“Joshua” is episode nine of season one of First Wave.
A group of searchers and law enforcement officers are waiting as a sheriff gives them a briefing. They have all taken the mandatory fugitive tracking course and will be split into teams, a search manager with four armed officers. They are not just looking for a fugitive, but for clues. The fugitive is a violent felon and those who capture him will be local legends. After the briefing, the sheriff speaks to a ranger. She says the fugitive can only go north or south. A search helicopter takes off.
The fugitive is, of course, Cade. He calls Eddie and interrupts his complaints; a cop spotted Cade in a diner at Cedar Pass. Eddie hears a dog and asks what sort. Cade doesn’t know. Eddie explains that search dogs are trained to follow a trail on the ground or in the air. He advises Cade to dig up the ground, because the dogs will stop to search it.
Another car arrives at the search base and the alien known as Joshua gets out. He’s posing as a U.S. Marshall and approaches the sheriff and the ranger, claiming his office sent him to help. He specialises in combat tracking. He claims hikers spotted Cade and the forest ranger, Jody Nolan, says north is wilderness and cade will die without provisions. Joshua suggests driving Cade towards Mosley and catching him there and Nolan says she’s going to head out and clear out any hikers or campers.
The dogs are delayed by the dug-up area and Cade stumbles across a rattlesnake, backing into a sharp branch as he moves away. The sheriff is talking to Joshua, who wants to join the field teams. The sheriff agrees and a deputy walks with Joshua to the latter’s car. The deputy is pretty racist and Joshua opens the boot to distract him. When the deputy looks in at the weapons on display, Joshua slams the boot lid down on him, hard, twice, then puts the body in the boot, saying that their hatred for each other will only hasten their defeat.
Cade has reached an open patch by a river and calls Eddie. He can’t shake the dogs; Eddie tells Cade they are animals, he can outthink them. They’re at the limits of phone service so Eddie arranges to meet Cade. The trackers arrive and can’t see Cade. He puts his jacket in the water for the dogs to follow. When they leave, Cade steps out. Then handcuffs land in front of him as Joshua steps out and tells him to put them on. Cade recognises Joshua from “Speaking in Tongues”. The aliens intent to cut Cade open to find out what makes him such a formidable adversary. Cade tells him that they made him when they murdered his wife.
Joshua sent the search teams south. South is a trap and Joshua didn’t think Cade would walk into one. As they start making their way, Cade recognises that they are near the rattlesnake. He suggests they cut through the forest, but Joshua declines. Which was what Cade wanted. When the rattlesnake distracts Joshua, Cade impales him on the sharp branch.
Joshua is impaled, not dead, and Cade searches him. He finds a sphere like the one he found in “Crazy Eddie” – not knowing that the sphere he had was Joshua’s – and refuses to kill Joshua. He pulls him off the branch to treat him so that he can be turned over to the cops to clear Cade’s name. Cade lights a fire to get the searchers to their location. Joshua tries provoking Cade into killing him, but it doesn’t work. Cade decides to torture Joshua into giving up information. The torture doesn’t work; at least, not the way intended. Cade does find out more about the aliens – the Gua – than he did before, and he and Joshua end up talking quite a bit.
Naturally, Cade’s plan to get the cops to take Joshua into custody doesn’t work and equally naturally they bump into Nolan.