The low houses formed an unbroken sprawl, with no clear distinction between front doors and back entrances. Narrow alleys barely wide enough for one person ran in every direction, but sewage streamed through every passage, and the stench was overpowering.
In the shadows, pairs of eyes gleamed coldly, searching for prey.
They were hungry, they were vicious, and they would let no stranger escape.
This was Rat Street.
It was notorious throughout the Dort District, and even all of South Los.
Everyone who set foot here trembled with fear.
Even the residents of Rat Street were no exception-because you never knew whether a wanted criminal might come calling at your home.
Most wanted criminals in South Los chose Rat Street as their refuge.
Some simply made Rat Street the final stop of their lives.
That made them all the more brazen.
Yet even the most brazen confined their lawlessness to Rat Street aboveground. Beneath it, in a place called Mouse Tail Alley, everything followed rules.
The Rat Council made those rules.
And enforced them.
Those who broke the rules would not die. They would suffer a fate worse than death-once, a Headhunter who had murdered twenty-one people hid in Rat Street. True to form, he seized a local resident's house that very night.
After cutting off the heads of the house's original occupants, he carried them to Mouse Tail Alley.
A week passed before he appeared again.
He had been flayed all over. One eye had been gouged out, while the eyelid of the other had been cut away. Needles and maggots covered his exposed, crimson muscles. Worst of all, his arms had been sliced into thin strands that still hung from his body, the flesh trembling incessantly whenever he moved.
The Headhunter had lost every trace of his former