The System Can’t See Me

The hook pressed cold through Kai's jacket against his upper arm. The point had found the narrow space beneath the lunch box, with packed plastic pressing down from above. Kai could feel each small change through the trapped muscle in his shoulder.

Nia's hand stayed locked in the seam of his shirt near his hip.

"What is it doing?" she asked.

Kai swallowed. His mouth was dry despite the water running outside the crawlspace.

"Holding my arm."

The answer hung between them.

The hooked limb moved a fraction. A soft crack came from the lunch box's damaged corner. Pressure tightened around Kai's left shoulder. His fingers flattened against the grit before he meant to move them.

He could still breathe. That was the only part that had improved.

Nia leaned forward as far as the red pipe allowed. Her hair brushed the back of his neck. The Archive copy stayed hidden beneath her torn jacket, pressed flat against her stomach. One forearm kept it in place. The hand at his hip was the only one she had free.

"Can you get your arm out?"

Kai tried to feel the shape of it. His left elbow was bent tight against his ribs. The forearm lay along the floor. The shoulder itself was wedged high under the box, with the hook pressing from the other side of the jacket.

"Not without moving everything else."

"Then don't."

The hook shifted again.

Kai shut his eyes. Pain crossed his shoulder in a bright, flat line. It did not travel cleanly. It broke apart down his upper arm, vanished around the elbow, then returned in his palm as pins beneath the split skin.

Nia felt him stiffen.

"Kai."

"If it keeps pressing, it will take the shoulder with it."

"Don't say that."

"I'm not trying to scare you."

"You are doing a good job anyway."

For a second, despite the box and the hook and the water, he almost smiled. The motion pulled at his chest. He stopped before it became a cough.

The creature outside made no sound he could separate from the water. The black plates at the mouth caught a brief red glint, then vanished again beneath the bent edge of the pipe.

Kai looked down the line of his own body. His bad ankle was folded under his right leg. His blue-bound wrist lay beneath him, cold and absent. The left arm was all he had that could still touch the floor.

And it was trapped.

"Pull my hip," he said.

Nia did not answer.

"Toward you. Same as before. When I turn, don't stop."

"You just got the box off your chest."

"It's not going back there."

He did not know that. He said it because she needed something definite to hold on to.

The hook pressed into the jacket seam above his upper arm.

Kai heard the fabric give.

"Now," he said.

Nia pulled.

Her grip tightened in his shirt and drew his hip toward the wall behind her. Kai pushed his left forearm against the floor. There was no strength in the arm. There was only the rough scrape of his palm and the angle of his body moving around a shoulder that could not follow.

His good knee dragged first. The bad ankle caught under it.

Pain flooded his lower leg so fast that he nearly stopped. Nia's hand kept pulling. His hip moved another inch. The lunch box edge ground across the top of his shoulder.

The hook held the jacket in place.

Kai turned anyway.

Something gave deep beneath the box.

The sound was small. He felt it more than heard it: a hard, wrong release followed by a wash of heat down his left arm. His vision went white at the edges. He bit the inside of his cheek until blood filled his mouth.

His left arm dropped against the floor.

For one sick second, he could not tell where the shoulder had gone. The arm lay too low, pulled close to his side but no longer caught under the box. His fingers curled against the grit. He tried to lift them and nothing happened.

Nia stopped pulling.

"Kai?"

He could hear the fear in her now.

"Don't move me," he said.

The words came through his teeth.

Above him, the lunch box shifted and found a new hold against the narrowing. It was still across his shoulder, but not over the arm. The pressure there had changed from a hard pin to a weight that burned through the torn jacket.

The hook remained caught in the outer sleeve.

Nia saw it before he did. "Your jacket."

Kai turned his head a fraction. A strip of dark fabric ran from his shoulder beneath the lower edge of the box and out toward the water. The hook had the sleeve folded over it. The material was already tearing along the seam from his collarbone to his upper arm.

"Leave it," he said.

"It'll pull you."

"It has the coat. Not me."

That was not entirely true. The sleeve still touched his shoulder. But his arm was free of it now, hanging uselessly against the concrete. He could feel the wrong pull at the joint every time he breathed.

The creature moved outside the mouth.

The torn sleeve tightened.

Kai's body followed it by less than an inch before Nia's hand locked harder in his shirt.

Her right calf dragged on the floor. He felt her breath catch behind him, then the warm pressure of her knees against the backs of his legs as she braced herself.

"Hold me," he said.

"I am holding you."

The sentence came out angry. It was the only thing keeping the fear from taking over her voice.

The fabric gave again.

This time the outer sleeve tore loose from Kai's shoulder.

The hook pulled the strip of jacket away beneath the lunch box. It vanished into the water at the mouth. Cold air touched the torn shirt over Kai's left shoulder. He flinched and the freed arm jolted against the floor.

Pain folded him in half as far as the box would let him.

Nia did not release his shirt.

For several breaths, neither of them tried to move.

Nia kept her face close to his back, listening to the uneven pull of his breathing. She could not see his shoulder from where she was pinned. The red pipe cut the upper part of her view away, and Kai's body filled everything below it. All she could see was his left hand on the concrete and the strip of torn shirt running up to the box.

"Talk to me," she said.

Kai opened his mouth. Nothing came out on the first try.

"Still here."

"That is not what I asked."

He shut his eyes again. The shoulder had become its own place in his body, hot and distant at the same time. When he breathed, something shifted beneath the pain. He kept the breath shallow.

"It moved," he said. "The shoulder."

Nia did not answer for a moment. Her hand tightened on his shirt until the fabric pulled against his ribs.

"Out?"

"I don't know."

He did not want to say the word. Giving it a name would make it a problem they had to solve in a space where neither of them could reach it.

The left hand lay beside him, palm-up. He watched the fingers because they were the only part of the arm he could see. The thumb flexed once. The others followed late and weakly, barely enough to scrape the grit.

Nia saw the movement. "Don't keep testing it."

"I need to know."

"You know enough."

He did. Every attempt sent a dull pull through the shoulder and made the edge of the lunch box grind against the torn shirt above it. The arm was free of the box, but it did not belong to him in any useful way.

"Can you feel it?" Nia asked.

"Some of it."

"Can you use it?"

Kai stared at the hand.

"No."

Nia's grip softened for a second, then tightened again. The Archive copy pressed between her jacket and ribs as she shifted her elbow around it. She did not check it. She did not ask what was inside. She only kept it in place and kept hold of him.

Her right leg had drawn a dark smear on the concrete when she braced him. Kai could see it in the thin strip of light below the box: blood from the torn calf, mixed with the grime under them. It stopped before the waterline. The runoff still moved at the mouth, close but not yet under her legs.

"You need to put pressure on that," he said.

"With what hand?"

Her left forearm held the hidden Archive copy against her body. Her right hand held Kai. She looked from one to the other and did not move either one.

Kai turned his head toward the wall. "Keep holding me."

The monster's hook was no longer against his arm.

That did not make the crawlspace larger. The lunch box still blocked the bend. The water still covered the mouth. The creature's head remained outside the pipe, close enough that Kai could see the red points moving behind wet black plates.

His freed left shoulder throbbed with every heartbeat. He could not tell whether the arm was hanging wrong because of the box, the twist, or something worse. He did not try to set it. There was no room. There was no hand he could trust.

Nia shifted her right knee by a fraction and stopped when the torn calf pulled against the concrete.

"Your leg," Kai said.

"Later."

"It is bleeding."

"So is your mouth."

He tasted the blood again and said nothing.

Outside, something scraped once against the side of the crawlspace. It might have been the hook. It might have been one of the creature's plates against the pipe. Kai could not see enough to tell.

Nia's hand did not leave his shirt.

"We need to get your shoulder lower than that edge," she said.

Kai looked at the box above his shoulder, then at the narrow space where his left arm lay slack against the floor.

"Not yet."

The red points disappeared behind the pipe.

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