Northwest of Hawthorne Town, wilderness.
"Over there."
The Mutant boy who had come along, Eli Finch, pointed ahead and spoke to Quentin and the others.
He was a boy of around twelve, with black feathers covering his neck, back, and both cheeks, yet he had no wings. Other than that, he displayed no other enhanced traits. He was clearly a very ordinary Mutant.
Miles and Quentin both understood that this was the norm among Mutants. Those who possessed truly powerful abilities were always a minority. Most ordinary Mutants had powers that were difficult to use directly in combat, and many even drew greater discrimination and disgust because of changes to their appearance.
Eli sat in the car, looking at Quentin with a mixture of fear and admiration. After all, in his eyes, Quentin Quire was undoubtedly one of the strong figures of the wasteland.
"That used to be an armed equipment center for the old government. It mainly handled armored vehicle repairs and weapons storage. It had been quiet all these years, so none of us expected there to be a Sentinel Factory here."
As he spoke, the off-road vehicle continued forward and soon passed through a long-collapsed wire fence.
Across the wasteland, countless low concrete buildings and semi-underground bunkers stretched into the distance. Abandoned warehouses, repair workshops, and earth-covered ammunition depots were linked by broad roads, with stretches of railway occasionally visible beneath the yellow sand.
The doors of several warehouses stood almost entirely open. Every removable piece of metal, equipment, and wiring inside had long since vanished; even the copper wires in the walls had been stripped clean. Scavengers' footprints, tire tracks, and pried-open underground maintenance shafts could be seen everywhere on the ground.
Quentin and the others were used to this. This place was close to Hawthorne