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Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.

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Let's get into it. My memory flinches at the details

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of that night, as though their surfaces slick with all

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hard to grip. It was late, long after the last

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customer had left Glen with moul, when I first heard

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the echo that wasn't mine. My shift had begun, as

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they all do alone in acres of fluorescent quiet, most

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stores black as uninhabited houses, and the floors shining only

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where the janitor's mops had passed. But as I made

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my rounds, an uneasy static crackled along my skin, as

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if the air itself was carrying a subtle harm, just

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out of hearing. We're told not to wander beyond our

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assigned circuits, but I walked to the central rotten anyway,

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more from habit than defiance. My footsteps on the linoleum

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floor bounced off skylights, blinded by dust, centered under the

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fake pond trees, and old tenant directory squatted into bat

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at a crioller case. Its letter is LOOSEO missing. I

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swept my flashlight beam over the board, seen the usual

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vacant store numbers, faded listings a few decades old clippings,

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offer and shoe repair and pages. Maybe it was boredom

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or that ham something made me stop there. In a

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bottom corner, some one had scratched faint symbols through the

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yellow plastic under decades of grime. I made out three

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lines of tiny coordinates b threeminis one hundred seventeen b A,

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Beefreeminess one hundred twenty one A, and his own hundred

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forty three. None were on my roster or in any

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shift lock. Whoever wrote them had pressed so hard the

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metal of their key dug white ox into the surface,

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as if wool in the numbers. To alast the directory itself,

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I used the tip of my penlight to trace the code.

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It resisted, subtle at first, like reading brail underneath glass,

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my fingers tingled. I felt distantly as if some one

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was watching from the gaping shadow beyond the empty orange

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jewliss counter. I copied every character into my lob book,

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half a mind on my task, half acutely aware of

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that grating sense of exposure. At the same moment, a

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cleaning cock gave a brittle squeak nearby. I jerked, nearly

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dropping my pen. Adrian the oldest of the janitors regarded

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me with rumy sideway's eyes. He looked from me to

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the directory, then back, and there was never a third

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basement year, he murmured, hoisting his mob. I waited for more,

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a joke, some mundane explanation. The words hung in the hush,

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as if warning would flowed up by itself, But his

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mouth clunched shut, and instead of answering my questions, Avery

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nudged his cart away over the tiles. He froze for

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an instant when the lights flickered. The overheads often did this,

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tensing the darkness for no reason but to night. Each

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datter seemed loaded with purpose. With nothing but uncomfortable silence

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behind me, I headed for the grimy door mart to

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daff only in the security office, under the harsh light

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of an ancient desk lamp, I dropped my lobe beside

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a battered rain of keys. My hand brushed something unfamiliar

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and oxidized key. It bows stamp to be three. I

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rolled it between my fingers. The old stamp was nearly illegible,

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black with age. I started to ask if any of

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the day staff had left it behind, but the radio

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was nothing but this I added the key to my

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own ring, feeling rashly conspiratorial. On my way out, something

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about the directory still nagged at me. I turned one

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last time, shining my light into the dusty curlic box.

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The glass fract of my reflection, I saw myself and

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also flicker two tall, two blurred, standing half submerged where

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the empty map used to hand. I shut my eyes,

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willing the trick of the light to pass, then opened

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them to nothing but my own pale face. But my

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heart was trifomering. I left the directory without glancing again.

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The weight of the B three key suddenly inexplicably leaden

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in my pocket. Back in the staff lounge, I wrote

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the numbers out twice, as if repetition might change them. Instead,

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the uneasy feeling press saturating even the air. That was

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the first wrang night. I didn't know, standing just outside

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the diminished directory case, how completely it would unravel my life.

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I was just another casualty of Glenwood More slow death.

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For years before things sliped sideways, I'd worked those echoing

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holes as mid level security grunt, officially night asset pretiction,

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though that always sounded like a lie Glenwood when I

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was a kid. In the nineties fell fast and permanent

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satur Days brought crowds from four bus lines, foundlies clutching,

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greasy carousel tokens, teenagers orbiting the arcade, and the vast

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green fruit corps. Holiday banners would drop from the skylights

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each November, a some burst of colosting the endless patent

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tile back. Then the names above every store Gload Marshal's

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True Valley g and c Herris and s Gifts. You

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could always hear music clicking out of sound goodie piped

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under foot from hidden all speakers. That was before Online's

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Shopping e wrote the rules, before the anchor stores started

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baling one by one, before talk of redevelopment began stabbing

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at the conversations of every vendor. By twenty seventeen, most

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wings were boarded up, and every few months another store

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would fail. Only three out of the dozen food court

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chains still opened every day. The only people left were

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the hopeful, the nostalgic, and those with nowhere else to go.

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Were tirees cling to more walker habits, teenagers there in

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each other into empty service corridors, and a steady churin

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of staff desperately working the day. On night shifts, my

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usual routine clock in at ten p them sweeped the

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low lot for trespassers, then foot patrol every floor, I

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flicking from shadow to shadow. The main threats weren't organized thieves,

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not really, but kids with too much time and too

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little else, or the occasional homeless man curling up in

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the quietest stairwell. Every shift, at least once I aroused

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a sleeper behind a dumpster, or shewed off a couple

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laughing high schoolers from the Frey delevator lobby. There were

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maybe a dozen of us cycle through security proper and

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over the same faces two months in a row. Most

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guards had other jobs or were counting down weeks to retirement.

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That meant responsibility often fell on me as the unofficial

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lay shiftly cleaning up after half hearted patrols or filling

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empty reports when the others called in more management, especially

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carn Now Daisy proviser pretended everything was under control. She

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wore press suits and purse lips, despatched plan emails about

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adherence to protocol and affirmative customer experience. Any mention of vagrants, leaks,

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Graffitia got swept under facility regularities promptly handle. When stores

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complained about break ins or strange noises in the night,

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we were to lock the incident as an equipment malfunction

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and leave it at that. Each evening stores rolled their

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grills down. They set about my endless rounds flashlight in

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one hand, ancient Motorola radio clipped to my jacket. The

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camera system a patchwork of nineteen nineties c archi daisy

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chained to lawn or wall in the staff office always flickered.

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Half the fees permistatic or greenish as scan lines. Karen

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said there was no budget for upgrades. I had learned

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to recognize which monitors were black out if he stared

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too long on which angles never quite matched up. From

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night to night, my log book became part confession, part defense.

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I recorded oddities, lights that cycled on and off with

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no apparent cause, deep gusts of cold airly the lowest

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service axis, flickers of movement on the cam in the

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dead Northern Way. Most nights it was rats, sometimes it wasn't.

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There was always something uneasy in the lowest levels. The

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main foe hummed with the dying embers of retail, but

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the sub basements originally built a house, deliveries mechanicals and

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an endless backlog of unsold inventory felt older than they

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should Down there, doorway was never led, quite wary expected

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my phone would drop signal during patrols near the beat elevators,

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no matter my carrier. The air had a flavor of

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mildew and daths threaded with something metallic. Some nights I

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could have sworn the shadows arranged themselves just out of reach,

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pausing until my back was turned. Still, that sense of

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creeping dRIT never tangled itself into daylight hours. I kept

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the oddities in my log book, taped the pages together

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with reminders to double check doors, just to job. I

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told myself that for months. But the first night I

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saw those scratched in numbers and found the bee free key,

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I couldn't pretend any longer. Something wharped on under the

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routines of Glenwood Mall as surely as the dry rot

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thickening behind its walls. Patterns are only obvious in hindsight.

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A week after that first off night, I sat alone

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in the office, poured enough to re read old incident

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reports at the top of the weekly print. Up dojer crumpled.

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I saw again the names I'd skimmed too often. A

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silly am custodial failed to clock in item closes as

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a voluntary resignation. Dave R. Courier, last seen by the

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loading dock. Marvin Shaw, retired teacher, disappeared mid morning after

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coffee at Javatine. There had never been any real conclusions,

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no follow up, no answers, just paperwork that started, faltered,

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and was quietly buried in noncommittal language. Most of these

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files had nothing in common, at least in the surface,

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but threeberer as they were patten began to stitch itself together.

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Every missing person was last seen in the offires between

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eleven at night and dawn, always within a narrowed sector

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of the Grand floor, not far from a clue stof

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maintenance corridor behind what used to be the video arcade.

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I traced each report on a battered more plan I'd

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found at the bottom of a forgotten filing cabinet. Every

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location clustered around Stole one hundred forty three and the

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Frey delevator mark staff no customer access. Nobody at the precinct, ever,

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seemed eager to come back when I finally called the

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non emergency line to check. The woman who answered said unfounder,

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she likely left tamp case clothes. Only the Knight staff

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would talk about the rumors, whispers that an older cleaner

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claimed to have heard voices through the back walls, kids

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who vanished after being dared into the service tunnels, but

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everyone denied concern if he used an official tone. I

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spent hours at the directory, running my fingers over the

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scratch coats. I tried every key on my ring against

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the locked doors on both basement levels, but unfit. Third

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beatree key hung on its clip, cold and apparently useless.

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The hall is near one hundred forty three ran into

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blank walls, fence stuffed with insulation, and hollow, echoing nothing.

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Late during a routine check a Wednesday, I think I

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saw shaped slip into the shadows at the far end

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of the back corridor. It paused where the corridor's lights

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had all blown By the time I reached the spot,

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breeding harder than I wanted to admit, nothing but a

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little puddle of dry coffee ringed the tire. I backed

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out and watched the security monitors again and again at

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the exact time, stamp the feet turned to static, not

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so much as a pixel out of place outside the window,

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just blank grayscale snow standing there. The realization hit me.

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These weren't just failures of maintenance or board staff playing tricks.

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There were playing gaps in the coverage systematic windows were

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anything any one could vanish without trace. It became a compulsion,

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rifling through the old law books, stitching together a record

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all my own. I pulled every print out that mentioned

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missing items, lost shipments, and claimed mail names scratched off

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the employee roster or in darkived in red. Each incident

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overlapped the next by minutes, gaps that always orbited the

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blank spot behind Store one hundred forty three in the

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elevator controls. The mall I was starting to believe, had

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secrets beyond even what its management ignore. What haunted me

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most was the way memory bent and nose low stat

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exaggerated spaces. I could recall my footsteps, but not the

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cu of the door, the voices of old coworkers, but

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not their faces. That ane seat beyond the bounds of

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the ordinary, drawing me down into something coiled, hungry and

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waiting in the dark. But I needed proof, concrete clues,

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not just stores, so I started to dick. Given enough

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time in caffeine, even the dead corners of Glenwood More

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offered up fragments. It started with a pattern of missing footage.

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Reviewing ten years worth of graveyard shift locks, I realized

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that every substantial disappearance lined up with sudden, persistent gaps

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in the camera feats. There was always an acceptable excuse

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power surges, network errors, scheduled maintenance. I charted at the

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data and found that the same blind spots repeated themselves,

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sometimes moving from one end of the sub basement to another,

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as if the shadows migrated with intention. A little after

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midnight on a Thursday, I crept through the lower corridors,

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using the full ring of keys left over from free

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generations of security staff. Most doors opened into vacant rooms

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painted sint of block gray, emptied of everything but crates

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and dust. But one panel and a cleaning closet no

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longer on the directory. Popped open behind moldering shelves, I

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found a clumsy arrow gouged with a screw driver, pointing

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down into the concrete, a direction that made no sense,

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with no stairwell or rampant sight. Whoever marked it didn't

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want to be seen or followed. Determined, I started testing

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the BEE three key on every available lock. Nothing gave,

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nothing turned a knot on the heavy steel doors in

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the deepest corridors, not on the unsalvageable vending machines left

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to rot near the staffed bathrooms. Then one night I

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went deeper into the sub basement and stumbled onto an

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alcove heap with old appliants, creates and battered free court stools.

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At the far end was a battered gray door flush

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against a wall where the blueprints said nothing should be

236
00:11:33,159 --> 00:11:36,320
Their bees wreaky slid into the lock. When I turned it,

237
00:11:36,360 --> 00:11:39,639
the mechanism cats scraped, stuck halfway and refused to budge.

238
00:11:39,720 --> 00:11:42,279
Later headed back towards the surface, I heard the swish

239
00:11:42,279 --> 00:11:44,840
of a mob down the hall. Adrian, the Knight Janitor,

240
00:11:44,919 --> 00:11:47,240
waited by an oversized trasparrel, his face pinched up of

241
00:11:47,279 --> 00:11:50,200
his collar. You don't want to go under, he said, quietly,

242
00:11:50,360 --> 00:11:53,440
his axe and flattening out his words. The fluorescent hums

243
00:11:53,440 --> 00:11:57,080
swallowed the silence. After Sometimes things come back up alone.

244
00:11:57,120 --> 00:11:59,480
Place was full of gourse even before they laid the

245
00:11:59,480 --> 00:12:01,399
fourth floor. When they put in the food court. People

246
00:12:01,480 --> 00:12:03,960
argued too much concrete, too many hidden spots. They built

247
00:12:03,960 --> 00:12:07,279
things nobody needed, left them full. He trailed off as

248
00:12:07,320 --> 00:12:10,279
move into my pocket, where the keys jangled softly under

249
00:12:10,320 --> 00:12:12,639
the shifting dumb lights. His hands shook in the broom handle.

250
00:12:13,200 --> 00:12:15,720
He wouldn't say more, just walked away, a shoulders hunched.

251
00:12:16,399 --> 00:12:19,080
I watched him disappear down the corridor, his figure growing

252
00:12:19,120 --> 00:12:21,320
indistinct in the flickering light, and I wondered how much

253
00:12:21,320 --> 00:12:23,879
he really knew about the layout. Most staff pretended didn't exist.

254
00:12:24,600 --> 00:12:27,840
That night, I Albert moved into the staff launch. Watching ires.

255
00:12:27,840 --> 00:12:30,360
Of all tapes, it was a ghost showed always that

256
00:12:30,399 --> 00:12:32,799
blinked in and out of being, rooms that only appeared

257
00:12:32,799 --> 00:12:37,320
on alternate mondays or after midnight. Nothing made sense. Sometimes

258
00:12:37,360 --> 00:12:39,440
the camera would reveal a space full of untouched mail

259
00:12:39,480 --> 00:12:41,919
and boxes one ire, then show the same spot utterly

260
00:12:41,919 --> 00:12:45,159
empty the next. There were jump cuts no one could explain,

261
00:12:45,279 --> 00:12:48,279
holes that terminated in blank screens, then reappeared behind another

262
00:12:48,360 --> 00:12:51,600
view twenty feet away. Frustrated, I started rooting through this

263
00:12:51,799 --> 00:12:54,440
drawers in file boxes in the manager's lock back office.

264
00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:57,320
Karen must have missed one. A battered envelope sealed with

265
00:12:57,399 --> 00:13:00,720
yellow fraying tape. The tab breathed thir two, do not remove.

266
00:13:01,399 --> 00:13:04,519
Inside I found three stapled memos dated from nineteen eighty

267
00:13:04,559 --> 00:13:07,960
seven to nineteen ninety eight, all stamp redacted. The letters

268
00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:10,759
were directives to spend storage transfers to third tier slash

269
00:13:10,799 --> 00:13:14,480
sub basement pending site reviewer and final inspection. The language

270
00:13:14,519 --> 00:13:17,200
was clinical but urgent, stressing the importance of complete lockdown

271
00:13:17,240 --> 00:13:20,159
of B three and direct access corridors until further notice.

272
00:13:20,519 --> 00:13:22,720
There was no BEE three in any official documentation, no

273
00:13:22,840 --> 00:13:25,960
mention in curative blueprints. As if to punctuate the mood,

274
00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:28,399
a chime from my phone startled me in anonymous text.

275
00:13:29,120 --> 00:13:31,320
It was a local number not saved in my contacts.

276
00:13:31,399 --> 00:13:33,480
Don't mess with the basement. Not all doors opened the

277
00:13:33,480 --> 00:13:36,639
same way. Twice. I called back twice, but each time

278
00:13:36,639 --> 00:13:39,519
the line rang once and dropped. The next evening, I

279
00:13:39,519 --> 00:13:41,960
found a folded note tapped under the security office store.

280
00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:44,240
A location scrolled the side of time along with I

281
00:13:44,320 --> 00:13:45,919
was stuck there a hole shift. It won't let you

282
00:13:45,919 --> 00:13:50,200
out by the same route I weeded. No one came. Later,

283
00:13:50,320 --> 00:13:52,480
a worker from a long shuttered department store tracked me

284
00:13:52,559 --> 00:13:54,320
down by the back loading dock. A gaunt man with

285
00:13:54,360 --> 00:13:56,919
shaking hands, hair shaved close to a scalp, warry eyes

286
00:13:56,960 --> 00:13:59,879
flicking side to side, got trapped down there sometime into

287
00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:02,799
two thousand and nine. Everything echoed wrong. Howd myself talking?

288
00:14:03,039 --> 00:14:07,120
But he trailed off, finally muttering. Sometimes you'd hear people

289
00:14:07,159 --> 00:14:09,039
up on the floors above, and then you duck under

290
00:14:09,080 --> 00:14:10,879
a stairwell and walk straight for an ire in. The

291
00:14:10,919 --> 00:14:13,960
voices would follow you. He wouldn't say his name, just

292
00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:16,399
pressed a ragged floorpan into my hand and vanished into

293
00:14:16,399 --> 00:14:20,360
the pre dawned fog. This was Brandon paranoia anymore. B

294
00:14:20,480 --> 00:14:23,159
three was real, more real than anyone at management would admit.

295
00:14:23,840 --> 00:14:26,240
One stormy night, Glen was power grid gave up during

296
00:14:26,240 --> 00:14:29,519
a thunderclap, plunging them all into utter darkness. The only

297
00:14:29,519 --> 00:14:31,600
glow came from the yellow hazard lamp above the main

298
00:14:31,639 --> 00:14:34,679
freight elevator. That was when I decided it was time

299
00:14:34,720 --> 00:14:36,799
to use the B three key wherever it might fit.

300
00:14:37,440 --> 00:14:39,840
With the building CCTV blacked out and the power surge

301
00:14:39,840 --> 00:14:42,919
making radios unreliable, I returned to the service elevator off

302
00:14:42,919 --> 00:14:46,200
the main staff corridor. I'd never noticed it sparted control

303
00:14:46,200 --> 00:14:48,639
panel had a blank steel button with no lettering, just

304
00:14:48,679 --> 00:14:51,360
below the normallessings for G B and s U B two.

305
00:14:51,919 --> 00:14:53,759
I hovered my flask light over it. A smear of

306
00:14:53,799 --> 00:14:56,320
crime not one one out finger put to suggest juice,

307
00:14:56,919 --> 00:14:59,120
heart racing. I slipped the B three key into the

308
00:14:59,120 --> 00:15:02,360
slot below the carcin trolls. For one terrifying second, I

309
00:15:02,399 --> 00:15:05,840
thought it would jam uselessly, but it turned smoothly. The

310
00:15:05,879 --> 00:15:08,600
panels dead display shriment to life, casting weak go into

311
00:15:08,639 --> 00:15:12,120
light over the keys. A new option blinked BE three restricted.

312
00:15:12,559 --> 00:15:15,759
The elevator doors closed, with the stomach dropping clan. Every

313
00:15:15,759 --> 00:15:17,840
instinct screamed to Aboart to lock this as a mistake

314
00:15:17,879 --> 00:15:20,600
and come back later with back. But something in each,

315
00:15:20,679 --> 00:15:23,600
some recklessness or need for certainty, press the B three button.

316
00:15:24,120 --> 00:15:27,480
The car grown shuddered, then began to descend slower the normal,

317
00:15:27,559 --> 00:15:30,360
past the listed levels, and then further. I counted the

318
00:15:30,399 --> 00:15:33,519
floors as they fell, mouth dry. My phone signal died

319
00:15:33,559 --> 00:15:36,559
before we stopped. The doors wheezed open onto a gray,

320
00:15:36,720 --> 00:15:39,639
narrow landing. The air was two degrees colder enough to

321
00:15:39,679 --> 00:15:43,159
raise goose. Fresh concrete tunnels branched off at angles that

322
00:15:43,200 --> 00:15:46,480
defied the square grid of the mole above. Old moth

323
00:15:46,519 --> 00:15:49,559
eeden display stood in piles fake Christmas trees, sun bleached

324
00:15:49,559 --> 00:15:53,200
sent cutouts, when ship palets blurring with mold cardboard boxes

325
00:15:53,200 --> 00:15:55,399
shaped into make sure walling boxed off a large section

326
00:15:55,480 --> 00:15:57,720
of corridor. The plywood was nailed with the first security

327
00:15:57,799 --> 00:16:00,559
tape marked with stricted diceealed until further notice, as if

328
00:16:00,559 --> 00:16:03,879
this place had once been hurriedly abandoned and then hastily barricaded.

329
00:16:04,480 --> 00:16:07,120
With every step I heard the architecture itself complain, pips

330
00:16:07,200 --> 00:16:10,200
knocking overhead, ere Duck's burpncled drafts, the distant drip of

331
00:16:10,240 --> 00:16:13,679
unseen leaks. Half wall along the main tunnel, my flashlight

332
00:16:13,759 --> 00:16:15,960
danced over a heap of old male letters, use out

333
00:16:15,960 --> 00:16:18,120
of date, and the tatoes of staff uniforms that had

334
00:16:18,159 --> 00:16:20,919
never been picked up from housekeeping. In a few places,

335
00:16:20,960 --> 00:16:22,799
the dust was scuffed, as though someone had dragged a

336
00:16:22,799 --> 00:16:25,559
heavy bag on the eyes before there were hand prince

337
00:16:25,639 --> 00:16:28,919
child's eyes and adult impressed in crime. The tunnels. Twisted

338
00:16:29,559 --> 00:16:32,200
spray painted arrows and scratch rouns marred the walls, some

339
00:16:32,320 --> 00:16:35,559
so old their meaning was lost, others freshly gouged. More

340
00:16:35,600 --> 00:16:37,399
than once. I heard what I thought were voices, a

341
00:16:37,440 --> 00:16:40,080
low thrum overlapping syllables that might have been night wage

342
00:16:40,159 --> 00:16:43,320
or just machinery deeper in the walls. Every moment stretched out,

343
00:16:43,360 --> 00:16:46,600
iterated with fear and curiosity. I followed a crude map

344
00:16:46,679 --> 00:16:48,279
left in a break of box that matched the cost

345
00:16:48,320 --> 00:16:52,279
I transcribed to the directory. Each number corresponded to a door, closet,

346
00:16:52,360 --> 00:16:55,679
or darkened alc of leading further into the maze. Then

347
00:16:55,879 --> 00:16:58,519
suddenly the emergency light snapped to harsh life, painting the

348
00:16:58,519 --> 00:17:02,000
tunnels and stuttering red and white bands. My shadow leapt

349
00:17:02,039 --> 00:17:04,759
on every side. In the flickering light, I made out

350
00:17:04,759 --> 00:17:06,680
the battered signage bolt into what must once have been

351
00:17:06,680 --> 00:17:09,759
a fire door taar beef re access restricted. I stared

352
00:17:09,759 --> 00:17:13,960
at Paul's thundering confirmation. The cords on the tenant directories,

353
00:17:14,039 --> 00:17:16,400
ratched deep into a crylic overlooked for years, were not

354
00:17:16,480 --> 00:17:19,799
random paranoia. There were signposts, keys to a labyrinth that

355
00:17:19,839 --> 00:17:22,680
someone very much wanted to be forgotten. I scribbled the

356
00:17:22,680 --> 00:17:25,079
specifics in my notebook even as my camera battery began

357
00:17:25,119 --> 00:17:28,119
its telthale blank of syanide already linger too long. The

358
00:17:28,160 --> 00:17:31,200
air was dense with the scent of age and rot. Haartig.

359
00:17:31,279 --> 00:17:33,680
Suddenly sure I'd pushed my lock, I retraced my steps

360
00:17:33,680 --> 00:17:36,599
as far as I could. The rode up would seemed longer, harder,

361
00:17:36,599 --> 00:17:39,480
each turn, less certain. I half ran the last stretch,

362
00:17:39,480 --> 00:17:42,119
scuffing my knees as I clambered over broken storage rocks

363
00:17:42,119 --> 00:17:45,039
and up battered concrete steps. At the top, the world

364
00:17:45,079 --> 00:17:47,799
surge back in normal, ugly staff corridor, just as I'd

365
00:17:47,799 --> 00:17:50,480
always known it. My cell phone chirped with the return

366
00:17:50,519 --> 00:17:53,559
of a signal. Seated panting and shivering in the fluorescent

367
00:17:53,599 --> 00:17:55,680
lit lunge, I found my hand shaking so badly and

368
00:17:55,720 --> 00:17:58,319
nearly dropped my look book. I slammed the door and

369
00:17:58,359 --> 00:18:01,079
recorded an audio entry, just and can my memory? What

370
00:18:01,160 --> 00:18:03,839
the hell have they left done here? My words echoed

371
00:18:03,839 --> 00:18:05,799
in the playback, toney and reel, as if some one

372
00:18:05,839 --> 00:18:08,400
else spoke them A second after me. I sat for

373
00:18:08,440 --> 00:18:10,640
a long time. There'd be three key clutched in my palm,

374
00:18:10,720 --> 00:18:12,720
feeling a kind of cold on the old feudal livers.

375
00:18:13,400 --> 00:18:15,440
But my mind was clear. Whatever was at the heart

376
00:18:15,480 --> 00:18:18,279
of Tyr B three wasn't finished. It was a cavity,

377
00:18:18,319 --> 00:18:19,880
a wound, tunneled into the body of the mole that

378
00:18:19,960 --> 00:18:22,880
refused to close. I resolved to return with backup and

379
00:18:22,960 --> 00:18:25,799
everything I could carry. I resolved to return with back

380
00:18:25,880 --> 00:18:28,880
up and everything I could carry. But resolve and practice

381
00:18:28,920 --> 00:18:33,200
isn't so simple. The following morning, sleep felt unreachable, even

382
00:18:33,240 --> 00:18:36,000
when exhaustion collapsed my body. The images of the sub basement,

383
00:18:36,039 --> 00:18:39,039
crumped tunnels, walled off chambers, the shifting stutter of red

384
00:18:39,039 --> 00:18:42,160
emergency lights clung to the inside of my skull. Every

385
00:18:42,160 --> 00:18:44,039
time I thought started to drift, they echo of my

386
00:18:44,079 --> 00:18:45,960
own voice in that cold, echoing dock. Whod wrote me

387
00:18:46,079 --> 00:18:48,480
up short, a stuttering, over lapping lag, like an old

388
00:18:48,480 --> 00:18:51,920
tape reel just before some thing splices. My first instinct

389
00:18:51,960 --> 00:18:54,119
was to go to management and Urgebonne, less of trust

390
00:18:54,119 --> 00:18:55,880
and more of desperate hope that some one else might

391
00:18:55,920 --> 00:18:58,920
take this on, relieve the sudden total responsibility from my

392
00:18:58,960 --> 00:19:02,240
aching shoulders. I thought of Karen had painted unclm and

393
00:19:02,519 --> 00:19:04,559
in my mind saw her face harden just past the

394
00:19:04,559 --> 00:19:07,200
point of polite curiosity. She would tell me to submit

395
00:19:07,200 --> 00:19:09,799
a formal maintenance request or refer to protocol ha mantra

396
00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:12,480
for anything out of her comfort. The truth was in

397
00:19:12,480 --> 00:19:15,319
Glenwood's twilight. Nobody wanted to know anything they might one

398
00:19:15,359 --> 00:19:18,319
day be called to answer for. Instead, I rode out

399
00:19:18,319 --> 00:19:22,200
everything details, time stamps, loose ends in my battered security lock,

400
00:19:22,319 --> 00:19:24,200
then opened the bat had laptop in the musty staff

401
00:19:24,279 --> 00:19:26,359
lounge and started looking for anyone with a reason to

402
00:19:26,359 --> 00:19:29,039
know the moll's real bones. My first move was the

403
00:19:29,079 --> 00:19:32,400
County Planning Office their public access I was started at

404
00:19:32,440 --> 00:19:35,359
a I posed as a property management clerk. There were

405
00:19:35,480 --> 00:19:37,880
enough of this cycling through our building not to raise suspicion,

406
00:19:37,880 --> 00:19:41,240
and asked for archaved renovation blueprints and structural adjustment diagramed

407
00:19:41,240 --> 00:19:44,680
for Glenard's West and south elevations. The clerk was obliging.

408
00:19:44,720 --> 00:19:47,920
After some small talk, she brought out three rolls, one

409
00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:51,519
labeled nineteen eighty four, another nineteen eighty six food court expansion,

410
00:19:51,599 --> 00:19:54,720
the last nineteen eighty eight service mechanicals over flow utility.

411
00:19:55,480 --> 00:19:57,599
I spread them out beneath the lazy ceiling fan of

412
00:19:57,599 --> 00:20:00,799
the break room and studded the incu bloo lines, main levels,

413
00:20:00,880 --> 00:20:04,559
upper service, the posted loading docks all present. The sub

414
00:20:04,599 --> 00:20:06,839
basement looked more like a set of fragile paddles. Founding

415
00:20:06,880 --> 00:20:09,799
out from the elevator corps. There faint beneath the layers

416
00:20:09,799 --> 00:20:12,480
of hand annotated notes, I saw two shaded cavities marked

417
00:20:12,480 --> 00:20:14,960
be too storage and only visible by holding the sheet

418
00:20:15,000 --> 00:20:17,640
to the window. A squiggle faint partial labeled overflow slush

419
00:20:17,720 --> 00:20:22,119
utility not for occupancy, no access error, no stairs or elevator,

420
00:20:22,279 --> 00:20:25,000
nothing to suggest it was ever meant for people. Other

421
00:20:25,039 --> 00:20:28,279
blueprints from the next year made things even stranger. East

422
00:20:28,319 --> 00:20:30,839
Mezzanine edition some one had written in red pencil over

423
00:20:30,880 --> 00:20:34,440
one loop corridor permanently silk sea variant set. I followed

424
00:20:34,440 --> 00:20:37,359
the scrawls to a blank, shaded box. There was no

425
00:20:37,440 --> 00:20:40,759
clear delineation. In fact, the further I searched, the more

426
00:20:40,759 --> 00:20:43,400
I found paper trails tending and retreating from something the

427
00:20:43,440 --> 00:20:46,839
planners had hidden from their own paperwork. I snapped pictures

428
00:20:46,880 --> 00:20:49,039
with my phone, feeling the hollow begin to full again

429
00:20:49,079 --> 00:20:52,240
in my chest. My hands were deader, now, less from

430
00:20:52,279 --> 00:20:55,519
courage than from adrenaline acidifying my blood. When I got home,

431
00:20:55,519 --> 00:20:58,559
a daylight interruption, with sunlight pulling beneath the faded plate cuttens.

432
00:20:58,559 --> 00:21:01,720
My phone buzzed again another text local air code and

433
00:21:01,799 --> 00:21:05,920
saved just a single word careful. Ten minutes later, my

434
00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:08,279
doorbell rang, but when I looked out the cloudy glass,

435
00:21:08,440 --> 00:21:11,599
nobody whitted on the other side through sleep deprived eyes.

436
00:21:11,720 --> 00:21:14,119
Even my own street felt alien now, every passing truck

437
00:21:14,160 --> 00:21:17,880
loaded with it. Still I pressed on. Next, I reached

438
00:21:17,880 --> 00:21:20,079
out to Ben, a former co worker who'd gutted Atys

439
00:21:20,119 --> 00:21:23,279
maintaining the mole's ancient electrical system before finally retiring eight

440
00:21:23,319 --> 00:21:26,000
months prior. I found his number at the bottom of

441
00:21:26,039 --> 00:21:28,559
an old group text and coal rehearsing a story about

442
00:21:28,559 --> 00:21:31,960
malfunctioning lights and dead panels and beatya. Then pick up

443
00:21:31,960 --> 00:21:34,720
on the fourth ring, voice raspy. I'm just trying to

444
00:21:34,720 --> 00:21:37,759
figure out how these systems work. I lied, keeping it breezy,

445
00:21:37,759 --> 00:21:41,160
but letting attention hangs bait, then grunt it. Then you're

446
00:21:41,200 --> 00:21:43,839
talking about the lower levels. Don't mess with those circuits, friend,

447
00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:46,200
Most of them are hodgebuds jobs. I patched half those

448
00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:49,519
lines together from discount lots. What about access? Did they

449
00:21:49,519 --> 00:21:53,200
ever let maintenance crew inside there? Out thirtier? Ben's laugh

450
00:21:53,279 --> 00:21:56,279
was short, disbelieving. Then he was quite long enough that

451
00:21:56,319 --> 00:21:59,240
I thought he'd hung up. They built too fast back

452
00:21:59,279 --> 00:22:01,799
in eighty five eighty seven, he said. Finally there was

453
00:22:01,839 --> 00:22:04,559
a rush injury and the concrete pour. Some lawsuits about

454
00:22:04,599 --> 00:22:06,720
union labor never paid out. Then they sealed a couple

455
00:22:06,720 --> 00:22:09,079
of areas. Nobody needed to put up new firebreaks while

456
00:22:09,160 --> 00:22:11,759
the doors the plans kept changing. But listen, if you

457
00:22:11,839 --> 00:22:14,480
found something, don't go alone. Some of those old dejaffs.

458
00:22:14,519 --> 00:22:16,279
You go in and never come out the way you think.

459
00:22:16,720 --> 00:22:20,039
I thanks him, scribbling notes. He hung up without goodbye.

460
00:22:20,680 --> 00:22:23,440
I now fatigue was a second skin. But the more

461
00:22:23,440 --> 00:22:26,000
details I gathered, the clearer it became. They'd be through

462
00:22:26,039 --> 00:22:29,680
sub basement had been deliberately erased if it existed outside

463
00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:32,240
rumor at all. It was as unfinished space. A cavity

464
00:22:32,279 --> 00:22:34,839
filled him with anonymous concrete, forgotten of a decade and

465
00:22:34,880 --> 00:22:37,599
marked off in bare clauses. But it was also a

466
00:22:37,680 --> 00:22:40,079
note to every missing person, every off the record incident,

467
00:22:40,119 --> 00:22:42,279
every patchy's story among staff, all drew me back to

468
00:22:42,319 --> 00:22:45,200
the same forbidden spot. The last. Armed with what passed

469
00:22:45,200 --> 00:22:47,839
for leads, I spent that even canvassing the remaining staff

470
00:22:47,839 --> 00:22:50,519
on site. The day's shift was mostly new high as

471
00:22:50,519 --> 00:22:53,640
teenagers and retirees, none of whom had ever ventured beyond

472
00:22:53,680 --> 00:22:56,960
their designated zones. I asked Lucas, one of the part

473
00:22:56,960 --> 00:22:59,160
timers on my own schedule, if he'd ever notice the

474
00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:01,880
off I was around the old service elevator. He went,

475
00:23:02,039 --> 00:23:04,720
glancing over his shoulder, as if reluctant even to discuss it.

476
00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:08,640
Sometimes the lights go dead in there, he admitted, like

477
00:23:08,720 --> 00:23:11,240
Holpont for a few seconds. You hear this weird air

478
00:23:11,319 --> 00:23:14,839
rushing like duck settling. Once I felt, He hesitated, then

479
00:23:14,920 --> 00:23:19,160
laughed nervously. Never mind, guess it's just bad wiring. Did

480
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:22,079
you ever see anybody's staff after iurs down there couldn't

481
00:23:22,119 --> 00:23:26,559
place who. Lucas shook his head. Man, I leave as

482
00:23:26,599 --> 00:23:28,359
soon as my rounds are done. If you want to

483
00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:31,640
scare yourself, that's your business. He started to walk away,

484
00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:34,799
then paused, lowering his voice. Just don't play around in

485
00:23:34,839 --> 00:23:37,720
the gaps. That place is falling apart. The next few

486
00:23:37,759 --> 00:23:40,440
days were a churn of anxious waiting and planning. I

487
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:43,519
didn't sleep. I researched the counter records day to bese

488
00:23:43,559 --> 00:23:45,839
coughed up a strain of lawsuits from nineteen eighty seven

489
00:23:45,920 --> 00:23:49,039
injury and documented elevator's shat a disturbed foundation were halted

490
00:23:49,119 --> 00:23:53,160
for side review sediment closed, all record sealed, persistent. I

491
00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:55,279
tracked down a PO box number one of the parties

492
00:23:55,279 --> 00:23:58,079
in those settlements, still at a local address. Out of

493
00:23:58,119 --> 00:24:01,200
other options, I wrote a letter asking simply, I believe

494
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:03,720
something was left in Glumermore lower level Tier B three.

495
00:24:03,759 --> 00:24:05,720
Please call if you can help, or at least confirm.

496
00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:08,200
I sent the letter and spent another night watching the

497
00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:11,200
surviving cc TV feeds in a darkened office, surrounded by

498
00:24:11,200 --> 00:24:13,119
static and the hum of machine far too old for

499
00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:16,440
their own noise. I played back footage of the service elevator,

500
00:24:16,480 --> 00:24:19,359
whare time stamped three weeks elier, the camera feedglitch showing

501
00:24:19,359 --> 00:24:22,240
for three frames of black metal panel. Not a malfunction,

502
00:24:22,599 --> 00:24:26,880
not quite, just absence. Two minutes later the video jumped

503
00:24:26,880 --> 00:24:30,160
and the clock crew wound by seventeen seconds. Unable to

504
00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:32,880
shake the sense of pursuit, I loaded up the Megamolachav

505
00:24:32,880 --> 00:24:36,599
for news clippings. There were older yellowine articles about renovation

506
00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:40,599
hazos and speculation on lost revenue. No mention of missing people,

507
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:44,000
no oakrey worth noting the place that always thrived on denial,

508
00:24:44,039 --> 00:24:47,200
building its own little ecosystem around forgetting. It was just

509
00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:49,880
past midnight four nights after my B three descent. When

510
00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:52,519
I got call a number, I didn't recognize land line,

511
00:24:52,599 --> 00:24:55,599
judging from the silence bookending the first few breaths he

512
00:24:55,680 --> 00:24:59,359
asked about B three. The voice started older mail ware

513
00:25:00,079 --> 00:25:01,720
I was made in its form, and from eighty six

514
00:25:01,799 --> 00:25:04,000
until ninety six, that whole section of them all they

515
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:06,400
cut corners on blueprints seen non low bring but they

516
00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:09,519
just builtline, left whole stretches boxed up. No real plan

517
00:25:09,559 --> 00:25:11,960
except to move on. Boss said, after the accidents, seal

518
00:25:12,039 --> 00:25:14,599
it off, let it rot. Insurance ll cover it. After

519
00:25:14,640 --> 00:25:16,720
a while, you get used to thinking there's less standard

520
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:18,960
than there is. He drew in a hiss of breath.

521
00:25:19,559 --> 00:25:21,680
Nobody was supposed to use it. That's all I'm going

522
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:24,880
to say. Don't call back. He disconnected as cleanly as

523
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:28,480
he begun. I leaned back, processing that mid three different

524
00:25:28,519 --> 00:25:31,480
sources directly os I was confirming, were at least refusing

525
00:25:31,519 --> 00:25:33,720
to deny that B three was both real and forbidden,

526
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:36,279
not just a logistical mess, but one meant to go

527
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:40,319
n see and unremembered. The missing staff, guests, drifters, and

528
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:42,400
the handful of night shift regulars were all the more

529
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:45,519
present in their absence. On my next shift, I tried

530
00:25:45,559 --> 00:25:47,440
to lose myself in routine, a full sweep of every

531
00:25:47,440 --> 00:25:49,839
service corridor, a double check on every door and hatch

532
00:25:49,839 --> 00:25:52,480
I could find. I watched the staff clock out the

533
00:25:52,559 --> 00:25:54,839
last food, caught kids truoking on his windbreak at exchanging

534
00:25:54,880 --> 00:25:56,799
a knowing glance with the fry cook, who would stay

535
00:25:56,839 --> 00:25:58,920
behind to close and was careful not to meet my eyes.

536
00:25:59,559 --> 00:26:02,480
One by one, each surviving merchant lowered their grill, turned

537
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:04,799
their lock, and hurried away, some without even switching off

538
00:26:04,799 --> 00:26:07,559
their lights. The hush that followed was so deep my

539
00:26:07,559 --> 00:26:09,759
own shoe sound of gunshot loud echoing up from the

540
00:26:09,759 --> 00:26:14,200
scuff dimple tile. Before dawn, I gathered supplies, two heavy flashlights,

541
00:26:14,359 --> 00:26:16,799
extra batteries, a fresh mass the dust was thick enough

542
00:26:16,799 --> 00:26:19,039
for a taste, back up radio, and my battered phone

543
00:26:19,039 --> 00:26:21,960
with a half charged power bank. I debated texting for

544
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:24,759
backup Lucas or even Adrian the Janitor, but stubborn logic

545
00:26:24,799 --> 00:26:27,039
settled in. No one would believe what I'd found in

546
00:26:27,079 --> 00:26:29,240
less I could show it, record it, document first, and

547
00:26:29,920 --> 00:26:32,039
thinking through possible routes in and out, I sketched the

548
00:26:32,039 --> 00:26:34,440
mechanic tear by field rough lines based on the scattered

549
00:26:34,440 --> 00:26:37,880
blueprints taped together staff maps and that gaundex workers cryptic

550
00:26:37,880 --> 00:26:41,240
floor plan. Everywhere the lines blurred or doubled back on themselves,

551
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:43,599
I marked them as possible A GAP's locations, where be

552
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:46,240
three could connect to the world above or recede into nothing.

553
00:26:46,799 --> 00:26:48,920
A zero iro approached, I sat in the break room,

554
00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:51,920
glancing at the B three key. My hands at start shaking,

555
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:54,720
as though fear was just another load to carry somewhere

556
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:57,160
beneath my tire bravado. It felt less like a promise

557
00:26:57,160 --> 00:26:59,039
and more like a truth about myself, whether I meant

558
00:26:59,079 --> 00:27:01,759
to find answers just to vanish like so many before.

559
00:27:02,359 --> 00:27:04,400
I clipped a small camera to the front of my jacket,

560
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:07,079
clamped my radio at an easy reach, tested every pocket

561
00:27:07,079 --> 00:27:10,240
for spare batteries. Then I locked the staff office behind me,

562
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:12,559
and as quietly as possible, made my way to the

563
00:27:12,559 --> 00:27:15,599
service elevator. The corridor was so familiar by now that

564
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:18,000
even its odd proportions. The way the ceiling seemed lower

565
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:20,279
while the four dipped in becetibly near the last vending

566
00:27:20,319 --> 00:27:23,920
machine felt almost comforting. If architecture could play memories games.

567
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:27,599
Clemwood subistments were a masterclass. I pressed it down button.

568
00:27:28,079 --> 00:27:30,839
The elevator rumbled to life, humming away only thirty year

569
00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:33,839
old machines will I fitted to be three key, waiting

570
00:27:33,839 --> 00:27:37,160
for the circuit to complete. The click was unnaturally loud.

571
00:27:37,920 --> 00:27:40,559
Record stop now, I whispered, thum flicking the camera on.

572
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:43,799
The sound was small but steady. The device's green led

573
00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:46,880
a kind of lifeline in itself. The ride down took longer,

574
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:51,920
this time five seconds. Certain the familiar things were ground,

575
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:54,599
then b then subbed Torren, then at last the mysterious

576
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:57,200
and marked dear. There was a stretching, as if the

577
00:27:57,200 --> 00:27:59,359
car itself was resisting the journey, and I felt the

578
00:27:59,359 --> 00:28:02,200
pressure of the air bill before finally the door slid open.

579
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:05,519
I stepped into a corridor that swallowed light. The cold

580
00:28:05,559 --> 00:28:07,559
was different to true vault chill, not just left of

581
00:28:07,640 --> 00:28:10,400
ver h vou remnants my breath chase itself in the

582
00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:13,720
spa stagnant air. Moving forward, I skirted the pile of

583
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:16,319
ancient display racks, the same old stained fake ferns and

584
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:20,000
holiday in insults before, but now mapped and methodical. I

585
00:28:20,039 --> 00:28:22,759
began verifying each door, each cause it against my directory

586
00:28:22,799 --> 00:28:25,640
codes B three minutes one hundred seventeen B B three

587
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:28,119
minutes one hundred twenty one A is one hundred forty

588
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:32,200
three each match to battered largely featureless metal door camouflaged

589
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:34,680
by grime and dust. The keys fit some of the

590
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:37,880
fight other slick as if recently used behind each the

591
00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:40,079
same end in its storage. Closets gun to rot chip

592
00:28:40,079 --> 00:28:42,839
holders for signage. Nobody remembered piles of an open mail.

593
00:28:43,519 --> 00:28:46,240
Some doors refused to budge, seemingly fused to their frames

594
00:28:46,279 --> 00:28:49,599
by time or intention. I filmed everything narrating in short

595
00:28:49,599 --> 00:28:53,039
clip bursts. Door one hundred seventeen B corresponds with first

596
00:28:53,079 --> 00:28:55,920
cord in the interior empty except for stack crates. No label.

597
00:28:55,960 --> 00:28:58,920
Film shows time stamp matching missing custodian Ashley m Von

598
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:02,839
last staff map. Further along another closet one hundred twenty

599
00:29:02,839 --> 00:29:04,960
one aboor, the spray painted remnants of an old MOL

600
00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:07,720
logo over ittum was tatted, masking tape labeled to no entry.

601
00:29:08,319 --> 00:29:11,279
Inside nothing but dust, boxy foot prints and an air

602
00:29:11,279 --> 00:29:14,480
heavy with ald ammonia in mold. At sown hundred forty

603
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:16,079
to weave my heart quickening, I found a pie with

604
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:19,440
panel nailed across the original frame security tape dried and flaking.

605
00:29:19,880 --> 00:29:22,000
I hesitated, then pressed my ear to the wood and

606
00:29:22,000 --> 00:29:23,920
caught a faint r MC thudding like a heavy a

607
00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:26,920
track unit, or impossibly the echo of slow mechanical breathing.

608
00:29:27,519 --> 00:29:30,480
I didn't try to force my way further. Instead, I

609
00:29:30,559 --> 00:29:33,440
backed away, marking the location with a fresh mate silver

610
00:29:33,519 --> 00:29:36,960
stigger from my loop book. Every so often, my flasklight

611
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:40,599
trembled across graffiti, strange repeated figures, and yellow spirals with tails,

612
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:45,160
arrows coiling back on themselves, warnings too old to decipher. Once,

613
00:29:45,319 --> 00:29:47,599
I swore I heard footsteps just beyond the next tea junction,

614
00:29:47,799 --> 00:29:51,160
but every time I darted forward, only silence waited. But

615
00:29:51,279 --> 00:29:54,400
I was methodical. I lowered each into section, pinned each

616
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:57,720
door's location on my chart. My memory felt sharper, stripped

617
00:29:57,759 --> 00:30:00,480
of destruction. Every muscle turned to the moment, but under

618
00:30:00,519 --> 00:30:03,480
it all, drag kept mounting coil and tider. It was

619
00:30:03,519 --> 00:30:05,440
in the deepest part of one of the storage corridors,

620
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:07,200
cold so they could stun my nose where I found

621
00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:10,319
the most unstantly marckery. It etched into cracks into block

622
00:30:10,319 --> 00:30:12,640
at head height, string of numbers and letters repeating down

623
00:30:12,680 --> 00:30:15,519
the sea a date nineteen eighty seven eighty eight. Then

624
00:30:15,599 --> 00:30:18,920
seal slash azim tia and hazardous materials against the letters

625
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:21,279
trailed off the group pressed deep enough to leave or grove.

626
00:30:21,319 --> 00:30:24,640
My thumb could nestle in. I recorded a close up muttering,

627
00:30:24,839 --> 00:30:27,880
same period as accident and insurance settlement. No records after

628
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:31,519
that date correspond with first shut down of expansion. Further down,

629
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:34,640
time seemed to spoil in and out. I passed closets

630
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:36,519
where the dust swelt in a wick of my own footprints,

631
00:30:36,559 --> 00:30:39,400
places where distant echoing mechanical creeks set my nerve scraping.

632
00:30:39,960 --> 00:30:42,519
I navigated by memory, by scraps of logic, by the

633
00:30:42,599 --> 00:30:45,640
hessens of my own senses that told me inevitably, unquestionably,

634
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:47,680
not all things below wanted to see the light again.

635
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:51,759
Not all of them were gone. Finally, adrenaline depleted, sweat

636
00:30:51,759 --> 00:30:55,200
cooling in the stagnant ere, I decided to return. Steps mapped,

637
00:30:55,279 --> 00:30:58,480
points checked, All data are recorded back through the maze,

638
00:30:58,519 --> 00:31:00,920
past the identical doors, tracked my own route up by

639
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:03,759
fresh Gouff's left and dust. As I slipped back into

640
00:31:03,799 --> 00:31:06,079
the elevator, hand pressed white knuckle to the lop control.

641
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:08,000
I let myself look once, just once, back at the

642
00:31:08,039 --> 00:31:11,079
main corridor. There, staring from a shadow at the hall

643
00:31:11,279 --> 00:31:14,680
was a face, pale, fringed by dark, staring and blinking

644
00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:16,400
at me from the edge of my own Flasklight beam

645
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:19,640
down in and I blink, perhaps my reflection, perhaps just

646
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:22,359
the swirl of dust, But in the split instant I

647
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:24,519
could swear it wore. Security had a few seasons out

648
00:31:24,559 --> 00:31:28,200
of day. The elevator groaned, rolls climbed at the top.

649
00:31:28,319 --> 00:31:30,839
The world returned brighter, mundane, full of the scoff and

650
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:33,799
scrape of maintenance and commerce, waiting for another day. By

651
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:36,359
the time I double checked the office and secured my bag,

652
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:38,799
the hum inside my skull had dulled to a manageable wine.

653
00:31:39,359 --> 00:31:41,759
I logged every detail archive files to her thumb drive,

654
00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:44,559
hid the beevery key deep in my jacket pocket. Never

655
00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:46,920
again would I dismiss what flickered between the seams at

656
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:50,079
Glenwood Mall. Deep down, I knew I could not truly

657
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:53,519
leave this insolved, and that in its waiting, dark tearbe

658
00:31:53,559 --> 00:31:56,599
tree was counting on people forgetting its secrets. Night Han

659
00:31:56,680 --> 00:31:59,480
beyond the little office is barred window. My mind kept

660
00:31:59,519 --> 00:32:03,319
were tracing each hallwayed, each door, every vanished connection. By morning,

661
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:06,759
my resolve had rennen itself, blunt, almost stubborn. I would

662
00:32:06,799 --> 00:32:08,880
return to be three again, equipped and ready, and this

663
00:32:09,039 --> 00:32:11,799
time I would not walk alone into the labyrinth. Even

664
00:32:11,839 --> 00:32:14,240
after my decision was made, return to be three, armed

665
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:16,680
and vigilant, I found myself hesitating, and the threshold of

666
00:32:16,759 --> 00:32:20,319
every action at home. Sunlight filtering through this much glass

667
00:32:20,319 --> 00:32:22,559
of my kitchen window, I could almost convince myself that

668
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:25,319
everything underground had been a product of exhaustion or anxiety,

669
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:27,680
no more than the usual ghost spread by a falin building.

670
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:32,480
But as dusk descended, the certainty returned inexorable. My hands trembled,

671
00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:34,880
not with doubt, but with a dissipation. I spent what

672
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:37,079
little time I had before my next shift in preparation.

673
00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:41,920
Every item of flask, lights, camera, spare batteries, portable radio, notebook,

674
00:32:42,079 --> 00:32:44,839
water bottle, a kroberfoots from the deserted hardware STORER was

675
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:48,240
examined and packed with careful redundancy. I charged my work

676
00:32:48,319 --> 00:32:51,160
phone and wiped it free of anything personal, even though

677
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:53,559
I drafted a message to Karen and the police, complete

678
00:32:53,559 --> 00:32:56,279
with four plants and directions. I hesitated to send it.

679
00:32:56,519 --> 00:32:58,680
It would mean dragging others into whatever awaited in those

680
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:02,119
blocked off depths. I late afternoon anxiety cloned to me

681
00:33:02,240 --> 00:33:05,359
leg sweat. I called Adrian, the senior janitor, just in

682
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:08,480
case he would pick up. He didn't answer voicemail, grinding

683
00:33:08,519 --> 00:33:11,799
out his voice and grainy measured syllables. Leave your message

684
00:33:11,799 --> 00:33:13,319
and hang up. I'll get to you when I can.

685
00:33:13,519 --> 00:33:16,039
Night is busy, I said, nothing, hung up. As soon

686
00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:19,880
as the beep sounded, part of me was relieved. When

687
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:21,960
I arrived for my shift, Glen would felt less a

688
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,480
retail plaza and more wounded hulk laboring toward oblivion. What

689
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:28,559
patches swelled long the base of the walls. Half the

690
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:31,960
escalators were out by now, dark, mouths open, refusing to budge.

691
00:33:32,759 --> 00:33:35,240
Only the soft hummufluorescence overhead in the cline of the

692
00:33:35,279 --> 00:33:38,759
occasional closing rollgate disrupted the hush. Karen was in her

693
00:33:38,839 --> 00:33:41,079
office door job, but her attention fixed on the blue

694
00:33:41,079 --> 00:33:42,720
haze of her monitor. She didn't look up as I

695
00:33:42,799 --> 00:33:45,839
passed somewhere in the strands of failing light. I knew

696
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:47,920
the building had marked me. I could hardly finish my

697
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:50,960
first rounds, the air felt taut, a member in waiting

698
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:53,559
to be split. Each shadow in the vacant wings seemed

699
00:33:53,599 --> 00:33:55,880
to promise an echo the memory of footfall's barely half

700
00:33:55,880 --> 00:33:58,039
a second behind me, I stopped at the rotten up,

701
00:33:58,079 --> 00:34:01,799
breathing hard. The older krill directory was undisturbed just as

702
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:05,240
I left it, but beneath the scratches, the surface looked cleaner,

703
00:34:05,359 --> 00:34:07,319
as if the mall itself had been trying to erase

704
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:10,159
what remained of its secret. The B three key weighed

705
00:34:10,199 --> 00:34:12,679
heavy at my side. I gripped it until the coal

706
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:15,199
pressed it dent into my palm. I would not return

707
00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:17,880
from BE three empty handed. I would not let my

708
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:20,960
own absence become one more mark on. Then attended incident locks.

709
00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:24,760
Just before midnight. I received a tax Lucas short and

710
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:27,559
clipped all hell with the south wing emergency panel. No lights,

711
00:34:27,639 --> 00:34:29,440
Did you swap feats? Let me know if you're covering

712
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:32,760
from me? I didn't answer. I had no intention of

713
00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:36,119
straying toward the normal problems of the job tonight. Instead,

714
00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:38,239
I sat in the brake room, assembled my gear in

715
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:40,679
a neat row, and waited for the building's heaviness to shift.

716
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:43,079
The hush that came each night after the last staff vanished,

717
00:34:43,159 --> 00:34:45,360
and the only movement was the subtle from of machinery

718
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:48,199
below my feet. When the moment came, I stood, checked

719
00:34:48,199 --> 00:34:51,679
my pockets, and made for the elevator. The corridors were abandoned.

720
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:54,800
I heard a distant door close, but nothing else. Down

721
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:57,719
in the low service hall, the elevator's coal button gold Weakly.

722
00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:01,639
I inserted the B three key, thumping. The panel lit

723
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:05,039
up one extra orange square marked, but waiting, I pressed it.

724
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:09,239
The descent was longer. At this time. The elevator car vibrated,

725
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:12,360
as if rolling through pockets of resistance. The red beef

726
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:15,480
re restricted light flooded the cabin, reflecting off my hands,

727
00:35:15,679 --> 00:35:18,639
my jacket, the batted lop book. With a faint shutter,

728
00:35:18,719 --> 00:35:21,599
the door slid open. I stepped out into freezing, breath

729
00:35:21,639 --> 00:35:26,320
thick air. Proceeding now, I whispered recording. Corridors branched off,

730
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:28,880
the main trunks of old concrete, lined with storage cages

731
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:32,360
and broken racks. My flasklight's narrow beam cut through the dark.

732
00:35:33,039 --> 00:35:34,920
I kept one hand in the crowbar, the other on

733
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:37,840
the camera's grip. The only sound the low and steady

734
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:39,760
thrum of old pipes and the gentle drip of a

735
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:43,400
distant leak. Every junction looked both familiar and newly disorienting.

736
00:35:44,079 --> 00:35:46,280
I shouted my path using the codes from the directory

737
00:35:46,320 --> 00:35:49,079
one hundred seventeen B one hundred twenty one A seven

738
00:35:49,159 --> 00:35:51,880
hundred forty three matching doors conver me each blind time

739
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:55,960
against my makeshift map. Each threshold resisted, hinges long seized,

740
00:35:56,079 --> 00:35:59,159
but the B three key fit reluctantly but certainly. Each time,

741
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:02,760
I whispered into the audio recorder, noting details dull one

742
00:36:02,840 --> 00:36:06,440
hundred seventeen B, storage racks, torn uniforms, footprints one hundred

743
00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:09,199
twenty one A logre empty crates, ear thick with ammonia,

744
00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:11,599
so one hundred forty three seems barricaded hard of the

745
00:36:11,679 --> 00:36:14,920
tear will assess further. As I advanced, the air grew colder,

746
00:36:15,079 --> 00:36:18,679
the pressure deeper at my back. The hiss of something moving, pipes,

747
00:36:19,079 --> 00:36:21,960
just pipes, followed every step. I began to think I

748
00:36:22,079 --> 00:36:24,800
heard voices, a steep drop in the darkness ahead, syllables

749
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:27,840
overlapping in the white noise of the radior static. Every

750
00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:30,079
time I tried to listen directly, the sound dissolved into

751
00:36:30,119 --> 00:36:33,000
mechanical knocks in the deep, slow pulse of half dead ventilators.

752
00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:36,440
The tea junction. The flashlight flickered briefly. I smacked and

753
00:36:36,519 --> 00:36:39,119
the beamer turned, revealing a set of child size handprints

754
00:36:39,119 --> 00:36:41,920
smeared into the dust. They disappeared into one of the

755
00:36:41,960 --> 00:36:44,880
smallest side doors. The lock twisted open and hanging loose.

756
00:36:45,639 --> 00:36:47,880
Some old part of me wanted to peer inside see

757
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:49,800
the source, but as I hestated, the air seemed to

758
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:52,239
solidify in my throat, warning me just how much further

759
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:55,679
one could go before being truly lost. The maze pressed closer,

760
00:36:55,760 --> 00:36:57,800
henned him by old walls mottled with patches of water

761
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:00,719
stain and graffitia. Sequence of coilings biols were repeeded, always

762
00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:02,360
near a pile of decayed mail or a block of

763
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:05,440
melted thenoleum tiles. The arrows I had marked in chock

764
00:37:05,519 --> 00:37:07,719
on my last ascent helped me piece together the main loop.

765
00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:10,880
A hundred feet alar, I found a half collapsed barricade.

766
00:37:11,679 --> 00:37:15,599
Stacks of unused merchandise, beambooxes, box vans, CRT computer monitors

767
00:37:15,639 --> 00:37:18,360
had been shoved strategically, forming a crude shiel facing the

768
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:21,880
main corridor. Behind it, I heard a faint, rhythmic screeping.

769
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:25,480
I circled around, careful to avoid sending my flashlight beam

770
00:37:25,519 --> 00:37:28,480
straight ahead. At the edge of my vision, something darted,

771
00:37:28,559 --> 00:37:31,679
then froze, only a tattered sleeve hanging empty a lawn

772
00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:36,760
the barquet, I called out, voice, catching anyone in there. Silence,

773
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:40,039
then a breath of human breath, ragged and trembling. Another

774
00:37:40,119 --> 00:37:42,920
scraping sound, frantic, an animal, as if someone was dragging

775
00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:45,960
themselves away from the door. I'm with security, I try

776
00:37:46,079 --> 00:37:49,239
projecting com I'm not here to hurt you. Are you trapped?

777
00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:52,360
A shuffling pause, then a whisper from behind the barricade,

778
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:55,239
words more moaned than spoken. Don't let it close, don't

779
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:58,480
let it close behind you. The voice wavered, brittle with thirst.

780
00:37:59,280 --> 00:38:02,760
Wall's change, wall's change, and you can't get back. Gradually,

781
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:04,880
I moved closer, shining my light to the side, not

782
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:07,679
at the figure, but along the floor. Are you injured?

783
00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:11,519
I asked? His silence save for the shaking intake of breath.

784
00:38:12,119 --> 00:38:15,039
Not injure, the survivor finally said, their voice low and wild,

785
00:38:15,199 --> 00:38:17,840
but stuck. Can't find the path out. Sometimes the same door,

786
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:19,960
samee number on both sides of the hall. Sometimes it

787
00:38:20,079 --> 00:38:23,320
lets me through, Sometimes it doesn't. He coughed, the sound

788
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:26,239
tearing through the little cave. I crouched near the barriquet,

789
00:38:26,360 --> 00:38:28,920
keeping a good two feet from the opening. Who are you?

790
00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:33,119
I tried? He pressed forward, a gaunt, batted man, cheeks

791
00:38:33,159 --> 00:38:35,400
hollow as fever, bright up of a ride of tangled hair,

792
00:38:36,079 --> 00:38:38,880
his security badge filthy and cracked, listed and name I

793
00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:42,320
recognize from the oldest low book, jacochore I employee who'd

794
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:45,199
vanished a previous spring after a string of absences blamed

795
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:48,239
on Berna. I gave him water, half a granol bar

796
00:38:48,320 --> 00:38:51,559
from my pack. He devoured both with trembling hands, all

797
00:38:51,599 --> 00:38:53,400
the while keeping his gaze flickering from me to the

798
00:38:53,480 --> 00:38:56,440
darkness behind. They sealed us in, he whispered, more to

799
00:38:56,519 --> 00:38:59,480
himself than to me. Cold drill, then welded the balls.

800
00:38:59,519 --> 00:39:01,800
Do you hear peer on the other side? Sometimes not always?

801
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:04,199
The living kind place grows a new angle each month.

802
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:07,199
Or maybe I just lose count. His voice broke into

803
00:39:07,239 --> 00:39:10,079
a nervous, dry laugh. It never got daylight down here,

804
00:39:10,239 --> 00:39:13,480
lights burned out years ago, always so down cold, Jake,

805
00:39:13,599 --> 00:39:15,519
I said, do you remember the layout. Do you know

806
00:39:15,599 --> 00:39:17,760
how to reach the other side? Act to the elevator.

807
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:20,079
I have a map, but it changes sometimes. I want

808
00:39:20,119 --> 00:39:22,719
to get us out together. He shook his head, palms

809
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:25,599
pressed flat to the grimy slab beneath us. It only

810
00:39:25,679 --> 00:39:28,159
let one out easy, Otherwise you end up in the loops.

811
00:39:28,199 --> 00:39:31,239
You double back, but nothing lines up. Voices overlap. Sometimes

812
00:39:31,320 --> 00:39:32,920
you are on talking to you through the next wall.

813
00:39:33,039 --> 00:39:36,480
Sometimes his eyes widen fix a point just past my shoulder.

814
00:39:37,119 --> 00:39:40,039
I followed his gaze for a heartbeat. The hole behind

815
00:39:40,079 --> 00:39:43,239
me seemed to contract, the air sharpest steel, just stuccos.

816
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:47,599
I told myself, just nerves Jake. We're leaving to I

817
00:39:47,679 --> 00:39:50,400
send more for myself than him. Stay close. If you

818
00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:53,440
start to feel lost, tell me. He nodded, but hesitated.

819
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:58,480
Don't touch the locked room. I frowned. What room. Jade's

820
00:39:58,519 --> 00:40:01,440
breath hitched. Name the door, all the ones like me,

821
00:40:01,679 --> 00:40:04,519
Ye'll know. I holsted the flask light and drew out

822
00:40:04,519 --> 00:40:07,440
a hand radio. The screen was still alive, but only

823
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:10,239
stat a crasp through. I show Jake the other radio,

824
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:12,840
told him to keep it close. We skirted the edge

825
00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:16,480
of the barricade together. Jake's movements were animal quick. Every

826
00:40:16,519 --> 00:40:18,800
gesture weighed as if gaging whether the walls would allow it.

827
00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:22,119
We lost the thread of my map almost immediately. I

828
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:23,960
left where there should have been a right, a passage

829
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:26,719
way that doubled onto itsself, forcing us between rusting wrecks

830
00:40:26,719 --> 00:40:30,159
and heaps of mildewed staff uniforms. The air grew close again,

831
00:40:30,599 --> 00:40:34,039
dust and stagnant shawl, choking each gasp. We backtracked, each

832
00:40:34,119 --> 00:40:37,079
time facing a subtly changed landscape. Vain girl swapped wiring

833
00:40:37,159 --> 00:40:38,679
that was frayed and cut off where it should have

834
00:40:38,719 --> 00:40:41,960
fed into break a boxes. My heart pounded, sweat freezing

835
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:44,679
along the back of my neck. Jake, for his part,

836
00:40:44,719 --> 00:40:47,360
seemed to listen intently at each intersection, humming a hollow

837
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:50,599
single note under his breath. Keeps the echoes clear, he

838
00:40:50,679 --> 00:40:53,760
whispered when I asked. As we passed Room one hundred

839
00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:56,360
forty three plywoud still nailed high and crooked across the

840
00:40:56,400 --> 00:40:59,440
door frame. I paused, This is the room, isn't it,

841
00:41:00,199 --> 00:41:03,400
I asked Jake. Hence what showing in the corners of

842
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:06,400
his eyes. It's where they put the lost ones, he whispered,

843
00:41:07,039 --> 00:41:10,199
after the proudest after the alarms name still thou scratched

844
00:41:10,199 --> 00:41:13,239
deep enough to outlast the paint. Below the survivingt tape

845
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:15,519
and brittle masking, I saw the doorway had once been

846
00:41:15,599 --> 00:41:19,159
labeled supplies, but now under grime. Three dozen names arched

847
00:41:19,199 --> 00:41:22,119
in a jagged ring across the wood. Some I recognized

848
00:41:22,119 --> 00:41:26,840
from missing Curson's files. Some were feeded beyond legibility. Below them,

849
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:30,320
reason scratches spelled fresh editions Jake's. Others surmounted by different hands,

850
00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:33,000
some by the same. In monotonous script. Who did this?

851
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:36,960
I murmured, shining my light across the scroll. Jake stared

852
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:39,400
at his feet the ones who left that the end

853
00:41:39,519 --> 00:41:42,519
management sent the order locked down temporary. Nobody was supposed

854
00:41:42,559 --> 00:41:44,119
to be here, but they sealed us in any way.

855
00:41:44,679 --> 00:41:47,639
His voice fractured, each syllable tinged with scorn and resignation.

856
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:51,519
I tried the handle, The lock blistered with old rost.

857
00:41:52,239 --> 00:41:54,199
There be three key refused to fit. The door would

858
00:41:54,199 --> 00:41:57,760
not budge inside. Something shifted, a scrape of metal too

859
00:41:57,840 --> 00:42:01,199
deliberate for rudents of settling debris. There was no visible window,

860
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:02,880
but I felt as sure as a kick nail that

861
00:42:03,000 --> 00:42:06,000
some one or something waited within. We're not going in,

862
00:42:06,199 --> 00:42:09,599
I said, stepping back. But we need to keep moving.

863
00:42:10,199 --> 00:42:13,840
I heard voices last time, Jake muttered last night, maybe

864
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:17,000
two nights ago. Sometimes you hear yourself inside. Don't answer,

865
00:42:17,239 --> 00:42:20,039
never answer, or the room takes you. We edged away,

866
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:23,920
my skin, crawling at each inter section. The Angulo spirals

867
00:42:23,960 --> 00:42:26,079
on the walls multiplied, looping back toward the heart of

868
00:42:26,159 --> 00:42:29,400
B three. I counted steps, were citing them softly, trying

869
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:32,280
to hold the geometry bat into fixed forms. We turned

870
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:34,960
another blind corner, and suddenly I found myself staring at

871
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:37,599
an open staff locker room, not on my nap. Faded

872
00:42:37,639 --> 00:42:40,440
locks gaped, doors bent, and half a spowl of sleeping

873
00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:43,400
mats and garbage bags lined one wall. Some one had

874
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:46,159
lived here and not long ago. Bagged cereal bottled water,

875
00:42:46,360 --> 00:42:48,679
and a stack of yellowed newspapers from the last calendar

876
00:42:48,719 --> 00:42:52,480
ear on one wall. Spiral and black resemarked another junction point.

877
00:42:53,039 --> 00:42:55,760
The maysumry behind it bowled slightly, as if something pressed

878
00:42:55,760 --> 00:42:59,239
outward just below the surface. Jake lingered by a Bassett

879
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:01,880
staff bulletin, or brushing his finger tips over the remains

880
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:04,320
of a half tor memmo. I snapped a picture for

881
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:06,920
my records. He looked up at me, then back to

882
00:43:06,960 --> 00:43:09,320
the rip in the wall. Sometimes there is a door

883
00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:13,000
behind the lockers, he said quietly. Sometimes it's walled. Sometimes

884
00:43:13,639 --> 00:43:16,159
he licked his lips. We used to call at the

885
00:43:16,199 --> 00:43:18,920
maze tooth nasty way out, but better than the echoes.

886
00:43:19,719 --> 00:43:22,920
Let's check, as said, and together we slid several lockers aside.

887
00:43:23,639 --> 00:43:25,800
Behind them was a gash in the plaster, a space

888
00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:27,559
wide enough for a grown man to squeeze through a

889
00:43:27,599 --> 00:43:30,800
thicker of their shoulders. Beyond a snarl of piper cage

890
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:33,920
backed ducks, bundled and humming, whilese trailing, broken light fixtures,

891
00:43:34,159 --> 00:43:37,480
condensation beating a long cracked insulation. The rush of cold

892
00:43:37,519 --> 00:43:40,679
force goosebumps alarmed my arms. We climbed in together, and

893
00:43:40,760 --> 00:43:42,960
for long minutes we were forced to call Jake ahead,

894
00:43:43,079 --> 00:43:46,719
me dragging my bag behind the corridor warped duck's narrowing

895
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:48,679
the path until I was certain our shoulders would be

896
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:51,480
caught for good. Half Way through, my radio chripped his

897
00:43:51,519 --> 00:43:54,400
shop spike of static, frantically oscillating between dead air and

898
00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:57,239
the faint The laid echo of my own voice proceed

899
00:43:57,360 --> 00:44:01,840
with care care, proceeding recording recordingly looping, lagged, as if

900
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:03,599
my words had been stored and spit out by the

901
00:44:03,679 --> 00:44:08,159
dock itself. Jake flinched. It has us, he muttered, has

902
00:44:08,199 --> 00:44:10,280
our voices too. That's what you'll leave behind if you

903
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:12,800
don't move faster. I bid down on my fear and

904
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:16,760
shove forward. The coal space handled sharply, then open, suddenly

905
00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:19,679
into another broad corridor, widened with higher ceilings on sheets

906
00:44:19,679 --> 00:44:22,199
of plastic sheeting, hung in when lushrouds along the walls,

907
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:26,039
behind the translucent veils, stacks upon stacks of an open merchandise,

908
00:44:26,159 --> 00:44:28,239
as if the world had changed seasons but forgotten. This

909
00:44:28,360 --> 00:44:32,320
place entirely sun faded labels unreadable through the muddy yellowing.

910
00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:35,360
Jake led me through a sequence of tidessk curves, pausing

911
00:44:35,400 --> 00:44:38,280
only to shake splinters from his cuffs. The heartbeat of

912
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:40,599
the place quickened as of B three, sensing our movement

913
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:43,760
was rousing itself for attention. We emerged at the edge

914
00:44:43,760 --> 00:44:46,239
of another intersection, the very heart of the sub basement.

915
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:48,920
What stood before us was an engine room, a jumble

916
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:51,760
of ancient attract towers, sputtering and trembling as the cycled

917
00:44:51,800 --> 00:44:55,800
musty air, fluorescent bulbs. Some still burning, castwarp shadows over

918
00:44:55,840 --> 00:45:00,440
the machinery, broken safety railings blocked half the footbath overhead,

919
00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:02,760
a catwalk creaked, every sound amplified in a coal mirk.

920
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:06,480
On the far wall, one last sealed door painted on

921
00:45:06,679 --> 00:45:09,000
it in pain sticking block letters every name from the

922
00:45:09,079 --> 00:45:12,360
missing person's reports at Glenwood, forming a rough rain at

923
00:45:12,400 --> 00:45:16,320
the center a new addition Jake's name, but also space

924
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:19,079
for mind. The pain still wet. As I drew closer,

925
00:45:19,239 --> 00:45:21,960
mouscana picked up a persistant tone high the normal machinery

926
00:45:22,119 --> 00:45:25,639
nerve tightening. This is where management sealed them. I asked

927
00:45:25,719 --> 00:45:29,159
Jake for shaking. He nodded. They thought it would stop

928
00:45:29,199 --> 00:45:31,960
the protest, stop the investigation, But the ones left behind

929
00:45:32,039 --> 00:45:34,119
they started kmocking the doors too, so they could try

930
00:45:34,159 --> 00:45:37,559
to get out again. Never work, The radio barked another echo.

931
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:42,800
Door door, door, never close again again again. The machinery sputtered, hummed,

932
00:45:42,840 --> 00:45:45,239
and somewhere inside the engine room I heard the desperate

933
00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:46,960
rattle of a lock and dun from the other side.

934
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:50,159
Jake pressed his face to the metal. They used to

935
00:45:50,199 --> 00:45:52,320
give us food through the vent, then they forgot. Then

936
00:45:52,400 --> 00:45:55,559
nobody came back. I shined my light under the door's crack.

937
00:45:56,199 --> 00:45:59,719
The darkness trembled, as if breathing. Let's go, I whispered.

938
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:03,559
We can't help them, We can only leap proof. Jake nodded,

939
00:46:03,679 --> 00:46:07,039
but took a step back. But it knows us, he muttered,

940
00:46:07,079 --> 00:46:09,559
turning to me. Every one who sees it leaves something

941
00:46:09,639 --> 00:46:13,039
behind your name, your echo. That's the deal behind us.

942
00:46:13,119 --> 00:46:15,360
The machinery cycled again, a deep vibration, the hum of

943
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:18,880
all that buried energy threatening to overflow. Suddenly, every bulb

944
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:22,760
in the place flickered. My radio howl cacophonic, spitting static

945
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:27,440
and broken syllables. The alarms throughout the molidysan wavering sand shrieked,

946
00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:29,920
as if cold by whatever had finally noticed us below.

947
00:46:30,559 --> 00:46:32,320
Jake and I lunged away from the seiled doors. The

948
00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:35,440
floors began to tremble, the sub basement circulation finally breaking

949
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:38,400
its old lines. I grabbed Jake by the arm, hauling

950
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:41,039
him around the machinery through curdiors that no longer followed

951
00:46:41,039 --> 00:46:44,119
the map. At every turn, the arrows in the wallster stood,

952
00:46:44,119 --> 00:46:47,280
pointing us in impossible loops. The radio chattered, the air

953
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:50,599
collapse in invisible fists. Despite the maelstrom, a sort of

954
00:46:50,679 --> 00:46:53,119
magnetic pressure that threatened to drive us deeper. Some stubborn,

955
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:56,320
desperate grace let me retrace part of our path, guided

956
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:59,199
by shouted numbers half invented in monarchs. We backtracked by

957
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:02,280
memory Jake's side names and room counts. Me reading the

958
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:05,000
chalk marks I had scraped along the way, A Sadden

959
00:47:05,039 --> 00:47:07,719
spegetate ball left through the engine room at duftright, forced

960
00:47:07,719 --> 00:47:09,360
to make a choice as the concrete strained with the

961
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:13,360
low rising grinding knives, the air thick and heavy as blood.

962
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:16,239
At last, ahead of me, a staggered shaft of light

963
00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:20,159
the elevator. Its door blink uselessly, stuck partly a jar,

964
00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:23,280
but enough for a desperate wedge of my crowber Jake,

965
00:47:24,079 --> 00:47:28,079
I shouted, voice lost in the chaos. He appeared wild eyed,

966
00:47:28,239 --> 00:47:30,760
breath torn in choking gasps, hands pressed white over his

967
00:47:30,840 --> 00:47:34,119
ears against the shrieking alarms. I lifted him bodily by

968
00:47:34,159 --> 00:47:37,199
the sleeve, dragging us both into the elevator car. The

969
00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:41,400
door shuddered, though up button flickered spastically, refusing to select

970
00:47:42,119 --> 00:47:44,800
come on, A come on, I'm martyred, but the control

971
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:46,760
panel was cut. Warring with itself as the cord for

972
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:50,000
a B three died, then revived with a new red blink, panicked,

973
00:47:50,039 --> 00:47:51,880
reretned to undue me. I slammed the base of the

974
00:47:51,920 --> 00:47:54,559
cover into the d ground button once twice, praying for

975
00:47:54,599 --> 00:47:56,760
the ancient mechanism to resolve decades of tension in this

976
00:47:56,880 --> 00:48:01,360
one moment. Behind us, the corridor filled with shadows, stress, multiplying,

977
00:48:01,480 --> 00:48:04,800
flickering in the guttering emergency light. Within them, the sawets

978
00:48:04,840 --> 00:48:07,400
looked agonized, only familiar and out of date security cap

979
00:48:07,679 --> 00:48:09,760
a sweater with chevrons from the old Bowley alley, the

980
00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:11,400
curve of a barge I had seen in the missing

981
00:48:11,480 --> 00:48:14,199
person's wall, a grip Jake's hand. With the strength of

982
00:48:14,239 --> 00:48:17,480
the truly terrified, he began whispering a mantra, his name

983
00:48:17,519 --> 00:48:19,360
and mine, over and over, as if to call the

984
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:22,400
elevator up through forces of memory alone. At last, the

985
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:25,599
elevator grown, jerked and ascended slope so slow, each floor

986
00:48:25,639 --> 00:48:27,880
marked by a new shriek from the alarms below. The

987
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:31,119
scarlet beavery restricted blinked off. We blinked into the light

988
00:48:31,159 --> 00:48:33,599
of the stuff corridor, Jay collapsing to the floor, sobbing,

989
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:37,440
breath hitching in spasms. I knot beside him, closing my eyes,

990
00:48:37,519 --> 00:48:40,800
clutching the lawbrooks so hard to cover snapped more. Management

991
00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:42,800
was not yet on sight, and only the hum of

992
00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:45,840
the still sounding alarms filtered up through the vents. Jake

993
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:47,559
and I sat in a days for account of heartbeats

994
00:48:47,599 --> 00:48:50,559
I could no longer name. When my phone returned to service,

995
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:53,880
I hit sin on everything locks audio diagrams. Before doubt

996
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:56,800
could catch up. I paced the corridor, waiting for the

997
00:48:56,840 --> 00:48:59,920
world above to acknowledge the wound open below. Within moment

998
00:49:00,000 --> 00:49:04,039
since the mole's mane, alarms brought the first responders, police, fire,

999
00:49:04,199 --> 00:49:07,079
and eventually Karen, who caught my sleeve with ice coal fingers,

1000
00:49:07,239 --> 00:49:11,079
demanding explanations I could barely provide. Jacobs silent, his gaze

1001
00:49:11,119 --> 00:49:13,920
fixed firmly on the floor, refusing to answer any question.

1002
00:49:14,599 --> 00:49:17,320
Authorities in locked the elevator, and drawn by the pressure

1003
00:49:17,360 --> 00:49:19,400
of their own procedures, pried open the doors to be

1004
00:49:19,519 --> 00:49:22,760
three for ires. They searched and found only the relics

1005
00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:26,159
of lawn, abandoned rooms, palliat of Maya, ragged uniforms, and

1006
00:49:26,199 --> 00:49:29,639
the endless spray of spiral graffiti. Eventually they forced open

1007
00:49:29,679 --> 00:49:31,960
the door I remembered, the one inscribed with names, records,

1008
00:49:31,960 --> 00:49:35,679
scratched over and over by desperate hands. Inside was nothing,

1009
00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:39,159
nothing but dust, the stale earthakest cement, and the faintest

1010
00:49:39,239 --> 00:49:41,320
echo of footsteps receding as if a cross miles of

1011
00:49:41,360 --> 00:49:45,000
dead corridors. Later that day, Karen and the police captain

1012
00:49:45,039 --> 00:49:48,159
led me to her office. Each avoided my eyes. Both

1013
00:49:48,199 --> 00:49:50,800
took turns, explaining that their investigation had led only to

1014
00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:54,840
hazard as building violations, nothing more. The missing person's log

1015
00:49:54,960 --> 00:49:59,000
was updated, cases marked as inconclusive. Only Jake and I claim,

1016
00:49:59,079 --> 00:50:00,960
to our frutured memory knew the truth behind where the

1017
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:03,360
building had tried and failed to keep hidden. In the

1018
00:50:03,480 --> 00:50:07,760
immediate stunned hush more rumors flourished newspapers mentioned they head

1019
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:09,960
and tear, though officials denied it with a muted fury.

1020
00:50:10,480 --> 00:50:13,639
The Glenwood developers arrived and delivered new demolition orders and

1021
00:50:13,760 --> 00:50:16,800
quietly sack half of management. Jake was delivered to a

1022
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:19,599
local hospital, charted as a missing person, then vanished from

1023
00:50:19,599 --> 00:50:22,559
public record. I never saw him again, though my phone

1024
00:50:22,599 --> 00:50:25,440
pinged with a single anonymous recording a week later, static

1025
00:50:25,679 --> 00:50:28,920
laced with a faint lupom whisper, my own voice delayed

1026
00:50:29,599 --> 00:50:33,440
other unidentified voices layered within. The Glenwood Mall was fenced off,

1027
00:50:34,199 --> 00:50:37,119
no public notice, no formal closure, just a squad car

1028
00:50:37,199 --> 00:50:39,280
eiding outside the main entrance in a convey of trucks

1029
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:42,519
arriving each dawn. As the demolition drew slowly near by night,

1030
00:50:42,559 --> 00:50:45,199
I prowled the edge of the property, restless. No one

1031
00:50:45,320 --> 00:50:48,800
challenged me. Nothing left inside argued for its own survival.

1032
00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:52,119
Eventually I returned to the staff lounge a final time

1033
00:50:52,199 --> 00:50:54,239
to collect what I'd left. A few notebooks, my batted

1034
00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:56,679
oak books, and the B three key. Now stripped of

1035
00:50:56,679 --> 00:50:59,639
all meaning or authority, I turned over the last of

1036
00:50:59,679 --> 00:51:01,920
my fine to the city, echoing the whords scrolled into

1037
00:51:01,960 --> 00:51:04,679
the deepest tier, no entry, no rescue, seal and forget.

1038
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:08,119
The world spun on, gleanward, more faded from the news,

1039
00:51:08,239 --> 00:51:11,440
as all ugly secrets do. And yet the final image

1040
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:14,559
did one lass and quiet return the memory of standing

1041
00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:17,039
years later by the ruins, as dust shifted on the wind,

1042
00:51:17,239 --> 00:51:19,679
catching the shimmer of a directory newly wrapped in plastic,

1043
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:22,360
already cracked with numbers I did not recognize, crouched deep

1044
00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:25,559
into the surface in a distance beyond the ruins, I

1045
00:51:25,599 --> 00:51:28,239
caught the fleck of movement, a pale reflection against shattered glass.

1046
00:51:28,320 --> 00:51:31,239
Someone in my old security uniform, standing sentinel in the gloom,

1047
00:51:31,320 --> 00:51:35,280
half turned away. Some doors never close, not down here.

1048
00:51:36,039 --> 00:51:40,119
Some doors never close, not down here. After that night,

1049
00:51:40,199 --> 00:51:42,239
I couldn't shake the impression that the building was aware

1050
00:51:42,239 --> 00:51:45,480
of me, watching from beneath its own debris insistence. Although

1051
00:51:45,519 --> 00:51:48,000
the mole was officially sealed, city crews wrecked a chain

1052
00:51:48,079 --> 00:51:50,199
link fencing and mounted a danger and save a stretch

1053
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:53,400
of plucards at every entrance, their lamination already bowed by rain.

1054
00:51:54,039 --> 00:51:56,199
My Passcoud was dead. No more laid night walks beneath

1055
00:51:56,199 --> 00:51:59,719
the humming overheads. Still, I took a circle into perimeter,

1056
00:52:00,039 --> 00:52:03,719
often without realizing I'd started the demolition schedule, crept forward

1057
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:05,719
and fits and starts, first to plan we can, then

1058
00:52:05,760 --> 00:52:09,559
a delay because of union disputes, then another inspection. Every

1059
00:52:09,599 --> 00:52:12,639
setback felt like be threes doing. The mall wanted to

1060
00:52:12,679 --> 00:52:14,599
be left in the sturb lost in its own dark

1061
00:52:14,679 --> 00:52:18,079
ritual of being forgotten. The press ran with the Urban Explorer, angles,

1062
00:52:18,199 --> 00:52:22,039
brave trespassers, spooky footage on YouTube, speculation about seeker tunnels

1063
00:52:22,039 --> 00:52:26,079
and underground rail police wouldn't confirm any discoveries. A management

1064
00:52:26,119 --> 00:52:29,039
issued careful platitude about structural risk and importance of control

1065
00:52:29,159 --> 00:52:32,920
environmental recovery. Even the city, usually eager to court outrage

1066
00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:36,639
or nostalgia, presented a blank face statements filtered through lawyers, engineers,

1067
00:52:37,079 --> 00:52:40,239
or just as often the void. At first, Karen kept

1068
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:43,000
her space, but a week after the rescue, she tracked

1069
00:52:43,039 --> 00:52:45,199
me down at my apartment unannounced, the same day the

1070
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:49,079
survivor Jake vanished from his hospital ward. She stood outside

1071
00:52:49,159 --> 00:52:51,480
my door, heavycot zipped up to her chin, fell folder

1072
00:52:51,519 --> 00:52:54,480
press flat against her chest. Her gaze flicked once at

1073
00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:56,440
my batted briefly is full of look books, then back

1074
00:52:56,519 --> 00:52:59,599
up to meet my tith stair there closing the investigation,

1075
00:53:00,079 --> 00:53:03,039
she set without introduction, the tapes of city property. You

1076
00:53:03,079 --> 00:53:06,559
should turn everything over for liability. I didn't let her in,

1077
00:53:06,760 --> 00:53:09,480
but I didn't close the door either. I already did,

1078
00:53:09,639 --> 00:53:13,719
I replied, everything worth sharing. She pressed her lips together.

1079
00:53:14,360 --> 00:53:16,440
They won't say what was down there, you know, Health

1080
00:53:16,480 --> 00:53:18,880
department redacted most of it. Legal says not to worry.

1081
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:21,880
We both knew that was a lie. I waited for

1082
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:26,199
her to go, but she lingered, footscraping patterns in the hall, regret. Finally,

1083
00:53:26,440 --> 00:53:28,840
she left the file on the threshold, eyes darting everywhere

1084
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:30,639
but at me, and disappeared before I could think of

1085
00:53:30,719 --> 00:53:33,719
one more challenge. Inside the folder, a glossy axes and

1086
00:53:33,760 --> 00:53:36,079
photo caught my attention, an aerial shot of Glenwood in

1087
00:53:36,119 --> 00:53:39,599
nineteen eighty eight. Shadows cut sharp over the parking lots,

1088
00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:42,880
A handful of cars stunted odd little rectangles. But the

1089
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:45,039
thing that stood out, nearly lost among the sun bleach

1090
00:53:45,079 --> 00:53:47,320
grid was a darkish devot in the southeast corner, a

1091
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:49,639
hint of excavation or rough black veil, just where the

1092
00:53:49,679 --> 00:53:53,280
third tier would have run, Invisible and deep. Some construction accident,

1093
00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:56,280
some correction soon buried. I slipped the picture into my

1094
00:53:56,360 --> 00:53:58,239
old lot book, not sure if it was meant as

1095
00:53:58,239 --> 00:54:01,880
a warning or an apology. Jake's hospital bed emptied the

1096
00:54:01,960 --> 00:54:05,400
next morning, stirred all the over roomers. Officially he'd slipped

1097
00:54:05,400 --> 00:54:09,000
away during a shift change, possibly fleeing media attention. The

1098
00:54:09,079 --> 00:54:13,079
police shrugged another vanishing act charked up to the unstable. Privately,

1099
00:54:13,239 --> 00:54:15,039
I doubted even he knew the way at once. The

1100
00:54:15,079 --> 00:54:17,760
system let him back in, or, more precisely, I wondered

1101
00:54:17,760 --> 00:54:21,000
whether any one's absence from Blenwood was entirely voluntary. In

1102
00:54:21,079 --> 00:54:23,320
a days I followed, I listened to my recordings on

1103
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:26,679
lupaudio riddled with interference, cellular noise, echoes of words not

1104
00:54:26,800 --> 00:54:30,159
my own, what conversation should have been? There would appear

1105
00:54:30,199 --> 00:54:33,000
the thought of ancient machinery, reverberant and wrong slavers of

1106
00:54:33,000 --> 00:54:37,440
overlapping dialog. I cataloged everything, keeping careful notes on timestamps

1107
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:40,119
and audible anomalies, but each session left me more afraid.

1108
00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:42,920
On some nights, I'd hear my own voice doutter in

1109
00:54:42,960 --> 00:54:46,000
the static, answering itself, proceeding now, recording, don't let the

1110
00:54:46,039 --> 00:54:49,880
door close. Sometimes in the quietest tres, some one else's

1111
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:52,320
name would slip, uninvited, through the hiss, barely louder than

1112
00:54:52,360 --> 00:54:56,079
my breath. The authorities squashed any further inquiry. Cols to

1113
00:54:56,159 --> 00:54:58,639
city planners went unanswered, and a few staff who'd once

1114
00:54:58,639 --> 00:55:02,920
spoken frankly about the moles oddities routse Fearful emails bounced,

1115
00:55:03,000 --> 00:55:06,119
funds rang without response. When I tried to reconnect with Bent,

1116
00:55:06,239 --> 00:55:09,519
the retired maintenance man. An unfamiliar voice answered Curt and

1117
00:55:09,559 --> 00:55:12,719
clipped and told me never to call again. Glamour's last

1118
00:55:12,800 --> 00:55:15,320
days passed in a peculiar hush town, gossip ebbing, ch

1119
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:19,119
chronic throb but never igniting for every utrageous story. Explorers

1120
00:55:19,159 --> 00:55:23,039
trapped in brick corridors, Psychics overwhelmed by memory residue, locksmith's

1121
00:55:23,079 --> 00:55:24,760
hired for a job I never seen again. There was

1122
00:55:24,800 --> 00:55:27,920
a polite, empty denial. I tried to care, but my

1123
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:30,280
focus refused to leave the pattern of scratched numbers, the

1124
00:55:30,320 --> 00:55:34,079
overlay between real and hidden architecture. Demolition began at dawn

1125
00:55:34,119 --> 00:55:37,039
on a Tuesday, quiet, unannounced, heavy machinery rolling in behind

1126
00:55:37,079 --> 00:55:40,079
blank security vans. I watched from a row of dead

1127
00:55:40,119 --> 00:55:42,159
hedges as the backo took its first roaring cut through

1128
00:55:42,199 --> 00:55:45,679
the south wall, sending a plume of duskywood. Three days later,

1129
00:55:45,800 --> 00:55:48,519
the roof collapsed into itsself, spraying plumes of insulation that

1130
00:55:48,599 --> 00:55:50,840
drifted along the wheed shirked parking lanes like so much

1131
00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:53,719
cheap snow. All the while, I trailed the edge, ghosting

1132
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:56,800
the fence line, looking for something. At first, I thought

1133
00:55:56,840 --> 00:55:59,119
I wanted to proof assigned the world above truly acknowledged

1134
00:55:59,159 --> 00:56:01,519
what had fest had been eath, But really I was

1135
00:56:01,519 --> 00:56:04,679
searching for closure, the final quiet confirmation that Glennwoods secretiar

1136
00:56:04,760 --> 00:56:07,559
was gone for good. During the final sweep, technicians from

1137
00:56:07,559 --> 00:56:10,920
an environmental firm IMMERSI at dusk faces pale. Even the

1138
00:56:11,000 --> 00:56:14,400
demolition crew spoke little. Their supervisor, a heavy set man

1139
00:56:14,480 --> 00:56:17,719
in a high vis vest, refused interviews, snapping no comment

1140
00:56:18,000 --> 00:56:20,880
when someone approached with the camera. A rumor circulated a

1141
00:56:20,920 --> 00:56:23,280
sin Squash that workers had found a sailed corridor with

1142
00:56:23,320 --> 00:56:27,760
an elevator stuck between floors. Nobody officially said what was inside.

1143
00:56:28,480 --> 00:56:31,280
By the second week, security controls double signed a peer

1144
00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:34,559
warning off trespassers. My lovebook might have been an artifact

1145
00:56:34,599 --> 00:56:36,679
from another ear. My keys just a pocket full of

1146
00:56:36,679 --> 00:56:40,119
iron ghosts. I spent my evenings by the old staff entrance,

1147
00:56:40,159 --> 00:56:42,199
sucking in the carbon tan of dust, listening to the

1148
00:56:42,280 --> 00:56:45,199
hollow cyclical groan as beams and joys gave up to gravity.

1149
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:48,000
If Jake was out there, he didn't return to the fence.

1150
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:51,320
If the other missing Ashley, the teenage runner, the elderly

1151
00:56:51,400 --> 00:56:53,639
woman from the arcade, ever returned, it would happen far

1152
00:56:53,679 --> 00:56:56,719
from human eyes. Once on a late round. I heard

1153
00:56:56,800 --> 00:57:00,320
voices in the wind between trucks, not English, not exactly,

1154
00:57:00,440 --> 00:57:03,760
just overlapping syllables, shed some frantic message work by the wreckage.

1155
00:57:04,599 --> 00:57:06,880
I pressed my ear a cold whyamesh but could find

1156
00:57:06,920 --> 00:57:09,960
only the row music of failing structure. After the demolition,

1157
00:57:10,199 --> 00:57:13,639
the new cycled away, dropping lambward two and afterthought develop

1158
00:57:13,679 --> 00:57:17,400
as posted plans for condos. The city's remaining files disappeared

1159
00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:19,559
from the registry. Even the old blue prints failed to

1160
00:57:19,599 --> 00:57:22,960
trace on any office computer. The mall at last was

1161
00:57:23,000 --> 00:57:25,880
as erased as its builders once intended. But the burden

1162
00:57:25,920 --> 00:57:28,400
of memory is hard to kill. In the dark, I'd

1163
00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:30,599
hear the radio scrawl of statkicking in the space behind

1164
00:57:30,639 --> 00:57:33,280
my eyes, voices delayed, shuffling steps on bare concrete, the

1165
00:57:33,320 --> 00:57:36,800
shuddering hush before the elevated or slid open. Sometimes, as

1166
00:57:36,840 --> 00:57:38,760
I drifted in and out of restless sleep, my mind

1167
00:57:38,760 --> 00:57:40,679
would return to the sealed room, the names on the

1168
00:57:40,719 --> 00:57:43,480
door growing by one more, again and again. Closure became

1169
00:57:43,519 --> 00:57:46,480
an act, not a feeling. I took my battered look books,

1170
00:57:46,519 --> 00:57:48,840
though bezery key with its worn grooves, the handful of

1171
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:51,719
photos and handed them over to the local library's archive

1172
00:57:52,079 --> 00:57:55,400
under a nondescript accession number. At least there some one

1173
00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:58,440
might stumble across a fragment and wonder, at least there

1174
00:57:58,519 --> 00:58:01,199
I could stop carrying it. On my last visit to

1175
00:58:01,239 --> 00:58:03,440
the site, the chain link finch rattled in a winter gust,

1176
00:58:03,519 --> 00:58:07,039
staccatto and bleak, whether rotten that had stood a pidiono foundation,

1177
00:58:07,079 --> 00:58:11,000
partly flooded, plastic sheeting snagged amrabar. The earth itself had

1178
00:58:11,039 --> 00:58:13,920
rejected Glenood Hidden Heart, as if the mole's final sentence

1179
00:58:14,039 --> 00:58:16,559
was not closure, but dispersal, all its secrets. Drifting on

1180
00:58:16,639 --> 00:58:19,039
ground water out to the tangled edge of town, the

1181
00:58:19,119 --> 00:58:23,039
silence settled. Glenwood Mole was no more retail, replaced with

1182
00:58:23,119 --> 00:58:27,000
blank property signs, its history scrubbed and safely forgotten for most.

1183
00:58:27,920 --> 00:58:30,559
Not for me. I still recognized the shape of something unresolved,

1184
00:58:30,599 --> 00:58:34,159
their necho not of terror, but a profound absence. Last week,

1185
00:58:34,239 --> 00:58:36,480
as spring scraped its pale knuckles across the lots, I

1186
00:58:36,559 --> 00:58:39,039
made a pointless pilgrimage to the ruins, stepping carefully over

1187
00:58:39,079 --> 00:58:42,679
broken glass and swinted studs. The only structure left standing

1188
00:58:42,760 --> 00:58:44,760
was a slat that had anchored the tenant directory plastic

1189
00:58:44,840 --> 00:58:48,800
wrapped remarkably and vandalized, gleaming in the waning light. I

1190
00:58:48,880 --> 00:58:51,880
brushed us aside and studded the pritted surface, tracing new numbers,

1191
00:58:51,960 --> 00:58:54,599
yet nearly through the polymer. They mapped in Noah one

1192
00:58:54,679 --> 00:58:57,559
hundred twenty three R nine feet x B three, multiplied

1193
00:58:57,559 --> 00:59:00,000
in a pattern that shifted beneath my finger tips Elijah

1194
00:59:00,239 --> 00:59:02,639
to any logic but its own. A breath of wind

1195
00:59:02,639 --> 00:59:04,800
caught the edge of the plastic, making the directory pulse

1196
00:59:04,800 --> 00:59:07,079
alive for half a second, lighting up my own blowd reflection.

1197
00:59:07,239 --> 00:59:09,800
Beside a second paler figure in an old security jacket,

1198
00:59:09,880 --> 00:59:14,199
shoulders slumped as indistinct turned watchfully away. I straightened, gathering

1199
00:59:14,239 --> 00:59:16,960
my coat more tightly, realizing at last that glemment wind

1200
00:59:17,079 --> 00:59:18,719
was not the buried rooms of vanished people, but the

1201
00:59:18,760 --> 00:59:20,840
space left in the world after seek us rot away.

1202
00:59:21,480 --> 00:59:23,760
I walked toward the chain link, colcrid in my tea,

1203
00:59:23,880 --> 00:59:25,880
feeling the moles hush cling to me like a second skin.

1204
00:59:26,440 --> 00:59:28,880
At the fence, I stopped, looked once over my shoulder

1205
00:59:28,880 --> 00:59:31,719
at the shadow lingering by the plastic wrap. Kiosk. Some

1206
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:36,400
doors never close, not down here, and that is the end.

1207
00:59:37,000 --> 00:59:38,679
Thank you. For listening, and I will see you in

1208
00:59:38,760 --> 00:59:39,280
the next one.