[Queued: Longblade — Milestone 2/4 // Dual-Range Shotgun — Milestone 2/3]
The number posted and held.
He waited until the itch to log one more task drained out of his hands. The vault breathed; the bench was a dark rectangle; the canvas, a dull hill. He clicked the lamp back on—tight light over steel and oil and the two promises he'd made himself: longblade left, shotgun right.
"Fine," he said. "Let's earn the next lines."
He uncovered the longblade and set the bar in the cradle he'd built from scrap angle iron. The chain lay easy now, tension where the knuckle test liked it. He rotated the sprocket by hand; the links flowed with the lazy confidence of something that wouldn't mind taking a finger if disrespected.
[Mechanic (lv1: 780/1000)]
The pane hung in the corner of his sight like a metronome. He reset the belt on the bench motor and checked guards—then stopped. Don't be stupid. Free-running was one thing; cutting was another. If the splice grabbed, the chain would come back at his face fast.
He needed a sacrificial bite. No hardwood, but a slab of composite decking would do. He clamped it as stand-in for bone and pride, set his hand where it wouldn't vanish if the chain jumped, and engaged the belt.
The chain took the bar; the bar met the fake wood. Not a panicked whine— a low, hungry saw-hum that settled into the bench. He fed it a centimeter, then two, and backed off to let heat wash.
The pane said nothing. The work did.
He feathered the belt and finished the cut, slow enough to hear wrongness if it sang. Nothing tried. Oil threw a thin fan. The bar stayed true.
He killed the drive and stepped away. Hot, satisfied smell.
[Longblade — Milestone 2/4: Chain alignment under load.][Gain: Mechanic XP +10][Gain: Basic Mechanical Repair XP +10]
Someone knocked. Not clerk-soft: knuckle—pause—knuckle. The rhythm of a door being reminded who owned it.
Canvas over longblade, canvas over shotgun; peephole. A3 again—Nightfall adjunct, pale eyes; a different shadow behind him. Cart. Bag.
"You said two hours," A3 said when Jace cracked chain and latch. "We made it one."
"I said two if gods were kind," Jace answered. "They weren't unkind. Keep the corridor."
They did. The camera dome's red dot watched. A3 nudged the cart through the gap.
"I want safety checks in your sightline," Jace said for the camera. "Rifles are clean, actions locked. Coil carbine is test-ready. For the shotgun controller you didn't bring, I need live rounds."
"We brought four," A3 said. The shadow held up a bag. "Bean-bag, two buck, one slug."
"Your generosity astonishes." Jace set the bag on the bench himself. "Trap is sand. No one dies unless the ceiling decides it."
He ran the coil carbine first, still in its cradle, muzzle to the sand box. He touched the trigger with a stick. The coil sang; the round hit; no smoke.
"Not smoking," A3 observed. "New."
"That's the idea." Jace checked heat an inch off the casing. "Don't drown it. If you have to shoot in the rain, use the rifle."
"We don't have rain."
"Then lucky you."
Rifles next—clean engagement, matched bolts, heads at gauge. A3 nodded the way a man nods to ritual. Good enough.
"Charity shells," Jace said, dry. The pane waited, polite and blue.
He mounted the shotgun in the cradle, muzzle into sand, selector ring to wide. Bean-bag first: bloom like a punched pillow; ports opening and closing without drama; no gas cutting where it would eat the gun a whisper at a time. Buck on wide: two shells, two sane booms. Ring to tight: one slug, the sound a single muscle. The sand cratered smaller and deeper.
He breathed out and looked for the line he wanted.
[Dual-Range Shotgun — Milestone 2/3: Port timing calibrated.][Gain: Mechanic XP +10]
A3's mouth flickered—approval he didn't have time to name. "Payment," Jace said, turning back before politeness became leverage. "Half on handoff. Half now." He tapped the case A3 had left earlier. "Add one, we call this queue closed."
A vial appeared with ceremony no one here believed in. "Done," A3 said. His gaze drifted toward the canvas. "What's under there?"
"Work," Jace said. "Manifest it, we talk rate."
A3 looked and didn't see. He wasn't a scavenger. That was fine. "Contact when you need pickups," he said. "Try not to die."
"I'll put it on the list."
They left. Jace set chain and latch, leaned his forehead against cool metal for a count, then lifted the canvas and let the room become his again.
[Mechanic (lv1: 820/1000)]
Live tests had counted. He accepted the accounting and turned to the longblade. The composite proved nothing about steel. He clamped a length of dead conduit—thick-walled pipe that had once held cable—and scored it to give the chain a bite. Guards again. Finger count again.
"Last test," he told the bar. Last test before you believe your own myth.
He brought the chain to a working hum. First touch to the scored pipe caught and tried to climb; he eased off, re-angled, and let the teeth set. The sound changed: not wood-hum, not a dry scream—steel being asked a question it couldn't answer quickly.
He fed it in the smallest increments his shaking arm allowed. The reforged splice came around and spoke—rougher pulse in the smooth. He let the chain coast, watched the rough pass through, then went again. The rough lessened. Edges seated. Heat laid temper where rust had lived.
He kept it up until the pipe had a respectable trench and sweat ran a line under his collar.
Drive off.
[Longblade — Milestone 3/4: Stress test passed (light steel).][Gain: Mechanic XP +15][Gain: Basic Mechanical Repair XP +10]
The bar crept.
[Mechanic (lv1: 900/1000)]
He sat to keep from falling and looked at the shotgun's sand pits—wide slumped already, tight still a hard mouth. One more task, the list-brain said. One more before the vault remembers walls have ears.
He retensioned the longblade, swapped belts back to rest, tagged tested with a date that was as honest as dates got here. He made notes the way the old man had: what he'd done, what he hadn't, the lie Future-Jace would tell if Present-Jace didn't write it down. Verify patterning live. Underline. Twice.
A new line blinked, small and polite.
[Optional: Archive Bench Log?]
"Yeah," he said. "Archive."
[Archived.]
He capped the vials and slid them into the drawer he trusted least and checked most. Water. Breath. The room swayed; he waited. It steadied.
The pane hung steady. The bar said stop or be greedy. Greedy taxed twice. He went for the lamp switch.
Softer knock—clerk rhythm now. "Jace?" through the metal, breathless. "You in?"
Not Mara. The other one—round glasses, ink-stained fingers. Eyes on the hinge like looking at faces cost. "Audit flagged your allotment," she said. "I need signatures before midnight or the system will pretend I never tried. If you have any claims for parts—"
"I'll sign." He took the slate, signed where she pointed. Her hand shook once and found groove. "If anyone asks, I wasn't here," she said.
"No one asks me questions they want answered." He shut the door on her thank-you and let the chain settle into its home.
He didn't open the drawer again. He didn't stare at the bar. He let the body choose. It chose the bench.
He set longblade and shotgun side by side and allowed two breaths to feel the rightness of possible. Not finished. Not safe. Just possible—a larger word than hope because it didn't require faith, only work.
[Mechanic (lv1: 900/1000)]
"Two more easy repairs," he told the pane. "Then sleep."
From the Nightfall leftovers he hadn't been paid for, he picked the fast fixes pride hid at the bottom of carts: a stuck magazine—free the follower, replace a spring that had forgotten its shape; a trigger packed with grit so fine it felt like breath. He inked train user on a tag no one would read.
[Repair completed.][Gain: Mechanic XP +5][Gain: Basic Mechanical Repair XP +10]
[Repair completed.][Gain: Mechanic XP +5]
The bar slid to the line he'd pretended not to chase.
[Mechanic (lv1: 1000/1000)]
The chime found bone.
[Level Up.][Mechanic (lv2: 0/2000)][Attribute increase applied.]
His hands steadied by degree. The thread of tremor thinned like a strand pulled from rope. Breath found the bottom of his lungs without charging rent.
He waited for pain to ask a price. It didn't, not immediately. The purple edge along his arm didn't retreat under his eyes, but the live wire beneath cooled a notch, as if a neighbor had turned the music down to prove he was listening.
"Thank you," he told no one. "Don't get used to it."
The pane posted what it had and nothing more.
[Mechanic (lv2: 0/2000)]
He covered the projects with a steadier hand, wrote level 2 in the bench log, and hated the flourish the 2 wanted to make. He hung the coil carbine's cradle back on its hook because neatness was a superstition he had evidence for.
Lamp off. Darkness came forward, blue at the edges.
The vault breathed. The bench clicked as metal cooled. His list, mercifully, went quiet.
[Mechanic (lv2: 0/2000)] hung steady in the corner of his vision, the smallest difference making everything sit a little truer.
He lay down without thinking tomorrow. Tomorrow would step over the threshold whether invited or not. He let the body fall by degrees, the way a crane operator lowers a weight when he wants it to land where it belongs and not through a floor.
The last thing he saw before the afterimage went was the faint suggestion of brackets testing their corners, as if the pane itself liked to practice being a box.
And then the room, the bench, the breath, the numbers—everything that could afford to—rested.