Peter and Olivia mount the steps to the front porch, and probably wonder to themselves if Mr. Hughes's nickname isn't "Digger," what with the shovels and the muddy footprints everywhere. Peter peers through the front curtains, Olivia knocks on the door, and a shovel point thuds against the bottom step. "Aw, hell," says a newly familiar voice, and its owner, played by a very scraggly and muddy John Savage, asks who they are. Olivia identifies herself and Peter, smiling unthreateningly as she asks to talk to Hughes. Kicking off his conspicuously filthy boots, Hughes invites them in, all helpful. As he ushers them through the front door, he goes on about what he claims is his nightmare existence of maintaining water wells. That must be why he's all dirty, which certainly rules out the possibility that he's been rooting around underground in a town where seven people have recently vanished. He's certainly spending a lot of time complaining about it, although it doesn't really get much more convincing the more he talks about it. As he goes to wash up, Olivia asks him, "Is there someone else in this house?" "No," Hughes lies simply before stepping out of view. "There's someone else in this house," Olivia quietly insists to Peter, and tells him to keep their host busy while she goes for a snoop.

She heads upstairs, as stealthily as a person still using a cane can be. She swings open a bedroom door, gun leveled, but there's no one inside. There is a home laboratory, with a workbench full of a equipment and a periodic table on the wall, which is admittedly odd, but there are no underground beasties. You hardly ever find those on the second floor anyway. There is one sign of life, however: Olivia's new super-hearing appears to have kicked in again, and she seems to detect a rapid heartbeat coming from behind the closet door. Setting her cane aside so she can steady her gun with both hands (like that's going to be any help if she topples over), she orders, "Come out of there." No one does, so she opens the door herself. Nothing but a shallow closet with shelves of more vials. No room for anyone to hide even if they wanted to. Suddenly there's a noise from the open doorway, and Olivia turns and squeezes off a shot without even looking. That is so not procedure. Peter ducks as the bullet lodges in the wallpaper directly behind his head. Olivia frantically apologizes, saying she thought she heard something. Peter looks furiously unimpressed, but he doesn't say anything. He's either thinking You almost killed me! or You are the worst shot in the world!