Roger shows them footage of mechs hunting down a large group of survivors from Burnt Ends. Oliver is surprised to see the Cannon Fodder and Thunder Thighs teams; Roger explains that many players have purchased insurance that allows them to have new mechs printed at no cost if they lose their original mechs. Oliver numbly watches as Terry, a shopkeeper he has known for years, is mowed down. Once this skirmish is over, Roger will direct any survivors to their base camp. He tells the group that Apex has dropped more supplies, including a tablet with a note asking Oliver and Lulu to use it to contact Apex. Roger stings Sam for swearing, upsetting one of the chickens that now follows Sam around. Sam soothes the chicken, wondering aloud if it’s one of Mr. Yanez’s magic chickens.

Roger remotely connects Oliver and Lulu to the tablet. Eli Opel comes onscreen. Opel expresses surprise that they’re still able to use the honeybee technology sent to New Sonora with them, as these drones were secretly designed to shut down after five years. Roger privately tells Oliver and the others that the New Sonorans discovered the honeybee kill switches and disabled them. Opel wonders if they might also have a functioning Traducible AI unit. Roger explains that this is a reference to him; Traducible AI was deemed too powerful and banned by the Republic long ago.

Apex has their entire base mapped and has the power to kill them all at any time. Opel has a proposal: If they stop communicating with people outside of New Sonora, Apex will continue to drop supplies so that the Lewis encampment can put up a good fight against the increasingly large numbers of customers he will be sending their way for the next three days. If they comply, Opel promises not to kill any survivors with his clean-up crews once the battle is done.

Lulu points out that letting the New Sonoran fighters communicate with the gamers is good for Apex’s profits, as people watching the livestreams enjoy the insults and threats. Reluctantly, Opel agrees to this exception to his communications ban. Opel signs off and is replaced by a countdown clock. When the time expires, 150 mechs will arrive to fight against the New Sonorans at the Lewis farm.

Oliver, Lulu, and their friends sit together in the barn where the Rhythm Mafia used to practice. Sam is trying to figure out the magical abilities of one of the chickens, whom he calls Betty Lou. Lulu stalks off to the control room, angry because Roger borrowed all the money she’d earned from her streaming work. The money is in an Earth bank account; Roger needs it to set up a server on Earth to conduct more research on their opponents.

Oliver realizes that, even if they survive Apex’s onslaught, Lulu may now never be able to realize her dream of using her savings to move to Earth. He wonders if it’s petty for him to be worrying about his relationship with Rosita when everyone seems to be losing everything. Then, he remembers that right before his grandmother Yolanda died, she advised him, “The closer we are to the end, the more we need to embrace our happiness” (210). His thoughts are interrupted by a man accidentally dropping a tray of recently printed winding mechanisms. When they hit the floor, they make a clicking noise. Mr. Yanez’s chickens immediately attack and destroy them. Sam is delighted, proclaiming that this is their magical ability.

In the film, Rosita tries to interview Mr. Yanez on his farm. He shouts at her to go away. He is trying to train his animals, he says, to leave a legacy. This is all he will say before he rides away on his quad.

That night, Apex drops another round of mechs onto New Sonora. Oliver receives a message from Roger detailing the real names and personal information of many of the Apex players. The message contains a “suggested insult” for each. Roger was able to gain all this intelligence by uploading a limited copy of himself onto the Earth server he has rented. Oliver questions how Roger was able to override his own programming to do something illegal like this, and Roger explains that the perimeter defense protocol allows him to break some laws. Roger believes that the insults are an important element of psychological warfare that will heighten the young gamers’ emotions, potentially causing them to fight amongst themselves and make impulsive mistakes.

The first team of mechs to arrive calls themselves “The Freeks.” The New Sonorans manage to defeat all five relatively quickly. A larger wave of enemies appears, approaching the farm from multiple directions. Missiles explode everywhere, catching the nearby woods on fire and damaging the base’s camo netting. Heavy smoke makes it difficult to see. A few enemy mechs make it inside the camp’s outer wall, and the New Sonorans lose one of their mounted guns to a missile. Drop ships appear and drop more and more mechs directly inside the base’s inner wall. Oliver and the others fire over and over, gradually disabling all the enemy mechs inside the wall. Honeybees dispatch the mechs still outside the compound. The New Sonorans take a moment to check in with one another. Oliver’s friends and his sister are unharmed, but the compound has sustained heavy damage.

The base’s defensive walls are down in many places, and the team has lost a number of important weapons. Lulu is sitting on the ground, crying. In horror, Oliver sees Mrs. Gonzales cradling the body of Mr. Gonzales. Lulu sobs that she feels responsible because Mr. Gonzales died trying to get Cindy back into the barn. If she had never brought the pig here, the elderly man would still be alive. Lulu no longer dreams of moving to Earth. In fact, she wants all the Earthers dead. “I do, too,” Oliver says (233).

Only one of the enemy mechs is still online. It lies on its back, and the New Sonorans can hear the streamer piloting it excitedly pumping his followers for donations. Roger tells Oliver that the streamer, Benicio Campos, is gaining tens of thousands of followers by the minute. Oliver asks Roger to configure it so that he can talk to Campos.

Oliver uses the intel that Roger has gathered on Campos to taunt him, claiming that Campos’s mother is ashamed of him and that his father died by suicide because of Campos. He announces Campos’s real name and gives out his address. As increasingly more followers join, he has Roger plant fake pictures of Campos’s ex-girlfriend sitting on the lap of a rival streamer, “Goat Sects,” in Campos’s feed. Roger warns him that Goat Sects is not involved in Operation Bounce House, but Oliver says he doesn’t care if he’s harming an innocent party. Before signing off, Oliver taunts Campos one last time, implying that Goat Sects’s followers are joining Benecio’s feed, posting pictures, and laughing at him.

In the film, Rosita interviews Tito and Axel about why Tito doesn’t talk. When they were children, Tito witnessed their grandfather get caught in farm machinery. Because Tito had neglected to wear his communications bracelet, he couldn’t call for help, and their grandfather died. Since then, he has spoken very little and only to either Axel or their grandmother.