Rain flattened the yard into one surface; footprints forgot themselves.
They worked by the window that wasn't a window so much as a polite idea of light. The map pretended to be geography and succeeded. On the table, the coil lay like an ear that had earned breakfast. The Mechanical Heart idled in Lex's palm, not asking to be fed yet.
"Mirror or ghost," North said. "Choose, then we don't renegotiate every time the wind changes."
"Mirror," he said. "But offline. We mirror the rhythm in a box we own. Live, we stay ghosts."
North tapped the page with a nail, neat as a metronome. "Say it so the room remembers."
He wrote it because writing makes promises legible:
— STRATEGY: Mirror offline (bench-only). Ghost live.— RULE: No transmit at night.— SCOPE: Timing study only; no command shapes.— WINDOWS: Morning = ours; Evening = theirs; Night = theirs; Dusk = listen only.
The UI added its stamp like a clerk who believed in ink.
[OBJECTIVE — STAGE 8: STRATEGY LOCK][MODE: MIRROR OFFLINE / GHOST LIVE][RULE: NO TRANSMIT AT DUSK/NIGHT]
Dima arrived with rain on their shoulders and the kind of smile that belongs to people who bring weather in politely. "Brown Vest sent a sentence," they said. "'If you're going to think near the cab, think like you aren't there.'"
"That's her way of liking us," North said.
"She also said the cart has an errand at noon and a reason at dusk," Dima added. "Rafe will keep the reason busy."
Lex opened the drawer where the city kept its leftovers. He set parts on the table: a headphone driver missing its patience, a battery clip, two resistors rescued from a radio that had aged out of opinions, a square tin that once sold mints to optimists, three paper shims, and a length of wire that would remember being copper if encouraged.
"Mirror in a tin," he said. "Air-gapped. We feed it the node's cadence and measure what happens."
North considered the tin, the driver, the coil. "We don't make a voice. We make a watch."
"Exactly." He taped the driver inside the tin lid, cone inward, leads through a paper grommet. The oscillator was not elegant—it didn't need to be. Two resistors, one cap pulled from a drawer and apologized to, a switch that had learned humility. He soldered nothing that would smell like ambition. He set the coil on the table and let the Heart flatten noise through bone and habit.
Dima sat on the edge of the map's northern coast and watched rain write the glass the way a clerk writes minutes no one will read. "Office actor came in early," they said. "Stood in the yard and practiced pretending the yard is theirs."
North looked at Lex's hands making a device out of courtesy and leftovers. "We codify the rules before we test."
He nodded. "Say them."
"No live bus coupling," North said. "No wires to their metal. No field strong enough to be read as an answer. Tin stays sealed. If it whispers, it whispers into its own lid."
"Agreed," he said. He wrote them in the ledger where rules learn to bite when needed. The UI approved by not arguing.
[BENCH RIG: 'TIMER TIN' — AIR-GAPPED][SOURCE: OSC CADENCE (RECORDED)][FIELD TARGET: SELF-ENCLOSED / SHIELDED][MAX ENVELOPE AT 10 cm: < +0.2 dB]
He clipped the battery; the driver sighed the way a small speaker sighs when asked to be a clock. The tin lid hummed against his thumb, not music, only intention. He closed the tin and taped the seam with the plain tape—the kind that pretends to be modest and succeeds. He set the coil five centimeters from the tin and watched the meter register something just above boredom.
"Feed it the node," North said.
He loaded last night's capture and asked the UI to behave like a librarian.
[PLAYBACK — NIGHT NODE CADENCE][PATTERN SEED: 97 / 41 / 41 / 97 ms][AUDIT SWEEP FRAGMENTS: INCLUDED][PRESENCE PING: SUPPRESSED]
"Presence pings are the trap," North said. "We mirror timing, not the question."
He nodded and let the tin tick into itself. The coil heard the lid agree. The meter thought about five and then stayed shy. The Heart warmed a fraction so that his hand would not invent motion.
"Phase?" he asked.
The UI drew two threads on the inside of his eyelid: node and tin, drift between them like the distance between a thought and a sentence.
[PHASE ERROR: 7 ms → 5 ms][JITTER: 2 ms p-p]
"We need under three," North said.
He folded a paper shim under the driver to pre-load the cone and damp the ring. He taped the battery to keep it from teaching the whole rig about gravity. Another pass.
[PHASE ERROR: 4 ms → 3 ms][JITTER: 1.6 ms p-p]
"Closer," Dima said. They had a talent for numbers that wanted to act like weather.
He rotated the tin, quarter turn. The coil stayed still. North tilted the coil one degree and set it down again. The room became a metronome that had discovered consent.
[PHASE ERROR: 2.7 ms][NOISE ENVELOPE @ 10 cm: +0.12 dB]
"Acceptable," North said. The word meant we can learn without teaching.
He let the tin carry the audit fragments the way a student carries a book they plan to return. The coil heard the shapes and did not object. Rain walked itself down the window and did not ask for applause.
"Field recon while it runs," North said. "We look at placements without becoming a placement."
They left the rig ticking in a box inside a room that knew how to keep a promise. Along the alley, rain found angles it liked and insisted. The glass place forgave them one more time. The bay panel waited with the kind of patience that gets jobs. Tape seam still true. Screws still honest. EAR pigtail still where a bored inspector wouldn't look twice.
"Bay ear stays," North said. "Cab seam gets a timed listener tomorrow—sealed tin, no signal legs."
"Tin in a sleeve," Lex said. "Paper over metal, then cloth, then another lie."
Dima posted at the corner, their silhouette borrowing straight lines from architecture. "Office actor's umbrella is expensive," they said. "He thinks that means the rules travel with him."
"Rules travel poorly," North said. "We carry ours anyway."
The cab glass wore rain in sheets. Lex did not climb the ladder. He placed his palm on metal that wasn't connected to anything he meant to change and let the Heart decide the weather inside his wrist.
[FIELD SCAN — PASSIVE][CAB SEAM: SUITABLE FOR LISTENING][RECOMMENDED OFFSET: 12 cm BELOW UPPER LIP][MAX SAFE TIN FIELD @ 12 cm: +0.08 dB]
"Good seat," he said. "We can measure without being counted."
"Parley," Dima said, as if they had summoned it. Brown Vest stepped out from the gantry's rain shadow the way certainty steps out of a memory it knows you share.
"You owe me quiet," Vest said.
"You'll have it," North said. "We will not speak to your night. We will time our own thoughts in a box that does not leak."
Vest's mouth made a shape that could become a smile in a safer world. "Office audit is scheduled," she said. "They like to surprise people by putting the surprise on the calendar. Your cart will celebrate at dusk; bring it something to supervise that isn't you."
"Rafe has scrap with opinions," Dima said.
Vest nodded once. "Your sentence is paid." She looked up at the ridge the way you look at an old wound on a cold day. "If the watcher learns your schedule, teach it patience."
They accepted the advice as the rent for being allowed to have a plan. Vest disappeared back into the perimeter the way professionalism turns corners without leaving fingerprints.
Back in the room, the tin hummed inside its taped lid like ethics practicing. The coil heard it and reported math.
[PHASE ERROR: 2.5 ms][JITTER: 1.4 ms p-p][CADENCE VARIATION: 0.6%]
"Good enough to time the window," North said. "Not enough to be mistaken for a voice."
Lex cut a sleeve from cloth that remembered being a jacket on a better day and wrapped the tin, then slid sleeve and tin into a paper sheath he shaped with tape and apologies. He added a strap because gravity deserves courtesy.
"Field placement tomorrow," he said. "We measure the clock edge when the node enters the yard. Nothing answers."
Dima leaned over the map and moved a pebble two inches west. "The watcher stopped pretending to count chimneys," they said. "It counts people now."
"The watcher will write us down when we let it," North said. "Not before."
He fed a bent bracket to the Mechanical Heart—a kindness for a machine that had learned to be a friend—and let the warmth smooth the part of his breathing that sometimes moved ahead of events.
[DEVOUR SUCCESS. MECHANICAL SOURCE +1.][MECHANICAL HEART: LV.1 — 223/500]
He wrote the day on paper in a hand that had learned to waste no strokes.
— STRATEGY LOCK: Mirror offline; ghost live; no transmit at dusk/night.— RIG: Timer Tin (air-gapped); phase error 2.5 ms; jitter 1.4 ms p-p; envelope @10 cm +0.12 dB.— FIELD: Cab seam offset 12 cm below upper lip; max safe field +0.08 dB.— PARLEY: Vest warned of office audit; cart decoy at dusk; truce honored.— RISK: watcher attention trend upward; office umbrella believes in itself.— NEXT: Place sealed rig to time node entry; no answers; map cadence drift.
Rain worked the city into a single idea and let it rest there. The kettle made a case for patience. North drew a clean box around TOMORROW and divided it into a ladder of minutes that could be stood on.
"Minute marks," they said. "We don't improvise presence."
"We'll borrow dusk by the length of a breath," Lex said. "Not longer."
The UI arrived with theater it tried to suppress and failed, because some functions enjoy being functions.
[SCHEDULE WATCH — NIGHT NODE][DRIFT: −2 to +12 m][HARMONIC: RIDGE UPLINK (FAINT)][INFERENCE: RELAY HOPS POSSIBLE]
"Relay hops," Dima said softly. "It might be counting from somewhere not here and only finishing here."
"Which means the clock we measure isn't just this yard's," North said. "It's the flock."
"We still learn something," Lex said. "We learn how far from the edge we can stand and still hear the wave hit."
He checked the numbers because numbers keep hands from lying.
[MECHANICAL HEART: LV.1 — 223/500][BASE ATTRIBUTES][STRENGTH: LV1 — 22/50][SPEED: LV1 — 1/60][DEFENSE: LV0 — 17/30][TOKEN CACHE: Y-CHANNEL — 1][PASSIVE LOGS: 2][BENCH RIGS: 1]
North lifted the wrapped tin and weighed it the way you weigh a word before you say it. "Tomorrow we measure. Tonight we stay small."
"Small can move quietly and still move far," Dima said.
Lex set the tin back into the box like a sleeping thought. Rain filled the room's edges with the kind of noise that makes honesty easier. He folded the strap over the lid and pretended the knot was a plan. It almost was.
[OBJECTIVE — STAGE 8: IN PROGRESS][RULES: ACTIVE][NEXT WINDOW: DUSK — TIMING ONLY]
The kettle clicked and the room chose tea over courage, which is often the better order.
They let tomorrow sit where it could find them, and not the other way around.