Jessyn eats a simple lunch with her brother, Jellit, in the quarters he shares with his workgroup, and she’s struck by how much he has changed—thinner, grayer, and oddly hesitant in conversation. As they talk around the fall of Anjiin, Jellit describes how his near-field visualization group was taken, left waiting for a security escort that never came, and then assigned by the Carryx to recreate Llaren Morse’s thin-spectrum lensing work. The half-spoken gaps in his story and the missing names in his living space make clear how much violence and loss his group has endured.

The conversation turns personal when Jellit expresses pride that Jessyn survived her own mental crises during captivity. Jessyn remembers how her family—especially Jellit—has long watched over her when her mind “slipped,” and she recognizes that this imprisonment proved she couldn’t weather a bad stretch alone. She tells Jellit that if they ever get home, she would let him pursue postings without being held back by her, and Jellit defers the discussion to a future that isn’t guaranteed.

The wide door remains partly open as Allstin arrives with Dennia and Merrol, their casual warmth briefly easing Jessyn. The mood shifts when Llaren Morse enters accompanied by Synnia, whose taut, bright expression signals purpose and danger. The real shock comes with the entrance of Urrys Ostencour—transformed, muscular, and composed—making it clear this gathering has been planned and that Jessyn has been brought into something larger than a friendly visit.

Ostencour admits he has been tracking and organizing contact among captive humans, estimating they’ve located around three hundred people and listing multiple workgroups while noting rumors that artists may have been executed as “extraneous.” He dismisses the idea that Tonner or Dafyd controls Jessyn’s lab and instead frames Jessyn as the decisive leader because she led the fight against the Night Drinkers. Ostencour reveals that humans have been able to make weapons and produces a crude firearm, arguing the Carryx permit such freedom because they do not fear it.

Jessyn warns that a rebellion cannot win against the scale of the Carryx, but Ostencour and his allies reframe “winning” as choosing defiance over obedience and refusing a future of being managed, bred, and disposed of at the Carryx’s whim. Ostencour leaves the gun on the table as a deliberate provocation, and Jessyn—familiar with dark impulses yet unwilling to die—handles it and sees through his attempt to romanticize death. Ostencour finally states his ask: Jessyn’s biochemistry group can mass-produce chemicals, so he wants her to design biological or chemical weapons that can truly hurt the Carryx, and he promises he will use whatever she makes.