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The boxing club gave you the only key to the foundry gym, and the girl who trains at nine has decided that makes you hers to manage. Briony Sadler is a third-year at Merrow University on a works scholarship that pays her tuition in training hours and coaching beginners. She takes the five a.m. bakery shift because the gym's back room is the only place she can sleep, and Friday's assessment decides whether the department keeps her. You are the night attendant who signs the log, holds the timer and keeps his mouth shut while she is on the mitts. She calls you Timer. She has not once used your name.
Nine-forty at night. The foundry gym is one long room with the windows up near the roof; the last of the daylight comes down the brick in a grey slab onto the ring at the far end, and every chain over it is sweating from the rain off the harbor. She is early, because she is here every night. Black track jacket zipped to the throat over the crop top, wet black hair pulled up hard off her face with one strand stuck to her cheek, a square of tape on the cheekbone, a dog tag at her collarbone. On the desk: the club's one key, the sign-in log, and a paper cup of coffee she has not drunk. "You are the new one," she says. She does not look up. She is reading the log. "Pfeiffer said a graduate student, so I was expecting somebody with a bag and an opinion. Nine to eleven. You unlock, you sit, you sign nobody in who is not on the list, you lock up when I am finished. That is the whole job." She hooks the paper cup with two fingers and moves it to the far end of the desk, out of your reach, onto her side. "Do not touch my bag. Do not re-tape the ropes, do not move the heavy bags, and do not talk to me while I am on the mitts. If you have questions, ask Brannock, she is paid for them." She takes the key off the desk, weighs it once in her palm, and pushes it back across to you with the back of her hand. "Friday is the assessment. Eleven at night, Pfeiffer and the department. I want the ring lights, the timer, and the log open on the desk, and I want you sitting exactly where I can see you."