A hopeless exodus, is how Ava recalls Bach describing the dead folks they found outside Canon City. The families who died trying to flee as the world crumbled around them.

The school bus rumbles and Castle Dia gets smaller in their rear-view with each passing second. But the motorcycles pursuing them grow larger. As do the pickup trucks with their gun turrets and their passengers standing in the beds, aiming their shoulder-mounted rocket-launchers out over the cabs. The dune-buggies with their high-whining motors, driven by gun-wielding desert-pirates in ski-goggles to keep the dust from their eyes.

“These Body-Snatchers swarm like flies on shit,” laughs a Slap.

But the slaves aren't going back. They take up turrets of their own, gleefully gunning their former captors.

This exodus? It's most hopeful.

Bach lobs explosives out through one of the bus's portholes and a rider is catapulted from his motorbike, sent hurling through the air and then tumbling head-over-heels in the dirt. His sidecar passenger is even less lucky, shrieking and trapped in the flaming wreckage. And one of the trucks back there explodes, too. A pair of the pale freedom-seeking slaves slap high-fives and embrace.

This mobile warfare—these Road Warriors—they're damned-near wholesome, when Ava takes a moment to observe them. This violence—these maimings and killings—it's ultimately all cathartic.

This is as close to closure as they'll ever come, she figures.

And Human Resources just keeps on producing more fodder for their healing. An entire squadron of bikes and trucks is grumbling after back there, stirring up a wall of tan and red prairie dust not unlike the telltale clouds which always accompany Big Traffick.

But the stolen school bus is properly tanked-out. Its armor is impenetrable to the small arms these pursuers possess. Even the heavier guns mounted in the beds of their pickups barely faze it. And each time a lone Body-Snatcher manages to catch up alongside the bus—close enough to attack with hand-thrown bombs and grenades—they get gunned down by some gleeful ex-captive.

Suddenly the scuzzy armada starts to peel off. They're quitting their pursuit, turning back toward Dia – cutting their losses.

“It's all a cost/benefit analysis to them. Everything's wrapped up in profit calculation,” Bach explains, “you just have to show them that fucking with you is not going to be worth their while.”

When the battle is over Ostby drives on in silence. The free men and women ride without much conversation, either. The atmosphere turns more somber and introspective.

They all have a lot to think about, Ava reckons, they've probably all lost so much.

By the time the exodus arrives back at Skid Mark's garage the day is nearing dusk, the sky transitioning to pastel pinks and blues above the black silhouettes of the mountains out West. Ostby puts the bus in park outside Skid's perimeter fence.

“I'll hop out and buzz him,” says Darby, grinning. He nods to Ava and she goes along with him. They're connected now. He confided in her, shared his concerns about the nature of the world.

He presses the button on the talk-box at the gate and says, “hey Uncle Skid, let me in before it gets dark out here.”

After a few moments of silence Skid comes on, sounding winded like he just sprinted to answer the call:

“Darby? That you? I'll be damned, those crazy sons of bitches did it!”

“Yeah, they went above and beyond,” Darby explains, “we've got about twenty tired and hungry folks on board.”

“Well, then. Guess I'll have to see what I've got in the ol' pantry.”

The gate buzzes and Darby waves with his metal hand for his father to pull the bus in.

They sit on the floor. They sit on piles of stuff. They smile and they eat gruel served up by a man named Skid Mark.

They're free people and slop never tasted so good.

Ava watches them. Ben and Diana sit close together as their gruel gets cold, perpetually in conversation. They can't seem to release their eye contact. Simulated or not, they are deeply in love.

But what about the rest of these people? Who are they? She doesn't have any quests to set them free.

If she's being honest, the question isn't as innocent as: who are they​?

It's more like: what can I get for them?

But then is she really so different from H.R.? She wants a reward for rescuing them. In a way, is she further commodifying the lives of these people?

“Where will they all go?” she asks.

“Home.” Ostby smiles.

“But they must be from all over.”

“Then we'll just have to make a lot of stops, won't we?”

“We need to talk,” she says to Bach.

“You're right,” he says, shoveling gruel into his bullet-trap, “we need to have our story straight in case Ostby and his kid find out about Puck. Have you told them anything?”

“What? No.”

“Good. No sense getting them riled up at us or ruining their memories of their kin. Puck was a fine Slayer, once-upon-a-time.”

“Bach.” Ava sticks her hands on her hips. “You know that's not what I mean. I'm not here to talk about Puck.”

“Yeah.” He sets his bowl of slop aside. “I bet you've got questions, huh?”

“Bet your ass.”

“Alright then.” He reclines on a pile of junk with both hands clasped behind his head, a relaxed posture he was incapable of assuming as recently as yesterday. He furrows his brow seriously and says, “fire away.”

“I barely know where to begin,” she replies, but the crux of it is, “did you use me?”

“Yeah, sorry – I guess you could say that.”

“To complete your epic quest – is that what this has always been about?”

He chuckles. “Epic quest, huh? I like that. Yeah, this has been the goal – for as long as I can remember. Maybe longer, even.”

“What does that mean?”

“I've been on this path for a long time, Ava.” He talks like it's not over, as though he didn't just complete it. “Longer than you've been alive.”

“Had you been to Dia in the past trying to get it done?” then she adds, “had we been to Dia together? How did you know about the Medallion? How did you know when I should use it and then how did you know when I should use my new abilities?”

“You'll think I'm crazy.”

“Believe me, I won't.”

He sits in silence for a moment, gathering his thoughts, pressing his lips together while he formulates his answer:

“I think I've dreamed it.” He shrugs. “Many times over many years. I mean I think it's been a dream—I think I remember waking up—and it played out just like I expected. All of it, right up until the lab with the Slaps.”

“What was different about the lab?”

“In my dreams or visions or whatever, we all died. Every single time.” He holds up his epic hand. “The Lepers killed everyone before I could get this made.”

“Your dreams,” she wonders, ”do they often come true?”

“Yeah, they have lately.”

“What's going on? How did you have an epic quest in the first place?”

“What do you mean 'epic quest'? You said that before. You mean my hand?” His eyebrows bunch up like perplexed caterpillars. “Your mom took my old one, remember?”

“Yeah, of course,” she says, “and that set you on the quest?”

“There's that word again – 'quest'. You talk like it's all a game.” He sighs. He's quiet again.

“But Bach,” she presses, “you called it a game back there, in Dia. You said, 'this is how I beat the game'.”

“Did I?” He pinches his chin—an erudite thinking pose—and then just shrugs. “I don't remember that – but I don't like it. They say that's what happens to the Scums – they forget they're human. They think they're merely avatars playing a game.”

“But what if they're right?”

“The Scums?”

“Yeah.”

“You feeling alright?” He sits up straight and studies her face. Looks her deep in the eye like he's trying to see if there's someone else inside her skull.

“I mean, no. I'm not alright. I'm confused.” Maybe he's lying again. Maybe he's just playing dumb. Or maybe he's right:

Maybe the game shit is all a sign you're turning into one of them.

“You know, sometimes I really do feel like it could all be some kind of game,” says Bach, “but I have to ask myself, 'are you just trying to lower the stakes?'”

“What do you mean?”

“If it's all a game, I guess it just matters a lot less what happens, right? It makes all the awful shit we see and do easier to cope with.”

Ava's gut feels heavy and turgid. What he's describing is the same as thoughts she's had herself. What he's describing is a coping mechanism; quests overlaid upon real-world tragedies, justifying the endless violence. She's had this same suspicion before, but she doesn't know how to respond. They sit quietly for a moment before Bach sighs and says:

“But that's crazy shit.”

“Maybe it's the world that's crazy,” says Ava, “and the coping we do is the sane part.”

“I used to have a dream that I could save everyone; that I could destroy all the dragons. You know – level the playing-field so the ultra-rich assholes who ruined everything would finally know what it's like to be one of us regular motherfuckers.”

Ava thinks back again to the time she died. The crappy little office full of computer parts. She recalls the monitor beside Teenage-Bach's gurney and the sticky-notes plastered around its edges. They read:

“You have to save him.”

And, “the only way he can escape is to beat the game.”

That's it. We have to beat the game. He just said how – we have to dismantle every last dragon.

“Bach,” she looks him in the eye. He's somewhere else – maybe he's recalling those old dreams. Those old dreams which might actually be the phantoms of lives he's lived in the past. She asks him, “how can we beat them? The dragons – how can we even begin to fight back against such overwhelming power?”

And he doesn't snap out of his quietly intense reverie all at once. He maintains a tight grip on this new dream, doesn't allow it to escape back into the hopeless reaches of his mind where logic reigns. Slowly, he turns to Ava and he says:

“We need to overwhelm them with our power – break their monopoly on violence.” And in his eyes she witnesses the fire burning; the blazing rage of the uncountable apocalypses he's suffered over the course of his past-lives. “By any means necessary, Ava – we've got to build a dragon of our own.”