Chapter 12: The Frequency Marcus Kept

Vasquez's footsteps faded into the operations room and Carol stood at the junction for a moment with her hand not quite touching the corridor wall, and then she walked in the other direction.

She had memorized the facility layout during the tour — not deliberately, the way a person decides to memorize something, but automatically, the way ten years of operating in unfamiliar structures had rewired her to absorb exits and load-bearing walls and ambient sound patterns without consciously choosing to. She knew where the secondary storage was. She knew where the fabrication cell was. She knew where Marcus had set up what passed for an office in a decommissioned water treatment facility: a former pump room off the eastern corridor, small enough that the equipment crowded the walls and the single desk lamp created a radius of light that left the edges of the room in something close to dark.

The room was empty when she got there.