“This place is so big they had to build their own enclosed subway system just to get from one terminal to the next.” Bach spits on the tracks.

That's where they are now – where he's led them. A subway tunnel in complete and impenetrable darkness except for the light provided by Ava's hand. She's forced to steal intermittent glances at her feet to keep from tripping on the train tracks.

Even at the quickest possible pace this is slow going. Ostby grunts and sighs while picking his steps carefully.

“Still quicker than trying to fight our way across the complex,” says Bach, sensing his frustration, “believe me.”

Here and there they come to forks in the tunnel and Bach always knows which way to go. He never needs to pause for even a moment to ponder.

“Hold on.” Uri stops suddenly and asks, “you hear that?”

They all stop and listen. Ava holds her breath. Bach kneels and places his hand on the rails.

“Train coming.” He says. “Right for us.”

It's not as simple as: we're afraid of being alone in the dark.

It's not even: we're afraid of not being alone in the dark.

It's more like: we're afraid of what we might see if we turn on the light.

In the dark, our brains are free to invent the danger without our dominant, visual sense. The things we imagine might be terrible – but at least we know them.

When the lights come on it's more difficult to carve out our own narrative. Then we're forced to confront the truth. And that can be impossible if we've already integrated the things our imaginations paint upon the pallet of darkness.

The ground trembles beneath her feet, vibrating up through her legs. She's shaking now. And the sound of the train bearing down on them is awful; a terminal Doppler Effect. Just one of those things her brain can discern without needing to see it: that sound means it's traveling too fast to stop in time before striking and killing them all.

“There's nowhere to hide.” Uri feels around in the dark. “The tunnel is too narrow. Unless we find a platform to get off the tracks we're in big trouble.”

“We'll be fine,” says Bach, “Ava's got this.”

“I do?”

“Yep.” Bach stoops and rips open a compartment located on the wall near the floor.

“How did you know that was going to be there?” blurts Ava, but she knows how he'll answer:

“No time to explain,” says Bach – just as she expected and honestly fair enough. “But this access panel controls the power to the tracks. We just need you to activate the switch we passed a little ways back.”

Simple enough, right?

Except again she's compelled to ask a fruitless question: “what switch?”

“We passed it in the dark.”

But you knew. You knew it was there. You knew the train was going to come. You've been here before and I just need to push all my questions down for now.

“If we get out of this place alive,” she promises, “you and me are gonna have a long talk.”

“Yes, yes. Fine. Please, Ava – the switch.”

She kneels before the panel. It's a mess of old technology – just multi-colored wires and light emitting diodes on a motherboard. There's no screen, no interface. No nothing.

“I don't know what to do.”

“Scan it.”

[Scan]—that's right—that's a thing she can do now.

She concentrates for a moment to view the ability's details:

She wills the ability to activate and suddenly the little access panel makes better sense. Somehow she internally understands what every wire means to its overall functioning. She innately identifies how it connects to the various track switches around it. The [Subway Panel] even has an ItemID – telegraphed into her mind rather than sought out with her eyes. Could be very convenient in the future.

If you don't quit screwing around you won't have any future.

She uses the [Power ON] ability to activate the switch behind them.

Internally she's confident of her success, but she hears the train – still speeding nearer and nearer their position. She stands and nods at Bach. He smiles his broad bullet smile and nods back.

“Did it work?” Ostby wonders. He and Uri are still wide-eyed and anxious.

But Ava can't answer—can't tell them the plan worked—because it's too loud now. The train is too close and the tunnel is filled with the scraping roar of its wheels on the tracks. And suddenly its headlight can be seen, rushing up at them, larger with every moment that passes. And then just a short ways down the tunnel it veers onto the alternate track which Ava activated and the headlight seems to just vanish and the Doppler Effect is all at once a comfort, informing their ears that the danger is headed in a different direction now.

“Whew,” she says, “that was a close one.”

But then just as the words leave her lips there comes a calamitous crash. The walls shake and dirt and dust is rattled loose from somewhere above. The train has derailed. The tunnel must have been incomplete or damaged. The tracks must have ended. It crashed through a wall back there and:

We're making choices, Ava thinks, and as usual people are dying.

“You can't save everyone,” Bach says. It doesn't even phase her right now that he seems to be reading her mind again. “That just ain't how it works.”

“So we just save ourselves at the expense of others.”

“Sure, fuck it,” he says, “let's go with that.”

The four of them press on. Ostby and Uri don't know that Skid's nephew has been killed – and Ava reckons they never will. Maybe they've already forgotten about him, anyway. They're both here with their own motivations:

Ostby needs to rescue his son.

Uri needs to find Ellie's child.

So what about her and Bach? What are they doing here, exactly?

We're here to save the Slaps, she thinks, because it's our fault they were stolen.

But does it feel like Bach is here just for the Slaps? Or is he on some other quest – one he's been working on for a long time?

Sure seems like he's on a mission.

She thinks back to before the Battle of Cripple Creek. He seemed rejuvenated by the prospect of battle.

But didn't he seem even more excited by the idea we'd lose? she wonders, was he expecting us to end up here, even back then?

Bach interrupts her train of thought before it can veer any further off the tracks:

“Okay, this is us,” he says. He pushes himself up with his stump and his good hand and rolls up onto a chest-high platform. The others follow suit. “Ava, we need your key again.”

Once more they've arrived at a locked hatch without a knob or lever by which to open it – merely another number-pad sunk into the wall beside it.

She fetches out the [Omega Key] and touches it to the door. And same as earlier its needle-sharp tip seems so narrow it can simply slip between the door's atoms. There is a brief pixelated flash and the mechanism rumbles and unlocks as though some secret security guard has buzzed them all through.

And they're back in the dingy halls with their flickering fluorescents but at least it's better lit than the train tunnels were. Bach leads them just a short ways and then stops before another nondescript door.

“Alright, this is it. This is going to be the lab where the Slaps are being held. There will be guards inside, too – and there could even be Lepers on scene already. You'll know 'em if you see 'em.”

“Watch your gunplay,” says Ostby, “avoid friendly-fire. The Slaps looked to be sedated and helpless.”

“We ready?” Bach asks.

The others nod and he turns and kicks in the door.

It's a large chamber with a roll-up garage door on the opposite side from where they've entered and seemingly every other square-inch of wall-space occupied with some complicated piece of machinery. This room is well-lit from above—it's a surgical theater, after all—with rows of operating tables surrounded by equipment which appears suited to do work on both humans and machines. Scalpels and wrenches and sutures and screw-guns. Ava smells iodine and something like Skid-Mark's garage – burnt oil and the distinctive odor of cut metal.

The Slaps are all prone on their operating tables. Some are still being worked on. Ava can count six or seven scrub-clad scientist-types who freeze in place, abandoning their tasks as Bach boots in the door.

Probably all prisoners, she surmises, victims of H.R.—forced to do this work.

They aren't the real enemy – but the guards are. She's counts three, all armed with snub-nosed submachine guns of their own. They lift their weapons but they've been properly ambushed.

Ostby takes aim with extra-lethal precision, his first arrow embedding itself into the eye-socket of one unlucky Body-Snatcher. His second strikes its target in the center of his throat and he tries to scream but only gurgles, clutching at the shaft jutting from under his chin, finally collapsing to die upon the tile floor.

Bach guns the final guard with a pair of quick bursts. The scientist-types all raise their hands in the air—indicating their desire to surrender—but Bach isn't taking prisoners. He paces further in and shoots one at close range. And another. Ava and the others flinch and cringe away.

“Bach!” she cries, “that's enough!”

But he keeps on killing until only one of H.R.'s hostage docs is still standing.

Still, it doesn't matter. The doctors—prisoners or not—have done their damage.

Ostby sprints to his son's bedside:

“Oh God. Oh no, Darby. Oh God no.”

Darby rouses groggily on the operating table. He sits up and Ava sees that they've arrived too late. Now he, too, sports a cybernetic hand. He turns his head to look at his father and an implant where his right eye should be telescopes out and its mechanical aperture blinks.

And the other Slaps begin to rise. They've all been heavily modified; a gang of child cyborgs.

Of all the places we've been in this fucking dungeon, she thinks, why does this have to be the one room that's so well-lit?

“You can't save them all,” says Bach. “Shit, sometimes you can't save anyone.”