Ryan narrowly avoids injury, but Jak is wounded in a few places, the worst being a long cut on his jaw which refuses to stop bleeding.

Ryan reaches the exit of the redoubt and immediately spots the slavers' base: a large sulfur mine, well-guarded and operated by slave labor, surrounded on all sides by barren, mountainous terrain.

While exploring an abandoned testing office Ryan inadvertently activates a set of five prototype "sec hunters": androids programmed to identify a target by their DNA and then hunt them ceaselessly.

After defeating the second hunter, Ryan heads to the test chamber to meet the third as it activates; eventually it does, but malfunctions spectacularly, attacking and destroying itself.

When they finally find themselves outside again and on land Ryan narrowly manages to get both of them to the shelter of a small cave and start a fire before they succumb to the cold.

Meanwhile, Dean is doing his best to avoid the attention of Zimyanin, who has met the boy a few times over the past days and finds him unsettlingly familiar, but cannot place why.

The Major-Commandant only realizes the connection several days later, conveniently when Dean is recovering from a near-fatal mine collapse in the infirmary and Ryan himself has been detained in chains for disobeying sec men while attempting to rescue his son.

Zimyanin blocks a last-ditch effort by the sec hunter to attack Ryan and forcibly throws it from the catwalk to its destruction, but ends up hanging one-handed from a severed support cable.

As they exit the ruins of the redoubt Ryan spots a large column of smoke in the distance, coming from the direction of the Lauren ranch.

As Ryan and Jak are riding away from the Lauren farm, Doc Tanner runs after them for a moment while calling out, "Shane," mirroring the end of the film of the same name.

While attempting to shake the sec hunter from the warehouse walkway, Zimyanin refers to Ryan and Dean as his "droogs", a fictional slang word for "friends" featured in A Clockwork Orange.