The Spire rose above Portmorris like a blade of glass and steel, its upper floors lost in the low-hanging clouds that had settled over the city at dawn. From the fortieth floor, the view was a grey void—the harbour, the slums, the financial district all swallowed by the same colourless mist that had been pressing down on the city for days. Elias Voss stood at the window of the executive briefing room, his hands clasped behind his back, his reflection a pale ghost in the rain-streaked glass. He had been summoned. He had come. He was waiting.
The room behind him was spare and functional, designed by someone who understood that power required no ornament. A grey table, grey chairs, a single screen on the wall that displayed the agency's seal—a stylised eye inside a triangle, the old emblem o
