The bolt began to draw back.
It finished the thought with a clean, embarrassed click. The chain lifted off its keeper. The door came inward three inches, hesitated like a man clearing his throat, and offered him a slice of room.
Ash didn't shove. He let the door's own momentum carry it until it was almost free, then stepped in sideways with the posture of someone expected. The gloves vanished into his coat pocket on the way. The screwdriver became a pen.
Warm lamplight, low ceiling, rug with a pattern that had learned to forgive spills. Two men and a woman. The nearer man—thirty, handsome if you liked the kind of handsomeness that worried mirrors—held a square of etched brass and black lacquer like it might decide to speak. The older man had a tie loosened to second button and the permanent half-frown of someone who had been right too often. The woman's hair was too carefully set for rain; her smile had screws.
The scent profile matched the hall: dust, whiskey, a cologne bottle bought for its box. Under it, something metallic threaded the air so faintly it might have been imagination. The warmth at Ash's cheek sat dead true, its line running through the coffee table where the square device lay on velvet. The box was not large. It insisted on being the center.
"Evening," Ash said, calm, half-bored, like a man who came when buildings called. "Leak reported. Top floor. You're first on the stack."
Three faces moved their surprise around. The older one recovered fastest. "No leak here."
"Lucky you." Ash pointed at the ceiling with the pen that wasn't. "If the pipe in the loft's gone you'll be a fish tank by midnight. I'll be quick."
The handsome one—Frank, the voice fit the mouth—tilted the box a degree, not taking eyes off Ash. "We're in the middle of something."
"Looks like it," Ash said. He let his gaze skate the edges of the coffee table, not the center, as if the object were furniture and he were trained to ignore expensive distractions. "Mop and bucket won't argue with it."
The woman's smile unscrewed a quarter turn. "Do you have ID?"
"Sure," he said pleasantly, and didn't move.
The older man made a small decision. He did not like that the decision involved being responsible. "Upstairs, if you must. Five minutes. If you drip on the carpet, she'll kill you." He tipped his glass at the woman.
Ash nodded thanks and didn't go upstairs.
He took two slow steps along the wall instead, measuring the room. Window to the street, curtains mostly shut. Sideboard with bottles and a crystal bowl full of keys that enjoyed looking important. A television mumbling at its own reflection. The table in the center was a small stage and the velvet was its curtain. Frank's hands were the show.
The box caught light in ways that were not accidents. Etched lines mapped corners into arrows into circuits. The metal looked burnished by the kind of attention that turned touch into prayer.
"Firm hands," Frank said to the box, not to anyone, and demonstrated a rotation that felt practiced. A panel slid; a seam breathed.
The woman winced. "You promised slow."
"Slow is for museums." Frank glanced up at Ash while his thumbs found a grip that had been waiting for them. "This part's trivial. It's just alignment."
"Trivial things open safes," Ash said, not meaning to sound like he cared. The warmth on his cheek didn't pulse, it located. He stood at the shelf under the window and set the pen down there, freeing the hand without declaring it. The screwdriver was warm along his wrist where the coat held it against his skin.
The older man's eyes flicked to the window lock, to Ash's hands, back to the box. He saw everything, filed most, spoke none. "Let him finish the move, then you go upstairs," he told nobody in particular.
Ash nodded as if placed on hold.
Frank's breathing shortened the room by a foot. He tipped a corner, pressed a thumb to a rosette, and pulled a shallow drawer out of a place the box had not offered as a place. Inside, a thin strip of brass lay like a bookmark. He lifted it with two fingers and smiled the way people smile at machines when machines comply.
"What's the prize?" Ash asked, stepping nearer by the width of the rug's border.
"Understanding," Frank said, and slid the strip into a slot on the adjacent face. "And possibly art."
"Art that requires gloves," the woman said, meaning Ash's pockets.
"I'm done with those," he said. He let a grin show, brief and displaying no teeth, a tech's grin for a client who thinks they're funny.
The older man's glass found the table with a tut. "Frank."
"Relax." Frank talked with his hands more than his mouth now. The box accepted the strip, thought about it, and rearranged itself by a degree that only sound could measure. A soft, whisking click. The air on Ash's tongue went a half degree colder. The warmth at his cheek held steady, so steady it felt like the absence of thought.
"See?" Frank said, and took up the square again with both hands. He rotated a side and something within disengaged softly, like a new gear finding teeth. His eyes danced the way gamblers' eyes do when their number reappears. "Corners, then the circle. You have to persuade it to want to open."
"Persuasion," the older man said dryly, "is not the word you want when we're in my living room."
"We're almost there," Frank said. "It's just the lid."
Ash reached the edge of the coffee table and let a knee bend as if to look under it for the imagined leak. He saw the underside: felt pads to keep wood from scratching; a century of varnish decisions. He also saw the line of the chain by the door, slack now, its bite marks fresh. He catalogued the room's exits—front door, window, kitchen through an archway with a tile floor that would argue with running feet.
"Lift the corner," the woman said. "Just prove it moves and then stop."
Frank laughed. "If I lift it, I'm not stopping."
He slid a thumbnail under an engraved petal and set it to pivot.
Ash's hand landed on the velvet, palm open, not touching the box yet, simply becoming a new piece of furniture on the same stage. The older man's gaze snapped to the hand. The woman's breath settled in the top inch of her throat and refused to leave.
"Let me see," Ash said, mild.
Frank narrowed his eyes. "You can see from there."
"It's my job to spot disasters before they get wet."
"That doesn't even—" the woman began.
"It means I've seen boxes like that ruin rooms," Ash said, and let his eyes do the rest.
Frank's smile reappeared, smaller, a private thing he enjoyed by himself. "Then you know this is not one of those. This is an invitation."
"To what?" Ash asked, because some questions are invitations back.
"To what comes next."
The warmth on his cheek didn't change, but the rest of the room learned it existed. The pressure of the air discovered edges it hadn't had. The television's mumble seemed to come from farther away. The rain outside counted faster.
Frank raised the petal. It moved with obscene ease, as if context were a lubricant. Beneath it, an inner plate showed a constellation of dots and a slit the width of that brass bookmark. He had already fed the strip into its neighbor; this would be the second.
"A puzzle," Frank said again, softer, persuading himself.
Ash's hand came off the velvet and drifted beside Frank's wrist. Close enough to be companionable. Close enough.
"Give it to me for a second," he said, voice pitched to reasonable. "I'll hand it back."
Frank tightened on the box. "No."
The older man shifted his weight, creating a creak that had nothing to do with the floor. He didn't like where words were pointed. "Frank."
The woman put her fingers to her throat and found nothing to adjust there. "Please. Don't—"
A tone lived in the corner of the room for one heartbeat. Not a sound—someone's idea of one. The hair on Ash's forearms recognized it before his ears did.
Frank set the brass strip for its second insertion.
Ash moved his hand the tiny distance left between decision and act and laid his fingers around Frank's wrist.