INT. HAVEN - MAINTENANCE BAY - DAY
The maintenance bay is a cathedral of salvage. Reclaimed pipes snake up the walls, oil-dark and sweating. Sodium lamps buzz overhead, casting everything in amber. Aura, nineteen, hangs upside down inside the guts of a failing filtration pump, her legs hooked around a rusted frame, a respirator mask hanging loose around her neck.
She works with the focus of someone who has done this a thousand times. Her fingerless gloves are stained with grease. A faded scar crosses her left eyebrow. Her hands move with the quiet confidence of a surgeon, but there is a tension in her jaw that has nothing to do with the machinery.
Aura tightens a bolt, then stops. She taps a corroded valve with the back of her wrench. A dull, hollow sound. She taps it again.
AURA
(under her breath)
That's not supposed to sound like that.
She swings down, landing on the grated floor with a soft thud. Wipes her forehead with the back of her glove, leaving a smear of grease across her brow. She studies the pump the way you would study a patient who is not telling you the truth.







