Kellan laid the collection confirmation beside the notice on the fence. The earlier document listed the warehouse at the lower threat rating. The posted notice carried a higher one.
“Neither has an approval time,” he said.
Calder pointed to the date. “The revision followed this morning’s inspection.”
“What time?”
“I told you, I don’t have it.”
“Did the upper crew get the revised notice?” Tessa asked.
“They should have.”
“Did they?”
The manager’s radio crackled. He listened to a report from the office, then lowered it. “The briefing sheet isn’t in the entry file. Someone is looking for it.”
Sera photographed the two documents side by side, keeping the fence and the posted notice visible. She added the time and noted that the collection confirmation had come from the supplier the previous day. A photograph could establish what they had found at the entrance; it could not establish when the hunters had been told the rating changed.
A blow sounded above them. The upper window shook. Nessa opened it a hand’s width and leaned close.
“Garin’s fading!” she shouted. “Please!”
Eli snatched the rope from the cart. “I’m going to the side entrance.”
Sera stepped into his path. “The current is moving near the stairs again.”
“Can you say it’s a creature?”
“No. Can you say it isn’t?”
He looked toward the window. Nessa had disappeared inside. The rope in his hand was long enough to reach the upper floor if he could find an anchor. The side entrance was behind the steel rack, and its damaged hinge had nearly pulled free.
Kellan took hold of the rope, not pulling it away, only preventing Eli from walking forward without noticing him. “What are you going to do when you reach the door?”
“Get past it. Find the stairs.”
“With what support if the frame falls? What will you carry Garin on? What happens if the thing you hear is between you and the stairs?”
“We lose time asking.”
“We lose him if you can’t get him out.”
Eli hated the answer because he could not refute it. He also hated how easily preparation could become a reason to stand still while someone died. He let the rope slacken.
“Tessa needs a stretcher,” Kellan said. “I need to inspect the crane. Sera needs a position where she can warn us if that source moves. We can do those things now.”
Calder had been listening. “The loading cage contains a stretcher and rigging. I can open it, but you’ll need to accept responsibility for any equipment you use.”
“Show us the terms,” Kellan said.
Calder took a form from his clipboard. It made the borrower responsible for damage to warehouse equipment, without distinguishing existing damage from damage caused during use. Eli reached for the pen.
“Wait,” Kellan said.
“Garin’s up there.”
“And this says we accept any damage the warehouse finds afterward.” Kellan pointed to the sentence. “The crane could already be unsafe. We don’t even know what condition the equipment is in.”
Calder glanced at the window. “It’s a standard release.”
“Then the standard release can wait. Let us inspect the equipment and record its condition.”
“I can’t authorize you to use another contractor’s crane.”
“Can you authorize us to look at it?”
The manager hesitated. Sal’s coworker, still holding his phone, said, “I’m a witness. Write down that you’re letting them inspect it, not use it.”
Calder crossed out the broad release and wrote a note permitting inspection only. Kellan read it, added the time and asked Calder to initial the change. No one signed responsibility for unknown damage. Calder handed him the cage key.
Sera felt the moving source shift away from the side door. She could not tell whether it had gone upstairs. She chose a position behind the steel rack where she could see the yard and remain clear of the weakened door. Eli took the opposite side of the cart with Kellan. They moved through the opened barrier to the loading cage while Tessa stayed at the treatment point.
The cage held chains, a folded platform and a rigid board. Two spools of cable sat behind a separate locked mesh compartment inside it. A paper tag on the board identified it as a rescue stretcher. Kellan checked the hinges and straps while Eli held the gate open. The board was narrow enough for the window on the plan, but the straps had been tied into knots.
“Who stores it like this?” Eli asked.
“Someone who wanted it to fit.” Kellan worked at the first knot. “Bring it out. Tessa can check whether she can use it.”
Eli carried the board to the barrier. Tessa unfolded it and tried the straps around a rolled blanket. One buckle slipped under tension. She removed it and used a spare strap from her bag, then asked Sal to help test the arrangement.
“Can you pretend your leg is injured?” Tessa asked.
Sal lay on the board behind the protected wall. Tessa and the coworker secured her and lifted just enough to test the handles. The board flexed but the new strap held. Sal sat up, breathing hard.
“Will Garin fit through the window?”
“Possibly. We need a measurement and a safe way to lower him.”
Kellan had moved to the crane. He read the load plate and compared it with the manual. The platform attachment matched the model, but he could not see the cable’s full length from the ground. He asked Calder for permission to inspect the controls.
“Inspection only,” Calder said.
“That’s what we’re doing.”
Eli stood beneath the boom and looked up. Weak-Point Sight traced strain through the steel frame. Some lines were ordinary load paths; one bright mark appeared near a cable guide, but the angle made it hard to see whether the cable or the guide carried the damage.
“Something there,” he said.
Kellan followed his gaze. “Don’t stand under the boom. Move to the side.”
Eli did. The mark shifted when the light changed, and he could no longer isolate it. He resisted the urge to declare the cable broken before Kellan had inspected it. The sight gave him a place to look, not a mechanical diagnosis.
A thin stream of water began running from the warehouse gutter into the yard. It reached the crane’s electrical lead and pooled around the plug housing. Kellan told Eli to leave it alone while Calder found the exterior isolator. Once the power was cut, they moved the lead onto an elevated bracket and checked the housing for damage. Kellan would not switch it back on until the crane was inspected.
The delay meant they could not immediately operate the controls, but it also kept the treatment route dry. Sal found a broom and pushed the water toward the drain from outside the barrier. The drain was blocked with paper. Nessa’s brother cleared it with a stick, keeping his body behind the wall while the water finally ran away.
A sudden thud came from the east door. The rack shuddered. Sera raised her hand.
“Source moving toward the yard.”
Kellan and Eli retreated behind the cart. The door bowed, its lower hinge tearing another inch from the frame. A gray shape pressed through the gap and withdrew before Eli could see more than a curved surface. The rack held.
“Creature?” Calder asked.
“I saw something gray,” Eli said. “I couldn’t identify it.”
Nessa’s brother took a step toward the window. Sal caught his sleeve. He shook her hand off, then apologized and moved back.
“Can it get around the rack?” he asked.
“Possibly,” Kellan said. “The barrier buys time. It doesn’t make the yard safe.”
Calder called the dispatcher and reported the door’s condition. The dispatcher instructed everyone to remain clear. The response team was still traveling; a road closure had diverted it. Calder relayed the information without offering a time he did not have.
Tessa checked her medical bag. She had enough dressings for an initial assessment and a limited number of supplies for moving an injured person. She did not know Garin’s injuries or Tomas’s condition. She asked Leah to call Marisol and request that a second medical worker come to the public-side treatment point if available.
Leah called back two minutes later. “Marisol is on her way from the clinic. The ambulance has the side-lane address. Ruth is staying with the patients.”
Tessa thanked her and gave the next check-in time. If they missed it, Leah would call the dispatcher again with the latest information. Kellan asked her to include the damaged east door and the unknown moving source.
A siren rose beyond the station. Sal turned toward it so quickly she knocked the chair against the wall. The sound grew louder, then passed the warehouse and continued down the main road.
“Another call,” Calder said.
Nessa’s brother swore. He dialed his sister again and held the phone to his ear. No answer. He showed Tessa a message sent earlier that morning: a picture of a lunch container with her name written across the lid. Nessa had complained that someone kept taking hers from the staff refrigerator. He had sent back a picture of his own lunch with a note promising not to steal it.
“She was joking,” he said. “She wasn’t expecting this.”
Tessa did not tell him she would be all right. She asked whether he knew Nessa’s usual equipment and whether she could move Garin without help.
“She’s strong. She works upstairs all the time. But if Tomas can’t walk, she’ll be trying to carry both of them.” He rubbed the heel of his hand against his forehead. “She won’t leave him.”
“Can you send her a message asking how much room is around the window? If she can answer, it will help us prepare the board.”
He typed with shaking hands. The message showed as delivered but remained unread. He put the phone on the car bonnet where they could all see it.
Sal brought water from her case. She offered it to him first. He took the bottle, opened it, and handed it back when she said she had another. The small exchange steadied them enough to return to the ambulance lane. Sal began counting the time between Nessa’s flashes aloud. When the count reached forty seconds, the lamp appeared again, and she stopped at forty-one.
Sera asked her not to stand beneath the window. A loose piece of plaster had dropped from the ledge after the last impact. Sal moved behind the wall and kept counting from there.
At the window, Nessa flashed her lamp twice, then once. Sera returned the agreed signal. A piece of paper appeared against the glass: TOMAS LEG. GARIN HURT. It was written in thick black marker, but the bottom line had smeared against the window.
Tessa held up two fingers and pointed to the paper. Nessa understood and rewrote it. The final line read NEED BOARD.
“We have one,” Tessa called. “We’re checking a way to get it up.”
Nessa made a circle with her thumb and forefinger. Then a shadow moved behind her. She ducked, and the paper fell from the window into the yard. Eli ran two steps toward it before Sera called his name. He stopped at the barrier. The paper landed near the weakened door, too far inside for him to retrieve safely.
“You already read it,” Sera said.
He looked at the paper lying in a puddle. The letters were bleeding into the water. “I know.”
Nessa’s brother picked up his phone when the screen lit. This time it was a call. He put it on speaker so quickly that the first word vanished beneath his thumb.
“—can’t hold this and move him,” Nessa said.
“Then put it down.” His voice rose. “Where are you? At the window?”
“By Garin. Tomas needs me on the other side.”
Tessa came close enough to hear. “Nessa, it’s Tessa, the medical worker outside. Tell me what you’re trying to do.”
“Garin keeps slipping against the wall. I have to hold the dressing. Tomas is caught, and he keeps trying to pull himself out.” Something scraped near the phone. “Don’t. Tomas, leave it.”
“Can you set the phone where you can hear me?”
There was a knock and a rustle. Nessa said yes.
Her brother stepped toward the barrier. “If they send a rope, can you climb down?”
Eli lifted the coil without thinking. “We could get a line up to her.”
“And tie it to what?” Kellan asked quietly.
“The window—” Eli looked up at the ledge where the plaster had fallen. He stopped. The frame sat crooked in its opening. He had not checked anything that could bear her weight, and his rope was still on the ground.
“Is there a way?” Nessa asked through the phone.
Her brother looked at Eli. Until then his anger had been directed at the still crane, Calder’s forms, the absent responders. Now Eli had given him a particular thing to hope for.
“I haven’t found a safe anchor,” Eli said. “I shouldn’t have said it as if I had.”
“Then check one,” the brother said.
“The crane gets us to the opening without making her climb a loose rope,” Kellan said. “I need Eli with me to inspect it. If he goes around looking for another anchor, that work stops.”
The brother turned the phone away from the machinery. “Nessa, if you could get out, would you?”
Silence lasted long enough for Eli to hear Garin breathing near the phone. Then Nessa said, “Not by leaving them without telling anyone. But if someone can take my place, yes. I want out.”
Her brother shut his eyes.
“Tomas, I’m coming to you,” she said. The phone scraped again.
“Nessa,” Tessa said, “don’t try to lift anything that’s pinning him. Tell him help knows he’s there. Can you keep the dressing in place without holding it every second?”
“My jacket. I can fold the sleeve under my hand while I reach him.”
“Do that if it lets you stay beside Garin. Tell me before you try to move either of them.”
Nessa repeated the instruction to Tomas. He answered too faintly for anyone outside to understand. Her brother bent over the telephone as though getting closer could help him hear. He started to speak, stopped, and put his free hand against his mouth.
“Tell him not to pull,” he said at last. “He listens to you.”
“He isn’t listening to anyone very well.” For a moment she sounded only irritated, a sister complaining about a difficult shift. Then something struck the room’s door, and the little sound she made afterward stripped the familiarity away.
Sera raised her lamp toward the window. “We’re still here,” she called.
Nessa told her brother she needed both hands. He said he would keep the line open. She said the battery was nearly gone.
“Then call when you can,” he said. “Don’t use it on me.”
The call ended. He stood holding the dark screen while Tessa gave Kellan what she had learned: two people unable to get themselves to the window, one helper being pulled between them. Inspection was no longer an abstract stage before a possible rescue. If it failed, Nessa would have to keep making those choices alone.
Eli handed the coil to Tessa and went back to Kellan. “Show me where you need the light.”
Calder looked at the signed inspection note, then at the window. His radio crackled with a request for the entry log, and he directed the caller to bring it to the public gate. He handed a copy to Tessa so the response crew could see the names as soon as it arrived. “I can let you examine the crane. Use is a separate decision.”
“Understood,” Kellan said.
Eli glanced at the rope, the board and the crane. Beyond the barrier, the crane stood still with its power isolated and its platform waiting. Kellan put a hand on the manual while Eli watched Nessa’s window.
Above, Nessa’s lamp came on again. The team had to decide whether to attempt the lift before the response crew arrived, and what failure would force them to stop.