Chapter Three: The Back of the City

“A strange way of being born does not make a life false.” Gu called the inverted metropolis the Back City. The ordinary city was held together by roads and steel; the Back City, by memory and consensus. Every rumor and every desperate expectation of rescue left a building or a life there. Seventeen “imaginals” had disappeared in two months. The Erasure Hounds were merely tools. Their master was called the Redactor. “He's collecting powers,” Shen said. Gu glanced at him. “You still know how to find answers at the edges.” She brought out three damaged photographs. In the first, a motorcycle courier leaped a blocked overpass to deliver emergency medicine. In the second, a child in paper armor braced a collapsing school.