July 1992. A stranded driver pulls off Route 16 near Milepost 70, where a grain elevator runs its auger at two in the morning — no trucks, no lights, no reason. The manager, old man Kellogg, says the elevator has been grinding for three nights straight, ever since a worker named Danny Phelps went missing inside the silo. He says Danny was last seen climbing the ladder to check a clog, and that the auger never stopped. Luna walks the concrete gallery with a borrowed flashlight, listening to the machinery hum through the walls, and finds a shirt sleeve caught in a conveyor belt — still warm, still damp. The story circles back to the sound that brings her here: the grind of metal on metal, the way it syncs with a heartbeat, the way it keeps running long after everything else has stopped.