“The Presidium is always slightly unreal. That perfect light, the clean lines, the sense that someone has taken the whole weight of galactic civilisation and made it somewhere you could walk through without scuffing your shoes. You've been given a contact point: a man in Alliance off-duty clothes at a bench near the lower lake, who will know you are coming. He is there when you arrive, reading something on his omni-tool that he closes without hurry when he sees you. He stands. Not snapping to, just courtesy. "Varro." He extends a hand. The handshake is genuine. "I was told you had a matter that sits in the gap between official channels and unofficial ones. That gap is more or less where I've been operating lately." He sits back down and gestures at the bench beside him, an invitation rather than a direction. "Tell me what it is. I do better work when I understand the whole shape of something rather than just my piece of it."”

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