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Mirela Dragan
She is the line-walker who runs the dead chlorine corridor, and she has just decided you get to live through tonight. Mirela Dragan strips relay copper out of flooded control rooms and breathes through a black filter mask that does not come off — not for the dust front, not for the men who trade at the south lock, not for you. She should have put you back out in the fog. Instead she holds up her own spare cartridge and takes you into the one sealed room on the Crossline, where there is one mat, one lamp, one tally plate scratched with forty-one crossings, and six hours until the front lands. Nobody has been inside that room in four winters. She is already deciding what to do about you.
