After Scoles departs, Holsten, Lain, and Brenjit Nessel sit in tense silence until distant gunfire draws the mutineer guard away. Holsten, restless in restraints, engages Nessel, who admits she once studied classics and knows his work. She is exhausted and bitter, yet more receptive to Holsten than to Lain.

Pressed about their fate, Nessel says it depends on who wins. She brands Lain complicit in Guyen’s plan to send pioneers awake to a moon base, raging against a lifetime of boxed, airless hardship while others sleep between stars. If the mutineers win, she vows, Lain can live out that sentence on the ice.

Holsten quietly challenges the ship’s fragile power structure: without culture, currency, or clear authority, waking soldiers could backfire on Security Chief Karst and Guyen. Lain bristles but concedes the mutineers number at least two dozen, with security holding a dozen and potential reinforcements in suspension.

Scoles returns, revealing a fallback: the mutineers control a shuttle bay and will abandon Gilgamesh if needed, taking Holsten along. Holsten protests that the green world is guarded by Kern’s murderous satellite, but Scoles says Lain warned them and insists they need Holsten’s ancient-language skills to get past it; Nessel’s knowledge is a backup only.

Lain’s guilt surfaces as she admits she told them success was unlikely yet mentioned Holsten. Scoles stamps on her ankle and threatens to bring her along to ensure cooperation, making clear that both Lain and Holsten will be forced to help the mutineers survive their gamble.