This thing called Dread accumulates the same way shovel-loads of dirt fill a grave. It's a completely different creature than its cousin, Fear. Everybody knows that Fear offers a choice between fight or flight – but not Dread. Dread doesn't present any options. Dread simply encases its victims, no questions asked nor permitted.

When the next impact from above-ground rattles loose a thick section of the steel ceiling it plummets to the floor like a meteor—cratering an entire bank of computers—and when the dirt and rocks come pouring in through the gap which has been created – that cold weight in Ava's gut is undoubtedly dread.

"We're going to be buried alive," she worries.

"We have to get out of here," Ellie repeats for what must be the millionth time.

"I can't walk." Bach gathers his legs beneath him but he's too wobbly to stand. “You must leave me, I'll only slow you down.”

“Shut up,” Ava says half under her breath and Ellie doesn't bother stifling her laughter.

Uri works at the clasps connecting the bed portion of the operating table to the rest of the apparatus.

“This comes apart,” he grunts, “Uma, give me a hand.” The clasps unfasten and the top lifts off. Uri tilts it to dump the blood-dampened surgical drape on the floor. What remains is essentially a cushioned backboard, complete with restraints.

“That's perfect,” Ava says, “let's get him strapped on.”

The laboratory is rocked again and the lights go out and for a panic-stricken moment the only sensation is the sound of the party's trembling breath and then the lights mercifully flicker back on. Uri and Uma hurry to situate the backboard on the floor beside Bach.

“The only way out is the way we came in,” says Ava, “we've got to get back through that blast door and hope the lodge upstairs hasn't already collapsed.”

“You think that's her goal?” Ellie wonders, “to seal us in here?”

“It's possible,” Bach says, “Dr. Sara might do anything to protect her secrets.”

Uma works at strapping his ankles to the disassembled surgical bed.

“Even destroy her own lab?” she asks.

“Even kill her own daughter,” Ava concludes.

“I can't,” Bach groans, struggling to lift his arm, “help me.”

Uri takes his hand and presses Bach's thumb against the print-reader. The blast door rolls to the side and the opening is immediately choked with dirt and debris. Displaced sediment flows into the lab and the party wades through it like the aftermath of an avalanche. Ava leads them out with Uma right on her heels. Uri and Ellie bring up the rear, ferrying Bach as if they were pallbearers. This cellar-space is lit better than it was before—back when Bach dragged Ava the last stretch into Sara's lab—meaning the lodge upstairs must already be mostly demolished to allow the sun to spook in this way.

“Hurry!” Uma cries. “It's a miracle the basement hasn't already collapsed in on itself!”

Ava forges through the dirt like an icebreaker cutting through the arctic. Never has this apocalypse felt so real – not even back in Canon City where it looked like a nuclear bomb had detonated. Right at this moment it is as if the entire world is in churning ruins, as if the Earth itself is working to swallow the party whole, to reclaim the blood and bones of Humanity for its own.

Finally the party claws their way to the far end of the cellar where the staircase climbs up to ground level. Ava ascends it first, shoving broken boards and hunks of fiberglass insulation out of the way so the others can follow. She pauses before the top step. The door which Bach dragged her through earlier has fallen down across the staircase and remains the final obstacle before they can reach the surface. Ava turns to face her companions. Uma, wide-eyed with fear. Uri and Ellie, panting from exertion. And Bach, limp and dull-eyed on the makeshift stretcher. Whatever they are about to confront, they are unprepared and out-manned.

“Okay,” Ava gulps, “here goes nothing.”

She shoves the fallen door up and out of the way and the sky revealed above is drab and gray but the sight of it is so welcome. They won't be buried alive, after all. Ava crawls out of the opening and offers a hand up to Uma. Looking around, she sees that the lodge is almost completely destroyed, the roof missing and the walls sheered and broken in more places than not. And as she scans their surroundings—as Uri and Ellie lift Bach out of the wreckage—a shadow falls across the ruins of the hunting lodge, blotting out the sun. Before Ava can look to determine what could be the cause of this sudden eclipse she is struck by the horror in the eyes of her companions.

“Back inside!” Ellie shrieks and starts dragging Bach's stretcher—along with Uri who hangs on for dear life—back down the steps they've only just ascended.

When Ava whirls around in order to witness what has Ellie so terrified, at first her eyes just want to cross. She can't focus well enough to interpret what she's seeing—it's all so impossible—and her gut churns with a nauseating sort of full-body vertigo. The shadow which has fallen upon the party is cast by a gargantuan nightmare of fire and clockwork architecture – a mecha-dragon taller than a high-rise building, bright orange flames erupting from its char-blackened mouth and nostrils, huge gears grinding to grant its monstrous limbs uncanny articulation.

Ava groans as immense wings unfurl upon the mechanical behemoth's shoulders like the solar sails of some dread space pirate—spanning the entire visible sky—and she suffers the terrible weight of its shadow, a vice tightening upon her heart:

>>>>YOU have been afflicted by Dread Aura(-1 Strength, Mind, and Spirit)

Darkness crushes in, suffocating the periphery, tunneling her vision to focus solely on the thick black-and-platinum interlacing armored slabs which serve as the scales of the dragon. She fixates on the reptilian face: the snout locked in a gnarly snarl, a massive flame-spewing cannon in place of a functional mouth, drooling napalm and gasoline; the eyes ornamental, sinister slits sparkling with diamonds and rubies. Ava shivers but she can't look away.

This lavish death machine, its serpentine torso adorned with glittering chrome-plated rockets and color-coordinated black-and-platinum heavy machine-gun turrets, the forelegs a pair of enormous pneumatic pulverizers and the hind-quarters bulky with multi-stage rocketry suggesting the entire accursed construction could be flight capable – this is her mother's mobile death lab. A walking fortress; lifestyles of the rich and famous during the post-apocalypse.

This modern-day dragon, inflicting terror and destruction—the purest expression of Man's first instinct: desire—this is what Ellie once called a God.

“There are no Gods,” Ava mutters, stupefied.

“Ava!” Uma cries, yanking her by the arm, “come on!” The dragon rears up like a tidal wave and the spectacle finally snaps Ava out of her stupor. She races frantically after Uma, back down the staircase. Back into the quagmire of the collapsing basement, fighting their way across the cellar toward the open blast door. They dive inside Sara's lab just as one of the huge pulverizers stomps down upstairs, demolishing what remains of the hunting lodge. Fractured lumber and severed copper plumbing and tangles of wire all come flooding into the lab along with small boulders and loose soil – completely choking off the exit.

“What now?” Ellie asks, edging into panic. “We're trapped!”

The earth beneath their feet rumbles as the dragon topside takes a step nearer, and more dirt and rocks tumble in through the gap which exists in the lab's ceiling.

“Ava,” Uri says, “what about the door we took to the nursery? Can't you open it again?”

“It might not be a way out,” Uma elaborates, “but it could at least be less prone to collapse.”

“Let's do it.” Ava hurries over to the place where the door had been – now just a smooth, steel, seamless section of wall. She spits. And waits. And nothing happens. Is something different? She stares through her reflection same as she did before, letting her eyes relax until her vision begins to lose focus, and then:

“This....” Ava shakes her head in confusion. “.... somehow this isn't the same lab we were in just a minute ago.”

“What? Of course it is,” Ellie argues.

“I can't explain it, but this just isn't the same place! Something has changed and the door is gone now. We have to find anoth—”

But before she can explain any further the lab echoes with a calamitous cracking as a massive steel skewer suddenly penetrates the ceiling, appearing among a rain of sparks, punching clear through the floor. Ava and Uma dive to avoid being impaled and Uri and Ellie topple onto their backsides, still holding Bach in his stretcher. The huge skewer is some extra-lethal addition to the dragon's foreleg pulverizers, previously embedded like a switchblade.

A second spike inserts itself through the gap and the dragon rips a rough swath across the ceiling the way a pocketknife opens up a tin can. For a moment light from the outside world sneaks in and then the perimeter of the lab begins to fill up fast as dirt and rocks and even whole trees tumble in like an avalanche, threatening to encase the party from every direction at once. That dire mecha-dragon has taken the lid off the lab and blots out the sun, peering in at them smug as a house cat hunching over a trapped mouse.

And up there—no doubt grinning madly behind the gem-and-napalm-encrusted face of the dragon—Sara must be inside someplace, piloting the murderous contraption. Piloting this entire catastrophe. Ava lifts her robotic hand in the air and makes a fist. Then she extends the middle finger, only. It crackles with electricity.

“Sorry, kids.” Sara's laughter echoes out from an unseen loudspeaker, melodic and derisive. The flames projecting from the dragon's mouth and nostrils intensify. “It's been fun but Momma has to be going now.”

“Look!” Uma shouts, pointing at the hole the dragon has punched in the floor. “There's a tunnel down here!”

Ava rushes to have a look. The light to see by is less every second but there is clearly a tunnel beneath the lab, extending in both directions. Uri and Ellie leap to action, carrying Bach to the rim of the hole. The companions exchange wary glances but ultimately there seems to be no other way out and there is no time.

They must act all at once: Ava scrambles down into the underground to help receive; Uri braces the foot of the stretcher against his shoulder and drops in while Ellie scoots her way over the edge, guiding the operation from above, holding on white-knuckled so Bach won't go crashing down. Uma lowers herself in last, close behind Ellie—

—but she never reaches the floor of the tunnel.

She shrieks and clutches the skewer with both hands where it erupts through her chest. Her eyes wide as the full moon, blood pouring from her mouth, painting her chin bright red. Her whole body suddenly tenses—every fiber of every muscle—and then just as suddenly relaxes completely. The skewer slowly lifts her, carrying her up and away from the others like the victim of an alien abduction performed by tractor-beam. The nearby violence unbalances Ellie and she topples the rest of the way into the tunnel, landing upon her companions in a heap.

“Uma! No!” Uri screams. He struggles out from under Ellie and tries to climb back up but there's nothing to grip. He cries for the others to, “boost me up!” But the dirt which has been filling the lab reaches the mouth of the tunnel and they will all be buried soon.

And up there, on the other side of the avalanche coming down on their heads, they hear Sara cackling through her loudspeaker and in the last moment before they are completely shut off from the lab there is an unbearably bright flash as she incinerates Uma's impaled body. They feel the heat for only an instant. Then the gush of the avalanche forces them underground—pushing the party further from the lab of the Mad Scientist—and packing them further into the strange tunnel like wads of meat filling a sausage-casing.