"In this business, it's always the children who suffer."

I See Dead People



We start things off at Nadia's funeral, which is intercut with Renee's autopsy. There are more people at the funeral than I would have expected. As Syd voiceovers the eulogy, we see the medical examiner remove a computer chip from Renee's chest cavity. After the funeral, Syd approaches the casket with Dixon and looks down at Nadia. She cries and asks Dixon, "How could I have trusted him again, after everything?" She's talking about Sloane. She says she won't make that mistake again.

At the Prophet 5 fortress, Sloane is pretty much being held under guard while deciphering the secret message on Page 47. Peyton pays him a visit and checks on his progress. Sloane replies that it's only been a week and surely after 500 years the key to Rambaldi's end game can wait a few more days. He tells her, "No one will stand between me and the fulfillment of Rambaldi's ultimate vision."

Back at APO, Jack, Marshall and Tom are working on accessing the data on the chip that was removed from Renee. Marshall says that it's a 30-year-old chip that appears to be corrupted and/or is missing portions of the data. He can't decrypt it. He puts the chip under a microscope and finds Vaughn's real name, Andre Michaux, etched on it. Jack says he'll tell Sydney about it. In the meantime, he wants them to find out what it was doing in Renee. We cut to a man with headphones on, listening in on their conversation. He picks up a phone and says he needs to contact Peyton.

At home, Sydney's trying to get Isabelle to sleep and has resorted to the old put the baby on the clothes dryer trick. Jack arrives and tells Sydney about the chip and how Vaughn's name was on it. Vaughn and Renee's fathers worked together against P5 and Jack wants to bring Vaughn in on this because he thinks he may be able to provide useful information. Syd doesn't like the idea because it will put Vaughn in danger, but SpyDaddy insists. Syd says OK, but she will be the one to bring the chip to Vaughn.

Peyton visits Sloane again and plays a recording of Dixon saying that Syd is meeting a contact in Nepal and will be taking the chip with her. She asks Sloane if he knows who this Nepal contact is and he says he doesn't. Peyton tells Sloane that P5 will be sending their own agent and they want him to brief her. The door to the room opens and in walks Anna-Syd. Sloane is completely nonplussed.

APO. Tom opens a magazine to the "Engineers Market" page and writes "CONTACT MADE AWAITING RESPONSE" on it. I wonder, is he writing with his left hand on purpose, you know how you do when you don't want anyone to recognize the handwriting? Because if not, he needs some penmanship lessons. Rachel approaches him and starts talking about not having a private life anymore but is really talking about how she thinks she's not a very good agent because she was fooled by Gordon Dean and now by Sloane. Tom reassures her that she is a good agent. Boy is she really going to feel stupid later on. Rachel walks away and Tom places a call on his cell phone, asking to place a classified ad in next week's edition. Of what, I do not know.

Sloane briefs Anna-Syd on Sydney - about the baby, Vaughn, etc. The scene is wonderfully acted by both of them. At one point, she chillingly says, "In this business, it's always the children who suffer." Oo, low blow. Sloane counters, awesomely, "Tell me, I imagine you do your best to avoid mirrors, yes?" After Anna leaves, a vision of Nadia appears to Sloane. Feeling guilty, are we?

In Nepal, at the tiny airport, a man called Nabeen (or something close to that) greets the person he thinks is Sydney, but is actually Anna. I know, it's confusing me, too. He tells her he's been sent by Vaughn, so now Anna knows that he's alive. As Nabeen loads her bags into the back of his truck, Anna knocks him out. He is replaced by her own man, who stays behind to greet the real Sydney while Anna drives off.

Marshall's on the phone with some mail order company arguing about a purchase. He hears a clicking on the line and investigates it. He goes to Jack's office, talks nonsense to him about coffee while writing a note for Jack to read. They convene to the parking garage where Marshall tells Jack that the logs show that Sloane logged on a few days ago and set up a passive surveillance system and Prophet 5 has been monitoring every conversation inside APO. But Sloane was gone already. How could he have logged on to the system? Was it Tom, perhaps?

Sydney and FakeNabeen are driving to Vaughn's when Syd's cell phone rings. Wait, cell phones work in the most isolated nation in the world? Anyhoo, it's SpyDaddy calling and he tells her that she's been compromised and P5 knows that she's contacting Vaughn. When she hangs up, she notices a truck broken down on the road up ahead. She knows it's a trap and before FakeNabeen can stop, she attacks him. This does not go well and the truck rolls over into a ditch. As Sydney tries to get out of the overturned truck, Anna-Syd approaches. Syd can't believe her eyes as she looks up and sees herself. Anna takes the chip from Syd's bag and when she says that she would have taken the chip from Renee when she cut her throat if she had known it was in her, Syd figures out that she's Anna. Anna sets the truck on fire and walks away. Syd manages to crawl to safety just before the truck explodes.

Anna-Syd enters Vaughn's hut and she and Vaughn embrace and kiss and I wish it was really Sydney and Vaughn reuniting. They talk about the baby and Vaughn appears to be fooled by Anna.

At Prophet 5 HQ, Peyton checks on Sloane's progress again. This time he says he's come across "an anomaly in the composition" and can she get a manuscript that he needs at a Geneva bookseller. Peyton says sure and leaves. Nadia appears again and the most significant thing to come out of this scene is that Sloane has already decyphered the secret code but is stalling and holding back the information. Why, I wonder? Also, when Nadia first appears, she has no neck wound but as she speaks it appears on her neck. Cool.

Anna-Syd has filled Vaughn in on the computer chip. Vaughn wonders if there's one in him, too. He shows her a scar on his chest that his father told him was from a bike accident that he doesn't remember having. They decide to do a little digging. Anna cuts into Vaughn's chest and removes a chip just like the one from Renee, but this one has Renee's name on it. Vaughn takes the chip and joins it with the one from Renee. They snap together. The data from Renee's chip wasn't corrupted, it was just incomplete.

While this was going on, Sydney has managed to escape the blast and get into a nearby truck. She calls her father and tells him that Anna knows about Vaughn and...she's been doubled. Dun-dun-DUN!

Peyton picks up the book at the Geneva bookseller. When she leaves, the guy behind the desk calls someone and says, "I believe there is someone trying to contact you."

Vaughn and Anna have accessed the data on the combo-chip. It's a map of a nuclear fallout bunker in Hamburg, Germany. Next we see them lifting off in a helicopter as the real Syd arrives too late.

Jack has gathered the gang in the APO conference room. In an awesome scene, he tells them that not only is Vaughn totally not dead, but Sydney's been doubled. He says that Vaughn and the double were spotted in Hamburg.

Nadia is still haunting Sloane, so he tells Peyton that he needs to make peace with the past in order to be able to concentrate on his work.

The bunker is beneath a jewelry store in Hamburg. They need to get into the basement of the store, so Vaughn suggests to Anna-Syd that they do what they did in Cartajena. She says OK, she'll follow his lead. Inside the store, Vaughn looks HOT. Being shot full of holes definitely agrees with him. They subdue the guard and owner and Anna-Syd guards them while Vaughn enters the basement. He finds the bunker. It is a repository for all of the information that his father and Renee's father have collected over the years on Prophet 5. But it has also been long abandoned, if all the cobwebs are any indication. Anna comes in and points a gun at him. Vaughn tells her he knew she was a fake - they were never in Cartajena. And she's a lousy kisser. They have an awesome fight and just as Anna's about to shoot Vaughn, she is shot right in the head, by the real Sydney. And now we get the reunion scene I wanted.

Sloane lights a candle in a church and turns and leaves. That's it? Light one candle and you're absolved of the murder of your daughter? After he leaves, we get a partial view of a figure approaching the candles. The person retrieves a small note that was left there by Sloane (we don't get to see what the note says). The camera pans up. It's Sark! I really thought it was going to be SpyMommy, but Sark will do just fine.

In the bunker, Anna's phone rings and Sydney answers, pretending to be Anna pretending to be Sydney. It's Peyton. She's in a car waiting to extract Anna. Sydney takes Renee's chip only, with a tracking device on it, and leaves Vaughn to meet Peyton. She'll be going deep undercover for her final mission, with the most challenging alias of all: Syd as Anna as Syd.

Next new episode: Wednesday at 8:00.