The packet ticked like a fingernail on a jar.
Ash's palm hovered over the emergency trip. His other hand rode the governor arm, two fingers giving the engine a piece of patience it hadn't earned.
"Trip?" Admin said—half question, half prayer.
"Hold," Ash said, and felt the needle flirt with high. He took one more ounce off the spring with his fingers, turning a hunt into a sway.
The nearer tech pretended to study numbers. The farther one pretended not to listen to his radio.
Admin's pen touched paper. "I authorize seal break on the unknown pigtail," he said, putting ink where air could hear. "To protect facility."
Ash didn't nod. He moved. The seal pliers bit red; the tag printed its guilt. He popped the bus fuse in the low-voltage tray—small glass, big consequence—then lifted the unknown pigtail off the header and bent it back against the bracket. He wrapped its nose in a strip of insulation tape and locked it down with a fresh red tamper so hard the clip squealed.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Control bus: isolated (LV fuse pulled). Unknown pigtail: lifted + sealed. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The clamp's console blinked LINK LOST again. The nearer tech put his thumb over the message like modesty.
The diesel's tone shed the thin edge and remembered its key. Ash eased his fingers off the arm in fractions. The needle stayed. He breathed like a man taught by machines.
The sergeant had found a new expression; it didn't improve him. "You're accumulating violations."
"I'm accumulating light," Admin said, sharper than before. "And record."
The farther tech murmured something into his sleeve. Somewhere down the conduit a relay answered with a dry clack that didn't belong to Admin's map. The needles took a dip—small, mean, enough to make a man swear.
"External load poke," Ash said. "Not command."
He didn't adjust screws. He pinched a thin shim of folded tag under the idle-stop to buy the governor one more hair of honest return and wired the spring tail to its post with a twist so it wouldn't walk under vibration.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Governor assist: idle-stop shim + spring tie. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The warble died. The engine stabilized like a room that had learned who owned it.
"Open that junction," Ash said, chin at the conduit chase. "Now."
Admin's key got them the cover plate: four screws, two that hadn't moved since a better year. The plate came away with a sigh and a smear of dust. Inside, under a wire bundle that had learned to tell lies about itself, sat a wye: one leg to the panel, one to Admin's logger that had been dead for lack of parts, and one—sleeved, newer—running up the chase to a world that called itself Security.
Admin didn't swear. He made a sound that had no letters in it.
"Document," Ash said. He didn't take the bundle out. He fanned it with gentle fingers until the Y admitted all three colors. Admin leaned in with his pad, wrote FOREIGN BUS LEG—TO SECURITY and drew a crude triangle that would be the whole trial if they ever got one.
The nearer tech: "Do not alter—"
"Cut," Admin said, and the pencil wrote CUT before his mouth finished. He looked at the sergeant. "Witness."
"Log your vandalism," the sergeant said, but he didn't say stop.
Ash pinched the foreign leg with his side cutters, shoved a cap on the dead end with a twist of copper and tape, then labeled the stump in block letters SECURITY REMOTE—ISOLATED. He leashed the honest legs with a tie and closed the junction back up so dust couldn't invent a later problem.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Remote leg: cut + capped + labeled (junction). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He slid the bus fuse back into its clips. A spark the size of a cough kissed the glass. The console's tach LED blinked to boring again. The cart's message didn't come back. Remote had been told to eat outside.
"Verification," Ash said. "One more time."
Admin's wrist threw Stage 1 and Stage 2 like a man who believed in his own hands. The belts took their note and swallowed it. The needle moved and settled. Ash kept his fingers off the arm on purpose. The engine didn't care. It behaved.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Load test: Stage 1/2 hold (post-isolation). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The nearer tech had his smile back, thin and dangerous. "We will cite this."
"You will cite that you tried to own our set," Admin said, and surprised himself by enjoying the sentence.
The sergeant looked like he'd tasted a word he couldn't swallow. "We're done," he said again, and this time it sounded like he meant for now.
Ash shut the panel gently, pressed his thumb against the new seal over the empty header until the ink took part of him. He turned to the governor and removed the idle shim he'd set, because a temporary fix that becomes a forever one is treason. He left the spring tie in place; honest bonds help men and machines both.
He walked the floor once more—sediment bowl clear; brush face golden and square; ground lug a little warmer because it had been loved. He signed Admin's page where Verification Complete lived.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Facility: generator verified—local control only. Status: stable. Risk: moderate.
The nearer tech wheeled his cart backward with dignity that would look better on a calmer day. The farther coiled his harness like a man rolling bandages after a fight gone wrong. The sergeant paused in the doorway as if a sentence were forming and he wasn't sure which language to use.
"Dawn audit," he said at last, an echo from another room. "Don't be closed."
"We're open," Admin said. "For work."
They left.
Ash stood still with the diesel's hum inside him like a second pulse. He let the set run long enough to learn what quiet sounded like here. He put one knuckle on the panel because sometimes men still pray with their hands.
"You okay?" Admin asked, in a voice that was still new to its edge.
"No," Ash said, because a correct answer is a kind of health. "But the room is."
He killed Stage 2, left Stage 1 up, then shut the door on the hum after a last look at seals and tags. Admin set a guard at the hall—two skirts of Admin gray who could read a tag and hit a radio fast. He turned the key in the Gen Access plate, pocketed it, and for the first time all day looked like a man who would sleep if given fifteen minutes and a wall.
They made the corridor. Chalk letters glared and lied. Nono trundled with its tray pressed against its little chest like it was hiding treasure.
Halfway to the stairs, a runner—Hale's kid, the one with the wire in her hair—came at them like news regretting itself.
"Inspection team," she said before breathing. "Early. Cart looks newer. Clerk with a bag of seals. At the shop now."
Admin's jaw set. "They said dawn."
"They found a watch that lied," she said, and remembered to breathe. "Hale asked me to say: 'Door's holding. Come when you've locked the dragon.' "
"The dragon's at heel," Ash said. It wasn't poetry. It was a switch and a set of tags and the memory of a wire cut.
They pushed quicker through the artery. The haven's hum felt clean. The chalk marks looked less tall when a man had cut a line inside a box they thought they owned.
On the stair, Admin's radio coughed and found a new voice—one of his floor clerks trying for cool and getting thin. "Auditor clerk is opening his bag," the voice said. "Hale is reading the stamp. There's a different seal."
"Different how?" Admin asked.
"Blue," the voice said. "Not Nightshade-red. City-Admin."
Admin's foot missed a step and found it again. "That's old-world. Half the time it's theater."
"Half the time," Ash said.
They took the last turn and the shop's corridor came up with its usual smell and a new temperature. The watcher stood aside, suddenly very interested in a scuff on the wall, which meant he'd found himself outranked by something he hadn't expected.
Through the seam: Hale, doing what Hale did—existing in a doorway—and opposite him a clerk in a coat that had been a uniform when the world could afford uniforms. The clerk held a bag of blue seals and a clipboard that had survived more meetings than roads. Beside him: a new cart, squarer, quieter, its mast LED politely white. The liaison stood behind them like a man who wanted credit for weather.
Hale didn't look back when Ash came up. "Generator?" he asked.
"Local," Ash said. "Sealed. Logged."
Hale dipped his chin once. Then he flicked it at the clerk's bag. "He brought tradition."
The clerk tried a smile that had once gotten him a seat at a table. "City-Admin audit seals," he said. "Per inter-faction protocol, we observe, log, and tag. Your Inspector is present"—a nod to the smaller Nightshade man—"to co-witness. No attachments without consent."
The liaison didn't like the last sentence but he liked the letter it wore. He kept his mouth closed because some sentences survive better unwritten.
Admin's pen arrived like an old friend. "We have our oversight protocol on paper," he said, offering the page. "View-only, first slot, rotation, no attachment. We just finished a bench verify and a generator sweep. The seals are fresh."
"Then we begin with seals," the clerk said, and put on a pair of gloves that had never known solvent. He took out a blue strip, the kind with a number that lives twice—one on the strip, one on the paper. He glanced at Ash's knife switch tag through the seam and nodded. "You maintain isolations during audit."
"Hot bench is locked," Ash said. The red flag glowed. The padlock looked like it enjoyed its job.
The new cart rolled a half-step and stopped because Hale's existence didn't allow it to learn bad habits. The inspector held his clicker like a rosary.
"Begin," the liaison said, finding his voice again, and the clerk wrote BEGIN as if the word were more than a place.
Ash wiped his hands on a rag he trusted and looked at the bench he had chained to this room. The micro-jig sat where he'd left it, the NO MOVE tag loud, the Admin initials a little crooked and perfect. Nono pretended to be square and actually was.
The day lifted its next weight.