Kirsten and August leave the untouched house in the woods, dragging two wheeled suitcases filled with salvaged supplies like towels, shampoo, and salt. With Kirsten in a blue silk dress and August carrying the Starship Enterprise, the house already feels unreal behind them, and Kirsten’s thoughts keep returning to the missing Symphony members, Dieter and Sayid.

As they walk, they revisit August’s belief in parallel universes and what different versions of their lives might look like without the pandemic or with a survivable virus. Resting on an embankment, they flip through magazines Kirsten took from the house and find tabloid photos connected to Arthur Leander: one of his wife Lydia, and another featuring Miranda Carroll leaving the Toronto theater during King Lear. Kirsten thinks she may have been in the building then but cannot clearly remember; she tears out and keeps the Miranda item as a meaningful addition to her collection.

They save two magazines for kindling, bury the rest, and continue the long-running game of imagining better worlds: a world with real space travel, a world like Station Eleven, and a world with working phones where they could simply call the Symphony and their lost friends. Kirsten tries to reassure August that they will find the others, though both know it is uncertain.

Near twilight they reach the outskirts of Severn City, where houses sit overgrown and swallowed by vines along the lakeshore. Not wanting to enter at night, they choose a random property and camp behind a garden shed; there is no food until August returns with blueberries. Kirsten takes first watch, sitting with her knife and listening to the night sounds by the water.

While Kirsten keeps watch, August suddenly returns to a disturbing detail from the gas station encounter: the scarred symbol on the man’s face that Kirsten associates with the Prophet. August pushes Kirsten to picture the shape precisely, then reveals his conclusion: the mark is not an abstract symbol at all but an airplane.