The agent stepped into striking range.
It didn't telegraph. The knife drifted a finger's width, then came like a thought—clean diagonal, edge seeking soft places. Caleb raised the black rectangle and let steel meet matte.
There was no ring of metal, no show. The sensation was idea against idea refusing to agree.
[CONTACT: SPECIAL ITEM—HOSTILE EDGE][RESULT: IMMUNITY CONFIRMED]
The blade skated, found nothing to bite, corrected. The agent crowded in, shoulder aiming to smother distance, hilt punching for his wrist. Caleb let his weight slip a half-inch, hips turning, the card's edge guiding the knife past ribs into air. The agent's off-hand flashed for the rectangle—fingers hooked, a thief's shape.
Caleb rolled his wrist and presented the white ring like an eye.
The grab stuttered. The agent flinched the way nerves do when a socket sparks.
[SPECIAL ITEM: NON-TRANSFERABLE][ATTEMPT: DENIED]
"Yeah," Caleb said. "No."
He felt the shutter frame at his left shoulder—a dumb ally with edges. The lights hummed overhead in a patient rhythm that didn't care who bled where. Far down the hall, the timer watched.
[TIMER: 11:56]
Nine strides away, Don shuffled deeper into his tilted aisles and knocked something small. It rattled across linoleum and died under a candy shelf. The noise didn't change anything; it announced that the hallway belonged to witnesses now.
The agent reset—no frustration, just a tidy decision to try again. It changed grip: high, then low, then a reverse that hugged the blade to its forearm for close work. It stepped in, knife hand low to shear tendon.
Caleb moved the leg the knife wanted and fed it emptiness. He drove the card forward into the agent's wrist the way you jam a latch before it knows it's a door. The blade's line wobbled. He made that wobble expensive—forearm to forearm, hip to hip, a shoulder bump that turned into space.
The knife climbed and came back hungry. He met the flat just below the guard with the card's face and rotated—small, efficient, inviting the joint to respect its design. The agent answered with the kind of speed you only get when fear isn't part of the math. It broke off, slid two steps, and re-angled. The knife flicked toward the card again, a feint and a test packed into the same inch of steel.
Caleb let the point drag safe and, without looking, called, "Don. Stick. Mop. Anything long."
"Hang on—" Don's voice tripped, then rifled shelves. Plastic squeaked; wood thumped. "Here!"
A bare broom handle skittered out, spinning. Caleb toed it up and caught it left-handed without giving the agent the courtesy of watching. It was cheap pine with a threaded metal end, the length of a truth and the weight of a choice.
The agent saw the new toy and edited strategy. It glided right, then left, as if testing the hallway for sympathy. The knife hovered like a question it thought it knew the answer to.
Caleb squared his shoulders and made neither hand the obvious one—the card raised at chest level, the handle loose near his hip. Breath ran steady under the buzz.
"Back," he told Don, and heard boxes scuff and settle as compliance.
The agent came in quick and quiet, the knife tip talking to the card like an insult. Caleb let the insult land; the matte face gave the steel no story. The handle snapped up and tapped the attacking wrist—nothing dramatic, just a reminder. The point dipped a degree. One degree is everything if you charge interest.
He slid the dowel along the forearm, found the elbow's slot, levered. The card pressed the blade's flat. For a heartbeat the knife had to choose between biting and belonging nowhere. The agent pivoted out, reverse-gripped now, bringing the edge close against its own midline like a promise of uglier work.
Don hissed. "Is it— is it a person?"
"Yes," Caleb said, because naming things keeps you honest.
[CAUTION: HEART RATE ELEVATED][SUGGESTION: COMPLETE OBJECTIVE]
"Working on it."
The agent feinted left, rushed right—knife high, shoulder low, a trick designed by tired geniuses. Caleb didn't buy the picture. He let the shoulder pass where he had been, slid his own along it, and put his weight into sternum instead of blade. The impact reverberated through cardboard and steel and skin-that-wasn't, and he smelled old oil wake up on concrete.
They separated by a yard that both of them felt they owned. The agent rebalanced, knife low again, knees soft. It had the posture of men who have spent a life on bad floors.
The light far down the corridor hiccupped into a slightly different hum; the hairs at his nape paid attention. He didn't look. The agent did, and that was rent he could spend.
He moved. The broom handle whipped the empty hand while the card rode the blade like a mirror line. Steel tried to choose a grievance and chose the one that looked harder to break. The card didn't break. Caleb reversed the handle and drove the threaded cap into the agent's shoulder, a sharp industrial punctuation.
The sound the agent made was wrong and convincing. It slid half a step back, then re-entered the conversation with its knife held like sincerity.
[TIMER: 09:34]
Nine minutes can be a lifetime. Nine minutes can be a hallway.
"Inventory," Caleb called. "Fire extinguisher? Sign with a pole?"
"No extinguisher," Don said, voice somewhere between a crawlspace and a prayer. "I… I see an exit sign down there. But the door under it says 'No Exit.'"
"Honest of it," Caleb said.
The agent came again. There was no flourish now, just competence that wanted to be terminal. The blade hunted the seam between card and wood. Caleb crossed them into a V and let the edge enter, then rotated. The knife stuck without sticking; the agent shoved; he gave—but not where invited. The give bought him a step, and a step is change.
He took it.
The agent's foot found a shallow slick left by fryer ghosts. It slipped a mean half-inch. That's nothing, except when it is everything. Caleb stepped into the mistake and expanded it—dowel under wrist, card over knuckles, a two-handed refusal. The blade left the hand because physics collects debts.
It clattered away, skipped twice, and nosed up against a dead planter.
The agent looked at its empty hand, offended by arithmetic.
[RECOMMENDATION: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WIELD HOSTILE EDGE]
"Wasn't tempted," Caleb said.
Knife-less, the agent rediscovered elbows, knees, weight. It closed, efficient, mean. Caleb ditched the handle before it became an anchor and moved inside the reach where duct tape and bone have opinions. The card tapped sternum, then collarbone, then rib—painless, persuasive, an idea the body disliked.
The agent tried the rectangle again, both hands, greedy. Caleb gave it the ring and watched the flinch travel through imitation nerve.
[ATTEMPT: DENIED][ITEM CONTROL: MAINTAINED]
[TIMER: 07:52]
Breath sawed a little. Pride tried to try out for panic. He didn't let it.
The agent bulled forward, trying to paste him to corrugated steel and let pressure do what the knife hadn't. The shutter bracket bit his shoulder with the quiet promise of a bruise. He dropped his weight and made himself a narrow question. The agent answered the wrong one and slid past into the metal, earned a jolt, and tried again harder.
"Don," Caleb said. "If the blade moves, kick it farther."
"Okay," Don said, voice bright with effort.
The agent rebounded and wanted the knife the way habits want old roads. Caleb moved to block the line. The agent was faster this time—hand out, fingers for the hilt, close.
The card kissed the knuckles. The hand flinched, half choice, half rule. That was a door wide enough for a shoe.
Caleb kicked, not hard, just honest. The knife skittered two yards and came to rest under the lip of a locked fire door, gleam cocky and useless.
The agent committed the beginner's sin of looking where hope went.
Caleb hit it—open palm, heel into the jaw hinge. Not dramatic. Correct. He followed with a shove that wasn't power so much as insistence and bought a step of air.
[TIMER: 06:18]
The hall's temperature admitted it had never changed. The hum returned to normal like nothing had happened to it.
The agent reassessed without ego and reached the conclusion predators always reach: ignore the push, finish the problem. It sprinted—not fast enough to be sloppy, fast enough to be present—straight for the trapped knife.
Caleb didn't let it write that sentence.
Two quick steps and he was there first. He didn't stoop. He planted his heel on steel and made mass into policy. The agent's foot scythed for his ankle with manual-perfect efficiency. He eased the ankle an inch. The knife stayed where it complained.
"See any other ring marks?" he asked, keeping his eyes where they belonged.
Don risked a look over the shelf edge. "Uh— the shutter bracket. That tiny circle thing— it… it kind of glows."
"Good memory," Caleb said.
The agent abandoned the blade and went for the card like a bad plan promoted to a strategy—both hands this time, a prayer turned greedy. Caleb turned the ring and gave it to the grasp. The flinch was bigger now, ugly, honest. The agent stumbled a fraction; imitation balance recalculated.
[ITEM SECURITY: VERIFIED][PROGRESS: SUFFICIENT][STANDBY FOR EXIT]
Air pressed his ears again, elevator calm. Somewhere in the walls, wiring arranged itself into agreement. The white ring in the shutter housing brightened a patient degree.
"Stay down," Caleb told Don.
"I am very down," Don said.
The agent bunched—no knife, no shame—and decided to spend everything: momentum, shoulder, skull. It lunged, all variables thrown on one bet.
Caleb refused to step back. He slid his left shoulder past its right, let the card tap the sternum like punctuation, caught the wrist, and turned the momentum into neat handwriting on corrugated steel. The shutter sang, dull and satisfied. The agent hiccupped in surprise, then reset like a machine with no overheat.
The ring in the wall opened a fraction wider, white dilating like an eye letting in morning.
[EXIT OPENING]
Light-that-wasn't gathered itself, the air leaning toward permission. The timer broke a minute into smaller decisions.
The agent came off the shutter, empty hands inventing weapons out of bone and intent, ready to punish anyone who mistook a door for safety.