The substance has a significant effect upon the various sensitives and non-sensitives alike.

The release of the Material D has been an advantageous distraction for Fifi, who assembles the bomb in the basement of Jaundice Press.

The messianic crown, if imperfect in its operation, places Default within Blue Hell for a span of fifty-three minutes – the first of many such trials to come. But for now, the power turns off; Default's thoughtform is back in North Mural, and the test is over.

Default stands up; the steel walls of the tank look so cold, and the cement has stains he'd never noticed^𐐇 before. He's disoriented, but makes his way through the bomb shelter's twisted tangle all the same, to find Bracey half-asleep on a sofa.

Default's already acquainted with the Terrorzone's main living area. It's like he never left this place he's never been before – everything inside is so familiar, but rearranged. And despite the grime and all the mess, all of his things have been taken care of, too.

Now, he enters the Terrorzone's main living area. Everything inside is so familiar, but rearranged. All of his things have been taken care of.

And we all know Meaty Mouse won't let Virgo make it to the bomb without a fight. In fact, she'd rather he die inside the slaughterhouse she's been building in secret.

So what is she trying to do, and what is Virgo about to step into?

There are no people manning the gold-plated machines and the red spray coming up from the mecha-saw grind doesn't stick to the gears that glint.

It's time for the showdown between Meaty Mouse and Virgo. Behind them, the doors of the chutes open, and the zebras are brought in. She attacks him as he tries to make his way through the hell of the blinged-out slaugherhouse machines, gold hooks and saws, the stripes of the zebras, the claustrophobia of the space, the conveyor belts, the red spray.

But he's victorious - he dodges her every attack, and leaps to safety. Meaty falls into the pit below; the same pit that the skinned and chopped-up zebra parts are being dropped down into, where she's been keeping her most ravenous strangers. The ones she knows are going to eat every single bite.

Virgo does not look behind him; he can hear her as she's stretched apart and grated down.

In the basement's deepest room, he finds the bomb, and he knows what it has all been for.

Fifi adjusts the machines and calibrates the final details, double-checking the safety measures for the third time, as a nearby camera points at the red strain. Her attention is pulled by the jangly bursts of her phone alert – Childhood Heroes, by Jethro Tull. There is no shake in her hands as she dismisses the alert. It's finally time, and she turns on the camera, palm of the other hand squeezed tight around the detonator. She takes a deep, calm breath, exhales, and presses down on detonator's button.

For a moment, the air is silent. The birds sing and the truck-drones rattles, and then, are silenced by the boom – like speakers blowing out, like the rush of an avalanche, a violent dampening. The explosion's glow drowns the city in hues of scarlet, rose, and tangerine, and Fifi looks up at the result of her handiwork.

The mushroom cloud spreads out high above the city – flat, holographic, and searing through the sky. With the camera recording, the words that Fifi had been looking for fade into view above the holodrone.

Before the bomb, Virgo places the thirteen lines of the Hearth and Hollow poem into the code; the intersection of the Fade and the Hells creates an explosion that ripples back through time. As the bomb explodes, Virgo's body and thoughtform are both sent into the distant future-past, as are the thirteen animal bloods, which coalesce as the gosdragons' physical form.

As the explosion moves through the Fade, the foundation that Fifi and Default had built remains strong – Default's attachments to this world are allowed to dissipate, leaving only the monuments behind. The explosion moves through the Fade entirely, yanking the gosdragon FM's thoughtform into the world of North Mural, where it settles in an earlier point in the story, within the body of the blank, Adrian Zhan.

Virgo remains a wanderer in the wilderness of Dead Cities, the future beyond VHZ. He carries the poem with him, and his presence maintains the balance between the dimensions.

At last, he's found a way out.

Though the former 'psycholy boys' are no longer veering towards self-annihilation, their journal is not over, as Argona uses her now-completed, ganshimandy-powered Red Hell engine to trap Default and Bracey within the dimension of Red Hell.