- Cassia's family's a little foggy after taking the red pill, forgetting everything that's happened in the last twelve hours.
- Her mom gets a private message on the portal—the entire family's being relocated to the farmlands of another province, effective tomorrow. She suspects they're taking all those who knew about the rogue crops out of positions of authority. We're a little confused, though… Why didn't they just make her forget the whole thing with a red tablet?
- The Markhams are leaving, supposedly for a position in the central government; this is likely a lie.
- Cassia goes to the museum to try to barter with the Archivists for information about Ky. One approaches her, but she just can't bear to part with the poem she shares with Ky. She does, however, notice a Sisyphus River in the Outer Provinces. Aha—this must be where Ky's from. And perhaps where the fighting is happening?
- Her Official's waiting outside the museum. She tells Cassia the whole thing was an experiment. The Officials deliberately placed Ky in the Matching pool to see what Cassia and Ky would do, and they even tried to add extra stress by cutting her meal portions. Everything went as predicted—and they know what Cassia's going to do now.
- Cassia realizes there's a few things they don't know—that she confessed to Xander, that she kissed Ky, that Ky can write, that Xander hid the artifact, Grandfather's poem—and these things make her feel more powerful.
- Cassia also realizes her Official is lying—they didn't purposefully put Ky in the Matching pool. So who did?