Dawn didn't arrive so much as negotiate. The sky thinned from black to poison gray, and the wind remembered how to whisper.
Lex climbed to the north roof with the pry bar across his back and the rope cinched short against snags. He eased the door open to the tape stop. Cold air licked his face—metal and wet concrete.
He stayed in shadow behind a rooftop unit and let his eyes learn the edges. Greyhaven's towers were charcoal cutouts, their windows blind. The Black Tide lay heavy on the western horizon where the river bent, a low bruise flattening dawn.
"North roof," a voice murmured, close and low. Left side.
Lex kept the Wind Cannon to a breath. "Hands where I can see them. No sudden."
A figure eased from a vent stack: coat, hood, a mask improvised from a band tee and filter sheets. The figure raised both hands, set a small bottle on the gravel, and stepped back.
"Water," the voice said. Hoarse, not infected; more dehydration than rot.
"Step into the light." There was no light—only less dark. The figure obeyed, letting a sliver of pallid sky paint the mask. Shoulders trembled with cold.
"Three numbers. Odd, even, prime."
"Seven. Four. Two."
"Again."
"Nine. Ten. Three."
"Mask down a finger." A human mouth appeared—chapped lip, normal teeth. The mask came back up.
"What do I call you?" Lex asked.
"A name is a handle," the figure said. "I don't hand those out."
"I'll call you North."
"Works," North said. "And you?"
"Don't need one," Lex said. "We're here for a map."
North crouched, hands visible. "Signal house had copies of the yard layout. Power limped, people were loud. That was two weeks into the fall."
"You know a way across that doesn't pay noise tax?"
"Roofline to the canal. Bridge is fenced but not welded. Then warehouses. I have a triangle key." A small tool shape bumped under North's collar. Truth declared, not traded.
"Move when I move. If I say down, you go flat. No questions."
"Copy." The word fit someone who had swallowed orders before.
They took the roof's southern lip in low hustles. Pebbles ticked. The city answered with the quiet that had replaced its engine. A gutter pipe dropped to a catwalk over an alley. Rope loop at Lex's waist, munter over a carabiner, North down first. North climbed like someone who had been light for a long time. Lex followed, pry bar thudding soft on the harness.
Alley. Fossilized trash. A delivery van slumped on flats, doors jimmied a year ago. On the seat, a cracked GPS, old enough to be almost analog. Lex palmed it.
Heat woke under his skin; the Mechanical Heart flexed. The GPS relaxed into powder.
[DEVOUR SUCCESS. MECHANICAL SOURCE +1.][BASE ATTRIBUTES UPDATE — DEFENSE: LV0 — 17/30]
North watched without asking. Points for that.
At the alley mouth, a drag-scrape worked against the rhythm of feet. "Down," Lex said. North flattened. A thin, wrong shape probed the corner, tasted the air with a fan of flukes, and shivered at its own conclusion before sliding away along the canal.
"They don't like open water," North whispered.
"Or they like it too much," Lex said. "Move."
They crossed the canal road in a crouch and took the dry lip where weeds had died undecided. The bridge fence had been peeled and lazily closed with wire. North spun a triangle in a cabinet and bled slack from the chain. Lex levered the gate a breath with the pry bar.
"Enough," he said. "Noise tax is real."
Across the bridge, warehouse roofs made a low horizon. North led up a rusted ladder. Roof tar wore white gull prints; the gulls had stopped taking meetings. "Signal house there," North whispered—squat box between gantry and switch office. "Maps in a frame by the door. Maybe tubes by dispatch."
"And power?"
"Depends who got there first," North said. "Engineers tried to hold one line live. Then the first real corpse tide came up the feeder road. Railworks don't like being fed."
Lex solved angles like a rat solves walls. "Fence first. I need to know if the service gate takes triangle or if someone welded love onto it."
"South fence," North said. "Office sightline is worse east."
They advanced roof to roof: move, belly, breathe. Twice, Lex paused to listen to the hum of his own pulse and keep the math from going feral.
At the last roof, a skylight yawned black. Below: pallets and forklift scars. "Office had hard hats and labels," North said. "Labels help brain later."
"After the fence," Lex said.
The yard fence tried to be more than chain-link and failed politely. Razor coil slumped along the top. The service gate wore a bureaucratic green cabinet.
Steel sang in the morning's bones—distant, then nearer in the idea if not the sound. Lex set a palm on the roof tar. The vibration purred a cat's purr through the ribs. South-southwest.
North's hands clenched roof grit. "They didn't strip every loco."
"Or somebody brought home a generator," Lex said. He showed his triangle key. North showed theirs. Two truths declared.
They slid into the shallow canyon between wall and fence, outside office sight. Up close, the lock was standard—triangle, rusted to old blood. "Cover me," Lex said—the word that made people useful even when they didn't know how.
Key in. Turn. The lock thunked with the dignity of something believing in one more year. Chain slackened. They eased the gate open a triangle's worth without letting metal complain. The world considered them and chose not to notice.
"Fence is viable," Lex said. "House?"
"House," North said.
They ghosted the fence line. The signal house windows were taped squares. The handle had known hands. Locked now. North fished a bundle of steel—tension wrench and tiny hooks cut from jigsaw blades. Ideas ran down their fingers. The lock sighed. The door opened like a building deciding not to care.
Inside smelled like paper and graphite. Dust turned steps into signatures. Lex stayed off obvious paths and kept the beam low. North took the desk. Lex took the wall frames. One held yellowing safety posters. One held a map under glass.
He shouldered the frame down, slit the backing, peeled the map. Read before roll. Tracks A–J, crossovers, a hand scrawl by the crane siding: "TEMP POWER FEED—CHECK BREAKER 12."
"Breaker twelve," North breathed.
"In quiet, out fast," Lex said. "If they learn the fence, second trips are funerals."
A tick visited the house, then another, like a fingernail on glass. Lights dead. Lex gave himself an inch of window.
Three figures crossed between hoppers forty meters out. People, not creatures. Two with pipe lengths. One in a dead orange vest. Tired wrong: too careful where loose should be, too loose where careful should be.
"Scavs," North said.
"Maybe hungry," Lex said. He put a finger on BREAKER 12. "We don't exist. We're a rumor."
A fourth shape detached and scouted. Dog posture—head up at a thought. The shape turned toward the house and came straight for the door.
Lex gestured left and down. North pressed into the floor heater well. Lex took the hinge side, pressure sharpened at his finger to a line thinner than indecision.
The knob turned slow. The door eased a palm's width. A strip of dawn cut dust into motes. A boot toe tested wood, moved the smallest distance wood can measure.
Pfft.
Air kissed the intruder's eye through the seam. "Jesus—" the man yelped, stepping back and bumping the door. Lex rode the bounce, hooked the vest, and dragged him in like a sack of rags. North settled the door to door again.
The man hit a wall frame and cursed through his teeth. Lex let him have breath, not motion.
"You walked to a door that wasn't yours," Lex said. "What did you expect?"
"Help," the man said. The word sounded like a coin that had been in too many mouths. "We heard a horn last night." He coughed. "We thought we weren't alone."
"You're not," North said, neutral. "Which is why you don't knock."
"Rafe," the man said, bleeding a name without being asked. "Two with me. We keep off the road. We don't run loud. We're not the ones you need to worry about."
"What do we worry about?" Lex asked, still holding him where being held made sense.
"Office," Rafe said, chin toward glass. "Nest in there now. They watch the fence. They hear the gate. They like horns."
Nest. The word had too many meanings, none friendly.
"Breaker twelve," Lex said. "Where?"
"Under the crane," Rafe said. "East cabinet. Switch sticks. Ground ring's half gone. You'll need grease and someone who won't scream when it sparks."
Valve grease in pocket. A hand that didn't shake when the world tried to be louder than survival. Lex released the vest but not the choice.
"Three boxes," he said for North. "Scout, breach, move. Scout's done."
"You're going to move a car," Rafe said, chewing the idea.
"Eventually," Lex said. "Today I move information."
Outside, a flock of small, fast shapes rippled around obstacles at knee height with hive logic. The scavs flattened behind a hopper. One wasn't quick enough. The flock learned him and unlearned him with a sound like rice on foil.
Rafe pressed the back of his head to the wall, blinked once like a man turning a page he hated, and opened his eyes again.
Lex rolled the map tight, slid it into a tube, and slung it. "You came quiet. Leave quieter. You don't know us."
Rafe nodded too quickly, then corrected it. "I don't know you." He caught himself before saying thanks and vanished into dawn.
North didn't look where the flock had been. "Breaker twelve," they said, making a prayer that only numbers hear.
Lex touched the rope coil. He had grease. He had a map. He had a gate that would open for whispers. He also had a variable named Rafe that hadn't decided whether to be problem or mass.
"Breach," he said. "Dusk."
North's nod was functional, not joyful. Contracts of the neck.
They slipped out and let the lock pretend ignorance. The rail sang south. The Black Tide held the horizon like a ruler's threat.
At the fence gap, office windows wore the day like mirrors. Triangle turned. Chain played one link at a time. Gate forgave them.
Wall and shadow back to roofs. At the last ladder, a sound rose—the kind a throat makes when it is not a throat. North's hand landed on Lex's sleeve.
"Don't look," North whispered.
Lex looked anyway. A figure stood on a warehouse ridge two buildings over. It had once been a person in a safety vest. Now the vest had grown to fit what wore it. It watched them without eyes.
He pointed a finger and made the air weigh something.
The thing cocked its head, curious, and took one slow step forward, as if coming to learn the word breach from strangers' mouths.
Dusk, Lex thought. We breach at dusk or we don't breach at all.
[MECHANICAL HEART: LV.1 — 182/500][BASE ATTRIBUTES][STRENGTH: LV1 — 22/50][SPEED: LV1 — 1/60][DEFENSE: LV0 — 17/30]
He lowered his hand. He didn't fire. He chose.
"Move," he said.
They moved.