has barely been washed away by the rain. Like a child playing in the mud, oblivious to the mess knowing her parents would wash her when she was done anyway. Her shell is dented in some parts but unbroken, and he looks around again to see what could have caused the damage. Another two of the metal plates are mixed into the bodies, one of them completely torn in two. The lieutenants that carried them in more pieces than that.

He wonders where Dylan is. Was he still hiding in the house? In the attic where he went to test out the binoculars? He knew the drones didn’t find him, the kid had probably just run off when the drones came, slipped out through some hole in a fence into the forest. He reaches out to Belle and grabs onto her arm as a support to help him walk. He expects her to assist