Chapter 4: What Lyra's Map Fragment Shows

The Metropolitan Museum looked like something had bitten off its roof and not bothered to finish chewing.

Three years of weather had done the rest — acid rain, windstorms that came from no direction and lasted no season, the particular entropy of a city that no longer had anyone filing maintenance requests. The great stone facade on Fifth Avenue still stood, mostly, but the eastern wing had collapsed inward on itself, and the northern galleries were open to a sky the color of old pewter. Someone had stripped the bronze doors. Someone else had written KRONOS SEES in block letters across the remaining stonework, which told you approximately what you needed to know about the current civic atmosphere.

We'd made the crossing from the Cathedral Parkway exit to the museum's service entrance in twenty-three minutes, moving fast in the gray pre-dawn before the sky got light enough to matter. Lyra set the pace. I kept up. I made a point of keeping up.