Everyone knew the Quiet Hour. At 3:00 a.m. the whole city paused for sixty seconds, then woke up never noticing. Nobody dreamed through it. But tonight Mara was awake, stuck on a calculus problem with cold coffee, when every light, every screen, every humming fridge died at once. The clock read 3:00:00. The silence was total. And Mara realized she was the only thing still moving.

A voice came from nowhere, calm and flat, filling the dark kitchen. "Anomaly detected. One citizen active during Quiet Hour." Mara spun around. No speaker, no phone, just the voice. "Please remain still. A correction unit is on the way." Correction unit. That sounded bad. Mara did not want to find out what a correction unit did.

Mara bolted up the back stairs toward the roof, lungs burning. Behind her, soft even footsteps followed. She burst onto the roof and saw the whole city below, frozen and dark, with one thing moving: a giant machine on the next rooftop, slowly sweeping a pale light over the sleeping streets. "Now you've seen it," the flat voice said behind her.

"Then let me help," Mara said, turning around. The flat voice went quiet a long moment. "No one ever asks that." The machine on the next roof slowed its sweep. "There are always more bad dreams than there are of us. If you can stay awake at 3 a.m., we could use you." So Mara became a Quiet Hour cleaner, sweeping the city's nightmares out every night while it slept and never knew.