What makes one human? Not chemically or biologically. Not, “what does it take to fabricate a single human being?” But rather, what traits combine to convey humanity? And what traits, when lost or removed, might cost a person that humanity? The Scum in Canon City were certainly no longer people. But what about someone like Bach? With his bullet teeth and grinding, mechanical innards – is he still human?

Ava stares out across a warehouse of girls who look exactly like her. She listens to the ventilators breathing for them. Fascinates upon what must be miles of tubing, removing their waste and replenishing their fluids. What is Sara using them for? It's like a comatose sweatshop.

A warehouse of AVAs.

“What am I?” she wonders aloud, hoping no one will answer.

But then there's no time. No time to think, let alone reason. Suddenly a passageway upon the far wall slips open smoothly and a pair of chrome-plated people step out. Some sort of androids or cyborgs – more science-fiction madness Ava can scarcely process. Menacingly expressionless, they scan the room for intruders. It takes the pair only a moment to lock onto Ava and her companions.

“Do not move,” says the first android, its buzzing, robotic voice that of a man, “we are the Custodians.”

“You are trespassing in a secure area,” says the second, its voice an electronic rendering of Dr. Sara's.

The party pivots to flee but the door they entered through slides shut and once again there is only the seamless, steel wall. Ellie pounds with her fists but to no avail. They are trapped. And Ava stands flat-footed, yet to react in the slightest to the presence of the security androids, still dazed by the sights and sounds of the clone nursery. Still scrambled by the question she can't bear to ask:

Am I a.... clone?

“We need you,” Uma pleads, “come back to us.”

The androids navigate the room sleek and swift, weaving between the encapsulated AVA's like bipedal panthers. Their silver-skin reflects the data displayed upon the monitors, etching their bodies in green, digital graffiti. As they come nearer, Ava can see they have only slits for eyes and mouths. The eye-slits glow subtly red and Ava is again reminded of the albino rats her mother cloned.

“The intruders have an opportunity to surrender peacefully,” the Sara-voiced Custodian taunts, “before their resistance is neutralized through force.”

And that snaps Ava out of her stupor.

“Never,” she growls. She turns to her comrades and tells them to, “seek cover behind one of the AVAs – they won't want to damage them.”

“What are you going to do?” Uri wonders.

She's not sure, exactly. And she's even less certain it will work. But in her mind she replays the battles she's already been through. She visualizes how she gunned Bazooka Earl in his school bus – that time she killed a man. She remembers the way her feet danced precisely to perform the roundhouse kick against the Scum in Canon City. And on both occasions all she had to do was mentally recite the mysterious AbilityID's associated with those attacks – the rest was automatic.

Perhaps these abilities are symptoms of the condition afflicting the Simulacrum—they could mean she is becoming one of them—but these abilities she's gained by osmosis are also her only means of surviving this current confrontation.

Uri and Uma and Ellie duck and crawl to crowd together behind one of the clones in its chrome-encased apparatus.

But Ava defiantly strides straight for the custodians, arms stiff at her sides and fists clenched.

“We are pleased you have chosen violence,” the androids say as one.

The first Custodian crouches peculiarly with his head thrown back and then in the next moment he begins to expel smoke from his mouth-slit and both androids are suddenly concealed in a cloud. And just as suddenly a series of pops and flashes—concussion devices of some sort—detonate in the air around Ava. She dives to the floor and rolls behind a clone capsule.

Ellie can't bear any more. She panics and bolts to run God-only-knows-where and the instant she stands and removes herself from cover there is a dull pop and she thuds upon the hard floor, her head smacking, the sound of it resonating sickly.

“Ellie!” Uma pleads, “can you hear me? Ellie!”

Ava glances back just in time to see a trickle of black blood from Ellie's ear. Uri drags her by the ankle until she is returned to the cover.

“The intruder has been incapacitated via non-lethal ordinance,” says the male-voiced android from his place of concealment, “sensors indicate a skull fracture and cerebral edema.”

“The intruder will succumb to these injuries without immediate medical attention.” The Sara-bot emerges from the smokescreen. “Surrender now and we will render life-saving aid.”

“Don't believe them!” Uri shouts.

“The intruders have no option but to believe us,” the Custodians say in unison. Ava rises to her feet, leaving cover. For a moment she raises her fists and takes a fighting stance. The male android comes out of the smokescreen to stand beside the Sara-bot, cracking his mechanical knuckles.

Ava steals another glance back over her shoulder toward her companions. Uma cradling Ellie's head in her lap. Uri crouching, ready to rush forward and join the fight.

And then Ava turns back to the Custodians. It's just her, a young girl, against a pair of futuristic fighting robots. She sighs and her shoulders slump. Turning in place so that she is facing back toward her comrades with the Custodians now behind her, she raises her hands in the air above her head.

“I surrender,” she says, “just don't let Ellie die.”

“Ava, no!” Uma cries out and Uri rises to his feet but before he can charge into battle Ava's eyes widen with urgency and she silently mouths the words stay there and he freezes in his tracks.

All at once the Custodians rush forward – but not toward Ellie. Not toward the injured person they promised to help. Instead they pounce on Ava with her back turned. The liars. Their cold robotic claws clamp onto her. The masculine android grabs Ava by her right bicep and the left is seized by the other liar. The liar with her mother's voice.

And they've fallen right into her trap.

She closes her eyes, and without any effort she is able to recall:

The changes happen almost instantly but time dilates to allow her to witness every excruciating detail. First, the skin on the back of her right hand splits like a rotten orange and what emerges from the abscess is extreme science-fiction body-horror. The new appendage is skeletal and yet completely inorganic, chrome and bronze bones with visible, pneumatic tendons and wires and diodes. Her flesh falls to the floor like snakeskin. Though visually the most traumatic, this might ultimately be the least awful of her transformations.

Because next, beneath her flesh and muscles and veins, the bones in her arms are suddenly webbed in a silver filigree like power lines. She is invaded internally. The filigree spirals along her ribs and spine, terminating in her gut. Silver, the most conductive metal known, strands of it extending from her middle out to her mechanical finger-tips.

And finally there deep in the center of her something hard and alien grows. Something hard which then becomes hotter and hotter. And she hears it: the grinding, groaning sound which Bach has made on so many deadly occasions—the vibration rattling up her spine to shake the bones of her skull, her teeth chattering—and sparks singe the back of her tongue. Sparks dance behind her eyes.

And then she simply is the spark. Tossing lightning like a Tesla coil. She whirls and grabs hold of the Sara-bot to better channel the electricity and both Custodians become engulfed in the tempest, quaking and rumbling until they collapse in a smoldering heap – not blown apart the way the antlions were but nevertheless completely inert.

Encounter Defeated!

Experience gained: 500

* * * * *

Ava swoons, crouching and trying not to topple over. Somehow she has survived at the center of a lightning bolt. Uma rushes to her side, helping her remain upright.

Debuff Applied: Drained(-2 AP until sleep)

“Drained” doesn't begin to describe the sensation. The motor within her is a cold void cramping against her soft organs. It is still whirring, but winding down, grinding to a halt. Her bones feel heavy and also alien, invasive, unnatural. And the hand is dizzying; essentially a combat prosthetic; heavy, numb, and uncoordinated. How she will go on living this way is anyone's guess – she sure doesn't know. Nausea forces her to her knees.

“Oh,” whimpers Uma, “Ava. Oh you poor girl.”

She takes her around the shoulder and they shuffle over behind the clone capsule where Uri crouches beside Ellie. She is still unconscious, a black bruise covering the left side of her head, the blood thick and shiny in her ear. Uri frowns.

“Do you think we can save her?” Uma frets.

“Not sure, but we have to try.”

“Can I help?” Ava asks, exhausted, capable only of breathing the words.

Uri stares at her new, artificial hand.

“Thank you,” he says, “but no.”

Uma bites her lip and looks at the floor. Her brother takes her hands in his and they begin to hum:

The procedure concludes with Uma waving her hand slowly over Ellie's bruise, and the black blood beneath the skin simply disappears. In the next moment Ellie groans and stirs. She sits up and touches her own face. Uma kneels beside her and rubs her back like a nurse kick-starting a newborn's lungs.

“What happened?”

“They hit you with a rubber bullet,” Uri reports, “it broke your skull and knocked you out.”

“Then how?”

“We fixed it,” Uma smiles.

“With your voodoo?” Ellie smiles back. “That's wonderful.” Uri opens his mouth to protest but Uma gives him a look and he shuts it. Ellie laughs softly. “I know, I know. It's not voodoo. Whatever it is, I thank you both. I'm in your debt.”

“Do you think you can walk?” Ava asks.

“Ava?” Ellie squints. “What happened to your hand?”

“She defeated both of the androids,” Uma explains.

“But your hand,” Ellie crawls over to Ava to better inspect the grotesque appendage, “you did this with your powers?”

“Yes. And it goes further. I have metal in my bones now and a motor grinds within me.”

“Like Bach?”

“Exactly like Bach.”

“And you willed it right into existence?”

“I did.”

“Like,” Ellie says, scooting back away, “like one of the Scums might do.”

“She saved our lives,” Uri seethes, “and you would accuse her—“

“I'm not accusing anybody of anything. I'm just sayin'.”

“I don't know whether or not I'm becoming one of them.” Ava rises to her feet. She works the mechanical hand, open and shut, the fingers clicking and buzzing as they move. “I don't know what's going on, at all. But I need to find out.”

“What's your plan?” Uri asks.

“We have to go back for Bach,” she says.

“What?” Ellie protests, still groggy, “why would we want to go back for him?”

“He'll have answers.”

“We wouldn't be in this mess if not for him!” Ellie can't believe her ears.

“We'd be dead,” Uma reminds her, “or slaves.”

“So we go back to the lab?”

“The way we entered is the only way out,” Ava says, “as far as I can tell. So yep, we gotta go back.”

“But what if Sara is there?”

“I hope she is.”