Helix (2014) s01e01 Episode Script

Pilot

Contamination.
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I'm going back to find some peace fame and fortune is a magnet it can pull you far away from home with a dream in your heart, you're never alone dreams turn into dust and blow away and there you are without a friend you'll pack your car and drive away I've got lots of friends in san jose do you know the way to san jose? oh, la is a great big freeway put a hundred down and buy a car in a week, maybe two Would you like some water? No.
I Would you like some water? Are parking cars and pumping gas I've got lots of friends in san jose What is that? Progress.
Presentation starts in five minutes.
I can't find it.
Did you look under the desk? Why would it be under the desk? That's where I found your seaborg medal.
How hard can it be to find a 160-year-old pump handle? Depends.
On what? On who's doing the finding.
Where did you Where you left it.
You're a lifesaver.
So I've been told.
In 1854, london experienced a terrible cholera outbreak.
Local doctors attributed the epidemic To miasma, or bad air.
Then they responded to it by burning incense And promoting the sale of fragrant flowers.
Not, as you might imagine, Terribly helpful to the 600 or so who died of the disease.
But a doctor and a clergyman Mapped out the victims, And this was the very first epidemiological study.
What they found Was a cluster of cases around broad street, Where there was a city water pump.
Defying the local authorities, they did the unthinkable.
They took off the handle.
And the outbreak came to an end, But the lesson lives on.
And so, unfortunately, Does cholera.
When a surgeon fumbles, a patient dies.
When we drop the ball, Thousands die.
As new cdc field officers, You are about to embark On a mission to the far corners of the earth.
And you will witness horrors others cannot imagine.
Horrors that make cholera seem tame.
You will make sacrifices that others find unthinkable.
And your family and your friends Will sacrifice right along with you.
And you will do all of this Because you cannot fathom living any other life.
This is no game.
The stakes Are very real.
That's just scotch in there, By the way, single malt.
In fact, toss it back.
Good luck to you all.
Late last night, a military listening post received a distress call From a private research base owned by arctic biosystems.
Big pharma.
Just read about them.
The call denoted a possible retroviral outbreak.
Two people dead that we know of, And a third person already infected.
I'm sorry, who are you again? Major sergio balleseros, Usamriid by way of the army corps of engineers.
I've been ordered to escort you and your rapid response team, Including dr.
Walker, up to the base To determine whether it is in fact a retrovirus.
Now, given that the army fielded the distress call, We're gonna share jurisdiction with the cdc.
It looks like there's no jurisdiction at all.
If the base is above the 83rd parallel, It's international territory.
We have no authority there.
Arctic biosystems is granting us access For now.
How kind of them.
This is all fine, but why me? There are six other senior scientists at the cdc Who can run point on this, including dr.
Walker.
The distress call specifically asked for dr.
Walker.
She thought it best that we include you.
I'm I'm still not following.
The third infected patient is peter.
Who's peter? My brother.
Our primary goal is to identify this pathogen.
Sarah.
You'll be with me and peter on the deceased To establish the extent of the illness.
Julia Will determine the cause of the illness.
Doreen, I need you to swab every inch of peter's lab, Test every animal for the source of the illness.
How about you, gi joe? What is it that you do exactly? I'm a systems engineer.
I'll be analyzing the base infrastructure, Air, water, waste treatment, looking for ways the virus Might have spread through pipes or air vents.
So, you're a glorified plumber.
Only if you're a glorified veterinarian.
Look, we have no idea what this thing is, So we treat it like a hot agent.
Bsl-4 protocol, full suits, And decontamination showers for every potential exposure.
That could eat up a lot of time.
Well, better safe than sorry.
Says the man who spent the night in a thatched hut full of ebola victims.
That's his ex-wife? Yep.
Not what I expected.
She's smarter than you.
Doubtful.
Better in the lab too.
Highly doubtful.
He never talks about her or his brother.
That's probably because He caught her and his brother in bed together.
Don't worry, they're professionals.
They'll make it work.
Why would I be worried? 'cause I see the way you look at him.
This is gonna be the most frakked-up family reunion ever.
Raptor 47 to artic biosystems, come in.
We read you, raptor 47, loud and clear.
We're making our final approach.
We clear for landing? Daniel aerov, head of security.
Sorry we don't have the red carpet waiting, but we're not used to visitors.
We're not used to red carpets.
This is dr.
Hiroshi hatake, director of research.
Alan farragut, cdc.
Peter's brother.
Of course.
We've come a long way for peter.
When can we see him? He's been transferred to our isolation facility.
I'm afraid the news isn't good.
He's been in and out of consciousness for the last eight hours.
And the rest of your people? Are you implementing hard or soft quarantine? Neither.
You haven't locked down the base? Allow me to explain.
You have three victims of an unknown pathogen.
And only three, who all worked in the same lab.
There have been no other infections.
Since we are not seeing a base-wide outbreak, we are fairly certain It's not airborne.
Well, at least you're fairly certain.
Hey, that's our ride.
- They can't stay here.
The temperature can drop to -70, it turns jet fuel to jelly.
Plus, we can't risk leaving before we have full containment, Cdc protocol.
You just made me feel better, knowing they're out there.
Not to worry.
Camp eisenhower is only 200 miles away.
They can be back here in no time.
Please stick out your left hand.
Rfid marker injected under the skin.
We all have them.
Yours will give you unrestricted access to the base.
Main elevator security access granted.
Level b.
Sweet mother mary matthew.
How many people work here? from 35 countries, That's a lot of potential patients.
Let's focus on what we know.
I'll need to see the personnel records of the infected, Their professional and medical histories.
I'll need to see their living quarters And any other areas they frequented.
And I want access to their lab animals and research materials.
And I'll need to start tracking down Anyone they've been in contact with for the past 48 hours.
Understood.
Level e.
Now I want to see my brother.
Level f.
I haven't talked to peter in a long time.
How long? That night? I went home and packed a bag, caught the next flight to la paz.
Ah, you always did have issues with impulse control.
I'm worried.
That's all right.
We're here, we'll do what we can for him.
He's not the one I'm worried about.
His vitals are all over the place.
He probably won't make it through the night.
Peter.
I'm going to ask you some questions.
If you can't speak, Try to nod yes or no.
Do you have a t1 link here? No.
That's too bad.
It's gonna take forever To upload this data back to atlanta.
We don't have a t1 because it's obsolete.
It's a synchronous optical network, 10 gigs a second.
It has to be fast, 'cause we only get the satellite an hour each day.
You seem to know a lot about medicine and technology For a head of security.
Dr.
Hatake taught me everything I know.
Where did you two meet? An orphanage.
In barrow.
He adopted me.
I've been with him as long as I can remember.
Peter, it's me, alan.
Dr.
Farragut, do you know where you are? Do you know what happened to you? Yes.
The white room.
Peter.
Peter.
Look into my eyes.
Look into my eyes.
Can you do that? Look into my That's it.
Peter, it's me.
It's alan.
Alan, the blood.
It's black.
I need a security team to quarantine now! You lie! You all lie! Everyone lies! Everyone! Everyone lies! How long had peter been assigned to this lab? The last six months.
Working on? I'm afraid that's over my pay grade.
You'd have to ask dr.
Hatake.
You expect us to help you, but you won't tell us what you're working on? We check that weekly.
Good for you.
Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk.
Aren't you a big girl.
Or boy.
They have no sex organs.
We've designed a way to inhibit the signaling pathway Responsible for genitalia.
Makes control easier.
Got an ex-husband I wouldn't mind trying that on.
Where are the monkeys? We don't have any monkeys.
You're kidding, right? With the kind of work you're doing here? No monkeys means no monkeys.
These are the other two victims that were found with peter.
You ready? Yeah.
Open the bag.
What the hell? That won't happen again, you have my word.
No, sarah, it's okay.
I've been around some nasty hot agents, But I've never seen anything like that.
No one has seen anything like this.
You still thinking retrovirus? Looks more like some kind of hemorrhagic fever.
Blood loss is consistent with ebola or marburg, But this kind of tissue degradation This thing doesn't kill, it annihilates.
So how was peter still alive? First things first.
Where's doreen? With major balleseros, swabbing down peter's lab.
Good.
Get started on the assays, sarah.
I need to see this thing to beat it.
Yeah, I'm on it.
Jules, talk to hatake.
Find out what our victims were working on.
We need to find the causation of this.
You should be in there with peter.
Whatever time he's got left No, he wouldn't want me sitting around watching him die.
What are you gonna do? Yep, just as I thought.
Hey, what are you doing? These live rats in the prc test confirm conclusively That hatake's right, it isn't airborne.
That's good news.
Yep, except I'm no closer to the source, And I still have no idea on the mode of transmission.
I hate rats.
I don't.
My dad was a master sergeant, moved us around a lot.
Rats are easy to travel.
You do this a lot in the service? Take apart drains and toilets looking for viruses? I spent my first tour in iraq, searching for wmds.
See any action? Rarely left the base.
Sounds dangerous.
Bet you got some pretty nasty paper cuts.
The last few years I spent Harassing the cartels in south america.
Must have been shaking in their boots.
Ever actually fire a gun? Not since boot camp.
Hey, let me see that.
What is it? M.
Mulatta.
Unless I miss my guess, This is from a rhesus macaque.
So, they have monkeys.
What's the big deal? That they lied about it.
Monkeys are one of the main agents of zoonotic transfer, That's passing a virus from animal to human or vice versa.
So, what didn't they want us to find out? Dr.
Hatake? Dr.
Hatake? Unbelievable.
The arctic has a timeless quality.
Don't you agree? Makes it a little tough on the commute, though.
We get more accomplished Without the distraction of the outside world.
Like interference from regulatory agencies? I need to know everything about peter's last few days, What he was working on, who he was working with I thought you might.
What's all this? Peter's research.
There are 20 more boxes in his lab.
That's gonna take me days to sort through.
Can you at least tell me what he was working on? Mutagens, mostly.
For speeding up mutations.
Those are dangerous.
You wouldn't want to let your children play with them.
Do you have children? No, I don't.
Can you think of any correlation between his research And the infectious agent? No.
I'm sorry.
Shift one, report.
Shift one, report.
Shift one, report.
Alan, tissues samples are Uh, I didn't mean to interrupt.
No, it's okay.
Entry 224.
Got in some uv therapy this morning.
Ran three miles on the treadmill.
It's getting harder to tell day from night, But I guess that doesn't matter.
I'm still seeing t.
She is terrific.
But I'm starting to wonder Whether I'm truly meant for relationships.
And it's not that I'm bad at them.
It's more like Well, they're bad for me.
More than anything, I am excited about being up here.
I I understand certain things now.
Up here.
I I understand certain things now.
What is it? Look at his hand.
We used to do that nights when our father Came home drunk or angry, which was most nights.
What does it mean? Run like hell.
You need to come to isolation now.
It's peter.
Contamination.
Contamination.
Contamination.
Contamination.
Contamination.
Contamination.
Contamination.
Contamination.
How could you leave him in there with a bone saw? I was a little busy trying Too busy to follow bsl-4 safety protocol? You're both missing the point here.
How did he get out? This morning he was terminally ill, Now he's ripping out of restraints? We sealed off the entire floor, deactivating peter's rfid chip.
He's trapped.
But we still need to get him out of there.
We're gonna flood the ducts with halothane gas.
It'll knock him out for four hours.
Once the gas clears we'll retrieve his body.
Look, peter is our best chance to understand How this pathogen works.
He may have antibodies which have allowed him to fend off the infection.
We need him alive! I'm sorry, but I have the lives of 120 others to consider.
No one is safe from the virus until we've contained him.
Security teams, confirm level lockdown.
Security teams confirm Once the gas clears, I'll take a security team and we'll bring him back to isolation.
If you're going up there, I'm going too.
I can't allow that.
It's too dangerous.
If there's any chance peter's alive, I need to be up there.
As you wish.
Listen, we've been at this for over an hour, and still no monkeys.
If hatake is granting us unrestricted access to the base, Why don't we just confront him, tell him we found a monkey hair? Yeah, right.
I doubt we'd get a straight answer.
Besides, this is way more fun.
Access denied.
Access denied.
Access denied.
So much for unrestricted access.
You got any bright ideas? Liquid nitrogen.
Freezing rearranges the tensile strength.
Huh.
Northwest a, clear.
Section northwest b, clear.
Southwest b, we're clear.
Dr.
Farragut, we need you to check in.
Dr.
Farragut.
Are you sure my brother's up here? We sealed the vents in this sector, and that concentration Of gas should have knocked him out.
Jeez.
What the hell happened here? What's that smell? That is monkey.
The only creatures that smell worse are humans.
There must have been a hundred of them.
Where the hell did they all go? I don't know, but someone busted off this cage door.
From the inside.
I've got something here.
Uh, black mucus.
Uh, southwest Uh Yeah, southwest c.
He was definitely here.
What was that? Peter? Peter! He's smart.
Way too smart.
There you are, Handsome boy.
Come on out.
Peter! Come on.
He's here! Peter's here! - Wait for backup! Are you okay? Am I cut? Do you see any breaks on the skin? I don't think so.
Be sure.
It's important.
You're okay.
He's here.
Peter's here.
It's not him.
It's It's not peter.
Oh, my god.
He was on one of my security teams.
Joseph kneizeh, talkeetna, alaska.
He was attacked and dismembered.
This doesn't make sense.
The question we should be asking is "why".
Why did peter attack this man? Why cut off his hand? And why is the pathogen making him stronger? I want to seal off this part of the base.
All nonessential personnel, keep them in dedicated safe rooms.
Nobody travels unless they travel with a partner, At least until we can recapture peter.
Attention, code 830, level g, oncology.
Anything from the first set of cultures? Cells are heavily damaged, most totally deformed.
It's like armageddon down there.
But no sign of a virus? I screened for all current viral structures, Filaments, polygons, cylinders, spheres Even icosahedrons.
What if it's not current? A couple of mit scientists discovered evidence Of ancient viruses in the greenland ice cores.
They found these obsolete structures dating back 140,000 years.
I gotta hand it to alan, he's got an eye for the smart ones.
It's not like that.
Not like what? Alan is a great mentor, but there's nothing going on.
I would have said the exact same thing.
Only that was eight years ago.
Look at that.
What? What is it? Right there.
That's only 15nm.
There's no virus that small.
No current virus.
I need you to finish this.
Where are you going? To find alan.
He needs to see this now.
We weren't even sure what we were looking for until julia Dr.
Walker started checking for paleoneurological structures.
It's some form of spherical capsid, But unlike anything we've ever seen before.
It's not naturally occurring, at least not in this century.
Here it is blown up to 100,000 xp.
Here's 500,000.
How was your walk in the snow? Fine, thanks.
A bit colder here than you're used to.
Doesn't bother me.
I'm adaptable.
You know what they say about those who fail to adapt.
The delivery will be on schedule.
The schedule changed when the cdc showed up.
I had nothing to do with that.
Either way, the people you and I work for aren't happy, And now I have to clean up your mess.
Hello, what the hell is that? Wait, there's more.
My god.
We thought it was just replicating, but there's something else.
This mutation only occurs in a fraction of the samples.
It's minimal but it's statistically relevant.
Which could explain why peter is still alive and the others died.
But what's it doing to him? For lack of a better term, it's changing him.
Into what? do you know the way to san jose? I've been away so long I may go wrong and lose my way do you know the way to san jose? I'm going back to find some peace of mind in san jose la is a great big freeway put a hundred down and buy a car in a week, maybe two, they'll make you a star weeks turn into years, how quick they pass and all the stars that never were are parking cars and pumping gas you can really breathe in san jose they've got a lot of space there'll be a place where I can stay I was born and raised in san jose I'm going back to find some peace of mind in san jose fame and fortune is a magnet it can pull you far away from home with a dream in your heart you're never alone
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