- After Team Scorpion fails a military training mission, they are determined to prove their worth to Cabe and Homeland Security when a bomber threatens to take out the internet infrastructure of the entire Southwest.
- Homeland Security director Merrick suspends the team after hey fail an absurd test to work with Marines. Walter and agent Cabe are desperate to earn reactivation by demonstrating its effectiveness in a daunting case. A bomb in a law firm proves a terrorist attack at the Internet itself, Walter's theory, confirmed soon by more bombs. The team must work along or even against a shadow federal bureau, whose chief agent Keeler proves far worse then just defensive of jurisdiction claims.—KGF Vissers
- At Scorpion HQ, Walter and Sylvester entertain themselves with a Rubik's cube race, with Toby doing play-by-play.
Agent Cabe Gallo comes in surly, they're late. He wants them to prove their usefulness to Director Merrick.
USMC Training Facily, Stockton, California Walter and Sylvester ride in a Humvee on a training exercise as Gallo, Toby, Happy and the Director of Homeland Security watch the video feed.
Once the marines takes the compound, Walter and Sylvester are supposed to take the computer info but Sylvester panics and Walter has to do it for them. They fail the drill when the rest of the team is captured. Happy makes it worse by hitting the Marine "guarding" her.
Walter says the marines chose a bad entry point and slowed them down, but Merrick is not impressed and tells the team they don't get any more work for the time being.
Paige drops her son off at school, trying to boost his confidence.
Back at HQ, Walter tells Paige how poorly it went and asks her to find a way to make it better, instead the team shuts her down.
Sylvester notices their wifi is down and Gallo gets a call about a bombing in downtown office building. But the team isn't allowed to go. Walter thinks the wifi being out could mean the problem is much worse than they think.
At the scene, the law firm of Mark Brown Family Law was destroyed, as well as the basement of the building. Gallo meets Thomas Keeler with the Federal Surveillance Group, who he's assessing the damage to the internet in the basement.
Then Walter and team arrive. They each use their skill set to explain why the bombing is a targeted act of terrorism against the Internet, because a hard cable supplying the Southwest went under the building and is destroyed.
Gallo explains the stakes for the team to Walter and then tells Paige to keep the team on task.
Back at HQ, Walter orders a specific part from Germany which will be overnighted and arrive tomorrow. In the meantime, traffic lights are out everywhere.
The team runs facial recognition and uses Toby's psych profile to pull a guy out of the surveillance outside the building, but he doesn't show up in any FSG databases. Walter questions the FSG system, noting he knows someone who hacked into it once.
Despite Gallo's admonitions to cool it, Walter is determined to find the bomber and justify the team to Merrick.
On the scene, Sylvester runs all potentialities to determine the bomber's point of entry and exit from the building. They get surveillance footage from a nearby building and Happy uses a water bottle to magnify the photo. They see a keychain from a bar that Toby recognizes.
At the bar, Toby can tell the bartender is lying about recognizing the bomber when he stops cutting lemons, because the part of his brain that handles small tasks is also the part used when someone is lying. Toby flashes the badge he lifted off Gallo and the bartender goes to call someone who knows him.
Later, outside the possible apartment of the bomber, Walter won't call Gallo until they know the bomber's inside. When Ralph calls needing entertainment at recess without the internet, Walter gives him a riddle: What kind of punch does a jellyfish like?
Happy bribes some nearby street musicians to get their portable speaker. She tapes it to an umbrella to listen inside the apartment and hear footsteps. Walter is calling Cabe when the bomber walks out. He takes one look at them and runs. Happy takes off after him. Walter and Paige follow in the car but hit a dead end in the alley. Toby gets in front of him but just gets knocked down.
Walter and Paige find him again in the street, but he pulls a gun. They're trying to duck when all of a sudden the bomber his plowed into by a bus.
Later, with Gallo and Keller on the scene, they're not happy the bomber is in a coma. Gallow won't let Walter go through the suspect's house with him.
Back at HQ, Paige checks in with Walter. She tells him she appreciates his faith in her, but they have to listen to her once in a while.
Gallow comes in with evidence, including the bomber's computer. Keller's men couldn't get through the firewall and the suspect wasn't in any system.
Happy looks at IED parts from the bomber's garage and says it indicates Special Forces training. She also finds parts that make her believe the bomb malfunctioned and went off early and others will be going off soon.
They hear three explosions. They hit a mall, a radio tower and an armored car. Sylvester doesn't see a pattern. Paige finally gets Toby to stop interrupting her and tells everyone that she knows from being a cashier that armored trucks don't have schedules, so he was targeting the building, not the truck.
Gallo gets a list of the building tenants, and Walter ID's GreyTech, which specializes in slow storage servers, places that hold old data that's rarely accessed online. They think the other bombings were just a distraction. Giving the internet targets, they wonder if the bomber has a secret he doesn't want getting out.
Walter has found an attempted hack on a slow server from the bomber's computer and traced it to an email address for a man named Frank turner who died two weeks ago in a hit and run.
Walter and Sylvester lead a tutorial on how to destroy information on the internet, which the bomber is one step away from completing. Toby announces he's found the router hub where the info went from Frank Thomas's IP address and they head out.
At the hub, they find the email from Frank in which he says he was an agent with the FSG and has evidence that Keeler was spying on the White House. Keeler found out about the email, went after it and then took out the data. He brought in the team just to keep an eye on them.
Gallo gets the email on the drive and is ready to take it to the Department of Justice and have Keeler arrested. Happy hears a noise in the server room. She crawls up into the air ducts and finds a bomb. It's big enough to take out the whole building. It's on a timer not a remote, meaning it was put there recently.
Gallo told Merrick where they were going -- and he told Keeler because he doesn't trust Scorpion. Sylvester calculates they have five minutes before it goes off. He goes with Gallo to deliver the drive. They're t-boned by Keller on the street.
He yanks Gallo out of the car and puts a gun to him for the file. When he aims at Sylvester, Gallo takes out the file to distract him. He punches Keeler, but gets knocked down. Keeler runs when he hears sirens.
Gallo chases him while Sylvester squeezes under the car for someone's dropped gun.
Back in the building, Toby and Paige try to clear the building. Happy looks at the bomb and announces she can't diffuse it because it's jury rigged. Then she sees janitorial supplies and has an idea to deafen the blast. They essentially make quick cement using salt as a catalyst. Walter stays behind to stir it and activate it while Happy get Toby and Paige out.
Meanwhile, Gallow follows Keeler in a parking lot but gets jumped by him. They fight back and forth and when Keeler gets the upper hand he's about to swing a lead pipe down on Gallo. But then Sylvester shows up, firing into the air and warning Keeler he's not sure who he'll hit. Keeler surrenders.
Back at the building, Toby, Paige and Happy wait to see Walter come out of the building. Instead, the bomb goes off, taking out the garage. When the smoke clears, they see Walter walking out.
Back at HQ, they discover the drive and laptop are toast. They have no evidence against Keeler.
Then Sylvester volunteers that Keeler met with the US Secretary of Defense about illegal drone strikes, and Keeler recorded it to use as blackmail. He was standing over Walter's shoulder when the unencrypted files scrolled through and even thought almost 30 pages went by in a few seconds, he memorized the whole thing.
Walter and Gallo talk about the future of the team. Gallo admits he wasn't promoted to LA, he flamed out in New York after the civilians were killed in the Baghdad airstrike. He found Walter because he's hoping to do some good to make up for that bloodshed. "You should know that I trust you so much that I put everything into this team and to you," Gallo says.
Walter announces the whole team will go get Ralph from after care and then get food. Ralph answers the riddle: a "smack," because a bunch of jellyfish is called a smack. A family of scorpions is called a cyclone, and Walter explains that when one is attacked, they all stand up for them.
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