Ash kept the jaw in cloth and gave gravity the choice it wanted. The ESD clip turned inside the rag, found itself owned by fabric instead of paint, and went into a pouch with its cousins. He printed ESD CLIP—AT KNOT—STRIPPED IN RAG—NO CONTACT and pressed the seal flat with his thumb so the ink ate the ridge of his fingerprint.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Probe intercept: ESD clip stripped into evidence (no rope contact). Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
"Contempt threshold reached," the judge said, voice steady. "Nightshade personnel are now outside-only. Your clerk remains for copies. Nothing else."
The liaison took the sentence like a man taking a temperature. He nodded once, small. He stepped back because stepping forward had spent itself.
"Numbers," the City-Admin clerk said, and read blue and violet again. "Unchanged." He ran the RF wand along rope, crate, hatch. "Negative." He underlined unchanged and boxed negative as if the page could wear armor.
"Sign," Admin said softly, and the stack came in order: co-seal acknowledgment, interim clarifications, roof entries, RF negatives, evidence list. The judge wrote her name the way rooms stay upright. Admin signed and stamped; the Nightshade clerk signed with the honesty of a man who had learned the difference between method and tool.
"Adjourn to fourteen-thirty," the judge said. "Venue sealed. Cart and drone remain at street. Nightshade observes from outside."
They walked the liaison and his assistant to the grille one step at a time so the floorboards could testify to sequence if asked. Hale kept his shoulder where doors live. Nono rolled beside the rope with its dome tipped toward numbers. The truck outside idled with a different opinion of patience than earlier. The exterior watcher rearranged himself into compliance when the judge's coat appeared.
Admin set the evidence pouches in a line on the crate like rivets on a seam and photographed them with the clerk's camera: labels face-up, seals intact, times legible. The City-Admin clerk clicked the file number aloud to the recorder. The room learned the punctuation.
The liaison crossed the threshold to where outside begins and stopped where the grille taught air about squares. He lifted his hands in the shape of a man placing a bowl he no longer owned. "We will lodge objection at fourteen-thirty," he said, as if vowels could enter venues that men could not.
"Filed at the mic," the clerk said evenly. "From there."
Nono chirped low. The cross-chain between the posts—two lengths with an honest sag—murmured a new note. You only hear it if you live with steel: a thrumming that doesn't come from men trying, but from something taking slack further away. The rope itself stayed quiet; the chain began to hum up toward tight.
Hale's eyes shifted a degree. He didn't look at Ash; he looked at the left post. The post answered with a little creak the way a hinge does when it remembers weather.
"Truck to three meters," the judge said, no louder than before.
"Within—" the Nightshade clerk started.
"—three," the judge repeated, and turned her head to where the truck driver could see she owned the unit of measure, not the distance.
The truck did not back. Its idle dipped a bar; the front bumper found a new angle like a dog putting its shoulder into a fence without the courtesy of barking. The strap hidden below the bumper—a flat length of web with a steel eye—tightened in a straight line to the cross-chain where some clever person had looped it through earlier while everyone else loved nouns.
The chain's sag lifted; the posts leaned inward a fraction; the rope across them pulled itself straighter than it had paperwork for.
"Tow attempt," Admin said. His radio was already live. "Corridor unit—photo on truck front strap at East Gallery. Record from our side. No physical intervention with vehicle."
The City-Admin clerk had his pen on TOW ATTEMPT—FRONT STRAP ON CROSS-CHAIN before the words finished; he underlined attempt and drew a small arrow toward chain because arrows are sometimes how humans tell truth to steel.
Hale moved first and without rehearsal because he keeps tools near where leverage lives. He reached the corner where the post foot met the floor and slid a wedge under the plate—not between metal and concrete, but between plate and direction so the lean would have to climb a triangle that wouldn't learn. He set a second wedge opposite, half-turn rotated so if the first surrendered, the second would not resemble it.
Ash was already at the right post with a tie-back in his hand: a short strap with a cam buckle and a fixed hook. He wrapped the strap around the post two hands high and took it back to the wall eye where some earlier facility person had left a promise in steel. He set the hook, took slack, and leaned to make angle do work where force wanted to be lazy.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Countermeasure: stanchion brace—floor wedges + tie-back to wall eye (prevent chain pull). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The chain's hum climbed another half-step. The strap on the truck mouth tightened a heartbeat more. The cross-chain tried to be a line and remained a curve because Ash and Hale had reminded geometry of its job.
"Truck," the judge said again, hand still at her side, "reverse."
You could hear the moment the driver decided to pretend compliance had been his idea all along. The bumper lifted off its plan; the webbing found slack; the chain settled down to a note the room recognized.
"Cited," the clerk said, writing DISTANCE VIOLATION—TOW STRAP and then adding ORDER: THREE METERS ENFORCED because sometimes ink needs the comfort of verbs.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Venue: tow attempt deterred; distance restored. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
"Roof Two," the radio cracked. "We remain at parapet. No tools seen. Your chain lifted then relaxed. Copy your citation."
"Logged," Admin said. He looked at Ash's tie-back, checked the cam with two fingers, and let the strap own its job.
The liaison examined the floor in front of his shoes with an interest that did not make it his. He said nothing. The Nightshade clerk cleared his throat in a way that asked the pen for forgiveness.
"Adjourned," the judge repeated, because rooms trust seconds more when they come in pairs. "Fourteen-thirty. Objections at the mic. From there."
A change came from below, not above and not bumper: a faint slide at the floor seam where the anti-grapple skirt ends its slant and meets concrete. It sounded like felt moving honed steel, a tongue tasting for a gap. Nono pinged a narrow alarm. Hale's chin fell a centimeter, which is his way of pointing.
Ash dropped to a knee at the lip and saw the tongue—a flat hook on a rod, blade-ground, low profile, coming in from the side where sightlines are bad, inching for the hole someone had drilled in a different century for a lever that had learned a nicer job since. The tongue wanted the hole. The tongue wanted the hole, and then to find the cross-chain above, and then to make physics try a trick.
He had bar and block because he keeps things between problems and answers. The bar was a short pinch crow with a nose that knows how to be a wedge; the block was the size of a book, oak, and had learned to be loyal. He slid the block against the seam inside the skirt where the tongue hoped to arrive and set the bar's beak into the tiny gap the tongue needed to become a noun.
"Record floor tongue," Admin said, already writing.
Ash levered the bar a breath to make the gap less a gap and more a trap; the beak caught tongue metal and told it, without speeches, about direction. The tongue hooked the beak instead of the hole, which decided matters for a second. He turned the beak a quarter and lifted toward block so when the tongue found force, it would punch wood and not rope.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Countermeasure: floor-grapple tongue intercepted with bar + block (under skirt). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The rod outside gave a tug that belonged to arms and resentment. The tongue slammed the block, found oak disinterested in dialog, and failed to enter the hole. Hale didn't move fast; he moved heavy, his boot heel laying weight on the plate edge in a place that turned pull into pain for the person who had planned to be clever.
The tug had a second try in it. It tugged. The beak held. The block thumped once more and then settled with a sound that tools make when they've been praised for choosing the right friends.
The City-Admin clerk didn't change his hand; he changed his pen angle so the entry would be legible in the afternoon. FLOOR TONGUE—UNDER SKIRT—INTERCEPTED (BAR/BLOCK) went down in long strokes.
Admin's radio had one more quiet sentence from corridor: "Photo taken of strap. Copy going to file. No movement on vehicle now."
The judge breathed in and let the breath go because someone in the room had to set the metronome. "Outside-only," she said to the grille, last time for this hour. "Objections at fourteen-thirty from there. Any hardware in this hallway that looks like law will be removed to the street."
The liaison bowed a millimeter, which is a form of punctuation people use when the alphabet has taken their tools away. The exterior watcher learned a new place to stand.
Hale tapped the wedge with two knuckles. It stayed where a wedge should. Ash eased the beak off the tongue and slid the block two inches deeper so the next clever idea would have less surface to rehearse.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Venue: stanchions stabilized; skirt seam guarded. Risk: moderate → low (temporary).
"Numbers," the City-Admin clerk said again, because numbers like being heard. "Blue—unchanged. Violet—unchanged." He let the camera see the digits and the pen underline.
Admin glanced at the clock, then at the objection mic on the crate, and then at the empty space between a line and a rule. You could feel the session getting ready to become paper again.
The truck outside sulked itself into neutral. The chain laid its lazy curve back over the post heads like a cat choosing a shelf. The grille remembered that it was a hole and not a plan.
Ash tucked the bar into the bag and folded the strap tail on the tie-back so it wouldn't invent noise. He met Hale's eyes long enough to agree on ready. Nono hummed a small agreeable tone and turned its dome back toward the knot.
The liaison reached for the mic with the care of a man touching a stove he hasn't forgiven. The judge angled her chin in consent measured in degrees. The City-Admin clerk lowered his pen so the page would be clean for verbs.
The mic clicked live. The grille's squares made the hallway into a board full of holes.
The liaison opened his mouth to say objection, the word you use when you hope nouns will outrun physics.
From the lip at the skirt a fresh shape announced itself, lower than the last, wider, a grapple tongue with a double hook that had been flattened to a ribbon. It came for the seam like it had rehearsed being a snake. It had help from below, not human hands—a jack somewhere in the hallway pumping up on the rod so the angle would clear the block.
Nono's ping learned a louder vowel. The tongue found the first half-inch of seam.
Ash slid, bar reversed to use the heel this time and not the beak, and drove the heel into the seam to meet the tongue with steel and not invitation. His other hand fetched a hardwood shim—a thinner block—and sent it home with the heel so the seam would stop improvising. He set his weight forward, forearm braced on plate edge, ready to answer the next push with angle instead of volume.