Luke woke from a nightmare, briefly mistaking his replica room for home before the reality of the Institute reasserted itself. Restless at 3 a.m., he considered distractions but realized they would only worsen his homesickness. He challenged himself to think proactively rather than wallow.

Deciding to learn rather than despair, Luke tested the Institute’s internet restrictions. Direct access to news was blocked by the system’s HAL 9000 filter, so he tried a workaround he knew: the Cloak of Griffin, a proxy tool disguised as a translation service.

He navigated to the Griffin portal, entered the password from memory, and masked his searches as German-language translations. This method aimed to evade monitoring by altering the recorded search history.

Using Griffin, Luke successfully reached the New York Times. He recognized the win as potentially significant, though he worried about live monitoring that might reveal his activities despite the disguised history.

Luke planned to check his local Star Tribune for news about his parents, but before he could proceed, he was interrupted by frantic screaming in the corridor: someone was yelling for help and claiming to be lost.