Rosie ‘Rustbucket’'s Arc

Chapter 10 of 16

The man didn't answer right away. He set down his pen and pulled the book closer, studying the diagram she'd matched to her notes. His finger traced the labels in pre-war script, then stopped at a component number she'd copied from the loading bay. He flipped pages, checking something, then looked at her with an expression she couldn't place. "These aren't separate parts," he said. He turned the yellowed blueprint toward her and tapped three different sections. "This is a distribution grid. Turbines here. Regulators here. Storage tanks connected through the cooling system. You've been salvaging pieces of a power station." He read the header text aloud, translating as he went. "Municipal Energy Distribution System — Integrated Design for Settlements Under Five Thousand." Rosie stared at the blueprint. Every part number she'd logged matched a component on the page. The cooling units weren't standalone machines. They were nodes in a network designed to power an entire town. The man pulled a rusted rack from the corner and began arranging her diagrams on its shelves according to the blueprint's layout. Turbines on the top tier. Pressure regulators below that. Cooling units at the bottom with connection points facing outward. The system assembled itself in front of her, each bracket holding a piece that fed into the next. She'd spent six years learning to salvage individual components without understanding what they built toward. The Ravens were digging for a complete system, not scrap metal. If they pulled it intact, they'd control power for every settlement within a hundred miles. Rosie took the blueprint and folded it carefully. "How long to teach me enough script to read assembly instructions?" The man looked at the diagrams on the rack, then at her notebook. "Four weeks for basics. Six months to read technical documents without help." She didn't have six months. The Ravens would strip that loading bay clean in three days. But she had something they didn't — a map of what the system was supposed to become. She could learn to read it later. Right now, she needed to decide whether to salvage what she could before they did, or find a way to keep that power out of their hands entirely.