flashbandit16
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As the strigoi turn New York into a war zone, survivors and the military must pull together and fight.
The strigoi are evolving, becoming faster. Smarter. Eph struggles to improve his failing bioweapon while trying to work through the emotional fallout of the abduction of his son, Zack. As Setrakian and Quinlan attempt to crack the Lumen's deepest-held secrets, Fet helps a Navy SEAL team in a deadly mission: search for the Master through the underground tunnels of New York.
The Master's offer to return Zack plagues Eph. Dutch reunites with an old group of friends but begins to question if her safety is better with them or with Fet, Eph and Setrakian.
After the Navy SEALS leave New York, Fet has a one-night stand with a woman named Kate. Eph rejoins Fet and Setrakian, who are pleased to see him; however, Quinlan suspects Eph has ulterior motives. As Palmer's health deteriorates, he has his researchers attempt to process the "white", the Master's rejuvenating essence. When they fail, he meets with Setrakian and offers to abandon the Master in exchange for Setrakian's knowledge of the "white." Setrakian refuses, but later tells Fet they may be able to use Palmer's desperation to manipulate him. Eichhorst tells Palmer to influence Justine Feraldo to funneling more victims into the Freedom Centers. Meanwhile, Dutch has fallen in with her old hacker friends who abandon her during a strigoi attack. After confronting them, she leaves. As Zach attempts escape the Master's confines, he glimpses Kelly feeding, then, panicked, suffers an asthma attack. The Master heals him with the "white." Quinlan catches Eph attempting to steal the Occido Lumen. Quinlan proposes teaming up to lure the Master with the Lumen so that Quinlan can kill him and Eph can rescue Zach.
The Occido Lumen is gone. Stolen. Setrakian and Fet race to recover it. Gus and Angel try to hide a secret houseguest, and Quinlan's thirst for vengeance is revealed.
Flashbacks depict Quinlan's past where an older woman discovered him in a Roman camp. Intrigued by his strangeness, she tells him he will "complete the prophecy". Quinlan tells Eph that the Master is his "father," but that he was conceived by humans. The Master infected his mother while she was pregnant, making Quinlan half-human, half strigoi. Quilan says that killing the Master will result in his own death. Angel discovers Gus is hiding his turned mother. When police "sweepers" are inspecting the building, they attempt to conceal her but are captured and conscripted to fight strigoi. Fet and Satrakian chase Eph and Quinlan to recover the Occido Lumen, tracking them with the GPS device that Fet hid inside. Eph demands that the Master meet with him to exchange Zach for the Lumen. During the exchange, Kelly tries tricking Eph by disguising one of her "feelers" as Zach. She is severely burned by the Lumen's silver cover when she attempts to take it. Fet and Setrakian arrive and destroy the turned Navy SEALS that are aiding the Master. Quinlan beheads the Master, but a larger than normal strigoi worm crawls from the corpse and escapes down a rain sewer. Eph and the others have the Lumen, but appear to have lost Quinlan.
Things have changed. The infection enters a new phase. Fet wants to celebrate, but Setrakian and Eph are worried there's more work to be done.
During a taped interview, a TV reporter claims the police are forcing conscripted chain gangs to fight the strigoi. Feraldo denies the accusations, but later does nothing to stop it after learning it is true and that few prisoners survive. Eph treats Quinlan's gunshot wounds and he recovers quickly, though Quinlan had expected to die after killing the Master. The ancients later tell Quinlan that the Master was not truly destroyed, as Quinlan did not kill the crimson worm containing the Master's essence. Frustrated with the ancients, Quinlan severs ties with them. Police force Gus and Angel to lead a "sweep team" through a strigoi-infested tunnel; only they and one other survive. Gus realizes the strigoi's actions no longer seem coordinated. Setrakian and Fet eject Eph from their premises after he reveals he helped steal the Lumen to exchange it for Zach. Eichhorst strikes back by sending turned Feraldo-workers to their former base of operations with C4 explosives implanted inside their bodies. The explosions blow the worms everywhere, infecting many staff and killing others. Fet barely prevents Feraldo from being infected. Dutch returns to Fet's place and stays with Eph, resulting in them drinking heavily together. When they go out at night, they encounter a strigoi controlled through the Master announcing he is still alive. Feraldo orders her police to confiscate the TV reporter's computers and video footage of Feraldo's interview, then has the woman arrested.
New information from the Lumen forces Setrakian to seek help from his nemesis, Eldritch Palmer. Eph's new experiments to understand strigoi communication seemingly take him to the brink of madness.
Many world cities have now been infected as strigoi numbers grow exponentially. Eph and Dutch have been capturing strigoi for Eph's biological experiments. Elsewhere, Fet implants two strigoi with GPS trackers and follows their movements. Setrakian and Quinlan continue studying the Lumen. Quinlan compares Setrakian to historical strigoi hunters whose obsessions bordered on madness. Setrakian notes the same regarding Quinlan. Eldritch Palmer, in rapidly declining health, meets Eichhorst's new associate, Sanjay Desai. Eichhorst inquires about a cargo shipment from Egypt that he tasked Palmer with arranging and is pleased it is on schedule. While performing a necropsy on a strigoi, Eph identifies the parasite and discovers that microwaves affect the creature's crude central nervous system and their collective communication ability. Justine Feraldo and Captain Frank Kowalski are dismayed that strigoi have infiltrated previously secured areas of Manhattan. Underground, Fet comes upon strigoi digging tunnels for their brethren to enter the city through Central Park. He also discovers a massive strigoi nest. In a flashback scene set in 1972, Setrakian poses as a seller of a fake Occido Lumen to lure and entrap Eichhorst. Instead he encounters Dr. Draverhaven, the sadistic Nazi doctor turned sentient strigoi. Setrakian overpowers the doctor and dismembers him, eventually dumping him alive into the North Sea, trapped inside a steamer trunk. In the present, Setrakian discovers the information he needs is watermark text hidden within the Lumen's pages: the Master can be defeated by containing him in a silver-lined sarcophagus. Setrackian enlists Palmer's help, offering a dose of the "white" in exchange for him learning the identity of the Master's new host body and his whereabouts. Further testing by Eph and Dutch reveals the strigoi can quickly adapt to the microwave interference.
Fet strikes hard at the heart of the strigoi army while Justine embarks upon a risky mission to drive the strigoi out of Manhattan once and for all. Gus and Angel fight for their lives.
As part of an all-out assault to reclaim Central Park, Feraldo sends Fet and NYPD captain Kate Rodgers on a dangerous mission to wipe out the strigoi nest under the park. Kates turns out to be the woman Fet had recently spent the night with. Eichhorst and Kelly give Zach a Feeler to act as his personal companion and protector. Eph and Dutch go to Central Park to gather more data on strigoi communication. While being forced to clear out tunnels, Gus and Angel rebel against their police overseers and escape the sweep team. Gus joins up with Fet and Kate while Angel leaves to protect a young woman, Maria, who had also been conscripted. Kelly moves Zach to a new location, but he leaves a message behind for Eph. Fet, Gus, and Kate reach and successfully destroy the strigoi nest. However, a massive wave of strigoi overwhelms the NYPD's checkpoints, revealing that the Master used the nest as a trap to set the city's forces up for a counterattack. After Eph gets Zach's message and searches where he was being kept, Eichhorst arrives to mock him; in the ensuing confrontation, Dutch severs Eichhorst's hand, forcing his retreat. Feraldo orders a full withdrawal as strigoi completely overrun Central Park.
Setrakian offers hope in a new plan to trap the Master while Eph and Dutch seek out the Master's "voice." Palmer needs Setrakian's access to the white to hold up his end of their bargain.
Fet and Setrakian travel to a Brooklyn pawnshop to gather silver for building a sarcophagus to imprison the Master in. Along the way, they stop at Fet's parents' apartment and find they have committed suicide after being infected. Flashbacks depict Fet's grandfather, a WWII Ukrainian soldier being captured by the Nazis and coerced into executing Jewish prisoners in exchange for better treatment. Years later, he committed suicide over his Nazi collaboration. During their study of strigoi communication, Eph and Dutch isolate a signal they believe is the Master's voice. They and Quinlan leave the safe zone and travel to JFK Airport to retrieve the black box from the airplane the Master flew to America in. They hope to get a pure sample of his voice to compare with their signal. A dying Palmer and his security team board the ship, Aurora Cutlass, in search of its mysterious cargo from Egypt. They find the crew dead and the cargo hold empty. In exchange for his promise to track down the Cutlass's cargo, Setrakian gives Palmer a single dose of the "white," which revives him.
The Master's voice proves to be more powerful than Eph or Dutch anticipated. Fet and Setrakian track down the cargo from the Egyptian vessel and realize they may be in over their heads.
Eichhorst inspects the processing plant for harvesting human blood. He is displeased that Sanjay Desai and his assistant have tested the system with human analogs rather than live subjects; Eichhort brutally tests the system on the assistant, killing him in the process. At the Elizade apartment, Gus' turned mother returns and attempts to attack Angel, forcing Gus to shoot her. Flashbacks depict how Gus' maternal uncles made his abusive father "disappear"; in the present day, Gus and Angel decide to leave New York. With a rejuvenated Eldritch Palmer's assistance, Setrakian and Fet gain access to the Freedom Center where they interrogate the Aurora Cutlass ship agent. He admits the Egyptian cargo was taken to the processing center; Palmer tells them that over a hundred such blood plants are being built in North America. Fet and Setrakian invade the processing center, but Eichhorst, Desai, and their subordinates escape with the cargo. While listening to the black box recording of the Master's paralyzing signal, Dutch collapses. Eph revives her and, later, the two become intimate. During a meeting to form a new alliance, Quinlan and the Ancients are ambushed by Eichhorst and a strigoi army. As Quinlan fights to escape, Eichhorst detonates a bomb that destroys the Ancients' hideout.
NYC is falling. Eph and Dutch race to finish their new device to stop the Master before the city is overrun. Justine, Gus, and Angel fight in one last stand to stop the spreading virus.
A flashback to the early 1960s depicts Palmer seeking a position within his estranged wealthy father's corporation. Mr. O'Neil refuses to hire his illegitimate son and instead writes Palmer a $10,000 check to sever their ties. Bitter and dejected, Palmer invests the money to begin building his own corporation, naming it Stoneheart as a nod to his uncaring, cold-hearted father. In the present, the NYPD leave New York; a few captains stay behind with Justine Feraldo. Fet goes to warn Eph and Dutch that the police have left and the city will fall within two days. Dutch and Eph opt to stay and continue working on their invention. The device works, disrupting attacking strigois' communication ability and rendering them inert. Gus and Angel come to the aid of Feraldo, Captain Kowalski, and the remaining NYPD captains as strigoi attack their vehicle in the street. All are killed except Gus, who escapes to safety. Quinlan has survived Eichhorst's attack on the Ancients and regroups with Setrakian and Fet. Eph and Dutch have brought the device, claiming it will incapacitate the Master. Fet, however, wants Eph to leave. Meanwhile, Palmer and his security team locate the Aurora Cutlass cargo and capture Sanjay Desai. The crate contains a nuclear bomb, one of two that Eichhorst had smuggled from Russia by way of Egypt. Eichorst used one bomb to destroy the ancients. Palmer confiscates the remaining weapon and lures Eichhorst into a trap where he and his team brutally shoot him. Severely wounded, Eichhorst leaps down the elevator shaft, his fate unknown. With limited time before the Master learns what happened, Palmer must immediately meet with Setrakian.
Humanity teeters on the edge of destruction. The Master finally reveals himself. Eph, Fet, Setrakian, and Dutch must overcome their personal differences in an effort to vanquish the strain.
Palmer and Setrakian devise a plan to lure the Master to Stoneheart headquarters so that Eph, Fet, Dutch, Setrakian, and Quinlan can entrap him in the silver-lined sarcophagus. However, the Master, who has taken a new body, ambushes Palmer and transfers his essence into him, gaining Palmer's memories. The Master retrieves the remaining nuclear bomb from Palmer's vault and revives the mortally wounded Eichhorst. The latter leaves to plant the bomb in the Statue of Liberty, giving Kelly the detonator that is later taken by Zach. Eph and Setrakian meet with Palmer but quickly realize it is the Master and battle him. Dutch activates the strigoi disruption device, crippling the Master; Quinlan, Fet, Eph, and Setrakian seal the Master into the silver-lined sarcophagus. Eph, slightly wounded, stays behind to treat himself, as the others take the sarcophagus to dump it into the Atlantic. Kelly, accompanied by Zach, enters Palmer's office and attacks Eph, forcing him to kill her in self-defense. Enraged over his mother's death, Zach vengefully detonates the bomb. The explosion's shockwave frees the Master from the sarcophagus, and the resulting nuclear debris obscures the sun, allowing the strigoi to walk freely in daylight. Eichhorst leaves with Zach, while Setrakians group is forced underground to avoid nuclear fallout and rampaging strigoi. Outside amid the chaos, Eph searches for Zach.
