The persistent chirp of a cell phone finally breaks through the uplifting music and -- what's that? An ominous chord? It's Hodges. Is the music for him? Does my new favorite character finally rate his own theme? No -- he's stammering to Catherine that he tested those little indentations on the coffin that he was so curious about, and there's Semtex on the bottom of each. In other words, Nicky's coffin is wired to explode if he should get up. We find all this out as we hear Warrick faintly issuing the count to get Nicky out of the damned thing. Catherine runs over rasping, "Everyone out of the hole! The box is ready to explode!" Warrick shouts, "Are you kidding?" Catherine shrills, "Get out of there nooooooooowwwwww!" Warrick's all, "Not without my daugh-- Nick!" Catherine's all, "There are charges under the box, fool!" Warrick stubbornly insists, "Not without my daugh-- Nicky! Dammit! I mean Nicky!" Recognizing that the kids aren't paying attention to Mom, Gil steps in and says, "Catherine's right. Get out of the hole now. I know what we're going to do. Just trust me." Warrick shoots Gil an agonized look; as he reluctantly steps away, Nicky watches him go and screams piteously. You really can't blame the guy.

Gil clambers onto to coffin and shouts, "Nicky! Can you hear me? So long as we're waiting for a backhoe filled with dirt to arrive, I thought now would be a fine time to do employee evaluations! Repeat after me, 'silk, silk, silk.' No, not 'Help, help, help,' 'silk, silk' -- look. Just -- all right. We'll return to this. Listen to me. It's gonna take us a minute to get you out of there, okay?" Nicky takes this about as well as can be expected of anyone who's been crammed into a coffin, tortured with bright lights, bitten by ants, subject to hallucinations, then dug up by colleagues only to be seemingly abandoned seconds before the coffin lid comes off.

Gil realizes that Nicky's crazy with fear and finally shouts, "Poncho!" This cuts through the fog: Poncho is what his dad called him, and parents stand for comfort. Gil slaps his palm on the coffin top and says, "Listen to me. Put your hand on my hand." Nicky does. Once Gil sees that Nicky's coming out of his blind panic, he says, "Now listen: there may be explosives under the box. They're probably set on pressure switches. We need to equalize your body weight before we can pull you out, okay? Poncho, nod your head if you understand me." Nicky nods. Gil then hops off the coffin and tells everyone, "We're going to use the dirt from the backhoe to equalize his weight. I need a rope and a carabineer." Gil then scampers down to the coffin again, places his hand atop Nicky's, and tells him, "All right, Poncho. We're going to open the lid and get you out. But I need you to stay lying down, okay? Or else you'll blow us all up." Does anyone really think somebody who's been cycling through adrenaline spikes, ant attacks, and near suffocation is going to be in any condition to leap out of a coffin? Gil does. He presses, "Do you understand that? Do you promise?" Nicky does, and he does. Gil double-checks with, "Poncho, say, 'I promise.'" Nicky does.