Three years earlier, Allison is making a scene in the cafeteria, shouting: “I want to go out” (23). Marnes alerts Holston, who runs over. He knows his wife has “signed her own death certificate” (24) in saying these words. Holston wonders whether she is only pretending to have gone crazy.

While in the holding cell, Allison calmly tells Holston: “Nothing you see is real” (26). She says she has found programs that IT uses to make pictures such as those on the screens look real. Convinced that other cleaners survived the cleaning but didn’t return, she believes she will also survive and promises to come back for Holston. Allison goes on to say that previous generations have discovered that they could live outside the silo, which led to the revolts.

In present time, Holston looks back on the three years since Allison went to cleaning, which he spent grieving, going through her computer files until he was “half mad” (31) and considering going out to cleaning himself.

Holston goes into the airlock chamber, which will shortly be engulfed in a cleansing fire, and leaves the silo. He walks up a ramp outside its exit.