The bridge takes Commander Graham Gore on the Underground to the Ministry and then debriefs her handler, Quentin. Quentin reveals Gore has been told about the Franklin expedition’s loss multiple times, yet keeps forgetting; earlier disclosures triggered escape attempts and disorientation. Quentin orders close monitoring, proposes MRI scans for the expats, and agrees to review the bridge’s budget concerns (especially Gore’s cigarette consumption and the need for a non-Ministry cleaner).

At a bridge meeting chaired by Vice Secretary Adela, the bridges report expat breakdowns and erratic behavior. Adela stresses the real purpose is testing whether time travel can sustain a human body, not comfort, and she flatly rejects sending expats back because they are “supposed to be dead.” The bridge leaves with Simellia (bridge to Somme expat Captain Arthur Reginald-Smyth), who hints at institutional power struggles and jokes about the Ministry being absorbed by the Home Office.

Over lunch, Gore describes the other expats, notably conflict between the seventeenth-century pair and his sympathy for Reginald-Smyth’s quiet torment. Gore arranges to go drinking with Reginald-Smyth and Simellia; the bridge worries the outing may overwhelm the traumatized captain, so she meets Simellia first at a pub. Simellia identifies the barman as a Defence tracker and speaks bluntly about how surveillance will reduce them to racial labels; she urges the bridge not to hide her identity from Gore and insists expats must adjust to the present, not the other way around.

That night, Gore returns tipsy and the bridge and Gore finally address race and language directly after Gore calls Simellia a racial term. As the bridge tries to explain modern racism and structural inequality, Gore recalls serving on an anti-slave-trade squadron and admits how, when counting captives on a seized ship, duty eclipsed compassion—leaving him uneasy about how Simellia would judge him. He then observes that the bridge is “not wholly an Englishwoman,” noting “the color of [her] mouth,” and their cohabitation continues with ongoing corrections as Gore struggles with modern vocabulary and slurs.

The chapter widens into an account of the Ministry’s language-conditioning experiment (expats describing modern images while bridges correct them over time) and snapshots of Gore adapting: churchgoing, sketching industrial landscapes, boxing with Lieutenant Thomas Cardingham, securing an air rifle and killing the garden squirrels, and requesting a forbidden dog because he is bored without purpose. Near the end of May, the expats are summoned for MRI scans; the bridge observes a Defence brigadier and the Secretary for Expatriation looming over the process, while Gore uses humor to calm the frightened Reginald-Smyth during the noisy scan. Afterward, the bridge spirals into loneliness and anxiety, shares cannabis with Gore, and their laughter and intimacy lead Gore to ask that she call him “Graham.” The next day, Gore mentions a Defence conversation about “Auntie” (the BBC) and then produces a sketch of an unknown handheld device he saw outside the Ministry projecting a grid of information into the air, unsettling the bridge with the implication of new surveillance or technology.