Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. Crackling static flickers in my heaference,
a wavering hiss that's always there, stitched into the noise
floor between my words. If you're listening to this, you
know I don't filter too much. It's the way I
started in my podcasts, at least before everything turns strange.
This isn't what I planned on recording to night. I
usually close shot by midnight and crash at my desk,
but some nights the city wouldn't let me. It was
just past eleven twenty when I heard the faint, metallic
slide outside my glass office door. Blue streets stuffing the
grimmest temp agency on the edge of Mitenkus quiet after
eight p m. So even late, every footfall fee is intrusive.
I waited, half listening, thinking maybe the accountant from Dancers
left another note about the thermostat, whether the janitor had
snuck up to empty bins instead. Nothing, just the fading
hum of distant traffic, forescent lights buzzing with fatigue, and
the shuffle thump of someone or something trudging away. Another
five minutes and I would have ignored it, but my
curiosity got the better of me. I opened the door.
I didn't see anyone of just a slip of darkness
vanishing around the corner, too fast for me to catch
a glimpse. At my feet, though waited a thick black
binder sealed in a plastic sleeve, as if to weather
the night, the kind management uses for h R policies, neat, dustless,
out of place. I hesitated, the way you do when
you send someone else's urgency lingering. I reached down, and
just before picking it up, realized the sleeve was not enclosed,
almost paranoid in its thoroughness. It wasn't warm, but the
thing nearly vibrated with potential. I caught the trace of
cologne or after ship clinging to it to shop old
fashion scent. My pulse quickened for reasons I couldn't pin
down Inside the sleeve. The binder was immaculate, jet black cover,
fresh plastic rings. First tap opened under a page with
a grood of times, dates, clock hands drawn with obsessive neediness.
The second page was clipped with the blue post it
and lipping hurried ink. I saw, do not file confidential
if they ask deny below, photocopid forms maintenance logs for
the entire building, level lists, vi Drollsignin's detailed elevator repetickets.
Every line cross referenced with stamps, signatures, and in the
margin are notations in unfamiliar handwriting. Some reference specific grooms
or conduits that didn't match the actual floor lay outside scene.
A few locks highlighted whole time periods where access denied systems,
loop and cryptic references to maintenance work above, but none
of the contractor initials matched anyone I recognized. Toward the end,
a section of rough diagrams, a crude hand drawn map
of the upper floors with auditas and blank spaces. The
sixth floor, which should have been a flat concrete paddis
storage area as I'd been told up here, with a
series of excess and no marks and tangled lines running through.
One sticky note stuck out at the coroner, almost childlike one.
Lights flickered again, heard her voice by a stoutwell. Second
shift said it was empty, but it's never empty. The
handwriting ran crooked, as if the writer was being jostled.
The last page broke the methodical rhythm. If you want dancers,
watch the sixth floor. After TUREM don't believe the sign
in locks there was a deed to night well. I
thought either someone was playing games with me or they
were desperate to was skiing aared for me to see
it as before anybody else. I coaked my head out
into the hole again silence. But as I gazed up
the stairwells open core five floors of blank black rectangles
caped above and far above behind a grimy paine that
belonged to the six floorst posity peddlocked and dead, I
saw a faint, pulsing sliver of light. It wasn't the
steady fescent of a cleaning crew, and it was the
passing cause wash if flicker A nervous morse code feeble,
but determined it was eleven forty. What kind of building
locks away a whole floor nobody uses? Then let secerts
drift down in binder's leg bait, and I thought, who
decides to leave a sign for whoever still awake enough
to look? I should have called security. I should have
tossed the binder in the manager's in books, left it
for their morning headaches. But as I found through the
pages once more diagrams, clippings, half ray scribbles that made
my skin prickle. I couldn't help it. I pressed record
this is of the Kessler Blue Street Tower, second floor,
received anonymous delivery confidential logs, keys to nothing but a warning.
There's a light burning on the sixth floor. I'm going
to find out whose watching whom. Most nights I don't
scare easily. To night, I felt something beyond curiosity take hold.
It was as if the building itself had nudged me
toward that binder, toward whatever was waiting above. Some mysteries
are borne from coincidence. Some I learned that night are cultivated.
Being a reporter is a career built on skepticism and
in complete coffee. My office is a closer of USB
Mike's caffeine soak notes and the town of coal takeout.
I never plan on likes that echo the constant, low
grade paranoia that comes with covering the city's fraying edges.
Blue Street was my first tempt job, but lately it
felt like it might be my last. The next morning,
I arrived after an iris leap binder hidden in my
back back and tuck myself into my usual corner booth
at hoch Cockfay. My playlist overflowed with previous episodes, superstitions
in city housing, haunted alleyways, the rumor economy. My voice
scratched the opening script episode one hundred nine, The Modern
Myths of Midtown. But even with my daily rituals chatting
with Melt, my producer, and tossing questions to the tenants,
who forced cheer? Who I was chewing on the contents
of that binder I spent? I was flipping it in
my lap beneath the table, shuffling die of ground's back
and forth in case smell snuck a glance over my shoulder.
By noon, I'd swap my morning routine for a surplus
of suspicion. I had a list of the buildings regulars
and for cover, I pretended to gather their thoughts about
office upgrades for a segment that was never going to air. Tony,
a resident accountant and two B met me by the
elevator with his usual nervous energy. He fidgeted with his tie,
glancing at the ceiling, slickering bulbs, at Nigel. Hear the pipe, sure,
he whispered, voice, cracking pole place, groans, old bones, you know,
sometimes I think I hear some one on the steps,
but the only one around is the janitor. Don't print that,
o K, he paused. We had paperwork loss payroll one time,
just vurnished, then popped up days later, but numbers were off.
Management blamed me. I scribbled notes I pretended were for
building feature stores. He shifted from fit to foot, finally
darting down the hall as if afraid of being overheard.
The next was Maia from Bridle Studio Chugee. She always
kept her space bright with imitation penis and the faint
hum of classical music. I mentioned the after ires room
is just abroad ghosts. No, no, she said, waving her
hand with loft sixteen fingers. It's just city stories. Some
years ago I heard attendant had a bad fall on
the stairs. But that's every building, isn't it the truth?
The six floor isn't haunted, it's never open. I don't
less staff up there, but after sunset I lock up.
People get strange ideas at night. She smiled, But I
could see the tension drawing lines by her eyes at
the door keys jangling. She hesitated, glancing toward the stairwell.
In moments between interviews, I wandered the hall, taking in
the musty scent that seemed to waft from all day
track and shut at offices. The paint peeled in thin calicius,
and every step echoed un naturally, as if the place
was built for more tenants than it had eva housed.
Half the mail boxes on the grand floor were empty,
and the tiles at the back entrancewap where water had
once seeped in. Later, in the record's room, I poured
over the history of Blue Street Tower. The original blueprints
were tucked behind glass at the front desk and naive
goldleaf promise of prosperity. The building rose in the fifties,
but a failed attempt at modern expansion a decade to
go left the six four unfinished. Lawsuit followed structural errors
cost overran's one contractor, who sued for our hostile conditions.
The owners tried to lease the six, but nothing stuck.
Insurance flight it as hazardous, so they locked it behind
a signed off Crimson placard, but the elevator still listed
six as an option, had a tape over the button.
No mention of sealed corridors in public records. I've covered
ghost stors for clicks before, but I never trusted them.
Every fountom roomor boiled down to bookkeeping errors or board
night's staff who wanted an hour off still by late
after Nima in books, pinkton address with a string of
random characters, no signature. Did you get the binder? Do
not trust management? The subject line was in all CAP's warning.
I stared at the email, hands resting on the keyboard,
careful not to reply. The building's shadow loomed larger. Now.
I wondered if mys brisk dismissal or Tony's nervous glances
were performances, or if they two felt something watching from above.
I placed the binder on the table, double checking each
page as if I'd missed a key already. Before packing up,
I pulled up my foren and scan the six floors
windows from the sidewalk. Nothing just dirty pains, dull in
the luring sun, reflecting my own word face. When you
spend years debunking stories, he developed routines to compartmentalize fear,
But the memory of the flickering light the bind is careful.
Anonymity and the six certainty that someone had chosen me
deliberately kept nudging at the edges of my resolve back
in my office, afflicked in the recorder. Something is wrong here.
Someone inside the building wants this to come out, and
I am beginning to think it isn't a simple girse
they're afraid of. Following night, I decided to test the
boundaries of my paranoia. Sleepers wash my nerves perk every
time a sea train rattled beneath the avenue. A little
after midnight, I let myself into Blue Street Tower with
Tony spare pass card back. I cloated with a bath
at Sony camcorder and my favorite Field audio recorder. The
elevator was already locked tenants after IROs so. I took
the stairs too at a time, pausing on the fifth
landing like spurning with adrenaline, and was giving an equal measure.
From there, I crouched next to the stair all door,
both hands pressed to the cool metal. This spot had
a few den the spine of the building. The lobby
is paltry, potted palm, the revolving glass doors, the checkerboard
floor glimmering with sodium light from the street. The holes
were so empty that every distant drip sounded orchestrated. I
checked my watch two zevendum time drag. I tried to
steady my breathing ears, attuned to mechanical rhythms on camera,
nothing unusual, a few des modes drifting in front of
the lens. The orange glare of the exit signed reflecting weirdly,
But as two thirteen tipped over, a low frequency hum
crept up from the walls. It was almost mechanical, like
an elevator lawn out of cortification, shuddering behind concrete. Leaning
over the fifth four banister, I peered up through a
gap where the stair wall wall at the window the
sixth floor, a rectangle of heavy glass crusted with the
recidue of years. A bulb or maybe a desk lamp,
flickered to life in sudden impulses. The dirty pink clothed
when dark glowed again a deliberate signal, almost rhythmical. Drops
of sweat crawled down my neck. I ned a camera,
but the image was muddy, out of focus, shapes behind
the glass impossible to define. My audio recorder, though, picked
up my more than dead air I caught a sequence
of footsteps, deliberate and slow, somewhere above, not heavy nor
shoffling like the janet has caught, just the quiet cages
of a person moving carefully, accompanied by a low's cough
and what might have been the memor of voices through
multiple layers of plaster and rabah. The light's cut out
again before two twenty. The entire building seemed to exhale
in that moment. I let the camera roll a little longer,
scanning every window. Nothing. By morning, cafeen propped me up
well enough to catch the night janitor at the subway entrance.
Gregg was fifty, maybe perpetually shrouded in flannel and resentment.
I waited until no one else was around. Hey, Greg,
you ever worked the sixth floor? I kept my tone light.
He wearily eyed my phone, then shook his head. We
don't go out there, no point to the stairs block
off right, he sniffed, glancing over his shoulder. Sometimes I
see lights. Sure, management says it's a circuit thing, but
the wires are dead. If you hear anything, it's nothing.
Don't worry about it, liar, I thought, watching how his
gaze refused to lend anywhere for long. I spent the
next iro cross referencing the previous few weeks of building
email several tenants, a couple on the third floor, some
one from the shipping office complained about lost paperwork, calls,
getting routed to deadlines, and seeing shapes behind the high
glass odd eyers. Their language was careful. I think it
was the wind. One wrote, probably maintenance, but I didn't
recognize the silhouette. My own inbooks had a dozen messages
about deliveries misplaced and support tickets are resolved by technicians
who never signed the log books. There was unmistakably a pattern,
not ghosts, but things misplaced voices, misplaced lights, The flickered
on and off in patterns nobody could explain. Sitting at
my work station, the binder opened all its obscure diagrams,
I felt the fact shift beneath me. Some one was
using this floor, or the idea of it, to manipulate
the building's riddance at exactly whose behests I needed to
discover for myself. As the day slid by, I transformed
from casual skeptic to obsessive documentarian. My next run through
blue Streets roactive tenants was more targeted. Each interviewer searched
for concrete evidence. In the web of daily frustration and
low level dread, no one trusted official forms each Gunds
floated toward the stairwell, towards shadows crawling up the wall.
At dusk. Maya, by, now accustomed to my recording gear,
appeared more open. After a few gentle questions. Last week,
she confided, I found a delivery slip on my counter.
It was the wrong address, but it had my handwriting.
She frowned, brow pinched. I don't remember filling it out,
and the original gone. Then Monday morning, everything I'd lost reappeared,
but notes called on them, not in my own pen.
Who keeps dampering with my paperwork? I pressed gently? Did
you report it? She offered a wan smile. We don't
make trouble for management of it. Trust me better that way.
Every shop here knows. Tony more Judery by the day
described a scene from his after I was vigil thing
is computers kept darling out at three in the morning,
walk past my phone, red lights blinking in internal extension.
I picked up and her static. But the call said
it was from six O one. That's the six, isn't it?
Only heard? It was gobbled But some one was speaking
real quick, then hung up. Even the security team, always
stone face started to bend Phil The midnight God met
me by the mailium with his Tai Ski fingers drumming
on his flashlight. I'll tell you something off the record,
he said, Leaning close. Last month, late back starell was open, unlocked.
It shouldn't have been. Chain on the inside was missing, dead,
but not even latched. I swear I wheeled it shut after,
but his voice trailed off, shoulders drawing tighter. There's always
a draft in that place, like doors opened where they
shouldn't be. Worth each story, my certainty grew. Whoever orchestrated
these disturbances knew the patterns of daily life here and
was deliberately appending them. I dove into the city's crumbling wrecords,
spending IROs at the municipal archives, obscenely the coffee in hand.
The listed blueprints for Blue Street tow were confirmed by suspicion.
The sixth floor was only accessible via the elevator disabled
more than three years ago, or from the stairwalls locked
behind two iron five doors. No mention of alternate access
anywhere in the modern plans, yet tucked between faded sheets.
I found older blueprints there. Beneath runs of coffee stains
and punch holes are traced a set of oddly angled
service corridors, windowless, doubling back, some choked off in renovation,
marked a roof or o auxiliary maintenance. A few poked
through to the sixth and error or in admission. The
rent record showed something else. Snow official least signed for
the six or any adjacent mechanical space since twenty fourteen.
Even the management reported routine fire compliance checks annually with
signatures I couldn't match to any living tenant or employee.
I kept digging. Cookie cutter security cam footage told a
story all its own. My friendly second shift, sharp as
attack and easily bred with Peter slipped me a thumb
drive on it. Four iro was a static tinge video
from the rear corridors. In those pale frames, shadows blurred
in and out, never fully distinct. But at two eighteen
and Tuesday, a figure distorted passed across the service hallway.
It had ducked, moving impossibly fast in frame one, empty
by two, a lengthening shadow, then nothing. I rewand over
and over. No badge, no uniform but some shape, some one,
sometimes two side by side, headless, vanishing between the jumpy frames.
At the last time Mark the service corridor door creaked
up in a half inch pause, then shut. Rumors whirled faster.
Mike called about another memo pushed beneath her shop door
in block capitals. Hullway lights need servicing scheduled t BA,
Please return all signed forms by four thirty. Neither name
nor signature, nobody could trace who send it. Tony texted
after midnight found stapled paper with my name on third
fl mail box, not handwriting info. Only you and I knew.
He'd stopped trusting the locks, started leaving his lights on overnight.
Kurt Instron, even Phil normally inflappable, mentioned with odd reluctance
he'd been hearing voices through the ben shafts, half conversations,
sometimes his own name, sometimes a woman's laughter, echoing from
somewhere no working human should be. If I was in
too deep, so would the others. After a week of this,
my own nerve started to fray. The paranoid groom infected
every elevator chime, every skip forcemail sent, My pulse sleeping,
my sleep eroded into three iro stretches, riddled with half
dreams of panic figures running and seening halls. Then, on
a Wednesday, so quiet that even the street preacher took
the day off, I found a single page slipped under
my apartment door. The paper was crisp. Knew the handwriting precise.
The stairs are safe until three fifteen. Don't let them
catch you on tape. They watch no signature this time,
no email. My hat slammed in my chest. Some one
had followed me home, whoever this was. They wanted me
to keep digging, but not to expose them. Not yet.
I studied the note for anything, indentations beneath the handwriting,
odd smules, misspelled words, nothing but its presents the assertion
that I was not just a chronicler, but a participant.
I set the note beside my recorder and pressed my
pond to the coal window glass outside. The city lights
smeared in the humid night, looping endlessly in the reflection
inside the darkness pool thicker than ever in the corners.
I realized every step would be watched from now on,
by whom or by what. I would have to discover soon,
and at my own risk. It wasn't enough any more
to chronicle patterns or theorized explanations. Something or some one
had claimed the sixth floor for itself, and I was
being drawn deeper with each clue, each whisper in the
dot work, each note left after I was like a dair.
The next morning, I returned to Blue Street with the
binder zip tight under my arm, a flat light, and
feeled like in my shoulder back no stretched tight like
fence in wire. After two rounds through the building, three
suspicious glances from tenants, and a half cup of scotched coffee,
I started my search in you. The Binder's cryptic diagrams
hinted at more than dead ends. Somewhere I suspected was
a real way in. By one in the afternoon, when
most tenants had retreated behind double locked doors, I traced
one of the Binder's hand drawn passages to the North's
service hallway. Here, peeling paint revealed corrugated metal behind the plaster,
and a cluster of ragged tiles entered abruptly at the
bookcase screwed into the wall, dusted with the years of neglect,
I knelt feeling for loose panels, tapping It seems as
discreetly as I could. The fourth tile gave way with
a hollow thud. I peeled it back inside darkness, a
shade deeper than the rest of the hall. There sat,
nearly flush in the wall was an axis panel, the
paint on its edge a shade lighter than the surrounding boards.
I put my ear to nod a sound, remembering the
most unsettling note from the binder watch for echos, So
I steadied my breath and pressed gently. The panel slid
back with surprising ease. The cold draft used onto my skin,
carrying the particular odor of stale wiring and old spilt sooder.
Stepping through, I found myself in a shaft no more
than three feet wide. Insulation bulged where pipes had been removed,
and cobwood danced in the torchly. The silence thickened with
each forward shuffle. The only hints of the living world
were the faint downbeat of car horns and a distant
hummikun place ten feet in the beam caught on a
fitted MARKT six had been scrolled in black grease, pencil
nearly lost in grime, and below it a corroded brass
plate glinted I pressed upon to the vented door beyond
it vibrated faintly, as if alive with the current. Even here,
someone had been careful in the layer. Thus, near the
entrance A spotted two prints, interrupted by faint dread marks,
as if cargo had been moved for some time in
the past day or two. I snapped a string of
photos and pressed the mic against the wall, listening a
harm again electric or perhaps no there underneath it. A whisper,
feigned as a shiver. Uselessh crawled up my arms. I
steadied the recorder and whispered my own test, just in
case the building did what I suspected. The corridor passed.
The door was empty. A batted metal benchlestice against the
far wall. A single wire check casticide overhead wiring coiled
out of half missing panels, looping toward a lock maintenance
closet at the far end. I traced my finger along
the edge of the dusty window, A smearor handprint recent
the grease, from upon, unmistakably new some one watched From here.
I pressed my digital recorder into the faint breeze. The
playback whistled was static at first, then on the margins
of silence, a single feathered whisper. I looped it again,
not just random noise, a syllable, ascitant scatter. I couldn't
make it out. I snapped a series of photos of
the marks from the handriton sign and id ort a
complete watch by two will erase tomorrow's look. At five
twenty seven, the paper was fresh, still curled at the corners. Suddenly,
movement deeper in the passage, voices, not shouts, but brisk conversation,
just above, a whisper of warning, a command. I couldn't tell.
My pulse hammered as I killed my flashlight, flattened against
the wall, an inch backward, they passed, two shadows elongated
by my torches after image. Moving with the liberate train purpose,
I squeezed myself back into the narrow axis, praying they
didn't look back. Once clear, I oppressed myself into a
crook behind EATI liitticinc, sifting the air for every footfall.
The voices receded, My breath clouded before me, the server
shafts cold soaked in again. With my heart racing, I
crept back the way I came, clutching the night order.
His note was shaking hands as the panel snap shut
behind me. I found myself blinking in the building's stifling fluorescence,
weighed down by the undeniable reality someone occupied the sixth floor,
someone methodical and fearless, who watched, tracked, and erased their
trail by bureauretted ritual each dawn. My nerves rattled all
through the following day. In edit, I scared the audio
from the passage. Dozens of times. I scurbed the track
at half speed, folding out ambient verb, until at last
the fragment resolved. Witness. I scanned the binder again, matching
each corridor on the diagrams to the time stamps in
my new recordings. Names repeated always. Jay Lemmore, the former
property manager whose name popped up in half the controversial
expansion memos. I left three voicemails tracked down in old
maintenance work in Queens for an interview heard about the
sixth He muttered over coffee voice boxy with regret. They
sealed it after the big mess lawsuit, but nobody I'll
talk about what really happened to place grew hoolets like
a wound count heel can't lose it. He shifted in
his seat, voice dropping. No one wants to be the
one to cut it open again. I mapped every incident
against the city's permitting data without exception, every act of sabotage,
every misplaced document, every unexplained event. Map to days when
an internal memo reference to repairs six floor system review,
that floor sealed. In practice. Busy on paper was the
anchor point for everything strange in the building. With mounting obsession,
I created a sprawling map on my white board, corridors
rounded up into nowhere, audit logs, faces from years old stafflus,
each event pinned with red string. At the heart of
it the sixth floor. In a simple, terrifying possibility, someone
had never left the expansion. Some one lived watch and
yearned to control the building below, and they were growing
boulder with every passing week. I decided, finally, foolishly that
the only way forward was live proof. I packed two
field mics, a Wi Fi camera, and every battery pack
I owned, resolved to document whatever emerged. After two a
m my nove roree too high for sleep. At one
fifty eem I slept into the service corridor. Flashlight sheaved
at my hip. The building emptied of all but its
own memories pressed and on every side. I made my
way to the sixth floor via the hidden panels, squeezing
through gear clutch to my chest. This time my intention
was not to listen from Afar, but to invade the space,
Settling into a storage closet just off the main corridor.
At microphone lie fature of feet pointed Dan toward the
distant Comforts room mart on the Binder's maps. At first,
the place was silent, safe for the faint shatter of
ancient day track. The air weighed heavier as I crept
through dust laden carpet, mutilated ceiling tiles, rows of decrepit
office chairs stacked uphasively. Dora Paco still clung to frosted glass,
leasing boardroom operations. My footsteps fell almost soundlessly. The carpet, grimy,
thread bare, absorbed all but my racing heart. Thirteen minutes
passed before anything changed. First, I barely perceptible flickered the
old security lights blinking on in stuttering fits, I pressed
myself against a battered credenza, peering around the corner. Further
down the hallway through a glass soll marked conference he
yellow light spilled out faint shapes moving beyond the privacy glass.
Not shadows, but silwet one too may be more. I froze,
nerves stretched so tight, I thought my own breathing would
give me away. My phone buzzed once. The light from
the screen glared dangerously bright. In the gloom, I checked
a new message, anonymous number. Don't trust the lights. The
temperature dropped, as though the six floors sealed. Heart pressed
an ice back to my spine. The metallic weak was
stronger now, tinshrivzon. The air vibrated with a subtle electrical
in ease. I edged closer steps, measured, camera balanced to
chest level. In the silence, every scuff of my heel
was catastrophic. I recorded in a whisper. I see one figure,
maybe more, conference glasses, frosted, movement, shadows. My own voice
registered as unfamiliar, a dry crook. In all that tension,
A metallic snap echoed further down the corridor. I turned behind,
near the maintenance closet, A bright, shivering flash of reflection.
My nerves jolted. I stifled a gasp, ducking down, just
as an indistinct figure entered from the shadowed lounge. Their
form was patched baggy clothes, face obscured by a surgical mask,
A glint of vasts so guggles beneath a pulled down
ball cap. The light in the conference room flared brightly,
then gutted out with a violent crack of ree lay
stripping in the stroke of extinguishing light. The slow acrossed
the room, jerky intent, neither quick nor slow, but filled
with an urgency that was all wrong. When the glass
darkened again, my view was empty. Only then did I
realize that every note in my hand had started to vibrate.
The recorder glitch, the static swelling into a full and
holy roar across the hall. A speaker embedded in the
vestibule ceiling bulls distorted ram It's bad of voice, but
twisted the words, warbling as if spoken underwater. Turn off
your recorder, I paused. Then you, being watched. The glass
in the window trembled. I duck lower, hard in my throat.
I pressed the mic to my mouth. There is some
one else they know I'm here. The lights flickered again,
coal presence pulling at my back, the unmistakable sense of
someone standing in the passage just beyond sight. Then every
light on the floor snuffed, and one swift stroke, even
the back of a leady cut out in total darkness.
I listened as soft footsteps approached, hesitated, stopped inches away.
I tried to tone, but the recorder in my hand
flashed its red light, then flat lined with a mechanical click.
One breath dear, I couldn't move, as if something unseem
pressed upon to my shoulder. Then nothing but the darkness
so thick I could taste it, the unmistakable near us
of being trapped, not just in space, but in the
sticky whip of someone else's careful game. The silence was absolute,
but I knew, by a shift in the air, the
shiver in the walls, and the closing of escape behind me,
that I was no longer alone. With escape shrinking behind me,
I stayed stone, still, measuring the pressure at my shoulder,
half waiting for that touch to become unmistakably human or not.
The air felt taut with expectancy. My pulse jitted in
my throat. I've reached out, slowly, fingers brushing the rough
edge of the storage shelf, calculating how loud it would
be to tople it should I need a distraction nothing moved,
Then just outside the door, something hard tap against the
floor once, then a second time, keas boot. The noise
was deliberate, almost signally, holding my breath, I strained to listen,
since his stretch beyond their limit for any intake of
movement or breath. The scuffing poles lingered, then a subtle click,
like a switch. The water my left bloomed momentarily with
ghosty blue, maybe a phone screen veaint as spill of
artificial light. Nerves screaming, I weigh my options, stay hidden
and risk discovery, or move now and risk even more.
Creeping sideways. Feeling the microtexture of coppet beneath my palms,
I flattened beside the supply carts, stacked with unused tone
of cartridge as the only thing clumsily shielding me from
the open door. I heard for the first time what
sounded like quick, nervous breeding, no more than ten feet away,
not mine. The person outside the door, whoever they were,
was not calm. A sudden voice too close, slipped through
a whispered cushion. Syllable was blurred, but unmistakably human. Is
it off? I froze, willing my equipment completely inert. Fighting
the ear to check the came stand by light silence
were cute. I heard the hum of the buildings transform
us beyond. The walls hung heavy. The voice's cadence was heard,
and instead of the amplified menace from earlier, it throbbed
with uncertainty. Another lower murmur entered, much closer and deeper
than the first. Check the closets to take the notes.
Movement now clear precise, the bare shuffle of shoes and
the gritty tiles. I griped one of my back up batteries,
half ready to throw it should someone lunge from me.
The shadow pass across the frosted lower panel of the
supply closet, stretching and then snapping back. As they crouched,
inspecting the other side of the door through a narrow slit,
A glimpse of pale hand fan out across the carpet,
Steading their balance. The hand retreated a shuffle of papers.
They were searching for evidence of me, Prince drop gear
or God help me the recorder I had left too
near the door. Ye see anything? A higher voice again
a little further now. My nerves shrieked, Why two people
up here after iurs in a sealed space. No, but
somebody has been through the duck to get back to base.
Don't leave the lock a saddle scrape. Someone rose to
their feet, shifting something heavy. I've risked a peek and
caught a flush black track pants, a branded jacket, no insignia.
The smell of ladox and hand sanitizer hit the air,
eerily medical for an office at night. My phone, useless
in the dark, vibrated quietly, an automated battery alert. I
nearly bit my tongue, holding back a gasp. No one reacted.
The pair left the open storage for stuts, blending as
they were streated their steps. I could into the hallway.
Then a sharp clunk, heavy was closing further down, deliberate lockdown,
drenched and swet mossles shaking. I waited several heartbeats, straining
for any trace of voices or a movement. Not. Then
I forced numb fingers to fumble from my recorder, still dead,
but the back of mike spun a silt red At
least a file would survive. Picking my way out, I
pressed as close to the wall as I could, moving
inch by inch past the open shelves and boxes. Afraid
any careless bump would betray me. I skirted out into
the corridor at a croach, pausing to listen. Down the hall,
the emergency exit lights cast cold green's mears atop the
door frames. The far conference room, once full of light,
was now pointedly dark to glass, reflecting only my disheveled
up line. As I called beneath its line of sight.
I was adjusted and navigated by fading glow past a
water cooler. I found the main access panel to the
service stairs propped open, a fresh finger print streaking the dust.
I bent to examine it and found tuck just inside
a yellow to dow slip audit lock check ceiling corridor
clear by five thirty j l the handwriting mass the
binder scroll. This was no Goost story. These were assignments,
shifts managed by insiders, cloaked in bureaucracy and misdirection. A
deep clang jolted me back. A disengate on the bottom
floor clearly manipulated axis points were being systematically shut, possibly
as part of some routine. I triggered without meaning to.
I hugged the wall catalog into clues, footprints, written orders,
the real human voices, the concerted structure of whoever haunted
these upper floors. I checked my watch nearly three a m.
Somewhere in the office beyond, I caught that tremulous flicker
through the glass again, a nervous morse coat signaling in
the dark. I knew with an unambiguous certainty that somewhere
behind the next turn I would find not just watches
of the building, but the center of something colder, deeper
in operation, layered in secrets, shrouded in plausible deniability, and
worried enough to chase even an amateur below the legal floors.
I poused one last time, fingers at my lip. If
it'd seen me, escape was unlikely. I'd have to rely
on the same anonymity that got me this far, and trusted,
perhaps arrogantly, in my wits, to slip out before dawn.
My mind throbbed with tension. I pressed myself into the
tightest curve of the passage, unweighted, eyes fixed on the
thin line of light, straining for any sign that it
meant rescue or another trap. That was where I was,
heart beat against concrete. When a new mechanical wine started
up from the depths of the building, a signal, or
maybe just the old elevator cycling up to the forbidden floor.
The next move, I knew would be dictated by however,
or whatever was orchestrating the silent, very real conspiracy atop
Blue Street Tower. I wedged myself deeper into the service
corridor's blind curve, pulse thumping in my ears, willing myself
invisible the mechanical drone, the elevator, or something else, with
teeth deepened as I pressed flat against the grime cinder block, listening,
but oh somewhere behind me clanged the echo, rolling a
long ducts and dying away. For a flickering second, all
sound was eaten by the undertone, metallic, sturdy, far older
than the building's age would admit. I force measured breaths,
bracing for motion in the corridor, but silence pressed me hard.
Cold leached from the concrete into my bones, swept, cooled,
and dried, all at once. Whatever triggered the new noise above,
the parade of doors slamming, the flash of emergency lights
shifted the balance of control deeper into their hands. Still
add the note the doll back up recorder, my Thhne
scraping seventeen percent battery, and the growing sick certainty that
any eggs it would need more luck than design. Something
tugged me back from the edge of panic, a line
from the memo in my breast pocket. The stairs were
safe until three fifteen. I jacked my watch, the luminous
hands stabbing two fifty nine time crossing, sticky, heavy as syrup.
Every part of me wanted to bold feet, slaping up
the old staale or two at a time, back into
the living city. But at the heart curiosity nod rawn
and broken. The six four was to corpse rodden in
city reel estich. It was still breathing, still shifting, and
now I was tangled in its lungs. I cut forward,
inch by inch, every step, weight passed the open service panel.
I pressed through a squeeze of ancient ventork, toward where
the light had last flared. The conference room, now dim,
mist cellar dust yawned empty behind glass, but outside the
door another glove flickered, a coal blue reminiscent of a
century old computer screen behind a warp supplisch half. I
found myself facing what looked at firs like a bank
of old davy cart's wire together my heart snouch as
I took it into Frankenstein's tangle of cable so its
protectors and battered surveillance monitors, each green offering a crooked
slice of the building's cuts. The lobby elevator car always
shot several floors below, even a dark glimpse into a
tenant's mail room. The main board and abuse cork slab
bristled with pushpins and a whirlwind of scribbled notes, lines
looping over color print outs of tenants faces, schedules in
military time, and arrows pointing to doors marked on my
own binders, diagrams on one's still powered corte. The six
floors main corridor stretched away a single empty passage and
a blown out emergency bulbs, but every thirty seconds or so,
static swallowed it, and the screen spasmed, as if a
large shape passed just outside camera view. No sound, just
digital ghosts beneath the monitors, on a scarred desk, more evident,
half empty water bottles for crack coffee mark, a stack
of quietly yellowing legal pads, all jammed with asset of lists.
I thumb through one noise one thirty eight am tenant
to be investigate patterns returned form to two g false alarm,
the anxious grouse by kit, the scroll evolving by page
three into block print, then abruptly changing hands. Same routine,
tract disturbances, neutralize erased physical evidence. A final entry, Today's day,
ridden with visible pressure audit ongoing management refuses to shut
it down. Enter at three twenty nine only. I paged
quickly through the notes, sweat clammy on my wrists. The
longer I read, the clearer it became. This was no
fanciful security system. It was an operation set on anticipating,
cataloging and quietly violating tenant privacy. Each strange memo, each
missing form, every spurious extension on Toni's phone started somewhere
up here. I fought to steady my breath. Something clattered
behind me, faint but urgent, as if something metallic, keys
or a flashlight dropped against tile. Voices followed. I froze,
blending into the dark. From just outside the room came
the same hush clipt exchange two people, the words half
swallowed by the thick air. He's back on base, You scant,
no clauses empty. The voice was tight, wary of being overheard,
set the alarum, then loop it again. Footsteps advance, then receded,
and the door at the end of the whole ground open.
When it swung shot, silence widened up once more. I
chanced a thin beam of my flashlight downward, hoping for
a notebook, a clue, anything to explain why management, who
pretended this floor didn't exist, had orchestrated alive breathing surveillance
ring in their own attic. My beam landed on a
slippery carpet of debris, takeout containers, discarded k N ninety
five masks, empty pill bottles from years gone by, A
scent of powdered cheese and must all peat's agrees in
something eerily chemical. Five suppress and foam may be wandered
up to choke the air. The space hadn't just been
watched into existence. It had been lived in for months,
maybe years. A bat of walcalland of two years out
of date pages over and by loops of red pen
flick out as another low current clicked the spaces lights,
lions connected tenants names with crketic times, presumably their disturbanced windows.
The chaos of urgency was deliberate whoever lived up here,
kept every tenant's habits in dex cross referenced and weaponized.
One polerooage not old enough to fade, showed the mail,
and two falls down. Taken from above, he ates up
a corner, A blurred face mine. I spet cold all over, fearbiting,
without drama, just cold logic. They'd followed me. A faint,
looping click from the speaker system, then a whisper too
thin to be anything but live. You see it now,
stop asking For a moment, I stopped moving completely, fingers
twitching over the edge of the surveillance table. I couldn't
tell if the message was automated or were delivered in
real time, whether meant for me or a partner somewhere else.
Either way, my skin prickled afresh. This was to ghost
in the wires. It was a human being, deliberate intimate warning.
My form pined anew incript detects leave last warning. I
stared at the message, hand shaking. I needed evidence, but
staying longer risk crossing into something other than reporting. Driving
past rising nausa, I scanned the space once more, werged
under a crooked chair, I caught the edge of a
weathered notebook, the cover torn, the spiral burent I opened
it to our confession, scratched in Hurd's gripped in case
someone finds this, I'm sorry for what we did. We
couldn't risk another no signature, no date. I photographed a
quickly tucking the book into my coat. By now, MOS's
movement overhead had faded over. An iron must have passed,
maybe more. I judged from the light strobing beyond the
conference room that the watchers were shifting their patrol. I
spotted a camera lens above, barely visible through duct tape,
the power light softly blinking amber, Pressing myself low, heart rattling,
I found a bolta utility closet nearby, inside more filing boxes,
bound and labeled and possessed caps for legal do not
shred the papers must distench book of a decade in darkness.
I slipped my voice recorder out, persisting the urge to
narrate directly. Instead, I photographed every page, focusing on signatures
led Ahead's jargon. The earliest files detailed routine maintenance and
ten and onboarding, but the stack beard into legal wrangling.
By twenty thirteen, after the incident, all access suspended until
further notice. Employee terminations to be process quietly, recommend extra
surveillance of new tenants. The pages cash hand annotated, blackmail, embezzlement,
Where's the money? The story that merged was what I feared.
The six floor shot after a stafford disappeared, investigated, then
a raise from mention. In all but these secret files,
one memo caught my I. J. Lemore resumed due to
under review. Keep all notes private, maintain facave for tendancy,
do not allow search and building rewrete all suspicious activity.
It was signed by two names matching expansion lawsuits from
Elow Blue Street. History of the men who vanished after
the settlement loose beneath this page is half melted employee
Ida sun burned past recognition, others intact. I turned them
in my palm, reading a familiar name twice. J. Lemmore
emails at the bottom, bared nerves and clapped desperate language.
Audits in complete. How do we keep them from checking?
Six arrange more diversions, papers, memos noise the few who
noticed the safer for everyone. I snapped photos until my
hands cramped, careful never to jostle the pile I whispered
a time stamp into my pocket. MIC found in ten
all legal documents confirmed cover up, embezzlement, missing staff, secret surveillant,
the six floors in open secret among management. They are
still up here, living inside the wound. Just as I finish,
another foot heavier, this time sent me scraping toward the
conference rooms adjoining coake closet, hard clenched tight, I eased
the door shut, Peering through the wide crack from the
gloom beyond, A figure emerged, mass tight across their face,
soft blonde hair poking from beneath the rattycap. They moved
with a patient efficiency of routine, pausing to check each switch,
paper and security display. A bulging shopping bag went to
the kitchenette. A clipboard followed, dragged in and avonpracticed silent sequences.
The figure swept up an envelope set beside the door,
my name on it in block print, the date set
for tomorrow. Adrenaline fault logic. I considered bolting, raising my phone,
or trying to confront them at fright, but the figure
spun sharply, as if feeling my stair. Their hooded eyes
swept the closet's gap then lingered longer than should have
been possible for someone on a air Every muscle screamed
at me to breathe, shallow, to freeze. Instead, I let
risk speak. I slipped my little voyage chorder, still warm,
to the closet's edge, thumbed it on, and rasped, I
know about the incident. I note what the sixth floor hid.
The words just loud enough to carry fell like a
dare the figures to differ, and scanning the room, I
spin points up time hun open. Their gaze found my envelope, paused,
and in a gesture somewhere between resignation and anger, they
dropped a micro cassette player onto the envelope, stamped it
beneath one latex palm, and after a lawn pause, backed
out of the room. When their footstitch receded, I waited
another three full minutes before prying the door open and
slipping at I snatched the envelope and the tiny player,
hot so loud I could barely hear the rise of
new voices echoing in a fog horridor. Inside the envelope,
a single micro cosette black electrical tape holding the spool
in place. In block letters, some one have written one
word confess. There was only one thing to do. I
bundled myself against the supply shelfs, lotted the tape into
the player and turned the tiny wheel with stiff shaking fingers.
At first just static and warble feedback, then a voice
old mail worry as we cold rain broke through, slow
and ragged. If anyone gets this year too close, I'm sorry.
My name's Lemire and I was property manager here years back,
twenty thirteen after the expansion, something happened on this floor,
money missing records, thinked I let people and who shouldn't
have been here, said yes to suits who threatened the crew.
One night, as Sta from Arisol peril walking on a
meeting she shouldn't have seen. After that, Lord, it went sideways.
She vanished. They made a sign off, told us to
loop the paperwork until nobody could find her name. The
insurance didn't want scandal. They paid some off. They told
the rest of us to stay quiet and monitor critical access.
That's how it started. His breath wheezed a cough, cutting in.
I heard voices off tape. Hurry up before he heard on.
We used the sixth. That is a watch post. Management's
idea first. Then my tenant, ax Odd Logitt he noticed
a disturbance, changed the paperwork wereout. The coal divert with
a memo. If any tenant gets too close, nudge them back,
slide a warning under their door, move what they lose,
keep their mind spinning. We kept people safe from the whole.
Marisol left a wound, yes, but also barrier. Nobody wanted
to admit what we covered. The tapes gidded as another
background voice hissed, angry urgent to just shut it down.
You brought her here, now you take care of it.
La Moore again, voice Tram if you're here, if you
hear this, youre part of it now. Either you stay
and help us keep the wound closed till you disappear
it too. Click. End of tape, The message left, and
after taste of threatened guilt all at once. Lemou wasn't
mourning so much as come scriping me. But even as
resentment rose in me, I dread certainty poles beneath. If
I brought the story down, I might not be the
only one at risk. Shivering, I crept toward the conference
room's edge, out toward the supply closet in search of
more evidence of increasingly an exit. That was when my
nurse blew out. At last. A thick set figure burst
into the corridor mast tide, wielding a blinding flashlight. Without thinking,
I held my hands up, recorded dangling voy steadier than
I felt. Why do you care, the figure rasped, stepping forward.
Their voice was male, world worn and familiar. It was
the same you and me based that I delivered the
confession on tape. Nobody cares about this place, not of says,
not the city. It's not your story. My mind spun
searching for any play. I'm not here to hurt anyone.
I just want the truth about myers. All the surveillance,
the audits, the floor. People deserve to know what's been
done up here. The figure lamore of realized, fully let
the flashlight sink cleare shrinking from my face for a second,
only the shaking in his flashlights being betrayed any fear.
Truth that he spat more worn than angry shrews. Is
Management cut us loose, and we stayed, some by choice,
some by guilt. You break this story. May be you
free us. Maybe you just bring their lawyers instead of
their thucks. He tapped one gloved hand against his temple,
then gestured at the disrayed maps and memos. We had
a job contain what happened to Marisol and what happened
after when the upper floors went bad, when the documents
kept changing, no matter how many times we double checked,
I started moving things myself, tumpering, I guess, sliding the
wrong paperwork to the right box, listening to tenant voicemails
through dutwork, whispering reminders. Fear keeps people from snooping too hard.
We did it. I did it to keep anybody else
from falling through. Sometimes I'm not even sure if I'm
alone up here on the ugly nights, the light when cut,
even if her trip the breakers myself, something never left
when she did. He was feverish when tied around a
pain shopper than he could upline. The skin beneath his
mask was cracked, and even in the near dark, tragedy
clung to him, a one stolid man, reduced to midnight ghost.
His conspiracy enough powered. But Penance, why now I pushed,
inching her corder closer? Why slip the binder to me?
Why the memmos? What's changed? His mouth worked, Alex. She
said you were stubborn, wouldn't let it go if you
got close. Maybe stubborn enough to air it up for
good this time. But you're not safe. They know you've
seen too much. Footsteps centered further down the whole, faster, heavier,
more than one set lemore jerked upright, panic flaring there here.
It's not just me and the roader tonight, I have
tuered before he finished. Every light on the six four blinked,
then flickered violently, as if a neon sign were being
stabbed by a switchblade. Static exploded from the vestibule speaker.
Another figures strode into view, smaller must hug low. Nothing
readable in their eyes except urgency. She can't leave. Nobody
leaves now. I caught just the edge of a staff
badge swinging near the waist blue logo the building's stylized tower.
Instinct screamed, I twisted, bolting for the corridor's blind end
behind me. Lamore shodded, not at me, but the oncoming figure. Stop.
That wasn't the dealer. Something heavy crash. A filing cabinet
bowled across the hall. A flurry of curses, spitting into
the gloom. I hurtled past a buckling wall panel, mind
racing through every map I poured over in the last week.
The ventilation stacked the one behind the main corridor, last
marked in the blue prints as maintenance only had to
connect with the staalewell. I risked a glance over my shoulder.
Only chaos lamore and the master compass wrestling shadows flailing
under dying lights are wired off kilt, A rhythm of
alarm hines starting to build. I basted the panel with
my side, wincing at the dry crack of bonon metal,
and forced it open by main strength. The odor that
poured out was foul ozon plastic, heeded to the age
of combustion, the sench of decades old cables. I squeezed in,
hands and knee, scraping against insolation in the darkness, I
felt more than heard the lurch of feet behind me.
A blast of alarm bled suddenly, a discordon off time,
a cacophony of bells, too old and out of sink
to be intentional. Emergency lighting fail, plunging every surface into
shadow except where the periodic gray blinkers throbbed in and out.
I fought forward, knuckles splitting on rusted sheet steel, adrenaline
burning off restraint. Then up ahead a rectangle of grimy
glast the old stairwell doow at locked for the last year,
may be more, but it was moving, quaking gently, as
some one below panded up toward it from the fifth floor.
My phone chimed a text, A stairwell now run, no name,
just urgency. I pressed my weight to the door. It
gave curagingly, and I stumbled out into the stairwell, proper
fission swimming, breath ragged in my fruit. The siren behind
was deafening, a whipplish howl, warning nobody in particular. Before
I could orient myself, a dark formall and civilian clothes,
haggard adrenaline gloss seized my arm, wrenching me down the steps.
Go you need to go now. Their eyes, unmistakable feuce
would worry, were the same that had flickered over the
top of the binder weeks ago. Alex's, my silent correspondent,
the bargaining soul who until this moment left only another
side of warnings and whispered hints. Together we have fell
half dived to the sublanning, slimming through a walk fire
door that snapped into place behind us. With a wet
final climb, my hand was bleeding toes numb with col
Alex pressed me up against the cinder block, close enough
to smell adrenaline and fear. Listen. She spat had duc low.
I was in management years ago, after the audit, the
missing money, the girl. None of it was supposed to
be public, but something in the wiring changed, like the
floor itself rodded. Some of us stayed to keep eyes
on it, to contain the trouble, to protect the tenants.
When the city stopped carrying, it got worse. We started
seeing more, hearing more. Her gaze bored into me. I
send you the first warning. Wanted you to get enough
to shut this place down for good, but they know
you have too much. The other watches won't let you
just walk. We started moving as feet thundered somewhere buff
The alarms flickered, dropping in and out, a chaotic ballet
of warning strokes and darkness. I tried to ask more,
but Alex hustled me down the stairs, urgency hardening her features.
They'll keep the alarms running. Until you're found. If you
escape now, bring all you have, use your platform. Blue streets.
Cancer only survives in shadow. Sure every one on the
third landing another crash, much closer signal pursuit. I downed
my bleeding hand into my jacket, clutching the recorder and
the list of evidence bindr, my cocossette, photos, the legal locks,
pocket notebook. One more thing, Alex whispered, as we reached
the final heavy door to the ground floor. Don't look
back when you cross the threshold. The lights when they
flicker together, it means the floors waking up, not just
the people, but something else. We reached the locked door,
metal bent where so many others had tried to leave.
Alex elbowed it, throwing every last ounce of fury and
regret behind the movement, and with a rugged pop, it
swung free. I stumbled onto the linoleum of the lobby
by instinct, shrieking alarm, still sneaking from above, the don's
first blue light stained the glass outside the city's distant
pulse colt. Alex glued the last memoid at lock see
five thirty to the exterior of this stairwell, a final
salvo against secrecy. As we barreled through the revolving doors.
City police sirens split the air two blocks away, drawn
by the cobble to give alarms blurring from every arbor window.
We skidded to a hauld outside, breath mingling in a
chilled morning, both of us shaking with exhaustion and fear.
Irist a glance back against Alex's warning. Six stores above,
the conference rooms like flat, brighter than ever before. First
split pulls a shadow along limbed motions. Stood at the
center of the window, watching neither Lamo nor Alex. The
light stuttered, then abruptly black hat. The building stood blank
once more for the first time. My niece gave out.
Alex helped me up, guiding me to the curb, both
of us trembling. My mind is spinning mess of revelation, horror, exhaustion,
and underneath the strighteous fury. I pressed the back up
her corder to my lips, foresteaded for the first time
all night. Sixth floor evidence collected survive is free. Story ready.
If you're hearing this, it means we did what others wouldn't.
Blue Streak kept a secrets for two long It ends
now everything after blowed into the Russian glare of the
outside world. Police cause piling up on the curb, stund
officers pounding on the lock glass. Tenants in nightclothes sushered
out into the early morning flashbulbs taped the dazzle of
morning news, Alex disappearing into the crowd as quietly as
she'd arrive. I spent the next day and night at
my desk piecing the evidence into something coherent. My hand
shook as I edited voice over, alternating between confession and indictment.
The podcast, when it would out, made city wide headlines.
By noon, clips from news anchstrauded the airwaves. Unaleedged to
veillance were inexposed in mid under Blue Street, how cordoned
off after years of secret tenant monitoring, the police confirm
evidence of hidden ruins, legal audits, possible missing persons case reopened.
Lawys keueued for comment. Property management refused every request but
promised full co operation. Tenants from Blue Streets, some who'd
called my voicemail, some who'd never trusted Derlocks, spoke out
on camera. Tony's was quivered in the audio montage. I
always thought some one was watching, but I hoped it
was just my imagination may up blinking in daylight. Added,
none of us were refused safe in a place like that. Again,
a hush fell whenever the six floor came up. Cranes
and police tip ringed its windows, and no one officers included,
made any effort to check it alone. Within two weeks,
the upper floors were emptied, the officers shrouded and sit
him and dated black plastic. These holders got free relocations.
Investigators filed in and out. H R records were redacted,
but unde and I will admit a cover abs and surveillance.
Lemore and the other custodians were charged at a laundry
list of abuses, corporate moutheasants, criminal trespas. Most plied out
in low voices, head bowed, even management silence so long
felt the city's eye shifting inward. We had no knowledge
of these unlawful activities. That was the official press statement.
I then it was too late. A decade WinCE had
finally opened raw in public. I ended my special episode
with the sound that started at all, crackling static, now
an emblem, not a warning. Something was never caught on tape.
I admitted a trout scraping my throat. We captured everything physical,
a paper trail bleeding out for years beneath the lights.
But the feeling in the darkness, the magnitude of what
was left behind, It doesn't fit on an SD card.
I walked the block every night that week, so Snuckle
let the story rest. But each pass I watched Blue
Street Tower seed into silence, its upper windows gone black
as rotten teeth. Days turned to weeks, the podcasts moved on,
and city news drifted elsewhere. The Blue Street faded from
the public mind, its doors locked, six floor windows boarded.
Tenants scattered, most wanting only to forget, but some stores
refused to die with new cycles, no matter how carefully sealed.
Late one evening, my old cast line rang in a
known number, static chue in the background. Is this off
a sorry to bother it? Ar j T the new
guy in four Sea? Is this the right number for
the podcast? I answered, weary but polite, sorry, just his
voice dropped, cheapish. I heard some rumors about the building,
but I I don't believe in that stuff, really, But
for someone supposed to be up there on the sixth,
he hesitated breath and even, I mean it should be
empty now right. He clicked off, but a fall up
was into my in box A few minutes later, attached
a blurry cell phone photo shot from side walk level
across the street. There it was the six four's dortsed
window had been wiped clean, like pouring out, brighter than
I'd ever seen in flesh or film. It wasn't the
sickly flickering Bolbovo's night, no pattern, no warning morse, but
a steady, aching blaze, as if the building itself wanted
to be seen once more, And centered in that glass,
A tall shadow, indistinct, a moving and silent stood facing
the city, no mask, no features, but certain as anything
I'd ever known, watching outward, watching back at me. My
hands trembled as I closed the email. I set the
phone down and speaking some light I understood then never
really burn out, and whatever remained on the six flour
now human or not, waits for someone else to look
up and wonder. I left my phone where it was,
half expecting the image to change or flicker away if
I looked too long. The shadow in the window, after
everything we'd exposed and all the grind, finally scurb clear,
stood there with a posture that was almost waiting. I
pictured a dozen explanations from bowertines to a late night inspector,
but none of them matched what I saw. How the
light cut through the layer Dirk to cran that saw
how it tilted not toward the floor, but atwood head up,
as if acknowledging every gaze below. I called jay t
back before I could rethink it. He answered on the
second ring, sounding more alert than before. Did you see
it again? A long silence, then a nervous laugh. I
haven't looked again. To be honest, I closed, the blinds
is out. Is there really nobody up there? Not any more?
Not officially. Don't go up, jay Tea, even if the
elevators start working again. I let the warning tumble out,
as much for myself as for him. If you notice
any anything else, let me know, seriously than tell anyone else.
You see who's new? He mumbled something grateful, and heard
off the line, the city's night noise following him. The
photo remained a glowing wedge on my screen. I forwarded
it to Alex with the subject thought we sealed this
seconds stretched, then her reply, I moved out last week,
still locked from inside that tiny phrase, poor cold water
drew my stomach, or replacing victory with something rawn finished.
I closed the laptop and went to the window. The tower,
just visible between two new o glass decads, loomed as
it always had, subtle and dominating with its row of
dark upper windows, only now a faint glimmering from the
highest one. I watched long enough, from eyes to water.
The light never wavered. I slept in short, jarring bust
at night, brainnying at every sound, and shadowed the way
it had during the sleepless stakeouts weeks before. Some time
before dawn, I bolted awake, certain I heard not inside
my apartment, but somewhere out on the fire escape, a tap, faint, deliberate,
like the King of Morse, coat knuckles against glass. The
city hummed the same as ever, but blue strip tower
poles in the back of my mind, a wind refusing
to close. The next day, I let myself get pulled
back into the web I had told myself I was
finished with chasing ghosts and cleaning up after the city's
wounded past. But here I was measuring my own resolve
against one burned out corridor. I called the city's property
management line, holding for four layers of music until a
clip voice answered. I gave my credentials and asked about
the six flour re entry. We have no scheduled re
occupancy for that level, the employee reply, bored and prickling
under every word. The cordes change. Only the insurance auditors
and city inspectors have access, and that strictly for safety compliance.
Anyone else oppressed maintenance cleaning staff, night patrols none authorized?
Are you reporting unauthorized axis? I hung up before I
could lie. Instead, I drifted down to Blue Street on foot,
crossing through the gray mid morning light that left every
surface bleach and and remarkable police tapes still flapped at
the corners of the tower's entrance. I stood across the
street encountered windows. The sixth floors class had been squeegeed
cleaned by someone, an official or maybe one of those
officers who had left dusty boot prints on the inside
when I was lost up there. But now the leftmost
bag glowed faintly with a sodium haze despite no visible
lamp or fixture. I delivery van blocked the alley. Two
uniforms moved boxes up the back steps, faces drawn and
postures stiff, before I could second guess myself. I fled
one down with a nod any work being done up top?
I cast my voice casual soul lights on last night.
The younger of the two looked up, then away. Nawd
us second time this week, someone asked. He dipped his head,
glancing at the badge, swinging for my coat. Cops won't
go up without back up, not after you know. The
wind chopped our conversation apart. I thanked him and drifted
past the revolving doors, fighting the old verge to push through.
But there was a new combination lock in place, and
my cred as a reporter did not extend to getting
thrown out by the department tasked without diting a local scandal. Instead,
I circled to the convenience store next door with a clerk.
An old woman with a voice like ripped construction paper,
pulled a face when I brought up the sad six floor.
Some stores are better boarded up, she said, her hands
folding over the register. But if you ever find whose
leave it all those sticky notes in my alley, let
me know. Every Monday without veil, I pressed for more,
trying to learn if any of the custodians had been by.
She hesitated, then drug once, maybe bulk order of batteries
and two packs of instant noodles, but that's weeks ago.
He looked right through me, like he didn't see much
at all. I left the stare, uneasy. The idea that
someone slipped back in every Monday, moving unseen through the garage,
or maybe tunneling in by habit itched under my skin.
I spent the next forty minute shadow in the perimeter,
scanning windows and shadow lines. A few times I thought
I saw something shift at the edge of the six
four glassic cut and billowing a flick of dark against
the pale background, but whenever I blinked, the image snapped
back to plane empty rectangles. On impulse, I ducked into
the alley beside the delivery van and slipped through the
narrow gap behind the recycling bins. Previous dickheads had taught
me there was a rusted via door on the side
lorn a goat chain shot, but someone had clipped the
padlock since the last city inspect, maybe during the police
raid or maybe somebody else. I pressed my hand to
the handle. It was cold, but free. For a moment,
I weighed whether to push it. My phone buzzed at
chill note running down my back A new text, don't
that was it just a single word from an unlisted number.
I froze thumb hovering. There was only one person who
texted with arcade and salex of someone who'd gotten hold
of her contents. I looked up, hot pounding, I skimming
the roof tops and nearby windows. No one. I backed
away the door. I moved and re entered daylight, letting
the crowd swallow me up. The lesson was simple, a boundary, real,
even if invisible, marked by warnings, more persistent than any
lock or bolt. But the story was not done with me.
That afternoon, two more emails arrived. The first was the
scan of an old office memo when I hadn't seen before,
with a blue header and a clear date from a
year after the official shut down, all six four logs
to be destroyed before transfer of ownership. The signature at
the bottomless lemos, shaking, as though the hand that wrote
its strug to remain steady to the last line. The
second was from an anonymous ander, no text, just the
short video attachment. My hand trembled as I swept it open.
Shaky black and white footage played someone, maybe with a
fun maybe an old camcorder had filmed from inside the
building after dark. The frame jostled pan upward. There for
a few ten seconds was a six four corridor, familiar
from all my nights, creeping through it. Doors stood half
a jar. The far end was illuminated by the same
impossible collless light as the videos operate. A edge closer,
the lens caught the outline of a human figure, not Lemour,
not Alex, not any one I recognized, standing loose Linden,
facing outward and moving, the faceless presence in the window
arms at its side. Only when the operator flinched and
the video cut off that I registered the absence of sound,
no breathing, no frtfuls, only the low stata kiss saturating everything.
I closed the file. My hand refused to steady. If
the recording was recent, days old, or even I was,
it meant some one had by pass police cordons, security upgrades,
and whatever management now called enhanced tenant ptday. Either someone
never left the six four after all, or something compelled
the pattern to begin anew every time the building tried
to forget. It was nearly dust by the time I
allowed to wait to settle. I walked back to my
office of a hot cup. The city's flow and broken.
No matter how many secrets spilled out from my window,
Blue Street Tower was just visible and silt brooding geometry
in electric twilight, night settled, and again, as if by
unspoken agreement, a sliver of light poles in the sixth
floor corner stronger, not weaker, and once in the darkness,
a thin electronic whine throated through my desk speakers, a
brief and locatable feedback, a morse blip, vanishing almost as
soon as it began. I unplugged everything tack quiet. The
dread was sharper than before, not because I feared being watched,
but because I recognized the loop. This story, like so
many rooted and neglected places and broken lines of authority,
would at last every effort to confine or expose it.
Maybe Lemore had vanished and Alex had moved away, but
their rituals, the watch logs, lights and warnings persisted, because
the city itself demanded a witness. I pulled out the
notequid Rush, flipping through the interest one last time near
this center. In cramp pencil, I found a phrase I'd overlooked,
bracketed by the same careful hand. If you're reading this,
you are the next line. Don't let it fall duck.
Sitting in my own light window, I made a second
copy of the recording the original binder at the confessions.
Even the new video was sent by a stranger. I
set them aside, midway between archive and offering. Some lights
cannot be extinguished by breaking bulbs or closing files. The
city spun on around me, oblivious to the pulse hig
above middawn. I left my blinds open that night, the
six floor lamp of faint echo in the glass, marking
a spot in the city's nervous system where memory and
guilt never fully vanished. In the weeks that followed, more
newcomers arrived at Blue Street Tower, load by cheap rent,
urban legend, or stubborn disbelief. Some called the podcast line,
half expecting a prank. In return, others sent blurry bethels
snapshots of flickering windows at odd iris, always with the
same anxious note. I thought this place was supposed to
be empty now. I never told them to stay away
at right curiosity after all, is as contigious as any haunting.
Sooner or later I realized every building leaves in an opening,
a seamen sealed, a pass on misplaced, a light refusing
to surrender to bureaucracy or legend. The watchers changed the
faces behind the glass, the voice on a memo, the
falling of another silent log, but the pattern, like the
memory of Mausol limped on. If you stand outside Blue
Street Tower on a moonless night and look up past
the older lamps in the tangle shadows, sometimes you'll see it,
a steady, searching light in the topmost window, waiting, calling
for the next witness. The story endows because the city
does like bloom and stubbornly against the gathering dark, proof
that some mysteries are kept alive not by ghosts, but
by the wall to remember and the fear of what
forgetting leaves behind. So I keep recording always ready, just
in case one night the sixth floor Ali goes out
for good, or burns brighter than ever, leading someone else
to ask, what's truly waiting up there with the cities
as turned at last the right way? And that is
the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see
you in the next one,