After capturing Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca), Amanda (Melinda Clarke) demands a trade with Division; she'll gladly return Alex in return for Ari (Peter Outerbridge) and his half of the key to the encrypted Black Box. Still not able to trust Owen (Devon Sawa) where Amanda and Ari are concerned, Michael (Shane West) assigns Nikita (Maggie Q) and Sean (Dillon Casey) to the prisoner exchange but Ryan (Noah Bean) overrules Michael adds Owen to the team and makes one other small addition to protect Division's secrets which Birkhoff (Aaron Stanford) only discovers after the group are overseas.
As the team flies to Ossetia for the prisoner exchange, a country where Ari is a marked man for "a massacre or two," Alex matches wits with her captor and tries to convince her nurse Larissa (Olga Fonda) who immediately recognizes her as Alexandra Udinov, to help her escape. The escape gets off to a solid start but when Larissa is shot Alex refuses to leave her side and make it out alone. Using their remaining time together Amanda plants a seed of discord between Alex and Amanda (perhaps with the use of the same psychic surgery she used on Owen?) that begins to bloom immediately following the prisoner exchange.
After Birkhoff and Michael discover Ryan had a kill chip implanted in Ari's skull and gave Owen the green light to activate it after the exchange, all without Nikita's knowledge, the pair have to make a hard decision on what to do next. Nikita discovers the ruse on her own, at the worst possible moment, leading to the bickering team being captured by local soldiers and only saved by Ari's quick thinking. The exchange goes much smoother, but Nikita's plan to rescue Ari is jeopardized by Alex's refusal to help given her promise to return and rescue Larissa.
Even two men down on a job that requires a minimum of four of Division's best, Nikita refuses to activate the kill chip as she and Owen attempt to extract Ari on their own. With the team split into pairs neither undermanned duo is able to complete their mission as Ari dies and Alex and Sean watch helplessly as an explosion destroys everything in the room of the military hospital where Larissa was being kept.
The grenade which find itself into Larissa's room is a little too convenient, but certainly sells Alex on the story she believes - whether or not it is the truth. Given Alex's unexplained blackouts and the discovery of one of Amanda's brainwashing machines in the room Alex first looks for her friend, however, we have to wonder what, if anything, is real about she remembers from her time as Amanda's prisoner. And despite Ryan congratulations on a job well done, the split between Alex and Nikita, who blame each other for not saving a person they were sworn to protect, means, Amanda brainwashing or not, there's trouble brewing not far below the surface.
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