The city didn't look any better up close.
They walked for a little over two hours, the forest thinning behind them until the last of the trees gave way to cracked asphalt and broken curbs. The buildings closed in on either side, tall and grey and silent. Windows gaped empty. Cars sat rusting where they'd been abandoned, some of them half swallowed by the weeds pushing up through the road. Every now and then a strip of faded advertising flapped from a billboard, a smiling face selling something nobody would ever buy again.
Sujin walked close to the middle of the group, her eyes moving over everything. She'd never been this deep into the city since the system came.
"It's so quiet," she said softly.
"It wasn't, the first day," Echo said. He was walking with his hands in his pockets, eyes half closed, listening the way he always did. "It was screaming. Everywhere. You couldn't hear yourself think."
