Two months after Tana’s sentencing, Wren rarely hears from her and is tormented by guilt, tracking Tana’s labor-camp logs and reminding herself that a comfortable prison is still a prison. Adrienne now serves as Wren’s covert Uprising contact, pressing Wren for black cache coordinates. Determined to make her risk worth it, Wren resolves to keep sabotaging Silver from within while relying on Kaine, Lyddie, and her nightly trysts with Cross to stave off isolation.

Using her Elite access, Wren enters the war room after hours, projects a live map of active black caches to Adrienne via telepathy without entering searchable queries, and then opens a decoy coastal map to mask her activity. Colonel Travis Redden walks in, pointedly implying he knows about Cross and Wren and unsettling her with his predatory demeanor. Outside, Cross arrives, flirts brazenly, and postpones their rendezvous for a meeting about the upcoming Silver Jubilee.

A week later at breakfast, Lyddie hints that Kaine suspects Wren is seeing someone; Wren denies it. A sudden summons to the war room gathers Elite. Cross announces the Uprising bombed a Silver weapons cache using a high-intensity “sugar bomb” derived from stolen tech; they missed the cache but flattened the surrounding forest. Theo explains the device’s energy-release mechanism and lack of radiation. Cross insists they must determine how the Uprising found the cache, while Wren hides her thrill at having enabled the strike.

Two days later, Wren encounters Ellis on base, recalling his extraordinary healing power and contrasting it with her destructive inciting. An order sends all present Elite to Medical for mandatory wellness checks. Theo is examined first, and Ellis instantly cures an infected forearm gash by touch, which Cross and Xavier justify as faster than standard regen methods.

Kess is examined next, and then Xavier, for whom Ellis detects a forming kidney stone without instruments and treats it on the spot. Anxiety mounts for Wren as Cross insists she comply due to a recent sparring head hit from Kaine. On the bed, Ellis resolves Wren’s hidden headache and then examines her further as Cross bristles at Ellis’s hands on her. When Ellis reaches the puckered burn scars on Wren’s thigh, he identifies them as old childhood burns and offers to remove the scarring immediately.