Steel and Sapphire go back into the living room and find Silver there. He tries to work out what he was doing before he was reversed through time. Steel calls his teammates out to the hallway and has Silver open the machinery. Silver says that he needs to know what it is, and Steel gets Rothwyn and Eldred, and asks what the machinery is. Rothwyn says that they're not engineers but they realize that they're in danger, and Steel tells Silver to guess.
Sapphire explains to Eldred that it's their job to safeguard time, and Eldred says that it's an experiment. Steel figures that they hoped to play happy family in the 20th century, but it went wrong and now they're stranded. They got the names wrong by several hundred years and storms off. Silver asks Rothwyn for her necklace. She gives it to him and Silver and he starts to change it, and Rothwyn tells Sapphire that there are two other groups like them there, and there's an engineer in one of the other groups. Sapphire says that it's too late because they're all dead.
Sapphire tells the couple that the others killed themselves because of the danger to everything. Steel asks the couple if they would do the same thing, and says that they can still do it and save them a lot of trouble. Rothwyn explains that some of them have to go back and tell them what went wrong, and Steel warns that they may not be able to send them back.
Silver accesses the machinery, trying to activate it.
The agents take the couple to the screen room, and they view the rural house. Steel tells Eldred to show him the bedroom, and Eldred initially refuses. He says that it's a question of privacy and decency, and explains that they've gained certain moral standards. Steel tells him to save his morals for his own time and show them the room. Eldred reluctantly does so.
Silver cuts open the panel on the machinery.
Eldred and Rothwyn stare at the corpses of the other groups, and Steel has Eldred switch it off. He asks if Eldred can access the rural group's log, and tells Eldred to bring it up so he can learn more about the power source the machinery runs on. Rothwyn explains that they didn't ask about the machinery, and Sapphire warns that now it's acting on its own behalf and forced the other groups to kill themselves. When Rothwyn breaks into tears, Steel has Sapphire take her out.
Out in the hallway, Silver tells Sapphire and Rothwyn that the Time Source lives behind the wall and says that he heard the baby cry. Once Rothwyn goes, Silver reveals the blood in the machinery and tells Sapphire to run tests to identify it. When she says that Steel has to give the okay. Silver angrily tells her that he needs to know. He explains that the system is partly organic and some of the machinery is the same as tools used in surgical operations... on living animals. Sapphire wonders what the scientists in the future are guilty of, and Silver repeats his request to have her run the tests.
Silver goes into the screen room and listens with Steel as a shocked Eldred plays the log of the other group leader. He says that the machinery was responsible and turned against them. Now it is experimenting on them, and it wants them to become a danger to the past and future. They killed themselves to make sure that it couldn't succeed.
Sapphire tests the blood using her powers and tries to identify it. The lights go out and the time machinery lights up. Steel and Silver join Sapphire in the kitchen, and she says that the blood belongs to every species of animal. The agents find the couple in the bedroom and ask them about the animals in their time. Rothwyn says that there are no animals because they have no use for them. Eldred says that they were unkind and cruel, but the scientists keep them alive as "pieces" and the public never sees them because they're kept in laboratories. Steel says that they're wrong and walks out.
Eldred goes out after Steel, and he says that one of the pieces came with them in the machinery. They were made to work together, shaped into a time unit with a kind of brain that worked against them. Rothwyn doesn't understand, and Steel talks about how animals once ran free and managed to survive. They were reduced to pieces, and it wants revenge against humans.
The lights go out and Steel's words echo through the capsule. Sapphire and Steel realize that the unit has broken free, and Steel goes to the kitchen and gets a knife. He finds a trail of blood leading away from the machinery, and finds the trail to the nursery leading into the crib. The organic part of the unit is inside and Steel prepares to stab it. Sapphire telepathically warns him that it's an illusion generated by the brain unit, and Steel realizes that it's the baby. The others come in and Steel, shocked, walks out and tells Silver to take the capsule back now by making an emergency call.
Steel gets the couple into the screen room and then enters the living room. The unit, in the form of a human baby, telepathically attacks Sapphire. She mentally tells Steel that the brain unit let them in so that they could help it escape, and they have to send it back to the future where the people there can deal with the problem they created. Sapphire tells Steel that since it's all animals, they can lure it back into the machinery with food. Steel tosses a leg of lamb into the wall machinery, and the brain unit goes back in after it.
Eldred runs up and demands to know what's happening, and Steel tells him that he's going home. Silver activates the signal and Rothwyn ask if the Changeling was their child. Sapphire says that it was, and the agents join hands and send the couple back to their own time in the capsule. Once Sapphire confirms that the capsule is gone, Silver tells Sapphire that there was mice in the capsule... and they took them back with them. Steel unknots the elevator cable so that they can leave.
Written by Gadfly on Feb 11, 2019