His fingers closed on the door bar and tightened it instead of lifting; he leaned until the wood learned his shape.
"Mr. Cole," the man on the porch said—the same steady voice that liked its own certainty. "Open the door."
"Not without paper," Noah said. "Cooling only. Your inspection's at nine. You can stand there, and I'll narrate airflow like a museum guide."
A flashlight stripe slid across the sill. The body-cam blinked its little red metronome; the drone's shadow teased the window rag and sulked.
Inside, the hood drew a loyal stream at the lip. The seam behind the enclosure window was no longer bright—only warm, a memory unlearning itself.
Bix called pleasantly from the gravel, "You got a lot of fans for a man who isn't cutting."
"Fans keep people breathing," Noah said.
The porch man tried again. "You had an altercation earlier."
"A coat met a clamp," Noah said. "No injuries. No entry."
Silence put a hand on the scene.
Then the world clicked and emptied. The hood's note ceased mid-breath, the little indicator on the inverter went black, and the street beyond the fence sighed as if someone had taken a blanket away. The doorframe cooled against Noah's cheek in a rush that felt like being laughed at.
[Grid power lost.][Buffer available.][Recommendation: engage buffer for ventilation and critical cooling.]
"On," Noah said.
[Buffer engaged.][Load: Hood 80% · Enclosure fans 60% · Lights 0%. Run time est.: 1 h 12 m.]
Air returned with a lower, private hum; the hood's edge tugged the shop towel again like a leash that hadn't snapped. Noah could feel the men on the porch pause in the dark.
"Power outage citywide?" the official asked someone he wasn't; a radio murmured an answer Noah couldn't quite separate from static.
Bix laughed softly. "That's bad luck, neighbor."
"Luck is a schedule wearing a mask," Noah said.
Through the ragged window, the night was deeper. The drone's light dithered; it preferred other people's electricity. It slid back toward the truck to drink phone battery like a tick.
Noah kept his voice level. "Gentlemen, I'm on battery. Ventilation is active; heat is not. We're done here."
"Mr. Cole," the porch man said, "you can make this easy. Open the door and let me verify."
"Open the door in a blackout with hot equipment?" Noah said. "That's a nice way to make you watch me make a mistake. See you at nine."
Metal clinked outside—down the wall, not at the porch. A small, practiced sound wearing gloves.
Noah lifted his head. "Stay away from my meter."
Bix put a grin into his words. "That a 'please'?"
[Alert: service panel tamper—vibration on conduit.]
He pictured the meter box at the west corner and the cut chain at the gate. He pictured a gloved hand learning how his house worked.
"Gentlemen," the official said, voice moving off the porch now, trying to be everywhere at once, "step back from the equipment."
"Just helping," Bix sang. "He's got a temper about his fans."
Noah turned from the door and crossed to the enclosure. He set two fingers on the lid as if it could take comfort from a human touch.
[Air quality: acceptable.][Thermal residual: falling.][Recommendation: maintain capture; avoid lid open for 6 minutes.]
"Copy," he murmured. He glanced at the battery readout: 1 h 09 m at current draw. He could triple that by killing hood speed, but this wasn't a night to flirt with fumes.
The radio outside spat names and streets—other outages, other doors, other men being certain elsewhere. The porch voice returned under the window. "Mr. Cole, if your power is down, you should shut everything and step outside."
"That's how people forget what switches are for," Noah said. "I'm cooling. Then I'll lock it out and sleep. You can watch the rag flutter and pretend it's a television."
Metal ticked at the meter again. Noah felt it in his teeth.
He crossed the room, lifted a tin shutter back into the hand, and pointed. "Hold that."
The hand sealed the window from the inside with a firm, indifferent grace.
He took the long flashlight from the peg, thumbed it on for a quick, tight cone, then thumbed it back off—too much honesty for the drone.
His phone vibrated. He flipped it over.
MARIN RAINES: "Power outage in your area? We just got a bunch of alerts. Inspection still 09:00 unless disaster. You okay?"
He texted back: Battery on. Hood active. Cooling only. See you at 09:00.
Three dots considered and vanished; a relief he could use.
Metal clicked at the meter box a third time—the deliberate sort of click that loves leverage.
Noah spoke through the door, voice aimed at the part of the yard that could hear it. "You touch that panel again, you're on my camera."
Bix: "In the dark?"
"I like surprises," Noah said.
Truth: he liked being the person who didn't panic.
[Buffer draw increased momentarily.][External RF: intermittent body-cam stream; drone inactive.]
"Mr. Cole," the official said from the porch again, closer to exasperation than anger now, "come outside and talk to me."
"I'm talking," Noah said. "You can talk through wood."
"You're not cooperating."
"I'm not failing a safety rule," Noah said, a careful emphasis that had the decency to be true.
He walked back to the box, checked the towel at the hood, listened to the pretty, low, obedient rush.
A separate sound found him—the metallic whisper of a key or a thin pry meeting a cheap lock. The meter box again. Not the official's voice this time. The kind of someone who doesn't ask.
Noah weighed the probabilities: sheriff's office would prefer to watch him break his own rule; Bix would prefer to break things without being the one whose name got written down. The blackout made people think rules had taken a nap.
He set the flashlight in his back pocket. He took the long wrench from under the bench and tested the balance in his hand—not a weapon, just weight with a handle.
He spoke to the box like it was a person. "Stay calm; keep breathing."
[Run time est.: 1 h 04 m.][Thermal residual: safe in 5 minutes.]
"Make it three," he said, to himself, to the math, to the evening.
The pry at the meter box turned from whisper to a small bark of metal.
He made the kind of decision that usually comes with a fine.
Noah slid the bench switch that killed the cutter's hum and the hand's idle servos—the hood kept its private weather—and went to the back hall. He lifted the bar on the rear door and let cold in on his face. He breathed once through it to remember the temperature of the night.
The yard on this side was darker. Trees took their time letting the wind through. A figure stood at the meter box with shoulders that liked their own width. The badge man's flashlight was slicing the porch, not the west wall.
Noah moved quietly in his own house. The long wrench sat along his forearm like a second bone. He kept the light off. He let his eyes figure it out.
"Step away from the panel," he said. His voice wasn't loud. It cut anyway.
The figure flinched, then turned its head. "Easy, boss," Bix said, tone dipped in sugar. "Just checking your breaker. Safety first."
"Safety first is don't touch my service." Noah shifted so the meter box was inside his shoulder's line and the yard behind him was nobody's friend. "You're trespassing."
"Allegedly," Bix said. "Power went out. Wanted to see if your magic box was smoking."
"You wanted to see if you could make my night worse."
The prybar in Bix's hand thought about being still. It failed. "You know, sometimes the meter gets sticky," he said. "Needs a tap."
"Tap your own things."
At the porch, the official called, "Mr. Cole?"
"Back corner," Noah answered, not taking his eyes off Bix. "Your neighbor thinks my meter is a public playground."
A flashlight swung, found them, painted Bix's shoulders in county light. The bar in Bix's hand suddenly weighed more than it had a second ago.
"Sir," the official said, calm with a thread of command, "drop the tool and step away from the service panel."
Bix smiled like a man who likes to argue with physics. He didn't drop it. He eased it down until it kissed concrete in a way that let him keep a toe on it.
The drone tried to be brave again, lifting to see what light could do for it, then thought better of it and retreated.
Noah said, "You will leave through my gate now." He kept his hands where everyone could see them—empty except for the wrench's shadow tucked against his arm. A legal shape. Barely.
Bix looked at Noah, then at the official, and weighed which argument deserved his night. He chose to grin instead of choosing anything.
"We're neighbors," he said, backing off one step. "Neighbors like to know how the dark works."
"I know how the dark works," Noah said. "It works better without you."
Bix took another step, palms up, let the prybar stay on the concrete like the proof of an almost-crime. "We'll talk at breakfast," he said. "Sand, hood, solutions."
"Gate," Noah said.
The official let him pass, watched the hands, watched the weight of them, watched the choice not to argue. The pickup coughed an apology and rolled forward. The drone skittered after it like a dog that wasn't invited. The night stitched itself back together with the sound of tires learning gravel again.
Noah held still until the fence stopped talking.
He turned his face toward the house and found that his jaw had locked. He let it go, one muscle at a time. He went inside, set the bar, hung the wrench back on the peg, and exhaled the kind of breath that has to be put down like a bag.
[External pressure: low.][Grid: still down.][Run time est.: 58 m.]
He set his palm on the enclosure lid and felt the small, decent vibration of a machine that wanted nothing but to cool down and be useful. He checked the towel, the lip, the pull. Good. He checked his hands and found they'd stopped shaking.
He could sleep if he was the kind of person who sleeps with men at his fence. He could cut if he was the kind of person who deserves paper. He could sit in a chair and listen to the battery tick a run-time into smaller and smaller slices.
He went for a choice that wasn't any of those—built for morning: he picked up a half-finished sheet for the shroud and the rivet gun and put six ugly, convincing fasteners where a different man would have put nothing. He took a paint marker and wrote "LOCKOUT" above the kill switch in letters Raines could see from the porch. He printed a quick SOP—PPE; fan on before heat; dust check; eye protection—and taped it to the inside of the door. It felt like lying smarter instead of louder.
The battery read 56 m. The hood still drank air.
He set his knuckles on the breaker panel inside and closed his eyes. He would not flip it up when the grid returned and forget which promises he'd made to morning. He would not gift Bix the satisfaction of being right about "boys with tools and secrets."
Outside, somewhere patient, a transformer hummed its doubt, then coughed back to life. The neighborhood's dark got thinner.
[Grid power restored.][Recommendation: switch back to mains; keep hood until enclosure cool.]
He did as told, not because it was told but because it was honest.
[Buffer disengaged. Mains stable.]
The hood's note didn't change. Good machines are indifferent to where their breath comes from.
He walked to the door and looked at the red tag. It looked back at him with all the eloquence of vinyl. He touched its corner and let it stick.
He could open the door now and tell the official he'd stayed calm in the dark. Or keep it shut and let morning own the conversation. Or take a welder to the back lot in daylight and make the chain honest again.
None of those—yet. He stood still until the room remembered it was a room.
Rivet gun down, marker capped, he mapped a plan that would put him between the machine and anyone else's certainty at nine sharp.