In a new host body, the swarm struggles with instability: Jellit’s high-testosterone physiology has shaped the brain in subtly different ways, and Jellit’s remaining impulses surge as rage and panic that the swarm must consciously suppress. Even its perception shifts as it recalibrates senses, seeing the Carryx cityscape through unfamiliar filters.

Jessyn checks on it, afraid that if they leave, they will be separated again. The swarm takes Jessyn’s hand and feels Jellit’s conflicted love and resentment toward his sister, and the swarm’s own unexpected grief at being pulled into those emotions.

The swarm recognizes that its mission demands escape to a less-secure colony world so it can transmit what it has learned about the Carryx. But it also admits it does not want to go: it has become “in love,” and the internal echoes of Ameer and Else argue over whether that love is real or merely inherited habit from Else’s former feelings.

To reconcile duty and desire, the swarm considers a compromise: carving off a “data packet” of itself and hiding it inside another person, so the intelligence can be carried outward without the carrier’s knowledge and later “bloom” when safe—an option Ameer notes would likely kill the host.

Thinking of Dafyd, the swarm fixates on his physical presence and imagines partnering with him as spies inside the world-palace, sharing the burden and striking at the Carryx directly. As a strange geometric bloom of radiation and magnetic force appears far beyond the atmosphere, the swarm records it and recommits to its purpose—while privately vowing to burn the Carryx world down with Dafyd.