“Ex Marks the Spot” is episode eighteen of season one of Mutant X.
Three GS agents and another man are in a safehouse, possibly the one that was compromised in “Interface”. The one who isn’t an agent is a New Mutant, and he and an agent he knows, Artie Hill, are discussing breaking into a vault. The New Mutant, Zack, says that the vault is way out of their league and he doesn’t need more prison time. He declines to help. Declining is not an option. Even though Hill says he’s a cop now, not a criminal – a cop who is planning a heist. Brennan and Jesse arrive at this point and take down the agents, leaving with Zack on the Double Helix. They contact Shalimar to tell her they are taking Zack to another safehouse. Zack recognises his voice, and she, his. Shalimar is glad the GSA didn’t kill Zack. That means she gets her own shot. Zack thinks she hasn’t changed a bit.
Shalimar is telling Adam that Zack is bad news and they need to walk away. Adam suggests that Zack has changed in the six years since Shalimar last saw him. She doesn’t believe people like Zack change. Shalimar spent a week in jail because Zack left the loot from a job in her freezer. Adam wants to find out what Zack has to say. Okay; then smoke him. Emma has brought up Zack’s file and tells Shalimar she knows how to pick them. Shalimar is more selective now. Adam wants Shalimar to be objective and keep her emotions out of it.
Jesse, Brennan and Zack are in another safehouse. Hill is someone whose crew Zack used to run with. He’d never even heard of the GSA. Zack demonstrates his power, placing a hand on a door and bringing up images of what’s inside. He used to charge for that at school. Jesse walked through a few walls that he shouldn’t have.
Eckhart is not happy with Hill; it seems Hill has been hired for this vault job. Then again, he’s rarely happy with his minions. He wants Hill to recover Zack and warm up his cold feet. Or else.
Zack is telling Brennan that he’s changed and that this was supposed to be his final job. His part was to simply get them into the vault. Zack did overhear something about artwork, though. Shalimar arrives at this point and lays into Zack. She evidently wasn’t capable of keeping her emotions out of it.
Emma has uncovered something about an upcoming auction and the vault where the pieces are being stored. The auction has a Fabergé egg in it. Why would Eckhart want one of those? Adam says that now they know what, they need to work out why, so to trace the egg’s ownership.
Zack is leaving; he doesn’t want anything to do with the job. Only two people can get into the vault; the guy with the combination and him.
Eckhart is looking at the catalogue description of the egg. Hill seems impressed by it. Eckhart doesn’t care. Does Hill need Zack to complete the mission? It appears he does. Hill needs to find and persuade him then.
Adam and Brennan have discovered the former owner of the egg. A biogeneticist with the Soviet anti-Genomex programme. A man rather like Eckhart. A devout Communist with a nostalgia for Tsarist items. Adam doesn’t think that Eckhart simply wants the egg because it belonged to his Communist counterpart.
Brennan and Jesse are talking with Proxy Blue – the first time that’s been seen for a while. It seems the Soviet scientist was working on genetically manipulating the strand of DNA that controls free will. It’s not known how far he got, because the records were destroyed. Adam enters and tells them he thinks the Soviets killed their scientist, and that he feels the latter hid a data chip of his work somewhere. Probably in the egg. Which means they need Zack to get it. Shalimar is not happy. Adam doesn’t trust Zack either, nor is he happy, but he uses a rather poor choice of words regarding it. It’s debateable as to whether Shalimar is okay with this. Her relationship with Zack is a bit complicated.
Now, Eckhart is in control of a government organisation and a large company, which means he has access to some rather large budgets. Yet, instead of buying the Fabergé egg at the auction, which he could probably have done easily, he decided to steal it. If he’d simply bought it, Mutant X would have had no idea he was after it. Rather stupid.