"It came from Board," Rita said.
The hyphen on her screen wasn't big. It didn't have a speech. It had a job. It did it.
Boone looked at the pixel like it were a hinge. "Name a room," he said.
Aisha's voice arrived with paper instead of anger. "Short notice to Board Counsel," she said. "Two sentences. 'Your materials contain a canary. This leak makes Board a source of speculation. We will reduce detail flow to Board; all future sharing will be public-safe and carry window.' No accusation, just process."
"Send," Rita said, and the word was not personal. It was plumbing.
She opened a new rectangle and emptied the room of unnecessary adjectives. Pelham wide at 09:47; Consent on Record lower-third; window on board; general route updates pending. No arrows. No stairs. No inside. It was a postcard that refused to boast.
"public-safe summary to Board," she said aloud, fingers moving. "Full route only to Serena/Handler and Host."
Vivian's bubble popped up as if she had been standing just outside the door and chose to knock this time. Not me, she wrote first, blunt. Then: I'll escalate. Do not change the window size. Board will ask. I'll tell them accessibility specs like a bedtime story.
"Thank you," Rita typed. "window stays legible. No 'mutual' language."
Agreed, Vivian replied.
Evan leaned his shoulder to the paint, not to rest, to keep the wall from thinking it was alone. "If we reduce flow to Board, they'll push for control some other way," he said.
"They already are," Aisha said. "Agent?"
Evan's phone hummed. He put the call on speaker against the wall, hands visible.
"Board at 08:30," the agent said, breath clipped so the words can run. "Agenda item 'clarify status'. Someone seeded a lower-third mock to the graphics vendor: mutual consent moment. Vivian's pushing back with Consent on Record. If you give me a wide with legible window, I can argue they're trying to rewrite what exists on air."
"paper first," Rita said. "We won't feed a mock."
"Board will hint at '07:00 couch' again," the agent warned. "They'll brand it as 'brief values chat'."
"no unannounced intimacy," Boone said to the air and to anyone who would someday read logs.
Rita's thumbs moved. "We'll reply once more: Addendum bars couch. Rider requires wide with Consent on Record. We deliver at 09:47, not 07:00."
Aisha added a spine. "I'll include morals clause 12.4 in the note," she said. "Cooperation in good faith ≠ coerced proximity. That line is a small hammer."
"Use it," Evan said.
Boone's gaze moved, inventorying the flurried quiet. He touched the stairwell bar with two fingers and let metal tell him its weather. "Ost route holds," he said. "Judges' Stairs, vestibül. credential for anyone who calls themselves staff. If someone asks where we're going, we are always 'on our way to work'."
Victor adjusted nothing and changed the hallway. "Alarm chirp," he said, and put two fingertips to his ear. "I've got the notch ready. If a strobe kisses the vestibül, don't blink. Lenses sell blinks. window eats strobes for breakfast."
Rita mirrored the window board to East again because superstition is just empiricism that's been alive long enough. "Board mirrored," she said. "caption window art ready with consent stated on air and the time."
Her phone buzzed with the polite chime of an email that will live in evidence someday. "Board Counsel received," she said, eyes scanning. "They 'regret' and 'will review'. There's a paragraph about 'monitoring sentiment' as if that were repentance."
"Repentance is nouns, not hearts," I said.
The press pen ping hit like someone flicking a spoon in the next room. Nolan's account had posted again. Inside route? Judges' Stairs? We own the hinge either way. The picture was a dim hallway in a different courthouse. It wore confidence like a bad cologne.
Rita pinched in on his bullet list and compared it to her scars. Hyphen before window again. No double space after wide. Her jaw didn't move. "Same canary," she said. "Second leak from the Board thread."
Aisha's tone lost its velvet. "Standards needs to hear this," she said. "I'm filing a note: 'Editorial pressure from Board-adjacent leak attempting to shape coverage; request any Board-sourced lower-third carry window on air to avoid speculation-as-fact.' Control respects Standards when it's about their own liability."
"Send it," Rita said.
Vivian's bubble: I'm in the thread. I'll remind them that leaking route details creates safety issues we get to write down with incident numbers. credential applies to everyone in a hallway, even people with shares.
"Good," Boone said. "Hallways don't care about shares."
We stood there with our verbs and let the night not argue with us for once.
"Do we put a process note at 07:05," Rita asked without asking for permission. "One sentence: 'At 09:47 we'll provide an on-record visual; until then, treat edits as edits.' It buys us expectation and takes food from the 07:00 rumor slot."
Aisha weighed it like a coin. "Pros: sets the table; gives Agent a thing to wave at the Board. Cons: invites attention at 07:00; might read as defensive."
"window guard says starve, not feed," I said.
Evan nodded that small nod again. "We hold," he said. "We post only if someone aims a mislabel with our names on it."
"Hold," Rita confirmed, and parked the half-written rectangle in the drawer where prudence sleeps.
Her phone vibrated with a different shape. Vivian: Board Chair asks again: can we replace 'Consent on Record' with 'Mutual Consent Moment' if we must run a lower-third? They claim it 'reads warmer'.
Rita didn't look up from the keys. "Reply: Consent on Record is verifiable; 'mutual' is not. names, not vibes. Add: 'mutual' without faces saying it is misleading."
"Copy," Aisha said, already rendering it into a sentence that slides into inboxes like good ice.
Boone's face tipped toward the door again. The building supervisor ambled back, a piece of tape looped on two fingers like civility. "Counsel asked me to stick this right under the sign," he said. The printout was simple: Interior filming from tenant threshold permitted; camera must not obstruct egress; no faces of non-consenting staff. He put it where water can find it when it gets confused.
"Thank you," I said.
"Borrow the tape," he offered.
Rita grinned with two millimeters of mouth. "We have our own," she said, and lifted the card that says no unannounced intimacy. She taped it under the permission sheet, tilted straight like an altar that had been inspected for screws.
"It suits the wall," the supervisor said, and left without asking for a picture.
The hallway returned to the sound mild rooms make.
Vivian again, this time with a screenshot of a draft from a Board subchannel that thought invisible ink is a business plan. The subject line read like a plan to avoid nouns: Clarify Status - Draft talking points. The bullet under it wore a sin like perfume: mutual consent moment; status remains private but affirmed; acknowledge chemistry rumors without confirming.
"misleading by architecture," Rita said. "They want to sell a vibe with our oxygen."
Aisha's keys were already moving. "I added that draft to my Standards note," she said. "Pressure to adopt non-verifiable lower-third language. Request: any lower-third tomorrow that isn't our words must run window next to it."
The agent came back on the line without ringing, because some men know when to listen and when to throw ropes. "I'm in the governance chat," he said. "They're split three to three; the seventh is asleep in a timezone that hates us. If you can DM me a crisp, pre-cleared lower-third image labeled Consent on Record, I'll put it in the thread and dare them to replace it."
Rita sent it. "Here," she said. "White background, black letters, legible to an aunt at a bus stop. window sits left."
"God bless bus stops," the agent said, and vanished into his trenches.
We took one step closer to doors we were not opening yet. It made the hallway change its mind from corridor to room.
"Contingency," Boone said. "If East vestibül gets eaten by an alarm truck, we take the inner archivist corridor and shoot the inside wide from the records half-door. Less pretty; more ours."
"Copy," Victor said. "window reads the same."
Rita built a new canary while we watched, because craft replicates itself when necessary. "Serena's handler gets a semicolon after 'vestibül'," she said. "Host gets a period. Vivian gets a colon. If any of those dots shows up in Nolan's feed, we'll sing the name of the song."
Aisha's voice turned soft enough that we had to tilt our ears toward duty. "Standards responded," she said. "They will require window on any speculative lower-third tomorrow during your minutes. They will also accept the host's six-word education slate on repeat without calling it 'clarify'. That's good."
"Good," the hallway said, because at two in the morning, walls get to talk.
Rita's lock screen flowered with three receipts at once: Serena's handler's thumbs-up; the host's thumbs-up; Vivian's received. The colon sat in its quiet place. The semicolon kept its manners. The period made peace with itself.
Nolan posted a smug thing about "sources say 09:47 East vestibül" and put a dot somewhere it didn't belong. Rita magnified the dot until it told on its sender.
"Colon," she said.
"Vivian," I said, not a question.
Vivian's bubble arrived before we could misinterpret. I did not send Nolan anything, she wrote. Board forwarded my exact punctuation to a brand consultant who thought he was DM'ing a friend. The friend is a sieve. I have receipts. I will staple them to Board Counsel if they breathe wrong.
Rita exhaled a millimeter, which is what passes for relief in rooms like this. "Thanks," she sent. "We'll keep flow to Board at postcard level."
The neighbor's peephole blinked once like an eye that just learned gossip can be boring. It retreated.
My phone buzzed with a quiet that meant Aisha would prefer your attention without scaring you. I checked it.
PIO will post a follow-up at 06:45: 'Please do not call the clerk; we do not confirm or deny vital records.' We can mirror. No adjectives. Aisha knows how to write sentences that keep hands off other people's throats.
"Mirror at :45," I told Rita.
"Scheduled," she said, already done.
We were deciding to let silence be a roof when Vivian's bubble changed color. Some apps do that when someone forwards an internal screenshot with a subject line that thinks it's clever.
She didn't add commentary. She didn't apologize. She put the rectangle in our hands like a fire alarm and let the letters do their sin.
Draft statement — Clarify Status
mutual consent moment
status update to avoid speculation
to run at 08:32 if no couch segment at 07:00
Rita read it aloud so the room could choose a stance. "08:32," she said. "They'll try to publish a sentence that pretends to be neutral and isn't."
Boone didn't raise his voice. He never does. "We answer with rules," he said.
The agent's name blinked again. They're queuing the draft. I can delay. I cannot bury it alone.
We looked at one another and at the little machine in Rita's hand where the time lives, and at the door we hadn't opened.
"Which is it," Vivian typed, finally spending a pronoun. Do I tell them you'll fight, or do I tell them you'll bend 'mutual' into something you can live with?
The hallway got very quiet.
We had to answer.
The timer in Vivian's screenshot began its silent countdown toward 08:32. It didn't blink. It didn't want a speech. It only asked: yes or no.