“Chimera” is episode nine of season four of Sanctuary.
It’s night and,. inside the Sanctuary, a spider is wandering around. The spider is quite big, but it’s also mechanical in nature. It enters a bedroom and climbs onto a bed, making its way up the person sleeping. Which is Magnus, and she’s not asleep – she captures the robot.
Magnus wakes up Henry, who starts going into too much detail about a dream he had before Magnus stops him. They look at the security footage, and it seems that Magnus’ wasn’t the first room the spider visited. So, it already did something to Henry – there are puncture wounds on the back of his neck.
Will has also been attacked, and the spider robot is the same thing that was already used on him in “Firewall” (by what he describes as invisible albino ninjas) to try and drain his memories. The device had been secured in the Sanctuary, and it’s not clear how it got out of its container. Henry thinks that the computer could have sent the release code to the container, but the question is why?
There have been a few glitches in the maintenance system recently and, whilst Henry tries to find out if there is a connection, someone arrives at the front gate. Even though it’s the middle of the night. Then Henry finds a hidden sector on the computer system. One he didn’t build.
The visitor is Tesla and he wants to see Henry. He seems annoyed about something. It seems Tesla is at least partially responsible for the hidden sector. He says that, when Magnus went missing in Hollow Earth in “Hollow Men”, he patched the spider into the computer system. And left something behind. Not a virus, but a sentient organic nanite. Which is far worse than a virus. Tesla had quarantined the nanite and didn’t tell the others. Because they were busy.
Magnus has been having Henry transfer the more sensitive files to a more secure location to keep them out of the hands of SCIU – which Tesla is running – and Henry warned her that, during the change, there might be a nanosecond when the defensive firewalls would be vulnerable. Tesla blames Magnus for irresponsible behaviour. Pot calling kettle black much? Henry says that Praxian technology is not easy to stop, and they don’t even speak the language. If it isn’t stopped, it will take control of their entire network. Tesla gets an idea – when he finally tells everyone other than Magnus, it’s to go inside the spider.
When they get into cyberspace, Tesla is disappointed at how normal it looks. As it appears to be the Sanctuary. It seems the computer is creating the surroundings based on their experiences. Things are not perfect, there are some strange things, the Sanctuary is not put together correctly and there’s something mostly unseen out of sight. Then Adam Worth turns up. Not the living Worth; Magnus killed him quite comprehensively in “Tempus”. This Adam doesn’t seem to have all of his memories. And wants to help. And does seem very helpful. Part of Adam wound up inside the computer, and Magnus thinks this recording is acting as an interface.
On the outside, Henry’s attempts to stop the nanite are proving unsuccessful and, if it gets out onto the internet, that would be bad. Skynet, according to Will. Inside, things seem to be going rather better, but Adam seems to be trying to remember things. Given his history with Magnus and Tesla, that would be bad. And it is. Adam is lonely and wants to learn, and isn’t very nice about it. In the virtual world he has a lot of power. Getting out of the virtual world proves to be harder.