The following letter was delivered to the Observer office:
Dear fellow neighbors, luddites and Hathianites.
You bask in this shithole like it’s a sunlamp, shoot garbage into your veins like it’s sunscreen, and complain about it but do nothing to improve the situation. Big cities talk about people falling through the cracks — the invisible ones, the insane, the vulnerable, the stupidly naïve, the sex workers and drug addicts and felons who can never get a job again — but Hathian is the crack they fall into. Hathian’s never had a beacon of hope in its entire existence. It let me down. It let you down. It will continue letting you down. It’s refused to let me out of its death grip, and refuses to grant mercy to those it cannot save. So it’s down to me. I have been granting them mercy, in the absence of a city that actually cares.
You can’t save them, but maybe you can find them. If you show me you care enough about this city, maybe I’ll even let you find me. Careful though, I’m at home with corpses (8).
Sincerely,
The Angel of Mercy
((Welcome to The Final Countdown! Every couple of days, there will be a new clue posted in The Observer. That clue will guide you to a location – the number in brackets tells you how many letters you’re trying to guess [e.g. This district houses Hathian’s financial area (2) would be D8). Once you get to the location, there’ll be a newspaper and hovertext. Write down the word of the day! At the end of the month, arrange the words that you (and your friends!) have collected to find the final location — and the big finale! Will you get there in time?))
