When they were done, James saw for the first time how the world was talking about him.

He turned the television sound back up, low, and his phone had been returned to him with the seal’s monitoring built into it.

The headlines did not agree on what he was.

"—the Bureau confirming this morning that the events at the Ashford Grand are now part of an investigation into foreign interference—"

"—James Ganner released under supervised conditions, a decision already drawing sharp criticism from—"

"—the United Kingdom continues to deny any official role, calling the delegate’s actions those of one man—"

"—Ganner Corp has welcomed the investigation while reiterating that its former chairman acted alone—"

And under all of it, the public tore itself in half.

@dublin_mam_of_3: they tried to STEAL an Irish kid and we’re debating whether to keep him. cop on

@CrownAndCountry: he killed a man and raised corpses on a livestream. you want that walking your street?

@redbrick_ronan: national asset one channel, monster the next channel. pick a lane

@just_here_lurking: england doesn’t even have to come back for him. they just have to make us scared enough to hand him over

James read that last one twice.

That was the whole strategy, laid out by a stranger online better than any briefing had. England did not need to send another Paladin. They only needed Ireland to grow frightened enough of its own Challenger to give him up on its own.

A news segment shifted to the Tower, and James left it running.

"—Emerald Spire confirming today that Ireland’s frontline guilds have now cleared as far as Floor 19," the anchor said. "Attention is turning to Floor 20, widely treated as the first true threshold floor, where clear conditions remain unknown."

A second voice came in over footage of the Emerald Spire crest.

"What’s notable is that Marcus Hale will not personally lead the first Floor 20 entry. Emerald Spire is instead deploying a specialist advance team, all cleared to Floor 19, to map the floor’s mechanics first. It’s standard practice at this level. You don’t send your strongest Challenger blind through an unknown door — you find out what’s behind it before he walks through it."

James watched it without saying anything.

Marcus Hale had built his whole name on being the man brave enough to go first. And here, at the one door no one had opened, even he sent other people through it ahead of himself.

He did not say it out loud. He just filed it where he filed things like it.

Finn called that evening on a Bureau-approved line.

The screen showed him leaned back somewhere at the estate, flat-faced as ever.

"They put a leash on you," Finn said.

"Seal." James held his wrist up to the camera. "Tells them if I raise anything."

"A leash." Finn did not smile, but something in his voice was close to it. "Suits you. You’ve always needed one."

James let that go, which for the two of them was the same as laughing.

Finn did not act like he was talking to the thing the news kept describing. He talked to James the way he always had, and that was the point of the call, even if neither of them would have said so.

"Maeve rang," Finn said. "While you were inside."

"And?"

"She said Floor 15 told her enough." Finn shrugged. "She doesn’t want to stay borrowed for one floor anymore. If we’re still climbing, she wants in. Properly. Not a hire. A member."

James frowned. "Why now? After all of this?"

"I asked her the same thing." Finn looked off-camera for a second. "She said if she was going to pick a team to climb with, she wanted to know what they did when it went bad before she signed on. Now she knows." He looked back. "That’s probably why she chose now and not before. Anyone can join when it’s easy."

James thought about that and found he didn’t have an argument with it.

"Tell her yes," he said.

Finn nodded once.

"You saw the news," James said. "Your father’s sending an advance team into Floor 20."

Finn’s face didn’t move. "Course he is."

"Thought going first was his whole thing."

"It’s his whole thing in the footage." Finn looked off-camera again. "Different door, that one. He’ll walk through after somebody else finds out what’s on the other side. He’s always been good at picking which doors are worth his neck."

James let it sit. There was a lot under it, and Finn was not going to say any of it, and James was not going to ask.

"See you up there," Finn said, and ended the call.

O’Shea came back one more time before the night ended, alone, and sat across from James at the kitchen table.

"I’ll tell you why I’m doing this," he said, "so you don’t waste energy wondering. It isn’t charity, and it isn’t trust. It’s the only move on the board that works."

James waited.

"If I hide you away, England wins the story without lifting a finger. You become the monster so dangerous that even Ireland was afraid to use him. That’s the picture they want, and a containment cell paints it for them." He folded his hands on the table. "But if you climb — under supervision, clean, with your team beside you, on camera doing the thing you’re actually good at — then the country has something else to look at. A Challenger clearing floors for Ireland instead of a necromancer dropping a building on it."

"So I’m a press release now."

"You’re a man with one way out, and it runs up." O’Shea did not flinch from it. "I’m not going to insult you by dressing it up. One clean floor, done right, with the whole country watching, does more for you than every word I say from a podium. That’s the truth of where you’re standing."

James didn’t like being a tool. He liked the cell less.

"Floor 16," he said.

"Floor 16," O’Shea agreed. "When you’re ready, you give us notice, and you go up the way we agreed. Not before."

Later, the house went quiet, and James sat alone in the dark of the front room.

It was quiet, but it was not home. There were agents past the door and agents past the window, his mother and Nyra were down the hall trying to sleep in a bed that wasn’t theirs, and the street outside belonged to the Bureau.

He opened the Tower interface.

The seal on his wrist pulsed cold the second he did, a small reminder that someone was watching the prompt come up at the same time he was.

[FLOOR 16 — AVAILABLE]

[ENTRY REQUIRES REGISTERED PARTY]

[BUREAU NOTICE REQUIRED]

He looked at it for a long time.

Team Zero was not what it had been. Finn was still there. Maeve was coming in for real now. Ronan and Cillian would climb because they always climbed. The whole country would be watching the feed. And somewhere across the water, England was sitting still, waiting for him to frighten his own people into doing their work for them.