After Clark tells Miranda that Arthur Leander has died, Miranda stays on the beach, numb with grief and thinking about how the world subtly changes when certain people vanish. She notices a sore throat starting but tries to dismiss it as fatigue, telling herself she will not go to any funeral crowded with paparazzi and Arthur’s other ex-wives.

Returning to her hotel, Miranda finds the lobby strangely deserted: no front-desk staff, and the concierge wears a surgical mask and visibly recoils from her approach. Shaken, Miranda retreats to her room, checks the news for the first time all day, and spends hours making calls trying to leave, only to learn that nearby airports are closing and flights are effectively impossible.

Miranda’s fear focuses on contagion—air moving through vents, shared cabin air—and her sore throat worsens despite her attempts to reframe the situation as an “adventure.” She sketches to calm herself, imagining Station Eleven imagery: a dark sea, distant lights, a rocky island.

At four in the morning Miranda wakes with a fever and severe body pain, realizing the illness is real. She calls the front desk, Neptune Logistics offices, and multiple consulates, but reaches only voicemail and ringing lines, and she becomes terrified that if she stays in the room she will be too sick to move at all.

Weak and unsteady, Miranda leaves the room and moves through silent corridors, passing a man curled near the elevators, shivering. Downstairs the lobby is empty—the staff has fled—so she forces herself outside and follows the path back to the beach, where she collapses onto a chaise longue as her fever and chills surge and no one comes to help.

As dawn arrives, Miranda thinks of container ships on the horizon and the possibility that their crews might still be safe from the flu. She watches an intense sunrise that blurs into visions of Station Eleven’s extravagant sunsets, the fleet’s lights fading as the burning sea turns into sky.