The Quiet Algorithm of Us

17 The Audit With Teeth

Regulators do not knock like neighbours. They arrive like dentistry: bright lights, latex smiles, a cart of instruments that promise both hygiene and pain. The notice hit at 7:11 a.m., a ping across official channels that had the smell of disinfectant and the word comprehensive sitting in the subject line like an unwelcome guest. The city’s rumor mill changed gears; the tabloids combed their hair; somewhere a paparazzo watered a houseplant and told it to be brave. Today would be excellent for plants.

Wing B’s corridor clicked into its favorite lie at 7:13. The yellow elevator asked for a second truth and a token. The bookshelf accepted a wrist with the loyalty of a dog who’s seen battle. Behind it, the fan-that-never-had-a-childhood began its sermon; six screens woke like sensible saints. Miran rolled her shoulders, put her mug down on the coaster labeled you are not the headline, and wrote the day’s thesis in her neat, domestic hand: Audit with teeth; we floss first.

Across the compound, daylight dressed itself in cooperation. Jinchao walked into the headquarters lobby without a lawyer curtain and with exactly the right number of bodyguards. He wore a suit that whispered boring excellence, the butterfly closure invisible under hair that had learned obedience. He shook hands with the lead regulator in front of cameras because there is no safer theatre than we have nothing to hide. “Welcome,” he said, voice like clean glass. “We prefer paperwork to rumors. Conference room A is brighter; Conference room B has better tea. Your choice.”

The lead smiled with two millimeters of mouth and all the authority of a man in a government lanyard. “A,” she said. “Tea first. Then teeth.”

“Of course,” he said. “Kai?”

Kai stepped forward with the distillate of three nights’ sleep: an agenda that could fit on a chopstick, a list of custodians, a master index of documents labeled in lowercase letters so as not to offend daylight. “We’ll begin with port concessions and logistics invoicing,” he said gently. “Then move to foundation procurement, then treasury operations. All files are duplicated to a drive named Mops,” he added without blinking. Luo Qiang approved this joke silently from security with the solemnity of a man who can make cameras yawn.

Outside, the paparazzi arranged their long lenses like a picket fence and harvested the rain from the hedges with their cuffs. Zhou responded as the house had been trained: tray of pears, three paper cups of tea, the phrase the kitchen is resting delivered with mastery. Bodyguard Sun said “excuse me” to a tripod and moved it half a meter with the elegance of a waltz. Bodyguard Chen said “please” to a man who was trying to photograph a reflection and, shockingly, the man obeyed.

“Today we practice shame immunity,” Aunt Meifang informed the peonies. “And coriander is banned under emergency powers.”

“Jasmine rates are favorable,” Aunt Lihua told the ghosts, slipping a sprig into her bun like an oath. “You may hover, but do not editorialize.”

The audit began with a stainless-steel tone. The lead’s team fanned through line items in a choreography that said they’d rehearsed on bigger fish and smaller consciences. They asked for invoices. They examined signatures. They requested “clarifications” with the type of smile that adds three zeroes to fines. Cameras waited downstairs like low-tide crocodiles.

Daylight had a face and it looked like cooperation. Shadow had a spine and it looked like a woman behind a bookshelf moving weight two millimeters at a time so nothing cracked.

Invisible Cushions, Installed Before Lunch.

Cash Sweeps: She tightened the weekly sweep schedule across subsidiaries from Friday afternoon to Wednesday morning, a small relocation that would be invisible to almost everyone except liquidity. It turned “where is the cash” from a shrug into a map. The Operations Continuity Fund she’d invented months ago quietly received two fresh rations and then split them along a crankshaft of obligations: payroll buffers, vendor prepay on clinics, and an escrow labeled Remediation with the bland dignity regulators love. The ledger called it prudence; everyone else called it air.