It felt like hours before they found their way back to the giant airlock that divided the first and second sections of the facility, though it could have only been minutes. It was especially hair raising when they had to turn back, seeking out a smaller corridor in which an actually usable lock could be found.

They found themselves once more amongst silent, methodically arranged bones.

"What the hell happened in this place?" said Cassandra.

Nobody responded, only the sound of their exhausted panting filling the corridor.

They made it through the first airlock without event, and began to make their way through the next area at a slow jog. It seemed to Keri that what had been an almost imperceptible slope downward on the way in had somehow become a significant incline that threatened to drain their final reserves of energy. Sweat dripped down her face, and the air had become a boiler, damp and cloying, making every breath a chore.

They heard the sound of metallic footsteps behind them at the same time as they arrived at the next airlock.

"Fuck, it's coming after us!" yelled Cassandra, slamming at the control that opened the heavy metal door to the lock chamber.

It swung open lethargically, every creak of its gears a countdown to impending doom, but it opened. They dived inside and slammed the button that would begin the pressure equalisation process just as the footsteps seems to be on top of them. Keri thought she could see something, dark and metallic, rounding the corner behind them just as the door slammed shut.

"Find something to jam the mechanism once the door opens," said Andreas. "Maybe we can keep it from getting through."

"There's more than one way through," said Cassandra, as the second door began its gradual swing outward.

"I know, but anything that'll slow it down is good for us!" Andreas shouted back.

They dashed out as Andreas stood against the open airlock door, pushing against it though in actuality it was far more likely that in-built safety mechanisms were holding it ajar than anything he was doing, whilst the others searched the now amazingly bare area for anything of substance.

They were in one of the residential areas, and Keri found a few lightweight chairs in a nearby room. She returned as Cassandra and Anisa, the latter now seeming a little more together although still with a worrying amount of blood pouring down her scalp, returned as well carrying similar detritus and insubstantial furniture. They threw the lot down atop the rim of the lock, and ran.

Keri heard the hiss of the closing door as they all hurried away, and as she looked back she saw it almost close before something detected the debris and sent it back to its open position. She could hear this repeated several times as they got further and further away, as if a child were playing with an elevator door.

They were well out of sight when an alarm tone blared behind them for a second, and though she had never heard it before something told her that whatever measures were in place for preventing just such a blockage were taking effect. They picked up the pace.

Two seemingly interminable airlocks later, and all that stood between them and escape was the final exit. As they stood there, waiting for the lock to cycle through, out of breath and close to collapse, Keri stared up at the camera that was quite clearly staring back.

Odd, as she had assumed it was Kilgore who was using them. But he had been surprised to encounter them at that first moment, hadn't he?

Then who...?

The sound of heavy steps upon the steel floor smashed her thoughts aside.

"Get in!" screamed Andreas, already through and in the final chamber with the others.

Keri jumped in as the door closed behind her.

Seconds later, and the wash of fresh air passed over them. Well, not fresh, considering the oily, lumpy surface of the shore-front water, but unprocessed, at least. Keri breathed it in deep.

Once her coughing fit had past, wasting time they genuinely didn't have, Andreas dragged her up and shook her; gently enough, at least.

"Come on," he said. He was holding his shirt to his mouth, and urged her to do the same.

Keri hadn't realised how filthy this air was. Their drive in must have gradually acclimatised them to it, but going from the filtered air of Triton to the smell outside was overwhelming. She struggled to hold down what little she had in her stomach as they half-ran, half-stumbled their way to the distant car.

Eu got out of the van and met them half-way, gasping in shock as she took in the state of them, especially Anisa. Keri only now saw that in addition to the cut on her head, the woman had a deep gash down the back of her right thigh. It had turned black around the edges already, and was slowly seeping.

"Get us out of here," ordered Cassandra to Keri, as they all clambered in.

Keri slapped her forearms together and drew them apart, and felt a shock run through her as the corps display that shook into life before her distorted and flickered. She had never seen anything like it.

That EMP… thing... she thought.

The screen skipped and jumped in front of her, struggling to resolve itself. It did, but for a brief microsecond, just before the display cleared, she could have sworn she saw the same face from her dream nights ago.

The bearded, smiling Butcher face, far older and more haggard than the one she had seen in Triton, with eyes that glittered as if they held a happy secret, well-kept.

It was gone almost before she saw it, replaced by the control screen for the vehicle. With a few semi-conscious movements of fingers and tendons Keri sent the car into action, on a course back to the city. She looked around at the others. Everyone's attention was focused on Anisa, Andreas using flesh-knit spray to close the deepest wounds, and no one else seemed to have noticed the flickering, grinning face that had stared out at her from her corps. If it had truly been there.

Keri slumped back against her chair with a deep sigh and closed her eyes.

"Keri!" shouted Andreas, as the car juddered.

Keri's eyes popped open.

Of course, she couldn't sleep. Not when it was her corps linked into the van. It was a feature that Keri had never had an issue with before, but now realised to be ridiculous. No human-operated automobile of any size would allow itself to be driven without a semi-alert operator within the driver's cab, and with the corps able to measure every physiological factor of its user, that meant Keri could not go to sleep.

This was another feature of the Manual, introduced with the justification that no machine could be entrusted wholly unsupervised with human life. The irony of this was that the vast majority of traffic on the road was fully automated, permitted due to the fact that this majority consisted of huge trucks carrying only industrial cargo and no people, yet those same huge trucks could easily crush and obliterate the few people-carriers winding in and out between them.

"Just... stay awake, ok dear?" said Eu, more sympathetically. "Just for a little while longer."

Keri spent the next hour or so fighting sleep. At least she could rest, pushing the chair down as far as it would go in the cramped cab without causing problems for the others. Anisa had been nursed as far as anyone could now, and was asleep at the back. Cassandra, too, her snores like a tree being sawn in half, sat up straight, head back and mouth wide open to the sky.

Goddammit, Keri thought. I haven't had a decent sleep in days. Haven't had a decent lay either, for that matter.

She suddenly realised that the last person she had slept with was Jyme/Jayme. Which meant the last person she had slept with was a dead man. For some reason it was this thought that went around and around her head as she fought to stay on the surface of the deep, dark sea of exhaustion that was trying to drag her down.

She was woken by a shake from Andreas, expression rather more understanding now they had put some time and distance from the underwater nightmare.

"You were drifting off there, ok?" he said, keeping his hand resting on her shoulder. "Look, I'm sorry, but the more distance we can put between us and that thing, the..."

"Let me drive," came Anisa's voice from behind them, mumbled and weak but alert.

They turned to look at the woman as she pushed herself up onto her elbows, then swung herself fully up.

"I've got this," Anisa said, clapping her arms together to bring up her bastardised corps display.

Nothing happened.

She repeated the action several times, looking rather foolish, to no effect.

"Um, well, it seems as if Kilgore's whatever-that-was has overloaded your corps, at least," said Andreas, talking to Anisa before turning back to Keri.

"We're lucky it didn't fry Keri's, too."

He frowned in concern at Keri.

"Well, there's no way this one is going to be able to stay awake much longer. Shit," he cursed. "I think we're gonna need to make a call."

"That could be suicide", said Cassandra, snores ceasing suddenly and one eye popping open.

"Well, this whole week has been going from bad to worse with pretty frightening consistency. I can't see any other option, can you?" Andreas replied.

There was a thoughtful silence, which Keri broke.

"What? What is it you're planning to do?"

Andreas looked genuinely worried, an odd expression on his mixed up features.

"Well, it looks like to keep going we need either Anisa's corps working, which seems unlikely to happen without serious wet-work[1], or we need this van to drive even when you're asleep. Either of which requires plenty of software knowledge."

"Well, so what do we do?" asked Keri muzzily, stifling a yawn.

"The same thing we usually do. We need someone who can do it for us. We need a modder."

[1] Wet-work had taken on a new meaning in an era of blood-and-bone modifications. It rarely referred to someone else's blood, these days, but your own.