Cheng Xin visits the Halo Group headquarters for the first time, still feeling that the wealth from Yun Tianming’s star belongs more to society than to herself. After meeting the company’s young executives, Cheng Xin and AA discuss how Halo might support Cheng Xin’s dream: investing in the Bunker Project for profit while using part of the proceeds to pursue lightspeed spacecraft research.

As they talk about the black domain, curvature propulsion, and the abandoned orbital cross being dismantled into a giant “1,” a flood of information windows announces a possible dark forest strike. The first unit of the Solar System advance warning system has detected an anomaly rumored to be a photoid. No official alarm has been issued, but panic spreads through the city, and Cheng Xin and AA decide to reach Halo, the company’s spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit, in hopes of fleeing toward Jupiter.

At the spaceport, a mass escape is underway. Cheng Xin notices a stranded school group whose place on an orbital trip has been taken by others after the alarm. Cheng Xin wants to save the children, but AA explains that Halo can only protect five people under maximum acceleration; AA selects three children through quick logic questions, leaving the rest behind and forcing Cheng Xin to relive the anguish of making life-and-death choices for others.

Inside the shuttle, the situation outside collapses. Crowds surround spacecraft, empty flying cars try to block launch pads, and some shuttle owners begin taking off directly from the parking lot, killing people with fusion-drive plasma. AA prepares to launch before nearby shuttles destroy their chance, but Cheng Xin refuses because people are around the ship. AA accepts Cheng Xin’s authority, then goes outside with a laser rifle and disables the tail fins of nearby shuttles so those owners cannot launch through the crowd either.

The alarm is soon confirmed false by Fleet International and the UN. Cheng Xin and AA leave the shuttle to find a battlefield of burned bodies, damaged ships, and stunned survivors. AA reveals that the Halo Group has built Cheng Xin a new miniature stellar ship, capable of sustaining her for life, and urges Cheng Xin to go to Jupiter; Cheng Xin refuses, choosing to remain on Earth with billions of others rather than become one of the privileged few.

The false alarm becomes the largest social disturbance since the Great Resettlement. More than ten thousand people die worldwide in launch panics, conflicts break out around space elevators and ships, and the public discovers secret small stellar or near-stellar vessels being built by corporations and wealthy individuals. This exposure of “inequality before death” creates intense public hostility toward lightspeed ships, since such technology would let elites wait comfortably on Earth and flee at the last moment, leaving the rest of humanity behind.