Zelu wakes to a flood of media requests, award nominations, and book-related demands. She enjoys the spring morning on her patio, savoring her freedom from the exploitative adjunct teaching job she was pushed out of. An MIT travel itinerary arrives, prompting her to decide she will tell her family about the exoskeleton program at their weekly Saturday gathering.

Her parents and siblings (Chinyere, Amarachi, Bola, Tolu, Uzo) come over for dinner. After waiting through the usual loud family banter, Zelu announces her news in storyteller fashion, framing it as a hopeful adventure. The reaction is uniformly negative: her mother questions why she would be chosen and invokes God; Tolu suspects experimentation on Africans; Chinyere argues it's not really walking and cites Zelu's PTSD and panic attacks; even Bola, an engineer who confirms Hugo Wagner's legitimacy, urges her to stay away.

Zelu accuses her family of wanting to keep her trapped at home, recalling how Chinyere told her to "get her affairs in order" before the Zanzibar literary festival, which she ended up declining. She breaks down in tears. The family pivots away to Tolu's upcoming court case, leaving Zelu silent. Uzo hugs her and says they love her, but Zelu reflects that love is not always enough.

Unable to sleep, Zelu binge-watches Westerns and at 4 a.m. video-calls Msizi in South Africa, hoping he, as a tech entrepreneur, will support her. Though high, he echoes her family's caution, asking what if it doesn't work. Devastated and isolated, Zelu spirals into a panic, reliving her fall, and eventually hangs up. The next morning, her agent calls; she numbly agrees to do The Daily Show.