[SYSTEM RECORD: FILE #025]Subject: Medical Triage / Sanitation ViolationLocation: Taichung Train Station, Platform 0 (Waiting Room B)Time: 07:36 AM

  [Investigator's Record]

  Item #312 stared at me for three long seconds.

  He unclipped the wire cutters from his belt, dropped them onto an empty seat, and walked over.

  "Take the jacket off," he ordered.

  I unzipped the windbreaker with my right hand, letting it slide off my good shoulder. Peeling it away from the left side was a slow, agonizing drag of fabric against inflamed tissue. I let the ruined sleeve hang around my waist.

  The technician looked at the swollen, misshapen lump of my left shoulder joint.

  "Anterior dislocation," he grunted. "You're lucky the bone isn't poking through the skin."

  He didn't ask if I was ready.

  He grabbed my left wrist with his right hand. His grip was a steel vise. He planted his heavy work boot directly against the edge of my plastic seat, wedging his knee hard against my ribs for leverage.

  "The Conductor," Item #312 said, his voice dropping an octave. "Does he patrol the rear cars first, or the engine?"

  "Engine to rear," I choked out. The pressure he was already applying made my vision blur. "Thirty-minute rotation."

  "Good to know."

  He yanked.

  CRUNCH. It wasn't a clean pop. It was a wet, tearing sound of cartilage and muscle fibers snapping brutally back over the humerus.

  My vision completely blacked out.

  I didn't scream. I bit down on the inside of my cheek until warm blood flooded my mouth, swallowing the sound. My entire body spasmed, a violent, involuntary convulsion against the hard plastic chair.

  My legs kicked out.

  The heel of my oversized rubber boot slammed against the linoleum floor, slipping on the slick surface. The blackened, viscous blood from the turnstile trap dragged heavily across the pale green tiles.

  A jagged, two-foot-long streak of black filth.

  My vision slowly swam back. I was gasping, chest heaving, staring at the fluorescent lights. The dead weight of my arm vanished into a deep, radiating throb. I could finally twitch my fingers.

  I looked down.

  The technician had let go of my wrist. He wasn't looking at my shoulder. He had taken two steps back.

  He was staring at the floor.

  At the long streak of black blood.

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  "Rule 12," he whispered, his skin turning a sickly gray under the glaring lights.

  From the narrow, claustrophobic corridor outside the waiting room, a sound cut through the heavy silence.

  Squeak. Splash. The heavy, uneven wheels of an industrial mop bucket rolling across tiles.

  Slosh. Someone was wringing out a wet mop.

  The digital clock above the boarding door read 07:38:12.

  The heavy wooden door with the stenciled 'B' swung open.

  It didn't step through. It glided.

  A figure in faded blue industrial coveralls pushed a galvanized steel mop bucket into the glaring light of the waiting room. There was no face under the brim of the stained yellow cap. Just a smooth, concave shadow that seemed to swallow the fluorescent glare.

  It plunged a thick, fibrous gray mop into the pitch-black water of the bucket.

  Slosh. It lifted the dripping mop and dragged it across the pale green linoleum.

  Where the wet fibers touched the floor, the tile didn't just get clean. The grout lines, the scuff marks, the texture of the material itself vanished. The floor was replaced by a patch of featureless, sterile white void. A localized deletion of reality.

  Item #312 snapped his heavy work boots off the floor, drawing his knees tightly to his chest on the hard plastic of seat 390. He balanced his entire weight on the orange shell, tucking his arms in.

  "Rule 12," the technician whispered, his eyes locked on the approaching figure. "Keep your feet off the ground when the bucket rolls. The system only deletes what touches the floor."

  He slowly turned his head toward me. A cold, feral grin stretched across his pale face.

  "But you, 404? You're the source of the stain. You're a walking sanitation violation."

  The Janitor ignored him. The faceless head was tilted downward, tracking the jagged, two-foot-long streak of black blood I had dragged down the center aisle.

  Squeak. Splash. It was ten feet away.

  I couldn't pull my feet up. The agonizing throb in my freshly relocated left shoulder meant I didn't have the upper-body strength to balance my weight on the narrow plastic seat. If I lifted my boots, I would fall backward onto the floor.

  The Janitor dragged the mop over the beginning of the blood streak.

  The black sludge didn't dissolve. It was violently sucked into the gray fibers, leaving another patch of endless white void in its wake.

  Seven feet.

  I looked down at my left foot. The oversized rubber boot was entirely coated in the thick, viscous blood of the queue entities.

  I didn't try to stand. I used my right heel to pin the back of the loose left boot against the floor, and forcefully yanked my leg upward.

  My socked foot slipped out of the oversized rubber casing.

  I leaned forward, fighting a wave of nausea from my shoulder, and grabbed the top of the filthy boot with my right hand. The thick black sludge coated my fingers.

  The Janitor was four feet away. The bucket wheels squeaked.

  I looked at Item #312. He was still curled on his seat, watching me with that dead, superior smirk, waiting for the mop to touch my chair.

  "Information is currency," I rasped.

  I hurled the heavy rubber boot.

  It arced over the rows of orange plastic chairs. Item #312's eyes snapped wide open. He tried to raise his arms to deflect it, but his balance was precariously locked into the fetal position on the narrow seat.

  The heavy, sludge-covered boot struck him squarely in the chest.

  SMACK. Thick, black queue-entity blood splattered violently across his pristine yellow polo shirt and smeared down his neck. The boot bounced off him and clattered onto the linoleum in the adjacent aisle.

  The Janitor stopped.

  The dripping gray mop hovered inches from my bare left foot.

  Slowly, the concave shadow beneath the yellow cap turned. It bypassed the small streak on the floor. It locked onto the massive, fresh concentration of biological anomaly currently dripping down Item #312's chest.

  The galvanized bucket rotated. The wheels squeaked as it changed direction, heading straight for row 390.

  The smirk dripped off the technician's face. His pale skin went entirely slack.

  "No," Item #312 choked out, his raspy voice cracking. He pressed his back against the plastic chair, trying to shrink away from the approaching mop. "Wait. I have a ticket. I'm booked for 08:00—"

  The Janitor raised the dripping gray mop.

  The digital clock clicked to 07:39:00.

  The bottleneck was resolved.