The meeting room wasn't much to look at.
A flickering neon sign outside the window buzzed like a dying fly, casting a pale green light across the cracked concrete floor. The walls were exposed brick, stained with years of cigarette smoke and layers of graffiti tags, some so old they were nearly illegible, others fresh and bold, stacked one over the other like ghosts of gangs that had come and gone.
In the center of the room sat a long rectangular table, rough and mismatched. The slabs of wood were held together by metal brackets, some rusted, others freshly bolted. It looked like it had been built out of necessity, not style. The faint smell of gasoline clung to the air, mixing with cigarette smoke and the sharp tang of sweat.
This was the back room of Line Zero, an old pool hall turned makeshift headquarters. It sat buried deep within Chalkline territory, the kind of place only the dumb or the dead wandered into without permission.
