“Welcome to the Bunker,” Weld said.

There were times when security or fortification suggested confidence, strength, or power. That you had money to spend on the extra security. That you were unassailable, untouchable. I suspected it was the atmosphere the Wardens wanted to cultivate, by the time they were done. I could even understand the logic, that a fault in security at the earliest juncture could be the flaw that they paid for later down the line.

But I didn’t feel like this was confidence. I didn’t feel like that the logic drove this more than the feelings did.

The grass was dusted white, and the sky was gray, and the building was poured concrete, making for a fairly grim picture, prefab walls and the spikes of metal that the walls were being fit to, holes in the walls matched to the spikes and then lowered down, where they would click into place. The expansive lower floor was already mostly done, with clear glass walls giving us a view of the interior and everything else was being built around it while people worked. Yellow slashes of paint on the ground delineated construction zones where it was dangerous to be, and people navigated them. For how much there was going on, it was fairly quiet. Only the hum of idling engines, and the creaks of cranes, the periodic crunch as two pieces of building fit together.

Inside, there were a few scattered members of the four big hero teams amid Wardens and a fair few regular people who were covering jobs ranging from construction to doing paperwork while standing beside desks without chairs.

Kenzie saw Dragon and started sprinting forward.

“Lookout,” I said.

She stopped.

“Stay in sight.”

She looked between me and Swansong, and Swansong nodded.

“You don’t trust them?”

I would have made a face at how undiplomatic it was to ask that question when we had Wardens in our little group here. I remained stoic. “I think I’ll worry about you in any new situation.”

She groaned. With the excited run forward and now this, she wasn’t really holding that firmly to the professionalism thing.

“Technically you’re contracted out, and we’re partnering with your team. Part of our end of the deal is to guard you.”

“Got it,” she said. “I know you have things to do. Will someone be my escort?”

Sveta and Tristan agreed at the same time.