The ladder metal tasted faintly of old grease under Eli Crane's palm, the way certain tools remembered every night they'd been hauled up and every hand that had trusted them. He had been awake long enough that the city outside the Avalon Theatre still belonged to the delivery vans and late-shift bakers; the smell of toasted sesame from a street cart two blocks away braided with the theatre's usual scent—sawdust pasted together with a lingering note of stage makeup. It was an early kind of quiet he liked: the hush where problems showed their faces because the bustle that usually masked them hadn't started up yet.
He eased himself higher, not out of necessity but because his habit was to feel the whole system with his body before he let his crew trust a single live cue. The fly loft hummed with its own slow machinery—old motors that purred like a disgruntled cat, ropes piled in neat coils like sleeping serpents. Eli ran his fingers along a main line, feeling for roughness, listening for the half-ounce shifts of tension that meant a splice had seen too many cycles. He muttered to nobody, a low running commentary that kept his hands thinking. "If that bolt's going to be theatrical today, let it at least act like it's got a motive."
From below came a shout that could have been a question or an accusation. "You up there, Grump? Coffee's cold and insultingly honest." Samir's voice carried a grin; Samir liked to make jokes in the wrong key when the theatre was about to sing. Eli couldn't help the corner of his mouth lifting.
"I'm not 'Grump,'" Eli answered, and the ladder creaked as he moved. "I'm a safety professional with a complicated taste in sarcasm."
Samir's footsteps flurried. He hauled up a thermos like it was a peace offering and passed it up. The coffee was thin, the kind that had been boiled once too often, but Eli accepted it because ritual sometimes steadied jittery hands more than good roast did. Samir leaned against the grid, looking small against the sprawl of beams and counterweights. He'd spent two years under Eli's eye and another two learning to make space for confidence without hubris. They had a shorthand—half sentences, glances, ropes that only needed tension and not orders.
"What's the mood?" Samir asked, nodding toward the stage where the new centerpiece hung—a mechanized wing, painted to suggest feathers and held in place by a lattice of braided lines and a harness system that was supposed to simulate flight.
Eli studied the arrangement. Rowan Pierce, the director, had wanted the audience to believe in impossible angles; he had a talented way of believing things into existence, which made people follow him like moths. Tonight's effect was supposed to be a showstopper: an aerial entrance that would culminate in a slow, impossible glide. Eli's hands tightened around a shackle. "Looks ambitious. Ambition's not the problem. It's the cutting corners when ambition needs a net."
Samir snorted. "We always cut corners. The trick is to make the cuts look intentional."
They both laughed—short, useful laughter that released pressure without solving the problem. Below them, the house lights warmed and actors started to move into place. The crew hustled with the precise ballet of people who could read the rhythm of cues without looking up from their hands. Even the stage cat—an ill-tempered, ginger thing with a degree of entitlement—patrolled the wings, brushing against a prop like it owned the plot. The cat's name was Matinee, because no one in the company had the gall to name it anything less theatrical.
Eli climbed down a rung to examine a secondary block. It should have been plain, stamped with the manufacturer's marks, vintage in a way that carried reliability. Instead, there was a sheen to the metal that suggested recent work: the gloss of a file, a fine crescent grind, a smell undercut with something chemical and sharp. He ran a glove over it and felt the hairline of a new seam where there should have been a smooth, original weld.