While Adam's trying to keep the kids preoccupied with an array of video games, Bree paints her nails and tries not to think. It's kind of comforting, the smooth repetitive action of the nail polish. When her chip's in, she usually goes too fast and leaves streaks and stray polish on her fingertips.
These are careful strokes, an even finish. When there's a knock on the door, she's still blowing her nails dry. "Chase?"
"I heard it," he says, putting on hold a chess game with one of the bionic kids and going to answer the door. Chase swings it open and freezes. "What are you doing here?"
Bree hears the panic and venom in his voice and whirls around to see their guest— someone she doesn't remember but knows immediately. "S-3." Her nails forgotten, Bree stumbles toward the door to stand by her brother. Instead of asking why S-3 is here, though, she says to him, "What took you so long?"
The former bionic solider looks frazzled, dirt caked into his nails, his eyes clouded. "I got thrown far from the junkyard during the fight," he says, sounding stilted and shaken. "I woke up at night and everyone was gone. I've been scraping by, scavenging… but then I picked up the signal from my brothers and sisters."
Chase whirls around to look accusingly at Taylor. "What?" she says, momentarily glancing away from the TV. "I didn't have a headcount. I just wanted to make sure we didn't lose anybody."
"I can't remember anything," S-3 says, still looking dazed. "But…" His eyes find Bree's. "I know you. You're not my sister, not like S-1, but I know you. S-B."
It hits her with a pang. It's been a week. She wants S-B to die. She wants the obedient evil cyborg she was to vanish forever, and she doesn't want anyone to ever call her by that designation again. "It's Bree," she says coldly, and then warms up. He's just as lost and confused as the rest of them. "Come on in."
S-3 walks in and immediately gets mobbed by the other bionic kids, who all clump around him amid choruses of "we missed you" and "what happened" and "that's Adam, he's great." Meanwhile, Chase leans over to Bree and shoots her a concerned glance.
"He shouldn't be here," he says lowly. "He tried to kill me."
Bree scoffs. "I tried to kill you."
"Yeah, but he's been mysteriously gone for a little too long," Chase replies, folding his arms. "Who knows what could have happened to him?"
"Remember that time Adam got lost for a weekend and we found him at the park eating churros and trying to make friends with a squirrel?" she reminds him. "That's probably what S-3 did. Pretty much."
"Maybe," Chase says, but he doesn't get a chance to finish the conversation. Behind them, Donald and Tasha stumble through the door escorting an elderly man who looks an awful lot like Leo.
When the dust clears, Krane's nowhere to be found and all the soldiers have fallen unconscious. The junkyard looks innocuous, weirdly so given the showdown they just survived. Chase releases his brothers, panting from the exertion of linking their bionics together.
It was worth it. They won.
That's when he hears Douglas yelling for them and they run around the unmoving forms of the soldiers toward another, all-too-familiar unmoving form.
Mr. Davenport's lying on the ground, motionless and pale, and Chase's heart sinks. "What happened?" he warbles, sinking to his knees beside his father. He checks Davenport's pulse and chest even though he sees Douglas doing the same thing. Douglas doesn't have Chase's super senses. Douglas doesn't have Chase's medical know-how. Douglas doesn't have… Douglas isn't Donald. That's it, square and simple.
Chase trusts him now, sure. He's family. But despite their similarities, despite the fact that Douglas created him, Chase knows who his dad is, and it's not Douglas. "What happened?" he demands again.
"Bree," Douglas says, one hand hovering above his brother's chest. "Bree happened."
Downstairs in the lab, Donald has no time to enjoy being home again and up on his feet. He's working ferociously over his desk, mixing chemicals with a kind of manic energy. On a stool beside him, Old Leo sits wrapped in a blanket, shivering every now and then. While Adam keeps an eye on the kids upstairs, Chase, Bree, Tasha and Douglas pace around the lab in a flutter.
"Good to see you up and around," Douglas says at one point, sounding awkward and clumsy around his older brother. Donald just snaps at him to go check the acidic readings of the chemicals on the counter.
Donald tries one of his serums, and Leo just coughs and pulls his blanket closer around himself. Nothing changes. Nothing gets better. Donald can't even feel happy to be back, consumed as he is with finding a cure for Leo's rapid aging brought on by using his energy transference to save him.
The elevator doors slide open and Adam runs out, the bionic kids in tow. "Hey, I know you told me to keep an eye on them up there but I'm worried about Leo and I wanna know what's going on so I'm gonna keep an eye on them down here, okay?" he says to Chase, and then he doesn't wait for an answer. He runs to Leo, scoops him up like a rag doll and holds him close. "Buddy, are you okay?"
"Adam, put him down," Donald says, and Adam complies.
"I'm fine," Leo croaks. "Just old. I can finally get us into R-rated movies." His weak joke gets deterred by his even weaker coughing.
Adam hovers over him, even more of a worried mama bear than Tasha herself. He's always been the overprotective one.
"So," Tasha says quietly to Bree, "these kids… they're still here."
Bree glances from Tasha to the hordes of bionic teens. "With Krane gone the Triton App's deactivated… just like it did with me. They're just normal, run-of-the-mill teenagers with normal, run-of-the-mill bionic superpowers. Just like me, Adam, Chase and Leo!"
She hems and haws for a moment. "There are four of you," she points out. "There are forty of them. And how do you know we can trust them?"
Every time that question comes up, Bree feels it like a heavy stone on her chest. How can they trust the kids? How can they trust her? It's the same question, even if the ones asking it don't realize that.
"We just have to trust them," Bree says. "We just have to."
But they're distracted at that moment when Leo careens off his stool and hits the floor with a sick thud, Adam looking terrified as he kneels beside his little brother. Donald rushes around the desk to lean over Leo.
"What's going on?" Chase asks, peering over the people crowding around Leo.
Donald looks up at him, horror etched into the lines of his face. "His time's running out."
Everything slows down for a second. For Bree, it's like when she's running and the world around her feels sluggish and unmoving. Leo lies unconscious on the floor, too still, too still, and no one knows what to do. Tasha and Donald look heartbroken, panicked, and her brothers just seem confused.
And then S-3 steps forward, one hand tugging at his chest. Before her eyes, the new addition soldier, the kid who hasn't even gotten a name yet, kneels down beside Leo and transfers some of his own energy into Leo.
Taking his lead, the other former soldiers gather around, each of them carefully extracting a ball of light from within them and adding to the collection of energy building inside Leo's limp, aging body. Taylor holds her breath as she places the energy from herself into Leo, and when she stands up, Bree clutches as her arm.
"Do me," she whispers, eyes on Leo. "Do it to me."
Taylor looks astonished. "Bree, I don't even know if it works like—"
"Do it," Bree demands, kneeling beside Leo, one hand reaching for his. Beside her, Taylor shrugs and uses her own energy transference ability to take some of Bree's life force and move it into Leo. As the soldiers move back, Bree keeps hanging onto Leo's hand.
She doesn't let go until she sees his eyes open.