16. Welcome to the CSA #2
Evelyn leads us to the front of the room and stops beneath the LBS sign.
“This is what Mackenzie saw when she visited Jace before she knew the truth,” Miles says quietly.
I look around again. There’s nothing here that says government intelligence agency. No maps. No mission boards. No surveillance images. No global threats being tracked across glowing screens. Only business projections and empty desktops.
“So, this is what you show outsiders?” I hate how naturally the word lands.
“Yes. When we have to.”
Evelyn steps toward a panel set into the wall and places her palm against it. A soft tone sounds, followed by a voice saying, “Director authorization.”
Evelyn looks at me. “We call the protocol that conceals the agency Code Fourteen. It is initiated whenever someone without operational clearance enters the floor.”
I glance at Miles. “Did I trigger it?”
“No. The floor was converted before we arrived.”
“Because of me.”
“Yes.”
Evelyn’s palm remains against the panel as she says, “Code Fourteen cleared. Return to standard configuration.”
For one beat, nothing happens. Then the room begins changing. All on its own. The Lancaster Business Solutions sign rises silently toward the ceiling. Behind it, a different emblem slides out from the wall—an intricate silver symbol encircled by the words Clandestine Services Agency.
The four large screens go dark. A second later, they light again with maps, agency-status displays, secure communications indicators, and the CSA emblem.
I stare at it all with my mouth hanging open. I startle when my attention is pulled to the desktop nearest me as it sinks slightly. Its perfectly blank surface rolls away, replaced by another one holding a recessed keyboard, secured controls, and an integrated screen.
The same movement travels across the room. Desk after desk opens like the building is waking up.
A series of panels along the east wall lifts into the ceiling, revealing framed portraits that had been hidden behind them.
Conference-room glass clears. A secured elevator door appears where a flat section of wall had been.
The slogan Your secrets are safe with us rotates out of sight, replaced by a digital mission-status board.
Even the lighting changes. The warm, bland corporate glow sharpens into something clearer and brighter, and I can’t stop staring at all of it, desperate to take it all in, knowing I’m missing some of it.
The room isn’t becoming something new. It is stopping its performance. For years, so many people I love have walked into this room when they go to work, seeing it with its real face.
Beside me, Miles is completely still. He isn’t watching the transformation— he’s watching me. I turn slowly, trying to take everything in at once.
Charlie’s fake spreadsheet disappears from one of her three monitors.
In its place, a map fills one screen, along with camera feeds and columns of data I can’t begin to interpret on the others.
Emerson’s monitors light with names, photographs, travel records, and hundreds of lines connecting one person to another.
Neither of them reacts to the transformation. This is normal to them. This is work.
“Oh,” I say. It is the least adequate word I think I’ve ever said.
Evelyn lowers her hand from the panel. “Welcome to the CSA.”
I look up at the silver emblem. Then at Miles. “You really are a spy.”
“Intelligence operative.”
Evelyn gestures toward the room. “We’ll keep the visit short, but I can show you the main floor.” She begins with the briefing area at the front. Operatives gather there before missions. The large screens can display live feeds, maps, intercepted communications, and information from analysts.
She shows me the conference rooms and tells me that they’re soundproof.
“Because you discuss secrets?”
“Because Ledger and Jace can argue loudly,” Miles says.
Evelyn makes a small attempt to hide a smile. “Both are true.”
We move past the first row of desks. Evelyn explains only the broadest functions. Analysts. Technical teams. Operatives. Mission support. Everything is general enough that I know she has carefully selected every word.
Then Miles points toward a cluster of desks near the center. “That’s Jace’s.” His desk is clean except for a framed picture of Mackenzie and a small object shaped like a helicopter.
“Ledger’s.” A whiteboard beside his desk has a line down the middle. One side says Ledger, and the other says ZOE in the CIA. There are tally marks under both names.
I stare. “They keep score at work?”
“Ledger does. Zoe keeps her own scoreboard.”
“Emerson’s is over there.” I glance toward him. He is still focused on the web filling his screens.
“And this one is mine.” Miles stops beside a desk that is somehow both ordinary and not.
There is a keyboard, a monitor, several locked drawers, and a charging dock holding communication equipment.
There is also a dark blue mug I gave him for his birthday three years ago that reads I’m not saying I’m Batman.
I’m just saying no one has ever seen us in the same room.
I pick it up. “You brought this here?”
“I use it every day.”
“While secretly doing intelligence work.”
“Yes.”
I look at the mug, then at his desk. There are things here that came from me.
A pen shaped like a sword from the year we exchanged terrible stocking stuffers.
A tiny plastic fox from the University of Maryland bookstore.
A photograph of the entire Lancaster family, with me standing at the edge beside Charlie.
I have been represented in this room. I simply didn’t know the room existed.
We walk closer to Charlie, and she swivels away from her screens and says, “Hi.” Her expression is cautious in a way I rarely see from her. “I’m sorry I said ‘read you in’ this morning.”
“It was subtle.” She knows it wasn’t. I know it wasn’t.
“I panicked.”
“You also told me not to spiral.”
She grimaces. “I panicked more.”
Charlie’s gaze moves over me, then around the real version of the room, and her cautious expression softens. “It’s weird seeing you here.”
“Good weird or hostile-shed weird?”
“Very good weird.”
I look past her to her wall of screens. “Is this what you actually do?”
“Part of it.”
Her monitors have some kind of privacy filter on them, so I can tell things are on them, but can’t tell quite what. She does turn one to face me, though—it’s a video showing the woman in the camel coat entering a gray sedan.
She gestures toward the equipment around her. “Usually, I’m the one communicating with operatives while they’re in the field. I monitor cameras, building systems, routes, security feeds, and whatever else they need.”
“You open doors remotely.”
“Sometimes.”
“You tell them where to go.”
“Often.”
“You save their lives.”
Charlie’s mouth opens. Then closes. “Sometimes,” she says more quietly.
For one disorienting moment, she looks exactly like my roommate and like someone I have never met.
This is the woman who sings along to girl-power pop anthems—loudly—every time she showers, and leaves half-finished craft projects on our dining table.
It is also the woman Miles trusts to guide him out of buildings where people may be trying to kill him.
I turn when Emerson comes up to Charlie’s station, carrying a tablet. He eyes me, then says, “Director, we have an update on the hangar operation.”
Evelyn considers for a moment. “Give us the sanitized version. Reese is authorized to hear information directly related to what she witnessed, but no identities or source details.”
“The contact channel reactivated,” Emerson says. “Maxwell wasn’t rejected.”
Miles straightens beside me.
Charlie swivels back toward her screens. “What did they send?”
Emerson swipes across the tablet, transferring something to her monitor. “They want second-stage verification. Proof of liquid capital, references, and proof he can move funds through the channels listed.”
“Deadline?” Miles asks.
“Tomorrow.”
Charlie is already typing. The warmth in her face disappears, replaced by complete concentration.
Miles steps closer to the screen. “Anything about why they ended the meeting?”
“Nothing.”
Miles’s jaw tightens slightly. I know what he’s thinking—it was me.
Emerson continues. “But the fact that they’re still vetting Maxwell means whatever happened at the hangar wasn’t enough to kill the referral.”
This must be good news, because Evelyn immediately begins issuing instructions. Charlie opens files and communication windows. Emerson returns to his desk without another word. Miles studies the screen, his posture changing in the same way it did at the hangar.
The family disappears. The agency takes its place. Not because they are pretending to be different people—this is just who they are, too.