The Crossing from the road looked like an industrial settlement that had forgotten to stop.
Converted shipping containers, modified warehouse bays, children moving between them with the ease of people who had made a life somewhere rather than passed through it. The outer perimeter wasn't guarded in the way pack perimeters were guarded — there was no formal entry point, no visible security rotation. There were people working at things, and some of those people were paying attention to us as we came down the access road, and the paying attention was its own kind of boundary.
I kept my hands visible and my pace unhurried. I had been the wrong kind of arrival enough times to know what that looked like from the other side.
Damon was behind me. Not at my left shoulder — behind me, which was t
