“Do you want to say something?” Bach asks. Uri nods.

The day is as gray as their mood. It's early still, the sun barely risen somewhere behind the singular, low-hanging cloud which blankets the sky from corner-to-corner. Uri has been out here with Ostby in the hours before daybreak, the two of them taking turns digging Ellie's grave.

“I didn't know my own mother,” Uri begins, “me and Uma were orphans.”

“I had no idea.” Ostby lays his hand on Uri's shoulder.

“I knew,” says Bach, almost gloating.

“Whoever our ma was left us on the steps of the Psionic Academy in Trinidad. And the monks there weren't what you'd call 'warm'. They raised us but I wouldn't say they cared for us. At all. We slept on the floor and we always ate last.” He's quiet a moment, recalling he and Uma's difficult past. “The monks mostly kept us around as slaves, I guess. We worked around the clock; cleaning up the campus; tending to the gardens. Maybe not so different from what H.R. had in store for us.”

“How'd you end up in Big Traffick, anyway?” Ava asks, “did the Academy get raided or something?”

“Oh no – no way. Human Resources doesn't want any trouble with the Psions.” He scoffs. “They snatched us while we were out gathering herbs to restock the pantry. We stumbled on a couple of them stealing a goat and when Uma confronted them they just went ahead—“ He chokes up, remembering his sister “They went ahead and stole the two of us, too.”

“Sorry,” Ava says, “I didn't mean to add to your hurt today.”

“No worries.” He wipes his eyes and collects his breath before going on. “But yeah, back to Ellie – she might have been the first adult who ever seemed to give a single shit about me. I wish her and Uma could have gotten to know each other better.”

“You reminded her of her son,” Bach says.

“Yeah,” Uri smiles, “she'd mess up and even call me by his name sometimes. 'Benjamin'. She said he died fighting Scum alongside his father. The son I reminded her of died buying her a little time so she could flee with her baby.”

The baby I'm supposed to find now in Dia, Ava thinks, as if that's even remotely possible.

“So I think that's the best way I can honor her memory.” He kneels beside the freshly-dug grave.

“How's that?” Ostby asks.

“I just want to repay her kindness.” Uri dusts himself off and explains, “we're going to find her child in Dia. I'm sure of it.”

“You really think they're still going to be there?” Ava wonders.

“I do.”

“Do we even know the baby's gender?” she asks, “how will we possibly confirm it as Ellie's? H.R. must have an entire nursery full of stolen infants.”

“I'll just know. I'm sure of it.”

He bows his head and recites a quiet prayer over Ellie's shallow grave. There's no marker but for a hunk of rose quartz Uri found in the dirt out by the well. And still, it's a better funeral and gravestone than most people are afforded in this world – Ava's sure of that.

This accursed world. How many graves are out there, hidden away in random spots?

It's all one big graveyard. This world isn't carbon-based – it's built from Death.

This grief. Is it just more world-building? This suffering. Does it have a point?

Of course it does.

I get it already, she thinks, addressing the Invisible Arbiter, you can stop. You want me invested in your goddamned story? Well here I am.

“We can't wait around here much longer,” Bach warns, “the Body-Snatchers are going to have squads out searching for us.”

They pile back into the minivan. Ostby's best efforts to clean up have been mostly successful, but here and there Ava still finds a drop of blood or a spot of crusty vomit. She and Uri ride in back while the grown men sit up front. As they pull out from the barn Bach keeps his binoculars trained on the horizons.

“You can bet it's going to happen,” he says, “we will for certain be ambushed again. Nobody just moseys in after being caught this close to Dia.”

“What can we do?” Ava crawls up from behind to be close enough to talk to Ostby and Bach without yelling.

“Stay vigilant,” he says, “be prepared. That's it. That's all we've got.”

This morning Ostby abandons even the country highways they had been following. Now they're traveling by ever more remote country roads, all unpaved and wash-boarded from years without any grading. They ride along without any conversation for a while, with the rattle of the van riding over the rough road as the only soundtrack for their grim introspections.

Finally it is Ostby who says what they're all thinking:

“I hate to be overly pragmatic.” He clears his throat and keeps his eyes on the road. “But what are we going to do for healing now?”

“That's a real concern.” Bach lowers his binoculars and nods. “We're almost certain to suffer some injuries while crawling through Dia.”

“We can't rely on Uri to enter a trance every time we require mending,” Ostby explains, “so one of us will need to step up and become Uri's partner—or battery—whatever it takes.”

For his part, Uri is silent.

“What about you, Ostby?” Ava asks, “couldn't you maybe be taught to do some healing? Since you already use the tandem mind a little bit to dominate animals.”

He's quiet. Just keeps driving. But then he shrugs and shakes his head:

“Ehhhh. I'm more comfortable doing damage from afar. That's my role. What about you?”

Ava shrugs, too. She looks to Uri and he just sighs.

“Ava can't perform psionics,” he explains, “and I'm sorry but neither can Bach. You're both too much machine – your Spirits are too thin to form resilient bonds.”

Ava can't help but flash back to the Afterlife. The crappy little office and more specifically the machine she was inside.

Or maybe I wasn't trapped 'inside' anything. Maybe deep down I really am just a machine – in both worlds.

It's weird, wild speculation. It's not helpful – but she can't help it. Her brain yearns to find connections; to force it all to fit into one unified theory. To have it it all make tidy sense.

But Bach wasn't a machine in the other world. He was simply a boy with wires in his brain. There's no correlation between their bodies in the other world and here – yet her mind tried to create a connection.

This is the way to madness. You have to pick a world and stay in it.

“But Ostby,” Uri continues, interrupting her thoughts, “Ava's right. You can do it. But I'm only going to teach you the lowest levels of Restoration, first – and we're going to practice before moving onto more powerful psionics. I promise I will not risk your life the way I did Ellie's.”

“Healing,” Ostby harumphs, “well I guess. We all have to make sacrifices.”

Bach glasses the horizon.

“Yep, ain't no mirage. I see 'em alright.” He lowers the binoculars, opens his eyes wide and blinks before peering out once more. “Looks like eight or nine in total.”

“Better take evasive action,” says Ostby.

He turns the van East, crashing off-road through a barbed-wire fence and into a dry dirt field. A cloud of reddish-brown dust billows up behind them.

“That's gonna make it very easy for them to follow.” Bach slides out of the front seat and navigates through the rear compartment so he can scan behind them through the gun-slits.

“They comin'?” Ava asks.

He's quiet for a moment before saying, “yeah, they're comin'.”

“Do you think we could conceal the van with your psychic camouflage?” she asks Uri.

He frowns and shakes his head. “No, it's probably just a little too large and there's not time to teach Ostby the technique, anyway.”

“Well we aren't going to outrun them.” Bach gets himself situated in the machine gun turret. “Better find some place to make our stand. A place where they can't surround us.”

“There's nothing out here.” Ava peers out through one of the gun-slits.

“We're coming up on Dia soon, too,” says Bach, “gotta figure something out quick.”

Ava turns and looks out the front windshield and there in the far distance she sees it rising up already. Castle Dia: a huge, sprawling structure with rows upon rows of tall windows, their panes all busted out like toothless mouths. Pyramidical white-cloth pavilions thrust up from the roof, dingy from years of car exhaust, like circus tents striped with grime. And Dia is surrounded by the ruins of other once-massive structures and an ocean of asphalt. And off yonder Ava sees a sign reading:

Denver International Airport: 2 Miles

The bikers are gaining, and suddenly the van launches over the lip of a pit Ostby didn't see coming until it was too late. They soar through the air—guts somersaulting from the sensation of anti-gravity—and then they splash-down. But the crash is more gentle than expected, like plunging into a swamp or some quicksand or perhaps something slightly more firm – a pit of hardscrabble scree, plinking and scraping against the van's armored exterior as it submerges entirely.

And then the van catches and stops sinking.

Ava looks out through one of the slits to see just what they've crashed into. It's a difficult sight to decipher. The light can scarcely spook through from above but she has a guess:

“Bones,” Ava whispers.

A mass grave. The bones of what must have been thousands of victims.

“Quickly!” Bach barks, dropping from his machine gun turret. “Everyone out! Bury yourselves! Hide!”

Uri tugs open the van's sliding side-door and bones pour in through the opening. They've become completely submerged in this ocean of skeletal bodies. The four of them dive and shove and wriggle out into the grave and bury themselves in bones.

And then they hold their breaths and wait to see what the Body-Snatchers will do next.