With that, the harness has been cut off. Rick's blood pressure is stable and his back looks like it has raspberry preserves down the spine. Little needle nubs stick out, too. Dr. Wings says that once the needles penetrate the spine, they soften, grow roots and become part of the host's nervous system. Anne wonders how that's possible and Dr. Wings throws around the term "nano-engineering." Basically, I think he means, "alien hoodoo." They look like needles, but behave more like living tissue. So if a kid wears the harness long enough, the harness and the kid become one. That is both awesome and terrible. You could really never wear anything backless again!

Rick starts seizing and Anne is all, "Uh, doctor?" Dr. Wings moves SO SLOWLY to get a shot of something and Mike yells at him to move it. Dr. Wings in turn instructs Dai to get Mike out of there. He puts a shot of junk into Ricky's IV and Ricky calms down. Dr. Wings tells Anne that he was totally expecting that. Anne, like everyone else, suspects that Dr. Wings is a total tool.

Meanwhile, Tom is skulking around the darkened streets, looking for his two sons and Karen. He doesn't have to go far, as he sees Hal stumbling and dazed in the middle of the street. Tom runs to him and Hal collapses before answering all of Tom's initial questions with the perfectly valid statement, "You drove away." He does manage to impart the news that Karen has been taken by the Skitters before tossing out a particularly brutal, "You left." Tom says that technically it wasn't HIM who left and that had he not been unconscious, he never would have left Hal behind. Hal starts crying and is just glad that Tom came back. In turn, Tom is just glad that Hal is alive. As they're hugging, Hal tells Tom what happened with the harnessed kids killed by the Mech. He says it was like they wanted him to see it and then let him go. Professor Tom, never one to miss an opportunity for a historical parallel, tells Hal that Nazis sometimes did this with Allied prisoners of war. They're sending a message -- "take one and we'll kill the rest." They left Hal alive to be the messenger. Well, message received. Tom redoubles his conviction to take not just Ben but all the kids the next time they come back.

We return from a break to find Anthony putting the finishing touches on a cage for the POW Skitter. Basically, it looks like the Skitter is in a storeroom, or maybe the Assistant Principal's office, and Anthony has welded some sort of metal cage piece where the door would be. Weaver says that if it were up to him, they'd kill the damned thing now. Although he is crazy in many respects, I think Weaver is right in this instance. Anthony agrees, but Porter shows up to say that nobody's had a live Skitter and if they're to beat the Skitters (hahahah, poop joke) they need to understand them. Weaver notes that Tom handled this one with a sawed-off shotgun and a flashlight, and wonders what else there is to understand. As it turns out, that's Dr. Wings' call. So he's a research biologist as well as a surgeon? His background in physiology and anatomy is good enough for Porter. Crazy Weaver is totally not happy that Dr. Wings will be with them for another three weeks. The Skitter snores in a way that would be sort of endearing if you didn't know that as soon as it woke up, its first choice of activities would be to eat your face.