Gale found the basement three blocks past the last working streetlight. The air down there tasted like rust and old concrete, but the ceiling vaults curved exactly the way she'd drawn them a hundred times. She could already see the lights cutting through smoke, bodies moving in the dark. Then she saw the hand. Someone had mounted it on the far wall, wrought metal shaped like an open palm with fingers stretched toward the ceiling. Purple and blue light poured from the fingertips, swirling patterns that moved across the brick like living things. It was exactly what she needed for the main floor, the kind of piece that would make people stop and stare before they even heard the music. But someone had already put it there. Someone had already claimed this space. Footsteps echoed from the entrance stairs. A figure stepped through the glowing archway at the top of the descent, backlit by the street beyond. The archway itself was strange, too clean for this neighborhood, its frame pulsing with soft yellow light that seemed to breathe. The person descended slowly, each step deliberate. Gale stayed where she was, standing in front of the metal hand like she'd been caught stealing. The stranger reached the bottom and stopped. Neither of them spoke. The hand on the wall flickered once, then brightened, filling the room with shifting violet shadows that turned them both into silhouettes. Gale knew then that walking away meant losing the only space that matched her vision. Staying meant fighting for something that might not be hers to take. She pulled the folded blueprints from her jacket pocket and held them up. The pages caught the purple light, her careful sketches visible through the paper. She didn't explain or apologize. The stranger stepped closer, close enough that Gale could see their face now, a woman maybe ten years older with paint stains on her hands. The woman looked at the blueprints, then at the metal hand on the wall, then back at Gale. She smiled, but it wasn't friendly. It was the smile of someone who recognized a problem when she saw one. The woman reached into her own bag and pulled out a set of keys, letting them dangle between them like a question that had only one answer.