Inside, the bench hummed like a machine that had taken its stand and meant it.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Oversight protocol: active (view-only). Attachment: blocked. Watcher posted outside.[SYSTEM PROMPT]Mechanic (lv6) — Core skill slot available.(confirm to learn?)
Ash blinked the offer to the edge of his sight and let his hands choose the next move. Receiver. Two screws. Rail stutter—graphite smear. Cloth, solvent, a dot of oil, slide forward/back until the stutter apologized and left.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Boots paused outside the door; the watcher settled into his lean like a coat rack that judged. A softer tread came with him—cloth shoes, breath fast. A runner in admin gray, hair pinned up with a bit of wire, hugged a wrapped parcel to her chest.
The watcher's shadow blocked the seam. "Closed queue," he said through wood.
"Protocol says first slot then rotation," Admin answered from his post, voice level. "He's in first. Rotation includes Admin."
"Rotation includes us," the watcher said.
Hale slid the bolt and opened just enough to be polite the way a door is polite to a storm. "You want to test the stamp again?" he asked, and didn't move his shoulders.
The runner's eyes went from Hale to Ash and didn't linger—people who need something don't have time for faces. "Priority two," she said, holding out the parcel. "Kitchen guard dropped his sidearm. Slides won't return."
"On the mat," Ash said. He didn't look at the watcher. The watcher liked being looked at.
The runner stepped inside around Hale's frame like a stream around a stone and set the wrapped cloth down. She kept her fingers on it a breath longer than necessary, then let go.
Ash unwrapped. The sidearm carried flour on its slide and a nick where tile had argued. He racked it gently; the return hung a thumbnail shy. He dropped the mag, checked a follower that preferred sulking, cleaned the rails with a cloth until they gleamed, dotted oil measurable in molecules, pressed the slide home.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He reassembled, cycled, dry-fired into the trap; the click carried a clean little truth. He tagged it, wrapped it back up, and handed it to the runner. "Tell your guard to drop it on grass next time."
"He'll laugh," she said, breath turning into a grin she didn't allow. She tucked the parcel and retreated past Hale. The watcher shifted like a man calculating whether to comment. Hale's expression told the comment it would be lonely.
The door clicked shut. Boots resumed their patience.
Ash took the next carbine, corrected a mag catch yaw, and reset its spring.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Component service: mag catch + spring. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Nono made a small happy beep and pushed a tray with extractor claws like a child offering stones. "Good," Ash said. "Claws."
An hour didn't happen; a minute happened thirty times with the smell of solvent and the tick of parts in trays. A dry firing pin got its apology. A bolt face learned humility under a stone. The bench absorbed all of it and requested more.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Component service: bolt face/extractor. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The watcher knocked once with knuckle and intention. Hale didn't open. "Words," he said.
"Inspector," the watcher said. "Cart."
Ash didn't sigh. "View-only," he said. "He stands at the door and writes numbers with his eyes."
The door opened two fingers' width. The smaller inspector leaned into the slice like a weasel checking a henhouse fence. He held no wand, only a pad. "Throughput log," he announced to the air, and scribbled as if ink could count better than hands.
"Count this," Ash said. He seated a return spring, racked, click, tagged.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Component service: return spring. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Nightshade's shadow changed shape another step down the hall. The sergeant arrived like weather. He didn't come in. He didn't have to. His presence pushed air through the seam.
"Test piece," he said. "Safety check."
Hale looked at Admin. Admin's jaw moved. "Through the door, on the mat," he said. "And if it's live, you say so before it remembers."
A trooper stepped into view, nervous mouth, older eyes. He set a carbine on the mat with two careful hands. "Misfires," he said. "And then it… runs."
"Safe," Ash said. The trooper's thumb fumbled and found safety with the panicked precision of a man teaching a cat. Ash cracked the receiver into the bench jig, muzzle into the trap, and tethered the trigger to the jig's arm. He worked the bolt with two fingers and felt the sear hang instead of catch—ragged face, heat polish where geometry had taken a bribe.
"Back," he said, because advice is a gift.
He eased the jig's arm. The hammer slipped—not a full drop, a hungry half-lurch. "There it is," he said. "You tried to fix this with oil."
"Twice," the trooper said.
Ash pulled the hammer, read the sear like a lie detector, and set the small stone to it—three passes, not four, because four would round the edge into philosophy. He reset, tested against the jig's neutral, felt engagement find a shelf instead of a slope. He breathed. He did not like the tiny amount of honest metal that had been left by men who didn't think in futures.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Safety service: sear face true (mid). +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He reassembled and ran the bolt. The sear caught. He set the jig's arm to a hair over trigger pull and let it down. The hammer stayed. "Again," he said to himself, and cycled. Again. The sear held. He pressed through. Hammer fell; the trap accepted it.
The sergeant's breath found a place to be that wasn't in his throat.
"Don't run this hot," Ash said, because truth is cheap and helpful. "And don't let your men file triggers when they're angry."
"Noted," the sergeant said. He hadn't moved from the hall. He still didn't move.
The smaller inspector slid his pad along the seam and stuck his clamp probe at the bench rail out of old habit. The probe's little teeth nuzzled steel and bit a whole lot of nothing—Ash's isolation had taken the rail out of the conversation again. The inspector's mouth pinched as if someone had put vinegar in his tea.
"Observing," the inspector said, and wrote Observe on his pad as if that would invent power.
Ash set the carbine aside, tagged it. The trooper took it back with the careful hands of a man who'd seen the floor too often today. Hale did not move; the trooper took that for the courtesy it was and vanished.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Functional cycle (bench): success. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Another pair of boots at the door, the sound of a soldier trying to be larger than his lungs. He stuck his head in the seam. "If the queue blocks ours again, we close this door," he said—not to Ash, to the world.
Hale's eyebrows inched up until they had a view. "You're welcome to try," he said with the warmth of a freezer.
Admin didn't look up from his pad. "Per stamp, first slot then rotation," he said. "You're in the rotation. If you want more, bring a filter for the generator."
The soldier withdrew, which is a verb some men still know.
Ash's hands ran without him. Magazine lips rebent to line; followers learned their job again; rails remembered smooth. Nono held bodies with its little hook like a nurse.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.[SYSTEM PROMPT] Component service: mag lips. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The blue in the corner of his sight kept its offer polite and persistent.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Mechanic (lv6) — Core skill slot available.(confirm to learn?)
He didn't hit yes. Every choice buys a debt you haven't counted yet. The queue was debt enough.
A shadow fell over the mat again; the watcher had decided to speak with hands. He set down a carbine with a look that said test; his lips said, "This one runs hot and sticks. Fix it. Fast."
Hale lifted the corner of the blinds out of habit; the hallway remained; the world refused to be smaller. "He is already fixing it," Hale said. "That's the part you missed."
Ash cracked the receiver. Sear engagement looked like honesty on one side and indecision on the other—someone had filed the disconnector and called it a day. He stoned a whisper off the wrong face, kissed the right face clean, tested in the jig. The hammer sat like a lesson. He pressed. The trap took it and approved. He wrapped his knuckles on the bench to tell the day to stay in its lane.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Safety service: disconnector/sear coordination (mid). +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The watcher took the carbine with that empty courtesy men keep for tools. "We'll be back," he said.
"Bring parts," Ash said. "Or patience." He turned to the next weapon before the door finished learning to close.
The inspector—having failed to make electrons betray secrets—decided to count by staring. He stared at Ash's sleeve. He stared at the blue panel's ghost in the corner of Ash's eye like a man looking at a lighthouse and arguing with the sea.
"Throughput," Admin said without looking. "Use your numbers there."
The bench answered with another mid—bolt lug burr cleaned with a pick and file; the dry cycle returned a sound that felt like a handshake from a man you could trust to carry a box.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Component service: bolt lug. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
A quick line on the blue: lv6: 315/1000. The number wasn't the point. The number was a map; the bench was the road.
Boots again—these fast, wrong. A Nightshade private shouldered through the seam with the panic of a man whose problem had chosen speed. "It stuck— it's live— I—"
The carbine in his hands said everything better. The bolt sat half open; the hammer hung wedged against a fractured sear; the selector had been touched too many times by fear to be believed; his finger gleamed white on the trigger from a grip he hadn't meant. The muzzle found the wrong angle as his weight shifted.
"Stop," Hale said. The word hit like a wall.
"Hand it," Ash said, already moving. He had the soft case of the Stag in his palm—no—he dropped it. His left hand came up, his right—bad—followed as much as it could; he took the carbine under the receiver with his left, over the handguard with his right, and rolled the muzzle into the trap like a man steering a cart that had decided to be a bull.
"Do not move," Hale told the private without raising his voice.
The private's eyes convinced his body to freeze after the fact. The trigger was still under his bone-white finger.
Ash's thumb found the mag release, dumped the mag to the mat. His left wrist jammed the charging handle back, the weight of his arm hating him and obeying; the hammer stuck like a lie. He pinned the carrier with the jig arm before gravity could betray anyone; the live round sat shy in the chamber like a snake that didn't want to leave.
"Don't breathe," Ash said to the room. He breathed anyway and felt the blue at the edge of his sight tilt the world into lines.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Live hazard detected. Recommendation: clear jam with bench trap engaged; restrain trigger.
Hale's palm found the private's wrist with the gentleness of a very large man choosing not to ruin a bone. "Off," he said, and lifted the finger from the trigger. It left a mark that looked like an apology.
Ash reached for the pick. The hammer's edge had found a burr in the sear like a bad idea finds a crowd; he teased it back with a patience that had teeth. The hammer came off the burr and wanted to fall; the jig arm caught it like a friend. He breathed again, slower, and saw the live round's rim had ridden under the extractor's lip—bad angle, wrong rhythm, fear's geometry. He eased pressure, thumbed the bolt face just enough with a brass tool to free the rim into the extractor's reach, then drove the charging handle back the last inch and let the round flicker out into the trap's throat and disappear like a lie in daylight.
"Safe," he said, and only then heard the sound his own voice had decided to make.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Emergency clear: live-jam release (mid). +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He stripped the receiver, put the hammer in his palm, read the sear's new truth, and wished little wishes he didn't have time for. Someone had thought a file was a solution to fear. He put that thought away with three precise passes of the stone and the kind of reassembly that respects how springs feel when they seat.
"Who filed this?" Hale asked the private quietly.
"I— don't—" the private said, and meant I am new to surviving.
"You are now," Hale said.
The inspector had stopped writing. His eyes were wider than paperwork knew what to do with. Admin's pencil had scratched the word logged and then dug a dot through the page.
Ash set the carbine back into the jig and walked it through five dry cycles, slow, then fast, then slow again. The hammer behaved. The sear behaved. The world decided not to take offense for another minute.
He pressed the receiver closed, tagged it, and met the private's eyes for the first time. "Breathe before you work," he said. "Then work. In that order."
The private nodded like gratitude had surprised him.
Outside, the watcher cleared his throat, preparing to make a problem with lips. Hale looked at the seam. The seam discovered it had urgent business elsewhere.
The blue panel waited with its polite little line, the offer that would eventually be a "yes" if the world allowed it.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Mechanic (lv6) — Core skill slot available.(confirm to learn?)
Ash reached for the next tool.