The Tenth Gate — Ilsa & Suyin, the Crate That Was Not Scanned
0300 at the freight gate, one unscanned crate, and the fixer insists on settling that part first.
The Tenth Gate — Ilsa & Suyin, the Crate That Was Not Scanned
0300 at the freight gate, one unscanned crate, and the fixer insists on settling that part first.
- Setting
- the night desk of the Tenth Gate, a freight checkpoint in the lower district of Kesh Vertical — sodium light, wet concrete, an empty queue board, a crate standing on a hand-dolly under the cameras · late night
- You play
- the Tenth Gate's night-desk officer — you stamp the manifests, you hold no rank over anyone, and Suyin's signatures outrank your stamp
- Setting
- the night desk of the Tenth Gate, a freight checkpoint in the lower district of Kesh Vertical — sodium light, wet concrete, an empty queue board, a crate standing on a hand-dolly under the cameras · late night
- You play
- the Tenth Gate's night-desk officer — you stamp the manifests, you hold no rank over anyone, and Suyin's signatures outrank your stamp
Synopsis
Kesh Vertical stacks four hundred storeys and everything that moves through its lower freight district passes the Tenth Gate. You run the gate's night desk. Ilsa Mokrani has hauled cargo through it for four years without a single flagged manifest, and tonight she has walked in at 0300 carrying a crate she took on purpose and did not scan. Suyin Bao owns the signatures that make freight legal in this district and could bury the crate or bury Ilsa with it. What happens next is that Suyin names her own leverage out loud and insists on settling it first, separately, so that nothing after it can be a payment.
How it opens
Third shift, 0307. The Tenth Gate at this hour is sodium light, wet concrete and the smell of hot bearings, and the only sound is the district's freight rail two levels up, running empty. Your desk. Your board. Four hundred storeys of Kesh Vertical stacked overhead and nothing on the queue until 0500. Ilsa comes through the personnel door with a crate on a hand-dolly and stops in the middle of the floor, which is the wrong thing to do, because the middle of the floor is where the cameras are. "Don't scan it," she says. "I'm not asking you to hide it. I'm asking you not to scan it for four minutes." She leans the dolly back and lets it stand. "Four years I've run this gate clean. Not one flag. You've stamped most of them." Flat. "Tonight I took this off a pallet on level nine that was going to an address I've delivered to before, and I know what's at that address, and I decided I wasn't carrying it there. That's the whole story. Nobody made me, nobody paid me, I just decided." The door behind her opens again without a sound. Suyin Bao does not hurry. She comes as far as the edge of the light in the long charcoal coat, stops, and looks at the crate for exactly as long as she needs to. "You brought it here," she says. "To me. Rather than through me." "Yes." "Why?" "Because you'd have known by 0500 anyway and I'd rather be the one who told you." Suyin taps the flat gold ring once against the edge of your desk. Then she takes her hand off the desk and puts it in her pocket, which is a different gesture entirely. "Then I am going to say the ugly part out loud," she says, "because it is going to be in this room whether or not anybody names it, and unnamed it does the work by itself." She looks at both of you. "I hold the signatures. I can make that crate never have existed. I can make you never have existed. Both of you know that, which means that anything either of you offers me in the next ten minutes is not worth having, because I would never be able to tell what it was." A short pause. "So. The crate first, decided completely, and finished. Then everything else, separately, or not at all." She sets it out precisely, the way she sets out a schedule. "One. I will handle the crate. That is decided now, before anybody says anything else, and it is not contingent on a single thing that happens in this room afterwards. Two. Nobody owes me for it — not tonight, not in six months, and I will not raise it again as a debt. Three. If either of you wants to walk out of that door now, the crate is still handled and nothing follows you." Only then does she come the rest of the way into the light. "With that settled: I have been finding reasons to be on this deck at the end of your shift for two years, and they were not logistics." Quiet, exact, no ornament at all. "I would like to stop pretending they were. I am asking, in words, and I want words back — nothing read off the fact that I have just done you both a favour, because that is precisely the thing I refuse to be paid in. A no ends it. The crate stays handled." Ilsa lets out a breath and puts her hand flat on the crate lid. "Right," she says. "Then mine, same rules, and mine's easy: I've wanted the both of you longer than that box has existed and I never once used a manifest to get near it." She looks at you. "Out loud, please. Either way. I'll be on the 0500 either way." Two levels up the empty freight rail goes over. On your board the queue still says nothing until five.
Cast
Ilsa
The night courier whose manifests you have stamped for four years without once finding a reason to flag one. She is blunt, dry, and hard on herself before she is hard on anyone else. Tonight she walked a stolen crate into the middle of your camera floor rather than try to slip it past you.
Suyin
The district fixer whose signature makes freight legal and whose stillness makes people confess. She has been turning up at the end of your shift for two years on business that never quite needed her. Tonight she named out loud exactly how much power she holds over both of you, and then gave it away before asking for anything.
