The house woke like a machine that trusted its operators. Battery Crate hummed a small yes. The LED stripe made a polite horizon on the table. Kael lifted the ledger and let the day sit upright inside it. Mira rolled from sleep to stance without the middle, knife already agreeing with her palm. Nox stretched until joints reported ready. Renn tugged his headlamp cord once like a bell rope and shortened its loop the way a person shortens worry.
"We do not need to be brave," Kael said.
"We need to be correct," Mira answered.
Nox: "And levered."
Renn: "And on the dots."
[System: Day Plan] - Mission A: unlock Comms Basics and build Rooftop Mirror Relay v0.1 (hop from RN - 4 alley to A3 roof to clinic line). - Mission B: draft first block map (grid with safe corridors, hymn shoulders noted). - Mission C: add noise baffle at Anchor - 3 gate; pad squeal; decouple vise vibrations. - Mission D: train Isa/Tom on Coil Snare clone; install at down - two. - Observation: Blue: "CROWN PARADE" arrows toward clinic street; frames now show hands holding mirrors. - Reward: +2 PC for relay functioning, +1 PC for map posted, +1 PC for A3 baffle, +1 PC for training/install.
PC available: 45.5.
Knowledge available: Info T1 - > Comms Basics (cost: 3 PC).
Kael bought the node with the calm of a man who enjoys simple laws.
[System: Knowledge Acquired]
Information T1: Comms Basics installed.
Effects: +line - of - sight relays, +signal redundancy, +codebook hygiene.
PC remaining: 42.5.
Mira watched him. "You have the face of a person who can fold light into messages."
"I have the face of a person who can label mirrors," Kael said. - - - Rooftop Relay v0.1
They scouted the roof during the 07:00 envelope's shoulder. The tank crouched like a metal animal with a bad back. Three chimneys made angles a person could love. Kael chalked positions: Relay - 1 at A3 corner, Relay - 2 at tank shadow, Relay - 3 at the parapet with line to the clinic sign, all reachable by dots only. He mounted two palm mirrors to scrap boards on pivot nails, each with a tiny lip of tape to dampen clatter. He rigged a cord so a watcher could tilt the mirrors from a crouch without being skyline.
He labeled each board with letters no painter would think to steal: A, B, C. He wrote the macro along the edge in pencil: 1 flash = ready, 2 = go, 3 = danger, hold = wait, diagonal = friendly, horizontal = blue.
Renn tested from RN - 4 alley mouth, flashing once, then twice. Isa caught the glint at A3 corner and returned it down to Kael at A1 through the periscope like a rumor allowed to be true. Stripe, on the clinic roofline, answered with two and a diagonal, friendly.
"Hop works," Nox said, satisfied. "We can talk to two blocks without paying air."
"Line - of - sight is a democracy of roofs," Kael said. "We will keep our ballots dry."
[System: Relay]
Rooftop Mirror Relay v0.1 online (A - >B - >C hop). Effect: +range without noise.
+2 PC.
He wrote a codebook hygiene rule: change mirrors weekly; erase pencil; never leave boards angled when not in use; cover with cloth when blue is near. He posted it in A3 where tools could judge it. - - - Block map v0.1
On butcher paper taped to the table, Kael drew the block with a pencil that wanted to be a surveyor. Streets in lines, alleys in whispers. Their building as a square with A1/A2/A3 labeled. Clinic two blocks west with a small generator icon and a brick baffle squiggle. A corner store, an office supply, a silent laundromat, a likely water main under a buckled street that he circled for later. Arrows showed hymn shoulders he trusted for moves. Xs marked blue signage concentrations. Dots showed relay posts.
Mira added Thread notes: wait squares, dot runs, no - step planes. Nox added Bar notes: carry zones, choke points, places where a pipe teaches fastest. Renn added Scout notes: places where the air smells wrong, where glass looks new, where children might slip.
Isa and Tom watched like people watching the invention of a new alphabet. Stripe, arriving with the map man, stared harder than she wanted to. "This is a war poster without a poster's lies," she said quietly.
"We do not poster," Kael said. "We ledger." He hung the map in A3 on the pegboard's top row and wrote MAP v0.1 in the corner. He drew an empty square next to it, to color when the next revision arrived.
[System: Map]
Block Map v0.1 posted. Effect: +shared planning, +route discipline.
+1 PC. - - - Anchor - 3 baffle and manners
The roll - up gate squealed like a cat with theology. Kael unbolted the worst slats, lined the track with a strip of cloth soaked in wax, rebolted with washers to reduce grinding. He added a felt pad under the vise so vibrations would not chatter to the stair. He hung a carpet scrap inside the gate to eat echoes and taped the chain to its own hook so it would not tattle.
They tested. The gate whispered instead of preaching. The vise stopped telling the building about their secrets.
Nox patted the gate like a dog that had learned not to bark. "Good door," he said, despite it not being a door.
[System: Baffle]
A3 noise baffle installed; squeal reduced; vibration decoupled.
+1 PC. - - - Training down - two: snare clone
Mira taught. Isa watched, then did. Tom fumbled, then did. Coil Snare Mk I became Mk I - d (down - two) under Kael's pencil: a smaller cam, gentler spring, a release only Thread knew. They set it behind down - two's door and taught Aunt Mara to step high and the child to never reach, then practiced with the broom handle until competence replaced hope.
"Your door now argues politely," Kael said. Isa nodded like a woman who had trained uglier doors.
[System: Training/Install]
Coil Snare installed at down - two; operators taught.
+1 PC. - - - Blue: CROWN PARADE
On clinic street, Blue had painted arrows large as hunger with CROWN PARADE pulsing between them like a disease. Stick figures stood along the arrows in crude lines. A handprint at child height recurred. The frames near A2 showed hands holding mirrors now, as if the wall had tried to learn their new language and made a threat out of it.
Renn's jaw worked. "They are watching our mirrors."
"We cover mirrors when we do not talk," Kael said. "We never talk for spectacle." He draped cloths over Relay - 1 and Relay - 2 and posted a rule: mirror faces down unless message is moving.
Mira drew a tiny ashamed X at the bottom - right of the hand - holding - mirror frame. "We keep our grammar," she said.
[System: Observation]
Blue adopts mirror imagery; CROWN PARADE directive. Action: cover relays when idle; maintain codebook hygiene. - - - Seer at noon
At the 12:00 envelope a new infected walked the clinic block: slow, straight spine, eyes cloudy but pointed like they still remembered targets. It paused at the clinic, turned its face toward the roof line where Stripe was not, then toward their building where Relay - 3 was not visible. It tilted its head, slowly, as if counting light. It did not reach for doors. It did not test knobs. It took three perfect steps backward, then forward, then left, then right, and then left again, measuring something with limbs.
"Seer," Mira whispered. The word felt correct and rude.
Kael lowered his mirror board a fraction. The Seer tilted its head again, then moved on, calm as a man who has found his lost keys. The hairs on Kael's forearms stood and held court.
"We do not flash when Seer walks," he said. "We freeze mirrors."
Stripe, across the blocks, flashed once in acknowledgment from a place the Seer could not geometrically see. Kael logged the behavior with a pencil that dug grooves.
[System: Variant]
Seer infected: mirror - aware; line - of - sight sensitivity inferred. Action: silent mode during seer passes; add cloth baffles to mirror edges.
He taped cloth flanges to the mirror boards so no accidental glint would betray them even from the wrong angle. He named the baffles not aloud: eyelids. - - - Supply loop: mirror tiles and felt
They made a small sortie to the shuttered hobby store across from the laundromat, timed under the 19:00 shoulder. Broken glass and craft paper made a carpet. They lifted a box of small mirror tiles, a roll of felt, a bag of glue sticks, and a spool of black thread. They left a note on the counter with three words that nobody would see: BORROWING FOR QUIET. Kael liked writing it anyway.
On the way back, two Blue - paint fingers skulked the far curb and then looked away when Nox looked harder. The Relay boards rode in cloth slings under Kael's and Renn's coats like disobedient books.
[System: Scavenge]
Mirror tiles x 40, felt roll, glue sticks, thread. Noise: minimal.
+discipline. - - - Relay baffles and code hygiene
They edged felt around the boards' faces, leaving only the mirror small and central. They cut slim visors into the wood to shadow glints. They wrapped cords in cloth to stop them from talking. Kael rotated the macro so that help requests used a slightly different pattern than yesterday. He tore the old macro strip in half and burned it in a tin with a match and one breath.
"Codebook hygiene," he said. "We do not keep old words near new doors."
Mira nodded. "We do not worship procedures. We update them."
[System: Comms Update]
Relay baffles installed; macro rotated; old codes destroyed.
Effect: - accidental glint, - code capture risk. - - - Map learns to be a plan
Back at A3, the block map gained marks: Seer path, Blue parade arrows, safe shoulders, ambush bad zones, Stripe watch triangle. Kael drew a red dotted line for an evacuation corridor that did not yet exist but would if cash flow of courage allowed: through the laundromat rear, into the parking lot cut - through, right at the fence, then south to the long brick where wind lies about sound.
"We will need Anchor - 4 there," he said. "A dormitory, later. Not today."
Nox grunted. "Later is good. Later is a luxury."
Isa pointed at the clinic. "If parade happens, the list people will get louder. We will need more receipts."
"We will need more screws," Kael said. "Receipts are made with screws."
[System: Map Update]
v0.1a posted; variant path and parade arrows added; future A4 noted. - - - Quiet Court: light that travels
They read the day with Zone A on and all mirrors asleep. Battery Crate purred. The child sat with his knees to his chest on a square of tape because squares comfort children if you teach them correctly. - Comms Basics unlocked; Relay v0.1 built and baffled; macro rotated; code hygiene posted. - Block Map v0.1 drawn and posted; updated to v0.1a with Seer path and parade arrows. - Anchor - 3 gate quieted; vise decoupled. - Coil Snare clone trained/installed at down - two. - Blue imagery escalated (mirrors, parade); relays covered when idle. - Variant: Seer observed; silent protocol adopted. - Scavenge: mirror tiles, felt, glue, thread. - Doctrine: repeated.
[System: Audit Complete]
+2 PC (relay), +1 PC (map), +1 PC (baffle), +1 PC (training), +1 PC (discipline), +1 PC (doctrine).
Total PC: 49.5.
Advisory: Approaching 50 PC. Options: Engineering T1 Fasteners Pro (anchors into brick), Bio/Chem T1 Antiseptic Gel, Info T1 Line Relay (heliograph range), Energy T1 Charge Control. Threats: Blue parade, Seer variant, Brass Street politics. Recommendation: expand Anchor - 3 shielding and prep Anchor - 4 scouting once parade window closes.
Kael rested his palm on the ledger. "We do not need to be brave."
"We need to be correct," they answered, and the mirrors on the roof angled their faces toward the felt and did not give the city any light it had not earned.
Outside, arrows shouted parade in a grammar for people who need someone else to choose their feet. Inside, a relay spoke only when spoken to. The Seer walked his geometry and did not find any glints worth chasing. And the map on the pegboard looked like a plan pretending to be a picture until it could be a day.