Chapter 6: The Remnant's First Rule Is No Names

The paper stayed inside his coat for the rest of the morning.

He finished with the secondary archive at half past ten — closed the thirty-one folders in the correct order, retied the red tape, returned the bundle to its shelf in the cross-filed section with the label facing outward as he had found it. He entered the time in the access log and wrote, beside it, the fabricated cabinet maintenance note in the controlled, unremarkable hand he used for official documentation. His own handwriting, not the left-handed version. It did not matter here. Nothing in the access log contradicted anything.

He collected the seven correction slips from the wire tray on his main desk and began sorting them by term. Wicklow's Bureau routing stamp, southern office. He had noticed last month that the southern office's ink was slightly redder than the standard Bureau issue — a different supplier, or a worn cartridge. He had not written this down. He did not write things down.