A semi-permanent floating settlement anchored to the collapsed infrastructure of a pre-GLMZ marina complex roughly two kilometers off the former Evanston shoreline, the Halcyon Drift is a congregation of sealed barges, decommissioned Carrion Logistics shipping platforms, and residential pontoon clusters that have accreted over forty years into an irregular aquatic neighborhood. The original marina's concrete piers still break the waterline in places, serving as mooring anchors and structural references for the newer construction above. Lakewater visibility is low here due to industrial particulate drift from the Slagshore, giving the surrounding water a pewter opacity that locals find comforting and newcomers find unsettling.

The Drift occupies a regulatory gray zone — it sits outside the formal municipal boundary of the megacity corridor, beyond the jurisdiction of most corponation security contracts, but close enough to shore infrastructure to pull illegal power and Diaspora signal from the grid. This ambiguity has made it a preferred residence for people who need to exist at a deliberate distance from Spire oversight: journalists running sensitive investigations, synthetics with disputed personhood status, and a significant population of former Arcturus Defense Solutions contractors whose knowledge of classified systems makes them inconvenient to the corponation's current leadership. Vespid Dynamics maintains a drone monitoring perimeter but does not intervene.