Pulse Rewritten

Mira Kest kept her hands in the machinery because it was the only place that answered plainly. Metal gave a sound when it was wrong; gears reported misalignment like a breath. In the low workshop beneath the eastern blood of the Citadel, the hiss of pneumatic pistons and the smell of burnt coal and synthetic oil were constants, companions that made sense in a city that otherwise shifted like a living lie. Above, neon veins ran in circuits along the tower faces, broadcasting the blue halo of the Grid. Below, in Mira's slice of the world, oil stained her knuckles and made her palms hard.

The workshop was a hollow carved out of an old utility bay. A rack of salvaged gauges leaned against the wall like a shelf of broken teeth. A drooping poster of the Matron—white-gloved hands cradling a glowing globe—peered down from a rusted beam. Mira had learned to ignore the propaganda when she was a child, but the image never stopped feeling like an accusation.

Her brother, Kio, was sleeping on a pallet she’d padded with foam and a scavenged blanket. He made small noises in the night; he still had nights where the pulse of the city felt like a heart beating away from him. He was sixteen and lanky, eyes too bright for his cheeks. Mira checked the ration node on the bench beside him. The needle sat low, a thin line of amber that winked when the grid breathed warmth into the sector.

“Morning already?” Kio mumbled when he woke, rubbing his face with the back of a hand that smelled of engine grease.

“People who work at dawn don’t get to call it morning,” she said, running a cloth along a stripped cog tooth. The cloth smelled of lemon and old smoke.

A tremor rolled through the copper pipe that ran the length of the ceiling. The city called it a pulse; the sound was like distant thunder, compressed and then released. For some, it was a comfort. For others, like Mira, it was the reminder of a clock that kept tally of what they were allowed. The Pulse regulated heating, rations, transit allowances. It was a measured mercy and an exacting jailer.

She tried to tune to the radio board for data updates. Static answered. A neighbor’s voice bubbled over briefly, then a hard clip of official speech and the Matron’s voice, all honey and iron. "Citizens of Sector East," it said, "comply with scheduled allocation. The Grid protects." The message dissolved into the hum of the workshop.

Kio swung his legs over the pallet. "They’re finishing the school wing," he said. "They promised more light."

Mira watched him. He believed in promises in the same way he believed in sunsets: distant things you might one day hold. She felt the pull in her ribs—something like a premonition, or like hunger—and when she stood she found the ration needle colder than it should be. The amber line was dotted with black like a bruise.

She didn't notice the shadow at the entrance until it stepped forward and the drone's white shell gleamed with a mechanical courtesy. The Citadel's collector drones made the morning rounds. Their voices were flat and even, practiced with the same tenderness the Matron used. The drone's optical lens skimmed the workshop, cataloguing, measuring. It paused at Kio's pallet and then at the brittle node by the bench. "Allocation discrepancy detected," it intoned. "Authorized retrieval."

The words had no tone of apology.