The security pulse had locked the corridor doors. Every one of them. Mara heard them slam, one after another, down the main corridor toward the outer lock: heavy steel doors sliding out of the walls and sealing the corridor into sections. Sera went to the nearest one and put her hand flat on it and said, without turning, “Sealed. Ours too. Between us and the lock.”
The laboratory’s wall display had lit. It filled the wall at the laboratory’s far end, a panel of dark glass Mara had taken for a window, and on it there was a room. An office. A desk. And behind the desk, a woman in a grey uniform.
Caldris.
She was not in the long dark coat with the white braid. She was in a Compact officer’s grey uniform, high-collared, plain. Her hair was the same, cut very short, grey. Her face was the same, composed, neat. She sat behind a desk in what was clearly an office on Meridian, Mara thought, from the window behind her: a slice of sky, bright, and a tree. And beside her elbow, on the desk, a long case of dark leather. Open. With a white rod lying in it.
