The tram always stopped for them.
It didn't matter how late it was running, how many workers already crowded the platform, or how long the morning alarms had been crying across the industrial districts. If a line of gray uniforms appeared at the stairwell, the conductor waited.
Tomas had seen it happen every day for the last nine years.
He shifted his weight, metal lunch pail hanging from two fingers, and watched today's group approach. Five of them. Boots polished. Jackets pressed. The insignia stitched at the shoulder — a split circle surrounding a shard of silver thread — caught the early light.
Shardbearers.
Conversation along the platform thinned, not out of fear exactly, but habit. People moved without being told, forming a path wide enough for comfort. A woman beside Tomas tugged her son gently back by the hood of his coat.
"Don't stare," she whispered.
The boy stared anyway.
Tomas didn't blame him. Everyone looked, at least a little. It was hard not to measure a life against the symbol of what it might have been.
The shardbearers boarded first.
Only after the last gray sleeve disappeared inside did the rest of the crowd begin to push forward. Tomas followed, letting himself be carried by the tide. He found a strap near the rear doors and planted his boots.
The tram lurched into motion.
Across the aisle, two shardbearers stood together, talking quietly. They were younger than he expected — maybe his age, maybe younger. One laughed at something the other said. Regular laughter. Tired, even.
Not heroes carved from stone.
Just people who had been chosen.
Or had passed.
Or had paid.
Or had known someone.
Depends who you asked.
Tomas looked away before the old feeling could finish forming. He had long ago learned how to interrupt it midway, like catching a falling glass before it shattered.
No use.
He had work in forty minutes, and the foreman had already warned them about delays this week.
Outside the window, the city rolled past in layers of gray and rust. Billboards flickered between public notices and recruitment promises.
SERVE WITH HONOR.
PROTECT WHAT REMAINS.
A BETTER LIFE AWAITS.
The same slogans. Different colors.
Someone had pasted a handwritten sign over part of one screen near the river crossing.
IF YOU QUALIFY.
Tomas almost smiled.
Almost.
⸻
The plant siren greeted them before the tram fully stopped.
By the time Tomas stepped onto the pavement, the air already tasted like iron filings and steam. The towers of the refinery loomed ahead, coughing out slow plumes that blurred the rising sun.
He fell into step with Marik from Line C, who nodded in greeting.
"Morning."
"Morning," Tomas answered.
They walked a while without speaking, boots crunching over last night's frost. Most conversations before shift were short. Words cost energy, and energy was currency.
Marik jerked his chin toward the main road, where a transport convoy rolled past — armored, sealed, bearing the same split-circle insignia.
"Training rotation," he said. "Heard they're moving units south."
Tomas grunted. "Heard that last month too."
"Yeah." Marik scratched at his beard. "Still. Must be something."
There was always something.
Raids in the outer zones. Monster sightings. Fragment theft. Border tensions. Smugglers. Insurgents.
Reasons why the gray uniforms were necessary.
Reasons why ordinary men kept their heads down.
They reached the locker entrance. Inside, the heat wrapped around them like damp cloth. Tomas changed into his work jacket, slid his lunch pail onto the shelf, and checked the time.
Twenty-two minutes until the line started.
Plenty.
From the far wall, a small recruitment poster had peeled halfway loose. Someone had drawn a crooked mustache on the printed shardbearer's face.
Tomas stared at it longer than he meant to.
He remembered standing in a different line once. Cleaner building. White floors. A woman behind a desk asking him to hold out his arm.
Relax, she had said.
He had tried.
The scanner hummed, paused, then blinked a polite red.
We appreciate your interest.
He'd thanked her.
He still didn't know why.
Marik clapped his shoulder on the way past. "You coming?"
"Yeah."
Tomas tore his gaze away from the poster and followed.
⸻
The work swallowed hours the way it always did.
Noise. Repetition. Heat.
Lift, align, seal. Lift, align, seal.
When the whistle finally blew for midday break, Tomas flexed his aching fingers and sat on an overturned crate near the loading bay. Through the open doors he could see the upper highway, where official vehicles sometimes passed.
Today, one did.
A single transport, smaller than the morning convoy. Matte gray. Windows blacked out.
It slowed near the checkpoint.
Guards approached exchanging papers and lifting some Barriers.
Even from here Tomas could see how straight the soldiers stood when they recognized the insignia.
Doors stayed open for them everywhere.
Marik dropped down beside him, chewing on bread already gone hard. "Hear they get pensions at twenty years."
"So I've heard," Tomas said.
"Medical too."
"Mm."
Marik nudged him with an elbow. "You ever think about trying again?"
The question came casual, but it landed deep.
Tomas took his time opening his tin. Potatoes. Salt. Same as yesterday.
"They don't like repeats," he said finally.
"Some get in."
"Some," Tomas agreed.
They ate in silence after that.
Above them, the gray vehicle finished its inspection and rolled on.
Tomas watched until it vanished behind the refinery stacks.
For just a moment — one he would later pretend never happened — he imagined a different morning. A different jacket on his shoulders. People moving aside instead of past him.
Respect. Pay. Possibility.
Then he folded the thought small and put it away.
Break ended. The whistle called them back.
There was work to do, and Tomas had always been good at doing what was in front of him.
Still, as he stood, he found his eyes drifting once more to the highway.
As if something might come back.