The city woke like a bad battery: a flicker, a hum, and then nothing. Kael counted the seconds between the pipe sighs and used the space to decide the day's verbs.
"We do not need to be brave," he said.
"We need to be correct," Mira answered.
Nox added, "And grounded."
Renn, tentative: "And on the dots."
Kael opened the ledger. The blue crown outside the door did not deserve a mention but received one anyway as a footnote that read: noise.
[System: Day Plan] - Mission A: conduct first controlled sortie beyond building to scavenge electronics from a corner store and an office supply on the next block. - Mission B: unlock Energy/Electrical T0 (DC Basics) if PC permit; objective: improvised UPS and low - noise lights. - Mission C: lay an exterior RN - 4 trip at alley mouth; survey Blue marks beyond our staircase. - Reward: +2 PC if sortie returns without injury; +1 PC if RN - 4 established; +1 PC if functioning low - noise light installed.
PC available: 23.0.
Knowledge available: Energy T0 - > DC Basics (cost: 2 PC).
"Today we buy light," Kael said. He selected the node without flourish.
[System: Knowledge Acquired]
DC Basics installed.
Effects: +wiring safety, +battery salvage, +inverter improvisation, - electrical noise.
Remaining PC: 21.0.
Mira's eyebrows lifted. "You look like you swallowed a diagram."
"Multiple," Kael said. "We will be less blind." - - - Roles and route
He sketched the route: down fire stairs, out the alley, avoid the main drag, cross to the office supply with the cracked red sign, then the corner store that still remembered electricity on its shelves. Return with small, dense things: batteries, wire, headlamps, a compact tool kit, maybe a soldering iron if kindness cooked it with a generator.
"Thread," Kael said, "you run the line and mark detours in chalk. Scout under Thread, you walk second, eyes outside. Bar, rear guard and carry. Latch, policy and locks."
Renn rubbed his taped hand. "I can still carry with the other," he said. "I can also run back if needed."
"Do not run back unless the dots tell you to," Mira said. "You follow my shoulder."
"Yes, Thread," Renn said, startling himself with how right the word felt.
They packed small: three cloth bags, a coil of paracord, two knives, Nox's pipe, Kael's hammer, a strip of blue painter's tape not for allegiance but for silence on metal edges. Kael included a multimeter he had kept for years and loved without reason. Suddenly it had reasons again.
He looked at the door. The blue crown jeered in its imbecile way. He ignored it. - - - Stairs and outside air
The stairwell carried an odor like rain that had not happened. They moved on the pipe hiss, bodies aligned to corners the way careful sentences align to margins. RN - 2 and RN - 3 held. At the ground floor, the exit had been chained open by someone else's panic days ago. Mira laid a loop of thread at ankle height across the gap as if reintroducing the concept of hesitation.
The alley had a skin of soot and a smell of spoiled kitchens. A shopping cart lay on its side like a joke that had not landed. On the brick wall to their left, a splash of blue had been worked into arrows that pointed both ways, which is to say, pointed nowhere. Under one arrow was a crooked crown. Against his will, Kael admired the efficiency of the symbol. Then he withdrew admiration the way a hand withdraws from heat.
"RN - 4 there," he said, and Mira set the line where shadow and trash conspired to hide it, dusting the knot with gray so it would be believed by the alley.
[System: Node Established]
RN - 4 created: alley mouth trip line.
+1 PC.
They moved along the wall of the building, not the middle of the alley, stepping over broken bottles and a fallen sign that had once shouted about sales. A figure lay at the dumpster, quiet. Not infected. Not anything. Stillness had a different smell.
Renn flinched at a new sound: voices on the main road, thin and argumentative. He looked back to Mira. She shook her head and drew a flat palm across her chest: no projection, stay shadow. He nodded and let his breath be very small. - - - The office supply
The red sign hung from one chain like a man losing patience. Inside, aisles of paper and organizers and cheap wires leaned into each other. They slipped in through a broken pane and felt the room wait. Kael led them toward batteries with a fox's patience. He found a shelf of AA and AAA packs, some popped open and some who had kept their dignity under plastic. He took six, not all, and wrote TAKE SOME NOT ALL in the margin of his mind.
Nox found a rack of LED headlamps and made a sound that was almost joy. "Hands free," he whispered. "We will be beautiful."
Mira discovered a drawer of zip ties and admired their moral clarity. She took a bag.
Renn found the locked cabinet that kept the small expensive things and glanced to Kael. Kael nodded. Nox pried the lock like a patient bully. Inside: a small soldering iron, a cheap multimeter, an off - brand power bank still in box, a coil of rosin - core solder.
Kael's chest warmed with usefulness. "Yes," he said, and meant it like a prayer to no one.
They kept the floor clean as they took and left the cabinet respectably ajar so that if someone else came, they would understand the room had learned a new habit: sharing.
[System: Scavenge] - Batteries: AA x 24, AAA x 12. - Headlamps: 2. - Zip ties: 1 bag. - Soldering iron: 1 (corded). - Power bank: 1 (10 Ah, unknown quality). - Multimeter: 1 (backup).
Noise: minimal. Alert: none. +1 PC. - - - The corner store
The front door had been smashed long ago. The floor wore glass like a rug. Kael guided them along the aisle edges, shoes whispering a different alphabet. They found a rack of USB cables, a tray of lighters, a box of alkaline D cells that wanted to be a lantern someday. Mira pointed at a back corner where a small inverter generator sat in a cage, brand new, tags still on. The cage had a padlock. The padlock had a flier taped to it that read: STAFF ONLY. Mira made a face at the flier as if the paper had made a joke about doors.
"Later," Kael said. "We cannot justify the noise today."
Nox collected two rolls of duct tape as if they were currency. Renn found a pack of vacuum - seal bags and held them like a found magic trick.
Kael scooped three small DC wall warts from a bin, more for parts than for their lies about power. He took a bundle of copper wire sold as speaker cable and kissed it in his head, then put it in the bag very gently.
[System: Scavenge] - USB cables x 6. - Lighters x 3. - D cells x 8. - Duct tape x 2. - Vacuum - seal bags x 1 pack. - DC adapters x 3. - Speaker wire x 1 bundle.
Noise: low. Alert: moderate voices near main road. +1 PC.
Mira raised two fingers, then pointed to the side exit. They left by the narrow door beside the stockroom and breathed air that felt briefly like permission. - - - Blue outside
In the alley behind the corner store, more blue. Not just lines and crowns. Words, rushed and smeared: BRING LIGHT. A child hand. Or an adult doing child. Under it, a blocky diagram of a square with a dot and a zigzag like lightning.
Nox muttered, "Do not accept quests from walls."
"It is not a quest," Kael said. "It is a trap or a prayer. Either way, our answer today is no."
Mira took chalk and wrote a single dot a meter from the message, low, where a child would miss it. She circled the dot once and then rubbed it almost away. She looked at Kael and lifted a brow.
"We can leave our own grammar," she said.
"Quietly," Kael agreed.
[System: Counter - mark]
Tiny chalk dot placed as breadcrumb; signature low. - - - Return with interruptions
They moved back along the alley. At RN - 4, the knot had shifted a breath's width. Not severed. Touched. Kael crouched and rebuilt it, raising the line by a fingerbreadth. He left no smudge of chalk this time; he left the memory of tension in the string itself.
Voices swelled at the alley mouth. Three men and a woman, arguing about which shop had which sins left to steal. The woman laughed like a glass would laugh if a glass could make choices. They did not enter the alley. They left the alley to its future.
Back at the building, the stairwell felt almost friendly. RN - 2 and RN - 1 reported nothing but dust. The blue at A1 had grown a new small mark near the crown: a tiny square colored in. Kael stroked the graphite on the ledger where he drew it, and then set the pencil down because he refused to grant it a square it had not earned. - - - A little electricity
Inside, the room smiled at batteries the way a face smiles at calories. Kael laid the loot on the table like parts of a ritual. He slotted fresh AA into the headlamps and handed one to Mira, one to Nox. Renn took a small flashlight with gratitude that did not ask for permission to shine.
Kael pried open the power bank and examined its cells. Three 18650s in parallel, a controller board pretending not to be cheap. He tested it with the multimeter. It lied less than he expected. He smiled anyway.
He salvaged a DC adapter's barrel plug and spliced the wire to a small LED strip he had hoarded from an old drawer. He crimped with pliers and soldered with care, hissing as the iron breathed a familiar sweet stink. He taped the solder joint with the painter's tape and then with duct tape because belt and suspenders are friends in a world that wants pants to fall down.
He wired the LED strip to the power bank and covered the strip with paper to cut glare. He flipped the switch.
Light arrived, modest and obedient, a soft panel glow that did not cut the dark like a knife but massaged it into reason.
Mira's mouth opened despite fatigue. "It is kind," she said. "Not loud."
"Kind and stingy," Kael said. "And we will keep it on a short leash."
[System: Craft]
Low - noise LED light installed.
Effect: - movement errors at night, +morale small.
+1 PC.
Nox touched the paper shade with the back of a finger. "We should call it something," he said. "A thing that helps should have a name."
"Do not name tools," Kael said reflexively, then relented a fraction. "We will name the process: Light Discipline." He wrote it in the ledger and underlined it: no lights near doors or windows; lights off when the hall goes loud; cover always.
Renn held up the vacuum - seal bags. "Food lasts longer in these," he said. "We can be stingier with rice."
"Good," Kael said. "Stingy is love dressed in math." - - - The listener again
Late afternoon brought the listener variant, the woman from yesterday or her twin. She drifted past the door without testing it, head cocked to the left as if the city kept a radio just for her. She paused by the blue crown and smiled again, that private little smile a person wears when a joke returns to tell itself again.
Mira shivered. "She likes the crown."
"She likes the idea of liking," Kael said. "We do not let other people's symbols borrow our nerves."
Nox watched her go. "Choir," he murmured. "The city hums and she follows."
Kael wrote: Choir variant not aggressive if song continues. He hated that the word choir had learned to mean this. He loved that the word still worked for him when he needed it. - - - A tiny grid
With the last of the light, Kael built a tiny UPS from the speaker wire, the power bank, and a scavenged DC adapter board that he had bullied into accepting the power from a set of D cells. He cut and crimped and soldered until the thing lied less. He put the contraption inside a cardboard box lined with a rag to stop it from rattling and labeled it with a rectangle that read: do not kick me.
He ran the LED strip from the box and added a switch salvaged from a toy, held in place with zip ties and stubbornness. He tested again. The light blinked and then settled with the patience of bees in a small jar.
[System: Craft]
Micro - UPS assembled (Power Box Mk I).
Output: LED strip and one low - power device.
Noise: minimal.
+1 PC.
Mira looked at the box like a pet that might learn a trick. "We are making our own weather," she said softly.
"We are making a ledger that glows," Kael said.
Nox shook his head, smiling despite a day that had made his back sing at him. "Ledger man, one day you will call it a lamp like normal people."
Kael pretended to consider. "I will call it a lamp when it earns a chapter," he said. - - - Exterior audit and Blue perimeter
Before Quiet Court, they returned to the ground floor to check RN - 4 at the alley mouth. The line was intact. The chalk almost dot was more almost than before, rain or fingers having meddled. On the brick, new blue arrows had appeared since noon, bolder, pointing toward an intersection Kael did not plan to see today. Under one arrow, in shaky big letters: SAFE.
"Never believe SAFE in capital letters," Nox said.
"SAFE in lowercase is also a liar," Mira muttered.
"Correct," Kael said. "We believe in audited and liveable. Not SAFE." He drew the arrow cluster in the ledger and added a skull in the margin to amuse himself, then erased it because ledgers can be funny in the wrong places.
[System: Observation]
Blue perimeter expanding beyond building; directive words appear: BRING LIGHT, SAFE. Classification: coercive signage. Action: ignore; maintain countermarks small.
Mira added two faint chalk dots near the floor where a child would put hands to stand up. "Breadcrumbs only the bored will see," she said. "Bored people are useful."
Kael nodded. "We will recruit the bored one day." - - - Quiet Court: light discipline
They returned to Anchor - 1 and ate rice that tasted like competence. Kael read the day with the LED strip making a little island of gentle brightness on the table. - Sortie: office supply and corner store; batteries, headlamps, zip ties, wire, adapters; power bank of questionable honesty; duct tape; D cells; vacuum - seal bags. - RN - 4 established at alley mouth; touched then reset. - Blue outside: arrows, BRING LIGHT, SAFE; frame now propaganda; tiny countermarks placed. - Craft: LED panel light installed; Power Box Mk I assembled; light discipline rules written. - Variant: listener passed; non aggressive. - Supplies updated; hygiene maintained; doctrine repeated.
[System: Audit Complete]
+2 PC (sortie success), +1 PC (RN - 4), +2 PC (craft x2), +1 PC (doctrine).
Total PC: 27.0.
Advisory: research Traces & Reagents to test blue dust; consider EM signature of choir events; wire paperclip bell to LED flicker as visual alert for the deaf hour.
Kael wrote: Bell Light Link. He drew a simple diagram of a reed switch beside the door wired to the Power Box so that when the string sang or the knob moved, the LED would blink once, twice, as a quiet shout.
Mira touched the paper lightly. "I like that our bell will make a star," she said.
"It will blink like a thought," Kael said.
Renn cradled the headlamp like a prayer bowl. "Thank you for making light that does not betray us," he said. "I hate the dark, but I hate loud light more."
"We pay in quiet," Kael said. "The world charges double for noise."
Nox leaned back until his spine popped and groaned in relief. "Tomorrow you engineer a nap for my back," he said.
"I will design a chair," Kael said. "It will have doctrine."
They laughed, which is to say, the air admitted to being less heavy for a minute.
Kael closed the ledger and set his palm on the cover. Ritual is a kind of battery too.
"We do not need to be brave."
"We need to be correct," the others answered, in order now, like a liturgy that had chosen them. The LED made a soft square on the paper and on their hands. Outside, the blue crown waited impatiently for worship that would never arrive. Down the alley, arrows lied to the dark, and the dark lied back. The city kept humming its broken songs. The building kept listening with old pipes.
Inside, a small light obeyed, and four people counted themselves again.