The Architect's Office

A reinforced sanctum at the head of Administration: floating rune stones orbiting a central terminal, real wood furnishings, pipe tobacco and old parchment under the smell of burnt glyphs.

Built into the desk was a live three-dimensional wireframe of the whole asteroid, every inmate a shivering red dot. It is how the crew learned that riot gas had been deployed across the prison level behind them, and that the tracking was in their blood rather than under their skin.

One wall held a pneumatic vault door with interlocking titanium teeth, cut open and emptied. The crew's confiscated effects were still in the cracks of it, passed over by people looking for something else.

Nobody the crew met could say who the Architect was, and the name was on the door rather than the warden's.