FBI Episode 2
What’s for Lunch?
The episode starts on a busy Manhattan plaza, where people are gathering for lunch and friendly discussions. We see two friends, or maybe colleagues chatting about work, when beside them a man drops to his feet, convulsing. The female friend turns to her male counterpart to announce her surprise, when he too is choking and gasping for air. The camera pans out and at least a dozen people are on the ground with the same symptoms.
FBI title, and we return to the scene, where Agents Bell and Zidan now are. There is a fear of contamination and airborne spreading. Eight people are already dead, and over a dozen more have been hospitalized; the crime scene spans an eight-block radius, and for the first few seconds, both Maggie and OA seem confused. Maggie steps over the crime line despite protests from police and OA and asks where one of the victims got their discarded salad. The hazmat officer finds a receipt in the pocket of the man, and it leads the two agents to a salad bar where they discover at least five of the victims bought lunch.
Lunch is you’re DEAD.
Maggie and OA request the security footage and through an interesting video reversal, can see a young girl spray the salad bar with a bottle of an unknown substance. It is hard to get a clear picture of her face, but she is small and has dirty blonde hair.
We cut to the bull pen where Agent Valentine says that the substance is TTX, or tetrotoxin a highly potent toxin which can kill with minute amounts. Where on Earth would a girl get something like this? It is not exactly found at your local pharmacy, which is also joked about by the team.
Introducing our new Special Agent in Charge, who enters the scene by announcing her presence in the most interesting way a middle-aged woman can: the video footage the team has of the girl dumping her original clothing has her leaving in a band shirt. Special Agent in Charge, Dana Mosier (Sela Ward, CSI: New York) says that she is wearing a shirt of a red anarchist metal band. OA gives her a look, as if he didn’t expect her to know this, and she explains that her daughter’s school sent out a warning for this sort of music earlier that year. She’s charming, witty and lights up the screen almost immediately. This type of band is anti-Capitalism, which gives a motive to our female suspect’s reasoning, so we think.
Anarchist Metal: All the Rage with Teenage Girls
As this is being discussed, Valentine tells the team that a young girl has just been admitted to a local hospital with symptoms of TTX. Her name is Caroline Subotic and she fits their description of the suspect perfectly. At the hospital, Bell and Zidan discuss with her mother how her daughter acts. She has struggled with bullying since her father left, has been burning things, listening to the music that is on the suspect’s shirt and it is unspoken, but logistically confirmed she is their suspect.
The two agents take her laptop to Kristen back at the office who finds out how unpopular Caroline is and how she was voted most likely to commit a school shooting.
They then discover her bag in the alleyway where the video footage came from, with a sprayer inside. It goes to the lab, where an analyst discovers it was rigged to inject the poison into Caroline on the fifth spray. She was set up. Dana calls and tells them that Caroline died.
Inside Caroline’s laptop, Kristen finds that Caroline spends a lot of time on a website that OA translates as “Dark Jihad”, and it becomes apparent that she is working with ISIS. This leads Bell and OA to ask Caroline’s mother about her daughter’s relationship with her Muslim father, where they discover how all this hatred started. Her father isn’t an extremist, but she harbors a lot of resentment toward him for leaving.
Giving New Meaning to Online Dating…
ISIS soon takes credit for the attack, and the team discusses what to do next. They use Caroline’s social media for hints, where they find a comment on one of her posts by a “Green Bird”. The Green Bird stands for “souls of martyrs are within the bellies of green birds of paradise” per OA; it is an icon of ISIS. The social media search also leads them to a friend of Caroline’s, Tara who they think knows more. She admits to also being a part of the same website. Then, she tells the two agents that the Green Bird is Caroline’s boyfriend and that he was going to move them to the middle east with Caroline. Tara has photos, OA and Bell prove them as a google search photo.
Maggie finds it disturbing that teenage girls are so easily drawn to ISIS. She says that she struggled in high school, but it would have never led her to this sort of thing. OA’s undercover work comes up for a moment, where he explains how this might happen. Maggie jokes she doesn’t need it to be “mansplained” it to her.
Kristen reaches out to Green Bird as Tara, trying to get more information. They are able to set up a meeting, but before this tells “Tara” that Caroline shouldn’t have died.
Similar attacks are linked to Khalid Barhom, a chemical weapons expert who was responsible for past attacks in the middle east. We see familiarity in OA’s face at his name mention. There is a definite past between the two.
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