Helix Episode 2.02 Reunion

Alan and his giant lumberjack beard are awakened by church bells. He has a flashback to searching for Jules, and stares into the mirror of his cubicle -- then more flashbacks to the people he threatened and murdered in his hunt as, in the present, he stares into space, at a dog-eared photo of Jules, and into his oatmeal. Then (or maybe it's another flashback) he logs into an llaria account and examines documents, ending on a map of St. Germain.

Later, he's raking grass outside the abbey school when a Brother Carson tells him his request to "join the harvest" is approved. But soon it's time for morning "council," so Alan heads to the church building with everyone else -- and he's spotted by Sarah, who's woken up with another bloody nose but isn't dissuaded, by that or the giant hole in her foot, from chasing after him. She is distracted by the infected dude she runs into in the hallway, but that guy gets away, so Sarah contents herself with hiding in the nave and spying on Council.

In Jules's timeline, she's decided Alan's "rested long enough" and it's time to dig him up. In the present, Michael Jim Joneses about surrendering themselves to the simple life, blah blah cult blah. He's creepily hugging various congregants when a grade-schooler with goulash boils on his face wanders into the nave. "Mother?" His mother stands up, terrified, and the kid, Soren, rushes her. Alan drags him off before he can do much harm; Alan also makes eye contact with Sarah but pretends not to know her.

Sarah briefs Peter and Kyle in Michael's office. The pathogen is on the island, she reports, telling them about the other infected parishioner she saw. When Michael comes in with Anne, Anne immediately starts in about expelling the CDCers for disobeying Michael's orders -- orders we didn't hear him give them, and which shouldn't apply to them anyway. Michael notes that Sarah helped Olivia, Soren's mother, which counts for something; Anne isn't convinced. Michael seems cooperative as he asks for Peter and his team's help containing the pathogen and finding "Brother Isaac," and Peter isn't equipped for that, but they can run some analysis if Michael has a lab. He does, a botany lab, though it won't have the latest technology (or terminology; Michael is the last living person who still calls it "the World Wide Web").

Jules is disinterring Alan. Caleb reluctantly pitches in to help. They hit a skull, and Jules begins to cry, then stops: it's not Alan's bones they've found.

Soren writhes in his primitive containment bed as Peter and Kyle split up to search the abbey catacombs for Isaac. Peter finds Isaac at the end of the fourth or fifth creepy hallway, but freezes when Isaac turns on him, flashing back to his own days as a vector in the Arctic Circle. Just before Isaac's about to tackle him, Kyle tackles Isaac, deflecting him from Peter. Isaac shoves Kyle and escapes.

At the botany lab, Kyle mocks the ancient "technology" and wonders why a cult needs a botany lab. Our best guess involves marijuana trafficking, but anyway, Sarah says it'll take her 20 hours to analyze the samples using these old machines. Then she admits she's seen Alan. Peter doesn't believe it at first, saying it doesn't make sense; then he expositions that Alan's "discredited" as a CDC scientist and has international arrest warrants out on him, so Sarah's not to have any contact with Alan. She objects; Peter yells; Kyle pulls a WTH face, but is as incurious about their dust-up as he was nosy about Sarah and Alan's relationship last week.

Anne still wants to expel the CDCers. Michael tells her to chill. Anne reminds him that the matriarchal generations of Germainton Abbey that came before them entrusted her "with their legacy," and she can't let them down. "They all knew what they had to protect," she vagues, but lets Michael calm her down with some of his patented invasive snuggling. And that's still less creepy than what's going on in the storeroom, where Isaac is lurking, then slashing his own throat as Brother Carson looks on in horror at the banana pudding pouring from Isaac's wounds.

Jules assembles the bones they found in "Alan's" grave -- which belong to more than one person, and the skull she hit first is a woman's. She's sure Alan left a clue for her, and sure enough, she finds an extra hip bone with a symbol carved on it. Caleb claims he doesn't recognize it, then lamely lies that he has to go check his traps, and rushes out.

In another botany lab, Michael has asked to see Alan, who's going by "Brother Jerome" and who clearly disapproves of Michael monkeying with tea varietals to create his own oolong. Michael quotes Darwin at Alan before asking why he's there. Alan sighs that he killed people, which kind of narrowed his options, cloister-wise. Michael says he's hiding, and condescends that Germainton Abbey is about facing the past, and "our pain."

Speaking of pains (in the behind), Sarah is struggling with the elderly equipment. Things go faster when she ditches her safety gear, so she does so, and Peter busts her and chews her out. What if Kyle walks in? Everyone who's caught the pathogen has died. Sarah snits that he can't tell her what to do, and Peter's like, aaaactually I'm the team leader so I can too, and why are you fighting me on every dang thing? Sarah passive-aggressives that "Alan welcomed other people's input," which has the desired effect -- annoying Peter -- and he says he's not Alan, and they can continue without her if she can't play nice.

Kyle interrupts with a news bulletin: Soren's all better, vitals normal, no memory of attacking his mother in the church. The team discusses retracing Isaac and Soren's steps to see where they intersected, a conversation made slightly awkward by Sarah not realizing she has another nosebleed. Why is she always the last to know about those? Does she not have any nerves in her upper lip?

Sarah and Kyle question some of the parishioners -- Sarah about the apple trees in the orchard (the over-it older lady from last time is impressed that Sarah knows her "apple cultivars"), Kyle about Germainton Abbey's communal child-rearing principles. A flirty young woman informs Kyle that the kids stick with their own parents until age seven; then everyone raises them together. Kyle thinks that's a bit young, and is winkily told that he has a closed mind "for a scientist." We also learn that, with a few exceptions, everyone's been at the Abbey for generations.

Soon thereafter, Exposition Girl leads Kyle into the storeroom, strips off her top, and orders him in a Tracey Flick monotone to "be my path." Too stunned to resist at first, Kyle finally and brusquely stops her when she kisses him. She smirks that she has to go back to work. That's not going to end well.

Neither is Sarah's attempt to speak to Alan in the orchard. She "introduces" herself to him to keep his cover, but once they're alone, he breaks Jerome character and hisses at her to get out of there immediately. They can't, she says; the Coast Guard isn't coming back for two weeks. Well, then they should go down to the dock and wait there for the duration, Alan grunts, and pray they get off Killigan's Island alive. He shoots Sarah a hand signal, two fingers over his heart, before the older lady comes back and leads her away.

Jules leans on Caleb to tell her what the markings mean. He admits that it's a map, but wonders how he can trust her that she's really there to stop an outbreak. She doesn't have time to lie, she says, showing him her worsening pustules. Caleb's not moved to tell her what's at the red dot on the hip-bone map; he only says it's somewhere she won't want to go, and he doesn't either.

Sarah tells Peter about her orchard tete-a-tete with Alan. Peter snarks on Alan some more: "We're the CDC; we don't run." Sarah smiles that that's something Alan would say. Then it's time for chalk talk with Kyle, who's charted everyone's movements and emphasizes that, as Michael said to Alan before, "nothing is random." Activity is tightly scheduled and controlled, and Soren and Isaac wouldn't have crossed paths -- but with everyone on the boat dead, Isaac missing, and Soren on the mend, someone is lying about something.

Caleb is escorting Jules part of the way to Red Dotville -- reluctantly, which why do we bother writing that, it's how Caleb does everything, really. She tries to entice him into coming with, but he'll only go as far as the river. Jules spots a child's skull just off the path, and comments on the "predation" marks, probably from animals. "Or something worse," Caleb dooms. Kar...dashians?

Something worse for us is happening back at Germainton Abbey: Sarah has snuck into Alan's room after curfew to whine at him about how he disappeared and she thought he was dead and why won't he tell her what he's doing there? Alan is polite, but firm: it's too dangerous for him to let her in on his M.O.. Sarah ups the ante, saying he owes her an explanation -- her, and their baby. Alan is gobsmacked. "I have a child?"

Wellllll, that's the thing: Sarah's still pregnant. She's been pregnant for 15 months. When she received Julia's spinal fluid, it made her immortal, stopping her aging process ... and the fetus's as well. So she's had morning sickness and fatigue for 15 months. Why didn't she terminate? "Something always stopped" her. Something like "being able to leverage it with Alan"?

Hey, respect: that's a gold-plated Concorde guilt trip girlfriend just took Alan on -- points for originality, too! -- but Alan won't budge. He wants to help, but he can't, and he can't tell her why he's there: "It's too important." Burn!

Michael's attaché, Landry, comes to Soren's containment cube and lies that his mom wants to see him. Soren faintly smells a small rat, sort of, but grabs his stuffed animal and follows Landry ... outside the walls, where Landry leaves him, locking him outside the Abbey. Moments later, a banana-pudding-faced individual (Isaac?) attacks him, and he's carried off screaming. DUN!