The room smelled faintly of solder and boiled water: progress and caution. Kael woke with the ledger on his knees and the hymn envelopes like quiet mountains on the page beside him. Mira sat up, knife under palm, eyes on the periscope bracket as if sight itself were a duty. Nox rotated his shoulders; the pipe tapped the floor once, respectful. Renn slept in the chair and woke the way paper wakes when turned.
"We do not need to be brave," Kael said.
"We need to be correct," Mira answered.
Nox: "And heavy in the right places."
Renn: "And on the dots."
[System: Day Plan] - Mission A: unlock Energy T1: Battery Banks; assemble Battery Crate Mk I (hybrid 18650 pack + D - cell bay) with trickle charge from rooftop panel scrap (if viable). - Mission B: teach Isa/Tom the Receipt Wall counter - language; replace Blue TAX with neutral ledgers. - Mission C: Parley Addendum: first contact with Brass Street Crew scouts at corridor edge; test quiet - node stance. - Mission D: scout location for Anchor - 3 (storage + workshop) two floors above A2. - Observation: Blue posted TAX NIGHT near mailboxes; arrows toward clinic. - Reward: +2 PC for Battery Crate functioning; +1 PC for Receipt Wall effect; +1 PC for clean parley w/ stripes; +1 PC for A3 site secured.
PC available: 39.5.
Knowledge available: Energy T1 - > Battery Banks (cost: 4 PC).
Kael selected it the way a man chooses a tool he already trusts without having held it.
[System: Knowledge Acquired]
Energy T1: Battery Banks installed.
Effects: +cell testing/balancing, +pack protection, +safe charge pathways, +failure prediction.
PC remaining: 35.5.
Mira studied his face. "You look like you can hear electrons misbehave."
"I can hear which ones lie," Kael said. - - - Battery Crate Mk I
On the table: torn - down power bank cells (18650), the honest D cells from the corner store, the DC adapter boards, a cheap protection circuit scavenged from a flashlight, copper bus wire, electrical tape, zip ties, a shoebox that had pretended to be for running and was now going to run light instead.
Kael tested each 18650 with the multimeter, rejecting two that read low and sad. He arranged the rest 3S2P - three in series, two parallel strings - for a nominal 11.1 V that the LED strip would drink without complaint after a resistor consultation. The D - cell bay he built as a hot - swappable sidecar, wired through a diode so it could contribute without arguing with the lithium.
He added a tiny fuse filched from a car charger because discipline catches fire earlier than tape does. He taped the sharp places, labeled leads, and wrote on the lid with a graphite stub: DO NOT KISS THESE WIRES.
"Name?" Nox asked, half a joke.
"Battery Crate Mk I," Kael said. "It will graduate when it stops making me nervous."
He set the output to a small bus - a strip of screw terminals salvaged from a defunct thermostat. LED panel on one tap. Headlamp charging dock on another. Hymn Ear amp on a third.
He held his breath and flipped the switch. The LED stripe obeyed with no drama. The amp hummed, honest. Nothing warmed that should not warm. He smiled despite ritual.
[System: Craft]
Battery Crate Mk I assembled; hybrid pack with protection; bus distribution.
Effect: +runtime for lights/sensors; +charge discipline.
+2 PC.
He wrote CHARGE DISCIPLINE v0.1: - Lamp Zones: Table, Corridor Prep, A2 Bench. Only one zone on at a time. - Charge windows: post - hymn 20 min; never during parley; never at doors. - Headlamps: rotate, never leave depleted on hook. - Crate carries: never near bath water; never near cook stove; never under child's reach.
Mira nodded, approving the bureaucracy that saved fingers. The child watched and did not touch, a new skill he wore like a medal. - - - Receipt Wall
TAX letters itch. Kael preferred ledgers. In the mail alcove, under Isa's watch, they pasted a piece of brown paper torn from a box and ruled it with four columns in hard pencil: Apartment (anonymous code), Watch Minutes Paid, Water Issued, Repairs Promised. No names. No glory. Just receipts that did not beg for worship.
"Receipt Wall," Kael said. "You do a thing, you get a line. Blue can shout. We will whisper with columns."
Isa's eyes warmed. "I trust columns more than crowns," she said.
Tom drew a line for down - two's watch shift yesterday and wrote W: 2 in careful block print. He did not smile. He did not need to.
Mira taped a small sign below: WE PAY ONLY TO PHYSICS.
They left the TAX paint alone. They did not erase it. They diluted it with better nouns.
[System: Counter - communication]
Receipt Wall installed. Effect: +neighbor cooperation, - Blue coercion effectiveness.
+1 PC. - - - Stripes at the edge
Midday brought yellow stripes: two men, one woman, sleeves painted at the cuff with a hazard band, not uniforms but intention. They stopped at the far edge where Parley Protocol had taught the floor to behave. Their posture said: We have learned enough to be dangerous to others but maybe not to you.
Mira took point as Thread. Nox stood as weight. Renn shadowed. Kael brought the ledger and the Hymn Ear on its stick because listening is a weapon.
"Parley," the woman said. She looked late twenties with a jaw that volunteered to argue. "We are Brass Street. We maintain order two blocks west. We are mapping ration lines. We will connect you if you declare your numbers."
Kael kept his voice at door level. "We are a wall. Walls do not declare. We offer watch minutes and reinforcement in exchange for quiet. We do not tithe to outside nouns."
The tall stripe smirked. "You have a house. Houses get taxed. The Crown collects." He nodded toward the blue crown as if allies existed between paint and brass.
"Your crown is not our landlord," Mira said, flat. "Proof - of - life for parley?" She held up two fingers, then half, then two fingers. The stripes frowned. Good. They were not invited in.
The woman looked at the Receipt Wall, read, did not mock. Her eyes flicked to the quiet node square and then back to Kael's face. "You mapped the hymn," she said. It was not a question.
"We mapped the hymn," Kael said. "We will sell timing advice for watch minutes at your clinic in exchange for materials: screws, plates, bleach."
The tall stripe made a sound like a crowbar hitting an idea. "You are selling air."
"We are selling not being eaten during a bad minute," Kael said.
The woman considered. Her posture changed a degree toward correct. "We will take your map to our Quarter," she said. "He thinks in calendars."
"Take nothing," Kael said. "You watch during hymn with us tonight. You see why the elbow square exists. Then you ask your Quarter if columns beat crowns."
A muscle jumped in the woman's cheek. "Name," she said.
"We do not name," Kael replied. "Thread. Bar. Latch. Scout."
She exhaled a laugh that did not hate them. "Then I am Stripe," she said, ironic. "We will return."
They left without stepping on any dot. The Hymn Ear wrote a small oscillation when their boots crossed a resonant line. Kael wrote it down because having more lines is a happiness he allows himself.
[System: Parley]
Brass Street scouts contacted; protocol held; offer made (watch - for - materials); escalation deferred.
+1 PC.
Nox muttered, "They will come back with either screws or a reason to own our teeth."
"Then we will own our teeth louder," Kael said. - - - Anchor - 3: a room that wants to be useful
Two floors above A2 there was a storage cage room with a half - broken roll - up gate and walls made of wire grid. It smelled of oil and the old pride of tools put away right. Kael liked it at once. He traced the load points with his finger where the gate tried to shrug off its job. He imagined a bench along the windowless wall. He imagined a scrap sorter. He imagined a place where noise would be honest and rare.
"A3," he said. "Workshop and overflow. No sleeping."
Mira chalked a discreet dot on the jamb at ankle height. "Our grammar goes here now," she said.
Nox lifted the gate and made a face at the squeal. "We will teach it to whisper," he promised.
Renn found a pegboard and made a sound like a man given an alphabet. "Hooks," he said reverently.
They set a bar slot and a secondary strap. They hung the Pebble Curtain twin. Kael added a small window baffle inside because any hole is a promise to a throat outside.
[System: Node Established]
Anchor - 3 secured (workshop/overflow). Effect: +capacity for builds; +buffer for people overflow.
+1 PC.
He wrote A3 RULE: no loud cuts except during hymn shoulders. He underlined shoulders three times and hung the Hymn Map page on a nail with a string through the top so the room had a calendar. - - - Blue: TAX NIGHT
On the stair at midafternoon someone had painted, sloppy and loud: TAX NIGHT. Below it, crowns. Below that, arrows toward the clinic street. Next to it, a small blue handprint at child height.
Mira's hands went white.
"We do not follow arrows," Kael said. He drew it in the ledger because reality deserves a photograph you can close. He added a simple counter: a receipt line under the word with a blank after PAY: ____ and a second blank after GOT: ____ .
Isa snorted when she saw it. "Make them do math," she said. "Crowns hate math."
They tacked a Receipt stub under TAX NIGHT. Someone tore it off an hour later. Good. Someone had to read it to tear it.
[System: Counter - communication]
Receipt stubs placed near coercive signage. Effect: +cognitive friction; - conformity. - - - Quiet grid inside
Battery Crate turned light into policy. Kael zoned the apartment with tape on the baseboards: Zone A table, Zone B prep, Zone C sleeping alcove. He ran a thin wire to A2 bench so the LED panel could travel where work needed to exist. He fitted each zone with a toggle that clicked without light to teach fingers the alphabet alone.
He taught charge discipline with a timer: headlamps in at :10 past the hymn, out at :30. He made the child flip the timer once, solemn as a priest. "Do not play with time," he told him. The child nodded like he'd been entrusted with fire.
[System: Power Policy]
Lamp Zones + charge windows formalized.
Effect: +runtime, +morale small, - panic during dark. - - - A small test of trust
Stripe returned near dusk with a skinny man whose eyes looked like they had learned maps before faces. He carried a canvas bag with metal teeth in it: screws and two hinge plates and a bottle of bleach half full. Stripe gestured at the stair elbow. "We will watch," she said.
Kael nodded and gave them the square by the quiet node. He kept them on the outside of RN - 3 and inside the vocabularies. He did not give them pins. He gave them time.
At nineteen, the pipe sang. The Hymn Ear wrote its shoulder. The stair amplified wrong where wrong bodies stood and quiet where the square existed. Stripe watched without talking. The map man closed his eyes and listened to the metal the way a mechanic listens to a car place its secrets in the air. When the shoulder eased, Stripe flipped the cloth from WATCH to DONE with a small satisfaction that did not ask permission.
"Columns beat crowns," she said; it sounded like an argument she had won somewhere else in her head.
"You brought screws," Kael said. "We will tighten a world with them."
She tilted her head. "We will return with questions," she said. "And a request: we have a generator we do not trust. We want your ear."
Kael considered the risk and the word generator and watched the Battery Crate out of the corner of his eye like a man watching a toddler take its first step. "We will send ears during a shoulder, not before," he said. "Payment in plates and bleach, plus a promise not to draw blue on our thresholds."
Stripe's mouth edged into a smile that could decide to be friendship later. "I cannot promise for paint," she said. "But I can promise for stripes."
"Good enough for today," Kael said.
[System: Trade]
Materials received (screws, plates, bleach) for hymn watch. Future: generator consult. Trust: thin but real. - - - Quiet Court: batteries and stripes
They read the day under Zone A light, Battery Crate humming like a polite refrigerator of the old world. - Energy T1 unlocked; Battery Crate Mk I assembled; Lamp Zones/charge discipline written. - Receipt Wall installed; TAX diluted with ledgers. - Parley with Brass Street scouts; watch demo executed; materials traded; generator consult planned. - Anchor - 3 secured (workshop/overflow); rules posted. - Blue: TAX NIGHT signage; receipt stub friction; child handprint noted. - Doctrine: repeated.
[System: Audit Complete]
+2 PC (Battery Crate), +1 PC (Receipt Wall effect), +1 PC (parley), +1 PC (A3), +1 PC (discipline), +1 PC (doctrine).
Total PC: 41.5.
Advisory: With >40 PC, next unlocks feasible: Engineering T1: Springs & Cams; Info T1: Comms Basics (line - of - sight mirror code); Bio/Chem T1: Antiseptic Gel (if glycerin found). Caution: expansion invites noise. Next Mission: Anchor - 3 outfitting; generator consult; draft Mirror Code v0.1.
Mira tapped the Battery Crate lid with the back of her knife. "We have a small sun," she said. "We will not worship it. We will ration it."
Nox leaned back, happy in the way heavy men are happy when weight has meaning. "Bring me more screws," he said to nobody. "I will staple this building to itself."
Renn looked at the Receipt Wall and smiled without showing teeth. "Columns are honest," he said. "I like honest."
Kael placed his palm on the ledger. "We do not need to be brave."
"We need to be correct," they answered.
Outside, TAX NIGHT shouted and nobody obeyed loudly. Inside, a crate of batteries obeyed the discipline of labels and toggles. In the stair, a quiet square taught strangers to stand in silence without resenting it. And somewhere two blocks west, a generator waited to confess its sins to an ear on a stick.