Lord Black escorted her and Bishop to a nondescript brick industrial building in Millbank, with an expansive view of the busy, noisy Thames, and held the door for them. As they stepped in, they heard a strange sound above them and a little pop, like that of a photographer’s flare, and as the door closed behind them, they noted a contraption with a paper ticker above the door that recorded the time, the numbers, and the silhouettes of the three forms in the door frame in an unembellished overexposed print upon the thin strip. “Not a bad idea for our offices,” Bishop said to Clara, who nodded and took in the open, cavernous three-story space before them, a metal stairwell connecting the floors in simple, industrial grandeur. Lord Black descended a stairwell and bid them follow him into a lower-ceilinged room with rows of long wooden tables and narrow windows looking out to the street, bars across the panes for protection. Not much light came in, but Clara deemed it a better work environment than a cellar—clearly better than the shuttered horror of the last Eterna work, and she marveled at the rows upon rows of small glass tubes, all layered with sediment, water, and various substances of provenance she could not determine.
