The concrete jungle crazed over the skyline of the City. Crumbling skyscrapers and hulking blocks of public housing formed a network linked by Skypaths, which are then again plastered over by myriad of monorail lines punching through city blocks, school buildings, hospitals, to whatever destinations the lifeblood of the city – its Denizens make their way to. Identical digital displays clung onto the faces of four grey shapeless towers on each corner of the City. The displays lit up with a single reading for the whole city to see. It reads “3”. It was a good day, not great of course, but good enough.

Our story begins in this place. A rusted monorail in a passable condition pulled into station number 37. As passengers step off the train, a metal plate on an opposite wall reads “37 - Plain station”. This is one of the better stations; there actually is a signage, correct one too. A couple of hawkers sat against the weathered station wall, goods spread out in front of them. An array of mechanical clocks, sunshades, swiss army knives and assorted semi-useful/useless stuff are displayed on tarred canvas cloths. Thermos flasks, plastic cups and various packets of instant drinks, single cigarette butts are amongst the display.

A middle-aged man wearing a weathered, but well-maintained suit exited the train with the passengers, carrying a small briefcase handcuffed to his left hand. His longish brown hair is clipped neatly into a bun, and he wore a pair of thin rectangular framed spectacles. The man’s name is Ethan, to most of his acquaintances. Stepping past the hawkers, he made his way towards the station exit – a single winding staircase spanning two stories high. Already, a crowd milled around the stairs, the more impatient ones pushing their way to the front, nudging the slow ones along. A crude peeling sign next to the staircase reads “maximum capacity – 5 adults”. It is pointedly ignored by the crowd. The stairs creaked and protested and wobbled under the burden, to no avail. Ethan slipped a pocket watch out from his vest. Giving it a cursory glance, he replaced it in his inner pocket.

A minor eternity later, Ethan found himself at the bottom of the stairs. A series of abandoned hovels adorned the landscape, accompanied by small mountains of thrash. In front of the ransacked abodes, a circular water fountain seeps brackish liquid. A broken angel statue leaned over a cracked section of the fountain wall. A mad man’s version of a chateau if you’d like. Already, the monorail passengers dispersed into various directions, leaving Ethan alone under the stairs.

The fading sunlight creeps through occasional cracks of skyline. Ethan took a mental note of the position of fading light, finding his bearings. To one unaccustomed to the City, It may seem like an elementary exercise. Yet, it’s not such a simple thing to do in the shifting, ever-changing chaotic revel that the City is. One turn into the wrong alley for the more careless-minded Denizens of the City more often than not takes a literal turn for the worse, much worse. There are places in the City that one does not simply turn back from, easily.

A soft, barely audible, distinctive click and a soft whirring sound sounded a few hundred paces away. If Ethan heard the sound, there was no discernable change in his expression. A click in the jungle that is the City can mean a few things, and none of them are good things. It may very well mean bad things for someone else, but in the City, one does not live long with that mindset.

Ethan made his way into the maze of the City with confident strides. The City is literally a labyrinth. Possibly, it is mankind’s crowning achievement in the exercise of confounding its fellow species. Twisting roads lead into buildings, monkey ladders, overgrown hedges, often branching off into various intersections presenting one with choices of windowsills to climb into (amongst other varieties of pathways). One enters a tunnel only to emerge through a grating, the top floor of an office building, the lunch room of an abandoned curtains factory. The main produce of the City is new alleys, and pathways and shortcuts which lead to haphazard places which makes entirely zero sense. The secondary produce, it is said, is dead bodies. Street gangs claimed stretches of urban wastage of the city blocks, relieving unfortunate pedestrians of their valuables, and more often than not, their lives. Opium dens run by the gangs occupies small basements and empty lofts, offering a mind boggling amount of mind altering drugs and concoctions, many of which are deadly to its consumers (the only variation of which is the speed in which the proccess occurs). A perpetual stench of rotting corpses pervades the City blocks. Abandoned housings, darkened doorways, quiet alleys are prime dumping ground for the byproduce of the City.

Manic laughter rang out behind a frayed curtain as Ethan walked past a row of half demolished public housing. An abandoned excavator parked amid the debris, left by its operator on his eternal lunch break. Ethan ignored the sound and continued on his way. Sounds of gunshots rang a few blocks away, accompanied with screams, shoutings and what seems to be return gunshots. The alley Ethan turned into is strewn with mounds of garbage. Cockroaches scuttled amongst the rubbish and scattered out of Ethan’s path. Weather-worn posters adorned the grimy walls of the alley.

Ethan heard another soft click, this time much closer. Just around the alley, I’d better hurry. Ethan quickened his pace and scanned the left wall. His gaze fell on a peeling poster. He felt the wall around it and found an irregularity, which depressed slightly and pushed back against his touch. He waited. Crunch crunch. Crunch crunch. He could hear footsteps around the bend of the alley, one from each end. For once, Ethan looks worried. Just as he was about to reach into his suit pocket, a pair of hands appeared from the wall and grasped Ethan. It looked as if the wall is speeding towards him, and momentarily before contact, he turned his head away and closed his eyes in reflex. When the impact did not come, Ethan opened his eyes. He found himself in a narrow walkway. It looks like a fire escape of sorts common for a multi-story building. In front of him, a young-ish blonde woman dressed in a grey-black fatigue placed a finger over her lips, the meaning of which was not lost on Ethan. Slowly, Ethan turned to face the “wall” he came through and saw a holograph projector set mounted around the opening he came from. A solid trick-door is moving soundlessly back into place. Outside, crunching footsteps stopped momentarily.