The clock on the wall read three fourteen and thirty-two seconds.
03:14:32 AM
Twenty-eight seconds remained until the Route 04 night bus departure window closed at the North Gate.
The air on the central platform was thick with the smell of boiling machine oil, pulverized purple toner, and scorched cast iron. High overhead, the green and red binary strobe from the projector screen flashed across the vaulted ceiling like emergency beacons in an electrical substation.
Matron Bell stood frozen across the sorting desk.
Her blackened iron fingers were still curved toward the wet twenty-dollar bill lying on the oak deck three feet away. Her single optical lens zoomed frantically, trying to calculate the legal clearance between Julian’s boots and the fallen currency.
“Julian,” Elena whispered, her fingers resting on her trauma shears. “Twenty-eight seconds.
If that machine doesn’t clear the balance right now, we miss the bus.”
