“Load transferred,” the operator called, eyes on the spool. His voice slipped a notch lower. “Cable’s good.”
“Good,” the captain answered, like a schoolteacher checking a box she’d carved herself into the form. “Everyone up. Reset behind the new line.”
We rose in inches, not feet. Knees unkinked; shoulders re-learned down. The human machine, which had been all torque and grit a heartbeat ago, pivoted to care. On the bank, Ms. Patel took another headcount as if numbers were blankets. Twenty-four names. Twenty-four faces. The pizza box turned soft under her pen and still did the job.
Luke started to belly-crawl back from the lip and then the river changed its mind.
From upstream came a sound like a door slammed in a house you don’t live in—one of those hollow booms that doesn’t belong to rain. A culvert gave way, or a section of retaining wall finally decided to be water. The current shouldered through the pit a shade darker, a little higher, and a lot meaner. The bus yawed, just a breath, the cable tightening to a note you could feel in your molars.
