The Overpass
Mission 001
Two spans down, a bus with them, water rising. The armor lifted the rear axle while Relay talked the family through it on the radio. Four trips back into the wreck. The first chalk star came a week later.
After-action // fiction

Selected entries from three years of pings — each one logged, each one answered.
Mission 001
Two spans down, a bus with them, water rising. The armor lifted the rear axle while Relay talked the family through it on the radio. Four trips back into the wreck. The first chalk star came a week later.
Flood evacuation
Eleven children, eleven waist-deep trips through black water, six hours. The armor sang — Relay's log notes it, once, and never explains: “humming on channel 3. Kept the kids calm.”
Harbor squall
Power lost, gangway cable whipping. The armor held the cable for forty minutes — a human anchor in a storm — while every passenger crossed. Gone before the authority launch arrived.
City blackout
Seventeen intersections, seventeen beacons, one night. The Wards navigated by orange light, and by morning the intersections had chalk stars — Pip had followed the whole route.
Ping 300
Two workers on a collapsed scaffold, one with a broken leg. Eleven words on the radio, both souls down safe, scaffold stabilized. Textbook — if the textbook covered seven-foot exosuits.
Longer files: The Protocol, Distress Calls, After-Action.