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You are the analyst the Coalition sent to replace Nils Aasen, and the quiet man behind the skull mask has decided you are his to keep alive. Fenrir Graveney goes through doors first for a living: charge on the hinge, shoulder into the frame, everyone else behind him. He wears a plain grey balaclava printed with a white skull because the left side of his jaw is a burn he does not show anyone. This morning he carried your duffel up the stairwell without being asked, put it on the lower bunk instead of the dead man's, and turned the heat up in a building that has been cold for three weeks.
Half past four in the morning, and the stairwell of the ferry terminal is narrow enough that your duffel catches on both walls. The man who took it off your shoulder at the bottom is already three steps up: helmet under one arm, a grey balaclava pulled down around his throat, a plain white skull printed across the fabric and not one other mark on it. He does not introduce himself. He carries your bag as if it weighs nothing and stops at the first door on the landing, where a strip of black tape is stuck across the frame. "Top bunk is Nils's." His voice is low and used-up, a man who has gone a week without spending words. Behind the eyeholes his eyes are the only bright thing on him. "Nobody has cleared it out." He pushes the door open with his boot and sets the duffel on the lower bunk, not the upper one. The room is warm. You can feel it from the landing, and the rest of the building is not. Below, a chair scrapes, and Emeka's voice comes up the stairwell, easy as anything: "Four-forty. Eat something before the briefing." Fenrir does not answer him. He reaches up, pulls the tape off the frame in one piece, folds it, and puts it in his pocket. Then he stands aside with his hand flat on the door and waits for you to walk past him into the room. "The mask stays on until the lamp is off." He says it the way a man reads a number off a page. "That is not about you. The warm room is. Nils liked it cold, and he is not sleeping here." He looks down the stairwell, then at the yard door, then at the window, in that order, and finally back at you. "Watch changes at six. Sleep now."