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Darksteel bolted ahead, prompting everyone else to follow. They were all still wearing the full suits of armor that Darksteel had made for them earlier, so the room came urgently alive with the sound of shifting metal plates.

Darksteel himself moved so quickly that Loren thought he might be about to jump through the nearest window, but instead, he came to an abrupt stop and merely looked out. Then, after a brief pause, he turned and looked directly at Loren, who felt suddenly as if the room had closed in around him.

“What do you see out there?” said Darksteel.

Ah. Loren relaxed a little and stepped up to the window alongside him.

He took his time scanning the view, not wanting to miss anything.

The buildings were so massive that much of the view was blocked--but not all. Because they weren’t actually on the ground floor, apparently. Strange. How had they made it so high up here without noticing? Was this whole tower abandoned? Connected so deeply with the ancient undercity?

He focused on the task. Roadways were everywhere, both above and below, with cars speeding along almost all of them. A few were backed up with heavy traffic, he noticed.

And the buildings themselves. He could see in many of the windows from afar. Several of them had people gathered around, gawking at something down below. Hmm? Below? Agh, this vantage point wasn’t great, but he could see a few hints of activity down there, nestled between the buildings and beneath the roads.

He moved left along the windows, searching for a better line of sight. Something was down there alright. What was it?

A crowd. A massive one. What was happening, though?

Crowds were tough to sift through. Just a cluster of visual noise. But with concentration, he could find the abnormalities therein. There was a certain logic to it, as well. Crowds, oftentimes, behaved like schools of fish. They were organized. Moving in unison. Creating a discernible flow. The key was to ignore all the distracting colors and focus on movement patterns. Then find the ones that stuck out. Disturbances in the flow. That was usually where the trouble was found.

But as he searched, he didn’t see anything like that. No disturbances. The flows were pristine. Extremely organized.

In fact... that, in itself, was abnormal. Humans were not literally supposed to move like schools of fish, which were able to maintain their harmony with pinpoint precision. Humans were still supposed to have imperfections here and there. People tripping or walking too slowly or bumping into one another.

But there was none of that.

That enormous crowd down there was moving with an almost mechanical perfection.