They ghosted into the next throat of the haven where light chose not to belong.
Air moved different here—cold and taut, like the corridors held their breath for someone else. Hale took point, hand up, palm open, then closed—slow. Admin kept two steps back, radio cupped in his palm the way a man cups a match in the wind. Nono hugged Ash's heel and kept quiet.
A slit in the bulkhead gave them the first look. The West Gallery stretched long and skinny, a cargo spine with high windows blacked by soot and time. At the far end, a maintenance shutter sat down on its tracks like a jaw clenched against talking. In front of it: unknowns—three men, mixed armor, no Nightshade marks. One ran a breach torch along the bottom seam; another levered a pry-ram into the side track; the third watched the angles and the ceiling. A drone bobbed at shoulder height, light caged tight.
"Not ours," Admin breathed.
"Not theirs either," Hale murmured. "Scav crew. Smell of out-corridor."
The torch guttered, hissed, climbed back to hungry. The pry-ram chewed on the rail with a whine that made metal sound tired. The lookout checked a side corridor and set a boot against the wall like he owned it; his hand rode a pistol that would jam on a good day.
Ash took the gallery in as parts—shutter, rail, side corridor, overhead run. A fire curtain track hung in the ceiling five meters back from the shutter, its manual drop box painted a yellow that had grown old and lost its nerve. A counterweight cable ran to a rusted dog latch; the dog was seized. A side crank panel with a lockplate waited on the wall near the rails.
"Curtain first," Ash said. "Drop it, split them from the shutter. Kill the torch if it lives."
"Manuals?" Admin asked.
Ash angled a nod. "Dog latch is stuck. I'll free it. Then you pull the counterweight. Nono—left latch. Hale, that side corridor."
Hale put two fingers on his lips: eyes. He scanned. The lookout's gaze kept sweeping past their slit without sticking. Hale touched the wall with two knuckles and moved like he'd been designed for walls.
Ash and Nono slid to the manual drop box. The paint dust lifted under his fingers. The latch sat like a promise breaking—seized, proud. He set the Chain E-Saw down—too loud—and instead took a chisel and a small hammer from his satchel. He placed steel on steel and kissed the latch's shoulder. Again. Again. The rust cracked like old bread.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Facility override prep: fire curtain dog latch service (simple). +30 Mechanic XP / +50 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:300/1000.
"On my count," he breathed. "Admin, pull when I say. Nono, second latch. Hale?"
Hale's voice came back, velvet-scraped stone. "Lookout is leaning on the idea of himself. I'll move him."
The torch flared hotter and licked along the seam. The ram ratcheted and bit.
Ash wedged the chisel, felt the latch give a whisper, and snapped it open. "Now."
Admin yanked the counterweight cable. It stuck. He yanked again with a grunt that owed something to the generator still humming in his bones. The fire curtain stuttered, then fell—a steel sheet rushing down its tracks with a throat-slap of air. Nono popped the second latch with a little savage sound. The curtain slammed between the unknown crew and the shutter, splitting the gallery like a guillotine that cared only about geometry.
Shouts. The drone collided with the falling curtain, bounced, and spun. The lookout whipped around, stumbled, and saw Hale where a shadow had been. Hale's hand took the pistol wrist and rolled it; the man met the floor with a gasp like he'd learned a new verb. Hale didn't punch. He placed the man into the wall's opinion and let him sleep.
The torch-man panicked and stabbed at the seam by reflex, then discovered he was kissing the wrong door. The torch's hiss turned into a whine.
Ash slid the Silver Stag to a perforation in the curtain frame and found the soft regulator on the cylinder. The shot did the small, exact job it had been asked to do.
Glass burst; the flame died; the torch sobbed out.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: torch regulator (long-range). Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:450/1000.
The pry-ram man grabbed the pry-bar as a club, took one step into the new geometry, and reconsidered when Hale stood up full-size at the corridor mouth. He backed, not a coward, just good at math.
"Log," Admin whispered, already logging. "Unauthorized entry attempt. Fire curtain deployed. Tools disabled."
The drone recovered and bobbed up to look for faces. Hale palmed his pocket light and stutter-flashed through the grille. The drone blinked stupid and saw glare.
"Crank," Ash said, and pointed at the side crank panel. Admin looked at the lockplate like it owed him money. Ash took a flathead, popped the face, bridged contacts with a copper strip from his kit, and watched the small status lamp come to life.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Facility override: local crank panel energize (mid). +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:600/1000.
He turned the crank a half-turn. A secondary bar crept out of the wall into the curtain's backside—an old bite that made the curtain self-brace.
On the far side of the dropped curtain, the unknowns made a choice. They didn't try to lift. They went sideways, sprinting for a fence break in the gallery's far corner, the way smart men leave when math grows teeth. The drone tried to keep up; the fence took out its dignity. It pinballed off mesh and sulked into a hover.
Hale stepped through the frame and took a position that owned the side corridor. "We're not chasing," he said, because someone had to say it before someone else pretended to want the sprint.
"We're securing," Ash said. He took the turnbuckle from his satchel, looped a short chain between the curtain post and a welded ear on the frame, and tensioned until the chain sang. He set a shear pin in the crank hub that would snap before a stranger's hand could take the curtain up. Nono produced a tag and, unbidden, wrote NO on it with a squeaky stylus. Ash wired it there and didn't smile.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement: chain set + shear pin + brace bar. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:610/1000.
He knelt to wedge the posts: thin steel shims hammered under the curtain rails to bite the slab. Hale kept the corridor honest with a shoulder and a stare; Admin logged details that might matter to a tribunal that existed mostly in honest men's mouths.
The gallery quieted. The unknowns' boots faded through the fence break into scrub and choice. The drone hovered like a bug that had forgotten what flowers were. Ash reached up and plucked it out of the air by its caged light, thumb on the lens. He handed it to Nono. Nono packed it into a crate with prim contempt.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Device secured: hostile drone (nonlethal). Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:615/1000.
Admin exhaled. "Log: West Gallery contained. Unknowns repelled without fatalities."
Hale rolled his shoulders like a man setting a pack. He nodded at the shutter the unknowns had been after. "What's behind that?"
"Service bay to the old north route," Admin said. "Storage that isn't storage anymore. A crawl under the wall people pretend they don't know."
"Why now?" Hale asked.
"Because the lights came on," Ash said. "Lights draw moths." He looked up toward the roof truss. Old steel answered with a small, offended creak.
The truss ran the length of the gallery, a triangular spine of rusted angles that carried the roof's dead weight and its bad moods. One panel near the shutter had a dogged joint—a manual clamp used when men had ladders and time. It had slipped a hair. Not much. Enough to make noise and grow into inevitable if ignored.
"Above," Ash said.
Hale followed his gaze. "If it goes, it goes on the curtain track first."
"And takes our brace with it," Ash said.
He took the ladder from the wall hook and set it under the truss dog. The ladder did not approve of his plan; it wobbled like a drunk praying for grace. Hale planted its feet and set his boot against a rung.
"Up," Hale said.
Ash climbed into the hot. The air by the roof remembered the day's generator run. Dust had weight. He hooked his left elbow through the ladder and reached with his right hand to the manual dog, fingers feeling for the toggle that would bite down on the plate and lock the panel back to true.
"I've got you," Hale said, voice quiet enough not to wake the steel.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Facility maintenance: truss dog inspection (simple). +30 Mechanic XP / +50 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:645/1000.
He found the toggle. It had worn to a shine like a promise it hadn't kept in a while. He pulled it—no joy. He tracked the clevis pin with his fingertips and felt play where play had no right.
"Pin's ovaled," he said. "Needs shimming or a new one."
"We have neither," Hale said.
"Then we fake it," Ash said. He took a washer from his pocket and a short sliver of shims from the satchel he kept for when the world wanted pretending. He fed the washer into the hinge line with the grace of a thief, then tapped with the small hammer until metal agreed to sit where he lied it.
The truss complained—a long, low groan like a barge turning in a shallow river.
"Easy," Hale said.
Ash thumbed the toggle again. This time the dog bit, a teeth-on-plate clack that told him truth had been served even if law hadn't.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Improvised fix: shimmed clevis + dog lock. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:695/1000.
He breathed out and let his eyes travel the truss one panel each side, reading for lies. The next dog down sat true. The long angle carried its load like a man remembering his oath.
Below, Admin muttered into his radio, "West Gallery secured. Curtain braced. Unknowns repelled. Request additional guard—neutral." He didn't say non-Nightshade, but the word lived there in the white around the letters.
Nono pinged once, a little nervous note. Ash glanced down. On the far side of the curtain, through a grille near the shutter, shadows moved—fast, flat, low. Not men. He didn't name them. The scrub kept its own books.
"Lane's busy," Hale said. He had his back to the side corridor, eyes on the place where opportunists were born. "We keep the door honest and let the world complain."
Ash set the hammer back in his satchel and put his weight into the ladder's descent. The ladder shook its disapproval one more time and then found the floor with grace.
"Next," he said, and pointed at the crank. "We lock that to us, not to them."
Admin produced a battered padlock from a pocket that looked like it had been turned inside out on hard days. Ash slipped it through the crank plate ear and a hole in the panel frame; it didn't fit right, but enough is a form of right when you're poor. He turned the key and listened for the click that kept sleep in rooms.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Panel control: lockout/tagout applied. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:700/1000.
He looked back up. The truss gave a small protesting scream, metal talking to itself the way old bodies do when they've been asked to lift something they don't like. The dog he'd set held; the panel beside it shifted and decided to share its complaint.
Hale's head tilted. "That wasn't the one you touched."
"No," Ash said. He stepped to the next ladder bracket and pulled it down. His palms stung from dust and time. "They're pulling on the roof outside. Or the world is."
Admin's radio made a half-noise and then thought about duty. "Report from West exterior," a voice said. "Movement on the roofline. Not Nightshade. Not ours."
"Scav crew with a ladder," Hale said, "or worse."
"We don't say the word," Admin said, and didn't.
Ash set the ladder under the second panel and climbed. The manual dog there was half-seated—someone had pulled it once and never finished. He wedged a shim, hit the dog with the heel of his hand, and felt it seat. The truss answered with a tone down a note.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Facility maintenance: secondary dog lock (simple). +30 Mechanic XP / +50 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:730/1000.
He reached for the next dog—
—and the overhead panel made the kind of sound that turns every choice into the next choice. A deep, ripping squeal. The ladder jumped under him as the roof skin flexed. Something heavy moved across the roofline and pressed weight where the truss wanted none.
Hale looked up without flinching. "We're done being surgical."
Ash's fingers closed on the cold handle of the dog. The steel above them decided to speak louder.