"I'm the industrious sort!" Aloy says, flashing a thumbs up.

"I can tell."

Eheheh.

Anyway, anything good in the journal?

Some writing, in a cramped hand:

4TH DAY
I am a traitor now and see no way out.

If I start at the beginning—how they turned me—perhaps I can see something I missed?

No. There is no escape. What good can writing it do?

...

15TH DAY
The same dream. Your hair in the forge-light, our son's weight on my shoulders. All of us free. You turn to me and whisper—it is a dream. I answer—Yes, I know.

And then wake. Alone.

Even awake my life is a dream—a lie. My treachery will not buy your freedom. It only buys time. But every moment you live, that he lives... if treachery is the cost, I will pay it.

34TH Day
Every week the device calls me in secret to a new dig site. We work like men with whips to our backs—as though it was left to us to upturn the soil of the entire earth and time has run low. Scrabbling to find the carcasses of ancient demons. It's the weapons they want, must be. What misery am I helping birth into this land?

...

54TH Day
Fitful sleep the past three nights, thinking on that Nora girl. Why did it order her killed? The device, must be. Even so, what threat could she pose?

We heard explosions and distant screams from the village. I thought the savages might blame us, turn on us. I almost wished for it. But their Matriarchs ordered us gone. We fled to the border with an escort of braves, crossed at Daytower.

Now I am called to a dig in the Rockwreath. They promise another glimpse of you, of our son. How I hope to see you both. 

"Where's Rockwreath?"

She points it out on the map. 

Aloy makes a note of it.

"Um, you said there was a murder investigation too?"

"...Yeah. The previous captain of the guard, my sister."

"Where should we start with that?"

"Where we found her body, probably."

"Lead the way."

The site's a short distance outside of Meridian, at the base of one of the mountains - though there's some aggressive machines that have moved in nearby.

Aloy and Eres should be able to clear those out.

Eres could use something to hit.

A bit of therapeutic violence.

Exactly.

And once that's taken care of, they can case the scene.

At first glance, it looks like a Shadow Carja ambush - though Aloy can pretty quickly spot that the arrows are unbroken, a cast aside helmet undented, and the blood splatters don't line up with what she'd expect from a battle. Also, there's drag marks leading to faint cart tracks.

"Seems like this might have been a setup. What were the bodies like when this was found?"

She'll point them out. "What do you mean, a setup?"

"The debris doesn't line up with how the fight would have happened," Aloy says, and points out the inconsistencies she noticed, ending with the cart tracks. "Whoever was here, I think, the attackers wanted to grab them. Everything else is covering that up."

" - Or they could've killed her somewhere else, and moved the body here... If they wanted to frame the Shadow Carja..." Frown. "Let's follow these."

Aloy can do that.

This leads them up the mountain, straight into a gathering of flying machines.

"Glinthawks!"