Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (novel24 .txt) 📕

which she is still in possession: the laminated information card. But the fair-skinned, sharp-featured young man does not appear satisfied.

“Your number?” he prompts expectantly.

Henrietta frowns. “I already gave it to you,” she tells him. “When I came in.”

“I see,” the man says. He looks about him as though he might have inadvertently mislaid the code in question, then begins tapping keys on his terminal. “You don’t happen to remember it, do you?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t,” Henrietta says. “It was long.”

“Perhaps just the first few digits? Otherwise, we will need to start the security procedure all over again.”

“It might have started with a three,” Henrietta says. “But I don’t remember for sure. I just handed it to you five minutes ago. That’s when you gave me the card.”

“Indeed,” the clerk agrees. One more tap, then the double doors in the front of the room slowly begin opening. “You may enter when ready.”

It takes her a moment, but then Henrietta gets it. The entire number routine was pure pageantry. It seems obvious to her now that the declaration INFORMATION CANNOT BE STOLEN FROM THE CLEANROOM also relies on it not being memorized. If, under the threat of additional superfluous bureaucracy, she’d been able to recite a significant portion of the sixteen-digit number from memory, Henrietta imagines that either the double doors would not have opened, or another few keystrokes would have ensured that the information waiting for her on the other side would have been a cleverly contrived intelligence placebo.

Probably a routine reserved for guests without French security clearance.

As Henrietta starts toward the double doors, she sees that the stakes are being raised. Yet another beret awaits, but this one is wearing neither a skirt nor a blazer. She is in full fatigues, her sleeves cuffed tight around her dark, toned biceps, a sizable sidearm clipped into a molded thermoplastic holster strapped to her thigh, and heavy black boots laced up to her shin.

“Bonjour,” Henrietta says with an uneasy smile. Any delusions she had of finding a way to defeat the cleanroom are now completely out of mind. The soldier replies with a curt nod, and Henrietta sees that her finely braided hair converges below her beret in a compact, orderly knot.

Other than the business with the sixteen-digit number, so far, Henrietta’s cleanroom experience has been more or less what she was expecting—security and precautions that are table stakes for any facility housing highly sensitive, top secret information. But when the soldier steps aside and Henrietta gets an unobstructed view into the next room, she realizes that her expectations were off by at least an order of magnitude.

What strikes her first is the incongruence of the whole thing. The space is a palatial, baroque, intricately gilded ballroom, the soft flooring giving way to rich, checkered marble, the floor-to-ceiling windows bricked up, and the ornate, prismatic, antique chandeliers still hanging like massive crystal bats. But in the middle of the room is what looks to Henrietta like a minimalist, cubic view into the future. Illuminated by a ring of tripod-mounted work lights is a single, elevated, pristinely transparent box with a single sheet of plasma glass suspended from the top. The diagonal, iridescent bars on the screen inside indicate harmonized polarization between it and the translucent walls so that the person inside can be surveilled while the information being displayed remains safe. There is no desk. No chair. No keyboard or other form of input whatsoever.

As Henrietta is led farther into the ballroom, she sees that there are several more soldiers posted just outside the ring of twin, diamond-shaped lights. Her escort’s boots knock hollow against the solid cream and coffee marble while Henrietta’s bare feet pad along in perfect silence, leaving petite staggered sweat prints behind.

As they step inside the circle of light, Henrietta infers the presence of a door by a seemingly disembodied handle opposite a cross section of a long, mechanically intricate hinge. As the soldier pulls, the door first slides out toward her on steel roller bearings the exact distance of its thickness before there is a reverberating click, and then its momentum transitions into a slow, heavy swing.

“You will have two minutes from the moment the information appears,” the soldier explains. “Use the plasma glass to scroll or zoom as you need to. Slide one finger along the bottom edge for brightness. Two fingers for contrast. When your time is up, the screen will go blank, and you will be escorted back into the waiting room. Do you have any questions?”

Henrietta had been trying to follow the soldier’s instructions, but she’d gotten stuck on the introduction: two minutes.

“What if I need more time?” she asks. Allard had used the term “very briefly” in his message promising access to The Static, but two minutes is absurd. From everything she knows about its contents, she would need at least two hours to get through it—maybe longer to fully grasp its significance and to reverse engineer something as novel and exotic as The Antecedent.

“No additional time will be permitted,” the soldier tells Henrietta. “If you need more time, all-new authorization must be obtained. Do you understand?”

All-new authorization. Which she is sure she will not get, no matter how many forgeries of Simon she manifests. Henrietta considers protesting further but she already knows that no concessions or exceptions will be made. In fact, she suspects too much opposition will end in her being led right back out. The only choice Henrietta has in her current position is to optimize what little time she is being given.

“Oui,” she tells the soldier. “Je comprends.”

“Bien. You may enter when ready.”

Henrietta steps up into the box and is shocked to see, on the plasma glass screen, a line drawing of a wide-eyed great horned owl—until she figures out that the nocturnal bird of prey watching over the entirety of the globe is simply the BRGE’s not-so-subtle coat of arms.

She is also surprised to find that her escort has entered the box with her. The soldier steps