Fifty-three.
Lyss wrote the number at the top of her notebook page and drew a box around it. Below the box, she listed the breakdown. Fourteen displaced residents, the same cluster she had tracked for three days, plus six new faces. Eleven Mechanist-profile individuals with rigid posture and clipped gait, none wearing roughspun. Three in modified clerical vestments. And twenty-five unclassified: standard Morreth tunnel workers, miners, pipe-fitters, the kind of people who could walk these corridors without drawing a second glance.
Her baseline from the first report sat at thirty-eight. Fifteen new participants in four days meant an aggressive, organized recruitment curve rather than mere seasonal drift or coincidence.
She set the notebook down and pulled the coded report cylinder toward her. The Ministry cipher pad was open beside her, the key matrix for this rotation already memorized and burned. She dipped her pen.
Report 2 — Operative Kesh-4. Observation Day 5.
