The System Can’t See Me

Kai kept his left hand clamped around his right wrist.

The grip looked absurdly small against everything else in the sump. His right hand kept tugging toward the grate in little, uneven pulls. Each time he hauled it back, the muscles in his left shoulder shook.

Nia stayed between him and the blue crescent on the floor.

The Archive copy pressed flat beneath the front of her jacket. She could feel the hard plastic sleeve against her ribs every time she drew breath. The audit summons sat in her jeans pocket, a folded rectangle against her thigh. Mateo's name was inside it. So was the one line it had given them: PROXIMITY EVENT RECORDED.

None of it made the water stop.

Nia looked at the torn red fibers still caught above Kai's blue band. One short piece had glued itself to the wet skin of his forearm. The rest lay in a dark coil beside the rail.

"Hold still," she said.

Kai gave her a look that would have been funny anywhere else.

She pinched the loose end between two fingers and lifted.

The fragment came free from his skin. Kai's right hand jerked toward the grate at once. He caught it with his left before his knuckles reached the metal, but the sudden pull dragged his shoulder forward. Nia let go of the cord piece. It fell into the blue crescent and sank beneath the thin water.

Kai's breath came hard through his nose. "Leave it."

"It was cutting you."

"It isn't holding me now."

The remaining fibers stayed where they were. Nia wiped the wetness from her fingertips onto the concrete and pressed her hand back to the wall. The cord had become one more thing the floor could take. She did not look at it again.

Another drop fell from the boot caught above the grate.

It landed near the pipe hanger and joined the shallow blue crescent. The water moved around the bent metal, found the low seam in the concrete, and crept toward Kai's twisted foot.

"We have to shift," Nia said.

Kai did not look down. "I know."

"You can't hold your wrist and the rail."

"I know."

"Then give me something better than that."

His mouth tightened. He was pale under the dirt, his hair wet at the temples. The blue band above his wrist had gone darker at the edges, but it gave him nothing except pain.

"I can lean on the wall," he said.

"For how long?"

"Long enough to move my foot."

Nia looked at the floor. The dry side of the seam was already no wider than his shoe. He could move one foot a few inches if she held his jacket. He could not turn. He could not use his right arm. He could not let go of his own wrist for more than a second.

"Okay," she said. "You move the foot. I keep you up."

Kai glanced at the front of her jacket. "The copy."

"It's dry."

"That's not what I meant."

She ignored him. There was no place to set the Archive copy. The wall was wet. The rail was wet. The pipe hanger lay half in the spreading runoff, its brown edges already darkening. Holding the sleeve against her body was the only way to keep it from the floor.

Nia put one hand on Kai's chest and shifted her shoulder under his good side.

She tested the position before she asked him to move. Kai's weight came into her shoulder at once, heavier than it should have been. His right side sagged away from the wall whenever he loosened his left-hand grip. She planted her feet a little wider, careful to keep both soles on the dry side of the seam. The witness ring around her calf stayed dim, but the skin beneath it ached as if someone had tightened a wire there.

"You lean into me," she said. "Not toward the rail."

"The rail is closer."

"The rail doesn't have hands."

He looked at her for a beat, then nodded.

"Ready?"

"No."

"Fine. Do it anyway."

He braced the back of his head against the wall. His left hand locked tighter around his right wrist. Then he lifted his bad foot just enough to drag it along the concrete.

The movement barely changed his position. His heel cleared the wet line. His ankle rolled, and his breath left him in a sharp sound, but his shoe landed on a pale dry mark beside the rail.

Nia took his weight before he could slide down the wall.

As Nia shifted his weight, the folded summons caught against the rail and tugged free from her jeans pocket. It landed between Kai's shoe and the blue crescent.

Nia saw Mateo's name before the first edge got wet.

She bent without thinking.

Kai's right arm jerked toward the grate.

Nia stopped halfway down. Her fingers hovered over the paper. If she reached farther, the Archive sleeve would slide from inside her jacket. If she let Kai catch her, his left hand would leave his wrist. The summons lay inches from the blue water, white against the dirty concrete.

"Nia," Kai said.

She did not answer.

The blue crescent reached the lower corner of the paper.

The ink bled first around the edge. A dark line ran through the printed border and spread toward the middle. The folded sheet softened and opened one flap at a time.

`WITNESS HOLD: DEFERRED` showed through the wet paper.

Below it, Mateo's record had been reduced to a gray smear where the water touched it.

Nia's hand shook above the floor.

The summons had never told them where Mateo was. It had never named the thing beyond the grate or opened a door. It was still the only record that said someone else had been caught in the same machinery and left enough of himself behind to be counted.

Kai watched the paper soften at the edge. He did not tell her it was worthless. That would have been easier.

"Leave it," Kai said.

"It is all we have from him."

"The copy."

"That is not the same thing."

"No," he said. "It isn't."

The paper slid another inch as the runoff found the seam beneath it.

Nia measured the distance without meaning to. Her fingers could reach the dry half of the summons. The wet half lay past the seam. Her palm would have to go down near the blue water, then come back up against the Archive sleeve under her jacket. She could lift the copy out first, but the wall had no hook, shelf, or ledge. She could put it in Kai's jacket, except Kai was folded against the wall and using his left hand to keep his right from drifting away.

She could ask him to let go for one second.

The thought left a sour taste in her mouth.

"Take the copy," she said.

Kai stared at her. "With what hand?"

"Your jacket is right there. I can put it back."

"And then you reach for the paper."

"Yes."

"No."

The word was quiet. It did not leave room for an argument.

She could keep both hands on Kai and try to hook the paper with a bare foot. That would put her traced sole across the wet edge. Every version ended with something on the floor.

Kai's grip spasmed.

His right hand moved toward the grate again, faster this time. Nia caught his forearm with the hand she had started to lower. The force pulled her against him. Her hip hit the wall. The Archive sleeve dug into her ribs but stayed under her jacket.

The summons drifted out of reach.

Nia watched it go.

It flattened in the blue water, then folded over itself as the current carried it toward the grate. For a second, one corner caught on the pipe hanger's rusted edge. The runoff darkened the fold.

Kai was breathing through his teeth. "You have to let it go."

She hated him for saying it because he was right.

Nia pressed both feet into the dry strip and kept her hand around Kai's forearm. The witness ring rose from her calf to the back of her knee, a thin blue band visible through the torn knee of her jeans. It did not tell her what to do. It only hurt.

The soaked fold tore with a quiet rip. The summons came free and slid over the edge of the floor grate without a sound.

Nia kept staring at the place where it had been.

Kai's left hand was still locked around his right wrist. His shoulder shook from the effort. The blue crescent had reached the toe of his shoe but had not crossed it.

"Is the copy dry?" he asked.

Nia looked down at herself. She pressed her palm against the plastic sleeve through her jacket. The paper inside had not buckled. The ink had not run.

"Yes."

Kai closed his eyes for a second.

"Good."

The word landed badly between them.

Nia wiped her face with the back of her wrist. "Do not say that like we traded one for the other."

"We did."

She wanted to tell him he was wrong. Mateo was not a receipt. The summons was not a thing they could weigh against a photocopy from the Archive. But the grate was still there. The paper was gone. Kai was upright only because she had caught his arm instead of reaching for it.

There was nothing useful to say.

Behind the inner grille, metal scraped once.

Nia looked toward the drain, then away from it. The locked Return Gate remained beyond the bend. The crawlspace was still blocked behind them. The damp patch around the pipe hanger widened by another finger's width.

Kai opened his eyes. "How much floor do we have?"

Nia looked at the space between his shoes, the wall, and the blue line.

"Less than before."

He nodded.

She kept one hand on his forearm and the other over the Archive copy beneath her jacket. The two of them stood against the wall while the remaining dry concrete narrowed around their feet.

Above the grate, the trapped boot released another blue drop. It struck the concrete beside Kai's shoe and spread along the seam in a thin, shining line.

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