It took ten minutes of waiting before what Akira was waiting for finally arrived.
It started small, with a faint ripple breaking across the surface of the otherwise still lake as water began streaming in from the small streams that fed into it.
Akira's eyes snapped open at once.
"There it is," she whispered.
The mechanism stirred to life beneath the surface, gears grinding as they prepared to shift the streets of the Undercity again, just as they had every time before.
But not this time. Not if Akira had anything to say about it.
The gears spun faster, rising up through the water until they broke the surface entirely, spinning into the open air.
Several tore straight through the vines holding the lowest corpses, severing them. The bodies dropped, splashing into the churning water one after another.
But Akira held her breath, watching the lake roil and twist below the rising machinery.
Then the mechanism at the center began to move, sliding open like a great stone eye.
