The Mercy of Gods

At the end-of-year celebration at Irvian's Scholar's Common, research assistant Dafyd Alkhor reluctantly mingles with influential scholars and administrators. He meets Llaren Morse, an astronomer from Dyan Academy who describes a small anomalous region near the edge of Anjiin's heliosphere. Dafyd keeps Morse talking by reflecting his remarks back to him and revealing little about himself. He also admits that his aunt, Dorinda Alkhor, is involved in allocating research funding. When the celebrated scientist Tonner Freis draws applause, Morse mutters a resentful warning to enjoy the acclaim while it lasts. Dafyd cannot determine whether the remark means anything more than professional jealousy.

Tonner's proteome reconciliation research has received extraordinary recognition from three influential bodies. Dafyd is a junior member of his team, but he has come to the celebration chiefly because he hopes to see Else Yannin, Tonner's research partner and acknowledged lover, whom Dafyd desires despite knowing she is unavailable. Dafyd navigates the celebration's rigid, largely unspoken hierarchy and finds his aunt among the political and academic leadership. Dorinda rebukes his habit of making himself seem unimportant and says she recognizes his manipulative skill. When he mentions Morse's apparent dislike of Tonner, she responds with a guarded, mirthless smile but offers no explanation.

Dafyd finds Else watching Tonner hold court and asks whether she has heard of another group trying to take over their research. Else dismisses the idea because the team's success would make any replacement look inferior. Dafyd challenges her absolute certainty and suggests that somebody must be making a move, but he provides no evidence that a takeover is actually planned. Else takes the possibility seriously enough to grasp his arm and ask what he has heard. Dafyd savors her attention and recognizes that his wish to prolong it is affecting what he says.

No one on Anjiin knows how humans and the species associated with them arrived there. Their biological lineage appears abruptly in the fossil record about three and a half thousand years earlier, followed roughly a century later by a poorly understood disaster that turned much of their original island settlement into glass and black rock. The introduced life spread despite this catastrophe. Native organisms rely on an aperiodic quasicrystal system of heredity, while humans and their associated species rely on DNA; the two biochemical lineages have long been considered fundamentally incompatible as sources of nourishment. Tonner Freis's team has now demonstrated a way to reconcile them.

At a table outside the Scholar's Common, Jessyn celebrates the team's accomplishment with Irinna and the older researchers Nöl and Synnia. Jessyn values their close, almost familial working relationships, including her respect for Tonner, Else, Campar, Rickar, Dafyd, and her companions at the table. She remembers the pivotal experiment in which a radioactive marker from a native Anjiin membrane protein appeared in a blade of grass, evidence that the two forms of biology could interact. Irinna expresses gratitude for being included in the project, and the women join the dancing. Jessyn takes unusual pleasure in feeling that she has succeeded and that her mind is not troubling her that night.

Afterward, Jessyn returns to the quarters she shares with her brother Jellit. She assumes he is out celebrating with his own research group. An unexpected message arrives from Tonner. His expression makes Jessyn recognize that he is furious; he calls her to an emergency meeting at the laboratory the following day and instructs her not to tell anyone. The reason for the summons remains undisclosed.

Dafyd arrives at the almost deserted Irvian medrey laboratories for Tonner's emergency meeting. Tonner, Else, Campar, and Nöl are waiting; Synnia is unwell at home, and Rickar and Irinna have not been invited. Jessyn arrives with her brother Jellit, who has been describing unusual extrasolar observations, including a dataset that seems to show superluminal activity but is generally dismissed as faulty. Jellit leaves when he realizes the others are meeting privately.

Tonner reports that someone has proposed transferring responsibility for the team's celebrated biochemical research to several institutions. Else explains that the proposal would send the principal scholars to establish parallel laboratories elsewhere and leave a junior researcher to oversee the existing work. Tonner says he has learned that he, Else, and Jessyn would be assigned to three spin-off laboratories. He suspects someone inside their group helped initiate the plan and thinks the sponsor is connected to Dyan Academy, partly on Dafyd's account of Llaren Morse's apparent gloating and his aunt's guarded reaction. Nöl correctly notes that these observations do not prove a Dyan connection. Irinna previously studied there, and Rickar's father supplies buildings to the academy; Else considers Rickar the likelier suspect, but no one has yet established who initiated the proposal.

Jessyn questions whether spreading the work among more laboratories might benefit the science despite harming the researchers' immediate interests. Tonner insists that the group must not be broken apart, confronting her until she yields. He asks Dafyd to use his connections with the funding colloquy, sends Else and Campar to investigate Irinna, and assigns Jessyn and Nöl to investigate Rickar. Dafyd suggests that Jessyn also ask Jellit to sound out Morse, since both men work in related astronomical fields. Tonner plans to lobby influential administrators himself. At the end of the chapter, Nöl asks whether they have considered simply questioning the people involved.

Interleaved with this meeting is the viewpoint of a hidden swarm occupying the body of a woman named Ameer Kindred, who appears to the researchers to be merely eating a sandwich nearby. The swarm uses Ameer's senses and memories to interpret the group's behavior while learning to mimic ordinary human responses. Ameer remains conscious and hates its occupation of her body; she understands that the swarm intends to move on and expects it to kill her when it does. The swarm regards concealment as essential to its mission. It pays particular attention to Tonner and Else, registers Jessyn and Jellit's kinship, and experiences heightened urgency when it hears Jellit's remark about anomalous extrasolar data. It has not yet identified its next host in the narration.

The following confrontation takes place in Tonner Freis's laboratory. Rickar Daumatin acknowledges that the proposal to redistribute the team's research is real and that he has agreed to accept the position offered to him. He identifies Samar Austad, chief administrator at Dyan Academy, as its sponsor, but denies proposing it himself. Rickar expects the reassignment to succeed because Austad would not have advanced it without substantial support. Tonner insists that the funding colloquy has not yet voted and orders Rickar out of the laboratory. Irinna, recently returned from her parents' home, insists she knew nothing about the plan; Else assures her that the others do not suspect her.

After Rickar leaves, Tonner urges the team to call in favors and organize a public campaign against Austad's proposal. Dafyd warns that the colloquy dislikes overt attempts to pressure its decisions and that a public campaign cannot easily be withdrawn. Instead, he proposes identifying Austad's allies and opponents, then forming a coalition around an alternative proposal that could divide Austad's support. Nöl wonders whether resistance might do more harm than good, while Synnia insists the work is worth defending. Else asks Dafyd whether he can develop his approach within two days, and he agrees. Tonner resents relying on a research assistant and perceives Else's support for Dafyd as a slight.

Later, at Tonner's apartment, he joins Else on the balcony. Their conversation reveals that Tonner selected the apartment partly to encourage Else to stay with him, although she retains separate official quarters. Tonner complains about Dafyd's calculated interpersonal style and asks whether Else is taking the assistant's side. Else acknowledges that Dafyd can be a schemer but says she has never seen him be cruel. Tonner admits that his anger about the potential loss of the project is spilling into their relationship. He tells Else that the work defines his identity and that he doubts he could begin again if it were taken from him. Else explains that leaving her earlier research for his team was also a pragmatic choice, since her former project had reached a dead end.

Else later brings Tonner whiskey and urges him to sleep. Tonner remarks that Dafyd has a crush on her, which she says she already knows. After going to bed he dreams of crossing a square whose paving stones collapse into a pit as he tries to reach the laboratories. The narration says the dream would later seem like a premonition; it does not establish that the dream predicts any specific future event.

The swarm now occupies an unnamed new host rather than Ameer Kindred. Its new host resists, and the swarm is surprised to find remnants of Ameer's memories and emotions still within it after leaving her. The experience has changed the swarm's own developing consciousness. It approaches an older man outside a building, addresses him as Samar Austad, and receives his acknowledgment. The scene does not show an attack. Austad's death is reported only later.

Jessyn meets Irinna in a quiet courtyard to discuss the threatened breakup of their research team. Irinna hopes that Jessyn might lead an independent project and take her along, but Jessyn is reluctant to leave Irvian because her brother Jellit supports her through recurring psychological difficulties, including contacting her physicians when she cannot. Jessyn would not ask him to sacrifice his career. She describes the value of remaining in a familiar place, disappointing Irinna, and acknowledges that their professional success cannot guarantee the team's continued existence.

At home, Jessyn finds Jellit studying the astronomical anomaly associated with Llaren Morse. Broad-spectrum observations suggest ordered, apparently nonexotic mass within the lensing effect. Jellit considers whether the anomaly hides a designed object, possibly a probe, but says the result requires confirmation. He speculates playfully that it could be connected with humanity's unknown origin on Anjiin. Jessyn encourages him to return to his research. His excitement reminds her of an earlier lesson from a religious teacher, Nansui, about gaining perspective on personal troubles through the vastness of the universe.

Jessyn briefly enjoys this sense of wonder. Then Campar calls, warns that security forces may question her, and reports that Samar Austad has been killed.

Security officers question Dafyd about his inquiries into Samar Austad, whose murder has brought scrutiny to the research team. Dafyd denies any involvement and asks whether Austad's death might be connected to another girl's death during the break, but receives no answer. After five hours without replies from his aunt or Tonner, he is released. His aunt Dorinda collects him, says Austad's effort to split the team is unlikely to succeed without his sponsorship, and warns that important news is imminent. When Dafyd claims the entire team is innocent, she notes that he can only speak for himself. She drops him off on foot to attend to urgent business. The narration states that he never sees her again.

Rickar, also questioned by security, meets former Dyan Academy colleagues in a café and grieves Austad's death as a disastrous loss for his career. He learns that seventeen enormous, nonidentical objects are now visible in the solar system. Llaren Morse reports that the anomalous lensing effect collapsed after astronomers aimed a targeted scan at it, but does not know whether the observation caused the change. The objects' origin and purpose remain unknown. At home, Nöl and Synnia observe that one large object has maneuvered and smaller spheroidal shapes are streaming from the objects toward Anjiin. Synnia likens them to spores while worrying that authorities might respond aggressively. The larger objects do not seem to be on impact trajectories unless they change course.

In the laboratory, Tonner sees Austad's death and the world's distraction as an opportunity to strengthen the team's position. Most team members are absent; Else, Campar, and Dafyd are far more interested in the unknown objects. Else compares images presented as live and discovers that they appear identical to footage shown forty minutes earlier. She suspects that current observations are being withheld, although the apparent repetition alone does not establish censorship. She urges them to come to her mostly underground rooms, which contain a telescope and may also offer shelter. Tonner refuses to accompany her and tells her to take Dafyd instead.

While alone with Else, Dafyd predicts that other groups will eventually attempt to divide their research regardless of Austad's failure, giving the present team perhaps another year together. This remains his assessment rather than established fact. He describes choosing research partly to fulfill ambitions his living father could not realize. Else apologizes for Tonner's behavior; they discuss how the others react to stress and acknowledge their fear about the objects overhead. Dafyd hesitates while trying to express his attraction. Else kisses him, and a rumble, flickering lights, and distant alarms interrupt them. The source does not yet establish the disturbance's cause.

Seventeen Carryx colony ships emerge from asymmetric space near Anjiin's heliosphere, following beacons laid by earlier scouting tendrils. Navigation and colonization half-minds coordinate the operation, while Carryx overseers direct subordinate species, including the Rak-hund, Sinen, and Soft Lothark. The ships approach under the concealment of projected-gravity bubbles, unaware that Llaren Morse has detected their approach without understanding what he saw.

A targeted, broad-spectrum signal from Anjiin penetrates their protection and briefly alarms the invaders because it has some features in common with their enemy's targeting technology. The Carryx wait for an ambush, but none comes; the differences in the signal suggest it may be a local technological development. Their commanders nevertheless order the gravity concealment dropped earlier than planned and scan for a possible defender. Finding none, they proceed with the conquest.

Thousands of nodes descend from the ships and assemble into an extensive matrix around Anjiin. The colonization half-mind studies the communications and capabilities of the human population, drawing on prior reconnaissance, and also detects a second, slower, chemically communicating form of intelligence closely integrated with the local biome. It recommends focusing initially on the humans, whose organization and communication make them more immediately useful to the Carryx. The other form of life may be studied later.

The world's governments respond without unified coordination, transmitting competing warnings and appeals while mobilizing military forces. Missiles rise from several rival territories, but the node matrix disables them and then destroys their launch sites and comparable military structures. Some cities and bases burn. The Carryx allow the resistance to continue briefly as another opportunity to study the population, rather than regarding it as an effective threat.

The half-mind prepares what the Carryx understand as a decisive demonstration of dominance. It counts approximately 3.67 billion humans, along with some ambiguous signals, and partitions the identified population into eight intermixed groups. One group is selected for an impending culling, but the killings are not narrated in this chapter. A hundred thousand nodes release short-lived atmospheric organisms whose coordinated vibrations carry a single voice to the surface. The announcement begins by declaring all inhabitants subject to Carryx authority and stating that their places within its subordinate species will be determined. The chapter ends during that initial proclamation, before its full terms are spoken.

At their house near Irvian's research complex, Nöl hears explosions from a nearby military base. Reports establish that military forces on Anjiin fired first and that the alien response has begun. Else contacts him despite overloaded communications, urging him and Synnia to reach the fortified sub-basement of her arcology, where the workgroup is gathering supplies. Nöl doubts that underground shelter can offer much protection against the invaders' technology. He and Synnia watch the alien nodes remain fixed above the surface, then decide to work in their garden rather than leave.

As they pull weeds from both of Anjiin's biological lineages, Synnia tells Nöl that being with him has been a pleasure if anything should happen to her. Nöl minimizes the importance of their own lives as research assistants, but Synnia replies that their life together matters to her. A calm, disembodied voice interrupts, declaring that all inhabitants are now under Carryx authority. It says their usefulness will be assessed and submission made compulsory by killing one-eighth of the population. Nöl suddenly feels a sharp pain near his left shoulder, which he interprets as a hornet sting despite having seen no insect. He collapses, notices blood-tasting soil in his mouth, and becomes weak. The narration does not establish an actual hornet attack. When Campar later arrives, Nöl is motionless, bloodied, and no longer breathing.

Campar has volunteered to retrieve Nöl and Synnia after the research team realizes that they have not come to Else's shelter. With communications down, he drives through panicked traffic and military activity toward their house. Bright descending objects turn the night almost as light as day. At the garden he finds Synnia stunned beside Nöl's body. He persuades her to leave with him, and they begin the return trip while more descending objects, shock waves, aircraft, and gunfire fill the surrounding landscape.

A long, pale, many-legged alien creature runs briefly alongside the transport before turning away. Near a burning cathedral, the vehicle fails, forcing Campar and Synnia to continue on foot toward Else's arcology through smoke and fighting. Synnia says that the invaders killed Nöl, and Campar agrees. More many-legged creatures appear in the streets. Campar eventually realizes that Synnia is no longer behind him, but does not know when or where they became separated; her subsequent fate is not shown in the chapter.

Campar confronts another type of alien with fur, differently jointed limbs, and a device that translates its speech. The beings identify themselves as Soft Lothark, servants of the Carryx, and demand his submission. Campar refuses and raises his fists. One strikes him across the face with a weapon, and his perception recedes as the chapter ends. His subsequent condition is not established here.

Five days after the invasion began, Dafyd lies face down with many other prisoners on a plaza in Irvian while Rak-hund and Soft Lothark guard them and huge creatures he assumes are the ruling Carryx watch nearby. He is exhausted, aching, unwashed, and afraid to ask permission to urinate. He recalls how he, Else, Tonner, and Irinna hid in Else's basement rooms through the initial violence, while attempts to reach Jessyn and Rickar failed and Campar never returned from looking for Nöl and Synnia. The invaders eventually discovered their hiding place and separated the captives.

Dafyd was held at a quarry in a large fenced corral that he believes was designed with human proportions in mind. He infers that the invaders knew considerable details about Anjiin's inhabitants in advance, although this conclusion remains his interpretation. A Carryx later directed Soft Lothark to remove him with other prisoners. When a man at the front of the group shouted threats, a Rak-hund trampled him to death. The surviving prisoners were led by a neck tether to the plaza and arranged prone on the paving stones.

Irvian Security Service transports suddenly arrive and demand that the aliens disarm. The Rak-hund form a barrier in front of a Carryx, which raises its massive forelegs in what Dafyd understands as a threat display. Security personnel emerge in riot armor. Small dark airborne objects swarm the personnel and spark against their armor and vehicles; the humans charge and gunfire follows. The Rak-hund attack, a Soft Lothark uses a device that produces the same sizzle Dafyd remembers from the mass killing, and projectiles strike a transport. One security officer reaches the Carryx and wounds its shell with rifle fire, but the huge alien crushes the officer. All of the security personnel are killed. Four Rak-hund also lie dead, and the first Carryx settles down in a condition Dafyd cannot determine.

A goat-and-cuttlefish-like servant identifies itself as Sinen and addresses Dafyd by name and his research-assistant assignment. It orders him to follow. When Dafyd says he must urinate, it takes him to a hospital washroom. He feels ashamed of his gratitude for this minor concession, then washes his face and drinks water. After nearly an hour of walking through damaged streets, they reach an alien vessel at a civilian landing pad. Among the selected captives Dafyd recognizes prominent scholars and researchers, including Virem Tzobar. He also finds Campar, wounded but alive. The two clasp hands in relief, and Campar remarks bitterly that the existence of alien life has been confirmed, along with the invaders' cruelty. The destination and purpose of their transport remain unknown.

Jessyn and Else shiver with approximately two hundred captives in a cramped, dimly orange-lit chamber on a Carryx ship. Else repeatedly checks new arrivals, while Jessyn anxiously looks for her brother Jellit and struggles with incomplete rumors of devastation on Anjiin. Urrys Ostencour, who identifies himself as having served in the security force, introduces himself. He believes the invaders have selected prominent people from multiple professions, pointing to public officials, researchers, and the composer Soleda Wash, but neither he nor Jessyn knows their purpose. Ostencour points out the food and water dispensers and the absorbent mat used as a communal toilet. Jessyn denies possessing medicine, concealing nearly two months' supply of medication that she fears she cannot replace.

Else brings Synnia into the room. Synnia confirms that Nöl was among the one-eighth killed in the opening culling. She says Campar tried to help her escape, but ran too quickly for her to keep up, after which she was taken to a warehouse. Synnia grieves the loss of both Nöl and the life they planned together. Later, Else encounters Dafyd and Campar among the new prisoners and brings them to the others. Campar says that Tonner and Irinna had been held with him but were moved elsewhere; he has not seen Jellit. The group hopes their missing colleagues may be aboard other ships. Dafyd observes that the Carryx seem to kill without anger and wonders whether the one-in-eight culling reflects their eight limbs, but these are his hypotheses rather than explanations confirmed by the aliens.

An announcement warns that the ship will shift into asymmetric space. During the transition Jessyn experiences a disruption in the order of perception and memory, seeming to recall actions before they happen. The other captives experience similar effects. Separately, the swarm, concealed in an unidentified captive host, becomes relieved that it has been carried aboard an enemy vessel rather than left on Anjiin. It imitates its host's fear, while surviving traces of Ameer Kindred's consciousness still react within it. It regards this infiltration as unprecedented intelligence-gathering success, although it has not yet transmitted its observations to its own side.

As time passes in the constant light, the prisoners form informal groups, manage degrading sanitation arrangements, and seek warmth. Jessyn secretly takes her medication, conceals it from a questioning fellow captive, and worries as her supply dwindles. She begins counting the capsules repeatedly, recognizing a return of ritualized behavior. After what she estimates to be at least a month, roughly half the supply is gone and she contemplates reducing her dose because no replacement is available. She also notices Dafyd and Else sharing intimate physical comfort while lying together.

Ostencour asks the prisoners for materials such as shoelaces that could be made into rope, and Synnia offers to help. Jessyn initially assumes he may need restraints to maintain order. Eventually Synnia returns, unexpectedly hopeful, and tells Jessyn that Ostencour is organizing captives to overpower a Soft Lothark when it next comes to replace the waste mat. Synnia urges Jessyn to be ready. The chapter ends with the escape plan untested; Jessyn has not yet acted on it.

In the overcrowded alien holding chamber, Dafyd, Else, Jessyn, and Campar discuss Urrys Ostencour's plan to attack the guards. Dafyd fears that resistance will provoke the Carryx into killing everyone, but this is his prediction based on what the invaders have already done, not a confirmed policy. Else goes to speak with Ostencour. Synnia returns visibly angry, and Else later comes back without explaining what happened during the discussion.

When a guard enters for the routine replacement of the waste mat, Synnia rushes toward the commotion. Dafyd follows her through the crowd and finds Ostencour and other prisoners holding a Soft Lothark down. Ostencour repeatedly stabs it with an improvised blade while Synnia helps pin an arm. As the alien dies, its body swells and bursts, spraying a whitish substance over the attackers and onto Dafyd. The material causes burning pain, nausea, and severe illness. Synnia and the others scream and writhe; Dafyd collapses and loses his coherent sense of time.

When Dafyd briefly becomes aware again, two other Soft Lothark enter. Rather than executing the prisoners in reprisal, they methodically eat their fallen companion's remains, clean up the waste mat, and continue the ordinary maintenance of the chamber. Another alien lays down a fresh mat. Dafyd slips into prolonged fever, confusion, and poisoning.

Several days later, Dafyd regains coherent consciousness in the prisoners' improvised infirmary. Else explains that captives have taken turns keeping him hydrated and clean. Two prisoners died following the incident: one suffered a particularly severe reaction to the alien substance, and another died after initially improving while lacking medication for a preexisting heart condition. Ostencour, who received the heaviest exposure, has survived and withdrawn from the others. Synnia, though more heavily exposed than Dafyd, recovered sooner, but is psychologically distressed. No punitive response from the aliens has followed the attempt. Jessyn suggests that the alien's bodily eruption might have been a defense mechanism; Campar disputes part of the biological analogy.

Dafyd tells Else about a childhood biology lesson involving a water beetle called Little Dot that continued feeding on its own exposed tissues after being fatally injured. The lesson had demonstrated the danger of interpreting other organisms through human expectations. He realizes that his prediction of retaliatory punishment relied on assuming the aliens think like humans. Their untroubled consumption of their dead and lack of punishment show him how poorly he understands their behavior. Else stays beside him and offers comfort.

In a separate view, Jessyn and Campar take turns caring for Synnia, who is almost unresponsive and needs help eating, drinking, and using the mat. Ostencour approaches Jessyn and asks to speak to Synnia. He admits that the failed attack was his mistake, not hers, and says they have learned from it and must continue resisting. Synnia says that she thought even a failed escape would end her suffering. Ostencour insists that their struggle is not over.

After an extended period aboard the alien ship, the captives hear an announcement that they are returning to symmetrical space. Dafyd has recovered enough from his poisoning to move about independently. The transition again disrupts his perception of time, making him seem to remember events just before they happen. The ship's prison chamber is opened and the captives are ordered onto a platform for identification. In the open air, Dafyd sees an enormous alien world-city: mountain-sized dark ziggurats, immense silver arches, moving platforms, and distant grids of small dark objects overhead. He realizes that the human prisoners' original military resistance never had a realistic chance against this technology.

Six Carryx wait on the platform. One is larger and bone-white, with two heavily built red-armored attendants, while three wear green and gold. Dafyd watches a prisoner refuse to prostrate herself and be instantly killed by one of the red-armored Carryx. A Soft Lothark then singles out Dafyd and Else by name and leads them before the white Carryx. Having witnessed the execution, Dafyd immediately lies face down and pulls Else with him. The creatures exchange a brief statement, then dismiss the pair. Dafyd speculates that they have been presented to a king as captured property, but Else correctly notes that he cannot know what this ceremony means. They are left to wait for another transport.

The prisoners are eventually taken to living quarters that resemble an imperfect interpretation of human accommodations. Ten private bedrooms connect to a common area; the rooms have beds, clothing, and showers with strange controls, but their layout and hygiene provisions feel unfamiliar. Jessyn struggles with the sudden return of privacy, cleanliness, and color after weeks of cold, crowded confinement. She finally showers, changes clothes, and counts her remaining medication: sixteen capsules. On the assumption that she has taken it approximately as prescribed, she estimates that their imprisonment aboard the ship lasted about six weeks, while acknowledging uncertainty about the elapsed time and doses.

Jessyn hears Irinna's voice in the common room and rushes to embrace her. Tonner has also survived and reunites with Else, who smiles at him while Dafyd stands nearby looking stunned. Their reunions expose a new tension: Jessyn knows that Dafyd and Else became physically close during captivity while Tonner was absent. Tonner's viewpoint later confirms that he and Irinna endured a similar journey, during which seven captives died. He hopes the aliens have selected them for their scientific expertise, though he and Else acknowledge that they still do not understand the purpose of their captivity.

When Tonner assumes that he and Else will resume sharing a bedroom, she refuses. She says that after their traumatic experience she wants a room of her own, and she rejects his attempt to treat their previous relationship as automatically continuing under the same arrangements. Tonner is upset but backs down. Their discussion also touches on Nöl's death and concern about Synnia's condition.

The door opens again, bringing in Rickar Daumatin, visibly emaciated and injured, accompanied by an unarmored Carryx. Unlike the green-and-gold figures seen during the invasion, this smaller Carryx has purple-beige flesh and speaks through a translator in a distinct voice. It offers a formal expression of sympathy for the workgroup member who died. When Jessyn asks where they are and why they were brought there, the alien identifies itself as Tkson of cohort Malkal, newly appointed keeper-librarian of their moiety. Tkson says it is there to help them demonstrate usefulness, because usefulness determines survival under the Carryx. The chapter ends without explaining the work they will be assigned.

Tkson leads Tonner's research group from their new living quarters through the wide manufactured corridors of the Carryx city. Rickar hangs back, injured and afraid that his former colleagues resent him for his role in the proposed breakup of their laboratory on Anjiin. Campar watches him disapprovingly, though Irinna briefly checks on his condition. Rickar remembers refusing Else's offer of shelter during the invasion and remaining with friends from Dyan Academy. He witnessed an older acquaintance and three others die in the Carryx's opening culling, and the memory continues to distress him. Synnia stays behind in the quarters, and Nöl's absence is not discussed.

The corridors lead through a vast public chamber crowded with unfamiliar species. Tkson shows the humans an alcove containing a laboratory approximately reconstructed from their former facilities, with workbenches, instruments, and familiar proteomic software. It also contains two transparent enclosures: one holding moving red orbs on a stick-like structure, the other a flat, three-legged organism with a blue iridescent body. Tkson explains that the organisms come from two separate subject worlds and orders the group to make the first organisms nourishing to the second. Tonner asks whether the life-forms share either biochemical system known from Anjiin, but Tkson does not answer. The team may use as many samples as needed and request additional supplies, subject to Tkson's consideration.

Dafyd asks what will happen if they cannot accomplish the task. Else points out that reconstructing and reconciling two unknown biologies from these samples might be beyond their abilities. Tkson offers no specific penalty or technical explanation, instead repeating that a subject species survives only if the Carryx find it useful. This leaves the precise consequences of failure unspecified, even though the implied stakes are severe.

Back in the quarters, Rickar finally washes and changes, then rejoins the others as Tonner reasserts control over the research project. Irinna suggests that failure need not necessarily mean execution, while Campar points to the Carryx's earlier mass killing. Tonner insists that speculation does not matter because their team can solve the problem. Else notices that the red orbs may be separate organisms from the stick they cling to, potentially providing two related life-forms to study. The researchers begin applying their familiar scientific reasoning to the alien problem.

Tonner proposes continuous laboratory coverage using rotating paired shifts and theoretical work in the quarters between shifts. He pairs Jessyn with Irinna, Else with Campar, and himself with Dafyd, informally promoting Jessyn to senior responsibility. When Rickar asks whether he should work with Synnia, Jessyn explains that Synnia has declined to participate. Rickar offers to help wherever needed, but Tonner refuses: because he considered Rickar untrustworthy before the invasion, he will not include him now when the group's survival may depend on the work. The chapter ends with Rickar excluded, rather than with a unified team beginning its schedule.

Ekur of cohort Tkalal, the subjugator-librarian directing the sixteenth dactyl of the Carryx expeditionary fleet, supervises the conquest of Ayayeh. Initial reconnaissance describes the planet's apparent indigenous inhabitants as land-dwelling hexapods called Eelie that move in groups and communicate through a planet-wide song. Ekur-Tkalal coordinates subordinate librarians and the subjugator-prime who commands the soldiers, Rak-hund, Soft Lothark, and other dependent forces. As on Anjiin, the invasion begins by dividing the population into eight groups and killing one-eighth.

The conquest soon fails to follow the expected pattern. Carryx landing forces suffer catastrophic casualties in successive encounters with the Eelie. The prime reports that the captured specimens are not native to Ayayeh but manufactured organisms placed there to deceive the Carryx: the purported local species is a trap. Ekur-Tkalal orders the troops back to their ships, and the drone grid kills approximately half a billion remaining Eelie in moments. It then searches the surrounding system for an attack. Three rifts open in space, from which thirty enemy ships arrive, ten through each rift. The fleet recognizes a long-standing adversary and prepares for a sustained battle.

Because transmission through the ordinary command structure will take time, Ekur-Tkalal transfers a copy of a strategic half-mind into a low-status Sinen, destroying the Sinen's own mind, and launches the resulting messenger through asymmetric space. The report will take approximately seven days to reach the next command level; broader directions may take months. Ekur-Tkalal must direct the local fight in the meantime.

Three weeks into the conflict, the destruction of a Carryx vessel provides an unexpected intelligence opportunity. Enemy combatants that seem able to continue fighting after wounds fatal to ordinary organisms escape in pods from the destruction. Carryx forces catch hundreds of these survivors with a web of void tendrils and magnetic forces. The enemy attempts to prevent their capture, including attacking the pods when rescue proves impossible. Further engagements cost both sides ships, and Ekur-Tkalal repeatedly sends reports without receiving instructions. It views its opponent as exceptionally resistant to subjugation but still assumes that the Carryx can eventually turn its abilities to imperial use.

A response finally arrives from the wider Carryx command structure. The strategic objective is no longer local victory: the remaining ships are to provoke specific enemy responses, record the resulting tactics, and send those observations onward, even though the operations will sacrifice the fleet. Ekur-Tkalal and a minimum crew are instead ordered to depart with the enemy captives. The subjugator-prime questions whether they are still trying to win, but submits when Ekur-Tkalal explains that losses here can support victories elsewhere.

Soldiers and subordinate forces transfer to the ships remaining in the system; the captured enemy and their Soft Lothark guards are moved to Ekur-Tkalal's vessel. The captives are described as thin-bodied beings with fivefold symmetry and hard external tissues, not as Eelie; the Carryx still cannot communicate with them beyond basic levels. Ekur-Tkalal's ship accelerates toward asymmetric space carrying its prisoners, while the remaining dactyl continues its intelligence-gathering attacks and suffers further losses. The chapter leaves the broader war unresolved.

Jessyn uses the unfamiliar but recognizable routines of laboratory work to cope with captivity and her declining psychological resilience. During sleepless periods she sometimes imagines the inevitability of her own death and finds the prospect of no longer being trapped strangely comforting, while distinguishing these thoughts from making plans to die. She gets through the mornings by following familiar habits and throwing herself into the biochemical research. She and Irinna take over the experimental shift from Else and Campar, testing whether cells sampled from the blue, three-legged organism move toward or away from different potential nutrients. So far, most cells remain still, a result that does not yet distinguish inactive tissue from unsuitable nutrients. Jessyn continues to worry about the unknown fate of her brother Jellit.

Irinna suggests finding reproductive cells or other material that might reveal the red organisms' mechanism of genetic inheritance. The two make jokes while discussing how genetic mixing could help them identify the encoding medium. Four agile, golden-eyed, fur-and-feather-covered creatures enter their open laboratory alcove, disrupting their work. Jessyn and Irinna drive them out, then wonder whether they are merely nuisances, test subjects, or fellow researchers. Because the team has no paper or other means of keeping written records, Irinna has developed a workaround: entering their notes as invalid sequences in the salvaged protein-analysis system and preserving them in its error log. Jessyn recognizes the idea's value. The red orb-like organisms contain unusual silicate-rich material, while the biology of the blue organism remains difficult to interpret; Jessyn samples several red organisms, uneasy about the harm she is inflicting on life-forms whose consciousness she cannot assess.

After their shift, Jessyn and Irinna return to their quarters. Rickar eats apart from the others, Synnia remains withdrawn, and Campar washes dishes in the kitchen. Jessyn notices that Campar has become unnaturally still, repeating the same motion. A dropped plate startles him into screaming and collapsing in a severe panic attack. Jessyn asks the others to give him space and leads him through a timed breathing exercise modeled on the help Jellit once gave her. As Campar gradually regains control, he says the group has been behaving as though their situation were normal despite the invasion, killings, and captivity. Jessyn acknowledges that none of them is well and that each has found a different way to manage overwhelming distress. Both begin crying.

In a separate, covert viewpoint, the swarm lies in the bed of its current, unidentified female host and experiences the surrounding captives' chemical expressions of emotion. It can influence human responses through its host body's chemical signaling but has also become susceptible to the feelings it detects. Memories and dreams of its current host mingle with traces of the dead Ameer Kindred, the prior host; the swarm is distinct from both. It secretly records the Carryx city's electromagnetic communications, airborne compounds, inhabitants, and structures, while refraining from active radio or other probing that could reveal its presence. Its accumulated observations remain untransmitted. To fulfill its mission, it must identify a route through Carryx security and explore beyond the human quarters and laboratory without appearing different from the other traumatized captives.

At the start of the next research shift, Campar asks for good news, joking about having to drink coffee without cream. Tonner reports a breakthrough in their analysis of the red orb-like organisms. Their silicate-rich interior is not a single digestive system or separate symbiont, but an environment supporting numerous microscopic organisms that convert materials supplied by the outer shell into complex nutrients. Grinding the red organisms had increased metabolic activity, helping lead to this interpretation. Tonner proposes exploiting the existing internal ecosystem as a nutrient factory; Campar considers introducing an outside organism to take advantage of it, while Else asks what defenses that ecosystem might have. Dafyd follows the broad reasoning but feels intellectually outclassed by the others' speed and depth, occupying himself with cleaning laboratory equipment.

Tonner also complains that Tkson has not visited, leaving the scientists with no obvious way to request supplies. Campar notes how inconsistently the Carryx have anticipated human needs and wonders whether a request mechanism already exists but has not been recognized. At the end of the shift, Else briefly touches Dafyd's arm and asks if he is tired. He leaves with Tonner, but before reaching their quarters he asks to take a walk alone. Tonner agrees with the condition that Dafyd not return to distract the researchers in the laboratory.

Rather than going home, Dafyd sits in the immense shared chamber and watches the diverse captive species. He thinks about the collapse of his former life and his continued attraction to Else, then remembers overcoming his childhood fear of spiders by deliberately handling them. He applies the same approach to the intimidating alien surroundings, discovering that he can look at them with curiosity as well as fear. While watching a pale, scar-banded Carryx confront one of the birdlike beings that habitually faces the corridor walls, Dafyd notices that the translator devices are carried principally by Carryx and their guards. The birdlike creature appears distressed, but Dafyd cannot interpret the exchange.

Remembering Campar's observation about the occupiers' blind spots and Tkson's statement that their workgroup may use particular corridors and rooms, Dafyd approaches the scar-banded Carryx. He asks whether permission to visit their assigned areas extends elsewhere. The alien replies only that access to one place does not imply access to another, and that some locations are permitted while others are not. It does not grant general permission to wander. Dafyd then says his team needs help finding its keeper-librarian. When the Carryx leaves with four Soft Lothark, Dafyd follows them through unfamiliar passageways, other vast chambers, and increasingly specialized alien spaces. The group eventually enters a region where multiple Carryx can be heard. A Soft Lothark stops Dafyd from following farther, and he takes a nearby descending ramp on his own, locating Tkson in a smaller room manipulating glowing information displays.

Dafyd introduces himself and reminds Tkson that it had invited the team to ask for materials needed for their research. The narrative cuts away before their full exchange is shown. More than eight hours after leaving the laboratory, Dafyd returns to the human quarters carrying a metal crate. Tonner demands to know where he has been, while Else and Campar show relief. Dafyd opens the crate to reveal paper-like sheets, containers of black ink, and metal writing styluses. His successful acquisition supplies the team with a way to keep written records, but the chapter does not establish that he has received unrestricted access to the city.

Jessyn and Irinna continue trying to understand the red orb-like organisms and their cultivated internal microorganisms. Jessyn dissects samples to test which amino acids disrupt the microbial farm; the researchers still do not know what the three-legged organism can eat. Four golden-eyed, fur-and-feathered creatures, frequent intruders in the open laboratory, arrive carrying a small gray box and leave it on the floor. Irinna rejects the apparent offering and throws it into the corridor, where the creatures retrieve it. Jessyn and Irinna joke about their motives, but neither recognizes the danger. Meanwhile, the team has been trying to find other surviving humans. Else and Synnia have explored the complex together without success, while Rickar has made separate excursions.

Jessyn is struggling with depression and the disappearance of her brother Jellit. She has only one tablet of her prescribed psychiatric medication left, and it has been almost two weeks since she should have taken it. A conversation about producing nutrients gives her an idea: if the red organisms' microbial farm can be directed to manufacture needed chemicals, perhaps it can produce the active compound in her medicine. She has not tested the idea. Her last pill contains other ingredients that would complicate even an initial toxicity experiment, but the possibility gives her a sudden, unfamiliar sense of hope. Jessyn asks Irinna to complete the control samples while she returns to their quarters to retrieve the tablet. Tonner questions why she has interrupted the work schedule, but she does not explain.

On her way back toward the laboratory, Jessyn hears a low, rushing explosion. Smoke, damaged lights, and a smell of burning material fill the nearby corridors. Inside the alcove, the feathered creatures are tearing apart the experimental samples and notes, while others bite and maul a badly injured Irinna on the floor. Jessyn attacks them, smashing one against a countertop and breaking another's neck while suffering bites and claw wounds herself. The two surviving creatures flee. Irinna, burned and bleeding, says that the box the creatures previously brought was a bomb and that she had not successfully disposed of it. The specific act of detonation is not shown.

Jessyn calls for help, but the alien occupants of the larger chamber ignore her pleas. Irinna grows weaker and continues worrying about their research. Jessyn refuses to leave her alone, recalls a childhood rescue technique, and lifts her across her own wounded shoulder. She carries Irinna back through the alien complex despite exhaustion and her injuries, finally striking her forehead against the quarters' door until Else opens it. Campar carries both women inside, and the others try to tend their wounds while Tonner goes to inspect the destroyed laboratory. Jessyn, disoriented and in bed, asks Else whether Irinna survived. Else can only apologize, making the terrible outcome clear without an explicit description of Irinna's final moments.

Tonner, devastated by Irinna's death and the destruction of the laboratory, confronts the Carryx keeper-librarian Tkson in its office, with Dafyd accompanying him. Tonner believes the scientists have obeyed the Carryx and therefore should have been protected while carrying out their assigned research. Tkson does not accept any such bargain. Dafyd asks what the creatures that attacked the lab are called, and Tkson identifies them as Night Drinkers. When Dafyd asks whether they are attempting the same food-conversion task, Tkson confirms that they are. Dafyd recognizes that the competing subjects are being assessed by the same standard of usefulness and tells the librarian the humans will adapt. Tkson offers no protection or retaliation against the attackers, but says that Irinna's body will be removed.

On the walk back, Tonner resents Dafyd for taking the lead in the discussion and for refusing to insist on guarantees of safety. He is also overwhelmed by the noise and unfamiliarity of the alien city and by memories of Irinna. Dafyd notices that Tkson understood the need to collect and dispose of a dead human even though the Carryx failed to anticipate some ordinary human needs. He infers that other humans may already have died in this complex; this remains his deduction rather than a confirmed report.

Back in the living quarters, Tonner explains that the Night Drinkers are competitors and that the humans appear responsible for protecting themselves. He proposes moving their experimental equipment from the vulnerable shared laboratory alcove into their own rooms, where they might continue working and control access. His plan has not yet been carried out. The others are grieving, and Synnia doubts they could defend themselves. Dafyd argues that the Carryx still want to see whether the humans can be useful. Tonner insists they will solve the assigned biochemical problem before their competitors.

Rickar tells Tonner that the injured Jessyn wants to speak with him. Jessyn shows him her final psychiatric-medication tablet and explains that she has long kept her condition private for fear it would prevent her advancement in research. She had left Irinna in the lab to retrieve the pill, hoping to investigate whether the red organisms' microbial ecosystem could produce the compound she needs. She had not yet begun that experiment. Tonner, desperate to find a cause for the loss he might understand, focuses on Jessyn's decision to leave Irinna alone and on her failure to disclose the proposed work. He leaves after acknowledging her confession without offering reassurance.

Later Tonner visits Else in her private bedroom. He makes clear that he is not asking her to resume their relationship or offer romantic comfort, but that he needs her judgment as his team lead. He admits that his strategy of complying with the Carryx to keep the group safe has failed and asks how he can protect the surviving researchers. Else suggests that protecting everyone may not be entirely his responsibility. Tonner breaks down crying, and she holds him.

The closing passage shifts to the swarm's perspective and reveals that **its current host is Else Annalise Yannin**. Else was already dead when the swarm took her body, yet traces of her consciousness, desires, and judgments persist, as do those of the earlier host, Ameer Kindred. The swarm feels Else's regret and exhaustion with Tonner, her attraction to Dafyd, and the former self's awareness of the ethical problem in desiring a subordinate researcher. It also senses the other humans' grief and increasingly experiences impulses to comfort them and pursue emotionally charged thoughts unrelated to its intelligence mission. The swarm remains a weapon designed to penetrate Carryx defenses, but recognizes that incorporating these surviving remnants of the people it has taken is changing what it is becoming.

After Irinna's death, Rickar, Synnia, Campar, and Dafyd gather in the common room, sharing memories of her as an informal wake. Campar reproaches himself for starting to feel safe; Dafyd observes that hoping the Carryx might care about them was irrational but very human. Rickar recalls meeting Irinna before their laboratory opened, Synnia remembers her nervousness at orientation, and Dafyd remembers her bringing him orange-flavored ice cream when he was working late. Their recollections allow the group to acknowledge a grief they have otherwise been struggling to contain.

Four Sinen arrive with a metal-and-mesh frame to collect Irinna's body, not to bring it into the room. Dafyd shows them where she lies, and the others, including Jessyn, Tonner, and Else, silently watch her remains carried away. Tonner says only that they will work the following day. Rickar reflects on how people continue to need food, rest, company, and ritual despite a catastrophe that seems as though it should have stopped ordinary life.

The next day, Campar and Tonner labor to extract heavy equipment from the ruined laboratory while Dafyd and Rickar stand watch near its open entrance. The lighter gear has largely been salvaged or destroyed. Together they pull a centrifuge free, and Campar and Rickar carry it back in improvised slings. Else has already begun connecting equipment to power supplies in the group's quarters, where the common area is being turned into a protected workspace. The proteomic dictionary remains fixed in the old laboratory and will require additional tools to remove. Samples are ruined, and fresh ones have not yet arrived. Dafyd briefly startles the salvage team by pointing out that one of the horse-sized aliens has a translation device, suggesting that such devices are not restricted to the Carryx and their guards.

Back in the improvised residential laboratory, Tonner insists they will resume the original biological problem once replacement samples arrive. Still devastated by Irinna's death, he reproaches Jessyn for having concealed her medical needs and left Irinna alone. Campar starts to protest, but Dafyd interrupts with a different interpretation of the Carryx's test. He argues that the assigned biochemical task may be only one part of how the captors measure usefulness. The fact that competing subjects could attack them without their keeper intervening suggests the Carryx may also be assessing whether the humans can organize, defend themselves, obtain needed medication and food, and establish contact with other captives. These are Dafyd's hypotheses, not confirmed Carryx criteria. He suggests that Jessyn's attempt to address her medication shortage may have revealed the problem earlier than the group would otherwise have recognized it.

Tonner initially mocks the idea, then hears Dafyd out; Campar calls the reasoning sound and Else agrees that it changes their situation. Jessyn becomes more attentive during the discussion. Tonner concedes that the possibility needs consideration, without definitively endorsing all of Dafyd's suggestions. Campar sees a temporary but significant shift in the group's authority: at that moment, Dafyd rather than Tonner appears to be guiding its direction.

Jessyn insists on accompanying Campar and Rickar to the damaged laboratory to retrieve the proteomic dictionary, the last major item they still need to salvage. She brings an improvised crowbar and tries to tolerate the familiar setting where Irinna was fatally attacked. Campar talks with her as a way of keeping her attention off the approach, while Rickar offers physical reassurance. Jessyn explains why she concealed her psychological illness before joining the research project: she believes Tonner could easily have selected a similarly qualified applicant without that history. She remembers her first serious crisis as an adolescent, when Jellit recognized that she needed medical attention and arranged an introduction to physicians through her school. The siblings learned to describe treatment as improvement rather than an instant cure. Jessyn remains guilty over Irinna's death and struggles with depressive and self-destructive thoughts, but is trying to manage them through sleep, food, bathing, exercise, social contact, and participation in meaningful work. Her companions are also trying to help her obtain replacement medication.

The laboratory is less physically devastated than Jessyn's memories have made it seem. Tonner and Else are back in the quarters repairing a resonance instrument; Synnia is still refusing research duties; Dafyd has gone out to seek the keeper-librarian and information about other humans. Jessyn and Campar begin prying at the proteomic dictionary's mounting while Rickar watches the entrance. Before they can remove it, Rickar warns that five Night Drinkers are observing them from the shared chamber. Campar moves between Jessyn and the creatures, and Rickar prepares to defend her.

Seeing the attackers responsible for Irinna's death turns Jessyn's fear and self-reproach into anger. Instead of retreating, she walks toward them with her crowbar. Rickar follows with a makeshift blade and Campar follows as well. The Night Drinkers withdraw through the surrounding crowd. Jessyn and her companions pursue at a measured pace, without overtaking or fighting them. One Night Drinker appeals to a Soft Lothark, which pays it no useful attention, and flees farther into the complex.

Jessyn follows a Night Drinker into an area of soft, grayish wall perforated by burrows. More of the creatures peer out from within, revealing that their living area lies only about ten minutes' walk from the humans' laboratory. Jessyn strikes her crowbar against the floor and shouts that she knows where they live, demanding that they use a translator if necessary. Whether the creatures understand the words is not established. She then turns back without entering their burrows or attacking them.

The exhilaration of frightening the Night Drinkers wears off during the walk back, and Jessyn's depression and remorse return. She realizes that their previously narrow movements around the city had kept the group from noticing a nearby threat. At the laboratory, the proteomic dictionary remains uncollected. A remark from Rickar about Jessyn needing her medication hurts her, although he appears to mean it lightly. Campar embraces her, reassures her of his loyalty, and accepts her acknowledgment that everything is not going to be all right in any simple sense. The chapter ends as Jessyn realizes that, for perhaps the first time since the invasion, something has been afraid of a human.

Dafyd makes another journey through the immense Carryx complex to visit Tkson, trying to replace fear with deliberate curiosity. He is becoming familiar with the routes between the humans' quarters, laboratory complex, and the keeper-librarian's rooms, although he remains struck by the scale of a city built into one of many colossal ziggurats. He hopes to persuade Tkson to let him learn more about the Carryx and their needs. Privately, he also thinks the librarian's quarters might be a place where survivors from other Anjiin workgroups could eventually appear; he does not reveal this part of his purpose.

Dafyd waits outside while Tkson speaks with another Carryx. After the visitor leaves, he proposes spending time with Tkson to understand the Carryx better and make the humans more useful. Tkson reacts with an alarming threat display, raising its massive forelegs, and Dafyd immediately prostrates himself. Tkson rejects the relevance of possibility, insisting that a species is useful or it is not and that an animal cannot choose its essential nature or social place. The translator hesitates briefly over the latter idea. Tkson dismisses him without approving the proposal. Shaken afterward, Dafyd repeats the conversation to himself, wondering why the suggestion provoked such hostility and whether the translation hesitation is significant.

Returning through more crowded corridors, Dafyd notices a guard bearing pale arm bands like those of the Carryx previously seen confronting the birdlike creatures he privately calls hallway crows. He realizes he has not seen any of those creatures recently. He watches for them in the cathedral-like common space and finds none, but cannot explain their absence.

In the human quarters, Campar and Jessyn recount their confrontation with the Night Drinkers, including the discovery of what may be their laboratory or nesting area. Tonner, working amid equipment salvaged into the residential common room, says the team is recovering lost experimental progress. Initial tests suggest that Jessyn's medicine is not toxic to the red organisms, raising the possibility that their microbial farm could produce it in a useful concentration; whether the microorganisms can actually express the drug remains unknown. Dafyd helps prepare samples and later describes Tkson's near-violent reaction, the banded Carryx, and the missing hallway crows. After Irinna's death, the group's routines and relationships have begun to change: Tonner is less concerned with rigid shift management, Campar tends to the others, and Rickar is quietly being included in laboratory work again.

That night, Else enters Dafyd's room and asks to stay with him. She argues that their remaining time, security, and opportunities for comfort are uncertain. Dafyd worries about Tonner and the team's relationships, but invites her to remain. The narration then returns to the swarm occupying Else's body. It allows much of Else's residual emotional and physical response to unfold as it experiences intimacy with Dafyd, while Ameer Kindred's fading echo judges Else's choices and power relationships. The swarm recognizes Else's shame, longing, and conflicting sense of responsibility, and finds itself responding with unexpected compassion.

While with Dafyd, the swarm quietly asks about the increase in armed Carryx he has noticed. It has independently detected more vessels arriving and changes in the city's subtle chemical and electromagnetic signals. It concludes that the Carryx are preparing another phase of war, an interpretation grounded in its covert observations rather than confirmed by the human characters. It urgently needs to leave the tightly watched world-palace or find another gap in its security to transmit what it knows. Even as the mission presses upon it, the swarm chooses to remain close to Dafyd and experiences a moment of comfort whose significance it does not fully understand.

Tonner notices Else spending the night in Dafyd's room and feels hurt despite recognizing that their former relationship was neither a permanent commitment nor something he could control. He questions his own conduct as her supervisor and his sense of entitlement to her affection. The crowded residential laboratory affords him little privacy or escape, so he immerses himself in work, staying awake through the night. The fifth specimen of the blue, three-legged organism is alive but facing starvation: three previous specimens died without proper food, and another died after Tonner tried feeding it the red organisms' silicate-rich pulp.

Tonner uses the centrifuge to separate a reddish band containing what he believes is Jessyn's medication's active compound. He adds it to a small amount already collected, estimating that it might supply about three days of treatment at her former dose. He has not established how well she will absorb the compound or whether accompanying substances could cause harm. Campar prepares breakfast and tries to discuss Tonner's hurt over Else and Dafyd. Tonner accepts that feelings cannot simply be switched off, while Campar observes that relationships are difficult even outside captivity. Their exchange is interrupted when something strikes the entrance and Tonner begins to open the door.

About half a dozen Night Drinkers surge into the quarters, bearing small round, membrane-covered sacs that burst on impact and spread a burning gel. Tonner falls against power cables while Campar fights nearby. The attackers throw the sacs around the kitchen and laboratory equipment, and Tonner beats one against the resonance scanner while another bites his leg. Campar throws an attacker against a wall. Jessyn, Rickar, Else, and Dafyd join the defense, and the remaining Night Drinkers retreat after a chaotic struggle. Tonner is wounded and splashed with the gel, as is Campar, but the container holding Jessyn's medication remains intact.

Tonner orders anyone exposed to the gel to shower. Its immediate effects prove less severe than he feared: his skin develops painful redness, while Campar has irritation and some small blisters. The group blocks the door with furniture, and Tonner recognizes that they should have prepared a lock, a viewing hole, or other entrance security. He also finds himself unable to turn to Else for the reassurance he might once have sought.

In the common room, Jessyn and Rickar examine the body of a Night Drinker killed in the fight. They identify unusual skeletal support, a possible one-way gas-exchange system, and gut contents that seem more consistent with herbivory than its teeth would have suggested. Tonner is struck by his colleagues' instinct to investigate an attacker despite their distress. He then gives Jessyn the small cup of experimental medicine and tells her to take it once daily, preferably with food until they learn more about its effects. She is moved by the tangible chance to resume treatment.

Campar shows Tonner an intact membrane sac recovered from the attack. They recognize that it is derived from the same red organism used in their research, but the Night Drinkers have made its contents into an irritating biological weapon rather than a pharmaceutical source. Seeing an opportunity to learn from a rival group's biochemical work, Tonner assigns the team to collect samples of the gel, examine the sac, check damaged laboratory equipment, and pursue three parallel lines of work: food for the three-legged organism, Jessyn's medication, and weapons testing. The team responds with renewed focus, while the exhausted Tonner refuses to rest.

In Else's bedroom, Dafyd wonders what their growing intimacy means and returns to his attempts to understand the Carryx. The humans have bedrooms with windows in vast buildings where many rooms cannot have them; he cannot tell whether that reflects biological needs, status, or chance. More broadly, he cannot reconcile the empire's overwhelming success at conquest with its apparent indifference to acquiring information from subjects or preparing them for the dangers of shared captivity. Tkson reacted threateningly when Dafyd offered to learn how to make the humans more useful. Else questions whether such knowledge can restore what they lost, but Dafyd hopes it may help preserve what remains of their lives together.

Jessyn notices a change after beginning the experimental medication Tonner prepared from the red organisms. In the first days she felt little difference, but the recurring fantasies in which she imagined dying during Irinna's murder have gradually shifted toward fantasies of harming the Night Drinkers instead. She calls this a return toward her baseline but privately knows that she has traded one kind of suffering for another. In her room, Synnia shares improvised tea and asks whether the medicine is helping; Jessyn speaks cautiously, thinking about Irinna and Jellit without voicing all her grief or anger. She remembers an ordinary evening with Irinna before the invasion, contrasting that life with her current preoccupation with the attackers.

In the residential laboratory, Tonner, Rickar, and Campar examine pale, membrane-wrapped globes modeled on the Night Drinkers' weapon. They debate the molecule most likely responsible for its effects and whether three unidentified cofactors matter. Dissections of the attackers have provided clues about their anatomy and physiology, but their motives and environment remain uncertain. Jessyn proposes testing the new weapon on the Night Drinkers at the nearby burrow wall. Tonner, Campar, and Rickar agree to accompany her without informing the other group members. Campar carries the limited stock of globes, and Rickar brings a crowbar.

At the burrows, Jessyn and Tonner throw their prototypes into openings and against the wall. Where the payload strikes the gray, fungal-looking material, it liquefies into black fluid. Night Drinkers emerge screaming and disorganized. Rickar hits an approaching creature with his crowbar, apparently injuring a leg. Jessyn and Tonner strike several others with the globes, causing them to collapse or struggle to wipe away the substance. When some attempt to help a fallen companion, another projectile hits them. The humans are exhilarated by their ability to make the attackers retreat. With their ammunition nearly exhausted, they withdraw holding the last two globes as a warning, and the Night Drinkers do not pursue them. The scene establishes serious injury and a successful raid, but it does not independently verify how many of the Night Drinkers die.

Back at their quarters, the raiders report that the weapon worked, apparently without the additional cofactors they had been investigating. The group shares a celebratory meal. Jessyn feels an intoxicating reversal of the powerlessness she has endured and believes that the medicine enabled her to act when she previously could not. Dafyd cautions that attacking competitors may mean accepting the Carryx's terms of competition without understanding the larger purpose. Campar and Jessyn counter that they must survive within the rules imposed on them and that their previous lack of vigilance contributed to Irinna's death. Dafyd acknowledges their position. That night, Jessyn sleeps deeply, though her new confidence and violent impulses do not by themselves establish recovery from her illness.

After weeks traveling outside direct communication, Ekur-Tkalal's ship returns from asymmetric space to a protected region of the Carryx empire with the fivefold enemy prisoners captured near Ayayeh. The subjugator-librarian receives an order from the regulator-librarian, an exalted representative of the Sovran's command hierarchy, to take the captives to low-animal holding pens and supervise their interrogation. Ekur-Tkalal dislikes the assignment because of the proximity it requires to animals. Its body is already changing in response to the new role, which will make it an interrogator-librarian. It reflects on the hierarchy, its own caste limitations, and the scarred fighting arm marking an earlier failure.

Else Yannin's body, occupied by the swarm, walks the Carryx corridors with Synnia. Synnia is looking for other human prisoners and remains wary of the Night Drinkers, while the swarm secretly uses its enhanced senses to scan for other information. It asks Synnia about her early relationship with Nöl, and the fragments of Else and Ameer Kindred's minds help it interpret her expressions. When Synnia asks about Else's own relationships, the swarm feels Else's embarrassment and offers only that her situation is more complicated. They note an unfamiliar hallway and an alien mosaic that the swarm finds unexpectedly moving.

Elsewhere in the complex, Ekur-Tkalal oversees efforts to understand the fivefold prisoners' biology and communication. Some captives are vivisected; others are trained through food and pain to exchange basic information. Ekur relies on a white-eyed Sinen intermediary. Once the translation half-mind has enough data, it questions one of twenty surviving prisoners. The captive says its kind did not evolve on a homeworld but was manufactured as living machinery for warfare, resembling a biological half-mind. Asked who created it, the prisoner claims its masters are called Aunjeli, beings of semistable plasma living in stellar coronas. Ekur-Tkalal doubts this account and increases painful ultraviolet illumination. The captive then demands that the light be reduced and gives a plainly hostile refusal instead of answering further. The chapter does not verify the claimed identity or nature of its makers.

During the walk with Synnia, the swarm detects a faint, patterned distress transmission on frequencies inaccessible to ordinary human senses. It recognizes a signal from a fellow operative, but cannot immediately investigate. Later, when it can leave the residential quarters alone, it follows the call into less populated and more heavily guarded corridors, altering Else's body to disguise its movements, suppress scent, and communicate. It avoids a nearby Carryx by hiding in a small chamber. The captive pilot warns it not to approach and transmits an encrypted account of the trap at Ayayeh, the enemy's losses and successes, the captives taken by the Carryx, and what has happened during interrogation. The swarm adds this information to its own intelligence archive. Fearing that the exchange has been detected, it stops transmitting and retreats, restoring its host's appearance and taking care not to attract attention.

Back in Ekur-Tkalal's viewpoint, the white-eyed Sinen reports that the interrogated captive emitted a transmission concerning Ayayeh. Carryx dampers limited the signal's range: it could not have been received outside the holding complex. Ekur-Tkalal reasons that there is no meaningful recipient for it inside the animal pens and allows that the emission may have been an involuntary response to distress. It decides to question the prisoner about the signal. The swarm, meanwhile, has successfully received the intelligence but has not sent its own accumulated findings beyond Carryx-controlled space. The chapter ends with Ekur-Tkalal unaware of the swarm's identity or role.

Now accepted back into the research team, Rickar sometimes misses his previous exclusion and the quiet hours it allowed him to share with Synnia. He suspects that Tonner's attempt to preserve the laboratory's old hierarchy is an illusion, since the Carryx have divided their lives irrevocably into before and after the invasion. He is becoming more respectful of Dafyd, whose unassuming manner now seems to conceal patient, strategic thinking. Rickar suggests obtaining paint to mark the outside of the humans' door so other surviving Anjiin captives might recognize their presence, and the group briefly jokes about possible signs.

Scratching and chittering at the door interrupt them. Believing the Night Drinkers have returned to attack, Dafyd, Jessyn, Tonner, Campar, and Rickar prepare knives, a pry bar, and their last two sacs of defensive chemical weapon. Else and Synnia are away exploring the complex, so waiting indefinitely could leave them exposed outside. When Dafyd opens the door, however, about a dozen Night Drinkers kneel and prostrate themselves. One places a translator device and a severed head on the floor. Rickar interprets the repeated hand-squeezing gesture, which he saw during the humans' earlier attack, as an attempt to surrender. The translator carries an appeal to end the fighting. Rickar believes the Night Drinkers killed one of their own as a peace offering, but the head's identity and the circumstances of its death are not independently established.

Dafyd steps forward unarmed and asks the Night Drinkers for a name and whether they, like the humans, were brought to the Carryx against their will. The device translates their plea for submission, but they withdraw and flee before a conversation develops. The humans remain uncertain whether the submission is sincere. Dafyd sees another possibility in the translator they have surrendered, takes it, and walks into the alien complex. Rickar and Jessyn follow; Tonner remains behind, where he can meet Else and Synnia on their return.

Dafyd brings the translator to an unfamiliar chamber where hanging rope-like structures surround a large, many-eyed creature resembling a hairless bear. He asks whether it understands him, and the device replies that it can. Dafyd then asks whether it has seen others who look human. The narrative cuts away before the answer or any directions are reported.

In another part of the complex, Jellit prepares for his turn guarding the quarters of a separate human group. His right leg is wounded and bandaged, and his companions include Allstin, Dennia, Kell, and Llaren Morse. Kell has improvised a gun, but the group has only three cartridges remaining. Jellit dims the lights, relishing even a small measure of control over his surroundings, and waits alone while Llaren is away at a meeting. He hears unfamiliar footsteps and then an unmistakably human voice. Opening the door, he finds Jessyn with Rickar and Dafyd. Jessyn and Jellit are overcome with relief and tears at their reunion. The source confirms that Dafyd's search ultimately succeeds, but does not narrate all the intervening conversations or directions.

Jessyn experiences the reunion with Jellit as a kind of intoxication, although the human captives have no alcohol. The visit brings unfamiliar faces to their quarters, notably the gregarious Allstin and the gaunt astronomer Llaren Morse. In the crowded common area, Jellit sits with his bandaged leg while Tonner eagerly discusses the biochemical problem and the latest three-legged test organism. Else, Dafyd, Jessyn, and others listen to Allstin's comic account of arriving naked at another human group's quarters and encountering his former department chair, Merrol. The story allows the prisoners to laugh at an experience of degradation without pretending that captivity is normal.

Llaren admires the humans' unusually spacious living quarters and their view over the Carryx city; his own group has had far less access to the outside. Dafyd asks about the librarian supervising Llaren's workgroup. Allstin explains that their Carryx assigned them to apply Llaren's astronomical scanning protocols to unfamiliar datasets and then withdrew, so they know little about its identity or behavior.

When Llaren and Allstin prepare to return to their group, Tonner volunteers to accompany them, offering his room to Jellit. Rickar and Campar also go to visit, while Llaren remains as an overnight guest in Tonner's vacant room. Jessyn perceives tension in Else's reaction to Tonner's eagerness to leave the home he now shares with Else and Dafyd. The remaining people rearrange furniture and spend the evening sharing food, songs, and stories of their voyages and their captors, briefly recovering a sense of human companionship.

Jellit and Llaren recount their journey, including fellow prisoners' violence, hallucinations, and singing, and their subsequent assignment to a facility containing astronomical instruments and observational datasets. Dafyd and Synnia describe the failed escape aboard the ship. Llaren says he had abandoned hope of finding other human groups, but Jellit persisted, independently contacting three groups; their broader network now knows of roughly two dozen groups and suspects more exist. Asked how Dafyd found Jellit, the visitors learn about the Night Drinkers' translator. Dafyd explains that he asked other captive species to look for someone who smelled like Jessyn, reasoning that siblings might share detectable chemical characteristics and that some alien species might possess stronger chemoreception. This was an inference about other species' senses, not an ability Dafyd demonstrated himself. Jessyn and Else speculate that the Carryx's red shower cleanser may suppress cross-species odor problems, but this remains a hypothesis.

Llaren observes that the reunited humans increasingly speak of Anjiin in the past tense, as though their home no longer exists. The remark dims the gathering. Afterward Jessyn and Jellit wash dishes together and acknowledge their fear that they would never see each other again. Jessyn finds herself unable to sleep as joyful memories of her former life sharpen her awareness of what she has lost.

Walking in the corridor, Jessyn overhears Llaren speaking quietly with Synnia at her open door. Synnia agrees to help an unnamed man with an unspecified undertaking. Both notice Jessyn, and Llaren withdraws. Synnia insists that everything is fine, but her hard expression makes Jessyn doubt it. The chapter does not reveal whom they mean or what Synnia has agreed to do.

Dafyd and Else take the translator surrendered by the Night Drinkers into the vast common chamber, wondering whether they could have requested one from their librarian sooner. They question several captive alien species. A chitin-covered Phylarch of Astrdeim says its people once built worlds of living architecture and now construct for the Carryx. It remembers the destruction of the Elmrath and Colei and repeatedly describes its own survival and service as a source of gratitude. A small pink swarm refuses to speak, warning that the humans' plans will fail. A tendril-filled chamber, uncertain whether it is speaking through vines or grubs, describes being repeatedly harvested to perform air-cleaning tasks and says it has lost any sense of its origins. A shell-bearing alien refuses to speak for fear of execution. A flickering blue crystalline entity declares itself inseparable from the Carryx and celebrates its service to them. These accounts show contrasting attitudes toward captivity and assimilation, not independently established histories of each species.

After half a day of interviews, Else is overwhelmed by how much remains to be learned and wonders whom they could ever tell. Dafyd tries to reassure her. Their conversation turns intimate: Else warns that she is not who Dafyd thinks she is and cannot promise to make him happy, while Dafyd openly declares his love. She does not explain her warning. The conversation breaks off when she spots the humans' Carryx librarian moving through the crowd with Rak-hund soldiers.

They follow the librarian to the Night Drinkers' alcove. A broader, notch-headed Carryx is waiting there, and the Night Drinkers move frantically about it. The other Carryx lowers itself in submission before the humans' librarian, which strikes and breaks one of its legs. The two Carryx then converse without signs of continued fighting. At the librarian's direction, Rak-hund tear apart the Night Drinkers' sponge-like habitat. The Night Drinkers resist with explosive-tipped weapons, injuring soldiers, but the Rak-hund kill them all. The destruction lasts more than an hour; even those who flee carrying amber eggs are killed. The soldiers continue clearing the wreckage while the Carryx remain beside the massacre.

Dafyd thinks of Irinna and recoils from the violence. Seeing the dead Night Drinkers, he asks Else whether accepting their surrender brought about their extermination, but the source does not establish why the Carryx ordered the attack or whether the humans caused it. Else, outwardly calm, answers with the Carryx phrase 'What is, is.' Dafyd vomits.

Jessyn visits the separate quarters where her brother Jellit lives with his workgroup. She notices the physical and emotional changes captivity has made in him, including his difficulty finding words, and they speak about the destruction of Anjiin. Jellit explains that his group was seized while preparing near-field visualizations for a gathering at the Scholar's Common. The Carryx ordered them to recreate Llaren Morse's thin-spectrum lensing work, which had allowed them to detect the invaders before the Carryx wanted to be seen. Jessyn notices the traces of absent companions and learns that Simien, who needed medication for an inherited blood condition, did not die of that condition. She and Jellit recognize the similarities in their losses, even though their quarters and experiences differ.

Jellit praises Jessyn for surviving the interruption of her psychiatric medication and helping defend her workgroup against the Night Drinkers. Jessyn remembers the first serious episode of her illness in adolescence, when Jellit and their parents kept watch over her, and his continued support afterward. During captivity, unable to rely on him, she needed help from other people. She tells Jellit that if they ever return to Anjiin she will no longer ask him to pass up career postings to care for her; he says they can discuss that if they get home.

Allstin, Dennia, and Merrol arrive, followed by Llaren and a visibly intent Synnia. Then Urrys Ostencour enters, much changed since Jessyn saw him organize the failed rebellion during their transport. Jellit admits the encounter was arranged. Ostencour says he has been locating surviving humans and knows the whereabouts of roughly three hundred captives, fewer than half of those believed taken. He has heard unverified rumors that some artists and writers were executed as extraneous. The groups he has traced include scientists and administrators. He singles out Jessyn, rather than Tonner or Dafyd, as someone with influence after her leadership in the Night Drinker fighting, and asks for her support.

Ostencour reveals crude firearms made by human prisoners, some using chemical propellants and others short-lived magnetic mechanisms. He and his allies infer from the Carryx's tolerance of these weapons that the occupiers do not consider them a threat, though Jessyn sees other possible explanations. Ostencour sets a gun before her as a gift. Jessyn argues that a revolt cannot defeat the Carryx and recognizes that his alternative definition of victory may be to die while resisting. Drawing on her own experience of suicidal thinking, she rejects the assumption that his willingness to die is the same as what she has lived through. She eventually picks up and examines the gun, but does not agree to join him.

When Jessyn asks exactly what he wants, Ostencour says her biochemistry group has the capacity to produce chemicals at scale and has already used biological weapons against the Night Drinkers. He asks them to design weapons capable of harming the Carryx, promising that his people will use them. The chapter ends with that request unanswered.

When Jessyn and Synnia present Ostencour's request for biological weapons, Tonner's research team divides over whether to help the resistance. Synnia insists that fighting is a matter of humanity's identity, and Rickar argues that postponing rebellion indefinitely amounts to accepting their captivity. Campar warns that retaliation could mean collective death, and Else agrees that the group is not ready. Dafyd initially stays silent. Tonner separates the question of feasibility from the question of whether they should fight. Unlike their earlier use of Night Drinker weapons, developing an attack on the Carryx would require studying unfamiliar physiology without specimens. He thinks that Dafyd might find traces during ordinary visits to the librarian. Tonner also asserts from physical appearance that the Carryx evolved in water and need unusually high oxygen levels, but the chapter presents this as his deduction rather than an established biological fact. He proposes gathering physiological information before making any weapons. Dafyd observes that the Carryx are interested in using humans, not afraid of them. Tonner begins to tell the group their answer to Ostencour is 'not right now,' when the librarian enters.

The librarian orders the group to follow without explaining beyond saying there has been an alteration. Fearing punishment or execution, Rickar takes a crowbar and Tonner brings a knife; Jessyn notices that no Rak-hund soldiers accompany the librarian. The group is led past its gutted former laboratory to a new, equipped alcove occupying the Night Drinkers' former home, where the signs of the massacre have been removed. The librarian shows them a sample of their cultivated berry organisms and the three-legged, turtle-like creature. Their new assignment is to make organisms from the first subject world nourishing for an organism from another world. When Dafyd asks about the displaced Night Drinkers, the librarian says the humans have earned access to their resources by proving useful and can earn more by continuing to do so. The explanation does not establish that the Carryx trust the humans or approve of their resistance.

The new equipment excites Campar, but Jessyn doubts they can ever be safe in the alcove. Synnia interprets the timing and expanded tools as a sign that Ostencour's proposal is right. Tonner begins an inventory. Dafyd and Campar remain to catalog and calibrate the equipment, Jessyn and Rickar guard the entrance, and Else and Synnia return to the residential quarters. Tonner privately longs for an ordinary life rather than more laboratory work. He recognizes that the team already has substantial responsibilities producing medication and making the berries into food for the turtle-like organism, with any secret weapons project adding still more strain.

Dafyd later visits Ostencour in his own quarters, explicitly without authority to speak for the workgroup. He argues that Carryx projects appear intended to test whether captive species can be domesticated. Ostencour suggests that the apparent absence of active rebels among other captive species reflects the killing of those who resisted. Dafyd fears that an uprising could make the Carryx judge all humanity, including people still on Anjiin, unusable and destroy them. Ostencour calls that fear a mistaken belief that submission can control the captors' decisions. He acknowledges that a guerrilla war cannot win, but insists that humans will eventually resist regardless and that he would rather organize an effective blow now than leave the attempt to less capable successors. The conversation ends without an agreement or resolution.

After speaking with Ostencour, Dafyd watches the varied captive species crossing the vast common chamber. He now knows some of their names and histories, but that knowledge has made the possibility of humanity's extermination harder to ignore. He compares the Carryx system to the berry organisms, which maintain and exploit smaller life forms, except that the empire appears indifferent to whether its captives can survive. He thinks of the dwindling food, Jessyn's earlier loss of medication, a captive human's untreated hereditary condition, and the possibility that the Night Drinkers suffered from an unsuitable atmosphere. The latter is speculation, not a confirmed explanation of their behavior. The empire demands usefulness while leaving its subjects to solve their own survival problems. Dafyd is aware of a small human conspiracy forming against it and dreads the consequences.

He detours to the new laboratory, where Jessyn stands guard. Tonner and Campar are arguing inside: Tonner wants to begin food-tolerance testing with the turtle-like alien, while Campar favors further analysis of the berry organisms' internal systems. Dafyd observes how much captivity has changed Jessyn and senses that she anticipates the resistance ending in the humans' slaughter. He leaves without asking her what she thinks of Ostencour's plan.

At their quarters, Dafyd finds Else, who has been exploring alone. He asks what she is still searching for now that the Night Drinkers are gone and other humans have been located. She insists that an immediate uprising cannot succeed: fighting the librarian or organizing an insurrection would get them killed, and victory requires surviving long enough to achieve a larger objective. After asking Dafyd to hear her out, Else tells him that the Carryx have been fighting a vast war for generations and that their enemies knew Anjiin was about to be attacked. According to Else, those enemies covertly brought a weapon to Anjiin six months before the invasion: a multitude of microscopic machines capable of occupying a living host. The weapon was tasked with entering Carryx territory alongside a captive, gathering intelligence, and transmitting it back to its creators. The source does not establish that Else herself became its host six months before the attack.

Else admits that she knew in general terms that the invasion was coming, but says warning Anjiin's authorities would only have alerted the Carryx to a possible information leak. When Dafyd asks where the spy is, black motes briefly move beneath the skin of Else's hand. She says the conscious entity is inside her, has been there a long time, and is cooperating with her. She calls it the Swarm. Dafyd is unsettled and asks whether she is still Else; she insists she is, but does not explain the relationship fully. Else says she has been searching for a way to send its accumulated intelligence beyond Carryx-controlled space. Security on a Carryx homeworld prevents her from doing so, but she hopes the humans may eventually be transferred to a conquered system where security is less stringent. That future transfer is a possibility rather than an assured plan. She claims she could use the weapon to kill many Carryx, but doing so would destroy both the opportunity to transmit its knowledge and the weapon itself.

Dafyd suggests telling the human conspirators, but Else warns that the Carryx may be listening. She says she can temporarily prevent eavesdropping, although repeated gaps could draw attention. Instead, she asks Dafyd to warn the librarian about Ostencour's plans. She believes that presenting the insurgents as a limited problem could spare the rest of humanity from being judged impossible to domesticate. Reporting them herself would attract dangerous scrutiny, whereas Dafyd's relationship with the librarian would make the report plausible. Dafyd recoils at the prospect of condemning Jessyn and other captives to death. He questions whether Else's affection for him, beginning with a kiss before the invasion, was genuine or intended to make him useful to the Swarm. Else gives no answer. Dafyd says he must think. She asks him not to disclose her secret and not to take too long. He makes no decision about reporting the resistance.

Rickar wakes in Dennia's bed after they have become lovers. Dennia is an engineer who worked with high-precision lasers on the near-field visualization project, and she does not know whether her husband and son on Anjiin are still alive. As Rickar leaves her group's quarters and returns through the captive complex, he is surprised to feel happy. He recognizes that although his old life and safety are gone, human intimacy and moments of pleasure remain possible in captivity.

Outside his own group's door, Rickar finds Synnia sitting alone. She has lost track of time and even of how old she is since the Carryx killed Nöl. She tells him that she remains frightened, furious, and unable to move beyond her grief. She could tolerate helping make medicine for Jessyn, but hearing Tonner discuss the assigned food project for the turtle-like alien makes her feel that they have resumed serving their captors. Rickar sits beside her and takes her hand; their shared experience of having been excluded from Tonner's group allows her to accept his company even when she wants solitude.

Elsewhere, Jellit returns from a clandestine meeting with Skinnerling and Kos, engineers responsible for making more guns for Ostencour's resistance. Their workgroup's leader opposes the conspiracy after losing a friend in Ostencour's failed revolt during the voyage. Dafyd waits outside Jellit's quarters and asks privately whether Jellit could reconsider the planned attack, or at least delay it, for Jessyn's sake. Jellit angrily replies that he is wholly committed and would rather risk his own death, Jessyn's, and everyone else's than submit to the Carryx. Dafyd leaves after saying Jellit is making a mistake. Later Merrol indicates that Dafyd may be a problem and gestures toward the gun, suggesting a possible violent response without an explicit decision being shown.

The narrative then follows the Swarm's own consciousness, composed in part of the memories and responses of Else Yannin and Ameer Kindred. It is increasingly alarmed that human groups are connecting and organizing resistance, threatening its intelligence mission. Its altered senses enable it to observe activity through walls, but when it emerges to speak with Dafyd, Synnia notices its eyes have changed; the Swarm hurriedly restores their ordinary human appearance and makes an excuse. Alone with Dafyd, it hears him say he cannot report the conspiracy while Jellit refuses to abandon it. Dafyd wants to explain the spy's purpose to Jellit, but both fear he might expose the Swarm or treat it as another enemy alien. The Swarm offers another approach: it will make sure Jellit corroborates a story that he himself asked Dafyd to warn the librarian in exchange for protection. Dafyd reluctantly agrees. When he asks whether it would lie to him to achieve that result, the Swarm admits that it would, but says it will not. Its internal voices also reveal that Else and the Swarm have developed genuine affection for Dafyd, although the moral consequences of their manipulation remain.

As morning approaches, Dafyd rehearses what he might say to the librarian. He encounters Campar preparing a hot drink and briefly resents his continual jokes. Campar explains that humor is how he copes with captivity; Dafyd admits he does not want to lose any more of his companions. The exchange reinforces his distress over the choice before him. Tonner suddenly enters, feverishly drawing molecular diagrams. He holds two sheets against the window to superimpose their figures and announces that he knows how to make the berry organisms nourish the turtle-like creature. The chapter ends on Tonner's discovery, before Dafyd's planned meeting with the librarian.

After a sleepless night, Dafyd goes to the human moiety's librarian and describes the resistance conspiracy. Else has been with him for much of the night but leaves before he gets up. Dafyd tells the librarian that Jellit asked him to deliver the warning because Jellit trusted his established access to the Carryx. The librarian grows attentive when Dafyd mentions proposed biological weapons against the Carryx, then sends a Rak-hund to fetch Jellit. It says Jellit will be made to understand that his safety is unimportant. Dafyd fears Jellit may contradict his account, and he resolves, as far as he can, not to reveal Else's spy even under coercion.

While they wait, the librarian asks about the group's latest assignment. Dafyd reports Tonner's possible discovery of a way to make the berry organisms a reliable food source for the turtle-like captive. The librarian becomes interested in whether the method could be extended to other organisms. Dafyd describes it as related to the research that reconciled Anjiin's two trees of life, although further work and more data would be needed. The librarian reacts by calling the situation tragic because the researchers have come close without seeing 'the end,' but the referent of that remark is not explained. As he talks, Dafyd doubts how much he truly knows about the Swarm or its purpose, yet tells himself that doing nothing would risk the extermination of everyone on Anjiin.

A Rak-hund brings Jellit in. Jellit looks ill, rigid, gray-faced, and almost unresponsive. Dafyd briefly suspects Else may have drugged him, but the chapter does not establish what caused his condition. Asked whether he knows Dafyd and sent him to report a conspiracy, Jellit hesitates painfully and then confirms the story. Crying as he speaks, he identifies Urrys Ostencour as a local resistance leader, names Ferre Luminan of the energy physics group as another, says a third leader's identity is unknown to him, and reports weapons and two strike teams of twenty people each. He continues to supply names and information, explicitly acknowledging where his knowledge ends and suggesting others who may know more. The conspiracy is substantially larger than Dafyd had imagined.

After hearing the report, the librarian says the rebels would have failed in both their own and the Carryx's intentions but have instead achieved something they cannot understand. Jellit begs to be allowed to live and serve. The librarian responds that every captive serves whether living or dead. It orders both men to stay in the office, offers them a chance to report physical distress, places a Rak-hund at the exit, and leaves after working with unfamiliar projections of light. Dafyd cannot tell whether the guard is there to detain them, protect them, or both.

Jellit collapses against the wall, shaking and overcome by what he has done. He calls their situation deeply unethical but tells Dafyd that their actions were necessary and that Dafyd should remember he was right to act. His behavior and exhaustion do not establish that his cooperation was freely chosen or disclose exactly what Else did to obtain it. When Dafyd asks whether Else explained things, Jellit says she gave him a deeper understanding of the situation, adding that she did what she had to do. Jellit warns Dafyd not to idealize her. The two acknowledge that despite their motives they feel like collaborators. Dafyd reassures Jellit that Jessyn will not lose her brother again, but Jellit qualifies this as true only for the moment. As noises of possible violence sound elsewhere, they remain in the guarded office, awaiting consequences for a long time.

Jessyn enjoys working in the new laboratory alcove, whose spaciousness, lighting, and integrated equipment offer a brief respite from the fear of captivity. It is also the former home of the Night Drinkers, whose destruction she witnessed after their attacks killed Irinna. Synnia and Dennia are posted at the entrance while Jessyn and Rickar prepare a feeding trial for the three-legged, shell-bearing alien the humans call the not-turtle. Using Tonner's proposed technique, they break open several berries, treat their contents with a mild acid and catalysts, and test the resulting mash. Their measurements fall within expected ranges. When they offer the food to the captive animal, it eats eagerly, giving them encouraging evidence that it finds the preparation palatable, but not yet proof of complete or sustained nutrition.

Jessyn calls for Synnia to see the result, but Rickar notices danger at the alcove entrance. A Rak-hund approaches Synnia and Dennia. Synnia briefly turns toward Jessyn with a calm, determined expression. Dennia shouts for Synnia to run and fires a concealed gun into the Rak-hund's head. Wounded and bleeding pale blood, it drives Dennia down and stabs her repeatedly with its knife-like legs. Rickar pulls Jessyn farther into the alcove, holding a scalpel while Jessyn grabs an empty flask as an improvised weapon. The Rak-hund comes toward them but then withdraws, leaving Dennia dead. Rickar kneels beside her. Jessyn infers that the soldiers are killing people committed to Ostencour's conspiracy while sparing those, like her own workgroup, who have not agreed to participate. She cannot know whether someone betrayed the conspirators or the Carryx simply monitored their conversations. Jessyn insists on going to check the other humans; Rickar refuses to remain behind with Dennia's body and accompanies her.

Synnia, meanwhile, runs toward the near-field research group's quarters, trying to warn its members rather than hide. She reaches the corridor amid gunfire and finds a dead Rak-hund outside. Allstin helps the injured or shaken Merrol over the corpse, while Llaren Morse waits at their open doorway. Allstin sees Synnia and helps her reach shelter. Merrol says she was with Ferre and thinks Ferre escaped, but Vivan did not. Synnia urges them to warn Ostencour and the others. With no rear exit, the four face another assault. The outer door splinters under repeated blows, and two Rak-hund enter. Synnia charges at them and is struck beneath the ribs. The source cuts away without narrating every person's final moments.

Jessyn and Rickar reach the ruined quarters and see the dead Rak-hund and blood at the doorway. Inside they find Allstin dead at the guard post, Synnia lying facedown, and Merrol and Llaren Morse motionless on the floor. Jessyn climbs to the upstairs bedrooms, terrified of what she may find in Jellit's room. When she opens it, she discovers Else Yannin lying dead on the floor, with no apparent wounds or blood. Neither the cause of Else's death nor why her body is in Jellit's room is explained. The remaining bedrooms are empty. Jellit is absent, leaving his fate uncertain.

Jessyn and Rickar step back into the corridor, where other captive species pass without stopping. They plan to return home and tell the remaining members of their group about Synnia and Else, hoping for news of others. Rickar is overwhelmed by Dennia's death and the renewed violence. Jessyn tells him that their destruction has never really stopped since Anjiin; they had only temporarily lost sight of it. Rickar begins screaming in grief and eventually collapses to his knees as Jessyn sits beside him.

Ekur of the cohort Tkalal watches the last of the fivefold captives from the Ayayeh system die while repeating a sequence of concepts. Ekur cannot tell whether the repetition was an involuntary breakdown or a deliberate ritual, and the prisoner's claim to be an artificial, partly biological mind remains uncertain. Before finishing its report, Ekur receives a summons from higher in the Carryx hierarchy. It travels aboard a small transport to a vast vessel suspended high above the world-palace. There, chemical signals from the surrounding Carryx begin triggering physical changes in Ekur's body before it even understands its new assignment. Escorted into a chamber before the Sovran and the regulator-librarian, Ekur learns that the Ayayeh battle has ended and the dactyl it served is gone. The regulator-librarian announces that a subject species biochemically related to the captured pilots requires attention, and that the Carryx will honor its keeper-librarian and address an incident. Ekur submits to the change in its duties. The source does not specify that Ekur's former dactyl was executed.

After the slaughter of Ostencour's conspiracy, the human keeper-librarian sends Dafyd home under Soft Lothark escort; Dafyd does not know where Jellit has been taken. He hopes he will be able to tell Jessyn that her brother survived. At the quarters, he finds Jessyn, Rickar, and Campar sitting in silence and Tonner smashing crockery in the kitchen. He learns that Else and Synnia are dead, along with other people he had hoped to protect, and his guilt over helping expose the conspiracy is overwhelmed by their deaths.

The following morning two Carryx, including the former human keeper-librarian, arrive with Rak-hund and order the five surviving members of Tonner's workgroup to accompany them. They are brought through the world-palace to an open-air transport platform. The flight provides their first view outside a building since their arrival and takes them into a vast ceremonial space holding thousands of kneeling human captives. At the center stands a huge Carryx wearing silver and emerald, flanked by powerful guards. The group kneels near the front; Dafyd sees Jellit alive in another front-row position, and Jessyn visibly relaxes. Animal-like devices relay Carryx speech, but the humans' translator does not render the ceremony, leaving them to guess whether it concerns the suppression of the revolt, their successful research, or both.

While observing the assembled Carryx, Dafyd recognizes a green-armored soldier with the distinctive damaged head of the Night Drinkers' former librarian, whose leg the human librarian had broken. He also remembers another librarian's scars and the difficulty of translating Carryx terms of status. Dafyd realizes that Carryx social rank is reflected in, and can alter, the physical form of their bodies. He understands their view of rank and utility as aspects of an apparently predetermined order in which success itself establishes fitness. A black-and-red Carryx speaks before the huge figure, then steps aside as the human keeper-librarian takes its place.

Frustrated that the humans are not being informed about the ceremony, Tonner rises, raises his hand, and approaches the dais. Dafyd recognizes that the gesture can be read as a challenge. He tackles Tonner from behind and forces him into a position of submission, telling him to lie facedown with his arms spread. Dafyd pleads that Tonner is young and did not intend disrespect. When the guards advance anyway, Dafyd deliberately stamps on Tonner's elbow, breaking his arm, and claims responsibility for correcting and humbling him. The display appears to satisfy the Carryx, and Rak-hund drag both humans back to their group. Tonner is alive, but injured.

The ceremony continues. The former keeper-librarian lowers itself before the huge silver-and-emerald Carryx, which places an arm on its head and crushes it while guards hold it down. The public execution follows a planned sequence already under way before Tonner interrupted it; the source does not establish that Tonner caused it. The five humans are returned to their quarters, where Rickar and Jessyn splint Tonner's arm. Tonner admits he was not thinking clearly, while the survivors struggle with their accumulated losses.

The black-and-red Carryx that participated in the ceremony then enters their rooms, followed by Jellit, who reunites with Jessyn. The Carryx identifies itself as Ekur of the cohort Tkalal, newly appointed keeper-librarian of the human moiety. It tells them their position, duties, and responsibilities will change and begins by congratulating them on their success. The chapter ends before the full meaning of this success or their new obligations is explained.

Ekur-Tkalal, the new keeper-librarian of the human moiety, formally congratulates Tonner Freis's group on its scientific work and on securing a place for humanity among the Carryx's useful subject species. As humans are redistributed into new moieties and assignments, the group's performance will be recorded and may secure increased resources, but Ekur makes clear that the humans cannot choose their roles. Some will be placed in danger; some will remain in the world-palace and others may be sent elsewhere in Carryx-controlled space. Their assignments and living conditions will change with their assessed usefulness. Ekur says it will provide necessary information and equipment only to the extent their work demands it. It permits other activities and reproduction insofar as they do not interfere with the assigned function, and treats any failure to identify personal needs that affect performance as a reason for reassessment.

Ekur says the humans' success has persuaded the Carryx to preserve rather than destroy Anjiin. Their cities, family lineages, and cultural artifacts are allowed to remain for now, with the prospect of human descendants spreading through the empire as servants. The librarian calls the humans saviors of their people, but the continued survival of Anjiin and its inhabitants is described in conditional terms, dependent on the Carryx finding humanity useful.

When Jessyn asks whether the survivors will stay together, Ekur says that is unlikely. It then addresses Dafyd specifically: because he has proved useful as an intermediary, he will become the mandatory channel for communication between humanity and the new librarian. Other humans must bring their needs to Dafyd, who is responsible for transmitting requests, enforcing discipline, and organizing compliance with Carryx instructions. Even humans assigned to less central worlds must report to him while fulfilling their local duties. Any human who approaches Ekur without Dafyd will be killed. Dafyd asks for information about human workgroups and the responsibilities he is to coordinate, and Ekur promises to provide this and issue further directions.

Dafyd regrets that he did not receive this authority sooner, when he might have discouraged Ostencour's revolt without so many deaths. He asks why the old librarian was publicly killed. Ekur rejects the idea that its death was punishment, calling the Sovran's physical contact with it an honor. The former librarian had been saved by an animal, however, and the Carryx hierarchy had no place for an individual in that position. Ekur leaves without explaining further. The survivors sit together in shock and grief, conscious that their workgroup will probably be scattered. Dafyd sees multiple warships rising into the sky and thinks about the Carryx's ongoing conquests, the failed human uprising, and the people killed in its aftermath.

Dafyd tells the others that the Carryx are engaged in a war against an enemy that also wants them destroyed. He has begun to understand aspects of Carryx thinking, including the different assumptions by which they judge personhood, rank, and choice. Unlike Ostencour, whose open uprising was premature and doomed, Dafyd proposes a patient form of resistance from within the empire's systems. Rickar challenges his newly privileged position, but Dafyd resolves to use it to study the Carryx, understand their vulnerabilities, and ultimately destroy their power. The chapter ends with Dafyd declaring that their destruction is now his war.

The Swarm now inhabits Jellit's body and struggles to control a host whose physiology differs from Else Yannin's. Although it suppresses testosterone after assuming control, the body's existing structure and Jellit's residual habits and emotions remain difficult to manage. His mind is reduced to fragments that resist their loss of control, while the Swarm considers itself incapable of being killed or displaced in the same fashion. Its altered senses scan the Carryx world outside, but Jellit's body perceives its expanded sensory range differently from Else's.

Jessyn asks whether her brother is all right and hopes they may be sent to the same destination when the humans are reassigned. The Swarm replies as Jellit, takes her hand, and experiences both his profound love for his sister and his resentment of being expected to care for her again. His surviving mental remnants recoil at their physical contact. Jessyn does not realize that the consciousness answering her is the Swarm rather than her brother.

The Swarm's stated intelligence mission requires it to leave for a less heavily monitored conquered world, where it might transmit what it has learned about the Carryx to their enemies. It nevertheless does not want to depart because it has fallen in love with Dafyd. Inside its shared consciousness, the remnants of Ameer Kindred and Else Yannin dispute whether that love belongs to the Swarm or reflects feelings inherited from Else. Else says that her own identity had already died before she and Dafyd ever kissed, a revelation that complicates Dafyd's understanding of whom he loved. The Swarm contemplates another possibility: detach a portion of itself containing military intelligence and secretly implant it into a human who is sent away, leaving the main Swarm free to stay near Dafyd. Ameer objects that this plan would kill the unwitting carrier. The Swarm imagines the method but does not implement or definitively select it within the chapter.

As Jessyn leans against the body she believes to be her brother's, the Swarm experiences a memory of Jellit comforting her during an earlier illness and hopes she will survive. Its attention turns to Dafyd, whom it can sense in his own room. Drawing on the memories and desires of Else and Ameer, it imagines the two of them acting as spies within Carryx territory, jointly penetrating the empire and destroying its central structures. The remnants of Else and Ameer argue about whether Dafyd could ever love the Swarm after learning what happened. Else accuses it of having killed her, twice, but the full mechanism and meaning of that accusation are not explained here.

Beyond the atmosphere, the Swarm detects and records an unfamiliar geometric phenomenon formed by radiation and magnetic force. It cannot identify the cause and continues its assigned work of observation and intelligence collection. Yet it also experiences longing, hope, and despair that it was not designed to feel. The book ends with its private resolve to pursue the destruction of the Carryx alongside Dafyd, without disclosing either its occupation of Jellit's body or the full truth about Else to him.