He kept the rectangle tight to his chest and let the agent's wrist learn its rule. Tendon betrayed the hand; the grasp loosened a necessary inch. He stepped into that inch and made it expensive—hip through, shoulder narrow, card edge a quiet persuasion under the joint.
The car's hum shifted pitch, a long mechanical inhalation that lived under the rails' song. He felt it in the soles of his shoes. The overhead strip didn't bother with letters. It had already told him what was next.
The agent reset without emotion. Empty hands shaped themselves around the absence he carried. It cut for his ankle with a lazy heel; he removed the ankle; it slid into a crossface; he gave it cheekbone instead of neck and stamped the ring under its wrist again, a small and perfect punctuation.
Wind changed where no wind should—forward of the far doors, a pressure that knew about thresholds. The rubber seams smiled a millimeter and stopped, like a mouth reconsidering a word.
He didn't wait to see if the door liked its thought. He moved, two quick steps along the pole, and pinned the circle in the door logo with the card's ring, holding the boundary where it lived. The indicator dot steadied, offended and obedient.
The agent punished the moment. It tried to turn weight into policy, shoulder to sternum, hip to hip, empty hands making loops around his center. He refused loops. He made himself a straight line the body couldn't coil and let the car's small sway give him the last fraction he needed. The rectangle touched sternum with a stamp's honesty. The agent recoiled a degree and pretended it had meant to.
The hum thickened. The tunnel on his right narrowed into light like an oncoming room. The train drifted into a side throat—a bay, not a platform—lined with glossy white panels that wore their cleanliness like an argument. Each panel had a coin-sized absence sunk at shoulder height: rings in neat pairs, waiting with the politeness of airport signage.
The car kissed rubber bumpers and settled. Outside, no people. Just a pocket of engineered quiet, a square of floor with yellow chevrons, a ceiling rail that carried a thin, precise machine: a clamp riding tracks with a dentist's confidence.
He felt the door boundary test itself, push back, hold. The rings on the dock wall brightened the way symbols do when they think they've been seen.
The agent read the new room and accelerated. It didn't sprint—smart men don't sprint indoors. It consumed the space with simple, professional greed. Its hands opened, patient and wide.
He slid past the center pole to buy himself quadratic options and kept the rectangle tight to rib and heart. He didn't have time to break the habit of talking. "You'll hate this part," he said.
The clamp above whispered closer on its rail, a clean little sound like a knife someone cared about. The door seams parted another half-inch against rules that disliked being second-guessed. The rings outside brightened again, an invitation disguised as duty.
He pushed the logo circle with the card and the doors remembered shame. They paused, thought, tried to close; the dock tried to open them back. Rubber smudged rubber. He pressed harder. The indicator stayed steady and sullen.
The agent chose the worst time to be clever. It didn't go for his wrist. It went low, bought his thigh with forearm and lifted, a neat dump that would have pasted lesser choices to the floor. He let his knee bend, gave his hip somewhere to go, and drew the card up the inside line of its arm. The ring found fake nerve; the lift lost conviction. He turned the dump into a sidestep and let the pole catch the bump that had been meant for his spine.
The ceiling clamp arrived over the doorway, mouth open, pads clean. Not a crane. A certifier. Its jaws widened until they framed the seam.
"Of course," he said, and the dock pretended not to brag.
A hairline circle flickered at the inside lip of the door frame, where passengers would never look. He felt it more than saw it, a pressure point for systems, not for people. The appetite he'd come to know by its manners.
He stepped into range and thumbed the ring to it. Metal cooled under his skin like approval. The circle dimmed, embarrassed.
The agent saw his attention split and did the polite thing: tried to end him. It surged, forearms crossing to catch both of his, hands closing to rewrite his day. He dropped his center, planted one boot on the bumpy yellow tile, and made the rectangle the only noun that could survive. Ring under wrist, rotate. It had to open. It did.
A light above the dock door blinked once—amber, then white. The clamp descended the last inch and settled its pads like a judge laying down fingers. The car shivered through the frame. He felt it in his teeth.
He kept breathing. He kept the card where gravity could find it if it needed to. The rings outside pulsed in a pattern that wanted to hire his hand. He didn't apply.
The agent discovered the shortness of the aisle. It sidled to steal angle and he didn't allow it. They traded inches. He stayed between it and the dock seam, body a boundary without paperwork. The clamp whispered again, this time with purpose. It began to slide inward, pads meeting the inner lintel like a mouth becoming opinion.
A border of white leaked along the joint. Not light—direction. Air made up its mind about where it would rather be. The skin along his ears prickled.
He glanced once at the ceiling rail, then at the second clamp hanging dormant on the left-hand track, retracted and patient. The dock had brought two hands and was negotiating which to use. He distrusted ambidexterity in machines.
The agent tried high. He let it; he wasn't there when the pressure arrived. He came in under, notch-and-turn, and set the rectangle under its elbow, rotating with the last of the car's sway. The fake body listened to physics for a heartbeat and then resumed being stubborn.
The clamp's pads flexed. The doors sighed open the width of two fingers. Beyond them lay a white channel with footprints printed into its rubber—human treads repeating in a pattern that said ritual, not traffic.
The boundary wanted to fail where it had been asked to politely. He insisted on rudeness. The ring to the logo. Hold. The doors complained into stillness.
An elbow grazed his mouth. He tasted metal and had the decency to call it what it was. He let his head go where force wanted, not his neck. The card stayed pressed to the place that mattered; he would have cut his own fingers earlier than give it room to be stupid.
"Pick a door, Caleb," he told himself. "Pick one and lock it."
Another hairline circle winked into being—not at the threshold this time, but low, inside the side panel by the stepwell. He hated that one on sight. Appetite beneath the knee. He leaned, kissed it with ring and contempt, felt it cool under his thumb like a lie that knows it's been caught.
The agent punished the lean, heel scything for his ankle again with perfect boredom. He let bone not be where it wanted to make a sentence and gave it shin instead. Pain had its say, small and honest. He didn't pay attention to it longer than that.
Above, the second clamp rolled toward the gangway end, choosing a new argument. He couldn't be in two tunnels at once. He would have to choose where to lose slower.
The dock lights went steadier, as if the room had decided to stop negotiating with him and start writing procedures on his day. The door seams fought each other gently, trying to decide which side of the rectangle they liked.
He gave the agent what it hadn't prepared for: retreat. Two steps, then one more, not panic, a measured withdrawal that invited it past the door so its need and the dock's didn't align. It took the invitation because rules apply to predators too. It stayed between him and the mouth. Good. Keep it there. Let the machine argue with flesh that isn't holding the thing it wants.
The clamp by the gangway arrived and set its pads to steel with the appetite of a letter opener. The hum entered his bones. The inter-car dot flickered twice, testing treachery. He ran the rectangle across the logo as he passed without breaking eye contact with the thing that wanted his center. Faithful hardware remembered discipline.
A hiss bled from the dock seam—the sound of an O-ring making declarations. The air tugged, not hard, just informed. The ring marks outside brightened again, a chorus line of invitations.
He smiled without humor. "You're very polite," he told nobody, and put the ring to the one inside the door frame again because politeness is for people.
The agent chose chaos over craft. It came in ugly, both hands, a jerk of weight and shoulder that wanted a wall and didn't care which. He took half of it in ribs and wrote the rest into the floor with a step that spent years of small good habits. The rectangle's edge found elbow and rotated. The world agreed for a half second and he used every fraction.
The clamp at the gangway bit. Metal answered. The car jumped. The agent flinched a degree because floors telling stories surprise even liars. He drove a shoulder through that flinch and bought himself the length of a bumpy tile.
The door's boundary held by grace, not consent. The white beyond raised its brightness like a person raising a voice in a conversation they'd been losing. He felt the pull not as wind but as preference on his skin.
No one else moved in the dock. No shoes. No shadow. No witnesses. Just him, a machine with two hands, and a problem determined to be symmetrical.
"Pick," he told the car, and wasn't sure which of them he meant.
The clamp over the main doors twitched into a final position. The pads kissed the lintel in a new geometry. The frame shivered and announced this would be the last polite ask.
He didn't wait. He used the car's heartbeat and his own and drove the rectangle up the agent's forearm into the web between thumb and finger, the place nerves remember childhood accidents. The ring touched rule. The hand opened a little. He took that little and doubled it with a twist stolen from a wrestling room that had smelled like rubber and other boys' shampoo.
The doors unsealed two inches.
He wedged his boot into the gap and made the bad choice that solves problems: he put himself in the seam. The pad brushed his shoulder with cold rubber, a kiss from industry. He set the ring to the low circle inside the lip again and felt it go out under his skin like a bulb denied power.
The agent slammed into his back to finish him and learned something about leverage: the seam was a wall if he made it one. He set his spine to it and fed the shove into steel. His teeth sang; his arms did their jobs.
White tugged at his sleeve. The dock wanted the rectangle. He had the rectangle. He kept it, fingers biting matte, ring out, elbow tight to ribs, body a hinge that didn't open for anyone else's nouns.
The clamp whirred and changed its mind about pressure. The doors tried to close on his boot as if liability had a lunch break. He jammed harder. The sole slipped. He bought it back. The rubber kissed leather and apologized with the squeak of cheap decisions.
The agent found his throat with a forearm and tried to change physics into mercy. He turned his jaw so the bone took it, not the wind. Ring under wrist. Stamp. Open. The forearm stuttered. He traded it for breath and a bad idea.
He pivoted on the heel trapped in the seam, dragged the agent with him by sleeve and elbow, and put the thing's not-sternum into the door where white wanted nouns. If the dock wanted a body, let it negotiate for the wrong one.
The machine bit down. Pads pressed. Rubber found synthetic fabric and pretended it was flesh. The agent reacted like any man being kissed by a closing elevator—reflex, not principle. It pushed away from the seam and in so doing gave him its wrists.
He stamped ring to tendon both sides. Both hands opened like a lousy flower.
The clamp sang a harder note. The door trembled. The gap narrowed on his boot a fraction more.
He yanked his foot free and the door punished the space with a flat clack, then held an inch open like a mouth with a word caught on its tongue.
The car shivered all along the frame as the second clamp locked, and sparks crawled lazy and bright across the threshold like someone had shaken a strip of steel wool under stars. The agent lunged through them, hands empty and stubborn, and he met it there in the doorway, gravel of light falling around their shoulders as the dock decided whether the car belonged to the machine or to the man holding a matte-black rectangle that refused to be anything but itself.