Now she had the better of Yanni and Hicks of ReseuneSec, who actually knew what this place really was…

Inside or outside this new wing, for Yanni?

That all depended. Maybe. Maybe not, depending on how Yanni took it. And how Hicks did. And what this team he was sending her turned out to be.

“Come see,” Sam’s message yesterday had said. “We’d love it if you could come.”

So here they were, driving along beside the white walls, and the whole project becoming more and more real the closer they got, right down to the feathery pour‑marks on the new walls, where they’d freed the finished wall from the molds.

All the conduits had gone into the forms before the pour, so she’d learned. The new place had a new sensor system, a new computer installation from the basic wiring up. It had new walls without ten thousand ghosty little lucifilaments running in places that were a real archaeological problem to trace…making a security headache for Wing One and most everywhere in Reseune. Systems as arcane as Base One–which had lurked within the lab computers until the day (event‑driven, calendar‑driven, it was never clear) it assembled itself and made contact–just could not surprise her in the new wing. Base One itself would get in, intact, through a prescribed gateway, and settle itself in, while other Bases would have to stop at that gateway and announce their presence to Base One before touching System inside. She trusted Base One absolutely. She was pretty sure it would do what she asked it to do. She no longer trusted, however, the systems where she lived–she hadn’t, from before Denys died. Florian and Catlin had long worried there might be a worm in the works, where Denys and his people had done all the arranging for years. Giraudmight certainly have done things within Reseune’s systems that could spring on them without warning. They’d gotten through the first months post‑Denys without disaster–but who knew what event might trigger something untoward? Giraud’s rebirth? Denys’s rebeginning?

Her own claim on power, when she did make it? She wanted to be in here when she made her move…safe, isolated, in control. Yanni ran Base Two at the moment: nobody but an Ari Emory and those she permitted had ever run Base One. But Base Two had been in Denys’s hands before that. And having some buried section of Base Two wake up and start actively spying–if Yanni didn’t already run those functions–that wouldn’t be good, no.

They would be in their new, secure apartment before summer ended: Sam promised it, and she had every confidence that would happen on schedule.

And the building had taken a big stride this morning: the gray, confusing forms that had stood at the end of the U had given way to a section of white angled planes rising stark and beautiful against the sheer natural rock of the cliffs. Florian turned the little car into the rutted and dusty area of what a sign proclaimed as Parking A, among the giant earthmovers, and Sam was waiting for them there, wearing a hard hat and orange overalls no different from any of the azi who worked with him. Sam’s square face split with a grin as they got out and walked onto the hard, rutted surface that was his particular domain.

“I hoped the pour would finally draw you out here,” Sam said, waving an expansive gesture at the walls. “There you are, people! Home sweet home!”

It was different than anything ever built at Reseune, an extravagant three‑story crown at the apex of the new‑born Alpha Wing. Her heart beat faster in excitement.

“We’ll be done ahead of schedule,” Sam said. “No bubbles in the pour. Went like a dream.”

That was good to hear. Bubbles in a foam wall were definitely a bad thing, and Sam meant they’d gotten all this foamwork set and hardened without sawing areas out, setting up forms again, and foaming in twice, and no problems with the design. Sam was decidedly happy with his job.

But she wanted to see. She wanted to walk inside, and make it real, not just a virtual image she could get on the computer.

“Can we get in there?” she asked.

“Right this way!” Sam led them all toward a gap in the pour, a broad area with rough notched edges. “This is just a workman’s door–you won’t be able to walk through this wall when you live here: we’ll foam it so it’s just wall, ever after.”

Reseune was like a fortress of sorts, against environmental hazards as much as for any other reason, the only lookout on this exterior side of the building once it was finished would be cameras, no doors or openings of any kind. Her apartment, at the top of the U, jutted out farthest toward the wild and the cliffs, and farthest upward, in its reinforced light‑channels. The rest of the U’s ground floor would be offices, a few shops, while the upstairs was all going to be very restricted residences: her apartment would have its main door on the third floor, the way things were in Wing One second floor. But, unlike Wing One’s, herapartment and only her apartment would have an upstairs section above the third floor–that was the height of the crown, up among the angles of the walls. That would be her room, her office, her personal safe place, with Florian and Catlin by her, and their rooms, and all the things they needed, up above the world, almost even with the cliffs.

Right now, the word given out among the CIT workers was that all this construction was new labs. By the time rumor got out that it was going to be a restricted residential area, and hers in particular, the security installations would all be in, and that time was getting very close. By the time Alpha Wing System went on line (and perished immediately as Base One moved in and took over) well, it wouldn’t matter any longer, at that point, what anyone knew. They’d be defended. Everyone she loved would be defended, once System came up and Base One ruled Alpha Wing.

Sam led the way inside, over dusty concrete floors littered with foam‑construction crumbles and plaster spatters. Sunlight fell in unlikely rectangles and bars from somewhere above–where not all the construction was finished, Ari supposed. Where they walked, first floor, was going to be offices and residences for wing security personnel other than her personal bodyguard, and they all would have immaculate security clearance.

Her new apartment, over their heads at the moment, would more than protect her–it would innovate. It would be all angles, and surprises like light, and living things. It would inspire her, and inspire her visitors, with things that had never existed in Reseune. Denys’ old apartment, where she had grown up, was a boxy put‑together of the ubiquitous Reseune cream‑colored walls and recessed lights, just boring, boring, boring–with the same color walls in every room. Oh, it had real imported wood, yes, and all sorts of luxuries like hand‑knotted carpet, and bric‑a‑brac and china. She’d sent the whole lot to storage so that Denys Two, if he one day existed, could have it all intact when he grew up–but, God, that some mentor had to teach a little boy to like that stuffy decor!

And Ari Senior’s apartment, where she lived now, had luxury, a lot of it, and it had its graces, but it was all linear, archway into archway, brown travertine and polished floors that would skid with you if you didn’t watch the rugs, and it had sat vacant for nearly a decade and a half with Base One gone dormant, an interregnum in which someone very, very clever and skilled–like Abban, like Seely–could have gotten into the place or at the place in some clever way they had never detected, with things as small as a human hair. Illicit surveillance might not have waked up yet, because Yanni might not have full use of Base Two–which might have plunged into partial dormancy itself, awaiting some event to bring it live…some event like a young Abban logging onto System.

That wasn’t going to disturb her life. Not in Alpha Wing.