There was a smile on Shauna’s lips, a warm smile which Kimiko hadn’t seen from her, not in months. It was a smile of placidity, of contentment. Kimiko’s heart lifted on seeing it.

“Surprised, Kimiko?” Peters asked.

“Yes.” It was nothing but the truth.

“Hm. That’s a little unfortunate.”

“Is there a way I can improve?” The question spilled from her lips as quickly as responding to a standard question in an interview. She hadn’t thought about it, just knew what she had to say.

“In a sense. It’s only unfortunate in that to be surprised means you’ve thought about it” His hand was on the small of her back, felt through her jacket, and he moved it in a slow circle, a reassuring pressure and warmth. “You remember how you feel in a Blank Page meeting?”

“Oh, yes.” Her breath caught, but rather than quickening as it normally did when something excited her, her breathing instead seemed to slow.

“You enjoy feeling that way, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And this, Kimiko, is a Blank Page meeting, even if it’s not yours.”

“Oh,” she said, and her voice seemed small as she did so. She wondered at it, but did not do so deeply.

“Your mind is a blank page,” he said.

“Yes,” she said simply.

“You are a Blank Page.”

Kimiko saw Shauna’s lips move as if she were silently repeating the statement. “Yes,” she said, but only because it seemed the correct response. She hadn’t really paid attention to what Peters had told her, and certainly hadn’t given thought to her reply.

“Kimiko, I want you to do as I tell you, without question. Will you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Go and stand by Shauna.”

Kimiko obeyed without word or question, stopping just a step behind Shauna, to her right. Shauna was a much taller woman, and seated, the top of her head was only a foot or so below Kimiko’s own.

It was odd to see Shauna actually owning all of her height, though. Kimiko knew there were people at the company who genuinely believed her to be taller than Shauna; one of them meekly turned in on herself, her body language apologetic over the space she took up, while the other demanded attention and projected authority, adding height to her stance as she did so.

Naturally, Kimiko’s gaze drifted up to the screen, which was still showing a screensaver, the lava-lamp style design Peters preferred. She had been smiling already, of course she had, but the warmth behind it intensified, along with a soft, melting warmth that seemed to settle deliciously just behind her forehead, as she watched.

“Ladies, you are Blank Pages,” he reminded them both gently.

“Yes,” they agreed, not quite at the same pace, but in chorus enough for all of that.

“This is a Blank Page meeting. I will be giving you instructions here, and I wish you to follow them, for the good of the company. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” they said again, and perhaps Kimiko’s response was a little faster in coming, for their speech almost exactly overlapped.

“That’s good. Kimiko, bend forward and kiss Shauna, without blocking her view of the screen. For Kintech.”

Wordlessly, Kimiko obeyed, her arms swaying limply down as she leaned forward, as drowsily ineffectual as they had been since the meeting had started. Shauna’s lips did not move, but the softness of them lingered on her own as she straightened back up.

“Shauna, physical affection from Kimiko brings you pleasure. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“But you do now?”

“Yes.”

“Kimiko, repeat your last instruction.”

Kimiko did exactly as instructed. This time she felt the other woman’s lips smile under her own, and the flickering affection of her tongue was able to slip between them in their slight parting. She met another tongue-tip on the way, and her lips and tongue seemed to tingle as she straightened up. She had brought a Kintech worker pleasure. That was good.

“Shauna, you enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want Kimiko to please you more often?”

Shauna didn’t answer immediately. Kimiko knew that it felt good to be pleased, and thought that she would have agreed immediately if their roles were reversed. “For Kintech,” Shauna said at last.

Kimiko didn’t understand, but her lips, still carrying the softness of the other woman’s, would not shape a word, her dizzy, drowsy mind would not form an inquiry.

“Then she will,” Peters said. “Both of you, strip topless.”

Kimiko couldn’t remember ever hearing that in a meeting before, but the rules were different for Blank Pages. She knew this to be true, even if she didn’t understand it.

She shrugged off her suit jacket, letting it fall to the floor, heedless of how it would land, her hands (which, now they had an objective to fulfil, no longer hung loosely but acted with brisk efficiency) already unbuttoning her blouse. She drew it back from her shoulders, pulled first one arm then the other free of it, and let go, moving on to her bra, which she unsnapped before drawing forward and releasing.

Then she straightened up, her arms dropping to her side again, heavy and helpless. (Helpless? That word made no sense. She didn’t need any help, not among her colleagues.)

Beside her, Shauna had been doing the same, a few moments slower overall perhaps due to her being seated and having to move awkwardly in some places to disrobe. Her bra lay where it had been shed, on the polished surface of the meeting room desk.

“Kimiko, stand behind Shauna,” Peters instructed. Kimiko took two quick steps to the left, her shallow heels catching the edge of her discarded blouse and drawing it along with her. Somehow the screen was even more fascinating and captivating just from that movement, placing herself directly in line with its surface, as if seeing it from even a slight angle meant it had less intensity.

“Tell me, Kimiko. Do you ever play with your own breasts?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Why?”

“It makes my cumming better when I masturbate,” she answered flatly. “And with one ex, I needed it to get me over the line.” Which was more than she would have admitted in any situation, if she had not been a Blank Page at the time she was asked. Even the previous question had been more than she would otherwise have answered.

“So not just for the titillation of another,” Peters said, and had Kimiko been thinking at that point she would have wondered why his tone as he did so sounded like her response had answered another question for him. “Do you like having your tits played with by others?”

“Sometimes.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Whether they’re any good,” she answered in the same empty tone. “Whether I’m in the mood.”

“Are you attracted to women?”

“No.”

“Did you enjoy kissing Shauna?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I was bringing pleasure to a colleague.”

“Shauna,” Peters said, changing his tack, “do you enjoy having your tits played with?”

“Yes.”

“Always?”

“Usually.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Nobody gets that far unless I think they know what they’re doing. Or I’m drunk. But sometimes I guess wrong and they’ve never cared to learn.”

“Are you attracted to women?”

“No.”

“Did you enjoy being kissed by Kimiko?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“We were collaborating for the company.”

Peters gave a snort of surprised laughter.

“Marvellous,” he said. “Kimiko, play with Shauna’s tits. For her pleasure, not yours.”

Kimiko’s hands lifted and moved forward. It seemed to her as if they were moving of their own accord, though they surely couldn’t be. They slid over Shauna’s shoulders, brushing gently against the warm skin, and ran lightly down the slope of her breasts to find where they swelled.

There she began to experiment. This was not an operation that needed clear thought; she went at first by her own instinct on what was needed, and as Shauna began to respond in shortened breaths, gasps, moans, and in the reflexive ways she moved her body against Kimiko’s hands, she started to develop an understanding of what would bring this colleague more pleasure.

“Now, then, ladies,” Peters said, once Kimiko was obviously firmly embarked on this journey, “I am going to say some things to you that I want you to understand and accept as truth. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” they both answered, speaking with a comfort found in the near-unison of their responses.

“I need to know that what you understand and accept as truth is right. So when I say these things to you, you will repeat them back to me. What will you do?”

“I will repeat them back to you,” they both acknowledged.

“If I do not specifically name one of you, I am giving both of you the same truth. When that happens, I want you to acknowledge your truth together by speaking as a pair. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Their speech was synchronising, the hesitation of one and the eagerness of the other drifting together.

“How will you acknowledge a shared truth?”

“We will speak as a pair.”

“That’s very good. You are ready to begin.”

“We are ready to begin.”

“Your superiors at Kintech know better than you.”

“Our superiors at Kintech know better than us,” they chorused, almost perfectly aligned. The only difference in their speech was in their accents.

“You must accept the judgement of your superiors.”

“We must accept the judgement of our superiors.”

“You are always happy with the judgement of your superiors.”

“We are always happy with the judgement of our superiors.”

“Shauna, you are Kimiko’s superior.”

“I am Kimiko’s superior,” Kimiko heard the other woman say.

“Shauna, it is your responsibility to make Kimiko a valuable Kintech employee.”

“It is my responsibility to make Kimiko a valuable Kintech employee.”

Kimiko’s fingers twitched slightly at that, for what reason she was not primed to investigate, and she tugged lightly on Shauna’s nipples. The other woman’s voice wobbled and cracked on the world ‘employee’, and Kimiko felt a jolt of bliss run up and down her spine, leaving a delicious tingling between her thighs and at the back of her head.

“Shauna, your reward for doing this will be Kimiko.”

“My reward for doing this will be Kimiko.”

“Shauna, you will start to see Kimiko as a suitable lover.”

“I will start to see Kimiko as a suitable lover.”

“Shauna, Kimiko being a woman doesn’t stop you being attracted to her.”

“Kimiko being a woman doesn’t stop me being attracted to her.” Shauna straightened up, an action which pushed her tits more firmly into Kimiko’s hands. Emboldened, she redoubled her efforts, operating on a purely instinctive level.

“Shauna, you will start to fantasise about Kimiko’s tongue in your pussy.”

“I will start to fantasise about Kimiko’s tongue in my pussy.” There had been no hesitation at all. The image of a wall being built, bricks stacked on bricks, crossed Kimiko’s mind, but she wasn’t really thinking and so she didn’t notice.

“Shauna, you will imagine having complete control over Kimiko in your bedroom, and it will excite you.”

“I will imagine having complete control over Kimiko in my bedroom, and it will excite me.”

“Shauna, you will fantasise about using Kimiko in a private office, and it will arouse you.”

“I will fantasise about using Kimiko in a private office, and it will arouse me.”

“That’s very good, Shauna. Kimiko, tell her she’s very good.”

“You are very good.” It came out completely flat, devoid of affect, and Kimiko might have regretted that if she had thought about it for any length of time.

“Kimiko,” Peters went on briskly, as if he had reached the point in a negotiation that went without saying, “you are Shauna’s inferior.”

“I am Shauna’s inferior.”

“Kimiko, it is your responsibility to make Shauna a more productive Kintech employee.”

“It is my responsibility to make Shauna a more productive Kintech employee. Productive and valuable, Kimiko knew, were different. She did not try to understand the difference. She did not think about it.

“Kimiko, your reward for this will be to be given over to Shauna.”

“My reward for this will be to be given over to Shauna.”

“Kimiko, you will start to see Shauna as a possible lover.”

“I will start to see Shauna as a possible lover.”

“Kimiko, Shauna being a woman doesn’t stop you from being attracted to her.”

“Shauna being a woman doesn’t stop me from being attracted to her.”

“Kimiko, you will start to fantasise about worshipping Shauna’s pussy with your mouth.”

“I will start to fantasise about worshipping Shauna’s pussy with my mouth.” Her mouth, which had grown dry, watered again at the prospect. How delightful that would be. She hadn’t imagined it before, for some reason.

“Kimiko, you will imagine being under Shauna’s complete control in a bedroom, and it will excite you.”

“I will imagine being under Shauna’s complete control in a bedroom, and it will excite me.”

“Kimiko, you will fantasise about being used by Shauna in your private office, and it will arouse you.”

“I will fantasise about being used by Shauna in your private office, and it will arouse me.”

“That’s very good, Kimiko. Shauna, tell her she’s a good girl.”

“You are a good girl,” Shauna answered. It might have been a tranquil tone of voice, floating along on the pleasure Kimiko’s fingers were bringing her, but for the raggedness of her breathing as the pleasure built up.

Kimiko couldn’t see Shauna’s face (in point of fact, though she didn’t know it, she couldn’t look away from the screen in front of her) but a picture formed in her mind, those dusky cheeks still darker with her flush of arousal. She could feel her own matching flush.

“Now,” Peters said, changing his topic smoothly, “Kimiko, you will stop fondling your superior.”

Kimiko obeyed silently. Without a further instruction to follow, her hands dropped back to hang limply down below her hips. Shauna subsided back into her chair with a soft sigh somewhere between desire and loss.

“Kimiko, dress your superior again.”

She complied, because she was compliant. It was easier fastening the bra strap into place when you were standing behind the person wearing it. It was more difficult to button up the blouse. Tucking the blouse into the waistband of Shauna’s pantsuit would have embarrassed Kimiko, but she was a Blank Page, and so it didn’t.

“Kimiko, dress yourself.”

Once again, Kimiko silently obeyed. Peters settled himself into the chair on the other side of the desk and fiddled with his laptop.

“Now, ladies,” he continued. “You may not realise this, but you’re not awake at the moment. You’re in a state of hypnotic trance. In a few moments I’m going to shut off the program and the screen behind me will revert. At that time, you are permitted to allow yourself to wake up from your trance.

“It is important that you do not remember what has happened over the course of this meeting after you wake up. Not yet. So you will hide that information from yourself. The part of the meeting you will remember is the part I will conduct once you have awoken, and you will think that this suits for the whole meeting. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s very good. Even the fact you arrived in this meeting at different times will not confuse the issue. You will simply allow the question to pass through your mind without explanation. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“You’re both doing very well. Now, I also have a simple rule for you both, and that is this: until I give you permission, anything you see take place in my private office may not be spoken of. You will not even consider discussing it, not even in private. Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. Everything else will have to wait for your next meeting.” He fiddled with something at his computer, and the lava lamp disappeared, revealing the company website beneath. The Kintech Global logo, animated, revolved slowly on its axis.

Kimiko blinked several times before looking first at Shauna, and then at VP Peters, with a broad smile. Glancing back over her shoulder, Shauna answered it with the warmest smile Kimiko had ever seen on her lips, and a shiver went down her spine.

“Well, ladies,” VP Peters said cheerfully, “I’m going to keep this brief. We’ll have a couple more meetings as we work on this situation, but we have a preliminary decision, and I’m happy to relay that to you both so we can look at putting it into action soon. Alright?”

He gave them both a brisk smile. Kimiko felt like that smile might hide more than it revealed, but it didn’t matter; in either case, he was her superior, and she was in any case loyal to Kintech Global and personally loyal to him. She nodded, and saw Shauna nodding too.

“So. As you will both know, Kimiko was reported as a roadblock to employee satisfaction and to employee productivity. The problem was reported as being that Kimiko was a bitch.”

Kimiko was no fool, and she immediately seized on the ‘as you will both know’ phrasing. It might have been deliberate on Peters’ part, testing the waters. It might also have been an accidental slip. In either case, it was a clear admission that Shauna had been one of those who had complained about Kimiko’s behaviour.

“I am trying not to be anymore,” she said softly. It was silly to feel defensive in a Blank Page meeting, she knew. But surely anyone would push back on this? It wasn’t being a bitch to object, it was simply human nature, wasn’t it?

“I know,” Peters continued, gently. “We also investigated the value of your work, both of you. From a comparative standpoint.”

Shauna looked over her shoulder again. Kimiko’s eyes met the other woman’s. They were, of course, both smiling - after all, they were both professionals - but she saw cautious uncertainty in Shauna’s eyes, and she imagined the other woman could read the same in hers. Where this was going, neither of them were sure.

“So. In a few days, once I have buy-in within your department, I will be changing both of your job roles,” he said. “Shauna, you will occupy Kimiko’s current position. And her current office.”

Kimiko rested a hand on the other woman’s shoulder and squeezed lightly, hoping her congratulatory intent came across properly. “That’s great,” she said. “Congratulations! You are very good.”

“Will Kimiko take my place, then?” Shauna asked. Peters shook his head, just once.

“No,” he said. “Her team - your team, once this has been effected - will have to do as much with one fewer person. If they are micro-managed less, they should be more productive.”

It was a test, in short. Kimiko understood that; she would have to stop being the limiter that Kimiko apparently had been. And if Shauna wasn’t able to do that, it would open two questions; whether she should have been promoted to Kimiko’s role, or whether Kimiko in fact had been doing the right thing.

She would have to give Shauna every support to make sure this was successful.

“I’ll try, sir,” Shauna said. “Thank you.”

“Well, that’s what this is all about. And you’ll have support, anyway. I’m assigning Kimiko to you.”

Kimiko frowned, confused. “I thought you said I wasn’t taking her place?”

“You’re not.” Peters waved a hand airily, dismissing the question. “I’m not assigning you to her team, I’m assigning you to her. Aside from one task, actually, which you and I will need to speak about again soon.”

Shauna and Kimiko exchanged looks of bewilderment. When they turned their attention back to Peters, he saw their faces and laughed. “OK, OK. Let me make this a little clearer. Kimiko’s new job title will be Personal Assistant.”

“Oh.” Shauna sat straighter in her chair as she thought that through. “My own PA, huh?”

Kimiko felt oddly squirmy, butterflies in her belly, a lightheaded sense of possibility setting in. And yet the possibility was tinged with a slightly sour edge. She wasn’t a PA. She was a manager. She was better than a PA.

Those three facts spiralled round in her head, over and over, in very little time, and they made the change sour.

But - Kimiko frowned, her brow furrowing over the professional smile she maintained as a loyal Kintech worker - were they facts? She had believed them for a long, long time. She held them close to herself - in fact until the idea of her as a PA was raised she hadn’t realised how deeply she believed herself to be better than PAs - but this was VP Peters saying she was the right fit to be Shauna’s PA.

And he was her superior. In fact, he was Shauna’s superior, which made him twice Kimiko’s superior.

If he judged her PA material, then she was, wasn’t she?

It was like coming out from under a cloud into the sunlight, or the moment where you realise a pressure headache has lifted smoothly. The moment she looked at it from his position, her distaste and confusion melted away like it had never been.

She sighed softly, a moment of pure contentment. “That’s what I’ve been doing wrong,” she murmured, too quietly to be clear to either of the others. It was a shame she hadn’t had a PA while in what was to be Shauna’s role, but then that was the point of the Blank Page meetings - they identified problems and found solutions. Evidently the problem hadn’t just been Kimiko being a bitch; she also hadn’t had the support to sensibly micromanage.

“This won’t go public until we’re ready,” Peters told them. “A lot of the company is still resistant to Blank Page.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Kimiko exclaimed. Shauna nodded, but slowly. After a moment, Kimiko remembered that Shauna had been very resistant.

So had she, of course, but her awakening had come earlier; she had already had time to understand what a good thing Blank Page was, not just for the company but also for its employees.

“Ridiculous or not, it’s true,” Peters said, and Shauna gave an mm of thoughtful agreement.

Now that she thought about it, Shauna had been resistant to the idea the last time Kimiko had spoken to her, which had been earlier the same day.

Had she only come round on it that afternoon?

“When do we announce it?” Shauna asked.

If she’d only just come round on it, it was impressive she’d realised what Blank Page could really mean so quickly. Kimiko put her hand on Shauna’s shoulder and squeezed, hoping her superior would understand it to be compassion rather than any kind of show of dominance. She wouldn’t do that to Shauna. She couldn’t.

“In a week, perhaps two,” Peters said, but Kimiko wasn’t listening. She was unpicking her own train of thought. “I need enough of the company to be in line with Blank Page before we announce the bigger changes, and this change of role is one of them. We’ll still get enough comments from outside once you both update your LinkedIns.”

That thought stayed with her, probably longer than it should have. She was in any case only half-listening to the others.

A thought can usually be summed up in words, but there is more to it as it passes through the mind. Feeling, and the shape of an idea, and the conviction behind it. Uncertainties waver, but sometimes you know as you think something that you truly believe it. Sometimes it can be the first time you realise how sure you are of something. And Kimiko realised she was quite convinced that she couldn’t undermine or overpower Shauna.

Not, in any case, that she wanted to. Why would she?

Peters clapped his hands together, clearly satisfied with something. Kimiko’s attention immediately returned to the scene in front of her, rather than the shape of her own thoughts. ”Right, then,” Peters said, and rose from his chair. “I think this has been a very successful meeting.”

“Yes,” Kimiko agreed, just as Shauna was saying “Definitely.” Peters gave them both a smile as he opened the door to his private office.

“Harriet, sweetheart?” he began. His opposite number in HR, still topless as she had been while Kimiko had been seated in there, looked up and turned to face them, her expression placid, docile, attentive.

She didn’t look like David Peters’ opposite number, Kimiko thought, and then she realised what the rest of that thought process said, what she did look like, and the excitement fluttering in her stomach redoubled.

Harriet looked like Peters’ PA.

“Make these ladies a Blank Page appointment for the end of the week,” David instructed her, and Harriet nodded and said “Of course, sir,” and turned back to her laptop and Kimiko realised she was quivering, her whole body, though nowhere more so than in her thighs.

The meeting over, they left the meeting room and headed back to what was, for another week or two, Kimiko’s office, where Shauna invited herself in, and where the two of them talked through a lot of things they each thought the other should know, but where neither of them mentioned the way Harriet had been dressed or what private speculations they might have about it.

They couldn’t.

*

The next day, VP Peters knocked on what was still, for the next little while, Kimiko’s office door and invited himself inside. He was carrying a pen drive and, when Kimiko rose to greet him and favoured him with a fractional bow of respect, his smile grew wider. “Good to see you again,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind me dropping by?”

“Not at all, sir. My office is your office.” It had been an almost instinctive response.

“Well, that’s not exactly how the hierarchy has it,” Peters said with a chuckle. “But then, we’re revising the hierarchy now in any case.”

“Yes, sir.”

He dropped into her visitor’s chair with a smile. Kimiko remained standing, her hands clasped in front of her belt buckle.

It took a few moments for Peters to register that she wasn’t sitting down, and he waved her to her chair. Kimiko sat, satisfied. He was her superior; it was his right to waive formalities if he chose, but it was certainly not her right to presume that protocol could be ignored. To do so would show no respect, and Kimiko wasn’t willing to do that.

“You know,” he said, “you’ve been a relatively simple mess to untangle.”

“Sir?”

“Well.” He shrugged expansively. He had things he wanted to tell her, information he wanted to divulge. It was, she imagined, information she didn’t technically need to know, but it was something he wanted to show off knowing. She could hardly suggest this was unwise, even if it was against confidentiality regulations. And in any case, she felt tremendous personal loyalty to the man. Regulations were his to override if he chose.

“You were, according to a couple of your staff, a bitch. One other talked about micromanagement. And obviously there’s your own secret, the contact with Interlogistics.”

Kimiko nodded to show she was listening, and she kept her expression clear, so that he didn’t see her confusion at that last part. The Interlogistics double-cross was because she was loyal to the company. It had nothing to do with the rest of this.

“Solving the problem mostly involved figuring out who should take your place and what to do with you. And of course, we’ve now more or less done both. There’s a whole mess in Sales, turns out that our top salesman is only top of the pecking order because three people who should be doing better than him have all been sabotaging each other’s deals. Harriet and I are still trying to find a solution there. And it turns out our recruiter liaison has probably cost us several good team members because they haven’t listened to the technicians…”

He shrugged. “Anyway. None of that’s relevant here. You’ve had a little time to think over my decision now, right?”

“Yes, sir.” She nodded her head, flashing him a bright smile. She wasn’t sure whether he preferred her attention on him, as she was trying, or whether he’d rather she bowed her head. Shauna had already told her that when she assumed Kimiko’s role, Kimiko would need to pay her full attention.

She’d accompanied the sentence with a shimmy that sent a shiver down Kimiko’s spine just to remember it, and which Kimiko had been thinking about most of the night.

“Any complaints?”

“Of course not, sir.” She let that hang in the air a moment then nodded again, a conscious affirmation of her words. “I know your decision will be for the best.”

“That’s very good,” Peters said. There was something in the way he said it that seemed somehow achingly familiar to Kimiko, though she’d never heard him say it that way before. She smiled wider, suddenly very aware of how happy she was with her lot in life. His praise sounded like the feel of Shauna’s lips on hers…

…not that she knew what that felt like, she realised suddenly. But the two ideas seemed associated with one another. She flushed, embarrassed to be thinking such a thing, doubly so in front of a superior.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Not at all. I know how important it is to you that Kintech prospers.” He leaned forward, and set the pen drive he’d been holding down on her desk. He placed one tip on the desk first, before deliberately guiding it down flat with one thumb. He had made something simple into something flamboyant and eye-catching. “You know what’s in this?”

“I can guess, sir.” She picked it up and loaded it into her computer. “This is the alternative data for Interlogistics.”

He nodded, smiling warmly. “Just wrong enough to ruin their development,” he said, “without being wrong enough for them to realise quickly. I wanted to give them a virus, but I’ve been told we couldn’t guarantee it would get through.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When is your next scheduled upload?”

“Tomorrow, sir.” She nodded briskly, as if she were already a personal assistant. “I’ll make sure everything goes off on time.”

“Well, good.” He rose. “I’ve had to speak to a lot of our security staff, you know. Put them in Blank Page. They had assured me something like this couldn’t happen.”

And on that perplexing note - after all, he’d helped orchestrate this - he left her office. Kimiko transferred the information onto her phone, and then went back to her work.