Bang!
Guan Yan violently kicked open the laboratory doors, shoved aside the researchers blocking her way, her mechanical arm flashing red. With one punch, she smashed open the glass container and dragged out Xiang Yuan, who had yet to realize disaster was bearing down on him.
The alarms blared.
"Come with me. It isn't safe here."
Guan Yan led Xiang Yuan in a mad dash out of the laboratory. Whenever anyone tried to stop them along the way, she said nothing and simply punched them aside.
Once outside the laboratory, Guan Yan glanced in the direction of the City Lord's Manor. A vague premonition stirred in her heart, and she took Xiang Yuan fleeing along the outer perimeter of the metal walls.
"Boss, where are we going?"
"We'll talk when we get somewhere safe."
Before the explosion and inferno, Guan Yan had been full of curiosity about the civilian district outside the Central District. As a kind-hearted young lady brimming with energy, she had tried every day to sneak across the border and deliver whatever supplies she could to the suffering people in the civilian district.
When the metal gates proved impassable, she gradually figured out how to use the sewers.
With that skill, she had, back when she was still a clerical worker, led the city guards who came looking for her around in circles until they got hopelessly lost in the sewers.
Guan Yan grabbed Xiang Yuan and leaped into the sewer. The two hurried along the broad iron-grate passageway, where their footsteps constantly produced squeaks and groans as rusted metal gave way beneath them from years of disrepair.
"Boss, how come you know the Central District's sewers so well?"
Xiang Yuan put his brain to work and swiftly concocted a whole script about a pioneer rising in