The jaw let go. The line screamed back like something taught manners too late. The skirt snapped down, a sharp clap against concrete. The cross-chain sang high and then settled into its lower hum. One wedge at the left rail crept—a little silver showing where wood should have been shy. The hinge whispered a bright ring against Hale's shoulder like a wineglass finding a note.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: auxiliary grab jaw (release). Difficulty: hard. +250 Mechanic XP / +350 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
"Left wedge," Hale said, not loud, already a step there.
Ash dropped from the grille into the bolts-and-hands part of the problem. Nono had the mallet up before he reached; Ash took it, set the wedge and drove—three small blows, honest, the kind of taps that tell a machine you love it enough to be strict. The wedge went home with a sound that was not poetry and did not need to be.
He spun the nearest turnbuckle a half and then a half again until the chain stopped wanting to ask questions. He pressed more mud under the baffle lip with the putty knife and wiped the excess on the floor where it could be ugly and useful.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement quick: wedge re-seat + turnbuckle tighten + mud refresh. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Admin's voice found the recorder: "Triple jerk attempt repelled. Wedge re-seated; chain tensioned. Venue intact." The City-Admin clerk's pen underlined intact like the word could earn muscle if you fed it underlines.
Outside, the truck idled into a new riddle. Boots paced. A line slid against something and decided not to continue. The drone made a wider circle as if the sky could supply new verbs.
"They'll wrap a column," Hale said, glancing to the side bay where a concrete pier sat like a shoulder waiting to be borrowed.
He wasn't guessing. A web strap snuck under the curtain skirt and went left, traveling around the pier at shin height, the free tail disappearing back to the truck. The strap's buckle was the familiar ratchet kind men use to make loads behave and sometimes to teach doors humility.
Ash braced the Stag in the grille, lined the sight on the buckle's pawl—thin notch of steel that makes a ratchet a ratchet—and pressed. A click that belonged on a different day. The pawl snapped. The strap lost interest in being a lever and turned back into cloth.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: ratchet pawl (column wrap). Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The truck shifted clever again. A sleek roller fairlead appeared in the sight picture—bolted to a little A-frame, snug against the curtain lip. The line ran through its rollers as if friction had ever been a thing for other people. You can cut line; you can kill roller. The far bearing showed its cap like a brag.
Ash held for the cap, not the roller, and wrote his opinion in a language old as powder. The bearing let go with a sound too small to be proud of; the roller seized; the line howled as friction returned to the world like law in a good room.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: fairlead bearing cap. Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Hale didn't move from the rope. He didn't have to. The rope moved from him. "Rotate," he told the Admin grays, and feet resumed the hinge/seam/lip metronome, the little ritual that had become a religion that worked.
The liaison's voice drifted in, dull, stubborn. "Continuous inspection," he repeated for the tenth time, as if the word might change jobs out of boredom.
"View-only," the City-Admin clerk said, each time the same.
Minutes heaved themselves forward and landed like tools on a bench. Nightshade tried angles with the patience of a man rearranging chess pieces after the game is over. A pair of low jacks crept for the center seam, one on each side, like shoulders meant to shrug the curtain up. A man cradling a pump crouched where Ash could see the rocker bar moving under his thumb—upstroke, downstroke—simple heart.
Ash chose the rocker pin. Muzzle to grille, breath to bone, press. The rocker jumped free of its own pivot, flapped once like a fish remembering water, and died against the man's knuckles. He swore in the quiet way pain teaches.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: pump rocker pivot. Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The other jack's valve stem stuck its little bold chin out where men who love valves put faith they shouldn't. Ash shaved that stem down to a question mark. Oil wept; the jack sank like a plan realizing it was never meant to stand.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: jack valve stem. Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
"Log," Admin said, which he had been doing even when he didn't say it aloud. "Jacks neutralized. Venue unchanged."
Hale lifted a palm, no words. The room obeyed a silent minute. You could hear the generator three corridors away and the drone pretending not to be offended and the truck thinking about being a courtroom. You could hear metal decide that for this minute it would stay the shape decent men asked of it.
Nono pinged soft at the far post; the mud burped a little steam; Ash pressed another rag into the paste and smoothed it with the trowel. The plate knocked his glove knuckle with a heat that would blister later if life permitted the vanity of blisters.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Heat management: mud/plate attention. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The City-Admin clerk took a long breath he didn't let the recorder hear. He checked his watch again—numbers arranged around oh-six like a picture of a harbor. "Ten," he said.
The dark outside began to loosen. Not sunrise—light leak, that thin gray that makes edges honest. It slid under the curtain skirt where the angles made a little maze and found nothing to do but be light.
The truck's idle dropped a notch, as if even engines had superstitions about mornings. The liaison's voice arrived with fresh starch. "At oh-six, we convene."
"At oh-six," the City-Admin clerk agreed, and this time the words felt like a promise other words might keep.
Admin drew a line under NIGHT CHECKS and wrote CONVENE—Dawn. He didn't look up when he did it. He did not need to.
Hale's weight came off the post a hair, enough to let bone remember it was bone. He took the rope in his palm—not to move it, to remind it—and looked at Ash. "If they sneeze before the chair sits," he said, "we treat it like night."
"Night has good rules," Ash said.
Outside, boots found a formation their owners liked. The watchers straightened. The drone settled into a hover that pretended to be official. The truck re-parsed itself into the shape of a podium that had opinions about rams.
"Recorder rolling," Admin said to the air, because the recorder was already rolling and liked to be told.
The City-Admin clerk stepped to the rope and, with a little ritual that looked like he loved it, read the number off the blue seal across the knot. He showed Admin the twin stub, showed the recorder, and tucked the stub into his coat like a priest tucking a wafer where God could watch it.
"Nightshade Tribunal Unit present," the liaison announced, meeting ritual with ritual. "Ready to proceed."
"City-Admin Audit present," the clerk said. "Venue sealed until this moment."
"Admin oversight present," Admin said, his stamp warmed in his hand.
Hale said nothing because doors don't talk. He was door.
Ash stood one step off the grille, Stag slung, safety on. Nono sat by his boot and pretended to be square in a way that comforted men.
The clerk lifted his scissors—not big, not old-world ceremonial; shop scissors, clean, sharp, honest. He set one blade under the blue strip across the rope knot. It crackled like paper that has remembered being a law.
And then the truck made the small movement men make when they have already decided to cheat: an inch of roll, a nudge that could be explained as settling or as contempt. Under the lip, where shadows had kept secrets, a supplementary jawbit—an auxiliary clamp that had been hidden flat under the skirt in the center bay, set on a standoff to avoid the angles and aligned with the single place the maze allowed a straight bite if you knew its name.
Hale's head turned a degree. The City-Admin clerk did not lower his scissors. The liaison did not blink.
Ash was already moving. Safety off. Muzzle to grille. The jaw showed him one thing—half a pin in half a glance—through two perforations, four feet of lies, and the morality of a morning.
"Record," Admin said, voice even.
"Proceed," the clerk said, and the blade pressed the blue.
The jaw tightened its small teeth.
Ash put the sight on that sliver and felt the break living under his finger with the weight of two different kinds of law on it.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Venue status: convene in progress. External variable: aux clamp bite at center bay. Risk: very high. Recommendation: interdict hardware while procedure proceeds (precision only).
He could count the square threads of the shackle pin on the half-circle he had. He could count the number of breaths left before a man misinterpreted inches as consent.
He counted one and pressed—or didn't—yet.