The Mole

Hunt 31: Lunch on Stair Nine

PeopleMantle

LensSpy

LeadAbigail

RegionPheli

RunMiddle Run

Hunt 31 · Spy

Lunch on Stair Nine

The Mole · Mantle

Abigail carries her own sandwich down to Stair Nine of the Fourth Floor Basement to sit beside the Mole, a Stack clerk whose living moss cape soaks up every room and sells it to the Syndicate by smell, because an arrest on that landing would break the Truce and lunch ends at one.

On the boardWears a Stack badge, works for the Syndicate, and hates both jobs. Eats lunch in a stairwell.

WhereThe Fourth Floor Basement (street name: Lunch Level), Pheli. The Stack's lowest floors, where the Mole eats lunch in a stairwell.

How it feelsHumming pipes, flickering lights.

House ruleOn any stairwell landing nobody asks the person eating their name, floor or employer.

Leads the huntAbigail Chase

PeopleMantle, from Shoma

Abigail's notebookThe landing. Bag hung, nobody on it yet.

Tuesday. Fourth Floor Basement. A landing.

I've come home to arrest somebody over lunch.

The basement runs on something called the Stairwell Truce. You knock twice on the rail, wait for the pipe to answer, hang up your lunch bag, and that landing's yours. Nobody on any landing may ask the person eating their name, floor or employer, and if you break it every door that reads your badge dims at you and refuses, forever. I worked in this building six years and had no idea. I ate at my desk.

· · ·

I sat down four stairs below and got out my sandwich. Kellen made it, by the manual. I've got one hour and I'm not allowed to ask his name. Ever tried to arrest somebody whose name you can't ask? Me neither, till today.

The Fourth Floor Basement, development art — The Fourth Floor Basement. Development art. Find it in the galaxy ▸

Hunt 31: Lunch relay on Stair Nine. Development art.

The people

Mantle

Gray coats of fine fur and faces that don't move. They read minds poorly and read bodies perfectly.

Honest, reserved, and frightening in a corridor.

ALSO ON THE BOARD: The Quiet Man (49), The Double (82)

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