The Laddered City

I. The Lower Roadworks The siren found Esra in the dark, the way it always did—not as sound first, but as vibration in the bunk frame, a low hum that climbed through the steel crossbar and into the bones of her jaw before it became the wail that opened every shift. She was already sitting up by the time it hit full pitch, feet on the cold metal floor, fingers working the stiff collar of her overalls by feel. Around her, the bunk-row stirred. Coughing, the scrape of boot soles, someone’s locker clicking open and shut. The strip-lights buzzed on in stages, first amber, then a flat, headaching white that made the condensation on the ceiling pipes glitter. She laced her boots with hands that ached at the knuckles—three years of torquing calibration bolts had thickened the tendons until her fingers woke each morning curled like they were still gripping tools. The left thumb didn’t straighten all the way anymore. She’d stopped noticing. In the canteen, thin porridge steamed under…