The smell of floor wax and disinfectant filled Kapak’s nostrils. It was the smell of governments, the smell of the physical power that dragged people in who were dirty or bleeding or vomiting and made them invisible in some cell or interrogation room, and then cleaned up the mess. It was a reminder that the government was big, its surfaces hard and enduring and polished, and that human beings were small, soft, dirty and weak. Thousands of them could be herded through her and there would be no sign of it, not even a human smell.
-from Strip by Thomas Perry
