The System Can’t See Me

The blood from Nia's right calf had reached the edge of the runoff.

Kai saw it in the narrow strip of concrete between their bodies and the water at the mouth. A dark line ran from the ripped denim, through grit, and stopped just short of the moving blue sheet. Each time Nia shifted her weight to keep hold of his shirt, another thin mark joined it.

"You need to stop that," he said.

Nia did not look down. Her right hand remained bunched in the seam near his hip. Her left forearm pressed the hidden Archive copy beneath her jacket. The red pipe sat over her shoulder like a bar.

"I know."

"It is getting to the water."

"I know, Kai."

Her voice was steady, which meant she was trying very hard not to let it change.

The box above his shoulder creaked as he breathed. The movement was small, but it sent pain across the damaged joint and down the arm lying beside him. His left thumb rested against the floor. He told it to move.

Nothing happened.

His right wrist was still somewhere under his ribs, trapped between his body and the concrete. The blue band felt like a strip of ice under his shirt. He could not reach it. He could not use it. He could not even turn far enough to see where his hand had ended up.

Nia shifted her left foot against his calves.

The old scrape at her ankle dragged over the grit. She stopped at once.

"Don't," Kai said.

"I'm not trying to move you."

"What are you doing?"

She took a breath through her nose. "Trying to get my other leg across it."

Kai looked back as far as the box and his shoulder allowed. Her right calf lay along the wall below the pipe. The torn denim had stuck to the wound in places and lifted in others. Her left leg was folded along his calves, the scraped ankle near his good knee.

"You can't reach it with your hands," she said. "So I use the leg I still have room to move."

He understood what she meant a second later.

"You'll pin my ankle."

"Maybe."

The word made something tighten in his stomach.

His bad ankle was already bent beneath his right leg. Moving it had cost him every time. If Nia folded her left leg across the injured calf, there was only one place for her shin to go: between his legs and the wall, close to the ankle he could not straighten.

"There has to be another way," he said.

Nia gave a short breath that might have been a laugh if either of them had been somewhere else. "With what?"

Kai had no answer.

Kai looked down at the torn denim stuck to her calf. Neither of them had a free hand to pull it clear, much less tie it, without losing hold of him or the sealed copy.

Outside the mouth, water moved around the creature's hook. The sound came and went under the low scrape of its plates against concrete. The red points remained hidden behind the pipe.

"Do it," Kai said.

Nia's grip tightened in his shirt. "If I move wrong, you'll slide into the box."

"If you don't, you'll keep bleeding."

She was quiet.

Then she shifted her left knee.

It was not a large movement. It took her several breaths to make it. First the scraped left ankle slid over Kai's good calf. Then her shin came up behind his knees, searching for space between his legs and the wall. The Archive copy crackled under her jacket as her torso twisted around it.

She never took her right hand out of his shirt. The fabric stretched between her fingers and his hip as she worked her lower body around it. Her left forearm stayed pressed to her ribs, keeping the sealed sleeve from slipping while her shoulder scraped under the red pipe. She had no way to see where her knee would land. She could only feel for the wall, Kai's legs, and the heat of the cut she was trying to cover.

Kai kept his good knee loose for her. It was the one part of him he could move without immediately driving pain through the bad ankle or the damaged shoulder. Even that small allowance cost him. Each time Nia's shin passed over his calf, the pressure traveled through his bent leg to the joint caught beneath it.

Kai felt every inch of the change in his lower body.

Her shin touched the outside of his bad ankle.

He sucked in a breath.

"Sorry," she said.

"Keep going."

Nia pressed her shoulder against the red pipe and moved her hips by fractions. Her right calf dragged along the wall. The dark smear on the concrete widened. Then her left knee crossed behind the right one, and she bent her leg until the raw part of her right calf was caught between denim, skin, and the concrete wall.

She made no sound at first.

Her hand in Kai's shirt went rigid.

The pressure reached the wound a moment later. Her breath broke against the back of his neck.

Kai wanted to turn toward her. His shoulder stopped him before he could try. The lunch box edge pressed down above the damaged joint. The left arm lay slack beside him, close enough to see and too far away to do anything with.

"Talk to me," he said.

Nia's forehead touched his back.

"I'm here."

The answer came out rougher than before.

Her left knee settled against the wall. The shin across her other leg held the right calf in place. It was not a clean wrap. Nothing was tied. The pressure depended on her keeping both legs folded exactly where they were.

Her right foot flexed once against the concrete and stopped. The movement pulled a low sound from her throat. Kai felt it through the back of his legs.

"Don't fight it," he said.

"I am not fighting it."

She was. Her whole body had gone rigid around the calf, trying to keep the wound pressed without making the pain worse. The red pipe kept her shoulder from moving. The box kept Kai's shoulder from moving. Their legs had become the only part of either of them that still had a little room, and they were using that room to hold a wound shut.

Blood still appeared beneath the torn denim, but more slowly now. The wet mark on the floor stopped crawling toward the runoff.

Kai watched it for a long moment.

"Is it working?" he asked.

"Ask me in a minute."

She shifted the left knee by less than an inch.

Her shin pressed harder into his bad ankle.

The joint flared. Kai's leg jerked before he could hold it still. His good knee scraped the wall. The movement pulled his hip away from Nia's hand, and for one sick instant the weight at his shoulder changed.

The lunch box gave a sharp, brittle groan.

Nia caught him by the shirt.

Her right hand closed so hard that the seam dug into his skin. She could not pull him far, but she stopped the small slide before his shoulder went lower beneath the box edge.

The effort drove her folded legs tighter together.

Her right calf pressed against the wall. The injury disappeared under the ruined denim and her left shin. Her left ankle was now trapped against the outside of Kai's bad leg, the old scrape squeezed against his skin.

Neither of them moved.

The box stayed where it was.

Kai let the breath out slowly through his nose. The shoulder throbbed. The bad ankle pulsed under Nia's shin. His left arm had begun to feel heavier than it should have, a dead weight along the floor.

"You okay?" Nia asked.

He almost said yes.

"No," he said instead.

For a few seconds, the only sound was water under the pipe.

Nia's hand loosened a little in his shirt. Not enough to release him. Just enough to let blood return to her fingers.

"Me neither," she said.

The Archive copy shifted beneath her jacket when she breathed. Kai could hear the faint plastic sound through the fabric at her ribs.

"Copy?" he asked.

"Still dry."

Her jaw tightened after she said it. The copy was dry, but it was trapped under her forearm and ribs now. If she needed it out, she would have to undo the same careful fold that was keeping the right calf pressed against the wall.

The creature at the mouth moved one of its plates against the pipe. A dull tap traveled through the crawlspace. Nia's body went still around Kai's legs, careful not to loosen the pressure on her calf.

Kai could not see the hook from where he lay. He could only see the water trembling around the lower lip of the crawlspace and the edge of black shell beyond it.

Nia's legs remained folded around the injury and across Kai's bad ankle. Her right hand held his hip. Her left forearm held the sealed copy beneath the torn jacket. Kai's left arm lay useless beside him. The lunch box still hung over his shoulder, cracked and shut.

The blood on the concrete had stopped spreading, but Nia's left shin had driven Kai's bad ankle against the wall beneath her scraped left ankle, and the pressure made the joint throb. If she straightened the leg, the pressure on her calf would ease. If she kept it bent, neither of them could shift without twisting both injuries together.

The fold did not hold still by itself. A tremor ran through Nia's left leg, and her shin settled deeper against Kai's ankle before she caught it. He felt his bad ankle throb hotter where it was wedged between the wall and her scraped left ankle. She pressed her toes against the wall and waited until the shaking passed, careful not to move her ribs enough to dislodge the sealed copy beneath her jacket.

Nia took one careful breath and bent her knee tighter.

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