I've had this idea brewing for a while, and I think the recent update is a good time to finally talk about it. I'll explain it (relatively) briefly and try to make it as digestible and easy to understand as possible.
Mad City has a pretty bad track record as far as being a normal city goes. It's the hot spot for alien invasions, power-hungry creatures, and it's even been nuked. Twice! A lot of people kind of just take this as a given; the sun shines, grass is green, and the city is, well, mad. But why? Can it all be explained as a never-ending chain of bad luck, or is something else going on? What even are its pursuers after? What is there to gain?
My idea is that Mad City - as a location - is inexplicably linked with a greater power. Maybe, there exists something that serves as the heart of the city, an anomaly. To me, this "relic" could be that. It's chaos incarnate. Is this what the city's adversaries have been after this whole time? Something powerful, dangerous, and impossible.
With the city lying dormant for so long, maybe it's been waiting, growing in power, becoming more and more unstable. As it sits idly by, it loses its form, leaking pandemonium into our world as an unthinkable storm forms and wreaks havoc, and with it comes change to unthinkable extremes.
Anyways, that's just a theory. An experience theory. Thanks for reading.