A man escapes from the Seneca Institute and is run over — Digger recognizes him as his blood brother Jay Dougan and John can see Dougan's picture in color. The two of them travel to Northam where the color leaves the dead man as John watches and the body has teeth with no enamel and a tag-id on his tongue. The two of them find the man's Army medal in the woods and follow it back to the Institute where mental patients are kept, but there's no evidence Dugan was ever there. They sneak in and John witnesses patients being drugged to act as "remote viewers", seeing things psionically from a distance.

John sees one blind patient, Michael, in color and playing "My Funny Valentine" and gets him out — he has scrambled senses and says he was told he was suffering from a fatal brain disease (similar to John's history — see "The Mourner".) and they took him in and help him develop his gift to see at a distance along with other orphans and homeless people. They realize they're being watched by Sam...

John begins to experience an onslaught of bizarre visions and images then blacks out — the visions lead him to a faceless murder victim and a cannery where the Phoenix Organization and the remote viewers were situated. John meets Sam of the NSA (the murdered man is one of Sam's undercover agents) and they manage to capture the Trenchcoat Man and discovers he's not deaf and speaks fluently in Sanskrit and Latin. Trenchcoat hints at John's destiny, how he's one of them, and that Michael (from "Remote Control") may still be alive and a key to the mystery – then he escapes using strange mental abilities of his own.

Sam introduces John as a "Class 1" to Lucas Doya, the founder of the U.S.'s own remote viewer program through the DoD — Doya puts John through a series of tests to heighten his own remote abilities and John locks on to Teresa in a copper mine. The NSA, Avery, and Frank close in with John as the remote viewers get a vision of the location of the Staff (from "Ashes to Ashes") in ...