The message came through at seven in the morning.
No name, but she recognized the number — she had added it to her contacts the night she filed the boundary incident report, the standard protocol exchange between pack representatives after a formal Vault interaction. The message was four words: Gray Zone. Today. Alone.
She thought about it for the length of time it took to make coffee. Then she replied with a time and an address and went back to work.
The café was on a side street three blocks into the neutral territory, the kind of place that served its coffee too hot and its food too slowly and stayed in business because the Gray Zone had a reliable population of people who needed somewhere to sit that wasn't on anyone's territory. Wood tables, a steamed front window, a counter staffe
