Paint stripes carry him along the overpass like a quiet river. Head down, eyes up. The cart's wheels whisper. Wind presses from west to east, useful for once, shouldering his scent toward lanes nobody is using.
A gap in the safety rail reveals a maintenance stair pinched to the bridge's spine. He noses the cart into the crook of a jersey barrier, tests the first tread with the outside edge of his shoe, and starts down. The stair smells like rust and wet pigeon. The city's breath funnels through it, cold and knife-straight.
Ground level. Eastbound service road on one side, right-of-way on the other: two steel ribbons set in a bed of pale, sharp stone. Beyond, tanks hulking like sleeping whales. A fence runs the line—a chain-link with a utility gap where contractors have made their own gate from habit.
Across the tracks, a squat, boxy building sits on cut concrete: a signal bungalow with a padlock and a door that believes in itself. He sights along the funnel ring, breathes once to the bottom of his lungs, and tightens the air.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The lock blinks surprise and forgets it has a shackle. He palms the door and eases it open until the rubber sweep kisses the threshold.
Inside: a clean smell of acid and metal. Cabinets line the walls, labels stenciled in a language of numbers and arrows. A bank of deep-cycle batteries waits low and heavy. A relay rack ticks once like an insect thinking. He kills the thought by pulling the main throw to OPEN and watching the light die from a single stubborn LED.
He works by feel and memory: battery terminals first, then fuses that still look honest, then spare wire. He coils leads into his cart, nests two deep cycles on the lower shelf until the cart complains and accepts its fate, and pockets a handful of ceramic fuses because hope is a plan with parts.
[MECHANICAL OPERATION (PASSIVE)][MECHANICAL REPAIR (PASSIVE)]
Outside, wind changes note. Sound crawls from the culvert under the road: not steps—tongues. From the underpass, the softer hush of bare feet learning to be steps. Two vectors, maybe three.
He kills the bungalow's lightless light, closes the door, and crouches at the crossing where road meets rail. The mast wears two dead eyes of red over white crossbucks. Beside it, a steel cabinet with a rusted latch. Inside: a relay, a bell driver, wires that still remember what to do when asked politely. He seats a fuse, back-feeds the circuit with one of the bungalow's cells, and bridges two posts with stripped copper until the metal shivers and the bell wakes with a surprised clack that becomes a steady clang-clang.
[MECHANICAL FABRICATION: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The first flash is weak. The second learns. Red throbs in the dark in a cadence human bones recognize whether they want to or not.
The chorus hears religion. Voices slip into register—laughter, pleas, promises, curses—then smooth into hunger disguised as speech. They go for the bell.
He rides the fence line east along the ballast, placing his feet between knife-stones. The cart hates the rocks; he makes it love them by lifting one wheel, then the other, a seesaw rhythm that spends shoulder and back and keeps the noise low.
Under the overpass, a handful of shapes peel away from the lure, more curious than faithful. One slips through a drainage slot graceless as a sack of meat and lands facedown in stones. It rises using its chin first. It turns its head as if the air were telling it a story and the story ended at him.
He keeps moving. The ballast shifts; his ankle rolls and then finds itself. He corrects without telling the ground he's angry.
A service gate presents itself: chain wrapped twice and too heavy for a man who isn't full of bad ideas. He sights on the link that holds the chain honest.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The first pulse dents. The second turns the dent into a tired oval. The third convinces the link that it has always been open. He threads through with the cart, drags the chain to make a gull-cry that points the wrong way, and keeps east.
The right-of-way crosses a riveted plate bridge with lattice rails and a view down into water black enough to swallow most regrets. On the far side: a yardlet—three short sidings, a dead switch, a tool shed.
The shed's AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign has no authority left. He opens it with two breaths and a nudge and steals what the future has been asking for since morning: two more jump boxes, a coil of 8-gauge, hose clamps, a flare kit he doesn't trust but takes anyway.
Movement troubles the bridge behind him. The drainage-slot curiosity has made friends. He hears bone on lattice, wet hands on steel. The bell farther west keeps praying in metal.
He checks the cart, tightens the straps across the deep cycles, and sets the funnel ring with tape chewed shorter by teeth that don't want to chatter.
[SPEED: LV.1 (Progress +1)]
The yard squeezes into a narrow run where the right-of-way threads between tank fence and a warehouse's block wall. Ahead, a truss bridge over the river. Half the deck is gone; ribs and ties show, nothing like a walkway. The rails still span the gap, two bright lines into a bruise of dark.
He doesn't want to choose. He loves doors and motors and bolts that say maybe. The bridge says now.
He drags the cart into the mouth of the span where grate meets gravel and locks the wheels with a zip tie because superstition is just engineering you haven't proved yet. The chorus pours into the yard like water poured into wire. He plants his feet on the first tie, points the funnel ring at the narrows, and spends shots like a miser.
Knees, not faces. Ankles, not chests. Things that make bodies reconsider their hobbies.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The lattice hums with impacts. A hand flaps independent of its owner and tries to learn how to be a bird. Something fast and glassy skitters along the wall and leaps for his throat. He bats it with the bar; it bursts wrong and leaves a shine that smells of pennies.
He uses the bar to make three meters of air that belongs to him. The chorus collapses the three by appointing new leaders. He backs onto the bridge until wind owns his clothes and the river below talks in a voice that doesn't care about people.
The gap stares at him. Ties show wood dark with time, bolted to nothing in the middle. The rails run the span like bright lies. Step wrong and the night files you under lesson.
He racks the funnel ring tight. The tape squeezes his fingertip until cold becomes a blade. He looks at the first five steps and refuses to look at the rest.
He goes.
The first tie takes him. The second lies a centimeter farther than his body wants. The third has a bolt head where his foot means to land and the bolt head does not want to share. Don't look down. He looks down because people look down. The river is a slow knife. Breath becomes a thing he manages and loses, manages and loses. Wind comes from where he needs to go and pushes without caring if the push helps.
Behind him, the chorus does math it hasn't practiced. A few start the ties. A few fall. Falling teaches them nothing they can use tomorrow. They try again because the bell is still clanging on a road they forgot how to name and hunger will make a culture out of any sound.
He anchors with the bar across two ties and crafts a narrow shot. The nearest lure has learned how knees work. He undoes the lesson.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Another has a rope of spit ready and a mouth that won't be satisfied with only one mouth. He leads the shot a thumb to the left. The rope arcs into dark. The lure shrieks in a register that makes the bridge tremble as if metal has feelings.
Four more ties. A gap wide enough to swallow a lazy foot. Heel, then ball; ball, then heel—head still, arms quiet, feet honest.
The last two ties before the missing mid-span are slicker than the rest. He inches the cart's nose forward until its front wheels kiss empty air and decide life is complicated. He can't drag the cart across. Not without a second person or a quieter planet.
He unstraps a battery, shoulders it, and feels his joints explain their policies. He hugs the weight with his elbows so his hands can still point and work. He steps to the next tie and the river says no hurry with the voice of a million knives laid flat.
The chorus floods the bridge mouth, a press of limbs trying to learn how to be a decision. The lattice sings; the truss groans. Something under the bridge takes offense at the noise and moves, big enough to make the river briefly choose another shape.
He does not look. The tie under his foot argues about its job and then agrees. The battery leans him left; the wind leans him right; the world leans him nowhere he can use.
The bell keeps praying because he asked it to and because machines love work even when work is ruin.
He takes the step that cuts off retreat.