The vines woke like a held breath.
They uncoiled from cracks in brick and seams in asphalt, from rust seams on drainpipes and the hairline gap beneath a dented dumpster—green pouring out of gray until Canal Street had a pulse. Leaves the color of bottle glass unfurled and found purchase where there hadn't been any yesterday. Tendrils braided, thickened, then slicked with rain and tightened into cables that might as well have been rebar grown out of the earth.
[Edict: Barricade Bloom — Confirm?]
[Cost: 1,200 Favor + Starter Ether Credit: 300]
[Side-effect: Fresh chlorophyll draws burrowers. Patrol recommended.]
[Heat: Repeated use reduces Novelty payouts for 5 chapters.]
"Confirm," Leon said.
Favor chimed like china stacked carefully on a shelf, and the UI ghosted a map over his sightline: chalk-blue routes pulsed where the Bloom would grip fastest. He uncapped a construction-orange spray can from a municipal kit and drew a line that would become a wall and a line that would become a door. If you let your eyes go soft, a safe block popped out of the lines like a stereogram.
Nyx whistled in the wire. "Starter Ether trickle for the first window," she said. "Tutorial courtesy of the Network's goodwill. After that, raids and nodes. Don't get used to it."
"I won't," Leon said, and stepped back as the first strap-thick vine hoisted itself over a mailbox and knit into a shutter-wide panel. A minute ago this street had been a throat; now it was a rib cage closing around a heart.
[Audience: 26,902 → 31,114]
[Notoriety: +3]
[Trust: +1]
[Entropy: +1]
Water sheeted off the growing barricade and pooled in a shallow trough Leon had scored with his boot. He didn't need to look at the Civic Ledger to know how he'd record it: Entropy +1—debt to be paid with maintenance work before it crashed in as a crisis.
He pitched his voice to carry without sounding like a man who liked to carry. "If you live inside the lines, you're on my ledger," he said. "You get what we have first. If you live outside the lines, come inside. Doors are here, here, and here. Keep them clear."
He traced three rectangles on the pavement with the heel of his hand. The vines answered—leaving clean apertures where he had marked. Faces turned from the wrongness in the sky to the green and then to him with expressions that weren't hope—but had its geometry. Green was easy to look at. Green said someone had a plan that went forward.
"Cameras love faces," Nyx murmured. "Give them one."
Leon shook his head and pointed at a girl standing on a crate to see over shoulders—eleven or twelve, eyes huge over a scarf that had once been yellow. "No minors on camera," he said.
"Policy doesn't forbid it," Nyx sang, faux-innocent. "Child courage tests extremely well."
"No minors," he repeated. "Blur, cut—I don't care. If a feed can't be cut, you change the angle."
A tiny pause. "Copy," Nyx said, voice cool as glass. "You are leaving Favor on the table. But I heard you."
[Producer Note (Private): "Architect requests Minor Filter as standing edit."]
[Favor Impact: −2% per episode; Trust Mod: +2% per clinic district]
Panels ratcheted into place without creaks, settling with the hush of felt on oak. A cheer went up and died when the vines twitched—alive, responsive. Children reached; their parents pulled their hands back. Leon breathed out a little longer than he breathed in.
chat_Arbit3r: That's not a wall. That's a garden with teeth.
Saint'sChalice: Restraint and geometry. Continue.
The two lapel-cam cops from earlier had been collected and seated, wrists plastic-cuffed to the barricade post, foam clinging to their boots like spite. He'd left them there on purpose. Humiliation over harm. By evening, they'd be sweeping clinic floors with a signed restitution clause and a camera on their shins, not their faces.
He followed the blooming line toward the corner where a strip of asphalt had been repurposed into a stage by men with a taste for theater and a deficit of imagination.
They'd stolen a pallet crane and a length of chain and made a show of practicality out of it. A chalkboard that read THEFT in a careful hand leaned against a crate. Four men in bomber jackets stood on the boards with their backs to the Tower, lapel cams pinned like medals. The tallest had a microphone taped to a broomstick.
Stockade Crew. He knew the name from the last time around; he'd never stood this close to their breath.
At the center, tied to a kitchen chair with moving straps and two belts, sat a man built like load-bearing timber. His face was all straight lines until the cheekbone, where it broke toward a scar stitched with thick dental thread by someone who loved him or hated him. His hands were bound in front instead of behind. They'd tied him this way because the show required it. The show required a visible breaking.
He looked up when the shadow of the new wall fell over the planks and met Leon's gaze through the half-mask. His expression didn't much change, but Leon had done enough risk interviews to recognize the exact angle of a jaw that asked, Are you a different kind of knife?
"Citizens!" broomstick bellowed. "Theft at the depot! This man took more than his share and pushed a mother. We don't allow that. We keep order. There has to be a—"
"Process," the load-bearing man said softly. Asphalt-at-dawn rasp. "You like that word. You don't know what it means."
Broomstick jabbed his shoulder. The taped mic clipped on the stream. "Shut up, Brutus."
So. Brutus.
"Nyx," Leon said. "Frame them wide. Keep the minor filter on."
Her hum said she understood the shape of the play.
Leon stepped onto the curb. The vines eased to give him a clean line up. The Stockade Crew pivoted to keep him framed. One smiled with all tongue and no teeth.
"Seen you on the feed," Tongue said. "Architect, right? Fancy walls. We got shows too. Public justice keeps people honest. Don't you agree?"
"I agree costs should be recorded," Leon said, flat cadence. "You publish your receipts?"
Laughter. Thrown toward their lapel cams, not their throats. Tongue wagged the broomstick like a scepter. "We're doing a lesson," he said. "Theft leads to pain. People need to see cause and effect."
"Then we're aligned." Leon tilted his chin at the moving straps. "What did he take? Where's your count? What's your clause for restitution? What's your oversight?"
"Clause?" Tongue fumbled.
"Nyx," Leon said, "publish Emergency Ordinance Draft Zero. And cut any child within thirty paces."
A translucent overlay slid into his periphery—words he'd written in a different life and rewritten last week at two a.m. when he couldn't stop seeing names. DRAFT: NO RANSOM. DRAFT: JURY LOTTERY. DRAFT: RESTITUTION LABOR.
chat_kiteRunner: My ma says he's the one who stopped the trucks yesterday.
WarKing'sFist: Break the hands. It plays.
"Public justice without receipts is theater," Leon said. "Put your sticks down and we'll have a tribunal. You'll bring witnesses. He'll bring names. If he's guilty, he works it off with his hands. If he's not, you work off staging a beating."
Behind the stage, the vines left a seam open—just wide enough for a body to slip through if he turned his shoulders. The Stockade Crew didn't see it. They were watching their lapel cams for sponsor cues.
"Ad-break in 02:00," Nyx said, sugar-cool. "We can run a disclaimer for policy. Or you can give them a moment."
Leon bent, flicked a quick-release on the belt binding Brutus's wrists—so that, if needed, he could rise. He didn't do it theatrically. He did it like a drill.
"Hands where the cameras can see them," Leon told the crew. "That includes ours."
The tallest twitched. Not much—a fractional flinch in the left cheek, the start of a swing if permitted. Brutus watched him the way the ocean watches a pier.
Leon's gaze found the broomstick mic, then the vines. He waved two fingers. Tendrils slid forward like a cat extending claws. They didn't bind—yet. Threads curled around the broom handles gently enough to be mistaken for a prank until they tightened a fraction, making a stick hard to raise without looking like you were wrestling a garden.
Tongue yanked. The vine flexed and said no.
"Do you have someone who needs the bottles?" Leon asked Brutus.
"A man with my face who taught me to sand floors," Brutus said. "He shakes."
Leon pivoted the mic. "Public comment," he said. "Anyone see him shove a mother on purpose?"
An old woman lifted a hand shaped like roots. "He carried the cart when my legs would not," she said. "He stacked my cans. He took two bottles; the cart had twelve."
"Comment recorded," Leon said. "We'll hear more at the tribunal."
"You think you run a court now," Tongue sneered.
"We run ledgers," Leon said. "And we cut shows short when they hurt clinics."
He glanced down exactly where escape-thinking eyes would go. He let the vines ease that seam open again—showing a clean path out—then closed it and tapped the panel with the broomstick like a teacher tapping chalk.
"You can leave your sticks and cameras on the stage and walk out," he said. "We'll take your names. You can go home and return for court. Or you can fight a wall."
The tallest did the math first. He unpinned his camera and set it on a crate. He dropped his stick with a thud that sounded like a confession. The others watched, did their own math, and followed, reluctance dragging at the ankles.
Brutus's shoulders lowered a hair.
Leon loosed the moving straps. Brutus rose like a man who didn't waste motion. Rain washed the dental-thread scar softer.
"Brutus Hale," Leon said, low. "Stand in doorways so nurses don't have to."
Brutus studied the vines like a builder tracing a load path. He considered the crew with something that might have been pity if it had been less tired. He looked at Leon's steady, unwarm hand and nodded like a nail seating.
"You tell me where to stand," Brutus said. "I'll make the line stay a line."
[Follower Acquired: Brutus Hale — Enforcer (Common → Elite potential)]
[Civic Contract: Warden Oath available]
[Oath Clauses: No harm to surrendering foes; Hands visible on duty; Cameras last near clinics; No minors on camera]
[Bonus: +Trust (Enforcement), −Favor (War House)]
[War King tipped −200 Favor: "Coward's court."]
[Glass Saint tipped +800 Favor: "Elegant defusion. An acquired taste—mine."]
Favor moved again like porcelain—delicate, almost drowned by the cheer when the vines eased and the Stockade Crew realized they could leave without being eaten. No thrown bottles. The plan for revenge wasn't revenge: testimony at sundown.
"Clinic doors are off-camera," Leon said, angling his chin so the mask was light, not face. "If you have minors, keep them under Blue Lamps."
"Blue…?" Nyx began.
"Blue Lamps," Leon said. He pointed to the clinic door where Nadia had vanished and where a nurse now stood with a battered camping lantern whose shade was a plastic bowl weeping blue Sharpie. "We're prototyping a night pass. Lamps mark protected corridors. No camera on them unless life-saving or documented consent."
The mask fogged, faint, when he said documented. He tapped his pen twice against the Ledger's spine to warn himself—then wrote DOCUMENT in the margin. Names, not numbers. Promises, not slogans.
[Policy Draft: Blue Lamps — Prototype (Unratified)]
[Effect Preview: +Trust (Clinic), +Prosperity (Night Labor), −Favor (War House). Risk: Lamp theft; anti-broadcast hostility.]
[Note (Nyx): "We'll need a 'wholesome' category. I hate that word."]
Between the gap teeth of the barricade, the street's scent shifted—fresh-cut grass steeped in iron. A scritch ran under the asphalt and set back molars on edge.
"Burrowers," Leon said. He didn't raise his voice. Panic is contagious; so is plain speech. "Brutus—doorway. You two, poles. No stomping on camera."
Two men who'd been trying not to be noticed found themselves deputized. Brutus stepped into the clinic arch and filled it with gravity you couldn't buy. The men flanked the alley with broom handles.
The first burrowers were the size of a palm, chitin matte with wet, blind heads lifted like poorly made shoes. They pushed tiny mounds of asphalt up with their forelegs, tasting vine-scent, and came faster.
Leon plucked a battery pest whistle from the kit and flipped it on. The tone was more felt in the sinus than heard. He laid it by the outermost panel. The burrowers froze, then flowed around the sonic knot like water around a rock—diverted toward the gutter where foam had thinned to paste.
"Not flashy," Nyx said. "But you threaded the needle. The Saint loves a tonic note in the second minute."
"Catalog it," Leon said. "We'll need three more."
chat_paperwall: He just told bugs where to walk. Chef's kiss.
RabbleKing: Borrrring. Hit something.
He didn't. He nodded to the broom men. They looked disappointed and relieved in the right ratios. He held out the Warden Oath for Brutus—the ink pale where rain had kissed it. The words were plain:
Hands where cameras can see them.
Mercy first.
Cameras last near clinics.
No harm to surrendering foes.
No minors on camera.
No ransom.
Brutus ran a thumb under the last line. The dental thread tugged his cheek. "No ransom," he said, almost to himself, and signed.
[Warden Oath — Brutus Hale: Bound]
[Passive Unlocked: Public Presence — +De-escalation radius when Brutus visible]
[Public Metric: Trust +2 (Enforcement); Notoriety +1 (Villain Brand refines)]
Blue light bled through clinic glass: the jury-rigged lamp. The nurse set it on a mailbox like a chalice. The plastic bowl threw a soft ring that anonymized her face—beautiful and useful.
Leon snapped the tape off the broomstick mic and handed the head to a kid who'd been bursting to hold something. "Announce when you see a burrower," he said. "But not the clinic door. We don't narrate that."
The kid nodded, abruptly solemn. He lifted the dead mic like a trumpet and practiced a "Hey!" under his breath. He didn't look at the camera once.
The vines shivered down the line like a cat adjusting on a lap. The siren hiccupped and steadied; power up, then stable. The Tower's shadow ratcheted two degrees and narrowed the world.
"Congratulations," Nyx said, honey over graphite. "You have a shape for your show. You've named your doors. Ratings are sticky when streets get names."
The Favor ticker hovered, polite. Leon didn't glance. He was looking at a rectangle of blank in the corner of his eye that shouldn't have been blank. The relay cam above the laundromat across from the clinic had died sometime during the stage play. It stared like a missing tooth.
"Nyx," he said, too low for wet ears to overhear. "Why is Lens Seven down?"
"Rain," she said, or made the word sound like rain, if a word could be evasive.
He crossed to the laundromat. Brutus shadowed, keeping the clinic in his periphery like he'd always known how. Leon popped the relay's plastic cover with a thumbnail. The battery had been lifted. In its place, tucked into the hollow like a coin where a coin wasn't, was a torn strip of black cloth stamped white—circle with four short lines, too short to be rays. A mouth refusing to open.
"Quiet Choir," Leon said.
Brutus made a small noise like granite deciding whether to crack. "Who?"
"People who think cameras are chains," Leon said. "They prefer no one watch us die."
"They'll get their wish if the clinic goes dark," Brutus said.
Leon palmed the cloth into the Ledger the way a man palms a coin. He tapped his pen twice against the book's spine to warn himself, and once for the lie he knew he'd tell soon: that he could keep everyone off camera always.
"Put 'Council Session' on the slate for tonight," he told Nyx. "Open floor. Blue Lamps exemption on the agenda."
"You're buying yourself a fight," she said, delighted. "And a very dull ten minutes in the middle. Can you survive not being adored?"
"Ad-break in 12," he said. "We'll fill it with a clinic walkthrough." He paused. "No faces."
She sighed like a compliment. "Make it art."
Leon turned back to the green. "This block is the seed," he said—not to the camera and not not to it. "We pass laws here. We keep receipts. We bury people no one counts. And we do it with the cameras on—until we don't."
[Audience: 31,114 → 34,009]
[Trust: +2]
[Notoriety: +1]
[Favor: +600 (Glass Saint), −200 (War King)]
[Heat: Edict (Bloom) 1/5]
A distant rumble ran under his boots—subway or something wearing a subway like a coat. The vines' leaves turned minutely as if they could listen. The rain came finer, the kind that finds seams.
On the far side of the barricade, a delivery truck downshifted, and somewhere above the cloudline, something measured them and found them insufficient and made a note.
Leon handed the broomstick to a man terrible at keeping things. "Announce the tribunal at sundown," he said. "Bring names. We'll listen."
He angled his face so the mask sipped air and didn't fog. The Ledger in his pocket weighed more now; the black strip in it was a promise with edges.
"Welcome to the Last City," he said to no one and everyone.
The dead camera stared like a closed eye.
"Leave Lens Seven down," Leon added, quiet. "Not a glitch. A choice."
"Your Audience will complain," Nyx said. "They want to see everything."
"They can see a city that minds its own dignity," Leon said. "Then they can pay us for it."
"Ah," she murmured, pleased. "You're learning to write the memo before they do."
He drew three small rectangles with the toe of his boot—doors in the green—and the vines eased around each one as if to say, I remember. A nurse lifted the Blue Lamp again; the bowl shone steady and unglamorous.
A tremor ticked the metal of the laundromat's sign. Down under, something tested its jaw against the city's bone.
"Nyx," Leon said. "Flag grid fluctuations. Pull Oren if he's alive."
"Copy," she said. "And Leon—"
"Hm."
"The Glass Saint just tipped for the sentence 'We bury people no one counts.'"
He tapped his pen once against the Ledger to mark the itch that praise left. Then twice more to warn himself.
"Catalog it," he said, and looked at the dead lens like a pact.