It’s time to do more memory work. Because of Amy’s capture, Melanie doesn’t believe they have time to be methodical. She wants to start with the big events – the things that scare him the most. Ptonomy thinks he has found the memory he couldn’t access from the kitchen. Though he is hesitant, David agrees to start there. In his mind, he explains that he and Philly dated for about 10 months. They fought a lot; he isn’t sure which fight this was specifically. David recognizes it when the bread box pops open. He is embarrassed, casts his eyes down as the contents of the kitchen explode around him. Melanie was right: he’s not just a telepath, but he is telekinetic. In order to learn how to use it, she needs to find the triggers, and requires to see what happened right before this fight.
David and Lenny were laying on the ground, getting high off of vapor (purchased with curios stolen from Dr. Poole), when Philly comes home with cake for a dinner party they are having tonight. Lenny tears into the cake, and Philly unplugs the frog vaporizer, which sends Lenny over the edge. The girls fight, and Ptonomy freezes the scene. “You were a junkie,” Melanie murmurs. “You got caught and you felt trapped.” Returning to the kitchen scene, Ptonomy tries to start the scene up, but says David is resisting again. David insists he isn’t. The potato devil comes out, looking dark and scary. David is the only one who can see it, but Melanie feels it when a door slams in her face. Ptonomy recognizes that something is wrong. David only remembers fear. Suddenly, the three of them are inside a yellow room. This is real. David teleported the three of them out of the memory cube, back into the main building.
Sydney finds David in the woods and they chat. She was raised in the city by an academic mother and several fathers who were all intimidated by mom. David is embarrassed, but he admits that sometimes he feels like he still has Sydney’s long hair or different center of balance. He admits he had to pee while he was her, but insists that he “didn’t touch it or look at it any more than I had to.” She teases him that she jacked off while in his body (she didn’t). She isn’t bothered by it. She has come to think of it as not her body. “I’ve been a Chinese man, a 300-pound woman, a 5-year-old girl, but every time, I’m still me.” David admits he liked being her – he liked that he could hold her hand.
Cary is hooking up electrodes to David, and injects him with a dye to better track his brainwaves. Sydney waits with Cary in the observation room. He instructs David to think of something stressful. He thinks back to a childhood Halloween. He and Amy are trick or treating with their dog, King. King gets away from them, and David goes looking. He ducks under a fence and creeps into a yard fearfully. Set back a ways is a barn or a storage building, with a larger-than-life illustration of the boy from “The World’s Angriest Boy in the World.” The painting steps off the wall and rushes towards young David.
Back in the lab, Cary asks if everything is ok. David says it is, but then Lenny is sitting with him, and the two converse. No one else can see her, and Cary is confused because the speech center of David’s brain is lit up, but he is not talking. David tells his dead friend that he isn’t sick; he has powers. Lenny points out that he isn’t as safe here as he thinks he is and that Melanie’s “secrets have secrets.” Lenny morphs into Amy, crying, saying they are hurting her. The room starts to shake; equipment breaks. Cary is worried that David is heading up. Sydney runs into the room as David levitates out of his chair. The two of them are sucked into some kind of wormhole.
We are now with Amy and the division leader, who presses Amy, convinced that she knows David was never really sick, but had powers. Sydney and David are there, “ghost-like” in the corner. Amy swears he hasn’t called, that she is not a tough person and isn’t trying to hide anything. The Eye sees the vision of David and Sydney and reaches for them. They disappear.
David and Sydney end up in the lake at Summerland. “If you learn to control that you will be a world-class badass,” Sydney compliments him. They rush past the curious onlookers back into the building, where they meet with Melanie, Ptonomy, and Cary. After describing The Eye to Melanie, she becomes concerned and insists they are not to go back. “But if I can take Sydney there, maybe I can bring Amy back,” David suggests. Melanie refuses, believing that next time they will be waiting for him. They will either kill him or let him go, follow him to Summerland, and kill everyone here. Melanie admits she knew The Eye, before the divisions, back when he was Walter. She and her husband filled Summerland with people like David, powered people, but Walter wanted to hurt people. She returns to the situation at hand, completely flummoxed by David’s power, how his mind is defending itself. She worries that she can’t do what she needs to do to train him; that she may be making things worse. David is certain she is giving up on him, but she is not. She wants to sedate him in the hopes of gaining unfettered access to his mind.
That night, both David and Sydney are awaken by nightmares. Sydney finds David sitting alone in the bathroom, and he admits to her that he used to be a junkie. He was high all the time, lied to people, stole. He doesn’t want Sydney to come on his mind trip in the morning, because he worries it will change how she feels about him. “Do you love me?” Sydney questions. “You know I do.” “Then there is nothing else to say,” she says simply. David considers this. Then: “Everyone keeps saying I’m sane. But what if they are wrong?”
In the morning, our group gathers again in the comfortable yellow room. Melanie injects David with a sedative and they all journey into David’s brain. David is not there with Melanie, Sydney, and Ptonomy. Instead, it is young David, the part of his mind that is awake. Melanie tells Sydney that her powers don’t work here, and she can touch him. Sydney gives little David a big hug, then they continue.
The scene the group encounters is David breaking into Dr. Poole’s office, stealing trinkets and drug samples. The room starts to shake and Sydney is scared. She sees memory-David eating the recordings and freaks; more so when no one else sees this blip. The walls crack open and hands reach through. Sydney insists that they have to go. Melanie can’t seem to see what Syd sees, but she trusts her and tells Ptonomy to get them out of there. He can’t. Young David races from the room and Sydney follows. They run past memory-David getting high, fighting with Philly, having sex. She finally reaches little David and they keep running. Down the hall, a door slams, and the kid from the book has come to life again, and is chasing them down the hall. He looks like Hitler in this iteration. Sydney follows little David into a crawlspace, his “safe space.” They scoot along, but are running out of time. Now it isn’t the cartoony Hitler following them, but the potato man. “You have to wake up right now! I can’t help you!” Sydney screams.
In the yellow room, Sydney wakes with a start. Everyone else is still out, and all she can do to wake them is hit the chair. Ptonomy finally wakes, but Melanie is still under. So is David.
In the mind space, Melanie goes upstairs. She sees a couple of people, David’s parents, I assume. They seem to look right at her. She continues, and follows a whimpering sound coming from David’s closet. She finds the book, “The World’s Angriest Boy in the World,” and flips through the harrowing story. Suddenly the thin volume slams shut on her hand, crushing it. The potato man is behind her. She wakes up screaming, clutching her hand in pain – but her hand is fine. Ptonomy calms her, promising it is just a memory, it can’t hurt her. Sydney, however, isn’t so sure these are just memories.
You can watch a preview for Legion Chapter 4 below!
