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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.

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A couple of nearby windows were the sources of the light that they’d first noticed, but said windows were so foggy and dirty that Loren still couldn’t make out anything on the other side, even with his eyes.

Darksteel didn’t hesitate, though. He pushed through the double doors as their small party followed.

What awaited them, however, was not the outside. Instead, they found themselves in another building. It looked decidedly less ancient than the one they’d just left behind, but it was still just as empty.

Abandoned? Hmm. Well, at the least the others didn’t need their flashlights, anymore.

The floors were a dusty stone, and thick pillars supported a low ceiling with long cracks running through it. Otherwise, however, the room had no walls, and light poured in from distant windows in all directions.

And there was something else, too. Loren noticed it right away, but he couldn’t actually tell what it was. Something almost invisible to the naked eye. It hung there in the air, covering everything like a thin veil.

What the hell was that? He felt like he’d seen such a thing before--and yet also not. Surely, he’d remember something so strange.

Certainly, his eyes had picked up on a few oddities over the years, but now, after his most recent mutation, which he instigated only a few days ago, he was beginning to worry that he might’ve messed himself up again. He’d hoped that he’d grown out of that early phase, but the fear never really went away, honestly.

The historical horror stories about mutation had been drilled into his mind, after all.

Agh. He tried to stay focused. Getting distracted might well be a death sentence in a place like this, he felt.

The group kept following Darksteel, but now it was truly dead quiet. Even the reapers had ceased their chatter--which was not typically a good sign, in Loren’s experience.

He thought he could hear something peculiar, too. Just the general background noise of a big city, he’d thought at first. But as he continued listening, he felt like there was another layer in there. Muted but not totally.

Perhaps Roman was hearing it, too, because the man was holding a cupped hand up to his ear.

Hmm. Did he have a power that aided his hearing? Loren felt compelled to inquire. “What is that noise?”

Roman took a moment before responding. “Screams.”

Next page on the 7th

Thanks for reading. And for not seething. Or bleeding. Or pleading. And for meeting. And eating. But yeah, mainly for reading.