[SYSTEM RECORD: FILE #022]Subject: Queue Protocol / Invisible EntitiesLocation: Taichung Train Station, Platform 0 (Sorting Center)Time: 07:22 AM

  [Investigator's Record]

  “Rule 04: Loitering in the transit hall is a Class-A violation.”

  The female voice from the PA system didn't echo. In a hall this cavernous, the sound should have bounced off the exposed concrete ceiling. Instead, the words were flat, deadened by the unnatural acoustics of the cold terrazzo floor, dropping directly into my ears.

  A high-pitched electronic beep pulsed from a hidden speaker above me. A single, distinct warning tone.

  A countdown.

  I was standing still. I was loitering.

  I dragged my oversized rubber boots forward, stepping past the first heavy steel stanchion and crossing the threshold into the labyrinth of faded red nylon ropes.

  The warning beep stopped instantly.

  I was in the system. I was in line.

  I exhaled through my nose. My left arm hung uselessly at my side, the dislocated shoulder throbbing with a deep, sickening heat. Every step I took caused the dead weight of the limb to swing slightly, sending sharp jolts of agony straight into the base of my neck. I couldn't let it dangle.

  Using my blistered, trembling right hand, I grabbed the cuff of my left sleeve. Gritting my teeth against the blinding flare of pain in my socket, I forced the deadened arm upward, bending the elbow just enough to shove my left hand deep into my own jacket pocket.

  It formed a crude, agonizing makeshift sling. It pinned the useless limb against my ribs, stopping the pendulum motion.

  I looked down the long, straight lane of the queue. The path between the red ropes stretched for thirty feet before making a sharp 180-degree turn. The lane was completely empty.

  I took another step toward the distant oxidized turnstiles.

  Clack. Squeak.

  I froze.

  The distinct, rhythmic clack of hard-soled leather shoes came from about five feet ahead, but the annoying, repetitive squeak of a rolling suitcase trailed closely behind it, leaving a mere two feet of empty air directly in front of my boots.

  I stared at the empty space ahead of me. Nothing but the pale green stone floor and the harsh glare of the fluorescent tubes.

  I didn't move.

  Beep. The warning tone pulsed from the ceiling again. Sharper this time.

  The entity in front of me had moved forward. By standing still, I was opening up a gap. In the logic of a transit hub, failing to close the gap was loitering.

  I forced my rubber boots forward. One step. Two steps.

  The squeaking wheel and the leather shoes moved in perfect unison with my pace, maintaining the exact distance. The entity was adhering to a strict, invisible grid.

  Slap. Drag.

  The sound hit my ears from directly behind me.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. The air temperature dropped, carrying the faint, metallic scent of stagnant canal water and rusted iron.

  Slap. Drag. Wet, bare feet on polished terrazzo. Less than two feet behind my back.

  Someone else had joined the queue.

  I kept my eyes locked forward. I couldn't turn around. In a queue, turning around violates the forward-facing flow of traffic.

  I was sandwiched. Two feet of clearance in front of the invisible suitcase. Eighteen inches of clearance ahead of the wet feet.

  My right hand stayed in my right pocket, gripping the freezing brass key. My left hand was pinned in my left pocket to keep the shoulder from tearing.

  With both hands buried in my coat, I had no way to balance. Every step in the oversized rubber boots was a stiff, precarious stumble. If the trailing invisible luggage tripped me, or if the wet feet behind me clipped my heel, I would lose my footing entirely. And falling face-first onto the terrazzo in the middle of a queue was definitely a Class-A violation.

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  I didn't have the bag. I had nothing for customs.

  We reached the first 180-degree turn.

  The lane bent sharply to the right, wrapping around the heavy steel stanchion.

  I slowed my breathing and watched the physical environment.

  The faded red nylon rope connecting the stanchions suddenly sagged outward. A depression formed in the thick fabric, exactly at waist height, sliding along the rope as the unseen passenger rounded the corner.

  The entity was pushing the outer boundary.

  I tracked the depression in the rope, mapping the invisible volume of the body in front of me. I waited for the nylon to snap back into place, gave it a two-second clearance to let the trailing invisible luggage cut the inside corner, then made the turn.

  Slap. Drag. The wet footsteps behind me rounded the corner perfectly, closing the gap back to eighteen inches.

  I fell back into the stiff, pendulum-less rhythm. The endless, maddeningly long zigzag of the labyrinth stretched out before me.

  At the very end of the line, the oxidized metal turnstiles waited. Under the glaring fluorescent light, I finally saw what was coating the mechanical rotating arms of the gates. Layers of dried, blackened blood.

  We reached the front of the queue.

  The invisible entity with the suitcase stopped exactly one foot away from the first turnstile. A faded yellow line was painted on the terrazzo floor.

  I stopped three feet behind the squeaking wheel.

  Slap. Drag. The wet feet halted exactly eighteen inches behind my boots.

  The turnstile was a heavy, floor-to-ceiling cage of iron bars, similar to the high-security exits at old subway stations. Attached to the metal frame at waist height was a thick glass scanning bed, illuminated from beneath by a dormant red laser.

  The invisible suitcase entity didn't hesitate.

  A sharp, synthetic BEEP rang out from the scanner. The dormant red laser flashed a bright, validating green.

  CLUNK. The heavy iron locking mechanism disengaged. The rotating arms of the turnstile groaned, spinning forward a quarter-turn. The squeak of the bad wheel echoed through the iron cage, moving past the barrier.

  The turnstile locked again with a deafening metallic snap. The light returned to dormant red.

  The space in front of me was empty.

  I stepped up to the yellow line.

  Slap. Drag. The wet feet moved up with me, maintaining the suffocating eighteen-inch clearance. The smell of stagnant water grew so thick it coated the inside of my throat.

  A digital display panel above the scanning bed lit up.

  [AWAITING MANIFEST TOKEN...]

  I didn't have a ticket. I didn't have a token.

  If I didn't present one within the allotted timeframe, I was loitering. If I presented an invalid one, I was an undocumented anomaly. The layers of blackened blood on the iron bars told me exactly what the system's error-handling protocol looked like.

  The brass key in my grip belonged to Cabin 00. It wasn't a ticket. It would trigger the trap.

  I let go of the key. My numb fingers dug deeper into the lining of my jacket, bypassing the freezing brass until they found a heavy, rectangular chunk of black plastic.

  I pulled my trembling right hand out of my pocket. My blistered fingers were wrapped around the device I had taken from the dead man on the train. The 1990s alphanumeric pager.

  I slammed the pager face-down onto the glass scanning bed.

  The red laser flared to life, sweeping across the scarred black plastic and the obsolete circuitry inside.

  The digital display panel above the scanner froze. The progress bar stuttered.

  [SCANNING...][DATA TYPE UNRECOGNIZED.][FORMAT EXCEPTION: TIMESTAMP CONFLICT.]

  The red laser beneath the glass began to strobe rapidly, emitting a high-pitched, failing whine.

  Then, the dead plastic brick on the glass reacted.

  A shrill, piercing sequence of electronic chirps erupted from the pager's tiny speaker. It was the standard 1990s alert tone.

  The tiny LCD screen on the back of the pager, dead for decades, suddenly glowed with a sickly green backlight. A string of blocky, digital numbers scrolled across the small display.

  02-15-1995-19:20

  The turnstile's digital panel erupted into a chaotic cascade of static.

  [CRITICAL ERROR: CHRONOLOGY OVERFLOW.][BYPASS PROTOCOL INITIATED.]

  The strobing red laser flashed into a blinding, sickly yellow.

  CLUNK. The heavy iron locking mechanism disengaged, the sound distorted and weak.

  I didn't wait for the system to recover. I lunged forward, throwing my right shoulder against the blood-stained iron bars.

  The turnstile fought back, its gears grinding against the conflicting commands, but the sheer weight of my forward momentum forced the heavy arms to rotate. I squeezed through the narrow iron cage, my oversized boots scraping against the terrazzo floor. As the heavy arms rotated, I snatched the dead pager off the glass bed just before the gate snapped shut.

  I cleared the barrier. The iron arms snapped back into place behind me, locking with a violent, definitive crash.

  I stumbled onto the open floor of Platform 0, gasping for air, clutching my ruined left arm against my chest.

  Behind me, the turnstile scanner rebooted. The yellow light snapped back to a harsh, unforgiving red.

  Slap. Drag. The wet feet stepped up to the yellow line on the other side of the iron cage.

  [AWAITING MANIFEST TOKEN...]

  There was no sound of a ticket being placed on the glass. There was only a brief second of silence.

  Then, the iron cage came alive.

  It wasn't a mechanical lock. The blood-stained metal arms of the turnstile suddenly snapped inward with the speed and ferocity of an industrial bear trap. A sickening, wet crunch, followed immediately by a heavy splash of saturated meat collapsing onto the terrazzo.

  The red light on the scanner remained solid.

  The wet footsteps didn't follow me.

  I shoved the dead pager deep into my pocket and looked up. The true scale of the sorting center loomed before me.