Cold pushed against his skin and then decided he belonged. The smell changed—lemon cleaner gone, traded for cold iron, damp concrete, the coppery breath of water that forgot how long it had been standing. Sound arrived as a low mechanical thrum, a fan beating air with tired patience somewhere past a wall.
He did not stumble. His shoes found rough concrete, dust dry enough to speak. The card sat in his palm, obedient, matte as a secret that enjoyed itself.
[ENTRY CONFIRMED]
Text settled at his eye line with the calm of a sign that had never been wrong.
He took stock without moving his feet. Narrow corridor, industrial bones. Left: cinderblock wall painted the color of apologies; right: chain-link fence panels on a square steel frame, padlocked where an opening should be. Beyond the fence lay a vertical shaft—service core—where pipes and cable runs climbed into dark; a metal ladder rode the wall, caged, vanishing up. Above the ladder's cage, a square hatch waited with a half-remembered daylight smudged into its edges.
Ahead, the corridor doglegged left after ten paces and died in a bolted door. Over his shoulder, another door, institutional green, wore a panic bar and no handle.
The air had the taste of places people don't tour. He flexed his left fingers; they came back dusty.
[ENVIRONMENT: SERVICE CORE MOCKUP][NON-PARTICIPANTS: NONE][CONDITION: MAINTAIN OPERATIONAL CONTROL OVER SPECIAL ITEM][OBJECTIVE: ACQUIRE EXIT TOKEN → ASCEND TO HATCH][FAIL STATE: ITEM LOSS / CRITICAL STATUS]
A clean plan, then. Get a thing. Go up. Don't die.
His eyes found the only likely cache—for these games preferred symmetry. A gray steel panel box sat on the cinderblock wall opposite the ladder cage. It should have been happy with a lock; instead it wore a circular absence where branding should be. A white ring the size of a coin.
He crossed to it and made a habit of glancing at corners as he moved. The chain-link sang a tiny note when the ventilation shifted. Nothing else objected.
Up close, the panel's ring wasn't paint; it was an omission cut so precisely it felt like taste. The card in his palm answered without being asked—his thumb found the groove on instinct. He raised the rectangle, matched ring to ring, and let absences meet.
The box learned manners. The latch popped with a demure click, and the door swung a palm's width. Inside, the dark was crowded with cable and a little nothingness where hardware should have been. In that nothingness, a small disc waited: matte black, a white ring etched so thin the eye only believed it because the hand did. A token, like a coin from a country that didn't owe anyone change.
[TOKEN: LOCATED]
He didn't touch it yet. He listened.
The thrum behind the wall continued. Dust moved in a draft too mild to register as climate. Somewhere above, metal tapped—maybe the building shifted, maybe imagination scaled ladders.
He reached. The token was cooler than the panel, almost cold enough to insist. It sat on his palm weightless as permission.
The chain-link whispered a sound that wasn't wind.
He didn't look at it immediately. He closed the panel gently with his knuckles and let the latch settle. He slid the token into his left pocket and the card into his right hand, ring facing out, like etiquette. Then he looked.
Down the corridor, past the dogleg, something had decided to exist.
It came around the corner like it owned geometry. Human height, human stride, edges refusing to commit. No face he could hold. In its right hand, not a knife this time. A length of pipe, cut clean at both ends, black with fingerprints that had never been printed. It moved with the heavy grace of people who break knuckles for living.
[HAZARD SPAWN: 1][TYPE: BLURRED AGENT][EQUIPPED: BLUNT TOOL][BEHAVIOR: FLANK / PRESSURE]
The agent reached the near wall and, without hurrying, rapped the pipe once against cinderblock. Dust jumped like spooked birds. The sound made the chain-link fence vibrate a thin laugh.
"Hello," Caleb said, because pretending to be rude is a kind of fear and he wasn't interested in it. "You're late."
The agent didn't answer. It adjusted its path by inches, mapping angles the way predators do—testing whether legs or gravity would betray him first. The pipe hung low, casual as a promise.
[TIMER: 07:59]
Numbers started eating the room. Eight minutes would be too long if he made dumb choices.
The plan on the wall read: get token, go up. Up required ladder. Ladder required the lock on the cage to admit comedy. The padlock: heavy, brass, bored, ringless.
He moved to the cage door and tried the card against chain-link anyway. The ring met galvanized steel and learned no one cared.
Fine.
He mapped distances. Cage door to wall: three feet. Corridor width here: six. Agent's path: the long side of that rectangle. His step back bought the cage a new angle with him behind it. He put his fingers to the lock and measured play. Too tight to finesse with wishful thinking.
The agent advanced until it could smell his certainty. It drove the pipe into the fence with a flat thunk that traveled through the frame into the bolt and into his hands. The lock held. The cage trembled, then remembered its job.
"Flank, pressure," Caleb said softly, reading the room its own notes.
He did not back up. He did not present the card as a shield. He held it chest-high, ring outward, a steady insult to the idea of taking. With his left hand, he reached through the chain-link grid and found the bolt on the inside. Not accessible by design, but designs are what hands argue with. The bolt's head sat behind a small plate. He pushed, pulled, felt where it slacked, where it bit. It wasn't a dead end. It was a reluctant hinge.
The agent read his reach and tried to solve for arm. The pipe came quick this time—not a swing at his head (smart), but a sharp horizontal snap to crush fingers (smarter). He moved his hand a split inch, let steel hit wire. The chain sang. The pipe ricocheted off mesh and kissed the bolt's plate instead. The jolt loosened the bite.
"Thank you," he said, and used the new play.
The agent crowded, putting shoulder to fence, weight to pipe, trying to bow the gate. A boot scuffed concrete. The frame groaned, shifted a fraction. The padlock still mocked gravity.
Caleb angled the card so the ring looked like a pupil staring dead through mesh into the agent's grasp. The pipe-hand twitched away, a reflex with a history now.
[ADVISORY: PREVENT CONTACT WITH SPECIAL ITEM]
"I'm aware," he said, breath low.
He worked the bolt with fingertips and knuckles, pushing from his side while the agent, helpfully, shoved from the other. Metal complained, then complied. The bolt traveled an inch, then two, clanging across rust it hadn't explored in years. The cage door shifted against the lock's shackle. The padlock didn't open; it moved enough.
The agent saw motion and tried to get in first. Pipe aimed for the triangle of space where a face might be if he were stupider. Caleb let the card meet the pipe and turned his shoulder so the blow spent itself in the doorframe.
The lash back rang in the agent's wrist. It didn't mind pain; it minded inefficiency.
The bolt reached its full travel. The cage door settled against the padlock like a promise waiting for a new noun. There was a gap now, not big enough for a person, big enough for a hand.
He reached through and hit the interior latch with the side of his fist.
The door jumped, then gave. The padlock remained locked to nothing, dangling in the air like a slow idea. The gate sprang half-open with a jerk that bit his knuckles through mesh. He took the bite and pulled, dragging the gate wide enough to accept a body.
The agent didn't pause to admire problem-solving. It crowded the opening, pipe vertical, trying to wedge past metal and man at once. Caleb slipped inside sideways, giving the pipe nothing to purchase but air. Chain-link scraped his shoulder, then yielded. He was in the cage; the agent was not.
It jammed the pipe into the gap; the pipe met the card; the card refused. The agent shoved; the gate creaked a note you didn't want to hear twice.
Caleb kicked the bottom of the gate where the frame was weakest. The pipe skittered off; the gate swung another inch inward and caught. The agent's hand slapped the mesh and found ring instead of grip; fingers flinched, useless.
He put his palm to the cage door, braced one foot on the ladder's lowest rung, shoved. The door returned to true; the padlock, still locked to nothing, clacked against the chain-link with an embarrassed clatter.
The agent drew the pipe back and made a clean, mean decision. It thrust the end through the diamond of the mesh and aimed for his ribs.
He took it on the card, angle low, and let the impact travel through his forearm and into the ladder rail. Bone sang, but did not complain. He raised his left forearm to deflect the pipe off to the side, buying the space of a heartbeat.
That heartbeat bought him a rung.
He climbed.
The ladder cage accepted him with the intimacy of furniture that has known other men. He kept the card in his right, ring outward toward the gap in the gate, showing the agent the wrong invitation. His left hauled him up, rungs shallow, paint chewed to metal, dust sticking to skin.
The agent attacked the cage, not the man. Pipe hammered mesh. The frame thrummed. Bolts protested. The sound went up the shaft like anger.
[TIMER: 06:03]
The numbers burned the back of his brain like a math problem imposed by a bored god.
Ten rungs. Fifteen. Breath steady. He glanced up. The hatch's underside was a steel plate with a recessed handle and—of course—a white ring the size of his thumbnail.
"Of course," he told the ceiling.
Below, the agent discovered the gate's handle and applied philosophy: if a thing moves, move it harder. It dragged the door outward until the padlock clanked and spun free. It shoved itself into the cage. The pipe poked up between rung and rail, seeking ankles. He kept his feet on the narrow side, climbed by calf and thigh and the permission of friction.
"P-01," he said under breath, tasting the number that had adopted him. "You wanted company. You forgot to make it polite."
The agent found the inner side of the ladder cage and started climbing with one hand while the other maintained its argument with the pipe. It moved efficiently, showing no interest in what a fall would do.
[ADVISORY: HAZARD APPROACHING FROM BELOW]
"Duly noted."
He reached the hatch and did something he hated: he trusted symbols. He brought the card up, kissed ring to ring, and felt the neat little legality of design reward obedience.
The handle turned without needing force. The hatch lifted two inches on stiff gas struts and then decided it had contributed enough to society. He pushed with his forearm. Metal complained. He pushed harder. Skin burned along the hinge of his elbow.
The opening widened. Above, light lived—flat fluorescents again, but brighter and honest. He shoved the hatch to a stable angle and shouldered through.
The shaft breathed warmer air against his neck. He got one knee on the lip, then the other, then braced his heel on the top rung and levered the rest of him up into the space beyond.
His shoulders cleared the threshold as the pipe from below stabbed for the back of his calf. It hit rung instead, sparked a mean sound, then tried to adjust.
He gave the agent the ring without looking. The pipe hesitated like a hand remembering a stove. That was time.
He rolled onto the floor above—smooth epoxy, clean enough to mirror a smear of him—and pulled his legs through. The pipe thumped the hatch's underside in a resentful tattoo.
He stood into a new room.
Not a room. A slice of building. White walls with the kind of paint that says it has health codes. A bright corridor, short, ending in double doors with crash bars. A red EXIT sign burned above them, honest as a bruise. To his right, a window with no view, just light trapped behind frosted panels. To his left, a maintenance cabinet, door ajar, cables coiled like tame snakes.
[OBJECTIVE UPDATE: REACH EXIT]
Simple, which meant a lie.
He moved to the double doors and pressed the bar. It gave, blessedly. The right door opened six inches and stopped dead against a chain threaded through handles on the far side. Someone had looped a padlock around caution and called it policy.
He did not swear. He set the door back, turned, and looked for rings.
There—a small white absence polished into the metal of the bar's mounting plate, easy to miss if you weren't the kind of person who collected absence as a hobby.
He raised the card. He matched ring to ring. The chain on the other side relaxed with a sigh like a tired nurse and let go of its own ends. The door drifted another inch, then another. A narrow hallway lived beyond, brighter, cleaner. He could smell fresh air doing a bad job visiting from the outside.
Behind him, the hatch complained in a voice that wasn't mechanics.
He looked back.
The agent had made the opening, shoulders cramped in the square like a mouth too small for a bite it refused to give up. One hand fed the pipe through, searching for a shin; the other found purchase and dragged. The ladder cage juddered as its weight argued with Newton.
He didn't have admiration to spare.
He pushed the exit door wider. The chain slithered like a defeated snake onto glossy floor. He slipped through—sideways, card tight in his hand—and got his right shoulder into the hallway beyond.
The agent's head rose into view—no face, just a suggestion of features drawn with a finger on fogged glass. It saw a door opening and learned a new preference.
He could run and let the hatch be a choke point. He could close the door and pretend denial equals safety. He could do the thing the letters had asked and nothing more.
He remembered Don's voice under a shutter saying please as if the word owed him something.
He jammed the right-hand door with his foot, stepped back into the service side, and reached for the hatch with his free hand. He grabbed the handle, shoved down with all the weight he wasn't using to stay vertical.
The gas struts argued. The hinge lied about its condition. His shoulder lit with a burn that felt very present. The hatch slammed to within an inch; the pipe shot up into the narrowing like a spear and stopped, wedged. Sparks spat unpleasantly against the lip. The agent's hand, bent at an angle anatomy would reject, scrabbled for lever. The ring in his card hand shone like a small polite threat.
"Not today," he said, because the room had earned a spoken sentence.
He shoved again. The hatch came down that last inch with a flat report that sounded approving. The pipe made an awful noise as it lost the argument with geometry; it clattered down the cage, end banging rungs, sound receding like someone dropping a long idea down a well.
He held the hatch a breath longer, forearm shaking, waiting for fingers. None arrived. He let go. The hatch stayed shut, the ring on its handle now a quiet, satisfied nothing.
[TIMER: 03:11]
Enough time to do this clean or to find a way to ruin it.
He turned, slid through the double doors, and took three steps into the brighter hall. The doors swung back on closers and kissed each other behind him with the manners of a hospital.
The corridor beyond wasn't a hospital, but it wanted to audition—vinyl floor, rubber baseboard, framed safety posters that had never convinced anyone. At the far end, another set of double doors promised green exit signs and the kind of daylight that turns men into believers.
Halfway down the hall, a service cart stood abandoned: mop bucket, folded signs warning of wet floors with cheerful triangles, a spray bottle of something citrus that reminded him of the dorm's pretend cleanliness. The cart had weight. It had wheels. It could be leverage or time.
He rolled it backward until it sat against the first set of doors he'd come through, a small insurance policy for a hatch he no longer trusted. He didn't believe in barricades here, but he believed in making other things do work.
The floor was so clean it betrayed dust. His shoe left a faint gray crescent that remembered the shaft. He kept his stride steady. He watched for white rings.
There, on the push plate of the final exit. Small as a fingernail. Waiting, patient, like the card had been.
He raised the rectangle.
Glass somewhere behind him ticked.
He didn't turn immediately. He touched ring to ring. The push plate learned new stories. The exit bar shivered under his palm like a horse that had finally decided to trust the hand on its neck.
He pressed.
The far doors opened into a stairwell that breathed air the building hadn't ruined yet. Cool, honest, outside-adjacent. Midday lived somewhere above, angled, possible.
He let himself enjoy one clean breath.
Metal complained, far back. The first set of doors tried to open against the cart and succeeded by an inch. The cart squealed, casters protesting. The small poster about safe lifting practices slid to the floor and lay there like a failed joke.
Caleb put his shoulder into the new door and widened it. The stairwell accepted him without asking for a story. He stepped onto concrete treads, card tucked back into his palm where it belonged, and took the first step up.
From the service corridor, the thud came again—closer, stubborn, patient. The cart moved another inch, another. The cheerful wet-floor triangle fell flat and skated, scraping a soft yellow arc across vinyl.
He went up. The stairwell's echo took his footfalls and made them into something the building could understand. The handrail was cold and honest. The next landing turned him toward daylight he couldn't yet see.
Below, a hinge cried out; metal hit metal; something found a new way to want him.
He didn't run. He let the cadence be the same as before, as if pace were a lie detectors could hear. The light on the upper flight thickened into the kind that dilutes shadows.
He reached the final turn and saw the last door—painted steel, push bar, safety glass. Outside was an unglamorous slice of rooftop equipment and a rectangle of honest sky.
He put the card to the plate, ring to ring, and the bar yielded like a held breath released.
Behind him, down past two doors and a service cart, chain-link shrieked in a way that made muscles remember other injuries. He didn't look back.
He pushed the door and stepped into air that remembered how to be day. The sky didn't bother to be blue; it simply existed, a color that forgot names. Wind found his face and registered approval.
He held the door with his shoulder a beat longer, listening to the stairwell talk to itself. He could go now. He could close. He could wait for curiosity to finish a sentence.
He decided which man he was, and let the door ease, slow, deliberate, until the latch kissed the strike and held.