[Mechanic (lv2: 0/2000)] hung steady. The night hadn't ended. It had just gotten thinner.
In the silence after, the vault made a sound like someone turning a book page and then thinking better of it.
A knock—polite, practiced. Chain off; latch back. Round glasses, ink-smudged fingers, a slate hugged like a shield.
"I warned you I'd come before they said I didn't," she whispered. "Audit at six. I need your signature or the system writes me as sleepwalking."
Jace signed where she pointed—room, hours, exceptions. "Anything else?"
"They flagged Nightfall's priority. Your hand on it makes it real."
"My hand's on it." He handed the slate back. She glanced past him at the canvas humps.
"Projects," he said. "Not yet manifest."
"If anyone asks, I was somewhere else." She slipped away; the corridor breathed cold.
Another knock, even and patient. "A3," Jace said through the door.
"Confirmation. Cooler holds." Pale eyes, the small case. "Payment—and a favor. Outer gate's sulking. Motor trips. We're thin until the changeover."
"Quiet like fix it," Jace said.
"Quiet like fix it without announcing a failure," A3 answered.
Jace packed the field roll, meter, heavier gloves, filter mask, rubber strip, two C-clamps, paracord, pry bar. He touched the longblade's canvas once—tomorrow—killed the lamp, and followed A3.
Underground dawn is air and ducts. Two turns and a flight down, the sally port waited: inner and outer door, a window with a tired clerk behind tempered glass, the smell of oil on chain. The outer shutter sat stacked above the threshold; a gray slit of world breathed grit across the floor.
He clipped his meter to the frame. Background. A tick higher when the slit exhaled. Not "die now." Not "be casual."
"Motor trips on start," the clerk said through the grill. "We've been hand-cranking. The door hates us for it."
"Lockout," Jace said. She slid the key. He set the bar and spoke steps aloud so panic could not. "Power killed. Inspect chain, sprocket, tensioner. Motor mounts. Limit switch cover. Verify travel. You get your crank back when I'm done."
Chain guard off. Links stretched thin at their throats; teeth like sharks. Tensioner earnest and wrong. One motor mount walked in an oval hole. He cut a rubber washer, backed the bolt, seated the patch until the chassis stopped lying. Limit switch: contacts scored, cam dry, feeler arm polished flat. He burnished with folded paper, oiled the cam, bent the arm a hair.
"Power up, jog," he said.
The motor coughed; the chain moved a link and tripped. Bend, oil, "again." Two more links. Trip. One whisper more, "again." The shutter came down a hand's width and halted where tired shoulders would stop. A breath of gray slid along the floor.
He checked the counterweight cable—marked, wrong. Someone had stolen a turn last winter and never paid it back. He gave it back. The weight settled honest.
"Again."
This time the chain didn't flinch. The shutter traveled, kissed the threshold, rose on command without panic. Twice more. The limit switch kept its word.
"Full run," he said. The clerk keyed it. Motor climbed; chain hummed; slats sang less each pass because the world likes being asked to do what it can. The meter leaned yellow on a gust, then settled to green when the slit was gone and cold air stopped crawling the floor.
[Task Registered: Field Repair — Outer Shutter][Difficulty Rating: Hazardous]
Guard back. Hand crank tied off. Chain guard on. He filed the note in his head: replace chain soon.
[Repair in Progress.][Gain: Mechanic XP +10][Gain: Basic Mechanical Repair XP +10]
The pane offered a polite nudge.
[Optional: Service counterweight pulleys now?][Estimated Time: 12 min]
He looked at the grooved sheaves, the cable wanting to write a new path. "Twelve if the gods are idle. Ten if we hurry."
A3 held tools; the clerk passed the right wrench the first time. He cleaned grit, trued set screws, gave the cable a fair track. The shutter sang quieter afterward.
[Repair Completed.][Gain: Mechanic XP +15][Gain: Basic Mechanical Repair XP +15]
[Mechanic (lv2: 70/2000)]
"Seal's good," the clerk said, palm on glass. "If you want coffee, I can pretend."
"Pretend later. I want a minute of watching it not fail." They watched the door do its job the way doors like: invisibly.
A runner in Nightfall gray jogged up, breath white in the duct wind, and handed A3 a slip. "Outer patrol inbound," A3 read. "One injured. ETA four minutes. Gate ready."
"It is," Jace said, glancing at the pulleys he had just coaxed honest. The pane chimed a line that made his mouth dry with how useful it was to be explicit.
[Environment Warning: Fallout Gust Predicted — 03:00][Advisory: Minimize seam exposure during transfer.]
"Three minutes," he told the window. "Queue the cycle: open, in, close. No speeches in the doorway."
"We know the drill," the clerk said, grateful anyway.
He checked the counterweight by touch—tired, aligned, willing. He set the crank near but not where panic hands would grab it first.
Boots. Voices. The sound a gurney wheel makes when grit teaches it a new geometry. A light in the slit; a knock that was more word than noise. A3 keyed sequence. The shutter rose. Air came in like someone testing teeth with a tongue.
The patrol slid through—the shape on the gurney too still, blanket doing a medic's job. The clerk hovered a hand over CLOSE like a superstition.
"Now," Jace said. She pressed. The shutter started down.
The squall remembered itself.
The meter leaped. Slats sang. The counterweight cable, as honest as it had been, found the groove it had loved before and tried to climb back into the past.
Jace moved. He hit the emergency brake with the flat of his hand, felt it engage, heard the motor cry against power he hadn't given it, knew a limit would trip, and still felt the mass want to finish the thing it had started.
The pane didn't shout. It posted.
[Emergency Override: Active][Manual Assist Required][Advisory: Use crank to balance load — 00:20]
"Crank," he said. A3 already had it. They set steel into steel; Jace took the handle with his left and his right braced the frame. The cable threatened to ride; he eyed the pulley and spoke to it with the wrench he'd left in his pocket for luck, a quarter-turn that asked the set screw to remember the present.
"Now," he said, and they wound. The shutter's song changed from panic to work. The clerk's thumb held CLOSE like faith. Grit hissed; the meter flirted with a number that made men stupid and then stepped back from it as the slit narrowed.
"Ten," A3 said, counting breaths.
"Nine," Jace said, counting links.
"Eight."
They rolled the last hand's width into the frame and felt the weight settle on the stop. The brake seated. The slats stopped being a mouth and went back to being a wall.
[Emergency Resolved][Repair Completed][Gain: Mechanic XP +20][Gain: Basic Mechanical Repair XP +15]
[Mechanic (lv2: 105/2000)]
Jace kept his hands on steel long enough to believe the stillness. He let the crank go and felt the arm hum not with tremor, but with tired use. He breathed and believed the air.
A3 laid the crank down like it had earned a name. "Gate's good," he said to the window. "Log it."
The clerk did, stylus moving with the relief of someone who had just denied a bureaucracy its favorite toy.
Jace wrote the lie he would tell if he didn't write the truth: limit arm adjusted, mount patched, counterweight pulleys trued; chain replacement scheduled. He underlined scheduled until the word meant something.
"Coffee?" the clerk offered again, this time without pretending. "It's not good."
"I don't need good," Jace said. "I need hot." He took the cup, tasted tin and grit and thanks, and set it down unfished because the next knock arrived in its place: two quick, one long—the vault's way of asking if it could borrow your time.
A face in the glass that wasn't Nightfall—mess runner, cheeks wind-burned. "Admin wants you to sign the south shipment acknowledgment before shift. Says 'before they say you didn't.'"
"On my way," Jace said. He looked at A3. "You have your gate. Don't make me come back soon."
"We'll try rudeness," A3 said, almost a smile.
Jace gathered his roll. The pane hung polite.
[Mechanic (lv2: 105/2000)]
He stepped into the corridor's thinner dark. The vault breathed more like a person now—tired, but not holding its breath. He let the breath go all the way out and started the walk back toward the signatures that made truth stick.
Behind him, the sally port settled. The door remembered how to be a door. The meter by the frame blinked once as the squall shrugged and moved down-hall to be someone else's problem.
The pane posted one last, small suggestion that sounded like respect.
[Optional: Schedule chain replacement at Maintenance — Window 0900-1100]
He turned the last corner toward Admin and slowed. Voices bled under the door—too many, too tight. A new patch on a jacket he didn't like to see inside the vault.
The pane posted it before anyone shouted.
[Advisory: Audit Window — 00:30]