The episode unfolds with a flashback of Keith showing Koku how to use a strong updraft to reach the Moby Dick hovering high in the planet’s atmosphere. Koku is unsure of whether Yuna will be waiting for him, and Keith encourages Koku to fight what he perceives to be his fate. Back in the present, Koku prepares to jump off a cliff.
Up on the Moby Dick, Yuna awakens and is miraculously healed. Minatsuki appears and Yuna insists that Koku will come find them, a comment which earns her a slap to the face. Minatsuki is firm in his belief that the Moby Dick is flying too high for even Koku to reach.
Back at the precinct Eric and Keith are trying to find Gilbert’s location. Kaela comes up with the idea to use her crowd-searching software and apply it to the town’s traffic, and Eric “hijacks” two additional satellites somehow (mod powers!) to power Kaela’s idea.
The trio get his location whittled down to ports down along the beachside and Keith does some kind of mental exercise where he imagines himself in Gilbert’s car. If he were Gilbert, where would he go? Where is he keeping Lily?
Keith comes up with the idea for Kaela to check Gilbert’s exit logs. Presumably all RIS employees must scan or swipe in and out of the building when they start and finish a shift. However, according to the logs, Gilbert hasn’t left the building. Could he really be hiding Lily under everyone’s noses? (In a nutshell: Yes.)
Keith also has Kaela run a search on all the unsolved disappearances of women from around the city. Why? He wants to see how many of the victims resemble his dead sister Erika. If there is more than just Lily, maybe Gilbert has been up to some nasty tricks via Market Maker for quite awhile. The answer is that there have been 37 such disappearances, which also matches up perfectly with the number of times Gilbert has “worked” past midnight. One late shift for each victim. This means Gilbert’s twisted lair is somewhere in the RIS building!
Once the trio looks at the old blueprints for the RIS building and locate where they think Gilbert’s secret space might be, they decide that they have to attack him alone. Gilbert’s lab being hidden for this long means he has people on his side working on the police force or in the building, and Keith, Eric and Kaela could very well be outnumbered if they try to attack Gilbert directly.
Keith and Eric enter Gilbert’s office to see if the entrance to his lab is there, and Keith is the one who finds the hidden switch. Once past Gilbert’s office, Eric and Keith take an antique elevator down several floors. When they reach the basement they jump out of the elevator with their guns drawn, but they’re too late. Lily is gone, leaving behind only a long blood smear on the steel table where she’d lain.
The creepiest thing about the basement is that there are dozens of preserved body lying in glowing blue tanks. One of the victims was Keith’s own father, the first person Gilbert ever killed. Eric is unable to wrap his mind around Gilbert being such a deadly serial killer but Keith takes this view in stride. He’s investigated Gilbert for a long time after all; he likely knows exactly what Gilbert is capable of.
While Keith and Eric are in Gilbert’s hidden lab, Keith’s cellphone rings. Of course it’s Gilbert. Keith has figured out that Gilbert doesn’t have Lily with him, yet she’s not on the table. Where is she? Keith promises that he will be the one to kill Gilbert himself. Gilbert ends the phone call by smashing his cellphone on the ground, then exits the RIS building via a side entrance and manages to escape by killing two police officers.
Keith breaks down a door behind which are years of corpses and body parts. Gilbert has drugged and disposed of Lily here, but she’s still alive thankfully. Eric orders Kaela to shut down the space around the RIS building to try to prevent Gilbert’s escape, but of course he’s too late.
As Gilbert is driving he calls Minatsuki to command him to kill everyone tied to the RIS. However Minatsuki, using a voice distorter, declines and says that Market Maker is too busy to deal with him. After the call ends we see that Gilbert was not talking to Minatsuki but to Laica; Minatsuki is still elsewhere on the Moby Dick with Yuna.
Meanwhile Gilbert has paused his escape to rest outside a diner. He’s absolutely furious that Minatsuki has defied him and Gilbert expresses this rage by having a tantrum and a meltdown. When he calms down he starts speaking to Erika’s spirit, but she moves away from his view. Frantic Gilbert falls outside his car and writhes in the snow as he pleads for her to return to him, but of course she doesn’t.
Then Gilbert stands up and it’s like nothing happened. Ominous music indicates that something has happened with Gilbert – he’s changed somehow. A new personality? A new persona? Either way the Gilbert that grieved for Erika is no more; a darker, more focused Gilbert is in charge now. He reserves the car quickly and taunts Keith to come see him so they can finish the final chapter of their story.
The part of me which is fascinated by psychology really enjoyed this episode. It sounds weird I know, but I couldn’t get enough of having Gilbert’s secrets revealed. Moreover, to hide a secret as big as Gilbert’s – that he’s a serial killer and his lair is right in the RIS building! – must have involved a lot of people who were keeping his back. How many are human and how many are Reggies?
I’ve never been as interested in the supernatural side of B: The Beginning – human psychology fascinates me more. But that’s just me.