Morning. The storage bank was empty, and the battery hadn't budged from 7%.

✢✳✻✽✻✳✢ "Volt and I will stay here. We're very good at playing dead."

"We'll be right back."

Behind the two of them leaving the junkyard, the headlights blinked once, like a send-off.

The electric market lived under the city's shadow. No signs — an alley only found by those who already know.

Used batteries were stacked like medals on every stall, and bare bulbs hung from the ceiling like stars.

A bottle of water: 0.3 kilowatt-hours. A pack of ramen: 0.5. Here, electricity was money.

"Whoa… this place existed?"

"Quiet. Act like a tourist here and you'll get fleeced."

At the very back of the market — the shop with the most light bulbs.

Behind the counter, a woman with a silver perm and glasses looked up at the two of them. Her lenses flashed white in the bulb light.

"…Well now. You're Sol's daughter."

"You know my dad?"

"Know him? Half this market runs on things your father fixed."

When Dot brought up the memory fragment, the woman closed the shop door without a word. Click — the sign light went out.

"You actually… woke that car?"

The three of them talked a long time. She didn't know much — but all of it was new.

"Your father called it 'the Heart'. What it is, even I never saw. He wouldn't show anyone."

"The taken ones go beneath the tower. …And child — taking them alive means they're needed."

Dad might be alive. Dot's fists trembled.

"We… need electricity."

"Nothing's free. Market rules."

She looked between the two of them, then lifted a worn storage pack from under the counter.

"An advance. In exchange — go to Sol's workshop and bring back something of mine. I haven't been able to get in for ten years."

"The workshop is locked. Only dad knew how to open it."

"The key — your father would have left it with his daughter."

"I don't have any key."

The woman's glasses flashed.

"You have it. You just don't know it."

She watched the end of the alley long after the children disappeared with the storage pack.

Then, from under the counter — she took out an old radio.

"…It's me. Sol's car is awake."

Who was on the other end of that radio — nobody knows yet.