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He had no number. He was never on the rolls. He was born in the cracks others merely slip through. His father was a dying drunk in a dusty, piss-stained alley, his mother was a mute serving-girl in an unlicensed bar. He was raised by a mongrel bitch, his brothers and sisters were dogs. The only words he knew were the curses and profanities heaped on him by people he encountered while scavenging for food in dumpsters, gutters and narrow lanes. These words, he learned well. He learned how little they meant. How little anything that was uttered by the lips of man or woman meant. Just a meaningless yapping and growling and whining, that's all.

As he grew stronger and longer in limb, he learned more of the ways of the place he was born in. He learned that it was a machine constructed to feed willing sacrifices to the great gods of wealth and power. It was a terrible parasite feeding on soul and soil for miles around, a crouched spider devouring drugged prey. It was what people call a city.

Being young and all alone, except for a rag-tag gang of street dogs, he was fair prey for the various minor predators who serve the lesser predators who serve the major predators who serve the great ravening maw itself. Paedophiles, homophages, slave-runners and other unsavoury sorts occasionally ambushed him in obscure corners, deserted by-ways. But he was a street-dog, and always slipped away. In time, he learned to augment his teeth and claws, rudimentary compared to his peers' with shards of broken glass, strands of rusted barbed wire and eventually, stolen knives.

He learned that, in this time and in this place, the human response was: eat, fuck or kill. He learned that the survivor's response is to kill and run. Kill and run. Hamstring them, slit their throats, and run. One less enemy for another day. One day, he conceived a plan. Being human, after all, he took a train of thought to its conclusion, and realised that what he had to do was kill the ultimate predator, the city itself, and run. To freedom.

But how does a dog-boy kill a big city?

Definitively, that's how. Hamstring the city - disconnect the cables, sever the bridges, down the airships. Slit the throat - fire the banks and the corporate complexes, scorch the malls, torch the municipal halls. All this in one furious night that followed from months or perhaps years of furious, furtive scheming.

And then he ran. A little white dog at his heels, son of one of his foster-sisters, a bag with bread and water for a few days on his shoulder, a spring in his step and a laugh on his lips. He walked all the way up to the edge where cities and people end, and then he stepped over.

Further to fall.

Free to fly.