Three levels below Wall Street, the air changed.
It changed on the second staircase — a drop in temperature, a quality of stillness that had nothing to do with the building's ventilation system and everything to do with what the building was. The stone walls here were obsidian, dressed and fitted with the particular precision of something built to last beyond any current political arrangement. Light came from crystals set into the ceiling at intervals, not electric, not warm — a blue-white that made shadows fall at angles that didn't quite match the geometry of the room.
Neva had been in The Vault's administrative levels before. Brief visits, documentation, the ordinary work of establishing an Underlayer-registered business. She knew the lower corridor, the filing systems, the way sound
