The library on Vein Eight had been built in a period when the city still believed that public spaces should feel permanent.
High ceilings. Stone floors. The particular smell of paper and climate control and decades of people sitting in the same chairs thinking different thoughts. It had survived three rounds of Order-mandated modernization by being consistently unremarkable on every assessment metric: low foot traffic, no strategic value, population served predominantly Tier 2 and below.
The kind of place the system looked at and decided wasn't worth the effort of changing.
Aiden had picked it for exactly that reason.
