The Rankless Initiative: Season 1, Episode 3

WARNING: If you don't want to know what happened in this episode, don't read this photo recap!

When we left our heroes, they had just found one of Brainiac's brainy probes, proof that the cerebral fella was coming to Krypton. Seg and Adam take the thing to the Fortress of Solitude, where Val performs some tests on it.

Turns out, the thing they found was only the casing for another thing — a parasite. Once freed of its shell, the parasite will invade a host, overtake it, and use the host to gather information. Like a viral detective. Except when Val cracks open the alien nut... it's already taken a host!

This woman! Rhom! Well, actually, she just found it while working salvage. She finds a buyer for it on the black market.

This guy!

Meanwhile, the Guild and Sagitari are planning their Rankless Initiative, their scour-and-root-out attack on the rankless denizens of Krytpon. They're looking for leaders and members of the "terrorist group" Black Zero, and their intel has it that those people are hiding out in Sector 19. Lyta is understandably hesitant: she doesn't want to harm innocent people just to rout out a few bad apples.

Adam finds the sentry at the black market, and starts to haggle for it. Then he runs away. Zero dollars beats any low price.

Meanwhile, the Rankless Initiative gets underway, and doesn't go at all according to Lyta's peace-keeping plan. Sagitari rough up all kinds of innocent people, and evacuate the sector.

The Sagitari are scanning rankless faces, trying to pick out the terrorists. Adam isn't from this planet, so he'll be singled out. Seg gives him the parasite to bring back to the Fortress so Val can make sure it wasn't activated.

Well, according to Val's tests, the sentry was activated and infected a host.

The woman who was the first to find it. Go figure. She turns into a killing, investigative machine, and on a rampage she goes.

Meanwhile, the rankless initiative is really getting underway. One of the Sagitari, pressing a rankless for information on Black Zero's whereabouts, ends up shooting one of the rankless. It starts a small uprising.

When Lyta hears of the merciless killing, she has her soldier, Kol-Da, arrested.

Seg flees the scene in order to track down the host, who happens to be a friend of his. He sympathizes with her situation, and wants to find an alternative to smoking her out.

But it's no longer Rhom. Brainiac's device has hijacked her mind, and she's on the attack. She tangles Seg up in some of her cables, ready to strangle him.

Ultimately, Seg knocks her out. Lyta comes upon Seg, who tells her that Rhom's body is living (or near-living) proof that Krypton is not alone in the universe. She wants to use the body to sway the council. Seg says no: he needs to save Rhom.

Seg brings Rhom's body back to the Fortress where he hopes Val will be able to pull some of his scientific genius magic tricks and revive her. It's looking rather grim. And on top of that, it looks like Rhom has already data dumped the contents of her noggin into Brainiac's database — so he already has all the information he needs. Uh oh.