"I want to make these walls a safe place for all of us."
Max's voice came through clean as I took the first step out of the elevator. No stone between us now. Only the two corridors and the open front and the yard beyond, and the speech arrived as if he were standing at the far end of the hall.
The men had spread out and filled the other side, the side that ran toward the front doors. They stood the way men stand when they've been told to hold a line and nothing more.
I looked at them properly on the way past.
More than ten. Closer to fifteen. And most of them were faces I'd walked past in this building when Bala ran it — men who had served three governments inside two weeks and would serve a fourth without breaking stride. The same posture. The same empty professional patience.
