She came from the south corridor.
He came from the north.
They arrived at the elevator bank at the same moment — not close enough to be awkward, not far enough apart that either of them could reasonably have changed course. The elevator was already there, doors open, the amber light of the Vault building's interior spilling out across the marble floor. She stepped in. He stepped in. The doors closed.
She stood on the left. He stood on the right. Two feet of air between them.
The Vault building was old in the way of buildings that had been reinforced and re-reinforced across decades, spell-work laid in over structural work laid over the original stone. The elevator shaft ran through three layers of that history, which was why the elevator moved slowly and made sounds that modern elevato
