In the town, the Wraiths gang was still making a ruckus, destroying and searching everywhere. They even argued over which dilapidated house was more suitable as a "command post" and where to set up sentry posts, completely unaware that they had already triggered an automated defense system far beyond their comprehension, an efficient system cleanup operation had begun.
Inside the garage, Rebecca and Pilar almost held their breath, listening nervously to the chaos outside.
The boisterous shouts and curses seemed to undergo a strange, unsettling change. Some sounds suddenly cut off, as if precisely snipped. The sounds of destruction gradually thinned out, replaced by a few extremely brief gasps, as if violently suppressed.
Besides that, there was a very faint sound they had never heard before—like the high-frequency hum of an energy weapon firing, or the low groan of precision machinery operating at its limit.
This sound caused a slight, unnerving tingling sensation in their auditory nerves.
"What... what's that sound, choom?" Pilar whispered, his eyes darting nervously behind his goggles, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise.
Rebecca, equally confused, shook her head, tightening her grip on the almost empty pistol in her hand. A strong, primal sense of alarm crept up her spine, as if the air was charged with invisible static electricity.
Meanwhile, outside, a highly precise clearing operation was unfolding with maximum efficiency.
A Wraith member, who had just picked up a spray can and was about to tag a wall, suddenly went limp as he raised his hand, collapsing silently. Only the faint clatter of the spray can rolling on the ground broke the silence.
Not far away, another fellow, his back to his comrades, was shouting into a comm unit for backup when his call suddenly cut off. He swayed, then quietly slumped to the ground.
"Enemy attack! Find cover—Fuu...!" A man who looked like a small leader finally realized something was disastrously wrong, crying out in terror as he tried to locate the source of the attack and dive for cover.
But his voice abruptly cut off, and his movement ceased.
It was only then that the remaining Wraiths discovered, in horror, a Servo-Skull—pale as an ancient sculpture and gleaming with inhuman metallic cold light—silently hovering in mid-air.
Its hollow eye sockets glowed a cold, unchanging crimson. Its metallic mandible slightly opened and closed, and miniature laser emitters extended from its sides, operating with ruthless efficiency.
Its movement was silent, defying the laws of physics, sometimes flashing across a broken window sill, sometimes perfectly merging into the shadows of a building, and then appearing without warning from another angle the next moment.
"Ghost... a ghost, man!"
"It's that chrome skull! Shoot it! Quick, shoot the gonk!"
Panic erupted like a plague among the survivors.
The Wraiths members hysterically raised various firearms, frantically unleashing a torrent of chaotic bullets at the elusive Servo-Skull.
Slugs rained down on walls, the ground, and abandoned vehicles, kicking up countless fragments of rock and sparks, creating immense noise, yet failing to even graze the machine.
It always managed to evade all the chaotic trajectories with minimal, elegant movement. Each imperceptible, brief pause was inevitably accompanied by a precise red beam of light and the silent, mechanical failure of an enemy body.
This was not a battle; it was the execution of a silent, highly efficient cleansing procedure. It ignored terrain obstacles, ignored makeshift cover, and ignored numerical superiority.
No screams lasted for more than a moment, because everything happened too quickly, too precisely, and too unexpectedly.
Rebecca and Pilar peered through the cracks in the wall and the hole, astonished by the one-sided, unimaginable confrontation outside.
They watched the mechanical Servo-Skull move through the air above the street as if performing a precise drill, watching the Wraiths members, who had been so arrogant just minutes before, flatline one by one.
There were no roars, no wails, only the frantic, gradually thinning gunshots of the attackers, and the heavy thud of bodies hitting the ground. This absolute, efficient response brought a shock far greater than any chaotic battlefield scene.
In what felt like one or two minutes, the gunshots and the last curses outside completely vanished.
A profound silence enveloped the town, with only the whimpering of the wind through the empty ruins, as if whispering about everything that had just happened.
Inside the garage, Rebecca and Pilar dared not breathe, drenched in cold sweat. The aura of finality contained within the deathly silence outside unsettled them more than the previous clamor and gunfire.
Pilar trembled uncontrollably, asking Rebecca in a barely audible whisper and mouth shape, "Sis... is that chrome still out there?"
Rebecca's face was pale. Her eyes fixed on the faint light filtering through the door crack and the hole, and she shook her head almost imperceptibly.
She couldn't see anything, but the feeling of being monitored by a highly advanced automated system, instead of dissipating with the end of the external confrontation, became even clearer.
What felt like an eternity passed, and there was still no movement outside. Only the eternal wind whistled through the ruins, carrying a hint of an indescribably strange, metallic scent.
Finally, Rebecca mustered her courage. Her limbs felt somewhat numb, and cautiously, carefully, she once again approached the hole in the wall, holding her breath as she peered outside.
The street presented a scene of total annihilation. The terrifying, nightmarish pale mechanical Servo-Skull had vanished, as if it had never appeared.
But just as Rebecca was about to breathe a sigh of relief, her peripheral vision suddenly caught sight of something—at the end of the street, on the edge of the dilapidated roof of a taller building, the Servo-Skull was silently, eerily hovering there!
Its hollow eye sockets, those cold crimson optical lenses, seemed to be precisely, motionlessly, aimed in the direction of their hidden garage.
It made no movement, like a piece of art casually placed on the rooftop, but after personally experiencing the brief yet shocking confrontation just now, this extreme stillness instead exuded a continuous, undeniable presence.
It hadn't left.
It was just watching.
Silently, patiently, absolutely watching.
Rebecca recoiled as if struck by static electricity, sliding down to sit on the cold, rough wall, feeling her heart pound in her throat once more.
"What's wrong? Little sister? What did you see?" Pilar, noticing her abnormality, asked anxiously, his voice trembling.
Rebecca's lips quivered. After several seconds, she squeezed out an answer in a voice as dry as sandpaper rubbing,
"...It didn't leave, choom..."
She looked up, her eyes filled with complex emotions, "It's on the roof outside... watching us. Always watching."