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senses jangling, he dropped into a crouch, clutched his courier pouches tightly, and froze there, waiting for the gate to return and the ethereal light it radiated to show him where he was. There must have been a focus shift, he thought. This isn’t the Burgundy Theater. The floor’s carpeted and the room feels too small.
    Minutes later—excruciating, interminable minutes—the gate reappeared. By its cold fire he saw that the focus had shifted to the bedroom of what had once been, according to the numerals stenciled in black on the flocked wallpaper. Suite 1232. Still in the hotel, he thought. Okay.
    The suite was empty of furniture, deserted, silent. The door to the cavelike corridor stood permanently open, bolted to the wall with a metal strap. Moving lightly, Wallace glided out into the gloom. He did not need light to find his way down to the field station on the first floor—he knew the old hotel by heart, every turn and doorway, every stairwell and guideplate.
    He knew it better than anyone except another runner would, and only runners belonged in the gate house. If someone else was there, something would have to be done to remove them.
    There was a small chance that the lights being off was an innocent accident, a matter of carelessness or mistiming. But there had been enough trouble in Red over the last year that Wallace thought otherwise. Something was seriously wrong.
    He hesitated, unsure of what was expected of him. The gate was open, the disruption of his passage past. He could go back the way he had come, back to Home and the Tower, and report the focus shift, the anomalous transit.
    For a brief moment, he considered doing exactly that. But he had never missed a delivery in nearly two years as a runner, and the two courier pouches he carried—an endomorphic one slung over his left shoulder and a thinner version strapped to his belly—tugged at his sense of pride.
    The first was full of documents and interrogatories intended for the station staff. The other contained a dozen or more vials of vaccine intended for a team of moles working the Washington-Boston axis, protection against the latest round of viral terrorism by Les Miserables.
    Besides , he thought as he continued on, what the hell could I tell the Section now? I’ve got to go downstairs, at least, and find out what I can .
    The hallway was as dark and deserted as the suite had been, carrying forward the illusions of a bankrupt hotel sitting empty while its owners tried to find some way to get it out of receivership and finance remodeling into office space.
    It was an illusion which suited the Guard’s modest operation in Red, and which dovetailed nicely with the depressed financial climate of the downtown area. And if increased gate traffic or an improving economy some day stretched the credibility of the cover story. Red Section staffers were prepared to convert the Bellevue Stratford into a members-only club.
    Wallace took the back way down, twenty-four flights of concrete and steel stairs descending into a black pit. Fingers gliding lightly on the handrail, he took the steps as quickly as he could in silence. After a few flights, his breathing was louder in the confined space than the sounds made by his foam-soled shoes.
    When he reached the final landing and the solid wood door which led to the field station offices, Wallace hesitated, wishing he were armed. Though he was qualified with the Guard’s basic .25 caliber automatic, he did not have one with him. It was impossible to bring a metal object of any size through the gate, as the energy flux had a nasty habit of grounding itself through the metal, with spectacular but unpleasant results.
    But there’s nothing to do about it, Wallace thought as he pushed the door open, so no point to wishing—
    There was no gate monitor at the desk, but by then Wallace would have been surprised if there had been. He worked his way cautiously toward the front of the building, passed through a second