the

home of poor tradesmen, dockworkers, and immigrants who lived in squalor in

its

congested, fog-enshrouded, mazelike courts and alleys. But the district was

perhaps most famous—or infamous—for the legendary Whitechapel Murders of

1888,

the grisly work of Jack the Ripper.

During the latter part of the twentieth century, and well into the

twenty-first,

much of the area had been redeveloped. Numerous office buildings were

constructed, as well as some apartment buildings, but as the economy faltered

in

fits and starts until the inevitable Collapse, construction projects were

started and abandoned and then started once again by new developers, with the

result that the area had become a surreal cacophony of architectural styles.

Here would be a monolithic tower made of steel and glass, there a ferroplast

cluster of geometric shapes rising up like some mutant stalagmite, dwarfing a

Victorian courtyard at the end of a narrow alleyway.

Many of the buildings were abandoned. A few had been picked up by

speculators,

but the reasons for the cheap purchase prices soon became apparent. Few of

the

buildings were in any stage resembling completion. Most were little more than

shells, with such, things as plumbing and environmental systems either

incomplete or not installed at all, rendering the structures virtually

uninhabitable. None of the windows opened. They were there to see out of, not

to

let in breezes. What little had been done on the interior of the buildings

had

been gutted during the Collapse. Still, this did not prevent the desperately

poor from seeking shelter in them, and it was difficult, if not impossible,

to

clear the often savage squatters out and keep them out long enough to effect

any

improvements. And what would be the point? It was hardly the sort of

neighborhood that would attract desirable tenants.

So, for the most part, Whitechapel had been left in limbo, a gloomy,

post-apocalyptic urban jungle. The half-finished modem buildings jutted up

into

the sky like pieces of dark, broken quartz, vertical purgatories to which the

lost souls of the city were consigned. At night fires could be seen burning

on

many of the floors behind the dark glass walls, most of which had been broken

for ventilation, leaving the large panels veined with cracks resembling giant

spiderwebs. Sometimes the fires would get out of control, and before long an

entire building would be burning like a torch. The fire brigades usually

would

refuse to go inside the burning building. Anyone who came out would be

rendered

cursory assistance, but those who had been trapped inside were on their own.

The

brigade's sorcerer adepts would call up a cloudburst to wet down adjacent

buildings and keep the flames from spreading, and chances were, if the

inhabitants survived, that many of them would continue to make their homes

inside the smoking ruin. A short distance away was London, elegant and

stately,

but to those who lived in the dark and deadly urban war zone that was