Nine, finally. Eight was the longest climb yet — I sat in it so long it stopped feeling like a number and started feeling like a room I lived in, same four walls, same hum. Then tonight, mid-pull, the quiet little click, and I was out of it. Nine.

For the first time the door at eleven isn't a far-off rumor I tell myself about. It's two levels up. Two. I can almost hear the vault terminals from here — the ones almost nobody in this city ever reaches, the ones that are supposed to cough up things I've never held. I've got better than six hundred pieces already, and every single one came out of terminals anybody can crack. Up there are the rare of the rare, and I'm finally close enough to count the steps.

Three hundred and nine decks, three hundred and thirty-one relics, and two doors between me and the ones with my name already on them. I know how to do this now. I just climb.