In the morning, the Consul discovers blood splattered all over Het Masteen’s room. A search reveals that Het is missing. Silenus thinks the Shrike killed him. The Möbius cube is still locked. The pilgrims speculate that it holds an erg, a sentient being the Templars use to manipulate forcefields. Het Masteen would have been the next to tell his story, but now it is Brawne Lamia’s turn.

The pilgrims arrive at Pilgrim’s Rest expecting Shrike Temple representatives, but it is empty. They get in the tramcar, which Kassad gets moving, and travel toward the mountain peaks. It would have been Het Masteen’s turn to tell his story, but as he is missing, presumed dead, Brawne Lamia tells her tale.

Lamia was in her office on Lusus when a man name Johnny visited her. She found Johnny attractive, but he revealed that he was a cybrid (cybrids are a rare form of AI consciousness embedded in a human body) and asked her to find out who “murdered” him. Johnny recalled how he was attacked on the planet Madhya and disconnected from the TechnoCore (the shared center of AI consciousness) for a full minute, which lost him five days of memory.