The Quiet Algorithm of Us

3 Moving Into the Fortress

"This study is yours," Zhou said. "We've stocked paper, pens, and a selection of tea equipment. Mr. Ren requested minimal perfumes in the soaps."

They toured as if they were responsible adults mocking the concept. Bedroom: quietly luxurious without any chandeliers that wanted to audition for a period drama. Wardrobe: reasonable. Bathroom: flawless water pressure, heated floor so kind it almost apologized. Kitchen: a pragmatic dream. The cutlery drawer indeed had a sub-section with a label: Forks In Time-Out. Miran swallowed a laugh and vowed to behave in such a way that forks returned to society when ready.

They ended back in the study, and Zhou stepped aside with the ceremony of a curtain. "There is a small closet at the end," she said neutrally. "Storage. Mr. Ren said to tell you it was secured and will not be inventoried."

A closet. Secured. Not inventoried. There it was, tucked into the sentence like a key under a rock. Zhou's face did not move. Her keys did not jingle. The air did not change temperature. But the house seemed to turn its head slightly, as if to pretend it had remembered something else.

"Thank you," Miran said. "I'll take it from here."

Zhou nodded, no offense taken, no curiosity performed. She executed a neat retreat and took the staff with her. The room inhaled, exhaled, recalibrated.

Alone, Miran approached the "closet" at the end of the study. It was, on casual inspection, a door. A simple, sensible door, no more interesting than a nap. On the frame, a reader the color of discretion sat politely under the trim. She slipped a slim plastic rectangle from the inner pocket of her cardigan, the one the tailor had stitched with tender anarchy. The keycard hummed at the reader. A green light ensued like a polite yes.

The door didn't swing. The shelf did.

Because of course it did.

The bookshelf unlatched with the sound of a perfectly made bed exhaling. It pivoted on a pin so discreet even its mother didn't know it was a pin. Behind it: a room as blank and declarative as a sheet of paper on a good morning.

No cameras. The silence felt like honesty, not absence. The walls wore soundproofing disguised as elegant panels. The desk was a long slab with edges sanded to a persuasion. The outlets were where outlets should be if you love humans. The ethernet jack glinted like a discreet handshake. Two shallow closets stretched along one wall with shelving that invited order. On the opposite wall, a small window sat at just the right height to let in a rectangle of sky without ever inviting someone else's eye.

There was a stool in the corner. On it: a reusable labeler and a fat stack of tape. Someone had thought ahead, and that someone had the soul of logistics.

A rectangle of paper awaited on the desk. No letterhead. No flourish. Five lines of block print, extremely neat and low on ego.

Engineer: Wen.

No upstream cameras on this wing; dead zone listed as "storage."

Network: isolated hardware line to the junction you requested.

Deliveries: scheduled under pantry supplies.

—J

Miran toyed with the labeler, then set it down. She checked the corners where cameras like to flirt. She lifted the trim because sometimes people hide eyes there. Nothing. She examined the smoke detector because you can't trust objects that volunteer to save you. Clean. She crouched by the outlet because criminals also love electricity. Boring, beautiful electricity. She got up, stood in the center of the room, and let her breath expand until the oxygen got ambitious.