The discovery of unhatched Xindi-Insectoid eggs inside a crashed vessel brings out the paternal side of Archer, who alarms the crew with his obsessive determination to save the embryos.

While dissension among Xindi ranks festers, Degra gets Archer returned to Enterprise. Archer considers compromising his morals to restore Enterprise's warp capacity after a fleet of Xindi-controlled warships cripple the vessel's engines. Sacrificing his ethics, he attacks an innocent alien ship to get their warp coil to repair the Enterprise's engines and intercept the Xindi superweapon. Meanwhile, T'Pol grows increasingly volatile, prompting her to confide a troubling secret to Phlox. Trellium-D exposure led to her addiction, with withdrawal symptoms weakening her emotional control.