Chapter 7: The Founder

Skyward's tower stood at the end of Harbor Street, and its top forty floors were still lit at midnight.

Caleb stood on the pavement and looked up at it for a long time.

Four years ago it had been a rented room above a laundromat with six students and a broken coffee machine.

He walked in through the revolving door in his borrowed jacket.

The guard at the desk looked up from a sandwich.

"We're closed to visitors, sir."

"I'm here to see the founder."

"Everyone is, sir. Come back at nine."

"Tell her a man is here about forty-one thousand dollars."

The guard blinked.

He picked up the phone with a puzzled frown and spoke into it quietly.

A minute later he put it down and straightened.

"Floor thirty-eight, sir. She says to hurry, because her coffee's getting cold."

The elevator opened on an open office full of dark desks.

At the far end, a single lamp burned over a table covered in cables and cold takeout.

A young woman stood up from behind it with a mug in each hand.

She wore a gray sweater with the sleeves pushed past her elbows, and her curly auburn hair was tied up with a pencil.

"Forty-one thousand dollars," she said.

"That's the only phrase in the world that would get me out of this chair. Who are you?"

"Caleb."

"Caleb who?"

"Merrick."

The mug in her left hand tipped, and a little coffee ran down her wrist.

"No."

"Yes."

"You're not real." She set both mugs on the table and wiped her hand on her sweater.

"You're a legal document. You're Bernard's favorite secret. You're a signature at the bottom of a page I have thanked every New Year for four years."

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