The blast wall materials arrived in the courtyard at 6:15, and Cole’s group was already there when they appeared.

This meant Cole had briefed his team before Michael completed the purchase, a level of operational efficiency that Michael had stopped being surprised by and instead began factoring into his timelines.

The north interior face was tackled first. Michael mapped out the sequence overnight and marked the anchor points in the Blueprint Interface overlay.

He then walked Shin and Rei through both steps before installing the first panel, ensuring they understood the coordination rather than just confirming it.

Rei listened to the explanation of the anchor point, keeping her eyes on the wall face, and then asked two questions.

Both questions were correct; they uncovered the load distribution logic behind the sequence, not just the steps.

Michael answered them, she nodded, then looked at Shin, who looked back at her. They proceeded to their initial positions.

The first panel seated at six forty.

Rei verified the anchor points twice, following Shin’s instructions carefully, her hands moving methodically from one anchor to the next. Once she completed her checks, she looked at Michael and nodded.

He confirmed and the second panel went in.

They worked steadily all morning, panel by panel, on the north interior face that was building across the ground floor lobby corridor behind the gate.

Their consistent pace indicated that the sequence was correct and that the people managing it were dependable.

Cole’s team handled the materials with the confidence of those who had done this three times before and had formed clear ideas about the best way to move steel panels through a building entrance.

By ten, the north interior face was sixty percent finished, and the turret gap coverage analysis indicated that the defensive situation was improving in each section as the blast wall extended along the vulnerable arc.

Michael stood back and looked at it.

Solid and heavy, the angled face was designed to deflect rather than absorb impact, with the anchor embedded deep into the floor substrate rather than just on the surface concrete.

If anything bypassed the gate, it would then strike this wall, which was built to minimise the impact duration as much as possible.

He pulled up the turret coverage overlay and ran the analysis.

The gap was closed at seventy percent completion. He kept building anyway because seventy percent was not a number he was comfortable with.

---

Gareth was on the watchtower at six and was still there at ten.

Michael checked on him during a materials break and found him with the pulse relay running in its extended format, the notebook he’d started keeping on the windowsill beside him, tracking the three variant Stalker positions every thirty minutes and noting the Aberrant group status in the opposite column.

He glanced at Michael as he approached. "North variants remain stationary," he said. "They’re in the same positions as last night. The southeast group hasn’t shifted since yesterday noon."

He checked the notebook. "The southeast group hasn’t moved in twenty-two hours, marking the longest stationary period since I began tracking them."

Michael looked at the southeast signatures on the pulse.

Five blocks, clustered in the park area, facing the building with the unblinking attention that Cole had described and Yuna had felt from the window of the observation position.

"They’re waiting for something," Michael said.

"Yes," Gareth said. "The question is what."

"The variants," Michael said.

Gareth looked at him. He’d arrived at the same place. "If they’re coordinating," he said. "The variants move into position first. Then the Aberrant group moves. Simultaneous pressure from two directions."

"Which is why the north face blast wall goes in today," Michael said.

Gareth looked at the building below them and the blast wall going up visible through the courtyard entrance. "How long until the north face is complete."

"This afternoon," Michael said. "South face starts tomorrow. East and west faces by end of week."

Gareth nodded and looked at his notebook and made a note on the thirty minute mark position of each variant signature and looked back at the city.

"One of Cole’s men," he said. "The one with the bow."

"Rens," Michael said. That was his name, Michael had learned it in the second week, a quiet precise man who communicated almost entirely through results.

"The variant Stalker contact profile," Gareth explained. "Sera’s inside reach drill is based on the correct principle, but it depends on reaching the inside, which means surviving the approach."

He glanced at Michael. "Interrupting the range before the approach closes alters the problem. By stopping the approach at a distance, you gain the time needed to get inside without the compressed window."

Michael thought about that. "Rens on elevation," he said. "Range interruption at approach, gives the ground team the window."

"If the elevation position is protected," Gareth said. "A variant at full speed reaches an unprotected elevation position fast."

"The corner platforms," Michael said. "Wall mounted, elevated, the overhang below makes direct approach from the exterior difficult." He thought about the coverage arc from the corner platforms and the sightlines.

"It works if the exterior turrets are handling the main body approach and Rens is working the variant interruption specifically."

"Separate target priority," Gareth said. "Turrets on mass approach, Rens on variant identification and interruption, ground teams on whatever gets through."

Michael looked at the city and ran the scenario against the defense picture in his head and felt it fit in a way that made the overall picture meaningfully better.

"Tell Sera," he said. "She needs to integrate it into the training."

Gareth looked at him briefly. "You want me to tell Sera."

"You identified the gap," Michael said. "You explain the solution."

Gareth was quiet for a moment and then he made a note in the notebook and went back to the pulse monitoring and Michael went back downstairs.

---

The conversation between Gareth and Sera happened in the training room at noon and Michael was not present for it and did not need to be.

He found out about it from Maya who had been in the training room working through the turret control familiarization session she’d scheduled for herself and had therefore been present for the whole thing.

"It was interesting," Maya said. She was at the kitchen counter eating and had the expression of someone who had watched something unexpected and was still processing it.

"How interesting," he said.

"He came in and explained the range interruption concept and she listened and didn’t say anything for about thirty seconds which for Sera is approximately forever and then she said it was correct and asked three follow up questions about the variant approach speed and the elevation sightline angles." Maya paused. "And then she said the corner platform positions needed a safety line if Rens was going to be working from them at speed and Gareth said he’d already thought about that and had a rope configuration that worked and she said show me and he showed her." She looked at Michael. "They worked on it for forty minutes."

Michael looked at her.

"Gareth is good at this," Maya said. It was stated the way she stated things she’d concluded from evidence. "I don’t like all the things he’s good at but that part is just true."

"Yes," Michael said.

She ate for a moment. "He’s not going to be a problem anymore," she said.

He looked at her.

"Not because he became a good person suddenly," she said. "Because he found something in this building that uses what he’s actually good at and now he has a reason to protect the building that’s his own reason and not just strategic." She paused. "People are less dangerous when they have their own reason."

Michael looked at her for a long moment.

"When did you figure that out," he said.

"Day three," she said. "I just didn’t say it because I wasn’t sure yet."

He looked at her and thought that Maya had been running a parallel assessment of the building’s internal dynamics since she arrived and had been waiting to share her conclusions until she trusted them and that was exactly how Maya did things and was exactly why her conclusions were worth having.

"He found Anya," Michael said.

Maya looked at him. "What do you mean."

"In the warehouse. He found that she was useful and he used that." He paused. "But the way he found it was by actually looking at what she could do. Most people didn’t look." He paused. "That part wasn’t bad."

Maya thought about that. "The rest was," she said.

"Yes," he said. "The rest was."

She finished eating and pushed the container aside and looked at the window. "Anya is good," she said. "She doesn’t take up space she hasn’t earned and she earns space faster than anyone I’ve seen." She paused. "She’s going to matter a lot when this building is bigger."

"I know," he said.

Maya nodded and got up and went back toward the training room and he sat on the floor and looked at the blueprint queue and thought about Anya at the workbench every morning with her clipboard and the supply tracking and the logistics assessments that kept making his decisions better and thought that Maya was right.

[Bond Event — She Told You What She Saw: Maya. +1 Bond Point. Current BP: 8 — Maya.]

---

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