Chapter 13: Athena Parrish Asks One Question

The strategy corridor on floor nineteen existed in a different atmospheric register than the rest of the building.

I'd walked it twice before — once following Anna to a partner briefing she'd decided at the last moment not to bring me into, once on a wrong-floor detour I hadn't admitted to — and both times it had the same quality: quieter than it should be, the carpet a shade darker than everywhere else, the overhead lighting adjusted to a color temperature that made everything look like the last hour before a verdict. The offices along it had no nameplates. You were supposed to already know whose door you were standing outside.

I was cutting through it at 8:14 a.m. because the elevator bank on my floor was running slow and I had found, three days into mapping the building's internal geometry, that the strategy corridor connected to a fire stair that put you on twelve faster than waiting. It was a seven-minute advantage that I had started treating as mine. I was drinking the last of a bodega coffee and thinking about entry sixty-eight and whether writing it down would constitute acknowledging it or just documenting it, which I had convinced myself were different things.