Damn.
“Okay,” I say finally, clipping my bag back on. “I’m going up. Keep me posted.”
I step back toward the elevator, blood crunching under my boots, and press the button.
The doors slide open.
Next stop: higher.
And things are about to get… respectful.
Iset the charges on the ninety-second floor, and the quiet is starting to grate at me.
It’s the wrong kind of silence. Not calm. Not empty.
Waiting.
“Grim?” I murmur, tightening the final clamp against the building’s core.
Nothing.
I pause, fingers stilling. “How many are coming?”
Static answers me, thin and broken, a hiss in my ear that crawls instead of speaks.
“…Grim?”
Nothing.
I straighten slowly and take in the space around me.
The ninety-second floor opens into a massive interior atrium, all glass and air and polished stone. It rises two stories high, the ninety-third floor exposed above it like a balcony in a luxury mall. A wide walkway wraps around all four sides of the upper level, railings gleaming under soft lights. Thick columns anchor the corners, structural and immovable. Tall white banners hang from the ceiling,drifting lazily in the conditioned air, heavy enough to matter if someone decided to use them.
Tables and chairs sit abandoned across the floor, expensive and fragile and very much in the way.
I zip my bag and leave it on the ground near the column. Explosives sealed. Tools stowed. If Grim doesn’t come back online, this turns into a very old-fashioned problem.
I try him once more. “Grim. Talk to me.”
Silence.
Then—
Ding.
An elevator opens on the floor above.
I look up.
She steps into view and stops at the railing, white against stone and shadow.
Tomoe.
White kimono. Immaculate. White chrysanthemums embroidered so delicately along the fabric they almost disappear unless you know to look for them. A katana rests across her back, wrapped, untouched. She doesn’t scan the atrium. Doesn’t acknowledge the charge humming behind me.
She looks only at me.
Recognition settles in my gut like a weight.
