The Symphony’s clarinet player, who secretly hates the troupe’s Shakespeare fixation, remembers sitting on the beach in Mackinaw City a year earlier, imagining writing a new, modern play about their post-collapse world. Dieter challenges her to try, and she drafts only a single line—written like a letter—before abandoning it. Months later, after she is taken, the Symphony finds that fragment in her pack and fears it might be a suicide note.

The clarinet wakes from a drugged sleep in a forest clearing with her hands and ankles bound, sick and cold, realizing she has been separated from the Symphony. Nearby, six armed men debate routes to the Severn City Airport while the Prophet calmly leads them. The clarinet hears Sayid tied up as well and sees Dieter lying motionless with marble-like skin, confirming he is dead.

The Prophet’s men explain they are holding Sayid and the clarinet to trade for “the bride,” while the Prophet frames their cruelty as part of a “greater plan,” repeating the mantra “We are the light.” Sayid provokes them with sarcasm, then discreetly mouths instructions to the clarinet about finding the road and turning left, giving her an escape direction.

Later, as the captors sleep, Sayid speaks quietly with the youngest captor, a remorseful boy with a machete. The boy admits not everyone is a true believer and describes the group’s silent-attack training and past raids, warning that they could kill Symphony members one by one from the forest to force compliance. While the boy talks, the clarinet uses her body position to loosen the rope on her ankles.

Still weakened by poison and with her wrists bound, the clarinet slips away into the trees, reaches the road, and runs through the night and into dawn. She collapses into the Symphony’s rear scouts and delivers the urgent message to change their route. As rain begins, the conductor orders an immediate course change inland toward the Severn City Airport and sends scouts to find Kirsten and August, but the storm prevents them from locating the pair.