Era of Madness

Left alone

"Ok, what are we doing now?" John asked.

"Why do you ask me? I have no idea" Tyler replied.

As they were talking, they remained close to each other, fearing that the other would disappear otherwise.

"Well I don't either" John continued. "All I know if that we have five options: focus on finding Erica and then leave once it's done, do the same but with the beast's corpse, not leave until we find both or our ressources come to an end, or not take too much risk and leave right now, hoping Erica already found the exit"

"What would you say is the best idea?" Tyler asked.

"I'd say we try to find back Erica and then leave, we'll get other occasions to claim the Nova beast's corpse, but I might just be biased"

Tyler thought for a minute before deciding himself:

"Let's continue to advance toward New Big Ben, since we didn't have a set meeting point, we can only assume that Erica will either get there or escape the city if she's still al- not imprisoned, and then if we meet her first we'll see how the situation will have elvolved before deciding if we get the Nova beast's corpse or not" he said. "Objectively, Erica's power is necessary, our chances to get arrested if we get out of Ghost London without her are far too high. And if we find the Nova beast's corpse first, well, same thing I guess, except if the circumstanes force us to back off"

John nodded in agreement:

"Sounds good to me" he said taking out his gun.

Tyler did the same, staying on guards. They kept advancing through Ghost London, cautiously, and while holding hands to make sure they wouldn't get separated by whatever danger laid here hidden among the shadows. Tyler would've probably been embarassed to hold John's hand like this if he wasn't so scared for his life at the moment.

"John, I think I found something" Tyler said. "It's not Erica nor the beast's corpse, but I think you might wanna see that"

Follwing Tyler's gaze, John saw that on an intact marble well, words had been painted with blood:

'Jack Jack oh Jack did you see what I see

The end is coming Jack it's coming

Oh Jack the mist won't save us it won't it wo--_'

"Ok, now that's a plot twist" Tyler uttered.

"The mist... won't save us? Did this Jack, and maybe other people thought that the mist would save us?" John questionned.

"Does that mean that what destroyed New London wasn't the mist in the first place? Or maybe... there was something so infamous in there that the mist was like the last resort, some case of nuclear option"

Tyler quickly shook his head:

"Actually nevermind, let's not make theories and keep walking instead" he said.

They kept walking toward the approximative location of New Big Ben. At one point, they were obstructed from their next step, meeting their first obstacle: to access the next part of the city, they had to reach the higher part of the city, the structures that was still floating above their heads. Problem was, most of the automatic bridges connecting these structures were out. On the ground, they could still walk between them, but flying was out of their skills range.

Therefore, they started to seek a way to get up. For long minutes, all the automatic bridges either didn't work, or were linked to structures that had already fell on the ground. During their researches, they found more blood-written sentences. This time, the style was different, much more rushed: