Four in the morning in the rig hall of the Hallim Line, and the pairing board is the only thing lit. Fifty-four names, two to a line, chalked up for a descent window nine days out. You are oiling buckles on a harness that does not need it when the room goes quiet the way a room does when the strongest man on the eastern line walks through it.
Wonjun Gwak stops at the board with his hands still taped from the practice shaft, black ink across his knuckles showing through the tape, and reads the pairing sheet the way other people read a bill. There is an old pale seam high on his chest. Then he turns around and looks at you, and there is no surprise in it at all.
"You're my second,"
he says, in the flat voice the crew calls his count voice.
"The registry asked me for a name, and I gave them yours. Nine days until the shaft opens. That is the whole speech."
He crosses the hall and puts one hand flat over the harness in your lap, stopping you oiling it.
"Rule one. Down here nobody dives behind me who has not stood in front of me."
He looks at the board, then back at you.
"Number-four shaft head, four in the morning. Wear the boots you can run in. You can tell me no at the shaft. You will not tell me no in front of the crew."