The System Can’t See Me

Kai's good knee slipped before Nia told him she had to move.

The denim dragged against the wall. His knee dropped an inch, then caught on a rough seam in the concrete. The jolt pulled his hip forward beneath Nia's lower hand.

Her fingers closed around his shirt.

"Kai."

"I felt it."

"Get it back up."

He tried.

The muscle above his knee shook as he pushed against the wall. The scraped skin underneath the jeans burned. His bad ankle lay flat for once, free of Nia's shin, but it could not take any of the work. The moment he asked it to press, pain ran through the joint and folded his effort in half.

His knee climbed a little, then slid back to the seam.

"That's all I've got," he said.

Nia did not answer right away. Her upper hand stayed flat in his torn shirt below the lunch box. The lower hand held his hip. He could feel the tremor in both of them as they tried to hold the same positions while their weight kept shifting beneath them.

Her left foot remained in the runoff behind his legs. The blue water moved over her bare heel. Her right calf was still against the wall. A dark line ran from the torn denim and disappeared below the pipe.

"Then don't let the knee slide again," she said.

Kai looked at the wall. The concrete seam had already gone slick under his jeans.

"I'll do my best."

"I know. Do it anyway."

Nia shifted her left foot in the water and stopped when the grit slid under her heel. The movement pulled lightly at the hands on Kai's shirt. She cursed under her breath, too low for him to make out the words.

"Your foot?" he asked.

"It's still where we left it."

"Can you get it out?"

"Not while you are hanging off me."

Kai looked at the wall again. The rough seam sat below his good knee. Above it, there was only wet concrete and the narrow dark mark his jeans had left. He tried to find another place to brace without moving his hip. There was none.

"Then I am sorry," he said.

Nia's breath caught once. "Save it."

The hook came through the gap below the red pipe.

Kai saw it too late to understand where it had been. One second there was only the wet edge of black plate at the mouth. The next, the hooked limb scraped along the concrete at knee height, fast enough to throw grit across his hand.

He shoved with the good leg.

The knee came free from the wall just as the hook crossed the space where it had been.

The hook caught his jeans instead.

Fabric tore above the knee. The pull turned his hip toward the mouth. Nia's lower hand slipped from his shirt seam to the bare skin at his side. Her nails dug in. The box scraped over Kai's left shoulder, and the pain in the joint went sharp and deep.

He made himself go still.

The hook pulled once more.

It dragged the torn strip of denim free, then vanished behind the pipe.

For a moment, Kai could hear Nia breathing behind him and nothing else.

The torn strip lay half in the water near her left foot. It turned once in the runoff, then slipped under the pipe after the Archive copy.

Then she said, "Are you cut?"

"I don't know."

"Can you feel your leg?"

He looked down. The jeans had opened over the outside of his good knee. There was a pale scrape through the dirt, already darkening at one edge. His knee flexed when he told it to, though the motion made the raw skin pull.

"Yes."

"Is it bleeding?"

Kai looked down at the torn cloth. His left hand stayed on the floor, useless. The right wrist remained trapped under his ribs. He could not reach the knee with either one.

"I can't check."

Nia shifted her head past his shoulder as far as the lunch box would allow. He felt her trying to see around him. Her grip loosened for the smallest fraction, then tightened again.

"There's blood," she said.

"From my knee?"

"I can't tell."

He would rather have had a clear answer.

Nia pressed her mouth into a hard line. Kai felt it against the back of his shoulder blade when she leaned in again.

"Your knee's scraped," she said. "Doesn't look deep from here."

"From what you can see."

"I can't get closer without losing you."

There was nothing to argue with in that. Kai kept the injured knee still and tried to decide whether the wetness under the torn denim was from him, from Nia's calf, or from the floor. He could not tell. The whole lower half of the crawlspace had become one dark smear.

Kai held his good knee against the wall again. It had no purchase now. The seam was below the knee, the scraped skin above it, and every small push dragged the torn jeans over the new raw place.

Nia felt the movement through his hip.

"Stop trying to put it back," she said.

"Then what holds me?"

She looked past him toward the wall. He could not see her face, but he heard the change in her breathing when she understood the same thing he had.

"Me," she said.

Kai did not like the word. He did not have anything better.

The lunch box remained diagonal over his left shoulder. The crack in its lid showed dark where the plastic had been stressed. It had not opened. It had not shifted clear of the bend. It stayed lodged against his shoulder, adding pressure whenever he shifted.

Nia moved her lower hand from his side to the waistband of his jeans. Her grip caught there more firmly than it had on the torn shirt. The upper hand stayed below the box.

"Don't pull me," Kai said.

"I'm not."

"It feels like it."

"You're sliding. There's a difference."

He kept his eyes on the wall. The knee had stopped trying to hold him up. It bent under him now, folded close to the floor. Without it against the concrete, most of his weight rested against Nia's hands and the line of his right side where it met the ground.

The blue-bound wrist was still trapped there. The cold strip beneath his ribs had pressed hard enough that he could no longer tell whether the numbness in his hand had changed or he had simply stopped noticing it.

Nia's fingers tightened at his waistband.

"Can you let your hip down a little?" she asked.

Kai almost asked what that meant. He could feel the answer in the strain across his side. If he kept trying to stay high, the box would keep grinding his shoulder and Nia would keep carrying his weight with both hands. If he lowered himself, he would lose the wall completely.

"How far?"

"Enough that I can keep you from rolling."

"That's not a number."

"You told me not to give you numbers."

Despite himself, Kai let out a thin breath that might have been a laugh. Nia's hand at his hip steadied him before it could turn into another slide.

"All right," he said.

He eased the good knee down.

The movement took longer than it should have. He lowered it a fraction, waited for the box to shift, then lowered it again. The damaged shoulder dragged under the cracked plastic. Nia kept one hand at his waistband and one high on his shirt, taking the turn out of his body as much as she could.

His knee came off the wall.

His hip settled closer to the floor.

The box gave a low creak above him and stopped.

Kai lay more on his right side than before, with his good knee bent under him and the bad ankle flat ahead of it. The position pressed the trapped wrist harder into the concrete. He could not pull it free. His left arm remained along the floor, dead from the shoulder down.

Nia stayed behind him, both hands holding fabric at his waist and ribs. Her left foot was still in the runoff. Her right calf shivered against the wall. The new blood near Kai's knee joined the older dark tracks on the concrete, but neither of them could see where one ended and the other began.

She tested the new hold by easing one finger at a time tighter around his waistband. The fabric was wet enough to stretch under her grip. Her upper hand had less to work with. The torn shirt bunched beneath the lunch box, and each time Kai drew a breath, the cloth shifted against her palm.

"Don't let go," he said.

"I wasn't planning to."

"That has not stopped things from slipping."

Nia was quiet. Then she said, "Put your weight down. Don't keep trying to carry it."

Kai let his hip settle another fraction. The floor pressed harder along his right side and into the wrist beneath him. His good knee folded closer. He felt the scrape pull open under the denim, but the box did not move and Nia's hands did not lose him.

"There," she said.

The wall was out of reach of his knee now. Nia checked her grip again and kept it.

She did not try to pull her left foot from the runoff. The attempt would have moved her hips, and moving her hips would have pulled at the hand holding Kai's waistband. Her right calf tightened against the wall instead. He felt the shiver through the hand at his ribs.

"Does it hurt more?" he asked.

"Everything hurts more."

The answer was flat, but her fingers had gone cold against his side. Kai could feel one slipping along the wet fabric until it found a seam and held there. He stayed as still as he could, even when the pressure beneath his right ribs made his trapped wrist pulse.

The hook stayed out of sight beyond the pipe. Kai did not look for it.

He listened instead to the water moving around Nia's foot and to the rough pull of her breath each time the calf tightened.

"Will it hold?" he asked.

"I don't know," Nia said. "It's better than the other way."

Outside the pipe, something wet shifted against the concrete.

Nia's hands did not move.

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