This is what she's been waiting for.

The answers—the secrets—all revealed.

Who is she? She's an Engineer. A Cryptomancer.

Sounds pretty fucking cool.

But what does it mean, exactly? It's not as though a rush of personal memories poured back into her mind upon activating [System Restore], filling in the empty spaces. Giving her any sort of context.

She stuffs the necklace back inside her pocket. She doesn't want to explain to the others where it came from. Not right now. Not while they're crawling a dungeon.

But she doesn't have to worry about Bach. He already knows everything.

This is what Bach has been waiting for.

He pops up out of the piles of personal effects and unloads two quick bursts from his submachine gun. The guards shout in surprise but they don't even have the time to begin looking for cover – let alone dive for it. They jerk and jump and they could almost be dancing but then they collapse into the mounds of stolen belongings, bloodied and dead.

“Okay, we gotta be quick,” Bach says, “follow me.”

He barrels through the piles of stuff and the others follow as fast as they can. But he's possessed. It's tough to keep up. He kicks down a door and disappears through its dark opening.

The rest of the party rushes through after to find themselves in a narrow, concrete hallway. Claustrophobic, it's some closed-to-the-public secret passageway used once-upon-a-time by airport maintenance crews.

Ava squints, looking left-and-right in a vain attempt to ascertain which way Bach went. Overhead only a few of the remaining fluorescent lights function and they flicker quickly, compounding her disorientation.

She concentrates to make her hand glow so they can all see a little more clearly. And there's Bach, already at the far end of the hall, at the very edge of her light's reach.

“I wouldn't have even known that door was there,” Ostby marvels.

“Yeah, Bach,” calls Uri, “you do know where we're goin', right?”

“Should be a security hub nearby.” He motions for them follow. “Hurry! Ava will deactivate the alarms once we're inside.”

“How?” she asks while running after him.

“You'll see, no time to explain.” He calls back over his shoulder to warn, “we have to get it done before the Lepers start showing up.”

“Who or what are the Lepers?” Uri wonders, sounding out of breath already.

“Loss Prevention. Elite shock troops – we call 'em the Lepers.”

This hallway is a maze all of its own. They race past dozens of doors, all leading who-knows-where. All of which look exactly the same. And it's clear, not only has Bach been here in Dia before – he's intimately familiar with the place.

They race along at top speed and then finally Bach just stops. He inhales deeply, catching his breath. He points his gun at a door. There's nothing special about it; no markings or anything obviously distinctive from the others.

“Alright,” he explains, deadly serious, “this will open into another short hallway, and at the far end there will be another door. Beyond that door is the security station. I'm gonna kick it down and there will be guards inside. We have to kill them fuckers fast.” He looks them each in the eye. “Got it?”

The others all nod quietly and ready their weapons.

Bach opens this first door carefully, quietly, and just as he said there's a second down at the end of a brief hallway. He glances back over his shoulder and nods, and then he charges down the hall and performs a straight kick which blows the door off its hinges.

And before it can hit the floor he's killing men. Rattling off bursts of submachine gun fire. Ostby hurries in and swiftly sinks a pair of broadheads into one of the security guards. His target falls back clutching the arrow in his chest, eyes wide with shock. He's already dead. Two of their adversaries are immediately down, but two more remain – both caught flat-footed when Bach burst in.

Ava and Uri come in with their guns blazing.

The room is round-walled like a big fishbowl. Ava's having flashbacks; the fishbowl effect is too familiar. A flickering bank of closed circuit television monitors covers the far wall. There must be eyes in the sky all over the airport. And beneath the monitors a row of simple computer terminals has been installed, allowing those performing surveillance to adjust the camera views – zoom in, turn slightly.

Ava can't help but be reminded once more of her time spent in the Afterlife. How she couldn't escape from the fishbowl. How she couldn't do more than simply move her eyes.

No time to reminisce about the time she died.

Two guards remain without any place to take cover. They maneuver as a duo toward a closed exit, peppering the invaders with unfocused pistol-fire while making their escape. They aren't hitting anyone but it's enough to suppress Ava's party for a moment. The first guard reaches the door and pulls it open.

“Where you goin'?” Bach roars and tosses one of his Molotovs, unlit. Everyone just watches it soar across the room, headed for the exit where the guards are fleeing – everyone except Ostby. Somehow he and Bach are on the same wavelength. He zips a [Fire Arrow] through the air and it penetrates the Molotov just as it's arriving at its destination. There's a whoosh as the guards become engulfed in flame. They scream and panic and drop to the floor, rolling around in an attempt to extinguish the sticky flames.

Bach strolls over calmly and shoots them both dead, there on the floor.

“Alright Ava,” he says, moving purposefully to the bank of security computers, “over here.”

She hurries to join him.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Turn it off.”

“How?” She stands before a keyboard. “Don't I need a password or something?”

“Naw, you are the password.” He laughs. “Just use your new abilities.”

That's right: she's an Engineer now. This is her moment to shine. Finally, she has abilities no one else can use. And if she lives to sleep again perhaps she'll be able to activate powerful skills like Ostby and Uri have shown – but until then she can only assume she has the 'passive abilities' at her disposal.

“Here goes nothing.”

She concentrates and wills the [Power OFF] ability to execute, focusing on the alarm terminal. And just like that, the alarms cease. Her ears continue to ring, bruised by the mere memory of the blaring alarm, but all at once everything is less stressful.

The closed circuit monitors remain powered on. They continue to show gruesome scenes from all over the castle; prisoners slaving, bodies being moved toward the incinerator, and something even worse:

“Look!” Uri urgently points at one of the monitors and the others crowd around to have a look.

On it they can see half a dozen Slaps, tied down to operating tables. They're being held in some sort of high-tech surgical theater. A team of scrub-clad cyber-docs mill around the children, carrying surgical tools and other, weirder mechanical contraptions. They see Cobra, lying unconscious, his head completely encased in a machine. And they see Darby, strapped-down and not struggling.

“What are they doing to them?” Ava asks.

“They're being modified for battle,” Bach says, matter-of-factly.

“We have to stop them.” Ostby wrings the grip of his bow like he's strangling someone. “Where is that lab?” He searches for some sort of map among the many monitors.

“It's on the other side of the castle.” Bach studies the scene with the Slaps. “That's where we need to be. But first, Ava, turn off these cameras.”

She focuses on the closed circuit television system and somehow she possesses its entire schematic. With a simple thought she executes the [Power OFF] ability once more and the monitors all turn black.

“That's it?”

“It'll keep 'em busy,” says Bach, “and hopefully it's enough of a distraction to keep us from running into any Lepers until we can get to the lab.”

“How will we get there?” Ostby asks, eager to get on with it.

“Just follow me.”

Bach leads them right back the way they just came, into the maze of the maintenance hallways. They race along at a frantic pace. Despite the alarms no longer blaring it's somehow even more stressful now with the only sounds being those of their feet hitting the cement floor and their breath coming out white-hot from adrenaline. Time is running out and they must have a mile or more of distance to cross – the structure is that huge; that sprawling.

Bach kicks down another door and guns another guard. They come to a T in the hallway and he opts for the left fork without a moment of hesitation.

He knows this place like the back of his—

Before she can finish the thought Bach brings the party to a halt. They stand before a secure door marked:

KEEP OUT

Authorized Personnel Only

“Ava,” Bach says, “now is the time for you to use the Omega Key.”

“What? How?”

“Just like Javors did. Just stick it in and let it do the work.”

She draws the weird, techno-futuristic stiletto. It has some secret power but she can't tap it. It seems almost worthless compared to her SMG – because she's conceptualized it primarily as nothing more than a weak weapon.

But really, its main function is as a key...

And there's no keyhole as far as she can see. Just a keypad on the wall beside the door.

“Where do I stick it? The door itself? The keypad?”

“I don't know. Just do it.”

She slowly inches the needle-thin blade toward the keypad.

“Nothing's happening,” she sighs.

“Try the door, then,” says Bach.

And as the tip of the stiletto nears the surface of the door it begins to hum in Ava's hand.

“Commencing brute force decryption,” she hears it whisper in her ear.

Knives can't talk, she thinks – but it's not a convincing argument.

In the next moment as it touches the surface of the door the stiletto somehow penetrates it with ease. And it feels alive in Ava's hand, wiggling and twisting – but she realizes that in reality it's computing; trying out different combinations.

Different passwords.

Then her ears pang from a loud, grating buzz and the lock mechanism clicks and the door grinds open just an inch.

“Nice work, Kid.” Bach grins. He throws the door wide open and jumps down a small ledge into darkness. The others stand at the precipice. It's numbingly black on the other side.

“After you,” Ava says to Ostby and Uri, sweeping her robotic hand out in a gesture which invites them to pass through.

And from the blackness Bach shouts, “quit fucking around and come on!”