The System Can’t See Me

Kai's left hand began to shake before his right hand did.

He had both pressed against his chest, one holding the other. He lay half on his stomach with one shoulder braced against the crawlspace wall. The arrangement kept his right arm from falling back toward the open sump. It also forced his left elbow into a patch of rough concrete that had already rubbed through his sleeve.

Behind him, Nia had stopped moving altogether.

Her breath touched the back of his jacket in uneven bursts. The red pipe sat above her shoulder. The Archive copy crackled under the front of her jacket whenever she tried to draw a full breath and could not.

Outside the mouth, water made a soft sound over the floor.

Kai did not look back. He could picture the strip beside the rail filling anyway: the pipe hanger half in the blue runoff, one of Nia's boots caught above the grate, the other crushed somewhere beneath it. The Return Gate remained behind the inner grille. None of those things had become less closed because they had run out of floor.

His fingers slipped on his right wrist.

Nia noticed the change in his shoulder before he could hide it.

"Your grip is going."

"My hand's wet."

"That is not an answer."

Kai pressed his teeth together. The cold band around his right forearm had turned his skin slick. His left palm hurt from the strain. If he changed his grip too quickly, the right arm would swing free. There was no rail in here. No cord. No room for Nia to get in front of him.

"I need to turn," he said.

For a second, Nia said nothing.

Then she gave a short, humorless breath. "You picked a bad place for it."

"I noticed."

The crawlspace was barely high enough for his shoulders. The floor rose a little toward the blocked bend, then tightened around the lunch box. Kai could not see the box from where he lay, only a weak blue reflection at the far end of the concrete. His bent bad leg filled the space between him and Nia. The shoe was still on it, swollen ankle trapped inside leather that had become too tight an hour ago.

"If I can turn onto my right side," he said, "I can pin the wrist between me and the wall without pulling my shoulder apart."

"Can you do that?"

"No idea."

Nia shifted her knees behind him. The sound of skin dragging across grit made Kai turn his head as far as the wall allowed.

"Stop," he said.

"I am making room."

"Your heel."

"My heel is already cut."

The words came out flat. She was saving the argument for something that might change the outcome.

Kai let his head rest against the concrete for one second. His chest felt too tight. The old reflex was to breathe high and fast, as if more air would make the body obey.

It never had.

He made himself keep the breath small and low.

He pulled in a shallow breath through his nose and held it below the panic, low in his ribs. The first time he had done it, he had been bleeding on an office carpet with a monster on the other side of a door. It had not made the monster slower. It had only given him a count before he moved.

He let the breath out in four parts.

The ache under his ribs answered with a thin pull, old and familiar. No warmth spread through his limbs. His right arm stayed cold and wrong. The blue band did not loosen.

But the shaking in his left hand eased enough for him to feel where his fingers were.

Nia heard the change in his breathing. "Can you use that?"

"A count."

"That's all?"

"It has to be."

She was quiet for a moment. Then her hand settled between his shoulder blades, careful not to press the injured side.

"Tell me the count."

Kai almost refused. Saying it aloud made it sound like a plan. It was not a plan. It was four seconds he could spend before pain took his attention again.

"Four out," he said. "Then I move my knee."

"And then I draw my knees in."

"No. You move after me."

"Kai."

"If you move first, I roll onto your legs."

Nia exhaled through her nose. "Fine. Four out. Then your knee. Then I move."

He took another breath.

One.

The damaged ankle pulsed inside the shoe.

Two.

His left hand tightened around his right wrist until his knuckles hurt.

Three.

The cold band stayed tight against his forearm.

Four.

He pushed his left elbow into the concrete and drew his bad knee forward.

The shoe caught on the lip of mortar near the entrance.

Pain jumped from his ankle to his throat. Kai stopped before he made the next movement. The leather did not give. He could feel the collar biting into the swelling above his heel.

"My shoe's stuck," he said.

Nia leaned forward enough that her hair brushed his shoulder. She could not see past him either, but her hand found the edge of his shoe near the ankle.

"Can you pull your foot out?"

"Maybe."

"Then do that."

Kai looked at the dark mouth behind them. The blue water had reached the edge of the threshold. He could hear it there now, a shallow movement against concrete. His shoe was the only thing between his swollen ankle and the grit.

Nia felt him hesitate.

"It's just a shoe," she said.

"It's my last one."

"And it is holding you in place."

She was right. That did not make the choice smaller.

Kai drew in another measured breath. He kept the right wrist pinned to his sternum, shifted his hips a fraction, and pulled his bad foot backward out of the shoe.

The heel resisted. Skin caught against the damp lining. He bit down hard enough to taste blood, then pulled again.

His foot came free.

The movement nearly rolled him onto his back. His right hand tore sideways. Nia grabbed his left forearm with both hands and braced her shoulder against the wall. Her knees slid. The Archive sleeve crumpled against her ribs but stayed under her jacket.

Kai got his left hand back around his wrist before the blue band touched the floor.

For several seconds, neither of them moved.

The empty shoe lay at the threshold with its toe still wedged against the mortar. Blue water reached it from outside. It darkened the laces, filled the opening where his foot had been, and nudged the heel a few inches at a time.

Kai watched it turn sideways.

Nia did not try to reach for it. She could not have without putting her heel into the water and pulling the Archive copy against the pipe. The shoe slipped beyond the lip. A thin current caught it and carried it along the wall toward the rail.

It disappeared from the narrow strip of view beneath the pipe.

Kai closed his eyes.

"Do not say sorry," Nia said.

"Wasn't going to."

"Good. I would have had to hurt you."

The threat had no force behind it. It still gave him something to hold for half a second that was not his own wrist.

His bare foot lay against the concrete, ankle already beginning to stiffen in the cold. The skin on his heel had torn where the shoe collar caught it. He could feel the wetness spreading under his ankle.

"Four," Nia said.

Kai opened his eyes.

"You got the knee forward," she said. "We do the rest before your hand starts shaking again."

He wanted to tell her that his hand had never stopped. Instead, he breathed down once more.

One.

Nia drew her left leg closer to the wall behind him. Her bare heel left a darker smear beside the threshold.

Two.

Kai dragged the bare foot alongside his other leg. The ankle protested immediately. He did not try to straighten it. He only brought the knee far enough forward to make space at his hip.

Three.

Nia tucked one knee into the space he had cleared. The movement pressed her shoulder against the red pipe. Her face changed, but she did not make a sound.

Four.

Kai rolled onto his right side.

The wall stopped him before he could roll far. His bad foot scraped the concrete. His injured shoulder struck first, sending a bright line of pain up his neck. He kept his left hand locked around the right wrist. His right forearm was trapped between his chest and the crawlspace wall now, bent wrong but close.

Nia caught his back before he could press her into the wall. One forearm held his ribs off her; her other hand protected the plastic sleeve beneath her jacket.

"Copy?" Kai asked.

"Dry."

Her voice was thin from holding herself against the pipe.

Kai stayed where he was until the light stopped moving at the edges of his vision. The new position was worse for his shoulder and better for nothing else. His left hand could still reach his right wrist, but now he had a wall between the blue band and the open mouth. The arm could not drop away without dragging his whole body with it.

It was not secure. It was only slower.

Nia eased herself down behind his bent legs. She lay on her left side, facing the mouth, with the Archive copy trapped between her jacket and her forearm. There was just enough room for her knees to bend. No room remained for her to sit up or pull the red pipe away from her shoulder.

The blue water stayed outside.

For the first time since they crossed the sump, Kai could see a strip of the crawlspace ahead of him. It ended almost immediately. The concrete narrowed toward the bend. Beyond that narrowing, the lunch box gave off a dull blue edge through the crack in its lid.

The box had not moved.

Then the floor beneath Kai's cheek gave a small vibration.

He went still.

Nia felt it through him. "What?"

Kai did not answer at once. He did not trust the first thought that formed. The crawlspace had carried sounds before. Water in the sump. The scrape beyond the grate. Metal settling under a building that had already forgotten how to stand straight.

The vibration came again.

This time the lunch box shifted less than an inch at the bend. The blue slit in its lid tipped sideways, then stopped.

Light leaked through the crack and pooled beneath the box.

"Stay where you are," Nia said.

Kai kept his right wrist pinned to his chest.

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