Julian Thorne's office did not have a name on the door. It didn't have a door at all; it had a series of acoustic baffles that absorbed sound until the interior of the room felt like being underwater.
His current client was Helena Valerius, once the most photographed woman in the Republic. Now, she wanted to be a ghost.
"They found me in the mountains," Helena whispered. Her voice, once capable of filling the Grand Opera House, was now thin and brittle. "A drone. It wasn't even a person. Just a machine that recognized the symmetry of my jawline."
Julian didn't look at her. He looked at the data-stream on his monitor. "You stayed at a hotel that used smart-mirrors, Helena. They scanned your retinas while you checked your mascara. That's how the 'All-Seen' works. It doesn't look for you; it waits for you to look at it."
He began the process of "De-Indexing." It was a digital surgery—snipping the links between her physical location and her digital ghost. He moved with a cold, terrifying efficiency.
But when he returned home to The Obsidian, the coldness evaporated. He stepped into the elevator and saw it: a small, charcoal sketch of a rose window, but instead of glass, the panes were filled with mathematical equations for structural load.
He touched the paper. It was warm from the elevator's brass heating element. It felt like a pulse. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, silver-foil wrapper from a chocolate he'd bought in a district that didn't use digital currency. He folded it with precise, practiced movements until it was a tiny, shimmering beetle.
He placed it exactly where the sketch had been.