The roof of the factory was sloped, and dotted with several smokestacks from which the fumes of the machines coughed the smog into the choking sky. As for the trail it was found again easily enough, leading across the iron roof. Eventually, just before the first of the smokestacks, the trail she saw a long and translucent string of some slight thickness hung motionless, unaffected by the breeze and dangling from some unknown source overhead. It was a difficult thing to describe, and could only really be likened to a kind of tendril hanging down nearly to the level of the woman's chest. It bore no color, and was all but transparent. It was only about half as thick as the finger of the average man, and bore with it the slight shine reflected in the diffused light of the gas lamps. Even if it were not for the fog the tendril would have been nearly impossible to spot had it not been for Alicia's alertness and proximity to the mysterious object.<br/><br/>Below it a pool of the liquid had developed, and as Alicia observed a drop of it accumulated at the end of the tendril, falling from its tip to the ground below with a silent splash. The object, whatever it was, was evidently covered in the liquid, which was either rolling slowly down its sides from the unknown source or body hidden in the billowing smog overhead, or the tendril itself somehow secreted the liquid.<br/><br/>Here the trail had ended, but the tendril itself, whatever it was, presented in many ways an even more peculiar mystery.