Heat thinned to nothing and the floor decided to be tile. Air hit his face with the dry tang of brake dust and old electricity; somewhere ahead, rails hummed like a throat clearing.
He didn't lift his head until his shoes told him the surface had the fine grit you get from decades of feet and the occasional emergency. He kept the card in his right hand, ring outward, a small, stubborn planet in his palm.
[ENTRY CONFIRMED]
Text arrived at eye height and let the rest of the space draw itself: a subway platform dressed in municipal beige, pillars tiled to chest level, a stripe of color banding the wall with the confidence of a map. The ceiling was low enough to remember. Ad frames along the opposite wall held blank paper, the kind that waits for slogans. A bench of slatted wood watched the tracks like a witness. Track bed: gravel, third rail hooded, tunnel mouth gaping black at each end like parentheses that didn't like their joke.
No crowd. No announcements. The sound system breathed the faint hiss of a line left open.
[ENVIRONMENT: TRANSIT PLATFORM MOCKUP][NON-PARTICIPANTS: NONE][CONDITION: MAINTAIN OPERATIONAL CONTROL OVER SPECIAL ITEM][OBJECTIVE: BOARD SOUTHBOUND → RETAIN ITEM UNTIL DOORS CLOSE][FAIL STATE: ITEM LOSS / CRITICAL STATUS]
The word southbound meant the right-hand tunnel; he didn't need the compass rose painted at ankle height near the pillar to agree, but it did anyway.
A soft pop of pressure teased his eardrums, then resolved into the faintest gust from the right—train far down the line, air rehearsing. He took three slow steps along the yellow bumpy edge, just far enough to see through the curve. No headlight yet. He stepped back, because good habits should be fed.
Behind him, something decided it wouldn't be polite.
He felt it first—a crease in the air where presence thickens. He pivoted just far enough to bring his shoulder in line and his elbow clear. The agent resolved at the top of the stairwell—a human height, human stride, edges that wouldn't sign their names. It came out onto the platform with empty hands held low, palms forward like a liar showing honesty.
[HAZARD SPAWN: 1][TYPE: BLURRED AGENT][EQUIPPED: NONE][BEHAVIOR: DISARM / GRAPPLE]
"Symmetry," he said, and the tile sent the word back, smaller.
[TIMER: 02:00]
Two minutes to choose which version of this story he could live with.
He moved left, away from the stairhead, keeping the card visible, ring a quiet insult. The agent matched his arc, not closing yet, angling, mapping which pillar would be its friend. He cataloged rail distances, the break between bench and pillar, the emergency call box on the far pillar with a little metal door and—there—on its face, a small white ring polite as a lapel pin.
He let himself look at it once, then didn't.
The southbound tunnel exhaled again, a longer breath.
The agent committed with no flourish: a quick two-step, hands for his wrist and elbow, an efficient proposition—give or be given. He let the reach arrive and didn't put his wrist where it wanted. The ring on the card kissed the inside of the agent's forearm; the forearm betrayed its owner with a narrow flinch. He turned his shoulder and let momentum draft behind him instead of through him, then slid past the pillar and toward the call box like he'd always wanted to see the emergency instructions.
The agent understood the pivot late and paid with two strides it couldn't use. He raised the card and kissed ring to ring on the call box door.
The box unclipped itself with a tidy snick. Inside: a red button under plastic, a dangling handset, and a round recess the size of a coin with a white line in its throat. He didn't have a coin; the rooftop had taken it. He had the card.
"Don't be precious," he told himself, and pressed the ring against the recess.
Something in the system learned manners. The platform lights stepped one degree brighter; the sound system woke from its nap.
"Southbound approaching," said a voice that was no one's, and returned to static.
The agent hit the pillar at running speed and turned the hit into a swing, hand cutting for his wrist again, other arm reaching across to trap shoulders. He let the first hand find the wrong target—the call box door slammed by his palm into the agent's fingers with a neat bark of metal, and he doubled the insult with the card's face under the crook of the elbow, rotating. The body obeyed the joint's request. He slid along its front and stole space.
"Platform rules," he said without volume. "No pushing."
The train's headlight winked down the tunnel like an eye daring itself to open. Wind lifted grit, made the ads' blank paper chuckle.
[TIMER: 01:11]
He moved along the yellow edge, not on it, making the agent fight both him and the invisible line that adults respect. The agent adapted and went for the cheap efficiency—backheel at his ankle, shoulder for his sternum. He let his ankle not be there and gave the shoulder a rib instead of a center. The card rode close and level, ring outward like a mirror refusing to reflect.
They reached the middle of the platform together. The wind from the tunnel acquired a direction that wanted to be called forward. He saw the headlight now—a white coin growing into a saucer.
He had options. Jump for the lead car doors as they opened and get swarmed by schedules he didn't control. Slide to the second car, where the crowd would thin if there had been a crowd. He listened to a system that had no crowd and adjusted: third car. The distance gave a human just enough time to change their mind twice. He wasn't changing his.
The agent accelerated. It didn't sprint; sprinting wastes choices. It closed until he could have breathed its air if it had owned any. Its hands made a circle shape he recognized now—the world wanting his smaller circle inside it. He denied the shape, turned his forearm, and set the ring against imitation tendon. Hands faltered. He bought a step, then two.
The train's noise arrived not as thunder but as a polished complaint, a huge machine asking the rails to respect it. The head car cleared the tunnel mouth with a snap that ran up the platform, print perfect.
He was at the third car mark when the doors' rubber edges smiled and separated.
"After you," he said to no one, and then went first.
He stepped across the gap, kept the card high, and immediately turned to face the platform. The agent was exactly there, one pace away, posture tidy, plan unflinching. It didn't want to follow him inside; it wanted to end the problem at the seam.
He gave it the seam.
It reached. He met the reach with the rectangle, ring a small sun. Fingers recoiled. He stepped one boot heel deeper, buying the door sensor his weight. The doors reconsidered their hospitality and began to close, cautious.
The agent shifted to the one cheap tactic left—wedge an arm and make the door decide to be kind. It threw a forearm toward the rubber edge.
He lifted the card and set it abruptly against the forearm so the ring met not skin but rule. The forearm jerked an inch without the rest of the body agreeing. The door's rubber kissed at the elbow and the sensors made a decision about liability. The door stopped, opened that inch, hungry and careful.
The agent tried to convert the inch into a foot.
He didn't argue with the door. He argued with the arm. He stepped in as if he were holding a polite conversation and planted his boot over the threshold, then used his shoulder to keep the agent's center out while his hand applied the ring to the joint again, a small stamp.
"Not invited," he said.
The door decided to try again. Rubber met arm; the sensor waited; the door persisted with the polite cruelty of a machine that had paperwork behind it. The agent withdrew the limb a fraction to keep it attached to its life. The door took the fraction. It closed farther. The agent chose between bone and etiquette and took one step back because physics had moved the goalposts.
He let the door win. He did not grin. He simply breathed and felt air that belonged to a car, recycled and faintly human in a way the platform wasn't.
The doors whispered shut.
[OBJECTIVE: BOARD SOUTHBOUND—CLEARED][ITEM CONTROL: VERIFIED]
The car was empty. Ad panels glowed with blank white. The floor was speckled with the indifference of thousands. Poles shone with a fatigue that said they knew hands. A route map above the far seats showed only the line color and a minimalist legend—no station names, no temporal promises.
The train agreed with itself about motion and began to leave the platform. The agent kept pace for two steps, then one, then let inertia choose pride. It stopped, its not-face watching, its hands still open, an offering of nothing.
The tunnel took the view and offered tile that flickered in strips of light.
He did not sit. He put his back to a window post so he could see the length of the car and the opposite door, kept the rectangle at sternum height, and let his breath untangle. The overhead panel displayed a simple list of instructions that didn't need to be read. He read them anyway.
[CONDITION: MAINTAIN OPERATIONAL CONTROL OVER SPECIAL ITEM][NEXT: INTERLOCK]
"Vague," he told the ceiling.
He watched the opposite door a full ten seconds past when anyone else would've forgotten it. It stayed a door.
He frowned at the ad panel nearest the vestibule. The corner edge wore a hairline circle etched so gently he'd have missed it if his hands weren't already busy with rings. He resisted the urge to test it. The car had learned to move; he had learned to obey.
The train slid into a deeper run, the rails' song smoothing into a single line the mind could ignore. He caught his reflection in the window—a ghost layered over tunnel tile and occasional service niches lit like secrets. His eyes looked older than the day allowed. He believed them.
Air shifted at his back in the dishonest way moving cars always do. It wasn't a draft. It was motion making itself known to skin. He didn't turn. He checked the glass first.
Behind him, in the reflection, a shape worked its way between cars, a blur where the accordion joint should be only fabric and compromise. It was careful with its hands and casual with everything else. He watched the blur's head tilt the way you'd tilt before you test a latch.
He did not let his heart announce itself. He slid two inches along the pole to change the angle of his shoulders to the corridor between cars and raised the card, ring catching a sliver of the car's cold light.
The inter-car door's indicator—just a dot of green above the handle—blinked once out of rhythm and then went back to steady. The blur paused, as if listening to rules. It made a decision about being invited and set its hand to the latch.
He spoke, not loud, just present. "Try the other car."
The latch didn't respect conversation.
He put the rectangle against the door's logo—small, a circle so faint it seemed embarrassed to be a symbol—and let absence touch absence.
The indicator went from green to nothing, not red, not off, but a refusal to be judged. The latch forgot what latches do. The door had the decency to feel heavier.
The blur remembered it had options and retreated the length of a hinge. The car's sound swallowed what little it had done.
He let his shoulders release a fraction but didn't put relief on the schedule. The car hummed and the system scrolled a single unhelpful line over the route map.
[STAND BY]
He rolled that phrase in his head like a hard candy he didn't want. The car moved through darkness and occasional lights and the occasional idea of station walls without people.
Movement lived at the far end of the car, not the door—seat level, quick, then gone. He pointed his attention without moving his face. A paper triangle—the kind that tucks into ad frames to hold the corner—worked loose and spun to the floor, a dumb piece of geometry returning to gravity. He felt stupid for having tracked it. He tracked it anyway.
He walked the length of the car without taking steps—shifting weight, shifting awareness, shifting hypotheses. The ring in his hand didn't change temperature. The world had the decency not to either.
The train eased throttle and let wheel noise return to separate objects. A sign over the door flashed a station name that wasn't a name—just a line, a circle, a dot. He had the feeling that if he stepped off here the map would collapse into something called punishment.
The car gave him another instruction he hadn't asked for: a faint chiming, like a microwave deciding on mercy. Over the vestibule door's frame, a small panel warmed to life and printed an offer.
[EXCHANGE: RISK CREDIT (1) → OPEN QUERY WINDOW (1)][YES / NO]
He hadn't earned a credit since the interim room gave him one for not being foolish at the pane. He didn't know why the system thought he had one to spend. He didn't trust generosity here.
He kept his finger to himself.
The chiming stopped, offended. The panel went back to being a rectangle.
The train began to brake into a station whose tiles looked exactly like the ones they'd left, because honesty is cheap to copy. The overhead panel decided to be specific for once.
[OBJECTIVE UPDATE: HOLD ITEM—DO NOT DISEMBARK]
That made this easy and therefore difficult.
The car rolled to a stop. Doors scissored open across the platform to a corridor of empty. Air from the station came in cool and uninterested.
He stood where he was and studied the smear of glass in the opposite car through the gangway. Nothing blurred there. He studied the platform reflection in the window and the angle of the tunnel lights and the small gap where stations are always too proud to align themselves perfectly. The card stayed at chest, ring outward, a small fact the universe had to argue with if it wanted him.
Time stretched in a way that made seconds file complaints.
The chime sounded again—twice, gentle. The door's edge lights chased in white arrows that suggested this was the part where people make mistakes.
He didn't.
A flick at the corner of his vision announced someone else's decision. Down the platform, the stairwell vomited a shape that moved like it owned speed. It wasn't an agent; it ran wrong for that. It was a man—no, a boy—hood up, shoulders rabbiting, eyes already looking back for the trouble behind him, not the trouble in front. He cut the yellow edge close like a dance and flung himself at the car two cars ahead.
"Don't," Caleb said, stupidly, because the glass didn't carry voices sideways.
The boy's foot missed yellow, found air, and then found the platform again by luck that would not hold through adulthood. He caught the pole inside with a hand like apologies and vanished into a seat.
The agent did not follow; perhaps there wasn't one. Perhaps symmetry was bored.
The doors sang that last polite warning and met themselves in the middle.
He let the small release happen, measured.
The car took the platform in reverse, giving back tile and light and the suggestion of decision. Darkness returned, then the rhythm, then the rails' ongoing argument with steel.
He didn't sit. He watched both doors and the window and the continuation of his own hands until even his breath had the decency to tire of counting.
The ad panel nearest him flickered, once. Ink—or what passed for it here—found words for one beat and then thought better of it. In that one beat, he saw a headline he'd never written, a photo that had never been taken, and the name WHITE printed with the clean kindness newspapers use when they haven't decided if you're a hero or a problem.
The panel went blank, innocent as a new lie.
He kept the card up and the ring outward and waited for the car to admit what next meant, letting the tunnel throw moving light over his hands until it looked like the world was practicing choices on his skin.