The ruins of the abandoned smelter were still spewing thick smoke. The acrid smell of burning and the heat-distorted air made the area feel like a living hell.
Schiller stood at the helicopter's cabin door, looking down at the ruins below, which looked as if they'd been gnawed on by a colossal beast. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his pupils contracted into dangerous pinpoints.
"Where is he?!"
His icy voice, tinged with uncontrollable rage, echoed over the silent ruins. A loudspeaker broadcast his question to every corner, making the soldiers carefully searching below shiver involuntarily.
Twenty minutes! A full twenty minutes! During the grid search, they had flipped over every steel plate, even those no bigger than the palm of a hand, yet they hadn't found so much as a single hair!
It was as if the recent, world-destroying saturation bombing had all been for nothing!
