Dagny approaches the guard at the door of Project F, where John Galt is being tortured. When the guard refuses her admittance, she says she is there on the order of Mr. Thompson. The guard argues that he has no orders to accept orders from Mr. Thompson. Dagny questions him as to his understanding of her identity, which he confesses he knows. She tells him that he has the choice of either letting her in or being shot. He breaks down, unable to make a decision, so Dagny shoots him. Francisco d’Anconia joins her, as do Hank Rearden and Ragnar Danneskjold. The other guards are tied up. They enter the project and are confronted by one of the other guards, who leads them to where John Galt is being held. D’Anconia and Rearden enter the lab to find eight more guards. There is a gunfight, and Danneskjold breaks through the window. When the guards are overpowered, Rearden and the others find John Galt. Galt tells them he is all right. The torture was rough but endurable. He dresses and they escape to d’Anconia’s plane, which is hidden nearby. As they take off, Danneskjold radios the other men from Galt’s Gulch, who had travelled to New York to join the fight if they were needed. As the plane flies over the city, the lights go out and New York is destroyed.

Eddie Willers travels on the Comet across the transcontinental railway west of the Mississippi. He is coming from San Francisco, where he had worked to re-establish the rail connection. When the train stops in the middle of the wilderness, Eddie sends one of the crew to a track phone to contact Division Headquarters. The man returns to say that Division Headquarters does not answer. As they look out the window, they see a wagon train: people are traveling by wagon with all their belongings. The Comet’s passengers load up in the wagons to reach the nearest town. Eddie refuses to leave the Comet even after he learns that the Taggart Bridge, the only link across the Mississippi, has been destroyed. He lies down on the tracks in front of the train.

At Galt’s Gulch, Rearden, Dagny, and the others sit in their homes in the twilight. The group makes plans for the future. Now that the government of looters has been destroyed, it is safe for them to return to the outside world—to begin the world anew.