“Personal Effects” is episode three of season four of Warehouse 13.
In the previous episode, “An Evil Within”, Jinks was successfully brought back to life using the metronome. Jane had claimed that the Regents had approved this; it turned out that she was the only one who had. So Jinks is now going to be watched. For the rest of his life, as no-one knows what the downside of that artefact is. Artie had pressed Father Adrian as to just what the great evil released by using Magellan’s astrolabe was; the Father’s answers could best be described as vague, yet unhelpful. At the end of the episode, Artie got a notification that an artefact had been detected, a dagger, the one he had a vision of Claudia killing him with in “A New Hope”. A little disconcerting that.
This episode opens with Jinks packing his things from his room. Although it isn’t actually his room, but the copy of it kept in the dead agents’ vault in the Warehouse. Something he finds a bit disconcerting; both the fact that his things were sent to the vault and that the vault even exists at all. Pete is holding a briefing. About the bathroom schedule and other things at Leena’s, now that Jinks is no longer dead. This is not the mission briefing.
They have a ping from North Dakota. Which Pete describes as basically having the same lack of attraction as South Dakota, just colder. A woman was admitted to a hospital, suffering from the effects of the poison from a rare South American spider. Which is not common in North Dakota – especially when the person doesn’t have a spider bite. Jinks recognises the description – it’s an artefact he’d seen before, in the possession of Walter Sykes. Sykes had many, many artefacts – and no-one knows where they are now. Pete and Myka are despatched to check. Carefully. The woman was a cleaning lady, and the house she was cleaning looks to be just a safe house for Sykes to hide out in after blowing up the Warehouse.
The specific artefact they are looking for is discovered quickly. Unfortunately, someone else has already cleaned out all the other artefacts. The person who has taken them doesn’t know that they are artefacts and is trying to pawn them for not very much. When he plays with one of them, it activates and he decides to keep it – but sell the rest. It seems the man who stole the artefacts got the codes for the house’s alarm from a friend who works for the security company that was responsible for the property. So, now there are a bunch of artefacts floating around that were simply stolen to make a quick buck. This could be dangerous. As is shown when Pete and Myka arrive at the shop they were sold to to have it explode in their faces. The pawn shop also had already sold six of them. So they need to track down the artefacts before the town is wrecked. And there’s a petty criminal who desperately needs money for something and has discovered that he has an artefact – and is learning how it works. However, his attentions aren’t as bad as might be thought. This doesn’t mean the results of his actions are good though.
A side effect of the metronome appears to have been discovered. By Jinks anyway.