“Dead Reckoning” is episode nine of season one of Manifest.
At the interviews in the hanger, Vance is handed a file about the woman he is interviewing, Autumn Cox, which says she has outstanding warrants. She’s taken away.
Vance is telling Ben and Michaela that the detainees are likely in a particular warehouse, found in the previous episode, “Point of No Return”. Ben starts to head out; Vance tells him he rushed in at the farm and everyone disappeared. They know Laurence Belson is the public face, but only have his office email. They need more. Michaela is going to see what she can find out and Vance gives her a burner. Ben asks what he can do. Vance tells him it’s Saturday; be with his family.
Grace tells Oliva and Cal she wants to do a surprise barbecue for Ben today; can they keep him out of the house until 4:30? When Ben comes in, Olive says they want to play laser tag. He agrees, then ignores a call from his office. He heads outside with Cal, then sees Autumn Cox staggering up the street. She collapses.
Ben knows who she is and, when he asks how she found him, she says she heard a voice in her head. She says that she and the others were hooked up to monitors and had all kinds of tests run. They were drugged most of the time, but she spit the pills out and managed to escape. She remembers the farm. Ben says he will call his sister; Autumn is worried because the cops turned her over to those who did the experiments. Ben explains his sister is also a passenger.
Michaela tells Ben to take Autumn to the boiler room. Ben tells Cal and Olive he needs to postpone laser tag, but he’ll still be back in time.
Fiona Clark and Saanvi are with Ben and Autumn in the boiler room. Fiona confirms that what’s been done was part of her research; Saanvi is not happy with that research saying it’s dangerous and unethical. Fiona says it was just theoretical and was never intended to be used like this. Saanvi says Fiona shouldn’t have handed it over. Saanvi isn’t sure about trusting Vance but Ben tells her Vance risked his career; it’s time to trust him. Autumn doesn’t want to go to jail, but they haven’t seen what was being done to the detainees.
Vance is brought in and thinks something doesn’t add up. Ben tries to explain about the callings; he can’t be more specific as he doesn’t understand them himself. According to Autumn, they were initially just interviewed but after some of them knew they needed to go to the plane, and it then exploded, they started doing the experiments. Vance is wondering why Ben is so ready to go off and Ben explains that Cal is channelling the pain of one of the passengers.
The experiments are started up again. Pain is inflicted on one passenger, but two others are affected. Whoever is watching the experiments suggests increasing the charge. The doctor doesn’t want to, but Belson gives the go ahead. This time, Michaela, Saanvi, Ben and Cal are hit as well.
After the pain stops, Ben calls Olive and gets her to check on Cal. Cal seems to be fine, but he’s drawing a building and his nose is bleeding. Vance is going to assemble a tactical team. Ben wants to come with. Vance t4ells Ben that Vance was military and he is still going to be behind the tactical unit. Ben is coming anyway. Fiona says she’s needed as well.
Ben’s behaviour, despite that it’s basically being done to protect Cal, is causing problems between him and Grace, perhaps not a surprise. She can’t really see that what he’s doing is helping Cal.