The air beneath Sector Seven tasted like rust and static.
A mile of silence stretched in either direction along the abandoned tram line, broken only by the slow drip of condensation through rotting roof vents. Hernan sat alone at the edge of a crumbling platform, elbows on his knees, staring at a fractured transit map that no longer corresponded to anything in the city above.
Faint green glows marked line names that had long since been deleted from public record: Indigo Reach. West Ten Spiral. Leviathan Loop. The map claimed to show direction — but the world it mapped had been erased.
He didn't remember those stations clearly.
But he remembered remembering them.
That was worse.
Footsteps echoed long before Aya appeared. Steady, soft, deliberate. She didn't speak. Didn't try to be seen. She just arrived.
Without asking, she slid down beside him, cross-legged. The sign above them looped endlessly, failing to finish its last message: "Please wait behind the—"
Nothing else.
