The landing met his lead foot with wet steel; grip was a rumor. The masked thing's ribbon of light hissed down in a clean diagonal. Hawke let it have air. He slid inside the arc, shoulders close, and hit the flat plate under its mask with a short left that had no romance in it. The impact rang through his bandage and into bone. The thing's head snapped a fraction—more curiosity than pain.
The second one came on his right, fast. He turned his ribs, let the blade's heat graze cloth instead of skin, and shoved its wrist with the heel of his palm. The joint flexed wrong and then remembered itself. He took the half-second he'd rented and stepped up one more rung so his hips owned the height.
Water hammered the catwalk. The brass bell clanged until the air turned thick. The third figure dropped from the torn roof onto the far end of the walkway, crouched low, ribbon humming. They worked like a team that had practiced, but practice didn't mean they'd done it here, with stairs and alarms and a boy who refused to leave.
"Left rail!" Peter shouted from below, voice bouncing off racks. "It's loose!"
Hawke saw it: the catwalk's left-hand guard, bolted into steel that had lived too many winters. The nearest uprights were bright with fresh water and old rust. He baited the lead ribbon into another diagonal and cut under it, driving the nose of his shoulder into the loose section. The rail gave a polite inch. He drove again. Two inches. The masked thing tried to recalibrate, too close for the flourish it wanted.
He snapped the emergency hammer off his belt, not as club, as wedge. He buried the flat head into the gap between guard and upright, twisted, and threw his weight. Metal squealed. The rail peeled away a handspan. He palmed the nearest mask with his burned right and shoved its faceplate into the opening, then stamped the heel of his shoe onto the lower rail for leverage. The guard popped free with a gunshot crack.
The thing's center went where gravity likes. It tumbled sideways, ribbon kissing air, and fell past the mezzanine, past the forklift mast, into a canyon of pallets with a crash that turned into the kind of silence that meant the conversation had ended for that one.
The second figure used the space left behind. It slid its ribbon in a horizontal, waist-high cut meant to shorten arguments. Hawke didn't argue. He hopped the slice, landed in the spray, and brought the hammer down on the wrist plate behind the blade. A spark kissed his knuckles through tape. The ribbon stuttered; the wrist re-learned elbows.
The third one advanced from the far end, taking advantage of his attention. Hawke felt it the way you feel a door open behind you. He went small—knees bent, elbows in. The incoming ribbon drew a fast vertical seam to pin him to the rail. He fed it junk instead: the loose guard he'd just pulled. He lifted the steel like a riot shield; the light cut a bright groove along it and ate nothing human. The smell went electric. He shoved the guard into the third thing's chest and turned the shield into a shove. Balance hated that. It backpedaled three steps and met the stop chain at the end of the catwalk with a metallic surprise.
"Forks!" Flash's voice, raw; the forklift engine coughed alive again.
Below and left, the mast rose under the catwalk's edge, forks tilting to catch. Flash's hands worked clumsy-sure on the levers, rain-slick now and smarter for it.
"Hold it there," Hawke said without looking, voice trimmed to fit the inch of time.
The second figure lunged again, ribbon low. He didn't give it a limb. He gave it the hammer—handle-first—straight into the mask's left diagonal lens. Plastic bounced; light hiccuped. He followed with a right to the same square of armor he'd hit before, then a left at the joint where the neck met the collar. This time the sound it made satisfied something he wouldn't name.
The third one shook the guard off and came, angrier. Its blade brightened, hungry. Hawke let it charge down the narrow run and stole its lane. Two steps and he was on the chain end of the catwalk, hips squared, the loose guard acting like a door he could choose to slam. He didn't swing it. He baited the ribbon high by lifting the guard like a crown. The light took the bait, drew up. He kicked the chain. The end bracket screamed; the catwalk's last two feet dropped six inches onto the forklift forks Flash had parked under it.
Impact stole the third thing's clean footing. It stumbled; the ribbon dipped; Hawke went through the opening it had made and put a fist into the softest part he could reach—the seam under the rib plates. The plate moved a little. The thing made a noise that was more pressure release than pain, but it stepped back because bodies, even wrong ones, honor space when you take it hard enough.
Behind him, the second figure recovered its wrist. It scissored light through the water in a mean, flat line at his calves. He jumped the sweep late on purpose so the blade passed where he had been and smashed into the stair riser. Sparks spat. Water made steam for a second, then remembered itself.
"Hawke!" Peter again, higher this time. He was on the mezzanine stair landing below, emergency hammer in both hands like a prayer. "Twelve o'clock!"
Topside, something bigger than a person skittered along the roof skin, silhouette wrong against the sprinkler mist. A panel folded back. Two more shapes poured through—one landing on the catwalk where the first had fallen, one dropping straight to the forklift cage and clanging off it like a misjudged plan.
"Back row, down!" Flash yelled, voice cracking with authority he hadn't auditioned for. Kids obeyed because fear and command sounded the same when the room kept changing.
The new one on the catwalk didn't pause to be impressed by its friend's hole in the pallets. It ran low, ribbon humming, and cut at Hawke's ankles in a sound that wanted to be a laugh. He stepped into the vertical—closer is dumber until it isn't—jammed his bandaged hand on the blade's flat, and used his other hand on the wrist plate to push the line off his legs and into the rail. The hot edge kissed paint. He ignored the sizzle on cloth and shoved until mechanical advantage remembered math. The ribbon skated and went wide.
He didn't have edge, only weight and the idea of timing. He slammed the mask into the rail with a shoulder. The rail bent a vowel. The thing grabbed for balance, found none, and slid a boot in water. He let it save itself the perfect amount, then took away that amount with a heel to the instep. It went down on one knee; he hammered its elbow the wrong way with the emergency tool and heard something inside choose a different job.
Below, the seedlet under the fire curtain twitched like a memory. The curtain flexed and settled. Good enough.
The second figure—his left—came again. No flourish now, just work. He flicked the hammer up in a short arc and hit the joint where blade met mount. The light blew sideways into spray like a flame in wind, coughing out. The mount stayed. He took the second to breathe, and the bead inside moved a single notch. Not reward, not voice. Position.
"On your right!" Peter.
The third one had abandoned reach. It leapt, body a line, intent an arrow, the ribbon turned off to save it from its own heat. Tackle, not slice.
Hawke lowered his center and met it with his hip. The landing turned into a clatter. They both hit the catwalk guard; the guard clipped the forklift's mast with a clang that shot down the steel into Flash's bones. The thing's hand scrabbled for purchase and found the loose chain instead. Hawke pinned the wrist with his forearm, grabbed the chain with his free hand, and whipped it around their forearms, making a fast, ugly knot that bound everything to the upright.
The thing pulled. The chain yanked Hawke's shoulder. Heat screamed up his biceps where the bandage wicked water. He took the pain the way you take a coin you don't want but need. He popped his hips, stepped across, and rolled the bound arm over his shoulder like a bad judo class in a wet grave. The creature went over, chain snapping taut around the upright. It hung for a second, then tore free at the wrong part of itself and hit pallets lower with a noise like an appliance dying.
The one whose ribbon he'd broken reached for his throat with a three-fingered glove. He batted it down, took a half step inside, and drove his forehead into the mask. The world flashed white bright behind his eyes. The mask rocked. He hit it with the hammer, flat, across the diagonals. Something inside the lens webbed. The glove went slack. He shoved it aside and held the railing with an open hand until his balance admitted it was back.
"Forklift—down, down!" Hawke barked. The mast eased, giving the catwalk back to its original height and stealing the leverage from anyone who wasn't braced for the change. The last figure wobbled. Hawke took the inch, then the yard—two fast steps and a low right into the seam of the rib plate again, then left-left into the mask until its diagonals stopped pretending to be eyes and turned into cracks.
Silence tried to live in the space their noise had made. The bell clang wobbled, choked, died. Sprinklers hissed, softer now, having made their point. The big craft's glow wandered the torn door like a thought that had left the room but wanted to be heard through a wall.
"Hawke?" Flash—closer, forklift idling, voice emptying adrenaline the way a drain empties a sink.
"Count," Hawke said, and heard Peter count without numbers—shapes, breaths, the movement of small shoulders behind pallets. He stepped to the rail and looked down. The two that had fallen didn't get back up. The one with the broken ribbon tried to remember knees and had to give up. He didn't approach it. He walked the catwalk toward the roof cut, the hammer head tapping the railing once every three steps, not as threat but to keep the body honest.
Above, more weight found steel. Three shadow-shapes scraped across the roof skin, then paused. The big craft's light drew longer along the broken door. The seam beyond the city wore the size of a decision now, not a mistake.
"Gate on the river side's open," the driver called from the gloom, voice careful to be useful. "We can tuck the bus under the mezzanine deeper, but getting back out—"
"We'll worry about out when in stops trying to kill us," Peter said, too fast for his lungs. He pressed his palms flat against his thighs and made himself breathe in a square. "Okay. Okay."
Hawke reached the roof cut. The panel was torn back like a fingernail. Wind pushed rain inside. He could see the big craft from here—slab of moving night, belly plates flexing, throat an oncoming storm that had decided to enjoy itself. He kept his head below the line of the opening.
Something rasped metal on metal three joists over. A small pod—smaller than a seedlet, more like a lunchbox with opinions—hopped the gap between beams, magnetic feet clicking. It found the cut, clicked along the edge, and sprouted a stalk with a glass pupil.
"Camera?" Peter whispered, at his hip now, because of course he'd come up despite being told not to.
"Scout," Hawke said.
He slid the hammer underhand and popped the stalk at the hinge like he was cracking ice. The pod whined, kicked, and tried to scuttle backward. He grabbed it by the smooth corner and discovered no corner was smooth, not really. It buzzed his palm with a voltage that wanted to be a threat. He fed it the hammer handle as a chew toy, levered, and snapped the magnet foot. It clanged off the catwalk and died somewhere behind racks.
"More of those," Peter said, staring at the roofline as if vocabulary could do anything. "If they mark entrances—"
"We'll shut what we can," Hawke said. "Choke the others."
Flash clanked up the first flights, breath labor, eyes bright with fight he hadn't spent by choice yet. He had a length of angle iron in one hand and the forklift's key ring in the other. He looked at the roof cut and then at the aisle map stenciled in red on the mezzanine rail. "Load bay two's got a roll-up," he said, words dragging from somewhere useful in his head. "And a dock plate we can flip, if my uncle's shop is anything like this one."
"Show me," Hawke said.
They ran the catwalk together, shoes slipping on sprinkler scum that had made a mirror out of steel. The mezzanine bent around a corner; the next bay yawned black with its own roll-up half open, chain slack. Water drew threads from above to make curtains. The dock plate in the floor was a heavy seesaw of ribbed steel that lived level until a truck backed onto it and made it want to move.
"Chain," Flash said. "We pull, it slams up—makes a wall short enough to be taller than a them."
"Do it." Hawke took the chain; Flash took the other. They hauled. The plate resisted out of habit, then teetered, then dropped up into vertical with a bang that shook dust out of joists. The roll-up hung just above it now—gap too small to matter, if you weren't a liquid.
Peter had the presence of mind to yank a pallet jack sideways and wedge its forks under the plate's bottom edge. "If they try to kick it down," he said, panting, "they get to fight a floor."
A new thud landed on the roof. Two more. The skin above creaked where weight had never lived. The big glow outside leaned. Hawke glanced at the cut—wrong light smearing silver across the bell's wet brass. He looked back at Peter and Flash. Both of them looked at him like he was a thing people asked for plans from.
He didn't give them a speech. "We hold here," he said. "We make them come through what we built, not what they want. Driver—kill the engine."
The bus's rumble died, leaving only sprinklers, siren, and breath. The room shrank around the sound.
The first pod came for the new bay, feet click-click along the roll-up's lip, stalk tasting air. Hawke didn't throw the hammer this time. He let it come down the inside of the door and pasted it with the angle iron like a fly. It burst into sparks that smelled like toaster.
Three masks showed in the dark seam above the dock plate. Their ribbons lit a sick low line. Hawke lifted the angle iron like a pike. Flash stood left with his arms spread wide without realizing it, making himself a bigger idea. Peter planted the emergency hammer on his shoulder like a bat, absurd and exactly what was in the bag.
Wrong light gathered along the lip.
The building's fire system chose that instant to cough and die. Sprinklers stopped. The bell cut off mid-clang and left a bruise of silence.
Something heavy outside took a breath. The big craft's throat deepened—not a sound, a pressure. Dust lifted in a slow wave off the rafters and hung there deciding which way was down.
The three masks tilted in unison, as if they'd been listening to the same station and liked the song.
The roll-up rattled as the first ribbon kissed it across. The dock plate vibrated under Hawke's hands like an animal. He braced, knees soft, elbows in, the angle iron pitched forward as if the world had grown an old-fashioned point he could meet.
The wrong light in the throat beyond the torn door condensed, layer on layer, patient as a storm tightening its jaw.