The last time Kaiden walked into this building, he came in a taxi.
Four nobodies in casual clothes, no escort, no cameras, no crowd.
They sat in a waiting room and drank complimentary water until a receptionist called their names. Two guards and a scientist in a back room. An orb that told them what the world already assumed: that they were nothing.
Today, the Awakened Association's main branch had been transformed into something between a fortress and a stage.
The glass-and-mana-steel facade was draped with banners bearing the Association's phoenix crest alongside the seal of the United States, and the security cordon extended three blocks in every direction, manned by Association fighters in full combat regalia who seemed to have been pulled off active dungeon rotations for the occasion.
