The sergeant held the dolly like it had been invited. The hinge on the hard case showed brass under dead paint and the lid's wedge nose didn't belong to first aid. Hale's palm stayed on the edge until the case learned stillness; the judge did not look at the case when she ruled on it.
"That does not enter this venue," she said. "Remove it to the corridor."
"Safety gear for the session," the liaison tried, already drawing the sentence he wanted the clerk to remember.
"For safety," the judge said, "you will keep it where it cannot be mistaken for hardware at the rope." She lifted her chin a width. The sergeant backed the dolly a meter; the wheels wrote a complaint in concrete that didn't change anyone's mind.
The City-Admin clerk's pen put weight where it belonged: ATTEMPT—HARD CASE (RAM NOSE) AT THRESHOLD—REMOVED. Admin's stamp warmed the margin with ADMIN—OVERSIGHT and the page settled like a tool into its slot.
Nightshade pivoted as if the floor were a hinge it owned. The cart's drawer yielded a slim tripod and a gray puck with numbers on its face. "Acoustic meter," the tech said with a voice that wanted everyone to be colleagues. "We'll log levels at the rope so there's no allegation about interference."
"Set it there," the judge said, pointing short of the rope. "No legs under."
The tripod came up anyway, one leg telescoping to find purchase under the line. Ash stepped in and took the leg by its foot. The rubber cap had a slit; beneath it, a lead shoe showed a small spring-loaded pin where an honest foot would have been solid. The pin head had a faint grind mark, the kind you get when metal has been sharpened to become electrical. He twisted the cap; the pin popped like a bad idea caught in the act.
"Electrode," he said, flat. He turned the puck and saw a second pigtail tucked into a seam with a male micro-clip that wanted a rope to complete a circuit.
The judge held out her hand and the tripod transferred without arguments. "Logged," the clerk said, already writing SOUND METER—FOOT ELECTRODE—REJECTED.
"Cart and drone are now removed to the street," the judge added, eyes still on the pin. "Return at fourteen-hundred with nothing that has a battery you cannot explain to a child."
The liaison kept his smile because he had run out of other tools and a smile is one you can carry past rope. "We note the court's limitations."
"You may note them while you comply," the judge said. She looked to the clerk. "Reduce watchers."
The cart operator set his hands where an operator sets them when he's not going to push any more, then pushed anyway; Hale's mass made persuasion unnecessary. Nono watched the drone rise above the lintel and then move down the corridor, its compliance finally shaped by a tone that didn't need volume.
They weren't done trying nouns. A "panel" came off the cart as if it had volunteered to be innocuous—thin, polycarbonate, with two foam strips along the back. "Crowd-control shield," the tech said. "To protect the rope."
"Show the back." Ash turned it and found the foam's first inch peelable to reveal adhesive hooks set into a pry-lip along the lower edge—designed to kiss a rope and then tear upward like a smile that didn't mean it.
"Reject," the judge said. The City-Admin clerk wrote PANEL—ADHESIVE HOOK / PRY-LIP—REJECTED in letters that had learned to be tired without getting messy.
The corridor changed shape when the cart and drone rolled away—emptier, but also truer. Watchers backed into their permitted lean and found themselves fewer. The truck idled at a distance that would remain exactly three meters for as long as the judge's eyes lived in this room.
Admin set the mislabeled ammo pouch and the drone tag pouch side by side on the crate and drew a small box around both entries. His hand didn't shake. The City-Admin clerk lifted his RF wand again, showed its taped antenna to the judge, and traced the rope and crate. The wand burbled hallway reflex but found nothing under the co-seals that wanted to confess. He wrote RF SWEEP—NEGATIVE and drew a dot beside it that meant his pen had decided to keep believing in ink.
They were two signatures away from letting the venue breathe without people talking at it when the smoke-hatch above the curtain lip ticked. It was a small sound—metal under paint, a fastener turning against whatever lies paint tells itself after installation. Nono's head angled up and pinged a polite emergency: motion at hinge bolts where none had existed a minute prior.
"Record overhead fastener activity," Admin said, already writing. The judge lifted a hand in an open circle that meant everyone else would pretend to be smarter than gravity. "Facility safety action is authorized," she said. "No alterations to rope or crate. All actions within view. Clerk will observe."
Hale had already moved to the wall ladder that lived beside the post. He handed Ash the bag that looks like it's for lunches and keeps a facility alive: duckbill pliers, safety-wire, a strap, two backup dog bars, a paint pen, and evidence bags that still smelled like clean plastic instead of later arguments. He took the first rung and found the ladder honest. Ash followed, bag over his shoulder, Stag slung down his back where it wouldn't try to teach rails about leverage.
They went up four meters, just far enough that the gallery became a map and the rope a line instead of a law. The hatch frame met them with paint that had learned the day's vocabulary and a lip that had not. A hinge bolt on the left side turned a quarter and stopped like it had hit a market it couldn't afford. On the right, a washers' dust circle lay where paint had migrated and wafered over time; someone had cracked it, then paused.
"Two above," Hale murmured, cheek close to metal. He kept his palm flat to the hatch to read its intentions.
Ash set one backup dog—a short bar that spans frame to lid—on the near edge and ran its carriage bolts to snug. He set the second bar at the far edge where a man could cheat with a pry bar and chose bolts that were lazy enough to survive being over-torqued without snapping. He tightened until the rubber pads kissed steel and stayed. He added a stop-strap—a short webbing loop through frame ear and lid eye—and pulled it just taut. The hatch would now have to become three things at once to move.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement: backup dogs + stop-strap installed at smoke-hatch. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He took safety-wire, fed it through the outer hinge bolt head and the adjacent tab, and twisted until the pairs lay neatly, twist count an honest twelve per inch. He brought the tails back and bent them so no later hand could pretend it bled by accident. He wired the second hinge bolt and then set the paint pen on the heads—one line across bolt to metal, a witness mark that turns movement into proof.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Fastener security: safety-wire + witness paint on hinge bolts. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Below, the judge stepped backward half a pace to keep the ladder and hatch in her periphery, and the clerk adopted the posture of a man who has learned how to write while watching. Admin stood with the pad under his arm like a shield he had chosen.
The hinge ticked again—not the wired head, but a nut on the hinge's underside, which a wrench above could reach without paying respect to paint. Ash felt it through the hatch's skin. He leaned his ear and heard the small, bright language bolts speak when they're being told to behave like strangers.
"Nut," he said, not loud. He took a thin drift and set it across two thread turns at the exposed edge; a second drift went against the frame's stiffener to brace it. He did not hit anything. He held both like a man playing an instrument that doesn't let you use noise.
"Below you," Hale said, and offered the duckbill pliers. Ash took them and set them in the small gap between hatch lip and frame where a washer had tried to slide; he pinched and fished the flake out, slid it into an evidence pouch with a felt that had once been a rag, and wrote WASHER DUST—HATCH HINGE with a pencil stub that didn't believe in finesse.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Evidence capture: washer dust / paint flake (roof hatch hinge). Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The wrenching above paused as if ears on a roof had learned something about being watched. Then a new tone feathered down through the seam—a saw-song, too thin for a blade, the peculiar hiss that abrasive wire makes when it decides to become a line and not a collection of grains. A dark filament slid into the small gap at the hinge end of the hatch and turned toward the strap like a man writing a diagonal. It took the gap because gaps are promises and wire knows how to collect them.
"Wire," Hale said, hand flat to the hatch to keep it honest.
Ash set the duckbill pliers open where the wire would pass and kept them quiet so the roof wouldn't hear the plan. He shifted his wrist so the pliers' throat would trap the line without letting it climb; he angled the pliers so a pull would drive the wire deeper into the jaws where cutting is a consequence and not a goal. He kept pressure off the strap; the strap's webbing would lose a long fight with a thousand small rocks.
"Below," the judge said calmly to no one in particular, "record abrasive line introduced at hatch seam."
The City-Admin clerk wrote it without looking up; Admin said "entered," because words have to hear themselves to work.
The wire kissed the pliers' mouth and tried to learn the hinge. It found the steel of the jaw and not the webbing of the strap, and it began to sing its own small saw-psalm. Ash added a breath's pressure to the handles and felt the vibration write a letter into his palm that meant tension. He brought his other hand under the pliers to back the cut so that when the line parted, it would not whip into Hale's hand or his own cheek, and he turned the jaw just enough that the wire would resist there and nowhere else.
"Cut," Hale said, not as a command; as a weather report.
Ash leaned.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Countermeasure: abrasive-wire intercept with duckbill pliers (no seal disturbance). Difficulty: mid+. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The wire's pitch went up as tension found it and then down as grit found throat. It tried to walk sideways; the pliers kept it from choosing. Ash felt the heat announce itself through the handle and adjusted grip without giving the roof a sound. He sensed the strand thinning and positioned his thumb against the hinge metal to follow the fall so the line wouldn't write a mark anyone could misread as the hatch having moved.
Below, Nono's head tracked the seam as if it could help by thinking. The judge did not tilt her chin. The liaison folded his arms and practiced a look that planned to say the word reckless later.
The line gave up the first filament with a ping and then, as if physics had agreed with itself, the remaining cords followed. The whisker fell. Ash caught it with the pliers' back and guided it into an evidence bag that Hale had ready, closing the zip with the care of a man putting a problem to bed.
He let the handles relax and tested the strap for any scar. The webbing showed no cut; the stop-strap would still die of boredom before it died of attention. He checked the witness paint on the hinge heads; both marks stayed a single line.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Threat neutralized: abrasive line cut; witness marks intact. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The wrench above tried one last gesture—a petulant quarter turn that never reached the threads—and then withdrew the way men do when roofs don't act like doors. Hale kept his palm to the hatch for one extra count because sometimes you teach steel with patience.
"Below," the judge said, "state of hatch."
"Reinforced with two backup dogs and a stop-strap; hinge bolts safety-wired; witness paint applied; abrasive line intercepted and bagged," Admin read, not a glance wasted. The City-Admin clerk wrote the same sentence in smaller words and underlined intercepted as if it owed him thanks.
Ash put a fingertip to the backup dogs and checked the pads for shift; he brought the wrench a quarter hair tighter on the far bar and then, because you prove your own story while the room is watching, he slid the loupe along the hinge seam and let everyone see that brass and paint continued to be where brass and paint had agreed to live. He dabbed one more dot of witness on the stop-strap's shackle and put the pen away.
They climbed down with the same care they had taken up. The ladder kept its promise. The bag went back on the crate; the duckbills went into it like a pair of animals that had found their burrow again. Ash placed the abrasive line pouch next to the micro-tag pouch; two problems of a similar species, now living under plastic where they could be counted and named.
"Any motion," the judge asked the liaison without moving her face toward him.
He tried one. "We move to question the alteration to the hatch—"
"—facility safety action within the venue and within my view," she said. "No alteration to rope or crate. Denied."
The truck out in the light changed nothing about its idle and told everyone it had opinions it hadn't been invited to submit. The watchers found a way to lean that pretended to be posture and were ignored.
"Finalize noon orders," the City-Admin clerk said to himself and then to the page. He read them into the recorder like minutes that could be enforced with doors: co-seal plain; cart and drone removed to street for the session; watchers reduced; distance three meters; no tools at lip; view-only inventory; bench snapshot-sealed; East Range validation completed on City-Admin ammo; Nightshade unit zeroed; exhibits A through F in custody; roof hatch reinforced with backup dogs, safety-wire, and strap; abrasive line intercepted.
The judge signed without turning her wrist more than policy requires. Admin signed and stamped, and in the small noise the stamp makes the room remembered it could continue to be a room.
The liaison's smile found a way to suggest patience that didn't exist. "At fourteen-hundred," he said.
"At fourteen-hundred," the judge agreed.
She had not finished saying it when the hatch above them made a new sound—a chatter with an edge, not the polite tick of thread, but the thin whine of a battery ratchet trying a different fastener and failing to care where courtrooms start. The pitch came not from the hinge, but from the keeper plate on the exhaust collar to the right, where a man with a bad education might believe he could lift the plate and get a hand under the skin.
Nono pinged high; Hale's head tilted toward the ladder at the first syllable of the tone; Ash took the bag again and was moving before anyone used the word authorized. The judge did not stop them. She turned her face toward the ceiling and let the sound reflect down into the recorder.
They went up the rungs like arguments climb when they have ground to stand on. The keeper plate lived where the hatch's exhaust collar met a square of trust. The self-tappers that held it had not been part of last night's genius; they were from an earlier day when a man with a drill had invented a solution and then left.
A black cord slid between collar and plate and wrapped itself around one of the tappers, trying to walk it counterclockwise with a set of beads—a trick you can buy in markets that sell more than should be sold. The beads chattered as the cord twitched by battery somewhere in a hand above.
Ash set the duckbills again, this time across the cord between the beads so the next twitch would use its own force to push itself into being caught. He brought the handles together until the beads couldn't move and the worm had to admit it was a string. He gave a small twist to shear bead from bead; the cord's insides failed at a seam. He laid the bitten piece into a bag and looked at the tapper; its slot had moved one degree and then stopped because physics refused to root for amateurs when courts watched.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Countermeasure: keeper-plate bead cord arrest (no movement). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He set two small self-drilling screws through the keeper plate's free corners and into the frame, then safety-wired their heads together so any future insult would be brief and recorded. He put a witness mark across them and touched a dot onto the collar seam like a man blessing a hinge.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement: keeper plate pinned + safety-wire. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Hale kept his palm on the hatch because that was his part of the sentence. The sound above turned into shoe rubber learning that listening had become a harder sport than walking. It moved away, two steps, then three, and the roof remembered how to be a lid.
They climbed down into a room that had witnessed itself doing the right thing in the right order. The clerk wrote BATTERY RATCHET—KEEPER PLATE ATTEMPT—ARRESTED; Admin underlined arrested and then put the pencil away as if he had only planned to carry it this long.
"Any further motions," the judge asked, the exact amount of courtesy a city can afford.
None came. The liaison saved his words for a time he could choose.
"Then we adjourn to fourteen-hundred," the judge said. "Venue remains sealed; rope and crate unchanged; hatch secure. Watchers exterior only."
She turned for her first step toward the corridor. The words had not yet finished being air when the hatch seam whispered again and a second length of abrasive line—thinner, darker, perhaps carbon this time—eased into the gap at the far corner, finding a new path where bar and strap were not. Its tip did not test; it bit.
Ash had the pliers in his hand before the line finished choosing. Hale leaned heel and palm into the hatch so any movement would be borrowed from bone and bar, not from lip. The line began to sing its high, hungry note.
Ash set the jaws where the pitch would be best, angled for a cut that would catch the fall, and prepared to give the roof back its own noise.