The cracked tarmac hummed beneath the tires as the convoy pushed deeper into the forsaken city.
Old pre-catastrophe roads, weathered and split by decades of neglect, with weeds and pale grass pushing up through the fissures like fingers from a grave.
On both sides, silent buildings watched us, hollow-eyed husks of shops, apartments, and offices stripped of life. Windows shattered or boarded. Doors hanging crooked on rusted hinges. The specific, oppressive silence of a place that had once been full of voices and was now only full of memory.
General Sinn's car led with Harmione, Code and Oddo inside. We followed in Mercury's car. Me, Sherry on my right, May in the front, and Owen on my left.
Owen couldn't ride with Oddo. That arrangement had been made without discussion.
He smiled the whole journey. Not at anything specific. Just smiling, the way certain people smile when they have information they find privately entertaining.
