When Erend finally made it down to the cavern, Aloy was in the pit, surrounded by human corpses. She was as white as a ghost, every one of her freckles able to be counted, her pale green eyes lost in a haze of grief and confusion.

“What…what happened?”

“Nemesis…possessed…” She shuddered. “They…turned…on us…”

“What…all of them?” Erend exclaimed. “What the hell, Aloy! You killed them!” He lunged towards her, his temper out of control but Nil blocked his path.

“That Nemesis thing already had,” he said bluntly, “whatever we just killed…it was something else in human form.”

“How could you possibly know that?!” Erend demanded. “How?!”

“Because I know about killing, both humans and machines,” Nil shook his head, “whatever was in their heads…it wasn’t human…not like us. It had no soul.”

Erend fell to his knees, his expressive face bathed in tears. “Where…where’s Morlund? Where’s…”

“Some survivors didn’t head for the exit,” Nil pointed to a bridge where a group of five Oseram cowered, “those that did were ambushed by Burrowers.”

“Five survivors? Five?” Erend’s voice was hollow.

“We’ve got to get them out of here.” Aloy rasped, standing up and walking weakly. “We’ve got to…we…to the base…protect…”

“Do you know where this base is?” Nil asked Erend.

“Yeah…”

“Then go, Aloy,” Nil urged, “I’ll make sure they get to this base of yours.” Aloy shook her head. Nil put his hand on her shoulder. “Whatever this is…it’s beyond my ability to kill…and that scares me.” She stopped and lifted her eyes, seeing for the first time, a glimmer of humanity in Nil’s expression. “But I think you can kill it…so go. Do.”

Her news of Las Vegas’ fall and the level of devastation shook the volunteers at home base deeply, particularly Abadund who had been ordered to stay behind when the others had gone to defend it. He tried to keep busy but every time he went to work, his arm would drop and his shoulders, sag.

Aloy was at a loss as to how to comfort him.

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It wasn’t really her area.

And when Erend and Nil arrived with the Oseram survivors, their broken state only unnerved them even more. Zo and Alva were quick to start looking after them, treating wounds and making sure they felt safe. Morlund was unable to look Aloy in the eye and she didn’t blame him. When the survivors were resting, Zo and Alva joined the command crew and all the remaining volunteers. Erend and Nil were also there, battered but alive.

“Nemesis can possess…people?” Alva had asked in a horrified voice when they had confirmed Aloy’s report.

“It seems that way.” Erend clutched at his ale and gulped it.

“It was what the Zenith’s wanted to achieve.” Tomas said. Aloy turned to him. “They wanted to be able to upload their consciousness into any form, organic, machine, digital…”

“You knew Nemesis could do this?” Kotallo demanded in a dangerous voice.

“Wanted to achieve. Theoretical!” Tomas exclaimed. “It was their way of becoming more than immortal, to being more than human but the experiment was abandoned. There was no way of knowing if Nemesis could possess biological organisms.”

“Biological…” Erend threw his ale aside and stood up. “His name was Stemmer! And all the rest of them! They weren’t biological organisms!”

Kotallo and Nil had to hold Erend back and Tomas looked like he was on the verge of running.

“I just meant,” he stammered, “that there was no proof of what Nemesis could do. The Zeniths went through a process of copying their minds down to the very last neuron. But the containment between individual minds wasn’t enough to keep them separate. They bled into each other, forging the entity we know as Nemesis. When the Zeniths realised they couldn’t experiment like they wanted, they trapped Nemesis in an energy bubble…for decades before it figured its way out. They only theorised what their uploaded consciousnesses could do…there was no proof…”

“There is now.” Alva shuddered.

Ikrie rubbed her freckled arms. “It must have been awful…”

Aloy recalled Stemmer’s purple, almost drunken, gaze. “It was…” She pressed her hand to her face. “It…was happy.”

“That sounds about right,” Erend snarled, “killing people would make it happy.”

“No,” she frowned, “Stemmer…the voice out of him…it was happy to be home and it told us to get out.”

“Home? On earth?” Nakoa looked around. “I didn’t think Nemesis had ever been here before.”

“It’s the composite of the consciousnesses of all the Zeniths,” Tomas explained, “while Nemesis has never been on earth before, it would know what they knew about earth, including their experiences.”

“This didn’t sound like psychopathic fury…but like it was personal.” Aloy pushed back the headache by pressing her fingers against her forehead. “Or I’m just imagining things…” She could feel despair rising up to swallow her and turned her back on it. “Where’s HEPHAESTUS at, Beta?”

Her identical sister looked up. “With every cauldron you take back from Nemesis, HEPHAESTUS is able to expand and strengthen its heuristic matrix. It’s not able to defend itself yet.”

“How many more does it need?” Eamon asked.

“A lot more…” Aloy murmured then stood up. “I’ve got to get moving.”

“Aloy, you need to rest…” Zo warned.

“No, I can’t,” she argued, “because while I do, the world burns.”

“Then let us help.” Zo looked around. “Surely we can override cauldrons possessed by Nemesis.” Aloy started to shake her head. “It’s our world too, Aloy. We can fight for it.”

“You need the equipment.” Aloy shrugged. “If Beta, HEPHAESTUS and Tomas can make what you need…”

“We’ll get started.” Beta promised.