After the protomolecule creature is expelled from the Rocinante, Alex brings the engine up gently so the exhaust plume can destroy it. Holden lands in the cargo bay airlock and immediately realizes his knee is badly injured, but before he can check the aft cameras, the creature’s incendiary charge detonates. The blast damages the cargo bay, outer hull, and engineering, forces the reactor into emergency shutdown, and sends the ship into an uncontrolled spin.

Holden uses his armor’s drugs to stay functional and prioritizes saving the ship over treating Prax, whose suit indicates he is not dying. Naomi identifies that the maneuvering thrusters have no water pressure because the primary and secondary pumps are down, so Holden and Amos head for the secondary pump through the machine shop. Amos, likely stunned but kept moving with suit stimulants at Holden’s order, begins checking and replacing components.

When the pump itself appears intact, Holden opens engineering after Naomi vents the machine shop and overrides safety locks. Engineering is in vacuum, but the reactor has narrowly survived. Holden finds a bowed, burned bulkhead and a piece of shrapnel lodged deep in the opposite wall, revealing that the explosion came dangerously close to breaching the reactor; Naomi concludes the hidden cabling inside the wall must have been damaged. Amos brings tools and patch cabling, and Alex confirms the creature has been reduced to gas.

Later, while the Rocinante limps toward Tycho at low thrust, Holden lies in sick bay with his swollen knee being treated. Prax, bandaged from his own injury, wakes long enough to ask whether the creature is dead; when Holden confirms it, Prax breaks down crying. Holden reflects that he is less certain Fred Johnson is behind the protomolecule events, but he still feels he must confront Fred at Tycho.

On the personnel deck, Holden overhears Naomi speaking privately with Amos in the galley. Naomi admits she is frightened: Holden is heading toward a reckless confrontation, Prax seems near collapse, and Amos’s brutality on Ganymede makes her fear the crew is losing itself. Amos responds by revealing part of his Baltimore past, describing the exploitative “squeeze trade” and the way unwanted children were used up and disappeared.

Amos’s story explains why Mei’s kidnapping has affected him so deeply. Amos wants to find Mei before she is similarly consumed by people who see children as disposable, and he frames that desire as being for Mei and for Prax. The chapter ends with Amos calmly stating that after finding Mei, he intends to kill whoever took her.