Chương 42: Mantis blades incoming.

Time lost all meaning as I hunched over, my eyes glued to the drone's feed—a grainy, ghostly window into the stark, deserted landscape that hugged the facility like a cold embrace. Each second felt like an eternity, every heartbeat a drumroll to an unknown finale. The highway nearby, usually bustling with the constant flow of traffic, felt eerily distant now. Cars whisked by, oblivious to the tension brewing in our abandoned factory. Watching them, a thought crept into my mind: just a few days ago, I was another face in the crowd of Megablock 4, and now... I found myself on the brink of becoming a rogue element. Or perhaps, I pondered, I had always been one, never quite fitting into the neatly packaged lives dictated by Crystal City's towering structures. Yearning for something beyond the confines of this city might very well be the hallmark of a rogue.