After the group splits up to handle repairs and cleanup, Amena goes to question Eletra while SecUnit helps ART analyze the gaps in its own archive. Eletra says she and Ras did not know about their implants, describes the lost colony as a long-hidden site first founded by an early polity and later re-seeded by Adamantine Explorations, and says Barish-Estranza recovered the old data after a hostile buyout destroyed the main databases. Her account confirms rumors of alien remnants around the colony, but she seems genuinely distressed by the implants and may not fully understand what happened to her.

While listening in, SecUnit finds something worse in ART’s status records: ART encountered a Barish-Estranza distress signal and explorer shuttle before its first forced shutdown, meaning the attack on ART likely began with that contact. SecUnit and ART immediately pull Amena away from Eletra, then present the evidence to the others in a feed meeting. The reconstructed timeline shows that ART’s remembered attack on a corporate transport never happened as ART believed; instead, ART was compromised soon after receiving the medical distress call, its memory was altered, and its crew were probably taken aboard the explorer. The group concludes that Eletra may be lying, but it is also possible that her memories were manipulated just as ART’s were.

The meeting leaves ART badly shaken, especially by the possibility that its crew may never have left the ship alive. SecUnit reassures ART that there is no evidence of a massacre onboard and argues that the lack of blood traces suggests the crew departed alive, possibly armed and under pressure. ART and SecUnit then admit, more directly than usual, how much this crisis has affected them: SecUnit apologizes for calling ART a name, and ART apologizes for kidnapping SecUnit and endangering the survey team.

Once Arada finally orders the exhausted humans to rest, SecUnit searches the Barish-Estranza shuttle while Amena lingers and asks personal questions. SecUnit safely extracts the shuttle’s logs without risking infection from unknown code, explains that it interfered with Marne because Marne had registered as a threat, and awkwardly describes Dr. Mensah as its teammate rather than merely a client. Later, while SecUnit and ART work on software defenses against the Targets’ drones and gear, Thiago confronts SecUnit over its influence on Mensah. SecUnit shows him footage of the earlier GrayCris attack on Preservation and reveals that Mensah stepped back from office to begin trauma treatment, not because SecUnit frightened her into dependence.

By the end of the rest period, ART and SecUnit have improved their defensive plans, though they still lack a true offensive answer to the Targets’ technology. ART also derives a crucial lead from the shuttle data: it locates one of the Barish-Estranza vessels, finishes repairing its normal-space engines, and begins moving to intercept. The appended HelpMe file excerpt then shows the aftermath of the GrayCris attack on Preservation, with SecUnit and Station Security containing the enhanced attackers and SecUnit secretly choosing investigation over medical treatment.