Richard
The tower was supposed to be secure. After everything, the filters, the sabotage, the vanishing clerks, the cathedral collapse, and the shifting council loyalties, we were supposed to have locked it all down. We had reinforced checkpoints, rotated patrol schedules, restricted elevator access, and sealed off tunnel mouths by the dozen. The entire tower complex was under twenty-four-hour surveillance.
But the courier still made it to the tower steps.
He didn’t run or fight. When the patrol intercepted him at the eastern stairwell, he froze with his hands half-raised, not surprised in the slightest. Tucked inside his jacket was a split clapper, custom-fitted and sanded smooth. It had been shaped to emit alternating frequencies that didn’t match any standard bell pattern, but they a
