At the Ministry, Adela panics and tells the narrator there is a mole inside the project: the time-door’s location has been leaked and someone is feeding the Brigadier information. The narrator presses Adela about “last time,” but Adela refuses to explain, only warning that the narrator is in danger.

Back at the flat, Graham Gore returns from checking on Margaret “Maggie” Kemble’s safe house and reports a brutal attack: Ralph has been drowned in a bath, and a different woman (Margaret’s lover) has been strangled in Margaret’s bed. Margaret is missing, so Graham insists they evacuate, retrieve hidden supplies, and go to Arthur’s safe house first, then to a tunnel refuge Graham has long prepared as an emergency rendezvous.

Arthur and Simellia’s safe house is also breached. Upstairs, Graham and the narrator find Arthur dead on the floor, apparently poisoned, with blood and vomit at his mouth. The narrator pockets Arthur’s notebook in shock, while Graham takes Arthur’s signet ring and pushes them to leave immediately.

They reach the flooded dockside tunnels and find Margaret alive, hiding in a vent; she collapses into Graham’s arms and then the narrator’s, until they tell her Arthur has died. Soon after, Lieutenant Cardingham arrives, having discovered Arthur’s body and followed Graham’s contingency plan. The narrator finally admits the expats have tracking microchips implanted; Graham reacts with fury at the narrator’s long silence, but orders the chips cut out, stitched up, and disposed of to break surveillance.

While they wait out the tide, the narrator texts Adela for help. Following Adela’s instructions, the narrator leaves a note for Graham and goes to meet her, only to find Adela held at gunpoint by the Brigadier and Salese. Adela reveals a major truth: Adela is the narrator’s future self, and the Brigadier and Salese are time agents from the 2200s trying to reshape history through assassinations; Adela claims this is a second attempt (“last time”) where Arthur and Margaret both died.

Adela suddenly stabs Salese through a protective field and kills him; the narrator fights the Brigadier and wrests away the blue-light weapon, but it has no charge and fails when fired, making the narrator vomit. Adela resets the narrator’s dislocated fingers and, as they walk back, explains a war-torn future where the Ministry becomes powerful and complicit, including records showing the Ministry eventually killed noncombatant expats. Adela admits she and the narrator killed Quentin because she believed he was the mole; she gives the narrator passcodes to wipe the project and asks her to go to the Ministry while Adela retrieves the remaining expats. Before they can reconcile, Graham and Cardingham confront them from cover and order hands up; a shot narrowly misses the fleeing narrator, and she realizes the shooter likely was not Graham because he would not have missed.