[SYSTEM RECORD: FILE #024]Subject: Interpersonal Dynamics / Seating ProtocolLocation: Taichung Train Station, Platform 0 (Waiting Room B)Time: 07:31 AM

  [Investigator's Record]

  I stood in the dark, holding the stiff cardboard ticket.

  [CLAIM TICKET: ITEM #404][DESTINATION: WAITING ROOM B]

  The illuminated path on the terrazzo floor had vanished the moment the frosted glass window slammed shut. The cavernous hall was swallowed by the dim, sickly light of the distant fluorescent tubes. The massive split-flap display board high above continued its insect-like clicking, a constant background static of death.

  I looked up. Suspended from the concrete ceiling a few yards away was a standard green exit sign.

  It didn't point to an exit. It pointed down a narrow corridor branching off from the main hall. The rusted iron plaque bolted to the wall read: WAITING ROOM B (ITEMS #300 - #500).

  I adjusted the dead weight of my left arm inside my jacket. Every step toward the corridor sent a fresh spike of nausea through my dislocated shoulder.

  The corridor was claustrophobic, lined with pale green tiles that looked like they belonged in a 1980s hospital ward. The air inside was thick and stale, smelling of old cigarettes and cheap vinyl.

  At the end of the hall stood a heavy wooden door.

  A large 'B' was stenciled on the upper half, right below a pane of wire-mesh glass.

  I shoved the door open with my right shoulder.

  The hinges screamed.

  The room was painfully bright. Rows of connected, hard plastic waiting chairs were bolted to the linoleum floor. They were the exact kind of uncomfortable, bright orange seats used in old Taiwanese bus stations.

  The room wasn't empty.

  A man was sitting in the third row, directly under the glaring overhead light.

  He didn't look up when the door slammed against the wall. He was hunched over, his elbows resting on his knees, meticulously picking at the cuticles of his right thumb.

  He wore a faded, oversized yellow polo shirt tucked into dark slacks. A heavy leather tool belt was slung across his lap, holding an outdated voltage meter and a pair of insulated wire cutters. He looked like an off-duty telecom technician from a couple of decades ago, except for the heavy, dark bags under his eyes and the severe, unhealthy pallor of his skin.

  More importantly, a stiff piece of cardboard identical to mine was clipped to the breast pocket of his polo shirt.

  [ITEM #312]

  I took a step inside. The door swung shut behind me on a pneumatic hinge, sealing with a heavy click.

  "You're tracking blood."

  The man spoke without looking up. His voice was raspy, laced with a heavy Taichung accent.

  I stopped. I looked down at my oversized rubber boots. The tread was smeared with the blackened blood from the turnstile trap.

  "Sanitation violation," the man said, finally tearing a piece of dead skin from his thumb. He flicked it onto the floor. "Rule 12. They'll send the janitor. You don't want to meet the janitor."

  I didn't reply. I kept my right hand close to my pocket, mapping the room.

  There were no windows. Only two doors. The one I had just entered, and a reinforced steel door at the far end of the room with a glowing red [BOARDING] sign above it.

  Every plastic orange seat had a white number painted on the backrest.

  "First time getting archived?" The man finally raised his head. His eyes locked onto my useless left arm pinned inside my jacket. A grim, knowing smirk crept across his face. "Tough break. What did you trade for the ticket? A limb? A memory?"

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  "A key," I said. My voice was hoarse.

  The man's smirk vanished. His eyes widened slightly, dropping to the ticket in my hand.

  "A physical key? From the Conductor's train?" He let out a low whistle, shifting in his plastic seat. "You're either the luckiest bastard in this hub, or the dumbest. You gave the Archive a Class-S anchor object just to sit in this waiting room?"

  "It got me out of the transit hall," I said, my eyes scanning the rows.

  "Yeah, well. Welcome to Limbo, Item 404." He gestured vaguely toward the back of the room with a calloused hand. "Better find your assigned seat before the minute changes. If the digital clock ticks over and your ass isn't in the designated chair..."

  He pointed to a large, red digital clock mounted above the boarding door.

  "They reclassify you as 'unruly baggage'," he finished quietly. "And unruly baggage gets compacted."

  I looked at the number painted on the chair directly beneath the clock. It read 380.

  The red digits clicked to 07:34:50.

  Ten seconds. Twenty-four seats away. And I couldn't run without tearing my left arm completely off.

  I locked my knees and launched my weight forward.

  I dragged my oversized rubber boots down the center aisle, forcing my body into a stiff, rapid power-walk. I kept my right hand buried in my pocket, clamping my jacket tightly against my ribs to pin the dead weight of my dislocated shoulder.

  07:34:53

  The bright orange numbers stenciled on the hard plastic seats blurred past my peripheral vision.

  Every heavy step sent a violent shockwave up my spine, directly into the inflamed socket of my left arm. Cold sweat stung my eyes.

  07:34:56

  I reached the sixth row. I had to pivot sharply to the right to enter the aisle. The sudden shift in momentum yanked my left shoulder outward.

  A blinding flash of white-hot pain exploded behind my eyes. I stumbled, my heavy boots scraping wildly against the linoleum.

  07:34:58

  The last seat in the row. Stenciled in chipped white paint: 404.

  I didn't try to sit. I let my legs give out.

  I crashed backward into the rigid orange plastic shell just as the red LED digits above the steel door clicked.

  07:35:00

  A heavy, mechanical CLACK echoed from inside the walls, locking the minute in place.

  I sat frozen, gasping for air, staring blindly at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Nothing happened to my chair. The floor didn't open. The ceiling didn't lower.

  I had claimed my archive slot.

  The scrape of a hard-soled shoe against linoleum broke the silence.

  The telecom technician—Item #312—was walking down the center aisle. He stopped two rows in front of me, leaning casually against the backrest of seat 390.

  "Not bad for a guy with one working arm," he said, his raspy voice entirely devoid of surprise.

  I slowly turned my head to look at him, fighting to regulate my breathing. "You waited until the last ten seconds to tell me the rule."

  "I was testing the merchandise," he replied flatly, pulling the insulated wire cutters from his leather tool belt. He tapped the heavy metal tool rhythmically against his palm. "A guy comes in here tracking blood, claiming he traded a Class-S anchor object to the Archive. I needed to see if you were actually a player, or just an idiot who got lucky."

  He stopped tapping the cutters and pointed them at me.

  "I don't waste breath on dead baggage. If you couldn't make it to that chair, you wouldn't be worth talking to."

  I stared at him, my right hand instinctively tightening around nothing inside my empty pocket. I was defenseless. If he decided I was a threat, or if he just wanted to loot my corpse, I was in no condition to fight a man with a heavy metal tool.

  "What do you want?" I asked.

  "Information is currency in the transit hub," Item #312 said, his dark, baggy eyes locking onto mine. "You saw the Conductor. You survived his train. I need to know what his current routing protocol is. I need to know the temperature of the furnace."

  "And what do I get in return?"

  He smiled. It wasn't a friendly expression. He turned his head and nodded toward the reinforced steel door at the back of the room. The glowing red [BOARDING] sign cast a bloody hue over the metal frame.

  "I tell you how to survive that door."

  I followed his gaze to the heavy steel barrier. "When does it open?"

  "Exactly at 08:00," the technician said quietly. "But there's a catch, 404."

  He turned back to face me, his thumb methodically picking at his torn cuticles again.

  "The system is bottlenecked. The manifest only clears one piece of luggage per hour. And right now, there are two of us in this room booked for the 8 o'clock train."

  I stared at him. I looked at the heavy, calloused hands resting on his leather tool belt. Hands used to wrestling thick copper cables, stripping insulation, and forcing unyielding hardware into place.

  "You want the Conductor's routing protocol?" I gasped, leaning my head back against the hard plastic shell of the chair. The fluorescent light above seared my retinas. "Fine."

  Item #312 raised a dark eyebrow, his hand pausing over his wire cutters. He clearly expected more resistance.

  "But first," I gritted my teeth, forcing the words out through the pain in my chest, "you put my shoulder back in its socket."

  The technician's eyes dropped to the makeshift sling bulging under my jacket.

  "If I can't walk through that eight o'clock door," I said, locking my eyes with his, refusing to break contact, "you get nothing. I'll take the furnace temperature to the incinerator with me."