Aloy had no trouble falling asleep. Multiple nights of interrupted sleep had taken their toll.

Preparation for bed had been sheer joy. The hot water Cass arranged for her succeeded in washing away the horrible stench of the Bandit clothing she'd been wearing, and Aloy's familiar Shield-Weaver Armor felt oddly comfortable, even though it was hardly designed as sleeping attire. As she had lain her Banuk wrap on the floor, near the stove, she reveled in the bright flames that arose from the burning of the Bandit outfit. She'd used the towel to rinse as much of the lampblack as she could from her uneven, short mop of hair, relieved that she no longer needed to pretend to be a common Bandit.

Cass had left a torch mounted to a wall – perhaps intentionally, to provide Aloy with sufficient light – and the smoke and steam that arose from the torch when Aloy had stabbed it into the water bowl lingered near the ceiling of the room. It slowly dissipated through the hole in the ceiling where the stovepipe extended, and as the flames of the burning Bandit clothing died down, Aloy curled up in the warmth of her wrap, feeling more comfortable and contented than she'd felt in… well, in a very long time. It took mere seconds for her to fall into a deep sleep (now I'm certain there was something in that soup!), warm, clean, and protected – with just a hint of a chill from her shorn head.

Aloy had never been a heavy sleeper. She had been alone all her adult life – since the death of her foster father, Rost – and she had since spent many a night trying to rest, knowing that the next day she faced battles, wars, Corrupted Machines and crazed humans, most of them with the express intent of ending her life, so sleep was always light, with one ear to the air to listen for impending threats. This night was different.

So it was that when Aloy felt someone shaking her arm, it took seconds for her to realize it. She quickly sat up on the floor, groggy, and tried to rub the sleep from her eyes with balled fists. She'd been dreaming, in the midst of a memory of life as a child, sitting by a warm fireplace in a cabin as Rost prepared their dinner, too young to yet realize that she, like Rost, was an Outcast in the Nora Tribe.

But the sounds of combat just outside the door brought her back to reality. There was little light in the room, provided only by a glow through the open door, but it was sufficient to see that the tugging at her arm was Cass's son Jhonnson, sobbing, barefoot and dressed in a nightshirt. Aloy could hear the clanging of metal on metal, yells and screams, and the moans of what were most likely wounded. Without speaking, Aloy pulled the boy to her wrap and motioned for him to lie down. She pulled the corner of the wrap up to cover the boy, then she stood and retrieved her lance.

A quick scan with her Focus showed a scene of devastation: from the other side of the village, just a handful of buildings downhill from her, there were dozens of people. Some were swinging weapons in one-on-one combat – Cass, tall and slim, stood out among the fighters as she brandished a broadsword as easily as if it were a stick – while others lay on the ground in agony, or lay completely still, presumably dead. The farthest buildings were on fire and she could tell that there were bodies still in those buildings. She paused her scan to watch Cass's opponent. Words appeared on the Focus: MERCENARY. HOSTILE HUMAN.

Aloy deactivated her Focus and ran from the building. The sky ahead, down the shallow hill into the valley, toward the herd of Chargers, was full of smoke. It cast an eerie glow on the combat scene as she ran between buildings and engaged a Mercenary who was attempting to set another building on fire. He was clearly unskilled in combat, and Aloy's lance disposed of him in seconds.

Mercenaries outnumbered villagers by at least two to one. And many of those villagers were ill-equipped for battle: some were older and not as agile as their opponents, some were not dressed or equipped with suitable weapons, some simply not physically able to sustain combat. Aloy realized that, in her haste, she'd forgotten to collect her bow or sling or bombs, any of which would be helpful at this time.

So she stopped and let out a loud, shrill whistle. In seconds, a Charger came galloping from the tall grass below her: the Charger she'd overridden the afternoon before. She jumped on the Machine's back as it approached and goaded it into ramming the closest Mercenary. It trampled the shocked enemy before he (perhaps it was a "she") could move out of its way. Aloy directed the Machine into a pack of Mercenaries that was running toward the village. She leapt from the Machine and drove her lance into the chest of an oncoming Mercenary, and the Charger began kicking and ramming several of the others. At first, the attackers were so dumbfounded by the actions of the Machine that they put up no fight, but then several of them started pounding and stabbing at the Charger. Which, of course, only made the Machine more determined to attack them.

Aloy rushed to assist Cass and two other villagers who were dealing with another cluster of Mercenaries. One of them swung a mace and struck Aloy in the back, causing her to stagger, but nothing more, as the Shield-Weaver Armor absorbed the blow. Cass gave a mighty swing of her broadsword and the Mercenary fell dead, blood spurting from the woman's neck.

It was only minutes before the battle ended. The carnage was indescribable: dozens dead or dying, helpless and unarmed villagers crying in agony, three or four buildings fully engulfed in flames, perhaps only a dozen people still standing. And, nearby, a solitary Charger, stoically standing alone, sparks flying and smoke billowing from the damage it had suffered.

But the Mercenaries were dead. Most of them, anyway.

"Cass, come here quick!" a female voice called from near one of the burning structures. Cass and Aloy approached to find a young villager kneeling before a male Mercenary, his chest pumping rapidly as he gasped for air. His face and arms were red with blood. "This man is trying to say something, but whatever it is doesn't make sense!"

"Piedad por favor…" the man whispered, then coughed as if choking on his own blood. "No quiero morir!"

Cass and Aloy stood over the man and looked at one another. "Is that some sort of code?" Cass asked.

"I don't think so, at least it's not anything I know," Aloy replied. The man continued to mutter unintelligibly. "It might be a language we don't know."

Aloy thought for a moment. "I wonder… my Focus is able to interpret so much, maybe it can help." She tapped the Focus and looked down at the man: MERCENARY. HOSTILE HUMAN.

Then the man looked up at Aloy, and an expression of shock and fear came over him. "… La mujer de pelo de fuego…" he muttered. The Focus immediately displayed a series of words, floating off-center where Aloy could clearly read them: LANGUAGE: SPANISH. ENGLISH TRANSLATION: THE WOMAN OF HAIR OF FIRE.

Cass could tell by Aloy's face that she had learned something. "What is it? Did your device help or not?"

"Yes…" Aloy replied, "but I don't know what it means. Apparently he just called me 'the woman with hair of fire," but in something called 'Spanish' that got translated to 'English'."

"English!" the kneeling young girl said. "In school, our teacher told us that the language we speak is called English. She didn't know why, but it is. And this man is speaking something called Spanish."

"Hmm…" Cass muttered. "You know, I have heard of a land, far to the south and east, where people talk in an unfamiliar tongue. Could this Bandit be from there?"

"Possibly," Aloy replied. "But he's not a Bandit. He's – they all are – Mercenaries. Hired to destroy something. Or someone."

"Mercenaries?" Cass responded. "I guarantee it was that bastard Skulldriver! He couldn't wait to hear from you so he hired these thugs to kill me."

"Maybe they were hired to kill me," Aloy noted.

"I think you should see this." Cass and Aloy turned to the origin of the voice from behind: an older man, gashed badly in one arm. He held a piece of what appeared to be white cloth. Cass took it from the man and held it out for Aloy to see. On the cloth was a crude drawing, cartoonish and without much detail, of the face of a woman in flowing red hair. Attached over one ear was a glowing green triangle – a Focus. Despite the simplicity, it was unmistakable. Aloy's heart sank.

"That's me," she said. Sure enough, Cass unrolled the wrinkled bottom portion of the cloth, where two words were written: Aloy. Firehair.

"I found it on one of the bodies over there," the man motioned to a pile of bodies behind him. "It was in his hand, all rolled up."

"They came here to kill me," Aloy said, "and instead they've destroyed your village."

"If they were hired to kill you," Cass noted, "who hired them? And why?"

The wounded Mercenary continued to sputter something, and when Aloy looked down her Focus translated again. The man said, "Piedad por favor," and the Focus showed "Mercy please."

Aloy explained it to the others around her. "This man wants our mercy."

"Is there any way you can use your… Focus? … to talk to him?" Cass asked.

"I don't know," Aloy answered, "I just found out it could translate. Let me see what I can do."

Aloy reached her right hand to her side – it must have seemed very odd to Cass and the villagers – and "touched" the Focus's display of LANGUAGE: ENGLISH. To her complete surprise, the words reversed and now read LANGUAGE: SPANISH.

Aloy looked down at the man on the ground and spoke, slowly, "Who paid you?" As she spoke, the words appeared on the display in her Focus, and below them were the words QUIEN TE PAGO. Aloy read the words slowly and deliberately, but the man didn't respond immediately: she didn't know how to pronounce them. She tried repeating the words, changing short vowels for long and long for short. Finally, when Aloy uttered "kwen tea paygo," the man's face lit up; he responded "no sé" and the Focus displayed "Don't know." Then the man said "alguien del refugio" and the Focus translated it as "someone of the refuge."

Aloy told the villagers what she'd learned. "The refuge? What's that?" Cass asked.

"I think," Aloy answered, "he means The Bunker. Someone in The Bunker put a pretty big price on my head."

"Why? Who hates you so much they want you dead?"

"I didn't leave there under the best of terms. One of the leaders – they all call themselves Generals – took a special objection to my presence. I think he even ordered me to be killed."

"Well, that order didn't succeed, so how'd you avoid your own funeral?"

"I managed to escape, but there are a couple of soldiers who probably haven't been able to walk straight since. I told you there are good people in The Bunker? Well, one of them, a soldier, returned my weapons and gave me food and water.

"Maybe that General didn't like how I treated his troops, or maybe all the leaders came to an agreement that I was a threat somehow. I don't know.

"The Bunker is run like a military camp, except almost everyone I saw was… well… not healthy. There are less than a thousand people, and they're separated into Sectors, and rules forbid social contact between Sectors. They're allowed to have children only within their own Sector. Even the general staff – and there are only twenty or so in that Sector. All of the general staff seemed to have some affliction, like deformed legs, or strange jaws, or hair missing…"

"Inbreeding."

The voice came from the older man standing behind Aloy. He stepped up to join the conversation.

"It's something called inbreeding. It's what happens when relatives mate only with relatives, there's not enough diversity to prevent it."

"How do you know this?" Aloy asked.

"I was born in The Bunker, in the Medical Sector. My father was a doctor. He made me read his medical texts, a collection of ancient books that he studied every night. There was an entire chapter on inbreeding. It's a very bad thing, and eventually everyone will die away as they become idiots or are unable to give birth."

"That fits with what I saw," Aloy replied. "The Generals are so intent on keeping power, and on running The Bunker like a military camp, that they don't even realize the amount of history and knowledge of the Old Ones they've got stored away."

"So I guess," Cass mused, "if we wait long enough they'll eventually die off. But that will take generations. What do we do now? Skulldriver is still going to invade the place. And besides…"

Cass's pause lingered, so Aloy said, "Besides… What?"

"How did these Mercenaries know you were here? How'd they get here so fast? Why would the leaders of The Bunker want you dead?"

"I'm not sure I know all the answers," Aloy looked at the burning buildings as she spoke. Gradually, the few remaining villagers had found their way to stand nearby, many leaning on one another as they stumbled into the clearing, almost all of them with cuts and burns on their bodies. "But maybe, somehow, using my Focus last night tipped them off. Maybe those Generals are not as ignorant as they seemed. Maybe they were able to track my Focus to this village. Maybe the Mercenaries were available and they just followed directions."

"These Mercenaries were well-trained, I can tell you that," Cass commented, "and well-equipped. None of my people in this field are my elite guards – they were all stationed on the hills to either side of us – and it appears the Mercenaries took them out first."

Aloy looked at the gathering crowd as Cass spoke. Then the realization of all that had just transpired set in.

"Cass, I am so sorry," Aloy said, "this is all my fault. I brought these killers here, and they were after me alone, and now your village is wiped out because of me."

Cass stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Aloy, pulling her close. "Yes, this is a disaster, one that I hoped would never happen. But I expected it. Only I thought it would be Skulldriver's men, and we'd all be dead. We all realize the threats we face just living here. We will find a way to survive and rebuild."

"I don't think you should rebuild, Cassandra. I think it's time you joined with Skulldriver. Work out an agreement, run your own village in his camp, become a leader with him."

Aloy could hear the murmuring of nearby villagers, even over the constant crackling of burning buildings. She couldn't tell if they were murmurs of agreement or protest, or a mix of both. She nudged against Cass's hug and the woman relaxed her grip.

Cass sighed, "Yes, perhaps you are right. We couldn't defend ourselves against a Machine right now, much less a Bandit clan. The people you see here, they are scientists and artists, they are not fighters.

"If you will, help me take stock of my village. We need to go through the buildings and look for survivors. We'll start in the burned ones, and we'll collect clothes, food, weapons, anything we can salvage to survive for another day. And we'll… wait… Jhonnson! Where is my son?" Cass looked frantically about at the villagers. "Where is Jhonnson?"

"Don't worry, he's safe," Aloy responded. I think. "He came to see me when the fighting broke out and I put him to bed by the stove."

As if on cue, Cass and Aloy looked in the direction of the path between buildings, and there they could see a silhouette of a diminutive figure, standing alone beyond the devastation of the burned buildings and human bodies. Cass ran to her son; Aloy decided to start the grim task of surveying the destroyed buildings. The first building she reached had only two walls still standing, as everything inside the small one-room shack smoldered. Against the far wall, what had been a bed, and on the ruins of the bed a body, burned beyond recognition.

Almost beyond recognition. Aloy knew the body was that of the old woman, Harlie, clearly so caught by surprise that she had been unable to leave her bed. Her blackened arms were folded across her bosom, and under those arms Aloy could make out the charred remains of a box: Harlie's "vision" box, the holoplayer that had, for a few seconds, fulfilled a lifelong dream: of a vision revealed by a Focus, a grainy, black-and-white image of only a few seconds' duration, a curious image of four boys running down a city street, a pack of screaming girls in hot pursuit, a song playing in the background.

…It's been a hard day's night…

The words seemed at once laughably contradictory – how could a night be a day? – and eerily prophetic. This night had indeed been a hard day.