Chapter 10: The Caldera

Part I: 7:00 PM The City of Angels

Los Angeles at dusk was a bruise of orange and purple spread across a concrete canvas. The plane touched down at Van Nuys Airport, private, discreet, the kind of airport where people came to do things they didn’t want recorded. A black sedan was waiting on the tarmac. Cross stood beside it, his suit immaculate, his face unreadable.

“Chef Jordan,” he said as I descended the stairs. “You’re early.”

“You’re late.”

“I’m exactly on time. The world runs on my schedule, not yours.”

“The world runs on hunger. Everything else is overhead.”

Cross almost smiled. He opened the rear door of the sedan. Sarah climbed in first, then Nia, then Vivianne. I sat in the front passenger seat, my bare skin against the leather, my teal neckband tight around my throat.

“You’re not wearing clothes,” Cross said as he started the engine.

“The Protocol does not pause for Los Angeles.”

“The Caldera is a five-star hotel. They have dress codes.”

“The Caldera is hosting a meeting of people who are planning to build a city of slaves. I don’t think they’ll complain about a naked woman in their penthouse.”

Cross glanced at me. His eyes lingered on my neckband, on the curve of my shoulder, on the scars on my hands.

“You’re remarkable,” he said.

“No. I’m determined. There’s a difference.”

He pulled out of the airport and merged onto the freeway. The city blurred past billboards, palm trees, and the distant lights of downtown.

Part II: 7:30 PM The Caldera Hotel

The Caldera rose from the center of Los Angeles like a monument to excess glass and steel, sixty stories, with a crown of lights that flickered in the evening sky. The lobby was all marble and orchids, the kind of place where a glass of water cost more than most people’s hourly wage.

I walked through the lobby naked.

People stared. They always stared. A woman in a sequined dress dropped her champagne flute. A man in a business suit tripped over his own feet. A child pointed and asked her mother what the lady was doing.

The mother had no answer. There was no answer. I was doing what I always did: existing without apology.

Cross led us to a private elevator at the back of the lobby. He pressed his thumb to a biometric scanner. The doors opened.

“The penthouse is on the sixtieth floor,” he said. “The consortium is meeting in the main salon. Twelve investors. Eight lawyers. Four security guards. And Arthur Prynne.”

“Anyone else?”

“Elara Voss was invited. She declined. Kaelin was not invited. She’s probably here anyway.”

I stepped into the elevator. Sarah followed. Nia followed. The girl Vivianne followed last.

The doors closed.

Part III: 7:55 PM The Penthouse

The elevator opened onto a foyer of black marble and white orchids. The air smelled of money, expensive perfume, expensive cigars, the expensive silence of people who had never been told no.

Two security guards stood in front of a set of double doors. They were wearing suits, earpieces, the kind of expressions that said they had seen everything and were no longer surprised.

“Damian Cross,” Cross said. “I’m on the list.”

The guards looked at me. At my naked body. At my teal neckband.

“She’s with me,” Cross said.

“She’s not on the list.”

“Put her on the list.”

“I can’t put her on the list. There is no list. There’s only the door and the people who are allowed to walk through it.”

I stepped forward. The guards tensed. Their hands moved toward their weapons.

“Tell Arthur Prynne that Vivianne Jordan is here,” I said. “Tell him that I have the documents he burned. The names he tried to erase. The truth he’s been running from. And tell him that if he doesn’t let me in, I will stand in this foyer until the sun rises, and every guest who walks past will see me, and every guest will ask questions, and every question will be a knife in the heart of Nexus.”