The water filter was moldy on the iron frame of the rust belt clinic, and the cry of the auxiliary machine mixed with the steam rain and hit the iron roof - Laila always felt that this poor place was hiding something that was not revealed. Until that day, when she was connecting the robotic arm to a dying scavenger, scalding step marks suddenly burned on her palms, as if someone had pressed the fire in the sea of fog into her bones.
The step mark is the mark of the fire-forger, and it is also the target of the church. The "Sea of Fog Swallows the City" mark on the old map, the half piece of copper that Martha clutched before she died, and the indelible slime in the water on the side of Caleb's boat gradually pulled her into a larger whirlpool: it turns out that the hardships people in the Rust Belt have endured for generations are not their lives, but a cage sewn by someone using the "Endgame Cycle".
She began to hide blueprints in steam pipes, dismantle the church's surveillance cameras in abandoned factories, and even the mute record player in the corner of the clinic became a code for transmitting messages. It's just that the further you go, the more you realize that people around you are hiding secrets - Caleb, who always smokes menthol cigarettes, seems to have something more terrifying locked at the bottom of the boat; even the step marks on her own palms occasionally reflect memories that do not belong to her.
The steam rain was still falling, and the rusty smell of the water filter began to be mixed with gunpowder smoke. Laila held the newly repaired mechanical wrench, her knuckles pressed against the burning pain of the step marks and thought: This time, some light should leak out of the folds of the rust belt.
