Helix Episode 2.08 Vade in Pade

We return to Killigan's Island accompanied by Pete Seeger singing "Plow Under" over a montage of dead abbeyites and the desperate attempts of Peter, Anne, and Kyle to breach the dining-hall door. When they succeed, they find everyone dead. Intercut with their horror is Michael, caressing a plant and musing on the circle of growth and death. Landry clarifies that Michael wants everyone else killed. "Purified," Michael corrects him -- and "purify" the CDCers first.

Alan begs Sarah to talk to him. She brushes angrily past, headed back to the lab, and Alan says they need to get her off the island, but Sarah's not leaving until she finds her baby. She knows it's still alive! Alan's "Okay, Kookoo Crazypants" face is somewhat inappropriate, but he responds to her tearful ranting about her baby being special with "our baby," so Sarah forgives him a little.

In the future, Jules makes audio notes about the abbey as she walks through the ruins, finding the tree symbol on former dining-hall wall matching the pendant Mlle. Durant gave her. Suddenly, she hears clanging and, spooked, grabs an iron bar.

In Michael's botany lair, Amy hears that "the thinning is completed," swallows her gorge, and lies that she's "had time to think" and she wants to become his partner, outshining all her an-sisters. Amy starts undressing, which distracts Michael (and, more to the point, Little Michael) from the fact that she's obviously lying so he'll let her out of the display case. It works. He unlocks the case. They kiss (ew), he starts undressing her (ew) and he's about to begin the "planting ritual" in earnest (EW!) when Landry and his minions come in and restrain Michael. Amy takes a moment to clock Landry for taking so long before smugging at a furious Michael that there won't be a planting ritual, today -- or ever.

Peter soothes a shell-shocked Anne that Michael "won't get away with this." Anne doesn't see who can stop him, and Peter claims he has "associates" arriving soon. Enter Alan and Sarah. Alan's more shocked by Peter's non-oubliette presence than the killing field he's walked into, and Peter's immediately enraged again and rushes Alan. Kyle's just managed to pry them apart when the group hears gunfire, and uniformed SWAT types enter the hall -- the CDC sent a Coast Guard squadron back to evacuate them. "This is no longer the only island under quarantine," Lt. Cmdr. Winger tells Peter. "The pathogen is spreading."

After the CDCers explain that the Islanders died from Jim-Jones-itis and not the pathogen, Winger admits there's another island nearby, "unofficially" -- an Army radar outpost. Winger's orders are to take them to St. Sebastian to investigate the breakout there. Theorizing about whether the bees spread the virus soon turns to squabbling over who is or isn't going (Sarah balks, naturally) and how many Dr. Farraguts there are ("about five too many," says Peter's stinkface), and finally Winger's like, is the other Dr. Farragut as good as Sarah says? Yes? Great. He's coming, too -- you all are, on your own or at gunpoint. Coast Guard boats a day behind theirs will round up Anne and any other civilian survivors; once everyone's off the island, the Navy's burning the place down and salting the earth. Anne objects, but she's only getting one day to honor the St. Germain dead; Winger has her orders.

Anne rushes out; Peter snips at Winger about "taking care of these people" and follows her. He's "not like" his so-called friends; he'll help her bury the Killigan's Islanders.

As Amy and the Landry-tones escort Michael … somewhere, he messes with Amy's head about how he's going to end her. She lets him get to her, snarling that she's "counting on" his living forever, presumably because she plans to confine him somewhere for the duration and he'll wish he could die.

Kyle and Sarah pack up. Sarah doesn't feel like talking about what happened to her, so Kyle changes the subject to the 17-century genealogy ledger he found -- and the fact that "Michel Dubois" is listed as the father for every child born since 1602. Sarah says Michel is Michael, and when Kyle claims "a 500-year-old man" is not possible, she shows him her silver eyes. He's deeply skeptical about her Immortality and not convinced that her super-fast healing is relevant evidence, so to prove it, she opens a toxic honey sample and tastes it.

As they honor the Killigan's Island dead, Anne tells Peter about the previous winnowing and he guesses it was Michael, "even back then." How'd he know? He's known quite a few other Immortals. Anne calls herself and her fellow abbeyites "such fools" for believing Michael's claims. She adds grimly that he'll have to answer to her for that deception. Line starts behind Amy, girl.

Sarah's telling Kyle, who's starting to accept her Immortality, that he's "very sweet" to have been "worried sick" about her when they hear more gunfire. In the courtyard, Alan's between Winger's team and the vector they're shooting, bellowing that they're there to cure people, not kill them. Sarah remembers the vector; she put two bullets in him herself five days before. Winger wants to bolt but Sarah and Alan note that the pathogen kills people inside the compound in two days; this dude lasted almost a week. They have to figure out why. Winger consents to "a quick autopsy."

From the bottom of the oubliette, Michael eye-rollingly entreats Amy to get on with his punishment already, like, seriously. Landry shows up with his team, and Michael's sentence: a three-layer "monument" of rocks and concrete. Michael is as offended as he is scared and yells at Amy that no matter what she does, he will outlast the tomb, and she "WILL! DIE!" She looks both defiant and afraid as...

… in the future, Jules follows the clanging she heard earlier down a dank hallway, and comes upon the ancient shrine to Michael. She taps on it twice, receives two answering clangs, and sets to ripping the shrine down. Through a hole in the concrete, she sees a bearded and feral Michael.

The CDCers run into Amy while transporting the body and Sarah ignores Kyle's "she's dangerous" warning to ask where Michael is. Amy tells her there's a new sheriff in town, and pretends not to know what Sarah's talking about regarding her baby getting ripped out of her -- then changes tacks and says she can help, which Sarah chooses to believe.

Kyle and Alan perform the autopsy while Alan explains the whole Sarah/Immortals/Ilaria connection. Winger comes in with the others for a sitrep; the victim appears to have been subsisting on a red tree resin, and since it's a lead on a cure, they can't leave. Peter gets hectic about not going outside the walls; Alan gives him a suspicious stink-eye and storms off, and Peter says Sarah's finished on his team if she goes after him. "You were just keeping Alan's chair warm" on his team, Sarah spits. Burn.

Outside, Alan apologizes: nobody else was supposed to get involved. Sarah begs him to help the CDC anyway; it's the only way to beat Ilaria and find "our baby." That last bit gets him, and they hug.

Amy's impatiently ordering the Landry-tones to rearrange the office when Anne comes in, asking for Michael. Amy tells her Michael's "no longer with us," and corrects her: the two of them won't be running the abbey, only Amy will. Anne forfeited her right to it when she tried to pimp Amy to Michael. Anne blanches at Michael's photo on the Wall O'Matriarchs.

In the future, a moth-eaten Michael wonders why Jules released him. She came looking for him 30 years before and needs his help now: she's looking for a child whose stem cells can stop the disease currently affecting Immortals. The child haunted him during his imprisonment and symbolized his failure, he says -- but he'll show Jules where "it" is.

At the gates, Alan takes Sarah's place on the away team and learns that Peter went off in a huff when everyone took Alan's side. Winger calls the Farraguts' lives "a soap opera" (right?) and then it's go time.

In the future, Michael limps along the cliff, peering over the side looking for a small cleft in the rock face that sounds like Caleb's hideout. When Jules leans over to help him look, he shoves her over the side. As she's clinging and scrabbling, Michael rambles on about hiding his existence from the other Immortals instead of just stomping on her hand and splitting, and as he's talking, a sword separates his head from his neck! Michael's head falls off to reveal Caleb behind him, and the body tumbles off the cliff as Michael's silver eyes go dead. Caleb helps Jules up. "Guess [Hatake's] sword works," he cracks. Yeah it does!

Amy disingenuously tells Sarah that nobody gave her an abortion: "We simply induced labor." Sarah's like, in the what now? Amy flounces to a cabinet and opens it to reveal the Immortaletus floating in a jar, alive; she'll give the baby back to Sarah in exchange for immortality for herself.

The Immortaletus's eyes open...and they're silver. Dun!