24 – The Next Day: 5 am to 6 am

Last Time: Mount Rushmore was saved when Jack was able to detonate the toilet hanging from Lincoln’s nose with the help of his gun. The people inside the limo that grabbed Manilow off the streets of Las Vegas got fed up with him and threw him in the trunk. Jack and Curtis got sidetracked in Indianapolis by falling for the old “Remote-Controlled-Stock-Car-Going-Around-The-Track” trick. RoboEdgar accidentally dropped the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile in the front yard of someone north of Indianapolis. Jack and Curtis chased the Marwan Brothers to the Field Museum in Chicago. The Marwans are somewhere inside, and Jack and Curtis have just arrived on the front steps.

The following occurred between 5 am and 6 am, and was filmed before a live studio audience.

5:00 am – A guard inside the Field museum sleeps at his post as Jack and Curtis pound on the doors. No matter what they do they can’t get the guys attention. Jack finally yells, “Cubs win the World Series!”, and that’s shocking enough to wake the guard up. The guard walks over to the door and Jack and Curtis mouth the words “Let us in” and start doing an elaborate pantomime trying to show that they want to get into the museum. The guard just stands there watching them. He uses an intercom and tells them, “No mimes”. Jack realizes the guard can hear them and tells the guard they need to get inside right away, and that it’s an emergency. The guard tells him that there are public restrooms down the street. Jack tells RoboEdgar to guard the entrance. Jack turns and shoots open the lock on the door. Jack and Curtis run into the museum, and the guard says, “The men’s room is on the second level!”

5:02 am – Julian is convinced he can find the secret to curing his brother’s pending onset of Zombie-itis, and runs frantically through the museum looking for the Tutankhamun exhibit. Under the lights of the museum, Marwan looks about as healthy as an Olympic athlete who participated in 1904.

5:04 am – Jack and Curtis run through the museum trying to figure out where the Marwans are headed. They stop outside the museum gift shop. Jack tries to reach Chloe on his JackPhone, but he can’t get a signal. He turns around and sees Curtis messing around with a coin stamping machine. Curtis says he’s just trying to get a souvenir of their trip, and shows Jack the coin. It’s of the King Tut exhibit. Jack tells Curtis they have to get a disguise and walk into the exhibit to try and take the Marwans by surprise, because he’s sure that’s where they’ll be.

5:06 am – Julian and Marwan are searching through the King Tut exhibit when Marwan suddenly stops and points at a mummy. Marwan says, “Hey! I know him! In the afterlife, that guy owes me money!” Julian stares at his brother for a second, and tells him they have to move quickly to find the recipe for the cure.

5:08 am – Jack and Curtis have broken into the gift shop. They both are putting on disguises to see if they can sneak into the King Tut exhibit posing as service staff. Jack finds a beard and glues it on. He tells Curtis to hurry up. Curtis emerges from the other side of the rack wearing a full King Tut costume, complete with head dress. He tells Jack that he could set down perimeters in style with that kind of outfit. Jack says that he’ll have to go in first with a service cart to see if he can see the Marwans. After that, Curtis will have to follow. Curtis asks what he should do. Jack looks him up and down and tells him that he should walk like an Egyptian.

Commercial

5:13 am – Julian walks to a portion of the exhibit with giant stone tablets hanging inside a glass case. The label on the outside says “Believed to be a tablet of ancient medicines and cures”. Julian excitedly tells Marwan that he thinks he found the recipe. He starts copying down the hieroglyphics onto a note pad. Marwan steps up and looks at the tablet. Marwan laughs, and says that it’s not a tablet that explains medicines at all. Marwan says, “See here? It says, ‘East Nile Guy seeks West Nile Gal for fun, food, and eye make up exchanges.’ It’s a personal ad!”.

5:15 am – Jack enters the exhibit wearing a maintenance jumpsuit and pushing a cart. The Marwans are in the far part of the exhibit and don’t see him. Jack slowly moves towards the Marwans. Suddenly, we hear someone singing:

“Now when he was a young man,
He’d never thought he’d see,
People standing in line,
To see the boy king”

It’s Curtis. He walks into the room singing and dancing, trying to blend in as if he’s part of the exhibit. Needless to say, the Marwans see through this immediately, and start shooting, knocking Curtis to the floor. Jack tries to return fire, but only gets a couple of shots off before the Marwans escape. As they’re running towards the entrance, Marwan tells Julian, “Don’t worry brother, it will all be over soon!”

5:16 am – Jack goes to see if he can help Curtis. There’s large dent in the medallion he’s wearing, but he seems to be OK. He tells Jack that probably wasn’t the best entrance he could have made, and Jack agrees.

5:18 am – The Marwans run through the museum, out the exit and slam straight into RoboEdgar. They fall to the ground, and RoboEdgar looks to see what happened. Thinking quickly, he tells RoboEdgar that there’s a great pizza place around Wabash and Ohio. RoboEdgar ignites his rocket boosters and takes off. Julian turns on a hand held radio, and tells someone to be ready for them.

5:20 am – The Marwans jump into Jack’s car, hotwire the engine and start to drive away. Jack and Curtis burst through the doors of the museum, dive for the car and are only able to grab it by the bumper as the car peels away. Curtis and Jack hang on for dear life as the car goes down the street. Sparks shoot all over the place from all the metal on Curtis’ costume. Jack looks up and sees a bumper sticker that reads, “How’s my driving?”

5:22 am – The car continues down the road, with Jack and Curtis in tow. After narrowly avoiding getting hit by traffic, tail-gaters, and various pieces of road kill, the car screeches to a halt, forcing Jack and Curtis off the bumper. They both tumble into a wall.
They’re at the entrance to Navy Pier. Marwan and Julian don’t even notice that Jack and Curtis were with them the whole time as they race for the doors to the building.

5:23 am – Marwan and Julian each run to a different door. Julian takes out his gun, shoots the lock, and runs inside. Marwan looks at what Julian did, shrugs, and simply opens the door. Marwan shakes his head. Julian’s only reaction is to tell his brother to hurry up. They go running down up the escalator and out of sight.

5:24 am – Curtis and Jack regain consciousness outside of Navy Pier. Jack gets up first and checks to see that Curtis is OK. Jack goes running to one of the doors and slams straight into the glass, which knocks him backwards. Jack shakes his head trying to regain his senses. He sees the other door with broken glass, goes through it, and runs for the escalator.

5:25 am – At the top of the escalator, Jack stops to listen. At first he doesn’t hear anything. Then, off in the distance, he can hear some carnival music start up. He goes running towards the music. He runs through some doors and sees that the Marwans are on a giant Ferris wheel nearly at the top. He runs over to the controls of the machine and shoots it, leaving the Marwans stranded at the top.

5:26 am – Jack uses the JackPhone to tell Curtis where to meet him. Jack hears a noise, and looks up. It’s a helicopter, heading straight for the Marwans! A rope ladder rolls out, and both of the brothers climb onto the rope. Jack tries to shoot them but amazingly misses. He tries to shoot the helicopter and misses. He looks at the gun, points it at a nearby flower pot and shoots. It shatters. Reassured that the gun is actually working, and tries to take aim at the helicopter, which is already out of range. As the helicopter flies away, Marwan waves at Jack.

Commercial

5:31 am – Jack phones Chloe to see if she can spot where the Marwans are headed next. Chloe tells him that they’ve hooked into Chicago’s police dispatch and there’s some sort of commotion going on near Wabash and Ohio, which is only a few blocks away. He tells her to try and find the helicopter that just left Navy Pier.

5:32 am – Outside of Navy Pier, a traffic control officer is writing a ticket for the car that the Marwans stole from Jack and Curtis. Jack and Curtis run out of the building and see the officer. Jack points up in the sky, and yells, “Look! A turtle!” The officer looks up. Jack and Curtis jump in the car, throw it into reverse, and drive off before the officer can turn around to see what happened.

5:33 am – Jack drives down Grand Ave, turning sharply on Wabash. On the corner is Pizzeria Uno, which already has people lined up outside of it, even at this hour. As Jack gets out of the car, a restaurant employee tells Jack that he can order his pizza now, and it’ll be ready by the time they get inside. Jack ignores this, and asks Curtis what he thinks they should do. Curtis says that he’d order the mushroom and green pepper pizza. Suddenly there’s a loud crash just north of where they are standing.

5:35 am – Jack and Curtis run up the block and see RoboEdgar outside of Pizzeria Due. RoboEdgar is standing in front of a man with a hot dog cart. RoboEdgar looks really mad. Jack gets between the man and RoboEdgar and asks what’s happening. The man looks extremely mad and says, “This moron wants KETCHUP on his hot dog! There’s a lot of things I’ll do. I’d shovel snow in my underwear. I’d roller skate down Lake Ave. I’d even swim in Lake Michigan. But I will NOT serve KETCHUP on a hot dog!” Jack finally placates the hot dog guy by buying 50 hot dogs, “all the way”. Curtis mumbles something about it being a little weird that hot dog vendors are out at this time in the morning.

5:37 am – Back at CTU, Chloe has calculated the flight path of the helicopter that left Navy Pier. Suddenly the monitor she’s viewing scrambles. She looks up and all the other monitors in CTU are scrambled too. Bill comes out of his office. He asks everyone who’s been doing pier-to-pier downloads again. Chloe yells up to him that she thinks that they’ve gotten some kind of virus in their system, and it’s shutting all the machines down. She tells him to call Jack to let him know that as best as she can tell, the Marwans are headed to Washington, DC. She tells Bill that she has to get to a working computer to help Jack, and that he better warn the White House.

5:39 am – Chloe runs out of the building, throws a pop can into the “Mrs. Fusion (Slogan: “It kicks Mr. Fusion’s butt”), jumps into her car, and drives away.

5:41 am – Curtis looks like he’s going to be sick. The hot dog guy says he’s never seen anything like it. RoboEdgar is has just finished off his 50th hot dog. Jack says that they need to get going to Washington, DC right away.

Commercial

5:46 am – There’s a large canvas covering the entire Lincoln Memorial. The canvas has a sign on it that says, “Renovation sponsored by The Hokey Pokey Toilet Company”. We hear hammering and banging, but can’t see what exactly is happening at the Memorial. It suddenly stops, and we hear screams from inside the work area, and Julian comes racing out.

5:47 am – A streak like a shooting star races across the sky right over the Memorial headed right for the Washington Monument. We can faintly hear two men screaming as the streak passes by.

5:48 am – The streak is on a collision course with the Washington Monument, but at the last moment, we see an arm reach out and grab the tip of the Monument. The streak turns around the top of the Monument several times, and finally stops. It’s Jack, Curtis and RoboEdgar. Jack tells Curtis, “Remind me to NEVER hitch a ride with RoboEdgar right after he eats”.

5:49 am – Julian continues to run from the Memorial as if he’s seen a ghost. He pulls out his cell phone and makes a call as he runs. He’s headed heading straight for the Washington Monument.

5:50 am – RoboEdgar takes them safely to the base of the Monument, and Jack tells Curtis to get rid of the Egyptian disguise. Curtis starts to do so. Jack tries to take off the fake beard he’s been wearing since they were at the museum, but it’s really glued on tightly, and he can’t remove it. He tells Jack, “You’ll just have to leave it that way until we have time to take it off properly”. Jack tells Curtis that he does NOT like looking like Grizzly Adams, and continues to try and remove the beard.

5:52 am – Elsewhere in Washington, a limousine stops in a parking lot. Two large men get out of the car. They go to the back of the car, open the trunk, and pull Manilow out of the back. They take him back to the car, and throw him inside. For the first time, we see that Hollywood and Janosz are the people that grabbed Manilow off the street in Las Vegas. Hollywood is speaking on the phone, and tells the person on the other end of the line, “Just take care of it!”

Hollywood turns to Manilow and says, “I want you to cooperate with us. If you don’t, you’re going to get hurt”. Manilow nods, and asks what he has to do.

5:54 am – Hollywood says, “We need someone on the inside of the White House, now that you’re gone. The Marwans are working on their part of the plan, but if it fails, we need someone on the inside to help cover things up.” Manilow says, “I’m the right person for the job! I remember where nearly everything is in the White House. I lived there before, you know”. Hollywood says, “Don’t be stupid. I’m talking about Janosz here. I need to get him a job inside the White House as some sort of security consultant. The news of your part in what happened with the Russian President yesterday hasn’t reached all of the security personnel yet, so you’ll be able to bring Janosz into the White House. He’ll take it from there.”

5:56 am – Manilow says, “They’ll never believe that he’s not a spy! I mean, listen to him talk! He’s got outrageous French…er, Portuguese, er, Arme…uh, whatever that accent is, it’s not going to work.” Hollywood says, “Then you’ll have to figure something out, because you need to get him into the White House.”

5:58 am – Manilow and Janosz are pushed from the limousine just outside the White House. Manilow tells Janosz, “Follow me”, as they walk towards the guard house.

5:59 am – Jack’s JackPhone rings. It’s Chloe. She says, “Jack! A virus hit the computers at CTU! I can’t do any of my surveillance from there. I had to drive home to get onto the public Internet to see what I could find to help you. I’ve found a website that might help us catch the Marwans!”

6:00 am – Time’s up!

NEXT TIME: THE FINAL EPISODE OF “24 – THE NEXT DAY!”