Speaker 1: The last of my boxes banged against my shin as
I tried to juckle the broken elevator door open with
my knee. Only midnight, yet the air pressed down, muggy
as a subway tunnel in August. All day. I'd sniff
some burnt Sarah note in the corrid door's plastic or
old electronics. It clung unseen like a film across my throat.
The elevator blinked down, and I dragged my half disassembled
life into the block's main hallway. Breath echoing between the
bare concrete walls dim panels overhead flickered as if uncertain.
I watched my unshadowed jerk across the floor as I passed,
doubling and twisting in the cracked buff tile. The architect
had once a division, smooth walls, recess lighting, round push
button doors. Now everything trembled under rough patches, bad fixes,
the faint wailing of distant plumbing. I counted off the
doors by their batted number plates, six hundred six, six
hundred eight, six hundred ten, and then at the other
six hundred twelve, my new home. I pressed a key
into the lock and had to put my shoulder against
the door to get it to budge inside, I dropped
the last box and just stood breathing, grateful and uneasy.
The single window let in the city glow that never
dimmed even a desire, just a thin orange band under
the blind. There was barely enough room for my mattress
in a patchwork stack of crates as a table. I
tried not to dwell on the wallpaper, rusty water saints,
and abstract sheaps, two small holes near the floor, like
the place once it wise or maybe don't think about it.
Foot traffic from rodents. Every step seemed too loud, as
if the room itself was listening. That night's leap should
have crusted like a wave. Instead, I lay stiff on
top of my sleeping bag, jackets still zipped. As the
block exhaled around me, floorboards fluxed beneath in visible feet.
A slow rhythmic tapping emerged from somewhere behind the wall,
sometimes faint, sometimes as though a finger scraped right beside
my ere Pipes banged without warning, emptying their slow heartbeat
into my apartment's hollow shell. Through it all, there was
a persistent half thought that something just outside my field
of vision was watching weighing my reactions. Shadows slithered beneath
the gap in the door was distant. Units opened and
closed their hinges, moaning like an easy breath. I counted footsteps,
or imagined I did, until I recognized my own pulse
thudding inside my ears. Eventually my mind slip between waking
and some westless half dream. I heard whispering, sibilant, indecipherable.
My limbs jerked as if the sound pressed down from
the ceiling. I forced myself to sit up, unwilling to
drift back into that suffocating soundscape. Through the thin wall.
I heard another mattress creak, some one just out of view,
and during the night, alarmside me or marking time the
same way. By three. After checking the clock for the
hundredth time, I realized I had yet to truly close
my eyes. Instead, I got up and patted across the
gritty concrete to the kitchenette, filling a glass at the tap,
the water came out, cloudy, then cleared. As I gulped it.
I watched a neighbors silhouette against the brushed glass cross
edge of the whole light long jointed alms, their coat
flapping as they slipped past my door and vanished into
the stairwell. Whoever they were, their steps didn't echo for
a moment. I pressed my palm against the door, heart racing.
Familiar mind games, I told myself. Yet as I finally
slaid under the covers, determined to steal at least an
Io's rest, I still felt the charged, invisible preciures squeezing
me from all sides. The block might have been empty,
were crowned with watches I couldn't say which terrified me more.
I woke around six to the sound of a trolley
rolling somewhere below. Thin sunlight seeped under the blinds, painting
the walls of sickly brown. When I rolled over, it
took a long, stuttering moment to remember where I was,
and longer to find my feet. The previous night pressed
against my temples. Not quite a headache, but some residue
of anxiety. I shuffled to the window and watched as
an old woman walked a small dog around the concrete yard.
Not a soul on the bench, not a sound of laughter,
just a wind string, empty wrappers in the sudden bark
of the dog, sharp as a cough. The days that
followed congealed into a pattern before I meant them to jobless.
I arranged interviews I've fizzled out or never came. I'd
rent a moug my cowe of whatever I could find
and stand on tiptoes to see the street from my
crooked window. Early afternoons meant a pilgrimage to the discant supermarket.
Faded oranges piled on pallets, the bone, pink flow of
meat under film. Cause she is nodding behind scratched plexicus,
my well track to the flat, and the boundaries of
the block as tightly to find as barbed wire. The
neighborhood still wore the relics of its prime once it
must have bustled. Evidence clung in the Massay coach above
the block's battered entrance, and in the shuttered shops that
guarded the ghosts behind wood a metal grate. Each door
bore a different sort of graffiti, looping tags, smeared cartoon faces,
calls for help, ord declarations of territory. Most residents move quickly,
heads low, headphones on. At first, I struggled to recognize faces,
but soon enough patterns emerged. The mother two levels up,
perpetual circles under her eyes, her child in the lop
sided pigtails, watching the ground as they shuffle toward the
bas The man in the ground floor corner, always asleep,
face pursed, a stack of yellowing newspapers, more like cargo
than a neighbor on the batter. Mornings I tried to shave,
tried to wear the red shirt. It never seemed to matter.
The mail books a downstairs overflowed most days, were a
rotating puzzle of our rent signs, the dull rattle of
moving vans, and the heavy thout of crates against the
old marble stairs. Conversations were short and mere. Most of
the time. People offered wary half smiles, shooting glances at
their greeting. Sorry, someone muttered as we jostled at the elevator,
eyes on the floor. Others offered nothing at all, slipping
into their units at the first possible moment. The block's
maintenance took on mythic dimensions. An ancient plastic placard in
the lobby faded to near eligibility, cycled through stone reminders
quiet eyes. Begin at twenty two Deua of strict a
report to servants to management maintenance owed its schedule three
r D fried each month. The intercom would stutter awake,
sometimes indistinct voices splintering across every floor, then falling silent
before any reply could be made. No one ever seemed
to respond to the urgent emails taped in the stair
well demanding patience for future repairs. As days shaded into nights,
I found myself devolving. My hair clumped and grew patch
across my chin, stable outline my jaw, and prickly constellations.
My clothing started a hand from me. I could see
my ribs were once a comfortable softest had settled. Mayor
Fleckers told me something of what I was becoming ice,
ringed in gray and blinking for too long, mouths set
tight of perpetually holding some better observation at me sleep
when it came arrived in brief, ugly pockets. More often
I lay awake while the block exailed versus energy. Sometimes
I had laughter spit out in two second boasts cut
off mit gasps, as if the very edge is approved.
More than once I caught myself gasping awake from a
dream that had been more like a looping, hyper detailed memory,
except the colors were wrong, or the sounds were off
by some barely perceptible, unwelcome degree. More disquieting still, on mornings,
when I blinked into gray dawn, I'd sometimes find my
arms thrown out wide, as if I had been reaching
for something or someone in my sleep. It was happening
to others. In the stairwell. I'd spot residents rubbing their faces,
scratching at their necks, walking like old soldiers stripped of purpose.
One time I caught the mother from upstairs, pressed into
the far wall, whispering a horse just tired to her
own reflection. Though one night's the inter calm whale to life,
only to echo with static and a single warbling tone
that never resolved to a voice. The boards in my
hallway clattered, as if someone tested the limits of patience
and gravity, towing the edge between quiet and the block's
ill defined punishishments, and outside my door taped and taped
notices and its fresh rolls, fines or mysterious audits, reminders
from a management companied. It never seemed to appear in person.
I learned to watch for the moving trucks every time
I picked up mail horse circle the lobby, waiting for
the elevators call, I'd notice another for rent sign, or
catch new faces hauling batter boxes. People didn't settle here,
not for long. It struck me after a week or
so that the hallways felt more like a trans at
lunch than home. Everyone kept a shoulder to their own burden,
planning away back out. Of course, I should have recognized
the pattern earlier. It only took a small break, the
kind that happens when ye be torsted. Every other distraction
and rest feels miles away. Four nights running sleepscrape past
me like a freight train, close yet not for me.
So in an early morning trance, I took to pacing,
counting tiles, double checking locks, running my hands along the
edge of the bed frame. On the fifth night, chasing
another phantom sound near the heater, my toe cracked against
a seam in the floor. Sharp, sudden, painful, enough to
pull me out of my exhaustion haze, sharp into the concrete,
oppressed the loosened blank Where most floorboards laughed at Krober,
This one yielded to gentle pressure, giving just enough from
my fingers to wedge beneath. With a grunt. I levered
up and narrow, splintery fragment, exposing a cavity of the
westuff with lint quarters and the fossilized edge of some
lost plain car Very three inches under the edge was
a piece of paper, folded in quarters, yellow and worn.
Some instinct told me not to smile. Not everything hid
in his treasure. Unfolding the page revealed cramp looping handwriting,
knead even through the jeter. It was dated seven years ago,
in bluing that had faded to violet's mudge as near
the edges. The writing itself could have come from my
own hand, if I'd had more patience. Sleep won't come,
not since third week here scraping in the pats of
two eleven, three thirty seven, and four nineteen down the
hall six hundred fourteen's arguing again, I caught red jacket
peering under my door, Or did a dream at head?
Thick sights blurring at corners, like eyes are watching all
down the block They nowhere off six hundred six never
leaves six hundred fours lights on all night, earthick enough
to drum black hair in the taub, not mine. I
wonder who's missing their sleeve next I read it twice,
three times, tracing certain lines. There was a list of names,
some familiar at least they echoed off the mail boxes
I saw coming and going each day, precise schedule marks
down to the minute, scrape and wall knock at door, laugh,
not neighbor two forty three, Whoever wrote it, watch the
world as closely as I'd come to watch mine. At
the bottom, in shaky print, stay awake, watched them back,
closing the page with a trembling hand. I stared at
the far wall. It was uncanny, as if the block
itself had staged my experience a half decade ago. Unseeen
fit to run the script all over again with the
new cast. That notion was a comforting. If anything, it
left a siro tase beneath my tongue, as if my
problems were only the latest verse in a somn the
building hun for itself. I looked again at the names
six hundred six, six hundred fourteen red jacket, the same
hang dug faces in the elevator. Down at the mail boxes.
I took a longer look at the gold labels, some
of the names still there, fading ink or replaced with scribble.
Taped patches. The realization fell heavy. Whatever haunted these walls
didn't go away when tenants left, the script simply picked
a fresh mask. I knew actor for the next act.
That night, I didn't even try to lie downne some
stubborn splinter inside me refused to be the next invisible casualty.
I sat at the makeshift table diary page beside me,
watching the minutes which passed midnight. Like the stranger who
hid their warning, I started jotting down my own notations.
What a heart, what I saw, every groan in the
pipes of shape in the window. Sleep it seemed would
not be my friend to night, so I kept watch,
even if I didn't know what for Bye. A second
week routine had collapsed into something else, a feverish project,
a private war. When sleep refused me, I mapped it
to catch the cracks in the ceilane, listened for the
patents in the clatter outside. Night's bled into days punctuated
by strange, irrational outbursts. A throne ringing with no collar,
someone muttering to themselves in the stairwell. The distant sound
of gas breaking just passed on. My notebook filled with
timings too eighteen am hissing and heat pipes. A two
thirty four light flickers outside six hundred ten footsteps. The
in door closes too soft for slam key and lock
twisted repeatedly. The Internet, once my comforting source of distraction,
yielded nothing useful. Every database, every old article referencing the
building's address seemed to end in a dead link or
an outdate of council record. I tried to trace the
names from the diary page. A few came up in
housing registers from years passed, several more traces in old
social network messages, but almost no one appeared recently, and
never with a note about why they had left. Most
listings highlighted short termorintal available quiet convenient. Apparently promises evaporated
on impact with reality. I dedicated myself to small, underground investigations.
When the chance arose, I lingered in the lobby to
see who left, who arrived. Once the mother with the
picktil girl brushed by me, muttering they want too much
for too little, and squeezed her daughter's hand hard enough
to make the child WinCE. Another evening, as I forced
myself downstairs after sunset, I collided with an elderly woman
just outside the elevator. She steadied herself on the wall, then,
fixing her eye on me, said quietly, don't let the
building get in your hair. Somehow the weight of that
warning sheil deeper than the winter drafts that crept through
my window. When I asked what she meant, her lips
pressed together, white and thin, and she slipped away with
out another word. In the middle of another sleep stove night,
I noticed the hair shuffle of moving boxes, studying tired curses,
the scuff of furniture. By breakfast, one door at the
end of the floor had been taped to avert, with
another bolt available immediately, sign the residence gone as a
scrub by an eraser. The cycle was continuous. Suitcases jostled
down the corridor. The elevator light flickered and protest new
names appeared in sharp eye. Old ones vanished. I grew
to him it then braver, and then perhaps a little
recklessly bowled. Every sound in the night became a note
in my lock. Doors opening by no visible hand, the
hum of the elevator to fifty six a m. The
whistle of air through the bathroom vent. I grew obsessed,
unable to stop myself. Sometimes I feared I'd slipple together.
Chasing patterns were only noise, and it saw near rained.
One night, desperate for distraction, I went to the basement
laundry room. It had this dale chemical fog of a
room both of views and neglected a dozen machines, only
a couple operational stacks of wart plastic chairs for waiting.
I leaned against the washing machine, trying to focus on
the spin cycle's steady wine. But soon I noticed something
off by the back wall, a small panel hanging a
skew light visible at the scene. Curiosity out weighed restraint.
Glancing over my shoulder, I nudged the corner loose. Inside
Instead of wires or pipes, I found an odd cash
marck folders, cheap notebook pages, and crude sketches, room shapes,
floor layets, all annotated with times, numbers and notes. In
a hasty little hand, I tugged out sheaf and stared
dozens of pages, each chronicling the movement and disturbance inside
particular apartments. Six hundred two subject restless lights flickered three,
while a m in nine hundred two ins on the
escalation pacing noted two forty five, seven hundred fourteen TV
volume Sudden at one thirty three abrought silence. Each drawing
echoed the view from a perspective impossible unless one lived
in or watched those very rooms. Some sketches were drawn,
like rough outlines match in my own flat angles and
shadows that mashed the precise layout of my bedroom, only
not quite from anywhere I had stood. One in a
trembling hand mark circles when my seat case rested my
mattress position, the cracked lamp I brought from my old
life at the bottom unit six hundred twelve subject shows
cast concert. It occurred to me finally, not only was
I a watcher, but the watched someone or some set
of some ones was chronicling each episode of sleeplessness, each
pattern of unrest. For a moment, I pressed the wall
panel closed again, not out of secrecy, but dread. This
was more, far more than simply a place with thin walls.
Each time I stepped from the laundry room back to
the elevator, PARANOI flushed through my head, thicke steam. My
own notes, my own desperate attempts at sense making now
looked like the work of another subject a rat in amaze,
moving through tests as old as the buildings dust, I
started to wonder on a truly remembering these sunds or
are some being fed to me? The line between outside
manipulation and inside breaked down blood until no solid ground
remained beneath my mind. I gave myself a single necessary
ire of daylight Debreathe then returned to my search. Laying
out the diary pages, my own notes, and the sketches
from the panel. I began to compare dates, places, handwriting.
Stark patterns emerged. The sketches stretched back over a decade,
over lapping some of the earl is mailing labels I'd
glimpsed in the lobby. The handwriting, careful but practiced, matched
the notes from several different ears, suggesting at times a
relay of authors, at others, someone methodically consistent but growing
stranger in style. But there was a method. Someone or
something was tracking residents following duration, severity of sleeplessness, spikes
and anxiety. Several entries mentioned as stay millis event introduced
Monitor thirty six response or coded lines. I could only
have decipher There were equipment receipts, sound generators humidity controllers
tapped in beside crumbing blueprint of the building's full layout. Startled,
I returned to the farthest reach of my closet, the
same area where I'd found the original diary page. I
moved old boxes, dusted off the top of a wart shelf,
and found a thin envelope, water damaged but intact on
the front and clipped black marker the words for the successor.
The envelope stuck to my fingers as I pridate ope
and revealing blueprints yellowed an annotated with red pen along
with receipts for bulk electronics in a dog gabelow book.
Inside the lobebook was sparser redden in rush utilitarian script
audio heat VN two thirteen, light in six hundred ten
two thirty GASOD two fifty five. First bums charted induced
insomni consistent red jacket ejected all dog women would roll
subjects six hundred twelve early onset muster mac clenched as
I read lines about the exposure window would draw phace
begins and final record of hand over controls for stark
process is needed. Now, with trembling fingers, I dialed the
property management office. The phone buzz to an automated menu, then,
after a lengthy whole, produced a voice, neutral, smooth drawing
out each syllable. Legacy monitoring not a practice or feature
of your building. Any suggestions otherwise owned founder from maintenance
pressed to you. The ounces felt both rehearsed and incompatible
with actual tenor of my experience. When I pressed for names, rolls, dates, anything,
the line went dead under the flat as possible apology,
and a sharp click sweat pooled in my palms. What
I'd suspected had become a certainty, not just strange phenomena,
but a deliberate sanction campaign woven three years of tendency,
orchestrated manipulations, not simple happenstance rooted in the bones of
the structure, and the careful hands are eyes or microphones
of those behind the coatain. The question solely multiplied, but
the few solidified endurance was no longer enough, Not while
the mechanisms of my misery ticked along, possibly alarmingly, is
still active, determined to break through. As spread the blueprints
and re seats across my makeshift table, high lighter in hand,
I marked every junction box, every labeled service basedtoped behind
ordinary walls. My own unit had more than one mid
century designed quirks or the legacy of secret intentions most
residents had never noticed, but the blueprints spoke plainly to
any one with the patients to study, guided by a
mountain dread, A stripped back the cinder block paneling along
my kitchen wall, weaving all tools and cracks. Following the
faint echo of whoes. My breath caught embedded twisted among pipes,
sat corroded electronics, recorders, amplifiers, bulb's position to flutter and fail,
and prescribed rhythms. Most devices were choked in dust or
stained with the green black crust of abandonment, but one
dangerously close to my bedroom blinked with a faint, persistent
red light. The lovebook now made sense, I read aloud
heat Cycle Team in his two zero sound file cue
play on ire. The physical feeling of being watched was
in fact literal, at least until one device failed and
another spun up to replace it. As I met the
subject no. S dozens in total, each withou precise dates
and crypticut comes, I noticed an ugly pattern. Some names
were hemmed with heavy under lining, and the words ejected,
who were drawn or resisted. Most, however, terminated on a
blank final line, after insomni spiked, or after some unknown
event like a patient record closed with neither discharge nor death.
When I closed the wall panel, I realized what any
sleep deprived observer would fear most. One cable, thicker than
the others, ran warm beneath my finger tips, leading out
of sight toward the communal pipes. I followed a path
with my palm shivering at the residual heat, until I heard,
after placing the wall back in place, the faintest unmistakable
sand the click of her relay, a deliberate switching sound,
as if someone somewhere was still flipping control. I sat back, swept,
drying into a cold sheen. Somewhere in the guts of
the saging hulk, someone was still administering the test, still
chronicling who could sleep, who would break, and who would
rise to become like me, another observer in the chain.
Lone am I un it with the sound of my
breath in the soft wabble of the intercom. I listened
for the watch behind the wall and waited, a dread
roiling in each passing I for the next move. But
the next move wasn't what I'd prepare myself for. No
footsteps in the hall, no flutter of an envelope under
the door, no whispered threatened the intercom. Instead, what changed
with the buildings read a shifting baseline, less like a
storm breaking, and more like a temperature rising imperceptibly with
each ere. Every small noise now curled itself tightly around
my nerves. The flutter of the elevator fan, usually too
faint to notice, seemed to vibrate through the plumbing into
my bones. At odd times, a phone would ring down
the corridor, shrill, old fashioned ring, then go silent before
I could check my own, leaving me to wonder whose
it had been, or if any phone had rung at all.
I sat up all night, hands quivering on the table
as I leafed through the found Look book, fighting weariness
with cheapins and coffee. The blueprints glared up at me,
accusing and urgent, that cable still warm, still leading into shadows.
I couldn't follow on this, so dared the communal corals.
Faces became an obsession of venomous for a trailing beneath
everything ordinary, a little off of four a m. I
tried pointlessly to lie down. My heart wouldn't settle into
any RESTful beat. From the window, I watched a shape man,
I guessed by the sway of his coat paws in
the courtyard, look up at my unit, then circle the
dumpster and vanish into the loading dock. The security lights
bled orange against his silhouette. I waited for the tremor
of the lobby door, the metallic echo of the mail
book's hatch, but none came. It was the stillness that
unsettled me. The longer the block held its breath, the
more certain I became at the system. This web of
old wires and new anxieties was active. I didn't hear
the vent turnon, but felt its breath, a faint barely
warmer than room blast oc, carrying with it the undercurrent
of charred duston distantly something medicine or lever or old leech. Maybe.
I coughed once, then again. The here in the apartment
grew heavier, tying itself across my chest. Unable to resist,
I went back to the wall and pressed both ponds
flat against the paint. If I didn't sleep, if I
cataloged every sound, and light. Maybe I could seize the
upper hand, but all I accomplished was toweling a parade
of details no one had ever asked for. My lop
a grieved like a codd confession for w A m
voice not sure, murmur in pipes, fades four thirty two elevator,
Nobody exits, but doors open before forty four knock not
my door, still too soft to track. With each entry
dub led into the text, Was it all real? Or
had I finally slipped into the half life? The block
seemed to crave. Following day, pippered in exhaustion, I resolved
that pure documentation wasn't enough. Action was needed, and it
couldn't wait. I topped the blueprints into a back back,
slipped into sneakers, and left the flat for the service
corridors before breakfast. No one greeted me in the hall.
Even the elevator grumbled, as if aware of my intentions.
I punched the button for the basement with a sticky
finger and waited for the slow descent, listening to each
four clatter past. The basement didn't offer answers, but only
more questions. Behind the row of laundry machines and the
crusted sink. I found the old schematics promise, a maintenance
hatch canoflage in the wall to ditches long ago painted
over by a lazy brush, half flaking away. I forced
it open with a wrench. The air beyond was dank,
flicked with the must of all cement and rodent eury.
With the beam from my flash light purchase just that
weak and nervous and deliberate at I scanned the space,
searching for the cable. I trees on the plan. There
was slithering alongside the gas pipe, then splitting into bundle's
lash with brittle ancient tape. Several lead into gray boxes
full of molded plastic, half melted. At this sprawled up
toward the ceiling, ducking between the beamswhady old insulation rott
it from countless leaks. I followed one cable with growing dread,
noting it led almost directly below my own unit, past
a dangling badge that reed beatiolect control. I knelt nudged
open the box with a screw driver borrowed from a
communal tolkid in the laundry alcove. Inside was a circuit
bore peppered with rust, and grit, but one l ed
still glimmering as sickly pulsing green eye attached to it
a small microphone. It smesh, blackened by age, but unmistakable.
I peered closer. There was a handwritten label in faded
to a ligibility. Whatever experiment had begun, it hadn't ended
with the first round of tenants or the second. I
snapped a photo with my phone, hands trembling evidence. I
fully for myself a soft noisepial from deeper in the corridor,
footsteps of the shifting of something heavy. I killed my flashlight,
heart tripping into a hearth rum. The dark was absolute,
pressing up against my eyelids for a full minute. I
didn't breathe. When I finally turned my light back on,
nothing wasted except pipees sweating mildew, hinting, accompany by their
very silence. I sealed the hatch, returned to the elevator.
Yet old day, the green led replayed in memory. Some
one had set all this in motion, and I was
only the latest day to point. I called the management
office again, this time after three ringsaw a woman's voice,
smooth and come to the point of robotic, answered property Management,
how May I help you? I tried to keep my
words steady, described the broken electronics. Asked after the history
of the building, She replied with a set of lines
well rehearsed. No surveillance, no legacy projects, all equipment installed
to code. Is there anything else I can help you with?
To day repetition, all walls, no substance. I tested her,
pushing into complaint about insomnia, mansions of previous tenants, even
the old audits. She paused, then said, I assure you
all units are compliant and inspected regularly. May I place
you on whole? She did abruptly. Before I could answer,
music spuilled over the line. I hung up, feeling colder,
and I arrived. I skywured the Internet and knew for
news stores, rumors, anything referencing experiments were of normal medical
stat as linked to the address. No lawsuits, no news
or gives only a few message boy threads years old
mentions of the nightmares, and moved after three months. I
don't meant on the six four if you value your sleep.
The post petered up, with no replies, washed away by
time that evening. A new warning a powerf liquor not
in the usual haphazard way, but in a synchronized wave
down the hall. I stepped outside, watching his bulbs blinked out,
then flared a live a ripple that continued floor to
floor from behind doors, movement, faces peeking through cracks, vurnishing
just as quick. No one seemed willing to step out
and confront the pattern. Even I hesitated, but the need
to understand pressed me onward. In the stairwell, I crossed
paths with the older man who slept in the lobby.
He seemed alert, for once meeting my gaze up close,
I saw there rosin as glaze of sleeplessness in his eyes.
The ways un trembled against his battered cane. He too, eh,
he said, nodding toward the darkened lights. Some nights, I
swear the wolf's brief for us. I used to work maintenance,
Never could find the root. His voice trailed off, as
if afraid of who else might be listening the root
of what I prompted. But at that his face folded
into itself, mouth of glumps shut a reflex of self preservation,
he hobbled away, pulling his blanket close over one shoulder.
That night, the pipe sang again. Now lay with a
low oscillation I could almost feel in my teeth. New
lockbercinterriest filled my notebook pulse nineteen h y eprous one
eleven a M, then again one nineteen repeats every seven minutes.
I tried recording it with my phone, but playbuck revealed
nothing but static and my shallow breathing. I woke at dawn,
seated upright at the table, wristsore, pent rot on the floor.
Fatigue had finally overcome vigilance, yet left me un afresh,
sweat pooling in the hollow of my neck. As I
straggled to my feet, something behind the fridge caught my eye,
a small scrap of red paper, barely glimpsed. I moved
the appliant aside and retrieved a torn business car, one
side smuged and curling, showed a faded logo a style
as dying twined with the circuit. The reverse read in
uneven print for Queeri's contact e Matt's reference block fourteen
ongoing protocol. The leads to have me awake. Who was
he Man's protocol for what? I searched the name in
every possible database, but found no corresponding listing. No linked in,
no old news, no sign of any relevant agency, Yet
the card's presence, hidden as if intentionally discarded, implied someone
had tried to leave a sign for whoever would come next.
I scrolled the name on my growing suspect board to
the series a sticky notes now colonizing the kitchen back splash.
That day, I took extra care in the holes, listening
closely as I passed each closed door. Vague voices carried
along the pipe, snatches of arguments, shushing, and from somewhere
up on the eighth floor, a long, lonesome, almost mechanical
cry that ended abruptly. Residents heard through, avoiding my eyes.
The mother with the daughter didn't appear at all. Late
in the evening, a thunderclap ripped across the city, shaking
my window loose in its rain. How went out a clean,
coordinated killed two sudden first storm surge. From inside my unit,
I heard doors open, then a mass of shuffling, whispered
voices as people peered into the hall. Some one with
a flashlight moved past her beam jiggled and skipped over
my door. After a moment's hesitation, I joined the others
at the corridor's midprint. Hands crossed over my robes. Anyone
called for help. The young voice asked the twenty something
from down the way, eyes rimmed by red. No answer
except a cooff from the stairwell. This happened much, he persisted.
An older tenant standing nearby jerked his head every few months,
welcomed to the cycle. Before the young man could ask,
what's cycle, the older fellow had slunk back inside, leaving
on this islands, and the strains sent a dust and
body heat in the air. Back in my apartment, phone
battery shiveling. I found myself talking quietly to myself, or
to the imagined audience that might review this some date,
if only to say this happened. I survived it. Here
are the facts. Even in my own voice. Stout clung
to every sentence. I returned to the blueprint's flashlight aimed
at the margin notes. Several were indecifferable, but one stood out,
circled twice cross Bay Sea, intake OB's mirror, possible observation
post did someone still linger inside? It wasn't courage that
pushed me toward the next roust, but dense compacted irritation,
A mixture of fear and aneedy to reclaimed space. I
would not be gas lighted by absent management, by a
ghost of sleeplessness, or by anonymous experiment as treating me
a subject six hundred twelve. In the early flat stretch
of midnight, I folded my notebook, pocketed the card in
a small knife protection against rats. I tore myself and
crept into the stairwell. The sixth floor lining stank of
marples and iron, ascent that grew only stronger as I
approached the panel marked and the blueprints. My hands sweated,
clutching the knife and flask light, every muscle tense for confrontation.
The panel pop loosened a pressure, revealing a cavity valley
wide enough to slide through, lined with pink insolation, gone
gray with age. Inside the space was unpleasantly warm, heat
from ushielded pipes mixing with cold drafts from the ventwork above.
I crawled in, gingerly, thumping against beams, swearing as my
backpack caught. The far wall came half way up my chest,
and behind it, just as the plan promised, loomed thick
pane of smoke glass and of deservation window. Looking down angled,
I realized into the living room of six hundred twelve,
my own apartment. I pressed my face close heart tripping
through the glass. I could see the shape of my
old brown lamp, the crooked back of my plastic chair,
even faintly at the sleeping bag, now half an zip
from restless tossing. The angle was impossible to reach except
via this precise coal space, and the set up scene
decades old, but the dust that covered a metal frame
was disturbed. Recent switches ran along the woodside the glass.
Wiring snake back toward a wall mounted junction box. I
flipped the box open, breath drawn and tight. The electronics
were new here, at least some pieces made in the
last five years. A cluster of colored wires, all spliced
and sold out expertly ran to digital recorder's most blinking stamp.
By overhead, A thin microphone poked down from the ceiling insulation,
aimed directly where I usually sat with my notebook. On
one switch, remnants of a masking tape label read nearly
flaked away. Phase two active. My skin ran cold. The
bulk of the installations were dead, fused, battery, drained or corroded,
but a handfuls, all poles with tiny blinking lights. One
was attached to a module with the ne SD card
slot softly hamming. I dared not remove it. I needed
to leave the system untouched lest to ever watch. Realized
what I'd found and reset the evidence. Backing out of
the cross base gray permissions row against the edge, I
posed only to snap a set of quick forts on
my phone. When I returned to my unit, I realized
I was shaking with a thrill of terror and validation.
It was all true surveillance, deliberate manipulation, a system beyond
mere voyeurism, aims systematically to disrupt, record and perhaps eventually
destroy in a piece. As dawn began to break, cold
light filtering into the half demolish kitchen, I sat and
faced my messaprint out's sketches and cryptical logan dress. The
block's legacy was random, nor was my descent into exhaustion.
I wasn't just imagining the steady pressure the blocks of
sleepless nights piling up. I was the next puzzle piece
in an all brutal experiment built from brick wire and
a callous disregard for comfort. There was no sleep for me. Then,
nor even the hope of it, but a bone deep
certainty the game was not over. It never had been
the question for all beside my gull like a fever.
If all this were systematized, who was watching now? And
why let the show run on? Outside? An ambulance pulled
into the court yard, its quiet presence more chilling than
any siren. Cheap paramedics unloaded stretcher, hesitating at the entrance.
For a moment, I considered going down, confiding in them,
but that I was just another sleepless wreck, another wild
story in a block that wore such tales like a
third bare uniform kept me boxed inside, stale. From my
narrow window, I watched as the doors of another flat opened,
as the mother and her daughter led a pale and
steady man to the lobby. He shook his head, muttered
something looked up at the glass where I hid. In
that glance, a sliver of recognition or accusation, or a
share plea for help from somewhere deeper than they were
willing to voice aloud. I retreated from the window. Let
the new day begin one more round. For the watchers
in the watched my notes called on line after compulsive
line the only defense I could muster against the weight
pressing and on every side. The block, it seemed, was
not yet finished with me, not by a long, sleepless margin.
I sat for a long time at my kitchen table
after returning from the crawl space. The blueprints sprawled before me,
the edges cold where my fingers had pressed down too hard.
Each circuit, each gribbled a notation now burned behind my eyelids. Outside,
dawn bruised the sky, and the lights in the corridor
flickered amadically backed life. The block was as quiet as
it ever managed, each apartment behind its bolted door holding
its own dose of uncertainty. But I felt the pulse
beneath the concrete. Something was awake somewhere in these walls,
and I could no longer convince myself of my own anonymity.
Sleep was pointless, My thoughts moved in loops. My skin
had personsity to every shifting, narrow sound. Papers from the
low book jabbed at my attention, notations about phases, cycles, thresholds.
I kept looking at a phrase of phase too active,
and wondered if I had just tripped someone spoken wire
by exploring too deep for the first time it occurred
to me to fear not just exhaustion, but the consequences
of poking into the system if some one was still
running tests, still collecting data. Had become both witness and liability.
I forced myself to eat two slices of bread, chewing
each bite slowly. The taste was dry as sand. When
I tried to stand, my knees wobbled. A phantom of
weight pressed along my shoulders in the hole. On the
way to the bathroom, I found myself pausing by the intercom,
waiting to hear my name pressed from a speaker, expecting
a summons behind the next buzz, but it stayed as
it was mute, a sentry with the dead battery. People
were up and moving early that morning. Through the peep hole,
I watched a line of neighbors fall into the corridor, whispering.
Some lingered by the window at the end of the hall.
I sunken face is pale when sum or not. One
of the new arrivals e Flinds, but only a package
was left addressed to a flat that had cleared out
the week before. Contagions Bread different to hear, not as
a germ, but as the palpable shuddow that runs for
people when they know but cannot name, what is wrong.
By late afternoon, the signs became unavoidable. Maintenance workers in
gray uniforms arrived with duffel bags and new blue tool boxes.
They kept their heads down and didn't answer when I
tried to greet them. Instead, I cut snatches of short
clip phrases, A phase in itarget, end points, a leave.
By sunset, they knocked on doors and disappeared inside, sometimes
just for seconds, sometimes long enough that even the tenants
waiting in the hall began to get restless. At one
point I stepped out and asked what was happening, and
was told fire compliance check by a man with the
expressionless patience of someone reading from a card. At sundown,
a high pitched tone wine through the pipes, barely audible
unless you were already on edge, which I was the
youngest resident on my floor. A sharp faced woman with
the nervous glare came stumbling down the hall, shouting, did
you hear that is a gas? Do we need to
get that? The answer was, as always silence. I looked
at her and wanted to tell her everything. To hand
over the stack of diagrams and concurrent nightmares to beg
her to confirm just one element so I would know
it was shared. In the end, I managed just something's off,
stale out, not guidance, not enough. The elevator stoll twice
the evening. One was stuck in the third floor, its
lights dead, the other open and fits and starts grinding
with barely disguised resentment. When I wrote it down for groceries,
I thought I held breathing above the ceiling panel, quick
and soft, but it faded with the joel to the
ground floor. I looked up at the grill, expecting to
meet someone's eyes, but saw only this rich shadow in
the remains of a wasp's nest. In the lobby, voices
grew sharp. Someone was arguing with management on the main
intercon demanding a visit and explanation, a promise it would
be fixed. The line cut out after three sentences. In
the slanted light through the big window, I saw a
moving truck idling in the street is generated a humming
above the background dinn of the city. Inside, two men
lifted about an armshair from one of the vacated second
floor flats, their faces set refusing to look at anyone.
I asked the concierge, the young one who usually just
nodded up packages, if they knew what was happening with
the workers. He shrugged, stirring at his phone. They don't
tell us. They just send a crew once every couple
of months for systems stuff and disappear. It's above my pay.
He kept his gaze, averted the whole time. After dinner, suit,
though it tasted of little, I climbed the stairs instead
of trusting the elevator. Each door I passed was marked
not just by a number, but by a subtle scar
on the threshold or discoloration near a hinge. There were
no sounds of television, no music, nothing but the scraping
of chairs and the shifting of bodies just out of sight.
BACKINSI I'd six hundred tall. I copied every diagram and
handrid a no haunt to my laptop, attaching photos where
I could A line of thought formed. What if I
could expose this? Leak it on social media, send tips
to journalists or authorities. A dozen false starts filled my desktop,
each post growing toy, surreal, each message too fractured. How
to make someone believe without sounding like the next person.
The block had driven mad my head ache from the
screen's blue glow, but sleep didn't threaten. Instead, Droid crept
him wherever I let my attention slip. Every so often
I listed the facts aloud. Blueprints, wires, surveillance, a red
tape across the circus. The holes drilled into walls that
looked like age, but mashed the blueprints exactly. Truth was
a weight, and it was settling in. At midnight, the
intercom woke, not to her full voice, but a garble, click,
a hiss, then the same orbling, single note that I'd
heard before, only this time it grew and deepened, until
my teeth vibrated. Lights dimmed and came back like breaths.
I pressed my ear to the wall, but whatever was
at work kept itself behind the veil. I couldn't keep still.
Something had shifted. The game concealed itself less and less.
The diary page, the decades of notes, the Crolspie's glass
now only partial answers, not closure. I told myself tomorrow
I would find out who was behind this. Tomorrow I
crawled deeper if it cost me the last of my nerves.
But to night I sat with my back against the
kitchen wall, facing the open room. I didn't intend to
make it easy for the watchers, whoever they were, not
any more let them see me stirring back. The next
morning was washed in sickly light. City sky smeared white
and gray, shadows sharp at odd angles. As I washed
my face, a faint shouder shook the cup in my hand.
There was shouting in the hall, the kind that was
both loud and designed to be ignored, a pattern not
for help, but for warning. I grabbed my backpack, flashlight
and a copy of a log book. I slipped out,
telling myself I was just going for milk. But I
steered straight for the stairwell, heart sammering. The corridors felt different,
to emptier somehow. It was then I noticed the mail
boxes nearly half bore, lettings in stickers, others taped off,
doors hanging loose. In a building with dozens of apartments,
absence was more than silent. It was a loss felt
in the veryar The few remaining tenants kept to themselves.
Two of them jumped when I walked past, as if
they had been startled by footsteps for days. Below the stairs,
a door was propped open by a mot bucket. The
cleaning lady, usually invisible, but to day, refusing to meet
anyone's gaze, raised her eyes once as I passed. I
asked if she'd see maintenance doing anything odd. She muttered,
their work isn't for us, in a tone that discouraged
further questions. At the second basement level, the thick come
of laundry machines was missing. I duck past the row
of dead dryers and made my way to the fire wall.
The panel i'd opened before was partly ajar. I just
goored from recent handling. Some one had visited since last
I was there. My breath picked up short and shallow.
I checked the duct inside. Scribbled sketches and photographs had
been removed to no trace but some torn adhesive and
a faint outline in the dust. A single new note,
clumsily written in blue pan rested in the gap. Be careful,
not all sea daylight. The crawl spaces beckoned, but every
instinct scream that an unseen presence weighed just ahead. I
pressed on, drew tut spidery tunnels and ducks caked in
forty years of soil, ched my way by flashlight. Following
the main cable from before, careful to avoid wis, drooped
like black ners through the space a ladder up to
the fifth floor. I stopped, pressed flat to the concrete
as I heard voice as a man and a woman,
low and urgent. I told you it wasn't ready, not
since the old team left. It's not my problem phase too,
They said, ye know the protocol. A shuffle, then radiostatic.
I waited, barely breathing until they moved on. When I
eased myself out of the tunnel, a splash of red
caught my eye. A discarded maintenance badge, the same stylised
DI logo as the card behind my ferge. It was bent,
the clip snapped, name scratched out with a penknife. I
turned it in my palm, thinking protocol, old team. Could
there still be some one in residence running the block's
experiment after all these years? The achin my temples ward
with a sense of opportunity. I continued passed the usual route,
tracing cables until I reached it tility Prestow marked author
as Presnell. Only the lock had been forced. I slipped inside.
The air was thick with the sweet acrid tann of
old coffee and hot plastics. The room was small, wall
papered and peeling diagrams and log sheet to the real
nerve center. Behind the block sleepless agony against one wall
stood two battered office chairs, an aging set of monitors,
and a nest of notebooks. Across the screen of one
monitor blinked set of codes scrolling past on a gray
field six hundred twelve, nine hundred two, seven hundred six eleven, bee,
and so on, each with a colored status of green, yellow, red.
There were recent dates well into the current month. A
plastic coffee cup steam beside a half feet in wool,
as if its owner had just stepped away, but the
proof was there and flagrant view. One notebically open its
latest entry in the same blocky script had seen countless times.
Subject six hundred twelve poor adaptation shows pattern of resistance.
Monitor for phase out of escalation ineffective. The windowless chamber.
Suck the heat from my body. I leafed through the
logbook's fingers trembling. It was all there. Entrance from the
earless phases handovers from one observer to another. Some switches
were labeled active, some suspended. In the margins. I found
a careful diagram matching the blown out circuits had found
with an added note Phase three would row sloastrous. It
only authorized on director approval. Before I could weigh my
next step, there was a scrape at the inner door.
My body pressed flat against the desk. The knob turned
slow and deliberate, and a man step threw older, then
gray hair running rugged beneath the janitor's cap. His uniform
was faded, but similar enough to the contractor's gear, and
his stare when it finally landed on me was both
worry and exhausted. He stood frozen for a beat, then
his shoulders sacked. Should have known somebody to find this.
They always do. In the end, I strayed in nobe,
but clutched to my chest. Who are you? For a moment,
he said nothing. He moved to the desk, as if
snatching authority from the simple act of sitting maintenance for
longer than you've been alive. Probably they call me caretaker
in the logs, but it doesn't mean anything, not any more,
he added the open notebook. You've seen most of it. Then,
while what's left to say? I forced out the only
words that mattered Why, who's behind it? Why keep doing this?
His lips corked in the shadows. Wasn't always me? There
was a contract, a study, university, government housing board. No
one fesses up testing the effects of stress, the privation.
See how long before someone breaks pure doubts? Who doesn't
had funding, free years, upgrades staff the first round. We
have protocols. Logs had to be sent monthly, tod rules
for who got removed, who got left to finish? His
voice trailed off and null, I demanded. Now he looked around,
the faded blue of his eyes, flicking to the silent screens.
And now it's just the block Maybe I kept it
alive out of habit. Some of us didn't want to
stop for the data, for reasons I barely understand myself.
I write the logs, run a few cycles, keep it
from rodding the blockers. Is being left alone? Or maybe
I do. I couldn't help it. The anger, sleepless, fervor,
and horror boiled together. You ruin people. You're still running
parts of this on people who live here. Now, he
seemed to shrink at my words, but the stubborn line
deepened at his shore. Nothing personal, No one ever wanted
any one had half the time. I think the block's
got its own will. If it's not me, it will
be someone else. Someone always picks up the log book,
starts watching. They can make sense of it. A low
hum vibrated through the walls, rattling unused circuits at our feet.
The caredacer grimace glanced at the monitors. Sometimes management sends
me instructions even now. Sometimes it's just me checking the
coil or tripping a switch were set in the cycle
before someone else gets wise. I hardly know any more.
He stood blocking the only door. You can't take it all.
They'll say you're mad, dismiss it, astress paranoia. All I
can do is keep watch, keep it running, so the
worst imbusses don't take hold. On the main console, a
red switch sat is housing open wires bare from decades
of brutal rewiring. A sudden bloom of noise tore through
the air. The PA system deed for months, according to management,
awoke its girl's pulsing with a low air of deep
frequency that rattled glasses in the cabinet. A made the
block quiver with the hump can confusion through the heavy door.
I heard doors slamming, voices raised in panic, and the
echoing streak of metal or metal like the elevator trying
and failing to close. The caretaker's face was ashen. Was
it supposed to do that? Automatic? Not the phase? It's
a hold of v men to break up a spiral
flust things out. He spun to the monitor, slapping buttons,
trying to meet the output behind him. I moved to
grab the logbooks, the most recent, filled with dates up
to this week, he noticed unlunged, but I ducked out
of his reach, clutching a stack of records and a
folded bulging with for seats and wiring diagrams. You can't,
he shouted, But I sprinted for the other service exit,
bursting through into the corridor outside the alarms welled overhead
doors flew open. Tenants spelled into the hull in their
dressing gowns and house shoes, panic shop in the air.
Some clustered around the stairwell cradling children, shouting for answers.
Above us, from the elevator shaft came the unnerving stutter
of the car as it moved and then stopped in
rapid succession, as if enable to decide on a floor.
Hounding footsteps echoed behind me, either the care to gut
or someone else on his trail, but I didn't look back.
I raced up the stairwell, logbooks pressed tight to my chest,
weaving through knots of terrified residence. Someone banged on a
unit door in a useless rhythm, calling led us out
the alarm. When quit, I shouldered passed, focusing instead on
the heavy door to the courtyard. It was jammed at first,
but with effort I shoved it up and careening into
cold twilight and blinking fluorescent glare from the street. The
building's bulk loomed behind its windows, winking as lights flickered
in irregular waves. I ran along the perimeter, panting, the
noise washing over me and desperate pulses behind in the
half led office, The caretaker might have been wrestling the
system back into silence, but I didn't wait to see.
At the far end of the lot, a squad car
had pulled up red and blue flickers, lending the block's
concrete facadas strange, washed out dance of color. I staggered
to the edge of the sidewalk, dropping the sheaf of
papers long enough to wave for help, chest heaving something
inside experiments people in danger. I tried to choke out.
The officers drawn by the din entered with hands on
their belts, counting at the flickering lights, but the rush
of panic outside. In the thick wall of noise and
side may communication impossible. A few residents poured out, clutching pets, children,
small bundles of valuables. Most just hugged their arms to
their chests, blinking as though emerging from a long fever.
Ambulance sirens joined the cacophony. One of the medics, the
same from laugh week, recognized me, staring my arm back again,
she murmured, helping me to sit on the stoop. What
happened this time, she asked quietly. I could only gesture
a wordless admission that what was coming out could never
fit into a form or a police statement. When I
handed over the folder of blueprints and LOGG pages, she
glanced at them, confusion flickering across her face, before setting
the pilot's side Inside. I could still see commotion officers
moving through the lobby, their voices raised and echoing. The
caretaker was nowhere in sight in the iro as I followed.
The chaos continued. Crowds in the lobby surgeon ebbed neighbors
who had never noticed each other now compayed panic notes,
traded symptoms and hallucinations. Some told stories a coomeona, haven't slept,
I dream I not alone, my walls moved my clock
stop at two thirteen. Each morning, each story built a
case against the block, but in aggregate they sounded delusional.
By the next morning, tenant streamed out, dragging luggage and
children clutching bags. Some cursed the place, some just looked taller.
The officials who remained were quick to downplay power surge.
They told anyone with the neershop old wiring, unreliable grid,
not in comman and blocks this age to me. There
is no record of that kind of maintenance work, sir.
The property management offers issue statement of no official report,
no knowledge of legacy. Proved calls. The kedaker had vanished
his apartment empty, not even a toothbush left behind. I
brought the stack of low bo pages and blueprints to
the police station, to the city health office, to a
local paper. Each time I was greeted with the tired
patients the face of bureaucracy. Some took copies. Others shrugged
urban legend, stress reaction, no proof of intent. One detective
looked me in the eye, her gaze annoyingly sympathetic. You
get a lot of sleep lately, she asked. I could
barely answer on my third consecutive round official shrugs. The
city inspector finally walked the block with me, scribbling notes
on his pad, Seeing plenty of places like this. They
breed stores, was all he said. When I pointed out
the panel in the laundry. He peered inside, ran his
hand over the blank wall, shook his head. Looks like
old wiring happens everywhere. Report it. They'll close off the space.
He jotted, something idly, promising to alut management. I could
tell that was the end. The presence, the sensation of
the watril lingered. The few residents left were silent, worry
keeping eyes averted. More for rent signs sprouted. Venders stood outside,
offering biots for tenants who would clear out immediately. I
saw a truck with the hazard remediation painted hastily across
its side, but the crew only replaced a handful of
life fixtures and left with a joke and a shrug.
Sleep even now wouldn't come. My lug book entries became emptier,
hopelessly circular, one eleven a m pipe footsteps above, but
no one lives in seven hundred twelve two fifty five
and calm static. Sometimes I wrote just a full space.
My reflection in the dusty battery mirror was stranger day
by day. Drawn feral hair touseled a fistu alert for comfort,
the paranoia faded, slightly, replaced by something worse, for resignation. I
paced the apartment, waiting for the next jolt, But the
angry systems had quieted. No one contacted me, no anonymous
threats arrived. Still I found myself glancing up at the vent,
at the place where the wires had run behind my wall,
waiting for the click that never came. I dreamed less,
or if I did, never remembered upon waking. But I
couldn't stop the records, the cycles, the cold logic pressed
on decades of tenants. Still now, I stared at the
faces as I passed through the law by wherey hollowed,
eyed heads down. Did any of them see the connections?
Or only the exhaustion blamed on city life, bad air
of too much caffine. Sometimes when the exhaustion pulled deep
identitying the possibility I belonged in the system's files. My
own reactions now cause as much as effect. But the
cold wire in my palm, the stacks of annotated plans
reminded me it wasn't all inside my head. I started
seeing myself as one more subject and inevitability. The building
had selected, chronicled, then discarded, but I kept my eyes open,
mapping every pattern. A treat wasn't an option, not yet.
The block stripped of many tenants, but never of its
underlying web waited for the cycle to begin. In it,
Movers carried in a new family justice, another box over
for rent. Fliers arrived. I passed in the corridor, girl
clutching a blue rabbit. Her mother's hand nodded in her own.
They didn't look at me, but the girl palls long
enough to press her ear to the wall, listening for
something only she could hear. In the silence between us,
I wondered who would inherit my notes, my wariness, my
sleepless nights. Outside city noises rambled on indifferent, But here
inside concrete and steel, the watcher always returned. I began
my final day in the block by stuffing what remained
of my belongings into torn boxes. The place was mostly bare.
Its coroners dusted with scraps of papers and taped the
recidue of nightly rituals. Slowly unwinding, I white prints from
the window, left the keys and the steam radiator. My journal,
thick as a phone book, anchored my pack. The air
ran heavy, as always odorous charged. I shouldered my back,
closed the door, and descended the stairs, stopping only to
glance down the corridor one last time. Nothing weighed except
the faint or above the exit signs, stuttering alive. No
one said goodbye, though a few heads turned as I
trundled my load through the lobby. The new tenants clustered
nervously at the mail rack, arms full of shopping bags
and hope. They exchanged ego small talk as they read
the pealing notices, still taped up, warnings about water shut offs,
rules for the refuse room, nothing about cycles or sleep
or observation. A small boy, maybe six, played with the
hinges of the big letter box, feet dangling from the
bench Beside his mother. He fidgeted and peered in fishing
something with careful fingers from the dusty gap. He pulled
a small black posercorder, cheap plastic the candied by at
the drug store. He showed it to his mother, who
frowned and started to scold, but he just smiled, turning
it over in his hand. On the back and blue
marker for the next observer it was running. I paused
at the glass door and caught my reflection, pale and
shoppened by insomnia, watching the family melt into the lobbies
uncertain light. I stepped outside and for the first time
in weeks, drew a breath that didn't taste entirely of
burnt plastic and concrete. The machinery of the block were
behind me quietly as doors opened and closed and cycles
were set. I kept moving my pack heavy lockboo, pressed
to my side, feeling the buildings silent, gazedeknoting between my
shoulder blades. As I disappeared into the one blue morning.
I kept moving my pack, heavy lockwook pressed to my side,
feeling the buildings silent, gazeknoting between my shoulder blades. As
I disappeared into the wan blue morning. I walked until
the blocks rank behind mid rise city haze, until its
rows of windows surrendered detail and became only a gray
brue smudge against flatten sky. Even then it didn't release me.
My feet found on familiar streets, automatic, while my mind
rolled back to each hazard of last night. The alarms,
animal hun trembling through the pipes, the faces in the
stable white with fear, the creticuts, weary confession. I spent
hours in small corners of the city one I always
in the doors, half expecting a figure in gray uniform
to material as behind me, as cycle through coffee shops,
trying and failing to explain to her journalist over an
online chat what I endured. My words grew more brittle,
the morey tight institutional surveillance, unauthorized human experiment. Reproof replies
dried up. When I offered photos of brittle circuit boards,
faded notebooks, thick with handwriting, looks like squatters or pranksters,
was the only response with even a trace of professionalism.
I saved the images anyway, dragging each file into a
new digital folder, still titled with my old gene number
six hundred twelve. By noon, exhaustion and hunger lured me
into a silent library. Carol, I tried sketching a timeline
to reclaim logic from Bannica Date's equipment. The names annotated
in that log book. All roads led back to the
same conclusion. Whatever had happened, whatever might still be happening,
was just out of reach. The official channels had closed,
the press had shrugged, the authorities dismissed the residue with
procedural calm. Night long before, I found the energy to
return not to the block, but to a cheap sublet
across the river, where the building shadow couldn't reach me directly,
even in closed by a new walls with different traffic
patterns humming under my window. Unease pressed down, I caught
myself watching patterns in the dust, listening for clicks behind
the heating vent. That first night elsewhere, even without the
orchestrated disruptions, I did not sleep. I called former neighbors,
those who had fled while I was still trapped in
adrenaline and insomnia. Some didn't answer. One, the sharp eyed
woman from my floor, picked up after a lawn delay.
She spoke only in cautious fragments, word place not the same.
After nothing's right. They want you to forget. I asked
her about the care diager. She got quiet before replying,
he always finds her way back, and even if it's
just a head. She hung up soon after three days passed.
Each morning I combed the news for any mention a
mass exodus of residents, perhaps a health department advisory, even
just a simple crime blotter entry. There was nothing. The
block's address flickered only in real estate listings. Spacious modern,
immediate occupancy, quiet community must see. On the fourth day,
police called. They had my statement, the photos, the record
of my friendic early morning report. The voice in the
line mail and practiced said, no evidence found of tampering
on our walk through building wiring oudated but serviceable. Management
denies any unusual policies outside standard maintenance. To few of
new evidence, please respond in writing, this investigation is now closed.
My hands trumbled so badly I almost dropped the phone.
Work was something like it found me soon after. Tempt
labor enough to keep my mind from circling too tightly.
But the recidue of the block was not erased. If anything,
it became sharper when juxtaposed with the noise of ordinary days.
I watched people in the subway faces hollowed by lack
of rest, and found myself searching for familiar, haunted glances
at night. If I dreamed, I never remembered the details,
only a sense of breath held too long and the
ache of being observed. I spent evenings sifting once more
through what I taken, the scanned blueprints, the cryptical law pages.
I scrolled and scrawl, seeking the missing angle, the overlooked
clue that would spark out for age or bring closure. Instead,
the document became numbing, repetitive, the same cold calculus of
stress points and withdraw triggers. If anything, they proved to
me only how replaceable we all were inside the system.
The researches, the observers, all spun out until replaced by
the next occupent, voluntary or not. It was around this
time I began receiving anonymous texts on my phone. Short clipped,
let it go. You are not safe if you keep
pushing No, don't talk to the media. I tried tracing
the numbers, but each routed to ghost as I am scarded.
As soon as I replied. There was no follow up,
no explanation, just a sequence of digital chills that left
me certain the game hadn't truly ended. One afternoon, drawn
back by a mix of morbid compulsion and unfinished business,
a bus past the old block. It looked unchanged, but
new faces cluttard, the cob struggling with boxes, a nervous
tangle around the mailbox, alcove gone, with the police, the ambulance,
the hazard remediation crew in their wake. Ordinary life had returned,
in all its ordinary discomfort. I watched from a distance,
sung lass as low as one of the new tenants,
Jim at the Foyd door opened with the swipe of
their phone screen. There was some argument about moving keys.
No one looked up at the camera blinking up of
the entrance. Yet despite the churn of human routine, I
could sense at the patience of the block, waiting for
the cycle to start again. In the glass doors reflection,
I caught the eye of a boy fresh to the building,
his smile faltering as he listened to the echo in
the stairwell. Even with the truth in my hands, for
as much of it as survived the caretaker's clutch, every
part of my body tensed, as if expecting an alarmed
shriek at any second. A few days later, a thick
envelope arrived at my temporary apartment, no return address. Inside
was a single photograph, black and white, grainy, dated at
the edge nineteen years ago. The shock captured a trio
of men in maintenance uniforms standing proud in front of
the block, stripped facad back straight faces blurred by age
or by some trick of expos In the corner near
the building's side door, a figure hunched scribbling in a notebook.
I recognized that posture. Now on the back someone had
written it never stops. No other explanation followed. I hesitated,
then burned the photo in the sink, but the after
image linger. Worse still was what followed, more silence, as
if those watching had decided I was no longer worth interference,
or that I had already been neutralized by knowledge alone.
It became difficult, after a couple more weeks to separate
what I remembered off the block from what had only
ever been suggestion or fear. I retraced my notes, desperate
to chart the difference between my sleep broken memories and
the factual record. Was it the sound of pipes at
dawn or the invisible evidence of wires under old pain
that still kept me from rest. Each night pressed heavier,
the absence of new alarms only deepening the sense that
surveillance could slip him from anywhere. A ventilation, great hare,
a flicker of static there, the neighbor's cough, next door wilways,
always just on the edge of verifiable reality. I tried
reaching out, letters, messages, uploaded PDF to citizen journalism sites.
Most vanished. A few responds trickled in, not from reporters,
but from other ex residents with their own cryptic testimonials.
Still here buzzing some nights, even in the new place,
My dreams won't settle it. Did you ever talk to
the old categer? He knows more than he says. They'd
already learned what I was fast coming to accept protests
and disclosure. Rarely reached past the building's self sealing membrane.