- Strange deaths caused by a mysterious shadow lead the Fringe Team to the scene, where they learn that a Russian cosmonaut was possessed by an alien and his brother is convincing Dr. Bishop to solve the equation to free him.
- When a shadow touches a man at home and he turns into dust, his wife panics and the Fringe Division is assigned to investigate. Philip Broyles recalls similar cases he was involved and obsessed a few years ago. Senator James Van Horn tries to persuade Broyles to stop the investigation and deliver the case to the CIA and Russian government but he does not accept. A patient is murdered in a hospital and while investigating the surveillance cameras, Olivia sees the shadow. Soon the Fringe Division finds the responsible for the death and what the shadow is. Will they succeed to stop the entity?—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- (We begin with a first season, premise-setting recap to bring newcomers up to speed, but you already know all that...)
Boston, Mass.
A woman, Natalie Dancik (0365768]), calls her husband Randy (Joe Towne), who tells her he's in an airport lounge as he sets up wine and roses in an apartment. She says she'll be home in about five minutes. It's their anniversary. Then mysteriously, the TV in the apartment goes on, all Poltergeist style.
He shuts it off and inspects. A light goes off. He tries it, but sees nothing. He finishes setting up the romantic surprise. More lights go off. He flicks one back on, a cloud of black dust shaped like a man comes at him.
Cut to his wife coming home and seeing the roses. The card says: "I know how you love surprises." She walks into the living room to see him sitting in a chair, staring straight ahead. She loves the surprise, but then sees that he isn't moving or reacting.
She inspects. He's still. She touches him and he turns to ash and disintegrates in front of her.
Broyles (Lance Reddick) waits for someone in a restaurant. He gets a call and leaves.
In the apartment, Walter Bishop (John Noble) examines the pile of man ashes. Only the man's arms remain in the chair. The seat cushions have no scorch marks, which rules out fire or spontaneous combustion. He's worried about how to transport the remains. He wants a Dust Devil.
Broyles arrives. He wants to know if the man had been in a hospital in the past 24 hours. He's seen this before, four years ago in DC. Five dead.
Broyles takes Olivia (Anna Torv) and Peter (Joshua Jackson) to a storage locker and tells them about the case. He got a call from an Eastern European man who said he'd tell them about it if they could decode his formula. The scientists failed, but the killings eventually stopped.
Olivia confirms the victim visited Latchmere General the day before.
In the hospital, the same shadowy dust figure walks down a hallway late at night.
Olivia and Broyles visit the hospital the next day, looking for an employee of Eastern European descent who worked in DC.
In the Harvard lab, Walter plays with man ash. He says the equation has to do with something highly radioactive, which means if it had anything to do with the man's death, he'll be radioactive. Walter is surprised to find his ash isn't.
Olivia calls and Walter tells her the equation, whom he's calling "she," is a complex puzzle. Mid-sentence he recognizes something and starts computing.
Broyles says the killer was distraught when he called. Broyles felt like the man wanted it to end.
Late at night in the hospital again, we creep up on nurses and see machines flicker. A fly lands on a patient's cheek. She disintegrates from the light pressure.
Olivia and Broyles respond to the screams. The nurses saw nothing.
The records search turns up Thomas Koslov (Ravil Isyanov), who used to work in DC and didn't come in to work today. He's not at his apartment, but there are signs he was building something.
There is Russian writing on a component. A tech finds a print.
Back at HQ, Broyles listens to a tape of his call from the killer. The man says the killings won't stop until they crack the formula. He sounds genuinely concerned.
Broyles gets called for a face to face with a Senator Van Horne (Gerard Plunkett) in DC. His suspect is at the center of an investigation led by the Russian government. They say he stole something. The senator says the case is being taken away by people above both their heads.
We see Thomas Koslov carting large pieces of electrical equipment with Russian writing on it into a hotel room.
Broyles calls Olivia to tell her the CIA is taking the case. Except he has no intent of handing it over. He tells her to keep everything off the books.
Surveillance footage shows the dust shadow. They see he has no face.
Later in the lab, the Fringers watch the video. Walter thinks it might be the result of a Russian experiment and Thomas stole the technology.
Back at HQ, Broyles gets a delivery of files from his pal Senator Van Horne. He included a note saying he assumes Broyles ignored his order and hopes it'll help.
Turns out Thomas didn't steal technology. He abducted his brother (Yaroslav Poverlo), a cosmonaut. Something happened to his brother in space and they don't know what. His brother returned from space in a coma and Thomas stole him. They think he's in the coma ward at the hospital. Broyles is ready to go there now.
Walter explains Dust Man is not emitting radiation, he's seeking it. All five of the victims were undergoing radiation treatment at the time of their deaths, except for the anniversary man who took a transatlantic flight with a window seat, exposing him to radiation from the sun.
At the hospital, the lights go out in the coma ward. A nurse, Darla (Linda Ko), goes to check on the patients and runs into Thomas. He tells her he needs to move a patient and he's sorry she saw him there. He's holding a syringe behind his back.
Broyles and Olivia arrive and find Thomas' brother gone and the nurse sedated in his bed.
Cut to Thomas driving away with his brother in the back of a van.
In the lab, Walter blasts opera and works furiously on the formula. Broyles and Olivia come by. Walter says it's possible the cosmonaut picked up an organism on a spacewalk capable of projecting itself.
Broyles wants to know if they can tell Thomas they'll solve the formula. He says yes, but he needs something from home first.
In his hotel room, Thomas lays out a bowl of water and tends to his brother, surrounded by tons of machines. He listens to his messages, one from a hospital in Minnesota offering him a job and another from Broyles, saying he has information about the formula.
Thomas' TV fuzzes out. He hooks his brother up to what look like jumper cables and asks his forgiveness as he tries to contain "the shadow." He zaps him and the dust cloud recedes back into his brother, but only temporarily. It comes out again and he zaps him again. His brother flat lines for a moment but comes back around.
Walter finds what he was looking for at his place. Tinker Toys.
Astrid (Jasika Nicole) sets up a trace should Thomas call. Olivia takes the down time to ask Broyles why this case is so important to him.
He tells her the case happened when Fringe Division had fallen out of favor and he became obsessed with trying to solve it to keep his family safe. Instead, it was the case driving his wife away.
The Bishops finish the Tinker Toy experiment, building a physical representation of the formula. Walter peers at it and finds something he doesn't like.
Thomas calls Broyles. They call Walter. He says it's bad news. The cosmonaut and the organism have become one and can't be separated. Walter tells him his people might be able to help.
Thomas thinks about it, but doesn't say anything. And then a light breeze from a fan blows him into a million tiny particles of dust. His dust brother walks out the motel room door.
They're able to trace the call to the motel and head there immediately. They find the comatose brother in the van outside, and dust Thomas inside, still holding the cell phone to his ear.
Walter arrives and straps on a lead vest. He brought jumper cables, figuring that might be how to contain it. But no reading on the Geiger counter shows that the organism isn't in the cosmonaut at the moment. He thinks they have to wait until it returns to try anything.
Peter suggest they fire up the brother to bring the organism back. Walter doesn't know if it'll work, but gives it a try.
In a nearby motel room, a little girl's TV goes fuzzy. Broyles hears her screams and pulls out his gun.
He shoots the comatose cosmonaut through the head.
In the motel room, the girl's mom comes out of the shower to see Tara (Megan Charpentier) sitting frozen on the bed. She reaches out to touch her. The girl turns, not dust, and tells her mom there was a "shadow man" but he disappeared.
Broyles and Olivia watch as the cosmonaut's body is taken away in a led case with Russian writing on it.
Broyles knocks on a door. A woman we figure is his ex wife answers. Her new husband is there. He just wants her to know he closed the case from four years ago. She's happy for him and invites him in, but he declines.
He's walking to his car when a man (JR Bourne) calls to him, telling him he's got a real friend in Senator Van Horne. He says when the CIA says cease and desist, "we" mean it. He just wants to make sure there isn't going to be any report.
Broyles asks him what they did with the cosmonaut. "We had no choice," the spook says, "once he started breathing again..." He looks meaningfully toward the heavens.
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