SecUnit escorts Amena, Ras, and Eletra through ART’s dim, half-active corridors toward Medical while sending drones ahead and behind. It realizes an intruder control system has changed security access, is piloting the ship through the wormhole, and may be coordinating the hostile drones. SecUnit also sees that more gray intruders are trapped outside the sealed control area and concludes that ART itself is gone, which deepens its anger and grief.

To keep the injured humans alive, SecUnit decides not to head for engineering and instead creates a defensible safe zone in the living section. It seals and damages key hatches, kills two hostile drones that ambush the group near a junction, and sweeps the medical suite before leaving the humans there. SecUnit warns Amena not to activate the MedSystem because it may still be compromised by the intruder system, then leaves a squad of drones to guard her while the others search for threats and watch the remaining intruders.

Back in Medical, Ras and Eletra prove suspicious, patronizing, and convinced Amena should control SecUnit or hand it over to them. When they cannot explain where ART’s crew has gone, SecUnit intimidates Ras into answering, but Eletra and Ras insist they truly do not know. Amena tries to manage the tension while treating her injured leg with manual emergency supplies, and SecUnit privately tells her to describe it only as being under contract to Preservation Survey, knowing that corporate assumptions about ownership would distort the truth.

As SecUnit searches the quarters and nearby compartments, it studies the enemy’s behavior and realizes the gray intruders may not fully understand what has happened elsewhere on the ship. It notices their helmets have been updated with stealth material, making drone attacks harder, and begins probing the hostile control system while also sending whispered audio into the sealed control area to confuse or distract the intruders. SecUnit finds recently used crew cabins, a trashed room containing ART crew belongings and an image of two smiling crew members, and no sign of bodies, which strengthens its fear that ART’s crew have been killed or removed.

Meanwhile, Ras and Eletra explain that they were taken from a Barish-Estranza transport connected to a recovery mission for lost pre-Corporation Rim settlements. Their account reveals a business built around reclaiming abandoned colonies and salvaging their equipment, which unsettles Amena. While returning to Medical with rations and new suspicions about ART’s real mission, SecUnit overhears Ras and Eletra warning Amena that SecUnits are dangerous and unreliable, and they even insist she must have been trapped aboard for days. Distracted by its investigation, SecUnit enters the medbay with only a moment of warning before Ras suddenly shoots at it, ending the chapter on an attack from inside the supposed safe zone.