Chapter 17: Brennan Counts What His Handwriting Built

The message came through the dead drop on Monday, which meant Brennan had placed it Sunday night, which meant whatever he wanted to discuss had been sitting with him over the weekend while Elias was occupied with the access form's destruction and the task of sleeping, neither of which had gone entirely to plan.

The note contained four words: Sub-level. After lamps-out.

No cipher variant, which meant either Brennan considered the message low-risk or had made the judgment that the dead drop itself was now the security mechanism and the message's content was secondary. Elias sat with this interpretation for a moment, decided it was probably the former, and filed the scrap in the cold residue of the morning's kettle.