Ethan Hawke walked out of the office.
The motion-activated lights in the hallway lit up one by one as he walked, then quickly went out behind him.
Pushing open a side door of City Hall, Ethan wandered onto Grant Street.
The city was still asleep, but it was a light slumber.
In the distance, at the Inland Port construction site, beams from searchlights crisscrossed the night sky, and the faint rumble of heavy trucks could be heard.
On the streets, night-shift sanitation workers were cleaning up trash, and occasionally, you could see community safety patrols in groups of three.
Ethan watched all of this.
A year ago, this place had been a lifeless ruin.
Back then, people's eyes held only despair. The streets were filled with nothing but wandering junkies and unemployed drunks.
Now, there was order.
The city had come back to life.
And the price for it was that its Mayor had just decided, in his office, to join forces with the Republican Party to purge his own political allies.
