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The shining eyes of a teenage human boy gazed up at the bright red and gold advertisement above him. It hung, suspended by a thin layer of binding wax on its backside, from a mildewy sandstone wall next to an alleyway he had passed through a hundred times before. The secretive passage from the slums on the west side of byway road number 305, and the slightly nicer blue-collar market street of 304 helped him avoid the more busy and well-guarded crossings between the two. The alley, which he used to call, jestingly, the rats' house, was, in truth, not really an alleyway. A small apartment on the edge of a butchery to its left, and an insurance house to its right, had rotted into pieces, and now lay a heap of mildewy, fungus-covered rubble and beams. He would tangle his slender body through this patchwork of threatening shapes til he had escaped into the light of the street beyond. He lived in building 5 of a complex of 8 buildings of concrete rooms 7 stories tall, 32 rooms wide, in room number 16, with his mother and 4 sisters. The room was no larger than 14 tics by 18, and was supposed to fit the 6 of them. His family had burrowed into the room next to them; an even smaller space meant for one person that was, as of yet, unoccupied. When a suitor had rented the room, his mother had chased him off with a kitchen knife - threatening his life if he spoke to the landlord. Since then he had not returned, and they were unsure of what had happened to the key. Yet they hadn't been evicted, of that they were sure. And thus they'd carved a tunnel through the thin, crumbly concrete with a trowel they'd picked off a cart selling garden supplies. They were thieves, and unashamed of it - it was merely what they must do to survive. Every single soul in that complex, and practically every other beyond it were thieves - even the merchants themselves would take an item or coinpurse or two off of their competitors were such not vigilant of their carts or stands. 155 Million souls and ever growing, the carts and caravans which brought supplies into the city simply could not traverse the roads fast enough to bring a plenty of materials into the gates - and therefore all had to make do with scarcity. That is, except the rich. In the city center, amidst dizzying tall cathedrals, banking houses, museums, operahouses, and ampitheatres galore laid the mansions and palaces of those "more fortunate". The boy had nothing but hatred in his heart for them.