He chose the brake.
Air was the luxury; the room was the oath. He let the last half-breath go and refused the next, keeping the strap taut and the ring factual under leather. The pawl trembled, coin on its rim, and sat because he told it to sit.
"Status," Angle said, voice like a line that never learned curve.
"Maintained." His answer came thinner. He rationed consonants like matches. Hold. Don't gift it anything you didn't price.
The pressure across his sternum read his decision and behaved. The line did not punish him for starving it of comfort; it simply took the inches he paid for. Caliper-fingers adjusted on his right hand with the exact touch of a tool that respects the material. The cuff tightened a paper's thickness. The seam brightened a breath.
"Selector: index aligned," Angle logged.
Warmth pressed perfectly between his eyes—steady coin, steady sight. Stay. If I go under, draw me back.
Behind him, the room stayed good. Lamp: shaved. Curtains: plumb. Rain: metronome. The white panel of the television held to the seam's width like a chalk line nobody dared smudge. The woman did not touch him by exactly one inch. The older man's tie shared the strap's duty without arguing status. Frank swallowed a word and did not spend it.
The velvet brake crept a whisper. The bowl answered with a microscopic slide and then remembered weight. The strap ticked once and settled. He tightened his left-hand grip and felt bone go white. The ring kept its fact.
"Proceed," Angle said.
"On my count." He gave the count, a thin scaffold: one, hold, two, hold, out—no out—and let the line take his throat where speech lives. Cold traced the larynx with a politeness that hurt. He kept the jaw set into the cheaper angle so the door would spend itself on him, not on the room.
"Pain," Angle asked. "State."
"Contained." He didn't save breath for courtesy. The corridor's hush learned his voice and softened around it, not comfort exactly—compliance.
The pawl flirted again—bright, eager. He did not argue; he changed the geometry. A slow lean into the vector bought the strap a hair and the hair became his. He hauled the ring down with the strap's back, not the thumb's hope. The pawl considered freedom and sat, sulking.
"Vector memory updated," Angle said. "Zero held."
Hold me there, he told the warmth. It answered by existing harder, a touch that felt like a thumb on a diagram.
Inside the seam, lattice-points pulsed—subtle waymarks. The distance to the first landing beyond the threshold was not measured in feet but in permission; he could feel it as a clean absence of error.
His lungs began their old argument. He let them talk and refused to bargain. The door asked for the remainder of his throat; he bent to give it, and in the bending he felt the exact moment the air would become argument and the argument would lose.
"Breath," Angle said, not unkind. "Demand."
"Brake," he answered, and paid for the word with a black edge at his vision that wasn't sight; sight had already been refiled as instrument.
The cuff set a new tooth. The calipers shifted. His neck crossed fully; the clean, mechanical hush on the far side noticed a spine willing to be written on and sharpened its pencil. He tasted oil in brown glass and paper that refused time. He tasted numbers.
"Terms," he said, because repetition is a handrail. "Say them."
"Vector only," Angle said. "Room spared. Noise contained."
"And return."
"Selector draws."
"Good." The world wavered and steadied. He found the afterbeat again, that second pulse deeper than blood, and stood on it. Live on counts. He gave the line the cheap inch next—C4 into the dark like agreement—and kept the expensive inch for the brake.
The internal counter in the box ticked quicker, excited by his denial. The lid tried to run under velvet and learned drag. The strap complained in leather, the tie in cloth. The ring trembled and discovered boredom.
"Acceleration attempt," Angle noted, clerkly. "Advise."
"Advance one," he said. "Inspection notch. Keep planarity."
"Proceed."
He bled slack into the strap—dangerous work when the lungs have opinions—rolled the ring through the treacherous gap, and felt the pawl lift, click, and seat lower with a relief that traveled into bone. The seam leaned toward his sternum only. The room's corners kept their vote.
"Status," Angle asked.
"Governed." The word cut his mouth and didn't bleed.
The line arrived where a ribcage becomes opinion. His heart knocked once against procedure and decided to learn it. The warmth between his eyes did not tremble. Stay.
"Vector," Angle said. "Heart's far edge."
"On the beat." He waited for the beat like a diver waits for the surface, then didn't take it. He gave it away to the line and kept the brake. Pain organized into a slender card and filed itself behind some other, older ache. His head grew light in a way that had nothing of surrender in it—only math.
"Status," Angle said again.
"Maintained." The syllables cost; he paid.
The room loomed gentle. The woman's mouth was a line of will. The older man's eyes looked historical. Frank watched as if watching were a new idea he might like. The bell downstairs forgot its script. The knock had been demoted to weather and then to nothing.
The line wanted more. It always does. He denied the first plea and offered the second, because compromise is not sin when you choose the price. The chain tugged; he made the tug cheap. The strap murmured its labor-song. The ring resented him and obeyed.
His lungs wrote him a letter with unkind penmanship. He did not read it. He placed palm and fingers on the strap's spine and taught his hand a new quiet. You breathe when the room can afford it.
"Conduit," Angle said, with something like respect measured into the syllables. "Cross shoulders."
"After the beat." He counted it with the same arithmetic that had cut stitches into truth, then gave the line what it asked. Cold passed beneath clavicle and settled there with a craftsman's satisfaction. The cuff shifted to meet new load. The caliper-fingers did not bruise; they corrected. Inside, the lattice's first landing—no floor, a decision—brightened.
The strap slipped a hair. Sweat undid a fraction of engineering. The pawl lifted the width of a coin and waited for permission like a child who knows better.
He gave it none. He twisted his wrist—the one Angle owned—and bled force into the strap by leverage. The ring came down; the pawl sat with a chastened tak. He almost smiled. He did not waste air on it.
"Selector," he whispered, because superstition and discipline are cousins. "Stay."
Warmth: yes—exact, constant, a promise that promised nothing beyond itself.
"Vector," Angle said. "Air."
The demand arrived not as hunger but as math. He could starve another five counts if he turned his body into the cheap angle and fed the corridor inches instead of oxygen. He bought the five. The world narrowed to lattice, to line, to the exact face of a man standing between a room and a rule.
The older man's voice, low: "We have you."
Ash nodded without nodding. Keep me. He leaned forward that small, bribing distance and let the door spend him instead of the house. The chain pulled. He went. Shoulders crossed. The seam widened by tolerance. The room lost nothing it could not afford.
Black at the edges cut inward another quiet finger. He accepted the debt. The afterbeat lifted him. He stood on it, because standing is a verb that doesn't require legs if the geometry likes you.
The line settled at the top of the lungs. If he breathed now, he would breathe the corridor in; if he did not, he might drop out of the arithmetic and into the old biology with stupid consequences. Choice is a teacher that favors fast classes.
"Now," Angle said.
He denied the first now. He took the second and turned it into rail. He did not inhale. He offered inches. The cuff set. The calipers approved. The strap kept fact. The pawl exhaled a sulky nothing and behaved.
"Status," Angle asked again.
"Maintained." Thin as string; true as chalk.
The woman's eyes shone but did not spill. The older man's grip on Frank became less punishment and more permission to fail quietly. Frank's throat worked around a word he didn't say.
The lattice ahead laid three waypoints in a row and labeled them with glyphs his bones understood and his tongue would not survive. Zero pulsed behind him where Selector had left the thumbprint of return. Another dot—call it One—waited in the middle distance like a fair price.
"Proceed," Angle said.
He did. Lungs paid another count tax. Heart paid in rhythm. Spine paid in inches. The world permitted him to exist as a diagram with human liabilities. It was almost funny. He didn't pay for the smile.
"Conduit," Angle said. "Breathe."
"Not yet." The words were the last he could afford.
The strap groaned and held. The tie became pride in cloth. The velvet remembered weather and made it friction. The ring remembered law. The pawl remembered seat. The bowl remembered weight. The room remembered him.
He let the line take the final fraction the throat would give the door without stealing air. The last safe inch vanished. The demand became absolute.
"Conduit," Angle repeated. "Breathe."
He could break the brake. He could break the breath.
He broke the breath.
He opened his mouth inside the plane and let the corridor have the first of him that wasn't held by a hand.