Twenty

Tonner Freis begins his day checking the artificial-gestation "lamb sacks," privately acknowledging he engineered Else’s child. When reminded of a meeting with Dafyd Alkhor, Tonner scrambles for assay data and decides to showcase a side project to impress.

Meanwhile, Dafyd oversees Jellit Kaul’s deep dive into the Carryx archive, learning of vast, millennia-spanning wars and living-like "void tendrils" used for reconnaissance. Uuya Tomos and choreographer Ver Cannedan brief Dafyd on Carryx body-language cues and a strategy using armband-like signals to de-escalate conflicts.

During the meeting, Tonner presents outdated assay results, then reveals his discovery: the Soft Lothark pass dense information via edible "nubblies," a private, hard-to-intercept channel. As he speaks, two Soft Lothark guards abruptly attack and kill him. Dafyd’s Rak-hund counters, but a fallen Lothark bursts caustic fluid, and the surviving Lothark kills the Rak-hund.

Frozen between exposing the secret and ensuring his survival, Dafyd nearly files a report revealing the Lothark method, then erases it. He reframes the incident to onlookers as a tragic misunderstanding caused by the Rak-hund’s misinterpretation. In shock, he returns to Jellit, accepts comfort but rejects intimacy, and steadies himself.

Composing a formal notice of Tonner’s death, Dafyd instead sends a simple overture: Humans and Soft Lothark can help each other. Meeting a Lothark privately (without the Carryx half-mind), he receives a crucial modification—Humans and the Deep Lothark can help each other—signaling a covert, cross-moiety alignment that could reshape their standing under the Carryx.