1. Escape

Bob escapes from Natasha's resistance compound after a violent confrontation, retrieving a radio containing his friend Bender's preserved matrix. After making contact with Bender and learning he is imprisoned somewhere called Halep's Ending within ten segments of Bob's current location, communication is cut off. Bob reggroups with his team and begins planning a rescue operation while Hugh unexpectedly initiates his own transfer to help.

Bob is interrogated by Natasha, the leader of a resistance group operating in Heaven's River, who suspects him of being a spy. When Bender's voice comes through the radio, Bob claims he and Bender are from the same Salty Seas clan, deflecting suspicion. Natasha orders Philip to execute Bob, but Bob breaks free from his restraints and fights his way out, incapacitating Philip and disarming Natasha. He escapes through a dining hall, defeats several Quinlan guards using improvised weapons and parkour tactics, and flees up a hillside into a forest with the radio, a tranquilizer gun, and a mysterious security card. After hiding and repairing the radio's batteries, Bob reconnects with Bender, who reveals he was shot down and captured by the Administrator but rescued by the Resistance. Through frame-jack ping latency calculations, Bob determines Bender is within ten segments of his location. Before Bob can extract more information, Natasha's people cut off communications. Bob leaves the radio on a rock as a decoy and contacts his team—Bill, Will, Garfield, Bridget, and Hugh—to coordinate a rescue. He learns Hugh has already initiated a backup transfer to Eta Leporis without asking, which will arrive in a few days. Guppy reports severely limited drone deployment options due to resource constraints and Hugh's backup transfer consuming bandwidth. Bob authorizes positioning one scanner drone over three weeks and prepares to begin a directional search for Halep's Ending.