Lin Mei dropped to her knees on the cold marble tiles.
She set the heavy blue canvas binder down, her chalk-whitened fingers flying through the tabbed dividers. The paper crackled in the sudden quiet of the hall.
“Foundation Charter,” Lin Mei muttered, pushing her glasses up with the back of her wrist. “Section 1, Article 0... 1996 Municipal Ratification. Julian, where are we looking?”
Julian didn’t look down at the binder.
His eyes remained fixed on the seamless golden barrier rising five feet in front of them.
The dome of the Master VIP Charter Pedestal was twenty feet across and twelve feet high, curved like an upturned bowl of hammered foil. It gleamed with a greasy, yellow luster under the rotunda’s high chandeliers. The air touching its surface was chilled to near-freezing, condensing the moisture from the room into a fine frost that rimmed the lower edge where the gold met the black Carrara marble.
Behind that frosted gold mesh, silhouettes moved.
Vance Sterling stood directly behind the curved lattice, his pinstriped vest buttoned tight, his silver pocket-watch chain glinting. Beside him, the eleven Syndicate Directors had gathered in a tight, breathless half-circle.
