Using the information obtained from Adira Tal, the Discovery finds its way to the combined Federation and Starfleet Headquarters. Saru, Burnham and Adira are beamed over and are greeted by Commander-in-Chief Charles Vance and Chief of Security Lt. Willa. Vance is mistrustful about the ship from the distant past. He says that the Discovery is going to be refitted, and the crew to be reassigned. A medical crisis ensues as Kili refugees are brought in, who suffer from a failure of their nervous system because of mutated proteins. Saru and Burnham see a chance for their crew to prove themselves and ask for the travel roster of the Kili. Among the planets they visited is Urna, which is deserted but used to be heavily industrialized and has a mutated plant life. The Kili can only be cured with the help of healthy plants from that planet, the seeds of which are stored on an a ship called Tikhov in a remote region of space. When Vance disapproves of Saru's proposal to take the Discovery there with the spore drive, Saru agrees to staying behind and letting a Starfleet security team with Willa join the mission. The Tikhov is caught in an ion storm, and there is initially no sign of the crew, a Barzan family. Culber and Nhan find three members of the family in cryostasis pods, the mother and her two daughters, but they are dead. Only Attis, the father, is still alive. Reno muses that when a coronal mass ejection (CME) hit the ship, he was just in a transporter beam and survived, but is out of phase since that event. The crew cuts power on the Tikhov and uses the transporter to put Attis into phase again. With his pass code, Burnham accesses the plant vault. Attis doesn't want to leave, a decision that Nhan understands. When Burnham says that they wouldn't leave Attis behind, Nhan decides to stay. Back at Federation Headquarters, the Kili can be cured. Burnham is puzzled by a melody that Adira played, that she heard on the Tikhov and that everyone in this otherwise disconnected galaxy seems to be familiar with. Also, Georgiou appears to be mentally absent after her debriefing with a Federation official.

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