“The Aftertime” is episode twenty-one of season one of First Wave.
A teenage boy runs out of a Chinese restaurant and Cade chases after and catches him. The boy asks if Cade is with the Justice Department or the CIA. No. Cade retrieves a floppy disc from the boy’s pocket and asks what’s on it. The boy says that Cade will know better than he does. Cade says the boy is in a lot of trouble and Cade might be able to help. The boy just thinks it’s static; he recorded it but doesn’t know what it is. Armed Gua are approaching, one of them Joshua, and Cade tells the boy to run. Cade runs in a different direction and gets shot in the back. The boy is grabbed. Joshua retrieves the disc form Cade, who definitely looks dead.
Going back to the previous day, Cade speaks about a quatrain which says the twice-blessed man will be resurrected. That certainly suggests Cade’s death is temporary. He got a message from someone claiming to be Joshua, asking Cade to meet him in an abandoned lot in Cleveland. Cade doesn’t trust Joshua, but he can’t say no.
Joshua tells Cade that a computer disc contains a transmission intercepted in the Cleveland name. The suspect’s handle is ‘River.’ That’s all Joshua is going to tell Cade. How much more does he need? Whether or not Cade does this is up to him, but the Gua will find the disc and the person who has it. If Cade wants to help the person, he should do so quickly. Eddie was listening in and asks why Joshua would want to help them. Cade doesn’t know. He may be against what the Gua are doing, or he may be setting them up. Eddie thinks they should leave but Cade wonders why the disc is so important.
Eddie sets up a search for River and, after getting briefly distracted by a Range Rover being sold in a government auction, finds a message from Rover, who thinks the transmission is a government transmission. Eddie suggests that Rover is a technogeek with some serious hardware. Yes, he can find said geek.
This leads Cade to the Chinese restaurant. He says he is looking for someone in the building who owns a ham radio, identifying himself as being from the FCC. The woman he speaks to says her son, Stephen, has one. Cade says Stephen may have accidentally come into possession of delicate info and may be in some danger. Stephen’s setup is in the basement; Cade tells him he’s not accusing him of doing anything wrong. He wants to ask about the radio transmission he recorded. Stephen denies any knowledge, then grabs the floppy and runs.
Cade follows, but this time, instead of him being shot, a wormhole opens up and a woman leaps out, taking down three of the Gua following. Joshua and the other get Stephen and the woman tells Cade to move. Afterwards, she says she did it, he’s really Cade Foster. She’s come to take him back, having travelled from the future. He was supposed to die back there, the woman says, showing Cade a newspaper article about his death. With his death, there was no-one capable of leading the human resistance, none to stop the recommended launch. The Second Wave was sent soon after and 19 million died. Cade’s journals survived, and he taught the survivors about the Gua. He’s a hero, but the Gua are winning. So many gone, so few are left and the Third Wave is about to begin. They need a leader. Cade. She doesn’t care about Stephen; she was sent back to save Cade Foster. Cade doesn’t believe her, but she quotes his journal entry from the meeting with Joshua.
Cade takes her to see Eddie, who tends to be less paranoid when it comes to attractive women. She introduces herself as Lizbeth. Cade explains and hands Eddie the disc. Eddie gets into an argument with Lizbeth on the feasibility of time travel. They couldn’t bring back soldiers or weapons, because they don’t have an army. The Gua have killed two-thirds of the human race; the rest are slaves. A few thousand survive in tunnels beneath the major cities. Cade thinks that means everything he’s doing means nothing. However, with Cade alive, maybe the future will be different. Maybe the resistance of thousands will be millions. Lizbeth wants Cade to come to the future with her in two days.
Cade is more bothered about Stephen and the disc. Eddie can triangulate where Stephen picked up the signal from, but needs his equipment. He will have hidden his best stuff. Lizbeth thinks this is insane; Cade could be killed again. Cade doesn’t think much will change if he leaves for the future.
Lizbeth’s focus is on returning Cade to her bad future. Cade is more concerned about the present, and perhaps stopping said bad future. Lizbeth does have a funny moment when ordering Chinese food. Then there’s Joshua. Just what is he up to?