Dust

The decontamination protocol is complex. Juliette deposits her finds in a sealed container, enters a burn chamber to burn off any possible debris on her body, and then submerges herself in water to prevent being burned again. In a secondary chamber, Nelson, Lukas, and Sheriff Peter help Juliette scrub herself and the room. Peter tells her that the dig punched through to Silo 17 while she was outside. Juliette hopes the box she brought back full of samples is helpful.

People from Silo 18 flood the near-empty remains of Silo 17 while Jimmy and the kids look on. Despite everyone’s reservations, Silo 17’s survivors follow Courtnee back through the tunnel for medical treatment. The tunnel is dark and terrifying, but Jimmy pushes down his nervousness to model bravery for the other kids. When they reach the end and face the crowd in Silo 18, Jimmy realizes that two vastly different worlds have been united and feels like a nervous child.

Silo 18 puts Jimmy and the kids into rooms and gives them food and medical treatment from Juliette’s father. All of them are initially defensive, but Dr. Nichols’s kindness eases their anxiety. Six-year-old Elise becomes distraught at the thought that Silo 18 will be her new home; as Courtnee escorts Elise and Jimmy out of triage, Elise finds a litter of puppies and quickly becomes attached to one of them. Jimmy is horrified at how casually the engineers talk about putting them down as pests.

Courtnee brings Jimmy and Elise to meet Walker in his workshop. Walker, who has talked to Jimmy over the radio, greets them warmly and agrees to call Juliette. While Courtnee finishes the call, Elise vanishes briefly, causing Jimmy to panic; when she reappears, her bag is moving and making noises. Jimmy and Elise follow Courtnee and Jimmy to get food.

Against the rules, Juliette and Lukas transport the box containing the scientific samples down to a different portion of the silo. Lukas and Juliette talk about death, and Lukas tells Juliette that the only thing that lasts forever is the impact of decisions. Juliette regrets her choices thus far.

At the Suit Lab, Juliette and Nelson don suits in the sealed-off room to begin examining the samples. Nelson finds it strange to be breaking the rules instead of enforcing them. As they conduct their research, Juliette sees evidence that someone designed the original suits to fail against the toxic outside air.

Juliette and Nelson are baffled to find that the control sample and the sample taken close to the silo have more toxic argon readings than a sample from the distant hills. Juliette feels a sudden sense of betrayal and asks Lukas if they know where the argon at the entryway comes from

Donald coughs raggedly, realizing his condition is bringing him closer and closer to death. He morbidly contemplates his choice to fight for all the silos to survive and dwells on the world outside, filled with nanotechnology that will kill all human beings for another 200 years.

Donald gets a call from Juliette, who angrily tells him that she has gone outside and discovered the truth. She accuses him of having pumped the airlocks full of something toxic, but he insists he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. After she hangs up, he realizes that the cleanings actually push more nanotechnology into the air, making the world more toxic and dangerous with every venture outside.

Charlotte attempts to work on a drone. She worries about Donald, who has grown mentally unstable since Juliette’s harsh call. He talks endlessly about the gas in the silos, wondering if they can figure out how to turn it off. Charlotte contemplates waking up other women but realizes it might be ineffective. Suddenly, soldiers arrive and begin to search the room; Charlotte just manages to hide herself and the drone under a tarp, watching as an old man with white hair—Senator Thurman—kicks a helpless Donald furiously and repeatedly.

Juliette and Lukas search the panels beneath the server room where Juliette had previously cut camera feeds. She wonders why, despite Silo 17’s population being all but exterminated, the server room is still functional. While Juliette continues to examine the piping, Lukas gets a call: One of the twins from Silo 17 has fallen to his death, dropped 20 levels over the rails during a riot over having to share resources with the newcomers. Elise has gone missing. Juliette tells her father to take the Silo 17 people to their home, but her father warns her that the angry crowd was heading in that direction.

Elise hunts for her lost puppy in the bazaar, where she quickly grows overwhelmed by the crowd. A boy named Shaw gives her free bacon; they have a confused exchange about her coming from Silo 17, and the boy is amazed to learn of its existence. He then misunderstands what she means by “puppy” and tells her that pig tastes better; Elise panics that someone might eat her dog and runs off. She finds the puppy, which she has named “Puppy,” in a pen full of dogs, but a man claims he has paid for them all; he offers to give her Puppy back in exchange for her precious book. When she starts crying, the man grabs her by the hair, but Shaw saves her and Puppy and helps them run away. Jimmy appears, finds them both, and tells Elise that they’re headed home.

Jimmy and Elise, tailed by Shaw, head down the stairs. They meet up with Juliette, who gives Jimmy the news about Marcus, the twin that fell to his death. She reluctantly lets Elise keep Puppy.

Further down, Shirly confronts Juliette about the riots, saying that mobs are moving through and causing chaos. Jimmy confronts Juliette about Silo 18 scavenging Silo 17 for parts. Juliette doesn’t have a satisfactory answer but promises to deal with it.

Charlotte wakes up from a terrified sleep underneath the tarp. She nervously emerges, aware that she is in danger, and searches the room. Donald is missing. She finds the parts of the radio and decides to try and figure out what happened or at least reach out to someone else.

Donald lies in imprisonment in agonizing pain. He dreams feverishly of commanding a sinking ship surrounded by dying people in lifeboats like cryopods. He rues that Silo 1’s leaders preserved the women so the men would fight for a future that will never happen.

Thurman appears with bad news: Donald will die from the nanotech in his lungs, so he will be executed instead as a troublemaker. Thurman will then exterminate Silo 18; that way, the plan for only one silo to repopulate the Earth can move forward, using the silos’ data to ensure that only the strong survive. Donald counters Thurman’s vitriol by revealing that Thurman’s daughter, Anna, helped him uncover the truth and begin working against the plan. Donald accuses Thurman of killing Anna for the work she did and blames him for “bringing [him] here. For turning [him] into this” (224). He waits for Thurman to hit him, but the blow never comes.

Lukas takes a call from Silo 1 but discovers that the caller is not Donald, but Thurman. Thurman demands to speak to Bernard, the head of IT, and Lukas lies and says that Bernard is still alive. Thurman gives Lukas 15 minutes to find Bernard before things go bad for Silo 18. Lukas decides to have someone else pretend to be Bernard—Sims, the security chief. Sims tries but immediately fails. Thurman calls Lukas out on the lie, tells him that he has up to date population reports, and orders Silo 18 to be shut down. Lukas and Sims try to flee as poison gas billows from the vents, but the room locks; blood pours from Sims’s nose.

Juliette takes frantic calls from the Mids about vapor leaks and then takes a call from Peter, who tells her that the outer door is completely open and he can see outside. She realizes that Silo 18 is being poisoned just as a call from Lukas patches through.

Lukas tells Juliette that Sims is dead and that she must seal herself off. She realizes that Lukas’s fate is sealed and demands that Hank and Walker get everyone down to the bottom of the silo as fast as possible, even though the crowds are surging upward.

People don’t listen to Juliette at first. However, after she convinces a woman named Raina to obey her orders, others follow. As a toxic fog falls down the stairwell, people start to jump off the stairs to floors below.

The kids and Juliette’s father make it through Mechanical to the other side of the dig. A stream of people—though not as many as Juliette hoped—file through the narrow tunnel. After they pour into Silo 17, Juliette and Shirly set off explosives to collapse the tunnel and seal off Silo 18, a reversal of the intended use of the charges. The detonation will kill whoever triggers it; Juliette goes to sacrifice herself, but Shirly grows furious at Juliette’s choices, punches her in the face, and goes to die instead.

Lukas calls Juliette’s radio, wanting to hear her voice one last time. She desperately begs him to get into the sealed pantry so he can survive, but he is too weak. He tells her that he loves her and then goes silent. Dust billows out from the tunnel as the charges explode, and Juliette realizes that everything is gone.