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.

Mara stayed put, gripping her pencil. She counted in her head. If the Quiet Hour was sixty seconds, she just had to wait it out and pretend she'd slept like everyone else. Forty seconds left. Thirty. Then her dead laptop screen flickered on by itself and showed three words in plain white text: WE SEE YOU.

Mara typed back on the dead keys, not sure they worked. "Who are you?" The screen answered instantly. WE KEEP THE CITY CALM. WHILE IT SLEEPS, WE FIX WHAT THE DAY BREAKS. Then, slower: YOU WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE. The countdown in the corner read 00:20. Whatever choice she had, she had twenty seconds to make it.

Mara typed one word with ten seconds left: "Stop." The screen flashed red. IF WE STOP, THE BAD DREAMS STAY. ARE YOU SURE? She didn't know what was true anymore. Five seconds. Four. She lifted her hands off the keys and let the countdown run out. At 3:01:00 the city woke up calm, the way it always did, and Mara decided some things were better left running.