Chapter 3: What the Invisible Tattoo Reads

The correction slip was finished by half past nine. He added it to the completed stack, capped the pen, and sat for a moment with his right hand resting on the desk.

The right hand was useful for this. Not for the pen work — he had trained the left hand for that, years ago, for the very specific purpose of leaving a script that could not be compared to any sample bearing his name. But for this, the ordinary unproductive rest of it on a flat surface in weak morning light, the right hand served well enough. He turned it over.

He did this rarely, and never when the mirror's relay was within a two-minute window. He had the interval calibrated closely enough that he knew he had approximately ninety seconds before the next transmission, and he spent perhaps ten of them looking at the inside of his wrist.