Twenty-Eight

Jessyn reunites with her brother Jellit in his quarters and learns about his group's captivity. An unplanned meeting reveals that Urrys Ostencour has been organizing contact between human prisoner groups and has manufactured crude weapons; he now asks Jessyn to design biological weapons for a planned uprising against the Carryx.

Jessyn visits Jellit's quarters, where they share a meal and discuss the fall of Anjiin. Jellit explains how their group was captured while waiting for a security escort and forced to recreate Llaren's thin-spectrum lensing work. Jessyn observes that Jellit has changed physically and emotionally, and notes the evidence of loss in their shared space—unused bedrooms, missing people like Simien who died when the Carryx withheld his medication. She reflects on her own history of mental illness and how Jellit has always supported her through difficult periods. When others arrive, Jessyn realizes the gathering was planned. Urrys Ostencour enters, transformed by muscle and discipline since the transit cell. Ostencour reveals he has been tracking down human prisoner groups across the complex—approximately three hundred people total—organized by their original roles: visualizations, biochemistry, physics, logistics. He claims some groups, particularly artists, may have been executed. Ostencour presents Jessyn with a crude homemade gun as a gift, then makes his pitch: her biochemistry group should design biological weapons to use in an uprising. He frames the choice as meaningful death versus prolonged captivity. Jessyn examines the weapon, contemplating its potential uses, including suicide, but ultimately focuses on Ostencour's proposal. She asks what he's requesting, and he explicitly asks her to create bioweapons that can kill Carryx effectively enough to make them reconsider their treatment of humans.