Tomas Nau surveys his opulent Hammerfest estate, built from wrecked starships after the Relight, and broods on decades of Exile ahead. He plans rotating Watches to stretch resources but keeps himself on continuous duty. A quake passes; Qiwi Lin Lisolet wakes, and Nau soothes and steers her, urging a short break and time with her Focused father. He reflects on grooming Qiwi—once a grieving teen—into a loyal, talented partner he can run through consecutive Watches.

Qiwi joins Ali Lin in the microgravity park, assisting his ecosystem tuning with garbage spiders. Sensing a brief window of receptivity, she nudges him toward designing a bonsai-bubble micro-park, and he engages with inventive solutions. Qiwi imagines future trading value for such marvels, even if it means sidestepping Nau’s bans, believing the Qeng Ho ethos will outlast Emergent rigidity.

Ritser Brughel breaks in through the floor hatch, vandalizes webs, and confronts Qiwi with a baton, calling the cleanup insects “vermin.” Qiwi counters that the garbage bugs keep the park breathable in zero gee, humiliates him under surveillance, and he withdraws. Shaken, she realizes he’d kill her if unwatched. Seeking comfort, she finds Ali’s Focused indifference and returns to work, clinging to Nau’s promise that Focus can be reversed.

At the Watch-manager meeting, Anne Reynolt reports a risky taxi mission to low orbit around OnOff with microsats. The Focused pair, Hunte Wen and Dr. Li, produce conflicting paths: Wen spirals into a fixation that OnOff is a broken “magic machine” shaped by galactic-core history, while Li builds a particle-based model explaining observations and implying such stars originate near the core.

Anne cautions that Li’s theory may be a trap without independent review, yet it hints at a faster ramscoop drive. Nau rules to bring the third physicist online lightly to review Li’s work, keep Li frozen between checks, and deFocus Wen—restoring his personhood though erasing much expertise—using whatever medicals are needed. Enthusiasm rises at Li’s promise and Wen’s manumission; Ezr Vinh watches, and Nau mentally dangles future mercy as leverage.