Admiral Cornwell arrives on the Discovery with a shuttle and demands to speak with Spock. She has visual evidence of Spock killing three people in the mental institution, but he passes her lie detector test. According to Cornwell, the decision making of Starfleet was transferred to Control, the artificial intelligence of Section 31. Cornwell herself was locked out of the system. The transmissions that were secretly sent from the Discovery went to an abandoned penal colony, which Cornwell identifies as the Section 31 Headquarters. While Airiam is working on the decryption of the messages, the ship proceeds to the Section 31 Headquarters. But something is happening to Airiam, which makes her transfer her complete memories to the Discovery computer. The station is protected by mines that attack the ship and that are apparently controlled in a way that anticipates any movements that are not random. Cornwell contacts the station, and the hail is answered by Admiral Patar, who is known for being a Vulcan logic extremist. Patar says that the order to attack the Discovery comes directly from Starfleet Command, and orders the ship to stand down to be boarded by Section 31. Cornwell and Pike, however, decide to send a team consisting of Burnham, Nhan and Airiam to the station to restore Cornwell's access. For some reason, life support is down. Then the team runs into the corpses of the station personnel, including Patar. The transmission from the admiral was a hologram, as was the recording of Spock murdering his custodians, as Saru finds out. On the station, Airiam does not act on her own. She continues to transfer data collected from the sphere to Control. The AI wants to gather this data to become more powerful. It is possible that Control will be responsible for the destruction of all sentient life in the future. Tilly tries to send back the personal memories to Airiam but it is of no help. Pike then gives Burnham the order to blow out Airiam through the airlock. Airiam still gives Burnham a cue to search for a "Project Daedalus" and then dies in open space.

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