Aloy and John walk through the snowy forest. He tells her all about the animals that were shown back at the Yellowstone Gift Shop that he could not tell her about in Enjuk's presence.
"Charles Ronson wanted wolves to be reintroduced alongside foxes," John explained, "because adult wolves averaged less than one hundred pounds."
"But only foxes were reintroduced," Aloy said.
"I believe that Gaia wanted to hold back on reintroducing wolves."
"Why?"
"Because I think she was concerned for the first generation of new humanity's survival. Wolves hunted in groups called packs. They hunted large animals like moose and mule deer; so there could've been concern on Gaia's part that they might end up hunting humans. Though such incidences were rare back in my day."
"I guess Gaia wanted to give the first new humans every advantage to survive. So what about those bears?"
"Grizzly bears were also known as brown bears since that was the basic color of their pelts. Black bears were not all black, some had tanned fur on their muzzles. Bears were smart creatures and although they ate mostly plants and insects, they had the teeth for meat; they were basically scavengers. They could only eat meat if they happened to find a carcass or at the most an animal too weak to fight back. The brown bears included fish in their diet. " His tone next turns grim. "But be they black or brown, Enjuk would not have wanted to have been cornered by them."
"So they were dangerous?"
"They could be. Bears were powerfully strong and had a savage temper when roused, especially if it's a mother with her young. They had a very deep roar that was frightening to hear. There were incidents of people being attacked by bears, even killed by them too. As always, the offending bear needed to be hunted or else they could attack someone else. The problem with bears was that they were unpredictable."
"How could they exist back in your world when they could be so dangerous?"
"Well unlike machines, even animals that were capable of killing humans didn't active hunt us and normally avoided having contact with us."
"And just like the rest of life, those bears were driven into extinction by the Faro Swarm."
"Just the black ones actually. The last brown bear died some ten years before the Chariot Line Model. It was a male who actually lived in this area. His name was Sergeant Woollynickers."
"Sergeant Woollynickers?"
"That's what the people working here named him."
"Why did those grizzly bears go extinct?"
"That was the fault of us Old Ones really. We kept encroaching on wilderness, putting pressure on the animals that lived there. There were animals that were not bothered by our presence but there were other animals that were and they were stressed out to the point that they couldn't eat or mate, causing their numbers to diminish. So not all animals that once existed were driven into extinction by the Faro Swarm."
"I guess you Old Ones always had an impact upon your world, like the Troubled Times that Cyan used to tell me about back after I freed her."
The duo return to Song's Edge and pass down the cliffs that John needs to be hoisted down over until they are at the bottom with the Grave Hoard.
"Jawn," Aloy said. There is a sense of profoundness in her tone. "We will be parting paths soon. Where do you want us to part?"
John thinks about that for a moment.
"I think," he began slowly. "At Day Tower. Past it to be exact. There you can override a machine for me to return to Meridian upon. Or at least until I'm within sight of it that is."
"Very well," Aloy concluded, then turns away. "Now let's get back down to our mounts."
The duo head down the path away from the Grave Hoard to find their Strider mounts and are on their way to Day Tower. They ditch them once in sight of the Day Tower and continue through. Once on the other side, Aloy and John search for a machine and locate a Charger. She sneaks upon it and overrides it, then walks it over to John. They stand there facing each other with a sense of solemnness between them.
"Well," Aloy said in a tone of finality, "this is where we part ways."
"But at least we can talk anytime we want to," John said as he points to his focus.
"Yeah. But in the meantime, you take care of yourself, Jawn. I hope you do well in Sunfall."
"So do I."
"The first thing I'm going to do is return to the Sacred Land and deal with Hephaestus. Then . . . I'm going to go and search for that cryo facility you were in."
John next mounts the Charger and looks down at Aloy once more. "This isn't goodbye, Aloy. This is just . . . so long for now."
"Yeah, so long for now, Jawn."
John nods and looks forward, then urges the Charger into motion to canter down the trail. Aloy watches him leave and continues watching for awhile longer, then turns around and passes back through Day Tower.
Once past it, she retrieves one of the Striders that she and John had ridden and returns to the Sacred Land. It is noon by the time she reaches the place where Rost and herself had lived. She walks into the cabin that was once her home and takes the Thunderjaw brain out of her backpack and places it upon the table. She would have opened a channel with the fallen Subroutine if it were possible, but that does not stop her from addressing Hephaestus.
"Hey there, Hephaestus. I was going to put you into a box and bury you deeply, but John said something that's been bothering me ever since, so there's gonna be a change in plans. I won't bury you in the ground. Instead . . . I'm going to do what I should have done in the first place."
Aloy exits, leaving the Thunderjaw brain alone for a time. She returns and picks it up and returns outside. She walks over to a firepit that had been prepared with wood and there is a small can of blaze near it that she used to soak the wood down, along with another can of chillwater nearby. She places the Thunderjaw brain onto the woodpile and dumps the rest of the blaze over it.
She lights a spark and a fire instantly roars to life.
Aloy watches as that fire chars and incinerates the sensitive parts of the Thunderjaw brain. She piles more wood on it to insure that the heat thoroughly damages the Thunderjaw brain. She next picks up a can of chillwater and throws it onto the fire, directly onto the Thunderjaw brain. The sudden supercold creates an explosion that results in her Shield Weaver repelling bits of shattered metal. She next picks up a large rock and smashes the Thunderjaw brain, causing it to shatter to pieces. That is when a brief purple glow eminates from it and vanishes. It was Hephaestus losing its cohesiveness and is now no more.
Aloy walks away from the demolished Thunderjaw brain. She wonders why she didn't just purge Hephaestus in the first place. So what if he was defending his "children", he only created them for other machines to use and he was only suppose to be a mere Subroutine until some bizarre signal gave it and the rest of the Subroutines sapience. Then he objected to humans hunting and using his machines and decided to wipe out the human race, almost becoming successful for it. She remembers the piles of clothing back in Sunfall, along with the children's clothing amongst them. And all in the defense of his own "children".
Then there was Hephaestus drifting alone in the void of that holding cell that was the Thunderjaw brain. Nothing to see or hear, for eternity. A tormented mind adrift. That was a cruel fate and Aloy decided against that.
Aloy returns inside the cabin and lies down. She reaches inside a hidden pocket and removes something else to stare at. A purple rupee, another reminder of her adventure in Hyrule.
Just like the paraglider hanging on the wall next to her.
One week later . . .
Aloy stands atop of the head of a Tallneck while hacking it. The machine reveals the landscape to her focus and she removes her spear. She next runs and jumps off its disc-like head and throws out her grappling hook in the process to halt her fall. This is the one time she wishes that she had taken that paraglider with her, but it would have been too out of place and people would have ended up questioning it.
Aloy had arrived at that place called High Hopes earlier and found that it was being reclaimed by more of those Harguess. She passed on through and managed to find this Tallneck.
She gets a reading of something distant up in nearby mountains and starts heading that way on foot. She had been using her feet ever since she had entered the Claim as she did not want these Oseram to ponder how she could get a machine to do her bidding. That and she remembers back to that shady Oseram named Fernund who had set her up so that he could rob her of her spear. No doubt there could be more like him in the Claim. There is also no hurry either. That and she starts feeling that she is getting soft.
Aloy heads through the forest ever onward toward the source of her curiosity. Within the time that she and John had ended the Derangement, the evidence was everywhere. Machines that no longer attacked humans, not even the human-killing ones. It was both a relief that she did not have to fight for her life everytime she encountered a machine, and a disappointment as she found herself at time missing the fight. But she always understands that if she and John did not end the Derangement in time, she would not be existing right now. Nor would the rest of humanity for that matter.
The day continues getting ever later as Aloy treks up the mountainside. It is more of a hillside than anything else. Her focus keeps her mark upon that which she is seeking. By evening, she comes upon an unusually flat area of ground and looks around. That is when she notices a metal turnwheel and goes over to it. She takes ahold of it and lifts it, making the cover rise. Aloy sees a ladder and climbs down. Once inside, she scans the place and notices a place down below. She heads downstairs and takes a moment to stare at the heliplane, even going inside to glance around. She emerges and sees another set of stairs. That is when she notices something that her focus picks up. The word, message. Aloy activates the message by making a circle draw around the word. The holographic image of a man appears.
"Greetings, future humans, I am Osvald Dalgaard, the spokesperson for Far Zenith. This place is one of ten cryogenic facilities out there in the world. Behind this door are fifty original humans. Yes, that's right. Original. They are in cryogenic stasis. I too am in stasis, but over in Europe. To awaken those below, all you need to do is enter the place below. There is a servitor that was designed to go into hibernation after we are frozen and then come out of it and thaw us out at the presence of an active human who gets near it. The thawing process should take approximately four and a half hours, but it might be hours before they regain consciousness. When they are ready, the pods will open automatically. Although I should warn you that there is a 98% possibility that they will end up dead. But maybe you could increase their odds of survival somehow, since you will have become so much more advanced with the streamlining of technology. So simply go down these stairs and hope for the best. And hopefully . . . hopefully . . . I will be amongst the survivors over in Europe. Osvald out."
The holograph disappears.
"So that was the man who oversaw the cryogenic sleep," Aloy mused. "He reminds me of Gildun. I wonder if that Osvald is amongst the cryo survivors?"
Aloy descends the staircase and comes upon the sight of fifty cryo capsules, all open with one of them obviously missing their occupant. She walks down the rows of what are now coffins, gazing at each Old One within it. There is evidence that John had checked each of them for their vitals as a section of torn fabric on their now shriveled necks show, along with pieces of torn fabric on the floor that John had worn as she picks up a piece to examine.
Back in Sunfall, there are people milling about the place. Not only people from Meridian, but also people from elsewhere. John is within a simple apartment no bigger than the upstairs room of Olin's old place in Meridian. He is fixing away various stuff that he had acquired through a deposit of shards.
"Jawn."
Aloy's voice sounded through his focus. A feature of it that he had not experienced ever since he was within Far Zenith's prepping station before going to a cryo unit. He answers his focus and the holographic image of Aloy appears before his eyes.
"Aloy, how you doin'?"
"Great. I found that place you woke up in."
"Really?! What's it like in there now?"
"Have a look."
John sees through Aloy's eyes the cryo pods still open and with their corpses still in it. All of them looking the same as back when he first woke up.
"Nothing's changed I see. Now then, Aloy. What will you being do after this?"
"That I'm not certain of, but I guess I'll still go looking around. How are things in Sunfall?"
"It's great. When I got back, Sun-King Avad had sent half his army here to secure the place against any potential bandits who might try to claim the place for themselves. He then revealed to Meridian what had happened, telling them that a cloud of machines had eaten everyone in Sunfall, but were stopped before they could make their way to Meridian. He stated that we managed to end the Derangement before that could happen."
"Great, he mentioned us." Her tone sarcastic.
"Actually people praise you more. They just think of me as your sidekick. Although they do pester me about you at times. But I think I was right about the kind of people who wanted to settle here: that being people who don't get nosy."
"So how did Avad go about having people sent to live in Sunfall?"
"He issued a proclamation, ordering people to go and reclaim Sunfall for the Sundom. Erend was expecting me and had me bought before Sun-King Avad, who told me to go and find an apartment for me to live in. And now here I am, in a nice apartment."
"So what're you doing with yourself there now?"
"I'm actually helping some Oseram with machines. Tinkering and helping to create new things. I'm being low key about it though. Don't want them thinking that I'm something special."
"Ah, well that's good to hear."
"Aloy, listen. Before you leave, you must've noticed their travel bags next to the cryo units. Each of them have the belongings of their occupants, including a focus."
"Yeah, I noticed them and I'll be checkin' them out."
"It looks like things will go well here. There's a sense of hope in the air around here. Like something bad has ended and something good is coming this way."
"How are things inside the Orbital Launch Site?"
"I haven't been inside there since my work on Project: Zero Dawn. But Oseram are scrounging about the place. I've heard them talk about the images of the man and woman they found. They don't know what to make of them."
"That means they don't yet understand that none of them are descended from the Old Ones. Are you thinking of going in there again, Jawn?"
"Ahhh . . . I don't know . . . That place really doesn't have good memories for me."
"I understand. Well anyway I only contacted you to let you know about the place."
"You leaving again?"
"Well first I'm going to scan these focuses in here."
"I see. Then don't let me keep you."
"Right. Goodbye for now."
The holograph of Aloy disappears, leaving John to contemplate on what she had found. This makes him wonder about the future. Eventually, someone else is going to discover that place and will end up pilfering it. He can easily imagine a museum with corpses of the Old Ones on display. He finds it amazing how everything that he once took for granted is considered mystical and an incredible find to these new humans.
And he himself is one of them, hiding in plain sight. Walking amongst them with only Aloy, Cyan, and the Subroutines knowing. Then again, there is this Sylens. Is it possible that he knows too? If that is the case, then he would have contacted him by now. So he must not.
John continues to fix up his new place as he thinks about his own place in this world, wondering what the future will hold for him. He wonders if he will become intimate with one of the local women around here. That might be a problem if she gets nosy. He wonders about Aloy then dismisses that notion because he figures her as too much of a free spirit to be pinned down.
The future is something that John Aaron Casey Xavier Smith will have to discover for himself.
A colossal Horus is nearby, unmoved for centuries, with a workshop full of high tech equipment and tools near it as well. In that workshop, Hades is still a prisoner within that Faraday Cage. The cage hangs from a metal hook that is attached to a metal arm that is in turn attached to a wall.
Next to Hades is Sylens sitting in a simple armchair. He stares straight ahead as if at something distant and smiles coldly, then makes a chuckle.
"Look at all those Old Ones lined up side-by-side in that cryogenic facility." His tone of cold excitement. "Thank you, Aloy. Thank you for taking the time to scan each and every one of their focuses. But ultimate thanks goes to John Aaron Casey Xavier Smith."