Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The first key to surviving the
night shift is routine. Some people say it's vigilance or paranoia,
or even caffine, but I know better. It's ritual, the
stringing together of small ordered habits against the tide of
darkness and fatigue. For four years, I've manned the overnight
security posted the Churis Corporate Center, a class sided echo
chamber spanning sixteen stories above an empty swath of city.
By eleven p m. The building is down to a whisper,
a far off printer at the click of badge doors,
occasional gurgle from the PEPs. Nothing stirs if you don't
first disturb it. I began that Thursday, as I always do,
swiping my own card at the east side entrance, pulling
on the oversized uniform jacket that still smells finly of
the last detergent, and flicking the banks of overhead lights.
In my periberal vision, the elevator's chrome doors reflected only
my own movements. I sign it in a control check
for notes, and glance over the digital logs of string
of a and nut bowed swipes, accounted for nothing to
spark suspicion or interest. After IRE's world belongs to people
like me, and I've come to relish the neat security
of known exactly where everyone is and is not. The
shifts so long and quiet, broken only by the drawn
of air circulating and the sharp snap offending machine hum.
Time falls on itself here at night, once the last
train leaves down hun you can almost hear the city.
Change gaves a kind of collective exhalation as business sleeps,
and only the word the wired and the word remain
two hours in. Half way through my first set of rounds,
I pass through the twelfth floor break area. Floor tiles
color as commercial cockpit. The odor of microwave noodles clings
thinly to the walls. It's nothing special, counter scuffed by
hordes of lunch traffic, A lonely pot of coffee left
charring itself on the burner. I collect the mugs or
fill the paper towels, and check underneath the conference tables
for anything left behind. Routine shapes the world and keeps
it logical. That's when I see it lopsided, half jutting
between a no limb and carpet seam bluck against gray.
I kneel, thinking it's maybe someone's badge. Instead, it's a
kick out heavy for its size, glossy plast with a
single Numerica label embossed on so very far thirteen brick room.
For a few seconds a crouch, they are examining it
in a pool of fluorescence bill. The building has twelve
office floors, two equipment levels, squatting square up of fourteen,
and the penthouse boardroom no thirteen. That's not superstition. Culpriate
architects design around their own anxieties. There is no thirteen
four in this building, at least not one that I've
ever seen or heard about. My badge, used all these years,
never glows for anything with the thirteen. I sit back
on my heels and glance at the nearest elevator alcove.
The floor panel jumps straight from twelve, two, fourteen. All
joke and lucky numbers mean empty floors or exhaust fans,
or simply a numbering skip for the superstitious. But my
key guard, freshly minted, says thirteen in an official font.
It can't be real. It looks entirely plausible as sibling
to every other badge you'd find on a line out
save for the blackness and its dark number. My first
thought a prank. Maybe Facilities may be one of the
programmers who fusses with the offed system. But something doesn't
add up. The plastic age of sharp clean, the sort
of we're only given by heavy use, not novelty. It
doesn't have the usual building logo, which is odd. Trying
not to think too hard, I head back to Control.
I thumb through the digital logs, arranging event by elevator
activity as a distraction. Monitors flicker, their pale blow dusting
the walls, elevator, ascending, elevator churning down for lake commers,
time stance ticking by. I browse raw data, idle curiosity,
turning towards something more pointed. Nothing appears out of line
until I spot it two seven a m. The previous
night elevator lock stop floor equals thirteen. I check again,
blinking against the spread of numbers. That's impossible. The digital
lock shows a clear sequence up down, a series of
badge entries, and a stop at thirteen that shouldn't exist.
I double check the camera panes, trying to find any
sign of tampering, jerkingly, half hoping to spot someone grinning
at me from behind a potty plant. Nothing, The cameras
never blink, the locks don't forget, and now in my
hand is the most unlikely key in the building. In vice,
in its normal sea chilling, in its implication, my skin
tidans cuspums, shivering up my arms in the humming silence.
There's no airror message, no of his hack, just a
door to or number that isn't there, memorialized by a
key that never should have been made. Most knights here
start with virtual motions and lock in a rolling gate,
harrying my jacket, retrieving the batted attendant log, and sitting
at my post behind the marble reception counter. My whole job,
as I see it, is to ensure predictability. A caretaker
of saneness. A Chair's corporate center, built two decades ago
on a patch of prime yet uninspired city grid is
designed so nothing feels surprising. After dark. The lobby's granite
floor stretches under amber a leady damn lights. The glass
walled conference rooms glimmer to my left, each flickering with
the memories of morning meetings swept away and replaced by stillness.
Elevators set in their brushed alumin and alcohoves, a weighed
only the rare employee daring enough to burn the midnight oil.
I start every shift with the circuit, first the basement
server rooms, then the parking levels, the stark echo under
the rows of electric ASUV, humming slightly as they trickle charge,
then up through the stairwells. Each drew will a syrup
of shadow until my flashlights bean slices into dust motes.
The upper floor is thick with the scent of iron
eized air, and the faint chemical tang from weekly cleaning
are quite as still. Each floor tells its own story.
Neither is always scattered with paper cups and half eaten
catering tries finance as snacks left abandoned by exhausted number crunchers.
The marketing annex on five is a ride of sticky
notes and campagne posters dying in the bloomiest blue white light.
Engineering tucked away on four hums, with gaming laptops and
powered bricks snaking across desks like grass as Cobra's. The
break rooms on every floor offer minimal relief from the
blank sameness. Ancient microwaves aging for mica, the soft patter
of vending coil spinning to spill snacks by request. On
good night, I'll see familiar faces pressed to as greens.
A bespectacled dy guy in a faded band tee jaw
slack as he squints occurred, nd yet the overnight accountant,
whereas headphunds so large, I hear the ghost of her
playlists before I reach her cubicle. There's a reliable pair
of Janetor's Curt and zeal unmoving like peaceful ghosts with
mop buckets, greeting me with tired nods. Sometimes we share
a joke commissariately about the night's slow blee, or trade
geranola bars from our pockets. Therein saw me breeds gentleness
I've learned. But every now and then faces vanish. This week,
only Zeeline returns the knot. Kurt hasn't been around three
nights running just as torrid. The daya besad men has
vanished from her customary seventh floor window. No one raises
an alarm burn out as some one explains he's back
in skull o'er. Her kid's sick. She's got leave that's
common in the city's corporate cycle. Ultern no closure. I
make a note of it. Never as expecting more than
life's regular attrition. My routines protect me. Badge checks at
every internal door, q R code checks for urgent building
note for ications, the static comfort to voice check with
the overnight monitoring firm. There are supposed to be no
blind spots. Every corridor banks off a camera lens. Every
door logs are swipe every elevator stop time stamped, and
archive for liability. Nothing in short, should ever escape the
quiet digital eye. The tough floor, by least favorite, always
runs a little colder, courtesy from a track unit that
likes to urdle wine and occasionally vent mysterious icy breath.
I traced the outline of the draft seems to emanate
from the midpoint between the kitchen alcove and a dead
janitor's closet. Though the logs saide the air floe is balanced. Sometimes,
I admit I amuse myself jawed in uneven sketches of
the floor lay its dueling, alternate routes, and hypothetical secret
rooms in the back pages of the Lovebook, A private
entertainment for the interminable iyros between patrols. Among us night staff,
old rumors were circulated in half serious tones. The missing
thirteenth floor, someone jokes over checked where they send people
who bought the Christmas party. Unlucky numbers make for excellent
company folklore and corporate architects on notores for their aversions.
Something about lawsuits in Hong Kong, the Superstition's gate from
one building code to the next. Still this comfort in
lodge exchange link fence. Nothing truly bad ever happens here,
I tell myself, just long iyres, miss deadlines, the glow
of the city refusing sleep, And on this night, as
I run through the paces, nothing feels particularly out of
place until I'm reminded by a found object that the
building has rules. I don't remember writing twice per shift.
I make rounds with the clipboard pencil poorts for imaginary infractions.
I keep a second note be coom my own scrap pad,
wherritrak minuschi, which force coffee machine is busted? Which thermostat
runs too hot? Last month's deployment of bug traps in
the storage rooms. Sometimes, instead of notes or draw there's
an oddly pleasing challenge to capture in the geometry and
dead ends of the top fours double back corridor, or
sketching where the heating touch fronds vanished behind drywall. The
security system is the company's pride and joy, its claim
of transparency. Digital freeedge roll in from every corner. Nothing
is said to be secret, nothing unwatched. Badge logs across
for reference in the IRA, even the meal cart's off
it tag gets tracked. The head of Facilities likes to
claim there hasn't been an unexplained incident in five years.
That's true as far as any one knows, unless he
count the time the CEO owned san fail to badge
out after a weekend bender, but that was handled discreetly.
The maintenance logs claim no known draft problem on any floor,
despite what I feel sometimes under the doors. Probably just
pressure equalization glitches. As Eelan told me, Once buildings breathe
at night, things settle, but on the edges of sleep,
when vending machines grow in the building creeks with the spansion.
I think about all blueprints, the memory drifts, construction workers
whispering about missing rooms, doors that don't open, or stores
about a hidden executive speakeasy built in some lon ago remodel,
a running jero, mutating with each retelling. No one I'm
sure actually believes in secret floors, except now there's a
key in my possession. It suggests the joke has a
punch line. I don't understand. The black card sits next
to my coffee. As I review that night's locks again,
I tap its embossed numbers. A scrawl the elevator system's records, reluctant,
but also faintly excited, each of curiosity. Perhaps I can
help it. Want something anomalous crosses my desk. Some part
of me has to scratch at it. The logs are
raw EXML, mostly batches of time stamps, paired with elevator
car numbers, floor stops, badge I d in a right
column the programme. Four indexes run up from B two
two sixteen, except here and there a rogue of thirteen
blooms in the stream. At first, I dismiss it as
a coincidence database import error. Maybe I isolate a week's
worth of logs, sorting by four stop and D eight
there again, over three different nights, at even intervals, Elevator
A pauses for less than twelve seconds. At thirteen always
between two zero and two thirteen a m followed by
the expected stop at fourteen or back down to the lobby.
There is no floor twelve point five or concealed mezzanine.
I paged through the buildings as built, blipprints on the
security tablet, floor stacked, and standard corporate monotony. The only
mechanical are labeled Mechanical Service fifteen, but the logs say
the teen with persistent digital certainty. My fingers are cold,
and the urge to look over my shoulder is palpable.
Controls closed circuit TV seem less secure in the moment,
though white angle views reduced by static. As I tockal floors,
I summon elevator cams for the suspect time stamps. The
video is mostly normal, a co worker yawning, humming through
their prone elevators, a leady panel skipping dutifully from twelve
upwards to fourteen, except on those stopping nights. It is
a corruption. Video escapes, then jumps forward with a tick
of static, a lost half second, and the elevator hummy,
as if nothing unusual occurred. I rubt sleep from my eyes.
This is more than a prank, more than misnumbered line
and scheduling file. I try to rest the building in
logics embrace, perhaps a test, perhaps an engineer scripting new
floor designators a narrow disabling test mode still buried in
the logs as a pattern, the elevated and noting four
equals stuttin always corresponds with a badge swipe from a
handful of night shift regulars, some of whom I haven't
seen this past week. My notebooks have pazard roster takes
off names all familiar. Jake from my t Taara ocurt
I checked the night shift, locked against the elevator records.
Each furnished worker transits the lobby, gets on the elevator
after one thirty a m. Then nothing, no lob for
the elevator, returned into the lobby, no badge scan. At
the exits. My pulse runs away, the last remnants of sleep.
I decide to double check the video chaves. Ther monitor's
glow under my hand is the whole world for a
moment midweek, Jake, smiling, red bearded face appears as he
badged and through the staff entrance at one fort e
three a m. Three cameras catches shuffle toward the elevator
coffee muginto he enters. Minutes pass but no core responding
video of Jake leaving the elevator returns to the lobby,
empty doors, yawning open. I watched the end of the
footage several times, half expecting some manuglitch to be picked
up by the camera's internal audit nothing, aside from a muted,
momentary flutter of static. When the elevator is supposed to
be at its phantom thirteen floor, the building, with its
endless glass and sharp edged geometery, seems to shrink around me.
Routine is losing its ability to explain. I tell myself
it's nothing, surely a sisam error, a batch process, drop
in an event, or an overwritten lock. But my attention
stays snagged on that tiny, a reducible black card next
to my culling cup, and on elevator spikes that interrupt
the perfect hum of routine. Three nights later, the pattern repeats.
Elevator A pauses again on thirteen, a fresh badge eyed
epine on the locks. This time it's torrors. I begin
to suspect that my own tendency to record every detail
may be the very thing driving me to paranoia if
you look deep enough, even the most secure building begins
to offer up fractures. But the files before me feel
solid and arguable, threaded with a growing sense of inevitability.
On my next night off, I returned to the logs
once more, eyes narrowed. Over five weeks, every thirteen encounter
in the system lines up with the bad trail of
a missing employee. In a cascade of unexplained elevator returns,
I check maintenance tickets from the same window. Oddly, none
of the custodial or engineering staff have a scheduled routine
checks for flours above twelve After one a m at
least none that show up has approved in the workoder system.
My isolation grows the other overnight regulus than out the
friendly circuit of late night Die HOWD replaced by hollow species.
Missed esks often coffee mouks, coat straighten and easily of
a rolling chairs. Most rooms retain the evidence of the
recently present laptop chargers, plugged in calendar reminders, blinking on
endy monitors, phona control rings during the witching ire on
caller id HR, a hard voice ton mechanically pleasant asks.
If I happened to see Tara after midnight on her
last shift. They mention something about an unreturned laptop, voice
tightening around the word concern. The call ends with a
vague warning to document novel observations in chift lock in
real time. I hang up un settled h R never
balls that shift or less. They have to. The mounting
pattern demands structure a road map. If only for my
own peace of mind, I begin mapping every elevator stop,
every bad scan, every unexplained gap, and come or coverage.
A timeline emerges, marked by vanishing routines in the mechanical
efficiency of systems designed to tell you nothing is wrong.
My patient fractures. By the end of my six shift
of tracking. The air feel is cut with unease, the
monitors blink with more static than usual. Another security guard,
someone leaned over from facilities, asks if I need help.
I wave her off. Some part of me wants to
solve this before it becomes official, lest I be drawn
into explanations I can't provide. I study the elevator systems
online console looking for loopholes. Certain commands allow you to
override standard destination locks by using inspection mode used for
fire drolls or moving heavy equipment. If the elevator is
called at exactly two zero, I am then set to inspection.
It should, by logic, ignore all non physical floor restrictions,
but no system should ever let it pause on floor
thirteen when it knows no such floor exists. The idea
takes hold just after one fifty five. Are ready a
service badge and weigh in the twelve floor corridor, hot
hammering with anticipation. The hall is empty, lined with shadows.
The only sound the faint rattle of the ductruc. I
step into the elevator, tapping my over eye coat. Lights flicker,
the familiar panel sequence, whirring through the pointless options ge
B two, one, and so on. When nothing changes, I
swipe again, calling inspection mote. Then hit the twelve button,
jabbing a finger nail against the sleek glass. The elevator hums,
calling up, stopping at twelve without vanfoir, I let the
doors close. Then, with a surge and a nod unsteady lurch,
the floor indicator ticks twelve. Then a single ghostly thirteen
flashes so quickly my eyes almost miss it. The panel
never fully lights yet the elevator groans to a halt,
as if impaled mid motion. An involuntary shiver tears through me.
The eight tractual sharpens, silence swallows the cab. No movement outside,
just the dizzing sense of weightlessness. Then the door slide open,
but nothing at amiss outside the same pattern of carpeting,
the same hallway that always marks the fourteen floor red
runner Bland Marketing signs, the flickering light that's always an
irow from burnot. There is no door marked thirteen, No
discernible shift in architecture. Had I imagined the whole sequence.
I steady myself against the frame, forced myself to breathe,
returning to control my nerves trash. I tried the mysterious
kikot on a dozen break room badge reads nothing, no beep,
no change. Sometimes the sensor glows a dim, unhelpful orange,
but there is no validation, no open door. After a while,
paranoise seeps in, like water soaking through old brick. The
chemeras always facing down. The length of the hole seems
slightly askew. One appears to track me as I pass,
its lens, glistening with manufactured indifference. The shadow is at
The edges of the control room flicker when I move,
as if the building itself is adjusting to my attention.
I convince myself I'm tired, overwrought, over caffeinated, overdue for
time off. But the sense of surveillance deepens. Every corner
is an eye, every reflection of potential witness to something
in the locks will never explain. Then a surprise to night.
Nutes later, I find myself face to face with a
senior manager well after midnight. She's younger than I'd expected,
dressed in take attire rather than old guard suits, but
her badge bristles with security clearance in network problems VPN glitches,
she mutters. When I see her, tracing her way through
the fourteen fours over annex, she is quick gathering her things,
almost furtive. Did you need anything from security, ma'am, I
ask a voice, even she shakes her head, eyes flicking
past me. No, just needed logs for report temporary glitch.
I follow her at a distance, curiosity peaued to see
her peering into the stawlell doors, running her own badge
on the panel, then glancing at her phone and perhaps
at something else, and seen just off the edge of
the light. She passes through the low be trailing a
slim folder she tries to stow under her arm in
her hurry its lips. She curses, then, not seeing me
step forward, leaves it abandoned as she collates her other papers.
I wait until she's gone, then pick it up inside
four plans more detailed than anything in the maintenance behind
her pages marked confidential, heavily redacted technical notes, and my
breath pausing the phrase service level selminus thirteen. No further explanation,
but the annotation is stark placed between the twelfth and
fourteen fours, A hashed and alcove mark doc sulliary lounge,
a memoir with encountered lines, ones, legacy, axis, restricted use,
master access or service level ID only. I snap images
on my phone before returning the folder to Lost and Found.
I work the rest of the shift with the sound
of blood pounding in my ears. The pieces are assembling
themselves around me. A arcs vanished people, official secrecy, and
adore that, to my knowledge, nobody should even believe exists.
Second guessing myself. As day lay after the dawn hand off,
in the quiet of the utility archive, I paged her
old blueprints yellowed, creased, annotated with the jagged handwriting of
generations of engineers. There is an oblique note on adducting
schematic half muted original break room thirteen c revised interior plan,
though the teen is circle thin, cost out as if
to avoid the very idea of a flow between twelve
and fourteen more badge locks. I review the detailed list
of staffish in master keys, some of them missing aim
show up. Jake, Tara, even Kirt with a card tier
for a building wide access, are ready for their positions.
All their last activity clusters around early a m. And
always always a stop at the ghost floor. Heart heavy,
I try to reason through the mounting evidence, such architecture,
such planning, even such secrets. It all feels impossibly dramatic
for a company that worries about tone of theft and
email scams. But it is also real, far more substantial
than rumor. Five weeks end with boldness, spawn of exhaustion,
I slip out of uniform, pocketing the mysterious their team
break room badge. I ride the elevator to twelve one
last time before dawn. The stairwell, as ever, is chilled
by a tongue of cold air and hidden from camera view.
I listen somewhere below the buzzing of compressors, the kind
of hush that suggests sent in its masking purpose. I
run finger tips over blank wall. The paint is rougher.
Here a texture of rectangles, just faintly discernible by the
light of my phone. A badge reader is slightly different
than elsewhere, its surface coated in a patterner of years,
and seen blink stormant in the shadow between stairs. Swallowing
my fear, I raise the stolen Kik God and press
it to the reader. There is a delay, then a
bloom of mute green light, not the cheerful chirp of
most readers, but silent, steady glow. With effort, the curved
door yields to my push, hinges groaning with fatigue, just billows.
The air beyond, colder than the stairwell, untinged with the
town of ancient adhesive, in something older, something metallic. I
glance over my shoulder, heart racing the question hovers, have
I violated an old joke? Or peel back olaye never
meant to be disturbed. The opening is only a foot
and half enough to slip through at the threshold, The
air seems to vibrate with anticipation, as if the building
itself is waiting to see if I'll cross over. I hesitate,
one hand grip in the door, the other clutching my
phone thum ready on the flashlight. I can, for the
first time in years of working here, I am genuinely,
deeply afraid of what lies past the margin of floor plans,
past the reach of my badge and my rationality, And
for the first time in a long launch stretch of
endless nights, I cannot trust of the rituals the routines
will keep me safe. I crossed the threshold as quietly
as the protest and hinges would allow, Poles in my ears,
careful to ez the doors shut behind me, letting it
rest but not latch. The darkness inside was not total,
but it was deep, distowed only by the thin blade
of white from my phone's flask light, trembling a little
in my hand. The beam sweat crossed ragged carpet, a
low and colorless pile whose pattern was neither current nor retro,
just as guarded as if someone had borrowed it from
a relic of the nineteen eighties. A faint track, a
path worn by years of pacing. Shoes stitched the dust
in front of me. I paused, letting the light in
my breathing settle, waiting for the sense of boundary to fade.
My skin prickled with the cold, a different cold than
the twelve floor drafted, sharp and chemical. It wasn't good air, stagnant,
almost sire. The sense of size was difficult to gauge.
My light seemed to get eaten by dart as faster
than it shit. The flastlight small power, vanishing a few
feet from the toe of my boot. I tried to
orient myself any logic, and in north East all I
had was the sound of nothing. I took four steps, cautious,
feeling for the moment my leaf at might knock against
dat chairs of forgotten furniture. Instead, the light hit a
corner cheap break room tables. Their legs splayed a monusque,
as if someone had dragged it in it. Anger chairs
ringed the walls silent, their seat cracked in the patterns
of lawn absence and sudden use. Against the far wall,
A vending machine stooped in disgrace as glass age dimmed.
A looping logo for a diffunct color company, faintly visible
underground under the machine calm. Another sound, small, irregular, perhaps
the sigh of the HVAC, perhaps something else. I listened
more closely, My attention flicked to the left. Or fluorescent
lighting at least a dozen years out of date, hanin
off kelterictingles from a drop ceiling. Some tubes blinked life
there like greenish and a little sick, barely illuminating. A
series of war mounted security monitors clustered in a jury
riefed to rate, clearly scavenged from different ears. The depth
of the room beyond the monitors was impossible to judge.
My steps kept drafting dust up over my shoes, but
prints clear and absurdly bright compared to the gray and
broken cross that lay everywhere else. The room's design was
familiar in only the most generic quay A refrigerated the
kind with the handle split at the top, A water
crooler that looked faintly yellowed and dry, or countercrowded with
smashed mugs. But the accreted layer of years, or at
least the illusion of them, warped the edges of every object,
made everything look faded. Twice over. I tried the fridge
door jitterate half way, expecting some child as pranka blast
of cold pack hair or a plastic spider. It yielded
with a reluctant crack, smelling only of old cool and
a mold empty shelves except for in an open kin
of soup. Its label cled like a burn flag. The
water cooler dispenser moved at my touch, rocking slightly hollow.
I scanned the walls, hunting for further clues. The fluorescent
tubes over the monitors gave just enough light for me
to read some of the sheets stuck with yellow and
tape beneath them, handred and in a spidery pen. Clean
up after use nineteen ninety two out of order maintenance scheduled.
I leave the break room as he found it. Most
odd was a tight sheet corners briddle reading level of thirteen,
staff use only, do not prot door. Its font was
the sort used by light min as eighties typewriters. A
shiver round threw me not of coal, but of the
sense of time, immerred. All my years in building new doors,
new textpecs card reader over holes for the last decade,
and here behind eligible credentials lay a room that belonged
to no era at all. The vending machines keep it
at half. The numbers worn probably by board employees decades gone,
displayed a message it's back at I'll see, blinking the
phrase welcome staff. In monospace, the wall of monitors buzzed
at a low frequency. Some screens lost to static, others
hazy but live, showing grainy off angle views. A stairbell
landing with no identifying marks. A cube field of gray
paneling and flickering computer screens. A break room I didn't recognize,
but with a brassy wall clock stuck at two. Seven
hands are moving, dust pulled at the bottom rim an
acrid odor. Pinch my nose, at my feet. A tangled
pile of lineyards and security badges lay as are dropped
in a hurry. Most were faded at the edges. The
id photos blurred by age. Their name's not immediately familiar.
A crouch picking up a badge by instinct. No logo,
just a number of thirteen twenty two T fissure systems,
another thirteen forty seven K more accounts below the heaps
out a stack of dog eared papers covered with frantic scroll.
I picked one up, hands now shaking out. Try no windows,
no way out, elevators, skips stairs, loop, locked in. If
anyone finds this not tried to leave when the lights
flickered to him. Behind me, a sophametallic clung, a shift
of something at the edge of darkness, perhaps a chair sliding,
maybe just metal settling. I spawn the phone beams, spas
me across the dirty floor, hot suddenly a metrope. Nothing moved,
the door was still a jar, behind me by a sliver.
I swallowed, my skin, prickled with the urge to rawn,
but something stronger kept me rooted to maybe a stubborness,
like the kind that had driven generations to poker, to
mark switches and odd glitches. Or maybe I just needed
an answer. I tracked the monitors, stepping forward. Each flickered
through alternating angles, a patrick of abandoned looking spaces, and
another stay will wear for a second, I could have sworn.
I glimpsed a backpack slumped against a riser, and then
another shot, looking directly at a conference table, but the
table was covered in paperwork, all but impossible to focus,
like an after image. Half glimpsed, then lost as the
feet shimmered with interference. A monitor at the end marked
a bree k thirteen C A moon and clumsy digital
text eliminated part of the very room. I stood in
the vending corner and the empty chairs. I saw my
ouncel wet, tiny and other focus shifting between flickers. I
half laughed, uncertain, am I on every monitor? Is this
just another prank? An elaborate old Halloween? Sat up my eyes,
waded the coal. The milky reel enough and the air
didn't feel like it had circulated for months. Tiny details
caught me. A chewed pencil bit and cleaned through, rolled
up to the edge of a vent. A ziplocked bag
of stale cereal water bottles, half emptied, scattered among the badges.
A notepad on a table one corner, badly scorched where
someone had torn off page after page. The cover read
simply shift note kurt. I flipped a page, feeling the
indentations left by harsh agitated writing. Must not sleep, light
blink sequals, door shuffle, lost track of time at the rest,
trailed off in what looked like a scratched attempt to
keep writing after the pen drite up beneath the note,
but waited a single primitive voice recorder tape based its surface,
tacky battery cover missing. I hesitated, then press play at
first only static, then a voice, a man's horse and urgent.
In forty eight hours by my watch, always won't a line.
Can hear someone else moving a think, but doors keep changing.
Don't trust the elevator. If you hear the cleaning crew,
do not go with them. They don't sound right. A
muffle thumb, then further static in my periphery. Light flickered
on a monitor, movement in a corridor, someone's shadow crossing.
My mind raced at I triggered a motion detected by entering.
I stood motionless, training my ear for footsteps, for even
a trace of breath, not my own. The silence pressed back,
broken only by the occasional rattle of the ceiling. The
ancient settling grown as the building expanded or contracted against
the cold. I tested the vending machine, punching a random
button out of frustration or desperation. Nothing happened. The dog
clunk echoed, as if I trigger motion deep in the walls.
Had any one been in here since? These note paths,
these badges, these water bottles, had been left on the
wall above the badges. Almost lost in the general clotter
was a hand drawn map lines as much guesswork and
panic as cartography, always liaping, doors marked with excess at
the mate's bottom, jagged words, this is not all viighty. Someone,
perhaps Kurt, perhaps one of the others, had tried to
make sense of the space. Arrows darted around corners, some
tracing back on themselves, notes about wrong turns, a door
to nowhere, and stairwell sets. My breath clouded in front
of me. I hadn't noticed at first, but the temperature
here was dropping. Was it the a track or insulation
never repaired. I started the ceiling, expecting to glimpse duct work,
but it was seal tied pave a stain tiles pressed
to get the safe for a single panel, as key
as if some one had once forced their way into
the coal space. I moved toward an inner door at
the side of the room, steel handle worn to a
dull shine, letters above flaking paint, nearly erased street a lounge.
My hand hesitated at the knob be yond a soft
tapping again irregular, insistent, not mechanical, flesh or maybe not.
I pressed my ear to the door. Faint movements, some
one breathing or draft. I let my own breath out, slowly,
careful not to fog the panel, heart beating in my throat.
I twisted the handle the door ground as it opened,
swinging just far enough to let me peer in. It
was another room, slightly smaller, dominated by a bathed couch
and a shelf lined with old binders. The color faded
to uniform gray. Paper spilled off the seat, and the
single lamp glowed from one corner, powered by a wy
threaded through a hole in the wall, its sores impossible
to see. Something darted across my field of vision. I recoiled,
catching only a blur human, I thought, or close to it,
Pale and quick, it ducked behind the couch. My chest
hammered for a moment, I let the urge to flee,
rage in my veins. Then a sound, a low scrape whisper,
just over the edge of hearing a help. I moved
into the room, keeping my hands visible, voice trembling, be firm.
Who's there? No answer? At first, Rustling behind the couch,
I waited, refusing to advance. The sickly lamp burn matching
the cold sweat breaking on my galp. Slowly, I had rose,
hair tangled, features gaunt, but unmistakably impossibly at Jake's. His
eyes squinted against the light, skin pale enough to seem unreal.
I tried to keep the shock off my face. Jake
for mighty, He frowned, as if dredging the name from
deep under water. You shouldn't be here, he stammered, voiced raspy,
and murred. What is this place? I asked, soften now?
He nodded at the ceiling at The monitor is visible
on the far wall. It doesn't let you go if
you badge in wrong, if the door lets you, don't
take the elevator, don't follow the lights. Are you the
only one here? I asked. Jake just shook his head,
finger pressed her lips as darting sideways, as if expecting interruption.
He shrank against the cushions, knees drawn up. Sometimes I
hear others. Sometimes they sound like people, Sometimes they don't.
I realized my hand was still gripping the latine breakroom
badge so tightly the plastic cut into my palm. Behind me,
A dull, rhyming thump, agan perhaps the mechanical hobbied of
the building, perhaps someone or something else trying to find
a way in in the dusty lamp light. Jake's face
was half in real, but the pleading in his voice
was not. You have to go, he whispered. If it
knows you're looking, it finds ways to keep you here.
That's what happened through he trailed off. I backed away
toward the open door, mind spinning, trying to recapture logic,
my safe scaffolding of routine, but it all fell away.
In the not quite silence, the thumping stopped. I looked
at Jake, trapped and cowed by failure, and made myself
a silent promise. I would get out, and if I could,
I would get him out to I turned and slipped
back through the break room, passed the heap of badges,
passed the burnt notepad and the humming monitors, back to
the door I'd left slightly ajar reres, shallow, feeling watched
by the screens, by whatever surveillance this place still possessed.
I slipped out, letting the door sail almost noiselessly behind me.
Whatever this was, I had stepped on to a path
from which there might be no easy return. And as
I leaned my back against the cool stairwell wall, the
thirteen break room badge pressed to my chest, I knew that,
for the first time in all my years, I was
in the building's domain, not my own. The stairwell seemed
to inhale with me. As I pressed my back against
its wall and listened for pursuit. There was no sound
to not Jake's ragged breathing, not the scrape of that
old couch, no footsteps on tire. My pulse thudded just
beneath my collar. The weight of what I just witnessed
to Jake faded in ferle. This locked away full burily
had time to register every instinct, screened to get as
far up or down the stairs as possible, returned to
ground level and call for help, But discipline that all
night guard's habit rained and panic. I forced slow breaths
and peered up at the smear metal door, letting the
details imprint themselves. Worn badge reader paint chipped along the frame,
a scuff mark made by a right heel always turning
against the jam. None of this had appeared on any
maintenance lock. It wasn't supposed to be here at all.
I stepped down a level, shoes whispering, and the rubber
trades my funds light toned as low as possible as
some camera human or otherwise see. The stairwall was narrow,
not the wide and well kept passageways of public floors,
but tight utility access lines of condor crowding to corners overhead.
My badge, a harmless shield for years, suddenly felt hot
in my pocket, as if carrying it, resmarking me for
follow up investigation. On impulse, I pressed myself into shadow
and pulled out the confiscated folder I had returned doll
at all lost and fanned, but never actually surrendered to
Coppet DULCEA of what the manager had left behind. I
thumbed through grainy floor plans highlighted in yellow, the redacted
security memos, and the ne legacy Pusnell retentioness Amnis thirteen
must remain isolated, all exceptions reviewed monthly. My leg bounced
with nervous energy. Monthly reviews for a faw never agnoited,
a breakroom never discussed, and a cluster of people who
disappeared from my blue lit world. I needed proof more
than screen grabs and anxious droodles in my notebook. Before
I left the stairwell, I composed myself in snap cover
photos on my phone. The badge reader of the door,
the ruined the team break room label in the geek
out the cryptic memos from the folder. I send Lora's
versions to my own cloud drive careful. I didn't know
who monitored network activity, but Cheris Corp. Employed people more
paranoid than me. Steadying myself, I risked opening the stairwell
door to the fourteenth floor, the same hallway, unfrilled, sterile
and humming fake whiff of ammonia. At the junction, I
paused at the camera mounted HIH above the door. It
red like gloads Daddy. I passed beneath, projecting calm, reviewing
my alibi. Some unrwund the feed, just a security guard
checking maintenance, responding to an alarm. Nothing to see. I
drifted to an empty conference room, ducking inside and double
checking that its glossed doors were a pick with their
blinds raw. My thoughts tumbled. Jake had spoken of the
floor as a trap, and now I wondered how many
others had stumbled here, Thinking themselves clever or just unlucky.
The pile of badges the burn note, but evidence of
people deposited here because they drawn too much scrutiny, or
known too much, or perhaps merely because some administrative threshold
had flagged them at the wrong time, And no auxiliary
break room, no uncirculated memos for the night answers tumbled
in my mind, But so did the questions who curated
the badge access, who watched the feed in that side
room with the monitors stitched together, blank, grainy views of
somewhere and some one else's despair? Most of all, what
was buried behind those redactive lines and cryptic directives? And
was it personal? Now that I trespassed ac of control?
Hands trembling from cold, I a lie to myself. I
checked the bad's locks leading up to my trip below.
My badge now reported a new level of service level thirteen.
It hucked into the logs at two seventeen a m.
Right alongside that same suite of logs for tart, Jake
and others who never left the system had noticed me
as an anomaly. My former invisibility had vanished. The instant
my curiosity tipped into action A dread certainty pulled in
my stomach. It would not go unoticed for long. I
found the land line, picked it up and dialed the
only number I knew for each other, one used for
overnight emergencies. No answer, only voicemail. The beet bridle in
my ear. I hesitated, then hung up without speaking, not
wanting my own voice on a record I couldn't control.
The minutes crawled by, I alternated between pacing control and
scrutinizing the screens. There were odd flock as, feels of
movement just at the periphery, but never where I could
pin them down. In one camera view, a janitor's cart
stood just outside the elevator, but no one reached to
push it away. Another angle showed the elevator's door stuttering
on thirteen, in a frame lost to static. When the
shift ended, I left nothing to chance. I stayed late,
clearing desktop logs and hiding my scribbled note put an
event behind a security desk behind a false panel no
one but facilities would discover. I left the building through
the main entrance, keikot press flat to my pumps so
the scanner wouldn't read it by accident, as I emerged
into the chill dawn. Instinct kept me from looking back.
I'd always dismissed the cities quiet as comforting, but now,
for the first time, the silence seemed to threaten rather
than rear. Sheer, like a mouth waiting to swallow me
if I turned the wrong way. Ires later or sleeper
fused to come. My mind upon old badge numbers, static
choked voices, the hollow eyes of Jakin, that impossible lounge restless,
I returned to the evidence on my phone. All the
images had uploaded as planned, except the ones showing the
stairwell badge reader. Those files were corrupted, flashing black and
white bars instead of showing the proper stickered rectangle. The
memo images, however, were intact. The legacy axis restricted all
locks reviewed monthly compliance required. It was only late afternoon
when my phone vibrated with an email alert. No sender,
just a subject mandatory administrative leave effective immediately terrorst facility security.
The body was a polite dismissal, no signature. My building badge,
according to the message, was already deactivated. I shut off
the phone, pulled the battery, not trusting airplane mode. I
closed the blinds sat against the wall and waited for
something to happen and knock, a phone call, an email
from a real person. Nothing came. I imagined what Jake's
days had been like before the break, small routines, coffee favorites,
night rounds and Coker banter, the sudden switch, the elevator
stopping entranced, or a badge pin waking the system's attention.
How long had he waited to be found? How many
others were living on that edge? Week after Amus tw
mild week there would be no record, no next of kinnotices,
just vanished names in the silent, cycling anguish under flickering
fluorescent lights. I returned to Churston the only way I
coot through records, online forums, LinkedIn searches. No sign of
tar occur. Jake's social free were abandoned months ago, Birthday
messages from relatives unreturned. Even the company directory quietly eliminated
their names, resumes, prior job titles. Their absence was all
that marked them out, drip drip of memory, edited by silence.
The next night was harder. I stared at the Fatine
break room Kikard, rubbing the embossed numbers until they left
in imprint in my skin, dredd thickened. I found myself
standing at my front window, convinced that a car idling
two floors below was watching me, its head lumps fixed.
I ducked from view, a rookie mistake, then caught myself
and tried to steady my breathing. Rationality demanded more, Ever
andce paranoise, said ron, but I still hadn't found closure.
Only Escalatian sleep finally found me around dawn, but it
was a shallow, fractured rests crowded with dreams. I was
always walking the Churi's corridors, only to have the wall shift,
the stairwells turn into loops, no door. Returning to the
lobby in the dream, faces called out dike tra voices echoing,
don't bitge in at night, don't follow the red light.
I awoke with a plan. Fear was closing in. Yes,
but so was certainty. The company wouldn't risk exposure. They
would want plausible deniability in silence. If the thirteen break
room was an old and traceable piece of legacy infrastructure,
a system for casting out the inconvenient, they hare to
maintain it quietly, but absolutely I would not stay quiet.
I printed copies of my photos to hard copy and
mailed them to myself, a cousin, and a friend who
owed me a favor. I wrote a note, cryptic but
clear that if I vanished, it was not an accident.
And then I began making phone calls. All went unanswered
or routed to generic mail boxes. At noon, and knock
at my door startled me awake from a nap I
hadn't realized i'd taken. I opened it to find two people,
one in a company branded facility's windbreaker, the other older
with a badge identifying him only as corporate security visitor.
Neither introduced themselves by name. They were courteous, if a
little too rehearsed. We're following up about some anomalies on
your last shift. The wind breaker explained a few system
errors were obligated to review in person, but I don't
have access to those files. Allied arms folded across my chest,
he smiled, non committal. Building's policy standard review after take
clitches and critical infrastructure. Your badge was decommissioned for now,
just so sopee. The older one never looked at me,
but scanned the apartment, his eyes resting briefly on the
package of printed images, then moving elsewhere. We'd like to
collect your security notebooks in any company devices, said the
first one. I feigned confusion, pointing out I'd left my
look book at work, which wasn't true. I nodded to
the desk by the door, inviting them to see for
themselves with forced patients, the rifle through a folder of
olver seats, ignoring the pile of junk mail, then handed
me a sheet my official voluntary separation agreement, complete with
a polite nondisclosure lying near the bottom sign Here the
Windbreaker's aid for hr you're no longer responsible for any
hourly incidences of this morning A cold certainty to cold.
I'd been marked. I was not staff any more. When
they left, a breeze hit chilled by some malfunctioning vent.
The doors latch clicked as if by itself. I noticed,
as I gathered up the contract to lock in the
safe that one of the visitors had pocketed a kikoat
I had left on the side table, a swap perhaps,
or just caution. I spent the afternoon in the next
reading the documents i'd smuggled at sitting in the half
dark the story became clearer. Their service Level thirteen designation
data from the early nineties, part of a so called
behavioral risk response, an internal project with bland corporate euphemism
hiding its intention. There were pages titled personnel realignment protocol,
breakroom thirteen, checklists for access denial, even a blurry a
caption polaroid of a man in a blazer staring toward
a fixed bright light. The annotations grew more cryptic the
deeper I read broom alignment procedure maintained electromagnetic isolation monitor
for unsanctioned returns unsanctioned returns. How many, ever made it out?
I spent IROs trying to reconstruct time lines, names cross
referenced in old newsletters, EMIL archives, staff directories from years past.
It was enough to make out a mournful pattern of
slow culling of outliers, each followed by vacant, faceless slot
left behind. Two days after my forced leave, I noticed
the restlessess that had always accompanied unsolved mysteries was replaced
by an almost expectant dread. In the hush before evening,
the feeling returned of being watched, as if woven into
the silence. I saw in the bathroom mirror a faint
starter in my reflection, a lag between my own movement
and the image. Brief but chilling. It looked for half
a heartbeat, like the glitch in the elevator camera, skipping
frames and returning me a stranger. My rational side rebelled,
and yet the fandom make behind my eyes lingered through
the weak. I dreamed again of the Breckkerm's blue shadows,
tape recorders crying out warnings, bags of hue, pencils, courts, burned,
notepad heavy in my chest. Sometimes I heard muffled by
the hum of my decade old refrigerator, the same mechanistic
drone i'd come to associate with sleepless two zero and
essen the building of rorescent undercurrent with the human edge.
Sleep did not help. I woke before dawn, nurse and
spully if there was a window to uncover more before
I became fully invisible. It was shrinking. I left my
building and crossed the city to a neighborhood coffee shop
I chosen for its lack of security cameras. The manager
of part time philosophy student had met in passing didn't
ask why I was there at six siery m hunched
over a laptop with a stack of batted notes. I
plugged in, created an encrypted drive, and began writing everything
I knew, dates, spaces, badge logs, what Jake had taught
me in the half light. I added the names from
the pile of badges, the memos, hinting at legacy of retention,
even the camera corks and static in the logs, as
far back as I could remember. When I left the
gray Sedan idol near the curb, tail pips sending up
a stream of white exhaust, I kept walking, not making
eye contact. Two streets over, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
A new email had slipped through my junk filter. The
subject re employee exit brief Survey. It looked official, but
the body was blank, safe for one line a question
a US still in possession of property marked break room thirteen,
no signature, no company logo. I thought of the key
kout at home, the one that pulsed with versigual and
ease every time I brushed near it to my desk drawer.
I deleted the message, but that did nothing to erase
the worry. The city, for all its bustle, felt then
crossing the avenue, I saw a woman in a cherish
leonard step behind a newspaper, kisk calm when I turned
the corner, someone who had once gone missing, or just
another exhausted drone. There was an unreality to the morning,
bright with new sun but still cold with threat. Back
up my apartment, I sorted through old past stops and
letters for more attachments, but nothing further arrived, no contacts,
no further attempts at collection. It was as if by
removing me from the shift's schedule and taking my badge,
the corporation expected the well to correct itself, to erase
my presence entirely. The dreams, however, did not subside. Each
night I cycled through the same distress and imagery, shuddering stairwells,
flickering lights, breay crimsone impossibly long and arrow, Jake's face
appearing and vanishing in the corners. Once I dreamt of
the vending machine, its display now replaced by my own
employee number Pulsey and green. For weeks I lived suspended,
neither in nor out of the world I'd known, adrift
from Serift's routines, yet still glued to the old system.
Logs had downloaded. Some days I'd receive voicemail's unknown collar,
one ring, then silence, sometimes attacks half a word long
safe door. On an overcast afternoon, three weeks after my
last shift, I dared to Emil Zielen, one of the
few night janitors who might know anything. I kept it casual,
asking after her and the stray cast. She always fared
in the garage. No reply, not even a bounce back.
A week later, a staff profile vanished from Cheris's public Lincoln.
The world at side moved on, but I was haunted
by the echo, by the knowledge that others must advise
to see these patterns. Fears to map. I combed through
secure forms, scanning for a post about disappearing floors late night,
badg glitches stuck elevators, but the stores were always too vague,
too quickly deleted, the posters drift in a way before
anyone could follow up. I tried calling families. Jake's brother
listed in a public record search. His voice mail was full.
Taro's mother answered soft voice, but firm she's on sabbatical.
We prefer not to talk. It really dissolved as the
weeks beled by. I cataloged every loose end. Once the
story connected in my head and network of vanished night staff,
not only at Cherist, but peering and scattered news clippings
from competitors across the city. Night watchmen found missing out
to elevate a malfunction that he analyst fails to return home.
Companies with large downtown buildings similar security, similar errors in
the reporting of floors. It was never the day people,
not the highly visible, always the invisible glue guards. It
t janitors. For a while, I considered writing it all out,
sending it to a journalist, or publishing it online, but
even the drafts had a wave of glutching word files
over it and image's returning error messages. I trusted only
my analog notes. The Scotch fragments had hidden Kurt's desperate
handwriting the old blueprints. Still, as time passed, I found
myself wondering if my memories were bleeding into dreams, or
if the dreams were swallowing reality. It changed One evening,
when half awake in my silent apartment, I noticed the
faintest roy glow on my bedroom wall. I'd never installed
an alarm there, creeping closer I found it coming from
a spot beneath the dresser, an early d dull but
pulsing marking of rectangle and plastic embedded into the wood.
It was the shape of puffect match for badge reader,
the kind I'd seen installed on as L minus thirteen.
I stared, hot, pounding for mebe an ere the glow
pulse faintly once per second. My phone refused to photograph it.
The image only showed am a broken darkness where it glimmered.
Even in full darkness. That single red eye watched me
as if in a trance. I reached for the bottom floor.
There was no power's horse, no wiring. I pressed my
their team break room caught to the glowing space, sick
with fear, knowing what I'd done. The light flick had
green for a moment, then as quickly as it had come,
it winked out. My room was plunged into silence, except
for anl not silence, not quite the faint u mistakable
homopluorescent bulbs vibrating at the age of hearing rose under
my floor. I felt the rhythm in my bones, a
drone that could only belong to one place. I jolted
awake not long after, if awake meant anything at all.
My mind stutted over the boundary between sleep and memory,
replaying a tingling static in my mirror, the vague after image,
that light behind my movement. At two zero a M.
I fumbled for the bad still on my desk, still chilled,
My phone vibrated, no collar, I d just a single
line text, welcome back. Two zero a M. I peered
at the clock one fifty eight. The badge readers after
image hovered by the side of my bedow wavering red
glow I couldn't touch, couldn't photograph. My breath was ragged
at every part of me, longing for nothing more than
to run, to leave the building and its ghost floors
and hidden traps behind forever. Yet I understood now that
escape was not just a matter of walking out a door.
It was a matter of unwinding a story too tightly
wound around the city's bones, a story as old a
security itself, as corporate pernoia, as night itself. At two
zero a m. Precisely, the light faded, fluorescent humbers within
the walls then retreated. I was alone, once again, alone
except for the knowledge the badge lay cold in my
grip its fall number, reflecting the shadow language of secrets,
the architecture of erasure, the persistence of memory in a
building that never slept. In the days that followed a
return to hollow routine, the company silence did not let up.
My image never quite matched me in the mirror. I
watched for the red glow each night, always relieved when
it did not reappear, always unsettled by what it meant
about prisons and absence. Months went by. Sometimes in crowds,
I saw people in faded chairsh lanyards, looking over their shoulders,
their eyes drawn to the invisible spaces between elevators. I
never approached them. An newariness grown in the city's hut.
One evening, an envelope arrived, blank except for hand drawn
out line of the brickroomb badge and a single phrase,
still here, watch your floors. No return address. The postmark blurred.
A deep truth settled into me. Then, whatever how Jake
and did others, whatever lived in the scenes between floors,
found its own ways to survive, to watch, to remember.
The building's memory was a living thing, insatiable, humming, indifferent.
In the quietest hours, when city lights flickered across drawn
blinds in the wild trunk to the size of my
own breath. I found myself listening for the hum, slipping
the badge from its hiding place. I wondered, as all
seekers do, whether the trap sprung for one could ever
fully close. After being found, sleep did not come easily.
When it did, I found myself walking gray, always once again,
always nearing a door with no number, always holding a
card and Boss thirteen in my sweating fist, forever poise
at the turning point, waiting for the indicator to flicker,
of the old machine to whine, and the world once
again to park for the vanished. And if in the
day's realness I thought myself safe, the smallest details belied me.
A drifting scrap of corporate carpet, a statict tuchll. At
two seven a m. The faint, hollow sound of a
distant and seen vending machine cycling changed that no one
ever comes to collect. But the vending machine wasn't the
only thing I heard that night, the last time I
truly slept, there was another sound gradually emerging from the
churn of my uneasy dream, aslow wet scraping, as if
some heavy object was being dragged across anolium just out
of my side. My feet moved, and dream logic carrying
me down corridors that twisted perversely with each step, glass
walls warping, the carpet changing from burgundy to slate to
the speckled dust choked pat and I had seen non
service level thirteen office chairs bungently on their own. Monitors
displayed empty loggins and badge times, and overhead the fluorescent
lights trembled with a staf drunk so deep I felt
it behind my teeth. And then I saw Jake again,
diminish but waiting, sitting crosslegged in the thread berck couch
in that impossible lounge. His skin was pale, I suck it,
sunken into darkness, but his mouth moved in a pattern
I recognized only after a moment. He was typing invisible
lines in the air, A tape recorder spun on the
floor beside him, its seat and furling, and the broken,
looping voice pressed through my head, not through my ears.
Watch the doors. Don't trust the bat. Nothing leaves everything
files away. Eventually I reached out to him, wanting to warrant,
to confess, to apologize, but he did not acknowledge me. Instead,
he held out a badge like mine. The number was wrung,
not his nor mine, but a string of numerals that
meant nothing until I realized it was my home address.
My hand recoiled, and the lights flared to false summrise,
colorless and sharp. Thus scraping noise returned closer now, and
I wheeled around in the dream hallway, every part of
my body screaming for exit, even as I knew there
was none. A door, flat open marked break room thirteen,
and I hurtled toward it. As I passed the threshold,
all sun cut away abruptly, and I woke to darkness.
Slick was sweat, my fiscal tight round bed sheets, finger
nails taking into my palms. I gathered myself, breathing hard,
the world around me steady, but even in the silence,
that hump persisted, a low but real I sat up, shaky,
and glimpsed in a muted light from the street, the
edge of the plastic badge winking, where caught a glint
from a distant street lamp. I tried to go about
my routine's coffee, running, water, news and deep breasts, but
the sense of pursuit trailed me all morning. At noon,
my phone vibrated unremarkable number, though not one I recognized.
Against my better judgment, I picked up. There was a
click than the flat line of someone waiting. Hullo, no
response this is I stopped, not willing to give my name.
After a pause, a male voice clipped and called came through.
You're not to discuss your previous employment, events of your
shift or cheerish property. You will be monitored for compliance
with the terms you signed. Silence, Then, almost as an afterthought,
a whisper, brittle at the edge of patience. Do you
not hampt to re enter the premises? Before I could answer,
call dropped. I stared at the phone, willing it to
ring again, but it did not. I felt a prickling
alumsscalp the tacit acknowledgment that I was being watched by
real and perhaps more abstract eyes. That evening, while I
was nursing a cup of tea, another message arrived by
currier and branded hand delivered. I examined the envelope. Inside
was a small, old fashioned audio cassette, the label blank
except for the word listen. I no longer had a player.
The ancient device from service level thirteen. The one night
handled in the lounge replayed in my mind. After some hesitation,
I messaged a friend who ran an indie music shop
a few blocks away, god a working tape deck. I asked,
need to hear something unlock. We met after closing eyres.
The shop's walls were lined with all manner of electronics clutter,
but amid the junk, he produced a portable tape deck,
battery compartment, tape chap. He didn't ask questions when I
slaid the cassette in place. He'd seen dark a stuff
traded among collectors, and he understood the unspoken rules of
city nights. I pressed play mouth dry at first, just
his sole tape and spooled and ought by time. Then
a tremble of office noise, the murmur of distant printers,
a pot of coffee bubbling, A voice, female and weary,
filtered through static. If anybody finds this, it means you
had access, or maybe you made access. Pause. Elevator only
works a set times. If you badge after two, you'll
never leave. Don't trust the exits, don't trust anybody in management.
We thought it was a safety protocol, but it's not
something changed in the system when they upgraded security after
the fire, they left us. We watched for weeks as
the badge logs shuffle, the floors receded, the screens fuzzed
until faces just stopped. The purring hiss again, someone's breath
close to the mic, then that same code of phrase,
nothing leaves everything files away. Eventually the tape clicked off.
My friend regarded me with polite bewilderment as I removed
the cassette and pocketed it. You okay, he asked, saw
something strange at work? I said, don't worry about it,
but he frowned. The lookal lingering after me as I left,
as though he half expected me to vanish before reaching
the curb. Back home, sleep was impossible. That phrase returned
to me again and again, Everything files away. Eventually. I
tried to occupy myself with anything else, movies, reading, even
organizing my kitchen drawers, but the sound of filing, metallic
and repetitive, pressed into my thoughts. I considered seeking out
old colleagues, finding Curt was eleanor even Jake's family, but
something in the warning stopped me cold, not just fearful,
myself but a sudden intuitive sense anyone pulled into this
would be in danger too. One night, as I was
staring at the city lights tracing the grid of offices,
my computer monitor blink to pop up, appeared out of nowhere,
then vanished. I double checked my brows' history, ran scans
from malware. Nothing. But then deep in my download folder
I found a new file. It was crudely titled as
al thirteene Look Summer t x D furious and trepid.
I opened it. Inside were lines on lines of badge logs,
a list of names with entries beside a floor marked
service level thirteen. The spreadsheet ran back decades, and the
last few entries bore from million names. Jacobar at TI
tore database K two facilities, then my own, stamped with
the precise time I triggered the elevator override. My badge
had not own recorded my visit, but had been added
to this chain of vanished people, as if the system
had cleaned me. However, briefly, at the bottom of the list,
one line was highlighted with a pulse and carrot returned
query status unresolved foul pending pulse racing. I dragged the
file on to thumb drive and plugged my machine. I
realized how little power I had to fight this. Where
my pride and security and order had given me confidence,
now there was only powerlessness, a dull, persistent fear that
what had been opened could never entirely be closed. I
knock at my door, startled me. It was nearly three
zero eh ma'em adrenaline surge. I moved quietly, peering through
the peep hole on the other side. Nothing but the
dim fame of the hallway. Nobody visible, just the echo
of a door shutting softly elsewhere down the hall. But
I saw a foot level, a new envelope, thicker than
the last. I waited a full two minutes, maybe more,
before stooping to collect it. My hand shook. Inside was
a single sheet Your status is still in review. Await
further instructions. No signature, no logo, nothing but those type flatters,
the kind use by the old chiff memos in it.
Some minutes thirteen. The paper rattled as I folded it.
I'd intuition told me, But I had the sense that
hiding was feudile, mixing fatigue in dread. I called a
distant acquaintance who occasionally worked as a facility's temperatureist competitor
across town. We spoke quietly. You ever had problems with
your badge at night? I asked, silence, a shuffling breath.
You mean like losing time or floors not matching up?
I nearly dropped the phone exactly that did you ever?
Did you ever hear about a floor between twelve and fourteen?
There was a short laugh, but it was humorless. Plenty
of places skip thirteen, but sometimes you see the elevator
blink at the wrong time. My friend quite after, he
said he spent an hour in a stairwell and the
floors kept looping. They let him go, told him he
violated prott call. He nerved places like these gut roots,
the old stuff buried in the building, patched over but
not gone. We said no more, both hearing the risk
in our voices. That was the first time I truly
believed this wasn't just your a's secret. Something endemic to
a greater whip of corporate architectures, a system designed to
prone those who didn't comply or who saw too much
repair ropst over decades, left as a by bas subroutine,
but never deleted. There would be others like me, The
stories erased, edited or distorted into rumors in lost documentation.
In the following weeks, emails trickled and from what I
could only assume were similar outcast instructions half spelled in
corporate shorthand, warnings to avoid public complaints, snifts of log data,
images of Badge readers embedded in unlikely places, basement storage units,
bandoned skyways. Sometimes there were notes scribbled on receipts scanned
and email from anonymous accounts. Most never included names, just
badge numbers of the years when they'd last seen, some
like glimmer through a normal window. Each contact was brief,
as if writing even a single email risk being found.
Many alluded to monitoring how the cameras kept moving, how
the badge sweats still registered at thought intervals months after
they had left their positions. The more stories they gathered,
the clearer the picture became a collective of vanished lives,
nudged from their routines into an invisible holding pen. Condemned
to drift in corporate purgatory. Must just plead it, don't
let anyone else badge in, and always don't trust the
elevators never follow the light. I spent my next days
preparing for something, though I could not say what. I
backed up my remaining files to discs, I hid in
different locations. I rehearsed what little I might say to
reporter if ever risked telling the story in person. But
in every attempt, my courage followed. Each time I tried
to reach out, something intervened, the email bounce, the call redirected,
their count clothes. The badge itself never left its drawer.
Still at odd eyes, I'd remove it and study its surface,
reading the embossed thirteen and the bland and specific break room,
tracing the edges as if I might find some secret
catch or hidden message. The number felt heavy each night.
Then one Wednesday, long past midnight, a power flicker swept
the building. The digital clock on my stoved up erset
the fridge ground to halt for a fraction of a second,
and in the darkness I heard the drone of fluorescent lights, impossibly,
unmistakably emanating from below my feet, my heart in my throat,
I walked barefoot, cross called anoleum, back to my bedroom,
where the badge sat. As I approached the dresser, I
saw the faintous ghost of a green glow there and
then gone, as though a card reader had winked at
me from beneath the wood. I couldn't ignore it any longer.
I dressed, quickly, pocketing the badge, a flashlight, the thumb
drive of the logs, and a battered old walkie I
had kept from my years in security. I told myself
that going back was foolish, that returning to chairs was
both impossible and would be met with resistance or worse.
But the need for completion, a burned down sense of
unfinished business, was stronger than dread. I made my way
across the city, skirting the well lit main streets. The
corporate tower loaned up of the grid, indifferent, as always,
multi story blank gaze, both implacable and inviting. The entrance
lights washed the sidewalk, and I waited in the alley,
watching for movement. There were no security guards, nobody at
the front desk now after midnight, just the echo of
empty lobby footsteps and the electronic pulse of barged doors.
Every internal entrance was control, but I still remembered the
side door. The catering crew sometimes propt for overnight deliverers.
I checked instinctively. The latch was misaligned, softened by hundreds
of slams over years. It clicked open with only a
gentle shove and an echoing sigh from the weather strip
in sight. The familiar scent washed over me, laminated directories,
the chemical tang of floor polish, the residual warmth from
machines cooling in the night time. For ease, I drifted
into the building's belly, keeping to the darker stretches, the
farthest corners from where a current badge logs might pain.
My destination was clear to twelve four, the sterroll hidden
between the conference center and janitor's closet. I slipped inside,
the boots of old habit, carrying me over familiar train.
It was there, in the glim above the end of
the landing that I found the badge reader. At this hour,
the dull Reddi lady pulsed again, inviting predatory. I pressed
the thirteen brake room card to its face. The green
glimmer responded immediately, more eager than before. The door released,
heavy and slow on its hinges, emitting a size of
exhaling years of containment. I entered the stale air greeted me,
thick with memory and dread. Space was unchanged. The break
rooms outline grew from the darkness, tables askew the vending
machine's dull face. Monitors dreading the static, gaze over abandoned
mugs and dust. The humming was larder here, not only
audible but palpable underneath the skin. My phone vibrated. I
glanced down. No service, no time stamp, just a blank
screen and the batter draining by the second. The door
behind me is shirt ceiling, with the hush from somewhere
deeper in the room, a shuffing noise in the lamp light.
Another hunch figure, a new present stood by the monitors,
dragging a chair with painstick and quiet. Some one else
morooned by the same error or design, their posture angular
and guarded. I called that softly, Jake. The head turned.
It wasn't jake. A woman, this time, pale and jittering.
Her badge clipped to a QRD around her wrist. She
blinked as if flight stabbed her, then stepped forward. You
have a cart, she said, flatly voice. Then I nodded,
showing it not fully trusting my voice She eyed it,
then me. It won't let you leave, she whispered, not
if you use it twice. I swallowed hard, fighting the
urge to glance back at the door. What happens if
you try, she shook her head. Sometimes you end up
somewhere else. Sometimes you just end up here again, even
if you think you left. Most stopped trying. I saw Jake,
I managed, She winced. He's quiet. Now, got too tired.
The system logs you eventually. If you keep moving, it
forgets he for a while. If you rests, if you
give up, it files you away. She shivered to discuss
memory both why do you come back? The question scraped
at a row wound inside me. I need to know
a needy I broke off. I wasn't sure what I needed.
Maybe just to believe someone could know the truth and
not be erased by it. She sighed, eyes darting to
the monitors. They still watch from outside, you know, management.
Sometimes you see them on the cameras, just staring. I
move closer, keeping my hands visible. What do you want?
A bitter, lopsided smile crossed her features. Nobody's ever asked me, da.
She dropped her gaze. I want to find the right door,
the one that goes somewhere real. We stood together in silence,
the hum around us thickening. She gestured at one of
the monitors tapped it. On screen, through a haze of
static was an image of the lobby. My own form
flickered there, indistinct and slow, as if f you ha
did a time lack. Sometimes, she said softly, you leave,
but you don't. The monitor showed me on loop circling
security desk the last night I'd worked. I watched myself stand, checklogs,
pick up a clipboard, yawned deeply. The badger my belt
blinked in the reflected fluorescent light. And that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.