The Work

"Placement is fast. The Network reminds runners that a placement is an opportunity, that an opportunity is a commitment, and that the two words appear in the same paragraph of your timesheet."

The safe town's economy is what pushes you into the dangerous parts of the floor. Every chain below is an errand on the surface and something else underneath, and six of the eight route you out past the line at least once.

The eight chains

A Measurement Requires Precision

Mr. Albright · Faraday +15. Examine the commission card on his counter, then bring back two components and no substitutes: a Calibrated Mainspring from the salvage cellar's staging crate, and an unbent Gauge Plate from the Frayed Quarter's bent stock rack. Pays a fitted Faraday piece made for nobody but you. Old money sends you to dig in the ruin it profits from.

A Runner Is Struggling

Dr. Synthesis · Faraday +12. Take the wellness referral from the tray by his tent, find the withdrawn runner holed up behind a boarded stall in the Frayed Quarter, and hand it over. He reads the fine print twice before folding it, which is smart of him. Pays a NeuroSync sample. Real care and organic marketing in one object.

We'll Need You to Come In

Karen · Pop-Up +14. Three placements, each one further from the booth. Take a gig sheet from the board; verify the dock manifest against the container stack; recover "abandoned equipment" from the Frayed Quarter, which turns out to have been defended rather than abandoned. The third is orientation, downstairs — the intake desk below the freight stairs. Benches, straps, a queue rail, and nobody else in the queue today.

Pays a Pop-Up voucher, a stamped timesheet, and — quietly — a copy of the Pens Override Key. That is the peaceful way into the conscription stash, and it means you never have to fight Pruitt for it.

Something I Can Use

Felicia Brand · Faraday +12. Three broadcast clips, pulled off the floor's own recording hardware: the exhibition clip from the duel-ring hoarding, the gig-zone clip from the dead billboard in the Frayed Quarter, and the intake clip from the recorder below the freight stairs. That last one never aired. You can tell, because it's true.

She watches all three twice and pays in a Concourse Residency dossier.

Tomorrow's Weather, Yesterday

Phil · Faraday +10. Read his forecast board, find the Anthology prop rack behind the set, and recover his old broadcast tape. Shows are filed by name; some of the names are blacked out. The label on the tape is in his handwriting and the date on it hasn't happened yet. He reads you tomorrow's weather, and this time you get to write it down.

Someone From the Show

Mr. Whiskerton · Faraday +10. Find the unstamped playbill scrap at the curio stall — every other item on that stall carries a prop-shop mark and this one doesn't — then find the racked costume behind the set. Cleaned, mended, tagged for reuse. The tag does not give a name. Take a button; the maker's mark matches his.

You tell him it's being taken care of. He says that's all he wanted to know, and waves at where a camera would be.

Keeping the Peace

Captain Wray · Faraday +20, Pop-Up −15. Seven steps and the longest thing on the floor.

Take a deputy slip from the guard-post board. Investigate stall shrinkage at the salvage-cellar ledger — goods go down, age, come back up as "found," and every cycle is countersigned with a guard stamp. Investigate vandalism on the set-strut bracing, which turns out to be measurements: someone was pacing the pens from behind the set and marking the doors. Deliver the Captain's sealed writ to the pens intake desk; the seal breaks in transit and it is a transfer order, by headcount, guard-countersigned. You were the courier. Take the countersigned page. Same stamp on the rackets, the quota, and your deputy slip.

Then the muster door on Guild Row — which needs Signal 40 to open. The muster room is larger inside than the town allows. She is in there, on schedule, and the door locks behind you out of courtesy. The peace, she will explain, has a supplier.

Outside, the market noise never stops. The town never hears a thing. That was the deal all along.

Chip In

The fountain itself · Faraday +5. The one thing on this floor everyone builds instead of takes. The notice on the rim reads FOUNTAIN OUT OF SERVICE. Parts wanted. Anyone. Whatever you can carry — handwritten, and countersigned by forty hands.

Get a fountain part (the fix-it stall's bin sells them at cost; the cellars have them free, plus interest) and fit it at the rim. Water moves somewhere inside. Not much, but it moves, and the notice gains your mark.

It is communal and it is per-season. Every runner's contribution adds to one floor-wide count. At 25 the fountain visibly changes; at 60 it runs again. You may chip in as many times as you like. Chipping in once earns you a hand-cut civic pin, which is bound to you and which the fountain keeps a chit of at the bottom, where everyone can see it.

Karen's gig board, afterwards

Close We'll Need You to Come In and Karen adds a line to her greeting: "Got another opening for me?" The board never empties. The rate does.

Work the whole earning window and you clear roughly 13 chits and +10 Pop-Up on top of the chain's own +14 — enough to go from Onboarded toward Placed. After that it is one chit a job forever. It is a way to level, not a way to farm, and Pop-Up designed the curve themselves.

Next → The Duel Ring — the one fight in town, and it's consensual.

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