Robin finds a note in Griffin’s cramped hand, written with Chinese characters that encode English. He deciphers precise instructions: open Babel’s door at midnight during a rainy night, wait in the foyer, then leave. On a storm-lashed Wednesday, Robin slips out despite Ramy’s questions, unlocks Babel, and two unseen Hermes operatives rush inside. He departs on schedule, returns home shaking, and spends a sleepless night fearing discovery that never comes.

The next day he arrives late to meet Ramy, Letty, and Victoire. Their lively translation session—Letty’s strict fidelity versus Ramy’s rhetorical license, Victoire’s frustration with English—steadies him, and routine classes dull his panic. That evening a terse message arrives telling him to await further contact, leaving Robin disappointed by the anticlimax and the silence.

Weeks pass without word from Griffin. Robin embraces life as a Babel student and grows close to his cohort. Attempts to befriend older students fail—Gabriel snubs Letty, Ilse Dejima rebuffs Robin, and Philip Wright dismisses their diverse cohort as political tokens. The four rely on each other for companionship and intellectual sparring.

Shared jokes, café rituals, and a disastrous improvised stew cement their intimacy; a ridiculous hunt for a phantom pear scent ends in helpless laughter. Watching them, Robin realizes he has found a family. The realization brings guilt: he loves Babel and his friends, even as he is implicated in Hermes’s theft and the empire Babel serves.

Only once is Robin tempted to confess—during a heated lunch debate where Letty defends British rule in India and Ramy calls it looting and violence. Robin nearly admits Hermes’s aims but stays silent to protect the fragile joy they’ve built and because he cannot resolve his split loyalties. He chooses to wait for Griffin’s summons as a hidden, private rebellion.