Max is wandering the streets of the city when the swarms begin, and has no reason to believe that anything is out of the ordinary (aside from everything, as she's only just arrived). Evening's just begun, and she's shrugged on a jacket, mostly out of habit, since the climate in Baedal is considerably warmer than the one in Seattle. For the first hour or so, her walk goes mostly undisturbed, and she makes her observances of the places and the citizens who walk the streets without incident.

Then the pipe crawlers start to make their move.

She's stopped at the corner of one of the streets, directly in front of a nondescript building, when she spots something - a nasty, slimy, crawling thing - crawling across her path. It looks harmless enough, but something about it reminds her of Manticore's creations, of the nomlies she let out. She focuses closer, notices the strange arms, but before she can make much more out, she is suddenly and violently sick to her stomach, badly enough that she begins to pitch forward as her knees buckle and she tries to keep bile from rising in the back of her throat.

"What the fuck," she mutters, reaching out and grabbing at the wall to stay upright. She manages to, but while the nausea ebbs a bit, it doesn't go away, and she wonders what the hell is going on.