“Waning Minutes” is episode seven of season three of Continuum.
In the previous episode, “Wasted Minute”, Original Alec had used Alec Two’s ID to get into Piron so that he could get something for Kellog in exchange for identification and money so that he and Emily could get away. Alec Two had arrived back as he was doing this, which caused conflict. Kiera arrived on the scene and decided to stun Original Alec – who she then took to the Freelancers, where he was placed in one of their cells. Which was possibly a bit better for Original Alec than killing him as Catherine wanted was, although Emily appears to have left without him. Whilst Kiera was at the Freelancers’ base, Original Alec’s programme that was running to get the information from Kiera Two’s CMR to find out who killed her in “Minute by Minute” finally completed, showing it was Chen. The episode ended on a bit of a cliff-hanger.
This episode opens in the past/present for once with Chen being locked up in one of the Freelancers’ cells as well. Catherine says that Chen will be debriefed, as will Original Alec if he doesn’t give up the location of the time travel device. Chen seems to truly hate Kiera for some reason. The Freelancers have another prisoner too; one Kiera seems to recognise. It then moves to the future.
Kiera and another CPS agent are after someone. The other agent gets shot in the process, but Kiera manages to catch the man they were hunting, Stefan Jaworski. Who seems rather like the person Kiera has just seen as a captive in the past/present, and is someone. Jaworski was the first member of Liber8 to die in the past in the first episode, “A Stitch in Time”. She is taking him back in a transport when the craft she is in suffers some sort of malfunction and crashes, killing the pilot, the only other person onboard apart from Kiera and her prisoner, who has survived, even though he is injured. Her CMR is malfunctioning as well, causing Kiera some discomfort. Jaworski offers her a bribe to let him go. Kiera is not willing though.
The two are alone in the middle of a rather desolate piece of ground and the craft’s emergency beacon has broken. So they are going to have to make their own way back to civilisation, but they get captured by some people who are living outside of normal civilisation, Gleaners they are called – one of whom is actually Sonya. This is prior to the events seen at the start of “Split Second”. Kagame is there as well, being healed by Sonya. She isn’t a part of Liber8 as yet. Kiera really had a lot of interactions with the Liber8 members who went back to the past before they all arrived there.
Kiera, as a CPS agent, isn’t exactly popular with the Gleaners, and their leader isn’t happy that she was taken captive. The Gleaners are currently ignored by the corporations, because they are small and provide high quality food for the CEOs. The presence of Kiera, Jaworski (who the former is finding to be incredibly annoying) and Kagame at the Gleaners’ is causing friction as well – and is potentially dangerous.
Back in civilisation, people believe she is dead, so they’ve stopped looking for her. The company demonstrates a really poor level of empathy for her supposedly bereaved husband and Future Alec gets involved personally.
For once, the vast majority takes place in the future, but the events of Kiera’s past in the future cause her to re-evaluate her present in the past.