The round took the motor can just behind the brush line. The saw squealed like a bad bearing being told a secret and died into a grunt. Sparks thinned to embarrassed dust.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: cut-off saw motor housing (long-range). Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
"Proceedings note abrasive wheel neutralized," Admin said to the recorder, pen steady.
Hale didn't peel his eyes off the seam. "Again," he said, because men with trucks always have again.
They did. A new cut-off bumped the plate and threw a different pitch. Its cord ran to a fat yellow GFCI brick like a toad mid-line, then onward to a generator whining beneath the truck's voice.
Ash slid the Stag one perforation over, sighted on the TEST bubble of the GFCI—soft plastic dome, spring behind it—and sent a tiny argument.
The brick tripped with a meek click. The saw snorted, spun down, and made the kind of silence that tastes like relief.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: GFCI test actuator (long-range). Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The Nightshade inspector made a noise like a man chewing a lime. Hale's mouth didn't move. The City-Admin clerk wrote EXTERNAL—GFCI TRIP as if he'd been waiting his whole life to write something that honest.
"Continuous inspection," the liaison called, defaulting to the only noun he trusted.
"View-only," the clerk answered, and tapped the blue seal on the rope for the recorder to hear.
New math scuffed the concrete outside. A low steel porta-power jack nosed into the seam—wedge tip thin as a lie—its hose umbilical running to a compact pump body cradled by a man who looked like he loved levers. The quick-coupler sat up top like a silver Adam's apple.
Ash didn't shoot hose. He has rules. He took the coupler just at the collar. The shot kissed metal; the collar blew its spring; oil burped meekly straight down into the man's own boot. He cussed and jerked the rig away before physics could decide to be unkind.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: jack quick-coupler collar (long-range). Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Inside, Ash traded the rifle for steel. "Nono—fishplates," he said. The bot shouldered out two short angles with holes. Ash set them at the far post base, straddling the anchor pattern—fishplating the plate to slab through abandoned shelf anchors he bullied into relevance with expansion bolts and a mean wrist. He backed them with washers thicker than honesty and ran the nuts down until the angles sang.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement: post fishplates to slab (expansion bolts). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Hale knelt, palm on concrete, weight making a promise. "Gap?" he asked.
"A hair," Ash said. He scraped dust from the slab with his blade, drizzled a line of oil to make a foul grout, and tamped it under the plate's near edge with a shim and a hammer until the mix packed like a lie that had found a job. He ran a rope seal along the rail seam and drove it with a putty knife to keep sparks from learning new paths.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement: foul grout + rope seal at base/rail. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Admin narrated like a metronome with a badge. "Interior hardening: fishplates, foul grout, rope seal. Venue remains sealed."
The watchers outside traded a lean for a stance. The truck rolled a meter and stopped like a thought unsure of itself. The drone drifted higher and pretended to be a star.
The liaison's voice came dry as paper. "You are escalating."
"We are holding," the City-Admin clerk said, courteous and implacable. He slid another blue strip over the rope knot—new number read out, duplicate to Admin's page—because sometimes ritual keeps rooms from rolling into ditches.
Nono pinged soft at the near post and again at the far. Nothing moved wrong. The ping was just a machine reminding itself it existed.
The truck's door clanged. Two men lugged a narrow cart with bottles upright—oxygen, fuel—strapped like saints; a steel tube bundled with rods like javelins; a box with a torch head that didn't look like anyone's cigarette lighter. Exothermic. Thermal lance.
Hale breathed once. "Heat," he said. "We don't win a weld."
"Admin," Ash said, already moving, "two dry-chems, seam wand, and—" he pointed at the hatch cord—"set to crack on my call. Not wide. We vent up, not out."
Admin's mouth tightened at the cord—habit remembered slam—but he nodded. "On you," he said, taking extinguishers off their pins and rolling a seam wand—a taped length of conduit with a flex nozzle—over to the grille.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Safety staging: dry-chem x2 + seam wand, hatch cord prepped. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The City-Admin clerk didn't step back. He shifted his weight so the recorder could see his face when men remembered to be people. He wrote EXTERNAL—THERMAL LANCE (PREP) with a hand that had stabilized all afternoon.
Ash took the Stag again—not to shoot with hope, but to keep men honest while heat tried to teach steel a new language. He set it on the lip, safety on, eyes through the grille slits at hands and valves. Regulator knob spun—oxygen first—whine thin. Fuel cracked, hiss low. The torch head took a bar from the rod bundle and kissed it with intent. White waited behind orange like a memory of the sun.
"Nono—ping high," Ash said. The bot angled its silly wand at the lip and chirped when the IR saw shapes it didn't like.
"Record valves," Admin said to himself as much as to the page. "Regulated; knobs set."
The torchhead met the rod and bloomed—white, immediate, greedy. The man outside brought the lance down toward the far post base, hand steady in the way of men who think PPE means immortality. The first touch made steel spit bright.
"Crack," Ash said.
Admin pulled the hatch cord a hand—not a slam, a sliver. Air took the path up, not through. Heat's breath found taller toys. Ash yanked the dry-chem pin, jammed the seam wand nozzle through the grille, and drove powder toward light.
The lance wrote a white roar against the day.