The New Protocol

She knocked. Three times, measured, the way you knock on a door that belongs to someone who deserves the warning.

Silence.

Then — not footsteps, not a voice — a quality of attention. The feeling of being listened to through walls. She had the sense that whatever was on the other side was consulting something. Not deciding. Already knowing, but confirming.

The door opened.

Not all the way. A third of the way. Enough to show that the amber light was still there, still the same specific warmth, like a room that had been lived in for decades and held the warmth in its walls. One of the seven was standing at the door. She couldn't tell which. She had not been able to tell, the first time, either — they were never quite resolved into faces when she looked directly.

"You came back with a question," the figure said. Not a question. A notation.

"Yes."

"The question belongs to someone else."

"He doesn't have access to the door."

A pause. Not uncertainty — more like the pause before a careful sentence. "Access isn't the relevant word. He hasn't been invited. But he has been noticed."

Maya felt something tighten in her chest. "Noticed how?"

"The way you were noticed. Before the letter."

She thought of Daniel standing early at thresholds. The waiting. The feeling of a cue he hadn't been given. She had assumed it was ambient — an echo of what was happening to her, bleeding into someone close.

"Is he going to be chosen?"

The figure stepped back, half an invitation.

"That's two questions," it said. "You've been offered one answer. You choose what you want answered."

The door held at its angle. The amber light fell across the threshold like something patient.