The blue door opened into something that didn't match its exterior.
From the street, the Emperor's Eye branch was a grey building — modest, unremarkable, the architectural equivalent of a person who had decided not to be looked at and had committed to the decision thoroughly. Inside, it was something else. Not large, not ostentatious, but dense — the density of a space where every surface was doing something, where the organization of objects communicated function rather than decoration. Maps on walls with markings that weren't standard cartography. Filing systems that receded further than the room should have allowed. People moving through the space with the focused quiet of a workplace that took itself seriously without needing to announce it.
Nobody looked up when they walked in.
Lulu, manifested in the form of a junior high school girl wearing the particular expression of something encountering a new category of unpleasant, appeared at Lexel's side and looked around the room.
