As if to confirm the statement, the corridor ahead ended in what should have been a sealed door—the same black stone as every other surface, no visible mechanism, no handle, no seam that suggested it had ever been anything other than wall.
It opened as Tank reached it.
Not slowly. Not with the grinding reluctance of something that had been sealed for decades and was being asked to perform a function it had forgotten.
Smoothly, with the deliberate ease of something that had been waiting for exactly this arrival and had recognized it the moment it occurred. The stone simply was open where it had been closed, the transition seamless, the facility making no effort to explain itself.
Tank stopped for exactly one second on the other side of it.
