The foreman wanted an answer before lunch.
Eli stood in a cordoned yard beside a stack of salvaged stone. The job was an inspection, not a recovery: identify pieces likely to split when moved, mark them, and help the crew decide what could be transported. The foreman, a woman named Inez, had shown him the written fee and explained that a qualified rigger would make the final lifting decisions.
“No one stands beneath a load because you say it’s sound,” she told him. “Your marks tell us what to check. They aren’t a guarantee.”
“That works for me,” Eli said.
He had disclosed that his ability could help him notice structural strain. He had not explained where it came from. Inez accepted the description and gave him chalk in two colors: white for visible damage, orange for anything he thought deserved a closer inspection.
The first stone had a crack along one face. Eli marked it white and pointed out where the fracture reached the edge. The rigger checked it with a light and agreed that the piece should be moved separately. The second appeared intact until Eli focused on it. Thin lines emerged beneath the surface, converging around a dark inclusion.
He marked that one orange. Inez tapped the stone with a small hammer and listened to the sound. She did not pretend the tap proved what lay inside; she noted the mark and set the piece aside for a slower lift.
They worked through the row. Eli used his sight briefly on each piece, then let the lines fade while he recorded the number. The physical work was light, but concentrating repeatedly made his eyes ache. He drank water and told Inez he needed a short break.
“Five minutes,” she said. “Then we need the next row marked before the truck arrives.”
He sat on an overturned bucket. Workers moved around the far side of the yard, keeping clear of the cordoned area. A forklift carried a pallet toward the gate. Its reversing alarm sounded in regular pulses.
Eli checked his notes. He had inspected eleven pieces in forty minutes. Three had visible cracks; four had received orange marks. The remaining four showed no obvious problem in the brief time he looked. He wrote no obvious problem, not safe.
When the break ended, he returned to the row. The twelfth piece was narrow and uneven, with a smooth face that reflected the gray sky. He focused on the edge. Lines appeared, then multiplied as he shifted his gaze. A joint near the bottom glowed more clearly than the rest.
He marked it orange and moved to the next piece.
A room appeared around him.
It was not the yard. Warm light fell across a table. A chair stood near a wall, and someone had left a cup beside a folded cloth. The sight arrived with a feeling of affection so immediate that Eli’s hand reached toward the chair before he knew what he was doing.
His fingers struck cold stone.
The yard returned. The forklift alarm continued. Inez was speaking to him from several feet away.
“Eli? Are you listening?”
He looked at the chalk in his hand. Orange dust had marked his fingers. The chair had felt familiar, but he had never been in that room. The feeling came with the same intrusive certainty as the memory of the bicycle.
“I need to stop,” he said.
Inez frowned. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m disoriented. I can’t make a reliable judgment right now.”
“The truck’s due in twenty minutes.”
“I understand. I still need to stop.”
She looked at the unmarked stones. “Can you finish the row if you sit for a minute?”
“I don’t know. I won’t give you marks while I’m unsure what I’m seeing.”
Inez studied him, then called the rigger over. “We’ll inspect the rest by the usual method. Eli’s stopping.”
The rigger nodded without asking for an explanation. He placed a barrier between the marked row and the uninspected pieces so the crew would not confuse them. Eli checked the numbers on his sheet and drew a line beneath the last completed entry.
“Did you mark the one you were looking at?” Inez asked.
“No. Leave it uninspected.”
She put a tag on it. “I’ll pay for the completed portion after we verify the count.”
He had expected an argument about the fee. The practical response left him with no reason to remain in the yard. He sat again while the rigger checked the eleven completed entries and the twelfth orange mark. Inez paid the proportional amount specified in the contract and signed his copy.
Outside the yard, Eli walked to a bench and opened the small notebook he had been using for warnings. He did not want to record the private image in detail. Tessa had asked him not to share family memories, and a notebook could be lost. He needed enough information to recognize what had happened without turning Darius’s home into an entry for someone else to read.
He wrote the date, the job, and the number of times he had used Weak-Point Sight. He noted the break after eleven pieces, the twelfth mark, and the moment of disorientation during the next inspection. For the image itself he wrote only: unfamiliar room; feeling of affection; likely an imprint, not my own memory.
How long had it lasted? He could not say. Inez had asked whether he was listening, which suggested she had spoken before he answered. The forklift alarm had continued, but he could not count how many pulses had passed.
Duration unknown, he wrote.
He checked his hands. They no longer shook. The chair remained clear in his mind, but the urgent feeling that he belonged beside it had faded. He could distinguish the yard from the room now. That did not tell him what would happen if another fragment arrived while he was carrying a patient or standing beneath unstable stone.
He considered returning to the yard to test whether the episode had passed. The crew had already changed its plan. His returning would make the test depend on their deadline and their willingness to trust his judgment. He closed the notebook and went to the clinic instead.
Tessa was arranging the newly purchased medication in the cabinet. She looked up when he entered.
“You’re early.”
“I stopped the inspection.”
“Was the yard unsafe?”
“The work area was controlled. I wasn’t reliable.”
He told her about the repeated use of Weak-Point Sight, the disorientation, and his decision to stop. He did not describe the room. Tessa listened without asking for it.
“How long did it last?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I wrote down what happened before it and what I could confirm afterward.”
“Did you hit your head? Skip a meal? Take anything new?”
“No head injury. I ate breakfast and drank water. I haven’t taken anything new.”
“Do you have a headache now?”
“My eyes ache. The confusion has passed.”
She asked him to sit and checked whether he could follow a moving finger, identify where he was, and describe the route he had taken from the yard. The questions were ordinary enough that he found himself embarrassed by how much he wanted to pass them.
“What would you have done if I’d answered one wrong?” he asked.
“Asked more questions and decided whether you needed a referral. A few checks here don’t establish the cause.”
“Do you think the ability caused it?”
“The timing makes it a possibility. I can’t tell you from one episode.”
He showed her the log without opening the page about the old raid. She read the entry, including the line about the unfamiliar room, and handed it back.
“You kept the private detail out,” she said.
“I only wrote enough to recognize what happened.”
“Thank you.” She looked at his face. “Before you take another job where someone depends on that ability, tell me if the symptoms return. Tell the person running the work that you need to stop, as you did today.”
“I don’t know what a safe amount is.”
“Neither do I. One episode doesn’t establish a limit.”
“I could test it somewhere controlled.”
“Describe controlled.”
“No one near the wall. A clear exit. A section already scheduled for demolition, with the owner’s permission. I record how long I use it and stop if the room appears again.”
“And if you become confused before you recognize it?”
He had not accounted for that. “Someone should be there, outside the danger area, to stop the test.”
“Someone who knows what to watch for and has agreed to do it.”
“Inez might know a site.”
“Ask her. Don’t turn her yard into the test without telling her.”
He smiled faintly. “You think I’d do that?”
“I think you wanted to go back and see whether you could finish.”
He had not told her that part. “Yes.”
She handed him a glass of water. “Drink it before you make the call.”
He did. The water was warm from the container, but it helped. Tessa returned to the cabinet and counted the medication again, comparing the packages with Leah’s invoice. Eli sat quietly until the ache in his eyes eased.
Inez answered on the second call. He told her he wanted to test his inspection ability at a condemned wall, with no one depending on the results. She asked what kind of test and whether he intended to strike the wall.
“Possibly, after marking a weak section.”
“Then you need permission from the demolition supervisor, a defined exclusion area, and someone who can stop you. I won’t offer you a wall over the phone.”
“Can you put me in touch with the supervisor?”
“I can ask whether they’re willing to hear your proposal. Don’t assume they’ll say yes.”
Tessa asked what he would do if the test produced no episode.
“Record that it didn’t happen under those conditions.”
“Would you treat that as permission to use the ability without a limit?”
“No. The yard was only one place, and I was doing a particular kind of work. A gate fight would be different.”
She nodded. “What if it happens after fewer uses than today?”
“Stop sooner. Tell the person watching. Don’t try to reach the same number just because I reached it once.”
He wrote both answers beside the plan. The number of stones was useful context, but it was not a threshold the system had given him. Fatigue, concentration, and fear could all change what he was able to do on another day. The supervisor would need to know that the test might end before any stone fell.
Tessa pointed to the note about the involuntary reach. “Make sure there’s nothing in reach that can trigger the demolition equipment.”
“I’ll ask where the controls are and keep away from them.”
Inez called back an hour later with an address and a time. The supervisor would meet Eli the next morning to inspect a freestanding section scheduled for removal. A worker would control access to the yard. If the supervisor judged the test unsafe, it would not happen.
Eli wrote the conditions in his notebook. Tessa checked that he had included the supervisor’s authority to end the exercise. He added it beneath the entry.
Leah came in with the afternoon appeal figures. The clinic had enough medication for its immediate patients, but the next order remained unfunded. She placed the update beside the inventory and asked Eli whether his partial inspection fee could be counted.
“Part of it,” he said. “I’ll keep enough for rent and food.”
“Give me the amount when you’ve decided.”
He counted the notes, separated what he needed, and handed her the remainder. She issued a receipt. The contribution was smaller than the recovery fee had been, and smaller still than the expense ahead. It was real.
Before leaving, he asked Tessa whether she wanted to know anything else about the episode.
“Did it make you want to act?” she asked.
“Yes. I reached for something that wasn’t there.”
“Then that’s a useful warning sign. If someone is watching your next test, tell them what movement they should interrupt. You don’t need to tell them whose room you saw.”
He added that to the plan. The log could not prevent another fragment, but it could give him and anyone working beside him a reason to stop before an involuntary movement became a falling stone or an injured person.
On the way home, he passed a building with a lighted window. For a moment the warm rectangle reminded him of the room in the imprint. He stopped and named the things he could actually see: the number above the door, a bicycle chained to the railing, a woman watering a plant. None belonged to the fragment.
Then he continued walking, carrying the notebook in his pocket rather than opening it again on the street.