Hekla and Brynhild’s Daughters arrive inside Princess Donut’s palace after Katia whitelists them into the shared personal space. Hekla thanks Carl for protecting and leveling Katia, then explains how her team used the employee portal and a Glass Prison spell on a Kravyad to reach Station 60. Carl learns an important new fact: Station 60 can route crawlers onto any of the twelve Homeward Bound platforms, and he immediately sends that information to his wider network. While taking in the visitors, Carl notices Eva’s many kill-skulls and grows more suspicious of Hekla’s group, especially because he has already been warned that Hekla may want Donut for her team.

Hekla says she did not come only to retrieve Katia. A thousand crawlers are trapped at Station 101 on the Vermillion line, including Li Jun and others Carl knows through his chat circle. The group is boxed in by mobs from multiple platforms, a major ghoul horde is advancing up the line, and whatever stage three of the withdrawal-ridden monsters looks like is about to appear. Carl realizes Hekla has framed the request so well that refusing would be both morally and publicly disastrous, but he also sees the danger of helping people who may be maneuvering against him. Carl privately warns Donut not to trust Eva and to question anything if Carl gets hurt, then agrees to help.

Hekla reveals the rescue plan. Her team found an intact Vermillion subway train with three passenger cars and cargo containers, stole it, and attached a second engine to the rear so it can return in reverse after loading survivors. The problem is the subway car is too weak to smash through the dense ghoul-filled tracks ahead without derailing. Carl assumes Hekla wants him to build a metal plow, but Hekla and Katia reveal a more extreme answer: Katia proposed reshaping herself into a living cowcatcher by using the metal and rubber she has added to her altered body. Donut objects immediately, and Carl tells Katia that Hekla is treating her as disposable and that she can stay with him and Donut instead. Katia answers that the idea was hers and that Hekla’s entire team came back for her, which means more to Katia than Carl understood. After Zev complains that Carl keeps important emotional conversations private, Carl compromises by agreeing to the mission if Katia stays on his team until it is over and if Carl and Donut ride with her.

Once they leave the saferoom, Carl notices that the system has created a temporary vestibule connecting the separate headquarters of the two groups. They descend to the employee line, where the Nightmare Express still waits, and the combined team boards it to travel to Station 60. During the ride, Donut jokes about Carl being surrounded by women, and Katia explains that Eva is an economics professor and that Hekla knew Eva before the dungeon because Hekla had been Eva’s psychiatrist. At Station 60, Carl sees Madison among a growing cluster of displaced NPCs. In the portal corridor beyond, Carl stops to comfort Tizquick, a grieving dwarf conductor who has realized his daughter was never real. Carl cannot solve Tizquick’s pain, but he acknowledges it, and Hekla watches the exchange before urging Carl to stop dwelling on what he cannot control and to hurry toward the rescue before the main ghoul horde reaches Station 101.