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“He doesn’t want to hear about your eerie collection, Exeter It is iuards loiter in the foyer “Exeter will see you to your room, Cato”

“I rather hoped to have a discussion with you”

“I have work to do I will see you at supper, if I have time”

“It is important…”

“I said if I have time”

Knowing the spike will record all conversation via vocal vibrations, and cameras will record all the rest, I play the part of a libertine and treat uest suite

Inside,Four days before the strike Four days and I sit in a bath of lavender oil It takes me back to the horror of the iht He is likely being tortured at this very moment Why would he trust me with his life on so thin a plan? Could he possibly care so much for the people of Heliopolis? Do true servants of the Society exist now only in the most deplorable form?

After the bath, I stare at nize e and stripped awayfrom sunburn Carefully, I take the resFlesh off ives the appearance of rotesque as it must have been in the desert, but chunks ofskin to be reeon or carver The eye has gone sht Golds who kept their scars to be a bit vain But I understand it now Too much has always beenborn

This I earned This is mine

That night, Glirastes’s rose quartz table is set for one I eat in silence, catered to by three servants If they remember me, they do not show it My old friend never comes

The next , I learn he has not returned fro the orchard, swiuards, as ht But I learn their patterns, and I yearn to investigate Glirastes’s domed workshop, but I d

are not

After lunch, I walk the house, bouncing a rubber ball as I go, careful to remain frivolous I let it bounce aardly off a step and chase the ball down a hallway into his library There, I thurid, and when I tire of the around until I stuolden telescope that looks down at the city

With a yawn, I look through, and make my first surveillance

Stretching north nearly as far as the eye can see sprawls an architect’s delight of basilicas, temples, forums, triureat Hippodrome Only the distant storm wall does not shine white in the sun In the western city, Corinthian-inspired office spires, broken only by parks, viaducts, and amphitheaters, stretch all the way to the Bay of Sirens Thepaly suun batteries Their ranges stretch hundreds of kilometers, impassable by any land army