He put the pen on the line.
Ink waited like a held breath. The sergeant's clipboard lived under his hand the way traps do—patient, sprung the instant you blink wrong.
Ash didn't blink. He slid the pen one millimeter left and wrote in the margin, cramped and neat: Receipt acknowledged. Oversight only. Clause 12-B under review. Admin countersign required. Then he signed the note, not the line.
The sergeant's eyes moved but his face didn't. "That's not the signature."
"It's the work," Ash said, and reached for the next rifle in the crate like this was a normal morning with better pens. "Oversight can start now. Attachment can wait for the book to show up."
Hale stayed at the door, body a hinge that could decide what opened and what didn't. Nono edged a tray into Ash's hip like an overeager squire. The clerk swallowed in segments and tried to look like furniture.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] External document amended by user. Clause 12-B status: pending. Recommendation: Admin countersign to finalize limitation.
"Five minutes," the sergeant said. He set one finger on the line and tapped once. "Then the thumbprint goes on the line or we close this room."
"Five minutes," Ash echoed. "Good. Watch."
The rifle on the mat had a lifter that sulked. He stripped it to the point where sulking had to admit itself. The spring had taken a set—shorter by a whisper, enough to make presentation at the feed ramp turn into a debate that jammed. He bent the spring cold with a pair of smooth-jaw pliers, measured, then bent again until memory agreed to lie. The lifter raised to the line like it had always meant to.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Maintenance task: mid-tier component serviced (simple). +30 Mechanic XP / +50 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv3:515/1000.
He cycled the action with dummy rounds; the ejection caught his thumbnail and snapped like a quick lesson after a long lecture.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Functional cycle (bench): success. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
565/1000.
The sergeant watched in a way that didn't look like watching. "You can fix them after you sign."
"I'm fixing them because you're here," Ash said. "Call it a live audit."
The clerk's hand twitched toward his pocket, then froze like he was about to confess to something without permission. Hale's voice didn't rise. "If you're calling Admin, do it like a man tying his shoe."
The clerk tied his shoe with his hand in his pocket. Somewhere down the corridor a radio answered itself with a tired squawk. The sergeant's jaw moved once. Not a smile.
"Three minutes," he said.
Ash set the fixed rifle on the rack and pulled a Nightshade sidearm out of the sergeant's shadow like a coin from a bad magician. The slide stuttered a quarter inch from lock; the rails told him why when grit came away under a cloth in streaks of dull graphite. He scrubbed, re-lubed with a dot measurable in molecules, and ran the slide forward and back until the stutter turned into a sentence with punctuation.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
570/1000.
At the door, a soldier's boot shifted—one of the ghosts; his rifle did the little dance that says a man is thinking about raising it but his brain hasn't asked permission from his spine. Hale's head tilted. The rifle remembered gravity.
"Permit," the sergeant said, tapping again.
"Permit," Ash agreed, and flipped to Clause 12-B with the tip of his finger. He underlined renewable and binding. "This is a leash with Seasons on it. You could renew until my hands aren't mine."
"It's temporary attachment," the sergeant said, as if the word temporary had a warranty.
Ash set the pen on the paper again and wrote beneath the clause in tidy block caps: 12-B STRICKEN—OVERSIGHT ONLY (NO ATTACHMENT). TERM: 30 DAYS. PRIORITY ALLOCATION WITHOUT SEIZURE. Then he drew a line to the margin where he'd already signed and added: —A.V.
The clerk made a small strangled sound. "You can't—"
Hale didn't look away from the hall. "He can write. The question is whether the paper believes in ink."
The sergeant didn't smile. "You misunderstand your position. Thumb. On the line."
Ash reached for another magazine like the conversation had agreed to be civil. The lips yawed. He coaxed them into constraint and checked presentation with a practiced press against the feed ramp. Nono braced the body without being asked.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
580/1000.
The corridor's air changed. Radios go silent in a particular way when someone more important than a sergeant starts walking. Hale's mouth did a small thing that meant the math might have shifted.
"Two minutes," the sergeant said, but his voice had developed a seam.
Nono beeped—a patient little tone like a tea kettle that knows it's not for tea. Ash didn't look up. He stripped a bolt, popped an extractor whose claw had lost its teeth, and pressed a new one home with two fingers and certainty.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Component replacement: extractor claw. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
585/1000.
He ran the bolt in the bench jig—snap, snap, clean eject—then set it aside and put both hands flat on the permit as if feeling its pulse.
"Here's what happens," he said. "I sign oversight. You watch. I deliver. Admin countersigns the limitation so when your renewal comes up in thirty days, we renegotiate or we don't."
"You sign Clause 12-B," the sergeant said, "or you sign nothing. Then you sign closure."
"The world is dying," Hale said in the tone of a man discussing the weather. "You can spend the day closing the only shop that keeps your firing pins doing what they do, or you can write your name where it makes sense."
A shadow moved beyond Hale's shoulder. The clerk's 'shoe' tying had grown a conscience. A second pair of boots approached, heavier, carrying the paperwork smell of responsibility. The sergeant's cheek twitched. He didn't turn.
"Minute," he said.
"Sixty seconds is a lot of repairs," Ash said, and reached for the Chain E-Saw. He checked chain tension, bar alignment, then trued three depth gauges with quick strokes that sang small bright notes.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Maintenance: Chain E-Saw fine-tune. Difficulty: simple. +30 Mechanic XP / +50 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
615/1000.
The saw went back into the rack with a sound that said ready. The room breathed in sync for the length of a heartbeat.
The corridor filled with a new voice. "Sergeant."
Admin wore fatigue and a badge and the weight of trying not to get eaten by friends. He stepped into the doorway, took in Hale at the hinge, the clerk folded into himself, Ash at the bench, the paper on the wood. He didn't smell of Nightshade; he smelled of bleach and not enough sleep.
"Permit," the sergeant said without turning.
"I'm here," Admin said, which wasn't exactly a yes.
Ash slid the clipboard a fraction toward the new voice. "Oversight, priority queue, no seizure, no attachment. Thirty days. You sign, he watches, I work."
The Admin's eyes tracked the block caps, then the margin note, then Ash's hands. "Clause 12-B is Nightshade template," he said. "We— don't usually—" He let the sentence die. "I can countersign oversight."
The sergeant's face didn't change. "He signs twelve-B."
"Or?" Hale asked.
"Or the shop closes," the sergeant said.
"On whose authority?" Hale asked, not like a challenge but like a man assembling parts.
"Nightshade's," the sergeant said.
"Inside Haven infrastructure?" Hale said. "Admin's authority lives here." The word here meant this skin, these walls, this air. He let it sit where everyone could see it.
Admin didn't square his shoulders. He squared the paper with his thumb and forefinger. "We need the output," he said to the room, meaning it. "We need it to stay safe. I can sign oversight. I can't sign attachment without tribunal." He looked past the paper at the sergeant. "There is no tribunal."
The sergeant's mouth made a thin line that had traveled a long road. "Thumb," he told Ash again, but something in it admitted the floor had shifted a centimeter.
Ash picked up the pen. He drew a box around his margin text, then a line from that box to the signature line for Admin. "You sign here," he told Admin. "Your badge. Your clock. Your name says thirty days."
Admin looked at the clerk. The clerk chewed his lip and nodded like a drowning man offered a rope with glass in it. "Thirty," Admin said. He pulled a stamp from his jacket pocket—the old kind, ink and pressure—and set the die where Ash had boxed. The stamp kissed the paper with a sound like commitment: ADMIN—TEMPORARY OVERSIGHT APPROVED.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] External authority added. Amendment strength: improved. Clause 12-B remains unapproved.
The sergeant reached for Ash's wrist.
Hale didn't move, but the doorway did. Space gets smaller when a big man means it. The sergeant's fingers paused a hair short of Ash's skin, as if they'd discovered a charge he hadn't been told about.
"You can sign oversight," the sergeant said, eyes on Ash. "We revisit twelve-B when this place remembers who keeps the lights on."
"The lights are held on by people who don't get attached to a single leash," Ash said, and signed Oversight—Accepted on the line under Admin's stamp. He didn't touch Clause 12-B. The ink flashed wet, then dulled.
"Thumb," the sergeant said again, lower. "Identification."
Admin lifted a hand. "We don't do biometric binds on oversight."
"Nightshade does," the sergeant said.
"Nightshade doesn't sign on this side of the wall," Hale said.
The room had reached the part of the conversation where every word had to be carried in two hands. The sergeant's ghosts shifted to either side like brackets. Nono rolled one inch forward, very brave, very small.
"Twenty-nine days," the sergeant said finally, as if shaving the month would grow him a new inch of authority. "And the queue is ours."
"First slot," Ash said. "Not the whole board. I won't slow Admin for your pride."
The sergeant's eyes cut to Admin. Admin didn't flinch. "First slot," he said. "Then rotation."
The sergeant flicked his fingers—a signal that meant nothing and everything to his ghosts. Their rifles breathed out of ready by a degree.
The pen sat heavy in Ash's fingers. He had signed the part that made sense. He had refused the leash. He had an Admin stamp on the refusal. He still had to live under the sky.
"Now I fix things," he said, and reached for the next rifle.
The sergeant watched him for three breaths like a man memorizing his problem. Then he lifted his chin at the door. "We'll revisit."
He took one step. The corridor answered with more boots—others coming from the far junction—too many for comfort, authority chasing its tail. The sergeant stopped. The far boots stopped. The air between them decided to be thin.
Admin turned his head, listening to a radio that hadn't spoken out loud yet. Whatever it said walked across his face like a shadow. He looked at Ash. "They want a rush on two dozen carbines. Nightshade patrols doubled after a drone went down." His eyes flicked to Hale—did you?—and back without asking.
Ash kept his voice even. "First slot, then rotation. Put them on the rack."
The sergeant's mouth betrayed a tiny muscle that wanted to be a laugh and couldn't afford to. He gestured. Two ghosts brought in a stack of weapons that smelled like the yard and bad decisions.
Ash set the first on the mat and the room exhaled new tension that knew its job. Hale shifted off the hinge and became a piece of furniture a man could sit on if the world allowed furniture. Nono lifted its vacuum wand like a flag.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Priority queue established. Oversight mode: active. Attachment: not in effect. Risk: ongoing.
"Clerk," Hale said without looking back, "get out before the corridor remembers your name."
The clerk slid sideways, thin as a wish, and was gone.
Ash broke the first carbine. The dust inside had ambition. He let his hands decide order—bolt, rails, chamber, lifter, magazine—and the bench found a rhythm again.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
620/1000.
Another. Bent feed lip; he crimped it back to the line.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
625/1000.
A third, higher-tier component but a simple task; the XP admitted the difference.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
635/1000.
Sweat stood at his temple. The rot in his right arm did what rot does—nothing generous. The blue panel held in the corner of his eye like a good rule.
The sergeant didn't leave. He stood with his hands behind his back and let the room know it was being observed. Admin stayed because he couldn't afford not to. Hale leaned a shoulder against the door and watched the corridor the way you watch water levels.
A soldier from the far group cleared his throat. "My rifle… it locks open sometimes." He didn't look at his sergeant when he said it; he looked at the man who made things run.
Ash held out a hand. The rifle came. He weighed it. The mag catch wore a shine it shouldn't at its lower face; tolerance stack plus a tired spring meant the magazine could ride low enough to pretend it was seated while starving the carrier. He swapped springs, dressed the face with a file that promised not to lie, and set the rifle back into the man's hands with a motion that said now it's yours again.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Component service: mag catch + spring replace. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
640/1000.
The soldier's eyes told him something the paperwork wouldn't—gratitude cached against a day when choices narrow. The sergeant saw it too. Authority learned when to take the win and when to hold the grudge.
"Thumb," the sergeant said one last time, quiet, a ritual now not a demand.
Ash lifted his left hand, pressed it—not his thumb—flat on his boxed amendment, smearing nothing, marking nothing, just reminding everyone whose hands these were. "Thirty days," he said. "Then we talk."
From the corridor came the sound of more boots turning away—Admin's men to fetch racks, Nightshade to be seen being Nightshade somewhere else. The room's pressure bled down a notch.
Hale let his breath out in a wordless line. "Back to work."
Ash did the thing he did when the world told him to pick a side and he chose function. He put the next weapon on the mat. The bench light hummed. Nono's little eyes steadied.
He set the pen aside where he could find it in thirty days.
And as he reached for the next tool, the floodlight buzzed and the generator in the depths of the haven coughed a warning cough that said the world had opinions about power schedules. The room's light dipped, steadied, dipped again.
The sergeant's head turned. Admin's jaw clenched. Hale's eyes slid to the ceiling and back. Ash didn't look up.
"Keep the lights on," he said to the room that didn't know how to laugh, "and I'll keep the rest running."
The hallway answered with a distant shout and the clatter of a dropped rack. Then the building found a new hum and held it, for now.