The third circle was still on the map when Mara came in.
Nobody had erased it.
Nobody had commented on it either, which was its own kind of acknowledgment, the particular tact of people who understood that some things were allowed to exist without being named. Nia had worked around it for two days. Tal had built his cross-references alongside it. Even Rell, who noticed everything and wrote most of it down, had left it alone.
Mara looked at it for a moment when she came in.
Then she put her bag on the table and took out the new file and said: "The server is being moved."
The room shifted.
Not physically. The quality of attention changed, the way attention changed when something that had been theoretical became structural.
"When," Aiden said.
"Eighteen days," Mara said. "The location of the secondary site isn't confirmed yet. It may never be confirmed through our channels. Once it moves, we lose the access point."
She opened the file on the table.
