One could hardly see the squad anymore, down below in the cracked streets. The rain was picking up, and with it brought the steam. The heated ground always gave off steam when it began to rain; the radiation and heat from He-Who-Watches fell from the sky, and heated the metal in the ground and what little chipped concrete remained. When the rain fell and hit the sidewalk, it blossomed back up into the sky as a steam, like a fog, raising to the heavens to rejoin their creator. It would have been beautiful should the Driven be able to watch without their eyes hidden behind the glass screens of their helmets. It was far too dangerous to go without, and even the ground team below was fully armored.

The men were just shadows through the steam, now, in the streets. Their bodies blurred together into darkness, hidden behind the white steam, but their lights shone through. Like a skeleton, the pure lights of their armor shone through the fog, their limbs frantically (but methodically) reworking the wiring of what the Driven knew to be a bomb. The bright violet, the green, and red of their suits quickly scattered, taking cover behind the hollowed shells of buildings which littered the streets. Further down the road, in the fog, masses of metal and flesh clawed over itself. The Driven couldn't see them, but they could hear the metal scraping on itself, a horrible scream like a clock stripping itself of gears. The spawn of the Deos, the small and the wicked which haunted the Skyline, burst forward to the platoon of men below. Before they could feast, however, the bomb devoured the gods.

A pulse of beautiful, scintillating light rolled through the streets, silently. As the light melded through the bodies of the Deos, they crumpled, falling as if into a sleep. Their neural and mechanical signals were temporarily scrambled, turning the powerful aliens into little more than piles of tortured meat and impossibly perfect metals.

A man on the ground threw a rock up at the window. It broke through, landing not far from the Driven. The suits of the ground squad had been disabled as well, not even their echoes of light showing through the fog anymore. The rock was a signal, a breath of relief. In the shattering of that window, the Driven heard different things. Some heard, "We're safe." Some heard, "Move, while we can." Even more heard, "It's time. Let's go."

Nobody heard, "Let's go home. It's over." There was no technology so great as to relay that sort of message. A rock would have to do.