SecUnit prepares to board the Barish-Estranza supply transport with Arada and Eletra, using ART’s better EVAC suits and checking them for contamination because it still does not understand how ART was compromised. Leonide has declined Ras’s body, which further worsens the Preservation crew’s opinion of Barish-Estranza. Once aboard the transport, SecUnit discovers there are no resident SecUnits and quickly gains high-level access through the transport’s security architecture. Armed crew escort Eletra away and bring Arada and SecUnit to a meeting room with Supervisor Leonide.

Arada keeps SecUnit present by claiming the contract requires it, then presses Leonide for an explanation. Leonide says Barish-Estranza reached the former colony, found the old dock still usable, and sent a contact team to the surface by drop box. After nearly fifty-eight hours of normal reports, the team returned compromised, and Eletra and Ras were among the environmental techs sent over shortly before the crisis. Arada provides Eletra’s extracted implant as evidence, and Leonide explains that a SecUnit’s warning about a viral threat let the transport cut feed access and survive when the explorer attacked and then fled. SecUnit concludes the altered attackers were focused on escaping the planet and taking a stronger, wormhole-capable ship.

Arada lies selectively about ART’s own encounter, saying the explorer sent a shuttle that led to a fight and the loss of eight crew members, and she pushes Leonide about alien remnant contamination. Leonide refuses to discuss that subject, then abruptly tries to "negotiate" Arada’s return to ART before transmitting payment, effectively turning the meeting into a hostage situation. SecUnit immediately disarms the situation by seizing a guard, locking down the local systems, and using both the transport’s security system and ART’s targeting lock to force compliance. Arada recovers her confidence, demands the invoice, and leaves with SecUnit without further resistance.

Back aboard ART, Arada and SecUnit agree Leonide likely tried to reassert control after revealing too much in front of her crew, but the exchange still gives them a clear next step: investigate the colony’s space dock. During the trip, SecUnit privately proposes a desperate tactic to ART, suggesting that ART copy SecUnit’s consciousness kernel into a variable killware assault tailored to the Targets’ systems. ART reacts with unusually intense anger and rejects the idea as dangerous. Ratthi and the others learn about the plan, question SecUnit, and Amena later confronts both SecUnit and ART, comparing the proposed copy to a child they would create only to sacrifice. ART reluctantly admits the tactic may become necessary.

When ART reaches the dock, the explorer is gone. Scans show the dock is still powered, the drop box is at the top of the lift shaft, and the planet below appears stormy, partially terraformed, and likely structured in a way that trapped colonists rather than serving volunteers. The team also detects decades-old satellite debris, suggesting older violence or collapse in orbit. Because sending pathfinders might alert hostile unknowns, they decide to board the dock directly. SecUnit wants to go alone, but Thiago and Overse insist on accompanying it under survey-contract safety rules, ART supports them, and ART privately tells SecUnit it will not lose SecUnit after already losing its crew.