Mechanism validated, reproduction PENDING. Same 0.3 mm / 900-cell sheet, seed 17, as Increment 2 — but each infected cell's virus secretion is throttled by (1−ρ), with ρ from that cell's locally-sampled IFN. The primary, robust effect is on virus load (~half the control from the earliest sampled step: 819 vs 1751 at step 20). The effect on infected COUNT is real but weak early (~4% at step 20) and only becomes sizeable (~23%) by step 40. ρ jumps to ~0.53 after one update and plateaus in a 0.55–0.57 band — a steady brake, not a hard block. This is NOT a claim any Sego 2022 Fig 3B/5/7 target is met (deferred to Increment 9); note also the source's IFN-self-secretion feedback is omitted here, so ρ runs somewhat HIGH vs a fully source-faithful version.