At 2:13 a.m., the abandoned platform requested permission to receive a train.
Idris checked the maintenance log. Platform Zero had been filled with concrete in 1986. He rejected the request and went back to his sandwich.
The signal flashed again.
This time there was a message: SEVENTEEN PASSENGERS. PLEASE.
He called control. The night supervisor asked whether he had tried restarting the panel.
“A platform said please.”
“Then restart it politely.”
Idris took his torch downstairs.
Behind the vending machines, the old service door was warm. His key fitted, although he had never found a lock it fitted before. Beyond it, steps descended through the solid place where the plans said the concrete should be.
A train waited below. Its windows reflected his torch. Inside, passengers sat upright with their coats buttoned. A woman in a conductor’s uniform stood on the platform, one shoe missing.
“How long?” she asked.
“Since what?”
She showed him her watch. The hands trembled at 2:13.
He told her the year.
She sat on the edge of the platform. For a moment he thought she might fall, but she was only reaching down to rub her bare foot.
“We’ve been moving for eleven minutes,” she said.
The passengers pressed closer to the windows. A boy drew a question mark in the condensation.
Idris radioed control. Static answered. On the wall beside him, a dial marked ARRIVAL began turning backward.
“They won’t open,” the conductor said. “The doors. We need the signal.”
He knew the station’s signals. He had spent nineteen years explaining them to people who wanted the trains to hurry. Above them, the first maintenance engine would enter the junction at 2:17. Giving Zero a clear signal meant routing that engine toward a platform the control system didn’t believe existed.
Idris climbed the steps two at a time. At the panel, the arrival request was fading. Through the ceiling he heard the maintenance engine approaching.
He pressed the emergency stop.
Every signal in the station turned red. His radio erupted.
“Track obstruction,” he said.
“Where?”
“I’m checking.”
He unlocked the manual release for Zero. The seal snapped. That alone would mean an inquiry.
From below came the sound of seventeen people discovering that they were allowed to move.
They emerged carrying newspapers, handbags, a birthday cake. One man demanded a refund. The conductor came last, supporting an elderly passenger who kept asking whether his wife had been informed.
Then the service door slammed. When Idris opened it, his torch struck concrete.
∗ ∗ ∗
The inquiry lasted until breakfast. The cameras showed passengers emerging from behind a vending machine but failed to explain how they had arrived there. Idris’s supervisor kept replaying the footage, as if the eighteenth viewing might restore the ordinary station.
The conductor sat beside Idris with her bare foot wrapped in a towel. Her name was Ruth. She had finally reached her daughter by telephone.
“She’s older than me,” Ruth said.
Idris could think of nothing useful to say.
A woman appeared at the office door. She had white hair and a coat thrown over her nightdress. Ruth stood, gripping the towel in one hand.
The woman crossed the room slowly. Then, just before she reached her mother, she began to run.