At 9:15 PM, the Institute was quiet. Front Half children slept under sedatives, and the five mutineers in the access tunnel dozed with headaches. Only the gorked children wandered aimlessly. Tony Stackhouse sat in Julia Sigsby’s office holding her special three-button “Zero Phone,” recalling Sigsby’s dread of calling a lisping-voiced superior and her fear of ever receiving an incoming call on it.

Stackhouse reasoned that the Zero Phone would inevitably ring, because the massacre and exposure in DuPray would reach the attention of the Institute’s higher-ups. He wondered whether the silence so far meant ignorance or a grace period to fix the situation. He focused on secrecy and damage control: he admitted the Institute could not continue in Maine, but believed he might save himself if he contained the story and prevented headlines about psychic children and the Institute’s purposes.

Based on Tim Jamieson’s claims, Stackhouse believed only three outsiders knew about the flash drive’s contents, with others dead and surviving mercenaries likely to keep quiet. He decided step one was to bring Luke Ellis and his collaborators to the Institute, possibly by 1:30–2:00 AM, and to prepare an ambush using available techs and security personnel like Zeke. His goals were to seize the flash drive and capture the intruders, so that when the lisping man called, he could report that the crisis was already handled.

Stackhouse tried to will the Zero Phone to remain silent until early morning, hoping for time to set his trap. As he spoke aloud, a phone rang, startling him; it was not the Zero Phone but his own box phone, indicating a call from South Carolina. He answered, asking if it was Tim or Luke.

Luke Ellis was on the line. Luke told Stackhouse to listen and said he would explain how the exchange was going to work, signaling that Luke intended to dictate the terms rather than accept Stackhouse’s plan.