The day bled out of Greyhaven in slow bands until color gave up. Wind rolled grit across the roof like dice deciding odds.
Lex reached the north parapet ninety minutes before dusk. Map tube under his arm, rope flat on his chest. Triangle key, valve grease, pry bar.
North arrived on a two-knuckle tap. Same coat, same mask. They set a bundle down: cloth tape, two bolts, a stubby screwdriver ground to a pick.
"Gift?"
"Noise tools," North said. "For other people."
No heroics, only permissions: get in, grease the switch, wake the cabinet, leave before the yard learned their names.
"Window?" North asked. "Ridge-watcher?"
"East loop," Lex said. "We move while it respects tradition."
They crossed roofs like remembering a language: move, belly, breathe. The city's sound thinned to single lives—one pot, one shutter, one cough. The Black Tide wore the horizon like a bruise.
At the last roof they taught their pulses patience. Long shadows made easy lanes. Lex signaled; they dropped to the alley. Damp air. Old rubber.
The service gate remembered them. The cabinet took triangle; the chain accepted less tension. They nursed it until a body could pass without the fence filing a complaint.
"Windows?" North asked, eyeing the office.
"Mirrors now," Lex said. "We stay rail side of the crane."
They ghosted along the fence. The crane dominated the yard like a sleeping iron animal. Under its ribs, a green cabinet squatted—the east box. Rust pretending to be paint.
Lex loosened fasteners, opened the door. BREAKERS 01–16, tidy stamps; handles with muscle memory; a ground ring that wanted to be more circle than it was.
North took the corner where shadow ate outline, watching the office. A bolt sat under their toe, a promise held in check.
"Twelve is our friend," Lex said. Dust, scored metal, tired contacts. He cleaned the bites, spread a thin smile of grease on the hinge and ring.
"If it spits, I stay," he said. "You stay clear."
"I can take a bite of light," North said. "But I won't test theology."
He braced and put two fingers on BREAKER 12. "On the breath. Three, two—"
Sound arrived first: a baritone whumm under the rails, a tremor through his boots, then a clean tick inside the cabinet as if the yard remembered its job. Blue-white arced under the handle and kissed his palm. He held it, jaw and shoulder in treaty with the current.
[PAIN RESIST CHECK — PASS.][NOISE ENVELOPE: +1.2 dB]
"Count," North said.
"Five." The arc shortened as grease settled. The ground ring spat once, then behaved. He let the handle set. The cabinet hummed like a cat with boundaries.
They listened. South, a relay clicked agreeably. Somewhere a line woke but didn't brag. "Not loud," North murmured. "Yet."
Lex brushed 11 and 13 with fingertips—stubborn, unclosed. 12 had chosen honesty for a night.
"Done," he said. "Test the line, not the yard."
"How?"
He chin-pointed the near siding: two hoppers asleep. "We ask the coupler if it wants to be mass."
"A big ask," North said. "No prayer?"
"I brought a nail." He lifted his index finger. North's eyes ghost-smiled behind cloth.
They left the cabinet humming and went to steel. Lex set gloved hands on the coupler, weight in stance more than push, and breathed move into metal the way he'd breathed focus into air.
Not glide—negotiate. Rust reconsidered; a brake shoe forgot to drag. The coupler gave one honest clink. Alive, not loud.
North checked office → crane shadow → him. "We have proof."
"Whisper-proof," he said.
Head-high and fast, something rippled along the far fence—the knee-high flock, or kin. North tapped the bolt but didn't throw. Waiting had its own sweat.
From the office: no movement. From the crane's ribs: a slow metal yawn as temperature tipped into night.
"Pack it," Lex said. "Let the cabinet sing to itself. If someone checks, they'll think a timer woke it."
"Let's not audition as someone else's plan."
They reversed their footprints. At the gate, the chain accepted re-tension like a dog accepting a leash. The fence learned nothing.
One alley from the roofs, the world added a variable: whisper of rubber, low cough of a small engine.
A golf cart—yard orange under dirt—rolled along the canal, headlights taped to slits. Two figures. Between them: Rafe. He didn't betray what he saw. Only two low fingers lifted, a signal for people who were already looking.
"Friends?" North breathed.
"Variables," Lex said. "Cart is trouble and promise in the same breath."
The cart slowed at the service gate. The passenger hopped off, checked chain without touching, vaulted back on. Momentum believer. It rolled on and vanished.
"We're not alone in testing lights," North said.
"Good," Lex said. "Maybe they teach the nest to look the wrong way."
"Rafe owes you nothing."
"He owes me no debt," Lex said. "Cleaner."
They climbed. On the second rung, North froze. A half beat later Lex felt it too: that not-sound of a throat learning how to be a throat, nearer.
Across the roofs, the ridge-watcher stood one building closer than math allowed, vest swollen to its owner, head tilted. It lifted one arm as if remembering what wave meant.
"It changed its schedule," North whispered.
"Or we never knew it," Lex said. He drew the Wind Cannon to a tight point and didn't fire. The thing tasted threat and didn't back away. It set a hand to tar like a blind geologist learning temperature.
"We don't run," North said.
"We don't sprint," Lex said. "We move."
They moved.
On the north roof, the wind sold them privacy. The city scraped its chair back for night.
North set palms to parapet, lengthened breath. "It saw us. It'll walk this side at dawn."
"Then dawn belongs to someone else."
North looked at his hands. "Bit?"
"Only a kiss." Pink skin at the base of his fingers. "May I?" they asked.
He nodded. North slid off a glove, steadied his wrist, thumb following the tendon while fingers mapped the heat's edge. The pressure translated down nerves as you're here.
"Better?"
"Better." The word didn't leave the room.
They didn't climb into romance, only into a decision that would live past tonight. After, not instead of: kettle, quiet, two breaths finding pace.
"Tomorrow," North said, "we look for a car with brakes that still believe in work."
"Tomorrow. Tonight we file proof."
He scanned the numbers because the UI liked ritual.
[MECHANICAL HEART: LV.1 — 184/500][MECHANICAL DEVOUR: PROFICIENCY +1 TODAY][BASE ATTRIBUTES][STRENGTH: LV1 — 22/50][SPEED: LV1 — 1/60][DEFENSE: LV0 — 17/30]
"If power holds, you'll try a pull," North said.
"One car. Half meter. If it complains, we give it back."
"And the cart people?"
"They'll be loud somewhere else," he said.
Far south, a horn murmured. North tapped the bottle against his knuckles. "To proof."
"To proof." Water rinsed the copper from his mouth.
They parted without ceremony. The city taxed ritual at peak hours.
—
The apartment received him with compliant dark. Map tube on the counter; triangle and grease by the sink. The drawer where dead things lived: a cracked headlamp, a broken relay, two batteries that had forgotten their jobs.
He palmed the relay. Heat lifted behind his eyes like static turned to air.
[DEVOUR SUCCESS. MECHANICAL SOURCE +1.][NO BONUS ATTRIBUTES.]
The headlamp sighed into powder next.
[DEVOUR SUCCESS. MECHANICAL SOURCE +1.]
He wrote what the UI wouldn't:
— BREAKER 12: greased; hum nominal; ground ring partial but stable under light load.— SIDING/CRANE: coupler acknowledged mass (low clink); brakes need love.— VARIABLE: golf cart (Rafe + 2) on canal; chain checked at gate.— RIDGE-WATCHER: loop changed; now tests near block at dusk; don't count mornings.— NOISE: cabinet +1.2 dB; coupler clink < threshold; fence zero.
The kettle made a weather of steam. Peace condensed into ordinary on the ceiling.
A knock: knuckles that meant harm to no door. Two taps. Space. One tap.
"North," he said, and opened, chain set to respect.
North's eyes were the same color as before. "Aftercare," they said, the word half joke, half plan.
His laugh was small—laughter was taxed. "Come in."
Outside, the city exhaled and pretended not to listen.
The door learned their shape and forgot it behind them.
[MECHANICAL HEART — READY.]