Across the seven wards of Rookvale, the silence of dissolving rolled outward from the mountain like an invisible tide.
It didn’t arrive with the blare of town trumpets, the shouting of heralds, or the ringing of cathedral bells. It arrived as a sudden, breathtaking cessation of artificial motion. The clockwork death of an extortion engine that had transformed human labor into moving fuel and human advancement into executioners for four thousand three hundred and eighty-two days.
Two miles to the south, in the frozen switching yards of the Tram Ward interchange, the dead conductors were walking their assigned patrol routes along the outer edge tracks.
For six winters, under emergency town supply order orders signed by Magistrate Pell, five physical copies of railway workers killed in the first sky shield collapse had patrolled the frozen gravel between the rails. They wore the faded navy-blue wool of the country transit power, their tin guide-rod badges pinned to their lapels, their iron punch-keys swinging from their belts. They didn’t speak, and they didn’t seek shelter from the sleet. They moved with the slow, unblinking rhythm of clockwork sentries, arresting curfew violators and escorting grain carts to the city court depots.
At zero five fifty-eight and thirty seconds, the circuit cut.
