The lobby has a front desk now.

  That's the first thing I notice when I step inside - an actual reception desk, curved and professional, with a computer monitor and a sign-in sheet and a little stand of pamphlets about youth mental health services. There's a woman behind it, maybe mid-forties, wearing a lanyard with a photo ID badge. She smiles at me like I'm a normal person walking into a normal building.

  "Bloodhound, right? Go on up - Councilman Davis said you'd be coming through."

  "Thanks," I say, and my voice sounds weird in here. The acoustics are different. They did something to the walls and I'm not used to the way sound echoes now.

  The grand stair is the same, at least. Same bones - the wood-and-metal railings, the straight run up the south wall. But the steps have been refinished, the railings repainted, and there's actual lighting now instead of the sketchy fluorescents Jordan jury-rigged back when this was... what, eighteen months ago? Two years?

  Back when Jordan lived here. When they were squatting in what was technically an abandoned music hall, running extension cords and patching the HVAC with duct tape and determination. And even when they were technically paying rent, but still living in an abandoned building that was absolutely not up to code.

  I take the stairs slowly, letting civilians pass me. There's maybe twenty people wandering around - neighbors, I think, people from Tacony who wanted to see what all the fuss was about. A couple of them give me looks. The helmet tends to attract attention.

  The second floor opens up and I stop at the top of the stairs.

  It's... big.

  I mean, it was always big. The original music hall volume, high ceilings, that sense of space that old buildings have. But before, it was big and *empty*, or big and cluttered with our crap - folding tables, mismatched chairs, Jordan's tools everywhere, the card table we used for meetings. Coffee tables swapped out every so often. Couches, couch cushions, beds, couch beds, couch bed cushions, and bed cushions.

  Now it's big and *organized*. The partitions are still there, but repainted, almost lacquered. Fixed up since Garbage Day ripped through them like they were made of cheap cardboard. Activity areas with actual furniture. Group rooms with glass doors so you can see in but not hear. Little conversation nooks with comfortable chairs.

  There are people everywhere. Staff, I realize - the social workers and psychiatrists Jamal mentioned. They're circulating, talking to the touring civilians, answering questions. One of them has a clipboard. Another is showing a family something on a tablet.

  "Weird, right?"

  I turn. Tasha's leaning against the wall near the stair landing, arms crossed, watching me watch the room. She's in something that passes for a costume, which I assume at some point Amelia made for her, but this is the first time I'm seeing it. Blue and white, but concealing. A mechanical brace type thing for her right arm that her phone's neatly slotted into. Bundles of wires, and a small drone whirring over top of her head, attached to a battery pack via a tiny little cable like a leash. It blinks a little red LED at me.

  "Yeah," I say, trying not to admire. Lighthouse, huh. "Weird."

  "I keep looking for Jordan's sleeping bag in the corner. It's not there anymore." She pushes off the wall and falls into step beside me as I start walking through the space. "They cleaned everything out during construction. All the stuff Jordan didn't already take got boxed up and shipped to MIT."

  We pass a group room where a woman in a cardigan is explaining something to three civilians with notepads - journalists, maybe, or city officials. I catch fragments: "...trauma-informed approach..." and "...peer mentorship model..." and "...evidence-based interventions..."

  "The kitchenette's still here," Tasha says, steering me left. "Nicer now. Actual appliances that were manufactured after the year two thousand. It's crazy."

  She's not wrong. The kitchenette has been transformed - real cabinets, a full-size fridge, a stove that looks like it was manufactured this decade. There's a coffee maker burbling quietly and a stack of mugs with the city seal on them.

  "Fancy," I say.

  "Maggie already claimed the biggest mug. There was a fight."

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Who won?"

  "Who do you think?"

  I snort. Maggie's force fields give her an unfair advantage in mug-claiming disputes.

  We keep walking. Tasha points out things as we go - the therapy rooms along the east wall, the storage closets that actually lock now, the ADA-compliant bathroom that apparently required tearing out a whole section of floor to install properly. Everything is clean and new and professional, and I keep waiting for the feeling of loss to hit me, the grief for what this place used to be.

  It doesn't come. Or it does, but it's complicated.

  This was Jordan's home. Our headquarters. The place where we planned operations and sorted Halloween candy and had the kind of conversations you can only have at 2 AM when everyone's too tired to pretend. That's gone now. That version of the Music Hall doesn't exist anymore.

  But this version has therapy rooms. It has social workers. It has beds upstairs for kids who need somewhere safe to sleep, not beds Jordan took from the side of the road but actual fresh mattresses that probably cost a mind boggling amount of money. Actually, that's not true. It's bare minimum mattresses but it's better than what we had. It has resources, the kind we were always scrambling for, the kind that might actually help people instead of just putting band-aids on bullet wounds.

  And the fucked up thing is, we only got here because Garbage Day tore the place apart.

  I think about that while Tasha leads me toward the private office. He ripped up the interior, caused water damage, basically gutted half the second floor. And because the Music Hall is on the historical register, that triggered a bunch of city preservation requirements, which triggered funding, which Jamal was able to redirect toward renovation instead of just repair.

  Maya must be fucking pissed right now. Sending Garbage Day after us was one of her biggest strategic mistakes yet.

  No, don't get ahead of yourself, Sam. There's still ways this could backfire yet. Optimism is for suckers.

  Hey! Don't say shit like that, inside voice.

  "Here," Tasha says, stopping at a door. "The inner sanctum."

  The private office looks like an office now. Desk, chairs, filing cabinet, a computer that's probably not connected to anything sensitive. There's a window with blinds and a small couch against one wall. It looks like the kind of place a program administrator would work.

  But there's another door on the far wall. Tasha sees me looking at it.

  "Go on," she says. "You'll appreciate this."

  I cross the office and open the door.

  The Faraday cage room is... actually a Faraday cage room now.

  Before, it was a spare room we'd lined with aluminum foil and called good enough. Jordan did something with the electrical grounding that I never fully understood, and it worked well enough to block most signals, but it always felt like we were one static shock away from the whole thing failing.

  Now there's actual copper mesh in the walls. I can see it through a small section they left exposed, probably for demonstration purposes. The door has a proper seal. There's a workbench along one wall with equipment I don't recognize, and a small server rack in the corner that's currently dark.

  "Jamal's guy did this?" I ask.

  "Jamal's guy drew up the specs. The actual installation was some contractor who does work for the federal government." Tasha's leaning in the doorway, looking smug. "Apparently it's rated for signals up to some classification level I'm not allowed to know about."

  "That seems like overkill."

  "That seems like Jamal knowing exactly what we're going to use this room for and making sure it's done right."

  Fair point.

  I step back out of the Faraday room and take another look at the office. There's a key rack by the door - the regular door, the one that leads to the rest of the second floor. Three keys hanging on labeled hooks. OFFICE. FARADAY. ROOF ACCESS.

  "Who gets these?" I ask.

  "That's the question, isn't it?" Tasha moves to the key rack and plucks off the OFFICE key, examines it. "Jamal wants to give a copy of the keys to someone on the Auditors. Probably Amelia or Lily, since they're, you know, adults. But I think you deserve it."

  "I haven't graduated high school, you haven't graduated high school, Maggie hasn't graduated high school, and Derek is an asshole. "

  "Also not really part of the club?"

  "Tasha."

  "Sam." She puts the key back on the hook. "This whole thing exists because of you. The mentorship program, the community center, all of it. You're the one who said yes when he pitched it. You're the one the kids know."

  "What about Maggie? She's been running point on everything public-facing for months."

  "Maggie gets a key too. So do I. So does Lily." Tasha shrugs. "But you get the master. That's the deal."

  I stare at the key rack. Three little pieces of metal that represent... what? Responsibility. Trust. The fact that I'm somehow in charge of a legitimate institution instead of just a gang of teenagers in costumes.

  "I didn't ask for this," I say.

  "Nobody asks for anything. Shit just happens and then you deal with it." Tasha's voice is matter-of-fact, the way it always is when she's saying something that matters. "You've been dealing with it for two years. Now you get to deal with it in a building that has working plumbing."

  Before I can respond, there's a knock at the office door. Maggie pokes her head in, helmet off, hair slightly less disastrous than the group chat suggested.

  "Jamal's looking for you. He's got the keys and wants to do a whole... thing." She waggles her fingers vaguely. "Ceremonial handoff. Photos for the press packet."

  "Of course he does."

  "Also there's a guy from the city who wants to talk about insurance liability, and one of the social workers has questions about the intake process, and I think Lily accidentally told a reporter that we fight crime here and now he has follow-up questions."

  "Lily told a reporter we fight crime here."

  "In her defense, we do fight crime here."

  "Not officially!"

  "Well, now it's semi-officially, I guess." Maggie grins, clearly enjoying my pain.

  I look at Tasha. She's doing a very bad job of hiding a smile.

  "I hate all of you," I say, and head for the door.