Season 2 Episode 15 - Desert Cantos

Vigil
Sarah, Derek, John, and Cameron drive through the desert to the town of Charm Acres, the company town for the workers and families of the factory Sarah discovered and Weaver destroyed. On their way they pass unknowingly by a few dead cows on the side of the road...

It's a quaint hidden town. Believing the factory was connected to Skynet, they split up to try and talk with anyone they can. Sarah finds the photo of Ed Winston, the man she killed.

John cozies up to a teenage girl, Zoe, who's father worked and died at the factory. She even had to pick out a suit for him to be buried in. Zoe and John are met by her odd friend Henry, who is immediately jealous of John.

As Derek makes his way around the vigil, he bumps into a suspicious man -- one we recognize to be Weaver's man, Walsh.

Still in front of his photo, Ed Winston's widow, Diana, introduces herself to Sarah. "So did you know my husband, Sarah?"

Service
As people fill in the pews, Diana tells Sarah stories of Ed. Diana reveals she's always been skeptical of the work at the factory -- what sort of security kept him traveling so often? But no one asks questions of the factory. Or of the question.

In the back of the chapel stands Walsh, who receives a call from Weaver. "Do you have him?" She's sent him to locate a man in the town. "Everyone I've spoken to believes he's dead. Died in the explosion at the factory." But being as she was responsible for the massacre, she can guarantee that he isn't. Walsh watches Zoe's mom file in.

Ellison is surprised to see everyone dressed in plaid at the ZeiraCorp offices. Murch explains that it's tradition to honor the late Lachlan Weaver on the anniversary of his death. Of course, Catherine Weaver's now oddly unaffected...

Back in the chapel, the Pastor thanks the factory's parent company, the Kaliba Group, for their generous contribution to the funeral services. But Diana Winston won't hear it. "Is this all that costs to buy us? Where's anybody from the company? Have any of you seen anybody from the company? Have anybody ever seen anybody from the company?" she rants. No, they haven't. Sarah follows her out, past Derek (who is now keeping a watchful eye on Walsh)...

Diana reveals to Sarah that she doesn't believe the factory was really for Desert Heat and Air. But she doesn't know what really went on there. No one does. Diana shows Sarah some keys she found in Ed's things, including one for a storage locker that she never knew existed. Weak, she gives Sarah the keys...

Sarah opens the storage locker and finds an odd assortment of personal belongings: furniture, blankets, lacrosse sticks, etc.

Processional
Derek finds Walsh with a flat tire and offers him a ride. In the truck, Derek gets at him. Walsh covers by saying he's an investigator looking into the explosion, but Derek catches sight of Walsh's police ring on his finger. "Retired." Derek wonders what he thinks about the explosion. "You know people say it wasn't an accident?" It's cat and mouse and neither reveals their hand. Suspicious, Walsh gets out of the car.

Sarah tells a surprised Diana that the storage locker was empty. She tells Sarah that she got an accidental call from Ed three days ago -- was it a recording of his gunfight with Sarah?

Meanwhile, John and Cameron ride with Zoe and an erratic Henry. Zoe clearly wants to get out of town. As she tells John about her boyfriend Mike that disappeared, we flashback to Sarah in the storage shed. Zoe tells them that Mike was a lacrosse player -- Sarah finds lacrosse sticks in the storage unit. Apparently Mike's mother worked at the factory and violated some confidentiality agreement. "They just up and left in the middle of the night." Or did they?

Always the subtle one, Cameron tells Henry that Zoe doesn't love him like he loves her. Pissed off, Henry stops the car in traffic. He wants them out. But John shoves him in back and takes over. Zoe decides to show them something really weird...

...the dead cows. It's a frequent occurrence but then they always disappear. No one knows what's killing them -- there's no bullet wounds. Odd...

Burial
At the funeral for Henry's father, Zoe tells John that the Kaliba Group has agreed to pay out all the families life insurance money. Everyone knows that the factory wasn't really a heating and air conditioning company; Zoe thinks it was some kind of government project. "So you think what? That somebody sabotaged the plant?" John asks. "It wasn't an accident, John," she tells him.

Derek checks in with Sarah, tells her he's been following Walsh -- he's looking for something. Since Walsh now knows Derek's tracking him, Sarah decides to take over. Derek definitely believes the factory's destruction wasn't an accident. He asks her if she's learned anything about the drone she thinks she saw? No, but Skynet's here. "I can feel it."

Sarah trails Walsh as he sneaks into an empty house.

John asks Zoe if Henry's okay. She says that they're all going through it. John understands, his father's dead, too. Zoe jokes that her father's a pile of ashes somewhere now too. John catches her in a lie -- she told him earlier she picked out a suit for her father's burial. She covers and gets away from him. Cameron notices Zoe hasn't been crying. Suspicious.

Ellison visits Weaver in her office. He's changed into a plaid tie in remembrance of Lachlan. He tells her about the recent death of her father and asks how Savannah's dealing with it. Weaver hadn't thought of that and asks her assistant to arrange for her daughter to be brought to the office.

Patient, Sarah waits before following Walsh into the empty house.

Wake
Derek, John, and Cameron crash Henry's father's wake. John wonders what the point of all this is. Derek may think Sarah is crazy, but she could definitely be right about the factory being linked to Skynet.

Cameron notices that Zoe hasn't looked at her father's photo even once. Nor has her mother. "If you had a photo of Kyle Reese, you'd look at it wouldn't you?" she asks Derek. But John understands -- Zoe's father isn't dead. And they know it. Derek agrees. And obviously, so does Weaver. Cameron thinks they should find him before he is dead.

In the empty house, Sarah finds a hidden staircase that leads to a room downstairs. Surveillance monitors watching the town, blueprints of the neighborhood, fresh blood on the ground. On one of the monitors:

John, digging through Zoe's parents bedroom. But he's interrupted by her. "Your father's alive, isn't he?" He wants to help her. "You can't," she tells him before pointing up to a camera hidden in the overhead vent. They too, are being watched.

Gun drawn, Sarah tracks down a long, underground corridor to another secret staircase, that leads to... a garage? She calls Derek who tells her he's at the fake wake. Sarah looks out the window... and there he is. It's Henry's parents' garage.

Recessional
Sarah shows Derek, John, Cameron, Zoe and her mother the surveillance room. "Skynet work camp. This is how they were setup. People working for the machines monitored by other people working for the machines," Derek informs them. Zoe's mom wants to know who they are but Sarah wants to know what was happening in the factory and what was being built. But she claims to not know and still claim her husband is dead. But John doesn't believe them and threatens to go find him on his own.

"Tell us what they were building at the plant." But they don't know. They do, however, admit that he is alive, pretending to be dead. It's safer for everyone and better for her family because they get the insurance money.

Cameron finds a clip in the archives -- Ed Winston and Zoe's father killing Mike and his parents. John finds a dried but muddy boot and thinks he knows where Zoe's father might be.

Outside the house, Diana confronts Sarah. She recognizes something's off with Sarah, but Sarah won't tell her the truth about what happened with Ed.

In her office, Weaver watches Savannah play with crayons and realizes she's crying. In her touching but robotic way, she tries to comfort Savannah with Ellison's story of his own father's death. Savannah says she misses how she used to sit on her father's lap. The T-1001 takes her on her lap: "Your lap is cold..."

Back at the spot in the desert where the cows were found dead, Sarah, John, Derek, and Cameron find a bloody, murdered body: Walsh's. "Where are we John? What is this place?" Sarah asks. But he doesn't know.

And then it happens. Surprising them all, from the bubbling water emerges... the drone/HK! Sarah did see it. And now it sees them. It flies off, leaving them all stunned, before casually returning to the back of a huge truck bed and being shut in by Zoe's father before he drives off. Uh-oh.

 

Guest Cast:

Mackenzie Smith as Savannah; Alanna Masterson as Zoe McCarthy; Adam Wylie as Henry Douglas, Jr.; Susan Floyd as Stella McCarthy; Thomas Garner as Mourner; Cyd Strittmatter as Diana Winston; Shane Edelman as Matt Murch; Jim Jansen as Minister; John Pyper-Ferguson as George McCarthy; Max Perlich as Walsh; Ned Bellamy as Ed Winston