He waited two days.
He needed a clean window: no handler rounds, no patrol passing, the room either sleeping or looking inward. The window arrived on the second night, in the gap between the shift change — forty breaths of empty corridor.
Doorman slept on his side, facing the wall.
Pei Jin stood, crossed the room, and did what needed doing. No weapons — he used his hands. Left palm over the jaw to anchor the head. Right hand cupping the neck at the right angle, the right vessel. He pressed and held.
Not a choke. A compression.
Doorman's legs kicked once, weakly. Pei Jin applied more pressure and kept him pinned to the bunk. Twenty seconds. Then stillness.
He arranged the body into a natural sleeping position, pulled the cloth up to cover the face, and walked back to his bunk and lay down.
It would read as a sleep death. Floor this deep, people died in the night from cold, from malnutrition, from whatever residue the last injection left behind. The handlers would drag him out in the morning without looking closely. Even if they did look closely, no one in this room would open their mouth — nobody wanted the attention, and nobody had cared whether Doorman lived or died.
He listened to the patrol come back down the corridor and closed his eyes.
He noticed no particular feeling about what he had done. What occupied him was the next problem: if Doorman had already reported him, how much did upstairs know, and how much time remained.
That was the real question.
Worst case: they had already flagged 0738 as a triggered subject. Next step would be an isolated interrogation or a direct transfer to a more controlled area. Once inside a testing wing, his options narrowed in ways he couldn't predict.
Best case: Doorman hadn't reported yet. The approach had felt like a probe — an informant gathering confirmation before submitting. They didn't report on guesses. A wrong tip ruined credibility.
He leaned toward the better scenario.
Which meant there was still time.
He organised what he knew. Something was forming inside him. Upstairs was looking for exactly that kind of subject. The floor's informant was handled. What remained: locate the storeroom and understand its contents. Determine if any other informants were active. Identify which of the triggered subjects had already drawn focused attention.
Near dawn, footsteps stopped outside their door. Didn't enter. Paused for a moment, then continued on.
Pei Jin lay with his eyes open, counting the rhythm of the guard's step, memorising the particular hesitation at the third flagstone.