A taxi lifts from the L1 jumble near sluiceway S745. Qiwi, having improvised a lock bypass, flies while fretting over her injured father, Ali Lin. Nau reassures her and spins a near-true tale of treachery, steering her into viewing the crisis as a repeat of the Diem Massacre. Motivated to prevent mass murder, Qiwi commits to reaching L1-A quickly so they can stop the attackers.

Meanwhile, Ezr, shot and half-drowned, surfaces in drifting bubbles amid the wrecked lodge. Bleeding heavily, he scavenges a full-press jacket from the debris and uses it as a tourniquet to immobilize and compress his ruined arm. Sky-kittens gather around him as he spots a diamond-tube pillar capped with a hatch—Nau’s tunnel head. Seeing the controls pass-green, Ezr opens the hatch, intending to reach L1-A.

In the Attic, cutting the zipheads’ links turns the grouproom chaotic. Trud Silipan panics, but Pham asserts they’ve denied Nau his core power and can still win. He returns Trud’s huds, orders a damage assessment, and pushes for any offline help from numerical-control specialists while the Focused are calmed.

Pham reenergizes scattered localizers, extending his vision across L1. He glimpses a taxi landing near S745 and estimates only hundreds of seconds before Nau reaches L1-A. Parsing streams from the Invisible Hand, he realizes Brughel has begun the sucker-punch launches against the Accord. Pham completes a low-rate view over L1-A and resolves to retarget nearby electric jets as weapons against the Podmaster, calling for Trud’s numerical support.