He drops to boards and lets the shutter teeth comb the straps. Sparks spit backward. The deep-cycle complains against the lash-down and decides to live. Above, a shadow paces the parapet—one shape becoming two, then one again—deciding what to be when it falls.
The deck clears the lip. The shape commits, dropping with both hands open. He sights where knee becomes weight and spends the bead he measured three ties ago.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The knee forgets its purpose. The body hits a dock edge and folds wrong, then slides out of the light, leaving a dark hand print that tries to be a map.
The corridor is a throat of sodium. Pallets flank the rails like teeth. A forklift stands mid-lift, mast sagging in slow guilt. Chalk arrows on the floor read OASIS and EAST with underlines deep as scars. Weight shifts in the light two bays ahead—human ankles carrying truth. Up on the parapet, another figure drags a cable toward a pipe laid across the rail like a smile waiting for a joke.
He keeps speed. The wall man starts to yank. Rhett sights where black cable crosses bright iron and answers with air.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Cable parts. Pipe rattles down. The wall man swears and skates gravel with his ribs. The two on the floor don't run. One shows empty hands, palms out. The other lifts a mechanic's hammer as if prayer had weight.
He angles the speeder for the gap between them and keeps throttle at a yes that isn't a question.
'East,' he mouths. Two fingers down at ballast.
Palms drop an inch. The hammer hand shakes but doesn't swing. He rides the gap and pays them back by not doing murder as a hobby.
Past them, an interior shutter hangs like a guillotine raised half-way. He can't leave this mouth open for the class behind him. Rope in the speeder's cubby. Stub post. Axle that owes him favors. Capstan in three moves—two wraps around the post, rope to the shutter's chain, throttle at idle and a foot on the deck to keep the belt honest.
[MECHANICAL FABRICATION: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The door comes down screaming steel. It kisses concrete and becomes a line nobody casual crosses. He kills the rope with a hitch and a hope. West: patience mounts the shutter lip; the chorus arriving as a committee that believes in committees.
He palms the jumper wire taped under the bench, touches it across the posts of a mast he made honest on the way in, and lets a single bell clap slap concrete. He breaks contact before it can become a sermon.
[MECHANICAL FABRICATION: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The sound runs backward down the throat. Some footsteps choose religion. Some keep their taste for the living. It's enough.
The east shutter is lower. Padlock useless, track warped, chain looped through like an old promise. He cracks the motor cover: reduction seized, contactor welded to forever. He doesn't need courtesy; he needs lift.
Spare belt from the machine shop, jump box clipped through a fuse that used to matter, belt looped around pulley and speeder axle. He levers the car up with a thigh until friction speaks his language.
[MECHANICAL OPERATION (PASSIVE)][MECHANICAL REPAIR (PASSIVE)]
The door coughs a hand-span, then two, then stalls, groaning around some bolt head that thinks it's history. One dry shot into the track where drag sings loudest.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Metal chips like ice. The door climbs to almost-enough. He lowers to boards. The strap kisses teeth. A buckle chooses violence and then repentance. A bolt bug scratches his cheek and leaves an argument.
He clears daylight. Outside is a high viaduct that decides the city is lower on principle. Crosswind comes sideways with a bill to collect. He keeps to iron and becomes small. Below, a flood channel braids junk and dark into a rumor that hates verification.
Halfway over, something under the deck wakes with cable arms and glue-bright fingers. It spits a rope that wants to weld him down. The strand finds the lash-down and bites.
He palms the brass regulator in his cubby, twists the valve into the hose he ran along the strap, and lets a flat hiss peel the bond off like sunburnt skin. The thing tries for his ankle. He answers with pry bar until knuckles resign their posts. He sights through tape and teaches the wrist a simpler story.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Bone agrees. The body rattles under wheels. The speeder shivers and accepts the apology.
On the far bank a bungalow squats with its guts moved indoors months ago. Past it: the straight line of the main and, across that line at chest height, a drop-bar—square tube in a welded frame, a chain black with grease pulled from a post to the bar's belly. The hinge sits to the right; a safety pin glints in the left bracket like a dare.
He rolls off throttle enough to measure without lying to himself. The chorus peels from the far shutter and tries the echo he left them; humans who didn't run are picking sides in their heads.
You don't stop a car on iron when the world behind you is a lesson plan. You make a cut.
He clocks targets as the ground comes up: chain belly where the links stack in a tight smile; hinge ears with bolts bright where fewer winters touched them; pin left bracket that might spring the whole arm—if the geometry loves you more than steel ever loves anyone.
Weight shift high on the parapet to his left. A human shape with a hunting posture and a cheap radio clipped to a harness. The radio hisses Oasis vowels with words that never finish. The posture says he'll drop if you give him room to believe he matters.
Rhett doesn't gift belief. He feeds the motor a little yes. He flexes his right hand until the finger is blood again and not glass.
Wind buys him a centimeter. He spends it entirely on sight picture.
[SPEED: LV.1 (Progress +1)]
The deck chatters across a frog and the chatter stacks under his ribs. The chain's belly is a black river one heartbeat long. The hinge ear shows a bright washer the size of a coin. The safety pin in the left bracket is the wrong side of possible at this angle.
The chorus arrives at the viaduct mouth and sings patience in one voice for once. It sounds like graduation.
He takes the chain. Not the link—links lie and bend and forgive. The weld where the chain plate meets the U-bolt on the bar's belly—metal that believed itself permanent.
He tightens breath, not grip. He points a thumb's width ahead to give speed a vote.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Air goes hard, small as a coin, fast as a story that kills.
The world becomes a spark waiting to be born.