"Don't," Hale said.
The soldier's glove hung on the chain, a finger still crooked under the link like a thief reconsidering sin. His eyes flicked to the padlock and the Admin tag that read LOCKOUT—VALE in pencil that looked like a verdict.
Admin didn't raise his voice. "Tamper with a lockout in my haven and the report reads attempted negligent harm." His pencil wrote the phrase on the pad before the liaison could argue with the air.
The liaison's smile smoothed itself like a sheet tucked too tight. "Provision Twelve—"
"—doesn't outrun safety," Admin said.
The taller inspector cleared his throat over the corpse of his cart and its little ribbon of cooling smoke. He kept his wand in his hand because men like tools when the room disagrees with them.
Ash slid the knife switch one millimeter—just enough to make the isolation flag red as blood under the padlock. He reached beneath the bench, thumbed a salvaged buzzer, and let a flat beep-beep fill the shop at a nurse's-pulse pace.
"Hot bench," he said. "Purge in progress. You want to move my rail under load, you sign Admin's sheet, then you put your name on the body when something goes off the trap." He set a red flag in the last receiver again—belt and suspenders for people who only believe things when they're repeated.
The soldier took his glove off the chain like he'd found a snake. The liaison's mouth thinned until it looked like a scar. He pivoted to the finished lot. "Outputs—"
"Verified outputs," Admin said, tapping the page. "Or not, depending on your test."
"Range is closed," the liaison said.
"Then we verify here," Ash said. He looked at the inspector, not the mouth with the seal. "Bench Verification Protocol: you pick three from the rack. We run each five hundred dry cycles in the trap on snap caps, staged checks at 100/250/500—sear engagement, disconnector behavior, mag latch retention, carrier travel. No clamps on my rail. You count with eyes and a clicker. If any fails, the lot fails and you get your paper show. If they all pass, Admin stamps lot compliant under oversight. That's a safer word than seizure."
The smaller inspector's jaw made a noise like gravel thinking about being a road. He glanced at the liaison and found no help there—just politics. He nodded once, as if conceding to physics. "Manual count," he said. "No attachments."
"No attachments," Hale repeated, tone soft enough to peel paint.
Admin wrote BENCH VERIFICATION PROTOCOL across the top of his page like a new law and pressed his stamp: ADMIN—TEMPORARY OVERSIGHT APPROVED.
"Pick your three," Ash said.
The liaison gestured like he'd invented pointing. The inspector pointed to A-07, A-19, and A-31—at random, but men like to pretend to read fate. Ash pulled them, flagged, set each into the bench jig with the muzzle in the trap, and laid the line of snap caps like bread crumbs.
Nono trundled to the side of the jig and fed from a tray with a square little devotion, claws exact and gentle.
The liaison tried to make the room smaller with posture. Hale made it big again with the same trick he always used: existence.
The inspector stood within the seam, pad ready, thumb on a clicker like a tiny gun he could win with. The cart's mast LED sulked at red. The taller inspector put his wand down because it had started to feel like a joke he wasn't sure he wanted to finish.
Ash nodded to Admin. Admin nodded to the page. "A-07," he read. "Begin."
Ash breathed once because that's how you put electricity in the right place. He ran the charging handle, let the bolt ride, pressed through the trigger into the trap; the snap cap took the strike and clinked into the catch. One. The inspector clicked.
Again. Two.
The bench found a rhythm that belonged in a different kind of room. Three, four, five— the jig's arm caught the carrier when it tried to outrun reason; Ash's wrist fed pace, not speed; Nono's tray hopped a cap every cycle like a metronome with wheels.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Functional cycle (bench endurance) — A-07. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
At 100, Ash locked the bolt, cracked the receiver, checked sear face for uneven shine (none), ran a finger along the disconnector contact (true), and pressed the mag latch while a full mag rode the well (solid, no give). He wiped a little graphite because that's what makes later more polite, closed, and looked at Admin.
"Continue," Admin said, pencil a metronome. The inspector had a tick on his pad where 100 lived.
101–250. The count passed like work passes when it doesn't waste words. At 250, Ash repeated the checks, added a carrier travel feel—no grit, no hang—then nodded.
"Continue," Admin said.
Through 500, the jig and the trap sang their small song. The inspector's clicker made a rhythm under it—cheap, patient, honest. A-07 passed 500 without decoration.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Endurance complete — A-07 (500). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
"Record pass," Admin said.
The liaison's eyes had the look of a man trying not to yawn through his own play. He gestured at A-19 like a king granting a pardon he meant to rescind later.
A-19 ran the same road. At 180, a follower tried to climb wrong; Ash felt it before it admitted itself and gave the magazine a quick press-fit check. The lips were true; the spring was just betraying a shape. He swapped in a fresh snap cap and the error never repeated. He made a note anyway because notes are how truth breeds.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Functional cycle (bench endurance) — A-19. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The smaller inspector, restless, let his pen drift toward the micro-jig like a man comforting himself by touching things other people own. His glove grazed the tag and the chain shivered. Hale didn't move his feet. He let gravity handle the correction.
"Don't," Hale repeated.
The glove withdrew the way a story takes a step backward when it discovers it's been told before.
At 500, A-19 joined the pass column. The inspector's clicker had a tiny bruise in its thumb pad. He flexed it and pretended he wasn't human.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Endurance complete — A-19 (500). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
A-31 last. If a thing were going to lie to you, it would be this one. Ash let the thought sit without letting it become a prophecy. One through eighty went like apology; at 114 the disconnector took a hair too long to hand the hammer back to the sear. Not a slip—just a suggestion. Ash broke, inspected, found a whisper of polishing on the disconnector's edge where two hours ago some angry hand had tried to invent light with a file.
He put the stone to it once, not twice, and took off nothing except a lie. Reassembled. Ran again.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Safety micro-service: disconnector kiss (simple). +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The rest of the count didn't put up a fight. 500 arrived like a minute that had worked hard.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Endurance complete — A-31 (500). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Admin circled PASS three times because sometimes ink has to act bigger than it is. He pressed the stamp: FABRICATION LOT A—COMPLIANT.
The liaison managed to keep his face while his plan conceded a corner. "You're very proud of little numbers," he said.
"Little numbers keep big numbers alive," Hale said.
Inspector Small tore the INSPECTION PENDING tag off the bench leg because you have to do something with your hands when the room has chosen not to be impressed. He looked at his partner's cart and decided not to try to resurrect it in front of witnesses.
The liaison slid a new paper out of his coat as if he hated the weight. "Dawn audit," he said. "We return with a replacement cart and a tribunal clerk. Your lot is recorded as provisionally accepted. Your jig is—" He searched for a word that could live with itself. "—noted."
Hale's mouth did the small thing that on other men might be a smile.
Admin countersigned the audit notice so it would live in the day's book instead of trying to crawl back later. "Watcher stays?" he asked, not because he wanted the answer but because he wanted it on paper.
"Watcher stays," the liaison said. He took his sergeant and his two soldiers and his dead cart and the smell of someone who had not eaten a win, and he left.
The watcher remained outside, leaning his shoulder into the seam like he had always meant to be a doorstop. The corridor learned to be quiet again.
Ash let the buzzer die. The hot bench flag glowed red under the padlock and he left it there like a religion. He set the three compliant rifles on the outgoing rack and wrote PV (bench verified) next to their tags in a script that did not pretend to be pretty.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Oversight protocol: verified lot recorded. Attachment: blocked. Risk: moderate.
"Next batch," Hale said, which meant we won this inch.
Ash reached for the micro-jig to loosen the vise and felt his left forearm register its vote in small fires. The right arm resumed its hanging habit, present and unhelpful. lv7 had made the world smoother; it had not made the meat less honest. He nodded to himself and took the next blank pin into the jig because this is what defiance actually looks like.
Admin's radio clicked, a polite little cough before it remembered its duty. "Control to Admin," a strained voice said. "Generator access— Nightshade is—" Static sanded off the rest. The voice found itself again. "They're calling it a security sweep. Two men at the door. Cart of their own. Saying they need to 'confirm connections.' "
Hale didn't change shape; men like him didn't need to. He looked at Ash the way you look at a map and ask it for a road that doesn't exist. "Shop or gen room," he said. "Pick."
Admin held the radio like it might pick for them if they waited. "If they touch the governor without you—"
"—they'll make us poor," Ash said. He looked at the bench, the jig, the pins that were the difference between throughput and excuse. He looked at the door and the watcher's patient lean, at the red hot bench flag and the padlock, at the line of work that meant freedom or at least the ability to pretend to it.
The radio breathed in his hand like a lung that had decided not to die. Outside, boots made a new sound: deliberate and light, like men practicing being careful before they remembered who they were.
Hale didn't move. "Pick," he said again, soft enough to pass for gravity.