The Rydell Realizations

Emily Jones tracks the runaway Morrie Rydell to a small meeting room at the library, using the GPS readout on his sister Suzu's device. Morrie has fled with Emily's backpack, planning to use her laptop to hunt down Marian, the mysterious woman who framed him for stealing $250,000 from businessman Marvin Plotkin. But Emily finds the backpack unopened. When she asks why, Morrie answers, "Ask my conscience," admitting with some surprise that he actually has one, and that it reminded him of both his boss's rules and his court order not to touch computers. Then he confesses the whole truth: five years ago, in an online programming contest while his family lived in Japan, he deliberately humiliated Marian on an international stage. Worse, the worm program used to frame him is his own invention, a prank tool he created back then and abandoned. Marian must have found it and modified it. Emily, who now trusts Morrie and has learned that Detective Polehouse wants the kids to keep investigating, agrees to work the computer herself while Morrie only tells her what to do.

Together they reach Marian on video chat. Morrie apologizes sincerely for being an arrogant show-off, but Marian, who now calls herself Carly, refuses to forgive him. She reveals why she hates Marvin too: he swindled her grandmother out of everything she had, and the devastated woman suffered a stroke and died a few weeks later. Marian took a job as Marvin's assistant purely for revenge, planning to help him gather money and then turn him over to the police. When she discovered Morrie in Odyssey, she saw a chance to destroy both of her enemies at once. The kids offer to help her bring Marvin to justice honestly, but she brushes them off, warning that she is not even close to being finished with Morrie, and signs off with a breezy "Toodles." Her mention of her grandmother's hometown gives Morrie the answer to her account's security question, and the kids trace her devices to a nearby hotel.

The hotel room turns out to be a decoy holding only a relay phone that masked Marian's real location. As Morrie coaches Emily through tracing it, Marvin Plotkin bursts in with a helper. He shoves Emily into the closet, ties Morrie to a chair, and spots the tracking program pinpointing Marian at a house in the forest on the edge of town. Marvin insists he is better than Marian because his scams only took part of each senior citizen's savings, so his victims would think they had simply made bad investments, while Marian used her program to take everything. He storms off to get his money back, leaving the kids trapped.

Emily batters the closet doorknob loose with a clothes iron and unties Morrie's painfully tight knots. Instead of running for help first, they video-call Marian to warn her that Marvin knows exactly where she is. She doesn't believe them until the sound of breaking glass cuts through the call, Marvin's voice demands his money, and the connection goes dead. The shaken kids reach Mr. Whittaker through the computer, and he promises to send the police, but he has hard news of his own: they need to come to Odyssey Memorial Hospital, because Suzu has been hurt.

At the hospital, Cooper Calhoun explains that Suzu had her own run-in with Marvin while everyone was searching for Morrie. Trying to get away from him, she fell, spraining her wrist and suffering a slight concussion. At her bedside, Suzu tearfully apologizes for telling Marvin that Marian and Carly were the same person, but Morrie gently assures her she is not to blame. Later, Emily finds Morrie thinking and praying in the hospital chapel and returns his laptop: the charges against him have been dropped. Marvin got stuck climbing through the window he broke, letting Marian slip past him and escape with the money, and after his arrest he confessed everything. Yet Morrie can't celebrate. A game he played five years ago has put two people in the hospital, one of them his sister. Emily urges him to fight for justice like her father says: "Even if it doesn't do any good, it's what's right." Morrie apologizes to her for everything he has put her through, and Emily forgives him, declaring herself all in with the team, and, with a little work, the friendship too.

That night, as Morrie removes the worm from his computer, he asks Mr. Whittaker whether he has ever heard his conscience talking. Whit says he calls it the true voice, and the voice belongs to Jesus. When Morrie admits he feels the whole disaster is his fault, Whit reminds him that no one is ever told what would have happened; we can only discover what will happen by doing what's right, no matter what. After Whit says good night, Morrie's screen flickers to life. Marian has answered his message from a new, untraceable system. Morrie promises to do the right thing about the stolen money, and when she taunts that it sounds like a threat, he answers, "More like a promise." Marian coolly replies, "Bring it on," and the two rivals bid each other good night, their battle far from over.