The city lay quiet before them.
Zolyah lay prone behind the cracked window of a large, gray building. Her optics pointed northeast, cutting through the district exactly as Johannes’ map had shown.
Along the long street, a barricaded section showed up ahead. Due to the curved road, her vision was cut by more than half.
"Eagle One, confirm your sightlines," Dmitri buzzed on the comms.
"I see you Echo Actual," Zolyah responded. "But I don’t see any hostile presence. Careful on the approach."
"Eagle Two, confirm your sightlines."
"You need to see it yourself, Echo Actual," Eagle Two answered, a hint of doubt in their tone. "Place is busted. HVT may not be inside."
Dmitri frowned, checking the time. Everything felt too quiet—too clean for a sector that was supposed to be held.
The road stretched from southwest to northeast, passing through several blocks of structures lined with emptied residential blocks.
Bones scattered on the corners and in each room, historical evidence that someone lived here but had died long ago.
Looking through the map, Elias’s territory sat in the center between the south and the east. Pandora District’s entrance only led to one road—the intersection where Dmitri was in now.
His gaze turned to the two agents, Johannes and Evelyn, who decided to join the hunt at the last minute.
"Intel’s off," Dmitri approached, his tone unfriendly. "Place is empty, and my overwatch isn’t picking up signs."
"That was the intel months ago," Johannes argued, his brows furrowed as well. "If something changed, then it’s nothing simple."
Dmitri locked eyes with Johannes for a moment.
"You better hope we find something," he snorted, turning around.
"Point Dora entrance secured," he called out. "Escort One and Echo Three, hold this position. Bulldog One, charge ahead."
Echo One and Two followed behind Bulldog One.
The Light APC roared forward, closing the distance to the barricade. Watchtowers loomed on either side of the road, void of any watchmen that should have been stationed up top.
As Dmitri checked the right flank, he noticed a depression on the concrete beside the residential building.
"Eagle Two, check the east. Left of the light-blue five-story building. There’s a depression, but I can’t make anything out of it."
"Shifting sights," Eagle Two’s expression suddenly faltered.
"That’s the one, Echo Actual. I can see it clearly now. Large footprints, human-like. I don’t like where this is going, Actual."
Dmitri shifted his attention back to the barricade.
It wasn’t blown apart. That was the first thing that bothered him.
The concrete blocks that remained had been pushed aside, not scattered nor shattered, but pressed outward as if something heavy had stepped through them and kept moving.
Metal sheets and rebars jutted out at shallow angles—all bent rather than snapped.
Where the gate once stood was now nothing but compressed materials that even he couldn’t identify. Yet, the depression was there, one too familiar with what he had seen on the sides.
Three—no, four meters, Dmitri calculated. Depth’s around fifty or sixty centimeters.
"Teams, check your corners."
Adrian, Echo Two’s squad leader, snapped to the left.
A truck that should have reinforced the center lay half-sunk into the asphalt, its rear frame warped inward, tires flattened unevenly like they’d been stepped on rather than crushed.
Above it, the edge of the adjacent structure told a different story.
The upper floors didn’t collapse—it was grazed.
Chunks of concrete had been shaved off along the curved path, leaving exposed steel and fractured edges that ran too high for any vehicle and too wide for any man.
Dust still clung to the surfaces, undisturbed by the wind. Whatever had passed through didn’t rush. It was as if it had taken the time to do so.
Everyone on the scene felt a slow tension settle into their shoulders.
Johannes and Evelyn even more so.
"Do you recognize these?" Dmitri directed to them.
"We are clueless as you are," Johannes shook his head. He had never seen something so bizzarre in his life.
"You sure it’s not him?" Dmitri asked again.
"Helix only improves one’s physical foundation," Johannes insisted. "It cannot create something of a monstrosity like this."
"We’ll see to that," Dmitri didn’t believe Johannes one bit.
An agent knowing more about a secret government project? Impossible.
If it was that easy, everyone else would have known about Project Helix long before disaster has struck the planet.
"I can only go as far here, Echo Actual," Bulldog One said. "We’ll see if we can find a detour, over."
The depression stopped their tracks. Any farther and the under chassis would be compromised.
"Copy, Bulldog One. Eagle One and Two, reposition close to the compound. Assist Bulldog One, over."
Echo One and Two delved deeper into the compound.
The farther they went, the less the damage looked like chaos and more like someone was carving a path to the north.
Shipping containers lined both sides of the road, stacked two high in some places. Their doors hung open or bent inward; metal folded toward the center as if something had passed between them without slowing.
These weren’t storage units but living quarters of whatever once lived here.
Inside, a cot had collapsed under the weight of the ceiling, or rather, collapsed the structure’s material was torn down.
A blanket messily lay on the corner, darkened with old stains of what seems to be blood.
In another, plastic crates held ration packs mostly torn open, contents spilled on the floor and left to rot. Rice clung to the asphalt in clumps, crawling with maggots.
Dmitri caught the smell before he had seen the worst of it.
Stale food. Waste. Blood.
Quarters whose inhabitants were suddenly disturbed in the middle of a commotion.
"Too long to count," he muttered, his nose twitching as flies lifted in lazy clouds.
"Shit," Echo Two cursed on the radio. "This ain’t right Actual."
"Location?"
"Not far from you, center of the compound. Damn it, stinks worse than the fish port here."