The episode starts with a pair of boys play-fighting while another claps to mimic the sound of heavy punches. That boy later flicks a pebble into the path of one of the border turrets activating it and watching the resulting spectacle. Trevor Goodchild is being pressured by the government into making the border more intimidating, despite his desire to make people stay in Bregna through the 'power of ideas'. To this end, he secretly allows Æon to come in and bomb the factory where the parts for the wall are being made. In a parallel and intertwined storyline, two Breen lovers, Onan and Sybil, seek to escape from Bregna into Monica through a gap in the frontier ...

At the start of the episode Æon is preparing to penetrate a Breen prison disguised as a guard. In the prison, Trevor is keeping compromising photographs of himself and Æon having sex with the price of their return being a Narghile. Narghiles are a mysterious controlled species, apparently immortal, that produce a memory-wiping drug called 'Bliss'. During her escape, Æon runs into a female prisoner called Muriel killing her in self defense after mistaking her for a guard. As Æon escapes, she encounters and leaves with a Monican called Rordy ...