The question isn't: who turned on the lights?

In fact it isn't truly a query so much as it's a request.

It's more like: please put me back in my cave until I forget the light ever existed.

The sun is high and scorching when Ava and Bach finally emerge from the elevator. The slaves shield their eyes from its painful glare – how long have they been underground? They are blinded, staggering, clinging to one another for support. Struggling to simply make sense of the sunlit world. Their senses are overloaded. And they are nearly all splattered with blood – some their own, but mostly that belonging to their former fellow captives who didn't quite make it.

They try to hide – but from what, exactly? From everything. Ostensibly they need to hide from the Body-Snatchers, but the instinct to crawl inside a safe hole goes back to before we were humans. Goes back to before we even became primates – when we were still twitchy little burrow-dwelling rodents. When we were obviously prey, and not deluding ourselves otherwise.

There exist innumerable hiding spots in this yard. There must be hundreds of vehicles stored here. But the sun is so bright, how can anything remain hidden beneath its glare?

And suddenly [The Omega Key] whispers in Ava's ear, re-establishing a bond she didn't know existed:

Cognitive bond will be completed upon next sleep.

Okay, just what the hell does that mean? Do I even want to know?

Bach interrupts her inner monologue, surveying their immediate surroundings and quickly landing on a plan:

“There,” he says, pointing at an armored school bus, its body covered in lewd and prurient graffiti. Dicks and boobs scrawled everywhere; the height of Corporate Slave Trade culture. Bach cares less about the paint job and more about the fact that,“we can haul everyone out of here in that thing.” He commands no one in particular to, “go check it out.”

“Yes Sir!” Oscar, eager to please his commander, snaps a quick salute and hustles off to go investigate. The others watch from their haphazard hiding holes. He climbs and creeps inside the school bus. But he disappears within it for only a moment before re-emerging, shaking his head left-and-right. He hurries back over, keeping low, to report:

“No keys, sir.”

Bach looks around some more. He's never been here before. Has he simply never progressed this far in the game?

“There,” he says again, pointing, “there's an office attached to that garage. I'd wager that's where they'll be keeping the keys for all the vehicles in this section.”

“Someone needs to sneak over,” says Ava.

“I want to go.” Darby crouches beside Bach, focused on the garage and the adjoining office.

“It's too dangerous,” warns Ostby.

“If I'm to be their leader,” Darby begins. He looks his father squarely in the eye and claps him on the bicep, a gesture typically performed by men much his senior—and concludes, “then sometimes it has to be me who leads them.”

“I'll go with you,” says Ava.

“Let's do it.”

Darby and Ava scurry up to the office, sneaking as best they can beneath the midday sun. It's more about moving swiftly from cover-to-cover than it is about moving stealthily.

Inside the office it's an utter mess. The Body-Snatchers aren't much for keeping their spaces clean and tidy. The floor is piled with candy wrappers and beer cans. Luxury items; the perks of being the bad guys in a world absent of glittering riches. There are a few desks with their surfaces completely covered in beer bottles like little forests made from glass. And the walls of the office are plastered in nude centerfolds, some less tasteful than others. But the far wall is also covered in a floor-to-ceiling grid of keys hung upon hooks.

Despite the mess, no one is around so they let themselves in as quietly as they can. Darby slowly pulls the door closed behind them.

“How are we ever going to find the right key?” Ava wonders. “There must be hundreds.”

And there seems to be no logical order to the way they're presented. She tries using [Scan] but it's still only possible to check one key at a time. If only there were some way for her to designate a set of search parameters.

What I really need is Javors and his Catchy Tune.

Before she can ponder that thought any further someone is coming. A door has opened in the back of the office. Ava and Darby dive under a nearby desk and crowd together in the cubby.

“Yeah,” a Body-Snatcher says into his walkie-talkie as he enters, “I've got my eyes open and I don't see shit.”

“There are at least two dozen escapees,” answers the walkie-talkie, deadly serious, “in your immediate vicinity.”

Ava and Darby see him now. He paces into their field of view, walkie-talkie in one hand and a self-rolled cigarette burning in the other. He wears a safety-pin pierced through his sepptum. He goes to the window of the office and looks out. What if he sees the others out there? There's so many, it's going to be hard for them to all remain hidden. Ava's hand hovers over the butt of her revolver.

And then out of nowhere Darby whispers, asking, “Ava, what is a Cryptomancer?”

“What? How'd you know about that?”

“I don't know, exactly. I have this new um, ability – I guess you'd call it.” His voice is so soft she can barely hear what he's saying. He keeps his eyes fixed on the Body-Snatcher searching for their party outside. “I just know how to do things all of a sudden. I guess as a result of the implants, maybe. I can scan things and I receive information. Like I just 'scanned' him. He's a level three Hunter, following something called the 'Path of the Manhunter.'”

Ava scans the Body-Snatcher and sees the same info. To Darby every little detail is fascinating, but she's more interested in the bit about the 'Manhunter'. It seems every class must have at least two paths branching out. Hunters can choose to stalk beasts or hunt men.

“Ava, I think this might all be fake.” She looks at him and his eyes are glossy with tears he can barely hold back. “Like a dream. Or a game. Some of the things I've seen don't make sense in the real world.” She knows what he means. He sighs, “I think that even if we manage to get out of here we might still be trapped in some way.”

This concern, it's not as simple as: who turned on the lights?

It's more like: please God can someone help me turn them back off?

“We need a distraction,” Ava says, “if we let him look out at that yard much longer he's gonna see somebody.”

“I have an idea.” Darby bows his head and closes his eyes. “Here goes nothing.”

Suddenly there's some calamity occurring in the adjoining garage. A piece of machinery has gone haywire. Loud pounding, thumping, and grinding noises echo into the office. The Body-Snatcher can't ignore it.

“Something's up,” he says into his walkie-talkie before cautiously creeping to investigate.

And when his back is turned – that is when Ava and Darby leave the cubby they've been hiding inside. They both pluck keys from the wall as fast as they can, stuffing their pockets and continuing until their clutches are as full as they can handle. But they can't steal them all – there's simply too many.

They go sprinting back out of the office, back toward where they left Bach and the others. And holding onto each and every single key simply isn't impossible. Some tumble from their grips and fall in the dirt.

“Shit!” Ava curses – any one of those could be the key they'll need. But she can't go back for them.

“Hurry!” Bach whisper-shouts, “everyone onto the bus and stay down – even once you're inside.”

The others all follow his orders. They slink and scramble onto the school bus and they cram together on the floor. The seats have all been removed aside from the driver's. The windows are mostly covered in armor though a few are open and without panes – portholes through which guns can be fired.

Ostby sits himself down behind the steering wheel while Ava and Darby start feeding him keys. He tries one after another in the ignition and each time they fail to fit he discards them on the floor beside his metal foot. The keys tinkle like wind-chimes. No one speaks; everyone hangs on, anticipating the sound of the engine turning over. Praying for it.

But with the tinkle of each key falling to the floor their hopes begin to dim. Their panic starts to rise back up. And Ava gets an idea:

What about [PowerON]? Will it start a car?

She concentrates and executes the ability but nothing happens aside from a brief message telegraphed into her mind:

This ability does not function upon this type of target.

Well bummer.

“Alright,” she hears the voice of the Body-Snatcher she and Darby eluded back in the office, “you dirt-bags have about three seconds to come out with your hands up or I start blastin'.”

“We have the bus surrounded,” rasps a second Snatcher, “give yourselves up if you want to live.”

Cobra lifts himself up to peer out through one of the open windows and there comes a pop! and he ducks as a bullet strikes the bus's armor-plating. He drops back down onto his butt so he won't have his head blown off.

“Yikes,” he chuckles sort of deadpan, a grizzled kid.

And suddenly there are more voices outside, shouting commands. Ostby fumbles the key he's trying to turn and it is instantly lost in the pile at his feet.

“Fuck!” he shouts and pounds the steering wheel with his fists. It's an out-of-character outburst for the customarily cool Sheriff of Cripple Creek.

“I won't go back!” screams a slave, scared out of his mind. “I'd rather die!”

And the entire bus rocks as something—a rocket? A grenade?—explodes outside. The slaves wail and cry, overwhelmed by their terror.

And just then the engine roars to life. Ostby has landed upon the key which fits right in the nick of time.

He stomps the accelerator and his new foot is heavy. He slams the shifter into first and the bus jerks forward. Outside, the Body-Snatchers open fire but the armor-plating is thick and their bullets can't penetrate. Ostby drives, roaring like some primal beast, crashing the school bus through a a chain-link fence and out away from Castle Dia, onto the brown and dusty plains.