All spoilers here are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
In a JC Jenson facility office on Copper 9, Subject #029, a Worker Drone, is hiding in a cubicle to avoid several robotic raptors hunting her. She attempts to rescue a paralyzed companion, but the two and found and killed by the raptors.
Back outside, Tessa happily greets N while Uzi demands to know what she and J, who had back-up clones of herself, are doing on the planet. Tessa explains that Cyn disappeared from Earth some time after the Gala incident, but not before unleashing the Disassembly Drones onto human-occupied planets. Suddenly, Doll steals the keybug and escapes into to a large underground facility. Tessa explains that Cyn had Copper 9 attacked in order to find a lab labeled Cabin Fever, which Tessa intends to burn down. As Tessa has J wait at her ship, Uzi questions why Doll would be involved with this, with Tessa theorizing that Doll's mother Yeva may have been purposefully infected with the Absolute Solver in the Cabin Fever labs.
N, V, Uzi, and Tessa enter the facility, which is littered with dead Disassembly Drones, and begin searching for the elevator to the labs. As they proceed into the facility, Tessa is snagged a rope trap and dragged away. Chasing after her, the three come across a lone Drone baby. Realizing it's a trap, the three are stunned by a crazed Drone named Alice. Uzi reboots to find herself and V strapped to a bed as Alice prepares to dissect them. Noticing the choker on Uzi, Alice accuses Nora, Uzi's mom, of leaving her and the rest of the drones in the lab to die. Tessa and N are restrained in another lab where N is happily cut apart by Beau, the baby Drone from before. Alice calls Beau to come over, where he inadvertently shows Tessa the code to the door's lock, allowing her and N to break free.
Uzi attempts to get more answers about her mom, but Alice only remarks that Nori killed a large number of people before torturing her. Seeing that N and Tessa are in the office, Alice seals the doors to her own room and releases the Sentinels, Anti-Drone machines that use a blinding flash to put Drones into a boot loop, stunning them and making them easy targets. Tessa shown N a live satellite feed of Earth, the entire planet fragmented and a singularity reminiscent of the Solver where its core should be. Tessa explains that, after the loss of Earth, the humans of Copper 9 attempted to study and harness the Solver, only to end up spreading it to new hosts. Tessa came to Copper 9 to find the list of infected drones, and suggests N choose the fate of the universe over Uzi, warning that the Solver will eventually overtake her.
A Sentinel stuns N and, mistaking Tessa for a drone, attacks her before destroying itself after violating the First Law of Robotics. Alice watches the scene unfold in her room when Uzi, now under the Solver's control, uses her power to release the locks to the operating rooms. Alice is stunned and killed by the Sentinels while Beau frees V from her restraints before he is killed as well. V tries to free Uzi in turn, but a Sentinel approaches them before being killed by Uzi.
The previously deactivated sentinel reboots, its once-blue eye-lights now a sinister red, and returns to the hunt. The group, meanwhile, finds Doll right in front of the elevator shaft, stuck in a remarkably convenient boot loop. When they approach her, Doll leaps up from her stunned state and unleashes the Sentinels, descending into the shaft and blocking the way behind her with the elevator cab. Tessa waves her still bleeding hand at the Sentinels, causing them to hesitate, however the red-eyed sentinel is unfazed and charges. As Uzi frantically attempts to use the solver to break into the elevator, V puts on her old glasses, which protects her from the Sentinels' stunning flash, and fights them.
In the chaos, Uzi starts losing control of her Solver power. Before she can be overtaken by the Solver, N severs her hand, terminating the power surge, and allowing the group to proceed into the elevator. N calls for V to follow them, but just before she can finish off the red Sentinel, its companions arrive as backup and shatter her protective eyewear. With the elevator jammed and the Sentinels closing in, V proclaims that she trusts Uzi and severs the elevator cables. She gives her friends a final, heartfelt salute as the Sentinels lunge at her.
This episode contains examples of:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Sentinel which bit Tessa eventually recovers from the Logic Bomb which that caused, now with red eyes and is able to consider humans as valid targets.
- Almost Holding Hands: Uzi timidly tries to hold N's hand when they first enter the labs because she was feeling scared. Tessa interrupts before their hands can touch, Uzi pulling her hand away in shock. Uzi and N do end up actually holding hands later in the episode, however.
- Amputation Stops Spread: When Uzi's solver powers go out of control, mutating her hand in the process, N cuts the hand off, temporarily halting the power surge.
- And Man Grew Proud: Parodied. Tessa's Infodump about the Absolute Solver contains what appears to be a still of Nori and Yeva being interviewed by one of the Cabin Fever Labs scientists in a Room Full of Crazy. The scientist is holding a clipboard that reads "What horror hath man's hubris wrought this time?"
- Bloody Hilarious: After discovering that bleeding causes sentinels to experience a Logic Bomb, Tessa later exploits this by purposefully spilling her blood everywhere. The sheer amount of blood that she loses is so large it's stupid.
- Bolivian Army Cliffhanger: The episode closes off with V cutting the cables to the elevator with the others inside as the anti-drone sentinels swarm her.
- Catch and Return: V catches a bullet fired at Tessa with her claw, similar to what Cordie from CliffSide did, and returns it to the Sentinel.
- Continuity Nod: Uzi warns that if Alice cuts up V, she'll end up getting a "worm" (a reference to the AS parasite that was inside the J in episode 2). Alice responds by showing that she's already canned several of those things already and has been containing them by storing them in an oven.
- Deliberate Injury Gambit: After discovering that the sight of blood causes Sentinels to experience a Logic Bomb, Tessa later exploits this against a horde of Sentinels by slashing her already injured hand to spray blood around.
- Do Wrong, Right: Downplayed. As N is getting dissected by Beau, he kindly attempts to guide him on how to disassemble him correctly, much to Tessa's chagrin.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: We see the aftermath of one inflicted by the Absolute Solver on the Earth itself.
- Enfant Terrible: A baby unit named Beau is equipped with deadly weaponry and has the objective of capturing and dissecting any drones that enter the area. Downplayed in which it isn't actively malicious and even frees V when things start going south.
- Foreshadowing:
- When the Sentinels are closing in on Beau, Uzi, and V, Beau prepares his laser cannon to fight them, before pulling a Bait-and-Switch and using it to cut V free and help her and Uzi escape at the cost of his life. At the episode's ending, the Sentinels are once again closing in on V while also sabotaging the elevator to force it to come back up with N, Uzi, and Tessa, and V pulls a similar Heroic Sacrifice by using her laser cannon to cut the elevator's cables and send it falling down the shaft.
- Doll not actually being bootlooped is foreshadowed by the circle not appearing in the center of her face screen.
- Genre Savvy: Beau's first appearance is him trying to bait everyone in. Everyone automatically knows that a random baby at the end of a dark creepy hallway is bad news.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- After the Sentinels entered the vigilance room, Beau decides to free V and allow her and Uzi to escape at the cost of his life.
- V also has this due to being seemingly killed holding off the Sentinels.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Tessa claims she can bypass the labs' defenses given she's human, only for a printout to be shown reflected in her helmet visor saying "ACCESS DENIED".
- Intertwined Fingers: Happens between Uzi and N, the two becoming very flustered over it. Unlike the instance in "Cabin Fever", this time it's not accidental and serves to signal their relationship becoming romantic. Tessa even lampshades this.Tessa: Don't date my robot, please.
- MacGuffin: Tessa mentions that she and J were looking for the Keybug to access a list of Solver-infected Cabin Fever Labs Test Subjects so they can find and hunt down any surviving Solver-infected Drones.
- The Needs of the Many: Tessa all but tells N they'll have to kill Uzi in order to contain the spread of the Absolute Solver, and implores him to make the hard but necessary choice.
- No-Sell: Being human, Tessa can't be boot-looped by the Sentinels' flash or sedated by the magnets.
- No, You: Upon noticing N and Uzi holding hands, V comments, "Ew." Uzi retorts, "You ew, you're mean."
- Obi-Wan Moment: V's final act is to close her eyes and salute her friend.
- Playing Possum: Doll attempts to ensnare our protagonists by pretending to have been boot-looped by a Sentinel by playing a GIF on her face-visor simulating the usual symptom of boot-looping. Uzi, N, and V see right through the act, but Tessa doesn't.
- Raptor Attack: The Sentinels are robotic raptors who aren’t exactly friendly as friendly as the Murder Drones.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The human-hunting Sentinel is distinguished by its red eyes.
- Spotting the Thread: Though no one notices, the one giveaway that Doll's bootloop is a façade is that the buffering icon is in the exact place of where her left eye would be. A true bootloop would be indicated by a buffering symbol in the center of a Drone's visor.
- Three Laws-Compliant: At the very least the Sentinels seem to be this, with the realization that it inflicted harm on Tessa causing a Sentinel to experience a Logic Bomb. Unfortunately, it ends up malfunctioning after hitting its head, resulting in it dropping the "don't hurt humans" rule.
- Villain's Dying Grace: After seeing Alice get killed by the Sentinels and realizing he's next, Beau frees V from her restraints and tips his hat to her before getting smashed to pulp.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Turns out all that's needed to disable a disassembly drone's nanomachines and an Absolute Solver user's powers is a magnet to their head - unless the Absolute Solver itself takes over.
- Wham Episode: In addition to revealing that the Disassembly Drones' backstory as creations of JCJenson was a lie, the destruction of Earth, strong hints that Nori may have caused the accident that wiped out human life on Copper 9, and the implication that Tessa intends to Mercy Kill Uzi, the episode ends with V's apparent death.
- Wham Shot: Possibly the biggest one in the series so far, as N views a picture of Earth as it is now... and the image shows the entire planet shattered into pieces, with a gigantic version of one of the Absolute Solver's "null" spheres at its core.
- When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Alice and Beau apply horseshoe magnets to the heads of any drones they capture, which is effective at disabling them. They have no idea how to deal with a human who isn't magnetic, so they tie her up, and duct tape a magnet to her helmet anyway.
