Elara got Caleb into the First Division engineering bay at oh-three-forty in the morning.
She drove him in the trunk of a maintenance van for the last twelve minutes of the trip. The van was registered to a contractor the division had used for fourteen years and which no one had bothered to audit. The driver was a man named Ridley who had not asked questions about a body in his trunk on three previous occasions.
The bay was four levels below the surface of First Division headquarters.
Elara unlocked the access hatch with a magnetic key she should not have had. She held the hatch open. Caleb climbed out of the trunk.
She locked the hatch behind them.
The bay smelled like ozone, engine oil, and high-end armor warming in storage racks.
Aris was at his workbench.
He had been waiting.
He lifted his head when they came in.
He was a thin man in his fifties with steel-rimmed glasses and a bandage on his left hand. The bandage was three days old. The hand was bleeding through it.
