In the atrium, Sierra is painting when Victor approaches and compliments the bird on the paper. Sierra thanks him, but frowns as she adds she "doesn't like this color," and we see that next to the bird, she's drawn a large, black, nebulous figure. From her station next to Sierra, Echo looks over with concern as Sierra goes on that "it's always here." Not to spoil things, but you might want to throw some red into the mix.

Topher's trying to figure out something that Alpha did (probably more work on the remote wipe) while having an out-loud conversation with himself, and like many things Topher, it's funny but is more effort than it's worth to fully recap, so suffice it to say that he stops when he realizes the talking out loud is very Alpha-like, which is certainly true enough. He's then startled to find that Echo has silently appeared behind him and "jokes" about making her wear a bell, and I hope that doesn't happen because knowing this show it would be attached to a leather collar. Echo produces the painting Sierra gave her, but he blows her off to go pour some coffee -- and when he turns, she's right there again. Hee. Cheap, but that one worked for me because it wasn't telegraphed in the setups or the editing, and by the way, lest I forget, I want to compliment Jonathan Frakes on his direction of this episode. Echo, more insistently, offers the painting to him again and tells him, "Sierra hates the bad man," and this is enough to get Topher at least to look at the thing, but he still doesn't take her seriously at first, saying that he's not even sure that the black smudge is a man, much less which one. Echo drops her tone out of normal dreamy Doll range, though: "You're not looking hard enough. You never do." That's enough to get Topher's full attention...

...and sometime later, he's asking Boyd about Sierra's "repeat engagement," saying he has a hunch something's wrong. Boyd's amused, not at the suggestion but at that part where it's bothering Topher, but gives Topher the scoop on Nolan, saying he's a Rossum VIP specializing in molecular pharmacology and neuroleptics (the treatment of schizophrenia), and the engagements have been fairly run-of-the-mill romantic encounters, with Sierra's stress levels never going out of their normal range. As he observes Sierra down in the atrium, he tells Boyd that he helped Sierra when she came to the Dollhouse, and then shows him the painting. Boyd fixates on the part where Echo was the one that brought it to Topher's attention, but Topher's too wrapped up in Sierra to notice, and says that Echo's been more help to him so far than Boyd has. Not particularly jazzed about being unfavorably compared to a Doll, Boyd suggests that Claire might have seen a pattern with Sierra...