Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I didn't realize Hasdale Office I
could grow after just a few months without anyone breathing
it in. He'd think emptiness would simply air out. But
stepping over the threshold of the marb Towers lobby, I
tasted the accumulated residue of lost weeks dust, the faint
town of old carpet glue, an aftertaste of burnt coffee.
Across the crack marble. My footstiffs pronounced themselves to no
one in particular, Echoing off bronze elevated doors still streaked
with the ghost prints of dozens of late night commutes.
There was still sunlight, barely reluctant shafts snuffing through one
grimy set of automatic glass doors, and scattering lownedou de
stripes across the reception desk's dead monitor. In my left hand,
I held the battle clipboard, last in a series of
concessions to protocol, and in my right a rolled upset
of floor plans. He could almost believe, from the way
the lobby looked in the waning light that someone had
just left disposable coffee cups. One appended its brown puddle
boulder to the paper by weeks of evaporation, A broken
umbrella wltzing in the corner, a stack of internal memos
caught in the updraft from long gun central air. The
building was to be demolished in under six weeks, so
every trace felt careless and slightly ominous, like a grave marker.
And cave for one of the elevator banks had already
been stripped of copper by Nikruz. The stainless surfaces bited
in streaks where a metal thief's cloves had missed the polish.
My route took me past the security post, empty except
for the amber led and the outdated security panel. I
found myself thinking I should make a note fouldy lock
main doors, possible liability, But even there felt pointless. Nobody
cared about liabilities anymore. I was just here to check
this sentials sign off and close up. As a matter
of ritual, though, I liked to climb at least one
level on foot before starting the day's rounds, so I
headed for the sloping escalator, its paralyzed handrail still sticky
under a coat of dust. I half expected it to
hunt to reluctant life, the way a dog is trained
to snap awake at its own as footfall. But the
mechanisms were lawn since silent. Half way up the lights
of a flock at one guttered fully out, and another
buzzed with a death rattle, then steaded. The shadows cast
along the balustrade looked impossibly dense. A conference table dislodged
from some upper floor had been dragged into a corner
surface littered with rescue from a failed and promptu card game,
bent playing cards, a couple beer bottle caps, one phone
charger that no longer fit any device made in the
past decade. The deeper I moved, the more it felt
like I was trespassing in a doll I was abruptly
abandoned by children, each object a gesture toward grown up life,
suddenly rendered pointless. I paused at the top of the escalator,
breathing in a longful of the dry minerally ad just
as my phone vibrated sharply in my pocket. Reflexively, I
checked the time, five seventeen p m. And thumbed up
in my work email, expecting perhaps a reminder about a
sign out sheet. Instead, blaring at the top, a new
unread message, no send or name, just a string of
numbers that didn't make any sense. Subject line, please lock
up level five before you leave for the night. Below
a clipped body of text all staff reviews. The attached
list locked doors per portcoll There was an attachment, but
it wouldn't open. The message curiously was marked as just received,
and yet right below it the timestamp put it at
ten years ago. Ten years and yet there was my name, Spelwright,
addressed to my current work account with the regular SECA
format listing six and familiar names. None from departments I recognized,
not even the older charm manager who loved to bombard
us with compliance updates back in the day. I scrolled
up and down, trying to trace the threat, but the
rest of the thread was empty, nothing to reply to,
and the sender wasn't in our system. This wasn't just odd,
it was nearly impossible given our ACTI protocols. I was
about to forward it to my supervisor, more out of
curiosity than concern, until I caught sight of the elevator
panel just passed the gloss doors at the security desk.
There between the brush steel fort and The Warner six
button sat warn oblong and labeled button muddy black, slightly recessed,
as if someone had gouged at the five and wiped
a clean It wasn't in the clipboard plans, nor on
the rolled up architectural blueprints. The maintenance checklists I leave
through this morning skipped straight from four straight to six,
A quirker choked up to typo or a criminal oversight.
A sudden trimer crept up my neck, leaving the short
hairs upright. It was that old unkenny Planner's intuition, as
sensed that the building's geometry wasn't just wrong, it was
hiding something. I couldn't quite shake, the feeling, as if
the structure itself had subtly shifted while I blinked, and
that between fours four and six, some hidden volume of
air or time was waiting and watching for me to notice.
It should have been funny, were just annoying. Instead, I
felt observed, pressed by the stale exhalation of a hundred
hurried departures. By the time I forced myself to shruken
march toward the fire stairs, the message continued to burn
on my funds, dim and screen unresolved and very much
on read. If you'd ask me even five years ago
whether I would end up as a building inspector in
the dying corridors of dead developments, I would have laughed,
probably too hard. Back then, I was fresh from urban
planning grad school, fueled by the righteousness of responsible civic design.
For a while, I was something of an upstock, brought
into consol f on city, sent to rezonings. The Mark
Tower had once crossed my desk in a blizzard of
sly decks, oll glass and a live work synergy, the
most buzzward rich project for its time, heralded by magazines
I'd since learned to ignore. But then I'd made the
mistake of looking too closely at a series of expedited
zoning approvals, a thickening stench around city ha AOL's dealings
with a handful of developers whose projects, like Marlwick, always
seemed to squeak through by margin of error. I couldn't
let go my mistakes republic. The fall up was ugly.
I always informed that my perpetual questions made me an
obstacle sidelining committees. My open source complained against the city's
planning division buried and a month's of administrative hayes. A
few of the braver whistleblowers had spoken up on my behalf,
but their names faded quickly. I got cold, stubborn. Their
names vanished from directories. After a public fallout that ended
with barely coded derision in the local business section, I
was blacklisted from anything assembling my old job. Now I
bounce from temp contract to temp contract, never on the
city pyrol, always through some shadow third party firm that
needed extra hands during or actually after a project's life cycle.
Utilities hemidding, building compliance verification, which was code for inspector.
It was meant to be honorable, but by now it
felt like an endless, stuttering slide walk throughs with clipboard
and hand mottering compliance numbers, ticking inspected boxes for insurance ordering,
then moving on before the wall's case ain't done for real.
Marwick Tower was my fifth side close out at that spring.
Each morning, out of some vestigial habit, I would arrive early,
sometimes before the other few contract workers shuffled in. I
parked beneath the fluttering chain ink that looped the perimeter.
Most days, soft city traffic dulled the loneliness on site,
but by the time my boots thudded up the final
step of seven thirty, only the janitor and occasional city
agency inspected their faces as tired as yesterday's news made
their appearances. My work was methodical, almost cleansing in its
repetition mornings, electrical panels, whollway carpet, water stains, perhaps vermin.
Every third window cracked or jammed, sprinkler had sometimes dripped.
Emergency lights frequently failed their test. I'd motter findings into
my phone, save voice memos, and increase in the listless
file names, then upload my updates into the same dad
email chain reserve for every walk through. Lunch more often
than not, was eaten in silence on the thread or
carpet of the fourth floor, five stairs. Sometimes I'd look
out the narrow, smuged window over the city a perspective,
lifted half a mile into mediocre air, and tried to
recall the thrill of seeing city blocks as living systems.
That spark had dulled, but routine delivered, if nothing else,
consolation and regularity. My colleagues Fleeting presence is a bearded
fire system inspector named Reggie who had a different sand
which every day never said a word about the city.
The cleaning company rotated people, and except for Anna, the
janitor with the wildly fashionable scarves and the unnerving talent
for appearing at every floor's end, mop and cueuing in hand,
she always hid her head funds on. But late one
rainy afternoon, when we met by the broken elevator, she
pulled out one eghbor and said, don't mind the noise
at night, o K. These old places, floor shift pipes rattle.
Sometimes people talk about ghost floors, lost spaces, probably rats.
When I asked if she ever saw any such thing
in Marwick, she showed a half mischievous, half wary, just
city stories. Mister, you'll hear something, but it's all in here.
She tapped her temple, then turned away, letting the brief
confessions scatter in the hummet's dowel air. The process was
always the same. I'd start at the roof, then worked down,
with each level itemised against what I could find in
the blueprints. Around a time I finished floor four, a
peculiar discomfort began to fester. There was a page missing
into plants, two sheets stuck together or printed out of order,
so the transition from four to six was a jarring leap.
The front desk shoved it off old typo only four
tenant fours anyway, But the more I verified, the more
the gap annoyed me. Still nothing in the city file,
no fight on the permit registers, nothing to justify wasting time.
Rumors about the buildings to my swelled everywhere, Unlawful add ons,
clandestine deals, a rash of untraceable modifications that had brought
a once glamorous adressed down to its knees. When demolition
was scheduled, nobody seemed more. Each shift became adrift through
empty plants and even emptier spaces, except for the quiet,
unresolved discomfort that there was something left and done, always
just out of reach. By the end of every day,
I'd pack up and check my reflection in the lobby mirror,
hoping to see some mark of usefulness, some evidence of persistence.
But mostly I just saw that shadow eversion of myself
invisible and at a place the prodigal urban planner faded
to the bottom rung, drawn endlessly to the unfinished. It
wasn't until the third week, in an otherwise and eventful dusk,
that the pattern reappeared. I was reviewing the checklist on
my tablet, clicking through themarked complete tiles of each floor.
My bags were packed by boots echoing in the hollostairwell.
Just before I shut off the security lights. The scream
bloomed white. A second email, a ride subject identical, please
lock up level five before you leave for the night
difference ender. A similar string of numerals succeeded to names
I didn't recognize this time. The attachment was a small
zip log file, which again wouldn't open. The body copy
was boilerplate, almost robotic, most eerie of all the seen
time stump three years prior under a long defunct out
he'd domain associated with the company I'd never heard of.
I forwarded it to my offset supervisor. The message bounced back, undeliverable.
I tried to push it aside another digital hicc but
old habits die hard, and I clicked deeper into the
building's electronic maintenance acheves. Most of it was bland routine
upkeep logs, coppet cleanings, semi annual fire suppression checks, endlessly
track folter replacements. Then reviewing a record from January of
the previous year, I stumbled across an entire column labeled
Level five the janitorial incense spill corridor E fifth floor,
A light tuber place Level five conference roomby routine smoke
tests Level five only j D signed March twenty two.
I stared the words flattening themselves with IROs of back
clock behind my eyelids. Several entriests stood out. Work orders
logged weeks after the last report attendant had moved out
before by maintenance contractors whose names didn't show up anywhere
else in active payroll. I cross referenced the signatures. Each
was checked initiate and confirmed in the margins. No access
at time of inspection and authorization see Sandra H. But
when I leave through a directory of current or recent
building staff, not a single Sandra H appeared. A nagging
curiosity to cold. I called the main office receptionist to
the voice stretched then over the late shift and inquired
about level five. A few keys cocks, she apologized for
the typo in system only four office levels top A six.
Thus sweet numbers not flows after a pause, probably old
paperwork from before the last renovation, but the document trail
was too specific. Dates thins service logs maintenance consent, and
those e mails relentless. Now by eight p m. Auto
populated calendar invites began crowding my in books, all for
lock up level five, every one a decade old, none
burying a traceabile cender. I should have stopped, but by
then inerte of curiosity was impossible to ignore. The elevator
panel haunted me. I couldn't leave it alone. I took
another walk past a blanket, flashing my phone's light in
the plastic. It bore the residue of years of you,
smoothed edges, faint finger prints, mudge, the subtle discoloration left
by many finger tips. The others two three, four, six
stood sharp and rugged. That night, after reporting my findings,
I received a final flowed of stray calendar invites, all
ending the same way, Please lock up level five before
you leave for the night. I went home feeling as
if some one or something was struggling to remind me
of a responsibility I had never been briefed on. I
slept with my phone under my pillow every bars and
in like the stirring of some unburied secret in the
city's bones. Over the next week, my mild intriguementistacited into
a sustained obsession. One rainy afternoon, I convinced myself to
try the city's public record database, hoping for some forgotten
Rennan in the project's history. I dug through out of
date building registries, scan fire codes, submissions, and queered inspection permits.
But every database recognized only four commercial levels plus basement parking,
where a building scam mightless five. The fields simply jumped
from four two to six without comment. Even a digital
overlay from the most recent code compliance skipped straight over
the fifth gap, as if nature itself had conspired to
erase a floor. I circled back to the only saying
witness I had left Anna. I found her in the
sub basement after ires scraping congealbox from the baseboart. I
played up my confusion, half laughing, asking if she had
ever serviced a fifth floor in the Mawik. Her answer
came without looking up. Don't be silly, there was only four.
Maybe in old days someone called the basement five as
a joke. But when I pressed gently reminded her of
our earlier chat about ghost floors, she straightened, suddenly guarded.
You know, maybe once years ago, a guard said he
wouldn't patrol pass four after midnight, something about a locked
door in the corridor that wouldn't open in the fire drill.
Maybe look, these buildings play tricks, you hear it, Its
stories flooded with night wind. It's all in the walls
of the vents. Goes if you want them, rats if
you don't. Before she could retrieve fully, I asked about
the old maintenance staff or any Sandra age who might
have signed off on the building logs. She shook her head,
muttered she was just contracted. He should try the management office,
then left without another word. Her nervous smile sat led
in on my mind. I tried reaching out to the
facility's manager. He responded gamely at first, insisted there was
no hidden floor, and offered to meet for coffee the
next week, but never replied to me follow up emails.
The quiet stonewalling of bureaucracy, the tutel brush off, made
me wonder if he'd even checked the building's administrative rooms,
mostly stripped of files. One night called to me. In
the hush glow of my flashlight, I pried opened desth drawers,
fishing for accident reports. Projected end at anything I found.
She for contract amendments, one labeled petition alteration, confidential workspace
authorization requires secure his own per attached NDA, no attached NDA,
no architectural diagram, just to composite signature, half legible and
a reference code leading nowhere in the building's current plan.
Another late night, I performed my ritual walk through a
circuit of the building's fire stairs, eyes keen for any
architectural slip. Steps led cleanly from four to six. The elevator,
jogged by my badge at midnight, flashed past the blank gap,
never landing, never pausing, no matter the button press. Mechanical
rooms full of humming pumps and as cake gages told
a different story. With a printed set of blueprints are
faded set rescue from a crumbling storage bin, a trace
the conduit layouts cross matching riser diagrams. There was an
anomaly marked runs of conduit and pipes drifting into dead
space between official floors, neither accounted for nor clearly terminated.
Nothing illegal on the face of it, just a lost
volume in the building's inn as a mufful of air
refusing to tell me what it had. The urge to
fill in the blanks overtook me. Night after night, I
linger beustracing the perimeter, sketching hypothetical room for prints based
on evidence, plotting, ghost corridors, and graph paper, just to
see if I could tease out rational explanation. The work
felt almost religious in its intensity. Searching for the invisible
by charting the shape left behind desperation crept in. I
began tinkering with the elevator's control box, holding the closed
door button while fretting a piece of wire between the
contacts of the unlabel button. Nothing. Later, I discovered a
raw maintenance terminal hidden in the security office, its ancient
CRT flickering blue behind the sea of dust. On impulse,
I tried to access the archad CCTV locks lopped, but
the password prompt irritated in the basic gave into passwardone
and the monochrome's greens built out. I was of footage.
One sequence jumped at me. A man, older stocky entered
the elevator with the cleaning cadd He hesitated, then pressed
the blank button. The door slow jut. Thirty minutes later,
the time stamped log blink forward. The same man stumbled
out into the lobby again, visibly shaken, pale, his shirt
soak through. I start into the far corners of the frame.
I cross checked the badge logs the next morning, as
credentials were marked as expired, A voluntary resignation the only
outward sign of any issue. I called the number on
his file dis connected. I trolled linked in, check in,
daid bisses, casual online directories. No trace of him after
the time stamp on the footage. That night, the city's
normal churn or something else. Logic scoffed, yet the doubt
remained by degrees. My nights grew more restless, unaccountable noises
prowled the building. After midnight. A pulsing hammet set the
duck brook shuddering, catching the edges of my hearing like
a radio tuned off station. Once following a muffled footstep
down a perfectly empty corridor, the only answer was the
echo of my own heartbeat, taking faster as I reached
the lidstowell. I started wearing ear blugs, but the low,
tremulous vibrations seemed to slip right tough skin and bone.
My dreams took on a peculiar texture. Always the fifth
floor visible only from a bird's eye view, pulsing softly,
room spilling across dark voids, Inhabitants moving an exo be
toward locked doors. They never quite reached. Names woke me
up in the darkness. None I remembered by day. The
set circled ever inward, physical blueprints, digital cross checks, even
calling and favors from old contacts. The silence at every turn,
no archived references, no mention in city registers, felt almost deliberate.
My rational brin clung to the idea of an early
construction error, some administrative oversight. But with each piece of evidence,
the mystery gaped wider. I almost missed it. A brittle
envelope stuff behind the breaker box in the sub basement
storage closet, hand addressed and faded on company let ahead
to operations level five well remain secured for whistleblower safety.
Under no circumstances should files, plans, or personnel movements be recorded.
Contact O lin only, maintenance by author's badge only, some
proofing upgrade installed five slash twenty w D. I read
it three times before folding it away. Whistleblower safety, no
mention in city records, nur Saignovo lind in any staff
directory going back two decades on the defunct company's servers,
even order the list of former employees he seed in
the recurring level. Five females, A few names I managed
to cross for reference. All had either resigned abruptly, died quietly, illness, accidents, suicide,
or simply dropped off the face of their professional earth.
A kind of terror, slow and quiet began it to
crawl up my skin. I needed to talk to Anna again,
A lifeline to actual memory. A coordnered her justice. She
was finishing her shift the night A pushing in thirty
waves through the brooken lobby doors. Her hands clutched the
broom like a walking stick. Anyone ever disappeared in this building?
I asked you. Ever hear stores of people going missing?
Up there? She hesitated, glancing at the security camera, then
looked back at me. Listen, she said, Finally, I heard
only how milk crew talked about a couple people back
when the Firs raided the marwork offices. Rumors mine, they'd
say some staff hid out somewhere up in the lost
floor when the police left. Only some came back. Superstitious crap.
I always thought I'd just cleaned when I'm told, but
sometimes she paused. Even now at midnight, the Vince Talk
whispered things like someone asking not to be found. She
gave a sad little shrug, then left for the stairwell,
leaving the air colder in her absence alone. I picked
apart my scraps of data, the white space and the blueprints,
the purposely cycled locks, the erase badge ricors, the misvolv
work orders, the blank button. I only now did I
since it wasn't a slip or cover up. It was
a living erasure, a space methodically suppressed and then ritually
triggered by anyone who lingered too lawn near its edge.
Unable to shake it off, I returned home and tried
every avenue of urban Panel's logic, mistake, nonconformity, lost paperwork,
but the evidence said otherwise, And the entire time the
email chain kept adding new messages, each time sam from
a different year, each ending with the same request, the
same demand. In my apartment. Sifting through city maps, technical ovalays,
and half forgotten contracted directories, I decided to leverage every
nds of professional skill left to me if I couldn'tuncover
truth by official procal I do it by inference. First,
I matched the original blueprints to every revision order filed
with the city. Vertical riser diagrams, usually exact, showed odd
discurpances in piping runs, water and electrical means doubled back,
mirrored themselves, or simply looped out and vanished in the
space between the fourth and sixth floors. Heating networking, even
trashute showed similar bends, like nervous sticks in the building's
nervous system. It was as if space itself was made
to confuse or to conceal heat sent Some maps from
a recent fire drill found online showed a strip of
dead thermal dat in the gap between four and six
No explanation. Another piece of evidence and nearly lost series
of punch list reviews listing small jobs completed on in
level five, including paint touch shops, five suppression zeinofs, and
pest control visits. Long after the official lost occupancy sam
had signatures, none nashed any current administrative staff. My phone's
GPS proved just as unreliable. Every time I walked the
suppose for print of level five, the map would starter,
compass needles would spin, floor cants would flicker between four
and unknown. At first I laughed, assuming interference from steel beams.
But but at the third time I watched the compass
needle circle endlessly while walking the interior hallways, I gave up.
I tempted to call in a favor with an old classmate, Delia,
who'd gone into private design work. At first I pitched
it as a code compliance puzzle or wayfinding nightmare where
it gaps in a high rise. She asked to see
the blueprints and the annotated plans. After a long silence,
she quietly refused official involvement, but confessed she'd wance worked
a hush hush consulting job for a developer notorius in
city circles for designing floors you weren't meant to ask about.
Late at night, a skyward news hawks on whistle blowing cases.
Near the Marwick Tower. There was a cluster of storers,
all years old, in which corruption allegations built from an
anonymous all was working with insecure shelter, always at an
undisclosed downtown address. Names were never given. The City paper
reported two lawsuits disappear into sealed settlements details confidential, and
a stop working past sunset. She quit the next week.
When I called to say goodbye, she claimed the new
contract was her own chuories, but her voice trembled sometimes.
She said, a building doesn't want to be found. Not really,
he wouldn't want to get stuck in the wrong spot.
After dark, I barely ate, barely slept, cycling evidence upon
my bedroom, all in a grid of mismatched Timeland's names
and four diagrams. The connections only clarified this shape. Level
five was no accident. I became convinced by architecture, by evidence,
by the pattern and a noise, that it was designed
as a sanctuary, more precisely, a forced omission for those
too dangerous or inconvenient for the city, a halfway house
for whistleblowers, information brokers, and the unlucky few who strayed
too near the truth. One Dursley Friday, close to midnight,
I risked official censer and tried something desperate. I used
my contract to law to schedule a deep clean and
ordered for or Level five through the creek as scheduling software. Amazingly,
the system accepted it, quitely, acknowledging the request under the
cove clee in five afters my badge when I swiped
it at the elevator. After ires sent the faintest flicker
through the control panel. That night, the building felt empty
than ever. The last of the city's glow filtered to
an ashe haze behind the filmy lobby glass. I pressed
the unlabeled button for ten seconds. Nothing happened. Then the
elevator chugged the fluorescent panel u of buzzing. The door
slide and closed with a sudden final snap. A thrum
of coal pressed and a round my scull, like diving
deep under water on a freezing day. The air and
the elevator thickened. The blank button glowed softly at first,
then brougher a faint phosphorescence like emergency exit tape, shining
back at a flashlight. My phone dimmed, buzzed, then went dead.
The elevator dropped, then ascend, the numbers blurring past escaping
for hitching, then pausing. The panel ob a flickered between
five and a blank expanse then still soft as a confession,
The doors potted. I peered through, heart slamming in my chest.
A corridor and spooled before me, dimly lit shrouded in dust.
The geometry of the walls wrong, neither parallel nor square,
as if purposefully reconfigured, or as a space itself had
collapsed and ver knitted along the hallway. Battered office doors
bore acronyms. They didn't recognize. A wlrm insafe, a dead
rotary foam mounted outside an office labeled though Lynn. The
air was thick, no longer musty, but edged with the
chemical tine of stale coffee ozone and some cleane. I
couldn't pin down at my feet plastic crinkle, the visitor's
badge apparently forgotten. I picked it up. The Level five
visitor at reed. My name was typriton on its back.
Being still fresh. Down the corridor, I made out shapes
behind the frosted glass, slightly shifting movements not fully human
or perhaps simply herd shadows somewhere as speaker bust a
familiar tiny voice repeating, please lock up Level five before
you leave for the night. The walls felt vaduly warped
office doors at hot angles. The distance is not quite
matching what the outer building implied. I stepped from the elevator.
Every hair standing on end senses alive to every ghostly sound,
bride to laugh, paper rustle, the too loud echo of
my own shoes on filthy carpet. Before I could decide
to turn back, metal shrieked. The elevator door slam shut
behind me, locking with a mechanical clang. The panel inside
winked out, smothered by blackout film. My return was cut
off as sharply as if I'd been buried alive here
between spaces in the corridor of the hidden floor, I
felt not only observed, but entirely known. Level five had
let me in, and my world now pivoted on whatever
it wanted to show or concealed from here on a
It took a full minute before I forced myself to move.
My pulse roared in my ears, and a salty prickle
ran down my back. It wasn't up as so much
as an optical romness. The moat, swirling in the fluorescent
haze seemed to drive from reverse with each shallow breath.
I lifted my phone almost out of habit, but its
screen jittered dully, then blacked off for good. Paper weight
now thine, I turned on my flask light and stepped
carefully forward. Avoiding the crushed plastic badge and a scattering
of perfectly ordinary paper cut strewn under the radiator. The
sound of my boots on the ancient then carpet barely
registered under the hum of the ceiling fixtures. Every few
steps the world shifted, the corridor wavered at the edge
of my vision, now cramping in now yawning wide. I
passed the first door w L R M as frosted window,
fractured by hail line cracks taped to the glass, yellowed
memos rippled under stale air currents, third type lines obscured
by mocker strokes, and no entry. Quiet bad required further
on the door to win safe, hung slightly ajar. A
slip of new print had been wedged into the gap,
bearing early to day's date, but the year was wrong,
five years in the past. A low, mechanical wine started
up behind the walls. I pressed my hand to cold paint,
feeling for any pulse. None, yet I could swear somewhere
nearby printers were churning, keyboards rattling in another room. The
flicker of movement behind the misty glass resolved briefly into
the back of a woman's had nothing more abund of
silvery hair, vanishing at the edge of perception. The instant
I focused on it, against my better judgment, I called out, HULLO,
is some one here? The words rikosheted back in a
subdued parchment tri echo. No answer, only the soft insistent
voice for speakers overhead, Please lock up vel five before
you leave for the night. Every syllable landed like an
overplay tape, thin and scratched with H. I moved down
the hall, skirting past more relics, a styrofoam cup, lipstick
print fossilized into the rim, a battered briefcase at sipper,
rusty shot, a faded city planning manual annotated in urgent
red pen mayern handwriting, or someone's uncannily similar I reached
the door, labeled her, then, half expecting, half fearing some
figure would becka me in, But the glass was blocked
with cardboard. A maketure of privacy shield taped haphazardly in
place beyond a low bench flanked a water cooler. Strangely,
the bottle atop it was full and sealed. A ring
of condensation fogged its side, as if it had been
placed them minutes before I brushed my fingers along the top,
still cold, an unforced laugh escaped me, sharp and too loud.
All right, you win, I muttered. My voice sounded alien.
From the end of the corridor. Came a subtle rattle,
the settling of ducktruk, of the unmistakable drag of a
chair's legs across tile. The sound ed and then returned,
alternating with the rhythmic tickle, like the winding of an
old wristwatch. I chose movement over paralysis, gravitating toward an
intersection marked conference b The door stood open, swinging slowly
on creaking hinges inside lawn tables gray for mica, corner
chips up beneath the suspended grid of brooken lights. Documents
actual paper, not digital records, spoiled in careful order across
the surface. Lists of names, incident numbers, incident descriptions rendered
in code, subject transferred whole, a shelter, extended coeo lynn,
cryptical little interest that refused to resolve into facts. At
the end of the table, a whiteboard was crowded with
jagged handwriting. Surveillance, fent, suspect, move save files, badge check
nine p m each item was ticked or crossed out
someone recently, by the look of the incod underlined the
last line twice, no exits after sweep, A strange, numbing
com settled as I fit pages and traced the trails
of others who like me, had garden this far. Each
fold of bore initials off, the matching the CC lines
of those endless emails. The files described information leaks, hush
money agreements, herd non disclosure signatures. Real people had hidden here,
operated in terror or complicity. Their names reflected in the
overhead lights curling at the edges, preserved, if only on
level five. But none of them seemed to have written
the obvious question, how did you leave? A tremor charper
and colder than before? Lanced through my leg. I stepped backward,
knocking into a wheeled office chair. It glided smoothly two feet,
resting against the door frame, as if nudged by invisible hands.
I scanned the walls, no clocks, no windows to the
outside wilt, only those smeared panes, each one revealing nothing
more than blowed light and refracted shadow, sometimes the hasty
retreat of an indistinct outline. My breeding grew shallow. This
was no longer a bove architecture, a city records, or
civic justice. It had become a place outside the city,
outside the living daylight timulus, yet bristling with the traces
of lives compressed and erased. I pocketed a single page
from one of the files, just in case my memory
failed me. My hands trembled as I folded it against
the visitor's badge. Speakers again louder, stammering, please lock up
level five before ye leave for the night. The pitch wobbled,
flattening mid phrays. Maybe I thought someone, for all their efforts,
never left at all. Above the noise, the elevator let
out a heavy final churn, then fell completely silent, only
my heart beat in the air. Theyke cement moved with me.
I kept going, every nerve, tuned to the warping hallways,
knowing somehow I had and died, not just another floor,
but record that did not want to let go. I
stood in the corridor, eyes adjusting to the drab, faded
amber of emergency lights just broad enough to deepen every
crooked chadder. The elevator behind me was now only a memory,
steel jolloseal tight panel dark, no mechanism evident for calling
it back forward. The warped hall were drifted in gentle, wrong, angled, sick,
so no endpoint remained. Every square before me I stepped ahead,
were resisting the impulse to press my upond flat to
a wall for assurance. The layers of paint were cold,
ancient thicke as lead. My flask light cut sharp, wedged
through the dim illuminating, scuffed carpet, pocked with stains, splayed
coffee circles, jagged ashmarks what could have been for Prince
made by herod wet shoes. Air vents overhead carried a
continuous metallic sigh dust motes billiard with each yellow breath,
as if levels of lost occupancy resettled themselves with every
new disturbance, door after door, each with an acronym I
couldn't translate. Some half peeled off the original brass letter's
dulled beyond Redemption quiet room a W L R M,
the conference b, the one I had already entered, Record security,
A heavier steel door plated with CODs. My phone was dead.
At the screen of black mirror, I ran my finger
across it, as though trying to coax a memory of signal,
but the device remained stubbornly inert. Still everything declared recent use,
more vividly than the standard off his floor ever managed
a plastic water bottle barely touched, sweating fresh beads onto
the warped linoleum of a defunct side kitchen. A jacket
the caught up dated, but with pen and badge still
clipped to the breast, pocket slumped on a hook beside
an analog's security keep ad. The stillness was split by
the faint on off hum of a powered monitor, be
handcracked frosted glass is blue WelCom screen, never resolving into login.
In the labyrinthine silence, the intercompiped up again, softer, now
nearly snick. Please lock up level five before you leave
for the night. Every syllable wrapped the hole in another
layer of uncannons, comfort warp into warning. I nudged open
one of the lighter doors, a quiet room, revealing a
space half pack with cardboard banker's boxes, some marked in
marker asset, A doctor w wel appending on the table
stood a barely warm mark, its contents ringed with frotht recidue.
I reached over testing its warmth, hot, not scalding. Some
one had made coffee minutes or at most an hour ago.
The tremor that ran through me had nothing to do
with caffeen into a corkboard, hown a lattice of overlapping
note cards, each with shorten and arrows meat t h
mid nitinsey for bad scheck, repeat nightly. A faded city
permit was stuck beneath a metal clap. It was dated
sixteen years back, issued for alternate use level five only,
then terminated line slashed with a red marker stroke and
a finale scold knell. Feeling unseen eyes at my back,
I returned to the hall, shining my torch through the
frosted panes of rooms to either side. Every now and
then a form flickered past the edge of perception, quick
reticent with drawing deeper into whichever pocket of shadow at
cold home. For a moment, I convinced myself it was
only my reflection, flickering and stuttering under broken glass. The
speaker throned again, more insistent, please lock up level five
before you leave for the night, louder flattening at the
upper register. I hesitated the instinct to shout for help,
warring with the more ancient fear of drawing attention. At
the corridor's far end, a wider double door hung slightly open.
The black read record security I advanced, swallowing, feeling the
room's temperature tumble into a dry, brittle chill. As I
entered here, the density of evidence climed to suffocation. Filing
cabinets lay open insides, ranswer to manilla folders. The tabs
grind from constant use, a sprowl of paper track cross
long battered meeting tables, busnell logs, incident reports, fragments of nda,
all heavily redacted, if not with swaths of vink, then
by scalpel blade. Excision of names and dates, most chilling,
with the photograph's faces blurred by a hasty marker, eyes
entirely blotted out, as if the act of seeing or
being seen had become a dangerous liability. On the backs,
familiar names, tags that matched up with ceasied email chains,
or that surfaced in those odd auxiliary calendar invites. Some
files yellowed wrinkle, the tall truncated stores. Transfer from legal
shutter request granted long term accommodation Level five a sticky
note on a battered land line foam warned incoming listen
only no calls out. I lifted the receiver, only a
dead hum greeted me oddly extra dry, as if static
itself had been muffled. Drawn to the head of the table,
afflicked a switch on an ancient desk lamp. A circle
of light revealed a whiteboard ghosted with generations of wiped
and rewritten commands, secure events, suspect surveillance, to check files
before sweep shed after a witness exit. Among the more
recent notes, one startled me if found did not trust
the locks. Keep record by hand. I ran my thumbs
over a stack of folders. Several remarked testimony Sulter extension,
CEO LYNN. Each contained fragments of what looked like whistle
blowers statements, but all were so heavily sterilized that only
the skeleton of alligation remained. Of bribery threats vowls walked
out under cover of after eyros inspections. I could fill
in the blanks, having seen real world versions of such reports,
to solved dozens of scandalous stores into bureaucratic vapor. In
a far corner, a battered office chair faced away from
the door, steadily spinning with some imperceptible breeze. The sound
of typridor keys soft. A hethnik began taping through the wall.
There was no clock in the wall, no ticking, but
the place selt thick with time compacted into every inch
of air. A singular icy drede replaced my early curiosity
grief for all the people who'd come here, whose rags
of witness now blurred at the edges. Unable to escape
the building's gravitational pull, I tried the stairwell, solid, no
give in the panic bar. The elevator, called by a
desperate slop of the button, did not so much as whimper.
The only light in the stare ucov came from the
floor indicator, flickering stubbornly. Between four and six. The exit
signs above doors blinked out of sequence, some flashing exit backwards,
others cycling through readable glyffs. I doubled back each circuit
of the corridor, re arranging itself. The angle of the
passage was subtly warped, as if the floor plan was
redrawing itself, for as if my sense of direction was
gradually being erased, my perspective unanchored from reality by the
wall of the place. Somewhere to my left, a noise
brought me up short, a shuffle, scraping like rubber soles
against thin carpet, then a series of slowe measured footsteps.
Out of reflex, I docked into the nearest open doorway
and quieted my breath. Raising the flask light, I saw
the outline of some one hunch narrow dragging a wide loop.
As they moved past the frosted glass. The beam caught
their feet, sho scuffed and powdery, angle's bent, as if
in show where next to step. They passed without stopping.
I let a few creaking seconds tick by before sliding out,
glancing over my shoulder with desperate hoperchance maybe for human contact.
Outside in's safe I found them A man, middle aged,
face shrouded by patcheek, graying stubble, shirt, rumpled and spotted
with grime. He seemed both shrunken and stretched, his eyes
tunneled with exhaustion. In something wilder, hollower, Hey, I said,
my voice hitching higher than I'd intended. He recoiled almost violently,
then peered into the dark between us, as if fighting
to recognize any one. Friend. Oufoe you, His lips struggled
to shape the word you got in. I'm I, hes stated,
the loss for how to introduce myself here in a
place that didn't exist. I'm just an inspector. My badge
let me up. I don't know how to leave, he
laughed to wreck sound. They let you. And did you
close the elevator? No, never close it. Never let the
door shut behind you. That's how they keep you. That's
the trick. He came further into the circle of my light,
wincing against his clare on his test half concealed beneath
the appel and old access badged route. The photo was
so faded it might have been any one. But I
recognized him, if only through layers of digital artifact from
the security monitors, the janitor or maintenance man who had
ridden the elevator and come out changed years ago. How
long have you, he interrupted, never meeting my eyes. No
clocks here they jumble everything. Time gets thin. You write
things down, you try to remember. Faces and numbers hit
all blurs after a while. Sometimes you see people. Sometimes
they ad just took goes. He pulled a battered notebook
from his jacket, gravelly, hands fluttering over the cover. Hear
these pages write what you see, who you are. Don't
trust the locks, don't trust the walls. I took the notebook,
running my fingers over its scorched, saying, cover inside the
opening page if found burnless. The rest a ragged, frantic lock,
scan badge enters, time stamps that made no sense, no
scold and varying hens, some frantic, some blocky. Can't find
the door, coffee hot, it's night, but never sunrise heard voices,
don't answer, keep bad visible. They come at night, he whispered,
When this week the fours. If you're not gone by
then no one remembers. He left. Names go, fuzzy, files
get erased. He glanced up, sharply. That's what they do,
cover stores, silence, money, whatever it took. People who threatened
to talk hid out here until nobody could find them.
Sometimes they walked out with new names. Most didn't. He
reached out, gripping my form with desperate strength. Don't let
the alarms go, never let them think. He found the
right corror doors. His words failed as a slow rising
beep took through the wall like a hospital hert monitor
only harsh grating. He startled, releasing me. That's them. I
have to go. He retreated, shoulders hunched, vanishing into a
side office. I followed, but when I tried the door
after him, it refused to bunch machinery groaning with him.
Silence returned thick with the after tist of panic. I
opened the notebook, scanning his lopy scirl hage is chronicled
day after day of isolation, routine and nuntin dread. They
come every night to a race. Don't trust the logs.
Only paper survives, file room key and the badge. Watch
for oatlen the vents. Don't listen too close. They are
not always the building. I've flipped ahead, breath shortening. If
you find a way out, burn the pages. The last
entry urged. Armed with this accidental testament, I pressed forward,
clutching the notebook and the scavenge badge in my pocket
until the outline dug into my palm. We turned in
two and safe. I tried the badge and the card reader.
The green light flickered and the door responded sluggishly. Metal
hinges squealing as a caved inward inside a vault like room,
glistened with steel cabinets, each marked in black, mocker contracts
unsigned NDA's ear twenty ten twelve safe reports in the center,
a glass table, born encrypted drive as scattering of keys,
and a yellowed wall shop. I skimmed the chot secure
cleaning schedule for level five with hand pend and just
trailing back decades, each matching the maintenance logs i'd seen.
Specific dit coincided with the anomalous after Eyre's work, always
anonymized drawings on the wall, technical annotated short how the
building's core was reverted date. A line spiraled into isolated loops.
Keepers and old fashioned physical locks cured doors from both sides.
The only outside axis routed through transcend construction elevators and
never registered in official city plans. I pocketed the drive
more for habit than hope, and paged through on side contracts.
Names matched the missing signatures marked null. No witnesses upcomes blank.
Here was a paper trail so damning, so perfectly complete.
It clarified the building's purpose and administrative ghost space, one
designed to facilitate a rasure, never documentation. The voices began again,
louder angry. I pressed my ear to the vent. Distinct
phrases surfaced a cat let them stay to archives must
be moved, that's not per coal all overlapping, always fraying
before clarity, then blending back into a humming syncipated drone.
The ceiling lights faded round alarm, skiening at the edge
of hearing, I braced myself, feeling the transitional living shutter
in the walls, as if the building rise to eject me,
or worse, to absorb me into its system. I stumbled
into the corridor as the entire floor shifted, panels and
the walls blink. A live secure mode enabled fire doors
slammed one by one down the length, bark and gun
metal collapse overhead strodes, flared glass bold popping with those
untang The speaker now urgent, hammered out, Please lock up
level five before you leave for the night. I ran,
breath tearing as the spatial logic of the place dissolved.
Corridors telscoped out into endless repeating suckles. One door previously
to conference B now opened only into record security no
matter what direction I approached. I doubled back twice, then
three times, the layout ever recomposing, taking liberties with three
dimensional reality, and new floors above would never allow. Ships
materialized just beyond the limits of my cone of light.
A row of backs, indistinct, motions, stuttered, figures in dust,
showed business attire, faced away board as frozen, except when
my attention drifted. Then they shadowed, as if to refocus
on some task forever incomplete. I ducked into Records Security,
slamming the lock through the frosted glass blowed outlines stacked
indistinct at first, but as my panic rose, they sharpened.
Featureless faces, eyes rubbed, roar MOUs worked in silent excruciation.
Their badges, each swinging online yards, all bore some iteration
of mark Tower, the old logos half worn. I fumbled
with the hard wardphone, the line connected, spewing nothing but
a chirin of chopped back of voices, interlaced with what
I recognized, the snatches of past testimony. Never meant to
hide it, le locked in for the night. They forgot
my name. A juttering stata closed them out. On the
desk side a complex control panel, dusty but let a
blinking overide button reading a level emergency slash exit. Next
to it, a faded instruction sheet two badges required, one old,
one current enter pass code lock up level five before exit.
I suspect a crowd pressed closer, their hands feathering at
the glass, not knocking, but sliding down, leaving streaks in
the smear dust. I pulled both badges from my pocket.
I laid the survivor's battered card and the reader, then
my own their emergency slash eggs. If light blinke fiffully waiting,
I prompt on screen admin code required last cleaning scheduled date.
My mind raised the notebook, the cleaning logs, the chart
on the wall. Match. I punched in the date of
my scheduled level five cleaning. A panel buzzed motor somewhere
deep in the walls, stuttering to life. Red light flared
down the hallway. Doors along the courre all warmped and banged,
as if magnetically locked and unlocked at once. The elevator giant, unnatural,
not like any chime I'd heard on the floors above.
I staggered into the whole the vision of lost employees'
knuckle lessing. They turned toward me, half real, half documented,
some mouthing in soundless terror, others in suspicion. When reaching
as if to hook their fingers in my sleeve. Their
faces were disfigured, not by violence, but by the absence
of memory, had faded eyes, blank feature straped in a
mist of administrative forgetfulness. As I bolted, the survivor materialized
in an intersecting corridor. He looked at me without hope.
If you get out Burnet, you can't have Rlettic comeback.
The swelling, low frequency grown rose, vibrating every cell in
my body, a fury of the building itself. The machinery,
both ancient and new, determined to deny me passage, or
it sorbed me into the next cycle. Doras, now swinging
and slamming in perverse and vitation, drove me forward. I
reached the elevator, nearly tackled by a brush of cold
that left my arms prickled, my flask lights being flared
then dimmed. The buddon at last glowed not white, but
with a bruised purple light. I staff it. The doors
parted in tears, waddled and strange hillogical shadows. As I
lunged inside, pale hands, Dozens reached, grasping, some pleading for help,
others simply seeking to pull me back. Clutching the notebook
in the survivor's badge, I ran the closed door button
until the doors heaved ship. The elevator shuddered still, then
word in liminal ascent or descent, I could not say which.
The display ticked, flickered, landed for a moment, En five,
then rotated wounded too well. The doors hissed open on
to the ruined lobby, sunlight shitting through the grimy glass,
a world perfectly mundane, except for the icy sweat that
covered my body in the black smears left on my arms.
With us cold insistent hands had seized at me, I
nearly collapsed, let in the slab like memory of Level
five dissolve as bist it could. In the new light
my first impulse flight, I stumbled through the empty foy hard,
crashing the notebook, still clenched in a hand that would
not clench. I paused only to press a trembling finger
into the badge scanner one last time, watching the axis
denied display wink up permanently. Out on the sidewalk, the
air tasted thin. In you. Annah, the janitor stood by
her battered supply cart, lit pressed tight as she took
him my ragged gray face, busy night as she asked
too loud, too forced. I tried to answer each word,
cracking apart in my mouth. Just just finished. I think, Anna,
there's something down there hidden. She shook her head, already
averting her gaze. We all got ghosts, mister. I just
clean up. The new demolition notice had been tacked to
the main doors over night, bolder and more final than
the last. The city lock out was in place, chained
her own. I recognized the city Supervisor's signature, but dared
not seek him out. I filed my report or tried.
Nobody believe the war. My notes vanished from the company
service within a day, My email's bouncing back as unrecognized.
The survivor's notebook pages, once full of frantic locks and names,
had turned overnight into a clump of water stained grip. Hulp.
My phone, newly charged, stuttered and rebuted when I tried
to open message logs or photographs. I returned to the
site once from across the street. Nothing to see, windows blinded.
Cordon's up. Anna was gone from the roster. Another inspectors
her rumor held took a job at Marwick, and, according
to buildings super never picked up pay. No one would
speak to it, not city officials, not company contacts, not
even my old architectural colleagues. Level five was a race again.
I slept badly, dreams awashed with panic corridors and silent faces,
alarms endlessly pending their phrase, gnawing from a tinny speaker,
leaping through the gray folds of memory, Please lock up
level five before ye leave for the night. The days blurred.
Each morning my inbooks refreshed with a long parade of
unread requests, mostly digital to try his from other failed contracts.
Then three days after my escape, a new message arrived,
please lock up level five before ye leave for the night.
Attached was a security camp photo from the exact morning
i'd left me hunted in the shadowed lobby, face ashen
under new daylight, but behind the glass entry where only
construction fencing should remain. A half dozen blurry figures crowded together, outlines, men, women,
each with a lineout or visitor badge, their faces lost
to the bone of reflection or a smear of movement.
They watched without expression, their pre and charged with the
silent unwasolffully. I deleted the emil. It returned intriplicate immediately after.
Outside my window, the blue glow of the city s
turned on, as if nothing had changed. No trace of
Margaret Tower in the sky line, no record of Level
five in any plan, still in the unmade stack of
my inboox, replandishing itself by the eye of the same
subject line gleamed each message as silent prod of the
responsibility lingered. A dread truth gnawed my thoughts, settling into
the pit of every subsequent night. Even as I'd escaped
the buried floor, Even as the city's memory cleansed itself,
some vital part of me and the lawn frozen secrets
of Level five would never wholly leave. I let the
new email pile up, paralysed before my screen, as the
senders a dress shape, shifted, numbers, flickering, domain swapping in
and out of existence. Each time I deleted the message,
it returned in different permutations of chain a tree, always
with that every subject line demanding I do something I
had no words for. Even as I was trickled by
I tried to distract myself with the rituals of the
outside world, coffee warming my hands, the stagger of city trains,
the noisy shuffle of vendors under my window. None of
it cleared the gray recidue from my senses. Reality it
a new have to taste, metallic and faintly chemical, as
if the arab of ground was still polluted by the secrets,
had stirred beneath it. When I fished what was left
of the notebook from my backpack, the survivor's frantic diary,
now bundle of water stained, almost featless, balpiram my thumbela
on the blackened edges and re read what faint lines persisted.
Remember only what you write, and further on, half obscured,
they will follow when you return. The rest migrated every
night into pure blurir sentences, dissolving in their own margins.
My work, such as it was, became a facsimile of normality.
After a few sleepless nights, I put in print waters
for newports and paperwork, stacking them neatly beside the battered
coffee pot, as if insistence alone could reconstruct the ordinary
from fragments. Even when my cell buzzed, I hesitated to answer.
In the foalt calum of daylight, I'd almost convince myself
what I'd seen could be written off as an episode
to break from the pressure a lingering fever. Then came
the subtle syncopation of details that didn't quite add up.
My apartment, which had always carried the soft clatter of neighbors,
seemed fainter, the walls less certain in their boundaries. Sometimes
just at the age of sleep, I thought I saw
doorways and places that couldn't exist, Angled windows that emitted
light which never shifted no matter the ire. Three mornings
after the escape, as rain lashed the glass weekly and
the city war it's habitual indifferent face, I pushed open
my apartment door to find a slim envelope and stamped
slip beneath on the front, just might name nothing more.
I crouched and pried it open, heart stumbling at the
unmistakable odor old towner carpet adhesive, the clinical astringency particular
to anuse copy rooms. They wafted up from the led
ahead before I even finished reading Morrik co Operations Personnel finalization.
The page itself was bland, bureaucratic, and yet its edge
is prickle. Confermal Level five documentation has been secured and
returned to administrative storage. Final access if required listed below.
There was a cold block at the bottom, as if
it expected a badge scan and a lock sequence. It
ended with the line I now dreaded, please lock up
level five before you leave for the night. I stared
the world of my flat slowering. On the back was
a scrall message, shaky uneven. If you see this, destroy it,
eh Amon. I could censor in the script the nervous,
rapid penmanship of someone used to leaving quick notes for
herself on service sheets. I'd been meaning to call her
check in see if she'd really left the janitorial company
for another job orer like me. She'd only tried to
map a rut summer father from memory, pause her hair.
I didn't say that it was just a joke of thought,
a slip, as if a wire inside my mind. Fraid.
I put the envelope down and wash my hands. Watched
the paper color little in the moist air of the kitchen,
like it was shrinking from me, like it feared being seen.
I returned to my computer, resolved to wipe out all
records of Marwick for my devices. I changed passwords, move files,
overwrote old logs with meaningless gibberish each time I hit delete,
though the same ghost lines reappeared, a level five lock up,
a cleaning request, excepted like a watermark. The script seat back,
restoring itself with the precision and futility of wind smoothing sand.
At the end of that week, I received an unexpected
call from Delia, my architect friend, the one he'd recognized
the signature of fas not meant to be found. She
spoke quickly, her voice low, smudged with static, as though
the city's regular noise had bled to the line. I'm
leaving town for a bit, she said, abruptly. Company moved
the project. Whether it's the line, I have a file
you should see all procurement documentation may be something to
help you put this behind you, or at least understand
how it was done. The implication it was still being
done somewhere by someone else twisted in my stomach. Where
can I meet you? A hesitation not the city, Come
up to Crosstown Park tomorrow noon. Bring nothing you want
to keep. She was gone before I could protest. The
next morning, gray miss moffling the city's edges, I made
my way through the subway and upside streets, dely awaited
by trashdrewn bench profile tot. She didn't sit, just slid
a data stick and a folded blueprint page from her
jacket into my hand. Oh call me, she said, don't
mention this. Whatever you think you saw, others saw to you.
Some left, some never showed up again. She looked around,
special twitching her features, then dropped her voice. They built
Level five into dozens of projects in the nineties, emergency
safe rooms, whistle blow stations, transfer corridor's design so that
any real record could be vanished. Those funding streins through
two dozen names, all paid by charities, advocacy groups, ghost companies.
They think it served a great acre, But buildings remember
even when people won't. She met my eyes here. You
don't want to get caught between them and the secrets,
theor Yes, more than just blueprints. I tried to ask
a battle, learn about survivors. She raised a hand. I
was told never to ask. You shouldn't ear. She left
before I finished, and folding the blueprints head down against
the wind, a slip of color lost among scrub trees
and trash. At home, I scanned the data stick, pulling
up a mess of procurement sheets, secret construction authorizations, and
at the center a folder label to leave a five
override inside a dated badge. Protocols lod Purg descripted to
run in the middle of the night emergency shut down
processes that whited not only the floor but its technologic
memory from all databases. Even the Atman panel I'd used
to escape, matched up, same buttons, same bad sequence. It
was as if the system existed only for the briefest
window triggered by ritual accident or compulsion, then sealed up
until the building's next scheduled disappearance. That night, after hours
of following trails that ended in digital I sat at
my kitchen table, haunted by the envelope with Anna's note
the data stick, the ever growing graveyard of emales. I realize,
sickened that the architecture wasn't just a trick. It was
an act of wool, a collective refuseal tell alst certain
truce any sunlight. That was why witnesses ended up blurred,
why my own memory buckled when I tried to piece
events together. The story had never been meant to survive
in this islands. I found myself repeating the instructions in
a half whisper lock up level five before you leave
for the night. And even as I heard myself say it,
part of me wondered if some habit deeper than memory
was compelled in my voice. I crashed into an uneasy sleep.
The boundaries between dream and we can growing even thinner,
I wondered, Endless corridors, sometimes the gray passageway of level five,
sometimes a version of my apartment building with new doors,
a blind hallway, voices murmuring behind glass. The faces that
turned toward me were always half seen. Enna smile dearly
as where he glanced the survivor's sunken eyes. I tried
to speak or remember their names, but each sound tore
open a new, gentle panic. Occasionally the elevator doors would
open somewhere impossible, at an till all be yond before me, empty,
safe for a handful of silent watches, each pressing a
dead visitor badge to the hut, waiting. One dawn spilt
harsh sunlight through the bedroom window, waking me with an
eyron jolt. I remembered, as if it was a warning
that i'd left. Deal Is blueprint enfrolled on the living
room table, heart pounding, I went to review it, only
to find something new scrolled at the bottom, and desperate
pencil words I hadn't written in hand, dritting, unfamiliar and urgent.
Don't forget, don't ever let the door shut. My phone buzz,
jarring me from the days I fumbled for it, seeing
Anna's name flash up, improbable since I hadn't wrung her
and she'd quit the job the week before. She didn't
wait for me to speak. They sent the cleaning schedule
here now, her voice rasped. They want me to sign
off on something I never did. I get calls, they
ask if I remember you. I don't say anything. Don't
come back Oka some fours they deeper than you think.
The lion went dead, but not before stad a q
wine rose up that same stuttering distortion had heard on
the level five desk phone. I set the receiver down gently.
My hand shook, the knuckles icy and a nyielding, as
if I'd spent another night in that shivering gray corridor.
In the days that followed, a kind of obsessive isolation
took rude. I let emails accumulate, unable to face the
constant return of the message each time I thought to
delete my account. Another batch with flood in level five,
level five, always escalating with the certainty of a candown.
My world outside the building shrank, Sidewalks seemed narrower, the
cities now as foaltering as if through thick a glass.
Friends texted, but their words failed to ground me. I
passed entire afternoons in a paralysis of drid shuffling through
a living room that, sometimes out of the corner of
my eye, long aided bend in strange ways I couldn't rationalize. Occasionally,
the bathroom light flickered in a man or two, reminiscent
of the elevator descent, and I'd freeze, Convinced for seconds,
I'd find myself stepped back onto the wrong floor. One evening,
desperate for any sense of banality, I walked the length
of my block, rain gleaming beneath sodium lights. Each time
footsteps rayng behind me, I braced, expecting what that. I'd
look back and see one of the blurred watchers, a
lionard swinging gently. Badge reversed as if refusing even the
act of reading under the weight of uncene obs a
tridul ordinary routines, grocery stores, dry cleaners, a quick stop
into the city library. On an impulse, I wandered to
the reference desk, asking after any documents on mart towed
demolition schedules. The young clerk typed scanning databases. There's no
Marwick Tower, he sef frowning, You mean market or maybe Warwick.
I spelled it again. He checked a thicker registry. No wrecker,
he concluded, handing me back my ID. If it was there,
the city would list in the project archive. There's nothing
in the last ten years. On the walk home, a
passivacant lot where Margaret had stood. Now it was only
a gap in the sky line, edged by a plastic
chain link fence, broken gas gleintin delly machines sat idle,
half covered in tops. On the security sign, a fresh
sticker had been slapped across the address, inspection ongoing, do
not enter after nine p m. Level cleaning schedule to
be confirmed. Even in a rasure, the instruction survived. When
I dreamed that night, my own hands were at the
elevator panel, the blank buttons locked beneath my thumb. I
pressed it. The humovens see machinery mounting a frequency that
blanked out memory, turned names into static faces, into smears
in the reflection of the elevator doors. My own image
gradually warped, malforming words my brain couldn't decipher. Behind me,
a crowd gathered, matching badges to faces with desperate hope
or resignation. Each time I tried to shout, I produced
only a thin high wine. The lights gutter. Then I
was back in the corridor at same endlessly by furcating hallway,
always one step away from the exit, always turning, always
returning to the start. I woke heart convulsing, body, drenched
and cold. In the dark. I forced myself to confront
the piles of evidence one last time, deely as blueprint,
AMAS envelope, the disintegrating notebook one after another. I burned
them in a shallow tray, watching the fiber's curl disintegrate, crackle,
and desot. The memory, though didn't fade with the ash.
I knew that nothing I did, no act of destruction,
could write what the maze of Level five had done
to my mind. There came, in those final days before demolition,
a hesitancy in my work and movement, an unfamiliar reluctance
to open any door or trust, A pattern of ordinary architecture.
Official letters arrived, in forming me my contract was concluded.
I almost wept from relief. They mentioned nothing about outstanding logs,
nothing about Skeo floors, only the usual platitudes in a signature,
though one line was bolded in faint gray thank you
for your service, do not return after ires on my
last visitist such a thing can ever really be candied?
I lingered across the street at dusk, watching the demo
creuz Gramble to put up extra fencing through the glare
of the spotlights. I thought I saw a slight movement
in the window was above the barre'st flicker, as of
some one pacing a dead hallway. Or perhaps it was
only the reflection of the city, or some facet of
myself split and left behind. Before bed that night, the
ritual recurred in buss open emails, stacked thirty new unread
at the top of photo time stamp for the ire
just passed. My face, cast pale by the screen's light glare,
glazed and far away behind me, the faintest silhouettes pressed
against the blurry glass of the city's deepest absences. I chose,
almost without thought to answer. I tagged a single sentence,
almost a prayer who wants the door locked. As I
hit send, the room chair, a pressure gathering at the
base of my skull. For a breathless second, no response,
Then message after message returned, each from a separate, featureless sender.
We do names must not be left unfinished. Please lock
up level five before you leave for the night. I
closed the laptop. City sounds pollsed under my window, the
neon line, the shudder of distant construction, the lawn, unbroken
hum of halt to progress. I pulled the shade and
sat in the dark, listening to my own heartbeat, willing
memory to hold just enough shape until morning. In the
time since living, half living, the message never leaves, the
in box refills, The lines repeat, always one more variant,
always from a new dress, the city's silence, now flavored
by the infinite recursion of floors, both above and over,
quite above. I passed through buildings, a lobby here and
elevator there, half show each time that beneath my feet
some secret corridor runs, populated by the ghosts of unfinished stories.
On rare nights, I wake with a start, certain I've
heard the elevator's wine, the soft plea of the speaker
echoing through drywall, insisting on its unfinished ritual. At first,
I tell myself I escaped, that is over. Then the
lights flicker, the inbox buzzes, or shadow moves beyond the
corner of my eye, and I recall so do buildings.
Their memories are simply kept differently, written in pressure, in
the odd comfort of enforced silence, the the rituals that
can quite be stopped. What if, I wonder? Sometimes the
point wasn't to safety or secrecy, or even the machinery
of erasure. What if hidden in that blunt pose between
four and six, the true purpose was always witnessed, trapping memory,
storing it where only the lost would notice, keeping company
with the vanish, waiting for someone to attend to the
last message, to close it out at last. Each iteration
of the email is its own record of failure and hope.
Each contains the same haunting refrain, leaping up from depths
I once thought were only structure on a air Please
lock up level five before you leave for the night.
As I write these final words, I see the screen flicker,
new notification rising, the unread count climbing, the old photograph
appended again at the bottom, myself frozen at the threshold,
gazed upon by the blurred company of all who remain unfinished, shadows,
waiting always for one more return of the key, for
the last voice to answer, for the final door to close.
And as long as I live, and as long as
some part of me remains unfinished, Level five will wait, unlocked, unwitnessed, unfinished, forever,
haunting the space between one ordinary dusk and the next.
And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and
I will see you in the next one.