Holsten is issued a borrowed shipsuit and, while being moved through refitted crew spaces, meets newly thawed cargo passengers frightened and confused. He sees a classroom of child trainees learning repairs from Lain’s recorded lessons and learns that strict population controls and embryo storage sustain a working crew as suspension reliability declines.

Brought to Communications, Holsten reunites with an older, worn Isa Lain. Lain recounts years of containing Guyen’s lingering upload fragments while battling systemic decay: waking in shifts across generations, training replacements, and refusing to upload herself. She insists Holsten must return to suspension once a viable pod is found.

Lain outlines the only remaining plan: continue to the green planet under Kern’s hostile oversight, prepare to resist her and the planet’s evolved life, and establish a human foothold by any means. She rejects promises, asserting the ship and species need her, and that she will keep waking early to supervise the next generation’s work.

Lain then shows Holsten a lab wall of frozen embryos—future crew and citizens harvested under policy. Among them she reveals their own embryo, a girl conceived during their brief time together, preserved because she once believed there would be a safer tomorrow. Lain tasks Holsten: sleep now, wake at arrival, and help make the world habitable for their child and humanity.

As Holsten is escorted to a restored pod, he notices the name tag on Lain’s ragged shipsuit shawl—his own—quiet proof of her long-kept attachment as he returns to uncertain sleep.