The Nodan infection spreads from the forbidden place Lot opened, carried by Damascus’s currents and marine life. It adapts to fish, crabs, jellyfish, plankton, and especially octopuses, but octopus nervous systems prove disastrous hosts: separate colonies claim control of different nerve hubs, causing infected bodies to tear themselves apart.

Damascan scientists attempt biological countermeasures, but the alien life adapts too quickly and deliberately. Unlike Nod, Damascus has no co-evolved defenses, so the infection destroys billions while breaking hosts down into matter it can reuse for new colonies still seeking the lost coherence it once had as Yusuf Baltiel and the other infected humans.

Above Damascus, Solomon works at an orbital elevator hub overwhelmed by refugees fleeing the oceans. The habitats and Homeships are far beyond capacity, and Solomon struggles to process the arrivals while recognizing that he is witnessing the collapse of an entire civilization.

For a brief moment, the Damascan species acts with unity, recalling ships and trying to salvage survivors. That unity ends when one elevator hub destroys another with missiles. The attackers claim the destroyed hub was infected and that the plague can now incubate long enough to evade simple detection, making every refugee transfer a potential catastrophe.

Solomon reviews the destroyed hub’s communications and concludes the attack was justified, which means the elevator network is compromised. Choosing survival, Solomon orders his hub’s cables severed, sacrificing those still on the elevator and cutting the orbital city off from the homeworld. Other administrators do the same, leaving the masses below trapped in despair while the orbital remnants struggle to stabilize themselves.