The investigation continues, and as the revelations keep coming we get glimpses of the man with the alien helmet.  Simmons continues to examine the bodies she determines that the wounds on their heads are in fact exit wounds, and that they’re infected.  They detect another anomaly at the local firehouse, and they arrive to find the man we saw earlier with the helmet.  He claims to hear a humming noise as a frying pan starts to float nearby.  May finds the helmet, which the man says was just a souvenir.  He and the two dead men had cleaned it a few days before, because it seemed to be covered in rust.  It wasn’t rust, however, but an alien virus.

Coulson clears the room, and speaks calmly to the man, asking him to have a seat.  Despite the fact that he is dangerous and only minutes from death, Coulson treats him with dignity and sympathy.  As Fitz yells at him to get out of there, he yanks his earpiece out and gives a moving speech to the man about death.  He confesses that he died recently, and that while he was told it was only for 8 seconds he knows it was more than that.  He says “I was there”, in some kind of afterlife, and when the man asks what it’s like Coulson says “It’s beautiful.”  May hears this over her earpiece with a sad look on her face, but the man seems comforted.  He tells Coulson to get out of there, clearly comforted by Coulson’s words, and as soon as Coulson is clear he explodes with electricity.

SHIELD takes the other firefighters for testing and Fitz scans Coulson, May and Ward for any signs of infection.  They’re going to transport the Chitauri helmet aboard the Bus to a mysterious location known as “the sandbox” but no one is thrilled about having it on their plane.  En route, May asks Coulson if he’s ok, and about why he’s having a physical.  Coulson tells the same story about his physical therapist requesting one, but May is suspicious.  She asks, “You’d tell me if something was wrong?”  Coulson says of course he would, and May comforts him that he did all he could for the firefighter.

Down in the lab, Simmons is thrilled by her discovery about the virus.  It seems that it’s transferred via electrical charge, which is unlike anything she’s ever seen.  She’s super excited, rambling along with the technobabble, but Coulson notices a metal instrument levitating behind her.  As she talks, he slowly backs out of the lab and then seals her inside.  She realizes she’s infected but all Coulson can say to her is, “I’m so sorry Jemma.”

Fitz and Simmons sit on opposite sides of the glass door to the lab, their backs together.  The group estimates that she has two hours before she explodes with electricity, which will tear a hole in the plane, but it’ll be another 3 hours before they’ll be anywhere they can land.  The only solution is for Simmons to find a way to cure herself, and while Coulson has no doubts that she will, May says, “She’s just a kid.”  Simmons works to find an antiserum while Fitz builds a device to deliver it to the patient.  They test their antiserums on several rats that they just have lying around (do they just carry rats around in case they need to test things, or is the Bus so dirty that it’s become infested?) but each of them dies with an electrical discharge, hovering inside their cages.

Skye finds Ward watching on a monitor from another room, and is surprised when he tells her she can stay.  They lament not being able to do anything to help, and Ward is especially frustrated that there wasn’t some villain for him to fight.  He feels helpless and unable to protect the crew against things he can’t see instead of some person he could punish.  He says all they can do is wait and be ready to do whatever is asked of them.

Coulson gets on the phone (technically on the screen) with Agent Blake, this week’s cameo.  Blake (Titus Welliver) featured in the “Marvel One-Shot” Item 47, a short film included on The Avengers DVD that told stories about SHIELD’s behind-the-scenes involvement in the aftermath of the events in New York.  Blake says there’s nothing like this on record, and tells Coulson that his orders are to dump any infected cargo they might be carrying.  Coulson pulls the old “bad connection” trick, and cuts the transmission.  He tells May not to even think about dumping Simmons, but she says she doesn’t have to as that is Coulson’s call.

Fitz and Simmons still working on the cure, but their conversation has devolved into a fight.  Fitz is angry that Simmons ever dragged him out of the safe environment they used to work in, just so she could satisfy her desire for adventure and to see the world.  She says that he was so “pasty” that he needed to get out of the lab and into the field, but he’s having none of it.  As they fight, Simmons realizes that neither of the dead bodies generated the proper antibodies for her to create an antiserum.  They realize that the Chitauri who owned the helmet must have been infected, but he survived because of an immunity, so Fitz runs upstairs to get the helmet and returns to the lab, going inside and contaminating himself.

They work feverishly on a solution as the entire crew watches, and they test it on the final lab rat.  Everything seems to work, but then the rat dies in a flash just like the others.  Simmons tearfully approaches the glass where Coulson is standing, and says that she knows the protocol for this situation but asks that he tell her dad of her death first, as her mom would probably be able to handle the information better if it came from her dad.  Coulson at first refuses to even listen to such a request, but gives in at her pleading before she asks everyone if she could have a moment alone with Fitz.  The group leaves, and while Fitz sits and talks to himself about continuing to search for a cure, Simmons sneaks up behind him and knocks him out.

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