This was once one of the busiest airports in the entire world. A hub of global connections. Each year travelers numbering in the tens of millions would pass through its concourses. Joyous reunions too numerous too list and more than a few sad farewells, as well. A place where momentous things happened.

Now it's just a dungeon.

But what is a 'dungeon'? The word evokes catacombs and crypts – but modern-day devils evidently make due with their multi-billion dollar mega-complexes. And if travelers are reunited within this place it means something has gone terribly wrong for them. People come here because they've been kidnapped. They aren't headed out on Holiday.

They're going to be sold into slavery – if they survive.

Everyone who works here is a monster by professional association. Their killings can all be condoned. Is that what makes a dungeon?

Ava is on multiple quests. Crusades. Any murders she might commit in the course of their completion are justified – consecrated, even.

This is sacred ground.

But why should she care? If this world isn't real then what does any of this matter?

Why do I keep assuming the other world is the real one?

Does it simply make a certain kind of logical sense? Because what else would happen if you died in a virtual world? Doesn't it stand to reason that you'd get booted out? Disconnected from the game, forced to log back in to continue playing?

But that scene inside that office was so bizarre. Almost harder to reconcile than this apocalyptic hellscape.

And it glitched out, didn't it? How is that possible?

And the butterfly....

And in the end the main result of her near-death experience is this insidious nihilism, isn't it? Since returning she's found it difficult to invest herself completely in everything that's been going on. It all feels muted and less significant.

So who does that benefit?

My enemies in this world, for sure.

So is that it? Has she been somehow brainwashed? Is someone in this ruined version of the world working covertly to intensify Ava's hopelessness?

Was her death and the vortex and the Afterlife all simply some sort of psychological warfare?

Or is it time you just admit this shit is all in your head?

The Body-Snatchers park their bikes at the rim of the mass grave.

“I'm not going in after them,” laughs one. “No fuckin' way.”

“We ain't gotta,” says another, and Ava hears a magazine clicking into a gun. Then the rapid puh-puh-puh-puh of submachine gun fire.

But the bones are too deep and they are protected. After only a minute the Body-Snatchers are satisfied.

“Alright, that's enough. Fuck 'em.”

“Yeah, let's get back out on patrol. Nobody needs to know about any of this. You just tell your manager we never saw anything.”

The bikes rev back up and Ava listens while they pull out, their rumbling engines becoming more and more faint. When it is safe she whisper-shouts to the others:

“Hey! Everyone okay?”

But none of the others answer. Maybe they can't hear her – or maybe they're all dead.

She presses up, but it's not like swimming. She climbs, and the bones shift under her weight and scrape against her arms and legs and cheeks. She closes her eyes so some stray rib or finger doesn't blind her.

And when she erupts through the surface-layer she is still all alone. And now it no longer feels safe to simply call out to the others – what if there's some unseen member of H.R. lurking nearby to hear her?

She wades toward the edge of the grave but when she has nearly reached it the sun catches the edge of something metallic and sets it sparkling. Ava can't help but investigate.

And what she finds is a sparkling skeleton. Its bones are filigreed in silver.

Conductive Skeleton, she thinks.

And then she sees the hand.

It's exactly like hers, attached at the wrist by strands of silver thread like the ligaments of an android. She pulls herself up out of the pit and then drags the skeleton up onto the rim like she's rescuing a drowning victim.

It's mostly just the top-half of a skeleton; the parts held together by the silver filigree. Everything from the waist down is gone, lost to the bone-pile. And it's as she deep-down suspected: this was a small person. A young person. Maybe the exact same size as her.

It's too great a coincidence, is a thought she tries to suppress.

And then she suddenly sees it:

A thin gold chain. A gold medallion setting. And the red ruby cabochon from her post-life vision.

She reaches out with her mechanical hand to take the medallion and tugging at the chain causes the neck to turn to dust and the skull to roll off, back into the pit.

“Ava!” Uri's excited semi-shout startles her and she shoves the necklace inside her pocket like a thief caught in the act. She turns to find him churning toward her and she pushes the silver-etched bones back into the heap before he can see her looting what by all indications might be her own skeletal remains.

“You think we'll just blend in?” Ava asks, skeptical.

“Sure,” Bach explains, “I mean between the barf and the blood, they'll think we're one of them, for sure.”

They cross the last stretch of plains between the mass grave and Castle Dia on foot. Up ahead they see the old airport terminal's sprawling parking lot has been turned into a massive asphalt-floored tent-city occupied by hundreds if not thousands of squatters.

“These people outside aren't Human Resources, don't worry,” says Bach.

“Who are they?” Ava wonders.

“Some are parasites getting by on the scraps left in H.R.'s wake. And others are here for the next auction, looking to acquire 'resources'.”

The four of them simply walk into the tent-city and no one tries to stop them. It's getting near dusk and trash-fires are popping up all over. They find a barrel of their own, a squalid campsite abandoned by its former squatters, and settle in.

“Just act natural,” says Bach, “try to relax a little but prepare yourselves for what's to come. After dark, we'll get inside.”

“How're we gonna do that?” Uri asks, gesturing toward the main terminal entrance where a barricade is manned by guards in ballistic gear. “Looks like security is tighter further in.”

“I think I know a way.”

They do as Bach says. They settle in, albeit anxiously. Ostby starts a fire in their barrel. They don't have anything to cook on it but "when in Rome," he quips.

And then he and Uri talk quietly – Ava assumes Uri is teaching him some healing techniques, just in case. She sits beside Bach:

“So how do you know so much about H.R.'s operations, anyway?” she asks.

“Just been around. I'm from these parts, remember?”

“You know I'm not going to settle for that. How'd you infiltrate back when you rescued me?”

“Sara told me you would be in the caravan. I just let myself get caught up.”

“But what was your plan, again? You and Sara's, I mean.”

“It's embarrassing. Do we have to do this?”

“Please,” she tells the truth but in a manipulative way: “I'm having a hard time putting some things back together after my whole near-death thing.”

“Okay,” he relents, “Sara told me she had already rescued two AVAs – I swear, I had no idea about all the others. But yeah, she said with a third we could summon parts to build our own dragon. To try and battle greedy evil-doers like Horst. I just didn't know who Sara really was. Didn't realize she was one of them. I failed in my most basic duty as a Slayer.”

“See what doesn't make sense to me now,” Ava begins, “is just 'why'? Why would she have you go through all that? Infiltrating Big Traffick and whatever else. I mean, Horst was evidently in contact with H.R.. He was able to recruit them to do his bidding. So couldn't Sara have just done the same? Why'd she need you when she could have had me delivered directly to her doorstep by Big Traffick? It doesn't make sense.”

“Wish I could tell you.”

“And with all those other AVAs – why did she need me? What's so special about me, specifically?”

But the answer to that one is easy. And awful:

It's because I really am Sara, aren't I?

“Bach,” she begins, “I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“It's about what I saw when I died.”

“Like, on the other side?”

“Yeah, I guess so. It was weird. I'm not sure it was real.”

“Some philosophers speculate that when we die we'll simply experience whatever we expect to happen," he says, suddenly erudite. "None of it is real in a material sense, but all of it is real to the dying mind. It could go on for what feels like forever, just a never-ending hallucination -- wish fulfillment forever after. I like that.”

“I don't know about any of that.” She sighs. “Bach.... I saw you.”

“Well that's weird.”

“Yeah, it gets weirder.”

“Oh?”

“You weren't you, you – you were someone else. Younger, really young – like my age. And you were unconscious—sedated—laid out on a gurney—“

“Like back in Sara's lab,” he interrupts. “Maybe your brain simply incorporated that imagery because it's still somewhat fresh in your mind.”

“I don't think so.” She struggles with how to proceed but what's the point? She might as well just tell him, “it felt real. You had wires in your head and you were hooked up to a computer. It seemed like maybe you were trapped in a game—and I had somehow gone in to rescue you.”

“Sorta like you said back when you drank the Vino Veritas.”

“Yeah, and I even saw the name of the game,” she explains. “'The Simulacrum Trap'.”

Bach frowns. He says, “Heaven sounds fucked up.”

“It gets worse. I saw my reflection – but it wasn't me.”

“Who was it?”

“It was Sara. I was Sara. And I think I was jacked into your brain somehow, trying to free you from a game. This entire world – I think it might be a computer program of some sort.”

He sighs. The fire dances in his eyes.

“We gotta find you a 'chipper.”

“What?” she says, “you said my chips were perfect; that AVAs make their own and that they're always flawless. You said AVAs' chips never corrupt.”

“I forgot all about that,” he chuckles, “I've sure talked a lot of shit, haven't I?”

“What do you mean?”

“I've just said things,” he pauses and sighs. “You know, in a way that may have been misleading. I've had to make decisions in the heat of the moment. I've had to keep us moving forward. And we're so close now, Ava. We're so close.”

“Are you saying you were lying about my chips?” She stands up and looks down at him from above. “Do you think I might be becoming Scum, after all?”

“Fuck, I'm sorry,” he says, “I really don't know.”