Rook

interesting. About nine stories tall andconstructed of an unprepossessing gray stone, the Hammerstrom Building looked like the kind of place in which the most tedious of businesses conducted their most tedious endeavors. There were no sculptures or decorations, no clue as to what might be inside. You would never just wander in to see what was in there. You’d have better things to do.
    The driver had the door open, and she realized with a jolt that she should probably get out of the car. Thanking him, she accepted his hand and took a few hesitant steps toward the front door. The protesters, seeing a short woman looking around uncertainly with wide eyes, thought she was a possible convert and converged upon her.
    “Miss! Miss!” There was a cacophony of voices, but finally the man with the beard established himself as their ambassador.
    “Miss, it might shock you to know that this building is home to one of the greatest conspiracies in history!” he declared.
    “Oh?” she said weakly.
    “In this building the government keeps its secrets about the truth!” he explained.
    “The truth?”
    “Yes!” he said, and he paused impressively.
    “About what?” she finally asked.
    “Excuse me?”
    “The truth about what?” she prompted him patiently.
    “Everything they’ve been concealing! Are you aware that the British government has been hiding evidence of alien landings for the past twenty years?”
    “They have?”
We have?
She resolved to look up aliens in the files Thomas had left for her.
    “Yes! And that’s not all! They have teams engaged in secret operations all over the countryside. We’re not sure what it is they’re doing, but we demand to know! Would you like to sign our petition and be put on our mailing list?” With one hand he thrust a clipboard under her nose, and with the other he fanned several pamphlets.
    In the end, she signed the petition. She declined the mailing-list offer but did accept some of their home-cranked pamphlets, slippingthem into her briefcase before, to the horror of the protesters, walking straight into the building through its rather shabby-looking revolving doors.
    Inside there was a small, bland lobby with a large, bland security guard behind a desk. There were three lifts, and a building directory listed an assortment of businesses that she knew were fictitious. She looked around and saw that the guard was hurriedly standing and straightening his tie.
    “Good morning, Rook Thomas,” he said, dragging his gaze away from her bruises and black eyes and looking her square in the shoes. “How was your weekend?”
    “It was nice,” she said, caught slightly off guard. “Yes, very, very… nice,” she added, failing to provide any details. There was an awkward pause, but to her secret delight, the large security officer seemed much more ill at ease than she was.
    “Yes, well, if you’d just like to step on through then,” he said as he reached under his desk and pressed a button, which buzzed her through a discreet frosted-glass door. She stepped forward, thanking him, and found herself in a painfully bright corridor that took her (unless she was mistaken) around behind the lifts, through a metal-detector archway, and into a lobby that was slightly larger and more nicely appointed than the one she’d just come from. A slightly larger and more nicely appointed security guard was getting up from
his
desk.
    “Morning, Rook Thomas,” he began
    “Morning. I had a shit weekend, longest I can remember,” she said with perfect honesty.
    “Uh, yes, they look nasty,” he said awkwardly, presumably referring to her bruises. “Well, if you’d like to swipe your pass and go on through,” he said, gesturing toward the four revolving doors set into the wall. The partitions were made of heavy steel bars and intricately pierced metal plates. She carefully ran her pass over a small black panel and heard a series of beeps and heavy clunks. The metal doors began to rotate, and she stepped through smartly.
    Here was the real lobby, obviously. A high ceiling archedgracefully. Elevator doors lined the walls, and she recalled from her reading that some led to the underground garage and some to the upper levels—a deliberate move to ensure that everyone entering the building had to go through multiple layers of security and pass the exceptionally large and prominently armed guards who sat at the ring of desks in the center. It was a beautiful room, and it was filled with