Lin Mei froze.
Her chalk-stained fingers stayed locked on the edge of the blue binder. The color rushed out of her face, leaving her skin the gray-white of bleached parchment.
“Clause 00,” she whispered.
She didn’t read it from the book. Every night clerk, every ward nurse, every transit driver who had ever survived a single hour past midnight knew the words by heart. They were the very first line of the 1996 foundation pact.
“An Unregistered Trespasser,” Lin Mei said. Her voice was barely more than a breath, but in the dead chill of the rotunda, it rang like a struck chime. “A shoplifter of civic air.”
Julian stepped closer to the golden dome.
The waxy tip of his Dixon Phano grease pencil touched the gold mesh, resting right against the seam.
Through the curved lattice, the eleven Syndicate Directors were still laughing, their faces flushed with smug arrogance. Vance Sterling held his gold badge high, his chest puffed out under his tailored wool coat, basking in the perceived safety of his thirty-year fortress.
