Discovery receives the fourth of seven signals, leading the ship to the Klingon planet of Boreth. Tyler calls Chancellor L'Rell to arrange free passage for his ship. At Boreth, L'Rell tells Pike of the possible reason for the signal to appear near the otherwise insignificant planet: It houses time crystals. When L'Rell argues with Tyler about the safety of their common son on Boreth in case Tyler was seen on Boreth, Pike says that he will beam down himself to obtain such a crystal, which may enable the crew to outwit Control. L'Rell, however, warns him that this will require a great sacrifice. On the planet, Pike is greeted by an old monk named Tenavik, who turns out to be L'Rell and Tyler's son. He exists at an older age because of the time anomalies on the planet. Pike insists on taking a time crystal with him, which comes at the cost of him witnessing his inevitable future, in which he will suffer severe radiation burns and will end up totally immobilized. Meanwhile, Burnham and Spock have embarked a shuttle to investigate an anomaly on a Section 31 ship. They find that almost the whole crew has been killed by exposing the ship to open space, obviously an "accident" arranged by Control. There is only one survivor, Kamran Gant, an officer Burnham knows from the Shenzhou. Gant agrees to return to the ship with Burnham and Spock. They devise a plan to isolate Control in the computer system. But Spock notices that after purging the computer a remainder of the program is left: in Gant's body. Control lured Burnham to the ship to get rid of her, because the AI considers her a threat. Burnham continues to fire her phaser, but even after repeated hits Gant is still not disabled. Finally the nanobots leave his body. Spock incapacitates them by magnetizing the floor. He and Burnham return with the information that the ship was on a course to a destination somewhere outside Federation territory. Before Pike can consider the next steps, the Discovery faces a fleet of 30 Section 31 ships, apparently all controlled by the AI. Since the ship is hopelessly outgunned and there is no way to delete the Sphere data that Control wants to obtain from the computer, Burnham sees no other option but to destroy the Discovery. Pike orders to prepare the evacuation and calls the Enterprise for assistance.

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