"Okay, favorite album." "Never mind." "What, is it that personal?" "No." "Never mind, Nirvana." " Oh." " You?" "Joshua Tree, obviously." "Sgt. Pepper." "And Rhapsody in Blue." "That's two." "Over the course of two lifetimes." "Gershwin played it for me while he was writing it." "And no doubt you've watched the sun come up with the Beatles." "Just one of them." "Is there anything better than eating pastilla with your fingers?" "Doing it in Morocco." "Mmm, which, by my calculations, is still 6,000 miles from our front lawn, sadly." "I'll get the tea." "So, what inspired this?" "This Midnight at the Oasis thing?" "It's a ritual I've grown to love." "It reminds me that the Bedouins had it right." "They have this philosophy called Al-Misaan." "It means never forfeiting your principles." "What is it?" "Uh, it's a..." "It's a text message from the wife of my best friend in college." "Danny's missing." "Can I help?" "The police are useless." "This friend, was he prone to trouble?" "Who, Danny?" "No." "Nobody was more straight up, more gentle." "Make your bets!" "Not for the squeamish!" "Not for the faint of heart!" "If you have a pulse, you will convulse." "Ladies and Dobermans, for your blood-lusting pleasure!" "Tonight's first fight..." "Give it up for Beta!" "Come on!" "The great Beta, everyone!" "And..." "Stretch!" "Stretch!" " No more bets!" "No more bets!" " Right, come on, come on!" "Fight!" "Yes!" "Lovely!" "Lovely!" "Give it to him!" "Yeah!" "Come on!" "Stretchy, Stretchy!" "Yes!" "Yes!" "Lovely!" "Alright!" "Beautiful!" "Finish him!" "Finish him!" "Get him out of here!" "Get him out!" "Kayla." "Oh, thanks for coming, Will." "What's this all about?" "Danny would never be gone this long without calling me." "He's in trouble, I know it." "He didn't say anything about taking off?" "No, nothing." "You know he's been working with feeding the homeless, right?" "Yeah, yeah, you got this whole gleaning thing going on with local restaurants, sure." "Yeah, well, I've been filling in for him, and the thing is, some of the people he provided meals to went missing." "When Danny looked into it, he found that at least a dozen homeless men had disappeared over the last few months." "I haven't heard word one about it." "Yeah, it barely made the newspapers." "Invisible victims, that's what Danny always calls them." "Anyway, when he went to the police, they basically shined him on, so he started investigating on his own." "This is the file of stuff he had gathered." "He always said if he ever got in over his head, you'd be the person to get him out." "And the police haven't given you anything?" "That's just it." "I get these looks as if they know something, but they won't tell me anything." "Hey, listen." "Danny's always been a survivor." "Whatever's happened to him, you know he's going to get himself out of it." " It's going to be okay." " Alright." "Henry helped me collate all the data Danny collected, witness accounts, times, dates." "One particular vehicle was spotted near three different locations where these guys disappeared." "It was a white van." "Well, that narrows it down." "Just wait." "A homeless dude got a license number when he saw his friend allegedly being abducted." "We traced it to a stolen vehicle that was found abandoned near the estuary." "Is there anything out there?" "Nothing inhabited." "Just a former awning factory." "Can you say "road trip"?" "Glad you could join us, Mr. Peralta." "Well, I know you were anxious for the latest on the trials." "Ms. Whitcomb, gentlemen." "Please." "We've field-tested 54 unique meta-human fighters to date." "19 were beaten to death in the pit, 9 others were eliminated." "And the most successful?" "The, uh, bio-armored meta-humans." "Five of our six variations made it through to the semis." "The one we called Beta was definitely leading the pack." "Wait. "Was?"" "Well, we're still working on the right dosage, but we're making more just like him." "How compliant was this Beta?" "Exactly what the Cabal had been hoping for, Ma'am." "Submissive with his handlers, murder on his opponents." "The perfect field soldier for the cleansing." "Right." "Six months to reach peak performance." "Train them in platoons." "You'll have your army sooner than you think." "Well, that presumes you know what I think, and that, Mr. Peralta, is doubtful." "Your spectacles are demeaning to our higher purpose, but they are an effective proving ground." "What do you think went on here?" "Executions?" "There's a great range in age for this blood." "Some of it seems months old, and others seem very fresh." "Pattern tell you anything?" "Medium velocity impact spatter, multiple trajectories, all consistent with repeated blunt trauma." "Enswell." "As in, "all's well that ends well"?" "It's a tool cut men use to stop a fighter's eye from closing." "Epinephrine, 1:1,000." "If used topically, it can stop bleeding." "You think this was a training facility?" "Or a fight ring." "Not exactly Caesar's." "But for bare-knuckle throw-downs, it would work." "My God!" "Who are you?" "I'm Helen." "I'm your daughter." "Don't you recognize me?" "Come on, I know this long-lost child scam backward and forward." "You got to work on your delivery, babe." "Your name is Gregory Magnus, and you're my father." "My name, if you don't mind, is Charles L. Denton." "If that's what you'd prefer." "What are you doing here?" "Uh." "Yeah, give me a minute, okay?" "I, uh..." "I'm just sleeping one off." "You know, free drinks?" "My buddy got me in here." "To what, an illegal fight?" "Alright, listen, if you're cops, I want to see a badge." "That's a very nasty cut." "May I" "I'll take care of it." "I'd like you to come back with us." "I'll clean that wound, and..." "And we can talk." "We got nothing to talk about." "This might be a case of mistaken identity." "I'm not mistaken." "I know my own father." " Piece of work, this one." " A quality I inherited." "We'll know before long whether it was Danny's blood on the floor of that warehouse." "This Charlie's real identity aside, he may be our best hope at finding out what happened to him." "I can't begin to explain it, but there is no mistaking who he is." "Can I be perfectly blunt?" "By all means." "Half the dreams I had growing up were about my mother." "I missed her so much that my subconscious took every opportunity to bring her back." "Charlie, or whatever he chooses to call himself, is not a dream, and he's not a figment of my imagination." "I know how compelling seeing this man must be." "I lost him once, Will." "I'm not going to lose him again." "There are things I need to know about you..." "Charlie." "And if I wind up being wrong, you'll be sent home with my apologies." "I..." "I presume you have a home." "I really do look like your father." "Okay, I get that." "I'll need to take a blood sample." "There are objective measures." "We could avoid a lot of bickering." "Look, if I am your father do I, uh, own a piece of this?" "Where were you born?" "In the middle of a squall in the Yukon Territory." "My father was a... bush pilot." "Your occupation?" "On a good day, I'm a scoundrel." " Special skills?" " I play blues harmonica." " Not well, but frequently." " Your date of birth?" "I'll be 61 in March." "Tell you what, you bring a decent Scotch, I'll invite you to the party." "You were born in Devonshire in 1829." "Your wife was Patricia Heathering, and you..." "You were the leading scientific light of your day." "You must understand, Gregory, the board has been patient with you, but their generosity has limits." "As does their imagination!" "Can you not fathom the secrets we are on the verge of unlocking?" "By accepting your hysterical and outlandish case studies as fact?" "I don't understand." "Why are they always so angry at you?" "They're not angry, sweetheart, they're afraid." "What have you done to make them so afraid of you?" "T ell me." "I can't." "Okay." "It's the drinking." "I won't deny it, but I've never been called anything close to 180." "What do you know about what went on in those warehouses?" "I told you." "It's a little innocent gambling, a couple of bad boys whaling on each other." "One of those bad boys, was he a young Asian man?" "You know, it's..." "It's all kind of a blur, to be honest." "His life is in jeopardy." "If you know anything, anything at all..." "I get these blackouts... but, no, that doesn't include forgetting who I am." "Why are you hiding everything you know to be true?" "Do I, uh, give my drink orders to you, or do you have someone for that?" "Did you get anything on Danny?" "Not directly, but I borrowed Charlie's cell phone." "He took these photos at the fight." "Now, nothing of Danny, but look at this." "Oh, my God..." " Tell me that's not an abnormal." " Not just any abnormal." "What do you mean?" "Two years before my father disappeared on an expedition to Mecca, he created a number of new species." "It was, in effect, the birth of genetic engineering." "He kept it all in this journal here." "Now..." "This particular species proved to be so aggressive and dangerous that he had no choice but to destroy every trace of it." "But if he destroyed it..." "How did it survive into this century?" "I know." "We don't even know how your father survived into this century." "Or if he even is your father." "It simply begs any semblance of credulity that a man identical to Gregory would be a spectator at a fight in which the very species of abnormal he created would be a combatant." "Okay, yeah, it is very, very weird." "What does it say about these matches that an abnormal is being used?" "I worry that your friend, Danny, may have stumbled onto something far more sinister than extreme fighting." "How good's your memory, Charlie?" "I remember better days than this." "Gregory Magnus may not know a single thing about what happened to Will's friend, Danny, but Charlie Denton does." "What do you know about those fights?" "And don't tell me it's all a little blurry." "You know, you got issues." "Anybody ever tell you that?" "We know that people gamble on these fights, and that abnormals are pitted against one another." "Do the fighters die sometimes?" "We all die sometime." "So you don't have a problem betting on these blood matches." "Kill an abnormal, save a pit bull." "Perhaps you're not my father after all." "He would never have been so callous." "Well, now we're making progress." "The father I knew risked everything for the simple belief that all creatures deserved a fair chance." "If I had a daughter, I'd want her to be just like you." "A little less borderline schizo, but otherwise..." "See, that's a trait that you and Gregory share, stubbornness." "You probably drove him to the edge, too." "If you know anything about what happened to these men, then please, tell me, Charlie." "I don't know." "I swear I don't." "But I know someone who would." "The beauty of this one is that they built it so the engine sounds harmonized at freeway speed." "Yeah, they don't make them like that anymore." "But they are making something new." "You're the man with the 411 on the abnormals fight club." "Charlie told us." "I know cars." "Yeah, you also know the players, and you don't want to tick off our boss." "Trust us on that." "It's been going on a year, year and a half." "The money's huge." "It moves through all the big books." "What's the betting on Danny Bradley?" "Oh, they don't go by names like that." ""Destroyer. " "Slice and dice. "" ""The re-arranger. "" "Where can we find the next fight?" "I could make a couple of calls." "I'll tell you what I hear." "But I warn you, the buy-in is steep." "And it's all super-secret." "Word doesn't get out till mid-week." "Tests from the floor of the warehouse." "Everyone who bled in that ring was an abnormal." "So Danny wasn't there." "Not the Danny you remember, in all likelihood." "What does that mean?" "His blood's been altered." "They've changed him, or he's changed himself." "Danny's an abnormal now." "What about the blood comparison between you and Charlie?" "That's my DNA on the left and his on the right." "Father and daughter." "The only way that's not the man who made me who I am is if they used his DNA to create a new Gregory Magnus." "Yeah, it's Charlie." "How are things at the Sanctuary?" "Magnus is coming along just fine." "The asset is in place." "I'm happy to hear that." "Recognize this?" "What, From Russia with Love?" "It's the lab I built based on your designs." "Wow." "I... designed this over a hundred years ago?" "Well, not the modern equipment, of course, but the core concept, yes." "Do you remember the first time you took me into your laboratory?" "Hey, look, I'm sorry, but..." "I'm not getting the antacid flashback you were hoping for." "You are the most talented medical researcher I have ever known, and yet you keep your most important work hidden from the world." "From me." "If you truly believe that I have potential, father, please, help me achieve it." "Once you enter this door, you are on a path that cannot be reversed." "You told me my world would never be the same." "Hey, no offense, but... your old man sounds like a whack-job." "I loved him with all my heart, and you're remembering a little." "I can see it." "These were your surgical tools." "In your hands, they were magic." "Is that right?" "Hello?" "It's the mechanic." "Did you get the information?" "Not on the phone." "Meet me at Hollister and 80th in 20 minutes." "500 cash per invite." "Come alone." "Okay." "This is the microscope you gave me when I was 10." "You said it would give me access to an unseen world, a world you said was filled with untold wonders." "I need a refill." "It's a part of you." "You can't deny it." "It's connecting for you." "You came back here for a reason, Father." "It can't have been by chance." "Stop it, will you?" "Back off!" "I'm not your..." "Father, what's wrong?" "You put up quite the struggle, or so my boys tell me." "The mechanic says you're a big fan of the fights." "Danny..." "Where's Danny?" "I've got someone else I'd like to introduce to you to first." "Meet your new boss." "What about our rookie from the Sanctuary?" "He's been given every courtesy." "For now." "Ironic if he turns into something useful." "Well, I can't see him going the distance." "Just make sure he has the procedure first." "Once the Scarab controls him, we can juice him into abnormality." "With a little luck, he might give us an insight or two." "Already been taken care of." "Anything else I could do for you?" "Smell better." "Right." "There's an insect-like creature deeply embedded in the muscles in the base of his brain." "What the hell is it?" "I can't say for certain without doing more tests, but all my instincts are telling me that this is what's controlling my father, keeping him from remembering who he really is." "Are you thinking the Cabal?" "These fight clubs could be their living laboratories, homeless people, their guinea pigs." "Mom, Will is missing, and I do not have a good feeling about this." " Have you checked the lower levels?" " Up and down." "I think he might have gone to see the mechanic." "There was an address jotted down in the office." "We gotta get out there." "Chances are that was just for the snatch-and-grab." "We find out where this fight was moved, we'll find will and Danny." "You know, the one man that's holding out on us is the one man that might know something." "I thought you'd never wake up." "What have they done to you?" "Same as it ever was..." "Only now I'm better." "Stronger, faster, smarter..." "Kayla's out of her mind, worrying." "She doesn't know if you're dead or alive." "What's it look like to you?" "You're scaring me." "There's a time and a place, Will." "This is my time, my place." "You don't even know what it is they gave you, do you?" "They gave me a front-row seat to the world." "What was that thing, that insect?" "That's nothing, man." "The real deal is the juice!" "Danny, listen to yourself." "You don't even sound like you." "I've never felt so alive." "It's like I'm flying without wings." "Come on!" "If you heard a kid in your program talk like that, you'd kick his ass." "This is freedom, brother." "You've been living in a box." "You'll see what I mean." "You'll be a warrior like me." "They've done it to me." "Your friends at the fight ring have taken our colleague." "I don't know what you're talking about." "This is getting old, Charlie." "It's obvious you know more than you're telling us." "Obvious to you, maybe." "Even if I could lead you to those people, I'd be paying in body parts." "There's still one or two I'm kind of fond of." "You know, I don't know you from Adam, but my mom says you're her dad, and that makes you my... my grandpa." "And that gives me the right to tell you that you're one cranky, ungrateful sack" " Hey, you be careful, young lady." " My mother worshiped you!" "She makes it sound like you were the smartest man in the world." " Not smart enough, apparently." " Charlie!" "We're family, okay?" "Whether you believe it or not, and what you're doing to my mom, and to Will, and to all those people, is wrong!" "Well, we know where she got the lip." "Enough!" "Okay, if you have any decency left in you, you will tell us where that fight's going down." "Look, I can't tell you what I don't know." "Well, then, you leave me no choice." "If only Gregory will tell us what Charlie knows, then we have to find a way to release him." "I'm quite deft with a scalpel." "I learned at the side of a master." "I heard him say they were taking you straight to a ten." " A ten?" " That's the bomb, man." "That's what I want." "I'm still waiting for a four." "We gotta get outta here." "Don't fight it." "It's useless." "Do you know why you're alive, Will?" "By the time you leave this place if you leave this place... you'll know." "It's a local anesthetic only, so you should be awake for the entire procedure." "It's deeply embedded." "What...?" " What is it?" " It's the juice." "I didn't think it could happen this fast." "What...?" "What do I look like?" "Like a God, Will." "Like a God." "There's a rhythm to the creature's movements." "If I can get it on the proper pulse point," "I should be able to pull the legs out individually and tie them off." "And if you can't?" "The hinged spurs on the pincers will propel the remnant all the way to the spinal canal, where it will paralyze and then kill." "Can you hear me, Charlie?" "Yeah." "You said you're going to kill me." "Hopefully not." "Gentlemen!" "Gentlemen!" "Ladies and gentlemen!" "I give you ugly fighters!" "Ugly fighting!" "Ugliness for the beautiful!" "Tonight's main card, a Meat Club first- a battle royale!" "With Double Doom!" "Double Doom!" "And..." "The Lobster!" "Lobster!" "Versus Riot!" "Riot!" "And in his Meat Club debut, The Boy Man!" "You feel it, Will?" "This is what it's all about!" "You know the rules!" "There are no rules!" "Last man standing walks away!" "And start fighting!" "Right!" "Come on, fight!" "Fight!" "Fight!" "Fight!" "Fight!" "Camden!" "Come on, you freaks, let's fight!" "Yeah!" "That's it!" "His vitals are spiking." " Trouble." " What?" "The front pair, doomsday wired." "Completely enmeshed in his peripheral nerve." "And if it gets cut?" "So does his lifeline." "You were born in Devonshire in 1829..." "In 1829..." "In 1829... 110 over 70." "Blood's moving." " Hang on, Father." " I'm trying, Helen." "Mom, he's in a lot of pain." "Can't you knock him out or something?" "I need him conscious." "Once you enter this door, you are on a path that cannot be reversed..." "Cannot be reversed..." "Cannot be reversed..." "Well, Gregory, you've designed the perfect fighting machine." "You don't know the hell you'll unleash." "Can you hear me?" " Get it out of me!" "I need your help." "I'm the patient, for God's sake." "You were also the most able surgeon the royal college ever produced." "These last pincers are the neural tap." "How do I separate them without killing you?" "The..." "Norwich Giant." "The what?" "Mom, what did he say?" "A pituitary abnormal on a hair-trigger to self-destruct." "Isolate the creature's neural kill switch, cut it before it can send the signal." "Sounds like a plan." "Except the Norwich Giant died on the table." "Nice!" "Lovely!" "Yes!" "Yes!" "I've exposed the peripheral nerve where it's been hijacked." "I have the cut point." "Do it, Mom." "Game's over!" "Back down!" "Let's get on with it!" "Come on!" "Get him out!" "Fight!" "Fight!" "Come on, fight!" "Alright, alright, you two!" "Let's go!" "Here we go!" "Look at me!" "Got it." "DS..." "Meat packing..." "I'll get an address." "I think we have a winner!" "Love it!" "Come on!" "This is your time, right?" "Huh, is that what you said?" "Is this what you want?" "Is this what you want?" "Is this what you all want?" "Get up!" "Get up!" "Finish him, you dumb bastard!" "Come on!" "Will, no!" "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" "It's me, Henry." "Will!" "Will..." "No, no, no!" "This isn't you." "This isn't you..." "Come on!" "Come" "Will, this is not you." "Henry?" "Henry..." "Help..." "Help me." "Come on!" "Kill him!" "Let's go!" "Stand down!" "Henry, help me." "You're going to be okay, Will." "You're going to be okay." "Listen to me." "The first thing we gotta do is get that thing out of you, okay?" "Yeah." "Yeah..." "You think you're breaking up some fights?" "You have no idea who you're messing with." "You can pass the same message onto the Cabal." "Ah!" "Ah!" "What do you want?" "I want these fights stopped." "And the genetic experiments." "You surface someplace else, and we'll be waiting." "Alright." "Alright!" "This is the last cycle." "All signs are that your body has purged the abnormality." "Danny's not far behind." "I keep thinking, was that me, ready to kill a friend, or was it... somebody else?" "We all have the impulse for violence." "The true measure of a species, indeed, of a person, is in our restraint." "Oh, my God!" "Danny!" "Kayla." "Oh, my God!" "I love you." "Thank you." "The first 10 years after you were gone were the hardest." "I kept asking myself, "What would father do?"" "I can't stay here, Helen." "Why not?" "I have decades I haven't touched on." "So much I need to show you." "The longer I'm here, the greater risk I pose to your well-being." "I wanted one day to come back to help protect you from your enemies, not to wind up helping them." "The Cabal had already asserted themselves as a threat long before they tapped your expertise." "I admit, their engineered warrior, the one you designed, that does make me worry." "When I finally put it down, it had taken the life of every abnormal in my laboratory." "Then who better to find its weakness than you?" "And what better place than here, in the Sanctuary?" "I'm sorry." "I'll have to seek my own way for now." "But I promise you, Helen," "I'll never be far."