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Sleepy entered a theater at the west end of the City Market and descended a large stairwell. Knowledge Allah, with his red-tinted hair tightened into a series of twists, like arthritic fingers dangling from his skull, limped alongside him. Wind-blighted brick walls gave way to limestone. A series of cantilevered brass tubes ran along the ceiling. The walls thrummed as large fans behind them whirred to circulate the air. A cast iron steamman, with a top hat and a cadaverous smile, loaded coal. The hydraulics of its pneumatic legs wheezed with each movement, its features a cold caricature of a person. Tanks on its back powered it; its pressure gauge crept higher as it exerted itself.

The Tombs—the undercity of Indianapolis—languished in the eternal night of the lower avenue. Its residents lived in the shadows of the downtown spires—sunlight parceled out in dribs and drabs—in the reflections of a better life. The tunnels beneath the city were old when Indianapolis was founded. Some whispered that this was the original Indianapolis and the overcity was built over it like some steam-fueled clockwork tombstone burying its past. Before the Pinkertons received their localized charter, the police used the underground alleyways as a shooting range. During the winter of 1912, the homeless slept down there. In 1913, the tunnels flooded, so by that winter, black people who were off the work cycle or who would otherwise be labeled Unpersons took up residence down there. Each week a non-descript city vehicle deposited a load of Unpersons released from The Ave, most of whom were elderly or had health issues severe enough that it cut into the prisons profits to house them. With no place to go or money to get there, they drifted down into The Tombs.