Episode Recap: A Fistful of Blood

Grace and Arthur have a complicated relationship with Julian Slink. After all they’ve been through chasing down her sister Karma (only to learn that she’s dead), they are pretty squarely uninterested in all of his nonsense. It’s about to get worse, because Slink has sent them off the main race course and toward Red River, a town close to America’s most terrifying place: The Scar. The Scar, you’ll recall, is the gaping hole left in the center of the country by massive fracking quakes, and the reason that the world is so messed up. Let’s also not forget that Grace and Arthur took The Scholar under their wing after The Gentleman blew his own head off. So, now, the three of them are headed through the desert and are pulled over by a small town cop.

Some angry shenanigans ensue but the gist of it is that Grace, Arthur, and The Scholar are all sent into Red River by the sheriff, who insists he’ll waive their ticket if they help him out. Once they get into town, they realize that there’s an electromagnetic pulse that disables all electricity. And that means they can get the Julian Slink-made brain bombs out of their heads. That’s HUGE. They head into town to get cleaned up as the Sheriff tells Arthur the news. Years ago, when The Scar opened, the people who came out of it were addicted to electricity. It consumed them and made them monsters who’d do anything to get it. They’d come and attack the town and so he built an electromagnetic pulse that kept all electricity down. Now, there’s a rogue gang of energy consumers outside of town and the Sheriff needs to shut down their power, for their own good and to protect the town from them.

Arthur agrees it’s a worthy cause and he and Grace go to a hotel room. Grace takes a bath and tries to seduce him, but ultimately is rebuffed. She heads to the surprisingly strange hipster coffee shop in town, where she meets up with Julian Slink. He’s got the whiskey, see. Grace and Slink begin talking about their unfinished business, while Arthur goes off to drain the camp of electricity.

Meanwhile, when Aki wakes up to find Christopher gone, she takes a look through all of the cameras at Heart Industries and finally Christopher's bionic eye. He's covered it with tape, so she can't see, but he is hot on the trail of what's happening in Los Angeles. It’s intense. The Contracrime Headquarters have been taken over by some pretty rough and tumble types and just as Christopher is threatened the most, a weapon shoots out of his bionic eye! He’s scared and baffled, but that’s when Aki catches up with him. She doesn’t know why it’s happening, but he’s becoming more like a cyborg and she’s somehow becoming more like a human. She’s even started to love him.

After the mission to steal their power, Arthur realizes that the Sheriff is not who he says. The townspeople from the camp tell him that actually it’s the Sheriff who’s super evil, having seemingly crawled out of The Scar himself. He’s been on a real tear of murdering people – including members of their family. Arthur is in a real bind. If only Grace could save him.

Grace however, has been throwing down with Julian Slink. The two have a lot of beef and unfinished business. He asks a lot of questions about her past – ones she’s unable to answer. And she asks him why he’s so obsessed with her. Slink’s answer is surprising – he’s actually not all that interested in Grace, it’s Heart Industries that want her around so bad. When she insults him, the two get into a fight and she realizes the truth: the reason Slink re-routed them to a town without power is so that there would be no cameras. Slink brought them there to kill her. The fight continues but ends with Grace smashing into the street, saving Arthur, and allowing him to turn the gun on the Sheriff.

The Sheriff tells Arthur a disturbing prophecy about himself – he’s going to go into The Scar. And that’s when Arthur shoots him and realizes that he’s been shot himself. Grace needs to get Arthur to a doctor as soon as she can, but finds that The Scholar won't be going along – not only has he fallen in love with the town mechanic, he's got a job as the new sheriff of Red River.

As Grace and Arthur pull out of Red River, free of their brain bombs, and ultimately, able to go wherever they want, they leave knowing that while the people at Heart Industries want more Grace on the Blood Drive, Slink just wants her dead.