Mission pushes through thickening smoke toward Lower Dispatch, relieved that the people chasing him seem to have fallen back but sick with guilt over the deaths caused by the blast above. As he nears Dispatch, Mission remembers why he had chased Cam in the first place: Rodny is still imprisoned in IT, and the delivery and explosion now seem less like an accident than part of a trap.

At Dispatch, Mission finds a crowd staring into the smoke-filled offices. Inside, firefighters and porters are wading through water and ash, trying to save damaged files and books. Eli accuses Mission of causing the disaster, and Mission sees the scale of the attack for himself, including the burned body of Hackett and another corpse covered by a sheet. Amanda tells Mission that people came for the beans and burned everything, but the destruction feels too wide and deliberate for a simple food raid.

Mission joins the salvage work, then listens as the surviving porters argue over what to do next. Some want immediate retaliation against the upper farms, but Morgan warns that they do not know who is responsible. Mission learns that Hendricks is dead, which means Morgan has suddenly become chief, and the loss shakes the group even as others fear that failing to strike back will make the porters look weak.

Mission then shares what happened above: the explosion, Cam's death, and the armed pursuit. He argues that the attacks are not really about porters versus farmers at all, but part of a larger plan to make everyone furious and set the silo against itself. Mission connects Rodny's imprisonment and IT's recruitment of young porters to that plan, warns that Rodny may be in immediate danger, and decides he cannot stay below. Despite Morgan's hesitation, Mission insists that he must find a way to get up-top.