"Pick," Hale said, soft enough to pass for gravity.
"Generator," Ash said. "You hold this door."
Hale's chin moved a millimeter. "Bring me back a grid."
Ash thumbed the buzzer off, left the hot-bench flag glowing red beneath its padlock, and checked the vise: micro-jig chained, NO MOVE tag signed. He set the Stag's soft case on the shelf where hands would find it if hands needed to. Nono zipped its tray, squared its shoulders, and fell in behind him.
Admin was already in the hall with his radio and that squared-off look men get when they love something they can't protect with fists. The watcher leaned in the seam, listening to his own patience. Hale's presence made the doorway taller.
"Two minutes there," Admin said.
"Less," Ash said.
They moved. Down the service stair, through the artery where the chalk had grown into doctrine: NIGHTSHADE—SECURITY SWEEP → GEN ACCESS in block letters that wanted to be law. The air cooled, then thickened in that industrial way that tells you the room ahead has work and old oil in it.
Two men in Nightshade gray waited outside the generator room—techs by haircut and hands, the kind who've held tools long enough to forget they were once children. Their cart wore clamps, a coiled harness, and a small console whose LED believed itself important. A sergeant without coat lingered to the side like a chaperone who had lost a bet.
"Security sweep," the nearer tech said, cheerful like a dentist. "We confirm connections. Look at governor response. Tie a tach for remote monitor. Five minutes."
"Admin sweep," Admin corrected. "You observe. He works."
The tech flashed a laminated card that had more laminate than identity. "Standard safety requires secondary oversight."
"Which you are getting," Ash said, stepping past him to the door. "You do not attach without countersign."
He keyed the lock, swung the door, and let the room greet them: diesel block; belts under guard; alternator housings; the panel's face with needles and bulbs that had chosen to live; the clean sediment bowl he'd made honest earlier; the governor arm sitting where it had been told.
The cart tried to follow. Ash turned, put his hand on the door frame, and the frame decided to be a mountain.
"Before any clamps," he said, "we do lockout/tagout. Then visuals. Then my verification sequence. Then we talk about where your eyes belong."
The nearest tech had good posture and bad habits. He held up a tach clamp—insulated jaws, a cable to the console. "Non-invasive. Reads ripple at the alternator to infer RPM."
"Put it on the safety ground," Ash said. "Then you can read the planet."
Admin's stamp appeared like a spell. "VIEW-ONLY," he said, marking it in his book.
Ash walked the panel with red tags in his hand. He clipped LOCKOUT—ADMIN across the governor spring adjustment, the fuel shutoff solenoid, the exciter bridge cover. He didn't make a show of it. He made a chain of small laws the room would remember. Nono rolled to the guard screws and held a bag for tags like a square priest with collection.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Safety protocol: lockout/tagout (governor/fuel/exciter). Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
"Visuals," Ash said, and took the sediment bowl in his hand like a crystal ball he did not respect. A flick with his knuckle yielded clear fuel and no new flakes.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Maintenance check: fuel bowl (confirm clear). Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He rocked the governor arm with two fingers and watched the linkage take up and return without lag. He inspected the clevis pin—no new oval—his shim from earlier still telling a useful lie. He popped the alternator's brush cover, eyed the seating—his cut faces bedding in clean, springs honest.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Maintenance check: governor linkage / alternator brushes (confirm). Difficulty: simple. +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He put a wrench on the ground lug and leaned enough to make the lug admit it still loved the chassis. He traced the safety ground cable to the pillar where age had accumulated like lies. He cleaned a thumbnail of oxide with an emery scrap and retightened.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Ground integrity: restored. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The tech with the clamp had drifted toward the governor while Ash worked. His clamp looked like a tach, but the second cable running down its spine looked like intent. He aimed for the governor arm's pivot like a man setting a hook.
"Don't," Ash said, and saw the glove pause midair. He tapped the clamp's tail with a fingernail. The plastic didn't ring right. He peeled the rubber boot up with a thumbnail and found a pigtail bundled tight: two extra conductors coiled like snakes sleeping. "Your tach has a shunt."
"It's a combination unit," the tech said, practiced and fast. "Monitor and safety adjust."
"Safety for whom?" Admin asked.
"Remote trim," the sergeant said, bored. "If the set hunts, we nudge it."
"You nudge it, you own it," Ash said. He turned the clamp, positioned it not on the governor arm but on the guard rail over the flywheel, bumped the jaw into bare steel where the tach function could sniff ripple from the alternator through chassis but the fake shunt met nothing but grounded reality. He zip-tied the cable there with two quick ties and wrote TACH ONLY on a yellow tag, initialed it, handed Admin the pen. Admin countersigned.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Tamper neutralization: remote shunt decoupled (repositioned to ground). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The tech didn't look happy, but he didn't fight the tag with witnesses. He tried a smile instead. "Control bus then. Pull logs."
"View-only," Admin said.
The second tech produced a tidy harness with a bus tap head—designed to slip under the control panel's lower edge into the data header like a thief who knew the house. Ash crouched, looked under the panel lip, and found the thing he had hoped not to: a pigtail already there, tucked neat behind dust: a split Y with one leg into the panel and the other disappeared through a sleeve drilled into the conduit chase. It had been added before today. He hadn't seen it. He should have.
He didn't touch it. He touched the panel's screws instead, one, two—snug—and then looked at Admin. "Who approved this?"
Admin's face did math with shame. "Not me."
The sergeant inspected his fingernails. "Previous liaison."
"Previous problems," Ash said.
He took out a tamper-evident seal—one of the last, red as blood and honest as paper—and threaded it through the bus tap head the tech held and around the panel tab so the tap could sit against the panel but not under it without breaking the seal. He wrote VIEW-ONLY—NO INSERT on the tag and pressed it flat. Then he took a second seal and looped it through the mystery pigtail's sleeve grommet, anchoring it to a bracket. He didn't cut it. He made it true by making it visible.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Tamper control: bus tap sealed (no insert) + unknown pigtail tagged. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
"Verification," Ash said, standing. He gestured to the panel. "We load to Stage 1, hold. Then Stage 2. You watch the governor and the needles. You don't touch the screws. If you move load without calling it, I pull fuel and we go dark."
"Hostile," the sergeant said.
"Honest," Ash answered.
He brought the set up. The diesel caught and settled. The alternator wrote a hum in the room that made the tech's clamp blink its tach LED in a nervous heartbeat. Ash set Stage 1—lights, essential pumps. Needles rose, found the mark. The governor arm moved and came home.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Load test: Stage 1 (stability hold). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
"Stage 2," Ash said, and Admin slid a breaker with a wrist that trusted physics. More load. The belts gave him the high note then swallowed it. The needle drifted a hair, then returned like a man choosing to behave. The clamp's tach winked and admitted the number was boring.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Load test: Stage 2 (stability hold). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The nearer tech leaned close to his console, lips moving as he counted unhelpful facts. "Governor drift three RPM," he said, trying to make it sound like gospel.
"Within spec," Ash said. "And less than your shoes."
The sergeant, bored of honesty, nodded to the second tech. The man touched his radio in a way that meant coordination. Somewhere down the corridor a relay clacked that did not belong to Admin. The needles dipped, then bobbed; the alternator's song found a warble. The tech looked innocent in a way that would fail a mirror.
"External load," Admin snapped. "Who touched—"
"Stage spike," the sergeant said mildly. "Security sweep."
Ash had already moved. Fingers on governor spring tag, not to break it, to brace it; wrist ready on the idle stop. He watched the needle hunt up instead of down—an uglier lie. Overspeed wants your day.
"Don't touch that," the nearer tech said, meaning don't catch us.
Ash didn't touch the screw. He touched the linkage itself—two fingers on the arm where spring translation goes to fuel, a place where a man can be a damper without turning a wrench. He applied an ounce of drag, not force, just education; the hunt's amplitude shrunk. He felt the engine respond under his fingers like a horse accepting a new rider. He eased the idle stop one degree against its locknut and gave the spring back its dignity without changing the book.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Governor control: manual damping + micro-adjust. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The needles leveled. The alternator found the original song without the harmony it hadn't asked for. Belt note stayed swallowed.
Admin's eyes moved from Ash's knuckles to the tech's console to the seal on the bus tap. "Someone is trying to own my generator."
"Someone tried yesterday," Ash said, looking at the pigtail sleeve with its red seal. "They might try again now."
The nearer tech's console blinked a little icon in the corner: a square that meant remote had knocked and been told to wait. He slapped the side of the cart as if a percussive maintenance could invent a miracle.
The sergeant's face didn't change. Men like him grow their patience in the wrong garden. "We're done," he said, a lie already tired. He nodded to the door. His men didn't leave.
Ash set Stage 2 to hold, thumbed record on Admin's pad without asking, and wrote REMOTE LOAD SPIKE—RECORDED for people who would not be there later when being right mattered. He cut his eyes to the panel lip. He didn't like the way the unknown pigtail's sleeve twitched with the room's song.
Nono beeped one patient, uncomfortable note. The bot's little eyes looked at the lower panel as if it could smell intention. Ash crouched, peered under the edge, and saw it: a micro-relay taped to the underside with salvage tape and hope, its coil wired into the unknown pigtail, its contacts kissing the data header with a whisper's worth of shameless.
He didn't grab. He tagged—FOREIGN RELAY—ADM HOLD—and then slid the corner of his stone under the tape just enough to lift without breaking anything he didn't mean to break. He looked at Admin. Admin looked at the sergeant. The sergeant looked bored on purpose.
"Remove that," Admin said to the air.
"After we finish the sweep," the nearer tech said. "Or you void your own safety report."
Ash didn't blink. "We're at hold. Sweep is done. Your cart tried to light a command. The set stayed ours. Now it gets cleaner."
He reached for the seal pliers—the small, tired kind—and tugged the red tamper on the unknown pigtail's bracket so his cut would print. The seal snapped with a guilty sound. He took the micro-relay in his fingers, felt the coil warm like a secret, and pulled it off the header with a motion that didn't ask permission.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Tamper removal: foreign micro-relay disconnected. Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The nearer tech's console threw a symbol he hadn't wanted—LINK LOST—and beeped like a child in a store. He palmed the display as if covering it would unmake the word.
The sergeant's jaw moved one measurable unit. "You just—"
"—took my generator back," Admin said, and his voice had teeth for the first time. He set a fresh seal through the panel flange and the now-empty header so the bus would have a chastity belt. He initialed it like a man paying a debt and handed the pen to Ash. Ash initialed.
"Stage 1," Ash said, and walked the load down to polite. The diesel dropped its shoulders. He let the clamp blink a number that would not get anyone killed.
The tech, cornered by simplicity, made a bad last move. He slid his wand under the edge of the panel toward the header as if plastic could argue with seal. Ash's hand met the wand and didn't grab. It occupied. He pushed the wand back out into the light and set it on top of the cart like something that had wandered.
"View-only," he said.
A relay clicked in the conduit behind the panel, a place even Admin's keys called later. The set's needle jumped a quarter tick the wrong way as if someone had whispered to it behind the wall. The unknown pigtail's sleeve—now sealed but still present—tightened like a vein under a curl.
"Who touched my bus?" Admin barked into the radio.
Static ate the answer. Then: "Security sweep—confirming connections at junction—"
"Kill it," Admin snapped.
The diesel's song took a thin edge, a singer finding a new key by accident. Ash saw the needle flirt with overspeed not because of load but because of command—a ghostly hand on a distant slider.
He put his palm on the fuel solenoid tag, ready to break and trip; his other hand found the emergency slap on the panel—the one that would drop load, kill the set, and buy safety at the price of dark. He looked at Admin, then at the sergeant, who had turned from bored to interested at last.
Nono beeped, small and urgent.
The unknown pigtail's sleeve clicked alive—a faint, high tick as a remote packet arrived like a word a long way down a pipe.
Ash's hand moved toward the emergency trip.