“Step outside,” said Papers, Please. A rustle of apprehension passed through the car. Aristide rose, put his book into his coat pocket, and shouldered his rucksack. Pointedly, he did not meet Cyril’s eyes. He hoped that Cyril wasn’t staring. Nobody else was—they didn’t want to get involved.

Outside the train the wind across the plains hit him like a wall. Machine Gun and Papers, Please marched him toward a tin-roofed shack that didn’t look like it ought to be standing against the onslaught. Barbed wire coiled around it like malevolent briars.

Saeger had made the call for him. They had been watching for him and waiting; this was just the next phase of the plan. That didn’t stop his nerves from stretching taut, sizzling with electricity. Things in Tatié changed depending on the wind, the time of day, the whims of heavily armed and splintering factions. Who knew what he’d really meet, despite what he’d been promised.

Inside the shack, with the door shut, the wind became an icy thread against the back of his neck and a constant high-pitched whistle. The place was crammed with maps, a ticker-tape machine, several wireless sets, and a boxy desk at which sat a middle-aged woman, olive-skinned and silver-haired, in the same uniform as the guards who had brought Aristide from the train. A straight smoldered in the ashtray at her elbow.

“Sergeant,” said one of the guards.

She looked up over the steel rims of her spectacles and cased Aristide with a gaze like a strigil. He was surprised he didn’t lose any skin.

“Thanks,” she told his minders, then picked up her straight and took a long drag. “You’re the peacock’s man, right?” Smoke plumed toward the ceiling. “Satri’s friend? Next time you see her tell her thanks. Those chain guns kept the Teezees off our asses down in Marjenek.”

“Of course,” said Aristide, trying to fight off a coughing fit and failing. The cold had woken up the tickle in his chest, and the secondhand smoke wasn’t doing him any favors.

“Sorry there’s not another chair,” said the sergeant. She didn’t sound it.

He waved her off and cleared his throat, eyes streaming. “That’s quite all right. I’ll stand.”

“Aren’t you supposed to have somebody with you? Gaffer told me two; Erikh Prosser and companion. Didn’t give a name.”

“Ambrose Adam Wallis.”

“Bet that’s not his real one. You two! Go and get him.”

The guards’ salutes and heel clicks came in tandem, echoing. Aristide looked down and saw soil through a gap in the floorboards.

An uncomfortable several minutes passed. Or, uncomfortable for Aristide. The sergeant seemed perfectly happy to ignore him. When the door opened again, the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.