During a three-day thaw, Raven takes Lena to check their animal traps. They find a large rabbit with its hind leg caught in the metal teeth. Raven gives Lena a knife and orders her to kill the animal as a test. When Lena refuses, having never killed anything before, Raven tells her that survival in the Wilds requires killing. She says “something must die so that others can live” (163). Raven then reveals she has known about Alex all along, asking if he was the one Lena tried to cross the border with. Enraged that Raven kept this knowledge from her, Lena lunges at her with the knife. Raven pushes her off balance and restrains her wrist, forcing Lena’s hand down to drive the blade into the rabbit’s neck. The animal dies after a brief struggle. Lena breaks down and cries for the first time since Alex’s death. Raven releases her and walks away with the dead rabbit. Afterward, Lena describes hatred as something that feeds and destroys at the same time and says she will build a “high tower” (166) of hatred inside herself.

The morning after holding hands, Lena and Julian wake to awkwardness and tension. When Julian mentions his father will pay their ransom soon, Lena does not respond and keeps her thoughts to herself. After nightfall, Julian tells Lena the beginning of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a forbidden story. He explains that his father, a DFA official, kept a locked study containing banned books and music from before the cure. While telling the story, he briefly mentions having a brother. Julian discovers the key’s hiding place and secretly accesses these materials until his father catches him reading. His father beats him unconscious, and the next day Julian has his first seizure, leading to the discovery of his brain tumor. Julian says his father was trying to protect him. As Lena falls asleep, Julian reaches across the darkness and gently strokes her hair after asking for permission.

The next morning brings renewed awkwardness. Recalling Julian’s mention of a brother from the previous night, Lena presses for details, but he reveals his brother has died in an “accident” (177) and angrily refuses to discuss it further. Two-armed members of the Scavengers—a pale man with a botched procedural scar and tattooed triangle, and a heavily pierced young woman—enter the cell and take Julian for interrogation. Alone, Lena searches The Book of Shhh in her backpack and discovers coded messages from her companions, Tack and Raven: “You. Must. Escape.” (182) and “The tools are with you” (182). A starred psalm mentioning rain leads her to the umbrella Tack insisted she bring. She breaks open the handle and finds a hidden knife inside.

Julian returns severely beaten. He tells Lena the Scavengers interrogated him for security information about his family’s apartment. Realizing from what he tells her that the Scavengers are no longer waiting for a ransom, Lena accidentally reveals she has been to Massachusetts, contradicting her cover story. When Julian confronts her, she confesses that Lena Morgan Jones is a fabrication and that even her cure scar is fake. Julian reacts with anger, accusing her people of orchestrating his kidnapping. Lena stops trying to explain and begins sharpening her knife.

On the night before the resistance group is scheduled to leave the encampment, Raven tells Lena it is time for her cure. She leads Lena to Bram, who has built a fire and is sterilizing a sharp metal tool in boiling water. He gives Lena whiskey to numb the pain. Lena lies down as Raven and Bram grip her arms to hold her still. They place a leather strip in her mouth to bite down on. Bram quietly welcomes her to the resistance before making the first deep cut into the skin behind her left ear. The pain causes Lena to scream.

Lena wakes from a nightmare. Julian tells her she was calling out Alex’s name in her sleep and asks what happened to him. Lena says Julian’s people—the supporters of the cure—killed Alex. She enacts her escape plan, using nylon from the umbrella to create a rope and her knife to break the hinges on the door flap. She writes a note in mascara claiming she is violent and her cellmate is ready to talk. A male guard enters to investigate. Lena and Julian overpower him, and Julian ties his hands and feet while Lena gags him.

They escape into a hallway lined with metal doors. After hearing Scavengers arguing nearby, they reach an exit that requires a keypad code. Julian deduces the code—0915—from a broken clock on the wall, and they unlock the door just as Scavengers enter the hallway. They find themselves in a large storeroom filled with stolen supplies, weapons, and equipment. They hide in a wardrobe as their captors enter. Lena overhears the leader organizing a search of the tunnels with at least six other Scavengers, including Nick, Don, Kurt, Forest, Briggs, and Ring. The leader mentions a payday, indicating the group expects some form of payment.

After the Scavengers leave to search the tunnels, Lena and Julian change into clean clothes and pack supplies and weapons. Lena finds a box containing hundreds of stolen identification cards and DFA badges. She remembers that the guard they tied up, Matt, had a tattoo of the DFA crest—an eagle and a syringe. Lena considers the connection between the Scavengers and the DFA, while Julian denies this possibility.

Two more Scavengers burst into the room. A fight breaks out between them. Lena kills the female Scavenger with her knife. The male Scavenger knocks Lena down with a baton and is about to slit her throat when Julian drives a knife into his back, killing him. Julian is shaken. Lena tells him he saved her life. Holding hands for support, they escape the storeroom and enter the darkness of the subway tunnels.