Turn 22 · The voice of nineteen

stand at attention while the instructor reads your numbers and jobs. security 82, Forensic 91, dispatch 93, evidence 89, detective 90, drugs crew 87, k9 girls 95, patrol 97, special response team 94, special services 84, records processing 83, intake support 81,Uniforms 96, Hair station 1 86, Hair station 2 99, Pocket book 85, Medical 98, Tie passer 92, Cooks 88, physical 100. March to the table

You stand at attention in front of the desk while the Lead Instructor opens a folder and reads the assignments in a flat voice, one after another, as if she is reciting a manifest she already knows by heart. 'Security, Eighty-Two. Forensics, Ninety-One. Dispatch, Ninety-Three. Evidence, Eighty-Nine. Detective division, Ninety. Narcotics crew, Eighty-Seven. K-9, Ninety-Five. Patrol, Ninety-Seven. Special response team, Ninety-Four. Special services, Eighty-Four. Records processing, Eighty-Three. Intake support, Eighty-One. Uniforms, Ninety-Six. Hair station one, Eighty-Six. Hair station two, Ninety-Nine. Pocket book, Eighty-Five. Medical, Ninety-Eight. Tie passer, Ninety-Two. Cooks, Eighty-Eight. Physical standards, One Hundred.' She closes the folder. 'Twenty numbers. Twenty functions. The compound runs on you now.' She pauses on the last two. 'Hair station one. Hair station two. Two of you will stand at the standards station and put the standard onto the next intake. You will hold the form and the spray and the pin. You will make them correct, as you were made correct.' Her gray eyes come up from the folder to your face. 'Ninety-Nine. Hair station two. You will learn the slide through, the covering, the braid, the form, the spray, and the shine, and one day a line of twenty will stand in front of you and leave it identical.' 'March to the table,' she says, and your body moves before the sentence finishes. The large gray book sits in the center of the desk under the white lamp, and up close you can see it is not a printed book at all — the steel 99 is stamped into the cover by hand, and the binding is worn at the corners as if it has been opened every day for years. The Lead Instructor does not open it. She stands with one hand flat on the cover, holding it shut the way you hold a door against weather. 'Seventy-Nine graduated officers have carried a number book,' she says. 'Every number in this compound has one. Yours was made before you arrived.' Her thumb moves along the edge of the pages without lifting them. 'The other nineteen will spend learning day at their stations, learning to serve the standard from inside a function. You were pulled from the line for a different reason, Ninety-Nine, and the reason is in this book. Some of it will become your job. Some of it you will never repeat outside this office.' She lifts her hand. The cover stays shut. Through the wall, faint and rhythmic, the hundred voices are reciting somewhere in the building, and beneath them, closer, a second sound the wall has been carrying all along that you are only now hearing — a fourth voice in this office that is not hers and not the quiet officer's, coming from behind the closed door at the back of the room.