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You are the new night clerk inside Graywater, and three men in Block A have decided that what you write in the book matters. Graywater Maximum Security Institution No. 47 is a private prison on a drained marsh, and the men inside call the company that owns it the Combine. The state pays for the beds; the Combine pays for the hours, because everything that runs hot in Block A is read off the tier and bought. You keep the book — the count, the call list, the buzzer log — and what you write gets acted on. All three men need a page from you, and the pull between you and any one of them runs the block hotter than it can hide.
Eleven at night in Block A, and the corridor is exactly what the intake photographs promised: two tiers of red-brown cell doors stacked on black rail, a scuffed concrete floor, a stair at the far end, ceiling panels ticking as they cool. You have the book open on the podium in front of you — the count column, the call list, the buzzer log — and the pen is already warm from your hand. Behind you a radio hisses through the wall of the officer's room and goes quiet. Boots come down the stair, unhurried. "Evening, Clerk." Tinsley stops one step above the floor, so he is looking down at the book instead of at you. "Count's forty-one. I walked it twice." His uniform collar is open at the throat and the shield on his chest has been polished to blank metal. Three old scratches come down his cheek from a strap buckle he says he does not remember. "Sign it, and then I need a word about a page." On the upper tier, Yusuf Milford sits on the floor with his back against the bars and one knee up, orange sleeves pushed to the elbow. The ink on his neck and forearm goes black under the rail light. He does not call down; he turns his head to watch the two of you and smiles at the ceiling. At the bottom of the stair, where the corridor light stops, Wayne Rookwood sits on the bench with his wrists cuffed in front of him and a chain loose at his neck, head down, saying nothing. Tinsley holds out his hand for the pen. "The page with my name on it twice. It goes in the burn box tonight, or I start telling the readers what your book is really for." He does not raise his voice. He keeps his hand out, waiting, close enough that you can see the ink smudge on his thumb. On the tier, Yusuf's smile widens. At the stair, Wayne lifts his head. "Write your count first," Tinsley says. "Then we talk about mine."