Bridge Crossing

A boy raised amid a ruined city's defenses lives with a deranged caretaker and tends battered mechanical soldiers, trying to repair and maintain them as invader attacks and fires consume the ruins. Frustration at being excluded from combat and alarm at the gradual failure of the automatons drive him to scavenge parts and experiment with repairs, while violent episodes expose the fragile boundary between caretaker and machine. As the city's guardians melt away and the ruins burn, he withdraws to a hidden manhole refuge, confronting his difference from those around him and the eroding protections of his world.