The free clinic in the slums had no name. It occupied the ground floor of a tenement that had been condemned twice and reprieved both times by a city that couldn't afford to lose what little charity remained. The sign above the door had been painted over so many times that the original letters were illegible, a palimpsest of good intentions and bureaucratic neglect. Inside, the waiting room was empty except for a woman in a nurse's uniform who was asleep at the reception desk, her head resting on a stack of unopened mail.
Nyla Voss stepped past her without waking her and walked down the narrow corridor to the last door on the left. The door was unmarked, its paint peeling, its handle loose. She knocked twice, paused, then knocked three times more. The signal Raina had given her before she
