Editing Summary:Skyward

Nine and a half years later, Spensa hunts rats in a cavern, imagining her speargun to be a rifle, nearby rocks to be fortifications, and the rat to be an enemy. She checks the clock on her light-line, and decides it is getting late and she needs to head back to avoid missing too much of the school day. She comes to an intersection with old machinery, where she collects some water from a tube, before heading forward again and reaching Igneous, her home cavern. She stashes some of her supplies in a obscure maintenance locker. Spensa comes to a check-in point where two ground soldiers make her wait for verification and authorization to enter, even though they know each other. She resents having to go through this every day. Alukos, one of the soldiers, calls her a coward after he finishes searching her bag for contraband, and Spensa tells him that someday he will be grateful for having known her, which he dismisses contemptuously. Spensa heads towards her neighborhood, the Glorious Rises of Industry, passing by a statue of the First Citizens, before reaching her family's apartment. While Spensa's mother isn't home, her grandmother, Gran-Gran, is. Gran-Gran is making algae rolls to sell, which is done since Spensa's mother can't get a job due to them being the family of a coward. She greets Spensa as the latter delivers her rats. Spensa notes that Gran-Gran has forgotten about her needing to attend school, something she misses a lot of due to it currently being about job opportunities she doesn't care for since Spensa is set on becoming a pilot. As they prepare the rats, Gran-Gran starts telling a story about Beowulf. Afterwards, she talks about the history of their clan, the Motorskaps, and tells Spensa to do her exercises, which she has been neglecting. Following her grandmother's instructions, Spensa closes her eyes and tries to listen to the stars and imagine herself flying, even though she finds it boring. Gran-Gran talks about their people, who worked on the engine room of the fleet's flagship. They were considered strange by the other crews, but were able to make the ship move, said to be because they could hear the stars. For a moment, Spensa thinks she can hear a "distant, pure sound". She asks Gran-Gran why the engine crews were important, rather than firing the weapons, which Gran-Gran dismisses, saying that ship movement is also important. She tells Spensa that she will tell her about Sun Tzu tomorrow, though Spensa wants to hear about Genghis Khan. Gran-Gran then mentions Queen Boudicca, who she claims is another of Spensa's ancestors. Spensa's mother interrupts, saying that all of those people being her ancestors is implausible and telling Spensa that she needs to go to school.