Chapter 11: What Vasquez Built

The fabrication cell occupied what had been the facility's primary chlorination room, and Vasquez walked through it the way someone walks through a place they built with their hands — not with pride exactly, but with the particular attention of a person checking that everything remains in its correct position.

"This is where documents originate," she said. "Substrates come in through a contracted cleaning supply vendor. Tomás manages the relationship. The printer is a Kree-manufactured unit — commercial grade, six years old. We acquired it through a tributary administrative office that was decommissioned when Sector Three consolidated. The firmware has been modified to disable remote logging. If you're wondering how, you can ask Reyes."

Carol was not touching anything. She stood in the center of the room with her arms at her sides and looked at the workspace the way she had looked at the transit maps — with careful, systematic attention, starting at the perimeter and working inward. The lamp in the corner was the only light. It threw everything into the kind of close relief that makes ordinary objects look like evidence.