A silent city is a terrible thing. Seen from above, a city is merely a grey dot on the landscape, but close up it is a living, breathing thing, with a mind of its own, pulsating with activity. A city without this life in it, with no movement in its streets, is a singularly terrifying sight to behold.

It wasn’t always like this, thought Dylan. It hadn’t been long at all since Strathton had been a beautiful place. Now, though, it looked like a ghastly parody of what it had once been. Where trees had lined the wide, sweeping avenues, wild and tangled creepers wound along the cracked kerb; the old business district, where glittering towers had once reached out towards the sky, was now nothing more than a collection of broken and twisted ruins.

Looking around him, Dylan shivered as the cold breeze cut through his tattered clothes. This certainly wasn’t the first time he’d come up here and gazed at his former home – but, he thought, it could well be the last.