Logan is tipped off by a friend at the morgue to a murder victim with a bar code tattoo on his neck. He tells Max who then investigates. Max reads the bar code to be that of fellow X5 escapee, Ben. However, the murder victim is not Ben. While she is viewing the body, Lydecker shows up to confiscate the body and close the investigation. Max hides.
After another body with the same bar code shows up, Max investigates the crime scene. While at the scene, Max has several flashbacks that make it clear to her that the real Ben is re-enacting a traumatic Manticore training exercise where a prisoner was hunted down and savagely murdered. Max herself participated in the exercise. Max remembers Ben had an obsession with a religious icon after a Manticore janitor gave him a card with her image. It looks to be an image of the Virgin Mary, but the young Manticore soldiers call her the blue lady.
Max goes to a local church and a priest befriends her. Later, the priest is abducted by Ben, who tattoos a bar code on the priests' neck. Ben plans to kill the priest in a ritualistic fashion, but Max catches him.
Just as Lydecker and his dreaded helicopter are closing in, Ben convinces Max to kill him because he doesn't want to go back to Manticore where he'd now be a prisoner. Max breaks his second vertebrae with on squeeze, killing him.
Elsewhere, Logan learns through an "eyes only" meeting with Lydecker, that Max is really just a killing machine. Logan also receives photos of Max as a young Manticore soldier with the blood of a recent kill on her face.