After New Year, the narrator returns to the bridge house and notices a subtle shift in her closeness with Graham Gore. The Ministry, responding to Gore’s requests to rejoin the Royal Navy, approves him (and Cardingham) for closely supervised field-agent training, forcing the narrator and Adela to fabricate extensive new identities and files. The narrator realizes she is obsessively cataloging Gore—professionally and emotionally—while still feeling relieved that he is being kept in London.

The narrator keeps functioning through social routines with Margaret and Arthur, including drinks in Dalston before a clubbing night. Soon after, Gore attends a formal Ministry ceremony in dress blues to mark his move into field training. In the crowd, Quentin Carroll reappears, disguised to defeat recognition software, and covertly presses a stiff document-holder into the narrator’s hand—then is shot in the head in front of her. As the courtyard erupts in panic, Gore reaches the narrator, takes her bag, breaks her remaining stiletto heel so she can walk, and gets her out, telling her coldly that he is “not” her hero this time.

Quentin is confirmed dead at the scene, and the narrator endures hours of questioning. At home, exhausted and shaken, she breaks down, and Gore awkwardly comforts her with cigarettes and steadiness. The concealed item in her bag turns out to be an incident report from eighteen months before the time-travel project began: police found mutilated teenagers and a glowing blue doorway in a shuttered youth center, and seized the machine beyond the door, collapsing it—revealing that the Ministry’s time travel came from confiscation, not invention. A handwritten addendum notes Quentin’s complaints about disposing of the minors’ bodies and recommends he be surveilled, confirming that Quentin’s warnings were grounded.

In the aftermath, the Ministry escalates security, restricts expats’ movement, moves the time-door, and pushes the narrator toward field training. The narrator sinks into depression and trauma symptoms while Gore unexpectedly becomes her caretaker, prodding her to eat, run, and rejoin daily life. A conversation about faith spirals when the narrator mentions Auschwitz; Gore searches and is horrified by what he learns, then recoils when the narrator draws parallels to the outcomes of anti-slavery “apprenticeship” and suffering under orders. In February, Adela reports that Anne Spencer has been shot dead while trying to escape Ministry wards and orders the expats to be told it was suicide; at a sterile Ministry funeral, Arthur privately admits his loneliness and asks the narrator if she and Gore are lovers.

Spurred by fear and anger, the narrator investigates surveillance records. She finds evidence that the courtyard CCTV blackout during Quentin’s killing was not automatic but manually triggered, and a fingerprint record ties the access to her—meaning she is being framed. Determined to act, she drags Gore into her ordinary life by introducing him to her friends at a karaoke-night pub, where his charm carries him through questions.

Leaving the pub, the narrator and Gore encounter the Brigadier and Salese. Salese uses a device matching Gore’s sketch to scan Gore as a “free traveler,” and the Brigadier threatens that if Gore comes with them, the narrator will not be harmed; when Gore refuses, the Brigadier fires a weapon that blasts a blue impact into the pavement. The narrator and Gore fight back long enough to escape on Gore’s motorbike, aided by the chaos of nearby couriers. At home, shaken and certain their attackers are from the future, the narrator impulsively kisses Gore; after a brief, frantic escalation, Gore panics, stops her, hands back her bobby pin, and retreats to his room, locking the door for the first time.