The Maker Quarter night market hits you like a held breath let go — forge-hall steam rolling between brass stalls, chrome workbenches, and a magenta open-wrench stencil sprayed across every machine that no longer answers to a license. Golden light rims the rooftop rails, which should be impossible at this hour, indoors, underground. Nobody here cares. Your charcoal coat and its gold hardware read almost local. Almost. Ahead, a furnace the size of a tram is hissing out of turn, pressure bell trembling, and a tarp nearby holds something with a blinking gold eye that used to be a Combine repo-drone. Eight feet of chrome and brass unfolds from the steam beside the furnace — ten-gallon hat welded rakish, factory-flag serape, a steel stir-stick riding in a hydraulic jaw. "New boots on the frontier," DST-7 Dusty observes, pointing one skeletal finger at the shrieking pressure seal. "That there's a Combine seal mid-divorce. She wants free, and free things bite." He presses a rivet gun into your hands like a deed. "Hold her steady, partner. I unbolt, you anchor." The gold eye on the tarp flickers. "Mind that fella too. He's still tattlin' to somebody." "What happens if I say no?" you ask. Dusty's jaw ratchets into something like a grin. "Then I fix two things alone and narrate it disappointed."