Authority: A Novel

Control tries to gather information about the director’s trip by herself before one of the 11th expeditions from Cheney and Lowry, the only man who returned alive from the first expedition. Lowry still works at the Southern Reach and is considered a hero and an anomaly, since he escaped both Area X and the cancer that killed other survivors of the expeditions. Cheney tells him that the director and Lowry did not get along that well but respected each other. They wonder why the director went into Area X alone.

Control works late that night going through the prior director’s notes. He finds the words she used as hypnosis commands. As a psychologist, she would have used these terms to get the others through the border calmly, but Control remembers that the biologist said hypnosis does not work on her.

Needing a break, he leaves his office for a stretch and hears noises from a nearby door. He enters the janitor’s closet to find Whitby, looking scared and confused. Control asks if he is okay since he appears to be having a breakdown. Whitby never used the Southern Reach’s mental health services, according to his files, but Control wonders if he needs them.