Cass kept two things in the van at all times: a torque spanner that had once earned its reputation by wringing open the stubborn hinge of a city bus, and a bowl of instant noodles that behaved like a fragile peace treaty—it cooled if left unattended and warmed up resentfully if she reheated it three times. Around them, the van’s shelves were a little domestic museum of other people’s problems: polymer gaskets with service scrawl, a rack of fossilized servo bearings, a coil of braided fiber she’d traded for at a back‑alley parts swap, and a handful of tiny couplers in a zip bag labeled in Cass’s handwriting, FOR PARTS / DO NOT TRUST. The handwriting was not an old relic; it was a convenience born of habit.
Outside the van the sector breathed in layers. Buildings stepped like terraces toward the sky, each balcony a little stage where kettles clanged at dawn and holographic banners advertised seasonal algae dumplings. A rain of citrus mist fell thin and soft; people walked with transparent umbrellas that refracted the city’s neon into pink lattices. Above, laundry drones drifted like slow metallic pigeons, trailing strings of socks in their wake. None of it belonged to Cass’s repairs, and she liked it that way—small bright evidence that the city wasn’t only a network to debug.
Her route had a rhythm. She could tell a building’s epidemiology of wear from the smell of its stairwell: oil and lemon meant a communal kitchen; burnt sugar and copper meant a workshop where someone still misused a hot‑knife. The building in question smelled of rosemary and boiled lentils, which meant the occupant kept a patient stove and probably a companion unit that preferred to organize plates by sentimental value.
She tightened the spanner, felt the metal obedient under her palm. Tools kept her honest. They required a hand and a decision and rewarded the sort of tidy, physical thinking that politics and therapy took in different currencies. Cass tucked the noodle bowl into a shallow cubby, clipped the van’s door shut, and padded up the stairwell with a bag of spares. Her steps were a percussion she had practiced for years—quick, economical. When the door to Apartment 7 opened, it was the sound of home rather than a problem.