In a final interview for a highly classified internal posting, the narrator meets Adela, Vice Secretary of Expatriation, who bluntly reveals the secret: the British government has developed time travel and is bringing “expats” from history into the present. To avoid altering history and to manage medical risk, the Ministry extracts people who would have died anyway, then assigns each survivor a full-time “bridge” to monitor and help them adjust while protecting the project’s secrecy.

After months of preparation, the narrator and four other bridges (Simellia, Ralph, Ivan, and Ed) receive a last briefing. Adela acknowledges the ethical and psychological strain: the expats often feel kidnapped or dead, and two of the original seven have already died from the extraction. Despite uncertainty about what time travel does to bodies and minds, the Wellness team decides the remaining five must leave the wards and begin supervised life in the community.

In a ceremonial room, the narrator is introduced to the expat assigned to her: Commander Graham Gore of the Royal Navy, extracted from 1847 and recently stabilized after pneumonia, frostbite, scurvy, and injury during capture. Gore and the narrator travel by car to a Ministry-provided house and begin an awkward, careful cohabitation. The narrator walks Gore through basic domestic technology; Gore is simultaneously witty, guarded, and overwhelmed, touching objects compulsively with frostbite-damaged hands and fixating on toilets, lights, and the sheer scale of London.

Over the first day and night, small discoveries turn into crises: Gore chain-smokes, struggles with modern norms, and inadvertently destroys the bathroom plumbing while experimenting with how it works. A walk on the heath becomes an impromptu lesson in germ theory and modern life. Gore asks about the other expats and, more urgently, about his own expedition; when the narrator explains that the Franklin expedition was lost and all men died by 1850, Gore reacts with shock and numbness, briefly suspecting the extraction team might have caused the deaths.

As the days pass, Gore oscillates between curiosity and agitation: music streaming stuns him, television disgusts him, and books offer uneven comfort. He becomes increasingly claustrophobic in crowded London, only to learn he is restricted from leaving designated boundaries. The narrator recognizes Gore as “internally displaced,” and privately reflects on identity, empire, and how Gore misreads her as white. The chapter ends when the narrator receives an email launching the next project phase and tells Gore they are going “in” next week, finding him rereading Rogue Male from the beginning.