Whether it was day or night was not clear. It never really was, because no one really cared. Somewhere out in the world, there was a sun that rose and set and a moon that followed in its wake. Those things were permanent and unending; they had seen the dawn of humanity, and they would probably see the end too. The differentiation of that they brought, though, had been replaced by the ticking of watches or the glow of clocks in the darkness of the City. No one cared it was day or night, because there was no distinction. The only distinction of consequence was whether it was raining.

On this particular night- -the sky above would have been dark, if anyone in SteelPoint L7 had been able to see it- -it was indeed raining. The water came down in thick rivulets, filling the narrow streets with strange echoes as it descended from above. The lights- -what few there were, casting a harsh yellowish glow through grimy, uncleaned class- -did not shine into the darkness as far as they normally did, although their light was returned in peculiar ways. The streets seemed to be lit from below as the light reflected off their wet surface, and light would occasionally glint off the network of wet pipes above and come down in ways that it never quite did when the area was dry.

It was not real rain, of course. There were rumors that real rain did indeed fall on the Surface from time to time- -and there were rumors that it was deathly toxic. Not that it mattered, or that anyone from L7 would be able to prove or disprove the rumors. The Surface was miles away, and hundreds- -if not thousands, as the old-timers said- -of levels above.

The “rain” that fell in this particular district was in fact a form of condensation produced on the body of some vast piece of machinery overhead. It was not generated on purpose, but rather as a byproduct of normal functioning. Some people supposedly knew what the actual purpose of the condensation-machine was, or had seen it in person. Elrod Jameson did not, and he had not. Nor did he care to especially much.

At this point, he was the only person walking along the streets. Had anyone been around to see him, he would not have looked out of the ordinary for his environment. From a distance, he actually appeared quite similar to any other man. On closer inspection, though, it could be perceived that his skin was thick and rough- -warty, even, in some places- -and that he was completely devoid of any body hair, including eyebrows. This appearance was far from striking, of course; this area was heavily contaminated, and many individuals in it bore strange skin conditions. A bald man with scaly skin was far from an anomaly, and considered quite tame compared to what some of the delvers who passed by occasionally tended to look like.

He wore a coat, and carried a plastic bag. He had just visited the shop that sat in one of the upper parts of the district. It was a grocer. In the bag, Elrod held ten pounds of ammonium nitrate, carefully wrapped to prevent it from getting wet in the rain.

The shop was owned by the Wongs. They were friendly, and Elrod liked them, even if they did not deal in scrap. They were open, as per usual, but only the eldest son of the family had been present, stocking shelves or chatting with other locals under the harsh glow of the shop’s white lights. Elrod supposed that it meant that this was night, which was when the Wongs tended to sleep.

Most people, it seemed, were asleep. Or they had gone inside to avoid the rain. Even if they had all been awake and the streets dry and cold, though, there would only have been a few of them out. This particular district had a startlingly low population. There just was no need for a large one. This area had never really been meant to be populated; in the distant past, it had been a mechanical level. The factories that it had fed, though, had faded and crumbled. Lines and pipes still ran through, feeding the old machines, but they were empty and the machinery long dead.

New people did not come to this district. There was no reason to. A few had jobs inspecting the infrastructure of the place, or held online positions. There was a pub, of course, and a shop, as well as a few stations that catered to those on their way to the Depths. Even Delvers were rare in this district, though; the entrance to the uninhabitable levels was not far in physical distance, but the path there was tortuous and confusing. An independent district had sprung up in that area.

None of this particularly bothered Elrod. The streets were quiet here, and the rents low. He had never been one to crave the excitement that Bridgeport had become known for.

The only thing that bothered him, if only slightly, was his distance from the sun above. As he walked, he paused to ruminate on this as he stood next to what the locals called Skylight Park. It was hardly a park at all, so much as it was a small and dark court that sat between two decrepit buildings. A number of bonsai trees had been placed there beneath lights that produced a dim purple glow. The park itself was barely six feet wide, but had gained notoriety because it was built under a channel that supposedly had once been the exhaust vent for a factory. It was still visible above, rising up through many levels. The locals claimed that at the right time of the year, it was possible to look up it and see genuine sunlight. Elrod did not believe it. He had looked up that shaft many times, and he had never once seen light. He had since given up looking.

Letting out a sigh, he continued past the park. It was the only speck of greenery this far down, apart from the coarse mosses that grew near some of the larger streetlights. In a way, he wished he could have stayed longer, but in a different way those small, sickly trees made him feel sad. In any event, the hour was growing late.

Elrod continued down the block, and as he did he found the rain lessening. The storm- -if it could be called that- -had only started, but in this particular region he landscape of buildings and abandoned machinery overhead had changed, forcing the water to percolate through something thick and old. The rain in this area came down more thinly, and the water fell dark with rust.

The overhead light flickered and buzzed. Elrod paused and looked up at it. The flickering was not odd in and of itself, as the lights in the entire district had been installed tens of decades ago. A few of them no longer worked at all, and those that did were sparsely spaced. Elrod was familiar with most of the lights in the small area he knew, though, and he had never known this particular one to flicker. He took it to be a bad omen.

That was when he heard a sound. Startled, he turned his head to look across the slick street and found himself staring into a dark chasm between two buildings. It was an alley, one of the many that had been created as offices and resblocks had sprung up in this region in the last century.

Like most of the alleys that ran through the district, no one had ever bothered to string lights into it. Elrod found himself staring into inky blackness, and as he did so, all of the stories he had heard of deadly animals prowling SteelPoint surfaced in his mind. Some he was instantly sure existed: vulpi, or genets, or even marmots depending on the season. Then there were the hyperwolves that were said to sometimes migrate up from the Depths. These were things that Elrod knew to exist and that he knew to be wary of, but more terrifying images came to his mind as well. He recalled the stories that the oldtimers would tell while sitting outside the local pub: of technovores, or harvester-spiders that had learned to collect human tissue. There were even rumors of feral Fluttershys roaming the area.

All of this should have been cause for Elrod to pick up his pace and hurry back to his comfortable, warm three-by-four apartment and get to work on the contents of his bag. Yet instead he found himself crossing the street, all the while peering into the alley.

His motive was not idle curiosity, but rather practical consideration. A genet or marmot could injure him badly but would probably not kill him, although a hyperwolf definitely could. Instead, his mind turned to thoughts of a technovore, and the fact that even a partial piece of its skull or its processor would provide him with enough rent money to last over two years.

Entering the alley, he set down the bag he was carrying and looked at the areas lit by the flickering light from across the street. They were mostly filled with trash, but not exactly the stinking plastic kind that resulted from human habitation. Much of it was decayed equipment that had already been stripped clean of any valuable circuitry or elemental constituents.

Elrod picked up one of these pieces of rusted metal: a thin, slightly bent pipe. It was oddly light, but he was sure it would do the job regardless of what lurked within that darkness. Except, of course, if it really was a Fluttershy- -but Elrod dismissed that idea quickly, as it seemed too farfetched even to him.

Slowly, he moved deeper into the darkness, holding the pipe at the ready. When he passed beyond the light across the street- -something that he felt himself hesitating to do- -he reached up to the left side of his face and activated the half-visor he wore. It hummed and hissed before the plate over his left eye illuminated with a grainy, monochrome image of the alley before him. Having only one eye able to see was disorienting, but he quickly got used to it.

Then, suddenly, his visor sputtered and went out entirely. Elrod let out a stifled squeak of surprise.

“No!” he whispered to himself, pounding his free fist against the guts of the visor assembly. “Not now! Of all the times, not now!”

It was at that moment that a trash can in the darkness tipped over. Elrod froze in panic as he heard footsteps padding toward him rapidly. He let out a high panicked groan and with all his effort punched himself in the side of the head. This stunned him somewhat, but the blow caused the visor to kick back online just long enough for Elrod to see the waist-high white shape galloping toward him.

There was no time to react. It tackled him, sending him to the ground. The pipe he was holding clattered across the polymer-concrete floor.

“Don’t eat me!” he cried. “I don’t taste good!”

He looked up, fully expecting to see a hyperwolf or technovore about to devour his entrails. Instead, though the half-illumination of his visor and the dim glow of the streetlight through the drizzling rain, he found himself looking into the panicked face of a pony.

She looked terrified. Her pale blue eyes were wider than any eyes that Elrod had seen in his life, and they were filled with a level of terror and desperation that he could sense immediately but scarcely comprehend. Her body was white and perfect, but Elrod had already noticed that it was devoid of a coat. She had no mane or tail, and her flank seemed to be denoted by a number.

“I’m sorry!” she said, reeling slightly from the impact and stepping quickly off Elrod. “Please!” she cried, “you have to help me!”

Elrod started to stand up. “Slow down, I don’t underst- -”

The pony looked over her shoulder and then turned back to Elrod. “Please!” she cried, her voice rising in fear. “Please, I need help, they’re following me, if I don’t- -”

A slight ringing sound filled the air, followed by an explosion. Elrod was knocked back as the pony’s head detonated in a plume of red mist and gray brain tissue that showered down around him. Skull fragments and the remnants of delicate electronics scattered and splintered on the walls and floor. Elrod watched as red gushed outward from exposed neck where seconds ago there had been a complete head. One now blank eye stared at him, its mechanical pupil shrinking to a tiny black point as its iris went dim. The pony slumped to the side into her fluids, and the gushing from her neck stopped.

Elrod did not know what to do. He wanted to scream, or to run, but he was frozen. He could not even decide if he was really afraid so much as he was confused as to what was going on. The impetus to flee was more of a logical debate at this point, a matter of technical minutia. He just did not understand.

Then he felt a curious warm sensation on his forehead. Then a bullet slammed through his skull and detonated in the center of his brain. His head exploded outward, and he was left completely decapitated.