'Quantico' Recap: And The Voice Is...

Warning: This recap for the “Care" episode of Quantico contains spoilers.

In which reveals are dropped on average of one every two minutes, including the identity of The Voice (we think).

Here, 20 things we learned this week:

1. Simon meets with Ryan at a bar in New York, pretending to be worried about Alex’s continuing obsession with the conspiracy. He tells Ryan she’s trying to find out about a CIA asset, number 2281 — she has no name for this person she’s seeking — and slips a tracker into Ryan’s pocket when they hug goodbye. Simon then makes a call — yep, it’s Alex. They’re still working together, and she tells Simon she hopes Ryan will soon lead them to the asset.

2. At Quantico, the NATS have to fill out a form ranking their preferences of which field office they’d like to be assigned to post-training. Liam indicates going to the smaller offices, like Little Rock, means you’ll spend your whole career there, so most of the trainees are aiming for larger posts like New York.

3. Caleb tells Shelby that Samar says Shelby’s formerly presumed dead ‘rents want to talk to her.

4. Ryan’s back at Quantico as a staff counselor, to help Liam with training while Miranda is on leave. Alex is unpleasantly surprised to see him, as is Drew, who continues to a) hit on Alex and b) have no chemistry with her.

5. More fallout from Miranda’s leave: Liam tells Raina and Nimah there’s no longer support for Miranda’s twin experiment within the FBI.

6. The NATS’ assignment for the week revolves around human trafficking, which is fitting, Liam says, because while they’re obsessing about which city they’ll be assigned to, they can get some perspective about how some people are forced to be in a place they don’t want to be in. This may not be an intentional comment on his part about his trainees’ levels self-involvement, but it probably should be. As part of the assignment, they’re going to be making a trip to the Canadian border.

7. Which gives Alex and Caleb an idea. Shelby’s parents can’t come into the United States — that whole faking their deaths bit and all — but maybe it could be arranged for them to meet up with Shelby in Canada? She resists the idea at first, but when Alex pulls out this week’s version of her “I lost my dad, and I’d really wish I was able to talk to him again” speech, Shelby agrees to take the opportunity to get some answers about her own shady parental units.

8. In present day New York, Ryan meets with Liam, who’s the new interim deputy director of the FBI. Liam offers Ryan Hannah’s old job, which Ryan accepts, but tells Liam he needs help with Alex, and trying to find out why she wants access to the CIA asset. They both are frustrated with Alex’s ongoing conspiracy theories, and Liam says he has a contact at the CIA who can hook them up with the asset situation. It works: Liam’s contact sets up a meeting between Ryan – who says he’ll take Nimah with him – and the asset, who’s being held at a safehouse in Buchanan, New York. Alex hears the plan – that tracker also has an audio bug component – and she and Simon get to the safehouse early and pretend to be Ryan and Nimah. Though actually, the pretense isn’t necessary … the agents guarding the asset tell Alex they don’t want to know names; she should just hurry up and have her meeting, because she won’t be allowed more than 10 minutes with the asset. Time constraints they’re serious about. The identities of people claiming to be FBI agents who’ve been granted access to an incredibly important CIA asset? “Nah, we’re cool, we’re sure you’re who you say you are. “

9. When the NATS arrive en masse in Canada, they have to hand their passports over to Ryan and complete this assignment: get across the border and back into the United States by 9 a.m. the next day. The first person to do so automatically gets her or his first choice of field office assignment, and anyone who completes the challenge will get special consideration of their top choices. You probably saw the outcome of this one, right? Nimah and Raina Parent Trap their way to a win. Not only will they get to choose where they want to work, but their twin trickery convinces Liam to continue supporting the project they started with Miranda.

10. Quote of the night: Caleb, upon hearing about the passport-less challenge of getting across the border, says, “Why do I suddenly feel like I’m on The Amazing Race?”

11. Alex and Drew are another team in the quest to get across the border, and their plan is to walk across, which necessitates some hiking on a very cold night through the woods. They decide to break into a cabin to warm up, and the cabin has a fireplace, and Alex is wigged out about Ryan’s return to Quantico, and Drew has to take off his wet clothes… so, yeah, they do it in the cabin.

12. Alex and Drew aren’t the only ones who get naked in the course of the assignment. Will and Iris strip down to their birthday suits, at the airport, in full public view, in an attempt to get deported back into the United States, i.e. across the border.

13. Ultimately, 18 NATS made it across the border, and Liam says that’s not good, because if it’s that easy for them to do it, traffickers will find a way, too. Isn’t that sort of like him saying, “If you self-involved knuckleheads can get across the border without a passport, anyone who’s motivated will, too”? That Liam!

14. Caleb and Shelby skip the border assignment altogether, and go to a nearby hotel to meet her parents. It’s a happy reunion, at first. Mr. and Mrs. Shelby explain they had to flee, because, on 9/11, they were at the airport in Boston, waiting to fly, when they learned the flight ahead of theirs had crashed into the World Trade Center. They knew it was a terrorist act, and that they would be among those charged in the fallout, because their company, McGregor-Wyatt, had sold weapons system software to the Taliban (unknowingly) for some off the books cash that saved them from a financial crisis.

They didn’t want Shelby to live life on the lam, too, so they quickly pulled together a plan to leave the country, and put themselves on the passenger manifest of one the hijacked planes (their company created that software, too, they say) so they would be presumed dead. But they’re sorry, and they missed their daughter, and that’s all Shelby needs to forgive them. They plan a dinner that evening to celebrate, but when Shelby’s pops mentions to Caleb that he and the missus are running low on dollars to fund their continuing faux deaths, Caleb gets suspicious about why they really wanted to meet up. And when he leaves a live cell phone behind the listen in on their conversation, he gets confirmation: They plan to ask Shelby for more millions and then abandon her again. To protect her from finding just what a-holes her parents are, he offers to give them his $5 million stash if they’ll leave and never contact Shelby again. They agree, and he covers with Shelby, telling her they had to leave because of security concerns, but that they’ll be in touch with her later. Totally sans clue, she later starts planning a vacay where she can have another mother and child reunion.

15. Back to that CIA safehouse in the present: the CIA asset is — dun dun dun! — Will Olsen! He’s as shocked to see Alex and Simon as they are to see him, and he tells them he’s been held for around seven months, and he’s been so secluded that he didn’t even know about the attacks in New York. Why? It may have something to do with the fact that he cracked the NSA’s encryption software — all the U.S. military codes are now in his head. “You’re a living, breathing threat to national security,” Simon declares. That also explains why The Voice wants Will, who Alex and Simon are there to kidnap, which they do. Will explains that he cracked the software to try to prevent World War III, but Simon realizes that if they do hand Will over to The Voice with these codes, they may be the ones helping to start WWIII.

16. While Simon keeps Will safe, Alex meets with Ryan and Liam at the FBI offices. Ryan accuses her of identity theft and kidnapping — he and Nimah went to the CIA office, right after Will had been nabbed by people claiming to be him and Nimah. She denies it, and even has doctored logs from that day to prove she was in the office the whole time. Liam buys it, and when Alex leaves and Ryan persists that she’s involved in the asset kidnapping, Liam tells him he’s starting to sound as paranoid and obsessed as Alex. Irony!

17. Other Will activities in the flashbacks: he made a fake passport for himself, as his “John Baskin” identity, and, when Caleb tells him he no longer has the $5 million they were going to use to buy “John’s” rise through the ranks of the Systemics cult, Will says that’s okay, he’ll just use his own money. So Will is a millionaire?

18. Alex gets instructions from The Voice on where to meet up. Will says he’s willing to go; the CIA was never going to free him, anyway, he says, and now he can at least be useful as Alex’s “personal Trojan horse,” getting the scoop on The Voice’s plans and somehow communicating them back to Alex.

19. At the meetup, Alex gets a call from The Voice, who tells her to send Will to the SUV in front of her… and then tells her to send Simon to the truck, too.

20. Then The Voice drops the ultimate bombshell, telling Alex she will not hear from him or her again, and instructing her to walk to the SUV and give her cell phone to the driver… who is revealed to be Shelby! Shelby is The Voice?!

Quantico airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on ABC.