Kirk, La'An and Spock board the long-missing USS Griffin and are haunted by apparitions that blur what is real.
Returning to the Enterprise by shuttle, Kirk, Spock and La'an follow a signal to the far side of an asteroid and find the USS Griffin, a Constitution-class ship that vanished with all hands nine years earlier. Kirk is privately worried by Carol Marcus's frustration with his long absences. Aboard the silent, dust-covered ship they find phaser marks from Starfleet, Klingon and Vulcan weapons, and logs revealing that the security chief, Lieutenant Rose Harper, murdered the crew after coming to suspect her captain and doctor had been compromised.
The ship's influence soon takes hold. Spock is tormented by a vision of T'Pring, and La'an, gripping Harper's dagger, stabs Kirk and offers him command of the ship, which he refuses. The Enterprise beams them out, and they learn that much of what they lived through was hallucination. They recover aboard, but when Kirk calls Carol and David, nobody answers, leaving his family situation unresolved.