Miranda receives a visit from Kern, who is awkwardly inhabiting a blank body made in Miranda’s own form. Miranda is unsettled by seeing her face animated by Kern’s expressions, while Kern argues that both of them are already forms of copied or simulated identity and have little ground for possessiveness.

Kern explains that long experience inside the simulation made embodiment feel necessary to her. Miranda admits that she cannot dismiss Landfall as unreal because she lived multiple lives there, and she desperately wants to go down to Imir and see what remains. Kern then reveals that the sensor data is inconsistent and takes control of the quarantine chamber, separating it from the ship so the two can return to the planet.

Kern-major, the larger shipboard version of Kern, intervenes but asks Miranda whether she wants to go. Miranda says she must see Imir for herself, especially because Landfall and Liff still feel like an unresolved wound. Kern-major permits the journey, and the detached pod glides from the lunar station toward Imir.

During descent, Miranda reflects on the Enkidu, the abandoned Watchers, and the doomed bravery of the would-be colony. She briefly intercepts radio-like signals from Landfall and realizes they are only part of the buried engine’s imitation of a living settlement. When Miranda fears the engine may have taken her again, Kern reassures her that rescue efforts had already developed countermeasures to enter the simulation without being trapped by it.

The pod reaches the coordinates where Landfall should stand, but the landscape is empty. Scans show the buried alien engine but no town, farms, buildings, roads, or archaeological remains. Kern-major admits that the crew already knew something was wrong and withheld the truth because Miranda was unstable after reintegration.

Kern-splinter finds one human trace: a buried crash site containing human-made residues from a heavy freight shuttle. Further data from Kern-major shows that the vessel was occupied and carried a small crew and the hopes of founding a colony. On the ground, Miranda stands where Landfall should have been while Kern-major reveals the truth: there was no colony, because the last functioning shuttle from the Enkidu did not survive atmospheric entry.