Season 2, Episode 3 - Proof Of Purchase

Normal watches a blood-sport boxing match between defender "The Mangler" and "Monty Cora" (who is really Alec using an assumed name). Although he is a dwarf compared to the Mangler, Alec uses his supersonic speed to kick the reigning champ's butt. After winning his prize money, Alec gets zapped with a stun gun by Agent White. He is knocked out. Logan, meanwhile, makes dinner for Max. She absentmindedly tastes the sauce he has made and puts her spoon back into the pot. She then realizes that doing so will afflict Logan if he gets her saliva's DNA in him. Max becomes distraught over their current no-touching situation.

Lydecker phones Logan, saying that Max's genetic DNA makeup has surprised even him. Lydecker gives him a lead on a Manticore lab tech named Engel who spliced Max's DNA with the virus strain. Logan gives Engel half of $10,000 to kill the virus, and the guy gets to work hoping for the other half when complete. Meanwhile, Joshua comes upon a familiar house, but the current inhabitants are alarmed by his intrusion. They manage to get a photograph of him before he splits. At Crash, Max sees Joshua's photo on the cover of the New World Weekly tabloid. She sets out to find him before the rest of the world does.

White finds Alec, saying that he's been sent to wipe out all evidence that Manticore ever existed. To save his own life, Alec offers to help White locate all the transgenics let loose. White injects a microexplosive into Alec's neck that will kill him in 24 hours if he doesn't bring in three transgenics' barcodes as proof. Alec shows up at Logan's apartment, and he tags along with Max to find Joshua in the sewers of Terminal City. It turns out that a man named Sandeman lives in the house Joshua broke into. Max remembers that Joshua said his father was named "Sandman," and that Madame X told her to find that same name. Max goes to Sandeman's house, but the guy is clean. Alec, meanwhile, comes upon a black-furred, lion-like She-Beast transgenic in the sewers. He stabs the creature and skins off her barcode.

After finding in White's tent an R.D.F. company ID card bearing Madame X's photo, Lydecker goes to that now-defunct company's former warehouse. He photographs the gruesome skeletal remains on the ground there, and recognizes a lion wall painting as the Manticore chimera logo. Lydecker sends his photographs to Professor Long, who determines that it eerily sounds like a Kiloma Indian fable about a woman forced to impregnation by white fur trappers in the 1800's. Her first two babies were killed because they were stillborn and deformed. When the third baby was born, it was stolen, and the mother was murdered. The skeletons Lydecker found just might be the same people. Lydecker immediately drives to hand over the photographs to Long, but he is followed and driven off the bridge into the river. Lydecker's body is not found.

On the street, Alec finds an X-6. He knocks the kid out, and slices off the barcode. When he comes up short with only two barcodes in his possession and two hours left, Alec asks White for more time. But White produces the still-alive body of the X-6, proving that Alec didn't really kill him. White gives Alec another chance at finding a third transgenic.

When a sighting of Joshua blares over Logan's police scanner, Max takes off to rescue her friend. Yet Joshua manages to escape her grasp. Logan figures out that Joshua had been looking up all the Sandemans in an out-of-date phone directory, and he sends Max to the remaining two addresses. Alec goes with her, and they find Joshua. Suddenly, Alec shoots Max with a stun gun, and Joshua lashes out at him. Alec manages to get Joshua down, but finds no barcode on his neck. "I was first -- special," Joshua tells him. Knowing he needs to produce a third barcode, Alec sets his sights on killing Max, but he can't do it. Max takes Alec to Engel, who offers to remove the microexplosive for $10,000. Alec only has half the money, and Max offers the other half of her money that was to be used for curing her virus. Engel skips town, causing Max to vent her anger at Alec for ruining her last chance with Logan. Alec is truly sorry, but Max sends him away anyway.

Max takes Joshua to the last address on the Sandeman list. Although it is deserted, Joshua remembers the house, and Max recognizes a lion statue as being the chimera on the walking stick of a man who comforted her as a child at Manticore. Was it the creator? Joshua is convinced that, if they ever find him, his father will be the one to help cure her virus.

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