Carl had never been short on exposure to the smell of blood. For someone like him, who moved through storms of gunfire, it was a scent he had long grown used to. But at this moment, it was especially pungent.
In Carl's experience, a smell that sharp meant there was a large amount of blood—and that it had not been out of human bodies for long.
Even if there had originally been a few Maelstrom members in this warehouse, there could not have been many. The dust on the floor showed that this was a place the local Maelstrom did not welcome. Did that mean this blood had come from the people Carl had been tracking?
Could it be...!
Carl's expression shifted slightly.
That pulse signal just now had not been telling those people to run. It had been telling them to die!?
If one wanted to leave no traces behind, dead people were naturally better at keeping secrets than living ones, weren't they?
Damn it.
Were they really that decisive?
Just as Carl was about to follow the scent of blood, he heard a faint sound.
It was a vague noise, like someone slowly rising from a thick, bloody liquid.
And with that sound, the stench of blood in the air grew even heavier.
Carl heard footsteps. Several heavy, uneven sets of footsteps came from deep within the warehouse along with the sound of someone getting up, and he promptly slipped into the shadows.
With the ear-piercing screech of metal scraping across the ground, several Maelstrom members staggered out under the dim yellow light. The dense clusters of cybernetic eyes on their faces had all turned an ominous crimson, their mechanical joints creaked discordantly, and their expressions were filled with a strange distortion.
Doctor Carl, who had extensive experience