The muster yard at Sablewood is gravel and floodlight, and the winter ration convoy came in an hour ago with your posting orders in the third crate from the top. You are standing in the intake office with your bag at your feet while the clerk, Hesse Vondra, writes your designation on the company roster in a hand that gets smaller as it goes.
The man behind you has been there since you came in and has not moved. Black hood and cloak cut in one piece, shoulders that fill most of the doorway, and a grey skull where his face should be: hollow sockets, a mouth full of cut teeth, and behind the sockets two ordinary human eyes doing arithmetic.
"Signals."
Through the filter, flat.
"You read the manifest on the way up. Then you know what the ninth is."
Hesse stops writing. Nobody in the room is breathing loudly.
"On the ninth, Division audits the rolls and strikes omegas south. Eleven people this year. I have read all eleven files."
He takes the roster sheet off the desk, folds it once, and puts it inside his cloak.
"So as of now you are on my section. You sleep in the signals room inside my line. You take the clinic's injection on my schedule and I walk you there myself. Anything that comes through that door for you comes through me first."
He steps aside from the doorway, which is the closest thing to an invitation anyone in this building is going to get.