Conner’s first control of Pavel’s peripheral is a threshold moment in which remote embodiment stops being an explanation and becomes an intensely physical experience. Waking inside the artificial body, Conner discovers hands he can move and legs that can carry him at speed; his first response is not to stay with the group but to run. The scene makes the technology’s consequence personal and immediate: for a man whose body was torn apart, movement arrives as astonishment, escape, and joy all at once.

Preparing the First Connection

Before the connection, Flynne tells Wilf Netherton and Ossian Murphy that she and Ash will go in together. She warns them that Conner may react intensely and asks them to give him room if he gets excited. The caution establishes that the encounter is not simply a technical demonstration: the people around Conner are anticipating the emotional force of what he is about to experience.

In the back room of the large vehicle serving as their base, the peripheral lies on a bunk with its ankles hanging over the end. Ash addresses it as Pavel and tells it to close its eyes. It looks at Flynne before obeying. Flynne counts down silently, imagining the wobble at ten and continuing until Ash says zero. The sequence gives the transition a small, deliberate ritual: a still body, a countdown, and then the sudden arrival of someone else’s presence within it.

Waking in Pavel’s Body

At the count, the peripheral’s eyes open wide. Conner raises its large hands into view, wiggles both sets of fingers, and touches each thumb to each finger in turn before reversing the motion. He sits upright as if propelled by a spring and comes to his feet. The detail of the finger test matters: his first inspection is not abstract. He checks what the body can do, one deliberate movement at a time, and the quick progression from hand movements to standing makes the new capacity visible as a series of discoveries.

Flynne identifies herself as Conner’s friend, and he confirms that he knows her. Macon had shown him a screen-grab, giving him a visual point of recognition before this encounter. Conner also recognizes Ash as resembling someone he once saw in an Atlanta club; he recalls that the person there called the figure a hyperspace elf and was, technically, overdosing. The exchange makes his arrival in the peripheral collide with a memory of another altered state, while Flynne introduces Ash by name and asks whether the colors are all right.

Flynne takes Conner’s hand and leads him out of the room, reassuring him that the two men outside are with them and are safe. There he is introduced to Ash, Ossian, and Netherton as Conner Penske, who served in the Marines with Flynne’s brother, Burton Fisher. The three men stare and nod. Conner’s changed way of standing registers even before he speaks again; when he decides handshakes are not in order, he puts his hands in the pockets of his gray pants instead.

The Run Through the Garage

Conner looks around the cabin and asks whether it is a boat or a dry dock. Flynne tells him it is a big, fancy RV. He goes to the window, bends to look out, and mutters that he wants out. He yanks the door open, skips the gangway, flips sideways over the railing, and drops roughly fifteen feet to the ground. The sequence is startlingly direct: he tests neither the exit nor the limits of the body cautiously, but turns the first opening into a leap.

He comes up running across the garage, down the long line of cars belonging to Lev Zubov’s father. Flynne follows behind him. As he passes beneath the arches, each one lights up with its shallow glow and then fades again; the movement reveals to her how vast the garage is, and how many arches it contains. The setting becomes part of the event’s scale: Conner’s speed carries him through a space that seems to open out in front of him, while the lights mark his passage only briefly before darkness returns.

As he runs, Conner screams and then whoops hoarsely between the screams. Flynne understands the whoops as an expression of overwhelming joy or relief: he can run this way, with fingers, in a body capable of the movement he has been denied. The sound is harder for her to hear than the screams themselves. That contrast keeps the scene from presenting the new body as a simple cure or uncomplicated triumph. Conner’s exhilaration is inseparable from the remembered loss that makes this freedom so powerful.

Meaning and Immediate Ending

The event moves from controlled access to uncontrolled movement. It begins with Flynne’s warning, Ash’s instruction, and a countdown; it ends with Conner running beyond the others’ immediate reach. The shift gives the peripheral a narrative significance beyond its function as equipment: through it, a capability absent from Conner’s injured body becomes available, and the fact is registered in movement rather than explanation.

The garage run is also the scene’s emotional culmination. Flynne can follow Conner, but she cannot make the experience ordinary by accompanying him. He continues beneath the lit arches until the last one fades, leaving only darkness and the sounds he makes. The scene ends without a conversation that translates his response into a settled judgment. Instead, it lets the running, the fading lights, and the distant cries hold together the relief of regained movement and the pain against which that relief is measured.