In a pounding rain, Robin, Ramy, Victoire, and Letty reach Lovell’s Hampstead house. A friendly neighbor, Mrs Clemens, recognizes them as students, lends a spare key, and later brings food. The four settle in the sitting room to keep watch through the night, exhausted but fearful.

Unable to sleep, Robin searches Lovell’s office and discovers caches of correspondence with traders and missionaries detailing Chinese defenses, naval capacities, and tactics. The letters show Lovell’s hawkish advocacy and reveal that negotiations in Canton were a pretext for a preplanned war. Robin realizes they were used to furnish justification for force.

Ramy and Victoire read the letters and agree they must act. They propose taking the evidence to the Hermes Society, the only group equipped to resist. Robin argues for turning himself in to separate the killing from the looming war, but Ramy rejects his martyrdom as useless, insisting their obligation is to stop the war.

Letty overhears and confronts them about Hermes. When they explain, she struggles to accept that Babel benefits the Empire’s violence. Victoire exposes Babel’s sale of bars aiding slave shackles and recounts Leblanc’s dehumanizing request to test them on her. Letty’s faith in philanthropy falters as she hears how reform within Babel serves imperial ends.

Letty promises loyalty and secrecy, tearfully clinging to Victoire, while the others sense unease that, after their revelations, she needs comforting. With the war plans in hand, the cohort resolves to return to Oxford and seek Hermes, committing themselves to resistance.