By the time the light started going, the east face was complete and half the north face was up and Michael stood back and looked at what a day’s work had produced and felt the particular satisfaction of visible progress.

Cole appeared beside him and looked at the wall with his dark eyes moving across the placed panels and the anchor points and the overhang brackets.

"This is a good pace," he said.

"Your people are fast," Michael said.

"They know how to work," Cole said. He looked at the north face which was still half unplaced. "Tomorrow we will finish the north and start the south then the day after we close the west face and the corners."

"Three days," Michael said.

"Two and a half if the morning goes well," Cole said.

Michael looked at him, and Cole responded with a steady, direct gaze. It was the look of someone who meant what they said, a certainty that had become natural over time, no longer a choice but just how he spoke.

"Why did you really come to this building," Michael said.

Cole looked at the wall. "I told you."

"You told me the practical version," Michael said. "The version that covers everything without mentioning the specific detail."

Cole was silent for a moment. He examined the fully completed east face set against the building’s exterior, then looked at the city beyond the wall, and finally at the southeast, where the pulse signature remained just within Michael’s range in the darkness.

"Two weeks ago, we lost our base, he said. "I already told you that." He paused. "What I didn’t mention was that I made a call I believed was correct, which turned out to be wrong.

By the time I realized, we had only about four minutes to evacuate." He looked at the wall.

"Since then, we’ve been moving. Moving keeps you alive, but it isn’t building. Building is what endures." He looked at Michael. "You’re building properly, with a plan, a sequence, and logical infrastructure." He paused. "I wanted to be part of something that would last."

Michael looked at him.

"And the specific thing," Michael said.

Cole looked at him with his steady dark eyes. "That’s the specific thing," he said simply.

Michael looked at him for a long moment and then looked at the wall and then at the city.

"Tomorrow we’ll finish the north face," he said.

"Tomorrow we finish the north face," Cole agreed.

They went inside.

---

Gareth was standing in the hallway when Michael returned to the sixth floor. He was just standing outside 607, arms crossed, eyes on the stairwell door. As he saw Michael coming off the stairs with an easy, relaxed expression, he straightened up slightly.

"Good progress today," he said.

"Your men worked well," Michael said.

"They always do." Gareth looked at him. "Cole’s people are good."

"Yes."

"Military?"

"Adjacent," Michael said, the same word Cole had used, and something moved across Gareth’s face briefly at hearing it.

"Where’d you find them," Gareth said.

"They found us," Michael said. "Same as you."

Gareth looked at him and his jaw tightened slightly. "And you let them straight in."

"I let them through the gate," Michael said. "They earned the floor."

"And us," Gareth said. "We earned ours."

"You did," Michael agreed.

Gareth looked at him with his eyes steady and his arms still crossed and Michael looked back and the hallway was quiet between them with the generator humming through the walls and the perimeter panel pulsing its amber at the far end.

"We should talk," Gareth said. "Properly. About where this is going."

"Tomorrow," Michael said. "After we’re done the wall."

Gareth looked at him. "After the wall."

"After the wall," Michael said and went to his apartment door and opened it and went inside and closed it behind him and stood in the quiet of his own space and looked at the pulse.

607 was quiet.

He examined the southeast scene. Michael woke at five, reached the roof by five thirty, and the city was still shrouded in darkness in all directions. The pulse was sweeping across nine blocks, showing him the same scene it had for two days—scattered Rotter signatures slowly returning to their normal patterns, while the eight blocks southeast housed the same persistent, unmoving threat from the night of the horde, sitting patiently.

He stared at it for a prolonged moment.

Then he reviewed the perimeter wall blueprint at the top of his Tier 3 list, checked the required materials, the SP balance, and did the calculations once more.

Three days. Possibly fewer with Cole’s six assisting in moving materials and Damon’s four helping alongside them. The expensive part was the pulse range upgrade needed for the wall’s sensor system—eight hundred SP—but the construction materials could be largely offset by scavenging the surrounding floors and cleared apartments instead of purchasing 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.

Simple. Functional. Exactly what the building needed.

He confirmed the blueprint and went downstairs.

---

Cole was already awake.

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 and the particular focused stillness of someone who had been awake for a while and had been thinking through something with the same attention Michael gave blueprints.

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

"Starting today," Michael said.

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

"Hour," Michael said. "I need to brief everyone first."

Cole looked at him. "The other group."

"They pull weight same as everyone," Michael said. "Same task, same 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." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"Yes."

"That’s either very smart or going to be a problem."

"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."

---

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