Irradiated dust and surface dirt howled with the wind through the rent in the dome roof, pooling and swirling in vast dunes around the rusted metalwork of the Creek. The single spar of cold sunlight seemed alien here, throwing long shadows from ancient archways and spotlighting the thick powder that hovered in the air. It was the first time the dome had been exposed to the surface for probably hundreds of years, but Leeson’s Run had brought a lot of the structure down with it as it collapsed. They’d been lucky not to be buried alive. The sound and fury of Caitiff’s surface forcing itself upon the dome made the fragility of the place more palpable - already the fearsome winds were making their mark on the virgin buildings of the Creek. It would not be long before the antique structures were just more sand-eroded ruins, walls carved smooth and razor thin. Crow sighed.

Even through the harsh filter of her goggles and the harsher filter of nearly half a millennium, the beauty the Creek had once possessed was unmistakeable. Hundreds of years ago it would have been an exclusive suburb, ornate and ornamental, a fashionable address for the upper echelons of pre-Imperial society. Permeated throughout with placid canalways, veins running from what was now the Grey Sea, the water proved a genteel and anachronistic means of transport – a serf at the helm, a nobleman reclining. The waterways were once lined with self-commissioned statues of great statesmen, their names now long-forgotten. If you searched hard enough, fragments of these illustrious men could still be found in the detritus that carpeted their former homes. Jutting spars of marble, pockmarked and streaked with runoff, are now the only hints of the dome’s former grandeur: it’s noble purpose did not last. As the hive grew, so too did the expectations of its richer denizens. Was it not right for the upper classes to be on top of the pile, both figuratively and literally?
The Creek had fallen from fashion as one by one its residents moved up in the world. Their homes, though, found new owners. A hive is a living thing – the flow of people ebbs and changes, but an empty chamber will soon be filled. The ready access to a renewing supply of water was not ignored - the newly vacated Creek quickly developed into a hub of industry, with pipelines, walkways and twisted metal production lines snaking round and through the existing buildings. Manufactorums need vast resources and produce plentiful waste, and the beauty of the dome did not stand long against these twin assaults: Lavish but crumbling mansions were gutted and converted to worker’s hab blocks and pumping stations, ornamental architecture demolished to make space for larger vehicles. The canals became putrid lakes of brackish water, filled with both the human waste of the workers and the industrial run-off of the factories. Fumes filled the Creek, rising through cracks like steam from a sewer to taint the domes above. But even this period could not last. With the Skew’s inexorable growth, hivequakes, floods and tsunamis became more and more frequent, interrupting productivity in the lower levels. Such environmental disasters had been common for years, of course – a few thousand workers killed here and there did little to dent production. But these larger events threatened the buildings themselves, and with the infrastructure of manufacture endangered, the industrialists moved on.
By the time Easthollow fell, the Creek was nothing but a den of cutthroats, occupied only by gangbangers; criminals and mutants unable to live in civilised society. But for the hundreds of millions of refugees seeking shelter in the hives from the toxic surface, little option remained. Living conditions were squalid and overcrowded in the Spire even before the Easthollow disaster, with rival factions warring over the most basic spaces to live. Where else but the largely abandoned underhive was there for the new arrivals to call their own? Compared with the alternative, even a life among the outcasts did not seem such a daunting prospect. Shanties and shacks built from corrugated metal and scavenged wood sprang up in their hundreds, their ramshackle facades adding further incongruence to the opulence and industry of the Creek. When conflict over territory escalated, even the waterways were utilised, with crookedly inter-connected archipelagos floating tentatively in the waste. A new economy of scavenged and stolen goods emerged, and for a few months, the Creek became, once again, a home to hundreds.
The Creek today was abandoned. In the months that followed the Easthollow disaster, the air on the surface cleared – It would never be safe again, and even now Crow was sure they were dying a little with each breath they took, but it was, at least, breathable once again. Over time, people began to venture back into Skew State, forming new communities, and reconnecting with those who had found shelter in the open. The overcrowding of the hive eased off, to a degree. But unknown to those that stayed, the air was filtered by moving water on the surface, and it became clearer at the exact rate that the ocean took up its poisons. The floating citizens of the Creek, those who had built their own shelter even on the turbulent effluent that made up what was once the canalways, were the first to fall sick. Those that stayed were not far behind them. From the day the first refugee died from contact with the tainted water, it was less than a month before, for the first time in its history, the dome stood empty.


It was in this historical water, surrounded in equal parts by riches and poverty, that Riff had drowned.