They stepped into it.
The corridor tasted of iron and cold dust. Hale took point, shoulders easy, center of gravity low, like he was a machine that had found its design. Ash let the door whisper shut behind them and counted the locks with his fingertips out of habit—one, two. Nono hugged his boot, pretending to be a dumb hauler.
"Left," Hale said, voice a thread. "Stairs. Then old pump hall."
They moved. The stairwell smelled like bleach, rust, and a memory of water. Two landings down a chain rattled; Hale stopped, tilted his head. Footsteps above, a pair, the sound of authority without paperwork. The men went up; Hale went down. Ash matched his breathing to Hale's back, quiet, measured, the way you pad under a sleeping animal.
At the pump hall a blast door waited with a paint job that had surrendered. Hale thumbed a key that wasn't standard issue. The lock thunked with relief. Cold came through the seam as the door gave an inch; the world outside pressed its face to the gap and breathed.
"Stay behind me until we read the yard," Hale said.
"Read," Ash said.
They pushed the blast door into a blue-gray that didn't belong to any hour worth keeping. The outer yard was a concrete court boxed by low walls, a burnt-out loader on blocks, a crane skeleton frozen with one finger raised like it had a point to make. Beyond, scrub lanes ran between skeletal buildings and collapsed fences toward the waste proper. The sky carried grit that made light go sideways.
Hale's hand lifted, two fingers, then flat. Clear enough. Ash drew the case open with his body between it and the world. The Silver Stag came out, oiled and silent, selector safe. He felt the panel in the corner of his sight like a gauge where the needle hadn't decided anything yet.
"Loader yard," Hale said, chin at the ruin. "Steel targets for free. If anyone hears, we pretend we didn't."
"Pretend," Ash said.
They crossed quick, not fast; speed makes noise. The loader's hull wore bullet pocks like a history lesson. Ash set the Stag on the lip of the loader bed, breathed the air that tasted of old battery acid and cold iron, and pointed at three points of rust and plate across the yard—ten, twenty-five, and a long diagonal at roughly sixty.
"Short, long, then sustained," he said.
Hale's side-eye said do it.
Ash set short-range, mounted, and pressed.
The Stag barked once. Rust leapt from the plate in a wet flock.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field validation: legacy weapon (short-range mode). Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv2:150/1000.
Nono's screen drew a silly circle like a target; Ash snorted, not laughing, and racked long. The hum tightened to a wire. He picked the diagonal, led the wind that had enough sense to make itself felt, and pressed.
The hull plate rang like a bell that had forgotten the word. Impact centered in the fist-sized rust crater at sixty.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field validation: legacy weapon (long-range mode). Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv2:300/1000.
"Again," Hale said, not because the target needed it but because the world did. Ash set a second on long; the return snap sounded true.
The yard, unfortunately, had ears.
Boots scraped at the lane. Two men in mixed armor stepped into view through a chain-link mouth caved into a fence. Their shoulder plates weren't uniform, but their posture agreed on Nightshade. One had a rifle tucked lazy but not unsafe. The other carried a baton and a smile that mistakes itself for charm.
The baton man raised his hands, palms out, like he was a good idea arriving. "Range time? Love that for you." His eyes flicked to Hale, cataloged him, then returned to the gun like a moth that insists on fire. "Permit?"
Hale didn't move enough to count. "Maintenance test. Yard's posted for that."
"It's also posted for Nightshade oversight." The rifleman's voice did the job his rifle didn't. "Hand the weapon over. You can retrieve it after inspection."
Ash kept the Stag low but safe, selector at short. He could see the burr he'd filed in the range light earlier like a phantom, could feel the coil's hum in his teeth. He resisted the urge to sight down the barrel and make his intention too explicit.
"Inspection fees went up," Baton Man said. "Lucky day—discount inspection for friends of the program."
Hale stepped just enough to put himself between their line of fire and Ash. "Program doesn't run here," he said. "And even if it did, your timing's bad."
"Timing's our specialty," Baton Man said, and flashed the smile again. "Hands. Weapon."
Hale didn't answer with words. His weight shifted—a transfer through hips and knees that re-labeled the situation as about to happen. The rifleman saw it a quarter-second late; his stock tightened under his arm an instant before his muzzle twitched.
Ash didn't wait to be asked twice by physics. He slid half a step right, brought the Stag up, and put short-range in Baton Man's center mass from under the loader lip.
The spread hit like a thrown door. Armor plates caught some, ribs caught the rest. Baton Man folded with the sound a body makes when its argument ends.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field engagement (self-defense): legacy weapon (short-range). Difficulty: mid. +200 Mechanic XP / +300 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv2:500/1000.
The rifleman snapped to a sight picture that would have been good if time were a circle. Hale's hand found the muzzle and redirected it a handspan left. The shot yanked sparks out of the loader. Hale's other hand introduced the man's face to the loader's side. The man dropped like he'd found the floor by accident.
"Move," Hale said.
Ash moved. They bounced through the loader's shadow into the scrub lane. Behind them, Baton Man made a sound like he'd remembered air. Not dead. Not their problem unless he bought ambition with it.
"Left," Hale said, and then the air cracked—another presence in the lane, a third silhouette he hadn't counted made a poor decision with a pistol. Ash swung, selector long, and drank the lane's length in the sight.
Press.
The pistol went out of the man's hand like a thought abandoning a head. He screamed, discovered he still had fingers, and decided to re-evaluate.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field engagement: legacy weapon (long-range). Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv2:650/1000.
They cut across broken concrete into a service strip where culverts ran like folded knuckles. Hale dropped into a crouch and made a small motion with his hand that translated to we catch our breath or it catches us. Ash nodded, crouched, and checked the Stag's receiver.
The selector returned from long a hair slower than he liked. The cam face he'd kissed with the file earlier had accepted the lesson but not internalized it. Heat plus grit equals opinions.
Nono held up a micro-brush like an offering. Ash took it, cracked the receiver just enough, and swept grit out of the selector channel. He kissed the cam again, even gentler, and dabbed a dot of dry lube with the tip of a patch.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] On-the-fly maintenance: selector channel clean + cam face refinement. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
655/1000.
He cycled the action. Better. He could feel the click become a certainty instead of a suggestion.
Voices stumbled at the far end of the culvert—Nightshade men learning new geometry with their feet. Hale held up two fingers, then a third, then flattened his palm. Three. Ash measured the lane—fifteen meters to the bend, thirty beyond to a collapsed fence that made a frame for a shot.
"Short on the first two," Hale said. "If the third's smart, he runs. If he's dumb—"
"I'll ask him a question," Ash said.
The first two came hot and didn't make it into the decision tree. Ash leaned, short-range, pressed twice in a rhythm that would have made his master nod if the man hadn't run out of nods years ago. The culvert coughed back powder stink; the men discovered new shapes to lie in.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field engagement: paired shots (short-range mode). Difficulty: mid. +200 Mechanic XP / +300 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv2:855/1000.
The third man skidded to a stop, took in the culvert, and considered living. He half-turned—and then decided to be a hero you could rent by the hour. He brought his rifle up too fast for clean.
Ash racked long-range and found the small coin of motion that meant a shoulder joint. He pressed. The man's rifle leapt out of his hands like it had decided to defect. He spun, tripped, and discovered that his options had narrowed to retreat and bleeding.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field engagement: disabling shot (long-range). Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv2:1,005/1000.
The panel cooled to a deeper blue.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Mechanic profession leveled up → lv3.Minor attribute increase applied. Work efficiency improved.
Ash felt the logic lines in his head snap tighter again—no fireworks, just fewer wasted motions. The rot in his arm remained a weight that didn't respect promotions.
"Congratulations," Hale said, tone exactly halfway between dry and pleased. "You gonna buy the drinks with your numbers now?"
"I'll fix the tap," Ash said. He cleared the Stag, listened, and heard the lane decide it had nothing immediate to say.
They moved deeper into the strip, then cut right through a hole in a wire fence where the wire had given up pretending. The ground rose toward a service hatch that would take them back under the haven's skin. Hale put a hand out—a stop that included the air.
A sound cut across the breath of the strip. Not boots. Not voices. A battery whine tuned to the note of institutional interest.
Ash looked up. A Nightshade drone slid into view over the far wall, a coin-shaped disc with a gimbal eye and the kind of light that made you confess to things you hadn't had time to do yet. It slewed, sampling angles. The beam knifed the dark and walked along the fence line, then ticked toward where two men and a small bot had stopped being noise.
Hale's jaw didn't change shape. "Down," he said.
They went to ground in the dead grass and iron filings as the light licked toward them and the drone's motor climbed a note that meant noticed.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] External variable: aerial surveillance detected. Risk: elevated. Recommendation: evade or disable.
Ash set the Stag's case down without looking away from the beam. "Options?" he asked, because asking meant his brain would do the right math.
Hale's mouth barely moved. "Culvert back—slow and low. Or you let me throw a rock and you see if that thing's allergic to pellets."
The beam brightened, fixing into a small white coin on the concrete three meters to their left, then began to slide.
The math answered for him.