Episode 9: Conscious
11/30/2003
Hiding out in a warehouse, the team devises a plan to frame
The Covenant for Sydney's extraction: Lauren will tell Lindsey
that she escaped The Covenant but they're still holding Sydney
in return for the Rambaldi device. Sloane will confirm the
story with Lindsey. Jack and Vaughn will say they were investigating
Syd's trail. Lauren needs to look as if she was mistreated;
Syd gladly punches her.
Sloane also suggests Syd contact a Yale researcher named
Dr. Edward Brazzel, who's invented a non-invasive technique
for treating long-term amnesia. Jack and Syd later track her
secret coordinates to a location near the San Andreas fault,
where they find a severed hand bearing a Rambaldi tattoo.
Meanwhile, Lindsey has the FBI arrest Dixon for impeding a
federal investigation. Lindsey is suspicious of Lauren's story
but agrees to trade for Syd.
The group visits Brazzel's lab and find him and his assistant
Kaya to be extremely eccentric. He believes dreams contain
memories so, through a cocktail of dangerous drugs, he fools
the brain into entering a lucid dream state. Once in this
state, Syd must follow the thread of her last memory —
and be wary of new, traumatic memories.
Brazzel administers the drug and Syd enters the dream state.
It's a surreal mix of past and present. She remembers being
picked up by 3 hooded men after her fight with evil Francie.
They inject her with something. She regresses to childhood
— she cuts a birthday cake, which becomes a severed hand,
and sees the face of a strange man. Back to the hooded men;
she follows as they take her limp body to Room 47. Lauren
guides her away, saying "You know better," then
tries to strangle her with hanging plastic.
In the real world, Brazzel revives Syd as she goes into cardiac
arrest. When she awakes, she kisses Vaughn passionately, believing
herself still in a dream.
Syd says it was Lazarey's hand. Marshall's forensics prove
the hand was attached to a living man only 4 months ago. Jack
says the incriminating tape could have been a performance.
Syd tells Vaughn that Lauren strangled her, but Brezzel says
it was probably just a representational figure. Syd goes back
under.
Sloane meets Lindsey, who says he'll make the trade but wants
Sydney assassinated in what appears to be a Covenant doublecross.
Lindsey tells Sloane, who's wary of entrapment, that he knows
what he's up to and gives Sloane an envelope containing some
sort of proof.
DNA from the Kremlin confirms the hand belonged to Lazarey,
which means Syd didn't kill him and Lindsey has nothing on
her.
Syd is dreaming again. She's in a car, called a St. Aidan,
with Dixon. She takes the box that contained the severed hand
and walks into her apartment. Weiss and Marshall are there
gambling. She enters the hanging plastic. Lauren tells her
to leave. Syd chokes Lauren, who becomes a Sydney doppleganger.
They struggle, the double says to trust Lazerey. Sydney shoots
and kills the double and enters Room 47. "Oh my god,"
she says.
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