The coffee shop perched precariously on the frayed seam between District 3 and District 4, a liminal space where the polished glass of the upper districts dissolved into the gritty, oil-stained concrete of the lower.
It was a place of perpetual transit, an urban purgatory where people existed only as bodies passing through. That was its utility.
In a city built on surveillance and social positioning, the most valuable asset was anonymity, and this shop offered it in abundance because nobody who mattered ever bothered to stop here.
Mike had been sitting in the corner booth for twelve minutes. He hadn't touched his coffee; it had gone cold, a dark, stagnant pool reflecting the fluorescent hum of the ceiling lights.
His nerves weren't frayed; he had trained them beyond that, but his awareness was dialed to a razor's edge. Every creak of the floorboards, every hiss of the espresso machine, and every muffled conversation in the background was data to be processed.
