Title from: Payment Deferred (1932)
Kovacs goes looking for the killer who is wearing Quell's sleeve.
Tropes in this episode:
- Ambiguous Situation: Is it Quell in the sleeve? Several people assume it's a sleevejacker in a clone designed to look like her, and once Kovacs witnesses a memory of her slaughtering random people in the street, he agrees that it can't possibly be her. During their fight at the club, she fights with significantly less skill and speed than Quell displayed in flashbacks—until suddenly she pulls her Signature Move of catching a knife without looking, and seems to "wake up."Quell: ...Tak?
- Asshole Victim: Quell goes on a rampage in the club, explicitly Real Death-ing two people and killing the sleeves of far more. But since they were all meths getting off on the memories of enslaved, unbodied stacks, it's hard to feel sorry for them.
- Chekhov's Gun
- Kovacs uses the drugs he took off the Yakuza to befriend the two meths.
- Carrera and the detective discuss how Kovacs' sleeve has wolf DNA. Turn out this is not just for savagery, but pack loyalty.
- Ballroom Blitz: Quell's massacre at the meth club.
- Chess Motifs: Carrera tips over some pawns on the chess table as his men kill off the police investigating Askley's murder.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The Wedge team slaughter a roomful of policemen just using their bare hands and a single pistol that they throw to each other as needed.
- Deader than Dead: Quell (or whoever is wearing her sleeve) has the ability to not only brick someone's stack on contact, but also wipe out their remote backups at the same time, allowing her to Real Death the immortal meths. Everyone realises this is a Game Changer which could change the balance of power in the Protectorate.
- Fantastic Legal Weirdness: It is mentioned that it is illegal on Harland's World to wear a Quellcrist Falconer sleeve, no doubt due to it being a symbol for revolution.
- Frame-Up: After Colonel Carrera kills the cops with the lead detective's gun, he puts it back in his hands, making it look like a murder-suicide. Anyone with even the slightest amount of forensic experience would spot the frame-up, but the Colonel isn't trying to hide anything from the people in power, so they can smooth over any wrinkles.
- Gun Kata: Kovacs and Quell fight this style during their confrontation at the club.
- Have You Told Anyone Else?: A subtle one when Colonel Carrera asks Detective Lorcan if he has "shared his findings" with the rest of his team, obviously assessing whether he might be able to dispose of Lorcan by some more clandestine means, or if they have to take out his entire team. It's the latter.
- Have You Tried Rebooting?: Kovacs suggests this to deal with Poe's ever-increasing glitches, but Poe feels it would lead to him forgetting all his memories of Kovacs, and Lizzie from Season One. This leads to bad feeling between them as Poe glitching at the wrong time could endanger Kovacs' life.
- Hologram Projection Imperfection: Dugan is off-world but is still attending Harlen's conference, as shown by his flickering image.
- Human Resources: With the recent war there are plenty of stacks but not enough bodies to sleeve them in. Stacks that are unwanted, or whose families don't have enough money to resleeve them, are being salvaged and wiped of their experiences, to be played back as entertainment for wealthy patrons who want to experience how the other half dies.
- I Am Not My Father: Cited word-for-word by Danica Harlen to Carrera, who regards her as an Inadequate Inheritor.
- I Work Alone: After Kovacs takes down the top five bounties on the planet just to find her Trepp offers to team up, but he tells her sternly that he works alone.
- Laser Sight: Carrera and his men pointing their laser guns at Kovacs after the attack on the club.
- Leave No Witnesses: Carrera kills all the cops who found out that the meth's backups were destroyed, to prevent panic from breaking out.
- Memorial Photo: Kovacs pushes through a crowd of people holding up photographs, implied to be of the deceased whose stacks they can't afford to resleeve.
- No Time to Explain: Played for drama when Poe has a memory loss, forgetting even that Quell is supposed to be on the planet. Kovacs loses his temper and gives this trope.
- Not on the List: Fortunately, Kovacs knows a Yakuza boss who can put him on it.
- Note to Self: Poe uses an external memory system to deal with his memory loss. In short, he writes everything down on sticky notes.
- Poor Communication Kills: The argument between Kovacs and Poe means the latter fails to warn Kovacs that his sleeve has a biometric tracker, when the sticky note it's written on falls on the floor.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Before Carrera kills the Detective.Carrera: Kick a dog, and it will start yelping, crawling back to its master begging for forgiveness. Kick a wolf, and it will tear your face off.
- Restraining Bolt: Wedge sleeves (such as the one Kovacs is wearing) are physically incapable of shooting their "alpha", in this case Carrera.
- With All Due Respect: When Kovacs curtly tells Hideki to get him into Semetaire's club, the Yakuza boss tells him coldly that he's not to give him commands, making Kovacs dial back his attitude.
- Who Are You?: Stated repeatedly by Kovacs as he fights whoever's wearing the Quell-sleeve.
