The tunnel takes him whole and teaches air to be cold again. The half-down shutter he just beat lets its teeth clack once behind him, a mouth changing its mind too late. Water ticks off patched concrete. The rail is truer here, head polished, shoulders brushed. Someone respects this hole through rock.
A breaker bay shows on the right: painted panel, stenciled numbers, a knife switch with a handle big as a forearm. The handle is down. A markup in grease reads EAST FEED in block letters. He doesn't touch anything that names itself that clearly. The deck keeps its thin, patient note. He hires breath to be quiet so he can hear failure if it wants to confess early.
Catwalk rungs pace him at eye height. Something moves there—hands learning certainty by trying to close on his skull. He stays prone, cheek to splinter, forearms inside strap, and sights through the ring without lifting his head.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Wrist learns humility. Another hand tries him and catches pry bar under the hinge; teeth complain; bone changes careers. Glue spits from the catwalk's shadow to find his lash. He opens the brass regulator and lets hiss peel the bond in papery curls; the rest gets edited.
[MECHANICAL FABRICATION: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The tunnel floor throws him new trouble: a plank dropped across gauge, a drag board the wrong way around with nails proud. He can stop and be chewed by five kinds of policy. He can make the plank work for him.
He palms the board as the deck kisses it, hooks a strap tail to a nail like he planned it, and lets the plank ride under his chest, edge down, shaving ballast and junk away from the rail head for ten meters before it frees, hits a tie, and chooses some other story. The lash stays loyal. Sparks walk backward like fireflies that forgot direction.
The tunnel breathes—big lung, slow. In that breath a bell coughs once from some bay far behind. The corridor likes rules even when it pretends it doesn't. Stay on the line, the wall chalk said. He does.
The mouth of the tunnel smears daylight into a blue smear, then a shape: pallet stacks wired into a gate, cable belly dressed at ankle and knee. A cone covers a throwstand like a joke that got tired. He doesn't brake. Rope from the cubby comes to hand. Two wraps around a stub post in the wall—escape recess turned anchor. Tail to axle. He becomes a capstan with ribs and lets the speeder be a winch.
[MECHANICAL FABRICATION: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The cable bellies. Pallets turn from policy to lumber. He kills the rope with a hitch and a curse and rolls the deck through splinters that autograph his jeans without asking for permission. A face in the recess three openings down watches him the way men watch weather: alert, grateful it didn't choose them.
Outside: warehouse backs, caged lights, a floor that remembers forklifts. A home signal at the interlocking mouth is dark, not dead; lenses clean, visors correct. Points sulk halfway. The throwstand sits inside a crash frame with a chain that wants to be law.
He pays the latch the coin he's been minting all night.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Pin spits. Lever drops in a thunk that frogs respect. Tongue kisses stock. The rail becomes intention again.
A radio at a bay door says 'After rider' with professional boredom. Another answers it like that was always the plan. Hands appear along the parapet, rifles down. Nobody needs to prove anything at a run like this. He shows left palm and taps two fingers to ballast without breaking line; a woman with a hard hat nods once and turns away like she has an inventory to finish.
A crossbar lives twenty meters on, settled low across paired frames that learned new welds this month. The chain belly shows a plate with fewer winters. He sights it and chooses restraint because the throw men are already hauling slack as if their hands remembered mercy before their mouths did. He flattens, threads, lets the bar kiss strap and then pride, and clears.
A catwalk sprouting from the roofline coughs a net. The cable runs to a cone that hides a throw; he edits hardware, not hands.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Cable shears. Net lands lazy and finds no future.
[SPEED: LV.1 (Progress +1)]
Glue tries the lash again like hope without memory. Hiss peels it back to scabs; the pry bar talks meat out of being ambitious.
The corridor kinks past a dead trailer with its door torn off and its insides made neat by someone who cares how cords coil. Chalk on the floor writes WATER and BATTERY in two different hands. He pockets neither word.
He wants fuel and forgets it. The river announces itself as cold through a venting slot; the world gets bigger in his mouth.
The line lifts onto a viaduct with a view: water black and unbothered, ribs of bridgework ahead, and, beyond that, a lift bridge with leaves rising like shoulders deciding to shrug. The road bed between leaves is still low enough to pretend they care about men on small machines. Between leaf and leaf, a crossbar of chain dangles, catenary fat, pin holes not yet home. Lights on the tower sit blue and pale, disciplined, not for him.
He does not own their schedule, but he can borrow it.
Mid-viaduct crosswind tries to buy him. He refuses the sale. The deck whispers an honest note he can live inside. Halfway to the lift, hands rise from a service catwalk over the water to try at his strap with hooks. He ignores them until a hook becomes an idea, then edits the wrist that carries the idea.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The hook clatters; water accepts it without comment. A face uses his name with an old kitchen's tone. He lets it go by like a wrong song.
The approach to the lift is policed by frames set in concrete, teeth counting, chain belly dressed to say no. A throw man on each side watches him the way saints used to watch weather vanes. He raises left palm. Two fingers tap ballast.
The near man lifts his own palm in the universal bargain that moves things without paper. The far one answers a radio he doesn't need to hear: 'After rider.' The chain lifts a breath. The slot becomes an argument he can win if he lays down enough of himself.
He tightens the strap one hole, lays pry bar under ribs so it hurts where pain has a plan, tucks cheek to timber warm from friction. He lets the motor speak yes because it has not learned any other word.
Teeth comb the strap. A buckle thinks about betrayal and chooses marriage. The chain's belly kisses his spine in a punctuation mark he will read later. He clears.
The bridge tower breathes hoist chain into the sky. The right leaf climbs first; the left a second behind. Air changes tone across metal. A woman on the tower platform points at him, then down, then does neither again when the radio at her shoulder speaks a sentence that begins with hold and ends with rider.
He doesn't plan to need their mercy. He plans to make their schedule a rumor.
A drag board sleeps against a pier, iron dogs lying across it, nails proud on one edge, paint ghosting a department name that died with clerks. He can make himself a cleaner one more time.
He bumps the board with the deck's nose, test fits the lash across a nail, and lets the plank ride under his chest edge-down as he enters the lift throat. It scrapes a seam of rope and grit away, buys him a thumb of clearance where teeth meant to ask for blood. The board slews free just before the joint.
A face at the platform rail looks like it could be glad for him. He does not honor that thought; he honors steel.
The heel blocks are not yet home. The leaves still moving. He sights the joint and feels the speeder ask him to be a better animal than he has been today. He becomes flat, smaller than breath, and asks law to forgive one more cheat.
A chain under the left leaf slaps noise at his ears. He watches the gap where the right leaf meets rail head pretend to be a seam. It is not. It is a plan in progress.
He needs the plan to be ahead of him by one sentence.
Between tower legs a black belly of tank car noses out across the next block, a cut pushed by a tug with a horn tired of people. The tug will block him as soon as the leaves kiss. If he waits he becomes policy. If he moves he becomes blame. He chooses motion.
On the tower platform a voice calls 'Don't.' It sounds like care and does him no favors.
He sights along iron until the pretend seam becomes the real one, an inch lower than courage, exactly the height of refusal. The deck's note tightens to a wire. Wind tries a last purchase on his back. He frees that purchase with a shrug that costs skin.
The right leaf's rail head kisses home. Pawls in the tower will drop and the world will be lawful. He plans to have already spent the inch by then.
He feeds the motor the yes he has left, flattens to timber, and rides the seam into a throat where tank bellies and moving rules want his life at once.