Codes and Hoes

The Curators keep their secrets on the ninety-first floor of a tower with no ninety-first floor. Halden’s people are proud of that. They say it the way you’d say a door has no lock.

Xiomara went in as a contractor’s assistant with a badge that had existed for eleven minutes. She took the stairs. On the way up she rewrote the building’s idea of how many floors it had, and by the time she reached the top the tower agreed with her.

She did not use the blade. She sat on Halden’s desk, crossed her legs, and read the whole archive through her fingertips while the Director’s security ran a diagnostic on itself. When it finished, it reported that nothing was wrong. She left it that way.

The file came back to the Trench with a note in her handwriting: “Nothing confidential. As promised.”

The Code Master printed the note. It’s the only one he keeps.