Carl rides his father’s motorcycle north through empty, rain-slick highways with few memory ghosts and no mobs, preoccupied by the unexplained disappearance of the Open Intellect Pacifist Network. He stops at a closed gas station for a map and is hit by a sudden loneliness, realizing too late he should have brought someone. Inside, he notices an elderly memory-ghost bloodhound, “Lightning Lou,” left behind as a guard dog, and offers a quiet Christmas wish.

Before dawn, Carl reaches the Homestead shelter listed on the benefactor flyer, a graffiti-covered building in an industrial area. He checks repeatedly for danger with multiple skills and finds nothing—no traps, mobs, or crawlers—while noticing his viewer count spike. Through the glass, he sees only a memory-ghost desk attendant in a Christmas hat, and the same flyer posted on the door.

Circling the building, Carl spots an unobtrusive graffiti message written in Syndicate Standard: “Look for me at breakfast every morning. I wear the red hat with the flaps. Coffee then speech.” Recognizing it as a deliberate breadcrumb, Carl breaks the locked glass door to enter. He finds a large men’s shelter filled with sleeping memory ghosts, Christmas decorations, and a nearby kitchen preparing breakfast, and he waits in a corner.

Carl dozes off and wakes around 6 AM to Christmas music and messages: Donut is drunk and partying; Mordecai and Katia warn him to be careful; Louis reports Zev briefly appeared; and Zev explains the AI is insisting no one interfere, even leaking internal debates to the public feed and throwing the Syndicate council into chaos. When Carl asks what a “Residual” is, Zev says she is forbidden to answer and implies Carl is about to learn.

As the shelter transitions into breakfast—cots put away, tables set up, coffee served, and a low-volume recorded sermon playing—Carl sees the target: an older man in a bright-red trapper hat. The man retrieves items from his sealed storage tub and joins the line. Carl takes the tub into his inventory to search it, and when the man returns with coffee, he turns, locks eyes with Carl, and announces himself with calm certainty: “Hello, crawler.”