The sad music of lonely dinners plays as Lois steps into a small café and finds a seat at a table. She orders wine for one and busies herself by reading a newspaper. Around her, couples are kissing. People are even kissing in the newspaper, as if to remind her of her solitude. She sighs. "Miss Lane," a voice says. She folds down her paper and sees the alien-abducting psycho. He introduces himself as Dr. Bernard Chisolm. He has a news story for Lois. Lois politely rebuffs him, but he promises the story will make her career. She gives him another moment of her attention and almost immediately regrets it as he starts blathering about aliens. She tells him to try contacting a reporter through the mail next time. She gets up to leave, but Bernie stops her. He sent her dozens of letters, he says. "Well, considering your story's alien angle, those letters probably never made it off the wacko pile," she says. I guess things have changed since she got her job at the Planet with an alien story. (Thanks to the forum peeps for refreshing my memory about that.) She brushes past Bernie, but he says he's captured some of the aliens. She turns to look at him. "They're under lock and key," he whispers. He begs her to come with him and help him spread the word. She feigns interest in order not to anger the psycho and makes some excuse about needing to call her editor first. Then, for some unfathomable reason, she pretends like she can't get a signal inside so she goes around the corner outside to call the police. Where it's dark and there are no witnesses. Bernie, realizing he's been played, follows her out and levels a gun at the back of her head before she can finish the call. "I'd hoped you'd enlist to fight our war," he says, "but I guess you'll have to be drafted." That's cool, because she even has a military-themed jacket on. Commercials.

Back from the commercials, Lois is chained to a desk in Bernie's Shower Lab of Doom. Her hands hover over a keyboard as she struggles to find a believable way to bring Misery Chastain back to life. Bernard shows her a box of microscope slides that have been dotted with blood. That's his proof, he says, along with all the notes he's taken. He shows her a notebook full of Kandorian symbols, mathematical formulas, and scrawled writing. He can't just show them to the world, though, because they'll be dismissed. "If they come from a legitimate news source, the public will listen," he says. Lois agrees to write the story, but tells him no one will believe it. "They will when they see the body parts I've harvested," he says. He's already sent samples to labs all over the world. He pulls back a plastic curtain, showing Lois the shower stalls. Two of them are empty except for splatters of blood. The third holds Vala, who pleads with her eyes for help. Bernie explains he's going to cryogenically preserve her. Lois tries to get up, but her chains hold fast. She attempts to reason with the good doctor by basically telling him he's a nutjob, which goes about as well as one would expect. He pulls some levers and cold air starts to fill Vala's shower stall. He's despondent that Lois still doesn't believe him, so he takes off his cap to show her the experiments the aliens performed on him. His scalp looks like a turkey-jerky sort of Pinhead, with holes at the intersections of his scars. He shows her the 3-inch-long Kryptonite spikes he's since removed and says he remembers dying before the aliens brought him back to life and poked at his brain. Lois thinks he should be thanking them for saving his life instead of abducting them. He shouts that when he died, he had peace, but now he can't shut off his brain. The trumpet-playing elephant blasts a note of sympathy. "I can't stop thinking," he says. "I have thoughts that no person should have." He tells Lois it's their job to save mankind. She stares at him, wide-eyed.