Recovering from invasive brain surgery, Lyria completes Matteo’s cognitive test and confronts the lingering sensation of the removed parasite. Matteo has her destroy the inert organism in a sterilization basin, assuring her she is finally free. He then reveals Darrow is present and preparing to depart for the Rim.

Lyria meets Darrow in the medical bay and demands to accompany him to rescue Volga. Darrow, strained by treatment and focused on a narrow mission, refuses, asserting Ilium is a warzone and that Volga is likely dead or conditioned. He promises only to see Lyria safely sent home, leaving her resentful and belittled.

The next morning, Matteo escorts Lyria to a sleek, AI-piloted transport bound for Mars in thirty-three days. Inside, she finds her fellow passenger is Sevro Barca. When Lyria offers condolences about Ulysses, Sevro learns—apparently for the first time—that his child was a boy. In shock and rage, he grabs Lyria and forces the truth: the Red Hand took the infant and nailed him to a tree.

Reeling, Sevro releases Lyria, presses a silver cube into her hands with instructions to deliver it to the Sovereign, and stumbles off the ship. Lyria, shaken, wonders if he will return and what the cube contains. The AI announces departure is imminent.

Noticing Darrow’s ship across the hangar with its cargo bay open and only drones about, Lyria places the holocube on her ship’s commissary table and slips back down the ramp. Choosing action over a passive return to Mars, she heads out, intent on catching Darrow’s departing vessel.