Season 2, Episode 9 - Medium Is The Message

Agent White's team finds a bald transgenic in Terminal City. White orders his henchman Otto to transport the creature to Forensics and to keep it alive. Otto reaches for the phone, and the Bald Transgenic's hands slip out of their shackles. The creature attacks Otto, and White is forced to kill it. "Never turn your back on them," White says calmly.

Max tries unsuccessfully to decipher a Manticore doctor's scribblings about Logan's virus. Logan, too, is on the hunt, and has resorted to calling Lydecker. He hopes to hook up with another former Manticore doctor for a cure. Logan finds out that Lydecker's car crashed into the river, but that his body was never found. Logan shows Max some photos of an archeological dig that were found near Lydecker's crash site, but she doesn't recognize them.

Joshua stumbles upon his father's art kit, and accidentally swirls some paint on a canvas. He enjoys painting and has found himself a new hobby. When Alec admires the gilded frame around Joshua's finished piece, Joshua thinks Alec is admiring his work and he gives Alec the canvas. Alec takes it to the Iconographic Art Gallery to sell the frame. Rita, the gallery's owner, is instead interested in the painting, and she gives Alec seven thousand dollars for it. When she inquires about meeting the artist, Alec tells her that Joshua is shy. Eager for more cash, Alec helps Joshua make more paintings. In the frenzy of the moment, Alec inadvertently grabs Max's wrinkled virus papers, and Joshua adds them to his work of art. Alec sells Joshua's second piece to Rita. When Max comes looking for her virus papers, Joshua realizes what happened. Without telling Max the truth, he warns Alec that they must find the documents. Alec tries to buy back Joshua's second painting, but Rita won't budge. She asks for two more original works to trade for the piece with the virus papers. Despite Alec's pleading, Joshua's not interested in painting any more.

Logan meets with Wendy Olsen, a woman whose son, Ray, has been mysteriously kidnapped. He agrees to take on her cause because she will make a sizable donation to the Eyes Only cause. Logan realizes from the boy's birth certificate that Wendy's husband is Agent Ames White. Later, Logan tells Max that he doesn't think that Wendy knows what her husband actually does for a living. He pulls up the security camera footage from the White's home, and there are two masked figures vertically leaping up to the roof of the house. With such capabilities, they assume these men are transgenics. Logan is convinced that they took the boy as retribution for White's transgenic hunt. Believing Wendy and her son to be innocent of White's treachery, Logan feels that he must warn her about becoming the next target. Max begrudgingly agrees to help Logan, but when they go to Wendy, she doesn't believe the allegations they make against her husband. Suddenly, Agent White enters his living room and holds Max at gunpoint. As Wendy begins to doubt White, Max grabs his gun and holds him down. Yet Max eases up, and offers to help track down the boy.

Rita doesn't like the two new Joshua paintings, and Joshua is desolate over failing to get Max's papers. He decides to steal the painting, but Alec shoots that idea down. As Joshua tries to confess the truth to Max, she gets a call from Logan, who has traced the ID badge on one of the kidnappers to R.C.F. Environmental Clean-up and Disposal (the site where Lydecker made his find in "Proof of Purchase"). Max goes to the R.C.F. site, and comes face to face with the two kidnappers from the White surveillance footage. She identifies herself as a fellow Manticore escapee, but they attack her with superhuman strength. She realizes that they do not have barcodes and are not transgenics. She sees White's son, Ray, being lead into a holding room. As Max escapes, she sees the bones from Lydecker's photographs, and she recognizes the Manticore lion symbol painted on the warehouse wall. Later, Logan references the symbol to burial sites dating back thousands of years. They don't understand the symbol's connection to Manticore or to Lydecker.

White gets a phone call at home from the kidnappers, demanding that he bring money in exchange for his son. Max follows the Whites to an abandoned warehouse and waits outside. White admits to his wife that he set up the whole thing, and Ray was not really kidnapped. Wendy had been chosen as his breeding host, but White mistakenly fell in love with her and couldn't get rid of her. When Wendy sought help in recovering Ray, White is forced to kill her. Wendy is stunned by this confession. Logan calls Max as she hides outside the warehouse, explaining that there is some kind of genetic reproduction that has been going on for generations. After the first two newborns are disposed of, the mother is killed. It turns out that the Whites had two miscarriages. As White is about to shoot his wife, Max crashes through the window and fights him. Agent White is resistant to any of her punches, and he mysteriously vanishes into thin air.

Max takes Wendy to hide out at Logan's. Logan learns that Agent White is using an assumed name. He is part of a breeding program that has been around for centuries, yet Logan does not know what that has to do with Ray. Meanwhile, White says goodbye to his son, telling him, "It's time for you to be with other people like us." The boy was included in the pretend kidnapping plot.

Joshua breaks into the Iconographic Gallery to steal back his painting, and Rita catches him. He tries to hide his face, but Rita is open to his strange appearance. She believes his work reflects someone who is seeing the world for the first time but who also realizes that he can't be part of this world. Rita kisses his cheek and gives him back his painting. Joshua returns home to find Max sleeping on his couch. He takes out a fresh canvas and begins to paint her portrait.

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