Ava has never seen so much blood. It's not spraying or pulsing or gushing, even. It's simply diffusing out in every direction from the severed leg. Ostby is plastered to the floor by his own bright red effluence, like an island in an expanding ocean of blood.

It's too much. It's too awful.

But then she reminds herself: it's only a game, Ava.

How convenient. She can simply reverse her entire worldview at-will. She can adapt the lies she tells herself to suit whatever self-serving impulse she so desires. When the world gets too scary and complicated, she can dismiss it all as 'only a game.'

But Ostby doesn't know he's not real.

And neither does his son. Darby blurts out an adolescent war-cry and charges forward to fight the Lepers. The slender stranger who sliced off his dad's leg moves to meet him. He performs that same horizontal cutting gesture with his hand and this time Ava witnesses a thin filament—a single strand of silken fiber—flash out like a whip.

“Darby!” she cries out instinctively, anticipating his murder – but that's not what happens at all.

Instead, the filament suddenly collides with an invisible barrier. Electricity crackles in the air around Darby. He's been protected—saved—by some sort of force field which Ava cannot see with her unmodified eyes. Some sort of new-fangled ability granted by his implants, no doubt.

And he's not done showing off his new stuff. Suddenly his freshly-installed cyber-eye telescopes out and fires a beam of intensely-focused light. The eye isn't merely some variety of vision-enhancing modification – it's also a weapon. The laser sizzles on the Leper's shoulder and that's all the other Slaps need to see to inspire them to hurry forward and join the the fray, screeching like a rampaging pack of chimpanzees.

But before they can join Darby in his fight against the slender invader, security guards outfitted in carbon-fiber armor and Body-Snatchers in their black leather jackets begin to press into the laboratory, pouring in behind the Lepers, shouting and cussing with their guns drawn. Human Resources isn't messing around. They're sending the full sum of Hell's Central Casting: square-jawed thugs in security garb alongside dusty desert pirates jacked up on bathtub amphetamines.

Bach leaps to the fore of the battle, swiftly positioning himself between the Slaps and the Lepers and all the other rampaging weirdos pouring into the room through the roll-up shop-doors.

“These two are mine,” he growls at the Lepers. He has new toys and he wants to play with them.

Ava flinches as Uri starts blasting away at the marauders pouring into the lab, his little Uzi spitting a steady stream of sparks.

Oh yeah, she reminds herself, I have a gun, too.

She sprays bullets indiscriminately into the mob because mostly she just wants to drag Ostby back away from the battle. Still, he's a grown man and her a young girl – struggling with all her might she can only just manage to tow him and even then it's terribly slow going, painting a mortal red smear upon the white floor. Finally she manages to pull him behind the cover of an operating table and she fights to regain her breath.

The air is full of violent math—far too much math—and for once she has to focus to block it all out. Her ability to view the equations behind the action isn't helpful during a battle this large and chaotic. It's simply overwhelming; understanding the exact causes and effects of all these violent acts. Somehow it's easier to cope with Ostby's blood.

She peers out from behind the operating table to try and make sense of the carnage. The Slaps have met the security guards and the Body-Snatchers and are more than holding their own. They have the element of surprise – their opponents don't necessarily expect them to all be killer cyborgs.

Ava watches while little Cobra sprouts wicked claws and goes to work slicing the marauders' lower extremities: calves, Achilles, the knee ligaments and even the groins. He's a waist-high whirling dervish and he's doing major damage to multiple opponents before they ever even register the little boy as a threat.

And at center-stage Bach faces off with both Lepers.

He takes one giant step toward them and then holds his epic hand out like a cop halting traffic. And then from the center of his palm the milky-white slime is ejected and Ava recognizes it as the paralytic acid. It sizzles and smokes where it strikes both Lepers and the undulations of their ragged scarves slow. They slump but remain standing. And Bach strides closer still, into melee range.

All around them now the laboratory is consumed in violent struggles between grown men and little cyborg boys. Little boys igniting their enemies on fire with laser-beams projected from their little-boy eyes. Little boys gutting their elders with reciprocating saw-blades concealed in their freshly-minted cybernetic forearms. Little boys covered in the blood of their would-be killers.

Ava pops up and peppers a security guard in the back with a rapid-fire burst. He drops right where he stood. She kills another in the same way.

I didn't even realize it was my turn.

And she wonders: did I somehow turn on 'auto-attack?'

And now Bach is about to engage the pair of paralyzed Lepers – but just before he can they quiver and something sloughs off of each and plops to the floor like a wet sponge:

Suddenly the rotation of the rags encircling them re-accelerates. They're no longer paralyzed – they've shed the layer of skin which was affected by Bach's acid attack.

And right away the first Leper—that which has attempted to slice Darby once already—executes a quick flick of its razor-whip. Darby drops to his knees and his hands fly to his own throat. His telescoping eye works in-and-out frantically. And despite his best efforts to suppress it, deep red blood seeps between his fingers from the clean, straight cut where his throat has been slashed.

“No!” Ostby screams and then his own blood loss overwhelms him and he faints at Ava's feet.

And the scale inside her heart begins to tip precariously toward Dread.

The second Leper performs a pair of quick, twitchy gestures and his whip hisses through the air but Bach bobs and weaves and the strikes both miss. He strides in a step in closer, until he's standing nose-to-nose with Darby's attacker.

And then he smirks and thrusts out his new hand and the maggoty tubes Ava saw used by the Scum-bat back in the woods outside Cripple Creek begin to fester out from his wrist. He wraps the Leper in a bear-hug and squeezes while the tubes begin to insert themselves into the flesh hidden somewhere beneath its swirling rag-body.

But Ava knows Bach needs time – [Sanguine Extraction] requires a round to establish the requisite grapple. The other Leper will interrupt his action. Might even decapitate him. She has to serve as a distraction.

She leaves Ostby—what can she do for him right now, anyway?—and sprints up to the second Leper. But right upon arriving there in melee range she realizes suddenly that she has only a single action point remaining. [Vigilance] is the obvious, safe choice – but 'obvious and safe' isn't what's called for in this situation.

Instead, Ava executes [Taunt]. Now she'll be at the top of the slender slicer's aggro list when next his turn resumes.

And all about her the action continues. Bullets whizz past, ricocheting off the walls and sometimes whistling past a second time. Ava notices Uri repositioning, falling back and crouching beside Ostby's fallen body. And she realizes that if Ostby dies or is incapacitated long-term they will be forced to rely upon Uri's solo-healing – reliant on his trance ability which carries a twenty-four hour cool-down.

Before she can become much more anxious about that uncomfortable thought Ava is distracted by the ferocity of the Slaps. Little Cobra is bright red, drenched in blood from head-to-toe. He screeches and slashes. All around her Ava witnesses the Slaps entering a sort of frenzy, cackling and cutting. The hysterical laughter of over-stimulated kids layered beneath the rapid crackling of gunfire and the sickening sound of freshly-sliced flesh-wounds.

And while she's distracted, the target of her taunt attacks:

His razor-whip snaps, landing what would be a lethal crit to her Torso—but the [Ballistic Vest] mitigates the blow and is simply reduced in effectiveness by one rank. Still, it's as though she's been struck by a hammer in the solar plexus. She struggles to catch the breath which her slender assailant has knocked from her lungs. She's lucky her lungs are still intact at all.

But she's done her job. She's distracted the enemy long enough for Bach's maneuver to complete:

The maggoty tubes tubes slither out from his wrist and insert themselves in the first Leper.

“Oh momma,” groans Bach.

And then the tubes snake out and fester into the Leper attacking Ava, as well.

But how? Isn't it only a single-target attack?

Has Bach's [Sanguine Extraction] somehow been enhanced to become even better than that which she saw the Scum-bat execute? She didn't notice—wasn't paying close enough attention to Bach's actions to absorb the ability's info—because she was still recovering from the Leper's near-fatal attack.

But she's focused now. She's paying attention. And what she notices is how the veins on Bach's throat bulge. How his biceps swell and his bullet-teeth grind together. The Lepers both slump – he's sucking the fight clean out of them.

Ava's limbs tingle.

It's my turn.

She blasts the Leper who hurt her and he collapses straight down, dead. Bach's tubes retract – like any proper vampire they don't want to drink from the deceased.

The battle continues to rage all around them. Ava sees that Ostby has regained his senses but he is alabaster-pale and Uri fires his Uzi over him to keep Body-Snatchers at-bay. The Slaps maintain their manic murder sprees like school children squeezing play into the last minutes of recess.

And the remaining Leper doesn't look like he wants to fight Bach anymore.

He backs up—still entangled in the vampiric tubing—but Bach rushes in. He seizes the Leper by his lean arms and simply rips them each off in one quick jerk. Blood geysers out from both shoulders.

Ava s can't believe the gruesome displays she's just seen. Without even fully intending to, her [Scan] ability suddenly executes and:

As far as Ava can recall, [Sanguine Extraction] should provide +3 Strength when executed successfully – but Bach has doubled-up. He's gained a cumulative bonus by sucking out both of the Leper's souls at once.

And now he's breaking the game. He zips past and unleashes a host of hungry tubes on a trio of Body-Snatchers. This time Ava is paying attention:

There's no cooldown. And the attack effects an entire area now – not merely a single target.

Have all his powers been enhanced to become some superior, Epic version of themselves?

Ava registers that he has gained another 9 Strength and action points. That puts him at 21 Strength, total.

He's a God.

He's busting out of his clothes; the ballistic vest tears and hangs off him like a bib. His poncho bulges and can't bear much more Bach inside it.

And he's not done. He sprays paralytic acid and Ava sees that it now does damage over time, too. He sucks out more blood. He throws punches which crater skulls, tears limbs from his enemies, and grins his bullet-grin.

This is his time, and his turn may never end.