Nobody notices a dead ‘droid.

When an InfoTech 8000 falls 56 storeys from a Sect-Designated building, everybody’s too busy watching their own shuffling feet to see it smash into a gutter on a side-street, it’s malfunctioning mechanics flailing in agony in puddles of rainwater and paranoia.

Picking through the innards destined to rust, a small black bird narrows it’s OpticX visual devices, switching to Infrared to locate the still-beating microchip it so desperately needs. Finding it, the bird swoops from the alleyway, above the ignorant masses, even higher than the ones who understand, and into the dusky sky, which glows the colour of misery.

Far away, a pale, teenage boy sets the bird co-ordinates for the other side of the ever-shrinking world, and, obediently, it flies away. Away from the android homicide. Away from where it all starts. But no matter how far it goes, the bird can always hear the distant thrum of the end. The poisonous heartbeat of a lifeless city.