After the alien fluid nearly kills Gav Lortisse, Erma Lante keeps him isolated in a makeshift infirmary. The habitat was not built for infectious-disease containment, so Yusuf Baltiel knows their precautions are imperfect, even though Lante believes the organism is too dense to spread through the air. Lortisse wakes badly swollen and damaged, but regenerative medicine and nanomachines begin repairing the physical harm.

Lante reports that Lortisse’s body appears to have expelled or broken down the alien organism, leaving no active cells or lingering traces in his blood. She warns that toxic chemical aftereffects may still appear, but Lortisse seems mentally sharp. Baltiel thanks Lante, then feels oddly lonely when Lante leaves to update Rani Kalveen, who is personally involved with Lortisse and Lante.

In the following days, Baltiel sinks into lethargy and depression. He avoids restarting study of Nod’s ecosystem, distracts himself with habitat logs and old human media, and judges Disra Senkovi’s increasingly autonomous work with his octopuses as a kind of useful madness. Lante recommends stronger antidepressants and mood stabilizers, but Baltiel cannot bring himself to accept the new regimen.

Rani proposes that the team abandon the dangerous marsh and move elsewhere on Nod, or even go to Damascus, where Senkovi’s work has created breathable conditions and no native alien life threatens them. Baltiel keeps postponing a response. He understands that Lortisse’s injury has intensified a larger despair: Earth is silent, humanity may be gone, and their great discovery of alien life may have no audience left.

Twelve days later, Lortisse is walking in a medical exoskeleton and seems to be recovering, but Lante urgently summons Baltiel. Terrified, she reveals that the alien fluid was not metabolized: it has migrated into Lortisse’s brain and formed encysted structures. Baltiel asks Lante to medicate him into clarity, and after the drugs take effect she explains that the organism has replaced Lortisse’s corpus callosum while somehow preserving communication between the hemispheres.

Lante cannot give a reliable prognosis. The encysted material may remain harmless indefinitely, or it may reactivate without warning; surgical removal carries severe risks of brain damage and might provoke the organism. Baltiel decides Lortisse must be told and that all four habitat residents need to understand the situation. He and Lante begin considering possible removal strategies while acknowledging that quarantine cannot be a permanent answer.