The world decided on a different shape and took him with it.
The hole wasn't a falling; it was a yes without gravity. The desk, the bed, the detective's grip, the door's rectangle of hallway light—all of it thinned like film held too close to flame and folded out of being. Cold kissed his palms. The smell of lemon cleaner snapped into ozone scraped over iron, and a faint pressure pressed his eardrums the way elevators do when they think about moving.
He didn't tumble. He translated.
His shoes met a new floor with a quiet, rubbery sound. The pressure let go. Sound came back in pieces: a buzzing that wasn't his dorm's light, a drip like a metronome practicing patience, air forced through ductwork somewhere just out of sight.
The card lay in his hand as if it had never known another home.
[ENTRY CONFIRMED]
The letters hung at arm's length in front of his eyes, not part of any screen. The font was the same calm, unarguable white. They made the place real in the way labels give maps permission.
He lifted his chin.
Hallway, not dorm. Commercial, not institutional. The floor was polished concrete—the kind you get when a developer runs out of enthusiasm—scuffed by shoes and cart wheels and a few lines from something dragged reluctantly. Ceiling: exposed beams and a forest of ducts. Lights: a staggered row of flat, humming panels, one out every fourth, so the brightness came in beats. To his right, a roll-down metal shutter hung half-open like a mouth that had forgotten its job. To his left, glass-fronted shops with names that hadn't survived the transfer, signage stripped to negative space. Farther down, the hallway ended in a T that was more shadow than architecture.
The air carried a faint cocktail of new paint, old dust, stale fryer oil, the ghost of a synthetic citrus a manager once insisted on.
Lines of text arranged themselves over the hall like a heads-up display that didn't need a device.
[ENVIRONMENT: COMMERCIAL ARCADE MOCKUP][NON-PARTICIPANTS: NONE][OBSERVER SHIELD: N/A][CONDITION: MAINTAIN OPERATIONAL CONTROL OVER SPECIAL ITEM][OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE UNTIL EXIT OPENS][FAIL STATE: ITEM LOSS / CRITICAL STATUS]
Critical status was a nice clean phrase for bleeding out.
A small sound tugged at the back of the hall—soft, too human to be machinery. He stood perfectly still and let his senses report. The drip was to the left, steady. The buzz from the lights set a weak, constant pitch. The new sound came again, a breath with words tucked inside it. He turned his head in increments.
On the far side of the half-open shutter, two shoes stuck out. Black, cheap, the kind you buy when you stand for a living and can't afford blistered pride. The rest of the body lay under the shutter where it met the floor, the metal teeth kissing a thigh. A man's jeans, gray with dirt at the knee. The shoes twitched once as if offended by pain.
"Hey," the voice under the door said. "Hey. You—hey!"
"I hear you," Caleb said, mouth dry and obedient.
"God," the man said, and then, more carefully, "Help. It dropped. I didn't— I can't move my leg."
Caleb took a step that told his brain the hall's friction honestly. He moved toward the shutter and kept his eyes from cataloging too early. He crouched two yards off, enough distance to see but not be kicked, and let his gaze inventory what caring looked like here.
The shutter had teeth like a long zipper. It had come down at an angle and found a thigh just above the knee. No wet shine. No exposed bone. The leg under the metal shifted less than the voice promised; pain teaches even liars to be economical.
Beyond the gap, the shop was dim—shelves at odd angles, a register on its side, candy scattered like a party that had been told to stop misbehaving. A man lay half-tucked under the door, torso inside, leg outside. Maybe forty, maybe thirty-five pushed hard. Work polo, name tag flipped backward. His face was a pale slab with too much sweat and a kind of public fear that hadn't learned to be private.
"Please," he said when he saw eyes on him. "I can't— It came down. It just— I don't know why."
[TIMER: 14:59]
Numbers arrived without fanfare in the air above the hall, a clean digital the color of decision. They started falling, 14:58, 14:57—not counting like a kitchen gadget so much as stating a fact and then another.
"Fourteen minutes," Caleb said, because saying things out loud anchors you to something besides the floor.
"What?" the man said. "What do you— Are you security?"
"No."
"You got a phone? Call— I think it's—something's wrong with the power? I hit the thing and it—" He tapped the shutter with his hand and winced, as if metal had a sense of humor and used it on knuckles.
Caleb looked at the bracket where the door met the wall. The housing that should have held a crank or lock had a blank face and a single round hole that looked decorative and wasn't.
A white ring.
Not painted or printed. A precise absence that stole attention at the edge of vision, the way the card's ring did when it wanted to be polite and fail.
He kept his face clean of recognition. "Okay. What's your name?"
"Don," the man said. "Don… Kelley." His breath staggered. "I can't— I can't feel my foot right."
Caleb glanced at the ankle. The shoe had room to move, but didn't. The sock at the cuff was dark with sweat. The shutter's teeth rested on denim with the weight of a choice. He could lever it up with a jack he didn't have or wedge something under it he might find if he broke three stores and got lucky.
He tightened his grip on the card. Matte cooled his palm like a rational argument. He peered at the white ring in the bracket and saw the way it watched him without eyes.
The interface read him back his own thoughts in gentler typography.
[NOTE: SPECIAL ITEM INTERACTS WITH ENVIRONMENTAL RING MARKS][WARNING: RISK PROPAGATION UNKNOWN]
A laugh lodged somewhere that knew better. He didn't let it out. He extended the card toward the ring the way you extend a hand to a skittish animal—calm, honest fingers, no sudden movements.
The ring stayed a hole.
"Hey," Don said, voice thinning at the edges. "Can you— please. It hurts, it hurts, it—"
"Talking," Caleb said. "Tell me where your keys are."
"What?"
"In your pocket? On your belt?"
Don blinked. "Inside. In a tray, by the— Why?"
"So your hands have a job," Caleb said, and watched Don's chest choose between panic and work. Panic lost a little.
He raised the card, aligned the ring on its face with the ring in the bracket, and did the simplest thing: he touched one absence to another.
For one second the air pretended indifference and then decided to be impressed. The white ring in the wall dilated with a quiet, painless insistence, acknowledging the circle on the card like seeing a relative at a reunion you hadn't planned to attend. In his periphery, the shutter's teeth lightened; pressure changed without dropping. The hallway smelled like hot dust and a spring day after lightning.
[INTERFACE: ONLINE][COMMAND WINDOW: LIMITED]
Clean and unhelpful.
He set his foot against the bottom of the shutter, careful not to trap his own shoe, and leveraged with the stupid, necessary physics bodies still respect. Metal gave him a millimeter and then another, hamstrings stinging, abs burning—the kind of pain you earn by running away from other things. Don made a noise like someone trying not to be too grateful.
"Hold," Caleb said.
"I'm holding," Don said, clutching air in useless fists.
Caleb kept the card's ring centered on the wall's absence and felt the micro-hum through his palm—the charge that wasn't vibration but attention. Vision salted at the edges; the shutter slipped one more tooth and locked there with the reluctant honesty of a machine that didn't like being argued with.
Don dragged his leg back a fraction. Denim rasped on concrete. The shutter settled a half-inch lower, punishing indecision.
"Stop," Caleb said, not unkind. "We do it once. Ready?"
Don nodded in jerks.
"On three," Caleb said—and didn't count. He set his shoulder, found the angle, and drove through with a breath that bought him two inches of kindness from metal.
Don yanked his leg free like he was stealing it from a thief.
The shutter fell the last inch and kissed concrete with a neat metallic sigh.
Caleb stepped back. The card didn't waver. The ring in the bracket pulsed once in farewell and went back to being a hole pretending to be decoration.
Don rolled to his back, stared at the ceiling for one gulping second, then propped himself on his elbows. He looked at his thigh the way men look at cars after a scratch—assessing damage, pretending not to care, caring exactly enough. The denim was pinched but unbroken. When he touched the spot, his breath jumped and then settled.
"Thank you," he said, like a surprise he wanted to keep.
"You're welcome," Caleb said.
[TIMER: 12:41]
The numbers fell obediently. The hallway's hum came back as a place to stand.
A soft sound arrived from the T—like metal on skin, not sound at all, a suggestion of sharpness. Don's eyes flitted that direction as if sound could have shape.
"You hear that?" he asked.
"I do," Caleb said.
"Is there— Are we alone?"
"No," Caleb said, and heard how the word made Don smaller.
The interface didn't ask to be coy.
[HAZARD SPAWN: 1][TYPE: BLURRED AGENT][EQUIPPED: LONG KNIFE][BEHAVIOR: SEEK / APPROACH / TEST]
At the end of the hall, where the crossbar of the T waited, a figure occupied space it hadn't had a moment ago. Not a glitch—glitches suggest prisoners. This thing owned its arrival. Human height, human gait, edges that refused to sign their names. Face: uncommitted. Clothes: mid-city generic. In its right hand, something long and straight that reflected light with old pride. The kind of weapon you carry when you want to be noticed.
"Security?" Don called, tone blurring. "Is that— Hey!"
The figure didn't answer. It covered half the distance with steady efficiency that didn't embarrass itself by running. The knife hugged the line of its leg the way professionals do when they respect weight.
Caleb slid two steps, putting the shutter frame on his left like a friend who wouldn't hold his coat but might block a punch. He raised the rectangle to chest height, ring outward. Breath found the rhythm behind his heartbeat. Tile could catch a sole; the alternating panels could throw shadow wrong; the edge of the shutter would make someone curse if they misjudged.
"Go inside," he told Don, eyes never leaving the figure.
Don limped backward into the dim store, wedged the fallen register as a doorstop, and ducked behind an overturned shelf as if it could be a wall.
The agent closed to six strides. Four.
"Hi," Caleb said, because data helps. "Problem?"
The figure's knife answered with a small, satisfied tilt.
Caleb felt the card cool in his palm, the ring's blank stare catching the faintest hello from the bracket across the hall. The timer chipped another second off the world.
The agent moved its knife hand—not a swing yet, a promise, the way fencers test distance when the world is honest and has judges—and stepped into striking range.