The grand industrial amphitheater of Warehouse 9 along the Brooklyn waterfront had been structurally expanded into an unassailable bastion of sovereign military power. Outside, the freezing winter rain crashed against the massive reinforced titanium blast doors, but inside the sprawling subterranean arena, the climate was controlled with absolute, clinical precision. The vast space was illuminated by a low, dramatic violet-indigo luminescence cast from the high-powered ley line projection arrays lining the upper galleries, sending a continuous, low-frequency hum through the concrete floorboards.
The ambient air did not carry a single trace of the old world’s raw, muscular Alpha dominance or the stagnant odor of human weapons. It was heavily saturated with an intensely dense, majestic arom
