Gareth watched from the window of 607 as Cole’s six men came out of the stairwell and began moving through the sixth–floor hallway with an uneasy expression.

Damon was beside him, with Fetch and Caro behind, and Wren was on the counter, all of them watching the hallway through the gap in the apartment door.

"They’re seven," Damon said quietly.

"Yes," Gareth confirmed.

"All military trained?"

"Adjacent," Gareth said, which was the same word Cole had used downstairs without Gareth hearing it, the both of them arrived at the same assessment from opposite sides of the gate. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Damon looked at Gareth. "This changes things."

"Yeah I guess," Gareth said. "That’s the point."

He watched Cole’s men move through the hallway.

"Within an hour of them arriving," Damon said.

"He made us wait in the lobby for thirty minutes before he showed us a stairwell," Fetch said from behind them.

"He made us clear three floors first," Caro said.

Gareth said nothing. He watched the hallway until Cole’s men had passed toward the stairwell going down and then he stepped back from the door and looked at his four men.

"Change of timeline," he said.

Damon looked at him carefully. "How much of a change."

Gareth looked at the window and the city beyond it, the watchtower visible at the roof edge and thought about the easy expression and how long it had been working and at situations it stopped working and what came after it stopped.

"We’re not waiting for the dynamic to shift on its own," he said. "We shift it."

Damon was quiet for a moment. "How."

Gareth looked at him. "Something’s out there," he said. "Something big. I’ve seen him looking towards southeast for two days. Whatever it is, it’s going to come here eventually and when it does he’s going to need everything he has pointed at it." He looked at 607’s door in the direction of Michael’s apartment. "That’s the window."

"And until then," Damon said.

"Until then we make ourselves useful," Gareth said. "The same as before." The easy expression settled fully back into place like a coat he’d put on. "We’re very good at that."

Fetch and Caro looked at each other.

Wren ate his protein bar and said nothing.

Damon looked at the chain in his hands, then at Gareth, then at the door, and his expression relaxed as if giving up and accepting their situation.

He just nodded, and Gareth took it, then turned back to the window, the city, the watchtower and the southeast where something patient was sitting in the ruins and waiting.

Outside in the hallway Michael and Cole were already moving materials.

—

Michael was up at five and on the roof by five thirty and the city was still dark in every direction and the pulse was running its sweep across nine blocks showing him the same picture it had been showing him for two days now, scattered Rotter signatures settling slowly back into their baseline patterns and the thing eight blocks southeast sitting exactly where it had been since the night of the horde, still and patient and not moving.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he looked at the perimeter wall blueprint sitting at the top of his current Tier list and the material requirements under it and the SP balance and did the math one more time.

He just needed three days. Maybe less with Cole’s six helping move materials and Damon’s four pulling weight alongside them.

The pulse range upgrade he needed for the wall’s sensor integration was the expensive part, eight hundred SP, but the construction materials themselves he could offset significantly by scavenging the surrounding floors and the cleared apartments rather than buying everything from the shop.

He pulled up the Blueprint Interface and finalized the wall layout.

It ran along the building’s exterior at ground level, connecting to the existing gate structure on the south face and extending around all four sides with reinforced panels that bolted into the pavement anchors the system would place automatically on material confirmation.

The wall stood three meters high with an angled overhang on the exterior face that made climbing it significantly harder than a straight vertical surface.

Four corner positions with basic platform space for someone to stand and watch the surrounding streets.

It was simple and useful and it was exactly what the building needed.

He confirmed the blueprint and went downstairs.

---

Cole was already awake before anyone else.

Michael found him in the sixth floor hallway outside his apartment door with a mug of something hot and his eyes on the stairwell door.

It seemed as if he had been awake thinking about everything that had been going on recently.

He looked at Michael when he came off the watchtower stairs. "The wall," he said.

"We’re starting today," Michael said.

Cole nodded. "My people are ready when you are."

"Alright in an hour," Michael said. "I need to brief everyone first."

Cole looked at him. "The other group I guess."

"Yes, they pull weight same as everyone," Michael said. "The same task and instructions."

Cole was quiet for a moment with his mug in his hand and his eyes on Michael. "You’re putting my people and his people on the same job."

"Yes."

"That may work well but might also become and issue."

"Both probably," Michael said. "But I need bodies on the materials run and I need the wall up and I don’t have time to manage two separate schedules." He looked at Cole steadily. "Your people can handle it."

Cole looked at him for a second and then nodded once. "They can handle it."

---

The briefing happened in the hallway at six thirty with twelve people standing in a rough group and Michael at the front keeping it short because short was what the situation needed.

"The perimeter wall will be going up today and tomorrow," he said. "Materials will run first, ground floor collection, then exterior placement following my instructions on sequence and position.

Two teams, Cole’s people on the east and south faces, Damon’s people on the north and west." He looked at both groups. "You follow the sequence exactly. Don’t improvise or skip steps and move to the next position until the current one is confirmed."

Damon looked at Cole’s group as if identifying them as threats. Cole’s group looked at Damon’s group with the same malicious expression but nobody said anything.

"Are there any questions?" Michael asked sweeping his gaze over the two groups but they kept silent.

"Good," he said. "Damon you start on the north face materials. Cole take your people to the east face. I’ll be moving between both." He looked at the group. "Let’s go."

---

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