"Eighth Street Mission," proclaimed the sign. The faded and chipped letters had seen better days, as had the battered and scarred brick building they named. All the lower windows were sealed with opaque construction plastic behind the rusted, bent, and now obviously useless bars that once protected them. Grafitti in sufficient layers to suggest generations of down-Sprawl artists made a riotous skirt around the sedate centenarian structure. One symbol on the wall along the stairs to the main entrance was bold, as though set apart from the other scribblings. Sam had never seen the thistle in a ring design, but he guessed that the emblem proclaimed the building under the protection of the local street gang.