Alexis Chen analyzes Kate's neural scans and discovers that each use of Kate's abilities causes approximately 0.3 percent neural degradation. She calculates that at current operational tempo, Kate will experience complete neural degradation within eighteen months.

Chelsea visits Marcus. He is worse - coughing blood now. Marcus: "The child is already gone. What is left is the question - weapon or victim?" Chelsea refuses to accept either.

Marcus drafts the expanded accords over eleven days. Brimstone reviews with corporate precision, Rossetti arrives as the Church's reformer representative. Five signatures seal the post-Undoing governance framework. Thomas departs with a warning about doors opening both ways.

*** Sector 4 — Mali Orbital Station, Bay Twelve *** Hammer-Seven The station's security was adequate. Not exceptional, but adequate. Hammer-Seven observed the patrol patterns from the maintenance duct, her augmented vision tracking heat signatures through walls.

Marcus attends the command conference without his recorder for the first time. Admiral Voss presides as the officers debate integrating the three changed crew members. Harris argues they are compromised; Marcus breaks his silence to vouch for their humanity with passionate testimony.

Abigail responds to demon attack in residential block — five coordinated signatures, which is wrong (demons don't cluster). She clears the lower floors, finds Belphegor in Theron's vessel upstairs. First direct confrontation: he's terrifyingly powerful, catches her full blast in his hand.

Haatim wakes. His Gift is silent — the conduit burned it out, may never return. He doesn't care. He sees Abigail sitting up with brown eyes. He crawls thirty feet across scorched earth because his legs won't carry him. She smiles — a real smile, the first without corruption's weight.

Chelsea Park steals a transport ship and spends three days at the nexus coordinates searching for Kate, broadcasting messages into empty space where she can almost perceive the faintest shimmer of the dimensional barrier.

Abdullah stands before the ship's officers for Gregory Tillman's sentencing. Despite preparing for execution, he cannot bring himself to kill. At the last moment, he lowers his gun and sentences Tillman to seven years imprisonment instead of death.