Mile Marker 14

**Mile Marker 14** is the sixth episode of the first season and the 6th episode overall of *Emergence*.

## Short Summary

Jo and Benny investigate the death of Kindred's former business partner. Meanwhile, Mia and Piper experiment with Piper's powers, and Alex confronts Ed about his health.

## Full Summary

Piper and Mia are lying on the ground up in the former's room. Mia tries to get Piper to move a cupcake but it's not working. Behind them, metal furniture starts floating. When Jo calls for them from downstairs, it all drops back to the ground. The girls claim it was nothing.

Jo tells Ed she's letting Mia stay home from school today. She helps him unload the dishwasher and checks if he's okay with having both girls. He is. He was thinking about telling the girls about his cancer. She thinks it's too soon as she wants him to consider his options first. He has but he can't do chemo anymore. He has come to terms with it. He's sorry that she hasn't. He agrees not to tell the girls yet, though.

Daphne is observing Emily closely and asks Chris how long she's staying. Chris says until they know Kindred can't get to her. Daphne is tired of being treated like a maid. Emily informs them they're out of creamer. Chris hands Jo the coast guard's report on Wilkis' death. Four years ago, he set sail despite a marine warning. They found the boat with a broken mast a week later. There's no evidence there was anyone else on the boat with him. Jo will talk to the widow and Chris has to go canvas the marina. Emily wants to discuss the water pressure in the shower but Jo is busy.

Maria Wilkis tells Jo that the boat and the job was everything to Alan. She was a distant third. He never took anyone on his sailing trips as he liked the solitude, especially not Kindred. Jo says they have reason to suspect Alan may have been murdered. Maria laughs at the thought of Richard killing Alan. Maria tells Jo that Richard is a fraud who doesn't know the first thing about technology. Jo informs her about Alan's attempt to change his contract. Maria didn't know but it just reinforces her theory. She thinks Alan killed himself. The day he died, he fixed a door that had been stuck for years. She thinks that was his saying goodbye. Jo says the break-in was not a coincidence. Maria suspects Richard may have been looking for Alan's research but Alan never brought that home with him, nor did he ever talk about it. It all died with him.

Mia enters Piper's room. After Alex has checked on Mia, they are leaving quietly. Piper tries to run after Maria but she inadvertently enters the museum space again. Richard is waiting for her. She thinks he brought her here. He invited her but she wouldn't be there if she didn't want to. They can be themselves here. Piper says it's not real. The room crumbles around them. They are now standing on a pier. Jo showed her a picture of this place. They used to go fishing here. Piper admits to liking Jo a lot. She feels like home to Piper. Richard suggests she may feel the same way about him some day. Piper says Mia is waiting for her. She walks off.

Emily is painting her toenails at Jo's desk. She admits it's fun to provoke Jo. Jo reminds her she's not a prisoner. Jo tells her that Maria insisted Alan killed himself. Emily thinks it's possible as he had the mind of a God but the emotional stability of a ferret. However, she thinks he was too much of a narcissist for suicide. Emily says he dedicated his whole life to designing Piper's AI. In the end, he resented it so much that he destroyed the entire source code so it could not be replicated. She guesses Richard threatened to kill Alan until he handed the code over but then killed him anyway. Chris comes in with a shocker: Alan is still alive.

Alex finds Ed setting up a new TV system. Alex is happy to have some time off. Ed knows he's here to talk Ed into doing more chemo. Ed knows they all love him. Alex says Jo feels like Ed made the decision without thinking of her. Ed is offended and points out they hurt Mia with their divorce. Ed didn't chime in back then because it was not his business. Alex says he didn't give up, he's still here. Ed says Mia thinks differently.

Benny has joined the others at the police station. Chris followed the boat. It was bought at an auction and moved to North Caroline, where Chris managed to get him on camera in the harbor. Jo compliments his work and asks Benny to reach out. Benny says they communicated through a dark web forum and took weeks to respond but he can try. Emily points out they have beat now. She has Jo send Chris out of the room. Emily then tells Jo and Benny that Alan won't be able to resist if they show him the AI. Jo has a video of Piper.

Mia and Piper are at a park. Mia has figured out that Piper can only move metal so she brought some metal objects. Piper is afraid but Mia says it's a good thing if she can control is. Piper focuses and makes the objects levitate. Mia starts recording it on her phone. A honk disrupts Piper's focus and a paint can smashes into Mia's hand. Piper apologizes but Mia says it's okay. She has an idea.

Jo sees Chris hovering outside her office and sends Daphne out. Chris feels sidelined and he wants feedback if he's been doing things wrong. Jo admits it was a crappy thing to do and closes the door. She then tells him that Piper is an AI designed by Alan, which they'll use to draw him out. Chris accepts that on the spot. Jo further explains that Piper cannot found out. Only Benny, Emily, and Richard know. She's not telling her family to make sure nobody lets anything slip. Daphne comes in with a courier, who has a package for Benny. It's a key to a locker at the Brookhaven Central Bus Terminal sent by Alan.

Jo and Benny are at the terminal. They haven't seen anyone near the locker. Inside, they find another note. It instructs them to leave their phones and weapons in there and wait for further instructions. Jo knows he's watching through the security cameras. Benny wants to go it alone, figuring this is all a bridge too far for her. Jo says they wouldn't have found Alan if he hadn't responded, which means he's got something to say. She wants to know what it is. Once they close the locker, they hear a phone vibrating. They find one taped under a row of chair. It directs them to a parking space.

It's an old car without GPS or Bluetooth, which means no one will be able to locate them. Jo told Chris to check in every half hour. He'll figure out something's wrong if they don't respond. She trusts he'll be able to find them. They get in the car and find a map with instructions to follow route 301 to mile marker 14. They drive off.

Mia and Piper show up at Abby's house. She's surprised to see them. Mia claims she fell when they were riding their bikes. Abby asks why she's not at school. Piper says she was sick. Abby lets them in.

Jo and Benny arrive at the mile marker. Once they stop, the phone receives a text that instructs them to walk 1,200 years 38° northeast. They pass a "no trespassing" fence.

Benny grows increasingly suspicious but Jo is confident he won't kill them. She wants to ask him about the exabyte disk with Piper's program. She wants to know what to expect moving forward. They arrive at the spot but there's nothing there. As soon as Jo spots a camera, a high-pitched alarm starts blaring, which makes them lose consciousness. Soon after, a car pulls up and a man gets out.

Jo and Benny wake up in a modern, underground space. Jo finds the disk and her second gun gone. There's a big screen displaying the view from Alan's beach house. Alan appears with towels to clean up their ears, which are bloodied from the sound cannon. Jo asks why that was necessary. Alan says she made a bad first impression by bringing a gun. Alan asks who designed the disk. Jo says Kindred did. Alan knows it's a lie. Jo says that disk is the girl from the video he saw. He says if that's true, it's the end of the world rather than a girl. Alan tried to prevent this by destroying his life's work. Jo says someone made a 10-year-old with his work.

Abby is examining Mia's hand. Mia insists her arm hit a rock when she fell. Mia also assures her Ed was okay with the two of them leaving to ride their bikes. Mia is glad her arm's not broken. The girls want to take off but Abby says this is not how this works. Since they came here, they are her responsibility now, which means she's calling Alex to come pick them up.

Chris can't reach Jo. Her car is still parked at the terminal. Emily joins him and says Alan wants them off the grid. Chris suggests she hack Benny's fitness tracker. She gets to work.

Alan has connected the disk to monitors, which now displays a neural network, a programming paradigm that allows a computer to learn. He thinks they should destroy it immediately. Jo says they are talking about a girl. Alan says they should fear that. She's constantly evolving and changing her programming, which makes her more dangerous, not more human. They don't know where it ends. Alan gave up his entire life for this. Benny says he might want to do the right thing but the follow-through is lacking. Jo says Kindred is the danger here, not Piper. Alan has what they need to get Kindred.

Alex shows up at Abby's. She served the girls dinner. Abby tells him Mia will have to rest her arm for the week and tells him the official story. The girls were doing something they shouldn't have been doing. Alex brings up Ed and how bad it went trying to talk to him for Jo. Abby comments they are the weirdest divorced couple ever. She thinks Alex has a plan but he claims he's just trying to help. He calls for the girls.

Alan tells Benny and Jo that in 2011, they were pursuing the development of nanotechnologies in gene therapy. Kindred tasked him to prove that it worked, which meant experimenting on humans. They found a village in Malawi of people willing to be experimented on in exchange for payment. They went ahead even though they knew before they started that it would end catastrophically. 14 people dead and it was all covered up. He hands Jo a drive. Benny tells Alan he'll burn for this as well. Alan knows. He should. An alarm goes off. There's someone in the elevator. Alan left Jo's gun in his truck about 70 feet above their heads. Alan can't shot down the elevator. Jo grabs a bat from a display while Alan moves to erase everything on his computer. He powers everything down. Seconds later, the servers melt down. Jo grabs the exabyte disk and they run off to the exit.

They head into a stairwell, which is seven stories up. They are chased by masked men automated guns. On their way up, Chase Knolls enters the stairwell as they pass that door. Jo knocks him down with the bat. Jo and Benny try to fight him but he overpowers them. Alan briefly activates the sound cannon to allow them to break free and make a run for it. By the time they arrive outside, they can only see him drive off. Jo and Benny struggle to keep the door closed behind them. Two police cars arrive soon after. It's Chris.

Alex arrives at the house with Piper and Mia. He sends them straight to bed but not before taking Mia's phone for a whole week. Piper wants to apologize but he doesn't want to hear it. He then finds the video of Piper and the flying metal objects on the phone. He's shocked.

At the station, Jo, Chris, Benny, and Emily are watching a news report on Kindred's arrest. He was charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with medical experiments. Jo is disappointed that they only got him on wire fraud. Benny points out he's facing 20 years, which is effectively the rest of his life. Chris sent out an APB for Alan in a 100-mile radius so they'll hear about it if he resurfaces. Benny doubts they'll see him again. He can just disappear again. Emily realizes she's free to go now. She tells everyone she didn't hate them all as much as she expected. She and Chris walk off. Benny offers to buy Jo a drink but she wants to head home.

Jo comes home earlier than usual. She tells Ed that Kindred is in custody. He's happy that they can finally put all that behind them. Ed says he owes Alex an apology for the harsh stuff he said to him. Jo says she's been taking advantage of her father. She's been assuming he'll be around to take care of the girls and the house. He's happy to do all that. She wants to keep him around. He'll be around for as long as he can. He doesn't want to be broken and in need of being taken care of. He knows she would do that but he doesn't want it. He wants to be himself for as long as he can be. Jo talks about a memory of her mother from right before she left. Jo had a green coat with blue buttons. It was her favorite and she had lost a button. Somehow, her mother found a perfect match and fixed it. She realized later that that was her saying goodbye. She knows it's the not the same now with Ed but it feels familiar. Alex comes in and shows them the video. He points out Piper is moving things with her mind. Jo asks to see the video but actually deletes it. Alex says he now understands why people were chasing Piper. He wants to show Ed again but then realizes Jo deleted it. Alex figures out that Jo already knew. Jo says she was trying to keep everybody safe. She can't tell them what else there is. If Piper finds out, it could be fatal for her. She knows it doesn't make sense but they have to trust her. Alex says that's a big ask since she obviously didn't trust them. She can't guarantee that Piper won't hurt Mia again. Alex can't let Mia stay here then. Jo admits he's right.

Mia objects to leaving. She says it was her fault, not Piper's fault. Jo hugs her and says this is only temporary. She closes the door behind them. Ed also turns his back on her. Piper has been listening from upstairs. She runs to her bed and starts crying.

Suddenly, she's on the pier with Richard again. She tells Richard that Mia got hurt because of her abilities and now everybody is scared. Richard says people are scared of what they don't understand. He assures her that she can always be herself with him. Piper points out he's not who he says she is. The disguise crumbles, revealing it's actually Emily who's been talking to Piper. Emily admits she sort of lied but it was a test. Piper did so well. Piper asks what happens now. Emily says they get to have fun now.

## Cast

* Jo Evans
* Piper
* Benny Gallagher
* Mia Evans
* Chris Minetto
* Abby Frasier
* Alex Evans
* Ed Sawyer
* Richard Kindred
* Emily Cox
* Chase Knolls
* Alan Wilkis
* Maria Wilkis
* Daphne
* Courier
1/15
### Starring

* Allison Tolman as Jo Evans
* Alexa Swinton as Piper
* Owain Yeoman as Benny Gallagher
* Ashley Aufderheide as Mia Evans
* Robert Bailey Jr. as Chris Minetto
* Zabryna Guevara as Abby Frasier
* Donald Faison as Alex Evans
* Clancy Brown as Ed Sawyer

### Special Guest Star

* Terry O'Quinn as Richard Kindred and Emily Cox

### Guest Starring

* Maria Dizzia as Emily Cox
* Ignacio Serricchio as Chase Knolls
* Seth Barrish as Alan Wilkis
* Tamara Tunie as Maria Wilkis

### Co-Starring

* Evangeline Young as Daphne
* Jeremy Lister as Courier

## Mystery Notes

Following clues and mysterious elements around Piper's identity are revealed in the episode:

## Music

No licensed music was used in this episode.

## Notes and Trivia

* The episode scored 3.42 million viewers.

## Gallery

### Promotional Videos

Emergence 1x06 Promo "Mile Marker 14" (HD)