When they’re safe from the Salt Plainspeople, Pawter tells Johnny why she really ran away: she has leaked information indicating the Company’s plans to build massive walls around every town in Westerley.
D’avin and Dutch apprehend Jake, the boy they’re sent to escort to Prodigy, only after roughing up and disarming his father. Jake's older brother, Olin, is already at Prodigy.
Piping through the big screen, Malta issues the group an ultimatum: she’ll keep mum about the illegal practices of neurofeeding that happened at the school, if Delle Seyah (who was behind it) is brought to justice.
Olin’s got plans to hijack Lucy, save his brother Jake, and hightail it out of there. The others…they’re not part of his plan so he cuts off the air supply in the facility.
Perhaps with her dying breath, Delle Seyah gives Dutch a kiss of life. But it’s only so Dutch has the DNA on her breath to unlock Prodigy’s mainframe and restore life support to the facility.
In an ingenious plan, Johnny uses a hologram of Jake to help talk some sense into the homicidal Olin, who’s brain has been warped due to hours of neurofeeding.