Kirsten and August wake up early on the third day of their separation from the Symphony. After bathing, they pass through Severn City as quietly as possible. They hear a dog bark and hide. Sayid appears, bloody and disheveled, followed by two men and a boy, who are armed. Kirsten throws a knife and August shoots an arrow, immediately killing one of the men and incapacitating the other; the boy runs away. As the second man dies, he explains that the prophet wanted to exchange the captives for Eleanor.

Sayid warns that the prophet is close by. He explains that the prophet captured him and Dieter with a chloroform-like substance. When Dieter died after failing to wake up, the prophet’s men captured Sidney, who later escaped.

Sidney, the Symphony’s clarinetist, was studying theater and music in college at the time of the collapse. A fan of modern German drama, she is disappointed that the Symphony only performs Shakespeare.

A year before her capture by the prophet’s men, she starts writing a play but gets stuck on the opening line about going to “rest in the forest,” which some interpret as a suicide note after her disappearance (289). Following her capture, she wakes up in a clearing near Sayid, her hands and feet tied, and overhears the prophet planning to apprehend the Symphony en route to Severn City.