Content Warning: This section discusses suicidal ideation and quotes some offensive language.

The third-person narrator argues that cities are “chaotic” but not “random.” The structure of New York City is intentional: America’s largest city sits atop an underground mountain range, and its skyscrapers are built above the sturdy mountain peaks.

Aside from underground mountain ranges, New York City has an underground city, the Downside, whose tough, dignified citizens call themselves Downsiders. The people who live above ground, Topsiders, don’t know about them. Topsiders can be rather “stupid,” but so can Downsiders. Nevertheless, the Downsiders possess a unique innocence, and the Great Shaft Disaster will test their purity.

A snowflake falls onto the nose of a 19-year-old unhoused man, Robert Gunderson, outside Grand Central Station. People in expensive clothes scurry past, and Robert notices a set of eyes looking at him from a storm drain across the train station.

Numb from the cold, Robert enters the warm train station, where there are more unhoused people and people with mental health conditions. On track 25, Robert walks into the tunnel. As a train is about to hit him, he jumps out of the way.

Robert meets three 14-year-old Downsiders, Talon, Railborn, and

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