Chapter 74: Refusing To Look
"There doesn’t seem to be any squatters."
The egg landed softly on the ground. Tomoe hadn’t opened it yet—part of her worried there might be people hiding nearby. After all, anyone in the vicinity would have surely noticed a massive dark crystal egg descending from the sky.
Still, anyone outside wouldn’t be able to see them. Tomoe’s darker variant of crystal was opaque unless you were standing almost right against it.
They waited in silence for several seconds, scanning for movement, before Tomoe finally pressed her fingers to the crystal wall. A sharp crack rang out as the structure shattered, revealing the world outside.
Riley immediately sent out a telekinetic wave, like a radar pulse, scanning for life or motion. Other than the slight shifting of metal scraps scattered across the warehouse floor, his radar detected nothing. No movement, no breathing—aside from himself, Tomoe, her mother, and Erik. And of course, not Rob.
"I was hoping we would run into a few of them."
Disappointment laced Riley’s voice. He shook his head as he sent out another pulse, but once again, the response was silence.
"Let us go, Tomoe," he muttered, turning toward the entrance of the warehouse.
Tomoe didn’t follow immediately. She took a moment to carefully survey the building—its facade riddled with cracks, vines curling through the gaps. The entire structure looked like it hadn’t seen human presence in years, maybe longer. Possibly a decade.
Even the concrete beneath them had surrendered to nature, with tufts of dry grass and weeds breaking through its brittle surface. The warehouse was surrounded by nothing but overgrown brush, an eerie, silent island on its own in the middle of nowhere.
Both the loading dock and the main door were also left completely open, and anyone could walk in if they wanted to.