Mercy Row (Part 1)

Tomas woke because something had stopped making noise.

He remained on his back with his eyes closed, listening to the absence. The room was dark except for the weak green light of the power indicator beside the kitchenette. It cast a narrow reflection across the ceiling, illuminating the water stain that had spread another few centimeters since the beginning of winter. Tomas had been meaning to find the leak. The pipe responsible ran somewhere inside the wall between his apartment and the vacant unit next door, and reaching it would require removing three sections of paneling, moving the bookcase, and convincing the people living illegally in the unit above him to stop draining their wash water through a municipal service line that had been disconnected fourteen years earlier.

He had been meaning to do that too.

The silence remained, and after a moment Tomas opened his eyes. The ventilation fan above the bed had stopped rattling.

It was an old municipal unit, installed when Mercy Row still appeared on city planning maps and people living there could call someone when the heat stopped working. Three of the original blades remained. Tomas had manufactured the fourth from a piece of polymer cut from the side panel of a commercial refrigerator, which meant the fan had never been properly balanced. Every twelve seconds, the housing vibrated, and every twenty-seven rotations, the replacement blade struck something inside the casing with a faint metallic tick. Tomas had grown accustomed to both sounds. Now there was nothing.

He looked toward the window. Moisture had gathered along the inside of the glass. It was not much, just a thin gray film near the bottom where the cold outside air met what remained of the warmth inside. Several drops had grown large enough to run toward the frame, leaving clear paths through the condensation.

The district heating had failed again.

Tomas closed his eyes and listened. Somewhere inside the wall, a pipe dripped — seven seconds, then another drop, then six, then another. Irregular. He listened for the circulation pumps beneath the building. He heard nothing. The old distribution line usually produced a low vibration that could be felt through the floor before it could be heard. The sound had disappeared along with the fan.

Tomas lay still. There were ways to determine how much of Mercy Row had lost heat without leaving the bed. The water line beneath the western passage contracted differently when the temperature fell below twelve degrees. The generator at Bell’s clinic increased output whenever the district pumps failed. The food cooperative on Level Three ran two additional heaters for the hydroponic tanks, and those heaters caused the stolen municipal connection beneath Block C to hum loudly enough that Tomas could hear it through the building supports.

He waited.

The distant generator increased pitch. It was not much, but enough.

Tomas opened his eyes again. Blocks C through F, possibly G. He would have to check, but not yet.

For several more minutes, he remained beneath the blanket as the apartment grew colder. He could feel it in his hands first, the joints stiffening slightly as the temperature dropped. He flexed his fingers beneath the blanket and watched his breath become faintly visible above him.

He should get up.

He did not.

There was something valuable about the hour before Mercy Row woke. Nobody knocked on the shop shutter. Nobody shouted his name from the passage. Nobody arrived carrying something that had stopped working and explained, with great confidence, that it had been functioning perfectly until moments before.

The broken things waited, for a little while.

Tomas listened. Someone coughed in the neighboring building. It was a wet cough, an older man, probably Vasko. He had been refusing to visit Bell’s clinic for six days. Tomas made a note to tell Amara.

Above the ceiling, something moved through the old service ducts. Too heavy for rats, too light for a person. Relay, perhaps. The cat had disappeared sometime after midnight and had not returned. Tomas listened for the scrape of claws.

Nothing.

A freight drone passed somewhere above the district. He heard the engines first, a low mechanical pulse descending through layers of concrete and steel. The sound grew louder, moved across the ceiling, then faded toward the eastern warehouses.

Port Meridian was already awake. It always was. The city had no reason to sleep. Factories operated through the night. Cargo moved between the coastal terminals and the orbital elevators. Corporate offices shifted workers according to markets on the other side of the world. Somewhere above Mercy Row, people were drinking their first coffee of the morning while others were finishing dinner.

Tomas turned his head toward the window. The glass looked black. Beyond it, the central passage of Mercy Row remained mostly dark. The district lights would activate in another twenty-three minutes, assuming the power reduction had not affected the timing system.

They had failed three times the previous week. The first time, Tomas repaired the control relay. The second time, Jonah Quell replaced a damaged junction. The third time, neither of them had found anything wrong.

Tomas disliked failures without causes. Machines did not simply stop working. Something changed. Either a wire broke, a bearing wore down, a signal arrived late, or a person made a decision, but there was always a cause. Finding it was usually a matter of patience.

The wall behind his bed began to vibrate. Tomas felt it before he heard the sound, a faint trembling passing through the mattress and into his shoulder blades. The glass of water beside the bed rippled. Somewhere in the kitchenette, ceramic shifted against ceramic.

Then came the train. The elevated line crossed directly above the northern edge of Mercy Row, though directly was a relative term in Port Meridian. Between Tomas and the tracks were four floors of abandoned municipal housing, two service levels, an old ventilation complex, and enough concrete to have buried a smaller city.

The train made all of it move. A low thunder filled the room. Dust loosened from the ceiling and drifted through the darkness. Inside the kitchenette cabinet, one of the cups struck another, once, then twice.

Tomas watched the window.

The first train of the morning traveled west. It emerged from behind the old transit structure as a line of white light moving through the darkness above Mercy Row. The train itself was mostly hidden by buildings, cables, and the skeletal remains of a pedestrian bridge that had collapsed before Tomas arrived in the district. But for several seconds, he could see the windows, rectangles of light, one after another, people inside. Most were too distant to distinguish: a man standing near a door, someone seated with their head lowered, a woman holding a cup near her face.

Then they were gone.

The train continued west toward Central Meridian. From there, it would pass through North Junction, cross the industrial canal, and eventually connect with the coastal line. Tomas knew the route. He knew most of the routes.

The vibration faded. The cups stopped moving. Dust settled across the floor. Tomas continued looking at the window. There had been a time when he traveled. The thought came without invitation, and he dismissed it. The train was gone. The apartment was cold. The ventilation fan remained silent.

Tomas pushed the blanket aside. The movement sent a faint sensation of displacement through his body—not dizziness yet, something smaller, the feeling that the bed had shifted beneath him even though he knew it had not. He waited until the sensation passed, then sat up.

The room moved. The walls leaned slightly to the left, and his stomach tightened. He fixed his eyes on the corner of the bookcase across from the bed. The bookcase was upright. The floor was level. The wall had not moved. He knew these things.

His body disagreed.

Tomas remained still until the disagreement became manageable, then placed both feet on the floor. Cold moved immediately through his socks.

“Wonderful.”

His voice sounded louder than expected in the apartment. He sat on the edge of the bed for several seconds, waiting for his legs to report themselves: right foot, five toes, pressure beneath the heel; left foot, five toes, slight numbness along the outer edge. Normal. He flexed them. The toes moved, not quickly, but they moved.

Tomas looked beside the bed. The support frame waited where he had left it. In the weak green light from the kitchenette, it looked more like dismantled machinery than medical equipment but that suited him fine.

Medical equipment came with warranties, technicians, service contracts, and software that refused to function after manufacturers decided the hardware was obsolete. The frame had none of those problems.

It had other problems.

Two metal braces followed the outside of the legs from ankle to hip. The right assembly had once belonged to an industrial lifting rig. Tomas had shortened it, rebuilt the knee joint, and replaced the original control system with a neural interface scavenged from a rehabilitation unit.

The left leg was assembled from at least four different machines. Tomas was not entirely certain anymore. The knee actuator came from a warehouse loader. The hip support had once been part of a municipal construction frame. The ankle assembly was medical. Probably. The manufacturer’s identification marks had been removed before Tomas acquired it.

A narrow spinal control strip connected the frame to the neural port beneath his shirt. Nothing matched. The frame was ugly, heavy, loud, but Tomas trusted it.

He leaned forward and reached for the right brace. The room shifted again, and he stopped, waiting as the sensation moved through him slowly. His eyes reported the floor beneath his feet. His inner ear reported motion. The muscles along his back tightened, preparing to correct a fall that had not happened.

Tomas breathed through it, focusing on fixed points—the corner of the bookcase, the crack running across the ceiling, the green light beside the kitchenette—until the room settled.

He pulled the frame closer.

The right leg first. He opened the ankle cuff and guided his foot into position. The lower brace closed around his calf with a mechanical click. Then the knee, then the upper support. He repeated the process with the left leg.

The hip assembly required more effort. Tomas stood halfway, bracing one hand against the wall while pulling the support around his waist. The movement made the room tilt again, and he sat down, waited, then tried again.

This time the hip assembly locked.

He reached beneath his shirt and found the neural connector at the base of his spine. The skin around the port was sore. He touched it carefully. There was slight inflammation, not enough to matter. He cleaned the connector with a cloth from the bedside table, then inserted it.

The interface came alive.

For an instant, Tomas felt nothing. Then the frame announced itself to his nervous system: pressure, position, resistance, artificial information layered over damaged signals. His right leg appeared in his mind exactly where his eyes said it was. The left arrived half a second later.

Tomas frowned.

He lifted his left foot. The frame responded late. He lowered it, raised it again, still late.

“Still doing that.”

The frame did not answer.

Tomas reached toward the control unit mounted beside his hip and initiated diagnostics. The display flickered, went dark, then returned.

“Take your time.”

The system cycled through the components: right ankle, right knee, right hip, spinal interface, left ankle, left knee, left hip. A warning appeared.

LEFT HIP ACTUATOR: SERVICE RECOMMENDED.

Tomas looked at it. The same warning had appeared yesterday, and the day before. He dismissed it.

The warning returned.

SERVICE RECOMMENDED.

“Yes.”

The display remained illuminated.

“I heard you.”

The warning did not disappear. Tomas pressed the manual override, and the system finally returned to standby.

“Put it on the list.”

He looked toward the kitchenette. On the wall beside the refrigerator was an actual paper list held in place by two magnets.

Replace ventilation fan bearing.

Find leak behind east wall.

Repair heating coil.

Recalibrate shop voltage regulator.

Check Bell clinic generator.

Replace left hip actuator stabilizer.

The last item had been written three weeks earlier. Tomas had the part. It was downstairs in the third drawer beneath the main workbench, still wrapped in the antistatic material it came in. Compatible voltage, correct response threshold, nearly new. He had acquired it from a medical recycler who owed him money.

Replacing the stabilizer would take approximately forty minutes. Thirty if nobody interrupted him. Tomas looked at the list, then away. There were other things that needed fixing. The frame could wait. It always had.

He placed both hands against the edge of the bed. Standing was the difficult part, not because his legs lacked strength, but because the problem existed somewhere between intention and certainty. His brain sent the command to stand. His muscles responded. His damaged vestibular system insisted the floor was moving. His proprioception reported the position of his legs incorrectly. His body attempted to compensate for errors that did not exist. The frame had been built to settle the argument. Most mornings, it succeeded.

Tomas pushed himself upright. For one second, everything worked. Then the room tipped sideways. His stomach lurched. The bookcase moved. The ceiling rotated. Tomas reached for the wall, and his hand missed.

The frame responded. The right hip locked. The spinal support tightened. The left actuator engaged half a second late. Metal struck metal.

Click. Whirr. Click.

Tomas stopped. The frame held him. He closed his eyes, which made the sensation worse, and opened them again, fixing on the bookcase, the ceiling crack, the green light, moving from one fixed object, then another, then another until the room slowly returned to where it belonged.

Tomas breathed out.

“Good morning to you too.”

The frame displayed another warning.

LEFT HIP ACTUATOR: SERVICE RECOMMENDED.

Tomas stared at it.

“You’re becoming repetitive.”

He dismissed the message. This time it stayed gone.

He stood beside the bed, waiting for his body to accept that standing had already happened. After several seconds, it did. Tomas took one step. The frame followed, right, left. The actuator lagged. He adjusted his gait. Another step. Better.

He crossed the apartment slowly.

The room above Rusk’s was not large: a bed, a kitchenette, a washroom barely wide enough for Tomas to turn around while wearing the frame, three shelves filled with repair manuals, obsolete technical books, and paper notebooks containing diagrams he could have stored digitally but did not, a table with one chair, and a second chair folded against the wall. Tomas could not remember the last time he had unfolded it.

The apartment looked temporary. It had looked temporary for nineteen years. He had never painted the walls, never replaced the damaged cabinet above the sink, never bought a larger bed. The boxes beneath the bookshelves still contained some of the things he had brought with him when he arrived. He had not opened them in years. There had never seemed much point.

The apartment worked. The roof mostly kept out the rain. The plumbing functioned more often than it failed. The stairs led directly to the shop. Tomas had everything he needed.

He reached the window. Condensation blurred the lower half of the glass, and Tomas wiped it away with his sleeve. Mercy Row remained dark below, though a few lights had appeared. Someone moving inside the bakery, the clinic generator glowing behind patched curtains, a figure crossing the central passage carrying two buckets.

Soon the district would wake. The knocking would begin, broken heaters, damaged prosthetics, water filters, neural ports, things people had kept working too long because replacement cost money they did not have.

Tomas watched the Row, then looked toward the paper list beside the refrigerator. The replacement stabilizer waited downstairs. Forty minutes. Thirty if nobody interrupted him.

Tomas knew he should replace it. He knew the actuator would continue deteriorating. He knew one day the half-second delay would become a second, then two. Eventually the frame would fail to catch him. He understood all of this.

Tomas turned away from the window. The district lights flickered on. Half of them worked.

“That’s new.”

He looked toward the stairway leading down to the shop. Somewhere below, something struck metal. Then came the unmistakable sound of an animal knocking several objects onto the floor.

Tomas listened. There was silence followed by a second crash.

“Relay.”

The cat did not answer.

Tomas began walking toward the stairs. The frame followed him.

Click. Whirr. Click.

By the time he reached the first step, someone was already knocking on the shop shutter.

* * *

The knocking came again, three hard strikes against the metal shutter, followed by a pause that suggested whoever stood outside expected Tomas to understand the urgency without requiring a fourth.

He rested one hand on the stair rail and looked down. The staircase descended along the rear wall of the shop, narrow enough that his shoulders nearly brushed both sides. It had been designed as a service access rather than a proper connection between floors, built for municipal employees who had once used the apartment above as an office and storage room. The steps were steep, the edges rounded by decades of boots, and the overhead light had burned out sometime during the previous winter. Tomas had replaced the bulb twice, but the wiring remained unreliable.

He began his descent. The changing elevation confused his body more than crossing a level floor. His eyes followed the stairs downward, while the damaged systems inside his head insisted that the floor was rising toward him. The frame attempted to correct for both reports. With each step, the hip assembly tightened, released, then tightened again, holding his weight while his left leg arrived a fraction later than it should.

Tomas gripped the rail. First the right foot. Pause. Followed by the left foot. The actuator dragged slightly before locking into place.

The person outside knocked again.

“I heard you.”

A woman’s voice carried through the shutter. “Then perhaps you could move with greater conviction.”

Tomas recognized Amara Bell immediately. He continued down without answering. Halfway to the shop floor, his left knee failed to register the edge of a step. The foot moved too far forward. His stomach lurched as the staircase seemed to shift beneath him, but the spinal support tightened and pulled him back against the rail before gravity could finish the argument.

Metal struck metal.

Click. Whirr. Click.

Tomas waited for the stairs to settle. Below him, Relay sat on the workbench amid the remains of whatever he had knocked over. The rust colored cat looked up at Tomas with mild interest, one paw resting on a spool of copper wire that had somehow escaped its container.

“You could help.”

Relay lowered his head and began washing the paw.

Tomas reached the bottom step.

The shop was colder than the apartment. The concrete floor had retained the chill from the night, and the walls carried the dampness of old underground structures that had never been properly sealed. His breath showed faintly as he moved toward the main power panel.

Rusk Analog and Neural Repair occupied what had once been a municipal appliance service office. The original counter remained near the entrance, though Tomas had cut away one section to make space for larger prosthetics and mobility equipment. Shelves rose along every wall, some bolted properly into concrete, others supported by pieces of pipe and brackets Tomas had fabricated from scrap. Their weight had bowed several of the boards in the middle.

Nothing in the shop was arranged according to any system another person could understand. Bundles of wire hung from hooks above the workbench, separated by gauge, conductor material, and the likelihood that Tomas might need them before the end of the week. Prosthetic joints rested beside radio components, cracked diagnostic tablets, salvaged optical sensors, and an obsolete cardiac scanner that had not functioned in nine years but still contained three parts worth keeping.

A row of small drawers covered the wall behind the main bench. Each carried a handwritten paper label: Connectors, Filaments, Neural pins, Seals, Fasteners, useful, Fasteners, probably useful and Fasteners, unidentified.

Tomas had once maintained a digital inventory. Then a manufacturer update had removed every component whose service life had officially expired, which amounted to most of the shop. The next morning, the system informed him that he possessed forty three empty drawers and suggested he purchase authorized replacements. He had printed the inventory, deleted the software, and returned to paper.

The knocking came again as Tomas activated the main breaker. The shop lights flickered overhead. The first row illuminated. The second flashed once and died. A lamp above the repair bench came on with a low hum, brightened, then dimmed until the filament glowed the color of old honey.

Tomas looked toward the voltage meter. The needle dropped sharply, recovered, then fell again. Mercy Row was pulling too much power from the municipal line. Or someone had reduced what the district was permitted to steal.

He watched the fluctuation through three cycles. They were not random. The loss followed a pattern, six seconds low, two seconds recovery, then low again. That was new.

“Tomas.”

Amara’s voice carried through the shutter with less patience than before.

“We’re closed.”

“You have never been closed.”

“It says so on the door.”

“The door also says Rusk An Log and Ne Ral Rep Ir.”

“The missing letters are decorative.”

“Open the shutter.”

Tomas disengaged the lock. The mechanism resisted. He pulled harder, and the shutter rose with a metallic groan that echoed through the narrow passage outside.

Cold air entered first followed by Dr. Amara Bell. She stepped beneath the rising shutter without waiting for it to clear her head, carrying something wrapped in a faded clinic towel. Her coat was buttoned incorrectly, one side hanging lower than the other, and her dark hair had been gathered into a loose knot that had begun to collapse during the walk from the clinic. A narrow pair of magnifying lenses rested on top of her head.

Amara was fifty two, though she treated age as a clerical detail that did not warrant discussion. She had the compact, economical movements of someone who spent most of her life in rooms too small for hesitation. Tomas had seen her perform surgery during a power failure with a flashlight held between her teeth. He had also seen her refuse to treat a man until he apologized to the nurse he had insulted.

People in Mercy Row trusted Amara with their bodies. They trusted Tomas with everything attached to them.

Relay lifted his head as she placed the towel on the workbench.

“You,” Amara said to the cat, “move.”

Relay did not.

Amara pulled the towel toward herself. The cat remained on it and slid several centimeters across the bench before deciding his dignity had been sufficiently threatened. He jumped down, landed beside Tomas, and disappeared beneath the counter.

“What happened?” Tomas asked.

Amara opened the towel. A pediatric respiratory regulator lay inside. The housing had once been white but had yellowed with age. A dark burn mark spread from the lower control port, and the flexible line connecting it to the mask had been patched twice with medical sealant.

Tomas recognized the unit.

“Niko?”

Amara nodded.

“It failed sometime after three. His mother woke when the pressure alarm started.”

“Is he breathing?”

“The emergency unit is running.”

“How long will it hold?”

“If the clinic voltage stays where it is, perhaps four hours. Less if the compressor overheats.”

Tomas lifted the regulator. The casing was still warm. He turned it over and examined the burn near the control port. Someone had already removed two of the screws, leaving shallow scratches around the heads.

“You opened it.”

“I looked inside.”

“With what?”

“A surgical driver.”

“That explains the screws.”

“It was dark.”

“That explains your coat.”

Amara looked down. She noticed the uneven buttons, frowned, then left them as they were.

“Can you repair it?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether you stand there asking how long.”

Amara folded her arms, but did not move. Tomas carried the regulator to the main workbench and swept aside several components, a cracked audio relay, two prosthetic finger joints, and a dismantled kettle he had promised the bakery owner would be ready yesterday. He placed the respiratory unit beneath the lamp and selected a driver from the magnetic strip along the wall.

The first screw turned easily. The second did not. Tomas applied more pressure, and the stripped head slipped beneath the tool.

He looked at Amara.

She raised one eyebrow. “Dark,” she repeated.

Tomas chose a smaller extraction bit.

Behind him, the coffee unit began its morning cycle, trying to draw water through a mineral clogged line. The heating coil clicked twice and produced the smell of hot metal without coffee.

Amara rubbed her hands together.

“It is freezing in here.”

“The heating failed.”

“I noticed.”

“Blocks C through F.”

“And part of G.”

Tomas looked up.

“Part of G?”

“The clinic examination rooms are cold. The pharmacy still has heat.”

“That puts the failure past the western junction.”

“How do you know?”

“The fan upstairs stopped rattling.”

Amara watched him remove the final screw. “Most people wake when something starts making noise.”

“Most people do not listen.”

The casing came apart. Inside, the regulator was worse than the exterior suggested. The control filament had burned through near the power input, leaving a blackened trace across the board. Two nearby contacts had softened from heat. The insulating layer around the conditioning circuit had cracked.

Tomas leaned closer. The smell of burned polymer remained trapped inside. “How many fluctuations last night?”

“At least six that I noticed.”

“Long drops or short?”

“Short at first. The last one shut down half the clinic.”

“And you kept this connected?”

“Niko was using it.”

“You have battery isolation.”

“We had battery isolation. It failed last month.”

“You did not bring it to me.”

“You had three people waiting for prosthetic repairs and a water purifier disassembled across the floor.”

“That was not an answer.”

“It was the relevant fact.”

Tomas looked at her. Amara met his gaze without apology. Their arguments rarely ended. They merely became less urgent than whatever had caused them.

He removed the burned filament with a pair of fine forceps and placed it beneath the inspection lens. The break was clean at one end, melted at the other.

“Voltage surge,” he said.

“I assumed that from the smoke.”

“Repeated surges. The circuit tried to compensate until the filament failed.”

“Can you repair it?”

“You asked that already.”

“I am hoping repetition improves speed.”

“It does not.”

Tomas opened one of the labeled drawers and selected a replacement filament. The first was too narrow. The second had the correct resistance but would not tolerate the regulator’s startup load. He searched through a small box near the back of the bench and found an older medical grade filament wrapped around a ceramic spool.

Amara watched his hands.

Tomas could feel her attention shift. Not toward the regulator. Toward his frame. He ignored it.

The left hip actuator had begun to lag more noticeably after the staircase. Each time he shifted his weight, the support arrived late and corrected too aggressively. The movement produced a faint scrape beneath the housing.

Amara heard it.

“Your frame sounds worse.”

“It always sounds like this.”

“No. Yesterday it sounded like an angry cupboard. Today it sounds terminal.”

“You should hear your clinic generator.”

“I came here for a repair, not criticism.”

“You brought both.”

Amara stepped closer.

Tomas adjusted the inspection lamp and began fitting the new filament into place. The work required small, precise movements. His hands remained steady even when the frame did not.

Behind him, the coffee unit sputtered. A few drops fell into the pot. Then nothing.

Amara looked toward it. “Is that supposed to be coffee?”

“Eventually.”

“It smells like an electrical fire.”

“That is how you know it is working.”

Tomas secured the filament and tested continuity.

The reading held. He reconnected the power line using an isolated supply from the bench. The regulator came alive with a low tone. Pressure values appeared on its small display, climbed, then collapsed as the conditioning circuit failed to stabilize.

Tomas disconnected it immediately.

Amara saw his expression. “What?”

“The filament was not the only failure.”

“How bad?”

Tomas opened the circuit housing farther. A small stabilizer sat beneath the damaged insulating layer. Its casing had warped from heat, and one of the internal contacts had fused closed.

He touched the edge with a probe. No response.

“The power conditioner is gone.”

“Can you replace it?”

“Yes.”

Amara waited.

Tomas did not move. He knew the dimensions before measuring them. Twelve millimeters across. Medical response grade. Low latency. The same series used in older mobility supports and pediatric respiratory systems.

He looked toward the drawers beneath the main workbench. In the Third drawer, wrapped in antistatic material, was the replacement part he had acquired for his own frame.

Tomas remained still long enough for Amara to understand.

“No.”

“I did not say anything.”

“You made the face.”

“I have one face.”

“That is unfortunately true.”

Tomas set the probe down. “The regulator needs a stabilizer.”

“Then find another stabilizer.”

“I have one.”

“No.”

“Niko’s emergency unit will not last the morning.”

“And your frame may not last the walk to the clinic.”

“It will.”

“You do not know that.”

Tomas looked down at the left hip assembly. The frame produced a faint mechanical scrape as though offering its opinion.

“I know approximately.”

“That is not reassuring.”

He reached toward the control housing at his hip.

Amara placed her hand over the panel before he could open it.

Her fingers were cold.

“Tomas.”

He looked at her.

She was no longer irritated. The sharpness had left her face, replaced by something quieter and more difficult for him to dismiss.

“You need that part.”

“Niko needs to breathe.”

“There are other regulators in the city.”

“Not in Mercy Row.”

“I can send Lio to the South Market.”

“With what money?”

“We will find it.”

“And how long will that take?”

Amara did not answer. Tomas removed her hand gently from the housing.

“Niko needs it more.”

“That sentence is going to kill you one day.”

“Not today.”

He released the frame’s manual lock. The left support softened immediately. Without the actuator engaged, Tomas felt the room shift beneath him. He placed one hand against the workbench and waited until the motion settled.

Amara watched. Her mouth tightened. “Tomas.”

“I need you to hold the housing steady.”

“I will not help you dismantle the thing keeping you upright.”

“You are a physician.”

“Yes.”

“Then you understand triage.”

“I also understand self destructive behavior disguised as practicality.”

“That sounds expensive.”

“It is free, since you never pay me.”

Tomas opened the actuator panel. Inside, the components were packed tightly around the hip joint. He disconnected the response cable, loosened two retaining clips, and exposed the stabilizer.

It looked nearly new. He had installed it temporarily to test compatibility after acquiring it, intending to complete the replacement properly when he had time. Three weeks later, it remained in place.

Tomas removed it. The left side of the frame switched to manual fallback. The support stiffened at the hip and knee, locking his leg into a limited mechanical range. He could still walk, though each step would require him to lift the leg rather than allowing the frame to follow the motion naturally.

Amara stared at the empty space inside the actuator.

“You have made it worse.”

“Yes.”

“You sound pleased.”

“I am accurate.”

He carried the stabilizer to the workbench and began cleaning the contacts.

Amara stood beside him in silence, but Tomas preferred her criticism. Silence suggested she was thinking about him rather than the repair.

He fitted the stabilizer into the respiratory regulator’s conditioning circuit. The dimensions matched closely enough, though he needed to modify one contact and add a thin ceramic spacer beneath the housing.

The work took twelve minutes. Amara did not ask how long again. When Tomas reconnected the isolated supply, the regulator activated. Pressure climbed across the display.

Five.

Eight.

Twelve.

It held.

The compressor engaged. A soft pulse of air moved through the attached line. Tomas watched for fluctuation. None came. He increased the simulated load, waited through two complete cycles, then switched the regulator to battery mode. The display remained stable.

“It will work,” he said.

“For how long?”

“If the clinic power continues surging, not long.”

“That was not what I asked.”

“It was the useful answer.”

Tomas closed the casing and replaced the screws. He discarded the one Amara had stripped and selected another from the drawer marked Fasteners, useful.

When he finished, he wrapped the regulator in the towel and pushed it toward her.

Amara did not pick it up. Her eyes remained on his frame. The left leg stood rigid beside him. The joint no longer adjusted to small shifts in balance, forcing Tomas to hold more of his weight through his right side and the edge of the workbench.

“You are coming with me,” she said.

“To the clinic?”

“Yes.”

“You can reconnect it.”

“I know.”

“Then I am not needed.”

“You are walking there so I can see whether you fall.”

“That seems inefficient.”

“I will enjoy being right.”

Amara took the regulator and wrapped the towel around it carefully. Tomas closed the actuator panel. The empty space where the stabilizer had been seemed larger once hidden.

He tested the frame. The right leg responded normally. The left remained stiff. He took one step away from the bench.

His body tilted. The frame corrected late and hard, forcing him to catch himself against the counter. A row of tools shifted beneath his hand.

Amara said nothing.

Tomas straightened. “I am fine.”

“You are functional.”

He looked at her.

Amara lifted the regulator against her chest. “You keep confusing the two.”

Outside, Mercy Row had begun to wake.

Voices moved through the central passage. A shutter opened somewhere nearby with a metallic crash. Water pipes groaned inside the walls, and the smell of bread drifted in from the bakery at the end of the block.

Above them, the old sign flickered to life.

RUSK AN LOG AND NE RAL REP IR.

The missing letters remained dark.

Tomas reached for his coat. Relay emerged from beneath the counter and climbed into the box of thermal insulation beside the workbench. He turned twice, settled into the material, and closed his eyes as if the morning’s work had exhausted him.

Tomas looked at the cat.

“You are in charge.”

Relay began to purr.

Amara raised the shutter the rest of the way.

Cold gray light entered the shop, carrying with it the sounds of Mercy Row and the first pale suggestion of morning.

Tomas followed her outside. His frame moved beside him.

Click. Whirr. Click.