The story

About a hundred and fifty years ago, settlers built a port around the bay and a bell tower on the hill in the middle of it, a hill that hums.

About a hundred years ago, the great bell in the Crown started ringing at midnight to open the Night, and the whole city felt it in the pavement.

Markets, music and the first arcades ran till dawn, and bats moved into the belfry. For a century Crown City’s nights were the loudest on the coast, and it was proud of them.

Forty years ago a young tortoise named Tolly became the Crown’s bell-ringer. Around the same time the arcade boom hit, and Arcade Row got its marquees.

Thirty years ago the first boards hit the Marquee Steps. Crews started forming district by district, and skating became part of the Night.

One midnight last spring, the bell in the Crown cracked in the middle of its ring. The hill shook, the tower was closed the next morning, and nobody has heard the bell since.

Crown City calls it the Wrong Note.

Weeks later, the Commissioner of the Night founded the Hush Patrol, and Quiet Hours began: no amplified sound, no shouting and no unlicensed wheels on public streets from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

The Crown became the Hush Tower, the drones moved into the belfry, and posters went up on every wall: QUIET HOURS. By order of the Hush Patrol.

This summer the Hush Patrol raided 88.8 After Hours, and DJ Lowkey’s tapes went flying across the districts. Those are the lost mixtapes.

One by one, the crews went quiet. The Marquee Kids went back to their handhelds, the Dockside Night Shift to their permits, the Skyline Club to their headphones.

On Arcade Row, a courier bear landed a trick so loud the street answered: gold cracks, a shockwave, every Quiet Hours poster on the block torn loose. The street rang gold for six seconds.

Nobody alive had seen anything like it. That’s where Shredquake begins.