The latch turned—slow, confident—as if it already knew the answer.
Noah kept the overheads dead. The enclosure breathed. The carriage crept its quiet loop. He slid the long wrench along his forearm like a splint and moved toward the back hall.
[External device detected. RF signature: consumer drone. Range: 28 m → 22 m → 18 m.][Motion: two subjects near rear gate.]
"Yeah," he said under his breath. "I hear them."
He passed the breaker, felt its hum like a pulse, and stopped at the back door. Old wood, old lock, a pane that had known too many winters. He shifted his stance so his body filled the view if someone looked in. The wrench felt right, ugly and honest.
Outside, gravel whispered. Someone tested weight against the chain-link where the padlock met the post—pressure, release, pressure. The drone's whine slid down the wall like a zipper.
"Evening, Mr. Cole," Bix said, voice near enough to taste his last cigarette. "Thought we left on a friendly note."
"We did," Noah said. "Gate's closed."
"Yeah, about that." Metal touched metal—bolt cutters kissing chain. Not a snip yet; a rehearsal. "County likes paper. We like solutions. Thought you might want to get out ahead."
Noah set his heel against the threshold so the door would not move if someone thought to shove it. "Come back daylight. Bring a quote. Leave the toy."
Skinny's voice floated, needle-thin. "Public airspace, buddy."
A scratch at the rear window. Not glass—frame. He pictured a flatbar probing the rotten spot near the sill.
He let his breath out slow and kept his own voice bored. "It's private air when it's inside my house."
The enclosure murmured. The crystal pulsed under its cap, patient. The hand and cutter waited in their marks like two dogs told to stay.
He slid a scrap of galvanized sheet from the wall and fed it to the hand. "Clamp."
[Manual assist acknowledged.]The hand pinched the sheet and held it up like a shield while he planted it in the back hall, blocking the rear-window sightline. He wedged a crate behind it, then a ladder, building a stupid little fortress that said: nothing to see.
"Materials and Solutions," Bix said as if he were reading a business card written on someone else's skin. "We can move a hood tonight, cash. We can calm down a drone. We can make the county not care."
"You'll make them care more," Noah said. "You smell like a shortcut."
"A shortcut's a road you didn't know was there."
"Or a ditch."
The drone's shadow jittered through the gap above the makeshift shield, hunting. Skinny laughed. "Smile."
Noah stepped sideways so the only thing the lens could love was a scuffed piece of tin. He reached back to the bench with his free hand and adjusted the feed.
[Thermal: 8%.][Recommendation: reduce luminance; increase airflow 10%.]
"Do it," he said. The fan deepened its note. The enclosure's little window hazed and cleared, hazed and cleared, a breathing animal.
He slid a palm-width of polished scrap to the floor inside the blind's shadow and tilted it—just enough to catch light from the enclosure and return it to the window as harmless glare. Then he flicked the emitter in a two-second pulse that barely warmed steel.
The pane bloomed with a square of brightness. The drone backed off a foot, uncertain.
"Easy," Skinny muttered to his toy. "Easy."
Metal touched chain again. This time, the cutters bit. The chain sighed and snapped.
Noah tasted his own anger, hot and metallic. "That's trespass."
"Neighborly adjustment," Bix said, cheerful. "Gate was squeaky."
Noah moved the wrench higher on his forearm so it lay like a nightstick along the bones. He cracked the back door an inch and put his mouth to the gap. "Leave my fence alone."
"Or what?"
He let silence say or what for him. The hand held the shield. The cutter hummed a millimeter above nothing, a threat with manners.
Skinny's flatbar found the soft wood; the window frame groaned.
Noah reached for the hand with two fingers and pointed. "Hold."
The hand set the tin tighter. The makeshift wall shut the last sliver.
"Bold of you," Bix said, footsteps soft in gravel now inside the fence line. "Operating when you're red-tagged."
"You read good." Noah adjusted the enclosure's feed again, keeping the machine's heart slow and small. "I'm testing a fan."
Skinny snickered. "Fans don't melt."
"Neither do YouTube comments," Noah said.
The flatbar squealed. Wood splintered in a tired cough. A knuckle poked into the crack and probed for purchase.
Noah didn't think. He slid the door a fraction wider and brought the wrench down in a clean, short arc on the flatbar, not the hand—iron on iron—so the tool leapt out of the crack and clanged on the step. Skinny yelped and snatched his fingers back anyway, offended by the idea of pain.
"Shit!"
"Careful," Noah said. "Splinters."
Bix chuckled without humor. "We could be friends," he said. "We could take a walk through your receipts and pick the ones you don't like. We could make tomorrow easy."
"Tomorrow's a brochure," Noah said. "You're in my yard."
Bix came closer. Noah could smell damp wool and machine oil. The drone drifted back toward the rear window, braver now that it believed in itself again.
[External RF source: new.][Location estimate: west wall, 1.2 m above grade, offset 0.6 m.]
Noah's scalp prickled. "Define new."
[Beacon. Low-power. Burst interval: 30 seconds.]
"Of course you did," he said softly.
He pictured Bix's partner palming something small against the siding—a self-adhesive tracker that would tell a phone exactly when the lights came on and the fan hummed and the bones moved. Not fancy. Effective.
"Just business," Bix said, voice friendly enough to make a dog bark. "I like to know when neighbors get busy at night. Helps me sleep."
Noah kept his own voice flat. "Take your beacon and your toy and go away."
"Make me."
He almost smiled. "Okay."
He kicked the door wide enough to give himself a lane and snapped two orders in the same breath.
"Hand—pin."
[Manual assist: clamp.]
The hand shot forward through the doorway, two fingers scissoring on the bent corner of Bix's coat. The grip caught fabric and meat. Bix swore, surprised.
"Cutter—hold."
The lance dropped to eye level, a buzzing needle stopping a centimeter short of the threshold. It didn't touch anything. It didn't have to. The whine wrote its own sentence in the air.
Bix froze, coat tugged, phone wobbling. "Easy."
"Easy," Noah agreed. "Your friend stuck something on my wall. Remove it."
"Let go first."
"No," Noah said. "You can leave after."
The drone lifted, uncertain, batteries dying or courage. Skinny muttered to it like it was a pet with a bad idea.
Bix tried to peel his coat out of the hand's pinch and found the fingers had more opinion than he did. He stopped. "Fine," he spat over his shoulder. "Left of the window, season to taste."
Skinny swore and fumbled along the siding. Adhesive ripped. Something small chirped and went quiet.
Noah's HUD ticked its approval.
[Beacon signal lost.]
"Good," Noah said. He eased the hand back without actually letting go, cloth still caught, power still his.
"You're making enemies," Bix said. "County tomorrow. Me tonight. Choose one."
"I'm making a machine," Noah said. "You're making noise."
Bix's grin failed him. It reappeared as anger with teeth. "You think you're the first boy with tools and a secret. You think you can outwork neighbors and paper and men who like your shit. You can't. Best you can do is pick your price."
"I already did," Noah said. "Close the gate on your way out."
He opened his fingers. The hand released. Bix stumbled a step and caught himself. The cutter stayed where it was, the world's politest threat. The drone sagged and edged back, hungry to watch and not ready to lose a propeller.
Bix smoothed his coat, looked at the pinched fabric, and then at Noah's face like he wanted to print both in his memory.
"Tomorrow," he said. "We'll be neighbors again."
He walked backward to the gap in the fence—and instead of rethreading the cut chain, he hooked it loose and left it like a mouth hanging open.
Noah watched them go. Skin under his jaw buzzed with adrenaline. The enclosure breathed. The fan kept its steady hymn. The hand hung in the air a second longer than it needed to, as if listening, then folded back into the box.
He closed the door and set the bar.
[External pressure: reduced.][Note: rear fence compromised.]
"I saw," he whispered.
He stepped to the west wall and laid his ear to the siding, feeling for a lie. His fingers brushed adhesive that shouldn't have been there, gritty and new, a square the size of a postage stamp. Even dead, the idea of it itched.
He wanted the thing out. He also wanted the seam done and the spine tuned and the morning to arrive with a hood that didn't look like a joke.
He grabbed a chisel and a prybar, then stopped. Pulling the tracker clean meant a scar and noise. Cutting around it from inside would be faster and quieter—steel in, rectangle out, patch later.
He set the tools down and moved to the bench. The enclosure waited, patient, thermal a small glow. He chalked a rectangle on a scrap plate—rough dimensions of the wall section where the beacon sat.
"Hand—plate," he said. "Cutter, slot. Laser, pulse."
He would template the cut, then make the real one from inside the wall cavity—no lint, no splinters, no show for any lens that came back hungry.
The drone's whine faded out over the field. The yard remembered it was evening.
He rolled his shoulders, tasted the iron in his mouth, and reached for the feed knob.
The breaker hummed. The red tag on the door held its stupid color.
He had two roads again: chase Bix down the lane and make a louder enemy, or kill the power and carve his wall in the dark—rip the tracker out of his life before it told anyone anything.
He set his thumb on the switch.
The machine's heart waited.
He picked his sin.