The plant level is one room eleven metres under the lobby, with the coal furnace at the north end plus the authorization vault at the south. Alder Vance bolted that door the previous evening at the eighth hour, then sat down on a stool between the coal and the stone.
A vault built forty years ago against a family quarrel opens for nobody who is standing in front of it alone.
The blood plate reads the named heir of the holding, which the deed fixed to the surname rather than to the person. Rynn Sable took another name at nineteen, so the plate has answered to Regina Vance since the morning he walked out of the house.
The consent plate reads a living print from the holder of record, given at the door with the holder conscious. He cannot open it without his daughter, while she cannot open it without a hand he has spent forty years keeping out of her reach.
[Plant level: sealed from inside.]
