Griswald planted his heel on the brass tag as the freight sled burst through an unmapped throat. One of six taut wall cords had dragged it to the spool below Two Down's account floor; it struck the third tooth beneath his boot as the two cages rattled through the dock lip behind it.
Above them, four fixed black plates held the street as down while water and loose cords streamed sideways toward the other roadback, a route absent from Griswald's maps.
One long cut above six short marks identified Griswald's seventh account. Beneath the spool, a drum turned an axle whose rod held the service-stair wedge through an inspection slot. A forked crank linked that rod to the third plate's cradle; the cradle's crossarm carried the lower guide.
"Keep your boot on the tag; if the cord turns that drum, it pulls the wedge from under the stair," Terva called from the first cage.
