Zixin followed the crooked sign toward the information counters, but instead of immediately joining the chaotic crowd jostling under the banner marked for NEW SURVIVORS, he slowed his pace and watched for a while. He had learned, in a single day, that walking into things blindly was a habit that got people killed.
The people at the front were being interrogated before they were handed anything. Not casually, either. Real questions. Some survivors were pulling up glowing blue system screens and swiping through them like they were showing their IDs at a checkpoint. Others fished out small metallic cards, cracked leather tokens, and stranger identification items that looked like bone or polished stone. The workers behind the counter scanned everything with cold efficiency, logging responses on floating tablets that shimmered with each entry.
