“How long do we think it will take us to get to Dia now?” asks Ava.

“Just a couple hours since we'll be riding in style.” Bach mans the heavy machine gun turret and smiles.

“Yeah, as long as you aren't intercepted along the way by H.R.,” Skid explains, “they have patrols and blockades all up and down the Front Range. You'd be wise to stay off the old interstate – it's completely under their control.”

“We'll go by country highways. Dirt roads.” Ostby inspects some broadhead arrows Skid rustled up from the junk heap and slides them into his quiver. “It'll take us a little longer but it's the safest bet.”

“Well you have a full tank – if we can trust the fuel indicator.” Skid tosses an empty five-gallon gas can in the back of the van. “Should be plenty to get you there and back, but if not you'll have to try and steal some from Dia. As much as they drive there has to be a massive fuel reserve someplace. I'd love to know where.”

Quest available? Well that's a first. Ava thinks back. Has she ever had the option whether or not to accept a quest? Not twenty minutes earlier she was complaining in her mind about not being empowered to choose her own class and path – is the game now trying to prove her wrong by giving her choices?

Am I being gaslit by... the Universe?

Regardless, there can't be any harm in adding it to her quest log. She simply wills it and the quest is accepted.

“I'll never be able to repay you for this.” Ostby shakes Skid's hand in a firm grip. “Thank you, Markus.”

“Shut up.” Skid pulls him in for a back-slapping hug. “You'd do the same. And I tell you what, maybe you can. My nephew Trevor was taken in a recent raid. His ma—my sis—is shattered. He's a big kid, sixteen or seventeen, with a goofy, kind heart. They'll sell him out to do hard labor but he ain't gonna cut it. Anyway, he might still be held someplace in Dia. If you don't get yourselves killed maybe you can keep an eye out for him. And if you bring him back safe it'd sure be appreciated.”

“We'll be on the lookout,” says Ava, and just like that she receives confirmation that the quest has been accepted.

“Awesome, okay.” Skid's mood shifts. Suddenly he sports an eager grin and says, “let's talk guns. I see your pistols—fine sidearms—but let me introduce you to my little friends.”

He produces a crowbar from out of nowhere – out of the heaps of junk. He takes it up and pries the lid off an unlabeled wooden crate as tall as Ava. And inside there must be hundreds of guns.

Bach doesn't need an invitation. He reaches right in and snatches a snub-nosed submachine gun with an extended stock. He inspects it like he's found an artifact whose value is beyond imagination.

“You won't be disappointed with that,” Skid says. He pries the top off a second box and it's full of ammo magazines. “Help yourselves.”

“I like my pistol,” Ava says, “it's what I'm used to.”

“Yeah,” agrees Ellie, “can you imagine me with an Uzi? This is fucking crazy.”

“It would be crazier to proceed with only your six-shooters.” Skid hands them each a submachine gun of their own. Uri doesn't have to be told twice. He takes a gun and turns it over in his hands.

Ava inspects hers, as well. She wants to know what she's working with and finally it shimmers into sight:

The top-end isn't quite as lethal as her revolver but the rate of fire means this thing can really dish out a lot of damage in a hurry.

“Thanks,” she says.

And right then Bach comes swaggering up to Skid like they're the only two people left in the world and asks with single-minded focus, “what about suppressors?”

Skid claps him on the back and gestures like a game-show host:

“Right this way.”

They all stay up late, laughing and talking and eating. They will leave at dawn. Any earlier and their headlights would draw too much attention from too far away.

“Hey,” Skid calls out as they're getting set to load up and leave, “hold on a sec. I found something else for you guys.”

He comes out of the garage hauling an armload of armored vests.

“Bulletproof?” Ellie asks.

“Well, nothing is ever really bullet 'proof',” he explains, “but these are damn close. Wish I had some helmets for you, too – but they aren't due to arrive until next week.”

He passes out a vest to each of them and then sticks his head inside the van for one last inspection of their gear. Ava studies her vest and:

She realizes this is her first time inspecting a piece of equipment which is designated as 'armor.' She understands that this specific vest is capable of mitigating one Lethal Injury. It could quite literally be a lifesaver.

Skid seems satisfied with his inspection. He has loaded them up with ammunition and explosives. He has given them a murder van.

“My work here is done.” He concludes, telling Ostby, “drive safe. You wreck this thing and it's gonna go boom.” He winks.

They hit the road. The dirt roads, back-country highways. Ostby drives. The way is North, the mountains always on their left. They pass rural graveyards, burnt fields, demolished barns and farmhouses. Properties dotted with rusted trucks and farm equipment.

The sun is up only a little more than an hour when from the rear of the van Bach informs the others that, “we've got company.”

Two plumes of dirt in the rear-view.

“Gonna be motorcycles.” Bach cracks the knuckles of his left hand against his right stump and situates himself in the machine gun turret.

“We can't outrun them,” Ellie says, “that's for sure.”

Ava peers out one of the rear-facing gun-slits and sees the Body-Snatchers coming:

“They're already gaining on us.”

The highway dips and then rises over a brief hill and only a few hundred meters ahead it is blocked. A barricade of junk has been erected, improvised from some of that same derelict farm equipment they've been passing along the way. And then suddenly there are rapid flashes from up ahead and the ominous wub-wub-wub of an autocannon firing.

Bach drops from the rear-facing turret and swiftly navigates the passenger compartment to man the front-firing rocket launcher.

“If this doesn't kill him,” he tells Ostby, “you ram that fucker.”

“Everyone hold on.” Ostby stomps the accelerator and the van whines, racing straight at the Body-Snatcher in his barricade.

Bach fires off a rocket and it zips through the air leaving behind a tail of white smoke and when it detonates on the blockade the explosion is greater than anyone could have anticipated. That Body-Snatcher must have been sitting on a pile of ammo for his autocannon. A massive fireball screams up from the resulting crater.

And Ostby can't steer clear in time.

The van catches air—leaving the ground entirely—as it jets over the crater's fiery rim. The front-end slams down. Ava, Ellie, and Uri all get crushed forward and then Ostby floors it and they all slide back again. They're sloshing around now and it's almost enough to make Ava seasick.

The van hits the far lip of the crater but not dead-on and it kicks up onto just the two wheels on the passenger-side. It weaves, teetering, and Ostby jerks the wheel to compensate but it's too much. He's over-corrected and the van catches an edge and rolls.

Upside-down, tumbling like laundry in a dryer, Ava can still hear the motorcycles revving up from behind. And then in the next moment she and Ellie's heads crack together with tremendous force.

It's not like a tunnel. There's a blinding flash of white light but there's no tunnel. No exit ramp from the real world. No shadowy apparitions waiting to welcome her to the next life.

Just that flash – and for a moment she's no longer in the van. The van no longer exists, at all. She's floating disembodied in a crappy little office. Like something that'd probably be occupied by an accountant or a lawyer who's down on their luck.

The floor is covered in computer parts—just regular home office fare—not like the floor-mounted super-computer consoles in her mother's futuristic laboratory.

She sees a window and a tree just outside. A parakeet flits down to land upon one of its branches. The parakeet's song is muted by the window in-between and she strains to hear it. But after a moment she does and it's crystal clear; high-pitched and rapid. And as she focuses, the song changes, becoming a squelching, stuttering sound as if the bird has suddenly glitched.

It's not just the bird, though. The entire world is bugging out, hitching as though there simply isn't enough processing power to render it all in real-time. Slowing down, grinding to a halt, and then—

—and then she's just back in her body. Like nothing happened. Back inside the minivan with Bach and Ostby and the others. The engine is stalled but only for a second before Ostby gets it started back up and checks the status panel mounted on the console:

“Armor seems to have absorbed the damage,” Ostby reports, “looks like structurally and mechanically we're good to go.”

“Still have the bikers to contend with,” says Bach, sliding back to man the machine-gun again.

“Deal with them and make it quick,” says Uri, holding onto Ellie and Ava as well as he can to keep them from sliding all over. “We need to get off the road. I can help but these two are hurt bad – if they aren't stabilized soon....”

Ostby stomps the accelerator and gets them moving again.

The rear of the van is pelted with gunfire but the armor is barely affected. Without even seeing Ostby's console-mounted status panel she perceives the number as it ticks down from fifty-seven to fifty-six percent.

Wait – how am I seeing this?

Are the walls coming down? Did hitting her head somehow affect the entire world?

Suddenly everywhere she looks she sees numbers and equations floating in the air. All the data she has had to work to reveal in the past now bubbles up and invades her awareness without any effort at all and it's nauseatingly overwhelming. She's suffocating in numbers.

Ostby flips a switch and unloads the caltrops and one of the bikers is trailing too near to avoid them. His front tire shreds and he goes sailing headfirst over the handlebars. He's back there crumpled in the road but somehow Ava knows he's not dead. She can't see him but she doesn't need to. This is an extra sense she's working with now, some sort of virtual telepathy—

And then she vomits like anyone with a concussion would and the extra layer of information is expelled along with her puke. Everything's back to normal and it's awful and chaotic.

She barely has the focus to wonder, did that really just happen?

Bach targets the remaining Body-Snatcher with machine gun fire. They trade shots but Bach's gun is much bigger. Finally the bike zips off, past them, heading north.

“We'll be seeing him again, I'd reckon.” Bach descends from the gun turret and slumps against the wall of the van. “And he's gonna have friends.”