That caution was still ringing in the air when the Sentinel attacked. There had been no warning whatsoever. One moment Emma had been finishing her speech, and the next the entire ceiling of the room was being torn away. The sun’s rays filtered through in a haze of red, but no one paid any attention because they were busy dodging the debris that was tumbling from the ceiling. Many of them had, at some point or other, seen the mutant-hunting Sentinels on television. But that hadn’t really conveyed just how big the damned things truly were. This particular Sentinel was gargantuan, and seemed even bigger to the terrified students. The blue-and-purple robot was twenty feet tall, yet some would later swear that it was bigger than the Washington Monument. And there was another one behind the first one, looking down with its expressionless face and perpetually glowing yellow eyes. A handful of the students actually responded in a manner that was 37appropriate to beings of their nature and power.
