A day in the life of Morrow Granz

04:45 - Wake. Dress. Erase.
The alarm doesn't ring — it clicks. Morrow Granz doesn’t wake startled. He wakes the way a file is accessed: pulled from storage, processed, and set to work.
 
He dresses in the uniform issued to Civil Observation Clerks. It smells faintly of paper mold and ministry ink. The trousers are too short at the ankles, and the collar digs at his neck. These things are deliberate. No one trusts a man too comfortable in his post.
 
"He" looks in the mirror, and "He" is gone.
Pale sallow beige. Cheeks slightly sunken. Hairline receded just enough. A clean shave. Eyes that scream of exhaustion, but never rebellion.
Because that is how Morrow is.
 
He blinks twice, recites the daily affirmation:
 
“I see so they do not have to. I listen so they may speak freely.”
 
The words feel like rust in the mouth.
 
06:00 - Transit to Bureau 19
The train smells like wet leather and ozone. Morrow stands, even though seats are open. Only liars sit early in the morning. His clipboard is tucked to his chest like a hymnbook. His posture says: I am unremarkable. I am regulation.
 
The station’s surveillance grid hums overhead — barely audible, but he hears it anyway. It pings every identity, every movement, every voice. It doesn’t ask questions. Just builds dossiers, drips of data feeding the river of suspicion.
 
He wonders how many times it’s logged Elra Voss.
Or Anka Frein.
Or others he no longer names aloud.
 
He checks the pocketwatch built into the inside cuff of his coat — a gift from Bierce Drommel, retrieved from a pile of smelter scrap, still ticking despite the heat.
 
06:30 – Entry Checkpoint, Propaganda Oversight Wing
Security scans his retina.
He doesn’t flinch. The eye they scan isn’t real.
 
Clerk Granz enters without comment.
The guard, Mella Renn — another pretender — gives him a once-over and a smile too sharp. She knows.
She would.
But they have a job to do too.
 
07:00 – Document Review, Censorship Queue Delta
Rows upon rows of clerks in gray. Screens flickering. Morrow’s screen shows a children's poem submitted for broadcast approval. The words are sweet — too sweet.
 
He highlights a line about fireflies:
 
"Tiny lights that guide us home."
 
He flags it. Could be code. Could be cult.
He writes: “Imagery evokes unauthorized religious overtones. REJECT.”
 
He deletes a second file without reading it. The name on the author line was once used by Rurik Daln. The memory stings. But not like pain. Like acid on old bindings.
 
The Black Flame does not speak here. Not aloud.
But it’s present, always, in the peripheral silence.
 
12:00 – Lunch, Alone
He eats a gray protein wedge and drinks lukewarm tea. No one joins him. That’s the way he’s built it.
 
Across the cafeteria, a factory worker — thin, trembling — meets his gaze for a moment. Morrow looks down, but behind his mask, "He" records every twitch.
 
That man once bought medicine from Elra.
He’d spoken the phrase: “Truth grows in ruins.”
He’s marked now. Not to be punished.
To be watched.
Nurtured. Maybe even saved.
 
13:00 – Audit Interview: Civilian Code Review
A mother, trembling, accused of teaching unauthorized prayers to her children. She cries. Morrow records. Speaks soft. Cold. Official.
 
But in the way he guides the questioning — the phrasing, the subtleties — he threads her a path. She walks it unknowingly. Leaves with a warning instead of a sentence.
 
In the recording room, Morrow deletes the last two minutes of footage.
 
The black flame flickers in the reflection of the terminal’s mirror.
Just once.
 
17:30 – Dismissal. Transit. Mask Drops.
He boards the train. Same spot. Same silence.
 
But this time, he sits.
 
Outside the tram window, Sector 9 burns in the distance — a factory fire, they’ll say. A wire spark.
But he knows.
He remembers the black flame’s promises:
 
“From ruin, reclamation.”
“From masks, truth.”
 
He brushes his fingers along the inside of his coat, where the old shawl of Anka Frein is folded like scripture.
He thinks of Dren. Of Rurik. Of the woman whose name was never Elra but still lives in Elra's body.
 
He arrives home. A cramped one-room dorm above a Ministry Archive Annex.
He stares into a cracked lantern on his desk.
 
Its flame is normal. Yellow. Flickering.
 
But he sees it as black.
 
And behind his eyes, it burns.