1 00:00:02,040 --> 00:00:05,559 Speaker 1: The commission was from a London magazine i'd worked with before. 2 00:00:06,400 --> 00:00:09,439 It was a long form piece about six thousand words 3 00:00:09,759 --> 00:00:13,320 and a photo essay, all on the ecological recovery in 4 00:00:13,359 --> 00:00:18,800 the Chernobyl zone. The angle was genuinely good, genuinely surprising 5 00:00:19,079 --> 00:00:22,760 if you hadn't read the science. In thirty eight years 6 00:00:22,800 --> 00:00:28,280 without humans, the exclusion zone had become accidentally the largest 7 00:00:28,280 --> 00:00:33,799 wildlife sanctuary in Europe. Surprisingly, wolves had returned in numbers 8 00:00:34,119 --> 00:00:38,200 not seen in the region since before industrialization. There were 9 00:00:38,280 --> 00:00:42,119 links wild boar, white tailed eagles, and a population of 10 00:00:42,159 --> 00:00:46,640 Puzzwalski's horses introduced as an experiment in the nineties that 11 00:00:46,719 --> 00:00:51,719 had thrived beyond any reasonable projection. The absence of humans 12 00:00:51,719 --> 00:00:55,840 had done more for the ecosystem than any conservation program, 13 00:00:55,960 --> 00:01:01,320 which said something worth saying. The radiation was still measurable, 14 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:05,599 but it turned out wolves didn't care about elevated background 15 00:01:05,680 --> 00:01:09,359 radiation in the way they cared about being shot, which 16 00:01:09,439 --> 00:01:14,599 they no longer were. This was the piece what happens 17 00:01:14,640 --> 00:01:19,120 to a landscape when people leave it entirely. I'd spent 18 00:01:19,200 --> 00:01:23,400 three weeks reading the ecology literature before I came, and 19 00:01:23,480 --> 00:01:26,359 I had a genuine interest in the subject that made 20 00:01:26,359 --> 00:01:30,120 the work easier. I wanted to photograph a wolf if 21 00:01:30,120 --> 00:01:33,400 I could. I wanted to photograph the zones edges at 22 00:01:33,480 --> 00:01:37,000 dawn with a forest that reclaimed the outskirts of Pripriat, 23 00:01:37,680 --> 00:01:40,079 and you could stand in what had once been a 24 00:01:40,159 --> 00:01:44,920 residential street and find it fully wooded, the pavement broken 25 00:01:44,959 --> 00:01:51,359 by roots, the street signs lost in undergrowth. My counter 26 00:01:51,519 --> 00:01:54,400 clicked up to one point four microcy verts and I 27 00:01:54,480 --> 00:01:57,799 noted it and moved on. That was part of the 28 00:01:57,879 --> 00:02:01,560 job a a SOCCA, you learn not to dwell on 29 00:02:01,599 --> 00:02:06,640 the numbers. The helicopters absorb your attention anyway. There were 30 00:02:06,760 --> 00:02:10,360 hundreds of them spread across the flat ground in rusting rows, 31 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:13,759 the MI eight and the M twenty six's that flew 32 00:02:13,919 --> 00:02:17,479 over the reactor in the weeks after the explosion, trailing 33 00:02:17,520 --> 00:02:21,719 their water and sand and lead. Some still had their rotors, 34 00:02:22,280 --> 00:02:25,319 some lost them to weather or theft, and sit with 35 00:02:25,400 --> 00:02:29,439 their necks exposed, the stumps of their rotor hubs corroded green. 36 00:02:30,840 --> 00:02:33,599 From a distance, they looked like a parking lot from 37 00:02:33,599 --> 00:02:38,039 a war that finished badly. Up close, crouched between two 38 00:02:38,080 --> 00:02:40,560 of them with a twenty four seventy at f eight. 39 00:02:41,240 --> 00:02:44,080 The scale of the things hit you again each time. 40 00:02:45,280 --> 00:02:48,639 The cockpit windows were still intact on most. When the 41 00:02:48,719 --> 00:02:53,280 light catches them, they reflect the sky. I got the shot. 42 00:02:53,319 --> 00:02:56,479 I wanted a line of five of them, receding into 43 00:02:56,599 --> 00:03:00,680 morning haze, the nearest one sharp and the furthest dissolved 44 00:03:01,479 --> 00:03:05,159 and stood up, and the counter clicked again, and I 45 00:03:05,240 --> 00:03:11,360 checked it. It had climbed to one point nine. Back up, 46 00:03:11,719 --> 00:03:16,439 Mikola said from behind me, not urgently. I backed up 47 00:03:16,439 --> 00:03:20,360 three steps and the reading dropped. He nodded, and we 48 00:03:20,439 --> 00:03:24,759 moved the next row. That was how it went with him. 49 00:03:25,639 --> 00:03:29,919 Information delivered as it became relevant, in the same even 50 00:03:30,000 --> 00:03:33,680 tone he used for everything. The floor on the third 51 00:03:33,759 --> 00:03:37,000 level of the administration building had collapsed into the second. 52 00:03:37,479 --> 00:03:40,840 In the school ampripate, you could touch the desks and 53 00:03:40,879 --> 00:03:44,680 the floors, but not the window frames. Something in the 54 00:03:44,680 --> 00:03:49,240 paint had concentrated it, and everywhere in the zone. Not 55 00:03:49,360 --> 00:03:53,280 the air. Never worry about the air. The air is fine. 56 00:03:54,080 --> 00:03:58,159 The dust was the problem. Don't touch your face, don't 57 00:03:58,159 --> 00:04:00,520 put anything on the ground that you'll be touching later. 58 00:04:02,280 --> 00:04:05,400 He had been doing this for fifteen years. He had 59 00:04:05,400 --> 00:04:07,879 a way of standing slightly ahead of you in any 60 00:04:07,879 --> 00:04:12,280 given space, position between you and whatever direction he hadn't 61 00:04:12,319 --> 00:04:16,680 cleared yet. I'd stopped noticing it after the first few hours, 62 00:04:17,160 --> 00:04:19,480 the same way you stopped noticing the presence of the 63 00:04:19,519 --> 00:04:23,759 cockpit on a long flight. You don't verify the pilot. 64 00:04:24,439 --> 00:04:27,839 You require a pilot, and so there is one, and 65 00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:32,079 you extend the necessary trust, and that's the whole transaction. 66 00:04:34,319 --> 00:04:38,279 The first day was clean, new material, the work running 67 00:04:38,319 --> 00:04:42,240 ahead of the anxiety. We were in Prippier by six 68 00:04:42,480 --> 00:04:45,600 before the zones perimeter opened to the trickle of tourists 69 00:04:45,680 --> 00:04:49,240 permitted in organized groups, and I had the fair ground 70 00:04:49,279 --> 00:04:53,600 to myself. The ferris wheel was the obvious shot, and 71 00:04:53,680 --> 00:04:56,959 I took it anyway, because obvious shots are obvious for 72 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:00,800 a reason. And then I moved off and angles that 73 00:05:00,879 --> 00:05:04,680 were less obvious. The bomber car Arena, with the cars 74 00:05:04,720 --> 00:05:08,439 still in their positions as if the power had cut midride, 75 00:05:09,040 --> 00:05:12,480 the soles of their wheels rusted to the floor. The 76 00:05:12,560 --> 00:05:17,360 Palace of Culture, with its Soviet mosaic facade still largely intact, 77 00:05:18,040 --> 00:05:22,240 the workers and cosmonauts rendered in tesserae, looking out over 78 00:05:22,279 --> 00:05:26,439 a street empty of everything except weeds growing through tarmac. 79 00:05:27,920 --> 00:05:31,480 I worked for five hours, and Mikola was somewhere nearby 80 00:05:31,600 --> 00:05:35,839 for all of them. I stay somewhere because I wasn't 81 00:05:35,920 --> 00:05:40,600 tracking him and didn't need to. Every time I moved 82 00:05:40,600 --> 00:05:43,199 to a new building or a new section of the street, 83 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:46,600 I was aware of him in the peripheral way you're 84 00:05:46,639 --> 00:05:49,639 aware of the light when you're not focused on it, 85 00:05:50,040 --> 00:05:56,480 but its absence would register immediately. The Zone authority's accommodation 86 00:05:56,839 --> 00:06:01,680 was a converted administration building at the checkpoint. Two bedrooms, 87 00:06:01,839 --> 00:06:05,360 a shared bathroom, a kitchen with a table, and a 88 00:06:05,399 --> 00:06:10,040 mounted television that received four channels. It smelled of old 89 00:06:10,079 --> 00:06:14,839 concrete and the specific institutional cleaning product that seemed mandatory 90 00:06:14,879 --> 00:06:20,360 in post Soviet buildings. I'd slept in worse. The bed 91 00:06:20,519 --> 00:06:23,160 was narrow, the mattress had a dip in the center, 92 00:06:23,920 --> 00:06:28,519 but I slept well enough in it. Before I slept, 93 00:06:28,839 --> 00:06:32,040 I went through the day's photographs on my laptop, which 94 00:06:32,199 --> 00:06:36,720 was the routine flag the keepers, delete the obvious failures, 95 00:06:37,160 --> 00:06:41,120 make notes on what I still needed. I'd shot four 96 00:06:41,199 --> 00:06:46,079 hundred frames, and maybe sixty of them were worth examining seriously, 97 00:06:46,879 --> 00:06:50,319 which was a good ratio for a first day. I 98 00:06:50,360 --> 00:06:56,480 worked through them slowly. The photograph was from the fourth 99 00:06:56,519 --> 00:07:00,439 floor of one of the apartment blocks unless ya Ukrainki Street. 100 00:07:01,439 --> 00:07:04,839 I shot it mid morning, looking down and west into 101 00:07:04,879 --> 00:07:08,000 the street below and the tree line at its far end. 102 00:07:09,319 --> 00:07:12,959 A good frame, the geometry of the empty street, the 103 00:07:12,959 --> 00:07:15,600 where the trees had started to reclaim, the pavement of 104 00:07:15,720 --> 00:07:19,079 the edges, the scents of the forest waiting at the 105 00:07:19,120 --> 00:07:24,319 boundary of human construction. I'd flagged it already as a keeper. 106 00:07:25,959 --> 00:07:28,319 I zoomed in on the tree line and looked for 107 00:07:28,399 --> 00:07:32,439 hints of the wildlife I was seeking. A shape was 108 00:07:32,480 --> 00:07:35,639 at the tree line's edge, half in and half out, 109 00:07:35,639 --> 00:07:39,439 of the shadows between two birch trunks. I pushed the 110 00:07:39,519 --> 00:07:44,759 zoom to the pixel limit, compression noise, the image breaking 111 00:07:44,800 --> 00:07:50,279 into blocks. But the shape was there, and its proportions 112 00:07:50,279 --> 00:07:53,079 were wrong for a wolf and wrong for a bore, 113 00:07:54,279 --> 00:07:57,360 subtly off, the way a word looks off when you've 114 00:07:57,399 --> 00:08:01,160 stared at it too long. The thing my eye kept 115 00:08:01,199 --> 00:08:05,519 returning to was the height. I looked at it for 116 00:08:05,560 --> 00:08:09,680 a while, then closed the laptop, got into the narrow 117 00:08:09,720 --> 00:08:12,800 bed with the dip in the middle, and went to sleep. 118 00:08:15,120 --> 00:08:17,920 In the morning, Mikola was already in the kitchen with 119 00:08:17,959 --> 00:08:20,519 a coffee made and a map of the day's route 120 00:08:20,519 --> 00:08:24,120 on the table, and I sat down, poured a coffee 121 00:08:24,319 --> 00:08:28,399 and looked at the map. I said nothing about the photograph. 122 00:08:29,759 --> 00:08:33,720 I have thought about this decision many times since I 123 00:08:33,799 --> 00:08:38,399 don't have a clean explanation for it. Something like the 124 00:08:38,440 --> 00:08:41,919 photograph was mine, the shape in the tree line was mine, 125 00:08:42,519 --> 00:08:44,559 and giving it to some one else would make it 126 00:08:44,600 --> 00:08:47,519 real in a way I wasn't ready for at six 127 00:08:47,559 --> 00:08:52,159 in the morning, with a day's work ahead, so I 128 00:08:52,240 --> 00:08:55,840 said nothing. I drank the coffee, I looked at the map. 129 00:08:57,039 --> 00:09:02,600 We left for the hospital at half eight. Mikola told 130 00:09:02,600 --> 00:09:05,720 me to wait at the jeep, the same flast instruction 131 00:09:05,919 --> 00:09:09,399 as every time before we entered a building, and every 132 00:09:09,440 --> 00:09:13,080 time I waited and he was back within five minutes. 133 00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:16,840 I leaned against the jeep with my camera and went 134 00:09:16,879 --> 00:09:21,159 through yesterday's frames and didn't think much about it. The 135 00:09:21,200 --> 00:09:25,159 hospital entrance stood open, the double door frame without its doors. 136 00:09:26,039 --> 00:09:30,960 He went through it and the building swallowed him. Five 137 00:09:31,080 --> 00:09:36,679 minutes ten, I radioed him and got static. Tried again 138 00:09:36,720 --> 00:09:41,879 at fifteen. At twenty I started calculating how long it 139 00:09:41,879 --> 00:09:44,399 would take to reach the checkpoint on foot if his 140 00:09:44,600 --> 00:09:49,080 radio had simply died and this was nothing. At twenty 141 00:09:49,080 --> 00:09:55,279 five minutes, I went in after him. In the ground floor, 142 00:09:55,639 --> 00:09:59,799 the plaster peeled off in sheets, graffiti across every surface, 143 00:10:00,519 --> 00:10:04,759 the flat gray light coming through filthy windows. I called 144 00:10:04,759 --> 00:10:08,639 his name. My voice went into the building and stopped, 145 00:10:09,360 --> 00:10:16,240 absorbed rather than echoed, the silence reasserting itself immediately, no answer. 146 00:10:17,519 --> 00:10:23,600 I went upstairs, second floor clear. I kept calling every 147 00:10:23,600 --> 00:10:27,759 few rooms and getting nothing back. On the third floor, 148 00:10:28,080 --> 00:10:33,159 I stopped half way down the corridor. A sound below me, 149 00:10:33,960 --> 00:10:37,480 too far down for the second floor, maybe the ground floor, 150 00:10:38,080 --> 00:10:44,639 possibly lower, A scraping intermittent, the sound something makes moving 151 00:10:44,720 --> 00:10:48,799 carefully through a dark space. Mickeler had gone down to 152 00:10:48,879 --> 00:10:52,559 check a basement, I thought. I started down the stairs 153 00:10:52,639 --> 00:10:57,240 to meet him and pulled the radio off my belt. Mickler, 154 00:10:58,120 --> 00:11:01,759 I pressed transmit, I'm on the third floor. Where are you? 155 00:11:03,720 --> 00:11:07,120 The chirp of his radio sounded off somewhere far beneath me. 156 00:11:08,120 --> 00:11:11,039 I heard my own transmission echo back from his speaker 157 00:11:11,720 --> 00:11:16,600 the half second delay, and underneath it, just before the 158 00:11:16,639 --> 00:11:24,200 echo died, another sound Micholas's voice, but not words, A 159 00:11:24,360 --> 00:11:27,399 sound a person makes when air leaves them. Suddenly and 160 00:11:27,440 --> 00:11:33,000 without choice, I went down. While descending, I heard a 161 00:11:33,039 --> 00:11:37,279 follow up sound. It sounded like someone had put shaving 162 00:11:37,320 --> 00:11:42,360 foam on their hands and clapped, a visceral, wet sound 163 00:11:42,480 --> 00:11:46,519 that I couldn't piece together, followed soon after by a 164 00:11:46,559 --> 00:11:52,519 metallic crunching at the ground floor. I went quickly and quietly, 165 00:11:52,840 --> 00:11:57,200 without consciously deciding to do either. The chirp had come 166 00:11:57,240 --> 00:12:00,559 from the far end, past the main corridor junction, where 167 00:12:00,600 --> 00:12:03,600 a set of doors led toward an old administration section. 168 00:12:04,799 --> 00:12:08,000 One of them was a jar. I pushed it open 169 00:12:08,200 --> 00:12:12,559 and went through the room. Beyond had been some kind 170 00:12:12,600 --> 00:12:16,840 of records office, filing cabinets along the walls, most of 171 00:12:16,879 --> 00:12:20,840 them open, and empty papers on the floor, A desk 172 00:12:21,039 --> 00:12:25,159 overturned in the far corner. The room's only window was 173 00:12:25,200 --> 00:12:28,919 half boarded, the light coming through in a single gray bar. 174 00:12:30,519 --> 00:12:35,879 Mickela was on the floor. I got three steps into 175 00:12:35,919 --> 00:12:39,960 the room before I stopped. I had been so used 176 00:12:40,039 --> 00:12:42,720 to the color saturation of the place that the bright 177 00:12:42,840 --> 00:12:49,000 reds scattered about gave me pause. It was messy, So 178 00:12:49,279 --> 00:12:52,440 much had happened that I was shocked. There was more noise. 179 00:12:53,840 --> 00:12:59,039 Whatever had done this had done it incredibly fast, but 180 00:12:59,120 --> 00:13:03,919 it wasn't finished. In the distance, I could hear it 181 00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:07,799 still working. It was at the far end of the room, 182 00:13:08,159 --> 00:13:11,159 in the corner where the light didn't reach low to 183 00:13:11,200 --> 00:13:15,320 the ground, not moving. I couldn't tell you what I 184 00:13:15,399 --> 00:13:18,480 was looking at in terms of shape or size, because 185 00:13:18,480 --> 00:13:22,039 my eyes kept failing to hold it, kept sliding off 186 00:13:22,039 --> 00:13:24,960 it the way I slide off things that don't resolve 187 00:13:25,039 --> 00:13:30,000 into known categories. What I can tell you is that 188 00:13:30,080 --> 00:13:33,120 it was large, and that it was still, in the 189 00:13:33,120 --> 00:13:37,000 way that things are still when they're not done. I 190 00:13:37,080 --> 00:13:40,039 did not breathe. I stood in the doorway with my 191 00:13:40,120 --> 00:13:44,399 hands still on the door, and I watched it, and 192 00:13:44,480 --> 00:13:48,600 I did not look up. I stepped back through the door, 193 00:13:49,200 --> 00:13:53,679 one step two into the corridor. I pulled the door 194 00:13:53,679 --> 00:13:57,000 as slowly as I could, put my back against the wall, 195 00:13:57,399 --> 00:14:00,200 and slid down it until I was sitting on the floor, 196 00:14:00,480 --> 00:14:05,559 and stayed there. The understanding came in pieces when your 197 00:14:05,600 --> 00:14:08,879 mind is protecting you from arriving at it all at once. 198 00:14:10,159 --> 00:14:13,639 The chirp his radio going off in the dark, my 199 00:14:13,720 --> 00:14:17,000 own voice playing out of his speaker in a silent building. 200 00:14:18,080 --> 00:14:22,159 The sound he'd made the sound of the transmission had 201 00:14:22,159 --> 00:14:25,399 found him, and so did whatever was with him at 202 00:14:25,440 --> 00:14:30,919 the same moment, and what it did. I stopped the 203 00:14:30,960 --> 00:14:34,200 thought there and started it again from somewhere more useful. 204 00:14:35,240 --> 00:14:37,519 I was on the ground. The exit was at the 205 00:14:37,639 --> 00:14:41,279 end of the main corridor, thirty feet away. I was 206 00:14:41,360 --> 00:14:43,960 going to stand up and walk to it and go 207 00:14:44,080 --> 00:14:46,679 through it and get in the jeep and drive south. 208 00:14:48,240 --> 00:14:55,399 I stood up, walked to the entrance. The frame had 209 00:14:55,440 --> 00:14:59,279 been closed. It hadn't been like this when I entered. 210 00:15:00,480 --> 00:15:03,639 There were no doors. There hadn't been since long before 211 00:15:03,679 --> 00:15:08,039 to day. The frame itself had been deformed, the metal 212 00:15:08,120 --> 00:15:11,519 on both ends bent inward toward each other. The gap 213 00:15:11,519 --> 00:15:16,240 it left perhaps eighteen inches across the courtyard. Light came 214 00:15:16,279 --> 00:15:20,240 through it, the jeep visible beyond, close enough that I 215 00:15:20,279 --> 00:15:23,679 could see the tent in the front left panel. I 216 00:15:23,720 --> 00:15:26,399 put my hands on the frame and pushed, and it 217 00:15:26,440 --> 00:15:30,759 moved perhaps an inch, and stopped. I got my shoulders 218 00:15:30,759 --> 00:15:35,919 into the gap, turned sideways and shoved one shoulder through 219 00:15:36,879 --> 00:15:40,720 the metal, found the other and held. I pushed the harder, 220 00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:44,480 the frame groaning under the pressure, and the groan rang 221 00:15:44,600 --> 00:15:48,879 down the corridor behind me, and I heard it from 222 00:15:48,879 --> 00:15:51,799 the floor I had just come from the sound of 223 00:15:51,840 --> 00:15:57,399 something beginning to move. I pulled back. The metal stripped 224 00:15:57,399 --> 00:15:59,960 a length of skin from my forearm as I came free, 225 00:16:00,279 --> 00:16:02,480 and the groan of the frame was still ringing down 226 00:16:02,519 --> 00:16:08,960 the corridor. Movement sudden and decisive. Wait, finding the floor 227 00:16:09,240 --> 00:16:11,840 with a speed that didn't match the slow movement i'd 228 00:16:11,879 --> 00:16:17,960 heard before. This was a response. I ran away from 229 00:16:17,960 --> 00:16:21,879 the entrance, back down the corridor. My footsteps were loud, 230 00:16:21,879 --> 00:16:26,519 and I stopped caring. The noise had already happened. Distance 231 00:16:26,679 --> 00:16:32,000 was all that mattered now. The stairwell door threw it away, 232 00:16:32,440 --> 00:16:35,879 but deeper into the building. It was the only option 233 00:16:35,960 --> 00:16:40,039 the building was giving me. On the second floor, I 234 00:16:40,120 --> 00:16:42,440 went through the first door. I reached and got behind 235 00:16:42,480 --> 00:16:45,159 the remains of a metal cabinet that had come away 236 00:16:45,159 --> 00:16:48,240 from the wall, and crouched down, pulled my knees in 237 00:16:48,639 --> 00:16:51,080 and made myself as small as I could against the 238 00:16:51,120 --> 00:16:56,240 base board. The building moved around me. Wait on the stairwell. 239 00:16:56,559 --> 00:17:00,480 Then not a displacement in the corridor outside the room, 240 00:17:01,200 --> 00:17:04,640 Something passing the door with a proximity I felt before 241 00:17:04,640 --> 00:17:08,480 I heard it, the air pressure changing slightly, the dust 242 00:17:08,480 --> 00:17:11,720 and the floor nearest the door, lifting in a faint current, 243 00:17:13,640 --> 00:17:17,359 a pause long enough that the urge to look became 244 00:17:17,440 --> 00:17:21,720 almost physical, the need to know where it was. And 245 00:17:21,759 --> 00:17:24,119 I pressed my forehead against the cold metal of the 246 00:17:24,160 --> 00:17:30,799 cabinet and did not look. At some point I looked 247 00:17:30,799 --> 00:17:33,839 at the counter, just something to do with my eyes 248 00:17:33,880 --> 00:17:37,720 that wasn't the door. The number sat at two point eight, 249 00:17:38,400 --> 00:17:42,680 higher than the building's baseline. I watched it for a while. 250 00:17:43,599 --> 00:17:47,799 Then somewhere below me, the sound shifted and the number 251 00:17:47,880 --> 00:17:51,279 dropped the two point six. I watched it drop again 252 00:17:51,559 --> 00:17:55,920 as the sound grew fainter, two point four, two point two. 253 00:17:57,519 --> 00:18:02,079 I stayed still, watched it fall and understood what I 254 00:18:02,160 --> 00:18:06,559 was looking at. It couldn't be ambient radiation from the building. 255 00:18:06,839 --> 00:18:11,519 From the way it changed, it was something else, something 256 00:18:12,400 --> 00:18:17,160 that moved. I didn't know what to do with that yet, 257 00:18:17,559 --> 00:18:19,720 but I noted it the way I had been trained 258 00:18:19,720 --> 00:18:25,200 to note things as information, not a conclusion yet, and 259 00:18:25,279 --> 00:18:28,680 I kept watching the number until it settled at one 260 00:18:28,720 --> 00:18:33,839 point six. I stayed where I was until the silence 261 00:18:33,839 --> 00:18:37,160 had been complete and unbroken for what felt like a 262 00:18:37,279 --> 00:18:41,240 very long time. Then I stayed for the same amount 263 00:18:41,279 --> 00:18:48,119 of time again. The corridor was empty, and I needed 264 00:18:48,160 --> 00:18:52,240 to move. No plan beyond the immediate There was one 265 00:18:52,359 --> 00:18:55,880 exit I knew of, and it was closed. There had 266 00:18:55,920 --> 00:19:01,119 to be another, one basic architecture of institutional construcuction, and 267 00:19:01,200 --> 00:19:03,559 I was going to find it before the thing below 268 00:19:03,680 --> 00:19:08,920 found me. That was the entirety of my thinking. I 269 00:19:08,960 --> 00:19:11,440 went through each room on the south side where the 270 00:19:11,480 --> 00:19:14,079 external wall would give onto the rear of the building, 271 00:19:14,720 --> 00:19:19,119 checking windows, checking frames. The first three would move it 272 00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:23,119 all the corrosion welding them to their frames as completely 273 00:19:23,440 --> 00:19:26,880 as if they'd been bricked over before. Had a handle 274 00:19:26,920 --> 00:19:30,279 that turned, and I felt the frame shift fractionally before 275 00:19:30,279 --> 00:19:33,279 it stopped, the seal of forty years of weather and 276 00:19:33,359 --> 00:19:37,440 neglect holding it shut. I put my shoulder into it 277 00:19:37,839 --> 00:19:41,240 and it didn't give. Doing it harder would make noise 278 00:19:41,279 --> 00:19:46,880 I couldn't afford, so I moved on the drop from 279 00:19:46,880 --> 00:19:50,960 the second floor. Windows were survivable anyway, two stories to 280 00:19:51,079 --> 00:19:55,400 scrub ground, nothing broken if he landed right, but survivable 281 00:19:55,480 --> 00:19:58,480 meant nothing if I couldn't get through the frame quietly. 282 00:19:59,559 --> 00:20:05,119 Quiet was the only currency I had. The third floor 283 00:20:05,640 --> 00:20:09,720 east corridor, I went carefully heeled to toe the way you 284 00:20:09,759 --> 00:20:13,279 walk when you're aware of every sound your body makes. 285 00:20:13,759 --> 00:20:17,519 And at the corridor's far end, I found the fire door. 286 00:20:18,799 --> 00:20:22,880 The handle turned, I let out of breath I've been 287 00:20:22,880 --> 00:20:26,000 holding since the second floor, and pushed the door open. 288 00:20:27,240 --> 00:20:31,160 The daylight hit me, gray and cold, and the most 289 00:20:31,200 --> 00:20:35,359 welcome thing I'd seen in an hour. An external metal 290 00:20:35,359 --> 00:20:38,519 staircase running down the rear of the building to the ground. 291 00:20:39,440 --> 00:20:43,119 The rear courtyard below, smaller than the front, had a 292 00:20:43,200 --> 00:20:46,400 chain link fence along its edge, and beyond the fence 293 00:20:46,839 --> 00:20:50,680 the tree line the jeepe wasn't there, but the ground 294 00:20:50,759 --> 00:20:53,599 level fence I could climb, and the forest I could 295 00:20:53,599 --> 00:20:57,799 move through until I hit the perimeter road. I stepped 296 00:20:57,799 --> 00:21:02,279 out onto the first tread, second tread, the third. Then 297 00:21:02,519 --> 00:21:05,680 the section beneath my feet pulled away from the wall. 298 00:21:06,759 --> 00:21:09,480 The mounting bolts on the right side had corroded through 299 00:21:09,759 --> 00:21:12,599 at some point in the last decade, and the whole 300 00:21:12,680 --> 00:21:15,720 right flank of the staircase swung outward from the brickwork 301 00:21:16,079 --> 00:21:18,839 with a sound that started as a groan and became 302 00:21:18,960 --> 00:21:24,079 something much larger. Metal pulling from brick, the structure twisting 303 00:21:24,079 --> 00:21:27,680 on its remaining fixings, the groan becoming a shriek that 304 00:21:27,799 --> 00:21:31,519 went through the building and through the ground. I grabbed 305 00:21:31,519 --> 00:21:34,240 the door frame with both hands and hauled myself back 306 00:21:34,279 --> 00:21:37,359 through the opening, my feet scrambling for purchase on the 307 00:21:37,400 --> 00:21:41,960 tilting treads. I got inside, pulled the door shot behind me, 308 00:21:42,279 --> 00:21:48,279 and stood against it, my hand shaking. The staircase hadn't fallen. 309 00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:52,400 I could hear it settling outside the door, the occasional 310 00:21:52,519 --> 00:21:56,839 tick of stressed metal finding its new position, useless and 311 00:21:57,079 --> 00:22:04,279 enormously catastrophically loud. Lord the counter hit three point four 312 00:22:05,119 --> 00:22:10,720 as spike instantaneous. I stared at it three point four 313 00:22:10,759 --> 00:22:15,599 and climbing three point six. The reading I associated with 314 00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:18,000 the way it did when you walked directly toward a 315 00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:22,240 hot sauce. It was moving, coming from the stairwell end 316 00:22:22,240 --> 00:22:27,359 of the corridor, and it was getting closer fast. I 317 00:22:27,440 --> 00:22:29,839 went to the nearest door and dropped to the floor 318 00:22:29,880 --> 00:22:32,960 behind the wall beside the frame, and made myself as 319 00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:36,720 small as possible. The counter of my hand read three 320 00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:39,599 point eight, and I turned the screen face down against 321 00:22:39,599 --> 00:22:45,200 my thigh. The sound came from the corridor fast. This 322 00:22:45,359 --> 00:22:49,240 was direct something that had heard a specific location and 323 00:22:49,400 --> 00:22:53,319 was going to it the fire door. I heard the 324 00:22:53,359 --> 00:22:56,440 handle move, heard the door open, the creak of it, 325 00:22:56,920 --> 00:23:04,559 the shifted staircase, groaning at the disturbance, silence. It was 326 00:23:04,599 --> 00:23:07,640 in the doorway, looking at the staircase with no one 327 00:23:07,680 --> 00:23:11,119 on it. I pressed my back into the wall and 328 00:23:11,200 --> 00:23:16,480 watched the ceiling, trying not to breathe. The door closed. 329 00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:19,880 The sounds moved away from the fire door, back down 330 00:23:19,920 --> 00:23:24,759 the corridor, slower now, the purposefulness gone out of them. 331 00:23:26,319 --> 00:23:30,319 I waited, listen to the movement descend floor by floor, 332 00:23:30,839 --> 00:23:35,000 the sounds diminishing, and then I looked at the counter. 333 00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:39,880 I watched it for a long time, tracking the movement, 334 00:23:40,279 --> 00:23:44,920 reading the position from the changes. Three point eight had 335 00:23:44,920 --> 00:23:47,759 become three point two when the sounds left the corridor, 336 00:23:48,559 --> 00:23:51,160 then two point eight as they went down the stairwell, 337 00:23:51,799 --> 00:23:56,319 then two point four a pause, two point two a 338 00:23:56,440 --> 00:24:00,000 lateral movement. The number rose slightly to two point four, 339 00:24:00,319 --> 00:24:04,559 with outther sounds getting louder, which meant horizontal distance rather 340 00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:09,559 than vertical, the creature crossing the floor below rather than ascending, 341 00:24:10,480 --> 00:24:16,240 Then down again two point zero, one point eight. I 342 00:24:16,319 --> 00:24:20,200 stayed completely still for five minutes while faint sounds moved 343 00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:24,359 through the lower floors and watched the number respond rise 344 00:24:24,440 --> 00:24:27,640 when the sounds came closer to the stairwell drop when 345 00:24:27,640 --> 00:24:31,720 they moved away. It wasn't precise. I couldn't get a 346 00:24:31,759 --> 00:24:34,920 direction from it. Couldn't tell if a rise meant it 347 00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:38,079 was below me or down the corridor, only that it 348 00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:42,960 was closer or further in some aggregate sense. But closer 349 00:24:42,960 --> 00:24:47,519 and further was information more than i'd had. When the 350 00:24:47,599 --> 00:24:50,519 number sat at one point six and the sounds had 351 00:24:50,519 --> 00:24:54,200 been absent for several minutes, I got up off the floor. 352 00:24:55,559 --> 00:24:59,160 I moved to the stairwell, put distance between me and 353 00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:03,039 whatever the lower floors contained, and the fourth floor had 354 00:25:03,079 --> 00:25:07,079 the highest windows and the best view. I needed to 355 00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:10,400 see the building's geography from the outside before I made 356 00:25:10,519 --> 00:25:15,119 any decision about the inside. I went up one floor 357 00:25:15,160 --> 00:25:18,240 at a time, stopping at each landing to read the 358 00:25:18,279 --> 00:25:23,359 counter and listen it stayed at one point six. I 359 00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:25,839 made the fourth floor and went to the window at 360 00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:30,480 the corridor's end, the one facing the front courtyard, and 361 00:25:30,519 --> 00:25:36,559 I looked out. The jeep was there, undisturbed, exactly where 362 00:25:36,559 --> 00:25:39,960 we'd left it. The windscreen was filmed with road dust. 363 00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:43,759 The courtyard was empty. The gate of the courtyard's far 364 00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:48,480 side was open. Beyond it, the axis road ran south, 365 00:25:49,039 --> 00:25:53,359 straight and clear, and twelve kilometers down that road was 366 00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:58,079 the checkpoint and other people. I looked at the entrance 367 00:25:58,119 --> 00:26:02,119 frame from up pier, the book gap, eighteen inches of 368 00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:06,400 deformed metal between me and all of that. From four 369 00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:12,920 floors up, it looked almost manageable. Almost. I looked at 370 00:26:12,960 --> 00:26:16,480 it for a long time. Then I checked my watch. 371 00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:21,839 Early afternoon, the light coming through the window was still full, 372 00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:26,279 hours before dark. Though I didn't know what that dark 373 00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:30,359 meant for my situation, only that light felt like an ally, 374 00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:33,519 and I wanted as much of it as I could get. 375 00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:38,359 The question wasn't whether the gap was passable. The question 376 00:26:38,519 --> 00:26:40,680 was whether I could reach it with the counter low 377 00:26:41,039 --> 00:26:44,119 and enough time to work it slowly with the entrance clear. 378 00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:51,319 Two problems, all of them solvable in theory. I sat 379 00:26:51,359 --> 00:26:54,160 down under the window, with my back against the wall 380 00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:58,440 and the counter in my lap, and I started thinking 381 00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:09,480 about how a pipe had come off a burst radiator 382 00:27:09,480 --> 00:27:12,920 fitting on the fourth floor. I'd found it, working my 383 00:27:12,960 --> 00:27:18,200 way along the rooms, testing floors, cataloging options. A meter 384 00:27:18,359 --> 00:27:22,240 of steel heavy, the threading at one end still intact. 385 00:27:23,279 --> 00:27:25,079 I didn't know yet what I was going to use 386 00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:29,720 it for. I took it anyway. The third floor fire 387 00:27:29,759 --> 00:27:32,440 door was a bust, but there was still one on 388 00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:36,240 the second. I already knew the staircase outside was gone, 389 00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:40,000 but the door itself opened inward. If the drop to 390 00:27:40,039 --> 00:27:43,920 the rear courtyard was clear, there was an escape possibility. 391 00:27:44,119 --> 00:27:50,200 I hadn't fully exhausted. The lock was the problem counter. 392 00:27:50,400 --> 00:27:55,160 At one point six I moved. I made it to 393 00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:58,720 the second floor landing. I went heeled to toe, the 394 00:27:58,759 --> 00:28:01,759 pipe held against my body to stop its swinging, the 395 00:28:01,839 --> 00:28:05,680 counter in my other hand, A steady one point six. 396 00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:10,400 I reached the fire door and stopped, listened, and the 397 00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:13,759 building gave me nothing back, just the tick and creak 398 00:28:13,799 --> 00:28:18,119 of all concrete doing what all concrete did. I put 399 00:28:18,119 --> 00:28:21,640 the pipe's threaded end into the lock housing. The mechanism 400 00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:25,880 was corroded, but not solid. I could feel movement in it, 401 00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:29,960 a give of metal that had rusted into position rather 402 00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:35,519 than being engineered into one. I applied pressure, steady, a 403 00:28:35,559 --> 00:28:40,319 low force of leverage rather than impact. The lock moved 404 00:28:41,119 --> 00:28:45,519 a millimeter, then another. The pipe trembled in my hands 405 00:28:45,519 --> 00:28:52,359 with the resistance of it. Twenty seconds thirty. The lock turned. 406 00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:56,039 I caught the door as it swung inward before I 407 00:28:56,079 --> 00:28:59,519 could move more than an inch. The hinges silent enough 408 00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:02,599 that I I almost didn't need to, but I wasn't 409 00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:07,240 taking any chances. I stood with my hand flat against 410 00:29:07,279 --> 00:29:12,200 the door and I listened. The counter set one point six, 411 00:29:12,599 --> 00:29:16,440 and the corridor behind me was empty. I pulled the 412 00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:22,839 door open six inches and it stopped a solid resistance, 413 00:29:23,359 --> 00:29:28,839 the door pressing against something. I pulled harder, controlled, putting 414 00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:33,799 heft into it, and nothing moved. I could see through 415 00:29:33,799 --> 00:29:38,720 the six inch gap gray daylight. I stepped back to 416 00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:43,599 get the full picture. The floor was warped. Decades of 417 00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:47,400 decay made the floor bulge just enough to jam the door. 418 00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:51,519 I shoved it hard, trying to see if the door 419 00:29:51,559 --> 00:29:55,599 could force the lump down released flecks around it. The 420 00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:59,400 door scraped with a sound like an avalanche, grinding brick 421 00:29:59,680 --> 00:30:02,880 that went on for two full seconds and echoed off 422 00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:06,359 the rear courtyard walls and came back and echoed again. 423 00:30:07,680 --> 00:30:10,839 The counter hit three point two before the echo died. 424 00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:16,119 I closed the door and moved fast, backed down the corridor, 425 00:30:16,400 --> 00:30:19,039 away from the fire door into the first room. I 426 00:30:19,079 --> 00:30:23,240 reached and hid the counter. At three point four three 427 00:30:23,279 --> 00:30:27,960 point six, the sounds came up from below the stairwell, 428 00:30:28,359 --> 00:30:32,759 something ascending with a horrible purposefulness. It went to the 429 00:30:32,759 --> 00:30:36,680 fire door and stopped. I heard the handle move. The 430 00:30:36,720 --> 00:30:42,079 door opened and jammed. The sound moved away slower, this time, 431 00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:47,160 laterally along the corridor outside the long patrol of the floor, 432 00:30:47,319 --> 00:30:51,680 before finally descending. I watched the counter drop in increments, 433 00:30:52,079 --> 00:30:55,400 and didn't relax until it was back at one point six. 434 00:30:57,240 --> 00:30:59,720 When I finally stood up, I went to the window 435 00:30:59,799 --> 00:31:03,200 at the corridors end and looked out, and the light 436 00:31:03,359 --> 00:31:08,640 told me what I already knew. It had changed. The 437 00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:12,279 flat white of the afternoon was gone, replaced by something 438 00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:15,960 lower and angled. The shadows in the courtyard longer than 439 00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:19,319 they'd been an hour ago, The light through the dirty 440 00:31:19,359 --> 00:31:23,440 glass of an afternoon running out, trending toward dusk. With 441 00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:27,039 the inevitability of all things today that had gone wrong, 442 00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:31,400 I worried about my chances of survival in the pitch black. 443 00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:35,920 Time was running out. I went back to the fourth floor, 444 00:31:36,279 --> 00:31:39,200 sat against the wall beneath the window, and went through 445 00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:44,319 the exits one more time. Ground floor entrance eighteen inches 446 00:31:44,359 --> 00:31:49,240 of buckled frame impassable without noise. Noise meant it came 447 00:31:50,119 --> 00:31:53,559 that door was closed. The fire exit was out of 448 00:31:53,599 --> 00:31:57,480 the question. Unjamming the door would take time and make 449 00:31:57,519 --> 00:32:00,920 that sound continuously for us. As long as it took 450 00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,240 I'd be doing it with a counter, climbing toward for 451 00:32:04,440 --> 00:32:09,720 the entire time that door was closed. The windows and 452 00:32:09,759 --> 00:32:12,920 the second floor was a survivable drop eight feet to 453 00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:16,279 the ground below. But the second floor windows facing the 454 00:32:16,319 --> 00:32:19,759 front courtyard were jammed. I'd have less time to work 455 00:32:19,799 --> 00:32:22,400 on them. And even if I dropped from a second 456 00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:26,720 floor window, it would be into open ground. I did 457 00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:30,920 not think I would make thirty meters. I'd checked the counter, 458 00:32:31,680 --> 00:32:35,319 a steady one point nine. It was upper floor. I 459 00:32:35,359 --> 00:32:40,000 could only assume. Looking for me, I let the fact settle. 460 00:32:41,160 --> 00:32:45,519 Every exit in this building was closed. The light was going. 461 00:32:46,079 --> 00:32:50,000 The thing below me had been stalking all day. I 462 00:32:50,039 --> 00:32:52,079 had nothing that told me it would stop, and the 463 00:32:52,119 --> 00:32:55,240 floor it moved to, slowly working its way up to me. 464 00:32:56,119 --> 00:32:59,400 Nothing except a pattern I'd observed for only a few 465 00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:03,039 hours in building. I'd been inside for the worst afternoon 466 00:33:03,079 --> 00:33:07,319 of my life. The panic had burned through hours ago. 467 00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:12,599 What was left was something quieter, and in some ways worse, 468 00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:17,559 the flat, clear eyed assessment of a situation with no 469 00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:21,400 remaining moves. I was not going to get out of 470 00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:24,799 this building before dark by any method I could think of, 471 00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:30,640 For this wasn't true. There was still a place I 472 00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:37,160 hadn't looked, a stone left unturned. The question was whether 473 00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:42,599 I could face him again. I had known where Mikola 474 00:33:42,839 --> 00:33:46,880 was since the ground floor corridor. I had known, and 475 00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:51,079 I had not gone there. I told myself this was tactical, 476 00:33:51,599 --> 00:33:54,960 for the counter was too high, the creature was too close. 477 00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:57,359 There was no reason to go to a place that 478 00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:01,000 served no purpose except to confirm. But I already knew 479 00:34:02,519 --> 00:34:05,440 this was not entirely a lie. But it was not 480 00:34:05,759 --> 00:34:11,039 entirely the truth either. The counter dropped at twenty past four. 481 00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:14,360 The secondary reading that had been sitting at two point 482 00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:18,320 one for the last forty minutes simply fell away, the 483 00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:21,360 number returning to one point four in the space of 484 00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:25,519 two readings. I watched it for three minutes, waiting for 485 00:34:25,559 --> 00:34:30,159 it to climb again. It didn't. It had gone somewhere 486 00:34:30,159 --> 00:34:34,119 where the building's mass was muffling its signature, the basement, 487 00:34:34,159 --> 00:34:38,280 maybe the far end of the ground floor somewhere that 488 00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:44,239 wasn't between me and the corridor below. Five minutes maybe less. 489 00:34:45,119 --> 00:34:47,480 I knew by now how quickly the number could move. 490 00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:55,400 I braced myself and went downstairs. I moved fast. I 491 00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:58,920 didn't know how long I would get the main corridor, 492 00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:03,159 the junction, the door to the Record's office. I stopped 493 00:35:03,159 --> 00:35:07,599 outside it. The door was ajar. I pushed it open 494 00:35:07,679 --> 00:35:12,000 with the end of the pipe and went in. Mikola 495 00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:16,000 was small. That was the first thing, the thing that 496 00:35:16,119 --> 00:35:19,960 hit me before anything else in life. He had been 497 00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:24,199 a large man, broad across the shoulders, the physical confidence 498 00:35:24,239 --> 00:35:28,519 of someone who had spent decades in difficult terrain. What 499 00:35:28,719 --> 00:35:31,360 was on the floor of the Record's office was no 500 00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:35,960 longer large. Violence had reduced him in ways I won't 501 00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:40,280 describe completely, because it feels repulsive to desecrate the memory 502 00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:44,599 of a great man with such disgusting terms, and because 503 00:35:44,639 --> 00:35:47,360 I think my mind had since edited out some of 504 00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:50,559 what was in that room without my permission, protecting me 505 00:35:50,679 --> 00:35:55,159 from the full inventory. What I can tell you is this. 506 00:35:56,280 --> 00:35:59,039 He was on his back and his face was intact, 507 00:35:59,679 --> 00:36:03,199 which was a mercy, and I could seem clearly enough 508 00:36:03,239 --> 00:36:07,119 to know him. The gray stubble, the lines around his eyes, 509 00:36:07,559 --> 00:36:11,559 the Zone Authority jacket still on his shoulders, or most 510 00:36:11,599 --> 00:36:16,639 of it. His expression was not what I expected. He 511 00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:19,559 did not look frightened. He looked like a man who 512 00:36:19,559 --> 00:36:22,400 had been in the middle of something and had been stopped. 513 00:36:23,199 --> 00:36:25,440 He looked like a man who had known this was 514 00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:29,079 a possibility and made his peace with the possibility a 515 00:36:29,119 --> 00:36:33,199 long time ago. The guilt came in and sat in 516 00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:37,519 my chest like a stone that is still there. The 517 00:36:37,639 --> 00:36:40,559 bag was by the door, a meter inside the room, 518 00:36:41,039 --> 00:36:44,119 placed with the deliberateness that I had come to understand 519 00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:49,840 was Michola's signature. Everything he did was deliberate. I grabbed 520 00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:53,519 it and went back upstairs, and I did not look 521 00:36:53,559 --> 00:36:58,519 at the room again. Counter was at one point six 522 00:36:58,559 --> 00:37:03,159 when I reached the fourth floor rising. I had four minutes, 523 00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:08,920 maybe less. I went through the bag, fast water, rations, 524 00:37:09,079 --> 00:37:12,960 first aid kit, spare batteries same size as my counter. 525 00:37:14,159 --> 00:37:17,719 I registered this and kept moving. A printed map of 526 00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:22,199 the zone folded Micheler's handwriting across it in annotations I 527 00:37:22,199 --> 00:37:25,480 couldn't read in the low light, and the Zone Authority 528 00:37:25,519 --> 00:37:30,800 tablet in its rubberized case. I opened it, still charged 529 00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:35,840 Michla's staff loggin already open. Counter at one point eight 530 00:37:37,599 --> 00:37:41,920 camera network first Begauseu's the first icon I saw. I 531 00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:47,159 went to the hospital exterior feed jeep there, courtyard, empty gate, 532 00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:52,400 open road south, all of it still there. Then I 533 00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:55,840 went to the archive, dragging the scrubber back through last night, 534 00:37:56,880 --> 00:38:00,519 and at two seventeen I found three frames before the 535 00:38:00,559 --> 00:38:06,800 camera angle shift. Those three frames was enough. Wrong proportions, 536 00:38:07,079 --> 00:38:10,880 wrong number of apparent limbs moving across the courtyard toward 537 00:38:10,920 --> 00:38:14,480 the forest in a way that wasn't natural locomotion in 538 00:38:14,559 --> 00:38:19,559 any sense. I recognized Counter at two point zero. I 539 00:38:19,639 --> 00:38:24,760 kept moving through the tablet documents folder one item, a 540 00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:29,519 series of files, photographs and text documents, all created at 541 00:38:29,559 --> 00:38:33,360 different dates over the past decade. I opened the most 542 00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:38,840 recent text tight in Ukrainian, the translation app rendering it 543 00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:44,719 in broken fragments as I scrobbled. If you are reading contingency, 544 00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:50,559 I read fast. The translation app losing words, catching others 545 00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:55,000 does not come up while the light is held. Confirmed 546 00:38:55,000 --> 00:39:00,159 across eleven years, Counter at two point two, still reading 547 00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:06,079 to not go, basement goes there when fed full, Counter 548 00:39:06,159 --> 00:39:10,599 returns the baseline. When below I looked at the counter 549 00:39:11,360 --> 00:39:17,519 two point four, and climbing baseline means below slow, no noise. 550 00:39:19,199 --> 00:39:22,360 The translation dropped out for two lines and came back 551 00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:26,159 for the last one. I looked at the window. The 552 00:39:26,239 --> 00:39:29,280 light outside was the deep blue of ten minutes before 553 00:39:29,400 --> 00:39:33,360 full dark. Not gone yet, but it was the last 554 00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:36,679 of it. The document said not to look at the 555 00:39:36,679 --> 00:39:41,039 basement door. Mickeler had been studying this thing for eleven years. 556 00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:44,559 He knew its geography the way I knew the layout 557 00:39:44,639 --> 00:39:48,199 of my own flat, because it had become part of 558 00:39:48,320 --> 00:39:52,800 him through repetition. But the warning about the basement door 559 00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:59,199 was specific, a place it goes when full. However, it 560 00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:03,320 wasn't full. It was trying to be looking for me 561 00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:08,199 the whole afternoon. The last place I hadn't looked was 562 00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:12,440 in there, my last glimmer of hope, in the most 563 00:40:12,519 --> 00:40:20,480 dangerous place imaginable. I had to time it right, making 564 00:40:20,519 --> 00:40:22,920 sure the thing was a longer corridor and a middle 565 00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:27,000 level searching. I made it back to the ground floor 566 00:40:27,559 --> 00:40:31,239 counter at one point six. The buckward frame was visible 567 00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:34,400 at the far end of the corridor, the gray rectangle 568 00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:37,679 of the courtyard light coming through the gap, the jeep 569 00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:42,599 beyond it, the road south beyond that everything I'd been 570 00:40:42,639 --> 00:40:47,679 trying to reach all day forty feet away, and I 571 00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:50,760 turned my back on it and walked the other direction. 572 00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:56,159 The corridor felt longer this way, every step taking me 573 00:40:56,280 --> 00:40:59,159 further from the light and closer to the end of 574 00:40:59,199 --> 00:41:03,039 the building I had been avoiding since the morning. The 575 00:41:03,079 --> 00:41:07,360 basement door was at the corridor's end, wooden swollen with 576 00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:12,119 decades of damp, standing slightly ajar a darkness beyond with 577 00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:16,400 steps going down. I stopped six feet from it and 578 00:41:16,519 --> 00:41:23,000 looked at the counter one point six steady. I locked 579 00:41:23,039 --> 00:41:28,039 at the basement door and breathed to compose myself. Then 580 00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:34,199 I looked at the wall beside it. I almost missed it. 581 00:41:34,199 --> 00:41:38,000 It was below eye level, set into the exterior wall 582 00:41:38,079 --> 00:41:42,280 at ankle height, perhaps half a meter square, one of 583 00:41:42,280 --> 00:41:46,280 those access points that exists in old institutional buildings for 584 00:41:46,320 --> 00:41:50,199 coal delivery or drainage management, or any of the dozen 585 00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:55,679 unglamorous functions that buildings require that nobody thinks about. The 586 00:41:55,679 --> 00:41:59,079 metal plate was black with algae, the edges furred with 587 00:41:59,159 --> 00:42:02,800 decades of damp growth. The hinges corroded to the same 588 00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:06,000 dark color as the stone around it, so that the 589 00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:09,480 whole thing disappeared into the wall unless you were crouched 590 00:42:09,559 --> 00:42:13,679 and looking directly at it. The mechanism was a simple 591 00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:18,239 latch that flips up and releases. I put my fingers 592 00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:23,559 on it. The metal was rough, corroded, wet, and cold 593 00:42:23,639 --> 00:42:30,159 enough to sting. I lifted it and it moved, not much. 594 00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:35,320 The corrosion had fused it partially, but it moved, the 595 00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:38,559 latch scraping upward with a sound that was small, but 596 00:42:38,719 --> 00:42:44,920 present in the corridor silence. I stopped breathing, listened counter 597 00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:48,400 At one point four, I lifted the latch the rest 598 00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:51,519 of the way, and the plate shifted inward a centimeter, 599 00:42:52,239 --> 00:42:55,599 the seal of decades breaking with a soft exhalation of 600 00:42:55,679 --> 00:43:00,599 stale air. I locked at the basement door ill ajar, 601 00:43:01,039 --> 00:43:05,880 the darkness beyond it unchanged with a latch undone. I 602 00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:09,920 pulled the hatch open. The sound it made was not small. 603 00:43:10,760 --> 00:43:13,760 The hinges had been still for god knows how many years, 604 00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:18,679 and they said so loudly, a grinding metal shriek that 605 00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:21,679 went up the corridor and into the stairwell and through 606 00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:26,239 every floor of the buildings simultaneously. I felt it in 607 00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:29,559 my teeth. I yanked the hatch the rest of the 608 00:43:29,599 --> 00:43:33,519 way open, because stopping halfway was worse than slowing down. 609 00:43:33,559 --> 00:43:37,280 At this point, I pressed myself against the wall, looked 610 00:43:37,280 --> 00:43:41,800 at the counter, and watched the number. It went from 611 00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:44,920 one point four to three point eight in one breath. 612 00:43:45,719 --> 00:43:48,679 And then from below the basement door came a sound. 613 00:43:48,679 --> 00:43:52,639 I had no category four, the rushing scramble of something 614 00:43:52,679 --> 00:43:57,559 with mass, and it was coming up. I went through 615 00:43:57,599 --> 00:44:01,400 the hatch head first, no room for anything except forward 616 00:44:02,239 --> 00:44:05,480 on my stomach. The bag dragged behind me, the frame 617 00:44:05,519 --> 00:44:09,840 of the hatch catching my shoulders. I wrenched through it regardless, 618 00:44:10,199 --> 00:44:13,719 stone scraping my back through the jacket, the cold outside 619 00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:17,039 air hitting my face as my hands found frozen ground 620 00:44:18,119 --> 00:44:21,559 behind me. The basement door hit the corridor wall as 621 00:44:21,599 --> 00:44:25,400 something came through it at speed, the impact shuddering through 622 00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:28,480 the building's frame and into the ground beneath my palms. 623 00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:33,360 I pulled my legs free and scrambled upright, and I 624 00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:39,079 ran at the rear of the courtyard, a trailing fence 625 00:44:39,119 --> 00:44:42,159 to my left, the building at my back making sounds. 626 00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:45,400 I was not going to stop to interpret. I hit 627 00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:48,000 the corner of the building and came around it into 628 00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:52,920 the front courtyard. I didn't slow down, legs already burning 629 00:44:53,599 --> 00:44:56,159 the gate ahead of me and the jeep between me 630 00:44:56,280 --> 00:44:59,760 and it. I got to the driver's door and got inside, 631 00:45:00,280 --> 00:45:02,880 pulled it shut, and the sound the door made as 632 00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:07,199 it closed was enormous. In the silence that followed, I 633 00:45:07,280 --> 00:45:10,920 sat with my back against the seat, chest heaving, and 634 00:45:11,039 --> 00:45:13,719 I listened to the silence while looking at the counter. 635 00:45:15,159 --> 00:45:20,119 Three point one dropping two point eight two point six. 636 00:45:21,639 --> 00:45:24,960 I looked through the windscreen at the hospital entrance. The 637 00:45:24,960 --> 00:45:30,480 courtyard was empty, the gate opened beyond it, and the 638 00:45:30,480 --> 00:45:34,119 Axis Road running south into the dark, and the sky 639 00:45:34,239 --> 00:45:37,679 above it the deep blue of dusk, the last light 640 00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:41,480 still hovering, the only thing stopping it from carrying on 641 00:45:41,599 --> 00:45:47,880 the chase it had stayed inside two point zero one 642 00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:53,639 point eight one point six background. I put the key 643 00:45:53,719 --> 00:45:57,679 in the ignition, the engine turned over and found no purchase. 644 00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:02,480 I waited one second, jaw clenched, and turned it again. 645 00:46:03,840 --> 00:46:06,960 It caught, and I had it in first before it 646 00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:12,000 had finished. Deciding to run the gate the Axis road south, 647 00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:15,199 I took one last look at the building behind me, 648 00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:22,480 and I did not look at it again. A kilometer out, 649 00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:26,000 I reached into the bag for the counter, my hand 650 00:46:26,039 --> 00:46:29,639 found the tablet. I pulled it out and turned it over. 651 00:46:31,039 --> 00:46:35,559 The screen was dark. A crack running corner as a 652 00:46:35,559 --> 00:46:39,159 corner across the glass. The rubberized case compressed on one 653 00:46:39,239 --> 00:46:41,679 side with a hatch frame and caught it. As I 654 00:46:41,760 --> 00:46:47,840 came through, I pressed a power button. Nothing. I put 655 00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:50,320 it on the passenger seat and looked at the road. 656 00:46:52,079 --> 00:46:56,199 Michola's document the camera footage with three frames. It had 657 00:46:56,239 --> 00:47:01,559 captured eleven years of annual records. The proof that any 658 00:47:01,599 --> 00:47:04,280 of it had happened, that a man had spent the 659 00:47:04,320 --> 00:47:07,519 better part of his adult life managing something in a 660 00:47:07,519 --> 00:47:13,719 building in the zone was gone. The checkpoint lights appeared 661 00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:17,440 at eleven kilometers. I watched them come and did not 662 00:47:17,519 --> 00:47:20,519 think about what I was going to say, because the 663 00:47:20,559 --> 00:47:24,679 empty seat would say it before I could. I drove 664 00:47:24,800 --> 00:47:28,239 through the barrier and stopped the jeep, leaving the engine running. 665 00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:33,320 The zone authority officer came out, the young one. He 666 00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:36,480 came to the window and I put it down. He 667 00:47:36,559 --> 00:47:40,320 looked at me, then at the passenger seat where Michela 668 00:47:40,360 --> 00:47:43,840 should have been. He looked at the tablet for a moment, 669 00:47:44,559 --> 00:47:49,079 then he looked at me. I had nothing to give him. 670 00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:53,559 No footage, no proof of anything except the raw strip 671 00:47:53,599 --> 00:47:56,320 of my forearm and the fact that I was here 672 00:47:56,719 --> 00:48:01,000 and Micheler wasn't the zone author He stepped back from 673 00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:04,679 the window and unclipped the radio from his jacket, raised 674 00:48:04,679 --> 00:48:07,679 it without taking his eyes off the empty seat, and 675 00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:12,039 began speaking to it quietly in Ukrainian. I sat in 676 00:48:12,079 --> 00:48:14,760 the running jeep with a cracked tablet on the seat 677 00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:23,119 beside me and nothing else, and I let him. They 678 00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:27,840 did not find Mikola. The search lasted four days. Two 679 00:48:27,880 --> 00:48:31,519 additional zone authority officers a dog that wouldn't go past 680 00:48:31,519 --> 00:48:34,159 the ground floor entrance and had to be led away. 681 00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:38,320 The official conclusion came eight days after I drove through 682 00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:43,400 the checkpoint structural collapse, flooring stability on the upper levels, 683 00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:47,960 and the victim conducting a professional assessment of a compromised building. 684 00:48:49,280 --> 00:48:53,000 It happened in the zone. The paperwork acknowledged the absence 685 00:48:53,039 --> 00:48:56,400 of a body, including a clause on debris field scale 686 00:48:56,599 --> 00:49:01,519 and search limitations. The hospital was close to future visitors. Within 687 00:49:01,559 --> 00:49:05,800 the week, his own authority website was quietly updated. The 688 00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:09,679 building was removed from approved itineries, pending a structural review 689 00:49:10,039 --> 00:49:16,119 that everyone understood would never happen. I was interviewed twice, 690 00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:20,039 same room, same two officers, and I gave the same 691 00:49:20,079 --> 00:49:23,639 account both times. I signed my name twice at the 692 00:49:23,679 --> 00:49:27,960 bottom of the same form. I was eventually flown home. 693 00:49:29,039 --> 00:49:35,679 I filed the Peace Iran in February. The ecological recovery angle, 694 00:49:36,039 --> 00:49:40,400 the wolves, the rewilding. The ferris wheel photograph is because 695 00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:43,960 you always run the ferris wheel. The Palace of Culture 696 00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:47,360 at dawn, the mosaic facade at the first light. The 697 00:49:47,400 --> 00:49:50,880 apartment blocks on Lessier Ukraenki Street have the birds trees 698 00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:55,000 growing out past the first four windows. The piece was 699 00:49:55,079 --> 00:49:58,400 six thousand words and I wrote it in eleven days. 700 00:49:59,599 --> 00:50:02,519 I knew why it came so quickly, and I didn't 701 00:50:02,559 --> 00:50:08,000 look at that reason directly either. The response was good. 702 00:50:08,760 --> 00:50:11,599 The editor emailed us say it was the most read 703 00:50:11,679 --> 00:50:15,039 long form piece in two years and asked whether I'd 704 00:50:15,039 --> 00:50:19,960 consider a follow up. There was appetite, she said readers 705 00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:24,559 wanted more of the zone. I told her I felt 706 00:50:24,599 --> 00:50:29,760 I covered the subject. This was true in every sense, 707 00:50:31,639 --> 00:50:44,000 but I didn't explain it to her.