The siren slid down one more step and held there, a low note that made the Bloom's ribs hum like tuning forks.
"Ten minutes," Nyx said, her voice satin over wire. "After that, we're dark on purpose. The Policy Office will bite."
Leon closed the Civic Ledger on the hood of the stalled sedan and tapped the cover once to steady himself, twice to warn his own appetite for approval. Across the street, Sister Irena adjusted the Blue Lamp's plastic bowl so it threw a soft ring on the clinic door. Brutus stood in the doorway with his hands visible, a patient wall in a coat patched clinic-blue.
"Blue Lamps up," Leon said. "Hands where the cameras can see them. When Nyx cuts, the bowls are the law."
Mae checked a list on a clipboard laminated with packing tape: oxygen, insulin, pediatric masks, the names of three children scrawled in a neat, small hand. Oren Dawes knelt beside a traffic signal UPS carcass and tightened a strap on a jury-rigged battery with the tenderness of a monk binding a book.
"Two stable packs," Oren said, tightening. "Four hiccups. We'll make the lampposts blink honest."
"Blinking looks like breathing," Sister Irena said.
Tamsin Quell—runner's coil in her posture, hair scraped back—jogged in place with a bowl in one hand and a lamp hanging from the other like a promise. Kite, his Blue Lamp armband too big for his forearm, stood at the Council board and practiced tapping an X with a pencil like a little clerk.
The feed's corner timer winked.
[Off-Feed Mercy: Scheduled — 00:01:00]
[Policy Fine in queue: −10% Favor; Ad-break +00:30]
[Audience: 37,118 → 36,902]
[Glass Saint: "Observing."]
Nyx exhaled into Leon's ear. "The War King is already elsewhere," she said. "Trickster is bored. The Saint likes the way the bowl makes a law."
"Good," Leon said. "We're not selling a cliff today."
He stepped into the corridor and raised his voice one notch—not loud, not timid. "Blue Lamps mean no faces. If you need to move under the bowl, step under the bowl and keep walking. If someone points a lens at you, raise the bowl and say 'Blue Hands.'"
Brutus lifted both palms so everyone could see how the gesture looked when a man like a door performed it. "Blue Hands," he said, tone flat as a rung on a ladder. "You walk. We handle the hands."
"Thirty," Nyx murmured. "Say it, Architect."
Leon turned his head so the mask wouldn't fog. "Kill Clinic Corridor," he said. "Ambient only. Soft music."
"Done," Nyx said, and somewhere in the Producer Office, a note was made in a ledger that wasn't his.
[Off-Feed Mercy: Active — 00:10:00]
[Category: Dead Air — Medical Corridor Exception (Contested)]
[Penalty: Favor −10% (stacking)]
[Merit: +10 (Clinic trust)]
[Quiet Choir: +Notice ("Kept corridor dark")]
[Feed View: Night Market — Teal lanterns; rain on copper; tea steam]
The visible world softened to teal and rain and the sound of cups on saucers. The story moved off-screen and into the corridor.
"Move," Leon said.
Tamsin took point with the bowl raised to any lens that might try to re-invent itself. The lamplighters fell into pairs behind her, bowls and lamps between them, armbands stitched with blue circles catching the hiccup light like fireflies that had learned punctuality. Mae pushed a cart with two strapped oxygen tanks, her shoulders bowed over the weight the way a planner leans over a budget; she breathed slow and counted steps under her breath. Brutus flanked the cart without touching it, letting his presence be the guardrails.
"Two blocks," Leon said. "Bowl up at the laundromat. At the corner, you'll see a drone that thinks it's clever. Brutus, you're cleverer."
Oren jogged alongside with a coil of wire over one shoulder like a battering ram. He kept half an ear on the hum under the street. "Grid's breathing," he said. "She'll hold ten minutes if I rob the bakery sign."
"Rob it," Leon said.
They rolled.
The corridor felt like a muscle that had learned its work. The Bloom ribs left seams that remembered hands; the lamppost hiccuped in rhythm, an honest blink. The Blue Lamp's ring on the clinic door turned anonymity into a sacrament.
A microdrone drifted low at the first corner—the sleek white kind that had been a toy last year and now tried to be a nose. It lifted, sniffed for faces it could sell, found only a bowl, hesitated, bobbed toward Kade's CLEAN TRIBUNAL banner across the way, and went where faces were obedient.
"Blue Hands," Brutus said softly to the empty air the drone left. He didn't reach for it. He simply made it irrelevant.
Sister Irena kept pace with Mae's cart for five steps, then peeled off to place a Blue Lamp icon on a mailbox so people who couldn't read could read it anyway. Kite ran ahead and tapped lampposts to make their blinking feel like a game he could win.
At the second corner, a man with a bomber jacket zipped to the throat stepped out and thought about performing in front of a camera that wasn't there. He found no audience and no courage. Brutus's hands reminded him that hands were all the world was willing to buy here. He stepped back and discovered he had always wanted to be helpful.
They reached the first door: a shelter with a sign that used to say TAB LAUNDRY in red and now said LAUN RY in apostate letters. A woman in a raincoat opened it a handspan and held her breath like a muscle. The bowl turned the air between door and corridor into law. Mae and Brutus tilted the first oxygen tank up and the cart groaned. Oren arrived, slid his shoulder under the weight, and made himself a wedge.
"Lift," Oren said.
They did.
The tank's rubber foot kissed the threshold and stuck. The cart jerked; Mae grunted, forehead against cold steel. Brutus shifted his weight, hands still visible to the empty camera, and raised the bottom with his knee, a practiced move that looked like kindness.
"Two inches," Leon said, under his breath.
"Two inches," Brutus echoed, and translated centimeters into mercy. The tank rolled. The woman in the raincoat made a sound that wasn't a thank you and shut the door on it like privacy hadn't known how to exist until a bowl told it it could.
[Merit: +10 (Shelter delivery — orderly)]
[Trust: +1 (Shelter corridor)]
[Favor: −50 (War House), +150 (Glass Saint: "Unseen work, precise.")]
"Seven minutes," Nyx said. "The tea is gorgeous."
"Good," Leon said. He set his shoulder to the cart and pushed.
At the cut-through by the laundromat, two figures perched on the fire escape railing like crows—Quiet Choir kids, faces half-hidden by long rain hoods, shoes too big. One of them held up a square of black cloth with the white mouth refusing to open. The other raised an empty lantern, bowl only, the bulb gone.
Leon lifted a hand and showed them the blue bowl in Tamsin's palm. He nodded once—promise, not contract.
The kid with the lantern jumped down and ran to the lamppost where the hiccup pack had slowed. He held the empty bowl up to the lens like a policeman that listened. The lamppost blinked and decided not to be a snitch.
"They're honoring your corridor," Nyx said, surprised into sincerity. "I hate that I have to say I'm grateful."
"Say it anyway," Leon said.
They turned onto Iron Market. A ripple moved along the ground under the Bloom—soft, a subterranean animal shifting its weight in a narrow bed.
"Grid?" Leon asked.
Oren cocked his head. "Not grid," he said. "Bones."
"Five minutes," Nyx said. "Stacked fines lock in at three."
"Keep them coming," Leon said. "We'll pay with receipts."
They reached the clinic. The door remained off-camera except for the halo of the bowl; the ring made everyone's eyes forget their faces. A nurse with the pragmatic grace of the exhausted took the first tank. A teenager in a hoodie that had once been white took the second, his hands shaking like he was learning how to be steady. Sister Irena put a palm on his shoulder and gave his tremor somewhere to go.
"Insulin," Mae said, and looked at Leon.
He nodded. "Cart two," he said. "Tamsin, Kite, bowl between. Brutus, doorway."
"Copy," Tamsin said. She tapped Kite's shoulder with the bowl and he straightened as if it had rearranged his spine.
They ran.
At the corner of Canal and Iron, Dawnshield's CLEAN TRIBUNAL banner fluttered under a halo-cam's polite rain. Kade stood framed in light, the minor filter "broken," a child's face behind him rehearsed to be brave. His mouth shaped words like JUSTICE and CLEAN and HOPE. Applause ran along the street like a thin white ribbon.
"Keep him out of your mouth," Nyx said, pre-empting. "Policy would love to fine you for naming a rival."
"I'll name a law instead," Leon said.
The pharmacy door was around the block—metal shutter down, chain on. The back entrance had a bent hinge from a time last year when a delivery guy had misjudged the ramp. Leon slid his shim into the throat and felt the lock's spring like a tired artery. He popped it. The door sighed.
"Three minutes," Nyx said. "You can land this in one if you don't talk."
Brutus turned the latch, then stood back so Tamsin could step through with the bowl. She lifted it at the corner lens out of habit; the lens decided it had better places to be.
Inside: shelves with sugar substitutes and cough syrup, strips of pills behind plastic, insulin pens in a locked cooler with a padlock that had been bought by someone who had guessed how mean the world could get. Mae took the padlock in one hand and the bolt cutter in the other and exhaled once before she cut, like prayer.
The cooler yawned its cold breath. Mae checked lot numbers with her neat fingers. "Intact," she said. "Short-acting here, long-acting here. Four pens each—eight total. Put two back."
"Two back?" Tamsin said, startled.
"So someone who finds this cooler after we leave doesn't learn to hate us," Mae said. "We'd rather make a friend than a statistic."
Kite took two pens from the top, hand trembling a little with how much they weighed in debt, and put them back like a boy practicing reverence.
[Merit: +15 (Insulin retrieval — ethical)]
[Trust: +2 (Clinic + Neighborhood)]
[Craft House: +100 Favor ("Restraint inside the task")]
[War House: −100 Favor ("Why are we watching a fridge?")]
Leon opened the back door to check the corridor. The hiccup lamppost blinked; the bowl in Tamsin's hand turned black into blue. The Bloom ribs held their breath and then remembered how to exhale.
A figure filled the doorway—blocky, bomber jacket zipped, the one Brutus had called "Hew." He lifted both hands at shoulder height, fingers spread.
"I sweep," he said. "They told me to say that to you."
"You're saying it to the bowl," Leon said. "It counts."
Hew nodded once and moved to the side, keeping his hands visible, making room for people who had been scared by doors all day to trust this one.
"One minute," Nyx said. "Ad-break will eat anything you do unless you finish the move."
"Move," Leon said.
They did.
Tamsin took the insulin in a padded pouch under the bowl. Kite carried pediatric masks like he was smuggling a future. Mae pushed the cart, her shoulders turned into rails by will. Brutus walked with them, hands visible, the Blue Lamp ring making a small, portable law wherever it fell.
At the final corner, a man bumped hard into Tamsin's shoulder—a real collision, not theater. The insulin pouch lurched. Tamsin planted her lead foot, let the motion carry through her hip, and let the pouch's strap slide into her elbow where it was stronger than fingers.
"Blue Hands," she said, raising the bowl. The man's eyes found his own face in the bowl's reflection and he stepped back, ashamed of a thing he hadn't done yet.
Brutus didn't touch him. He didn't have to. The bowl did the speaking.
The clinic door swallowed the pouch. The door did not appear on any feed. The Blue Lamp threw its ring; the ring meant no faces. A nurse's hands took the pouch. The Corridor breathed.
The feed—on the side of the world where metrics lived—showed rain on copper and teal lanterns and the suggestion of a market that had learned to lower its voice at curfew. Glass Saint tipped the way a person would put a coin on a saucer after a performance they were not supposed to see.
[Off-Feed Mercy: Completed — 00:00:14]
[Policy Fine applied: Favor −10% (stacked)]
[Merit: +35 (Corridor success + Insulin delivery)]
[Trust: +4 (Clinic + Shelter)]
[Glass Saint tipped +600 Favor: "Elegance in refusal."]
[War House: "Asleep."]
Leon moved to the sidestreet to bleed off adrenaline and let the mask clear. He lifted the Ledger and wrote three names in the margin under LAMPS: +1. He didn't read them out loud.
Nyx's voice slid back into the channel with a small clink of china. "Your corridor's a religion now," she said. "Trickster is threatening pies. The Saint is in love with your dislike of applause. The Policy Office sent a memo with bolded words. You want to read it or light it?"
"Light it," Leon said. "We'll pay the fine. Post the receipts."
"Done," Nyx said, pleased against her will. "Your audience dipped and stabilized. We traded stickiness for trust."
"Receipts," Leon said.
At the edge of hearing, a tremor ran under the street like a whale turning in an old pipe. The Bloom's leaves shivered once and laid flat. Oren squinted at the subway vent; the air tasted like copper and old news.
"Soon," he said.
Mae wiped rain off the clipboard with the side of her hand and tucked it into her coat. Her hair clung to her forehead in commas. "We have five minutes before the Council," she said. "Kade's CLEAN TRIBUNAL is live. His minor filter is still 'broken.'"
"Cut my mics if I say his name," Leon said. "We win by law."
Sister Irena lifted the Blue Lamp and set it on a mailbox as if lighting a candle. "I will say his name in prayer," she said, dry. "And ask for mercy for the child."
Brutus opened his hands. The gesture felt like punctuation at the end of a sentence that wanted to be short.
The lamppost hiccuped once more and steadied. Oren's UPS hack groaned like an old hinge, then settled into a hum. Tamsin drank water, grimaced, and laughed anyway. Kite shook his jar of blue buttons like rain on tin.
"Council in two," Nyx said. "You'll get your votes. Then a memo from the Policy Office will arrive that will try to say your name louder than your laws."
"Put the memo in the ombuds box," Leon said.
"Which one?" Nyx asked. "Complaints or Thanks?"
"Either," Leon said. "They'll sort it out."
A shadow moved at the end of the block—the white of Dawnshield's van; Kade's smile trimmed to a sharper angle. A man in a bomber jacket limped past holding a mop. Latch. He didn't look at a camera that wasn't watching him. He looked at the clinic door and then at his feet.
"Good," Leon said, too softly for metrics.
Then Nyx's voice sharpened with the edge she saved for windows closing. "Architect," she said. "Pharmacy guard rotation shifted early. Someone's playing with the roster. Your clean corridor bought you fifteen minutes of grace, but your raiding window just shrank to eight."
Mae's head tilted like a metronome skipping a beat. "Insulin's in," she said. "Antibiotics aren't."
Brutus rolled his shoulders, ready to be a door again. Tamsin tucked the bowl against her ribs like a heart.
Nyx purred in Leon's ear, silk wrapped around a dare. "We can land it at ad twelve if you run now. Double Fine will stack. The Saint will tip. War sleeps. Your choice."
Leon tapped the Ledger once. Then twice. Then not at all. His mask fogged on the inside and cleared.
"We run," he said. "Off-camera. Again."