The chap­ter begins with the nar­ra­tor, Mick­ey, feel­ing an over­whelm­ing sense of anx­i­ety and dread about the process he is about to under­go. His com­pan­ion, Nasha, is under­stand­ably freaked out as this is a new and ter­ri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence for her; how­ev­er, for Mick­ey, fac­ing exe­cu­tion has become some­what rou­tine. He reflects on the chal­lenges faced by their colony ship once it arrives at its des­ti­na­tion, Nifl­heim, not­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of sur­vival due to the plan­et’s hos­tile cli­mate and atmos­phere. The crew had to imple­ment engi­neer­ing solu­tions, like intro­duc­ing algae, to even­tu­al­ly make the plan­et hab­it­able.

The menial jobs begin with test­ing the local micro­bio­ta, a neces­si­ty for ensur­ing human safe­ty. As the test­ing com­mences, Mick­ey is entered into an iso­la­tion cham­ber where he is sub­ject­ed to var­i­ous poten­tial pathogens, a pro­ce­dure that induces a psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal strug­gle as he rapid­ly suc­cumbs to the effects of the unknown microbes. Nasha stays near­by, sup­port­ing Mick­ey emo­tion­al­ly through the ordeal, but even­tu­al­ly, he col­laps­es and begins to expe­ri­ence severe symp­toms of ill­ness.

Mick­ey under­goes a grue­some death process, result­ing in a pro­found ful­fill­ment of fear and hope­less­ness. How­ev­er, he wakes up cov­ered in goo, next to the portable tank uti­lized dur­ing the test­ing. After a brief peri­od of recov­ery in med­ical care, it becomes evi­dent that Mick­ey must under­go fur­ther tri­als, indi­cat­ed by a series of painful inoc­u­la­tions aimed at prep­ping him for round two in the iso­la­tion cham­ber. His rela­tion­ship with Nasha is deep­ened dur­ing this time, as they share inti­mate moments and sup­port each oth­er through the uncer­tain­ty of what lies ahead.

After a week pass­es, Mick­ey enters the cham­ber again pre­pared for a new round of test­ing. This time, how­ev­er, the out­come looks hope­ful at first, as he feels per­fect­ly fine even after days of iso­la­tion. Yet, a star­tling dis­cov­ery soon aris­es when Mick­ey is advised he must under­go anoth­er exam­i­na­tion after dis­cov­er­ing an omi­nous growth in his brain. What fol­lows is a har­row­ing expe­ri­ence as he con­fronts the impli­ca­tions of hav­ing his brain eat­en by par­a­sitic worms, lead­ing to severe neu­ro­log­i­cal degra­da­tion.

The pas­sage con­cludes with a reflec­tion on the grim and bru­tal tri­als he’s faced, pos­ing ques­tions about the nature of his exis­tence and the next steps Mar­shall has planned for him, with an unset­tling sense that despite his expe­ri­ences, a new dread is creep­ing in.