Carl leaves the Christmas party under the excuse of taking a shower, choosing not to tell Donut or anyone else about the benefactor box until he understands it. In his bare room, Carl adds a few personal objects, including a fern, a drawing from his brother, and the Centipede cabinet, then begins opening accumulated loot boxes.

Most rewards are minor, including trench-building scrolls, invisibility potions, a Size-Up potion, turkey-frying supplies, and unusable warrior gear from the hydra fight. More important rewards include a skill potion that gives Carl level five in Find Crawler, a burning-book upgrade patch that grants Intelligence and the once-per-day Book Burner ability to make an enemy forget a spell, and a Wand of Nighty-Night that casts a powerful sleep effect.

The benefactor box contains only a flyer for The Shepherd’s House, a homeless shelter in Homestead, Florida. The flyer’s 7 AM Christmas breakfast is circled, as is the rule forbidding pets, making Carl suspect the clue is meant specifically to separate Carl from Donut. Carl asks Louis where Homestead is and learns it lies north of the Keys, within reach of their current Florida area.

Carl reasons that the effort to steer Carl and Donut toward Miami must have been about more than sparing Carl from Iowa or the Bahamas. Carl tells Donut that Carl is stepping out for air, while Donut remains excited about her new majorette hat and the party. At the saferoom exit, Zev stops Carl and admits that Carl’s sponsor sent the box days earlier, before Miami was chosen, and that the box was seized before the sponsor, the charity, and Rosetta all disappeared.

Before leaving, Carl asks Zev about the failsafe Cascadia once mentioned. Zev does not know what it does but says the system is under temporary quarantine, with many powerful outsiders trapped on or near Earth, making the failsafe unlikely to be used. Carl exits anyway, summons his father’s motorcycle instead of the royal chariot, finds it fueled and functional, and rides toward Homestead.