Tally falls from the gondola of the hot air balloon, struggling to gain control. When she falls close enough to the river for her hoverboard’s lifters to turn on, she smacks into the board with force, breaking her nose and cutting her lip. When the board hits the flooded river, Tally and the board both submerge, and she loses her hoverboard in the current. She grabs hold of a fallen log and, realizing that her board is most likely lost, forces herself to swim the rest of the way to shore.

Once she reaches the riverbank, Tally cannot start a fire because the wood is too wet, and even the heater in her coat fails to warm her. She worries that she is getting sick or that her brain is starting to deteriorate like Zane’s. She misses him and feels guilty for not jumping sooner. Torn with thoughts of what she should have done, she eventually falls asleep.

Tally dreams that she is a bored princess stuck in a tower with no way down. She leaps from the tower, only to realize when she crashes into the ground that she has made a mistake. Tally wakes up to a sunny but very cold morning.