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+The heavy, rhythmic thud of the hydraulic press was the only heart Cypress Bend had left, and it was skipping beats. 
+
+Marcus Thorne didn’t look at the readout; he felt the stutter in the soles of his boots. He adjusted his glasses with a quick, silver-sharp flick of his finger, a tactile reset for a mind currently processing three failing sub-systems and one very real, very physical threat. Across the shop floor, the air smelled of ozone, damp pine, and Arthur’s old tobacco.
+
+"She’s fighting the casing, David," Arthur grunted, his voice a low hammer-strike. He didn't look up from the lathe. His right hand, scarred and permanently curved to the shape of a wrench, moved with a grace his trembling left couldn't match. "The tolerances on these scavenged bearings are trash. You can’t software-patch a physical scream."
+
+David Shore didn't move his eyes from the bus-bar junction. He was cleaning his fingernails with a precision screwdriver—short, obsessive strokes that betrayed the staccato rhythm of his thoughts. "If it shears, it takes the ventilation grid with it, Arthur. Clean logic suggests we throttle back to sixty percent. The Sentinel is already sniffing the heat signature."
+
+"The Sentinel is already in the subnet," Marcus interrupted, his voice dropping into the cold, contraction-less void of Infrastructure Speak. "I have not told the others yet because panic is a variable we cannot afford to integrate. If we throttle the fans, the server rack in the ‘Ghost Nest’ will hit thermal shutdown in twelve minutes. Elena loses the bridge. We lose the Exodus."
+
+The warehouse groan intensified as a gust from Tropical Depression Zeta slammed into the Level 4 supports. The vibration reached through the floor, into their bones—a reminder that the swamp was trying to reclaim the steel even as the City-State tried to lock it.
+
+"Hmph," Arthur spat, finally turning. He rolled a lucky brass bolt between his knuckles. "You and your bridges, Marcus. You’re so worried about the digital ghost that you’re going to let the physical world collapse on our heads. I’ll fix the bearing, but I need David to hold the mount. He’s the only one with hands steady enough to keep the tension while I torque the seat."
+
+David looked at his singed forearm, the flash-burn a raw reminder of the grid's rot. He didn't look at Arthur. He looked at the machine. "Order of operations, then. I stabilize. You torque. Marcus, you keep the Sentinel out of the local mag-seals for ten more minutes. If those doors lock while we’re mid-repair, we aren't a sanctuary. We're an oven."
+
+Marcus rubbed his thumb against his index finger, his mind already overlaying the thermal bloom of the warehouse against the Sentinel’s search grid. "Agreed. I will buy you the time. But Arthur—if she screams again, the City-State will hear it on the seismic sensors."
+
+Arthur turned back to the lathe, his face a map of grease and stubbornness. "Then let 'em hear it. Let 'em know some things still make a noise when you try to break 'em."
+
+***
+
+# Character State: ch-23
+
+## Marcus Thorne
+Location: Warehouse-Level 4, "The Kiln"
+Physical: High exhaustion; manual tremors masked by rigid posture.
+Emotional: Crystalline terror; hyper-focused on system survival.
+Active obligations: Owes the Exodus Group a viable exit vector (Ch01) — UNPAID; Owes Arthur a "logical" reason to leave the workshop (Ch23) — UNPAID.
+Open loops: Marcus vs. The UBI Sentinel [cyber-siege] (Ch01) — UNRESOLVED; Marcus vs. System Arrogance [hiding the breach] (Ch23) — UNRESOLVED.
+Known secrets: Knows the Sentinel has breached the primary partition — [Arthur and David do NOT know].
+Arc: 35% — Admitted the Sentinel is an "infection" to be fled.
+Permanent: NO.
+
+## Arthur "Art" Penhaligon
+Location: Warehouse-Level 4, Main Workbench
+Physical: Right wrist seized; chemical burn weeping; staggering under weight.
+Emotional: Berserker protectiveness; "The Iron Rule" is a physical barricade.
+Active obligations: Owes David a stabilized generator moun
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