The guard counted the tools at the transition between sections.
He did it from the cart, running through the items in order, drain snake, plunger, bucket, sponge, each one checked against a mental list he carried without needing to consult anything. He was thorough and quick about it, already past the point where counting had anything to do with thought and had become more like habit wearing a uniform.
Proxy watched him do it. He noted what was on the cart, what could be missing, and what missing would cost. That was the real inventory, of course. Not the tools themselves, but the consequences of their absence.
Then the guard directed the group west to the next assigned section, and the cart came with them, as if it had opinions and none of them mattered.
The new task was a pipe fitting that needed re-seating and a length of conduit that had come loose from its bracket on the upper wall.
