2nd Month, Year 98th of the Ruination Calendar
Jessica's POV
"You saw a woman emerge from the water in the area we bombed last week?" Minerva asked, her voice steady but laced with disbelief. She was a grizzled veteran, approaching 60, with a mechanical arm gleaming under the dim light and an eyepatch covering her missing eye. Her rugged appearance and the metallic clink of her prosthetic contrasted sharply with her intense gaze. "Are you absolutely sure you didn't see wrong, Jessica?"
"I didn't," I replied, hitting the button on my computer to replay the footage. "This footage shows the area before it was bombed. As you can see, it was crawling with infected. Then, just minutes later, the Slayers arrived and started the bombing. You can clearly see in the footage that when the explosions began, the infected surged toward the source of the noise. Infected are drawn to sounds, so that's expected. But what's odd here..."
