After the bonfire burns itself out, Rowan sits with Dominic on the beach and gently salvages a partly burned copy of Jane Eyre, seeing Claire’s notes still inside. Rowan tells Dominic that grieving burned possessions is real grief, and then urges him toward the practical work of returning to the seed vault in the morning, knowing he needs a task to hold himself together.

Over the next several days, Rowan and Dominic scrape rust from exposed steel, chip away damaged concrete, and patch the vault walls by hand because they lack proper materials. The work is exhausting and repetitive, and the silence between them is strained because both are trying to ignore the intimacy opened between them. At the same time, Rowan keeps thinking about Dominic’s vulnerability, his children, and the closeness that now feels impossible to undo.

The repairs make little real difference because the larger problem is environmental collapse: moisture keeps seeping in, permafrost is melting, storms are worsening, and the vault temperature is rising. Rowan, Dominic, and the children constantly pump out water and carry buckets away while the children sort thousands of seed containers according to Hank’s meticulous list. Rowan sees that Hank’s obsession came from the scale and urgency of the task.

After a week, Rowan says plainly that they may need to remove the seeds that can still be saved because the vault is failing too quickly. Dominic, Raff, Fen, and Orly discuss possible alternatives, but every option fails: the base freezer is flooding, moving the freezer is impractical, and the lighthouse freezer is far too small. The conversation exposes the real crisis, because saving some seeds may mean abandoning others.

Orly rejects that idea outright, insisting Hank already cut the collection down once and that they cannot lose more. Dominic quiets him when he turns his anger on Rowan, but the scene leaves everyone aware that Orly alone may know enough to decide what survives. That night, Orly climbs into Rowan’s bed and tells her about the dinosaur trees, and Rowan realizes the children are not simply coping with logistics: they are being asked to live through humanity’s brutal habit of choosing what is worth saving.