Questions

She crossed the threshold.

The door closed behind her without a sound, as though it had been waiting her whole life to do exactly this. The amber light was sourceless — it came from the walls, the air, the grain of the long table itself. It smelled of beeswax and old paper, of libraries that had never been modernized.

Maya walked to the empty chair and sat down.

It was the strangest ordinary thing she had ever done. The chair fit her perfectly, the way a chair in your childhood home fits — not because it was made for you, but because you were made in its presence.

The seven figures watched her settle. They were difficult to look at directly. Not because they were frightening, but because each time her eyes tried to fix on a face, something in her attention slipped sideways. She had the impression of age. Of patience. Of people who had been waiting in rooms like this one long before rooms were invented.

"You'll have questions," the voice said again. Still collective, still sourceless. But now she thought it emerged mainly from the woman to her immediate left — silver-haired, with hands folded on the table as though containing something they'd decided not to release.

"I have several thousand," Maya said. Her voice came out steadier than she expected. She was distantly proud of this.

A small sound moved around the table. It took her a moment to identify it as laughter.

"That's why you're here," said a different figure — a younger man across from her, who spoke as though confirming something already agreed upon. "The ones who come in asking no questions at all, we worry about. The ones who come in asking several thousand — those we can work with."

He slid a single piece of paper across the table toward her.

She looked down at it. It appeared to be a map.