For one brief second, the refugees went blank.
A white-haired old man raised a trembling hand and caught the food falling from the sky.
He stared dumbly at his palm, then hesitantly put the little morsel of meat into his mouth.
Then he abruptly looked up.
Behind him, those enormous steel monsters stood silently in the rain, their gun barrels still smoking, yet not a single shell had landed among the crowd.
Looking ahead again, he saw that the officer who had just been waving a long blade and forcing them back was already lying in the muddy water, nothing but a mangled corpse.
The old man's breathing suddenly quickened.
A simple, direct thought pieced itself together in his sluggish mind.
The monster behind us doesn't kill us.
It only kills the people who won't let us eat.
The silence lasted only an instant.
The next moment, someone let out the first hoarse cry:
"That's our food!"
"Grab it!!!"
The instant that cry erupted, reason was torn to shreds.
Hunger, fear, and the humiliation of being driven into a dead end all surged up at once.
Survival became their only thought.
They no longer feared death, because death was already right before their eyes.
Instead, they began to fear something else: being a step too slow.
The cries were like a lit fuse, setting off a thunderous explosion in the canyon.
Inside the tower, every trace of color drained from Kyle's face.
The wineglass slipped from his hand and fell onto the carpet. Dark red wine quickly soaked into it, like a spreading pool of blood.
"Impossible... This is absolutely impossible." His voice was dry, as though he had forced it out of his throat.
Kyle pointed toward the chaotic flames and crowds in the distance, losing control of