Defiance Episode 3.03 Dead Air

Due to the fact that those freakish worm things called shrill ate all of Defiance's weapons, Nolan is on the hunt for a fresh supply -- and he may have found some, a whole E-Rep bunker-full, but his good news is severely dampened when Stahma and Datak's plan to blow up the arch succeeds. The town is in mourning as Amanda and Nolan arrive at the E-Rep site where they're roughly greeted by two biomen (one of whom says something about Amanda looking like "the girl from the movies" - creepy n' cryptic much?). The pale blue thugs throw them into an elevator and take them through a massive underground complex only to come face to face with ... Niles Pottinger?! We thought he was dead! (Oh wait, that was just a very pleasant dream.)

Over camembert and brandy, Potty tells them how he escaped from New York during the terraforming disaster (yes, the one caused by the Kaziri, via Irisa). When Amanda makes the plea for weapons, Pottinger agrees and asks for a bit of her private time. When Nolan leaves, Potty asks for an eternity of her private time. She declines his offer of a lifetime of isolation and pity sex, so he makes the case that they belong to each other. He whispers in her ear, "You're mine, Amanda" - the exact words she heard before a man in New York raped her years ago. Making the connection, Amanda wrests a firearm from Pottinger and orders him to open the screening room. What she discovers is a trove of memorabilia of both her deceased fiance, Conor, and herself - including the mask and flashlight that her rapist used, and hundreds of hours of video footage of her in her bedroom.

Amanda uses the business end of the gun to eke a confession out of Niles, but bullet after bullet, he remains silent. Meanwhile, there was never any intention of letting Nolan take the weapons and actually save Defiance, but he made a new friend in his on-site jail cell, a medic named Samir who tells him that Pottinger kidnapped him and many of his friends as they fled New York. Niles forced Samir to rig a singularity bomb to his heartbeat (for those readers not from the future, a "singularity bomb" sucks everything in its path into a wormhole).

Well, it's a good thing nobody's going to try to kill him or anything! Oh, wait ...

Nolan and Samir hack out of their cell, defeat the bioman guard and rush to stop Amanda from stopping Niles' heart - but they're a heartbeat too late. They sprint for the exit and reach the roller just as a multicolored cloud of antimatter devours the bunker, leaving a crater deep enough to reach Hades. There goes Niles, the camembert and the guns that could've turned the tide in the impending battle with Rahm Tak.

Back in the beleaguered town, Stahma is practicing arts and crafts: the craft of concocting poison strong enough to kill T'evgin, and the art of seducing him so that she can stab a needle of the potion into his naked back. You see, Tak found out that T'evgin -- scientist, inventor, statesman on his home planet, just generally a badass -- is in Defiance, so naturally he orders his favorite lackeys to assassinate him. Stahma is against the idea, but seeing as Tak has Alak prisoner, she has no choice. T'evgin isn't fazed by the attack, or the sex -- both are worthy efforts -- in fact, he makes his lover pancakes to show how both tender and powerful he is. Stahma spills all -- Tak, Alak, her total lack of desire to kill him -- and the two find a deeper connection, shall we say, after they've talked about all of the sundry details of the event.

Irisa, who had to sit the weapons mission out due to her gunshyness, is having no such breakthrough with her adversary, Jessica Berlin (though we're sure there's some fan fiction out there to the contrary). They're sifting through the rubble from the explosion to see if it will lead them to the culprit when Irisa is felled by a searing headache emanating from the head wound she's had ever since T'evgin cut her free from the stasis pod tentacle. As she writhes and shakes on the ground, she begs for help, only to watch Berlin slink away in contempt.

Nolan, after telling Amanda she's not to blame for giving in to the rage she felt towards Pottinger, is struck by the same headache coming from his own head wound. Samir keeps him from choking on his tongue as Amanda wracks her brain trying to figure out what could've caused the wound.. and how they can save Nolan's life.