The hand overhead clawed air three inches off his hair and closed on nothing at all.
He slid under its reach, shoulder grazing pole, the card tight to his chest so the ring flashed and vanished like a small, rude sun. The agent pressed, empty hands opening and closing in the shape of a circle that wanted a smaller circle inside it.
He denied the shape.
"Not yours," he said, and turned his forearm, letting the ring kiss imitation tendon. Fingers twitched against rule. The grip misfired.
Above, the panel's neat mouth stayed open—a clean round absence just large enough for a wrist. The hand withdrew, then came again, blind and patient, scar on the second knuckle cutting a pale comma through the car's light. It groped for the rectangle like a drowning person reaching for the wrong rope.
He gave it ceiling instead of card and moved. Two quick steps, a heel-hook around the seat bracket, and he took a low bounce up the cushion, one palm to the pole, the other raising the rectangle like a stamp. The panel's circle wasn't a friendly ring mark; it was appetite. He still offered it what he had.
Matte met absence.
Cold gathered in his palm, quick and mean. The circle flashed thin as a hair and tightened.
[PROXY CAPTURE: BLOCKED]
"Stay shut," he told it.
The agent used the altitude he'd bought himself. It drove a shoulder into his hip to paste him to the post and let gravity argue on its behalf. He let the hit bend him where hits bend you and didn't let it set the next line. He came off the seat, turned in the air the way doors turn when you don't ask permission, and landed into the aisle with knees soft and the rectangle already between sternums.
The agent's arm swung for his wrist. He hid the wrist an inch closer to bone than usual and let its hand brush the ring instead. Reflex and rule fired together. The hand jerked; the elbow lost its argument.
He wrote the next sentence with a shoulder.
Metal poles translated the thud into the car's language. The agent rebounded, polite only in the way it kept using the most efficient version of ugly. It cut for his ankle. He let the foot be elsewhere and gave it shin, then card, then empty air. The rectangle's edge slid under the crook of elbow again and rotated, a small persuasion that joints have a design spec.
The overhead circle brightened like an insult remembered. The wrist reappeared, fingers splayed, learning too slowly. He didn't jump this time; he drove the ring upward with an arm like a piston and tapped the mouth once, hard.
The circle went out like a coin flipped and caught.
He let the seatback take half his weight and used the bounce to be standing where the agent wanted him not to be. The car's motion smoothed. The rails stopped arguing long enough for him to hear his own breathing choose discipline over volume.
He stepped left, then right, and kept the rectangle close. The agent matched his angles as if the aisle were a chessboard and hands were rooks. Empty palms opened again.
"Find a new trick," he said.
The agent, to its credit, obliged. It didn't lunge. It pivoted and brought the back of its forearm across his face in a crossface meant to turn spine into a yes. He let the pressure own his cheekbone and not his neck, sank his hips, and slid under. The card rode the underside of its wrist, ring grazing imitation nerve. The hand betrayed its owner a second time.
The inter-car door dot blinked out, in, out—quiet treachery. He didn't look. He walked by reflection. The glass showed him the handle's little twitch and the shadow behind it thinking about being a person. He reached without eyes and pressed the rectangle's ring into the door's logo as if signing a boundary.
The dot steadied. The handle forgot its interest.
The agent learned from the wasted moment with professionalism. It gave up on neat and simply tried to be heavy. Shoulders and hips crowded, weight searching smart angles and dumb luck. He chose neither. He stepped through, shoulder to sternum, and used the car's small sway as punctuation.
The overhead panel, chastened, stayed shut. The card stayed cool in his palm like a fact.
Far down the car, the ad frame that had spelled his name earlier pretended to be furniture. He did not believe it. He kept half an eye for ghosted circles in edges. The route strip showed a blank courtesy that looked like a threat's nap.
The agent came again—empty hands, a quick heel for his ankle, a palm for his wrist, a shoulder for his chest. He let the heel cut air, let the palm find ring, let the shoulder meet rib where ribs forgive. He wrote contact with economy, not anger.
The car eased throttle into a long curve that put a new pressure under his feet. He let it live in his ankles and not ride up into his hands. The agent misread the curve by half a beat and paid two inches. He bought them.
"Southbound," he said to no one, because sentences keep you human.
The overhead lights dipped a degree—not dimmer, truer—and the car sang a chord he didn't have a word for. Something—maybe rules, maybe appetite in a different hat—touched the panel over the gangway; a hairline circle ghosted there, mean and hungry.
"No," he told it, and moved before it learned to be a noun.
Two steps. A slide along the pole. Ring to ghost. The panel cooled under his skin like a grudge.
[PROXY CAPTURE: BLOCKED]
The agent punished the moment he'd spent—not enough to matter, enough to negotiate terms. Its hand found his shirt seam at the shoulder and tried to claim fabric as leash. He didn't gift it posture. He snapped his elbow down, broke grip with geometry, and let the ring find wrist again—a small, precise stamp.
Far ahead, the car's doors flirted with their indicators—a flash and then nothing. No stop. No platform. He didn't trust the lack.
The agent circled, discovered it had found every simple angle and disliked the result. It reached for his forearm in a soft, careful way that almost fooled him—a fisherman's hand, coaxing a line instead of yanking. The card would have left his center if he were that version of himself. He wasn't.
He kept the rectangle welded to sternum and gave the agent forearm to hold. It took it, pleased. He turned under the contact the way you turn under a ceiling fan you don't want to meet twice, and his other hand—empty and useful—set the agent's elbow where elbows obey.
They clattered two steps into the center pole. The metal kept their secret.
The overhead ad panel surrendered to boredom and flashed a single, graceless word.
[HOLD]
"I am," he said.
The car washed through a brief patch of light where a service niche pretended to be a station's sad cousin. He used the brightness to inventory the agent's not-face: nothing to hang a name on, just the suggestion of a man the world hadn't finished drawing.
He didn't finish it for the world.
Movement at the far gangway interrupted the lull—no circle, just a thump where hinges think. He felt the air behind the door want to be a person. He starved it. Ring to logo. The latch remembered duty.
The agent had grown bored of tricks and discovered commitment. It stepped in hard, both arms at once, hands wide and patient, ready to ride whatever fight became of it. He had the bad habit of respecting that kind of truth. He set his feet like a man who intended to remain a noun, and the rectangle sat in the small space between them like a contract.
They met. Forearms braided, shoulder lines collided. The car took some of it and gave some back. He put the ring under wrist, rotated, felt the hand obey a rule it didn't sign, and used the slack to flow past instead of over. The agent tried to correct with speed. He corrected with angle.
The route strip finally remembered it had responsibilities.
[NEXT: DOCK]
He didn't know what Dock meant here. He didn't like that he didn't know. He leaned on knowing what his hands could do and let definition arrive when the universe got around to it.
The agent made one more honest attempt to become a door through him.
He met it with the quiet leverage of practice—hips under, shoulder narrow, the rectangle pressed to sternum—turned, and put it into the pole up to the line where men reconsider careers. The pole hummed low and petty. The agent sagged a degree and came back a degree less.
He didn't wait for it to pick a new sin. He stepped through the center of the aisle, cut the angle toward the gangway that loved to lie, and got the card to the logo before the dot could decide it was bored.
The indicator steadied like a chastened student.
Behind him, the agent decided speed should apologize for intelligence. It rushed. He didn't reward it. He let it arrive and then shifted an inch so the arrival had to argue with momentum. The rectangle nudged tendon. The hands opened by rule. He gave them back to the air.
The car slowed in a way that wasn't station braking, just a civilized refusal to keep pretending speed solved things. The rails' song lowered a note. The overhead strip kept its new, unhelpful word.
He tasted metal that wasn't blood and tightened his grip just enough to tell his hand it could be trusted.
The agent coiled, disciplined again, empty hands steadying into patience. It approached without hurry, like a man reading a speech he had memorized. He met it in the center of the car, present, square, his boots finding grit and pattern.
The rectangle came up.
The doors at the far end breathed once and thought about opening. He saw the rubber seams consider daylight and changed their mind for them the only way that counted—by moving.
He cut the distance as the gap thought about appearing, card raised, ring bright, and drove the rectangle under the agent's wrist before the car could decide which of them it liked more.