The area around the old Central Pumping Station was now called the Sunken District. After the disaster, the area had been abandoned, left to the mercy of ruptured water mains and geothermal vents that perpetually shrouded it in a thick, sulfurous mist. It was a graveyard of industry, where the rusted skeletons of warehouses loomed like forgotten gods in the fog.
The team moved through the oppressive silence, their footsteps echoing strangely in the damp air. The Pumping Station itself was a gaping wound in the cityscape. A huge portion of its side had been blown out, exposing a tangled mess of colossal pistons and pipes, all bleeding rust.
"Spread out," Ronan ordered, his usual bravado tempered by the bleak atmosphere. "Look for anything that feels out of place."
Liam was drawn inexorably toward the heart of the ruin. He placed a hand on a massive, buckled boiler, its metal cool and slick beneath his fingers. He closed his eyes and reached out. The [Temporal Echo] was a violent storm of sensation: the shriek of tearing metal, the roar of scalding steam, the final, terrified shouts of dying men. But woven through the chaos was a thread of something else. Something cold, silent, and utterly unnatural. It was the feeling of deliberate, focused will in the midst of pandemonium. It was the echo of a mind that was not panicking, but observing.
He pulled his hand back, a shiver running down his spine. "The disaster… it wasn't just an accident. I can feel it. Something was forced."
From near the collapsed wall, Isolde nodded slowly, her own eyes closed. "There is a scar here," she whispered, her voice barely disturbing the air. "Not on the stone, but on the memory of the place. It's a void. A story that should be here is missing."
They had found the epicenter of the lie. The event itself had been tampered with, its true nature overwritten with a simpler, more convenient tale of incompetence. They still didn't know the how or the why, but they knew with certainty they were standing in the footprint of a decade-old crime.