Helena struggles to interpret the octopus ambassador, which is relaying a request from the distant warship Profundity of Depth. With Portia’s help, Helena realizes the warship’s commander wants to speak directly to her. A visual channel opens, but the commander’s alien movements, lighting, and emotional displays make its message difficult to understand.

Instead of hostility, the commander expresses admiration for Helena and her earlier account of shared species history. Helena recognizes that the octopus has responded to the emotional shape of her story, even if its grasp of human narrative is unclear. The exchange ends with the commander telling Helena and Portia to leave.

From Ahab’s perspective, Helena’s story has genuinely moved him, and Ahab accepts Helena as sentient and worth preserving. However, Ahab also believes Nod’s infection must be contained at all costs. When a brief transmission from the Lightfoot wreckage identifies the crash site, Ahab decides to destroy the survivors on the surface and possibly eliminate the orbital threat as well, hoping this will prevent Helena from sacrificing herself.

Helena and Portia receive Viola’s short message: the organism has found them. Portia repeatedly tries to contact Viola and Kern, but there is no response, and Helena fears the missiles will soon annihilate Viola, Zaine, Fabian, and the wreckage. Just as Helena despairs, Kern unexpectedly contacts them and orders Helena and Portia to translate a message to the octopuses.

Kern explains that she is no longer operating from the Lightfoot but from the station associated with the organism. The octopuses suspect Kern has been compromised, and Kern admits the suspicion is partly true and partly wrong: she cannot be infected like an organic intelligence, but she is now acting as intermediary. Kern says the parasite is sentient, has formed an interface capable of understanding human-level concepts, and wants a truce.

Helena controls her panic and translates Kern’s urgent message into colors, patterns, and mathematical supports for the octopuses. Kern conveys that the organism has learned assimilation leads to sterile monoculture and now wants to meet, understand, and learn from other life without absorbing it. The octopuses are not convinced, but Portia detects that the missiles have been diverted into an orbital holding pattern rather than striking Nod; Kern then sends a visual feed as proof.