Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. My name's Alan McCree and this
is audio Lord number. When I'm not actually sure I
ought to be doing this. It's just passed two thirty
in the morning, and here I am again, with nobody
around except for the damn flecker and the elevator panel.
Management said for documentation in case anything happens. So maybe
this counts even if nobody ever meant these files to
be reviewed. Or maybe I just want to reassure myself
that I'm not drifting off, not seeing things, not letting
the sleep to provation get to me. The building is
a glass and steel monolith slate gray at night, all
hard reflections and fluorescent glare. You'd think a place this
expensive wooden buzz, but the fixtures up on the service
floor sound like they are a live, constant low drone,
pulsing in time with their system. Nothing is supposed to
happen on this shift except for checking access logs, patrolling
the vacant lobbies, jotting your initials on a clipboard, and
keeping your eyes open just enough to avoid being fired.
I walk through the lobby, it always feels colder than
it should, though there could just be nerves. The white
marble gleams with the shellac finish, and the only movement
is my reflection skimming across the doors. I stop in
front of the bank of elevators, badge out, and the
display flocks to greet me. Security axis grounded, one floor
lit a pale blocky thirteen. Some nights there are more floorers.
When I'm un relief or swapping with another shift to
night for some reason, all near the thirteenth, my badge
doesn't even respond to the other buttons, just a little
red blink. The doors open with a sort of deliberate reluctance.
I've come to hate metal sighing, rubber buffer sticking. Each
time I ride up, it's like entering a pressure chamber,
empty except for the little rectangle of hand sanitizer in
a corner, and whatever skin prickling sense it's sunder in
my collar. As the doors close, for a split second,
I catch myself in the mirrored wall, features pulled down
a look of late night resignation. If anyone in the
building ever smile, I can't imagine it. I stand in
the elevator, listening to the cable strain. The ascent feels
longer than thirteen floors should. When the chime sounds, it's muted,
like the system's embarrassed to denounced itself. The door slide
open onto a hallway skirts so clean it still smells
of disinfectant, lemonye and sharp, like some one wipe away
anything human and iro ago and it hasn't recovered. Four
thirteen is nothing special on paper, off brand top carpeting,
class partitions, cubicles outfitted in industrial baige. Yet the instant
I step out, something's wrong, always wrong. Desks are all
slightly off the grid from the map I meant to follow,
as if someone tried to reconstruct the floor from memory
using the rom blueprints. Maybe I should chalk it up
to the cleaners, but the patterns are intentional. Brewers of
office stairs pointing subtly the same direction, except for the
one station at the far window that's always precisely diagonal
facing out. I check my clipport official diagram, dark lines
mark in each desk, each pivot point, each bought for
emergency supply bins, But the arrangement in front of me disagrees.
File cabinets moved an inch, sometimes two. Once a fish
bowl of pens were located from the left to the
right side of a credenza that incidental feels too regular.
On one desk, just past the first conference room, a
paper cup stands out catch in the light. Steam curls
from its mouth, faint but visible under the weak florescence.
My own coffee is back at the desk in the
security office. Nobody's supposed to be here. The locks from
half past midnight said no entry since twenty two nineteen
Badge system door cams everything zero activity, a kneel hand
hovering over the cup. Heat seeps up, humid and strong,
dark ring forming on a clean sheet of paper underneath,
and impossibly smudges of what looks like clips to come
the rim. I thumbed through the security app on the
work phone, checking the overnight video streams times down's match,
all showing a dull and empty office save for the
shadow of my rout and the blip of my flashlight
as I walk past the calms. Not a flicker of
movement near the desk, just static stillness. I end the
log broke tight. Nothing to report, I say, which is
a lie, But I can't bring myself to submit anything concrete.
I tell myself, I'll double check the layout, I'll watch closer.
But my hand shakes as I sign off, and the
lemon scent lingers long after I leave. Before all this,
before the twelve IROs stretches and stale at ghost corridors,
Before I started noticing things not written in any manual,
I didn't know there was such a thing as a
truly quiet job. The temp agency made it sound almost amviable.
Security for an overnight shift in a new glass building
union rate, no report of trespassers in three years. Easy
money if you can stand the boredom, the manager said,
flipping through my application. I took it obviously. It was
a step out from my lust into private warehouses out
near the canal. The pay came right on time, and
nobody expected heroics. Just wakefulness, walk the floors, keep your
notes neat, leave the coffee pots clean, repeated so often
it became background noise. Still I should have known the
reputation was off. The structure itself was considered something of
a legend among city gods, one of those spots you
e the brag about surviving or refused to discuss. When
EF first started, folks called it the dead zone, not
because of danger, no more because nobody working there seemed
to recall the details afterward, which is odd in the city,
where most buildings develop histories, stories, even pranks among the staff.
Here there's only silence, more uncomfortable deflection. From the beginning,
routines were sacred. My shifts started with a handover from
the day guard, Bill somewhere past retirement age, bristly mustache,
always frowning at me as if I'd misuse something of
his already. Just stick to your assignment, he said the
first week, thrusting the clipboard into my chest with enough
force to make the rings rattle. Don't poke around, stay
off floors or not due to patrol, trust to logs.
Alan there there for a reason. He stayed vague about
what that reason was, and even though I pressed with
the sort of off and friendliness that usually cracks open
some hidden rivalry or complaint, Bill just shook his head,
lips a flat line. Later, I caught him watching the
elevators after shift, as if he expected something to go wrong.
The day crew, cleaners and maintenance became a curiosity. I'd
watched them wheel cuts past the elevators pausing for Bailey
a second, as they had to keep it careful, never
to let their gaze linger too long. Not a single
one press for the thirteen. Despite all the joking about
flaws in luck. Someone even stuck a strip of masking
tape over the thirteen button during the day, a joke,
they said, except nobody laughed. My own motives were simple.
I needed the work. Rent's rent, and nobody else in
my saturation can turn down a union car and health benefits.
But even then there was a prickling sensation that went
with the territory of feeling that the floor I was
meant to ignore was the one watching me instead of
the other way around. It's hard to explain the other
gods swapped assignments without explanation. The regulars in the break
room tocked up the ghost shift, but their tone went
fat whenever specifics came up. Between nightly walk throughs at
hunker over the bank of monitors that passed for a
control room sipping bunk coffee while the globe from the
screens made everything look washed out. Incident reports always empty,
building logs cleared every week. Security policies stuck to the
same patrols recorded every hour. No deviation from the designated
floor also standardized. You'd think the building was copying itself
from an instruction bucklet. Trying to break up the monotony
at wander by the maintenance station and catch brief snippets
of conversation. When I dropped fourth thirteen casually into a
question a gearus stock supplies up, there were just on twelve,
with the cleaners pretended not to hear. It was as
if the floor lay under a spell. It's mention sold
in the alec and unlockom odor. One afternoon, I asked
Bill if there was ever anything we've laid at night.
He gave me this blank look, not angry, just tire.
You follow the routines, allan, keep the logs tight, don't
get curious on that floor, That's all. Then you switched
topics so abruptly it was like a drop call. Two
weeks in vaults of the deserted thirteen four began to
build up, nagging at the back of my mind whenever
the shifts grew slow. It would have been easier if
the avoidance felt natural, but it wasn't. Hit was wilful, deliberate,
like the whole staff had signed some unwritten agreement never
to draw attention to that blinking black boarded button behind
the glass panel. I would have let it fade if
not for the little things that started to add up.
How the elevator sometimes paused the strange extra second on
twelve as of considering something haw the janitor Marisel skipped
that slot entirely when wiping the buttons, as if afraid
of getting cleaner on her gloves. And how in the
store room I once found a box labeled extra thirteen's
last do not replace, filled with faded placards and single smashed. Namely,
I returned it reluctantly, pretending nothing out of the ordinary
had happened. Still, it's hard to shake that sense of
something just off. Like the time walking my route, my
reflection in the glass partition seemed to lack a fraction
behind my own step. Impossible, surely, but it left a
metallic taste on my tongue. The thirteenth floor didn't just
attract my curiosity, it needled at it. The second week,
I decided to test whether anyone any one was actually
using the space. Maybe there was some one skipping the
badge systems or a night manager checking on a project.
But I needed something more concrete. If some one was
moving through the floor, there had to be a trace.
That night, after marking off my shift start at eleven
fifty three, I quietly slid one of the rolling chairs
about three inches out from its cubicle. The left back
wheel lined up with a subtle gouge in a tile.
Easy enough. I also left a penny bright, untarnished plant
a face upon the thick stack of h off owls
cluttering a side table near the kitchen ere, something no
cleaner would bother with. Right next shift, I arrived up
my usual time and walked the same route retired, but
keflas the chair I'd moved now set back, not where
it was supposed to be per the official map, but
back to the very alignment I noticed on my first
night that faintly skewed off center look not quite facing
the aisle the penny an. I skyried the floor, even
rooting around the trash under the pretense of checking for
a contraband, but no luck. More intriguing, the coffee cup
was there again, though this time only half full, and
under it a faint brown ring stained the blotter where
last night's cup had sat just a shade off from
the new placement, almost stacked layer over lay, a timeline
in staines, no entry in the lock, no glimmer of
movement on the security tapes. It was as if the
floor and whatever was tending to retinue to stay just
out of sight. I opened up the digital logs on
my work phone, reviewing visitor enters and cleaning passes for
the week. Nothing. Each time stamp lined up with the
badge in badge out rhythm, the camera stubbornly refused to
give up any secrets. Static flicker overlaying the empty queue.
Farm Maintenance's answer when I send a report about unexplained
office rossettes was a carbon coppet email asked off or
exceptionally thorougher. I few of new concerns file a written
request to maintain routine patrol schedule. No further action required.
That bland official response only fueled my nerves. Nobody a
reason is exceptionally throwed at three in the morning with
a shift rotation as half empty and zero maintenance tickets
marked as pending. The rissets when just quick cleaning. They
would deliberate like a person re aligning the room after
a rehearsal, trying to get it just right for a
performance no one would see. I started proping in secret,
as if for a contest was some one who knew
how to work the rules. My next attempt at catching
the fountain was subtle. I left a sticky note folded
inside the equipment closet door, right below the bolt, not
a normal place, some one dusts. I also set a
thread of masking tape over the filing cabinet latch, a
machiece seal that would break if anyone opened it. Instead
of logging my patrol right away, I waited, turning off
my flask light and tracing steps backward, straining to hear
the faintest trace of movement. Nothing at first, no footsteps,
no lights flickering. But as I made my way back
an aisle later, I found the sticky note motor sheeped
into a tiny wedge balanced on top of the mob
bucket inside the closet. The tape strip gone replaced by
a neolia identical scrap of fresh edge, but the same color,
almost seamless. The files on the cubicaldesk had been shuffled
just slightly. Their order reversed from how I'd stacked them.
If it was a prank, the perpetrator was a genius
and insomniac, or both. I checked the locks. Doors that
should have been shut tight were open. A crack hinges
creaking so softly I had to hold my breath to
hear it. Each time I stepped away, I felt the
tickle of carpe fibers shifting behind me, a fractional scalf,
a breath of pressure. I began jotting down every discrepancy,
using the pretense of equipment checks to proke through cupica
draws and the staff'supply closet. One night, after passing through
the server room, I saw I heard the low drag
of a chair just behind me, A tiny whereasping complained
that faded as soon as I stopped walking. Feeling boulder,
I tried to proke the security terminal deeper. Four thirteens
listening in the digital admin map was the only one
to read unsigned in all caps. Nothing tighter to a department,
tenen or amendes. It was as if it existed outside
the hierarchy and claimed real estate in the busiest business
district in the city. The UB records didn't stop there.
Digging into the aukouse those accessible any weight, I noticed
old maintenance tickets that kept recurring like a bad toothache.
Nightly bulb failure was set Circuit one A or residual
chicout pingjan fourteen AM, please retrain cleaning staff restrict unscheduled
access to thirteen. The documents signed by initials I didn't
recognize disappeared after a two month period. In early summer
eight years ago, a pattern started to emerge, but never
in a way you could capture neatly. Cross checking blueprints,
I noticed that the laminated directory and a maintenance basement
dating back at least a decade simply skipped from twelve
to two fourteen, not thirteenth, but also no actual floor
labeled fourteen on any elevator. It seemed like the space
walk between plans alighted from record, as if the architects
themselves were embarrassed by elevator. Maintenance logs meanwhile, made repeated
references to four fourteen adjustment, even though the public facing
buttons never included such a floor check position. Sens Azero
logged between thirteen slash fourteen. One entry read another had
routine was set to default override building management. Yet try
as I might, I never once saw a fourteen illuminate
on the control panel, nor found a key that would
summon an elevator to the destiny. I had made up
my mind late one night to dig deeper, if only
because the contradictions felt like a deer. I started searching
city permit records after my shift. Cross reference in old
inspection summaries using the building's former names Bird. Within a
knock of sight scanned from grainy dark matrix microfiche, I
found reference after reference to a fourteen flour conference s
wheet multi level tenant occupancy Priminis twenty twelve, and abruptly
notations reading space were classified not for general use, no
public access. Why were classify a floor? It didn't make
sense unless there was something to hide or perhaps something
to bury. That night, driven by restless curiosity in a
dose of real dread, naw, I let myself into the
sub basement records room bade swiping three times to rouse
the old maglock, a faint chemical weakling at the left
of a paint or disinfectant, but it was otherwise deserted.
I scrolled through the digital logs, reaching years back, and
though there were sensor traces, some nearly a decade old,
showing motion in staff access at odd repeating intervals, always
after midnight, the logs paired the late night checks with memos.
Four was thirteen slash footy, use our patient, restricted records only.
It did not archive, incident, review the leadership only. It
wasn't just forgetfulness. Then someone had been erassing, restructuring, scrubbing,
not just finger prints, but the very identity of that floor.
Even after all this time, I made a quick odio lock,
whispered but insistent. Four thirteen is mask coor reading for
something else. Maybe something happened on what used to be fourteen,
and now it's hiding there, orver worse, somebody's still maintaining
the fiction. Someone's here. Suddenly the lights in the record
room flickered at twice, then again a pause. The elevator
time echoed from the hall. I held my breath, trying
to convince myself it was a routine test, standard maintenance.
But then I saw the elevated doors at a far
end slowly slid open empty car interior revealed like an
open mouth. The panel above showed thirteen glowing softly and
as I stared into his belief, my hand nowhere near
the button, the clock on my phone changed one fourteen um,
blinking then freezing. For an instant. It was the minute
stamp to every unexplained reseet on the maintenance locks, the
same time the badge's pink in the security nuts flight errors.
Long after the staff had left, my refection looked up
at me from the glossy floor, eyes wide, pulse beating
so hard I thought the sound would call something from
the shadows. The elevator waited, mute and beckoning. I hesitated
the urge to step forward stronger than any rational thought,
and only by clutching hard at the tapeer coorder in
my pocket, my warn protection, my thin thread of proof,
did I managed to step back, heart racing. That was
the moment I knew things wouldn't stay quite much longer.
Something let the elevator come for me. Someone or something
was still keeping the thirteenth floor alive. A day or
two passed, but the nervous pulse I brought up from
the subassement stayed with me. It seeped into my sleep,
turning my dream's abstract and metallic candless blank corridors, which
air legs scraped the tiles, and patterns too precise to
be random. When I returned for my next ship, Bill
was gone out for a few days, according to a
slicherd message from daytime admin. In his place squated the
tempt guy whose handjik was clammy and brief, no eye contact,
maybe just another soul being shuffled through the system. As
I wrapped up the handover, I caught sight of Marizol,
the overnight cleaner, as she lingered by the staffer room.
She was collecting rubbish into a large plastic bag, humming
tunelessly fall night. I tried unsure if I wanted a
distraction or some signed. The world was still saying. Maris
all looked up, then glads away quickly. Always is in here?
She kept her gaze fixed on a stained patch of tile,
her hands tightened, whitening the plastic elevator work again. I think, so,
did you ever have to clean? Ertine? I pressed, or
where I sounded twitchy? May be even desperate? She shook
her head instantly, sharp and practiced no hint of curiosity. No,
my codes don't work on that level. Just twelve Sometimes
lobby they set its for security only for a reason.
Before I could push for details, she scuttled away, nearly
tripping over her cart. I was left stirring through the
swing doors at the darkened break room, the chill from
the lobby drift mixing with stale air of the hallway.
When I finally clocked in, my nerves were practically vibrating.
In the short trek from my station to the elevator,
I checked that my phone was recording Always now cowardly
habit upon my badge tightly enough that the plastic cut
a faint groove into my fingers. The elevator accepted my
badge after a moment of lack. I watched its slow
crawl to thirteen the way. The doors fought to open,
and as they relented, I was greeted by the oddly
sweet chemical scent that felt stronger, almost syrupy, in the
closed air. I set about the evening's patrol with all
false nonchalants I could muster, determined not to let fear
get the upper hand, But the air was about as
calm as the lobby before fire dull heightened too. Still,
my ears felt overtrained, catching the faintest fibration the soawmer
grind of duckwork far away beaps a memory of laughter
that never happened. Determined not to be out maneuvered again,
I ran my set of little tests. Slid a binder
and inch out from michell's edge. Slipped blue ballpoint into
the back of some one's desk drawer, careful to know
the fink click. Left a receipt folded into triangles atop
a stack of an open mill. Before furnishing the round,
I gently nudged a heavy rolling whiteboard in the conference room,
sowed that it bracketed both the chair and the table,
like a configuration more inconvenient than anyone would leave intentionally.
A sense of ritual took over, as though my only
defense against the weirdness was to claim some measure of control,
any small assertion over the objects that insisted on moving
behind my back. The rest of the IYRO dragged all
false starts in false alarms. Every time I thought I
caught a movement from the corner of my eye, I'd
pivot too quickly, hot pounding, only to see a printer's
blinking stand by light or the mirror double of my
own reflection, cutting the course of row of dormant screens.
Back in the control room, I called up the feed
from every camera pointed at four thirteen. Each monitorsured the
beak gross bry cubicle grid. Not a chair shifted, not
a shadow lingered. The cup from before was gone to night,
replaced by a Nietzsche for printed forms that hadn't been
their last shift, each with date fields left just barely
and complete, teasing the notion of work never quite finished.
For a while, I sat in that bluish monitor glow,
hands clasped tight, as if my knuckles could squeeze out
what the screens refused to reveal. A part of me
wondered why I kept coming back, Why I wasn't content
to lock my rounds and leave the oddities alone. Maybe
everyone before me had reached the same breaking point. A
tipping agere denial gave weight to stubborn urge to prove yourself.
Right about half way through my shift, a faint scraping
echoed from the corridor. My seat creaked under me as
I stood, hoping foolishly that it was nothing but a
settling noise. But as I stepped into the hallway, free
footstep broadcast and two louds to cutto the noise stopped.
I waited, forcing myself to listen, to really listen. The silence,
once so comforting, now seemed like a smother. When I
rounded the bend into the far conference room, the whiteboard
sat in perfect parallel with the wall, a chair neatly
slotted beneath on the table top. My folded receipt had disappeared.
A nod vowed to go swept through me. I leaned down,
checking under the table for the lost scrap of paper,
brief ridiculous hope it might have simply slipped to the floor. Instead,
I found Dussa's carpet, a faint line in the fibers,
as if something or someone had dragged their fingertips through it.
Frustration crepin jostling with fascination, I muttered, all right, you're clever,
but you're not invisible. I stood and scanned the empty,
too bright room, my words swallowed by acoustic tile. If
you are a night manager, you win. I give up,
But even after saying it, some animal part of me
refused to believe the game was finished. The building didn't
let anyone win, not in the ordinary sense. Eventually, with
little else to pursue that round. I sat back down
at the control bank and prodded my way into the
buildings till back when a back of menu left open
by board, I t text lawn before my time. With
enough patients, I found what I was looking for, an
interface for the card access system. One lock after another's
wipes failures forced entries, scheduled lockouts once again. Fourth their
team was the only sector to list as an assigned.
Trying to drill into the history merely spat back a warning.
Even route access failed to produce logs on that sector's
doors between the iOS of midnight and five a m.
Further digging in old emails on the system uncovered a
string of tickets flight for a hardware set four fourteen
sensors shuffled among request about water coolers and flickering overheads
sence a confusion between floors one admin and entry read
time stamp Midwin two years ago request all that of
badge validation for legacy sector. No further staff reassignment until
resolved priority low. Of course that met management didn't worry,
but they knew pretending not to would keep the real
problem at arm's length. A surge of resolve replaced my
earlier knees. Clicking through to the digital archive, I compiled
the folder of every relevant foul cryptic maintenance logs, badge
record screen shuts a photo of the directory, missing it
to the teen and fourteen listings. My own private evidence
dash growing chunk by chunk. I copied it off site,
emailing it to an encrypted address I'd made just in case.
Like any whistleblow fantasy, it felt brave in small doses
and desperately paranoid in the cold midnight eyurs. The last
half of my shift always felt warp A clock's too
slow and the office light flickering off sequence. I find
myself for trees in my rounds, eachly reinforcing how the
space seemed designed to erase memory. Once I found a
note to myself, my own shake is scripped towards behind
the monitor in the security office. Don't forget what changed.
I couldn't remember writing it. At the end of that shift,
fatigue pressed against my eyes like wet towels. I checked
the security phone, no miscolls. Just as I went to
shut everything down, a note for cation pained fall restored
it said, I thumbed the screen the time stemp showed
one fourteen again that minute. Besides his surgery, the restored
file was an audio clip three seconds long. I played
it silence for two beats, thin, a frictional, drawn out
exhal followed by a whisper You're almost there, allan. I
dropped the phone, pulse biking. There was nobody in the
building that used my name on tape, not unless someone know,
not unless something was listening for me. Every night, in
a break room at dawn, I nursed too hot coffee,
staring at the blank wall while red smears from the
sunrise bled through the lobby windows. For a moment, the
building felt utterly normal, stacked with glass and aluminum, stale biscuits,
and a jar the remains of a half finished crossword
in the corner. But as I suit to leave, I
spotted my penny, the one I'd left in the cubicles earlier.
It sat on the edge of the staff sink, tails up,
perfectly cindered, and just for a second, a swore. The
air by the elevators was colder, as if the building
itself was holding its breath. After a sleep that barely
took I texted a college friend who worked outy for
another contract security firm. You ever see buildings jugose floors,
map skips, hidden locks, He called me back instantly, voice
crackling with anxious energy. Man, there's a bunch of buildings
like that, old capital state, financial places with mergers or biots.
Most justlyse a floor in the books, but sometimes I
hear stores about places where the logs keep people catting
or referencing dead tenants. You get flagged for poking a
round too much, though I hesitated, not sure how much
to say. What would happen if someone kept resating everything,
like moving stuff, erasing badge and just so nobody could
ever confirm someone's been there. But don't mess with those files, Allen.
They'll lock you out. Worst, they'll loop you in, keep
sending you the same looks over and over until you
start seeing them everywhere. He stopped breathing into the mic,
then asked you, okay, A fine? I lied, just curious,
Thanks for the warning. After that, I became extra careful.
I changed my coat passwords every night, watched for phantom
badge pings in the system, memorized where I left things,
and kept mental talents of every anomaly. Days blowed one
into the next bagels and invoices and aching feet mocking time,
but each if the thirteen four waited, sometimes pitient, sometimes
with the faint scent of new coffee drifting down the stairwell,
and seen and uninvited. One night I set up a
secret camera, the kind used for wildlife, disguised as an
air freshener, just inside the conference room, trained on the
most active zone from misplaced objects. I angled it to
catch both door and white balls, sink the time with
my fallon, set the camera to send a silent pin
if triggered midshift. As I was cycling through camera feeds,
my phone vibrated emotion aller. The live feed from the
wildlife cam came through Garble Street with static, I could
barely make out the furniture. Then, for a full second
the screen cleared, I caught the briefest flicker of movement,
A desk chair rotating by itself in a jerky puppet
like motion, stopping halfward to face the window. A penny
lay spinning on the corner of the table and probably balanced.
No one else was visible, no shadows to blame, yet
the room's configuration were set before my eyes. Whiteboard back
at the wall chair tucked in, the table top wiped clean.
I played the recording back twice, three times. Each time
I swore the room seem fractionally different, as though the
video itself was rewriting the space. By the fourth playback,
a penny had vanished, and in its place was a
folded slip of a child let ahead with my own
name typed or courtly at the top. When I paused
to double check the timestamp, the fowl crashed and the
cameras as decar corrupted Instantly after that, my nerves ran
ragged as a weather strip. Every shift, I expected to
walk in and find the world entirely REALI, with nobody
else the wiser. The next morning, I called building management directly,
using an anonymous tip line. There are recurring issues. One thirteen.
I began disguising my voice with a cough. Physical objects
out of place, unexplained to sets, mirrors that don't map
to real movement. The voice in the other end was smooth, practiced,
Thank you for your concern. Off facilities are maintained to
industry standards. If you wish to submit a formal claim,
please provide your name and employee. I d I hesitated,
then hung up. There would be no help from above
that day. In a moment of rashness, I printed every
filic at stomach maintenance tickets, old old it lock's security
badge patterns my own instant note, stuffing the stack into
my messenger bag under a library but dust jacket. My
plan was to leave Coppice with my friend off company property.
When I reached the Plausa that evening, hussing for wind
that seemed to slice off the building's mirrored edge, I
found my friend waiting in the sandwhich shop, white eyed,
tromming his fingers on the table. You look like kel,
he said. And your phone keeps calling my number at night.
I wake up at one fourteen and there's just that
dead air, like someone breathing on the line. He messing
with me. I shook my head, trying and failing to
maintain a smile. Something's wrong in that building. I think
they hit a floor or are hiding something that happened there.
He looked at the stack of papers, leafing three dates
and blurry, grainy print outs. The longer he read, the
paler he got. Don't put my name on this stuff.
Look if what you found is real, you need to
drop it people lose their jobs or worse, forget why
they were there in the first place. I left the
stack with him, grateful and sick at heart, returning to
my shift, swirling thoughts about job prospects and did him
risking a black mark on my record pinched at me.
I nearly clocked up before my shift even started, but
again I found my feet turning back toward the elevator.
I pressed the badge resigned. This night, only the thirteen
flickered once, then stilled waiting for me. Riding up, the
air was almost suffocatingly close, and as the elevator rose,
I noticed another oddity of the floor. Indicato skipped twelfth
and jerked directly to the teen with a double blink,
too fast, like a skipped heartbeat. The minute I set
foot on to the thirteenth floor, my breath drew in shallow.
Something had changed. A staleness clung to the carpet, heavy
and thick, as if no one had brethed fresh air
through here all week. The familiar grid of furniture appeared
slightly blurred, as if seen through water. When I passed
the kitchenette, the coffee pot was not just full, but scalding.
The glass pots steamed, droplets of condensation jittering on the burner.
Another cup, pressed into its branded cardboard sleeve, stood on
the table, palet stained with an old print lipstick, just
visible in the yellow light. I forced myself to circle
the floor, marking checkpoints with the heavy bitten end of
my pen. In a second row of cubicles, I found
a binder, one of those ancient battered office types, stamped
with the faded blue logo of the developer. Inside print
teps of old employee rosters from over a decade ago,
all stamped do not remove. Most names were familiar from
the property's history, but others had been crossed through a
heavy black marker ink bled through the paper and angry lines.
Each crossed out entry was appended with the handwriten note
not cleared, a resigned, not transferred, a c incident fourteen B.
Faint music drifted through the vents, an odd whole tune, sung,
eshpipe and buzzy. I caught my head following it through
the blind spots between glass and breakout rooms. The sun
always backed away, never growing clearer, a marote of melody.
My skin prickled with the sense that The music was
only ever cover for something heavier looking behind it, a
coded message I couldn't decode. On a whim, I decided
to run the desk phone for a direct dial out
of the building. The only number programmed into the shortcut
directory was a string labeled to fourteen main con r M.
I pressed it. The hand shat shurled once, then filled
my ear with the same souper silence that haunted my
feron at night, and not quiet that seemed to ache
for a voice to break it. Nobody picked up, but
after twenty seconds a recorded prompt began colitching and snapped,
you have reached the crisis response line. If you are
not staff, return to your assigned area. If you are staff,
of the message cut harsh stat crushing in to fill
the gap. It repeated twice, then ended as abruptly as
it had begun. That cryptic warning reinforced what the files
kept circuitously hinting, not just an accident, but cover up,
a program to make people forget, to keep people from noticing,
or perhaps both. As my shift tacked toward two eight M,
I gave up on softl DY, resolving to warp the
floor in reverse order stopping at every glass wall and
studying my own reflection, looking not for myself, but for
any movement out of time. With my steps, the reflections
all trailed half a beat behind, like a slight echo
in the image, every angle, a tiny registration error, as
if the glass itself was keeping its own memory. Rand.
In a corner toward the side hallway, I suddenly came
face to face with Mike, the day maintenance supervisor, the
guy whose word was lower in the hardware room. He
stood in them, moving dark, hand stuffed into his overall pockets.
Didn't expect to see you hear this late, I said,
after swallowing a jump. Mike stared at the ground, then
up at the ceiling, was quiet. You shouldn't be up
here every night. They tell us it's for our own good.
They who management or someone else along sigh? It does
it matter? Every so often somebody gets ambitious, pokes around
the old logs, asks about four fourteen building, always resetts
like it never happened. We do what the tickets say,
and then everyone skips a day. I peered past him,
more nervous than angry. Now did you know about the
fake h R binders? The weird logs. Mike's lips twitch,
possibly a smile. Nothing in his building matches the logs.
Don't try to reconcile it. That's my vice. He turned
to leave, but before he did, he had as a
parting shot, you keep finding stuff, you'll start misplacing memories too.
When he was gone, the silence felt doubly thick. I
traced my run to the stairwell, somehow, needing the reassurance
that the building retained at least one escape route not
subject to an electrical glitch. At the landing, I paused, thoughtful,
wondering how many rounds I'd actually made that night. What
time I watch would really show if I walked out
into the dawn. Sometimes I imagined all the clocks in
the place ticked to a different schedule, one written into
the wiring by whoever designed it, for secrets above all else.
I made one last pass by the conference room, scanning
the desks, the phones, the silent monitors. I didn't go
in the next night, not at once. Instead, I sat
at home, replaying the footage from the secret camera. The
sound of my own blood rushing louder than any real
noise in the clip, But the longer I watched the enter.
The images grew, frame staggering, cheers, benning received folding and unfolding,
as if the camera couldn't decide what it remembered. I
caught myself mouthing words at the screen, asking what happened here,
as if an answer might break out and spill form.
But absence nags harder than presents. After a restless day
and a nap that left my mind muddy, I found
myself back in the uniform, lacing black shoes by reflex
badge inside my jacket. Nothing about the evening should have
belonged to routine, not with what naught at me, that
confusion of evidence piling up in the digital dark. But
some animal part of me wanted to walk the floor again,
to press closer, be nearer to truth. Whatever lay at
its heart, habit or compulsion, I'm honestly not sure. On
that commute, the city's outlines wavered. Car headlights blurred in
the rain, reflecting off the slick streets in the vast
arched lobby windows. Every time I caught my reflection, I
looked like a man rehearsing a confession, mouth set, eyes
ringed by fatigue. I couldn't blame Mumpo. Sleep alone. I
gripped my satchel tighter at the thin packet of files inside,
making me self conscious, an invitation to drop everything and run,
even in the elevator up from the parking garage, A
brace for the intercome's mutic greeting. Half waited for the
stupid to ding that meant a human voice, something regular. Instead,
the speaker only hissed an indiscriminate static only I seemed
to notice. When I reached the skies. You were to
desk in the lobby, A scan for bilot, a force
of habit. The nightman's absence left a necker. In his
place was an older janitor, white paddle truck, capal too
low over the face, stacking bins by the mail drop.
He looked at me once, then away with a sort
of veiled apology. What are you working on to night?
I tried, gently, voice quiet enough for only us. The
janitor shook his head, chin barely tilting up from his hull.
Nothing nothing worth saying. Then risking a fast glance my way,
he added, don't stay too late to night. People don't
come back right after they start talking. That haunted inflection
stuck with me on the short, anxious walk to the
staff elevators. Ilk crawled along my shoulders as I badged
in waited for the soft old talk of the elevator.
Really only the one floor illuminated again fifteen A sullen
waiting invitation, I brought a fresh roll of film for
the secret camera with me, plus my phone, and wore
my recording device soperly, now more for my own faith
than any real hope a manager might one day Rebut
before the doors opened, I snapped a pho door of
the panel in the time twelve fifty three a m.
As always the eleve Vader's travel felt liquid and inserta
like had drawn out instant dream that never quite landed.
The thirteenth four let me out with almost no ceremony,
just the dull swipe of electrostatic keys and a second
or two of dead air. The sen had changed, more
chemical undercurrent, less lemon It was closer to ammonia and sharper,
as if something stronger had been sprayed the earlier in the night.
I walked the rout i'd memorizer past the alcoves and
cubical glurid conference room blasts, kitchenet light flickering with steady monotony.
I let my hand drift across the carpeted wall terrain,
checking for finger prints. This was gone, but there was
a smeared handprint on the supply room door, smudge that
looked oily darker than the finish. This time I came
prepared for direct evidence. I carried my phone in my
Palm camap open, snapping quick shots as I worked through
the disc aills slow and deliberate. Nearly every desk look staged,
some with yelling post is fluttering in the tendrils of
the AH track, others with pens arranged and patterns I
could almost but not quite make sense of. On one screen,
left in sleep mode, a lavender glow captured something that
was wrong. The laptop technant and out of logum mode
once twice. Then without warning, it snapped to a pulsing logo.
I recognized the company font, but not the name four
fourteen Holdings LC Welcome. I tried the keyboard to wake it. Nothing.
It was unplugged, no battery, a ghost boot, if such
a thing existed. I knelt close and looked beneath the
plastic in one far corner, nearly hidden beneath smeared white o.
Someone had etched a quick response code into the plastic.
My hand shook as I started my phone scanner, app
needing proof that it wasn't a hallucination brought on by
in the shifts and broken sleep. The phone camera read
the code. The link was old, at first a dead page,
then a redirected window. Suddenly an ancient HR portal flickered open.
The brows are warning of a security certificate from half
a generation ago. The page was labeled only Crisis Response Materials,
Floor fourteen, and then, to my surprise, a streaming, grainy
video of them milhovered titled test foot of June twenty
two on the digital log. The date looked like it
belonged a decade behind us. I tapped and held my breath.
The video buffered a grain silky over the frameman. Then
a room flashed up, familiar to the point of nausea.
Same it, same walls, except the lighting was blue cast
in the faces, and the frame flitted by too quickly.
A blur of people around a conference table, their movements
frantic lips moving, but sound muted. At the bottom of
the feet white block text read fourteen flour secure conference,
instant live response, and beneath a line of legal lease,
no circulations, lash return, all badges, legs trembling. I scanned
the rest of the floor, half expecting every image to
resolve into an old memory. It felt like evidence or
a threat. I snapped photos of the QUA code and
locked the page, careful not to linger too long. I
begun to suspect the building had its own sensors, some
network spider lurking in the wiring, itself back in a corridor,
Leaning into the note beside the supply closet, I waited.
The iron hand crept closer to one. It was up.
Moments like that, waiting, nerves fray skin show that unplanned
things happened. A low word, the building's breathing, shifting near
the elevator, A sliver of movements just beyond the wall
of glass. A slender figure hunched at the panel, pressing
buttons like it needed somewhat to go. The elevator didn't
come for them, or maybe a re There was no
real figure at all, just a reflection or the impression
of one. The building locking in its old routines. I
pressed on toward the far end passed the kitchenette again,
and there a flicker of motion. A coffee cup rim steaming,
sat atop a neatly fanned collection of executive folders. But
this time something had changed. On the whiteboard. Illegible diagrams
filled half the space, spirals, department floatsharts, badge numbers that
seemed plausible in the globe but never matched the current date.
Through the glass, I saw someone else, know not some
one else, A cleaner, so I thought. At first, he
looked up at my approach, eyes wide, face fixed as
if caught in the act of delving where he shouldn't.
For an instant, our gaze is locked, then averted, each
of us seeing the others possible threat. Hey you really
work here, I said, pushing the nervousness downward. Not my job,
this for I. I came for the fir a mop.
He glanced at the closet. They don't let us up here,
not after what happened before. They won't let it go.
We just try to leave it be. I set my voice, gentle,
weary but seeking connection. What's here to leave? He shook
his head, panic rising. It's not for me to say.
They move things back if you touch them, we just
mop what we can and go. Sometimes we hear the
copying machine after iOS. But when you go look his
words cut off, eyes darting toward the closest tixt a
distant thing registered from the elevator. Both of us looked.
No one stepped up, the cleaner about his head. You
didn't hear this, he muttered, and hurried away with a
speed that made my hot jolt. The air in the
corridor promptly thickened, clotted by the sire scent, and the
quiet heavy enough to register as intent. I worked for
another half ire, running patents, shifting chairs a few inches
at a time, opening draws, a penny in one a pen,
and another a tiny sliver of tape over the edge
of the conference table. Every pattern would be checked next round,
ever disturbance, a tiny dare. Nothing moved, but the feeling
grew the weight of being watched. I caught my own
affliction now and then in glass shaped behind it, seeming
to linger a shadow echo of office life never quite dissolved.
Without warning, my phone buzzed. The call O idea was blank,
I answered, careful, saying security Allen speaking, I'm mangled underwater
tone answered, stop asking for your own sake, not everything
is yours to know. The call ended without pause for reply,
a sharp click, the automated kind, not a human's, but
closer to a machine switching off. I stood there, stirring
at the phone, thinking maybe my hands were shaking because
I wanted to believe in rational explanations. At that point
I made up my mind more bitterness than bravery. I
would stay through the witching. I stay with my recording device,
running document what I could as it happened, if anything happened.
Not as a challenge any more, but as a kind
of surrender. At twelve thirty, I turned off the main
lights and set myself up behind the lobby glass body
hidden from the doors but facing the largest part of
the open plan cubicle grid. I ran an external microphone
to pick up ambient noise, jet battery status, press record
the iro between midnight and one stretched. Every second, every
scrape as loud as a clap. I must have yonder
oor blinked too long for As the digital clock on
my phone ticked to one seven a m, I heard
a clear metallic Snicodesth's chair turning behind my field of view.
My breath caught here we go, I whispered out of ideas.
The next few minutes played out as a slow motion,
hazed furniture creaking, a hum of air rising and dipping,
lights clicking off one by one, and then surging back.
I could have sworn the entire arrangement of the cubicle
shifted in the corner of my eye like a chess board.
After a mismove. I looked away, then back. A traska
rolled an inch, hitting the file cabinet somewhere it just
won twice in stop, square on to the window, not
at its earlier angle. Then the stranger thing, a burst
of overlapping voices, almost as though a crowd had entered
the brick room all at once. I pressed my ear
to the microphone, cautious, but the pitch was wrung too quick,
too frantic, timeless. I slipped deeper, just at the line
of the main corridor, hot thumping, and stared straight into
the conference room. Inside. At the lawn table, a coffee
cup steamed fresh as if poured only seconds ago. The
handle turned in were the cup at a place no
one sat in front of an open binder. I approached,
legs carried over with fear. The air in the room
fell charred, as though an old argument shivered just out
of hearing. Papers lit at the table, blotched with faded
logos and signatures that meant nothing. Now. As I looked
one sheet stirred, turned by a draft that should not
have existed, I let my hand fall on at Incident Report,
do not Circulate four fourteen Conference. Read the header, I
forced myself to open the binder in the front pocket
sumped an id batch, crusted and brown at the edge,
the old logo and poto half rubbed out by time.
The Namery Tarborough Facilities executive match neither roster nor present
staff list. The date of issue was ten years past.
Therefore a number on its block stamped fourteen. As my
pulse thundered, I heard a distinct step, a slow rolling
drag of a heel on carpet. For a moment I
was sure I saw the movement reflected in the glass,
an arrow figure of stylis shoes striding in a calm,
managerial gait. Behind that, another smallish ad or perhaps several,
moving at once. I flipped through the incident Report. Each
page was heavily redacted, but I could piece together, flashed
s language about lockdowns, staff isolation protocols, notation of a
critical event resulting in staff consolidation and memory management. Instructions
for forced elevatory route and a chilling last line notify
leadership in person. No electronic trace. As I absorbed this,
the security feed monitor left open on a side terminal
in the corner. Blinton stotted first split second infers from
its normal leaping empty view. The tape showed a previously
unseen vent. Dozens of staff clustered by the exit expression stock,
one woman clutching her chest, two others wrestling with the
jawned elevator. There was a crash. Someone's arm frown up
as if to shield their face. Then the camera fussed
end in a tangle blow. Something not right. Maybe it
was only poor exposure, or maybe it was a massive
form impossible looming shapes behind the group. The fief flicked ahead,
people scattering, one slumping to the floor in a final
immobil sprawl. I looked down the same comference room, the
same configuration. I was standing in its echo. As the
lights flickered urgent, the air shift to pressure fell cold
wrap my scalp. I felt for the first time that
whatever haunted the floor was over, it was still happening,
Stuck in the loop, the building never acknowledged behind me, distinct, undeniable.
The elevator bind open, not on floor thirteen, but on
a panel displaying fourteen. The numbers were on blocky, not
back at the usual blue. I lurched toward the hallway,
stumbling the dosser and badge, clutched in a sweating fist.
Turning for the stairwell, I heard voices again, layers of
panic and authority, flat professional tones, barking orders, and plaintive cries,
blending into a chorus louder, now synchronizing with the thumps
of my own feet. At the stairwell, the door janned
above me, the click of high heels. I turned to
gestri glant, a motion in the conference glass, a reflection
almost my own, except it like to bed behind eyes,
wider face drawn in a silent screen. I pressed the
door again, harrider, until it gave. The stairway was wrong,
stairs bending, as if the geometry had been tampered with.
My sense of up and down scrambled, but I climbed,
pushing past the vibration in the walls. The air became sharper,
more chemical. My knees threatened a buckle. I reached the
lawn in marked eleven twelve and forced the door, hoping
desperately for the ordinary, dull lobby beyond. As I staggered
into the hallway, the pressure in my earslackened, Silence blest, sticky,
and absolute. I made it three steps before the world snapped.
I was back at the lobby, last door's marble floor
behind me. The elevator dinged, and for a wild second,
the panel flashed again fourteen briefly before returning to black.
My chest heaved. I dropped the badge in the tiles,
listening as it skidtered, then skidded a halt just by
the janitor stationed. All eyes resolutely turned away, then a blank.
The next thing I remember as being slumped on a
viny bench in the lobby. A ParaMed cleaned over his
pen light flickering your weight, gnat you were out, called exhaustion.
Maybe he wrote something on a clipboard. I was dull
and distant. My phone and the recorder were gone. The
messenger bag sat at my feet, but the files inside
were scrambled. A stack of nondescript printer out, no sign
of the incriminating binders or cuar snapshots. The building's day
admin hovered near the desk, lipstight, issuing quick instructions to
two men in cheap suits. I heard staff privacy violation
and schedule over lap band most telling move nights for Bill,
keep him out of reception. Bill appeared soon after, gray
faced eyes far away, handed a badge and a handritten schedule.
He avoided my gaze and his hands shook as he
signed off the roster. That morning, management avoided me. Questions
about the overnight logs were returned with formal three sentence
replies typed in legal ease on scheduled entry equipment malfunction.
A staff hel the elevator key was rescinded. I would
work the lobby for the next two weeks or explore
other opportunities. I found inside my home mail walks later
that week, and a marked Manila envelope no return address
inside a single full scap sheet authorized maintenance and clean
of floor fourteen two thousand eight twenty twelve stamp Chief
Officer only. The line for settlement mounts was redacted, but
it listed names more crossed out than I could read
flanked by a small type note. All confidentiality strictly enforced.
Any incident will terminate access at the bottom. An unreadable signature,
a warning, adair, an admission, no manager or union repuid
ever acknowledge allowed. I was shaken, rattled down to the marrow,
but clear on one point. Whatever happened, whatever kept four
fourteen erased and fourth thirtiea ghost, It was not done.
The staff weren't just scared, they were institutionalized in silence.
Complicity had become routine, as unnoticed as the office's daily
cleaning side. Sometimes in the weeks that followed, I tried
to explain without explaining, to ask Bill or the janitor,
usually met with the shake of a head or the
hint of tears. Once in the parking garage, Bill lean
in close and whisper. They closed the books allan every
ten years. You're lucky if you remember anything at all.
I didn't go back to four thirteen, not as staff.
I found shift work in another district, to late night's
quieter buildings, No more fancy gloss of corporate security, just
the crowl of time, the room of old paper and
cheap disinfection. But I never really left the quiet floor,
my phone would ring once at exactly one fourteen a m,
with no one on the end end. When I played
back the voicemails, they'd be empty except for a disjointed breath,
a sound just out of time, sometimes a mumble of
alan or a plea I couldn't quite unravel. One night,
checking my laptop, I found my incident folded, nearly re
arranged digital files labeled er or fourteen, scrambled dates shifting
with every click. When I tried to restore them, a
set of overlapping voices hissed from the tinney speakers, urgent, layered, desperate,
finish what was started, help us. I stopped checking after that,
but some nights slump through after Iro's corridors with a
loop of keys on my hip. That's where I heard
the faint roll of office chairs down an empty hallway,
or found a still hot cup of coffee at the
edge of a vacant desk where nobody should have been. Once,
when I turned to leave, my phone buzzed with the
new text unsigned, no number, just a simple line, thank
you for remembering us. The time stamp one fourteen a
M on the nose. There are stores in every empty building.
I believe that now some are layers of memory, some
are accidents, brass played over by time. But the quiet
floor alives in its repetition, in event looping, unresolved furniture,
dutifully re aligned, coffee poured for some one never coming.
I tell myself, this is how secrets survive in the margins,
and they ignore details, and all the silence is rehearsed
by the guilty and the innocent. Like I've learned not
to linger, to make my rounds clean, to ignore fresh
stains with a subtle, inevitable tilt of evertare. But sometimes
i'llone on a night desk, badge heavy in my palm.
I catch the faintest, sweetest whiff of lemon and chemicals,
and I understand some things don't stay barred, especially not
on the quiet floor. I stay quiet about the envelope,
about the files, about what I'd seen, not from professionalism.
By now I lost the mask, but out of caution
that felt almost superstitious. The more I replayed the events,
tracing back the rhythm of changes in the thirteenth floor,
the more I understood the architecture of fear at work.
It's a slow, cumulative dread, rational at first, then suddenly
staggered by the uncanny. You don't catch yourself believing until
one night, you scanning your own eyes in the lobby mirror,
searching for gaps you can't explain. But it didn't stop there.
New shifts in a different district should have handed me closure,
or at least staluted the feeling. Different building, different stuff.
It never worked that way. There were knights had clock
in PaperWorks, squared away, walking rounds through corridors built before
my berth, but a stray scrape echoing in the wrong
register would trip my nerse like a tripoi. One shift,
three weeks since my last day in the tower, the
new site manager at my job, a woman named Locksley, asked,
you come highly recommended, but there's a coortion note on
your file from the last placed staff, health, unscheduled entry,
flagged locks. Anything I should know, Alan to law night
poorer eating bad luck, I said, keeping trimmer from a
voice off as politics. She sniffed at tides murk passing
behind her eyes. There's always more to it everywhere. The
first time I saw an office jest, sitting on the
wrong side of the break area at Taosuth. I wrote
it off a left of a from the day shift. Probably.
Then three times in the same week I'd find my
mug stacked perfectly at top, blank hr forms. I hadn't
printed the coffee inside warm with the lemons weakness my
own grounds never had. There would be a feeling sometimes
of needing to look over my shoulder, or of a
whiff of ammonia hanging in coat closets. After iOS, each
sign was small, deniable, but together they formed a code.
I'd wake sometimes from short naps during split shifts, with
cold sweat on my neck, and always the same time,
stump on my phone's lockscreen. One fourteen a m as
though I'd set an internal alarm, I couldn't turn off.
One Monday Sunday, when the city's avenues empty of all
with cabs, I found myself drawn back, first in mine,
then in physical fact. My new assignment sent me into
city center to retrieve a misplaced parcel. The route cove
me near the tower. I paused at the cob across
the street. The building's glass caught dusk's light, a smell
or sodium gulf, rearing into dark. For a full five minutes,
I stood on the opposite sidewalk, watching staff trickle out
and into the dum let lobby, voices low, body language tight.
No one lingered near the elevator. A hunch cleaner brushed
to push Coot rapidly across the floor, Turning before she
reached the interim marble strip that led to the elevator alcove,
she wheeled back. I skittering across the surfaces as if
counting ghosts. I should have kept walking for mayvia heartbeat reason.
Almost one let the place keep its secrets. But curiosity,
or stubbornness or something more. One at a cross entered
through the revolving door of the building's temperature plunging over
my forearms. Inside the familiar hum of lights. The lobbyat
altered over the weeks away, felt both new and precisely stage.
Behind the desk sat a thin, hollow eyed young man.
His badge shuffled half behind his coat read attend staff,
no bill, No one I knew the temp looked up.
His people shrank at my approach. Just here for a pickup,
I told him, gesturing with building, I d for my
new site. He processed it slowly. I was darting down
the package's last row of lockers. Don't linger in the
lobby after ires, please. His tone carried the muscle memory
of someone recently brief, the words not quite his own.
As I moved toward the side hall, I heard a
low raise, meant for no one float after me. Watch
for the elevator. Don't answer if it opens on its own.
It shouldn't have meant anything, but there it was a
residue of warning that trailed me to the lockers and
then out again. I couldn't see the elevator itself from
the alcove, but the back bright panels and the chron
doors flashed under current of blue, the color I dreaded,
the sick half step between fifteen and nothing. On a compulsion,
I aldered my course, not back to the revolving door,
but to the corridor leading to the security office what
used to be my kingdom. For the lawn ires. No
one stopped me. A heavy expectant sensibility pressed down that
feeling of being watched not by eyes, but by the
architecture itself. Near the staff elevator, I stopped and pressed
my palm to the glossy wall, listening the hum from
the cables traveled in waves. Somewhere beyond the silver doors.
I knew it lay that impossible gap ground built omrid
aut of blueprints and unresolved events. My eyes closed, and
then faintly the lights overhead flickered in a sequence I
recognized the same pattern that marked off the two worse
weeks of the previous winter. One flash. I paused free
in succession. The maintenance code never explained I could have left.
I had no cause to stay, no official lern, but
the urge for resolution for whatever counted as closures in
my legs. I tapped the elevator button, knowing nothing good weighted.
The doors tried to resist, then parted with their old reluctance.
The panel inside offered no numbers, just a scrolling message welcome.
Staff sweped to continue, but my batch had no barkeet here.
I pressed it anyway. The light stutter then turned green.
When the door was closed, I stood at the back,
arms folded. The lift didn't move. There was no jerk,
no acceleration, just a halt, as if the system was
waiting for my decision. After a long pause, the cob
began to rise. Floor count silent, no indicator, a light
at all for a second gravity. It's holf felt held
in suspense. Then a soft chime. The door was opening
onto a floor thick, chemical, dark carpet. It wasn't labeled,
but habit told me four thirteen. Only the layout was
subtly off. The cubicles were still, the glass walls brimming
with shadow. Klino's cut, one I'd never seen, sat abandoned
by a conference room. Mop limp over the edge. A
sharp tinge of bleach pinched the back of my throat.
I moved forward, without even the benefit of made all
clipwoard to ground me. The air colder than memory. I
scanned for anomalies. The chair at the window, the white board,
the ever present coffee cup. All were there, only each
inch further from the familiar. The ripple of rearrangement lived
in every surface. A desk phone on the far cubicle
chirped once twice, atoned so ordinary it almost masked its strangeness.
A cross tour and picked up silence. Then two voices
of laying in static. If you're not staff, return to
your area. If your staff returner returned, do not circulate
the line cuts. My hand shook, but I hung up.
It hadn't been meant for me, not really. From the
conference room, the glow of an old monitor pulsed, not
modern blue, but c pH video processed beyond clarity, drawn
to it. I entered, and the surface vibration of the
screen crackled on the edge of perception. On its face
a pause video time sam with a day not to date,
not to morrow, but a looping air stirring thirteen slash
fourteen slash air slash one fourteen. The forms on the
table hadn't changed much, executive folders post it and clusters
only slightly off. A single an opened envelope with the
name Retourber printed in block capitals across the front. The
badge from before lay beside it, a smear of dried
brown at its edge. My pulse ratched it as I
realized the fear wasn't from the evidence now, or even
the known risk, but from the anticipation of what the
sight itself remembered. A chair scraped, not behind me, but
somewhere in the echoed chamber beyond, and almost in counterpoint,
came the dull, rolling click of an elevator door opening,
only too far away to be this floor. I froze
unable to decide for direction in the glass. My reflection
flickered a slow lac then caught up, showing a face leaner,
older than last week, white at the corner of the
jaws stress effect. Maybe I looked at my watch reel
analog and saw the second hand jam beneath the minuage
just for a blink, but the hair on my neck rose.
The smell bleach, coffee, burnt sugartna from an ancient printer,
spoiled aroun me almost edible. I lifted the envelope. The
weight inside was wrong, not paper but metal. Shimming it open.
I found a key out of old style plastic, faded
logo on one side to floor fourteen access crisis response,
flipping it the back boar instead of a max stripe,
A square of crimson tape initials over imacher d T
surge of adrenaline Neili sent a cottering to the floor
with shaky fingers. I snapped a foe too with my phone,
something to prove later, my lifeline against the anxiety of
vanishing evidence. Footsteps now definite, unheard, high heeled, too formal
to be the building staff too certain to be panic.
They approached from the far end of the corridor, almost
at the threshold. I tucked away from the glass, pressed
against the inside wall. A shadow passed thin as a memory,
not resolving into features, just the sense of someone pacing,
searching for a script yet unwritten. A whisper perfectly pitch
drifted through the open conference doors, realigne reset, not for
public record. As sudden jolt, the lights dropped to emergency rowe.
The white boat's dye grants poles once every floor shard
erbruptly pointing back to the badge in my palm. The
whine of the elevator pitched up, cycling in the shaft above,
as if the system was squaring itself to find me.
Papers slid from the table, caught in a draft as
ghostly as any poltergeist. Pages fan and clustered as if
drawn by a magnet, all settling at my feet. With
a slap, I scanned the topmost consolidation procedure staff memory
integration floor fourteen. The printing official and sterile was interrupted
by notes and sharps. Swift script, no one leaves, no
one forgets, return all badges by one fourteen. With barely
controlled panic, I backed from the room, keeping my eyes
half on the badge, half in the corridor's gloom. The
chair by the glass rotated frictionless, and in its reflection
I caught the briefest flickerous land of a woman's profile,
chin sharp as mfocussed. The sensations cascaded, smell sharpening to anumonia,
sound compressing until voices registered only as thunderous pressure in
my ears. As I hit the corridor, moving faster, every
light in sequence blinked out ahead, creating a tunnel of
deep near dark. Don't run, I maud, remembering some line
from an old training manual. Not that any protocol could
prepare for this. But the further down the corridor I went,
the lesser geometery made sense. Office walls now shifted. Wasn't
that window last on the right? The stairwalls when I
pressed into the next landing now let up and up,
never resolving, but instead leaping. The sense of elevation flowed
as if I had caught in the room of amrby
a strip up and down traded in each turn. I stopped,
heart in overdrive at last, half by second nature. I
fumbled the badge from the envelope and pressed against the
stairwells exit pad instead of denial. The reader chimed and unlocked.
The door slid open, revealing not a floor but a smaller,
dimmer office, A boardroom formal with skyscraper skyling pasted against
papered windows, leather chairs all askew. The long table was
polished but gouged. The vineer walked under too many cups
of fists. Sound came as pressure, the doll hush of
a dozen people breathing shallowly on the far wall opposite
the entrance. The digital clock ticked, lost in time. It
read one fourteen, a m blinking then freezing in those chairs.
No full figures, only their impressions. Coat straped as if
just shrugd off, teekeds rimmed with lipstick. An open binder,
each with its logo Excize sustained. The sense of presents
crushed the air from my chest. My phone went wild
in my pocket on its green I push alert returned,
badge exit not authorized. The background image glitch cycling through
security footage from night I hadn't worked. Scenes both familiar
and impossible. Sometimes I saw myself, Sometimes the blurred shapes
of staff from old photos. A memory pried itself out
from where ever I'd buried it built that first week,
before I'd known what task. Muttering to himself in the
brick room, not supposed to know, not suppose to remember.
A surge of static rose in the fluorescent overheads, cresting
and dropping with each tick of the digital clock. The
whisperings started again, a cueseration at first, then words help
us finish what was started. Each four is coming laid
as the fear is overlaid, sharper and shopper, until the
air snapped with a pressure I felt in my teeth.
I staggered back, clutching the badge, the envelope, anything solid
behind me. Chairs began to move, sliding inward, organizing in
a precise ring at the table. A tremor passed through
the building. It felt like resolution, or an after math,
or a practice rehearsal, finally reaching the end. At that moment,
the emergency light surged up to blinding. The door behind
me banked open. An airloe from the corridor dragged everything
loose off the table, even a badge. Instinct seized me.
I bolted for the new opening, crashing into something soft, fabric,
a coat or a hand reaching I never saw, and
then I was back spoiled half in half out of
the staf elevator for reading shallow blind for a moment attempt.
Security man stood two steps away as wild, phone in hand, sir, sir,
or you are right? Did you call for help? His
voice was shrill, unused to urgency. I nodded, unable to
force words. Passed a panic clock to my third I
pushed up it, grip tightening around the now empty envelope
in my pocket. Must have fallen asleep, I rasped, long day.
He peered at me warily, then checked his own watch.
It's exactly one fourteen. Ye, sure you're okay. I brushed past,
trying not to run. Tell admind. I returned what I found.
He flinched at the phrase, nodded too rapidly. By the
time I reached the ground floor, the lobby was empty.
Only the janitor remained, mop clutched in hand, gaze heavy
with understanding he'd never voice. As I exited into the night,
I felt the relief, brief bitter, a suit of cold
wind on my face, and the solid, forgettable sound of
the city. No shadows followed me. The buildings were ceded
into street lump glow blamesus and mute. But for days
after my phone showed signs, cold locks filled with blank entered,
all taunted that impossible minute past one. Sometimes a corner
of my email would be replaced with blood snapshots from
my own camera. Roll shots had never taken, desks empty,
but always precisely arranged, a cab in the foreground lit
from above. Once returning home, I found my note of
my own hand riding circled and underline tacked to the
inside of my apartment door. Do not forget what changed.
The tape was the same crimson shade as the badge
from the envelope. Life insisted new routines, filled dyos, inventory locks,
building rounds, the dirty math of hily pay stacked against
groceries and overdue bills, But underneath the rhythm never shattered.
Each time I entered a new lobby, the pattern played
against chaiz coffeed a subtle alignment, inviting me to notice
daring meat ignore. On one of my last nights before
transferring districts again, a cop Bill sitting behind his new desk,
watches fatigue radiating through the glass. He motioned for me
to join him as if in truce and not everyone forgets,
he said, barely above a whisper, some of us file
it away until the building decides it's time to reshuffle.
I met his gaze and saw in his sunken eyes
that told the quiet fore had taken a debt of
memory and silence passed from God to guard. Did you
ever find out what happened? Really? I asked? He shook
his head. No one ever does. They think they do
for a minute, But the rooms change, and the records
eat themselves, and someone drops a cup of coffee just so,
and you know it's time to leave. We sat in
silence for a minute, letting the dull rattle of the
evening fold the space. They'll keep it going, you know,
Bill said. Finally, it's safer for everyone if no one
ever finishes the story, if no one asks why the
badge flog skips or white cleaner skip a certain row
of safer but not better. He stood, shouldering his coat.
You see a chair out of place, only just put
it back. That's advice. After Bill left, I jotted my
own log in a scribble. No one puts everything back forever.
Memory is always off by an inch. Now, as I
settle into yet another night, another shift in a building
that smells only mandainly of dustins wet. I sometimes listen
for distant chairs moving, wakle, the feel of heavy chemical air.
Will glance up at the clock just past one, waiting
for something or someone not listed in the looks. Most
nights there is only silence, ordinary and deep, but just
often enough. The chair at the end of the corridor
faces slightly out, A single cup of sire coffee waits
at the edge of my patrol, and the faintest whiff
of lemon lingers after the rest of the world has
gone to sleep. If I try to explain, people not frown.
Ask if I'm tied to, suggests Widamin's or vacation, and
that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I
will see you in the next one.