“The 40th Floor” is episode eight of season three of Warehouse 13.
In the previous episode, “Past Imperfect”, the team had discovered that FBI Agent Sally Stukowski was the one who stole the artefact from Jinks and Claudia. Although, as yet, they haven’t discovered that the Van Gogh painting she gave back to Artie and Jinks in “Don’t Hate the Player” was laced with electronic insects. What they are doing isn’t known, but it seems a bit of a coincidence that both Jinks and Pete had their artefact protection gloves fail to protect them from artefacts after the infiltration.
This episode opens with Artie narrating about the Regents, how they were the first field agents of Warehouse 2 and have since become the keepers of its secrets as well. Whilst Artie is narrating, this, there is a woman tied to a chair who is being tortured by Sally using the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory she stole from Claudia and Jinks in the previous episode. Finally, the woman tells Sally something.
In the Warehouse, Artie continues with his narration. He has had Claudia looking into suspicious deaths and she has four artefact-related Regent deaths (could the Regent whose funeral Artie went to in “Trials” have been one of them?). There is now a fifth Regent missing – the woman from earlier.
In Atlanta, Georgia, Sally is in a bar and sends a text message before being accosted by Pete and Jinks. She smashes her phone, knock the pair down and runs, to be stopped by Myka. Who though that stunning her should have been Plan A. As they do this, Pete gets a vibe and sees a man watching in a car – he has been seen before in “Don’t Hate the Player”.
Sally’s attempt to destroy her phone didn’t work, as the SIM card was left intact, so they leave her tied up with Jinks watching whilst Pete, Myka, Claudia and Artie go to an office building she had visited. There are two guards who refuse them entry, so Artie has Claudia stun them with a Tesla grenade. The two guards have an Eye of Horus tattoo, which leaves Artie tongue-tied, and one has a business card saying Diana K. Snow.
On the titular 40th floor of the building a meeting is being held. Diana K. Snow is an anagram of Adwin Kosan, the man who would appear to be the head of the Regents and the ultimate decision maker, and two other Regents (one of whom, Jane, is played by Kate Mulgrew, Voyager‘s Captain Janeway). The place for the meeting was only decided three hours ago; this is presumably the information that Sally tortured out of the Regent she was torturing. According to Kosan, once before someone has tried to take control of the Warehouse – Napoleon, in 1812 – and steps were taken (this was when Napoleon’s empire really started to crumble). Myka gets an argument with the Regents’ head of security about the best steps to take, and is proven right, but she, Artie, the three Regents and their head of security wind up trapped in a building which has been seriously compromised by Sally and her partner using an artefact (it’s disintegrating) and from which there looks to be no escape while Pete and Claudia look for Sally’s partner.
Sally herself is telling Jinks that the Regents are not the paragons of virtue that he thinks, and that she can prove this. At which point Mrs Frederic appears. Sally is claiming that the Regents have brought this on themselves, as they started it, and that they have essentially already lost. Mrs Frederic is willing to question Sally quite vigorously, which causes problems for Jinks.
At the end of the episode, Pete gets a surprise, one that can be seen coming moments prior. More is ‘seen’ of the mysterious player introduced in “The New Guy” but we still don’t know any more about him – or even what he looks like.