Episode 17: What Matters Most
This one starts in a gated community (in Marlon, Ohio), which looks straight out of Pleasantville. A guy named Chambers goes out to get his newspaper and keels over in the driveway. At the boardinghouse, Artie tells Myka (Pete is still at his annual physical) about Chambers’ death, saying he had massive internal trauma but there’s no obvious cause. Meanwhile, Steve is moving in the last of his stuff, something he’s been avoiding. He and Artie are distracted by the smell of scones and assume
Abigail has made breakfast for once. (Breakfasts have been sorely lacking since Leena died.) But Abigail just bought a couple of scones from a bakery, which leaves Artie and Steve disappointed. Claudia comes in with a ping, a teenager in New York went into some kind of fugue state and started writing out some really complex equations. Artie is ready to send Steve and Claudia, since he and Abigail have to flush out the goo repository, but Steve volunteers to stay behind and help Abigail with the goo.
In Marlon, Pete and Myka visit the scene of the crime, a gated community called Crown Heights. On further reflection, it actually looks more like Stepford than Pleasantville. Pete immediately gets into it with the community cop, Colonel Cassell, who tells him he can’t just park anywhere he wants because rules are rules. Myka smooths things over, but Pete isn’t 
impressed. (Pete: “Gated communities … for when you really miss boot camp.”) Pete admits he’s in a crappy mood because the doctor at his physical told him his testosterone is a bit low. For a guy like Pete, that’s almost a death sentence. They’re interrupted by a Gladys Kravitz-type nosy neighbour (Janice Malloy) who has figured out they’re there to investigate Chambers’ death. She tells them Chambers was a hard-nosed District Attorney (nicknamed “Gas Chambers” for all the people he sent to Death Row), and mentions that Chambers’ car was vandalized a while back when it was parked outside instead of in his garage.
At the Warehouse, Abigail is in full haz-mat suit to clean out the Gooery, which Steve finds funny. He stops laughing when they go into the chamber and he gets his first whiff of the God-awful stench. In New York, Artie and Claudia find the equations scrawled on an overpass column by a kid named Nick—advanced calculus and physics, plus computer code. They find out
Nick is a homeless kid who lives in a box under the bridge and that witnesses claim he was glowing when he wrote out the equations. In Marlon, Pete and Myka talk to Chambers’ step-son, who’s surprised they think Chambers’ death is suspicious. They can’t find any artifacts in the house and when Myka gets the autopsy report, it says Chambers died from the same mixture of drugs used in lethal injections. Myka figures the killer could be a family member of someone Chambers sent to death row.
Their discussion is interrupted by an ambulance outside, which Pete goes to check on. He follows the paramedics into another house and finds a half-dressed woman stuck to a shirtless young stud … and when I say stuck, I 
mean literally fused together at the torso like conjoined twins. Turns out the woman is Mrs. Labelle and the young dude (whose parents are away) was “helping her with her laptop”, if you know what I mean. Even more interesting, Mrs. Labelle’s husband used to work for D.A. Chambers before being fired just a few days ago. Pete calls Myka to tell her, saying Jerry Labelle has a great motive to go after his cheating wife and Chambers. Myka wonders if he might have two different artifacts, since one artifact probably couldn’t both poison and conjoin.
At the Warehouse, Steve admits to Abigail that he didn’t stay behind just to unpack his stuff. He’s a bit freaked out because he’s realized that his entire life is basically about the Warehouse now. He knows he can only share what he does with one person, but Pete, Myka, and Claudia haven’t found that special someone yet, so Steve wonders if he ever will. As he’s talking, the
Gooery spews filthy goo all over him, prompting him to go jump in the shower. In New York, Claudia talks to Nick at the hospital (where he’s had another spontaneous writing episode), but he’s reluctant to trust her. She lets him know she was in the foster system and in a psych ward, so he finally tells her what he remembers. When he’s about to have an episode, he gets weird flashes like his mind is being transported somewhere else; afterward, he can’t remember anything. Artie comes in and says Nick’s MRI shows massive brain seizures when he’s having an episode, and if it keeps happening it’ll probably kill him.
In Marlon, Pete and Myka go with a security guy (Rex) to Jerry Labelle’s house to ask him about Chambers and Mrs. Labelle. Jerry takes a swing at Pete, then admits he broke Chambers’ windshield, but swears he didn’t kill 
him. When Pete asks about his wife, Jerry is genuinely shocked to learn she’s been cheating. Before they can digest that, Rex spontaneously combusts, burning with a strange green flame. Myka and Pete extinguish him and call an ambulance, but he’s close to death. They decide to get some info from Janice, the local busybody. She invites them over for tea and Pete (as usual) stuffs his face with the first food he sees … in this case, chocolate cookies. Janice tells them Rex didn’t hang out with Chambers or Mrs. Labelle, but she does mention that Rex’s condo burned down a while ago; quite the coincidence, since Rex himself almost burned right before their eyes.
At the Warehouse, Steve and Abigail have a long talk and she admits she lost a patient because she couldn’t help him. She bummed around the world for a while before getting the job at the Warehouse. Steve wonders if they’re all misfit toys that the Warehouse collects, and Abigail says that might be why
he’s freaked out about his stuff arriving. Maybe the Warehouse crew are Steve’s family now and he’s nervous because he knows it’s time for him to share more of himself with them. In New York, Artie works on the formulae Nick has been jotting down while Claudia talks to Nick. Artie figures the equations are the types used by quants, people who use physics and statistics to figure out derivatives and such for banks. If a quant is using an artifact somewhere, it could be having a residual effect on Nick.
As Artie is talking, Nick has another episode and starts scrawling more numbers. Claudia asks him what he can see and Nick describes an office with some random objects … including a clock shaped like an antelope. Nick has another seizure and Artie uses Stalin’s sleep mask to knock him out. In 
Marlon, Pete and Myka check out Rex’s condo, which is suspiciously free of damage for a place that had a fire. They find an insurance report that mentions boric acid in the outlets and Pete remembers that boric acid burns green, like Rex did. They figure the artifact must punish people with their own sins: Rex faked a fire so he was burned, Mrs. Labelle and the young dude were banging so they ended up glued together, and Chambers may have done something unethical that got some one sent to Death Row so he was killed with a lethal injection cocktail. Pete figures Colonel Cassell might be the perpetrator, since he’s such a stickler for rules.
They go to Cassell’s place and find him choking to death in a room full of toxic gas. They drag him outside and ask if he’s done anything illegal or immoral. He admits his unit gassed a village full of civilians in Kuwait in 1991, which explains why he’s being gassed now. Pete and Myka realize
someone in Crown Heights must know about everyone’s sins and is punishing them. In New York, Artie and Claudia call Steve to do some research. Abigail mentions that since adolescent brains are still developing, some quant might be using Nick’s brain to amp up his own mental prowess to figure out the complex equations. Claudia finds a match to the antelope clock Nick saw and Nick confirms it’s the right one; it belongs to a Wall Street bank called Armstrong Investing.
Pete and Myka also call Steve for research help and he tells them about a possibility; there was speculation that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah might have created several salt-caked artifacts, but nobody’s sure what they are. Myka wonders why these particular people were targeted and Pete finds stationery that shows four of the victims were on 
the Crown Heights board. Myka points out that Rex wasn’t a board member and Pete suggests she check the minutes of the board meetings while he goes to see the last board member, John Foster. In New York, Artie checks out Armstrong Investing just as Nick has another seizure. Nick’s directions (including a reference to the “Kill the Wabbit” song—better known as Ride of the Valkyries) lead Artie to an office where a guy is wearing Orville Wright’s aviator goggles as he works on some complex formulae. Artie bags the goggles, which stops Nick’s seizures.
In Marlon, Pete goes to Foster’s house but can’t find him. Myka calls to tell him she knows who’s using the artifact … Janice Malloy. The board had rejected (three times) her request to put up a bust of her late husband, the founder of Crown Heights, and Rex spoke out against the bust. Myka notices
some chocolate cookies in the Colonel’s office and remembers there were plates of cookies at all the other crime scenes too. Myka looks closer and notices large salt grains sprinkled on the cookies; she figures it’s the salt from Sodom and Gomorrah that Janice is using to punish people. Pete realizes he’s in trouble, since he ate some of Janice’s cookies. His fears are confirmed as he suddenly blows right through the window onto the lawn with both his legs broken.
Myka comes to help him, but he tells her to find Janice and bag the artifact. Myka goes to Janice’s house, where she’s plying Foster with cookies. Myka knocks the cookie from his hand and Janice goes nuts, grabbing a butcher 
knife. She also grabs the artifact, a mask made of salt that must’ve covered someone’s face in Sodom or Gomorrah. Janice starts freaking out about her husband, saying he put his whole life into Crown Heights and now they just want to erase him. She goes after Foster with the knife, but Myka takes her down and bags the artifact. She leaves Janice crying on the kitchen floor, but when she gets back to Pete, his legs are still fucked up. Colonel Cassell pulls up in a cab and says he felt fine right after he left that afternoon. Myka figures Cassell felt better because he confessed his sin, and urges Pete to do the same.
Pete doesn’t want to, but finally admits that he drove drunk back in his boozing days and got in a car crash. He was fine but his best friend had both legs shattered and that was Pete’s rock bottom, his wake-up call to quit
drinking. The confession works and his legs heal. Myka tells him it took guts to tell her all that and that he doesn’t need to worry about his testosterone levels. In New York, Nick is ready to head back to the streets when Claudia invites him to come to South Dakota with her and Artie. Nick is suspicious, but Claudia says she’s just trying to help him like someone did with her once … and to let him know he’s not alone.
Back at the boardinghouse, both Steve and Abigail have decided to be more 
open with their fellow Warehouse agents. Steve has cooked a fabulous meal for everyone and Abigail displays a photo sh took on her travels. Claudia shows Nick his room and we see Nick texting someone, saying that Claudia bought his story and he’s in. I assume he’s texting Charlotte Dupres, who designated Claudia as someone’s target a couple episodes back. The next day, Myka goes for her annual physical, but her news is much more grim than Pete’s … she might have ovarian cancer.