Marek woke up already tired, which meant he’d slept. That was the first bad sign. The second was the sound—metal screaming somewhere down the tunnel like a train was being peeled open with a can opener. The hub lights did that stuttery half-life thing, bright, dim, bright, like they couldn’t decide whether to keep pretending. He lay there for one extra breath anyway. Private rule. Don’t pop up into the next mistake. Let the air tell you what kind of day it is. It smelled like wet concrete and sweat and cheap disinfectant. Normal. Except for the sour tang under it, like pennies on the tongue. Like lightning. Like the first time the sky broke.
He sat up on the bench and checked himself the way you check gear. Hands. Legs. Ribcage. No fresh holes. Good. His jacket was still his jacket. His bag was still under his knees where he’d looped an arm through the strap like a paranoid child. People were moving in jerks around him. Not flowing. Not queuing. Jerking. A woman with a toddler was dragging a suitcase with one wheel missing. A man in a transit vest was shouting at nobody. Someone was crying in the corner like they’d decided to start early and get it over with. The big board over the platform flashed CANCELLED in three languages and then glitched into a block of static.
Marek reached into his bag, counted without looking. Two protein bricks. Half a water bottle. A folding knife that couldn’t cut through anything that mattered but made people reconsider. One cheap lantern. Three matches in a bent tin. One spool of wire. A little pouch of salt he’d stolen because salt is stupidly valuable when everything turns into barter. Waste nothing. He stood and rolled his shoulders. They popped like old doors. A transit guard in a helmet that didn’t fit was pushing through the crowd with a baton held like a magic wand.
"Back from the gate!" the guard yelled, voice cracking on the second back. Marek looked toward the main concourse. A line had formed there, but it wasn’t a line. It was a pile with an idea of a line. People pressed toward the metal shutters where Saintfall Transit Hub’s inner doors were supposed to seal during emergencies. The shutters were half down. Half down was worse than up. Half down meant somebody important was making decisions while the rest of them waited to be sorted.
He took a step toward it anyway. A shoulder slammed him from the side. A guy in a puffy coat, eyes too awake, shoved past like Marek was furniture.
"Move," the guy snapped. Marek let himself be moved. Not because he was nice. Because he didn’t know the pathing yet, and you didn’t pick fights before you had a map. He watched the guy’s hands instead. No visible weapon. Good. Desperate, not predatory. Yet.
A speaker crackled overhead. A woman’s voice—too calm, too practiced.
"Saintfall residents, remain orderly. The inner concourse will admit families and essential personnel first. Present your wristbands. Do not approach the shutter." Wristbands. Marek’s wrist was bare. He’d never bothered with residency. He ran jobs. In and out. Keep moving. Don’t get on lists. Now the list mattered. He rubbed at the pale band of skin where a wristband would have sat.
His brain did that tired inventory thing where it tries to solve problems by listing them until one becomes a handle. Need: get inside. Need: not get trampled. Need: calories. Need: weapon that isn’t embarrassing. Need: stable point. He hated that last one. The word stable felt like a joke.
A kid—teen, maybe—bumped him hard and kept going, eyes fixed on the shutters like if he stared hard enough they’d lift for him personally. Marek caught the kid’s backpack strap and yanked him back just enough to make him stumble.
"Watch it," Marek said. The kid whirled, face flushed.
"Don’t touch me."
"Then don’t run into me," Marek said, and let go. Pettiness was cheap. Pettiness also kept you awake. He’d take whatever kept him awake.
The metal scream happened again, closer. This time it came with a thump that traveled through the floor into his ankles. The crowd flinched as one organism. Somebody shouted," They’re in the tunnels!" Somebody else shouted back," Shut up!" A third voice, high and ugly:" My sister’s down there!"
Marek didn’t look down the tunnel. Looking didn’t help. It never helped. The thing you needed to know was whether the sound meant time or no time. The guard with the wrong helmet shoved his baton into a man’s chest.
"Back!" the guard said. "Back or I swear—" The man grabbed the baton with two hands and yanked. The guard stumbled forward, went pale, and then swung wild. The baton caught the man’s jaw. Teeth clicked. Blood sprayed. The line-pile surged.
Marek stepped sideways out of the direct flow, pressed himself against a pillar, and watched like it was a raid going wrong. Watch first. Move second. That was another rule. He’d broken it enough times to pay for it in scars. Somewhere up above, a door alarm started wailing. Not a fire alarm. A security scream. The kind that meant something that should be shut was open.
Marek’s stomach tightened. Not fear exactly. More like his body remembering all the ways this went. He pushed off the pillar and started walking parallel to the pile, skirting the edges where people were too busy with forward to notice sideways. He spotted the admin booth—glass box, metal frame, a little raised platform, like a fish tank for the people who got to say no all day. Two transit admins inside, faces white, hands moving fast over a panel.
There was a narrow gate beside it. Keypad. Wristband reader. A man in a suit jacket—suit jacket in the hub, like he didn’t accept the new rules—was arguing at the glass.
"I have clearance," the man said, slapping his wrist against the reader. "I have clearance, you stupid—" The reader beeped red. The admin inside didn’t open the window. She mouthed something and pointed at a sign: NO WRISTBAND, NO ENTRY. The suit jacket man’s face did that thing where entitlement turns into panic too late.
Marek stepped close enough to hear through the glass.
"Please," the man said, and the word tasted like it hurt him. "My daughter is—" The other admin, a bald guy with a transit patch, shook his head hard. He pointed at a laminated sheet taped to the inside wall. Protocol. Always a protocol when the world was on fire.
Marek leaned in toward the suit jacket man like he was going to join the argument. Instead he watched the man’s wrist. There was a band. Just not the right kind. A thin strip of gray with a little metal tag. Not resident. Essential. Utility. A runner’s eye caught the details. The tag had a number stamped into it and a tiny notch that looked like it could slot into something. Marek’s fingers twitched. Waste nothing.
He stepped back. He needed a distraction small enough to be plausible and big enough to make hands move. He looked around. Saw a woman with a shopping trolley full of canned food pulled tight to her chest like a baby. Saw two men eyeing it. Saw the moment before cruelty becomes a plan.
Marek walked right up to the trolley woman and said,
"They’re going to take that." She blinked at him.
"What?" He nodded toward the two men without turning his head.
"Those two. They’ve already decided. You’re alone." Her hands tightened on the trolley handle.
"Mind your business."
"That is my business," Marek said, and hated how true it was. She looked him up and down like she could price him.
"You want something."
"Half," Marek said.
"Half of what?"
"Half of what you keep," he said. "Otherwise you keep none." Her mouth opened, closed. Her eyes flicked to the men. One of them had started to drift closer, casual as rot. She swallowed.
"I don’t know you."
"Yeah," Marek said. "And you don’t know them either. But you can see their hands." The woman’s jaw worked. Pride. Fear. Hunger. The usual three-way knife fight.
"Three cans," she hissed. "And you walk me to the gate." Marek almost laughed. Gate. Like the shutter was a door you just walked through if you had manners.
"Fine," he said. "Three cans now."
"After," she snapped. Marek leaned closer.
"After is a fantasy. Now is real." Her eyes narrowed.
