The harpoon's pin winked in the grille's light.
Ash pressed.
The snap arrived a heartbeat later, high and sharp. The line bowed, spat back, and whipped against the truck's bumper hard enough to slap the driver's pride. The winch howled empty, drum eating its own tail.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: grapple shackle pin (long-range). Difficulty: mid. +200 Mechanic XP / +300 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Hale didn't smile. He watched the seam. "Next trick," he said, like a weather report.
Nightshade obliged. The truck crabbed sideways; a bumper hook nosed under the curtain two panels down, sneaking for leverage. Metal clanked. A man out there muttered the kind of arithmetic men do when they've decided to lift a house by a hinge. Beside the hook, a hydraulic spreader kissed the seam, its wedge jaws closed, hose snaking back to a compact pump body with a bright little solenoid block bolted on top like an idea that hadn't been tested enough.
Admin, by the rope, didn't raise his voice. "Proceedings note second breach attempt—hydraulic device at seam."
The City-Admin clerk wrote EXTERNAL TOOL—SPREADER (SEAM) in tidy blue and didn't step toward the grille; he let paper do his walking.
Ash settled the Stag again—cheek off stock, muzzle barely through—and took the spreader apart in his head: quick-couplers, solenoid pack, gauges that only make sense to men who like incomprehensible needles. He didn't shoot the hose; a wounded hose can write a story across a room. He clicked the selector to long-range and aimed at the solenoid box—three screws, one window, a red LED that had all the self-esteem of a plan.
He pressed.
The LED died like a gnat; the pump coughed; the wedge jaws relaxed as if a thought had left the device and gone to find a drink. Someone swore into their shirt.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: pump solenoid block (long-range). Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Hale's head tilted. "That buys minutes," he said.
"Let's spend them," Ash answered.
He left the grille and went to the curtain lip. The bottom edge invited trouble because steel is honest about where it ends. He pointed at Nono's tray. "Angle strip," he said. "Short bolts. U-clamps."
Nono beeped brisk, produced two angles salvaged from a shelf and a bag of short bolts that had meant to be decorative and were now doctrine. Ash set the angles under the curtain lip, staggered like scales, and clamped/bolted them so they projected a small skirt down and out—a geometry that told hooks to make new plans. He laced the ends with U-clamps through existing holes in the curtain bolsters, tightened until the angles became part of the lip.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement: anti-grapple skirt added (angle strips + U-clamps). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Hale took the chain and ran a cross-brace between the two curtain posts, turnbuckles mid-span, then added side runs from posts to column ears—a triangle trick buildings have loved since before papers learned to lie. The chain sang a different note as he tensioned; the posts stopped believing in sideways.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement: post cross-chain + side runs (turnbuckles tensioned). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Ash knelt; his hammer found the wedges under the curtain rails and asked if they still believed in their job. The wedges answered with obedient rings. He slid two more shims under each rail and set them with taps that sounded like stay. He checked the shear pin in the crank hub, then drilled a second hole through the hub's ear and slid a backup pin—a cheap kind of redundancy that has saved more days than any hero. He wired a NO tag through both.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement: rail re-wedge + backup shear pin. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Admin spoke to his recorder as if it were a clerk with very neat ears. "Barrier enhanced: anti-grapple skirt, cross-chain, wedges, backup shear. Venue remains sealed."
"Continuous inspection," the Nightshade liaison called through the seam, voice oil finding seams, "remains our right. We post a watcher and a cart at your rope."
"Post your eyes," the City-Admin clerk said. "Leave your hooks. Adjourned to dawn."
He set his blue seal across the rope knot again because ritual is how rooms remember. He read the number, Admin echoed, recorder caught it, and the rope looked briefly like law.
The truck outside stuttered between idle and intention the way a drunk chooses between beds. A drone purred like a bored wasp. The hydraulic device sulked with its dead solenoid. The bumper hook clanked once against the new skirt and learned steel's way of saying no.
They held still long enough to hear their own blood.
Hale leaned his shoulder into the post and let the room weigh itself against him. "We set watches," he said. "Hinge check every five. Seam walk every ten. No heroics; mechanical interdiction only."
"Nono," Ash said, "motion on post bases and lip—soft ping, not panic."
Nono beeped compliance and rolled along the curtain like a square animal marking a fence. It set a little motion wand by each post foot—cheap IR eyes stuck with tape and prayer—and patted them with its manipulator like a mother assuring herself the night would listen.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Sensor deploy: motion pings at post bases/lip. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Admin's radio made a small, civil sound. "Generator," the floor clerk said. "Local. No odd load. Your seal is still handsome."
"Good," Ash said, and let a slice of tension leave that didn't have anything to do with guns.
The liaison tried one last polite trespass. "We'll require your logs now," he called. "Outputs, H7 marks, and your maker's punch for custody."
The City-Admin clerk beat Ash to the mouth. "Denied," he said, crisp. "Seized by audit until dawn. Your co-witness can read the counts. Your cart does not enter."
The Nightshade inspector cleared his throat loud enough to be heard over paper. "Counting," he said, and his clicker obeyed like a dog.
There's a quiet that comes after a room chooses its shape. The gallery found it. The truck idled in the courtyard like a fact you couldn't unlearn. The drone drifted. The watchers traded leans. The rope stood. The chain sang. The curtain breathed like a machine in sleep.
"Rotate," Hale said. He sent one Admin gray to the hinge with a mallet and patience, another to the seam with a hand mirror, and stood where his mass made meaning.
Ash checked angles on the skirt one more time. He found a gap finger-wide by the left post where the concrete wasn't honest; he overlapped another short angle and bolted it into the first, creating a tiny labyrinth a hook would have to argue with. He wired a red NO tag through the bolt heads so a later day would know which lie had been fixed.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement: skirt overlap at left post gap. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Admin's recorder got bored and kept working anyway. The City-Admin clerk took pictures of the skirt and the cross-chains the way a man photographs his own dignity to remember it in bad weather. Nono twitched when a shadow moved wrong and then calmed when the IR said leaf.
"Sleep later," Hale said, which in this language meant no one was going to.
The liaison tried casual. "We'll inspect the roofline," he announced to the air as if air were a judge. The truck's spot panned upward, found the smoke-hatch Ash had slammed earlier, and painted it white like an accusation. The drone rose to see if roofs confess at altitude. They don't.
"Record roof appraise," Admin said, pen sat up straight again. "No access."
The City-Admin clerk wrote OBSERVE—NO ROOF ACCESS and underlined observe because verbs matter.
Minutes passed like screws turned by a familiar hand. The night on the other side of the curtain got the idea it could be clever. The truck sighed, repositioned, wrote new math with its parking brake out by the far post—the one whose foot was set into a plate with four anchors and a long history of minding its own business.
Nono pinged once—soft. The IR by the far post caught something warm where cold should live. Ash slid back to the grille and put eye to seam. At first: dark. Then a bright pollen of sparks drifted low, hugging the floor like bees in a bad story. A dry scream of an abrasive wheel followed—the sound you get when cheap cut-off meets steel and asks it to be thinner.
"Wheel at base," Ash said. "Far post. They're cutting the plate."
"Log," Admin said, voice getting that iron he'd borrowed earlier. The City-Admin clerk wrote EXTERNAL TOOL—ABRASIVE WHEEL (POST BASE) in neat blue and circled the line.
Hale didn't move fast. He didn't move slow. He moved exact, taking the angle that put his shoulder between the rope and the inspector like a door you couldn't tell had been built there on purpose. "Don't sneeze," he told the room.
Ash brought the Stag up to the grille again. He went low, muzzle kissing the perforation; he angled the sight through the slot at floor level where the seam had left a line thin as a lie. The wheel lived on a small handheld saw clamped to a saddle that hugged the base plate; its motor housing bulged like a turtle shell, with vent slots and one proud brush cap trying to get promoted. The cord ran back through a GFCI to a genny humming under the truck's voice.
He didn't shoot the cord. He didn't want a whipping snake in a room he couldn't see. He put the sight on the motor can right where bearing and armature try to negotiate. He could also pick the brush cap—small, quick—but the motor can would be terminal.
"Don't punch the wheel," Hale said, not a caution so much as a reminder of which physics we prefer.
Ash set his breath and took the half-press that makes the world admit it isn't in charge yet.