He lifted the next carbine onto the mat and the world, so briefly, chose to wait its turn.
Magazine out. Catch face shined where it shouldn't; spring tired. He swapped the spring, dressed the face two strokes with a stone that owed him nothing, and seated the mag with a click that sounded like a promise kept.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Component service: mag catch + spring. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
A second line wrote itself, as if the panel had been doing math in the background while the roof remembered manners:
[SYSTEM PROMPT]XP reconciliation complete. Mechanic leveled up → lv6.Minor attribute increase applied. Core skill slot: available.
He paused long enough to feel the click—clarity trimming a fraction more of the waste—then moved. The rot didn't loosen. The work did.
Hale's silhouette shifted against the sheet-metal blind, a hinge that could decide. Admin stood in the doorway with his radio low and his shoulders high. Nono slid a tray across the bench and made a small proud beep.
Knuckles touched wood.
Not a timid knock. The patient weight of someone with a clipboard and men behind him.
Hale didn't look away from the door. "Company."
Ash set the carbine aside, wiped his hands, and nodded. "Open."
Hale slid the bolt. The door came in on a Nightshade smell—oil, starch, rulebook. The liaison from the gate stepped over the threshold like the floor owed him back rent. The sergeant followed, coat over plates. Two inspectors pushed a squat scanner cart with a mast, a caged light, and a wand on a tether. A third man rolled a power sled with a humming battery stack and a coil of cable like an accusation.
Admin didn't step back. "Oversight," he said. "As stamped."
"Authority," the liaison corrected, smiling with the kind of teeth that have contracts. He held up a sealed notice in plastic. "Integration order under emergency provision twelve."
Admin's gaze didn't blink. "There is no tribunal."
"There is doctrine," the liaison said, and let the notice sit in the air. "Inspection and temporary attachment. Thumbprint for identification."
Hale's head tilted one degree. "He signs nothing you don't co-sign."
The liaison's eyes traveled Hale's height, then decided to speak past him. "Inspection begins now. Inspector Varr, set the cart." He flicked his eyes at Ash. "Bench access."
Ash didn't move out of his own way. "Oversight means view-only while I work. You don't attach to my tools."
"We attach to output," the sergeant said, tapping the plastic. "Same end."
"Different harm," Ash said, and reached for the next carbine like the room had made a mistake and he was correcting it. He broke it, checked the extractor claw, found its bite rounded to apology, and set a new one with a push that clicked in a way men understand.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Component replacement: extractor claw. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Inspector Varr frowned at his scanner cart like it was a friend who'd refused a drink. "Cart goes here," he said, steering it toward the bench corner where Ash's ground strap ran to a salvaged water pipe. "Wand reads serials, logs throughput, confirms custody."
"Wand also reads bios," Hale said. "Funny how that works."
"Standard practice," the inspector said, like he was discussing rainfall.
Ash straightened the ground strap with two fingers, then patted the bench rail. "This bench is isolated when I say it is. Your wand touches nothing until I say so."
The inspector's mouth tightened. He rolled the cart closer, stepped around Nono, and reached for the wand. Hale turned a fraction. The sergeant's hand shifted reflex near his sidearm and then remembered Admin had a radio and the room had witnesses.
"Let him work," Admin said. "Or we log interference."
"Log this," the liaison said pleasantly, and set the sealed notice on the bench, weight of plastic pressing like a bad dream. "Emergency provision twelve gives attachment powers absent tribunal for thirty days, renewable."
"Words are cheap," Hale said. "Metal's expensive."
Ash didn't look up. He took a sidearm from the rack, ran the slide, felt a rail stutter, and cleaned graphite off with a cloth until the stutter apologized and left. The bench hummed.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Inspector Varr extended the wand. Its tip glowed mean. Ash saw his own reflection in its caged light and didn't like the angle.
He clipped the ground strap to the bench rail. The strap's alligator jaw bit down with a little spark of personality. He flipped his isolation toggle—a salvaged knife switch—and the bench's ground went hard to earth through pipe and intention.
"Bench grounded," he said. "Your wand is now an antenna for whatever hum you brought."
The inspector sneered. "It's shielded."
"Against belief," Hale said.
"Proceed," the liaison said.
The inspector set the cart's feet and powered the mast. The cart's fan whirred. The caged light flicked from white to a working blue. He dragged the wand toward the rail.
Nono bumped the cart's wheel with a square body and feigned clumsiness. The cart's foot skated an inch; the inspector saved it with a small dance and a hiss. He shoved Nono with a knee. Nono blinked once, blank as a wall.
"Careful," Ash said. "You break my help, you buy time I can't spare."
The wand touched the bench. Its light hiccupped—once, twice—then steadied. The inspector grinned, vindicated.
Ash reached under his bench and flicked a second switch he had added the day grief taught him about ground loops. The strap took a different path; the bench frame became less an earth and more a sink. The cart's LED flickered from blue back to white and then to red—a small square that said no in the machine's tongue.
"Your ground is dirty," Ash said mildly.
The inspector frowned and wiggled a connector on his power sled. The sled's fan climbed a note, then sagged. He glanced at the battery stack—three bricks with a face full of optimism. "It's not dirty."
"It's lying," Ash said.
Varr crouched, traced his cable back to the sled, and discovered a detail he hadn't planned on: the sled's cooling fan intake had acquired a rag in its grill. Nono, innocent as a broom, stared at a point in space.
"Remove the obstruction," the liaison said, not looking to see who had obstructed. The inspector plucked the rag and the sled's fan found second wind. He dragged the wand again. It hummed, read nothing, then spat error in a polite beep.
Ash kept working. He swapped a firing pin with one that understood duty and reset a return spring that had been mailed in by a lazy god.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Component service: firing pin/return spring. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The second inspector—smaller, more patient—left the cart and tried a different approach. He produced a clamp probe from his bag and reached for the bench rail like a thief trying to be a tourist. Ash moved the rail out of the way by moving his arm across it. The probe bumped his sleeve and stopped there.
"Don't touch the mechanic," Hale said, voice quiet enough to pass for wind.
"Protocol allows attachment to work surfaces," the small inspector said, eyes on his own bravery.
"Attachment is the word that closes shops," Admin said. "And hands. We're not closing anything today."
The sergeant stepped once, the little bob of authority drunk on itself. Hale didn't mirror. He didn't need to. His existence in a doorway filled the doorway enough.
"Throughput," Ash said, not lifting his eyes. "You want numbers? You get numbers. Oversight watches throughput. Attachment watches more than that."
The liaison stroked the plastic notice with a thumb like it was a cat he could train. "Attachment ensures compliance."
"Attachment leaks lives," Ash said. "People who need repairs don't need wires between my rail and your ledger."
"Then sign the biometric ledger," the sergeant said, losing patience and finding its cousin. He produced a small ink pad and a line on a form like a trap. "Thumb. Now."
Ash looked at the pad and saw a ledger that didn't belong to the bench or to men. He put his hand back on the Chain E-Saw, checked chain tension by touch, then flipped the bar and set depth gauges with a file until they sat like a row of soldiers willing to march.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Maintenance: Chain E-Saw service. Difficulty: simple. +30 Mechanic XP / +50 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The inspector tried the wand anyway, angling for a serial off the Stag case. Hale's hand appeared where the wand had planned to be. He didn't touch the wand. He occupied the wand's future.
"Watch," Hale said, and that was all.
The liaison let a small smile die behind his teeth. "You're brave for men who keep lights on with paper."
"Paper's your weapon," Admin said. "Mine is signatures. I sign oversight protocol: view-only logs, first slot in the queue, rotation after. Zero attachment. You can stamp that or write another notice for the pile."
The liaison turned the notice in his hand as if the plastic had angles to consult. "Protocol requires data."
"Data is time-stamped throughput," Ash said. "Watch the bench. Count." He set a receiver, slid a pin, and felt it seat. "One."
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Functional cycle (bench): success. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He tagged it, set it aside, took the next. "Two."
The inspector, frustrated by his expensive wand eating humiliation, made a small dumb move. He hooked the clamp probe around the ground rail anyway and bit.
The bench snapped in response—nothing flashy, just a quiet, decisive pop from a sacrificial fuse Ash had wired in that would open under exactly that kind of rudeness. The cart's mast light died to red again. The sled hiccupped. The probe smoked around its clamp like an apology.
"Your cart's unhappy in my house," Ash said.
"Your bench is unsafe," the inspector snapped.
"My bench is safe," Ash said. "For work."
The sergeant's jaw ground. He moved a second step. Hale's weight shifted in a way that made space think twice. Nono rolled between them and raised its vacuum wand like a tiny pike. The room's humor arrived, saw itself, and left quickly.
Admin reached into his jacket and produced a stamp—the same old kind, ink and pressure. He set his notepad on the bench beside the sealed notice and wrote a line with a blunt pencil: OVERSIGHT PROTOCOL—VIEW ONLY. FIRST SLOT. ROTATION. NO ATTACHMENT. He pressed the stamp: ADMIN—TEMPORARY OVERSIGHT APPROVED.
"Logged," Admin said. "Stamped."
The liaison watched the stamp sink into paper like an anchor. He didn't blink. "Our authority remains."
"Your notice remains," Admin said. "Authority lives on this side of the wall with the men who keep the electrons pointed the right way."
The liaison let out a breath he didn't intend to be audible. He plucked the sealed notice off the bench, replaced it with a smaller seal—a paper tag with a wire twist that said INSPECTION PENDING—and fastened it to the bench's leg as if tags had teeth.
"Watcher at the door," he said to the sergeant. "Half-hour rotations." To Ash: "We'll be back when ink grows teeth."
"Bring a filter for the generator," Ash said. "Bring a conscience for your drones."
He put the next rifle on the mat and let the room be what it was.
The inspectors wrestled their cart out. The sergeant stood three breaths too long and left the shape of a threat in the doorway. Hale slid the bolt. The corridor's sound shrank a notch.
Admin touched the stamped line with a fingertip as if to confirm it remained. "They'll test the edges," he said.
"They always do," Hale said.
Ash didn't answer. He let the panel sit where his eye liked it.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Oversight protocol: active (view-only). Attachment: blocked. Watcher posted outside. Risk: ongoing.
A new line wrote itself under that one with an honesty the panel favored:
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Mechanic (lv6) — Core skill available.Preview: Adaptive Fabrication(convert salvage to spec parts within tolerance; XP yield scales with novelty/difficulty).Confirm to learn? (yes/no)
He stared at it long enough to know the word yes lives in hands, not eyes.
Hale watched him not decide. "Later," Hale said, exactly as he had said about the slate.
"Later," Ash said. He put the stone back on the bench, took the next carbine's bolt in his left hand, felt the extractor bite, and began to make the world obey the part of physics that still respected men.
Outside, boots turned a corner and set down their patient rhythm in front of his door.
Inside, the bench hummed like a machine that had taken its stand and meant it.