The thing to remember about violence is that it only snowballs. A little bit is never enough. It must escalate toward a crescendo before it can begin to recede.

This specific round of violence only concludes when Bach crushes the final Body-Snatcher's skull between his palms. The hapless kidnapper tries to scream but his face implodes and the air passing over his vocal chords is interrupted by an avalanche of brain and bone fragments.

Bach holds the pose, laughing, louder and louder, his outstretched fingers dripping chunks of gunky gore. For a moment Ava is transfixed. Bach is back. Once more he's become the greatest monster she can imagine.

At least he's on my side, she thinks. Guess I should be grateful.

But then she remembers that the Channings are both dying.

Darby lays unconscious, his throat slashed. His skin pale and cold.

Ostby is also pale. His leg lays motionless on the floor like a dead fish.

And Uri looks anxious. There are other injuries here which require healing – the Slaps have not come out entirely unscathed. Ideally he would use his trance to heal Ostby and together they would mend the injuries of the others – but that would mean letting Darby die.

“Save him,” Ostby pleads, his voice barely a whisper, “let me die if it means he can live on.”

Uri can't reply. His face shows it: he's frozen; he can't make this decision on his own.

So Bach makes it for him.

“Hurry up, Uri. Save the kid.” He scoops Ostby up in his arms as easily as he'd lift a baby from their crib. “I'll take care of Nature Boy here.”

Ava watches as he carries Ostby across the carnage-filled lab like newlyweds in Hell. He boots the dismembered leg aside as they pass and Ava cringes. Ostby just flops in Bach's arms, looking like he might already be dead.

And Bach lays him on a gurney and then drags him over to one of the machines. It looks like an apparatus meant to perform magnetic resonance imaging—a sort of pod or capsule to encase the patient—and Bach positions Ostby's lower-half inside. Then he works at the conjoined computer console and activates the cybernetic fabrication process.

Meanwhile, Uri enters his [Meditative Trance] and executes the [Mend Lethal Wound] psionic. The gash on Darby's throat seals up and his pale cheeks flush pink only a moment later. He sits up in time to hear his father start screaming as his new limb is built and installed.

The aftermath of this specific round of violence is like a bomb exploded. Body parts scattered all over. Blood coagulating, getting stickier by the second. Dismembered Body-Snatchers in ramshackle stacks, their limbs jutting out at awkward angles.

There have been battles during the course of human history which claimed the lives of more than a million people. This battle ended the lives of perhaps twenty. Thirty, tops. It's hard to make an accurate count when so many of them are in pieces. But seeing the way this room is now poisoned with corpses, Ava has to wonder:

How can the Earth ever be cleansed of all the murders done in its past?

It's enough to take the fight out of her forever. She could become a pacifist. She thinks back to the time they discovered the stranded refugees on the highway outside Canon City. All those skeletal corpses trapped in their cars. So much death in this world, everywhere she looks.

And for what?

“Oh my God,” says one of the Slaps, a boy Ava knows as Oscar, maybe thirteen or fourteen years of age. An oscillating sawblade extends from his forearm, its motor slowly winding down, some gory viscera still dangling and dancing from its tip.

“I know,” says Cobra, sounding awe-struck.

Ava senses them sensing the same truth with which she's been wrestling: the violence is too much. The killing corrupts something in them the same as it pollutes the Earth. She's relieved to hear they can't stomach it, either.

But then the Oscar's eyes widen and he says:

“That was fucking awesome.”

And Cobra nods, exuding, “I wanna do it again.”

“Looks like you might get your wish.” Uri leans over a computer monitor. It's connected to the closed circuit surveillance system, which Human Resources has evidently already reactivated. “We've got more Body-Snatchers en route – including at least two more Lepers.”

The news sends the cyborg Slaps into giddy celebrations. They high-five with their steel-plated hands at the prospect of more violence.

Ava helps Ostby stand. He's whole again but the cybernetic leg is a big adjustment – more alien than the combat implants the Slaps have had installed. This is a full-on prosthetic and he'll have to learn how to walk again before he can run. Still, he knows it's time to retreat:

“Darby,” he pants, “we can't stay here fighting forever. We have to escape. You're their leader – so lead them out of here.”

Darby doesn't require any convincing. He didn't have the same experience as the others—for him the battle wasn't fun. Far from it: he saw his father's leg amputated. And he was very nearly killed, himself.

“Slaps!” he shouts, “fall in!”

But they don't respond to his order in the least. They just keep on chattering, overflowing with excitement at the prospect of another chance to kill.

“Slaps!” He stomps his foot. “Fall in!”

Oscar and Cobra smirk and laugh. Cobra says, “Captain, maybe you ain't looked around you yet enough to notice – but we're not Slaps, not no more.”

“Fuckin' right, Cobra,” Oscar slaps the littlest cyborg on the shoulder and concludes, “we got a double-digit body-count now. We're bonafide Slayers.”

Most of the child-soldiers cheer. A few are more quiet. More stunned and shocked.

Ava stares hard at Bach, her jaw clenched. He's still bulging, red in the face, panting and wild-eyed. But he understands the look she's giving him, even so.

“Attention!” he barks, stomping up to the ecstatic Slaps. “You little maggots fall in line. Listen to your captain – we're getting the fuck outta here.”

“But we could use this equipment still,” argues one of the boys, “we could gain more power. More implants.”

“We need to make these scum-suckers pay,” swears Cobra.

Bach has heard enough. He wrenches one of the machines—ripping the bolts right up out of the floor—and chucks it in an overhead smash against the others. Sparks fly and fire erupts. And suddenly overhead sprinklers start pouring rain down upon them.

But he's still not finished. Maybe he simply can't stop. He rips up another console and smashes it the same way. He tears a third from the wall and crushes it with his bare hands like a trash-compactor personified.

“Power! What do you know about power?” he roars. “Shut up. Follow me. We don't care about H.R.. We're Slayers! And we hunt dragons.”

Bach's violent display settles things once again. Sets the course. The war-party exits the lab without any more argument and returns to the train tunnels. It is pitch-black outside the sphere illuminated by the light shining from Ava's hand.

And now Bach's, as well.

You can't save them all, his words replay in Ava's mind.

She's here to save him, supposedly. Is that what she's done? Has she set him on the path to salvation by helping to transform him into an unstoppable monster?

“Who goes there?” she hears him ask the darkness and she flinches.

“Please! We didn't mean to escape,” cry the shadows in answer.

The war-party is coming back to the intersection where just a short while ago Ava accidentally derailed a train. If she squints up ahead at that juncture she can just make out movement in the shadows. And as they come closer it becomes clear there are people milling about in the tunnel.

“The train,” explains a stranger in the dark, “it just came crashing through the wall. There was no warning. It killed the guards assigned to us and our worksite caught fire. I swear! We would have burned to death if we didn't get out – and the only exit was through the hole where the train busted in.”

“Please, we'll go back,” another terrified soul begs, “please don't kill us! We can still work. We're still worth something!”

“Don't worry,” says Ava. She can't take any more of their terror. “We're not H.R.. We're friends.”

“Well I don't know if I'd go that fuckin' far,” says Bach, mostly under his breath.

“Who are you?” the shadows ask. Suspicion thrives in the dark.

“No one special.” Ava intensifies the light from her hand so that they can all see each other's faces. “But we're getting the hell out of here.”

And suddenly the slaves' tunes change to, “take us with you!” and they shamble forward, pleading with clasped hands.

“Alright,” says Bach, “come on then.”

What does that mean?

But it's simple, isn't it? One of these stunned and staggering slaves must be carrying Ellie's baby. Must be smuggling the child Ava was certain she'd never find. The child who she assumed was only a plot device intended to induce more guilt for her role in Ellie's death.

But now it turns out Ellie's baby is real and—despite Castle Dia being impossibly vast and sprawling and complex—they've stumbled right upon him or her.

Oh, Ava rolls her eyes. What a fortunate coincidence.