The alarm hits before the permit does.
Kade doesn't get the bigger permit. He gets a phone that won't stop buzzing and a dispatch:
ALARM — GRID BANK 14 — VIBRATION ANOMALY — SITE LOCKDOWN.
Grid banks are city batteries—rows of cabinets that drink power off-peak and spit it back when the grid wheezes. They like concrete pads near water; cooling's cheap there. On good days they hum like a hive.
Today isn't good.
We roll with lights we're not supposed to have. Juno drives. Mia rides shotgun with a new hard case—her Harmonic Relay, three sensors and a stolen audio interface bolted into something that looks legal if you squint. Ariad and I sit in back with a second Anchor Gun and the Reach Gun folded tight. Kade calls ahead and turns three "No" into one "Yes, if you don't break anything."
Grid Bank 14 lives two blocks from the breakwater. Cyclone fence. Two gates. One guard who knows our faces now opens without eye contact.
"Tag it," Juno says.
Mia slaps orange on chain-link: INFRASTRUCTURE INSPECTION — SAFETY PRIORITY. Zone flips. Ken is legal on-site. Juno's shoulders drop a millimeter.
The hum is wrong when we step out—two notes beating, then three. Cabinets shiver on their pads like they want to walk.
"Where?" Juno asks.
"Back row," Mia says, scanning. "Bass note bleeding through the slab. If the anchors go, these slide. If they slide—"
"They arc," Ariad finishes. "And we get fireworks."
We move.
Three ranks of gray doors, hazard stickers, fans gulping. Concrete pads hairline-cracked where salt laughs at sealant. Corner bolts anchor skids. Some shine new. Some are chewed.
Ariad kneels, presses two fingers to a pad like she's reading a pulse. "Three–one–three notch code on brace spikes," she says, pointing at a skid base. "Our friends were here."
"And the other friends," Mia says, crouching by a corner bolt that glitters with crystal rot. "Double–four–none on this run. Sabotage pattern."
"Walk the load," Juno says. "Fast."
Mia plants the Harmonic Relay puck on the concrete. It listens and spits frequencies to her tablet as colored bands. She nudges two sliders, and the wrong band jumps. "There."
Ariad snaps orders. "Anchor here, here. Clip a high line across rows two and three. If one pad lets go, the others hold it like a hand."
I shoulder the Anchor Gun and sink two spikes into the slab lip. Juno clips and pulls. The cross-line thrums. Cabinets groan. Fans cough.
"Kein Chalk," Ariad says.
I draw fat arrows on the concrete where we want force to go. Our visors see blue; our bodies follow. City crew in hard hats hover beyond the fence and pretend they can't.
Footsteps. Two maintenance techs in clean uniforms step through the gate, badges out, hands too empty.
"Stay back," Juno says.
"We're assigned," the tall one says. "Work order says—"
"Who signed?" Juno snaps.
He blinks. Doesn't know. Keeps walking. Fingers twitch like he practices patterns in mirrors.
"Kein," I warn. "Hands."
He smiles without teeth and drops a Kein Flash bead. I close my eyes before it pops. He lunges. Juno meets him with her shoulder and Ken Disrupts down his forearm. His fingers forget how to shape. He hisses, switches hands, and meets my katana's back edge, kissing his wrist lightly. The bead falls, rolls harmlessly.
The second tech sprints for a corner bolt with a wrench that looks wrong—teeth filed to bite. Ariad flick-kicks the wrench toe-smart, not hard. It skitters.
"Hands," Juno repeats. Zip-bands click. She pushes both to the fence. "Mia?"
"Work order's fake," Mia says. "Logged from a kiosk that doesn't exist."
"Great," Ariad mutters. "Walk. Now."
We tighten the cross-line. Cabinets shift an inch and settle. The Relay drops one band. Another climbs.
"New source," Mia says. Pivots. Points at the far pad. "Under that."
We sprint. This pad smells like fruit and solvent. Salt gel drools down one bolt like somebody fed it with a spoon.
"Counter?" Juno asks.
"Fresh water buys time," Ariad says. "Bandage only." She thumbs the guard. "Hose."
We don't have one. The guard does. He drags a red line and opens a valve. Gel fizzles, stops eating for now.
"Anchor," Ariad says.
I fire. Clip. Juno leans and presses Ken through the bolt seat to feel the truth. "Threads are gone," she says. "We're holding weight on lies."
"Then give the lies a friend," Ariad says, snapping a wedge under the skid rail.
The Harmonic Relay sings again—higher, tighter. The wrong hum is moving.
Mia frowns. "It's walking through the slab toward the gate."
"Source is mobile," Ariad says, low. "Someone brought a tuned puck."
"Find it," Juno says.
Tall fake tech watches me like he wants me to read his face. He isn't brave—he's here for a bonus. The other sweats, shakes.
I move fast. Gaze Trap needs half a second; fear buys me two. I shift the gatepost in his head by an inch. He flinches wide, yanks a magnet puck off his belt to steady himself—and there it is: flat, black, a little light that isn't LED, a hum that is the hum.
I slash the puck from his hand. It hits concrete and tries to stick. Juno stomps it. It wails like amp feedback and dies.
"Frequency injector," Mia says. "Forcing the wrong beat into the slab."
"Pretty," Ariad says—meaning stupid. "More?"
"Two," Mia says. "Back row."
We split. Juno left, me right. My injector hides under a pad lip like a leech. I hook it with the blade and flip. It clings to steel, skitters to concrete. I stomp. It squeals and goes quiet. The Relay loses a band.
"Last one," Mia says.
A shadow slips behind cabinets. Gray jacket. Hood up. Walk like Rao—but shorter, nerves showing.
"Hands," Juno calls.
They don't run. They shoulder a brace gun like a rifle and shoot a spike into the slab between us. It sticks and hums wrong—DIY injector tied to a spike.
"Cute," Ariad says, firing our Anchor Gun across its line to pull stress off. "Kanon."
"On it."
I toss a Phantom Steel scrape left. The figure bites—looks—then corrects. Trained enough not to chase sound forever. They pop a Kein Smoke pellet. Waist-high wall with chemical tang blooms. Not real; bodies believe anyway.
I step through and bump their shoulder on purpose—small Ken pulse through bone, legal on-site. They stumble. Hood slips.
Hammer woman from Dry Dock Three stares back. Scar through one brow. Teeth bared.
"Really?" I say.
"Really," she says. "You walk the load; we built it."
"Then why are you breaking it?" I cut the spike loose. "This injector—"
"Not ours," she snaps. "Someone wants the bank to pop, so you blame us."
Juno arrives, palms up. "Hands."
Hammer woman shows them. "Let me fix it," she says. "Or watch your batteries leave the pad."
Juno hates decisions like this. She glances at Ariad. Ariad's already moving. "Here," Ariad says. "You take that wedge; I take this. Kanon, Chalk where I point. Mia, read me the band."
We work like a unit without agreeing. Hammer woman knots a brace line with steady hands. Ariad fires, clips, and shoves a wedge. I paint Kein Chalk arcs that tell feet where to push and where to stay off. Juno reads bolts with Ken and calls, which lies we can use and which we can't.
The Harmonic Relay squeals high, drops, flattens like a good EKG.
"Hold," Ariad says. Breathes. "Good."
"There will be four," Hammer woman says. "Corners. We've only killed three."