The New Millennium Complex looked like a cross between a medieval fortress and a space station. Seamless stone walls surrounded roughly fifteen acres of land. Four gleaming, glass-walled towers rose from within those walls, as majestic as anything you could find on the strip. Though the New Millennium towers lacked the garish colors and lights of the casinos.

The entire population of Copper River, Michigan could have fit inside our compound, and you’d still have room for our former neighbors from Tamarack.

The Porters had purchased the land ten months ago through a series of deals and negotiations with Las Vegas and the state of Nevada. The amount of paperwork involved made the Wheel of Time series look like flash fiction, and there were at least five separate legal battles currently in play about everything from zoning requirements to air rights.

Coming here from Michigan felt like traveling to another planet, a hot, arid world where the spectrum of visible light had boycotted the color green. Patches of dark scrub along the side of the road came close, but for the most part, the landscape was all browns and tans and yellows. The first time Lena visited, she’d remarked that the lack of trees made the land feel like a graveyard.

There were no protesters at the front gates today, but it was obvious they’d been here recently. The desert plants and flowers by the entrance were trampled into the dirt. I kept suggesting we replace them with cacti. New graffiti denounced us as witches and demons and Satanists, which always amused me. I’d heard the same accusations about role-playing games when I was a teenager.

Visible security measures included cameras and electrified wire along the top of the wall and guards at the large, arched gate. Other protection was embedded within the stone. The wards looked like braids of barely legible text forming a black fence inside the wall, with a thinner framework stretched overhead: an invisible dome designed to block out aerial cameras and worse.

I pulled up to the small booth at the gate. A metal sign warned: YOUR THOUGHTS MAY BE TELEPATHICALLY SCREENED FOR HOSTILE INTENTIONS. Several paragraphs of fine-print legal jargon followed.

Technically, it was more of an empathic screening than a telepathic one. We were more interested in hatred and rage, unusual levels of fear and anxiety, that sort of thing. I hated the mental intrusion, but the Director of Security had insisted. After they caught three different would-be attackers in the first month, including one with a trunk full of fertilizer-based explosive, I stopped protesting.

I rolled down my window and handed my ID to a middle-aged woman in a turquoise New Millennium polo shirt. “Good afternoon, Marion.”