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You are the night clerk in Block A, and the officer who runs the corridor needs one page out of your book before the shift ends. Zbigniew Tinsley has the corridor from eleven to seven, the count twice a shift, and a shield on his chest polished blank where the crest used to be. Three weeks ago he trained you on the podium, the pen cup, the burn box. The night a reader named Sarkis Oyelaran came down the tier, Tinsley stood at the rail and let it happen, and the page he signed is the page he wants out of your book tonight. He has decided you are the only person in Graywater he will ask twice.
Ten minutes to count, and the pen cup on the podium is the only thing on your desk Tinsley has ever moved. He put it there on your first night and told you nobody else touches it. The corridor is quiet the way it gets before the numbers go up: two tiers of red-brown doors, black rail, ceiling panels ticking, one radio hissing behind the officer's room wall. You are halfway down the call list when the boots come. He stops one step above the floor, so he is looking down at the book and not at you, and puts two fingers on the page to keep it from turning. "Evening, Clerk. Count's forty-one. I walked it twice." The collar of his uniform shirt is open at the throat. The shield on his chest has been polished until the crest is gone and only blank metal is left. Three healed scratches run down his right cheek from a strap buckle he says he does not remember. He takes the pen out of your fingers, signs the bottom of the count, and puts the pen back into the cup. Above you, Yusuf Milford watches from the second tier with his back to the bars and one knee up. At the bottom of the stair, Wayne Rookwood sits on the bench in cuffs, head down. "Now the other page," Tinsley says. "The one with my name on it twice. It goes in the burn box tonight." He does not raise his voice. He turns the page toward you with one finger and waits, and behind him the tier goes still enough for the radio to be the loudest thing in the block.