The union of Rearden steelworkers demands a raise, but the Unification Board rejects their demand. A newspaper story claims that the steelworkers are starving and mentions that the raise in wages was rejected. The story doesn’t, however, specify who rejected the raise. The government places an order of attachment on all of Rearden’s money, so funds aren’t available to him. Rearden’s family is terrified that he’ll retire and vanish. Unconcerned about the impossible burdens that he has to carry, they plead with him to remain.
Rearden goes to New York to meet with Wesley Mouch and several other heads of the looters’ regime. They inform Rearden that they’ll put a new Steel Unification Plan into effect. Rearden points out that, under the plan, he’ll go bankrupt regardless of his output, while Orren Boyle’s Associated Steel will receive the bulk of his earnings. He leaves the meeting and drives back to his mills. When he arrives, the mills are under siege. The government thugs placed among his workers have started a riot. They murdered the Wet Nurse when he tried to stop them, and they attack Rearden when he enters the mills. One thug smashes him with a pipe before an unknown worker kills the attacker. When Rearden regains consciousness in the infirmary, he finds that his unknown savior, the same person who organized the workers’ defense and defeated the thugs’ attack, is Francisco d’Anconia. Francisco has been working as a furnace foreman at Rearden’s mills for the two months after he destroyed d’Anconia Copper.
