My nights fall into a steady rhythm. I wake as the evening drags on, then meander around the old factory until the sun has completely set, and the streets of the city turn dark enough to be comfortable. Sometimes Mike will be around, and we’ll ‘talk’ until he heads off to sleep and I head out into the city. I still don’t know what he does, when he isn’t here, but there’s something I like about the regularity he provides. I know he’ll be there when I get back. We don’t talk about much – there’s only so much dust to draw in – but it’s nice to have someone explain the things I don’t get, like traffic lights or pedestrian crossings. That one took some drawing before he understood.

Then I’ll creep out and go for a wander. I’m not so hungry as to slink off to the nearest shop right away. Instead, I take the chance to explore the city some more. To explore Seattle, I suppose. It seems too big for a name, though. It feels like the city covers the whole world, reaching high up into the heavens. It might as well be the world, as far as I’m concerned; I’ve travelled east, west and south, and it’s bordered on all sides by enormous expanses of dark water, separated from the city by immense angular fortifications of concrete that rise up four stories tall in places.

I tried swimming, then gliding through the shadows, and found that I can travel through dark water as easily as I can through dark air. Helpful to know, but I didn’t go very far. Why would I, when this city seems to hold the whole world within its borders? I could spend months, maybe years, exploring it, and never fully understand it. I don’t need to add more places onto that, not when I have no connection to them anyway. Seattle is the whole world, because it’s the only place I have any ties to.

That being said, I still don’t understand it. The water to the south is smaller than the west and east, a mere channel with a lake at the centre, but I haven’t crossed the bridge yet. That’s where all the skyscrapers – a fitting name – are and I still hate to look at them. They frighten me, like they could come crashing down at any moment. A lot of things frighten me here. I haven’t gone north yet; Mike says it’s dangerous up there, and I haven’t any reason to doubt him.

Instead I’ve been learning everything I can about our own little patch of the city: watching people as they spill out of work and head straight for the bar; watching, however briefly, the people in the Red Light District, as they look for alternative ways to relieve stress; watching the shows of force from the local gangs, or the black-uniformed soldiers who patrol the better parts of the neighbourhood with pistols on their belts. There are thousands of people here, perhaps tens of thousands. All of them individuals, with their own stories. I like to guess sometimes, as I look out of the shadows, who each of them is. I’ll never get it right, but it’s not like I can just walk up and ask them.

Most of the shops close at midnight – at least the ones that sell food – so I usually try and raid them pretty early on as I have no way of telling the time. I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at hiding underneath the shelves, and I now know a couple of places where the shelves are far enough off the floor for me to eat my meal without revealing myself. I’ve only been seen a few times, and almost always on my way out. I can’t carry anything in the shadows, but sometimes I’ll take a few things back with me the long way. Those nights are more dangerous, but I’m pretty hard to spot even outside the shadows.

Sometimes I bring back food for Mike, as I know he won’t eat fruit if I don’t get it for him, but more recently I’ve been bringing back some extras just for me. I found an electronics store, once; at first it scared me, with its walls filled with glowing screens emitting harsh light from moving images, but eventually my curiosity overcame me. That was the night I discovered I could move through darkness even if there was glass in the way. It doesn’t seem possible, but who am I to argue?

The shop was shuttered and closed, and all the boxes by the front had thankfully gone dark. I couldn’t make sense of any of it; strange boxes and panes of glass that somehow made the images I had seen. There was only one product that was even vaguely recognisable to me. I pawed over the radio, trying to figure out how to switch it on before jumping back as it crackled into life. I spent another few minutes fiddling with the frequency until the room was filled by wonderful music. Completely unrecognisable to me, of course, but music all the same.

The only trouble was in getting back; I couldn’t carry the radio back through the glass door and I didn’t want to cut myself trying to batter it down, so I turned my eye to the shop itself. I chose a heavy black case highlighted in green – serving no function I could determine – to smash through the glass, before sliding my precious radio through the gap between the shutter and the ground.

Part of me felt guilty, but it was overshadowed by my prize. I spent the rest of that night flicking through stations back in the factory, listening to dozens of different sorts of music, interspersed with late night talk shows and far too many adverts for things I couldn’t understand. It was a nice way to pass the time, and I came to love the gentle sound of music in my room. Sometimes Mike came up to listen with me, and that was nice as well.

Tonight is about saving that radio. It died on me last night. I was distraught, until Mike told me that all it needed were new batteries. Now, after having the difference between A, AA, and AAA explained to me in exhausting detail, I’m on the hunt yet again. I can’t go down to the same store again – it’s not smart – so I’m just prowling the city looking for something else that fits the bill.

I decide to combine it with a quick jaunt up north, to see what exactly has Mike so scared. It’s not like I can’t just duck into the shadows if I see anything bad happening. So far, the north looks a lot like the rest of the area, if a little more run-down. There are fewer streetlights here, and fewer people out at night. Not enough for it to be quiet, but enough for it to be noticeable. The people who are out are a lot less eager to make some noise; crawling between the bars and their homes without fanfare or celebration.

Still, they have a small corner shop that’s open this late and might have what I need. I creep through the door while the shopkeeper is busy with a customer, then hide under the shelves until I’m sure he didn’t notice the door opening. I creep around for a while, making sure that nobody else is inside, before reforming myself in the aisle and looking over the shelves for any batteries. There’s nothing on this isle – just tools and boxes – and I duck back into the shadows as a couple of customers step in.

I wait while they look up and down the aisle I’m hiding under, before a series of distant cracks has them glancing around in panic. The cracks increase in volume; I’d have my hands over my ears if I had either of those right now. The two customers start to huddle together and I spot the owner pull a short-barrelled gun out from underneath his counter. None of them make an effort to leave, and there’s no way I’m getting out with them all spooked like this. Mike says some capes are bulletproof, but I’m not eager to test that.

Outside the glass front of the store, the street is suddenly illuminated by flashing green and white lights as a trio of grey vans speed past, one of them stopping right outside as a squad of grey-uniformed soldiers file out, carrying short-looking rifles made entirely of black metal. The crackling din – which I now assume is gunfire – increases as it’s joined by tremendous crashes and bangs.

Suddenly there’s a figure at the door, and the customers shrink back. Their demeanour changes when he steps in, however, and they start to seem somehow reassured. He doesn’t look like the soldiers – a short man, possibly a teenager, dressed in an armoured suit of steel scales with a mask across the top half of his face – but the customers are almost deferential to him, and the shopkeeper has lowered his gun.

“You need to evacuate,” he says, his voice filled with authority. “There’s a police cordon a block to the south, it’s safe there.”

The two customers leave immediately, thanking him as they go, but the shopkeeper is reluctant, and the two descend into a polite but fierce argument. I seize the chance, forming my body in the aisle and looking over the shelves for those cursed batteries. I paw through gardening equipment and cleaning products, before spotting a rack of batteries on the top of the shelf. They’re too high for me to reach, so I use my claws to ‘stand’ on two legs while leaning against the shelf, and reach up with my other set of arms for the batteries. I’ve almost got them, but I’m struggling to keep my balance.

“What the…”

My right eyes dart to the side only to see the shopkeeper and the cape on their way out the door, both staring right at me. The cape reaches out with his right hand, while a number of scales detach from his armour and start to circle around him.

“Don’t. Move.”

He says each word slowly, his eyes locked on my own. My tail sways from side to side nervously as the shopkeeper points his gun at me, aiming over the cape’s shoulder. My tail strays briefly into the shadows underneath the shelves and I pull on that connection, dragging myself into the shadows underneath the shelf as a gunshot rings out. I rush through the shadow, leaping out of the other end of the shelves and bursting through the door, my tail brushing up against the cape’s legs. He wheels on the spot, more scales detaching from his armour, but I’m already sprinting down the street.

The grey van is still parked outside and its flashing lights don’t give me anywhere to hide. I hear the cape talking into a radio behind me, and duck into the shadow underneath the van before leaping out onto the other side. Shouts emerge from behind me, as soldiers respond to the cape’s warnings. They don’t shoot at me, but it sounds like there are a lot of them. The crackling gunfire reverberates through the streets ahead of me, but I’d rather sneak my way past the unknown than try to evade that cape on a street bathed in green and white light.

I start to see signs of the fight. A uniformed soldier leads a line of civilians towards safety, before turning back for more. A soldier jogs past me carrying his wounded comrade over his shoulder. I start to hear shouts through the gunfire, mixed in with strange whirring noises. Then, I see it. The street ahead is teaming with soldiers shooting off into the distance, hiding in alleyways or clambering over the rooftops. In the centre of the road an enormous armoured suit, as wide as it is tall, is striding through the concrete. I watch from the shadows as bullets spark and ricochet off its plates, but the armoured figure weathers the storm as it strides down the street, the soldiers moving up behind it as they lay down a withering stream of fire.

I creep past them, slinking through the shadows and taking care to avoid being exposed by the flash of gunfire. That’s when I catch my first glimpse of the other side; a trio of strange flying machines, about as large as a human torso and supported by whirring engines that defy comprehension. They fly into the street, blasting away at the armoured suit with machine guns suspended beneath their chassis.

The suit effortlessly raises its immense gauntlets, letting loose a spray of sparks that collide with the machines and send them shooting back into the buildings, where they crash into and through the brickwork. The suit is almost artful as it dances amongst the contraptions, as if it is somehow mocking their inelegant flight with its poise.

In short order, the three machines have been dealt with and the soldiers double their advance. I speed ahead of them, shifting into the alleyways and leaping up to the shadowed rooftops, bounding from building to building until a bright flare is fired into the sky, driving me back down to earth.

That’s when I see some more of the other side; ragged figures dressed in oily green ponchos to protect them from the rain. Few of them are carrying rifles, and most are laden down with looted electronics or scrap metal. Their movements are shambling and unnatural, and the few faces I can see are gaunt and unhealthy. A scream draws my attention, and I see a man being dragged through an alleyway by one of these figures, as if he weighed no more than a sack of grain.

Caution wars with emotion in my mind, but in the end I decide I can’t just watch them drag him off. I slip into the shadows behind the shambling figure, moving from side to side as I try to find some way of approaching this that won’t end up with me dead. His waterproof poncho gives me an idea; its surface is treated and water-tight. I get as close to him as I can in the shadows then, when the opportunity presents itself, slide into the shadows beneath his poncho, going from following him to being carried by him.

I don’t wait, instead materialising all my limbs as I push aside the poncho, wrapping them around him in a death grip that has him twitching and writing. He keeps moving, putting only the smallest effort into fighting me off. I tighten my grip, driving claws and talons into his body while scraping away at his skin with my fingers. It doesn’t work. In desperation, I open my mouth wide and bite down on his neck, tearing out a lump of flesh that I immediately spit out in disgust. He bleeds, less blood than I feel there should be, and falls to his knees before collapsing entirely.

I roll him onto his back, as the captive takes one look at me and runs, and see eyes that were dead long before I got here. Strange steel devices have been stapled into his face, and one of his eyes has been replaced with some kind of camera. There’s something deeply uncomfortable about the sight, about the way his skin has been so casually parted to make room for these abominations, and I start to wonder if he was still alive when the surgery was performed?

I hear footsteps shambling towards me and slip into the shadows just before two more horrors round the corner, pistols clutched in their hands as they scan blindly over their fallen comrade. Their eyes are dead, just like his. The gunfire creeps closer, and I decide I have seen quite enough of the city for one night. I travel southwest until I can’t hear the gunfire anymore, and sneak down familiar streets filled with familiar people. I don’t look for another store, instead heading straight back to the Factory. Back home.

Mike is asleep, and we have no light for him to see by, so I force down my questions for now and creep back up to my room. I’ve made it more homely over recent days, and my most prized possession is spread out across the floor. It’s a carpet, with a beautifully woven pattern and luxuriously soft fibres. It covers much of the water damaged floors, and has been well worth the considerable effort I expended in bringing it here. I’ve draped a similar rug over my bed, and it is now softer and more comfortable than ever before. As I lay there, staring at my broken radio, I cannot help but think of the grey eyes of that man.

To think that such horrors could exist in a city that also holds such beauty, such life. Truly, this city is the entire world. It is bordered on the east and west by the sea, and on the south by towers tall enough to scrape the heavens. The north, in comparison, is the underworld. Only the dead dwell there.