Chapter Summaries

Hesta told Palan she had realized she could kill Wilford and the others simply because she was capable of it, and questioned whether undiscovered perfect crimes filled the world. Palan arranged for Eclipse to meet Hesta on her train to Core City, while Silei’s investigation confirmed the identities of three of the eleven skeletons found at Roan Palace and left the remaining seven unknown.

• Palan told Hesta that Eclipse would help her meet Ava in Core City and gave her a coded way to identify Eclipse on the train.
• Hesta told Palan that justice had not enabled her to kill Wilford and the others; she believed she could have done so simply because she had the ability and desire.
• Hesta questioned whether crimes that left traces could still go undiscovered, and said she wanted Ava’s advice about her future plans.
• Palan left Hesta’s apartment and reflected that Hesta was a unique human specimen.
• Silei attended a press conference where police confirmed that three of the eleven Roan Palace skeletons belonged to people who had disappeared from District 3 twelve years earlier.
• Silei said the remaining seven skeletons were unidentified and that investigators had found no twelfth body despite searching around Roan Palace.

Alvira burned down Roan Palace and was arrested, while Hesta prepared to leave Tanyi for a final conversation. At the police station, Silei told Hesta that Alvira had killed herself.

• Hesta received a new uniform and prepared to meet Ava before leaving Tanyi that evening.
• Alvira ordered the butler and servants to set Roan Palace on fire, destroying some evidence, then confessed to arson and was taken into custody.
• Sophie begged to accompany Alvira, but Alvira told her to stay home and wait for her return.
• Hesta packed her belongings and changed out of her new uniform before answering Silei's call and going to Tanyi Police Station.
• Hesta found the station damaged after Shepherd had caused a disturbance, and Silei told her that Alvira had killed herself that afternoon.

After Alvira died by suicide, Hesta learned the news and went to see Sophie, who was waiting for her aunt to return. Overwhelmed by the encounter, Hesta fled as the world around her seemed to distort, while a woman boarded a train to Core City alone.

• Silei told Hesta that Alvira had taken poison before leaving home and died in the hospital.
• Hesta suffered a sudden bout of nausea but insisted on finishing the interview before going to the hospital.
• Hesta drove to the former duke's residence and went to Sophie's darkened room.
• Sophie said she would keep waiting for her aunt to come home and asked whether Mr. Thompson had told her the truth about losing her mother.
• Hesta became overwhelmed by pain and terror, saw the darkness and floor shift around her, and fled the room.
• At Tanyi Central Station, a woman in a golden yellow hat boarded the train to Core City alone after her expected companion failed to arrive.

As heavy winter rain fell over Tanyi, Hesta wandered in a daze until she intervened in a beating and remembered she had to flee. Quicksilver Needles security officers tried to take her for an examination, but Silei arrived and asserted that Hesta remained under her team’s authority.

• Silei drove through the rain after hearing conflicting radio discussions about the unusual weather.
• Hesta wandered through Tanyi, searching for the Art Palace she remembered from Bruno City before realizing it could not be there.
• Hesta stopped a man from whipping a woman, but the woman struck Hesta with a stick, and Hesta remembered that she could not stay.
• Quicksilver Needles security officers found Hesta by tracking her chip and tried to take her for an examination.
• Silei showed her credentials and told the officers they could not take Hesta while the Murder Photography investigation remained open.

Silei brought the exhausted, rain-soaked Eureka home and tried to comfort her, only to discover she had a fever and was clinging to Silei’s hand. As Eureka fell asleep, Silei found a wig and realized the person beside her had Hesta’s distinctive flame-red hair.

• Silei picked up Eureka after leaving the Quicksilver Needles station and drove her toward home while asking about her condition.
• Silei carried the barely responsive Eureka into the apartment, where Eureka walked across the carpet in wet shoes and collapsed onto the sofa.
• Silei brought Eureka hot water and instant lasagna, but Eureka barely responded or ate.
• Eureka asked Silei to hold her hand, and Silei noticed she had a fever before helping her to bed.
• While trying to change Eureka out of her wet clothes, Silei found a wig and recognized the flame-red hair unique to the Hesta people.

Silei discovered that the injured woman she knew as Eureka was Jane Hesta, Chiba’s ward, and realized the clues surrounding recent events had finally fallen into place. She contacted Chiba to report Hesta’s serious injuries and left their relationship exposed.

• Silei found a swollen head wound on Hesta and noticed blood running down her neck.
• Silei tried to call Victoria for help, but Eureka fell from the bed and revealed a bloody wound beneath her shoulder blade.
• Silei concealed the discovery from Victoria by asking for her reimbursement-code instructions and postponing her case report by two days.
• Silei reflected on Stella’s words and the events that had shaped her understanding of justice and order.
• Silei called Chiba and said Jane Hesta, Chiba’s ward, was injured and needed immediate medical attention.

Eclipse told Ava that Hesta had been hospitalized with severe psychological symptoms, and Ava reassured her that Chiba would handle the aftermath before discussing her planned surgery and consciousness upload. At Hesta’s hospital room, Valenti explained to Chiba that Hesta likely had a brief psychotic disorder triggered by Alvira’s suicide, but her recovery remained uncertain.

• Eclipse told Ava that Hesta was hospitalized at Tanyi’s Reserve Base with severe somatization symptoms and that her shoulder injury could expose their plans.
• Ava told Eclipse to leave the aftermath to Chiba, then recounted Alecto’s capture and said Eclipse should ask Anna to explain the story.
• Eclipse explained that Ava’s surgery would be presented as a lobectomy, while her brain would be removed and her death announced before her consciousness upload in District 15.
• Chiba questioned Valenti about Hesta’s condition, and Valenti described her psychogenic symptoms and the suspected diagnosis of brief psychotic disorder.
• Valenti told Chiba that Hesta might recover with rest and treatment but could not guarantee a timeline, and Chiba pressed her about the possibility of lasting illness.

Chiba learned that her former adjutant and guardian Ava was critically ill and traveled to Core City to visit her. Ava argued that staying alive was the essential privilege because only the living could shape history and defend their own identities.

• Valenti asked Chiba why Hesta had changed, but Chiba did not answer.
• A nurse gave Chiba Ava’s critical illness notice, prompting Chiba to decide to go to Core City.
• Chiba asked Valenti to look after things and try to bring the old Jane back, then left for Core City.
• Chiba reached Ava’s hospital ward and found her reading in bed.
• Chiba challenged Ava’s decision to award a medical prize to an obstetrical needle, and Ava explained that the living could still change the world while the dead became objects for others to interpret.

Ava confronted Chiba about her responsibility for Hesta’s suffering and criticized her for withholding guidance as a guardian. Ava also warned that Quicksilver Needles could be persecuted after Chelated Disease was defeated, leaving Chiba to consider what future awaited her and Hesta.

• Chiba visited Ava before her surgery and asked whether Ava would die, but Ava urged her to focus on living.
• Ava told Chiba that Hesta’s condition was partly Chiba’s fault, pointing to Hesta’s years of fighting and her collapse after achieving revenge.
• Chiba admitted she was a terrible guardian and asked Ava where she had gone wrong.
• Ava said Chiba had held back her own experience and failed to set firm expectations or teach Hesta through conflict.
• Ava questioned whether Hesta had been asked what life she wanted, then warned Chiba that Quicksilver Needles might have no safe place after Chelated Disease ended.

Chiba and Ava discussed AHgAs’s future, then revisited Chiba’s misdeeds from her youth and their years as guardian and charge. Chiba apologized, and Ava reassured her that she had never disappointed her as she gently rested a hand on Chiba’s head.

• Chiba told Ava she was not worried about AHgAs’s future because she had never intended for it to leave the stage of history.
• Ava argued that AHgAs’s independence was essential to protecting Quicksilver Needles and warned Chiba that people might later demand its dissolution.
• A nurse interrupted their argument to remind them that visiting hours had ended.
• Ava recalled Chiba’s past misdeeds, and Chiba listened as memories of their shared years returned.
• Chiba apologized for being incorrigible and for disappointing Ava, but Ava said Chiba had always found another path and had not disappointed her.

After Ava’s surgery left her comatose, Chiba faced the decision to end her life support and watched her linger for hours after the ventilator was removed. The chapter left Chiba alone at the Reserve Base, grieving Ava’s death.

• Ava’s seven-hour surgery ended with her in a coma, and Chiba visited her in the ward.
• On the third day, Aya gave Chiba Ava’s final arrangements and asked her to sign the order to stop the ventilator.
• Chiba returned to Tanyi and recalled arguing with Ava after she disobeyed orders to pursue a Chelated Being alone.
• Chiba and Aya removed Ava’s ventilator, but Ava’s heart continued beating for five hours and forty-nine minutes.
• Chiba sat alone in the woods and wept for Ava.

Chiba stayed by Hesta in the underground hospital, struggling with Ava’s accusation that she had not been honest enough with Jane. As researchers investigated Hesta’s altered condition, Chiba set aside the medical possibilities and began taking her on daily walks, leaving their future uncertain.

• Valenti found Chiba at Hesta’s bedside, where Chiba admitted she wished Hesta’s condition were her fault so she could fix it.
• Hesta briefly stirred but showed no response, and Chiba told Valenti she had barely spent time alone with Jane in two years.
• Chiba remained in the underground hospital for two weeks, restricted access to Hesta’s medical information, and reviewed the Murder Photography case records before they were given to doctors.
• Researchers discovered that Hesta’s initial awakening scent had disappeared and debated whether external stimuli could alter a Quicksilver Needle’s condition.
• Doctors found abnormal brain activity in Hesta’s orbitofrontal cortex, but Chiba put aside their possible explanations and took Hesta outside in a wheelchair every afternoon.

Stella met Chiba at her restaurant, where they discussed a suicidal patient, Jane’s treatment, and the unfairness Chiba felt toward people who gave up their lives while others struggled to survive. The chapter ended with Shawn grieving beside Calvin’s hospital bed, unable to accept that his brother’s suicide attempt came from illness.

• Stella arrived at The Baroness on the Tree and found Chiba wearing bloodstained clothes after she had helped a Quicksilver Needles who attempted suicide.
• Chiba told Stella that Jane had improved but still scratched herself bloody, and that the hospital was trying medicinal baths to ease her phantom pain.
• Stella described girls driven to suicide by searches for those who had disappeared before age eleven, but Chiba asked her to stop talking about suicide.
• Chiba said she hated that some people gave up lives that others desperately fought to keep, while Stella argued that everyone’s life belonged to them.
• Shawn sat beside Calvin’s hospital bed and sobbed, believing Calvin’s suicide attempt meant that he had abandoned his brother.

Shawn, imprisoned and grieving over Calvin’s condition, blamed Hesta for his losses and escaped his Quicksilver Needle guard to reach her ward. He prepared to attack her with a rusty nail, determined to die with her.

• Shawn mourned beside Calvin’s bed and regretted the crimes that had led to his imprisonment and the loss of his plans.
• Shawn decided Hesta was responsible for his misfortunes and took a rusty nail he had picked up with him.
• Shawn persuaded his guard to take him to Hesta’s hospital floor, pretending he only wanted to wait for Eleven and thank her.
• Shawn watched nurses enter Hesta’s ward, then asked to use the restroom while noise broke out inside her room.
• Shawn entered Bullet Time, escaped through a ventilation duct, and headed toward Hesta with the nail, intending to stab her in the eye.

Shawn broke into Hesta’s hospital room, but Hesta’s frantic warning and the guard’s intervention stopped him before he could harm her. After confirming Hesta was safe, Chiba told her about an upcoming mission and began explaining her past, ending with the story of the friend whose name she had taken.

• Shawn charged into Hesta’s bathroom, where he froze at the sight of her struggling in the tub, and the guard pinned him to the floor.
• Chiba returned to find Hesta safe and learned that Hesta had sensed Shawn’s approach, warned the nurses, and briefly stood in the bathtub.
• Hesta recognized Chiba and herself, and Chiba took her outside in a wheelchair to talk.
• Chiba told Hesta that she had to leave on a mission for at least two months but could take Hesta with her.
• Chiba revealed that she had been born as 40392 at an isolated District 14 base that experimented with producing Quicksilver Needles from Chelated Beings.
• Chiba explained that her first friend was named Chiba Masaki, the name she later used.

Chiba told Hesta how she and Masaki uncovered the shelter’s experiments on graduates, fled, and became caught in the outbreak that devastated the island. She recalled killing Masaki after the disease transformed her, then described fighting Chelated Beings until Ava arrived.

• Chiba explained that the shelter had used graduates as human test subjects in Chelated Disease experiments.
• After Chiba revealed the experiments and planned an escape, someone reported her, and she and Masaki fled into the mountains.
• Chiba and Masaki infected themselves with Chelated Being blood, but Masaki became ill while Chiba remained unchanged.
• Escaped Chelated Beings destroyed the shelter’s laboratories, and the disease spread across the island, infecting nearly all its residents.
• When Masaki transformed, she asked Chiba to kill her; Chiba eventually drove a knife into her heart and fled deeper into the cave.
• After fighting Chelated Beings for 76 hours and 43 minutes, Chiba encountered Ava and told her how long she had been fighting alone.

Chiba told Hesta how her past shaped her understanding of Hesta’s suffering and asked her to leave the hospital with her while she recovered. Two days later, Tulan arrived at Tan Yi Airport to visit Hesta.

• Chiba revealed that she had killed Chiba herself, not Chiba after she became a Chelated Being, and said the experience helped her understand Hesta’s pain.
• Chiba told Hesta she was important to her and urged her not to risk her life again; Hesta promised she would not.
• Chiba asked Hesta to recover somewhere new with her, and Hesta agreed to go despite worrying about her condition.
• Chiba admonished Hesta for keeping Ava’s visit from her and told her not to tell Tulan or Ligo about Murder Photography; Hesta agreed.
• Two days later, Tulan arrived at Tan Yi Airport with her luggage.

Tulan reunited with Hesta at the Reserve Base and stayed to support her recovery, while sharing news of her research career. After learning Ava had died, they attended a memorial flower drop in Tanyi, where a poem brought Hesta’s memories of Ava rushing back.

• Tulan visited the White Ship, bought Hesta’s favorite canelés, and then reunited with Hesta at the Reserve Base.
• Tulan examined Hesta’s medicine, recognized a drug Ligo had once taken, and reassured Hesta that she could recover too.
• Tulan told Hesta about being removed from a research lab after challenging discrimination and about joining the Ava Morgan Foundation’s young scholars program.
• Tulan spent the following days helping Hesta at the underground hospital, including retrieving her belongings and delivering a postcard to Tina.
• Tulan and Hesta learned that Ava had died and arranged with Chiba to leave the base for Tanyi’s memorial event.
• Tulan and Hesta watched fighter jets scatter flowers over the city, and Hesta read poems that brought back memories of Ava.

Jane Hesta wrote a foreword for Ava Morgan’s autobiography, reflecting on Ava’s influence and the need to remember how hard-won rights and happiness must be defended. She urged readers to preserve Ava’s conviction and pass it on to future generations.

• Jane Hesta agreed to write a foreword after Ms. Clifford told her the preparations for Ava Morgan’s autobiography were nearly complete.
• Jane recalled meeting Ava when she was twenty and Ava was seventy-two, when Ava helped her through a difficult period.
• Jane described Ava’s brief autobiography and remembered how Ava’s character and ideals had influenced her.
• Jane warned that people were beginning to forget painful history and argued that rights were never guaranteed.
• Jane urged readers to defend their hard-won happiness and pass the responsibility to future generations.

Ava Morgan explained why she wrote her autobiography and recounted her grandmother Marlowen Corleisa’s harsh life, the love and deception that shaped Ava’s childhood, and her regret at not understanding Marlowen sooner. She ended by recognizing their shared fate and offering her blessing to future generations.

• Ava Morgan began writing her autobiography after Anna persuaded her that later generations could learn from her life, and she explained that its named women were her maternal relatives.
• Ava described how Marlowen survived abuse, hardship, dangerous work, and three marriages before becoming a wealthy and formidable family matriarch.
• Marlowen spoiled Ava while holding her younger brother Bal to stricter rules, and Ava withdrew from her family after learning that Bal was being prepared as its heir.
• At eleven, Ava overheard Marlowen confessing her regrets and sorrow to Ava’s mother as Marlowen lay dying.
• Chelated Disease destroyed Ava’s town, and Ava later reflected on her regret, Marlowen’s love, and the bond between their lives.