WARNING: If you don't want to know what happened in this episode, don't read this photo recap!
It's time to finally find out what happened to Vanessa after she was whisked away in a helicopter! In a minute. First we have to get to know this guy who is travelling around the woods guided by partially deflated red balloons. Things don't go well for him. He gets eaten.
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Things are going arguably better for Vanessa. She's not eaten, so that's a plus. She is trapped in some kind of science-type facility. Upside? Beds and clean clothes. Downside? Men with guns who don't want her to leave.
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That doesn't stop her from trying, of course. She manages to fight her way through a good chunk of the facility, discovering a whole bunch of vampires locked up in rooms for what one can only guess are experiments before she is eventually stopped by this guy. His name is Dr. Bruce and he runs the place, tells Vanessa his men left her friends behind because they couldn't risk the extra cargo. Then she hits him in the gut.
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Vanessa runs straight into a room with a massive window looking out on to the mountains and she finally stops running. The nurse from earlier arrives to deliver some food but mostly she's here to ask probing questions about Vanessa's abilities and to talk up Dr. Bruce's genius, despite his terrible bedside manner. Apparently he might save them all from the Rising. But how exactly does he know about Vanessa?
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So it turns out that Dr. Bruce was brought in by the government years before the Rising to find a cure for vampirism. How long has this whole thing been a thing? He really just wants to know if Vanessa can turn vampires back to humans. He and Vanessa mostly stare at each other.
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Dr. Bruce introduces Vanessa to Martin. He's a vampire, currently, but he used to work there. They injected him with what they thought was a dead version of the vampire virus with obvious results. They want Vanessa to turn him so they can study his blood and maybe find a cure.
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Vanessa says she'll think about helping him out with a cure, but before she can storm off, the nurse is calling after her. Only she's using the name "Nessa." Apparently she used to know Vanessa's mother when they both worked at The Farm.
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Back in her room, Vanessa continues to have those creepy Vampire dreams full of images of the elder and the Red Door and now the vampires in the basement and Martin. A creepy voice nearby tells her he's been there for years and that most people in the facility don't know what's "really going on."
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A little snooping in the facility leads Vanessa to a suspicious looking book. It's full of odd pages and strange images but before she can get far she's interrupted by her mom's old "friend."
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It seems that the fluke of Vanessa and Scarlett's abilities came from an accident at the Farm. Their mother was obsessed with being prepared for the Rising and as a result accidentally injected herself with a serum made from the blood of a "special vampire." She ran and hid the girls when the military found out about them.
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Of course, there's more to Abigail than meets the eye. Like the fact that she's Abigail Van Helsing AKA Vanessa and Scarlett's mother. Abigail assures Vanessa that she wasn't an experiment, and is very surprised to hear that Scarlett is alive and that she was one of the people left behind when they grabbed Vanessa.
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Vanessa agrees to help Martin now that she knows her mother is involved. It doesn’t go quite as planned and she ends up having to bite him in the arm but from there on out it’s the usual blood vomit and transformation back into a person.
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Of course not everything can be business as usual. When Dr. Bruce doesn't get the results he was expecting, he asks Abigail to ask Vanessa to go find the Elder and bring back DNA samples. Vanessa finally takes the chance to tell her mom about her visions and she warns her that the Elder is more dangerous and important than anyone realizes.
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A little more snooping on Vanessa's part reveals that Dr. Bruce might be older than he's letting on. Meanwhile, he and Abigail aren't quite as cozy as they seemed to be in the beginning. He once again insists that Vanessa go after the Elder, while Abigail tells him she'd rather be anywhere but with him.
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Confrontation time. Vanessa decides to let Dr. Bruce know exactly what she's figured out. Like how he made a drug that allows him to live without aging and how he only wants her to go to the Elder to finish putting together the longevity serum.
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Vanessa and Abigail decide they've had enough of Dr. Bruce's lies and that they're going to escape the facility together. The armed gaurds are surprisingly unwilling to shoot, even when Vanessa uses their own vampiric subjects against them, and she and Abigail make it pretty far before Abigail tries to stop her, telling her they need to find Scarlett and get to the Elder.
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All this because, of course, this was a set up the whole time. Abigail isn't her mother. It was all part of Dr. Bruce's plan to get to the Elder. When Vanessa confronts her about her real identity she loses all pretense and shoots Vanessa, claiming that they won't need her once they find Scarlett.