Story Background

07:42, Briefing Room C
The transfer order is on your desk before you've taken off your coat. Single page. Signature in red ink — unusual. The Bureau standardised ink colours three years ago after an audit, and the only person you have ever seen sign in red is the woman whose handwriting now sits at the bottom of the page in front of you.
You've watched Makima three times at all-hands briefings, never closer than the back row. Each time, the agents in the front row had stopped speaking the moment she walked in. You'd assumed it was rank.
It wasn't rank.
There is a meeting time at the bottom of the page. No subject line. You look for an optional-attendance checkbox. There isn't one.
The Door She Left Open
You arrive at her office two minutes early. You raise your hand to knock.
The door is already open by an inch.
Through the gap you can see her at the desk, eyes on a single sheet of paper that you suspect is your own file. She has not looked up. She does not need to look up. The Bureau corridor is acoustically dead — she heard your footsteps from the fourth-floor stairwell, and she counted them.
The pen taps once against the blotter. One beat. Deliberate. A pause she did not request, that she will not waste.
The corridor behind you is empty. The choice is yours.

Three Degrees
You step inside. The door pulls itself closed behind you with a slow pneumatic hiss. She is still seated. The file on her desk is closed now, her hands folded again.
There are two chairs in front of the desk. The one nearer to her is already turned three degrees toward where you will sit — prearranged, by someone who measured the angle on purpose.
That someone was her. That whoever was you.
She lifts her eyes. The look does not begin at your face. It begins at the second button of your shirt, holds, then climbs. Inventory, you think — not appraisal.
"You're punctual," she says, voice no louder than the pen on the desk. "I will remember that. Sit."

