Logan and Kara drive south through St. Louis and on to Texas, Logan newly overwhelmed by amplified perception. On Christmas Eve in Santa Fe, they discuss memory and emotion versus reason, both noticing how the upgrade eases sentiment’s grip. At dawn they head toward Vallecitos, following GPS coordinates embedded at AAVS1.

Deep in the Carson National Forest, they find an old electric Chevy. Inside lies a decomposed body with an empty morphine vial and Miriam’s double-helix necklace. Realizing it is their mother, they reel with grief but continue to the exact coordinates.

They uncover a hardcase hidden in a lightning-struck stump: a ruggedized laptop and six phase memory drives. Miriam’s recorded message explains her aim to uplift human cognition, her cognitive decline, and that she secretly dosed both children (via Soren and a drone). She declares them the next step in human evolution and bequeaths the upgrade, urging them to save the species.

Logan argues to destroy the drives after the catastrophic locust precedent; Kara insists reason demands deploying the upgrade to avert extinction. Sensing a lethal resolve in Kara, Logan drags the hardcase downhill. When he confronts her, she quietly loosens her pistol’s retention. Logan bolts; Kara fires, hitting his shoulder.

Bleeding, Logan reaches the truck, removes Miriam’s corpse, and gets the vehicle running under automatic fire. He disables Kara’s car by shooting out both rear tires and flees down the logging road, growing hypovolemic. He crashes near the ruins of Mis Amigos in Vallecitos, where a local boy finds him as he realizes he has lost this first battle over the upgrade’s fate.