Cass Rios liked the edges the way other people liked the center of things. Edges were where bolts lived and where panels complained; edges told the honest story of a building. She trusted edges more than people, because edges behaved according to tolerances and torque charts. She trusted the snick of a ratchet, the particular whisper a glass seam made when it wanted adjustment. On a slow night, dangling from a harness with the city at her feet, she could read a façade the way a cook read a recipe—by feel, smell, and the way materials sighed under heat.
The block at the eastern bend had been retrofitted last month with a skin that claimed to manage its own exposure: panels that diluted streetlight, shutters that trimmed angles of sight. Management marketed the thing as “privacy that breathes.” Cass had a softer label for it: expensive claptrap. She had been hired to do routine maintenance—measure anchor loads, lubricate weatherstrips, verify seals. Routine paid the rent and kept her hands busy; both were valuable.
Night tasted of citrus and fried pastry. A hawker two storeys down sold glaze-buns that glinted under sodium lamps; their sugar crust caught the light like a second moon. Someone on the corner had strung wind chimes made from old spoons that sang a metallic chorus whenever the evening breeze took a turn. The city never stopped being odd. There was a municipal ordinance requiring reflective bands on feral pigeons in certain districts—purely decorative, the council said—and one of those pigeons regarded Cass from a drainpipe with what she took to be professional disdain. She had a sticker on her harness that read I BOLT FOR FUN; it was an old joke and a better conversation starter than she generally allowed herself.
She clipped in, checked her rope, and let out a breath that had nothing to do with the height and everything to do with the ritual of beginning. Fingers found calipers, then a torque gauge; she eased her weight, letting the harness support her while her hands did the talking. The façade hummed through her palm, a low, metallic thrum that lined up with the distant hum of the tram. Not magic, technically, but the city liked to answer to attention. She preferred bolts. They were honest.
At the fourth panel she felt a hairline give, a tiny flex at the corner like someone holding their breath in a room full of strangers. She leaned closer, breath fogging the glass in a small crescent. Through the seam came a sound that was not quite a word: a soft, frightened intake.