Night put a lid on Greyhaven; the wind handled the rest.
The canal kept its promise to move and not to brag. Dusk had finished turning into night without asking permission. They took the roof lane with the kind of caution that wastes nothing and keeps receipts.
At the west gantry Brown Vest waited where shadow did half the work. Rafe stood a step behind, hands without arguments. She gave Lex the smallest nod that counts as currency.
"One sentence," Vest said.
"We won't talk to it," North said. "Only listen."
Vest lifted her chin toward the cab. "It will ask who lives here. You will not say your name."
Lex set the map tube by a brace as if this were a room that would remember where things belonged. Dima signed eyes west and bay clear. The cart's cough tried itself on and changed its mind.
"Your scrap?" North asked Rafe.
"Two piles," Rafe said. "One honest, one louder. You'll get the one you want."
"Quiet is the one we want," Lex said. He palmed the coil they'd built for the cab seam—tighter wrap, thinner tape, a loop small enough to count as discretion. The Mechanical Heart warmed his palm like a polite stove.
They moved into positions that did not make a picture. Dima near the bay line, reading the office door with their ears. North below the cab ladder, hands ready to signal and to stop. Lex three rungs up, coil hovering at the seam where cab glass met metal and paint tried to be a seal.
[EAR — BAY: ONLINE][COIL — CAB SEAM: ONLINE][SESSION: PASSIVE — NO TRANSMIT][RULE: DO NOT ANSWER]
He pressed the coil to the seam without touching metal. The Heart flattened his pulse to something that would not interfere with math.
The UI arrived a minute sooner than they wanted and exactly when they expected.
[SUBSCRIBER ONLINE — UNKNOWN NODE][WINDOW: DUSK−10m → DUSK+5m][CHANNEL: Y-CHANNEL — NIGHT MODE][NOISE ENVELOPE: +0.1 dB]
"Early," North breathed.
"Rude," Lex agreed. He let the coil listen the way a lock listens to footsteps.
The first packet wasn't speech; it was posture: long, short, short, long, a pause that taught you whether you were patient. The cab beacon answered by announcing that it was still itself. The bay wall didn't try to matter.
[NODE HANDSHAKE — PATTERN: 97 / 41 / 41 / 97 ms][CAB REPLY — STATUS: PRESENT][BAY AUX — STATUS: IDLE]
"Not cab master," North said. "A visitor that thinks it owns the clock."
"It's taking attendance," Lex said. He watched the pause for the slot where a reply would go if there were fools in the room. They were not that kind of fools.
The node changed key; the field rose a finger's width and then flattened. The coil carried the tremor through tape and bone. The bay EAR chimed a little lagged echo, like gossip trying to be radio.
[NODE QUERY — DOORS?][ROUTE HINT: WEST GATE → SOUTH SPUR][CAB — FORWARD: PASSIVE]
"It's asking about doors," North said. "It hasn't noticed Aux."
"It's counting locks," Lex said. He did not smile at his own joke; humor spends stealth too quickly.
The cart, west, admired a scrap pile with professional skepticism. Rafe reorganized the pile just enough to give it a sound worth supervising. The cart took the job.
The node pushed again, not harder, just more specific. The UI refused humility and drew labels like it owned pens.
[NODE PING — PRESENCE? (ALL LISTENERS)][SILENCE — OK][ADVISORY: DO NOT ANSWER]
North's fingers made the smallest motion a human hand can make and still be called a motion: hold.
Lex held. He watched the slot where the answer would live if they were a mistake. The slot passed them by, went hungry, learned nothing.
The ridge-watcher took the far roofline and recalibrated its patience. Vest did not look up at it. That remained her signal for we remain boring.
The packet flow shifted like a person who sits forward in a chair to say the important part of the sentence. The coil caught a new cadence: long-long-short-long-break-short. The bay picked up the tail a fraction later.
[NODE — AUDIT SWEEP][FOCUS: AUX 1–4 | BRAKE BUS | COUPLER][CAB — COMPLIANCE: TRUE]
"Audit," North said. "Ownership or safety?"
"Both," Lex said. He wished the answer felt different.
He stole a look at the tester lamp in his pocket the way you look at a watch you're not wearing. He did not remove it. The Heart kept his palm quiet against the seam, which had always been its job.
The office door opened a fraction wide enough to accept a shoulder shaped like a policy. The voice that went with it had budgets and believed in them. Dima's silhouette did the neat trick of being where it needed to be without proving it.
The node sent a smaller thing—a test that wasn't work so much as a signature: a short-short-short query with the arrogance of identification baked in. The cab beacon answered with a formality that did not belong to machines that were truly free.
[NODE ID — HASH SEED: 8F:…][INFERENCE: GOVERN (NEST) OR GOVERN-ADJACENT][CONFIDENCE: 0.62]
"Govern," North said, not quite a question.
"Something that thinks policy," Lex said. "Or something that exists because policy forgot something."
The field climbed a breath as if the node were leaning in to smell the room. The UI performed its little drumroll and got to the part that mattered.
[NODE PING — INVITE RESPONSE?][COUNTDOWN: 500 ms][RECOMMENDATION: IGNORE]
He ignored it. The recommendation felt like virtue for once. The countdown reached its end and fell off the edge of the world without taking them with it.
The coil shivered at the seam; the EAR did the same at the bay. The pattern changed to one with more doors than people, which told him what the node valued.
[ROUTE QUERIES — WEST GATE / NORTH GATE / SERVICE DOOR][RESULT: WEST ONLY — CHAINED][COUPLER: CLOSED][AUX STATUS] — 1 READY / 2 READY / 3 READY (SOFT) / 4 STANDBY
"It sees our soft-ready," North said.
"It does not ask why yet," Lex said. "Good." He filed the fear under useful later.
Vest's weight shifted on the gantry rail the way a piece of architecture shifts when a train goes by. Rafe's scrap pile offered a final cough that made the cart look like it had finished an argument and won.
The node repeated the presence ping. It was either impatience or discipline. The answer mattered less than the repetition itself.
[NODE PING — PRESENCE?][SILENCE — OK][SCHEDULE — EXTEND +90 s]
"It's staying," North said.
"We'll let it," Lex said, and meant we are not a pattern.
A small note from the canal, the kind that belongs to water deciding to admit boats exist, moved through the lane and made everything feel closer to honest. He kept the coil steady and let the seam press back like trust that had learned its lesson.
The node did doors again, then coupler, then aux, then tried the polite shape of a question machines ask when they want more than status and less than control.
[NODE — REQUEST: LAST ACTION LOG (AUX)][CAB — FORWARD: PRESENT][AUX BUS — LOG: NUDGE 1-CLK (AUX2) / QUIET ACK (AUX3 SOFT)][ADVISORY: LOG MINIMAL — OK]
"It read our line items," North said.
"Minimal logging paid rent," Lex said. "We remain uninteresting."
The office actor stepped all the way into the yard and then remembered to pretend not to care. Dima shifted a pallet's sound from new to already happened. The ridge-watcher decided the roof was doing an adequate job of being a roof and relaxed an inch.
The field withdrew the length of a politeness. The UI brought the moment it had waited to narrate since they got there.
[NODE DOWNLINK — ID HINT CAPTURED][ID PARTIAL: 8F:3A:K5:—] [CHECK: checksum slot][FUNCTION INFERENCE: AUDIT / OWNERSHIP TICK][SCHEDULE: NIGHTLY; DRIFT ±12 m]
"They collect ticks," North said. "Who owns, who complies, who strays."
"They write the world down and hope it obeys," Lex said. "The world skims."
Parley debt paid, Vest gave them the almost-nothing of a nod that means we will ask for our sentence later. Rafe packed the louder pile back into the kind of neat that does not invite questions.
The node sent one last ping. It was less a question than a tradition. They honored it by not belonging to it.
[NODE PING — PRESENCE?][SILENCE — OK][SESSION — CLOSE IN 10… 9… 8…]
The coil did the kind of tremor you feel in teeth if you clench. He did not clench. He let it pass through. The EAR at the bay exhaled whatever counts as breath for a taped pigtail.
[SUBSCRIBER — OFFLINE][WINDOW CLOSED][NOISE ENVELOPE: +0.1 dB]
He peeled the coil off the seam like removing a bandage from a healed place. The Heart cooled its half-degree. North's hand rose: clean?
"Clean," he said.
They withdrew by un-making their presence in reverse. Roof shadow remembered the weight and decided it had always been there. The cart took its argument someplace that wasn't this block. The office door returned to being a rectangle that contained a coat.
Back in the room, the map did its job of not lying. He laid coil by coil—cab, bay—like two ears that had done what they were told. The token stayed where it had been put, because trust isn't a thing you keep in your hands if you can help it.
[PASSIVE LOG — STORED][NIGHT NODE: ID PARTIAL + TIMINGS + ROUTES][RISK: LOW (NO TRANSMIT)]
He wrote it in the ledger the way you write a thin history you still want to be true when you wake.
— Night Node: online early; handshake pattern 97/41/41/97; presence pings ignored; audit sweep over doors/aux/coupler; session close captured.— ID hint: partial hash 8F:3A:K5:— [CHECK: checksum slot]; function inference audit/ownership tick; schedule nightly (drift ±12 m).— Noise: envelope +0.1 dB local; cart held west; office actor present; watcher curious only.— Truce: honored; one sentence paid: we don't talk to it.
Dima read the numbers like some people read weather. "It looked at Aux," they said. "It saw the soft-ready."
"It didn't punish curiosity," North said. "That makes it more dangerous later."
"Tomorrow," Lex said, "we teach ourselves its countdown off a wire we own. Mirror the ping in air, not on the bus. Offline."
North considered the version of caution that includes theft. "An imitation without an answer," they said. "A mirror held where a question expects a face."
"Or we ghost it," Dima said. "Let it keep thinking the world is smaller than it is."
He watched the coil like you look at a tool that believes it has a soul. "We learn first. Decisions after."
Numbers, because numbers are a ritual you can do with your hands:
[MECHANICAL HEART: LV.1 — 219/500][BASE ATTRIBUTES][STRENGTH: LV1 — 22/50][SPEED: LV1 — 1/60][DEFENSE: LV0 — 17/30][TOKEN CACHE: Y-CHANNEL — 1][PASSIVE LOGS: 2]
Night stayed on the city like a lid that had learned how to fit. The canal took its time doing what water does. Vest still owed them a sentence and would collect it when collection was useful. Rafe would find another way to make scrap sound like discipline. The ridge-watcher would teach itself one more thing and write it down in tar.
He corked the ink, capped the pen, and gave the room the quiet it had been working toward all evening.
The UI helped itself to the last word.