Nibs Wirewhistle had two hours until dawn, and the storm outside had turned Roothaven's message exchange into a snarled mess. The big display above his station scrolled a list of undelivered calls so long the bottom entries kept slipping off. Nibs was orange, small, and running on three nights of bad sleep. Last Tuesday he had patched a merchant's call to the wrong district, and he could still feel Mrs. Fentwick's look from the records hall the next morning. If he cleared this backlog before the exchange master arrived, the head operator title was still possible. If he didn't, the complaints would bury him. He plugged, pulled, and rerouted as fast as his hands allowed. Halfway through a farmer's line to the grain office, he heard the hum shift. Three seconds later the line dropped, right on schedule with the small warning only he could hear. He swore and jacked into a backup jack before the caller noticed. But the board kept adding faster than he cleared. Then he looked at the tangle of cables feeding the main relay tower and had an idea that would either save him or finish him. In a crate under the desk lived a small clan of shaggy, puppet-limbed critters the night crew fed scraps to. They chewed anything with insulation. Nibs pried the crate open and tipped it toward the bundle of storm-fried lines running to the outer tower. "Go on," he whispered. "The frayed ones. Just the frayed ones." The fuzzy little goblins swarmed the cables. A purple one chewed through a scorched wire; a green one snapped a sparking junction clean off. Each broken line forced the board to reroute through the healthy trunks, and the backlog started shrinking. Nibs worked the panel with both hands, catching every rerouted call, hearing each drop three seconds early and saving it. The scrolling list shortened. Then it shortened again. When the last entry cleared, the sky outside was still dark, and Nibs sat shaking in his chair with fur tufts stuck to his sleeves. He had cleared the backlog. He had also chewed apart a quarter of the exchange's outer cabling with unauthorized animals, and the morning shift, and Mrs. Fentwick, would walk in to find the evidence in less than an hour.

Nibs stared at the empty crate under his desk. The cable-eating goblins had done their work on the outer lines, then squeezed through a vent and vanished into the walls. He could hear them now, faint chewing behind the plaster, moving toward the records hall. If Mrs. Fentwick heard that sound before he got them out, the fur tufts on his sleeves would be the least of his problems. He had maybe twenty minutes before the morning shift arrived. He pulled a folded floor plan from the drawer and spread it on the switchboard. A security display on the far wall traced movement through the exchange in thin colored lines, and three bright dots crawled through the wall cavity above the corridor. He matched the dots to the plan. The goblins were heading straight for the records hall, where a huge council billboard hung outside Mrs. Fentwick's door. The billboard showed her curly grey hair and hard pink face, lit from above, impossible to walk past without feeling watched. Nibs felt watched now, and she wasn't even in the room. He grabbed the laser pointer from the lost-and-found tin and ran. In the corridor he clicked it on, aimed the red dot at the baseboard, and jiggled it. The chewing stopped. He dragged the dot along the wall, back toward his station. A small thump followed inside the plaster. Then another. He kept the dot moving, slow enough to chase, fast enough to tease. He passed under the billboard without looking up. Halfway down the corridor a door creaked. Mrs. Fentwick's voice called out, asking who was there. Nibs froze, then flicked the dot hard around the corner. The thumps rushed after it. He heard her footsteps stop, then turn back into her office. He led the goblins the whole way to the open vent above his desk. One by one they dropped out of the wall, snapping at the red dot until he steered it into the crate. He slammed the lid and sat on it. His hands shook. The chewing was gone. The walls were quiet. He had pulled it off. Then he looked up at the security display and saw a fresh trail glowing on the screen, a bright line running from the records hall to his station, recorded and saved. Whoever checked the panel next would see exactly where the intruders had gone, and exactly who had been waiting at the other end.

The bright trail still glowed on the security display across the room. Nibs stared at it from his stool. A thin red line ran from the records hall wall, down the corridor, and stopped at the crate under his desk. Under the desk, the carrier hummed with soft thumps. He had draped a blanket over the top, but a green paw poked through the wire door, and a blue face pressed against the plastic side. He had ten minutes before the hallway watcher made her round to the display and read the panel. He knew who walked that round. Down the corridor, past the billboard, a small booth sat beside the stairwell. A stool, a clipboard, and a mug marked the spot where the watcher perched between sweeps. She checked the panel at the top of every hour. Nibs had heard her boots that morning already, slow and steady, pausing at each doorframe. If she reached the display before the trail was gone, she would follow the red line straight to his stool. He pulled open the bottom drawer and lifted out a small ring of tightly wound copper, a spare coil from the relay repairs. He had watched a technician wave one near the panel last month and wipe a whole afternoon of tracks by accident. Nibs slipped the coil into his sleeve like a bracelet and stepped into the corridor. He heard her boots two halls over. He walked toward the display with his hands loose at his sides. At the corner, he stopped and peeked around. The watcher stood at the far end, back turned, marking her clipboard. Nibs slid to the panel, pressed the coil flat against the glass, and dragged it across the recorded line. The trail broke into gray static, then went blank. He pocketed the coil and stepped back around the corner one breath before her boots turned his way. He reached his station and sat down hard. Under the desk, the carrier shifted. A muffled squeak came from inside the blanket. Nibs pressed his boot against the door to hold it steady. The display across the room now showed a clean floor plan, no trail, no dots, no evidence of the night. He had bought himself the morning. But the goblins were still under his desk, awake and hungry, and the morning shift was climbing the stairs. He could hear their voices already, and one of them was asking who had left a blanket on the floor.