The machinery rumbled in the distance, growling like a half-woken beast. Dust hung in the air, catching in Mikhail's throat as he stepped away from the foundation pit. Concrete had been poured. The surface gleamed slightly under the afternoon sun, faint steam rising where it met the cooler air. But Mikhail's gaze had shifted, not to the slab, not to the workers, but to the jagged limestone outcrop at the quarry's edge.
He moved toward it, boots crunching over gravel and broken shale. As the noise of the site faded behind him, he knelt and placed a hand on the rough, pale rock face. A few chips broke away at his touch. The texture was familiar. The structure is too consistent to ignore. He scratched a groove with his thumbnail, then reached for his pocket knife and carved a flake clean off the wall. When it split, it broke in a clean fracture. Fine grain. Dry. Dense.
Mikhail stood and glanced over his shoulder. Kat was guiding a cement mixer to reverse toward the remaining section of formwork. Lars was cross-referencing the delivery slips on his clipboard, brow furrowed, mouth chewing on nothing. Mikhail didn't raise his voice. He simply waved.
Lars was the first to see him. He called over to Kat, and together they made their way across the site. Kat wiped sweat from her brow as she approached, still holding her level and trowel. "What now?" she asked, wary.
"Take a look," Mikhail said, gesturing to the exposed limestone wall. "This is what we've been hauling past every day."
Kat frowned. "Yeah. Rock. What about it?"
"Not just rock. Limestone. Uniform. Dry. High quality."
Lars blinked. "You want to use the quarry's own aggregate?"
Mikhail nodded once. "We're paying to truck in crushed stone from outside when this is sitting twenty meters from our pit. If we can blend it into the mix, we cut transport costs and reduce cement usage. Rough estimate, three percent savings, maybe more."
Kat's expression was unreadable. "We don't have a crusher. Or a screen. Or a material cert."
"We can rent the crusher," Mikhail replied. "Screen's optional if we keep the batch small at first. Cert's just paperwork. You know I'm right about the material."
Lars crouched, fingering the rock himself. He tapped it lightly against another chunk from the debris pile, then nodded slowly. "Grain size is even. No visible clay inclusions. If we crush and sieve it right... yeah, it'll work. High calcium content too. Good bond strength."
Kat still looked doubtful. "It's another variable. Another delay."
"No," Mikhail said calmly, "it's our edge."
Lars straightened. "You see the world differently."
Mikhail allowed himself the briefest grin. "I guess I know what I'm looking for now."
Behind them, the cement mixer gave a low honk. Kat sighed. "So what's the plan?"
He turned back toward the slab, already calculating staging space. "Then we make room for a crusher."
Kat gave him a sidelong glance, equal parts suspicion and respect. She tapped her radio. "Erik, prepare for another phase. The boss has a plan."
The radio crackled back. "You're kidding. Again?"
She looked at Mikhail. He was already walking, eyes fixed on the rise where the crusher would sit.
"Does he ever?" she muttered, following.
The sound of tires crunching gravel echoed in the distance. A flatbed was approaching.
The flatbed creaked to a halt beside the quarry's lip, its worn tires spitting dust as the driver threw it into park. On the trailer sat a rented portable crusher, weather-beaten, ugly, and just barely legal. Erik hopped down from the cab, his shirt soaked through. "This thing better not kill us," he said, slapping the metal side.
"It won't," Mikhail called from across the clearing, already pacing off the setup zone. "As long as nobody sticks their hand in it."
"Noted," Erik muttered, eyeing the exposed belt teeth.
Lars unfolded a schematic he'd printed just an hour ago and joined Mikhail at the edge of the staging area. Kat trailed behind, rubbing her temples. "We're really doing this in the middle of a pour?" she asked.
"We're ahead of schedule," Mikhail replied. "The foundation's curing. This buys us a week of prep if we start crushing now. And if it works, we'll never need to order crushed aggregate again."
Erik grunted. "So we're betting the next phase of concrete on rock from a wall we never tested before this morning?"
"No," Mikhail said. "We're betting on me."
That shut everyone up for a moment.
He didn't wait for agreement. He pointed to Erik. "Rig the generator and fuel line. Get the crusher ready to test. Kat, I need barrels for samples and a stable flat for runoff. Lars, notify the lab, if they can swing a rush test on site, even better."
The team scattered.
Two hours later, the crusher screamed to life.
Dust billowed into the air as the first chunks of limestone were fed into its gaping mouth. The machine shuddered violently on its stabilizers, chewing through the rock with a raw, metallic hunger. Gravel spilled out of the far chute into a heavy bin below. Mikhail knelt beside it, fingers sifting through the coarse, crushed stone. The particles were even. No excessive fines. No clay streaks. It was clean.
He stood and waved Lars over. "Bag that. Label it."
Lars didn't need more direction. Within minutes, he had the sample loaded and tagged. "We'll have numbers tomorrow," he said, adjusting his glasses. "But I can already tell, this is premium stuff. Stronger than what we've been importing."
Kat stood with her arms crossed beside the crusher, watching it devour rock after rock. "You're insane," she said.
"Is it working?" Mikhail asked without looking up.
She hesitated. "Yeah. It is."
"Then I'm just practical."
As the sun dipped lower, the pile of crushed stone grew. Erik, caked in dust, leaned on a shovel beside it. "We'll need to shift the staging area before full production starts. This is going to dominate the site."
"Good," Mikhail said. "It should."
He walked to the edge of the pit and looked down at the foundation slab, now framed by piles of locally crushed stone. They had taken dead rock and turned it into a weapon, quiet, efficient, cost-saving.
He could almost see it: roads, walls, buildings, all rising from the material under his boots.
A low whistle interrupted his thoughts. Kat stood beside the lab courier, who had just pulled up with a thick envelope.
"Results?" she asked.
Mikhail stepped down from the mound, brushing limestone dust from his hands.
"Let's see if the numbers back the vision."