The hum slides lower as the tide turns, and the plate waits for orders.
Ariad has a three-point pattern locked. "Chalk," she says.
I draw big, fat Kein Chalk arrows across beams and plates. The honest city crew leans in. One of them starts shouting positions like the idea was his. Good. Steal it. Own it. Keep the bridge up and call it yours.
Mia breathes. "Second truck bailing east. Board in two. Gel crew scattering."
Juno peels off the tarp hood, drops, cuffs the tube man to his bumper. She checks me with a glance. I give her a chin. That's our mid-job "alive."
The lattice shimmer below the plate wakes and walks load exactly along Ariad's lines. It purrs when it likes us; it buzzes angry where the second pattern—the bad one—argues.
"Find me the wrong notch," Ariad says.
I scan spikes. Three-one-three everywhere except—there—double notch, then four, then nothing. Sabotage pattern. I circle it with Chalk. "Here."
"Don't pull," she says. "We walk past."
We repeat the river-mouth trick: set new anchors, draw arrows, tighten, release. The load creeps around the bad spike like water around a stone. The plate sighs.
Board windbreakers clatter down the stairs. Kade in front, coat ridiculous for rebar and gulls. His eyes clock everything, recalibrate twice without moving his face, and nod once like somebody handed him a new math he doesn't hate.
"Arrest that one," he says, pointing at my downed visor man. "And those two." Gel runners raise their hands and try to look like interns.
He looks at Ariad's pattern and—for once—doesn't tell her to erase it.
He looks at me last. "Thank you," he says, too quiet to be for show. It's for the plate and the man and the city. He hates meaning it. He swallows it like medicine.
Sirens thin into background. Above, civilians keep walking because bridges are supposed to stay up.
We clean. We write. We hand things to people who might misfile them and let the work stand anyway because steel remembers hands.
Rao appears on the far catwalk like he grew out of rebar. He doesn't come close. He taps his goggles twice—the signal Zann used when we were kids: notice, little brother—and vanishes before Kade can pretend he didn't see him.
Mia's tablet pings. Unknown. She doesn't hand it to me; she reads: "WALK THE LOAD, NOT THE STORY." Beat. "Signed Z."
He signed again. My stomach does a bad thing.
Juno watches my face and chooses mercy. "We don't chase a ghost across water today," she says. "We keep the city standing. Then we decide."
Ariad prints a final arrow on the paper plan with a blunt pencil. "Decide fast," she says. "Whoever installed the second pattern is on a schedule. So is the tide."
Kade stands on the catwalk, coat bright in a place that eats color, and says to no one, "We'll need a permit we don't have." He doesn't mean the bridge.
"Then write it," Juno says.
He gives her the smallest smile I've seen, a crack in a good mask. "I'll try," he says, and leaves like trying hurt.
We haul gear up. People honk for no reason that matters. The hum settles into something like a base note under everything.
My phone stays quiet for once. Somehow that's worse.
Mia packs Lark. "If we follow this where it goes," she says, "we'll need new batteries and a new lawyer."
"Add both to the list," Juno says.
Ariad slaps the plan into my chest. "You're the only one he writes to," she says. "Use it."
I fold the paper and tell myself it isn't a letter from my brother. It is.
We slump in the van lane because inside still smells like coffee and foam. Mia projects a grid on the windshield—piers, docks, dates. Every hum, lattice, forged work order becomes a dot. Three-one-three blooms across older spans like a rash.
"It's a map," Mia says. "Somebody's bracing what the city forgot."
"Middle Way," Juno says. First time she labels it out loud. Not a curse—an objective.
"Maybe," Ariad says, pointing at an empty strip. "Or a splinter group. Or someone trying to keep up with someone else's bad math."
"What are 'Samsara' and 'Nirvana'?" I ask, half to the room, half to the quiet phone.
Mia flips to asset lists. "[[Samsara]] is the upstream floodgate retrofit nobody funded. [[Nirvana]] is the entertainment pier at the headland. Both sit on the edge of this pattern."
"Walk the load," Ariad says again. "See where stress actually goes, not where the drawing pretends."
"Next step," Juno says, counting off. "Mia, map every three-one-three brace and cross with camera outages and 'repairs' with bad timestamps. Ariad, pull inspections with missing hours and change orders that vanish between drafts."
She looks at me last. "Kanon—if you're going to chase a shadow, make it cast a shape."
"I know where the shape is," I say, and hate how true it is. "He sent it."
"We'll go," Juno says, meaning the word we don't like in public. "But we do it with permits—or cover we can defend."
"Or we do it fast and pray," Mia mutters.
"Both," Ariad says.
We inventory. Lines re-coiled. Anchor Gun clean. Foam scraped off my blade's throat. My shoulder throbs steady. Juno gives me clinic eyes.
"I'm fine," I lie.
"Clinic anyway," she says.
By the time I'm wrapped and back, Kade's signed a stand-down for a different site. Our placard flips from ACTIVE to REVIEW somewhere across the river. The hum keeps humming. The city breathes.
Juno stands. "Gear in twenty," she says. "Then Samsara."
We move because moving keeps the hum out of your bones. I pocket the plan like a letter and don't admit it out loud.
My screen lights: COUNT TO THREE BEFORE YOU TOUCH ANYTHING. —Z