When the entire excruciating day has finally passed and the crickets chirp and the dogs in the alley outside the jail stop fighting for scraps – then and only then is it time for Remmick to turn in and go to bed. He ensures the cell is locked and he blows out the candles. Then the lockup is dark except for the meager light which filters in through the barred window.

“Holler if you need anything,” he tells the children locked inside his jail, “just don't expect a response.”

Ava and Uri sit on their cots in the darkness. The cell is basic: a pair of cots, a commode bolted to the floor, a chamber pot chained to the commode. The floor is concrete and the walls are bricked and there is a single, barred window – too high for them to see out.

“What are we going to do?” Uri asks.

“I'm not sure, but we won't be hung. We'll get out of this.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Just a hunch.”

That hunch is simple but not something she can share with Uri. He might really think she's crazy and she's certain she's going to need him on her side if they're going to escape. But deep down, she has a hunch they'll avoid hanging because deep down the question persists: is anything real? Is it all a game – all on rails? Right now, the idea that they'll be rescued from this situation by some literal deus ex machina so they can continue their play-through is a genuine comfort. Ava shakes her head. She might be losing her mind but hey – at least these delusions help ease it sometimes, too.

Games. Games. Games.

She sits awake, dreaming of games. Shooters and sims and side-scrolling adventures. Ava knows what they are – but doesn't remember ever playing any herself. Racing and grand strategy and role-playing games. What role is she playing? Her character sheet listed her class as simply “AVA.” But she's not like the other AVAs, anymore. She's physically different. And she's not being victimized by Sara.

Have the other AVAs ever played any games?

What a weird thing to be thinking about while she sits in a jail cell, awaiting a fate which could include hanging. But somehow these questions seem even more urgent:

What role would my lack of memories play in a game?

She lays down on the cot to ponder. Across the cell, Uri snores rhythmically.

How can he sleep?

Perhaps her absent memory is a way to compel her toward an investigation of her own past. It makes sense as a plot device. Or perhaps she has suffered an injury to her brain. Perhaps none of this is a game and she is simply progressing down the same demented path as the Scum.

Quiet!

But she can't stop the thoughts. They keep emerging in her mind, bobbing to the surface like debris from a shipwreck. And then she wonders:

Are these thoughts even mine? Is my mind my own? What if the voice in my head is just dialogue written by someone else?

She recalls the nursery beneath Dr. Sara's lab. All those AVAs. All alike and just the same as her. And all asleep. What was Sara doing to them? What was she using them for? But then suddenly the question isn't as simple as that. Suddenly it's:

What if I'm not really awake?

What if every AVA is just playing their own version of the same game?

Just then Ava hears a tiny plink like someone throwing pebbles – and that's just what it is. On the next attempt the unseen stone thrower manages to hit the gap between bars in the window and a pebble skitters across the cell. Ava climbs off her cot and stretches on her tip-toes but the window is too high to reach – let alone look through. Another tiny stone soars into the cell and rattles around on the cement floor.

“Uri,” Ava says, rousing him gently, “wake up – there's someone outside.”

“What?” He rubs his eyes.

“Boost me up,” she says, pulling him to his feet, “someone outside is trying to get our attention.”

“Who?”

“I don't know.” He's still half-asleep so Ava guides him by the hand over to the wall beneath the window. “Alright, gimme a boost.”

He yawns and kneels and she climbs onto his shoulders to have a look.

“What do you see?”

“Nothing yet,” she stretches as far as she can and says, “lift me just a little higher.”

Uri grunts and Ava peers out the window into an alleyway. Outside there stands a group of at least a dozen young people. They appear to be mostly teenagers, but a couple look even younger. The entire gang is dressed in all black, blending with the shadows.

“Hello?” Ava whispers. One of the shadows steps forward from the rest.

“You the ones that opened the mine?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Ava admits, “I guess that's us.”

“Show us your hand,” says one of the kids, “the metal one.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

She sticks her hand out through the bars. The shadows chatter excitedly.

“I told you!”

“So you did,” says the lead shadow, the one who stepped forward. He whispers up to Ava, “alright, we're gonna bust you out of there. Get back away from the window.”

“Okay,” she whispers, reaching down to touch Uri on the shoulder, “you can let me down now.” He kneels so she can dismount.

“Who's out there?” he asks while straightening his shirt.

“I don't know, but they're here to break us out.”

“Guess you were right.”

“Right about what?”

“Your hunch,” he continues, “about us getting out of this without having our necks stretched. Looks like you were right.”

And the realization lands like a punch to Ava's gut. In the excitement of the moment she had forgotten – but she knows exactly who's out there in the alley, busting her and Uri out of jail:

They're the deus ex machina you expected.

It stands to reason that the kids must climb up on each other's shoulders to form a human ladder, because suddenly there's a face at the window and he's just a little wobbly. He's a boy who looks to be somewhere in his mid-teens, same as Ava and Uri. He smiles down at them in their cell.

“Hi,” he says, “I'm Darby.”

And he has a blowtorch! He flicks a lighter and adjusts the flame until it shifts from orange and lapping to blue and keenly focused. Sparks shower down as he begins to work at the bars.

“Hold on,” someone out there whisper-shouts, ”Night Watch coming!”

Ava hears their feet padding around the alleyway as they disassemble the human ladder and scatter, hiding behind crates and barrels while the Night Watch patrols past. Once the patrol has gone the kids resume their rescue operation. The bars come out one-by-one and are passed gingerly down the ladder like a hot relay baton. Then a knotted rope comes through the window. Uri takes it and ties it off to the cell bars. He gives Ava a hand and she climbs up out the window and then shimmies down the rope. Uri follows after. Then they stand in the alley surrounded by these young people dressed all in black, free once more.

“I'm Ava,” she says.

“Uri.”

“Who do we have to thank for saving us?” Ava wonders.

“We're the Slaps,” Darby explains, “it's short for Slayer Apprentices – and we think you can help us prove there aren't really any Scum in the mine.”

“What can we do?”

“We need to find proof Horst was lying,” Darby concludes, “so we've got to get into the Underground, but we've never been able to open the door. Seems like you know how, though.”

Ava glances at Uri to make sure he's okay with this arrangement. He nods stoicly.

“Alright,” Ava says, “you can count on our help.”

Alright, Ava thinks, keep it together. It's just quest text. Completely cool and normal.

“We better get out of here,” she says, “before Remmick notices we're gone.”

“Yeah, I'd better get home before my old man finds out I'm not in bed,” frets one of the kids.

“You Slaps should all return to your homes,” Darby advises. “Don't get busted. I'll go with Ava and Uri. This is it – this is what we've been waiting for.”

This collection of child fighters salute one another and scatter into the night, except for Darby, who leads Ava and Uri out of town by the backstreets and the alleyways.

“You mean there are others?” Darby asks. The forest rustles on either side of the path.

“Yes,” Ava explains, “we travel with three more – Ellie and Bach and Javors.”

“Bach, you say?”

“Yep – you know him?”

“If it's the Bach I'm thinking of then yeah, I may know of him,” Darby says, a gleam in his eye, “but we have never met.”

“You will soon,” Uri says, “the campsite is a short ways away.”

Same as last time they passed through, the forest is alive and looming. Eyes reflect in the underbrush and further off the path where they cannot see something growls grim and guttural. But all these would-be predators remain as lurking dangers only, seemingly repelled by the presence of the path.

“Darby,” Ava asks, “is this pathway enchanted somehow?”

“Huh?”

“Is it under some sort of protection? Seems like there sure are a lot of beasts out there in the woods that would want to eat us but they just keep on keeping their distance. Is there some reason why?”

“Huh, yeah that's interesting.” He puzzles, fondling his chin, stroking a goatee that he's still too young to grow. “I've never thought of it before but you're right.”

“Kinda weird, isn't it?”

“Probably just another of Horst's tricks,” Darby reckons.

At the edge of the woods they veer off the path. It has been an exhausting interval since Ava and Uri were last at the campsite and they were only there briefly to begin with so their memories aren't perfect – it will take a bit of searching to find the exact location. They traipse along cautiously, squinting and listening for any sign of the others. Finally up ahead the shadowy outline of the fire-pit comes into view. The logs beside it for sitting. And the sweet aroma of whatever foraged delicacy Javors most recently cooked for the company draws a long growl from Ava's empty stomach.

“There,” she says, pointing with her heavy hand.

They angle toward the campsite. There are no snoring lumps sleeping on the ground to be seen nor heard just as of yet. And for a moment Ava worries that perhaps something has happened to the others. Could Remmick have ridden out here on horseback, beating them to the punch? Well, not on the path he couldn't have – they'd have seen him. Even still, entertaining these morbid fears slows Ava's pace, and Uri takes the lead, walking a few paces ahead of her and Darby.

“Something worrying you?” Darby asks.

Before she can answer there is a rush of wind and an accompanying whoosh! It is sudden and nearby, a violent motion which in the darkness disorients Ava. She struggles to focus and discern what is happening but all at once Uri is gone – just vanished. Her heart hammers inside her chest. She hears leaves rustling, something thrashing in the brush, and then Bach comes bursting seemingly out of the ground, appearing from his hiding spot beneath a screen of thatched branches.

“Goddammit,” he curses. He falls to his knees and extends his good hand. “Take it.”

At first Ava can't fathom who he could be talking to or reaching out for, but then she realizes it's Uri. He's fallen into a pit which was hidden beneath another blanket of thatched branches – same as Bach had been concealed beneath.

“Bach Jadeson,” Darby mutters, made stupid with awe.

Bach helps Uri out of the pit one-handed. He might be diminished but he's still strong.

“Sorry,” he says. Suddenly Ellie and Javors arrive, coming out from wherever they'd been hiding.

“What took you so long?” Ellie asks. “We thought you weren't coming back.”

“I knew you'd be back,” Javors contradicts, mostly just talking to himself. “And I apologize for the booby-traps. That was all his idea. I only helped out of boredom – I swear!”

“They threw us in their jail,” Uri explains while brushing the dirt from his trousers.

“Are you... Bach?” Darby blurts.

“Maybe I used to be.”

“My uncle told me so many stories about you. His name was Puck. Do you remember him?”

“No.” And Bach just leaves, walks off into the dark beyond the campsite proper. Darby looks at the others, confused.

“I'm sorry,” he says, “I didn't mean to cause offense.”

“You didn't do anything,” Ava says.

“He's a legend.” Darby massages his own forehead, distressed. “I just wanted to let him know he's one of the reasons I will one day swear my life to the Slayers.”

“Maybe in the morning he'll feel better,” Ava lies.