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.
“Then we go down swinging.”
They crashed through the kitchen, slid down a trash chute, and landed in an alley smelling of old grease and rain. Sirens wailed in the distance.
By dawn, they were on a Greyhound bus headed nowhere in particular. Megan stared out the window at the shrinking skyline. Adriana took out the compass—still broken—and set it on the seat between them.
“Go!” Adriana shouted.
“The developer’s gala is tomorrow night at the Meridian,” Megan said, sliding down the wall to sit beside Adriana. “They’re displaying the land deed in a glass case. The original one. If we lift it, we can prove the city’s claim is based on forged signatures.”