The staging area smelled like old metal and the particular kind of dust that collected on tools no one cleaned often enough.
Cole sat on a crate two rows back from the front, tool bag between his boots, watching the line move.
A Judicial clerk worked her way down the crew with a clipboard, methodical, asking the same three questions of everyone who’d worked the mid-stairwell rotation the week of the incident.
She wasn’t Corliss.
That was the first thing Cole had checked when she’d walked in.
Younger, less patient in the shoulders, moving like she had a list to finish before end of day and no personal interest in any one answer.
That should’ve been a comfort.
It wasn’t.
Andrus stood three techs ahead in line, arms crossed, waiting his turn with the same unhurried posture he brought to a faulty board.
When the clerk reached him, he answered all three questions in under a minute, his voice carrying just enough to reach the back rows.
“Yeah, I worked that block.
Tuesday through Thursday, scaffolds on fifty-eight.
Saw a screen flicker once, maybe twice.
Didn’t log it because it didn’t stay broken.
No, I didn’t see anyone else near the trunk line during my shift.”
Flat.
Bored.
The truth, shaped like a tech who’d rather be working.
She made a mark on her clipboard and moved on.
Cole let two more techs go ahead of him before he stood.
Waited his turn.
Kept his face how Andrus’s had been: mildly annoyed at the interruption, nothing more.
When she reached him, the clipboard stayed level with her chest.
She asked the same three questions, word for word, the cadence identical to the six times Cole had already heard it.
“Did you work the mid-stairwell maintenance rotation between the fifteenth and the twenty-second?”
“Yeah,” Cole said.
“Four shifts that week.
Lighting and display work, mostly scaffolds.”
“Did you observe any screen malfunctions or anomalous display behavior during that period?”
He let himself pause, the way someone actually trying to remember would.
Just long enough.
“One board went dark on the eighteenth.
Replaced it same shift.
Logged the serial number with the depot.”
True.
Unremarkable.
Happened six times a week on any crew.
“Did you observe anyone accessing the trunk line or performing unauthorized work during your assigned shifts?”
“No.”
She made a mark.
Then stopped, pen still on the clipboard, and looked up at him for the first time.
Cole didn’t move.
Didn’t tense.
Just waited.
She checked his name against something on the page.
Her pen hovered over a column Cole couldn’t see from this angle, and the pause stretched one beat longer than it had for anyone else in line.
Then she circled something not his name, he was almost sure, just something in the margin near it and moved on to the next tech without another word.
Cole stepped back to the crates and sat down.
Picked up his tool bag.
Let his hands work through the straps, checking the buckles the way he always did at end of shift, even though he’d checked them twenty minutes ago.
The clerk finished the last three techs in the line and thanked the crew for their time.
No one was flagged for follow-up.
No one was asked to stay.
She left the staging area the same way she’d come in, clipboard under one arm, moving like someone with five more stops to make before the day ended.
The crew started packing up.
Someone made a joke about Judicial finding new ways to waste a lunch break.
Someone else said at least it wasn’t a cleaning they were investigating.
The room’s low murmur picked back up, ordinary and unbothered, just noise from a crew when nothing had actually changed.
Andrus slung his bag over one shoulder and gave Cole a look that meant back to it tomorrow.
Cole nodded.
Andrus left with the rest of the mid-shift rotation, boots echoing down the stairwell in a rhythm Cole had already learned to recognize. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Cole stayed on the crate.
Let the room empty out around him.
Took his time coiling a length of test wire he had no reason to coil, because his hands wanted something to do that wasn’t just sitting there doing math he had no interest in finishing.
She’d circled something.
Not a name he was almost sure it wasn’t a name but a shift block.
The number for this week’s rotation.
Cole had worked that block twice.
He ran the numbers in his head.
Twelve techs total on mid-stairwell that week.
Maybe fifteen if you counted the scaffold runners who never logged their own hours.
Her list could’ve been narrowing by location, or by shift overlap, or by something Cole couldn’t see yet because he wasn’t the one holding the clipboard.
Corliss’s list.
It had to be.
She wasn’t asking because Judicial wanted to close a file on a screen malfunction.
She was asking because someone higher up had told her which rotation to pull, and Cole’s name was on it.
Not flagged.
Not yet.
But circled.
Close enough to see the shape of.
He finished coiling the wire and clipped it back in the bag.
Stood up.
The staging area was empty now, just crates and dust and the faint ozone smell of a workday that had ended an hour ago for everyone but him.
Cole slung his bag over his shoulder and walked out, boots quiet on the metal landing, face steady, doing absolutely nothing that would make anyone remember he’d been the last one to leave.
But he counted it in his head, the way he’d been counting everything since the stairwell.
Twelve names on a list.
Maybe fifteen.
A shift block circled once, not crossed out.
And somewhere above him, or below, Corliss holding a file that had just gotten one step closer to a name she could use.
Cole kept walking.
The stairwell took him down, same as it always did, and he let the numbers sit in his chest like a held breath: quiet, cold, and waiting for the moment it was safe to let it out.