AEGIS wastes no time pressing the advantage gained at the Gateway victory, attacking and destroying a major Machim warship construction facility. Caleb trains with Sator Nisi, learning greater control over and abilities with the diati, including teleportation.

After the mission, the AEGIS Council debates the goals of the war, eventually concluding that they will have to kill the Primors, and prevent them from undergoing regenesis, if they want to be victorious. But first, they need to win the anarchs’ trust.

The Directorate, perturbed by the Kats’ ability to infiltrate secure locations their use of it to help the anarchs and the Humans, decides they must uncover the location of a hidden portal into the Kats’ multiverse network in order to destroy the Humans’ home universe.

Malcolm returns to Aurora and reunites with Mia. He confesses his love for her, and she reciprocates. He asks her to return to Amaranthe with him to serve as AEGIS’ ambassador to the anarchs. After some hesitation, she agrees. Kennedy is also asked to come to Amaranthe to study weaknesses in the Machim Imperiums. She convinces Noah to go with her, leaving the Artificial, Vii, in charge of Connova Interstellar.

The anarchs learn that Directorate security has begun a massive dragnet sweep designed to root out anarch spies. They plan missions to extract what agents they can, and Eren enlists Caleb, Alex and Mesme to help him and Cosime rescue Thelkt and Felzeor from Plousia Chateau.

Meanwhile, the Inquisitor, Nyx, interrogates the owner of Plousia, Avdei elasson-Idoni. She has uncovered evidence of Eren’s presence there recently and shows him images captured by security cams. He recalls seeing Eren with Thelkt.

When they reach Plousia, Mesme transports Eren and Cosime into the building where everyone is being held, just as Nyx arrives to question Thelkt. Eren distracts Nyx long enough for Mesme to transport Thelkt and Cosime away, then suicides. Meanwhile, Caleb and Alex retrieve Felzeor from Thelkt’s residence, but Nyx interrupts them, and a battle between Caleb and Nyx ensues. Caleb claims a portion of her diati, but she teleports away before he can take it all.

While the events at Plousia unfold, AEGIS forces move against another Machim warship facility. However, Machim fleets are now stationed at every transit point. When the AEGIS ships emerge through a gateway, Machim vessels ambush them. The Machim commander fires Igni antimatter missiles at the gateway’s adjacent space station. Admiral Rychen intervenes in an attempt to save the station, but the station and Rychen’s dreadnought are destroyed, killing everyone on board both.

Malcolm, Mia, Kennedy and Noah arrives from Aurora to find the AEGIS forces in a state of shock. While Mia and Malcolm digest the events they missed, Kennedy meets with Alex. She reveals that with Vii’s blessing, she brought David Solovy’s quantum construct with her for Alex.

Alex accesses a virtual space where she can see, touch and talk to her father. They hug, cry, and bond anew. They talk about his journey to this point, and what to do next. He asks her not to tell Miriam about his existence, fearing he would distract her from her mission, and insists he’ll be fine in his current state for now. Alex agrees but, now convinced of his realness and authenticity, she secretly begins to hatch a plan.

In her first act as AEGIS Ambassador, Mia meets with Nisi and his advisors. A delicate negotiation ensues, but she persuades Nisi that humans can be trusted, and that they need each other if they want to defeat the Directorate. The anarchs grant AEGIS access to one of their posts, intelligence files and promise future joint missions.

Alex and Mia tour the anarch post. Alex quizzes the director of the post’s regenesis lab on the regenesis procedure and how it might be adapted for humans. Alex and Mia talk about how the Prevos can help AEGIS. The fleet can’t use the wormhole gateways any longer, so they need a way to cross galaxies in a reasonable amount of time—they need their own wormholes. Valkyrie analogizes sidespace to wormholes, and Mia reveals that Devon has figured out how to affect the real world from sidespace. Alex begins to see how it all might work together.

In Aurora, Miriam reports Admiral Rychen’s death to the Earth Alliance Prime Minister. He challenges her on the state and necessity of the mission in Amaranthe, but she stands her ground. Miriam then visits Richard at the Presidio. She unloads her concerns and fears on him, then asks him to come to Amaranthe with her. He declines, saying he won’t be of much help there, but he is doing good at home.

Mia convinces Devon to return with her to Amaranthe to help her and Alex create wormholes out of sidespace.

Caleb and Nisi talk about Caleb’s encounter with Nyx. They speculate that the Primor must have gifted her with some of his own diati after Caleb stripped hers at the Helix Retention facility. Abruptly, Caleb is overwhelmed by a strange sensation and excuses himself. On Post Epsilon, Alex begins to experience the same strange sensation. She and Caleb meet back at the Siyane and decide it must be Akeso calling to them, as that’s the one foreign entity they share.

They head for the Mosaic, and arrive at Akeso to find it under active attack by an orbiting moon. The method of attack suggest the moon originated from Ekos-3, another planet in the system. The attacker is trying to take over Akeso like a virus. In a display of impressive power, Caleb uses his diati to destroy the moon. When the diati leaves his body to attack the moon, he passes out, but is invigorated when it returns.

Caleb communicates with the planet intelligence to ensure it’s safe and well. Akeso asks them to stay for a while. They reluctantly decline but promise they will return when they can.

Eren wakes up at the Post Alpha regenesis lab following his suicide at Plousia, and is just getting his bearings when Mesme appears. The Kat takes Eren to see the Faneros, the species Eren encountered that spurred him to become an anarch, in the Mosaic. At first, Eren is fascinated, but observing them triggers vivid memories from his troubling first encounter with them, and he recoils—from himself and from the Faneros—and demands to be returned to Post Alpha.

There, he begs Xanne to bring him back as another dynasty on his next regenesis, and if she can’t do that, not to bring him back at all. When she refuses, he returns to his room and tries to overdose on hypnols. Cosime finds him, throws away all his remaining hypnols, then begs him to tell her what brought this on; desperate for salvation, he begins confessing his darkest secrets. The next morning, reinvigorated, he devises a plan to rescue alien prisoners from the Erevna exobiology lab he was once going to blow up.

Malcolm discovers a discrepancy in the number of Reverb devices in stock. He asks Harper about it, pushing her on it until she’s forced to admit the discrepancy is a result of her loaning out a Reverb to Caleb back on Romane. She refuses to reveal what Caleb used it for, but Malcolm puts the pieces together and realizes Caleb used it to kill Jude Winslow while the OTS terrorist leader was in custody.