The line sang a high, hungry note. Ash set the duckbills to catch it where physics would do the cutting. He turned the jaws a hair so the pull forced the grit into the throat instead of along the lip, lifted his off-hand to catch the fall, and let pressure decide.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Countermeasure: abrasive-wire intercept (second line) with duckbill pliers. Difficulty: mid+. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The pitch peaked; heat wrote its name in his palm; the carbon strand pipped, then failed in a soft sigh that felt like a gear giving up. He guided the severed whisker into a pouch Hale held open; zip closed; label written—ABRASIVE LINE #2—FAR CORNER—time and position under it like screws.
He touched the stop-strap with a thumb, reading it the way he read a bolt. No scar. He checked the witness paint on the hinge heads and the new dots on the strap shackle—still one line, still a story that no one else could edit.
"Roof call-out," the judge said to Admin. "Facilities to the hatch, external. We keep actions inside the venue."
Admin raised the radio. "Facilities, East Gallery hatch—external contact requested. Bring nothing with teeth." He lowered it and looked up. "Logged."
The City-Admin clerk wrote FACILITIES—ROOF APPROACH (EXTERNAL) and boxed it, then angled the camera up to keep the hatch in frame. He tapped the co-seal numbers with his pen tip. "Rope—unchanged. Crate—unchanged." He said it aloud so later couldn't pretend it hadn't happened.
Nightshade, exiled cart and drone gone, tried pettiness: the inspector's assistant flicked a coin off the floor toward the skirt seam, aiming to make a noise big enough for a lie. The coin skittered and found no purchase; Ash didn't even look down for it. He did look at the lip and the spot where wire had liked to find angles.
"Edge," he said to Hale. Hale held the ladder; Ash climbed the last half-meter and pressed a U-channel edge guard—thin stainless, sprung—over the bare lip of the hatch skin where a line could start a life. The channel seated with a quiet click. He slipped a felt packer under the short stretch that made the worst echo, a soft enemy for any future grit.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement: clip-on U-channel edge guard + felt packer at hatch lip. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He ran the paint pen along the guard's ends and put a witness tick on the felt's tab—bright, small, undeniable. The judge watched the tip of the pen, not his hand. The clerk wrote EDGE TRIM—CLIP-ON (WITNESS). The liaison adjusted a cuff and discovered it did not change steel.
A new thing tried the room: a smell, thin and sharp, finding the air from the collar seam—solvent, not much, a thread as disciplined as the men who fed it. It walked toward the stop-strap because chemistry likes woven grief.
"Admin," Ash said. "Sock and dye."
Nono produced a rolled absorbent sock from its belly—white rope in a bag that liked oil less than oil liked itself. Ash tucked the sock under the collar seam so it would drink without touching the strap and cracked a tiny ampule of indicator dye above it. The dye bloomed blue where the solvent found it and stayed white where nothing had been offered yet.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Countermeasure: absorbent sock + indicator dye under collar seam. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He let the sock do what socks do and wicked a drop into a vial with the edge of a pipette; label went on: SOLVENT TRACE—COLLAR. He sealed the vial into a pouch and added it to the neat line of today's oddities. The clerk wrote SOLVENT—TRACE—SAMPLED and underlined trace to keep it small.
"Facilities to Roof Two," the radio answered in Admin's hand. "Two minutes."
The wrenching above, cocky a moment ago, turned into the sound of shoes trying to belong. Hale stood calm, palm on the hatch, reading. He shifted the weight a little to remind a lid that men could be part of buildings. The lid agreed for the length of one breath and then two.
Ash put his loupe to the collar seam again and lined sight along the keeper plate. The safety-wire he'd woven sat snug; the extra self-drillers held. The witness paint lines met themselves where they should. He took the duckbills and pressed the jaws shut once, gently, to remind his hand of their hinge.
"Record," the judge said. The City-Admin clerk did, adding EDGE TRIM APPLIED; INDICATOR ACTIVE; SOLVENT TRACE CONTAINED to the page until it nearly wrote itself.
A voice outside the door echoed down the corridor—Facilities gray in a voice you could sand a shelf with. "Roof Two. Permission to pass."
"Exterior only," the judge said. "We see the ladder. Announce before contact."
The footsteps went up beyond their ceiling. The hatch did not change its mind. A tap on metal above, not a wrench—knuckles. "Roof Two on hatch. Visual only," the voice called down.
"Logged," Admin said.
All of that would have felt like an end if the day had wanted to be generous. The inspector's assistant tried one more noise test: he bounced a washer at the skirt to claim a rattle. It rattled. Ash killed the rattle by shoving a small felt tab into the maze gap nearest, a millimeter of quiet that explained how echoes happen and how they die.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Maintenance: felt tab to kill seam rattle (non-structural). Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
"Rope," the City-Admin clerk said, for the recorder, "unchanged." He liked that sentence enough now to say it with a little music.
Ash eased down a rung, then up again—one of those micro-movements that keep balance part of the job—and looked to Hale. Hale blinked once. They did not need more.
From above, a tiny tink clicked against the collar—metal meeting metal where no meeting had been scheduled. Ash leaned his ear. Another tink, a fainter skate. He put the loupe to the plate and saw nothing but paint and his own patience reflecting back at him.
The radio at Admin's chest crackled with the voice that had learned not to invent words. "Roof Two. No tools seen at hatch. We have two Nightshade grays at roofline east, not touching. We have scuff at tar near vent. We will remain here."
"Logged," Admin said, and glanced at the judge.
"Remain," she told the radio. "View-only, like everyone else."
Ash set his palm on the hatch again and felt—not motion—tension in the metal like a plate thinking about stress. He didn't have to translate it; he just had to plan around it. He added a second short piece of edge trim over the opposite lip where grout had once been generous, and ticked it with paint.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement: edge trim (opposite lip) with witness tick. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The sock below the collar lived up to its promise; the dye kept its boundary; the strap stayed dry. The clerk breathed as if he'd been saving a breath for something that deserved it.
"RF sweep," Admin said gently. The clerk obliged, wand tracing rope, crate, hatch seam. The noise floor stayed dumb. He wrote RF—NEGATIVE again, pleased, and boxed the second box next to the first so it could have company.
"Session resumes at fourteen-hundred," the judge said, not because anyone had forgotten but because rooms like to be told when their next heartbeat is. "Venue remains sealed. Throughput per interim if you can work without leaving sight of the rope."
Ash considered the bench in the other room and let it go; the hatch and the seam owned them until the clock said otherwise. He checked the duckbills' pivot and wiped a hint of grit off the throat with the dead part of a rag. He slipped the tool back into the bag where it could hope for a nap and not get one.
A foot scuffed on the roof overhead in a way that meant someone had stopped trying to appear light. A thud followed, not weighty, pointed—like a spike touching skin. The hatch skin near the collar lifted a pucker the size of a coin as something pressed from above. A bright point—steel the length of a nail, finished rough—poked through paint and a tenth of a millimeter of metal and peeked into their air.
"Record," the judge said, as if recording could push the point back out of physics. The City-Admin clerk had already written SPIKE ENTRY—HATCH SKIN (NEAR COLLAR) by the time she finished the word.
Ash didn't wait for nouns to try to grow verbs. He had the duckbills again and set them up under the point so contact would be backed by the jaw and not by the plate. He turned his wrist to make the cut perpendicular to the length so the break would shear without peeling paint. He raised the jaws until they nearly kissed the tip and let his breath decide when the handles would squeeze.
Hale leaned into the hatch without making drama of it. The spike's point breathed a tiny thread of daylight into their room and kept breathing, trying to become a narrative.