The Hour Warden of Lumen Harbor

Night in Lumen Harbor is a machine that breathes. You learn its rhythms by sound: the sigh of tide against concrete, the cough of diesel and electric that rattle the elevated tracks, the low, constant chime from the ChronoGrid towers that marks the paid minutes. Your hands know that cadence by touch; they can tell a tram's temper from the weight of a wrench, the way a copper flange fits like an old heart. You are Mara Quinn, twenty-four, short on sleep and better with gears than with greetings. The snack kiosk on Dock Road calls you by the nickname you earned—'Warden'—because you fix what others throw away.

You squat in the tram's belly where the underfloor glows blue and the air smells of salt and machine oil. The conduit hums through your gloves. Rafi, the dispatch kid with permanent grease on his knuckles, taps a foot above you.

'You got that panel yet? We're three minutes behind and a kid's late for tutoring in District Nine,' he says, voice thin with tired courtesy.

You wipe grease from your fingers with the cuff of your jacket and fit the last rivet. The tram gives a soft cough and then nothing else. The clock on the control board blinks—two digits stuttering between seconds—and the world tilts like a ship on the wrong tide. A woman at the platform straightens, smiles, blinks, then repeats the smile as if rehearsing it. She keeps saying the word 'home' with a small wobble, and her eyes curve like a question mark.

'That's not normal,' Rafi breathes.

You aren't trained for anomalies. You're trained for snapped axles and burnt contacts. Still, something else moves along the tracks tonight: a thin silver seam of light, tucked into a rivet like a seed lodged in metal. Your fingers find it because they remember the way light sits on brass. It winks where you touch, and warmth unfurls under your palm—pepper tea on a windowsill, your grandmother's crooked watch face, a voice saying, 'Find the seam.'