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“Put my name underneath it and you can have it.” I slid the job sheet back across the workbench. “My actual name, Adrian. In the box where it says objections.”

He kept his hand on the paper, covering the empty space. “You’re being asked to confirm that the equipment will perform as specified. Nothing beyond that.”

“The equipment will perform beautifully. That’s what bothers me.”

Beside the soldering station, Cora stopped peeling the backing off a replacement label. She had the sticky strip caught on her thumb. Ivo sat at the test console with both hands off the keyboard, like a driving instructor had just climbed into the passenger seat.

Adrian Vale moved his hand. The cuff of his shirt had picked up a black smear from our workbench. He inspected it without complaining, which bothered me more than a complaint would have.

“What exactly are you objecting to?” he asked.

I reached past his elbow and woke the wall display. The ferry concourse filled the screen, people bunching around the departure board beneath our workshop. I switched to the plaza plan and pulled the proposed rally views alongside it.

“Those cameras.” I marked the six positions with the cursor. “All the approach heads. Every one facing west.”

“Toward the event.”

“Toward the stage. The event includes people coming into it.” I tapped the east service road on the plan. “They come through here too.”

“The east road is controlled access.”

Cora pulled the label off her thumb and laid it flat. “Controlled by a bent gate and a man who goes downstairs to smoke.”

“There will be additional personnel.” Adrian glanced at her. “This isn’t the usual operating arrangement.”

“I hope the gate’s getting the same briefing.”

Ivo made a small choking sound and bent over his mug. Adrian waited until he put it down.

“This is an approved security configuration,” Adrian continued. “We’re not redesigning it in the workshop.”

“Fine. Show me the approval.”

He pointed at the sheet between us. My name was printed above a neat green check. Under it, the work order instructed us to apply the mayor’s rally preset when the plaza closed to ordinary traffic.

“I didn’t approve that,” I said.

Ivo’s chair scraped the floor. “I didn’t put it there.”

“Nobody said you did.” I kept my eyes on Adrian. “Where did the package come from?”

“The event operations office.”

“Who there?”

“It came through the authorized channel, Lena.”

“That’s a route. I’m asking for a person.”

He picked up the paper by its clean edge. “There’s no value in making this adversarial.”

I had a half-repaired power supply open between us. Its loose screws were sitting in a jar lid, and I wanted him to stop moving that sheet over them. I wanted to finish the power supply, sign a normal job and get the burnt smell out of my hair. Instead, I moved the lid out of his reach.

“Ivo, tell me what you loaded. Start with the file you received.”

He rubbed the heel of his hand against his trousers. “The rally package. Signed, no warning, correct job number. I loaded it under my account like you told me. Preview only.”

“Did you open the approval panel?”

“No. I can’t approve anything. That’s sort of a recurring theme of my employment.”

“Good. Keep it that way until somebody pays you for it,” Cora muttered.

Adrian set the sheet down. “Nobody is accusing the trainee of anything.”

“He has a name,” I said. “And this is his workstation.”

“I know whose workstation it is.”

“Then you know why I’m asking him.” I pulled a stool over, letting Ivo keep his chair. “Show me the load record. Don’t run the package.”

He opened the job history. His account had imported it. The status remained incomplete; nothing had gone out to the field. Below the imported approval, a blank supervisor acceptance box waited for me.

Cora came around the bench. “So what’s that green tick worth?”

“It says someone approved the design before we got it,” I told her. “It doesn’t mean we’ve accepted the work.”

“Then don’t accept it.”

“That’s what we’re discussing,” Adrian said.

“No, you’re discussing it. She’s already told you.” Cora reached past Ivo for the pack of labels. “You two can keep doing that, but I need the bench back. Half the terminal thinks a printer’s broken when it needs paper.”

Ivo pushed his mug out of her way. “That was one call.”

“You took a screwdriver.”

“It could’ve needed a screwdriver.”

“You came back with paper.”

He smiled despite himself. Adrian didn’t. Behind the wall, a ferry horn pushed through the room hard enough to rattle the loose panel on our vent. He waited for it to pass, his lips pressed together.

“The east road serves a protected location,” he said. “There are people whose movements we cannot put into an ordinary transport recording system.”

I left the mouse alone. “What kind of protected location?”

“A refuge. Women who’ve been threatened. Some are witnesses.”

Cora put her labels down.

Adrian looked at me rather than her. “That information stays here. The instruction is not an aesthetic preference. We have a duty to people who can be identified by where they’re seen.”

There were doors along that road I had never needed to open. Delivery entrances, a boarded office, the narrow passage under the ferry ramp. I knew the camera views better than I knew the buildings. That wasn’t the same as knowing what happened inside them.

“Then give me the restricted-view instruction,” I said. “It doesn’t need anybody’s name or address. The safeguarding lead can confirm the area we’re supposed to mask.”

“Turning the heads away achieves the same result.”

“It takes away the whole road. A mask would leave us the gate and the crossing.”

“We’re not adding a complication the security team hasn’t tested.”

“Neither am I.”

His phone vibrated against the paper. He turned it over without reading it. “You know what happens to a location once somebody puts it in an email. It gets forwarded. Someone includes the wrong attachment. I’m trying to keep those people off a list.”

“I don’t want a list. I want the person responsible for safeguarding to tell me this is their request.”

“I’m responsible for civic operations.”

“And I’m responsible for accepting camera work.” I kept my voice level. “I won’t use my own name without knowing what I’m accepting. I definitely won’t use it because somebody’s already put it on a form.”

Ivo’s fingers hovered over the keyboard.

“Leave it open,” I told him. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Adrian drew a breath through his nose. “I can authorize an operational exception.”

“Can you put that in the job?”

“I’m giving it to you directly.”

“Then directly put it in the job.”

“Lena.”

“I’m not asking you to overwrite the approval or hide where the package came from. There’s an exceptions field. It keeps the audit history. Your name, your instruction, my objection. We can send it to the security lead and get a decision.”

He considered the screen. Ivo shifted his chair enough to let him reach the keyboard, but Adrian stayed where he was.

“No test footage leaves this room,” he said. “Not to a personal device, not to somebody you think should have a look. I need you all to understand that.”

“We understand handling restrictions,” Cora replied. “We work here.”

“I’m making the instruction explicit.”

“You could make the other one explicit while you’re at it.”

Adrian’s phone vibrated again. He picked it up and slid it into his coat pocket. “Keep the package in preview. Don’t deploy it. I’ll have the acceptance issue addressed.”

“The field stays on the normal preset,” I said. “And the job stays incomplete.”

“For now.” He lifted his paper. “I’d appreciate a little room to get this resolved.”

Cora moved her tool bag off the path to the door. He thanked her, and she let him out without answering.

I listened to his shoes on the metal stairs. Ivo watched the approval box until the door closer caught and the workshop settled around the hum of the racks.

“Am I in trouble?” he asked.

“No.”

“With him. I know you’re not shouting at me.”

“I don’t know what he’s going to do.”

Cora took Adrian’s abandoned stool and brought it over. “That’s better than telling him everybody’s happy. Nobody comes up those stairs happy unless they need a favor.”

“I should’ve looked before I loaded it.” Ivo pulled the job history wider. “I saw the signature and thought, okay, finally, something I can just do.”

“You loaded a file into preview,” I said. “That’s why preview exists.”

“I know what it’s for.”

“All right.” I moved my hand off the back of his chair. “Show me what you noticed. Not what you think I want.”

He stopped worrying the seam of his trousers. “The stage already has a camera.”

“It does.”

“So why give it six more? We’re not producing the mayor’s show.”

Cora pointed at the separate broadcast feed on the plan. “That one belongs to the event crew. Don’t mix it with ours.”

“I’m not. The broadcast shot’s tight. It doesn’t see the road either.” He turned toward me. “Can we run the preview without accepting?”

“That’s the next job. Local preview only, no field commands.”

He selected the test environment and left the output control in view. I checked it beside him. The page showed our fixed camera sites, with their pan-and-tilt heads represented by little cones. As the rally package ran, each cone swung toward the stage. The area behind the loading bays emptied of coverage.

Cora leaned in. “Go back.”

Ivo reset the preview.

“Run it again. Same screen.”

“Nothing’s going to change.”

“I’m looking at the permissions, not the pretty arrows.”

He expanded the narrow panel below the map. Cora had spotted the tiny linked symbol beside each head. We used shared control groups for floods and road closures, when field crews needed to stop fighting each other for a camera. This group hadn’t been in the ordinary plaza job.

“Who’s MARR-oh-four?” Ivo asked.

I read the entry over his shoulder. MARR-04. External contingency control. All six heads belonged to it under the proposed package.

“Open the description,” I said.

He did. It gave us a credential type and a recovery contact field we couldn’t open from his account. No person. No office number.

Cora’s thumbnail pressed into the edge of the bench. “Can that thing take control off us?”

“If the package goes live, it gets the permissions shown there.” I checked the list. “Pan, tilt, preset recall. I can’t tell from this screen who holds it.”

“Does it get recording?”

“Not listed here.”

“Could another bit of the package give it recording?”

“Yes. We need to check the rest.”

Ivo turned back to the map. “So he comes down here himself to get us to approve a package he won’t put his own name on.”

“Up here,” Cora corrected.

“What?”

“He comes up here. People downstairs think we live in the ceiling.” She pulled the spare stool closer to his. “Don’t put a story on it yet. It might be an ugly job, not a conspiracy.”

I knew the tone. She used it with me when I wanted to replace a whole run of cable instead of finding the bad join. She was usually right about the cable.

“You think I should’ve accepted it?” I asked.

“I think he’s got a phone full of people who can make this unpleasant.” She kept her eyes on the screen. “Dev’s rehab payment finally cleared. I don’t feel like finding out how many people at council can send it back.”

“That’s not the same budget.”

“I know what budget it is.”

Ivo started to speak, then swallowed whatever he had ready.

Cora turned to him. “Go on.”

“I was going to say they can’t do that.”

“Well. Keep that lovely thought.” She reached over and straightened the loose label on his keyboard tray. “I’m not telling you to run. I’m telling you not to assume Lena can make this harmless.”

I sat on the edge of the workbench. Under the window, Cora’s tool bag still had a ferry ticket tucked into the handle. She’d been taking the boat to the rehab center so Dev wouldn’t see how much she hated driving his car. I hadn’t asked how she was getting home.

“We can stop at the fault,” I said. “Reject the job, preserve the incomplete record, request a fresh package. That’s normal work.”

“And if the fresh package’s got your name on it?” Ivo asked.

“We reject that too.”

“You’ve got a permanent post.”

He said it without a joke, and I let it stay there. His mug sat on a folded pay slip with an agency logo on the corner. I had told him to stop leaving it where people could read it. He’d told me nobody in this room was going to learn anything cheerful.

“I can put the rejection under my account,” I said. “The import stays under yours. I won’t change that.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“I know. I’m telling you what I can do.”

Cora looked between us. “And we’re not deleting anything. Whatever clever option they offer, we keep what arrived.”

“On this machine,” I said. “Adrian’s instruction about exports still stands. I’m not putting a protected view on somebody’s phone.”

“Wasn’t asking you to.” Cora pulled Ivo’s mug away from his elbow. “You can quit looking at me like I’ve got a thumb drive in my teeth.”

“I was looking at the coffee.”

“Then you’ll be pleased I saved it.”

Ivo opened the ordinary operations view beside the test map. The field cameras were still on their normal settings. A delivery truck waited outside the east gate, and a worker in a fluorescent vest waved it forward. Beyond it, the service road narrowed beside a concrete wall stained by water from the ramp.

“There,” Ivo said. “Normal preset. Actual feed.”

“Leave it there,” I told him. “I want to compare the gate edge with the proposed view.”

Cora reached for her mug and discovered it empty. She held it toward me. I shook my head. She set it down, staying beside the console.

A woman in a gray coat walked into the road view. She carried a folded white sign against her chest, its wooden stick poking below her elbow. A gust caught the loose edge and she pressed it flat with her palm. I couldn’t read the writing.

Ivo moved the cursor away from the gate. “She’s going the wrong way for the stage.”

“She might work here,” Cora said.

“With a protest sign?”

“We don’t know it’s a protest sign,” I said, though I couldn’t think what else she’d brought it for.

A notification opened across the job panel. Ivo took his hands off the desk.

“I didn’t touch that.”

The server notification listed a preview-cache erase awaiting delivery to this workstation. Under it, a second pending instruction would close the job as approved, supervisor Lena Rusk.

“Don’t click anything,” I warned.

“It’s queued. I’m not—”

“I know.” I crouched beneath the bench and found the workstation’s network lead. The rack connections ran through the tray above it; I left them alone. My finger slipped on the little retaining tab, and I pressed harder until it released.

The road picture stopped. Above my head, Ivo drew his chair back to give me room. I held the loose cable clear of its socket, leaving his machine powered and its preview cache where it was.

“Lena,” Cora said quietly. “That’ll register.”

“I know.” I stood with the lead in my hand. “Don’t reconnect it.”