Nobody made a gutterball on purpose — that is the official position of the nascenti, and it is, as with most official positions, technically accurate and substantially misleading. Spherical, approximately head-sized, rolling through drainage systems and derelict spaces with a vibration you feel before you hear it, each one feeds the hive mind: sound, temperature, dark matter density, the chemical signature of fear. If one finds you — which is materially different from you finding one — Van will want to know.

Cryptobites are the psychic garbage collectors of Hellsborough — massive, slow, almost entirely unkillable, and engaged simultaneously inside and outside the dark net in a manner I have stopped trying to parse. If one has fixed its attention on you, something you have been through has left a residue it finds interesting. The field notes recommend staircases.

Hexikid are the size of bin lorries and they move at roughly the same speed. That's not the problem. The problem is you're on a wet surface in murk-fog, and a hexikid is the exact colour of the road it's cleaning.