Auditor sighted in Bunker 14: pulse checks now mandatory

At 18:02 on the fourth, a man in a grey suit walked the full length of Bunker 14's main corridor, from the Pickard Street hatch to the water stores, and back again. He carried a folder. He nodded to people. He was pale and his collar was very clean. Three hundred people saw him and nobody thought anything of it until a courier developed her film the next morning.

Why we think it was an Auditor

• Nobody in Bunker 14 owns a clean collar, and his folder carried a Bureau seal. They never hide. They do not need to.
• He did not blink in any of six frames taken across forty seconds, and he walked through the laundry steam without a hair on his head moving. In the fifth frame the steam has left a bead of wet on his cheek and the skin under it shines like a candle.

An Auditor does not fight. It counts. It walks among us to learn how many we are, where the water is, who the doctors are, and which of us are tired enough to be told something comforting. Then it leaves, and a week later a Tithe comes to exactly the right street.

Pulse check protocol, effective immediately

Every person entering or leaving any hatch in Sectors 4, 5 and 6 will have their pulse taken at the wrist by the hatch warden. Two fingers, fifteen seconds. Auditors have a pulse of sorts, but it is perfectly regular and it does not change when you surprise them. Tinker_9 opened one in 2059: wax over brass clockwork, bladders of something warm in place of blood, and a metronome where the heart should be. The warden will say something unexpected during the count. Ours say 'your mother phoned'. A human pulse jumps. An Auditor's does not.

If the pulse is steady as a clock, do not argue, do not fight, do not follow. Step back and ring the brass bell.

I know the queue at the Pickard hatch is going to be thirty minutes at shift change. Bring a book. Wardens, wash your hands between checks. We are trying to catch machines, not dysentery.