The single lightbulb over the workbench flickered as Mikhail leaned closer, the old blueprint wrinkling under his hand. Pencil tucked behind his ear, ruler trembling slightly in his grip, he adjusted the support column measurements for the fourth time. The scratch of graphite on paper filled the quiet space, broken only by the occasional gust of wind rattling the workshop window. Dust floated through the air like ash in a lamplight.
He didn't flinch at the cold, not tonight. The past few hours had stripped away the romantic fantasy of getting a second chance. Now, the raw truth stared back at him in millimeter lines and failed math. His first plant hadn't collapsed because of fate. It had collapsed because of him. He was the weakness in the foundation.
A note beside the load-bearing calculations caught his eye. It was his own handwriting, scrawled, arrogant, rushed. From his old life. He grimaced and erased it violently. Then redrew. Slower this time. Sharper.
"Don't rush this," he muttered aloud. The pencil paused between his fingers. "That's what buried you last time."
He reached for another page and began retracing the material estimates. Limestone haul. Water table risk. He remembered the day the supply line failed, the concrete arriving late and drying unevenly. The inspector walking out. The lawsuit.
Every mark he made now was a correction not just of the blueprint, but of himself.
A sudden gust pried the door slightly ajar with a creak. Mikhail turned, eyes narrowing at the sound, then returned to the paper. Just wind. Nothing more. But the silence that followed pressed heavier against his neck.
He pressed on. The steel reinforcement lattice, too narrow. He widened it. Calculated cost. Re-balanced the concrete volume to offset. His fingers moved automatically, but his mind tracked every step with relentless clarity. Mistakes were no longer abstract lessons from the past. They were ghosts, still breathing down his neck.
His pencil snapped.
He didn't curse, just grabbed another and kept going.
The shop's overhead bulb gave a sharp pop and dimmed. For a second, only the desk lamp lit the room. Shadows stretched like claw marks across the wall.
He didn't stop.
The final page lay before him, the workflow diagram. It had been the seed of disaster before. He could almost hear Erik yelling in the old office, papers flying, deadlines missed.
Mikhail redrew the floor plans,sequence. He slashed redundancies, shifted personnel allocations and recalculated delivery schedules. The lines on the page moved in harmony now. Not perfect, but honest. Functional.
The eraser wore down to the nub.
He blinked hard, rubbing his eyes. The blueprints were cleaner now. Tighter. Real.
His body ached as he leaned back, knuckles cracked. He didn't smile. There was no room for pride. Only readiness.
Then, A click behind him.
His spine straightened. Someone had opened the door.
Boots. Light ones.
A soft voice, laced with sarcasm and curiosity, drifted in from the threshold.
"Still dreaming, Mikhail?"
Mikhail didn't turn around right away. His hand hovered over the last blueprint, fingers stained with graphite, knuckles raw from hours of drawing. He recognized the voice —,Kat. It had a little laugh tucked inside it, as if she wasn't sure whether to mock him or admire him.
"Come take a look," he said without looking up.
She stepped inside, her boots tapping lightly against the concrete floor. The chill from the outside clung to her jacket, and when she passed behind him, a brief waft of cold air brushed his neck. She stopped just over his shoulder. He could feel her eyes scanning the pages.
"You redrew all of this?" she asked.
Mikhail nodded. "Had to." He tapped a line with the pencil stub. "That beam used to be misaligned. Caused a chain reaction on the whole north wall."
Kat leaned closer, brow furrowing as she followed his finger across the page. "You fixed the material estimates too. These numbers… that's smart. You're accounting for weather delays?"
"And supplier inconsistencies. Hoffmann used to get his aggregate from a broker that lied on the volume by ten percent. I adjusted for that."
She blinked. "You've done your homework."
"I lived through the collapse," he said flatly.
Kat didn't answer. She reached for the edge of one page and gently flipped it. "This is clean. Aggressively clean. I've never seen anyone this obsessed with a planning sequence."
Mikhail gave a dry smile. "I've had time to think."
Kat walked around the table, the lamplight catching the edge of her cheekbone, making her eyes sharper. "So what's the endgame here? You fix the blueprints, buy some dusty lot, and suddenly become king of concrete?"
"No." He met her gaze, his voice steady. "I will build it right this time. I don't need a kingdom. Just something that doesn't fall apart."
She studied him a second longer, then gestured to a far corner. "I saw an old pouring schedule binder in that cabinet. Want it?"
Mikhail stood, joints creaking as he crossed the room with her. "Yeah. That'd help."
Kat opened the rusted door and reached inside, pulling out a weathered blue binder thick with notes. A dead spider clung to the edge. She flicked it off with a pencil and handed the binder over.
"Thanks," he said.
"Don't thank me yet." She folded her arms. "I still haven't said I'll help."
"You're here," Mikhail said, flipping through the pages. "That's more than most."
Kat raised an eyebrow, then moved back to the workbench. "Show me where you want to start."
He spread out a fresh sheet and began sketching the batching flow. She leaned in again, less skeptical this time. Her pencil joined his.
For the next twenty minutes, they argued softly — over ratios, pump capacity, rebar angles. She caught a mistake in his slope calculation; he corrected one of her yield estimates. It was messy, but alive.
Finally, she set her pencil down and stepped back. "You might actually be serious," she said.
"I am."
"Good. Because if this goes wrong, I'm not eating gravel just to say I helped."
A sharp rap came at the workshop door. Both froze.
Then a muffled voice cut through the night. "You Mikhail DuPont? Come out. We've got business."