Marck staggers down Silo 18's central stairwell with a rifle under his arm, wounded, bleeding, and half deaf from the final explosion at IT. He thinks back on the failed assault: McLain's bomb killed her, the blast damaged his hearing, and Knox is now dead. With the attack broken and IT forces chasing the survivors from landing to landing, Marck focuses on one goal instead of the disaster behind him: finding his wife, Shirly.

As Marck retreats, he hears little beyond the ringing in his ears, but the danger is obvious from the bullets striking steel and the crowds shrinking back behind cracked doors. He fires occasional wild shots upward with his slow, unreliable rifle, knowing IT's weapons are faster and more advanced. When he reaches landing fifty-six, the last place he saw Shirly, frightened onlookers indicate she may have gone farther down, so Marck follows the illegal power cables and continues his search.

One level below, Marck dashes across a landing and tries to force open a door, believing Shirly may be inside. People on the other side hold it shut while bullets snap past him, and Marck is forced back to the stairwell. He reasons that if Shirly is hidden behind those doors, she may be safer remaining there and blending in; if she has gone below, he must keep moving. Either way, the chase leaves him no choice but to descend.

At the next landing, Marck catches up with three Supply workers, including a badly wounded man impaled through the abdomen by a chair leg. Marck offers to carry him, but an unnamed woman from Supply refuses and helps place one of their pipe bombs into the wounded man's hands. As Marck is dragged away, he realizes the dying man is being left behind as a last defense against the advancing IT gunmen. Gunfire erupts, then the bomb explodes, shaking the stairwell and knocking Marck down. He recovers his rifle and keeps moving downward through the chaos as the silo sinks deeper into violence.