Page 24 of Dragon Chaos Around

She lifted the canister from the transport case. Read the label—he’d left the original studio label intact, the Pinnacle Studios logo and the title printed in the serif typeface of 1940’s Hollywood. Her lips moved. He couldn’t read them at this camera angle, but the shape of her mouth suggested she was repeating the title to herself, and the way she pressed one hand flat against the desk—bracing herself, anchoring her body to a fixed surface—told him everything he needed to know about the impact.

She sat down. Set the canister in her lap. Pressed both palms flat on the desk surface and stared at the far wall with the fixed, wide-eyed expression of a person whose brain had stalled.

Then she picked up her phone.

His phone buzzed.

ALANI: There is a 1944 print of The Woman in the Shadows on my desk.

He stared at the message. He’d prepared for this. Three hours of preparation—he’d drafted and discarded six potential responses during the predawn hours, ranging from plausible deniability to complete deflection to a version of the truth so carefully edited it would have passed a congressional hearing.

CHAOS: I remain unaware of the origin of items appearing on your desk.

ALANI: It’s in a TRANSPORT CASE. A climate-controlled, museum-grade transport case with the Silverscale crest embossed on the latch.

He looked at the transport case. Looked at the crest on the latch. Closed his eyes.

The crest. You forgot to remove the crest from the transport case.

Eight hundred years of strategic planning. Seven centuries of outmaneuvering rivals, monarchs, and the entire British legal system. Undone by a monogrammed latch.

CHAOS: The facilities team uses standardized equipment. The crest is present on most corporate materials.

ALANI: Greg’s equipment?

Greg. The phantom facilities manager she’d invented during the manga exchange. She was building a running joke. His dragon was delighted. His dignity was hemorrhaging.

CHAOS: The facilities department employs multiple individuals.

ALANI: Chaos.

His first name. She’d never used it in text before. The four letters hit the screen with an intimacy that his phone’s glass surface should not have been able to transmit.

ALANI: This is a 1944 original print of a film I mentioned in a meeting THREE DAYS AGO. In passing. While discussing panel scheduling. I did not say ‘please source me an original print.’ I said ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ like a person making conversation, and now there is an EIGHTY-YEAR-OLD FILM REEL on my desk in a case with YOUR FAMILY CREST on it.

ALANI: I looked this film up. There are eleven surviving prints. Three are playable. The Library of Congress has one. The BFI in London has one.

ALANI: Which means the THIRD playable print of one of the most important villain films in cinema history was sitting in your archive, and you put it on my desk because I said ‘wouldn’t it be nice.’

He set the phone down. His reflection stared back from the dark surface—a man whose long-practiced composure had developed a visible crack at the left corner of his mouth. Not a smile. Not yet. The ghost of one, threatening to materialize.

CHAOS: The film is a significant cultural artifact that merits a wider audience. Its presence on your desk is logistically practical given the screening proposal you raised.

ALANI: That is the most romantic logistics I have ever experienced.

He turned the phone facedown on his desk. Stood. Walked to the window. Walked back. Picked up the phone.

ALANI: I’m coming upstairs.

The air left the room.

TWELVE

ALANI

The elevator to the penthouse floor required a security clearance that Alani did not have.

She had it in ninety seconds.