Platform Zero

At eleven forty, every screen in the station announced the same train: Eastbound, three minutes.

Mara had cleaned the eastbound platform for nine years. The final service left at eleven twenty. There was no late train, especially not during a blackout that had already silenced half the city.

Eleven passengers gathered beneath the glowing sign. A man in a dark coat assured them that emergency power was perfectly normal.

Mara looked at the floor. She had mopped it half an hour earlier. A narrow dry track now ran from a locked service door to the platform edge, as if someone had wheeled a heavy case across it.

The coat was dry too. Outside, rain had been falling since ten.

“Which entrance did you use?” she asked.

The man smiled. “Does that matter?”

Mara moved her cleaning cart across the stairway to the platform. “It does to the person who locks them.”

One passenger raised his phone. There was no signal. Another tried the ticket barriers. They would not open.

The screen changed: Eastbound, two minutes.

From behind the service door came three measured knocks.

Mara picked up the station radio. Its battery light was green. Someone had removed the antenna.

For the first time, the man in the dark coat stopped watching the screen and looked directly at her.