Dawn stalled over Greyhaven; clouds queued, undecided, and the canal kept its breath.
"We take the window early," North said, palming the tester lamp. "Ridge-watcher likes to wander after nine."
"Bay wall first," Lex said. He laid out the kit on the counter as if the counter were a bench and the day a patient: pigtail EAR, meter, tester lamp, graphite, wedges, triangles, strap—then the new thing, a headphone driver he'd un-soldered from a pair that had stopped believing in music. He'd wrapped its two leads around a paper clip and taped the metal into a tiny loop. "Pickup coil."
North tipped the coil on a fingertip. "That listens through paint."
"Through pride," Lex said. "No touching." He set the map tube by the door out of habit; the habit felt like weather you could control.
Dima knocked the signature—two taps, space, one—and slid in, eyes bright with cautious calories. "West patrol drifted at dawn," they said. "Vest was not with them. We have eyes on the glass."
"Good," North said. "No flashes unless we signal."
Dima nodded like a promise you wanted to protect. "If you need the chain to sing, I can make it hum without a chorus."
"Whisper only," Lex said. "And only if we're late."
They moved before the light began to mean anything. Down cooperative stairs. Along quiet alleys. Up to roofs that remembered yesterday's weight. The glass place let them in on the first try.
The panel waited—screws honest, tape doing its job. Lex loosened the top two without letting them fall, then slid the cover down to reveal the neat interior as if the wall had a private life and was letting them eavesdrop again.
[BUS SNIFF — PASSIVE MODE][SIGNATURE: CRANE AUX — LOW CONFIDENCE][AUTH TOKEN: "Y-CHANNEL" (HASHED), MISSING][SAFE STATE: TRUE]
"Same heartbeat," North said. They clipped the meter across FEED B and ground, set the tester lamp in series on the pigtail, and eased the coil against conduit paint, not touching metal, only flirting with the field.
Lex pressed his palm to the panel side and let the Mechanical Heart smooth the line. Heat acknowledged heat. Hold, he told his body. Be ballast.
The meter drifted toward almost-zero and then tried on 4.8 like a borrowed jacket. The lamp toyed with the idea of light. The coil gave him a tremor through tape and finger bone, the kind of shiver electricity makes when it isn't sure anyone is listening.
"Pattern," North said.
"Forty-one, forty-one, eighty-three," he answered. The UI enjoyed being useful.
[TIMING PATTERN: 41 / 41 / 83 ms][PROTOCOL: PULSED / GATED]
They waited. The city upstream hiccuped a truck's cough, then apologized by shutting up.
The coil twitched a new way—long, long, short, short, long. The tester lamp lifted the idea of a blink and set it down again, embarrassed.
"Not heartbeat," North said. "A sentence."
"Token," Lex said. He kept his hand on the panel and set the coil at the conduit elbow.
[TOKEN FRAGMENT CAPTURE — 1/5][HASH PARTIAL: 0x4E…][NOISE ENVELOPE: +0.3 dB]
"First," North murmured, not smiling. Smiles invite gravity.
They held the line. "Cart?" North asked, meaning the world.
"Not yet," Lex said. He almost breathed deeper, then didn't. He steadied the coil and let the Mechanical Heart be a weight in his wrist instead of a promise in his chest.
The coil twitched again—different cadence, shorter tail. The tester lamp discovered a blush.
"Not token," North said. "Telemetry."
"It knows something we don't," Lex said. "We stay dull and useful."
Silence wrote itself into a paragraph. The bay door frame clicked as metal remembered temperature.
A small sound came from west—chain that thought about moving and decided to think about it again. Dima's footsteps never announced themselves, but their shadow did. They set a finger on the concrete like a signature and lifted it.
"Cart checks the far gate," North whispered. "Whisper back," Lex said, and Dima ghosted away.
The coil picked up a hair more field as if the conduit had leaned closer to gossip. The lamp pulsed—one, two, then a pause you could lose a thought in—and the UI raised its hand like a student who already knew the answer.
[TOKEN FRAGMENT CAPTURE — 2/5][HASH PARTIAL: 0x4E…B1…][NOISE ENVELOPE: +0.5 dB]
"Two," North counted, voice even.
A shape tested the roofline two buildings east and made the vest color of memory. It didn't advance; it tilted. The ridge-watcher's palm found tar and printed itself, then compared the print to its hand like a scientist who had never enjoyed science.
"Curious, not hungry," North said. The words built a small wall around fear.
"Let it learn boredom," Lex said. He didn't point. He didn't teach the world his fingers again.
A generator down the canal found its idle and stayed there.
"Surge," North said.
"Hold," Lex answered.
The coil burred like a bee in a bottle. The UI dressed up to narrate.
[GRID FRAGMENT — SOUTH / LOW][SYNC OFFSET: −3 ms][TOKEN FRAGMENT CAPTURE — 3/5][HASH PARTIAL: 0x4E…B1…A7…][THERMAL TICK DETECTED — PANEL FACE]
The panel made a sound like a coin flicking a table. Lex lifted his hand and the coil as one piece, slow, never dramatic.
"Abort?" North asked.
"Pause," he said. They counted to thirty with their pulses, not their mouths. The coil cooled against paint it had never technically touched.
Outside, the cart coughed twice in a key the bay didn't feel obliged to answer. "Still morning," North said without looking at a sky that had no intention of telling time.
"We keep it that way," Lex said.
Footsteps on the canal road had the weight of two plus maybe a toolbox. Brown Vest's voice didn't cross the yard, but its shape did: syllables squared off as if they trusted corners. Rafe's reply was a shrug said by a throat.
"Distance," North said, which meant: this is not a conversation.
"Agreement," Lex said.
The coil caught a longer pattern that clipped itself at the end, like a word swallowed to avoid naming things in public.
[TOKEN FRAGMENT CAPTURE — 4/5][HASH PARTIAL: 0x4E…B1…A7…3C…][BROADCAST MODE: SCHEDULED / DUSK]
"Last slice is a dusk thing," North said.
"Of course it is," Lex said, and the words felt like he'd earned them.
They re-seated the cover, pressed the tape across the seam, set the screws to honest again. The coil went back into the pouch as if it had never left a radio. The pigtail EAR stayed taped where a bored inspector would not find it.
They stepped into the alley where the glass place listened to itself be empty.
Brown Vest stood on the canal path with Rafe and the kind of stance that owns ground without buying it. She did not come closer. She lifted her chin enough to call it acknowledgment and no more.
"We keep mornings," North said too quietly to carry.
Vest put two fingers to the brim of a cap that wasn't there. Gesture, not gear. A yes that had its own borders. She turned west, Rafe beside her, and the cart's cough found them a moment later as if the engine had been waiting to decide whose day it was.
"Tests tonight," North translated the shape of Vest's words.
"We won't be there," Lex said.
"Unless we are," North countered, not quite teasing.
They let the alley choose their next step and didn't argue with it. The ridge-watcher stayed where it was and pretended to be patient.
Back in the room that defaulted to quiet, Lex set the coil beside the tester lamp. He fed the dead earbud from the same pair of headphones to the Mechanical Heart and let the UI reward his superstition.
[DEVOUR SUCCESS. MECHANICAL SOURCE +1.][MECHANICAL HEART: LV.1 — 201/500]
He wrote what systems refuse to own:
— Y-CHANNEL (passive): FRAGMENTS 1–4/5; dusk broadcast required for final slice.— PANEL: thermal tick once; pause succeeded; screws honest; tape seam clean.— RIDGE-WATCHER: curious posture; earlier drift subdued; no approach.— PATROL: west gate ritual persists; Dima's whisper sufficient; zero cabinet interest.— RISK: dusk co-occupancy with Vest would collapse truce margin; alternative = solo lane from bay with long coil.
They ate the kind of lunch that's a theory: salt and crumbs and discipline. Dima took their cup with both hands and listened to steam.
"If the last slice is at dusk," Dima said, "we can make noise somewhere not here."
"We don't teach noise tricks," North said. "Not yet."
Dima set the cup down with the caution you use on thin glass. "Vest said tests. Maybe you hide under their noise and steal what the bus says to the crane."
Lex rolled the coil between fingers. "Or we put the coil where the bus is loudest—the cab." He didn't like hearing himself think that thought.
North saw it arrive and didn't rush it out. "That's not a morning," they said.
"It's a decision," he said.
The UI pretended it had waited long enough and brought punctuation.
[TOKEN STATUS — 4/5 ASSEMBLED][FINAL ACQUISITION WINDOW: DUSK—DUSK+12m][HIGHEST FIELD: CRANE CAB / WEST GANTRY][ADVISORY: DO NOT TRANSMIT]
"Not alone," North said finally. "If cab, we talk to Vest on purpose, not by accident."
"We keep our mornings," Lex said.
"And tonight we borrow their evening," North said. "Under their rules. Or we don't go."
He set the coil on the map like a mislaid compass.
"Decision by three," North said. "If we're in at dusk, we kit for it by two."
"Dima," Lex said. "If we go, we'll need lookouts at the west gantry and the bay. No flashes. Only hands."
Dima nodded with an economy of motion that belongs to people who plan to see tomorrow. "We will be boring," they said. "Loudly." Their grin got away from them and then came back. "You know what I mean."
"I do," he said. "And I will never say the word 'romance' to a coupler again."
North's eyes warmed and cooled in the same second. "Growth," they observed.
He checked the numbers, because ritual keeps hands from inventing trouble.
[MECHANICAL HEART: LV.1 — 201/500][BASE ATTRIBUTES][STRENGTH: LV1 — 22/50][SPEED: LV1 — 1/60][DEFENSE: LV0 — 17/30]
"Tonight," he said to the room, to the air, to the bus that had not yet decided to speak, "we listen."
The UI obliged with a final piece of theater, because it couldn't help itself.
[NEXT WINDOW — DUSK: PASSIVE DOWNLINK EXPECTED][REQUIRED: FIELD PROXIMITY (CAB OR BUSWAY)][RISK: MODERATE — MULTI-ACTOR LANE]
They let the day walk to its edge.
And then they began to kit.