“The Flight of Francis Jeffries” is episode five of season three of First Wave.
A man arrives home, looking around, checking to see if he’s being followed, and enters. The house is empty. A girl outside walks towards the same house, whistling. Inside, there’s a photo of her and the man on a desk. He takes out a video camera and starts recording. His name is Alistair Tilden and these may be his last words. There was a terrible accident at the lab and his life is in danger because of this, holding up a device.
Presumably having finished, Tilden sees a shape at the door. He grabs a poke. The girl enters; it’s his daughter, Lindsay. She was supposed to be at practice but it was cancelled. Tilden says he’s in trouble; it’s too late for the police, so pack her bags, they’re leaving. He puts down the poker and heads to his office. Lindsay picks it up and follows. She starts whistling and the tune means something to Tilden. She responds to his shocked exclamation in a different voice and demands to know where it is. She’s not Lindsay. Where’s the Vessel? Tilden won’t tell her and Lindsay beats him to death with the poker.
Strolling out of the room, Lindsay listens to an answerphone message in which a woman tells Tilden ‘he’ is after them, whatever he is. Hide the Vessel; she doesn’t think he will stop until they are dead. Lindsay is cleaning blood from her face, looking in a mirror. A man is looking out at her.
Cade arrives at Moorway State Petitionary in Ohio to investigate the death of Alistair Tilden. The death itself isn’t uncommon, but her father worked at Rokomm Industries, a high-tech weapon design firm that’s a prime target for the Gua. There’s a demonstration demanding death for someone outside the place.
Cade speaks to Lindsay, claiming he is from an organisation interested in looking into her case. She was told he was coming. She didn’t do it; one minute she was walking home, the next she was inside the house and found her father in the study. She doesn’t remember anything else. Lindsay called the police herself. Lindsay doesn’t know anything about her father’s work; he wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Lindsay loved her father and she’s scared she’s going to die like the man the protesters are protesting about.
Eddie isn’t convinced that Lindsay is innocent as all the evidence points to her. Regarding Rokomm, Eddie got inside their expensive firewall but the R&D section is offline. The place has too much security to get in as well. Cade decides for the next best thing.
This is Tilden’s house. Someone watches him enter. Cade plays the answerphone, which has nothing on it, and searches the study. One drawer in the desk sticks and he finds a hidden file. The watcher enters, armed, but it’s Jordan Radcliffe. She doesn’t buy that Lindsay killed her father. Jordan is there because her family is a major shareholder in Rokomm. There was a rumour that were doing radical stuff with molecular microprocessors. One researcher was killed in the lab. The police took the files. Cade shows her the one he found. There are three people in it. Tilden, the dead man, Susan Wilson and a man called Francis Jeffries. The man who saw his reflection in the mirror.
Someone else arrives, whistling. He smiles and runs, getting knocked by a car he tries to stop. The man touches the woman driving it and energy passes to her. She drives off, laughing. The man now has no memory of where he is or how he got there. Rather like Lindsay.
They head to Eddie’s trailer; there’s a password because of the use of clones. Inside, Eddie is told what happened. He doesn’t believe it could be consciousness; the Gua have a process. However, it could be that the Gua infiltrated Rokomm to create a new process. A Raven Nation team will check on Susan; they will take Jeffries.
Both places are empty; unsurprisingly, for Jeffries. Jeffries is a Gua, and he reports to Mabus. Mabus is not happy that Jeffries hasn’t got the Vessel. With it, they could defeat humanity without firing a shot. He’s also concerned to hear Cade was with Jordan, given the prophecy of the Fifth Harbinger.
It seems the Gua have developed a way to transfer their consciousness just by touching someone. Which makes catching a person with such an ability very difficult.