Page 13

Somewhere down the table the pilot made a sound he turned into a cough. Rylos let the cough pass without comment.

“Zone two lift protocols,” he said. “If a lift is recalled during a security notice.”

“Recalled to the nearest garrison security level, not the ground. Standing order since a bombing attempt eleven years ago. If you’re in a lift when a notice sounds, you are choosing which garrison security level to be arrested on.”

I answered the next four the same way, and the next three after that. Each question contained one wrong detail. I corrected it before answering the rest.

He wasn’t trying to learn the Spire; he’d had hours with my archive. He was testing how far my knowledge actually went and where it failed. Question by question, the table began to understand that I knew what I claimed to know.

Then we reached the entry timing, and I challenged his approach.

“Delegation enters at 0900,” he said, and the schedule appeared beside the schematic. “Peak petitioner traffic. Maximum crowd, maximum processing load, minimum attention per individual.”

“That’s backward.” I said it plainly.

“Peak load is when checkpoint staffing doubles and the verification tier goes up. The Conclave staffs for its queues; I’ve stood in that lobby a hundred times. What you want is the pre-relief trough, when the petition queues have thinned and the day shift is already watching the clock. A delegation is a break in the boredom. At peak traffic, the guards have backup and time to send anything unusual upstairs. Before relief, they want the paperwork finished so they can go.”

He looked at the schedule for three seconds. “The trough it is.” He changed the time without arguing. Around the table, several people looked at me differently after that.

But security level six was where it happened.

His interior route came up: through the administrative band via security level six, where a security substation controls lift access to the sealed bands. Six minutes of exposure.

“The rotation gives us our window,” he said.

“Midday relief at 1300. There’s a ninety-second gap at the substation while the incoming watch signs in. We cross at 1305, through the lift bank, during the handoff.”

“No,” I said, second time that hour, and the room went properly still. “Your ninety seconds is real on paper and doesn’t exist on the floor. You modeled the schedule. I know the men.”

“Then tell me about the men.”

“Security level six is a punishment posting.” I came around the display so the route sat between us.

“Windowless, dull, and under Watch Commander Hesk, who’s been quietly loaning bodies to a director’s private detail for two years and burying the hole in his roster. The men on six run doubles, off the books. At the end of a double, a man doesn’t stand his post until 1300 like your schedule says. He racks his rifle at quarter to and drifts to the lift alcove. It has the only working caff dispenser below the garrison mess.

“Hesk doesn’t walk his floor at end of watch. He does his signatures in the booth. So from roughly 1245 the substation console runs single-manned or empty.”

I lit the east side of the floor.

“Your window isn’t ninety seconds at 1305. It’s a six-minute window before the hour. And your route walks the delegation straight into every tired man on that level, clustered, bored, looking at exactly the spot where you plan to be. You cross at 1250, by the east service stair, past a console nobody’s sitting at.”

Nobody answered for a moment. His attention pleased me more than I wanted the room to see. I kept my hand on the east stair and waited.

“Varrick,” he said. “The archive has the door logs.”

“Pulling them.” The tech’s hands were already moving.

“Security level six, lift alcove access, trailing ninety days... huh.” The logs unrolled in columns.

“Access pings cluster 1240 to 1300. Every watch cycle, both alcove doors, dozens of badge events. And the substation console logins,” a second column appeared, “go quiet in the same window. She’s right. It’s in her own data and I didn’t think to look, because no model flags men getting caff.”

“Models don’t drink caff,” the mathematician said, with what I suspected was professional admiration.

Rylos said nothing. He reached into the display, took hold of his own route, and moved it: 1250, east stair. Then he went on to extraction contingencies as though nothing had happened.

The cheerful woman pointed at me across the table. “I told you this would be good.”

The briefing ran two more hours. Before anyone could leave, Rylos turned from the display to me. “You wanted the whole table to hear your terms. They’ve heard you work. What do you want?”