Michael was on the roof before sunrise again.

He completed his sweep, verified the southeast signature which had remained unchanged for the past three days and glanced at the partially finished wall below.

He considered the day’s sequence: the north face required six more panels to complete, while the south face, being the longest and most exposed run, was assigned to Cole’s group, known for their speed and precision.

Damon’s group was tasked with finishing the north face and beginning work on the west corner brackets.

He went down and got started.

The morning moved well. Cole’s group took the south face materials down in two runs and had the first three panels up before Damon’s group had finished their coffee situation in 603, which Michael noted without commenting on because Damon’s group had been working hard and a slow start wasn’t the hill he was going to die on today.

By mid-morning, the north face was completed, the south face was halfway finished, and the building was beginning to look like a serious structure from street level.

Maya came out at ten and walked along the south face, inspecting the panel angles without saying a word. Her silence signaled the angles were correct, and Michael interpreted this as the best acknowledgment he would receive on a construction day.

She fell into step beside him as he moved between the south and west corners.

"The overhang on the south face is going to matter more than the others," she said. "That’s your main street exposure. Anything coming from that direction is going to test that face first."

"I know," he said.

"The angle you have it at deflects climbing attempts but it won’t do much against serious sustained pressure at the base," she said. "If you add a secondary anchor point at the midpoint of each panel on that face it distributes the load better."

He pulled up the blueprint and looked at the south face panel specifications and she was right, the midpoint anchors would make a real difference against sustained pressure.

He added them to the sequence and she watched him mark the positions and nodded.

"Good," she said and walked back inside like she hadn’t just improved the structural integrity of his perimeter wall and he watched her go and thought that Maya was going to be genuinely dangerous when she hit her stride in this new world.

He went back to the wall.

---

Rei came outside for the first time at around midday.

She came through the gate quietly with her hands in the front pocket of her hoodie and stood on the street side of the building looking at the wall going up around it and Michael watched her from the south face corner where he was supervising the panel placement and gave her a moment before going over.

She looked at him when he stopped beside her, her eyes clearer than the day before. Sleep had worked on her more effectively than a single night usually could, indicating she’d been running on empty for over eleven days in Gareth’s warehouse.

"It’s big," she said, looking at the wall.

We’re still getting there," he said.

She observed the south face panels being installed, then looked at Cole’s group efficiently working on the placements, and finally back at the wall. "You’re constructing this to keep something out," she said. "Not only Rotters."

He observed her. She was gazing southeast with focused, sharp eyes, not as if asking a question.

"There’s something out there," she said. "I can tell by the way everyone keeps looking that way."

"Something we haven’t identified yet," he replied.

She nodded slowly and turned her gaze back to the wall. "Is it going to hold?" she asked. "Yes," he answered, confident in the math he trusted, with no space left for doubt about the wall’s stability.

Rei looked at him, and her expression eased just a little— the kind of relaxation that occurs when someone speaks with such conviction that your body accepts it even before your mind catches up.

"Okay," she said simply.

They paused for a moment as the wall rose around them panel by panel. The city was quiet under the grey midday light, and there was a comfortable silence between the two, both of whom had run out of words for the big things and were content with that.

[Bond Event — Standing Outside Together: Rei. +1 Bond Point. Current BP: 3 — Rei.]

---

Cole found Michael at the west corner in the afternoon.

He moved around the building’s exterior, inspecting the finished faces as he always did—systematically and efficiently. He paused at the west corner to observe the completed east, north, and south faces, which stood solid against the building, then looked at the west face still under construction.

"Tomorrow morning we will close the west," he said.

"And by afternoon we would have closed the corners," Michael said.

Cole nodded and examined the south face with the midpoint anchors Maya recommended, which his team had installed without question when Michael revised the sequence. He paused to look at the anchor pattern for a moment.

"That wasn’t in the original sequence," he said.

"It got updated it this morning," Michael said.

"Good call," Cole said. "The south face needed that." He looked at Michael. "Your architect caught it."

"She was just a second year studentn," Michael said.

"She thinks like a qualified one," Cole said simply and went back to the west face materials.

"I can’t argue with that"

Michael looked at the south face and remembered Maya walking it at ten in the morning.

She was focused on the angles, and she casually mentioned, "the overhang on the south face is going to matter more than the others," as if it were an obvious fact she was simply sharing but this was something most people would have missed entirely.

"She really is a genius of buildings" Micheal said with a slight smile while turning to get back to work.

---

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