The episode begins with Cromartie posing as an FBI agent asking for information about new male students at area high schools. The administrator asks for paperwork and the Terminator kills him since he does not have any.
At the Connor house, Sarah leaves a message for a man called Sarkissian, which she got from the business card that Cameron retrieved from Dimitri. Derek enters with the Terminator T888 chip that Cameron failed to destroy and hid from the others. He accuses her of intentionally withholding information and asserts that she is like all Terminators, they cannot be trusted. She tells them that the chips contain a visual record of everything that a Terminator sees. John asks if she has ever hacked one and she says no, but she says that he has.
John and Cameron visit a friend to acquire high capacity computer hardware in order to work with the Terminator chip from the future. John asks her if Cameron has ever lied to him before, and she says yes, sometimes about important things.
John starts decoding the information from the chip with Cameron's help. The visual data shows that the T888 was married to a human woman. John is surprised by this but Cameron says that the T888 is an advanced infiltrator, and that the woman would not be the first human fooled by a machine. The next video footage reveals the names of the T888 and his wife, Vick and Barbara Chamberlain, as well as their address.
While John and Cameron go to school, Sarah and Derek visit the address from the footage. No one is home and haven't been for awhile and their computer is missing. They discover evidence that reveals Barbara's occupation is a city manager, an infrastructure position.
At school, John runs into Cheri again. Making smalltalk, he mentions that she is from Wichita Kansas, and she gets visibly upset, denying that she is from there. John apologizes and she leaves.
Cromartie appears at a high school, investigating the first name on his list. The young man is not John Connor, so he leaves.
John keeps working on the video footage and sees a clip that shows the T888 killing Barbara in a remote wooded area outside LA. Sarah declares that they are going to go find her, over Cameron's objection that she is no longer a mission priority.
They find a body, but not Barbara. The woman is Jessica Peck, and according to Cameron, a threat to Skynet. Jessica was a lobbyist fighting against ARTIE, Automated Realtime Traffic Information Exchange. It is a system capable of tracking anyone at all times, everywhere they go. It would be the nervous system for Skynet, with the Turk being the brain. Derek proposes blowing up the system, but Sarah counters they will just rebuild it. John suggests using a virus as a way to discredit the system, but there is no external access to deliver it. Sarah declares she will get it inside.
Sarah and Derek surveil city hall, and discuss ways to get past security. Derek has inside information about underground tunnels from a project he did in ninth grade. Derek says he and Kyle lived there after the bombs fell.
At school, Cameron learns that there is a cop asking to see John. She goes to the office and her visual recognition system identifies him as Cromartie. She enlists the aid of John's friend Morris to go to the office and claim to be John. Cromartie scans him and does not get a visual match for John Connor so he leaves. Cameron tries to follow him but runs into John. She pulls him aside, but does not tell him what just happened. As she leaves, Morris catches up with John and tells him about the cop.
At home, Cameron tells John about Cromartie. She tries to reassure him that Cromartie won't be back, because she wouldn't. He begs her not to tell his mother that Cromartie was that close, because she will surely move them again.
The next video clip shows the T888 tracking Derek's team from the future back to the safe house and killing three of the four, the only one left alive being Derek. The team had been following Barbara, and had made a mistake letting the T888 know of their presence. Derek says he knew nothing about them following Barbara.
Sarah and Derek head for city hall and enter the tunnels. They encounter a wall that Derek does not remember, so they blow a hole it in with explosives. They enter city hall and Sarah uploads the virus. The system however, blocks the virus and sets off an alarm bringing guards down on them. They escape back into the tunnels with the guards right behind them. Derek creates a diversion and Sarah overpowers them from behind. Derek's first instinct is to execute them, but Sarah stops him and they leave.
More video reveals Barbara still working hard to finish ARTIE. John is experiencing problems with accessing certain areas of the chip. He tries increasing the voltage, which Cameron warned him about earlier, saying it would activate the higher level processes of the T888 chip. Suddenly, John's phone starts dialing for an Internet connection, with the chip trying to reactivate itself. They manage to stop it before it succeeds.
Sarah and Derek come home and reveal they were unsuccessful. John has an idea, which requires taking down only one traffic light. The idea is to remove Cameron's main chip and plugging it into the ARTIE system via a traffic light. That way, Cameron can take over ARTIE like the T888 took over his laptop. Derek argues that maybe this is the way the world ends, rather than Skynet as they have always believed. John disagrees, saying to trust him.
John interfaces with ARTIE through a maintenance box at a traffic light and successfully uploads Cameron's system, causing immediate failure in ARTIE. Derek snatches the chip from John, saying that one day one of the Terminators is going to kill him. John takes the chip back and says it won't be this one.
John puts the chip back into Cameron and she reboots. He asks her what she saw inside ARTIE, and she says she saw everything.
Derek is showering when Sarah interrupts him. She says she got a call from Sarkissian, saying that he would sell the Turk to her. She then accuses Derek of killing Andy Goode, saying he was defenseless. She then tells Derek if he lies to her again, she will kill him.
The next video clip shows Barbara being interrupted in the shower by the T888, but happy since in 36 hours they were going to Tahiti. Sarah watches the clip with grim determination on her face as the next scene shows the T888 strangling Barbara.
Written by pentar on Mar 5, 2016