The steel above them decided to speak louder.
Ash's fingers closed on the dog handle. The ladder shivered. Hale's boot trapped a rung and turned his leg into a brace. Admin lifted his face toward the ceiling, as if listening could subtract weight.
"Dog," Hale said, quiet.
Ash slid his palm along cold metal until he felt the clevis—oval wear, slack where certainty should live. He thumbed a thin shim into the gap, set a washer against the hinge line, and tapped twice with the small hammer until the dog's teeth found the plate.
The truss complained and then accepted the lie as truth.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Improvised fix: shim + dog lock. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:780/1000.
"Next panel," Hale said, eyes on the seam where the roof skin overlapped. "Hear that?"
It was a click, the kind a ratchet makes when a tooth takes weight. Then a whine—electric, not diesel—chewing through air above their heads. A line slid into view at the seam beyond the dog—braided, black, glittering with dust. It wiggled like a curious snake, then straightened as whatever rode it put work into pull.
"Battery winch," Ash said. "On the roof. Small rig. Big attitude."
"Can you shoot it from here?" Hale asked.
"Not safe. Angle's bad; ricochet in a steel box is a stupid obituary." Ash looked down. "We shore, then kill its brains."
He slid the ladder over, shouldered it with Hale's help, and set it under a gusset two panels down that would carry diagonal load. "Angle iron," he told Nono.
Nono trundled to a rack, wrestled a length of angle, and presented it with a beep that sounded proud. Hale took one end like it weighed nothing. They lifted it to the truss at a forty-five, inner end against the central chord, lower end aimed for the gallery column by the curtain frame.
"Clamp," Ash said. "Chain. Wedges."
Admin moved without needing a class—years of keeping things from falling made men learn the same dance. He fetched a U-bolt clamp from the wall bin; Ash set it on the angle's upper bite and tightened until metal decided to agree. Hale looped chain to the lower end, around the column's ear, and Ash ran the turnbuckle until the chain sang a new hard note that meant load.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Emergency brace: diagonal angle + chain tension. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:830/1000.
They wedged the angle's foot—thin steel shims under the heel to bite—then drove a spike through a slot in the base plate into the slab's old pre-drill. The roof's whine grew petulant as the truss remembered how to be stubborn.
Above, the winch line tested the seam—tug, settle, tug—a rat gnawing. A shadow passed over the seam, quick and low. Not Nightshade; wrong doctrine. Out-corridor hands.
"Admin," Ash said, "smoke-hatch. Manual. Slam it."
Admin glanced at the smoke vent cord—counterweight in a housing on the opposite wall, the kind you trip to dump air in a fire. He yanked. Nothing. He yanked harder. The sear refused to care.
Ash jerked his chin. "Give me a second dog, then pull."
He scrambled up the ladder again, worked the next dog—this one half-seated from a half-forgotten day—and locked it with a hard heel of his hand. The truss tone dropped a note, closer to honest.
"Pull," he said.
Admin tore the cord. The vent flap in the roof banged shut with a flat wham, a great steel eyelid deciding to blink hard. Air thumped by. The winch line stuttered at the seam as the roof skin jumped.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Facility override: smoke-hatch slam (manual). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:880/1000.
The line didn't quit. It steadied—whoever ran it had patience and a bad plan. A small control pack houselined on the roof edge came into view for a heartbeat at the seam's lip—plastic box, three screws, cable gland.
Hale saw it too. "Brains," he said.
Ash nodded. "We do it clean."
He took a knee on the ladder, braced elbows, and eased the Silver Stag up through a narrow inspection grille by the beam—muzzle only, no cheek weld. Selector to long-range. He trained not on the line, not on the roof skin, but on the control pack's plastic face where a single red status LED pulsed like a smug heartbeat. He breathed out through his nose and pressed.
The shot punched the little brain out of its case. The LED died like a gnat. The motor whine cut to silence. The line went slack with the humility of bad decisions.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: roof winch control pack (long-range). Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:1,030/1000. [CHECK math?]
Ash blinked against the ringing sting of muzzle gas in confined air and lowered the Stag, safe, careful. The roof above them relaxed a hair. Dust sifted in a friendly way this time—no urgency, just the world shaking off inconvenience.
"Finish the tie," Hale said.
Ash dropped from the ladder. Nono fed him a secondary chain; he dogged it from the angle's midspan to a side ear on the column and tensioned until his forearms sang. Hale added a through-bolt clamp at the top—belt and suspenders. Admin reached across and tagged the turnbuckle with a red strip and his marker: LOCKED—ADMIN. The words looked like a thin wall but walls are walls.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Reinforcement: secondary chain + tag-out. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv5:990/1000.
They stood under the truss and listened. The roof made small old-man sounds—complaints, nothing personal. The line above, now dumb, rubbed the seam in one last pointless shrug and then did nothing at all.
Admin's radio came awake long enough to believe in itself. "West Gallery," he said, breath thin. "Roof pull disabled. Overhead braced. Unknowns… withdrew or are repositioning."
A pause. "Copy," a woman's voice answered. "East Gate quiet. Liaison gone."
Hale angled his head at the curtain. "We keep it down."
"Locked," Ash said. He pulled the shear pin out of the crank hub, checked the padlock, then slid his palm along the panel frame the way you check a friend's fever. "If they come for it again, they'll have to invent a new tool."
They backed out—Hale first, owning the cross-corridor; Admin with the radio; Ash last, eyes up on the bruised roofline. Nono rolled between their heels like a square dog that believed in chores.
At the stair throat they paused because pausing is what keeps you alive. Hale looked at Ash's right sleeve and didn't say the word. Ash flexed his fingers once; the lv5 edge took only a little sand out of the gears. Not healing. Just less insult.
"Shop," Hale said. "Queue's about to arrive on shoulders."
"Let them," Ash said.
They started down the stairs.
Something scuffed across the roof above the landing—heavier than a man, lighter than a truck. A second whine wound up, a different pitch—another battery winch, further downline. The ceiling panel over the stair bowed a millimeter and complained.
Hale stopped with one boot hanging in air. "Second line."
Admin lifted the radio like it weighed more. "West exterior, confirm—"
Static. Then: "Movement still on the line. More than one."
Ash set the Stag's case on the landing, looked up at the new seam where the ceiling tile said not today, and took his breath where he could find it.
"Again?" Hale asked.
"Again," Ash said, and reached for the ladder.