Three nights ago, the city announced it was condemning Rain Street. A shiny new tech hub was going to flatten every pawn shop, every dive bar, every memory. The eviction notice was a guillotine blade hanging over their neighborhood.

Breathless, Adriana laughed—a wild, free sound. “You know they’ll hunt us forever now.”

But as she reached for the deed, an alarm shrieked—not from the case, but from the fire exit. Someone had tipped them off.

“We never really were,” Adriana said softly. “Rain Street was just the place we left from.”