The chalk was cold.
Not refrigerator cold.
Deep-water cold—patient, pressure-heavy, uninterested in skin.
White dust clung to his fingertips. He rubbed them together.
It didn't fall.
It smeared, stubborn as a fingerprint.
On the desk, the form waited.
DOCKET
Clean black letters on paper that smelled of salt and rot.
His phone buzzed once.
He looked at it like it might bite again.
INJUNCTION I: NO FULL NAMES.
CASE ID: LT-00:00-001
RIGHT MAINTAINED: BREATHING (TEMPORARY).
Under those lines, something new appeared—no icon, no app, just authority.
LIABILITY CLAUSE ISSUED.
DUTY OF RECORD: 01 ENTRY DUE.
DEADLINE: 00:12:00
A countdown started immediately.
00:11:59.
00:11:58.
He stared.
"Record," he whispered.
The word tasted like paper.
Behind his ribs, the weak voice stirred—faint as a dying engine turning over.
Don't let it write you first.
He looked down at the docket. A line had already printed itself:
SUBJECT: [PENDING IDENTIFICATION]
Under it:
STATEMENT OF FACT:
RELIEF SOUGHT:
It wasn't a form.
It was a machine that turned ink into weight.
He lifted the chalk.
His hand trembled.
The obvious answer—the fatal one—waited behind his teeth.
His name.
His full name.
Upstairs, something had been practicing it, wrong and then less wrong, like keys tested in locks.
If he wrote it here, would it shelter him…
—or finish the address.
He swallowed.
His throat clicked in the dead quiet.
The room didn't react.
The shelves of damp boxes simply existed, swollen and patient. The columns stood like appeals that had never been read.
00:11:03.
He lowered the chalk until it hovered above the blank line.
Didn't touch.
He forced himself to breathe, slow and deliberate, as if his lungs were equipment he had to keep online.
A granted right. A borrowed function.
He shifted his grip on the chalk and, without thinking, wiped his dusty fingers against his pant seam.
The white smear stayed.
Evidence.
Of course it stayed.
He glanced to the side of the desk.
Half-hidden beneath a stack of folders sat a rusted binder clip.
Ordinary.
Which made it obscene down here.
He picked it up. Opened it. Closed it.
The snap sounded too loud, like a stamp.
He clipped it to the corner of the docket.
His phone buzzed.
SEAL STATUS: PARTIAL.
No warmth. No comfort.
Just a label.
Partial meant: not safe, but not instantly fatal.
He exhaled through his nose.
00:09:57.
He still needed identification.
But he couldn't give a name.
So he did the thing he'd spent his life doing.
Minimal input. Clean handle.
He wrote:
SUBJECT: OUTSIDER
The chalk scraped.
His molars ached, as if the word had teeth.
The air in the chamber shifted by a fraction—not sound, not wind, just… registration.
His phone buzzed.
SUBJECT REGISTERED: OUTSIDER (TEMPORARY).
SEAL STATUS: PARTIAL (MAINTAINED).
Temporary. Partial.
A life in brackets.
He moved to the next line.
STATEMENT OF FACT:
Fact was a loaded word.
Facts became precedents. Precedents became chains.
Too much, and he built the enemy a path. Too little, and the system punished noncompliance.
Duty of Record.
You know it, you file it.
He wrote the smallest truth that couldn't be used as a rope.
FACT: LOW TIDE JURISDICTION COMMENCED AT 00:00.
His phone vibrated.
FACT ACCEPTED.
He wrote another, careful.
FACT: SERVICE REMOVES THE TARGET FROM SURFACE JURISDICTION.
A pause.
Then:
FACT ACCEPTED (CONDITIONAL).
Even truth needed disclaimers here.
He hesitated on the third.
He didn't want to put himself into the record.
But the Case ID was already branded into his screen. He was already in the cabinet.
He wrote:
FACT: OUTSIDER IDENTIFIED AS ADDITIONAL PARTY DURING SERVICE EVENT.
The chalk squealed.
The binder clip shivered against paper—just a tiny metal twitch.
His lungs tightened sharply, as if someone had cinched a belt around his ribs.
His phone lit up.
CITATION FEE DUE: 01.
The white dust on his fingertips lifted—barely visible—and drifted toward the docket like smoke being pulled into a vent.
He tried to inhale.
Nothing happened for half a second.
Then air returned, shallow and cold.
On the screen, the breathing line flickered once.
RIGHT MAINTAINED: BREATHING (TEMPORARY).
A warning light.
The weak voice scraped through the inside of his skull, strained.
Too much.
He froze, chalk hovering.
00:06:41.
The last line waited.
RELIEF SOUGHT:
What did he want?
Shelter. Time. A delay.
A word rose from somewhere he didn't know he had.
Objection.
If service was procedure, procedure could be contested.
He wrote:
RELIEF: STAY OF SERVICE PENDING REVIEW.
The chalk line landed.
The chamber didn't move.
It listened.
His phone buzzed hard.
RELIEF DENIED (INSUFFICIENT GROUNDS).
REASON: NO JURISDICTIONAL STANDING ESTABLISHED.
Standing.
Of course.
A court didn't owe you anything unless it recognized you as someone it had to pretend to care about.
No standing meant: no right to object.
He wasn't a person here.
Not yet.
Not properly.
Upstairs, the clerk in the long coat would have perfect standing.
It belonged.
It served.
He stared at the denial until the words stopped being text and started being a wall.
00:05:12.
He needed grounds.
He needed something procedural, something mechanical.
Something that didn't require a name.
He turned away from the desk and scanned the shelves.
On one shelf, a half-open box sagged with folders tied in twine. The labels were blurred by damp, but a few words remained sharp, stubbornly legible.
NOTICE
SERVICE
DEFECT
He stepped to the box. His shoes made no echo on the seabed floor. The silence swallowed footsteps like wet cloth.
He pulled out the DEFECT folder.
It was heavier than paper had any right to be.
Weight again.
Meaning.
He opened it.
Inside were forms. Dozens. Hundreds.
Most blank except for one section printed at the bottom like a confession.
GROUNDS FOR OBJECTION:
Under it, a checklist.
He didn't understand half the terms.
But one line was simple enough to make his skin prickle.
— Improper Identification
Another:
— Failure of Notice
Another:
— Unlawful Venue
He carried the folder back to the desk like it might crack if treated like paper.
00:03:09.
He amended the relief line, tight and small beneath his earlier request.
GROUNDS: IMPROPER IDENTIFICATION — SUBJECT NOT FULLY NAMED.
The chalk scraped.
The binder clip snapped down a fraction harder, as if approving the pressure.
His phone buzzed.
GROUNDS NOTED.
STATUS: REVIEW PENDING.
Not approved.
Not denied.
Pending.
Pending was a foothold.
A mechanical mercy.
His ribs loosened slightly—enough to make him realize how close he'd been to drowning on land.
A new line appeared beneath the Case ID.
PROCEDURAL RIGHT GRANTED: OBJECTION (LIMITED).
Limited.
Always limited.
The weak voice pulsed once, like an exhausted nod.
Good.
He glanced at the timer.
00:01:28.
He'd filed an entry.
But the system wasn't finished with him.
His phone buzzed again.
DUTY OF RECORD: INCOMPLETE.
REQUIREMENT: 01 EXHIBIT ATTACHED OR NOTED.
Exhibit.
He looked at the chalk in his hand.
He'd been treating it like a tool.
The court was telling him it was evidence.
Of course it was.
This place ate objects and turned them into citations.
He wrote one final line at the bottom of the docket, under a section he hadn't noticed before:
EXHIBIT(S): C-03 (CHALK), IN POSSESSION OF SUBJECT.
As he wrote, the chalk grew heavier in his grip, as if it resented being named into the record.
His phone buzzed hard.
Then the screen lines rearranged themselves with the calm of a file being closed.
DUTY OF RECORD: SATISFIED.
RIGHT MAINTAINED: BREATHING.
CASE STATUS: ACTIVE.
The countdown vanished.
The air in his lungs eased—just enough to make the relief feel like a trap.
He lowered the chalk.
His hand still shook.
Not adrenaline.
Recognition.
He had agreed to terms without reading the fine print.
He stared at the docket.
OUTSIDER.
Facts.
Grounds.
Exhibit.
A handle.
A foothold.
A leash.
The weak voice whispered again, softer now.
Now you can argue.
He turned toward the stairwell.
The darkness there had thickened.
Pressure built, steady and wrong, like someone leaning on a door that was supposed to stay shut.
He heard it—not a voice, not yet—more like a sound being rehearsed.
A syllable forming and breaking, forming and breaking.
Wrong.
Close.
Closer.
He clenched his jaw until his molars hurt.
He did not answer.
He did not speak.
His phone buzzed one more time.
HEARING SCHEDULED: IMMEDIATE.
VENUE: SEA-BED COURT.
Then, beneath it, a final line—short, blunt.
NO CONTINUANCE.
He exhaled.
Short. Steady.
He looked down at the chalk dust on his fingers, the white smear on his pants.
Residue.
Like he'd touched something sacred.
Or contaminated.
He set the chalk on the desk.
Then picked it back up.
A steadier grip.
Above, beyond the boundary, a clerk prepared another notice.
Down here, for the first time since midnight, he had something the system recognized.
Not a weapon.
Not a name.
A procedure.
It might not save him.
But it meant he wouldn't be written out without appeal.
For now.