Juliette passes through the silo's outer doors as argon floods the airlock behind her, and she steps onto the ramp leading outside. At first she forces herself to keep moving because the suit feels like a coffin and she expects to die soon. When she reaches the top of the ramp, her visor displays a beautiful green world, but Juliette remembers that the scene is false and struggles to hold onto what she knows is real.

Juliette turns toward the sensor tower to clean, then tests the suit by rubbing a wool pad against her arm. The heat tape does not fail. From this, Juliette realizes Walker and allies in Supply replaced IT's defective materials with Mechanical's reliable tape, so the suit will last longer than any previous cleaner's. Understanding that she has been given extra time, Juliette drops the pad instead of cleaning and walks toward the nearest hill.

As Juliette climbs, she focuses on the feel of the wind, dirt, and ground rather than the visor's false colors. She wants to die beyond the hill, out of sight of the silo, partly so no one can watch her body decay and so Lukas will not have to see her corpse from the upper levels. On the slope she discovers the cruelest part of the illusion: the visor has hidden the bodies of Holston and Allison beneath false rocks. Juliette also understands that other supposed rocks mark where earlier cleaners collapsed.

Near the crest, the visor's projection begins to break down. Juliette sees that the shining distant city is only partly rendered, with ruined lower levels and unsupported buildings hanging over a dead landscape. At the top of the hill, she looks back at the inviting false world over her silo and then turns toward the barren, dusty reality beyond, accepting that the silo is now closed to her and that she must face whatever remains outside.

Descending the far side, Juliette notices that the landscape is made of repeated circular bowls separated by ridges, as if the earth has been shaped to isolate each hollow. In the next bowl she sees another sensor tower and the remains of another cleaner. After briefly fearing she has become disoriented, Juliette realizes she is still moving toward the ruined city. The only explanation is that the new tower belongs to another silo, and the hills are meant to hide these neighboring structures from one another. Juliette ends the chapter with proof that her silo is not alone.