Ten feet was a number I could work with.
Stage One needed eye contact, two seconds minimum, close range. Thirty feet through a conference room with three people and a table between us was a problem. Ten feet through a cracked secondary door, with the unknown man's back potentially to me, with Yaoyorozu close enough to give me a warning look if she clocked the angle — that was a different geometry entirely.
The problem was everything else.
The elevator was moving. The north face watcher was four minutes out, maybe three now. The maintenance woman in the lobby had a radio and a reason to use it. Hatsue's message was sitting on my phone unfinished and whatever she'd found had made her stop typing mid-sentence, which in six weeks of working together I had never seen her do.
I pulled the phone up.
*Parent company is registered to—*
Still nothing after that. The typing indicator had gone dead.
I typed: *Hatsue. Status.*
Waited four seconds. Five.
No response.
That was a new problem. I filed it behind the door and kept moving.
The lever depressed smoothly — better maintained than the main entrance, which meant this side saw more regular use, which meant Moriwaki used it and probably hadn't thought to mention it when the meeting was arranged. Details people overlooked about spaces they were comfortable in. I'd built half my operation in Arc 1 on exactly that kind of oversight.
Two centimeters. The gap opened.
The room resolved in pieces. Moriwaki first — side profile, hands flat on the table, the posture of a man trying to take up less space than he occupied. Yaoyorozu across from him, still spine-straight, but her hands had moved from the table's surface to her lap. Not visible. That was new. She was holding something or she'd made a decision she didn't want her hands to betray.
The unknown man was closer than I'd expected.
He'd moved from the far end of the table. He was standing now, near the window, which put him at roughly eleven feet from the secondary door and angled at maybe forty degrees off direct. Not a clean line. Not impossible.
He was speaking again. Low register. The particular patience of someone who had made this offer before and knew which part of the silence meant consideration and which part meant refusal.
"The objection window closes in eighteen days. That's not pressure — that's simply the schedule." A pause. "We're not asking you to do anything, Yaoyorozu-san. We're asking you to not do something. There's a difference."
Yaoyorozu said nothing for a moment.
Then: "Who does the consolidation benefit?"
"The district. New infrastructure management. More efficient allocation of—"
"That's the framing. I'm asking about the beneficiary."
The unknown man's chin moved — not quite a smile, not quite acknowledgment. The expression of someone recalibrating upward.
"You've done your research."
"I read the February amendment. I can read a holding structure."
"Then you already know the answer."
Which meant she did. Which meant whatever Hatsue had found in that Nagoya registration wasn't a surprise to Yaoyorozu — she'd gotten there through a different route and arrived at the same door. The meeting wasn't an offer. It was a test to see how much she knew and what she was planning to do with it.
I adjusted the door. One more centimeter.
The man turned slightly toward the window and I lost the angle. His profile now, which was worse than his back and better than nothing. The jaw, the cheekbone, the particular way he held his shoulders — not hero-trained, not military. Corporate. The kind of physical confidence that came from rooms, not fields. From people agreeing with you for long enough that your body forgot what resistance felt like.
I knew the type. I was in the process of becoming it.
Twelve feet. The angle was wrong. If he turned another twenty degrees toward the window I'd lose even the profile and be looking at the back of his head.
He didn't turn. He said: "The objection would delay the filing. Create complications for people who don't particularly enjoy complications."
"Is that a consequence or a warning?"
"It's information. What you do with it is your decision."
My phone vibrated against my palm.
I didn't look at it. I couldn't look away from the gap without losing the geometry I'd spent three minutes calculating. The vibration continued — not a message, a call. Hatsue never called. Camie called when something had gone wrong faster than typing could address it.
I let it ring.
Yaoyorozu said: "I'll need to consult with my legal team."
"Of course." The unknown man reached for his folder — the one he hadn't opened. He set one hand on it without lifting it. The gesture of someone marking a position rather than making one. "Eighteen days."
The phone stopped vibrating.
Then immediately started again.
The unknown man's head moved — a fraction, toward the secondary door. Not looking at it. Registering the direction a sound had come from, the way trained people registered sounds they hadn't expected. I had the vibrate function on. I had it on because I was in a building I wasn't supposed to be in and I had been in those buildings enough times to know the basics.
I had gotten careless with the ring duration.
His shoulders hadn't moved. His hand was still on the folder. But the head angle had shifted and stayed shifted, and that two-centimeter gap was a two-centimeter gap in both directions.
I stopped breathing.
Three seconds. Four.
He turned back to the window.
I let the breath out slowly and looked at my phone.
Camie. Missed call, missed call. Then a message:
*North watcher is not alone. Two of them. They're not police.*
Then, four seconds later:
*Third vehicle on the south side. Just parked. Engine running.*
Then Hatsue, finally, the interrupted message completing:
*Parent company is registered to a nominee director in Nagoya. But the operating signature on the account belongs to a law firm. The firm handles three other district infrastructure filings in the last eight months. All of them have a common previous client.*
Then the name.
I read it once. Read it again.
The headache behind my left eye detonated.
Not because of the Quirk. Because the name on my screen was the name of a mid-tier underground broker I had done business with twice in the previous year — a fixer, a connector, someone who moved pieces for people who didn't want their hands visible. Someone who had seen my operation. Someone who knew my methods well enough to recognize them in a room.
Someone who knew I'd be here.
The secondary door. The pre-positioned cabinet. The three-point coverage built before we arrived.
Not built to catch Yaoyorozu.
Built to find out who was watching her.
The elevator doors opened on the fourth floor.
I closed the secondary door without a sound, turned from the conference room, and walked toward the maintenance alcove with seventeen minutes left and a name on my phone that changed the shape of everything I thought I understood about this morning.
Ten feet, and I hadn't taken the shot.
That was going to cost me something. I didn't know what yet.