Her thoughts kept drifting back to the thing, whatever it was. It hadn't felt like a machine, not entirely. There was something else, something beyond what her mind could process. It had moved with purpose, with intent. The soldiers had tried to fight it, but they hadn't even slowed it down. She had seen the way it lifted one of them off the ground like a ragdoll, its hand closing around the man's chest with the kind of ease that made her stomach churn. She shuddered. She couldn't shake the image of it. The way its eyes, if they could even be called eyes, had locked onto her for a brief moment.