Everett Finch forces his way into the compromised Crucifix Bastion and rushes into the glass-walled atrium, furious to find no sign of Director Housemore or the embassy security team that was supposed to be present. He reaches for his personal RFID card to take the elevator, then remembers that no one should be able to access the elevator down to Threshold without the proper authorization.

Assuming Susan Housemore must be upstairs or has left the bastion, Finch calls her again. Instead of an answer, he hears a phone chirping nearby, seemingly from a couch against the far wall. When he calls once more and hears the chirp again, Finch drops to check beneath the couch.

Under the couch, Finch finds Susan Housemore’s body, her eyes lifeless. The discovery makes him instantly certain that Threshold is under attack.

Elsewhere in a frigid underground vault, the Golbm studies Threshold’s true power source: a toroidal superconducting magnetic energy storage device (SMES). He understands that the system’s superconducting coils must be kept colder than roughly 260C using liquid helium; any temperature rise could trigger a runaway heating event called a quench.

The Golbm surveys twelve large Cryofab liquid-helium tanks feeding the SMES and reflects on the physics that make helium catastrophically dangerous if released: as it boils into gas, it expands about 750 times in volume, potentially creating a “pressure bomb” unless vented through Threshold’s massive quench vent (the “R2-D2” structure). Knowing the tanks’ fail-safes make a mass failure virtually impossible without intervention, the Golbm resolves to turn Threshold’s power system into the mechanism of its destruction in retaliation for what was done to Sasha.