They used to call this a post-truth world.

Now it's just post-apocalyptic.

They use to say, “listen to your gut. What's it tell you?”

These free-thinkers, they'd command you to think for yourself, too.

Just like them.

But maybe they were lying about everything.

Maybe that's been their strategy all along.

Because to their kind, it's always just been a game.

“Alright,” Bach says as darkness falls, “I know a way in. I don't believe it will be well guarded.”

How can he possibly know that? Is he lying again?

Is this all a set up? Did Sara set this all in motion to bring them to this point?

Did Ava?

What's the difference?

Is she starting to look at everyone as elements of the game? As mere objects – means to ends. It's beginning to feel like no one can exist in her vicinity without serving some purpose. Some purpose for her to exploit, more specifically.

Suddenly it's not as simple as: my companions are their own people.

It's more like: my companions are resources who happen to look human.

But what if that's all bullshit? For awhile she was feeling more and more certain that this world wasn't real – but Bach's confession has changed her thinking. Apparently she might have a bad chip, after all.

This—all of this, every last weird damned thing she's experiencing—could all be symptoms of the Scum disease.

Which reality is easier to accept? That she's going insane, becoming a monster – or that she's potentially involved in some grand conspiracy? Which concept can she reconcile and integrate into her world-view more easily?

The conspiracy, she concludes in no time at all.

The game. The quests. Killing in the name of advancing the main storyline.

Being Sara's virtual avatar.

All of it is easier to accept than the idea that she's simply losing her mind.

In a way, do I hope that I'm Sara? So that at least it's her mind that's being lost?

When it is completely dark save for the trash fires burning in their barrels, Bach leads the party away from their camp. Castle Dia—formerly the Denver International Airport according to signage—is absolutely immense. Hands-down the largest structure Ava has ever seen, for sure.

“There's just no way they could surveil this entire perimeter,” observes Uri.

“Oh, they could,” Ostby corrects, “they have the manpower.”

“There's a specialized division who deals with intruders and would-be liberators,” Bach explains, “they call themselves Loss Prevention.”

“So how are we going to get in?” asks Ava.

Bach guides the party around the side of the main terminal. There are dirty men with cruelty in their eyes everywhere. They're waiting for the next slave auction. These aren't squatters – they're employers. Job creators. But they're also cover, allowing the party to blend in while Bach locates their entry-point.

It stinks. Like dirt and sweat and untreated sewage but also like something worse. Burnt plastic. Burnt hair. And something else:

“What is that?” Ava asks. “That smell; like sweet and sort of rotten. Like some tropical fruit you'd be scared to eat.”

“That's what it smells like when living flesh is burnt.” Bach inhales and holds a deep breath. “You'll never forget it.”

And that's where he's leading them – into the incinerator. Here they find an opening belching out a river of charcoal and ash, covered by a metal grate. Bach wades in and motions for the others to follow.

He grips the grate with his lone hand and pulls it down without even straining. It must have been barely propped up against the opening. He doesn't explain how he knew about this weak-point, and Ava doesn't bother asking.

How could she believe him, anyway?

“Careful, “ he says, “might be some extra-gristly parts in here that haven't been cooked all the way through.”

This particular section of the facility is all automated.

“An ideal point of entry.” Bach beams with pride.

Conveyor belts which once ferried the luggage of travelers around the airport have been repurposed to ferry the bodies of spent resources to incineration. The corpses slide down ramps into a great furnace sunk in the center of the chamber. The ashes pour out down another ramp and into the wind outside.

The party enters by wading up this latter ramp, pushing through the cremains and then climbing over a lip to stand beside the mouth of the furnace. Bodies topple in at a steady clip, pale and rigored and naked. The stench is godawful and eye-watering.

“This is Hell,” Ava observes, covering her mouth and nose against her bicep.

“Guess maybe you'd know,” says Bach.

“I agree with Ava.” Uri coughs. “Please, let's just go.”

But there's no door by which to exit this hot chamber. They'll have to crawl upstream against one of the conveyor belts. Bach goes first, shoving bodies to the side. They're all stiff and nude, stripped of everything that can be stolen. Ava can't close her eyes. She'd trip and might end up carried back to the incinerator. She can't help but look at the corpses as they pass by.

And she half-expects to see another Sawyer.

Or maybe an Ellie.

After a brief tunnel they enter a processing room. Workers labor—also in the nude, no doubt an anti-theft measure implemented by Management—stripping possessions from dead bodies and chucking the clothes and trinkets onto a separate conveyor belt. Presumably one which doesn't lead to a crematorium.

“We need a distraction,” says Bach. “We've got to get on that people-mover where all the stuff is going.”

“Ostby and I have it covered,” says Uri, “just give me one sec to teach him.”

They huddle together for a moment. Uri does most of his teaching telepathically, Ava surmises, implanting concepts in Ostby's mind without any words spoken out loud. After a moment, Ostby exclaims, “ahh!” and they're ready to proceed.

“Avert your eyes a moment,” Uri warns.

It's a well-lit chamber—these naked laborers are doing detail-oriented work. Uri and Ostby perform the [Flash] psionic power and the largest overhead light flares like a supernova. The whole room turns blindingly white.

The workers cringe and shrink away like something has exploded. Then they all look up to see what happened – and that's when Bach leads the party, duck-walking fast as they can past the collectors and onto one of the conveyor belts loaded with people's stuff.

They bury themselves in the coats and shirts and pants of the dead and the people-mover carries the party away, undetected.

The next room is a warehouse full of clothes and watches and jewelry. All the crap taken off the corpses. The conveyor belt dumps everything on the floor where it piles in huge drifts of personal effects. This stuff can all wait to be processed because it won't decompose.

There are only a handful of guard-types milling around, mostly joking and jabbering with one another.

But as the party drops off the people-mover into the laundry drifts, one guard turns his head. Bach freezes. He motions for the others to get down and he buries himself. They all hunker down and hide in the mounds and drifts of stolen possessions.

Piles and piles of stuff. Loot. All of it will have ItemID's. All of it could be useful. But Ava can't go rummaging through it right now, not with the guard looking for them.

So she finds the necklace in her pocket. The medallion she took off a corpse that could only have been her own. And while everyone else is distracted she gives it an inspection:

The ItemID—or lack thereof—is the exact same as the [Omega Key]. She hadn't ever considered summoning a second stiletto, but now she wonders if she even could.

System restore, she ponders, is this what it's all been for? Has Sara been curating events to bring me here, to activate this item? To regain my memories?

There's only one way to find out.

Go ahead, do it. 'Restore your system'.

But the risks are too great. She doesn't want to end up Sara's pawn. And yet the cabochon calls to her, its red surface humming, vibrating with mysterious possibilities.

What if it tells me everything? Who I am; what I'm doing here.

What if it can tell me which world is real?

“Go ahead, do it.” She hears Bach's voice in the rubble nearby, echoing her own internal monologue from only moments ago. “Restore your system.”

“What? How?”

“There isn't much time left before the alarms start sounding,” says his voice, a ghost in the junk. “You do have the necklace, right?”

“How do you—“

“Listen to me: do it. Hurry up. Or we're going to end up out in that bone pile again.”

And right on cue—just like he predicted only a moment ago—a loud alarm blares in the warehouse.

“Do it!” he growls.

She holds the medallion and inspects it, her hand trembling. There isn't much light here beneath this giant laundry pile but that doesn't matter. She can make her own.

How do I activate you? she wonders at the necklace.

And that's all it takes. The stone flashes and time stops. The lettering inside begins to pour into her mind. It's not like reading – it's more like being written upon. She's not perceiving the data; she's becoming it.

Engineer? she wonders, Cryptomancer?

“You did it.” Bach sounds relieved. “Atta girl. Now let's get the hell out of here.”