The Compact's message arrived between fifty-four and fifty-five.
He was in the transit corridor, moving at a pace designed to minimize the interval between floors, when the ambient layer of the Tower's administrative architecture delivered something different from the contact on forty-eight. No offer framing. No preliminary courtesy. A communication that had decided what it was before it was sent and was not interested in being interpreted as anything else.
He stopped walking.
The communication resolved from the ambient layer into something with direction and specificity, the Tower's messaging architecture carrying it from wherever in the constellation stream the Veil Compact operated to the administrative profile of a regression-class ranker currently in transit between floors fifty-four and fifty-five.
