“Minute Changes” is episode four of season three of Continuum.
In the previous episode, “Minute to Win It”, Alec Two found out that Escher was his father, that Emily was a spy for Escher, and that he had inherited Piron. Which was all just a bit overwhelming for him. Original Alec also confronted Emily, and claimed he was from a different future and had come back in time to help her – something she thought he was simply saying to mess with her after discovering she was spying on him. Until she saw Alec Two at the same time as Original Alec. During the Liber8-controlled bank robberies, a safety deposit box was opened containing a piece of advanced technology that interfered with Kiera’s suit. Kiera doesn’t recognise it, nor did Liber8 – and nor did the Freelancers, who have their origins 100 years in Kiera’s future. So who does it belong to?
Opening in the future, Kiera is in a fire, of a type that they are no longer supposed to have, protected by her suit. She discovers a couple of children sheltering from the fire, but she can only take one out at a time. The fire brigade is stretched, won’t get there in time and, as Kiera is going to go back for the second child, she is told to rescue some company bigwigs instead.
In the present/past Carlos still isn’t coping that well with discovering that his Kiera had been murdered. He goes to speak with Julian and gives him a t-shirt with his Julian’s on it (the iconography is extremely, and probably deliberately, similar to some old ones of Lenin) and warns him to lay low.
Campus police go in on a ‘Liber8 Our Free Speech’ protest on campus, saying that it’s an illegal assembly and they have to shut down. One draws an extendable baton and both guards get clobbered as a result, and one gets his gun stolen. The police are also involved; Dillon doesn’t see a problem with it and nor does Kiera, but Carlos’ attitude is more along the lines that they are simply college kids. Kiera tells him that college kids is where it all starts. Carlos goes into Betty’s office to get the list of highest-risk students and discovers a SIM card stuck to the bottom of her stapler. Betty is a spy for Liber8, but this Carlos doesn’t know that yet.
At the after effects of the campus event, Kiera spots one of Julian’s people, one who wanted to kill her when she was captured by them in “Second Wave”. Kiera isn’t really holding happy feelings for her, and takes her down quite roughly, nearly strangling her to death. The police aren’t exactly popular on campus, especially as the boundaries on what is allowed keep shifting. There’s another ‘Liber8 Our Free Speech’ demonstration by the students at which they detonate firecrackers and smoke is used. One of the police, blinded by the smoke, hearing the firecrackers and thinking he saw a shooter, starts shooting at the students himself, killing some of them, including a Liber8 girl.
There are no recordings of what happened – which, in the day of the smartphone camera, is unusual. It’s down to Piron; all functions like that were disabled in the area of the riot once it was known to be happening. There may be a cover-up of some sort in progress, but whose? Was the riot a setup?
Emily wants to talk to Alec Two, but he’s still rather upset with her. The board of Piron (which includes Dillon now) is effectively ensuring Alec doesn’t have a say in running the company, just as he was warned would be the case and even though he has a controlling stake in the company (although Dillon looks like he may be more favourable to Alec). So Kellog, who completely expected that to happen, offers to help, saying that the board don’t have a strong hand or a strong leader, and he needs to sort them out or get his own shark.
Carlos and Kiera are not exactly in accord for much of the episode, given Carlos’ feelings about Kiera Two’s death and that they have differing opinions on the students for a lot of it. Alec Two gets another surprise.