Several days earlier, Juliette sits in the holding cell while trying to teach herself how to be sheriff. As she studies the screen showing the dead landscape outside, she feels no longing for it; instead, she sees a useless wasteland and concludes that the silo's real future lies underground. While sorting open cases, she compares police work to mechanical repair and begins to understand the job as both investigation and preventive maintenance.

Juliette keeps returning to two closed files instead of her active cases: the file on her dead former lover's case and Sheriff Holston's file. Re-reading Holston's sparse record of being sent to cleaning unsettles her, especially Mayor Jahns's note asking that Holston be remembered for his service. The more Juliette reads, the more she begins asking forbidden questions about the purpose of the silo, the world beyond the hills, and why sensible people like Holston and Allison would want to leave.

Bernard Holland, now acting mayor, arrives at the cell and introduces himself. Juliette immediately treats him as the prime suspect in Jahns's poisoning, and their conversation becomes a veiled confrontation: Bernard warns that public rumor says Jahns simply exhausted herself, while Juliette says she is treating the death as murder and implies that the guilty party is the one who benefited most. Bernard reminds Juliette that they will have to work together and pointedly tells her to keep him informed about everything.

After Bernard leaves, Juliette notices that the sheriff's star has cut her palm because she was gripping it so hard. The encounter hardens her resolve. She pins on the badge, accepts that this is now truly her work, and walks to the airlock window to imagine what Holston must have felt while waiting to die outside; this leads her to think less about why cleaners wipe the sensor and more about the strange, unknowable experience of standing at that threshold.

Back at the office, Juliette sees Deputy Marnes openly grieving over Jahns's file and gently sends him home. Left alone, Juliette decides she cannot properly do Holston's old job until she understands why Holston abandoned it and chose to go outside. She sends a request down to Mechanical for help obtaining information and commits herself to uncovering Holston's secret as part of taking up the sheriff's role.