Chapter 385: The Exit Signs Were Part of the Trap

Lukas hit the walkway alarm while I shouted at the loading crew to drop the cage back onto its transport supports. The supervisor started arguing until the swinging load struck his railing and removed most of his enthusiasm for punctuality.

The winch operator lowered the cage, letting its weight settle onto the frame instead of hanging above the inspection crew. Two workers crawled clear, and a third limped after them with another man’s arm around his shoulders.

Nobody needed me to invent a new rescue skill when the actual controls still worked. They needed someone to interrupt the idiot telling them to ignore those controls.

[System: Management material, mate. You yelled at the right cunt and everything improved, which was basically a qualification.]

I would put it on the application after we finished breaking his workplace.

The alarm drew guards toward the loading frame. We moved with the visitors being directed back along the public walkway, then took the service turn marked on the console instead of leaving through the front gate.

The route-control station stood above a row of cable drums, separated from the main yard by a low equipment wall. From its window, we could see the settlement’s temporary evacuation signs blinking along the distant road.

The office had warned residents, but those signs still pointed toward the fenced wash. Anyone who missed the broadcast or arrived on the next shift could follow them straight into the planned release area.

Old Mate offered twenty thousand EXP and sixty-five IP for disabling the false directions and getting the corrected route onto the local emergency channel. The task required both, which prevented me from solving public safety by smashing every screen I disliked.

"We’ll use their own control station, then keep a copy of what we changed."

Lukas checked the service door. Its card reader had power, and the guard inside watched a bank of yard cameras while eating something wrapped in foil.

I knocked. When he looked up, I held my visitor pass beside the window and told him we had found a wallet on the walkway. That wasn’t my best lie, but the pass made us look inconvenient rather than immediately murderous.

He opened the door with a complaint about lost property. I slid between his feet before he could close it, caught his reaching wrist with a tendril and drove him against the padded chair instead of the exposed console.

Lukas took the radio from his belt and moved the chair away from the controls. We secured the guard with the room’s restraint straps while I warned him that shouting would make the conversation more physical.

My humming had started softly enough that he noticed it only after I stopped speaking. He looked at my face and decided to breathe through his nose for a while.

The camera screens showed exactly what Rex could see from this station: his yard, the loading road, the staged wash and three public approaches. Several panels were blank where our earlier broadcast-core theft had interrupted a relay connection.

There was no view into our crawler, no secret picture of the girls and no camera helpfully installed inside every thought I had ever had.

[System: There you go, mate. Not an all-seeing god, just a nosy prick with a wiring budget.]

That made the wiring budget a reasonable place to begin.

Lukas used the station’s physical control panel to isolate the false beacon group. He checked each sign against the stolen route plan before switching it off, leaving the normal freight markers and water-stop lights alone.

I watched the guard and the yard screens while he worked. The loading crew returned to their positions after the cage settled, but nobody walked beneath the frame again without checking its support lamps.

That small change pleased me more than it should have. Then I saw Rex’s face on a promotional monitor and remembered that I also wanted a much larger change involving his teeth.

The emergency channel required a direct cable connection to the station’s broadcast port. Lukas attached the recovered core, loaded the settlement office’s verified message and called the office through the desk radio to confirm the correct frequency.

The answer came from a tired dispatcher who asked whether we understood how serious unauthorized access was. Lukas asked whether she wanted the wrong signs switched back on while they discussed it.

She gave him the frequency.

We transmitted the corrected directions, identifying the safe assembly points the local office had already checked. Lukas kept the original warning beside the new message so the receiver could see the source rather than accept a mysterious improved map from two thieves.

The dispatcher read back the key junctions. On the nearest road camera, a freight truck stopped beside a darkened false sign, then turned toward the public assembly lane after its driver checked the new broadcast.

Old Mate cleared the objective once the office confirmed reception. Ninety thousand EXP and seven hundred fifty IP appeared, while I resisted the urge to charge the dispatcher an emergency consultancy fee.

The guard asked whether any of this would cost him his job. I told him that depended on whether his next career plan involved helping his employer collect frightened people in a drainage ditch.

We copied the station log and disconnected our core. The guard asked whether we planned to leave him tied up forever, and Lukas loosened the strap enough for him to work free after we left without reaching his radio immediately.

It was kinder than I would have bothered to be, which was one of several reasons I had chosen the correct traveling companion.

The yard screen changed before we reached the door. Rex had entered the loading lane and stopped beside a wheeled metal shield, touching its frame while a worker pointed toward our station.

He had noticed the missing beacon signal. We hadn’t needed to appear on every camera for him to know which controls had failed.

The support deck shuddered beneath us, and the marked shield slid across the station entrance, blocking the only open route I could still see.