"We need them," Laura says, and Leoben nods. "She's right. We all want the same thing. If we cooperate..." Three smiles a second time.

"-- We cooperated on New Caprica, brother. It didn't work out well." It's all she remembers, drifting in the memory of war, alone in the universe. A singular Three, with no sisters at all. "I'm going to hold your people hostage until the Final Four are safely aboard this ship."

(But follow the line of blood, the intricate and interweaving cubits and furlongs of blood: Cally kills Boomer, takes her out of a fantasy story and puts her a horror story: lost among aliens, threatened with extinction in the desert of the real. Boomer and Caprica drive each other crazy; it all comes to a head in a Starbucks parking lot, and Caprica kills Three to save Sam. In that moment another story is born: the Lie of LOVE. The story falls apart on New Caprica, it still stings; Three is left holding the shards in her hands. A meeting with a human Oracle gives her a new path. Hera and Gaius conspire to teach her the reality of love. In a moment of extremity, her next life is introduced: a vision of the unthinkably scattered tribes of the Cylon, gathered on the wings of an angel into God's unity. She is martyred to this cause, a one-woman army, a fifth column in Cavil's world. The Plan changes in her absence, thanks to Sam and a distant unnamed Raider, and when she comes back, her Plan has transcended religion and become political: her people must be gathered in, the Cylon Diaspora must be resolved before they drift even further apart. This is only an extraction, a rescue of her people from their jailers, in a time of war. Holy or not, saints or demons, the Cylons are her people. Her people. This is only an extraction.)

And just like this -- Centurions step forward, the Marines and Helo draw on them, Bill draws his gun on Three -- she puts us all back into the war from which we were just beginning to wake. Laura begs Bill to stand down, to save this broken alliance, to respect the extraction as far as they can, but she's caught in the war too. Three has pushed them all back into the fog. "Come on, trust me," she whispers, and he lowers his gun, angry. He orders them to stand down; Three smiles for the third time.

"I've already had an Eight prepare a Raptor, so we'll launch as soon as we come out of the jump. Oh, and Admiral, you'll be coming along with me to Galactica." She moves them around like a President, using Eights as Centurions like Brother Cavil, running the show. She has returned from the dead to accomplish two things in one: the realization of a prophesied connection with divinity, and the rescue of her brothers and sisters from enemy lines. When Boomer came home, shackled and shaking in the waters of resurrection, Three rejoiced, in tears.