“But it’s enough.” When he folded the white paper and tucked it into the hidden compartment, Luke’s fingertip brushed against a tiny crease in the lining of his pocket.
That crease hadn’t been there yesterday.
He didn’t pause.
He stood up, cleared his desk, returned the book to the third position from the left on the second shelf of the bookcase, and wrapped the record player’s power cord two and a half times around the back of its base to secure it.
These were his own physical parameters.
The next morning, he arrived at the office ten minutes early.
The lock was intact, turning with the exact same resistance as yesterday.
However, the position of the record player on his desk had shifted.
The deviation was minuscule.
The rear-left corner of the record player’s base was usually aligned with the extension of a scorch mark on the desk—a reference point he had calibrated the first day he moved the machine in.
Now, the base had drifted roughly six millimeters to the right of that line.
The record player was heavy; structural vibrations in the building couldn’t have moved it.
Luke walked around the desk, checking three specific spots.
The drawer gaps were of normal width.
The angle of the dimmer knob on the curtain simulation panel was normal.
The books on the second shelf of the bookcase hadn’t been touched—the pencil lead he had placed between the third and fourth books was still in position.
Only the record player.
Someone had been inside, touched the things on his desk, but moved only one item.
Either it was unintentional, or deliberate.
Luke pushed the record player back to its original position and sat down at his desk.
He booted up the internal system and pulled up the surveillance logs for the office hallway.
The footage from 11:00 PM last night to 8:00 AM this morning appeared normal.
The hallway on screen was empty.
At 2:00 AM, the lights automatically switched to energy-saving mode, dimming by sixty percent.
No one had walked past.
Yet there was an abnormality on the playback progress bar.
Between 3:17 AM and 3:24 AM, the timestamp encoding experienced a brief frame drop—four frames lost in total, lasting less than two-tenths of a second.
Without dragging the progress bar frame by frame, it would be almost invisible to the naked eye.
Luke closed the playback.
He didn’t take a screenshot, nor did he report it.
He pulled a small roll of clear tape from his drawer, tore off a strip less than two centimeters long, and stuck it across the bottom seam of his office door—half on the door panel, half on the frame.
If the door were opened, the tape would snap.
Then he dug a box of paperclips out from the bottom shelf of the bookcase, took three out, and bent them to distinct angles before placing them in three locations: one clipped to the split ring of the B2 file cabinet key, one resting in the groove of the drawer’s inner slide rail, and the third placed horizontally between the fabric folds outside the hidden paper compartment.
He photographed the angle and location of each clip on his phone, saving them to local storage without uploading to the cloud.
Once finished, he tucked his phone away, grabbed his briefcase, and walked out.
One of the light fixtures in the hallway had been replaced; its color temperature was half a notch cooler than the others, casting a sharper-edged patch of light on the floor.
He took ten steps toward the elevator.
Around the corner ahead, someone was walking close to the wall.
All-black uniform.
All-black mask.
Black Noir.
The two passed each other halfway down the hallway.
Black Noir didn’t look at him.
His mask faced straight ahead, his pace steady, the sound of his soles striking the floor mostly absorbed by some dampening material, leaving only the ultra-low frequency displacement of air.
In the second they brushed past, Luke caught a glimpse of the man’s hands out of the corner of his eye.
His fingers hung naturally at his sides—not clenched into fists, not tucked into pockets.
There were two faint friction marks across his knuckles, located on the outer side of the second joints of his index and middle fingers.
That wear pattern was common on hands that frequently turned door handles.
Luke didn’t turn around.
He kept walking forward and stepped into the elevator.
In the final second before the doors closed, he saw through the narrowing gap that Black Noir had stopped in the middle of the hallway.
The mask was facing toward his office.
The doors shut.
He didn’t return to his office for the rest of the day.
Instead, he borrowed an empty small meeting room in the conference area on the 38th floor, using a desk there to handle his afternoon paperwork.
When he returned to his office the next morning, he checked the door seam first.
The tape was intact.
No one had come.
On the third morning.
The tape was broken.
This time he didn’t check the record player.
First, he checked the paperclip in the drawer rail groove—unmoved.
The paperclip in the hidden compartment fabric—unmoved.
The paperclip on the key ring—shifted by fifteen degrees.
Someone had touched his key, but hadn’t opened any drawers or hidden compartments.
The goal wasn’t to unlock anything.
It was to confirm which keys he had.
Luke restored the paperclip to its original position, sat at his desk, and opened his phone’s memo app.
He didn’t type anything.
He stared at the blank text field for five seconds, locked the screen, and put the phone away.
Certain things could not be written on any electronic device.
He pulled a fresh pencil from the bottom of his briefcase and wrote a tiny line of text across his palm.
*Ranking by probability: Members of The Seven with silent movement capabilities and all-floor security clearance in the building.* The ranking produced only one result.
He rubbed his palm against his pant leg twice.
Most of the graphite washed away under the friction, leaving only trace residue embedded in the lines of his palm, invisible unless viewed up close.
His phone buzzed.
A text message from Homelander: *4:00 today.* Luke replied: *See you in the evaluation room.* He set his phone on the desk and glanced one last time at the time on the lock screen.
10:11 AM.
Nearly six hours left until four o’clock.
He needed to figure out one thing during those six hours.
What was Black Noir looking for?
Or rather, who was Black Noir looking for it *for*?
Muffled voices echoed from the hallway outside—two administrative employees discussing next week’s equipment procurement list.
The sound faded quickly.
Luke pulled open his drawer and looked at the neat row of folders inside.
The key to file cabinet B2 hung from the steel clip of the first folder.
A fresh smear of fingerprint oil rested on its brass surface.
It wasn’t his.
His fingers didn’t sweat.
The intruder’s did.
“Whose orders were you following?” He spoke the words to the empty office, his voice barely loud enough to reach the edge of the desk.