Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. Between strange city iOS and the runoffhum,
A fair conditioning sleep had no grip on me. I
lay wide, a weak tapping in nervous foot against the
edge of my mattress, as if to keep myself anchored.
It was some time after two in the morning by
my stubborn digital clock. My apartment had the feeling of
a shoe box with a single slat window to prove
the city was out there, the rest sealed away behind
drywall and the rattle of pipes. Some sound, a quiet
scuff in the hall made my body tense. I counted
ceiling stains until the feeling faded, but it persisted this night,
the sense that something just outside was knocking, quietly, watching me.
When eventually I did push myself off the mattress, it
was because of a change in the air, a draft
swirling from underneath the door, carrying the bitter tone of
cleaner and something older. There on the fraid of welcome
mat that used to belong to some one else was
a note, A slip of paper not folded inksmeared halfway
by damp thumprint. My own grimy hand shook as I
picked it up, more afraid than I wanted to me.
The block, a handwriting, heavy and certain on cheap line paper,
belonged to one person, someone I hadn't seen em eeks someone.
Everyone else had stopped mentioning. It read whatever you saw,
you have to help us. There was no signature. My
skin prickled. For a second. I felt I might burst
out laughing, but my jaw only ached. I ran my
thumb over the bottom, where water had made the ink
run into blue gray blooms. The broom closet at work,
the overnight staff bathroom, the utility cart always organized her
so I had seen it. Script on old chiff checklists,
jokes on the whiteboard, a forgotten lunch labeled David in
a frantic hand. David hadn't shown up, not after last Monday.
His badge had vanished from the hook. The supervisors offered
nothing but a surplus of shrugs. I took the note
to the table and forced a breath. My arm bumped
the mug, still crusted with yesterday's coffee. From my window.
The city bled stray lights across the building's concrete face.
The glitches of red neon stuttering in the humid mist.
Down the block, A wailing siren flared and died. My
phone as to the screen, pulsing with an unknown number,
so abrupt that the Mugolmo slipped from my grip. Hullo.
My own voice sounded small and cracked. No adswer, only silence,
as if something was listening close on the other end
and waiting to inhale. Then the line snapped in my
dead I set the folded note in front of me,
my hands sweat and beach clinging beneath. The nails hovered
over the screen of my overcorder. Should I say something
in case this was the last wreck of left of me?
A slow chill moved along my arms. The city noise
felt petitioned off a set so far away that whatever
played out now in my apartment was outside ordinary reach.
If anyone finds this, you should know, I tried, I said,
heading record with the thumb that wouldn't stop shaking. A
bit melodramatic, maybe, but the shadows felt much closer. I
started recounting the last few weeks, the way the buildings
low corridors seemed to sound twice as lad at night,
the radiostatic that sometimes prest through the earpieces with oddwarbing
that never resolved into words. The moments I would pause,
mop in hand, sure, I climped something in the break
room window, a figure moving just out of sight, caught
in the circle of old flurets and lights. Every time
the building swallowed a person, it was as if nothing
had ever fold its base to begin with. I found
myself reading the note again, searching for anything hidden, but
the message was plain. Whatever you saw, what did I see?
I had tried so hard not to see anything at all.
There was another buzz. My heart shot into my ropes.
The phone again, I know number. I didn't answer at
this time. I watched it light up and go dark, slowly,
as afraid even to think too loudly, I gathered my
jacket in the battered notebook that had served as my
nightly confidant. Smudges of graphite under lined a dozen strange occurrences,
scribbles tracing a pattern I tried up to now to ignore.
The city made distant, hopeful sounds through the glass, but
I only heard my own breath and the imagine footsteps
in the hallway, never quite arriving, but never going away.
My whole body was tense as I stared at the note.
Just the weight of that handwriting, years of muscle memory
wrapped round and name no one mentioned now was enough
to make me reconsider the distance between ordinary and dangerous.
I started composing a new recording, this time making sure
it was clear desperate u mistakable evidence or confession. Either way,
the night had chosen me, and I couldn't pretend, not
any more, that I hadn't seen something wrong. I didn't
mean to join this building's graveyard, rosed her now, though
my name was already being drafted on to their list.
Before all that, before meetings and empty corridors, before notes
under the door, my life fell into the days, and
I was that other people slept through. My world ran
on bleach and secrets, the kind that gathered in the
bottoms of deep cleaning buckets and never spread thes sent
beyond industrial wipes. My shift always began as the city
lights dimmed somewhere past nine, when most offices dissolved into silence.
The building in which I was nearly employed never lost
its harm at heartbeat, living somewhere beneath the tile and wire,
my walk to the entrance beneath a battered canopy that
still wore the original foam's logo was a nightly ritual.
The security guards, not neither friendly nor hostile, marked the
crossing from city oddity to building secret. Inside, the air
was richer, with recycled chill and faint mechanical smells, all
elevator grease, oeson from malfunctioning lights, the faintest trace of
left of preventing machine chocolates. That first eye was easy,
just filling the lists, mop floors, checked bathrooms, white downbreak
encounters replaced paper towel rolls with full liners. I moved
between spaces designed never to quite fit, ceilings too low,
mirrorless hallways reflecting my own blank face even where they shouldn't.
The elevator critical to the job, became more unreliable the
later of the ire At midnight, if I pressed the button,
sometimes nothing happened. Other times it would jerk upward before
slowly grumbling back to the level it started from, dimming briefly,
as if it considered ending the night with me trapped inside.
The corridor on eight was particularly odd, a mirror t
junction that betrayed movement even when everything was still the
first few times I pass a caught ship's flickering across
polished glass, only to find myself alone. The janitory roster
felt like the resident ghosts to dress book mersey faces
that kept the same ires, always tired, rarely direct. Sam
It was to constant late fifties, thick set with eyes
that seemed to stick out, exists before he committed to
a room. His keys always rattle from his hip, and
conversations with him were clet drained of any mattock edge,
any trouble he'd ask, never quite looking at me inventory.
In one hand, I came to respect the nonchalants, the
simple economy of his words. Plaro was the opposite. She
arrived in nervous bursts, ducked into rooms too fast, and
seemed to be constantly searching the ceilings for something I
couldn't see. She'd join me at the service desk for
exactly three minutes, her words quick and wild eye. It's
cold to here, she blurted one night, aren't you cold?
It's just the vents, I answered, but she only shook
her head. Doesn't feel like that, d'ye hear? Never mind?
She never finished her sentences. Supervisors rarely serviced after dark. Instead,
the evenings belonged to late stay off of Stapphamess pateelln Hr,
who typed furiously some nights with her office door locked,
ignoring the world. I grew used to her presence, the
low throbbing light beneath the door, her shadow of flickering
behind frosted glass as she reviewed one spread, she after another.
I once offered a when greeting, which she returned without
looking up. Thank you for your work, she said, voice flat.
I think she meant it. She never spoke first. Most
of the other night staff I tre records, the two
person delivery crew left little mark. They haunted the back routs,
faces blurred by exhaustion. At shift end, I sometimes found
myself alone at the tank clock, stirring at unfamiliar signatures OTT,
it is cropped up. Even then, when I told myself
to keep my head down, my mop would go missing,
just long enough to make me question my memory, then
appear two doors down, leaning in the opposite direction. Once
the break room coffee was set out with three fresh mugs,
all gently steaming, though I could have sworn no one
else was there. Another time, my supply cock contents were rearranged,
bleach wapped for glass, cleaner, gloves replaced by smaller sizes.
I blamed fatigue. The radio link issued to every night
staff member was unreliable. It would showup a burst of
static once every hour, often distorting our names. An unfamiliar voice,
usually Klara or sam Mir, would pipe up, sometimes frantic,
sometimes nearly monotone third four done copy. Near three a m.
The lights on the eighth floor would blink sequentially, as
if playing out some coat. I tried to ignore it.
Sometimes I lingered, staring at the clock, certain I have
missed something, only to find an ire of gone by
without memory. My note book, tucked in a back pocket,
was filled with times in four numbers, pages marked with
clumsy sketches of hallways that never matched up. I left
myself little notes where checked Room eight hundred thirty three dstain, cold,
druft chair facing wall. Clara, on a particularly exhausted night, mentioned,
have ye seen anybody new like working? I shook my head.
They keep saying their hiring, but nobody lasts why, I asked,
They don't say, she replied. Later I heard her crying
in the break room, but she denied it. When I passed.
Most conversations went really conversations. They were confessions, quickly disguised
as annoyance. As the new hire, the less I said,
the safer. I felt the building fostered a culture of forgetting.
But sometimes, when cleaning the mirrored halls, I caught my
own face half shadowed, looking out, as if I were
the only living thing. Each shift bled into the next,
Knights droves along, punctuated by the hickeeping grown of the
vending machine and the hush that came before elevators opened
onto darkened floors. The unees never left me, though it
rarely crossed into real fear. Not then. The most I'd
admit was a sense of being watched, not by the
security cameras, but by something closer. Curiosity coagulated into observes,
the observer. When staff vanished, their spaces collapsed behind them,
paper trails and implex race. I dismissed most of its
dress night iris the machinery of corporate apathy, but the
patterns blossomed even then in the margins no one else
read For me. It was easier to chalk up a
missing mop, a shifted chair, a lost badge to an
attention the truth was, I'd start of writing everything down,
not facts, but possibilities, because the knights seemed to demand it.
Most nights ended as they began walking home under faded awnings,
replaying an endless catalog of inconclusive details. The city, always indifferent,
always just out of reach, gave no answer. Eventually I
stopped greeting the security guard. He stopped looking at me,
except to check my badge. Other people faded out of
the narrative. My own reflection lingered. When a second pattern started,
I'd stop believing anything at all. Returning to the building
the afternoon, I told myself I was only a there
to pick up the last of my things, an old thermos,
the battered note book may be a stray set of keys.
I signed the guest register with a practiced signature down
beneath a building wide haze of lemon scented cleaner. The
lobby was empty, television ticking out muted headlines. My shoes
stuck a little to the lobby tile. Back again. The
security got on duty, offered a brittle smile. He was
new or new to me. Hair busts, short uniform pressed
with a little too much starch. His badge reader. F
driver here, just left the mug upstairs. My voice cracked
with manufactured ease. He looked me over. I was pausing
at my hands, then shrugged. People coming and going every
day lately, he said, turnovers through the roof. Don't leave
anything now, you'll never get it back place. Isn't what
it was. I pretended not to hear the warning and
made for the elevator, now whirring with new signage. Her
sharp authorized personnel only sticker appealed at the corners, grinding
my teeth. I opted for the stairs. On the way up,
I rifle through all voice memos on my phone the
past few weeks appeared as fragments, short interrant dictated on
tired lungs, sometimes just a date and floor number, if
floor two thirty three a M. Lights blinking in sequence,
some one talking in record room. No official shift schedule
to night eleventh, floor three fourteen a M. Office chairs
facing the rown direction. Files missing from top drawer, one
after another, each too briefed to amount to anything, but
consistent in their absurdity. Most incidents time stamped between two
and four in the morning's always in this peculiar, never
busy sections of eighth and eleventh. Walking the silent corridor,
I passed the cleaning closet door, gaping, echoing with the
whir of ventilation, and turned into the brake room. My
supply back was still there, a relic of a less
complicated week, but something felt off. The zipper on the
outer pocket was stuck, almost glued shut by residue. When
I finally pried it open, another note, folded into a
tight origami triangle, dropped onto the linoleum. The sight of
it sent a fresh pulse through my chest. Unfolding it,
I recognized the same jagged script, almost hurried as time
check the blueprints fourteen, no signature. The incot's mudge poorly
at fourteen could have meant filed the room folder perhaps
a floor, but the building by memory badge and all
the elevator directories only ever went to thirteen. I tucked
the note deep in my pocket, glancing up as a
gust of air rattled events. The florescent light flickered. My
own reflection blowed in the darkened window, as though something
behind me moved. Before I could focus on my way out.
Passing the supply room, I found only a strange business
card wesh behind the cleaning caddy blanc except for a
phone number on the back. No name ires passed before
I let myself imagine what any of it meant. My
head ran with the memory of quiet firings clar as
tear streaked faced when her badge deactivated midshift, the silent
escort of two stony supervisors leading her to the lobby,
no one's booke. On the way back, her key ring
clattered on the counter, and the blue line hoard with
her name vanished. Worse was the way that the janitors
pretended it was ordinary. It happens, someone's always next, but
nothing about the building's procedures aligned with what I had
seen in ordinary life. Fired staff removed the odd eyes.
Supply of logs were written system rebuts racing entire evening's
work and office lay out subtly altered. Overnight. I stood
before the door at the end of the corridor, torn
between the gnawing urged to run and the siren need
to stay. The city's heart beat, faint and triumphant through
the window, pulse against my jaw. I hadn't realized I
was clutching a note from my missing acquaintance, so tightly
until my knuckles ached F fourteen. I'm out of the code,
half hoping the gloom would respond with another clue, something
to save me from risking belief in what I knew
but didn't want to admit. It wouldn't answer. The building,
I realized already knew how to keep its secrets. The
sleeplessness arrived before full panic. My apartment, once somewhat to decompress,
became a narrow cage of tension, empty of comfort. I
stayed awake, cycling through all voice memos, reorganizing scraps in
my battered notebook. My screen was clot of time stamps, maps,
hastily drawn four plans that revealed little but the dwellings
of my own anxiety. I barely ate. I trace patterns
with the tip of my pen, circling IROs two zero,
A M, three nine A M, always the same, supplies, missings,
security doors, leffaja, chairs moved like flickery. Even after reviewing everything,
no single data point confirm anything except my inability to
dismiss it. It wore at my nerves until at last
I fished out the business card left in my supply
bag of the one i'd found wedged among the mops.
I called the number, Hans, trembling so badly it took
three tries to dial straight. A crowded silence answered, faint
background sounds, maybe traffic. The rush of ventilation in dispersed
with the dry rasp of shallow breathing. Is this, David,
I asked, pitching my voice as low as possible. A hiss,
something like a stifled curse. Not here, don't call me,
Never saw you? Abrupt click, no message, no clue, just
another erase line. I tried the number again. This time
it failed to ring. Etele paranoia ate at me, ordinary errands,
buying coffee, standing in pharmacy, isle's gruetense, every stranger's glance.
A potential threat was that the same sedan parked across
the street last night? Had some one been following me
from the train. After another night of failed sleep, I
returned to the There, the new security guard was replaced
by someone even more in familiar, hair darker for his
flatter graveyard shift, he said, flashing teeth too casually. You
shouldn't be on this roster. He checked my eyeedeeth rice
and leaned into the radio. A burst of static followed
cut short by a board all clear from upstairs. The
building's pulse felt different, strain, expectant. Nobody offer help. Then
Net's silence was hostile, not bored. That evening, I slipped
in behind the last wave of daytime office workers, pressing
my back to the dingy marble as their suits whist passed,
mouth shut tight in my pocket. My badge, the one
that should have been canceled inched up and down with
my increased any jumpy breathing. The elevator's light was dark,
buttons I'm responsive. Samuel had once whispered the old drake
supply stairwell fifth four exit badge scan at the side
service panel the first time I'd observed him. It looked
like a nervous habit. Now I realized it was away
in when someone didn't want ye noticed. I crept floor
by floor, the air stale but comfortingly normal. At day eighth,
I paused, heart beating hard from the hall. All the
smaller offices were locked, but the break room was ajar.
A cleaning cot definitely not mine, stood in the middle.
A faint hum of vending machines filled the space, punctuated
by a higher, less comforting wine. I closed the door
quietly behind me, Cataloging everything by habit, I moved through
the quiet rooms on eleven. Most desks were still, save
a row of new monitors running silent, looping screens ivers.
A shadow passed on the hole's far end, but when
I looked, it was only the glint of a ceiling fixture.
My first real fine came in a half forgotten nook,
a security closet door propped with a half empty case
of bottled water. Inside a panel of monitors watched silent corridors,
time stamped with choppy red digits. One monitor sadderedz watch
for a second, then cleaved to the view of a
dark empty floor. On a battered desk, half bird under
cleaning invoices, I found a set of ancient headrons plugged
into a recorder. I put them on, flinching at the
hiss of static snippets emerged the shuffle shoes, a soft argument,
two voices rising intention then silenced. After a click, The
time voice drown three seventeen a m then a strange
rythmic clattering and metallic objects scraping across tile. De nap
sawlence Another section, this one abruptly truncated, switched to the
ticking of some distant clock in a high synthetic beep.
Most clips were clipped and stitched together a scan for context,
each labeled with a code like arminous four or be
menace free. Any lawn or sequence was missing, replaced by
blank aps. It was purposeful. Some one had erased everything
between two and four A, and I edited the night
to appear nearly still. I capped the headphones on, letting
the confusion and dread anchor me, and continued searching. In
the records room, barrowed beneath decades of faded incident reports,
I uncovered an old, unnotated set of building blue prints.
Dust made my eyes water as I turned to pages,
hunting for any mention of a fourteen floor. Most documents
insisted the structure ended at the teen, but there penciled
in at the margin of a coffee stained diagram, floor
fourteen manual override required below a faint arrow pointed from
the elevator shaft diagram annotated by a looping hand. I
did not recognize in short gribbled notes over i'dneed's badge,
key code senior staff only. I ran my hand along
the diagrams and traced the faint line secret rooms, utility corridors,
and at the base a false wall near the maintenance elevator.
My head spun with the implication patterns went just paranoia.
There was another floor. I tored the relevant page from
the blueprint binder, folding it into an inside pocket. As
my hands grew clammy ad I slipped out the side stairwell.
The corridor lights flickered, and the radio at my hip
choked half a word something like be back or bleeded,
before dissolving into static again. The city's grim noise seeped
in my buns as I stepped out toward the street,
and certain if I was escaping anything at all, or
finally stepping closer to the building's core. By then, the
old urge to run was matched only by the sick
satisfaction of the truth unfurling beneath the concrete. The next afternoon,
I arranged to meet Samar in a tired corner dinity
blocks from the building. He was already waiting, elbow planted
among salt shakers and half empty ketchup bottles, gaze fixed
out the window as if keeping watch for some one else.
No time for nonsense, he muttered before I sat. He
knew about the floors, I said. He bristled, but didn't
deny it. I know not to ask twice, not if
you want to keep your job, or keep anything, really,
I pressed harder. David left me a note. He disappeared
Clara two gun right in the middle of her shift.
You have to tell me what's really happening. Samer worked
his jaws of chewing a memory. The hum of the
dinersnee unsigned glared off the bastic menus. In that silence,
I realize how few words he'd ever shared. They get
you to clean them, the floors you're not supposed to see,
he said, quietly, fingers worrying at his coffee muck. But
once you do, it's like fog after flood. You can't
remember it right. Sometimes you wake up in a different place.
Sometimes you wake up three hours late and haven't moved,
But your COT's been rearranged. But why fire people? Not
all get fired, Some just vanish if you ask questions.
They make you sign things and dya's insurance papers. If
you don't sign, your accused of theft. Insubordination sometimes transferred
out quiet psalm though they don't come out at all.
Everybody says every one else is fine. He met my
eyes at last. You want to live, you keep your
head down and don't open the doors you're not supposed to.
If something strange happens, you say it was a power
surge or a prank. He fish in his jacket, then
handed me a knack in street with greasy pin marks.
There's a locker, no stairwell, basement. Combo's on here. If
you go back, get what's there. When I asked if
he'd help me, his stair went flat. Don't go back,
not even for them, not even for yourself. You hear me,
his voice low and scared, barely belonged to the man
I thought, I knew. He slid off his stowel and
dropped some change in the counter. If you're lucky, you
forget before they notice. He noticed. Otherwise, well you saw
what happened. Don't ask about the blueprints, don't ever mention
F fourteen. Watching him leave, I felt my own mind
rearranging its boundaries, the list of things possible growing greater
by the moment. Back on the sidewalk, I reread the
knackin until the numbers nearly faded, to then press my
breath into my collar, promising myself that if any one
could find out what was real, it had to be
someone who cleaned the floor that didn't exist. On the
night I returned for the lost time, the city was
pushing cold into the wind, scouring hope from its bones.
I kept the alley, avoiding the front desk, keeping my
head down as instructed. My nerves were beyond fraid. I
clutched the napkin, the page of blueprints, and an old
pen light tight in my fist. Access in the side
entrance required two bad swipes in a quiet prayer. The
systems indicator alike low green. Unexpectedly for a moment, nobody
stopped me. Once inside, I avoided the elevators, slipping through
maintenance corridors as described in Samura's alt device. The new
security cameras were angled badly, their lights blinking dull red.
I knocked out the lens on one with a trick
I'd read online JAMMI and for red with a strip
of reflective tape. Just for a few crucial moments. Unlocking
the north stairwell, my glove handshaking, I dropped the napkin
and nearly lost my nerve. But the combination whipped forty
two minutes seven minutes nineteen and the locko swung up
and with a pop. Inside waited a batter tape recorder,
fugiticate badger's torn scraps from floor diagrams, and a dulg
Ear employee handbrogne which Sunyer ad scrolled coded notations in
the margins. There was more a miniature roll of duck
tape and a faded red cap I recognized from early
shifts before samerswarped uniforms. Clutching these artifacts, I made my
way two floors up to the mechanical heart of the building.
At the cramped doct room, I played the casio, yet,
pressing the speaker tight against my ear. Sound filled the
narrow void, voices stretched like rubber bands, slicing in a
nut of static. You do your part and you forget,
One voice said, heavily processed. You hear nothing, you see nothing,
You work. Then footsteps echoing down a void. Another voice,
then desperate, pleased, there's something wrong with it to take
cut out, replaced by the scrabble of heavy door swinging open,
and then a braying echo of metal against metal. I
resumed my survey of the diagrams, Sammer's notations, the strings
of badgelock enters all at quarter iro intervals during the
same two way M four A M range matched the
service elevator's override schedule. Someone maybe Sammer or some one
before him, had tracked exactly when senior staff made use
of non existent floors. Heart racing, I found the key
switch beside the guttagutility panel, not on any modern map.
I rigged up in the lock with the duplicate badge,
lined up the codes, and waited for the system to react.
An almost regarden were kicked in and the panels dull
green indicator glowed. A new button on label barely pressed
into the surface, clicked softly beneath my thumb. The elevator shattered,
doors clanging. As I stepped inside. My heart jumped. The
panel now boasted a single smaller button beneath four thirteen
no edched numberest a rough hand and graved ex. A
cold breath stood to dust on my arms before I
press it. A slipped sam As cap in my pocket
and round my thumb over the folded note that started
all this. I needed an uncas something to remind me
of the boundaries of reality. As the world narrowed around me,
the elevator door of slid shut, locking me into the
sealed compartment of old metal city air thinning. With a
single reckless jab, I pressed the button, the carriage lurch
dropping heavily past floors already forbidden by blueprints and by trust.
Light flickered overhead, the hum deepening numbers ticked away eleven, twelve, thirteen,
then a blank pane beneath a heartbeat, and then the
doors yawned open. With the finality of waking from a
half remembered nightmare. I stepped into floor fourteen. Everything here
was preserved, trapped in the memory of another decade forescent
lights snapped on silently in sequence, blinking away. Layers of
accumulated gloom. Desks were meticulous, yet oddly occupied a coffee mine,
ugs with petrified rings, phones that looked to have rung
only yesterday. For the frames turned face down. Their room
of stale air mingled with the ozone tang of humming
servers at the end of the hall. I moved from
space to space, noting that the wiring ran as if
for hundreds of workstations. Yet there were no computers, just
the constant low wherre of machinery tucked out of sight.
Surveillance cameras pound as I walked, precisely, tracking each move
down the west corridor. A lock conference room door muffletoage
urgent conversation. A red indicator glared above the knob I
dared not linger. As I crept past. I ruffled quickly
through discs, finding a sheaf of printed mimmo's labeled special projects,
most heavily redacted, with names and dates blacked out. Employee
psychological evaluations, lay paper, clipped and fan piles, lists of
behaviors concerned for compliance, some annotated suitable, others compromised. I
pocketed once, too strange to leave behind. Suddenly, the elevator
dinged at the end of the hole in the silence fractured.
Someone was trying to access the secure floor. I ducked
into a side wholly line with faded posters and pressed
back against a genital royal storage door. From my hiding place,
I glimpsed a group streaming into an inner office. Four
men and two women in tailored suits surrounded a work
in coverall's mid fort is pale hands trembling. They fired
questions in low, steady voices, grilling him on protocol compliance,
asking what he remembered after his last queening he saw
at once shook his head. I don't I was just
on shift. Then his voice cut off as a woman
in a blue blazer raised a flat palm. Remember nothing
that here, or you won't have shift protection. It was
too measure to be a threat. But everyone in the
room flinged is if struck? My skin crawled as a
conversation to solve further references to ames at protocols, containment
engineering consequences for a late night brickdund The seats scribbled
on clipboards regarding the night janitor with the kind of
attention one gives to a failed experiment. In a flash,
the security monitors snapped on. The group turned in unison too.
The walls greens there grainy CCTV displayed me eyes wide,
caught in a moment of indecision. Outside the stable door,
the clacksun shattered, the quiet red strobes, painting the walls
with fresh strarade. The group in the office froze. Then
a man pulled a radio, bocking orders. I ran doors
slammed behind me, the magnetic locks barricading corridors. I ducked
under desk rose. The employee handbook flew from my pocket
as I sprinted for the frost Dowell door. I scooped
it up adrenaline, shopening each small motion a final desperate bid.
At the next desk cluster, I yanked open a drawer,
A thick Manila folder labeled with another list of names
and an admined scroll to delete. After approval slid easily
into my satchel panic lance speed. I crashed through a
maintenance stow all door just as a gloved hand reached
from my sleeve, pulling free pounding down the emergency stairs.
The lud surged, first flickering, then dying, before re emerging
above me. One by one. I reached the lobby, dodging
two on coming figures in security uniform, neither meeting my eyes,
both already distracted by radio's crackling with urgent voices out
in a cold, humid night. Still gasping, I put blocks
between myself and the building's heavy doors. The pell end
files pressed to my chest, my thoughts scattering in every
direction as the city bled on, the city swallowed me
for a moment. With its indifferent arms, refects propelled me
up crock side walks, past the shuttered grocery and the
fluorescent blur of a laundromat washing light over the street.
My shoes studded toward the nearest daley, hot thrushing in
my ears, louder than any car passing by. It wasn't
just fear that carried me. It was the dread, the
certainty that, even now being out in the night, there
was a line nap once cross stayed with the person.
I doubled over behind a flaking dumpster and felt my
chest fighting for each breath. The folder in my hand
was heavier than seem possible. I glanced over my shoulder.
No one followed, but a police cruiser roll passed slowly,
headlight striking over the cracked cup where my shadows shivered.
I waited, motionless, holding a nause that might have been
adrenaline with shame. My fingers trembled as I ran them
under the tap of the folder and peeled it open,
hands half shielded from the lie inside. Names. I recognized
the names I didn't, A rotating list with marks beside
each cleansed non compliant referred spress. Shutters rolled through me.
As I scanned the column, Samya and Klara's full names,
both flagged with peculiar codes. Next to you, David, someone
had scold and frantic script hold slash further evaluation slash
sleep study scheduled beneath a print out of security badge data.
Strange irregularities in the access locks, bracketed by hand drawn
question marks. There were handritten notes in marginless desperate pen
no memory esque char for prote cozy form, and in
red session for the charkhaus slash destroyer. I traced a
column labeled incident date slash ire and saw again every
entry cost between two and four a m. The city's
distant noise descended back, tugging me out of the moment.
I snapped the folder closed. It wasn't safe to linger here.
For all I knew, the next set of headlights might
be the ones that didn't pass by. I forced myself
up and kept moving, hugging the wall of the alley,
docking past the sagging wooden gate at the rear of
an apartment complex. The night smelled of stale beer and
sheep soap. I clipped my shin ona forgotten milk crate
and stifled a curse. On the ground. Beside the crate,
a candy ray business card with nothing on it but
a phone number winked at me in the sodium glare.
For a second, the world felt vitigenous lay it in
double Everything benign was alive with potential threat. I walked on,
passing to twenty something smoking under a broken street light.
They glanced at me, then away, but I felt the
gaze linger. I tucked the folded deep under my jacket
and kept my eyes ahead until I reached the back
stair of my own building. Each flight took age at
my legs suddenly lifeless, and every creak of the treads
behind me felt like footsteps. I fumbled my keys twice
before getting into my apartment. Once the door locked, I
let myself slide down against it, fold a press flight
across my chest, pulse still dancing in the palm wrap
tight around my phone. It was only then, finally that
I let my lungs excealefully. The tape recorder Somes was
in my other pocket. I fished it out and said
it atop the folder on my lap. For a moment,
I thought about calling some one, any one, but my
body refused to move. What would I even say? It
sounded the ludicrous secret floors raised memories, prode to calls
for late night staff. But the folder was real, as
real as they ache in my shins and the ghostly
touch of gloved hands brushing my sleeve in the stowell.
I shoved aside my battered notebook and opened it, found
a clear page and started scribbling every detail I could remember,
details to anything, everything, the way the elevator lats had
skipped A looks on those supervisors faces as they addressed
the janitor on four fourteen, the stifled fear beneath a click,
professional command. I wrote down the words session for the
truck house, slashed destroy, just in case they blurred in
my head later, Just in case I the next day
the next hour started to forget or to doubt my
own memory. A new sound cracked my attention. A panel
truck idling outside the building door, slamming footsteps econ in
the stowell. My hand poised over my phone, ready to
call for help, but the truck walled away, harmus as
any other Still, I pause and pressed record on my
phone again, forcing the quaver out of my voice. If
this is the last thing I do. If someone needs
to know about the folder about floor fourteen, there's more
procoused tests, people mark for disapproying if they don't comply
chlora some ear David. They won me. But it's worse
than that. It's written everywhere. If you know where to look.
I have the files. I'm going to show some one
I have to My whisper hung in the lowlight, silent room,
as fragile as daylight in a boarded up house. Then
through the thin walls an upstairs neighbors started the shower.
What are thumped in the pipes? A mundane signal, the
world trudging forward as if nothing burned beneath its foundations.
My name freshly printed atop that folder, blaze you and
raw in my mind. If anyone was listening, the story
was only beginning, and somewhere in the night, the buildings
still watched, counting those who had ever dared to see
what waited behind the service door labeled with nothing but
an X. I barely slept that night, if what passed
for sleep could be called at at all. My minder
maveled through those narrow eyros, reopening the fold as brithel edge,
repling the low stair of the suit of figures on
floor fourteen, the memory of red light pricking muscle. I drifted, awaking,
with the dard fact its weight and familiar beside my pillow,
the cold silence, sibling to my fear. The city day
was a hostile thing, the sun scattering between buildings, as
if afraid to look too deeply. My curtains were drawn like,
gathered awkwardly on the faded carpet, burning the inside of
my eyelids whenever I tried to rest. By ten a
m I'd already re arranged to papers half a dozen ways.
The stolen folder's contents felt too broad for sense. Columns
of namees mapped against time coded entries, behavioral assessments annotated
by the impassive hands of someone who'd never had to
clean their own messes. I sought it through the list again,
desperate spot patterns that would explain all that I had seen,
or at least narrow it to something explainable. The more
I read, the more obvious it became that I had
fallen sideways into a were built for secrecy and revision.
Directives for containment. Pepper the margins next to codes for
compliant and UNEASACA protocol checks. A single sheet near the
back drew my attention. Printed in the same type font
as a pharmaceutical incert titled Guidelines for Night Operationally for
our compliance. Below it Implementation of memory Softening Techniques for
Emergency Escalation Procedures Incident Documentation cy Section eight subsection four.
The language was impenetrable, but the intent was not. It
was corperate code for erasion control. I circled everything that
made my stomach twist, enough to damn them, but possibly
not enough to move the immovable. I started pacing phone
in one hand, them hovering above the coal screen. Could
I go to the police report? What a set of
weird employee files? A missing coworker or two, A flawed
out Everyone would insist never existed. Every scenario played out
the same, A dame detectives squinting at my batted face,
tossing the folder and the pile of the city's other
un ressolved misers. My name would be flagged, the company
would bury it. I'd be buried. If not embody then
in credit and reputation narrowing in and the only thing
I knew how to do. I got out my recorder again.
My voice, when I finally trusted myself to speak, was
thin as the light. If you find this, if I
don't make it, everything you need is in the folder.
They have a system for making people forget for using
night's staff as something between labrats and ghost cleaners. If
you work nights and you hear something run, these are
not accidents. My hand shook, but my voice held steady
as long as I allowed no room for trembling. I
tried to eat, but food had turned to something illian. Instead.
I forced myself to write out a list what I
had seen, who I could still contact, where I might
hide af Horst Cane to worst for a moment, the
absurd he struck me, Me and after IRE's janitor, now
living like the sort of subject in a low budget thriller.
None of it felt cinematic. All of it was oppressive.
Detail by detail, I found myself hesitating at the door,
listening for movement in the hall, the weight of every
step outside my apartment, of possible visit from people who
would not care to knock. The phone on my table
vibrated again and known collar. I didn't answer, but my
pulse answered for me, forming so hard my rips ached.
I left the phone where it was in stepped to
the window. The sidework glared up at me, as if
holding secrets somewhere inside. A resolve hardened, and not the
kind born of heroism, but sheer animal momentum. I couldn't
let this vanish quietly, even if it only amounted to
one more failed attempt. I had to deliver the evidence. Authorities, media,
labor rights advocates, whoever would listen or could be forced to.
But first I needed allies. Isolation was the first step
in the playbook. I would not let them call my bluffalon.
The building changed almost overnight. Security was doubled, then quadrupled.
A black suv popped at the cub in new rotation
on familiar men and women in natching dark jacket blocking
every obvious entrance. Facade remained as unremarkable as ever, but
the underlying tension bled out from around its scenes. I
watched it all from the bakery across the street, sippin
burnt coffee, hiding behind a doll geared library book, his
page's blood. When my focus slipped, people moved in and
out of the doors with uncommon urgency, most war badge
is now marked by a rid slash I hadn't seen before.
A few faces I dimly recognized as being up a
management or a chark came and when with whipos quickness
headed down, they did not glance at any one or
anything beyond the hood of their car. I tried calling Clara.
No answer at first three rings, then voicemail on the
third attempt. This number has been disconnected or is no
longer in service. I checked my note. A cour address
was just on the other side of the river. District,
a converted warehouse carved into small apartments. When I passed by,
something was wrong. Her name had been scraped from the
mail box, the apartment dark inside a faint spiral of
junk mail collected on hersel. Even the scrap our cats
seemed to avoid the building. At the library, the computer
labed terminals wind onder on sturdy fingers. As I searched
for ways in, a rash of new job postings caught
my eye seeking knight stuff, slash flexible ioslash, background check required,
slash competitive wage. The same generic lines cropped up in
dozens of places. Some company as I'd never heard of,
some link directly back to the address of the building
I'd just escaped. All postings went up within the last
two days. I checked them for hidden you orl for
clues for something just out of sight, Each redirected to
a different anonymous recruiter. It felt like the network, whatever
it really was, was already moving to replace those whose memories,
whose futures they'd scrubbed. One afternoon, my phone ran with force,
loud enough to cut through myself and forced isolation. An
untraceable number. I answered on instinct, only breathing, responded, stop
asking questions. The voice growled after a long moment, so
low I couldn't tell if it was male or female.
You don't want what the others got. Blick. I deleted
my coll history and tossed the phone onto my mattress.
I didn't sleep that night. Any Time a car passed outside,
headlights drifting through the seams of my blinds, my heart pounded.
I started rating again, just to prove I was real.
They're warning me now, I said to the recorder, I'm
being watched, maybe follow I won't give this up. That's
what they want, but I'm going to have to disappear
for a while. I'm gone check my locker at the gym.
The files will be there if they come for me.
All I ask is you tell someone don't let them
sweep this away. Talking to myself out love was becoming
too natural. Some time after midnight, when the heat from
the radiator finally drove me off the floor, I typed
a message into a private corner of an online genitorial
form posted as late watch A hundred fifty three anyone
worked for two hundred twenty four w banner recently? Anyone
else missing time or coworkers, please reply? I approof No
one reply, not that night, not the next. When I
checked again, the post had simply vanished. As if deleting
itself out of self preservation isolation may conspiracy plausible, parer
andi made it mandatory. Two days blowed by in the state,
I didn't risk returning to my apartment during daylight nor
after midnight. Each time I stepped outside, I felt as
though I had stolen something precious, and that someone, even
those who glanced at me without expression, could sense it.
It was on the third aim the circuit through the
city that I found an opening, a string of oblique
comments on a seldom visited sub form about returners of
people who'd been fired or disappear from night jobs and
crept back, sometimes unwilling, sometimes forced. Among the scatter haunted posts.
Some one with the handle guard Gone mentioned work in
the late shift at Banner said he had to sign
stuff and resign. I messaged, desperate but cautious. His response
came within the iro meat only save public nowhere near
the building. I know things, they know me. Wechs a
rundown coffee shop at windows scrolled with dust and the
fading hint of a now defunct bakery. Inside. Guard Gone
looked like I'd expected, broad shouldered, pitied cheeks as that
darted to every reflection in the glass. He shook my
hand like he hadn't touched another person in days here,
the one with the files, he said, not really asking.
I nodded. He worldlessly slid a battered USB dried across
the table them grazed with a white scar They didn't
find this. They pulled it from the audio backups before
they upgraded the systems. I asked him what he'd seen.
His voice was mostly a whisper. They told me to
destroy a whole run of footed graveyard stuff. Maybe weeks
if you ask why you get threatened fire both. It's
not just inside. They watch you outside. They scrub anything
unusual from the archive. I left before they could make
me sign more papers. I saw cleanings on my shift reports.
I said, is that what? They? He nodded, swallowing code
for deleting, sometimes for taking people away if memory's not enough.
Fours empty denies, no marks, no complaints night after there's
a new cleaning contractor if you ask, you get stairs,
or they say it's a deep system. We'set. No one
who works nights there ever stays. I let my hands
rest on the table, calm, except for the involuntary flutter
under my left EYEID why he shrugged, But is stare sharpened?
Seen it before. Other companies always late shift, always special projects.
Nobody ever keeps the same crew. Some one up. I
signs off. He tapped his knuckles on the us B
God snippets ordio, mostly a few logs, nothing clear enough
for someone who knows what to hear. I opened the
folder angled so only he could see. They're going to
wipe it all soon. Schedule says they were set four
fourteen and forty eight hires. Anyone left will be blacklisted.
I have a plan, but I need help for at
least a witness. His jaw set. He tapped out a
message on his phone, careful fingers shaking. When they need
the USB, I'll help, he said, but after to night,
I'm leaving town, and if they see me, I can't
help you any more. We went over the plan there,
and then over two or filled mugs of scorched coffee.
He had contacts a journalist who had once written about
labor abuses into companies, a name whispered with a kind
of reverence among online whistleblowers. Our plan was basic but urgent.
I would return to the building try to recover whatever
digital and physical evidence remained. He would siphon outlogs using
his old badge, documenting everything for a redundancy. At the
same time, we'd orch straate a meeting with the reporter,
who would go public of either of us finished. You're sure,
I asked, I'm sure if I was hoping for approval
or doubt. He gave a sharp, humorless smile. You're not
the first to think about cracking this wide, but most
decided safer to disappear. I guess you've seen too much.
We parted in shifting city dusk, each of copice of
the plant's scribbled in coat all back up fle split
across multiple cloud lockers. That night found me prowling alas
in silence, shouldered to every brick, heart anxiously preparing for entry.
The city air tasted coppery in my mouth as the
usual sounds dulled under my own dread. The building after
midnight was fantasian threat, together with side set cameras, disabling
two more with the foil and tape trick, my badge failed.
At the front door, the system was tighter, but the
basement service entrance, long neglected, was open after a canned
maintenance override, except it beat softly from the console inside.
The wallpaper seemed to thrown with residual electricity, as if
the entire building anticipated violence or of revelation, and would
be glad to meet it in either form. Up the
service stairs, my ally led the way, pausing at every
landing here was tuned to the hum of distant machines.
On the twelfth floor, we met our next obstacle, freshly
changed codes in the stowell door. Luckily, his back badge
glitched the handle after thirty seconds axis lagging as if
the building's immune system was processing in infection. We made
for the elevator bay. My glove slick was sweat. The
overide key walked again, but now the panel displayed only
a blank space next to thirteen no X. My partner
forced open the fuse box, jumped the circuit, and after
a grumble that pressed on our ear drums, the elevator
accepted the original code the low mechanical grun, and the
door slid open onto four fourteen. The space was immersed
dozens of foul boxes rolled on handkirts, shrouders grinding through
piles of paper. Men in plain clothes swept through the desks,
tearing out wires, yanking silver drives from racks. One cube
farm section was emptying into black industrial garbage bags, a
clot of keys and badge linards ruscheting off tile. We
played a part of new maintenance workers, keeping eyes down
under cover of a half collapsed cubicle. Weaves dropped on
two supervisors fussing over an oversize monitor. They want this
all wrapped by three. Anything still here gets touted for
offsete disposal. HR got the transfer lists anawed all non
compliant flat for temporary leave of absence, the rest memory
flush and badge clearance overnight. We couldn't linger. I ducked
into the narrow print room, finding a familiar patter of
flour punds taped up with a dusty copier. Corridor I
hadn't noticed before, beside far from the main conference rooms
terminated at double security doors, one left barely ajar Weadge
threw holding breath as we moved past the core evidence
In this corridor. Compliance room sat empty at but more
sinister hospital beds with odd restraints, a rack of wired
headphones or whiteboard listing audio conditioning intervals. At the far end,
two doors were marked sleep study in progress and interview
room too. A figure shuffle, just a head, brown uniform,
shoulders bout ham mattadown. My heart lurched David. He moved
with a confused gate of some one's sleep, walking to
h R Rett's flanking him. His eyes glazed past mine,
not focusing, lips moving and soundless. Prudest, we followed at
the distance, ducking behind a half closed door. As the
small group into the interview room, thro sliver, I heard
the woman's voice of familiar clip register a David, do
you recall the protocols for badge reassance? He shook his head.
I am not supposed to ask. Just can I go
back to work now? The mail rep responded for he
was carefully neutral. Once you finished to night, you will
be moved to the new side. Remember none compliance his
grounds for temporary suspension of shift privileges. David didn't respond.
A chill rolled over me. He wasn't resisting, not even comprehending.
I stepped back, letting the door close. The faintest snap
my ally teeth clampton horror. Shook his head. We can't
help him now he mold, And though my soul rebelled,
my body believed him. Time tinned. At the document destruction room,
we planted our recording device time stump everything in the
hopes the warring machines would fail to wipe all context
from here. The core of the floor, the true nerves center,
revealed itself as we darted for another emergency stairwell. At
the base, glass double doors etched with nothing but a
shifting corporate insignia blocked access to a room of executives.
We pressed our ears close and were blustered with argument.
We met compliance targets this quarter. Why risk exposure now
they are collaborating outside the chain if the CITs to
press it. Another voice mail oily, Containment's always been sufficient.
Deny delay and let the cycle finish. Night workers never
hold the story. They never do. My partner pressed the
us B into my palm. We have everything, Let's go,
But I shook my head, unable to disengage. I needed
one last piece, an h R exec a face had
glimpsed before exited, hitting straight for us. Her gaze passed
over my partner and landed on me. Pupils tight lets
the razor's edge away from a smirk. Cleaning to night,
she asked, I nodded, Just finishing up, She leaned, in,
voice dropping, you know it isn't just here. No one
working these nights ever leaves the same. Some walls are
meant not to be seen by Dailey. I tried to
swallow my terror. What happens now to people like Clora,
like David? She shrugged, stepping closer. There play summer safe,
where the memory doesn't hurt so much. The best you
can do is forget to She straightened, glancing at her
watch as if already behind schedule. You'll be on the
next transfer cycle if you stay too long. Have a
good night. She turned and strode back toward the sound
proof conference. We were treated for the exit, breath shallow
every step, awager on luck holding security. The far hallway
was moving men with radio's murmuring, central's reporting last pass
on mayn ark of one anomaly in love, a possible
badge out of sequins. We doubled back, picking up two
fold a smock final pails, slash archive, slid them under
our jackets and bolted for the stairwell. A shout I could,
I yanked a fire alarm, unleashing a screech that covered
our panic with bureaucratic noise. In the chaos, we slipped
through the swing doors and hit the street, just as
a police car rolled passed, responding only to the alarm,
not to us. I tasted blood in my mouth. By
the time I reached an hourly two blocks away. My partner,
the ex guard, clapped me on his shoulder, grip electrical
with terror and triumph guard it, he breathed, But let's
life long enough to make it worth it. We press
into the shadows and vanish, taking the story with us.
At least for the moment. The euphoria lasted all of
an ire. My phone vibrated as we ducked into a
rendered room above a closed nail salon. A string of
texts from a unknown source, random letters and numbers, badly
coded threats. My email to your message from the journalist
cannot proceed, legal contented family ceasel attempts delete files, Please
don't contact again. I tried other forums. My posters appeared
as soon as I made them, raised by hands no
less visible for their efficiency. My partner received a voicemail
garble frightened thereafter both of us. I saw a van
I think, don't trusty, static swallowed the rest. I went
into hiding, move three times in five days, shifting between
borrowed rooms, a storage facility, a friend sofa. Each morning,
a new menace, an email, we know where you are.
The paranoia was no longer irrational. I barely trust it myself.
Questions lingered about every safe house, every voice on the phone,
who might have been complicit, who was merely tired? Isolation deepened,
the walls reduced to blurred pavement, hospital lighted nights, breaths
held in shot of restrooms while the latest thread checked
itself under my door. Every so often I replayed the
lost tape Samma had left me, his voice almost off,
like the scrape of a room across dusty linoleum. If
you can't get out, help the next one. Even if
you can't help yourself, there's always another night. At my lowest,
I nearly held the files into the river, let the
machinery of forgetting grind me into puzzle pieces too small
to threaten them. But Samuel's tired woods planted roots despite everything.
It was then that my battered resolve hardened back to steal.
On a night dance with fog and the promise of violence,
I prepared for the final push. I didn't try to
finesse exposure any more by brute forced it, using public terminals, India, cafes,
any unsecured Wi Fi I could sniff. I torched my
anonymity tuplet every scrap scan after scan of the marked,
nameless badge locks, redacted project memoirs, even badly focused photos
of the sleep study beds and the shredded files. I
blanketed every whistle blow for him, every labor rite subpredate,
every underground journalists lilicerve a packaged hard copies and flashed
royse anonymous unreturnable to old genie reps, local reporters, national organizations.
Each time I hit s end, I felt a little
less myself, but also a little less alone. My personal
account and edited raw followed the evidence. I described exactly
what I'd found, the timetable of badge locks, the process
of memory wiping, the manipulation of overnight workers, elicit names.
Colorer David Samyr I gave details of the missing flaws,
the technical tricks that let people vanish by the clock.
I didn't sign my name. I left by contact and
encrypted signal, just in case I needed to move again.
It didn't take long for the pushback to begin. In
Earnest company's spookespeople denied everything, The records were fabricated, the
employee was unstable at a scruntle former contractor. Their press
release glib and two paragraphs too long, dismissed allegations in
the blandest language possible, but others pushed back in turn.
Anonymous ex workers chimed into my trades, showing badge logs
from wholly other cities happening at four hundred one fifth Avenue,
same thing in Philly Boston too, whole clusters of Knight janitors, cleaners,
maintenance men, and women who'd thought themselves crazy or alone,
or both. The city authorities, prodded by the scale of posting,
opened the superficial audit. A single detective foled me, bois
jaundiced with fatigue and self preservation. You know you are
making a lot of people nervous. Right, half the emails
we get our pranks, the other half are untraceable. Do
you have anything physical evidence beside stories? I gave him
the back up location of the folder. The detective promised
to follow up. A week later, an e mail informed
me that of records were inconclusive, unable to confirm any
rendering ongoing investigation. From that moment, the company's campaign shifted
from the nile to retaliation. The threat sharpened the direct
explicit ugly. One night, deep in a subway tunnel connecting
two lines, I realized someone was following heavy footsteps two
perfectly timed a figure reflected in the curve glass of
the train's doors, never quite catching up, never quite letting go.
When a car emptied out, I bolted through emergency stairs
and felt more than saw the close presence of some
one hunting not for a purse or wallet, but described
the last traces from a story that refused to die.
That night, I did not go home. I smashed my
old phone, pocketed only the U S B in notes.
I left the city briefly, and when I returned it
was as a visitor to an address I no longer claimed.
News followed in trickles, at first disturbing pattern of labor
violations at local firm. The questions linger over night walker disappearances,
no charges filed in alleged floor controversy. The company closed
four fourteen, launching renovations and sealing off the old dock
I've rooms. Senior managers resigned quietly without statement. I watched
the stories mutate, more about rumor than fat, the real
horor diluted in a muffle of p R sugar. The
suits that had interrogated David never so much as had
their names published. Still, the names on my less, the missing,
those never meant to be seen, now existed in the
digital firmament. The bird stayed a little less buried. I
took comfort where I could, which was mostly nowhere. I
let days, then weeks slide by existing at the margin.
I changed my name, crew out my hair, let my
beads sprap, ragged and unkempt. I moved south, then east,
picking up short contracts on a fake ID. Whenever I
started to feel safe, if the new segment would air,
or an email signed with nothing but half remembered phrase
would find me still cleaning, or worse, it's safer not
to look. I lived in the uncertainty, never quite knowing
if some one was beyond the next door, waitin to
erase me as thoroughly as any log entry. But I
wasn't alone, not any more. The network of Returners, as
we called ourselves, grew slowly, an encrypted chat here at
thumb drive. There a meeting in the back peece of
a dark bar. We shared details, warning, small pieces of evidence.
Most were too afraid to act, a few reckless or desperate,
prepared to blow the whistle at the first opportunity. I
recorded one final local eate weary, very softer than it
had ever. I can't sleep the way the floor's hum
at night. I hear it even now, every creek in
the walls, every shadow trigger's memory. But I have the
story out. I save what I could. If you're listening,
believe your doubts, not their explanations. If you're working late,
keep your head down and leave when you can't. Someone's
always cleaning up somewhere. And when you hear something odd
between two and four, remember you're probably not alone. Then
I turned off the recorder and let the night settle,
as dense as breath in all lot cause it I
stayed up until morning, forever, alert to footsteps at dork knook,
the scrape of a note, push beneath the threshold at
my temporary refuge. Some time later, in yet another city,
sleepless dusk, the real ending came not with relief, but
with a grinding, familiar dread dress, now as routine. The
hallway smelled of bleach, again, as though following me across states,
never letting me forget. The apartment was not yet familiar,
not yet haunted, at least not in the way that
made my bone shrink. I pushed by the mail slot
each night, an anxious animal, and waited for the world
to creak its next move. It arrived on an evening,
slow with humidity, when my mind was a little too still.
My hand's halfway through unpacking a box of chipmunks quiet,
so quie the whole way life flickered, the floor aped
under distant footfalls, and my nerves collapsed into expectation. I
opened the apartment door, expecting another round of flies or
rent to slips. Instead, lying on the aging an oleum
was an envelope, A real envelope, the cheap kind sold
a hundred to a box on the front only my
assumed name, no return address. The handwriting blocky, frantic, but
this time practiced, my mouth dry. I recognized the slight
redwood lean, the way, the h gold in the middle.
At how every dot pressed too hot into the paper.
My fingers trembled as I cracked the glue with a
thumb nail. The first slip inside was a note four
words in blue ink. Caught my chest in a vice.
It's not over. They're building again, every city, every night.
Below a plastic badge fobed plain but new corporate blue
stamp with the logo of a cleaning contractor I didn't recognize.
Across the bottom, in the same script, someone had written
floor seventeen. The seven was looped with the same practice
jerk as every cryptic note I'd received from David. My
hands went numb. When the budge caught the whole way light,
it shimmered, the letters, blurring the baccoon scannibal on any
known system. Pinned to the note, a business card blank
except for one phrase in the back, hastily scrolled, He'll know,
saying I heard a noise soft outside and paid through
the peep hole. The corridor was empty, but shadow moved
behind the glass, something not entirely unfamiliar, as if the
building's walls remember my every secret. The air trembled between
the threshold and my lungs. I sat by the door,
Friar's badge in one hand, note in the other, forcing
myself to record what felt like the only truth that
still belonged to me. We're all still cleaning up somewhere
someone is, and we never leave the building for lawn.
And then, because sleep would not come, because the night
had always been a covenant, never faithfully kept, I watched
the badger's dawn came, waiting for the next shadow to
move and the world to start the cycle again. At first,
I sat rigid in the wash of weak morning light,
shadows calling along the edges of boxes and walls, the
badge in my palm was called at sharp corners, digging
angry in prints into my lifeline. I turned it over
again and again. With each repetition, the looped seven almost
looked like a news or a spiral, or maybe just
a crooked question op. Pressed the card's edge under my thumb,
staring at the company logo and that a possible floor seventeen,
as if filling it to open some new sense in muscull.
In the background, the city's pulse started to rouse bursts
of traffic, muffled by new insulation so different from the
old apartment. Even so, each sand seemed weighted with old meaning.
Any faint fits that from the whole scent. The hay
is on my neckt biling up. Eventually, dizziness forced me upright.
I paced, counting my steps three across six to the door.
I tested the lock with the key nervoustick learned in
the month since. With the boss still warm from my grip,
I moved into the tiny kishenete and let the tap run.
My eyes kept sliding to the envelope on the counter.
The handwriting did not change, not with time or place
or exhaustion. Coffee is for a bat of French press.
I drank it with the cards sitting in view, my mind,
dripling the pattern. Every city, every night, every shadow behind
frosted glass. My senses strained for repetition, for the lutch
of something unseen returning after all this distance, Each late
night knock wandered over each slip of mail in the map.
Even the badge's faint chemical smell plastic and new paint
became a trigger. By late morning, a new certainty began
to settle. The network wasn't only hiding, it was adapting, spreading,
always a floor higher or deeper, or simply somewhere off
the grid. They'd let mew surface, then reminded me it
didn't matter. The next shift would start as inevitable as
the city's heart beat. That afternoon, I left the badge
an envelope on the counter, daring myself to leave the
apartment at all. In the stowell, the creak of a
boot on metal echoed up to some one coming down
too slow for a neighbor. Maybe, I pressed myself back,
hot hammering. A wiry man in coverall's whisp passed, keys
jingling from his belt attendant maybe or already another returner.
He passed without a glance, but my skin bust sending
waves of all suspicion across my shoulders. Outside the sky
was a quilt of iron and exhaust, people flowing obliviously
to errands day job's screens. The badge felt heavier in
my pocket, now burning its shape through my coat. My
eyes traced every janitorial van parked at the curb, every
utility work, A cleaning public binds, most Warren branded uniforms.
It would have seemed harmless if I didn't know what
I did. The coffee shop across the street provided purush shelter,
too exposed, an anonymous for real safety, but at least
it granted me silence and the view of my blocks,
enters and actors. I nursed my cup, fingers tied round it,
watching as a pair of dock suited men ducked into
the lobby down the block. They could have been management
for any number of businesses, but both carried flat and
marked briefcases, corporate fluid invisible. Just like always, I started
scribbling in a new notepad, force of habit. When my
hand grew tied, I leaned forward and let my gaze
drift to the street cleaning truck idle beside a loading zone, freeman,
one woman. They carried out black trash bags, each shield
with tape. Something about the routine, the way no one spoke,
the way their faces seemed blank, duty driven, scraped to nerve,
the driver moved to the rear door and tapped a
coat into a wireless pair. Obviously bored, my mind mapped
the memory on to familiar blueprints, the same behavior as
the same route efficiency. I was watching replacements, and none
of them would know what lay on their own four
seventeen until it decided to reveal itself. When I returned
to the apartment, sunlight slant across the badge, casting a
thin navy shadow across the counter. The enveloped paper had softened,
curling at the corner from the city's damp breath. I
turned my head, listening just the clutter of place next door,
a baby's then cry. Farther down the hall. My phone
vibrated with a single text, a five digit code, unfamiliar
in nothing else. I compared it to the badge, the envelope,
every old file stored in encrypted arcaves no immediate connection
may be a room number in employee I D, or
just another whisper to prove they still watched. I went
to the window, staring down at the blank faces of
those filing in and out of the lobby, carts and
cases and uniforms, blending from one block to the next.
Crossing the threshold of comfort and fear was now routine.
My own new anonymity was already paper thin. As Ira
sauted into dusk, my mind kept cycling. Should I disappear again,
or investigate or warn others? As Samyar had asked some
on the current behind These questions kept me pinned in place.
I was witness and messenger, not hero. I could not
solve what was always engineered to be unsolvable, but I
could keep naming it again and again, every note, every code,
every vanished night worker, every shift lost, every fragment of
truth passed on and incord digital pulse. By midnight, the
badge glimmered faintly in the lamp light. It's embedded chit
catching every angle as I lifted it, just to be
sure it hadn't raised itself. With it in my grip,
I made a record in a natural habit, now a
compulsion braided with survival. I have proof that they're building again,
I whispered, voiced low risks, vibrating with adrenaline. If you're
hearing this, you're already being watched. Don't use your badge
after midnight. Don't go to floors you can't see in
the directory. If someone sits a note under your door,
trust it's the last honest signal you'll get. I stopped
listening as my own voice settled into the hush of
the walls. I pictured every city window blinking out one
by one, imagined every night janetor pausing, just briefly somewhere
out there, the palm, sweaty around a mop pandle wandering
about a door that should not exist. As I powered
down the recorder, I heard a click behind me, the
whole light flickering, the mail slot, settling. Someone or something
was always arriving, always cleaning, always remaking the world in
silent intervals, while the city pretended nothing was wrong. I
pressed my forehead to the cool window pane, searching for movement.
Another cut, another uniform, another pair of eyes, scanning the unseen.
I kept the badge around my neck, the coast scald
and tucked between my shoe and sock. I waited, a
living echo while the world slept, for his own version
of night shaping another hidden floor for someone else to
find and try to survive. And as dawn broke, pale
and clumsy across the city's face as towers, I realized
the cycle could not be broken by one person alone,
no matter how many times the warning was given out
of the evident shade. But now at least there was
a voice reaching out into the dark, refusing to be
scrubbed away. I leaned back every cellway to the sense
that this story would keep finding alvers, that Floor seventeen
and whatever followed had already started, and that the secret
cleaning would never truly end. And that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.