The captured Protogen architect, executed by Miller before his Eros rationale can face any trial.
Dresden identifies himself at Thoth Station as the architect of the Eros experiment and defends Protogen's mass killing as the necessary price of learning to direct the Protomolecule. He makes the argument not as a confession of regret, but as a boast that humanity needs its future more than it needs its dead.
Before Fred Johnson can process the captured staff or James Holden can demand justice through a trial, Miller shoots Dresden in the head and chest. His death ends the only direct interrogation of the man who articulated Protogen's ideology, while leaving the evidence, prisoners, and research behind as a more complicated inheritance.
Dresden was a tall, solidly built middle-aged man with dark hair graying at the temples, empty watchful eyes, and a practiced chilly smile. He wore a finely made linen-and-raw-silk suit; this describes him alive.
Dresden was the articulate executive who made Protogen's atrocity sound like a species-saving necessity.