Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I'm recording this just after midnight,
huddled at my cramp, just beneath the ice sting of
overhead fluorescence. This sire belongs to a kind of silence
no one talks about. So total. I can hear the
blood in my ears, and the old doctwork breathing against itself,
faint but persistent. The rest of the building, five stores
of brown brick anonymity on the edge of the business district,
is empty. I like to think of it as mine,
at least for an hour or every one. Gun but
the janitor's distant clinks in that constant papery smell you
get only in old offices, coffee dregs, dust, memories of
by Guntona drifting like a gossip of the cheap carpeting.
I came across something tonight, the sort of thing you
talk yourself out of bringing up at tomorrow's meeting. I
was finishing my favorite part of the job, of clearing
out in old supply closet nobody had opened in years,
maybe decades. In fact, I'd have never found it if
I hadn't dropped my notebook and called a hinge glint
through the gap behind a coat rack. It was so
absurdly toughed away that I had to wedge an old
trust between the door and the wall just to keep
the thing open. The hallway back there is nearly forgotten,
fluttering with vent drafts that always smell like ozon, and
the remnants of some are freshener war from a previous era.
The door handle to the closet was sticky and coldened.
When I worked it open, threw a waft of preservation
into my face, old wax, mouldy and the kind of
underlying sirn as you expect from all personalized mugs that
aren't retrieved off of someone's last day. The light was broken.
I had to use my phone, and instantly the rectangle
of my flashlight revealed a stubby metal filing cabinet scuffed
powder blue enamel chipped down to the steel. Four drawers,
all locked. Maintenance left me a ring of keys last weekend. Predictably,
one still fit. Each drawer scraped open with the vandal's
reluctance inside manila fold disordered with compulsive neatness. Each packed
dozens may be a hundred total black type writting from
a battered smith Corona labeling every single one. My hands
felt un reel, prickly as a flipped through Karen Rotch,
each one not a duplicate. Every tag type in you,
some with a slight slant, others immaculate, but all lotterly
blanks inside and touched by time, except for a faint
scent of oil in the heavy paper. I stacked a
handful to be thorough, every folder, every drawer, only the name.
I thought of office pranks, some mood insurance archive, possibly
a batch waiting for routine label swapping. But this was
deliberate strange. I remembered hearing, probably from Gregg who's been
here forever, that Karen Rotch was attempt in the late nineties.
Never made a splash, supposedly just stopped showing up. It
was said the agency left her checks and collected for months.
Even back then in offices like Irish, people just faded out.
But nobody keeps a hundred empty folders for a vanish attempt,
do they. I felt an odditch under my skin, like
I was failing to spot the punch line. I repacked
the folders and double checked the lock even rotated the
furniture block in the closet just in case. As I
closed the door, I could swear the twist of the
lock felt wrong, too gritty, as if recently changed. Checking
it now, I see the scratches run in a new direction,
overlaying older scrapes. Tiny details may be nothing, but it
makes the air in the whole feel unsteady. Somewhere upstairs,
a copyer makes a sound, as if some one's re
setting it ray. The floor under my feet creaks just once.
The light at the far end of a corridor blinks,
and I blink back, brittle with nerves. Since Gregg left early,
I know there's nobody supposed to be here. I sit
back at my desk, fold was set neatly in a stack.
I want to laugh it off, but on my audio lock,
my voice is thinner than it should be, and my
hands once stopped tapping nervously against the plastic chair arms.
I tell myself it's just late, nothing more, just the
strangest of old buildings. But Karen Rotch's name lingers in
my mind, crawling up out of nowhere, and the empty
folders sit like a silent challenge. I cannot quite walk
away from in this off kilt or quiet. The edges
of reality are suddenly too thin. I pull my jacket
tighter and hurry the last notes of the lock, glancing
again at the lock in the west closet, now brushed
with fresh polish, I swear it wasn't like that before.
My name is Maris Colter, Junior administrative Assistant. I landed
here six months ago, the runaway, with a business management
degree and no patience for open plan offices or stop
pep talks. These days, I tell myself clerical detritus as
a backbone of a company, though I still know the truth.
I shuffle paperwork, fetch coffees, babysitt printers, track off a stock,
and on nights like this, plagaritor for the forgotten corners
and the youngest by almost a decade and about twenty
runs from anyone who'd need to know my name. Yet,
I realize, with a grim little smile, I know every
shadowy call s base, every stock window, and the color
coded spines of files from nineteen eighty four onward. My
own name, though is still misspelled in the pay system.
Most of what I do is what nobody else remembers
to ask for. I chase supply orders that never arrive,
file inverses for contractors who vanish last spring and twice
this month. Track down where the mysterious missing tone of
Cottridges keep vanishing. Sometimes I swear the flicker out of existence,
lawed in the order system, never delivered, always marked collector.
There are rumors about those supplies. Gregg, grizzled and mad eyed,
tells me the clausets have holes in them, doors that
open the wrong way. He means it as a joke.
I think the building itself, Blakely Towers, is an uneasy
clash of colkwork and then be a nineteen sixties corporate
relic grafted onto the nineteen eighties with pastel drywalls, patted radiators,
and the strange half life of a property always half
way to being condemned. The west wing is the oldest part,
rarely entered unless someone's lost or hunting the last working
labor maker, their sealed door, some just painted over, some
riveted hut. Maintenance keeps moving that out of date directory,
a big plastic board that features at least four companies
that collapse before I was born. Peeling stick on labels
culling off the blanch grid, listing suitees two hundred one
through four hundred ten. I watch the cleaners each Friday,
struggle to prop at upright where visitors might see, then
give up halfway and push it back under the security console.
The office regulars are a rotating cast, a mess darnel
head of HR who could freeze milk with a gaze,
Gregg who moves in oblique lines from boiler to elevator
shafts and says little unless cornered, and a hopscotch of
tempts receptionists, part time data heads. The only constant is
high turnover and the sheer number of anticubicles. Somebody leaves
almost weekly, sometimes with a quickie mail and sometimes with
nothing but a voicemail announcement at six a m. People
talk in whispers. There's gossip about businesses that never seemed real.
Ghost tenants, paperwork offices that exist only in the books,
patchwork networks, foreign extensions that always go dead. I learned
the dance early. Keep your head down, Never ask why
desk's it's empty for months. It's a badge of luck.
I suppose that I'm still here, not yet replaced by
tempagency clones. Last Thursday, I spend a ten minute leap
retracing my steps stack of copy paper gun missing from
my rolling cart, reappearing fore hours later under the break
from counter, sealed in its wrapper, but with a checked
and slip signed by some one with unreadable initials. I
raise it quietly, with a mess darnell. She brushed it aside.
Try not to dwell on every misplaced receipt, Marius. In
these old places, inventory just drifts. She said it with
such finality I might have believed it were gospel. Sometimes
I feel the building's history waiting for me to take notice,
whispering behind the walls. Last month I shared a joke
of perception about a kettle that boiled itself. The new receptionist, Tora,
looked up sharply asked if I'd heard the story about Jeanine.
I didn't push, she didn't offer turn over. Here is
like gravity, unrelenting. A week ago I ran into one
of the previous admin assistance lander. She hadn't said good bye,
hadn't even taken her mug. Saw her at ten thirty p.
M hareskew stuffing papers into a canvas bag. I called
her name. She didn't look up, just kept her head
down and double turned out the freight elevator. Sometimes, at
the end of the week, a scroll through my audio lulks,
just a little insurance for myself, or running record in
case something goes wrong. Strange thing this month. The logs
are scattered fragments of conversations, long pauses, mid sentence fades.
I don't remember recording. I blamed exhaustion at first, maybe
a blutith glitch. But sometimes I find myself picking up
the microphone and joining a blank heaven. Reviewing, I'll notice
missing stretches or segments where the background sand seems subtly wrong,
like echoes from a space I know too well to
have missed before. With every passing week, I feel more
at home, but less certain about what being at home
means in a place like this, where everyone seems to
vanish sooner or later and nothing stays the same for long.
If you focus on the desk lamp and not the hallway,
you can almost pretend the ghost here are merely administrative
befolver is life stack to cross my desk. I told
myself it was curiosity that made me bring them home,
But I already know it's something closer to compulsion, that
it's behind the eye that says a story ends wrong
and only you have the means to make sense of it.
I'm stirring at the name tag Karen Rosch in Black's
March type of capitals, over and over, as if the
act of repetition itself kept her memory flickering. She is
not on the Christmas list with the payroll or the
HR organized anniversary posters that line the brake from bulletin board.
Her name disappears abruptly from the pasystem one quarter there.
She is in the probationary list which every te lands
and for six months then nothing. But that's not the
whole of it. My hands move over the stack now,
and the spot things I missed In the bottom corner
of one folder, barely visible, there is a faint pressure dimple,
the ghost of an old staple or perhaps a string
tac that once held something heavy, a shape so subtle
it could be wishful thinking, wondering if I missed something.
I come through the supply request logs and old attendants
summary is burned into my laptop's memory by months of habit,
and there just under a month mounton of petty cash receipts.
In bulk furniture orders, Karen Roch's name surfaces not just
as a signature or out of date forms, but as
the reciping for a stream of supply orders. It makes
no sense. After the date her name vanishes from all
staffing rosters, she continues to generate requests clipboards, cottons of paper,
ergonomic shares, dozens sent to what must have been out
of the way seat somewhere. For weeks after she supposedly disappeared,
her name alone is used again and again, supplies ordered
in her name, signed on her behalf, even as everyone
insists she never returned. It's not just aught, it's methodical.
There are gaps, two entire stretches of time missing from
both digital and physical locks. Months blink off the record,
but the orders remain, trickling through without explanation. As I
trace these threads, my fingers catch a sticky note, faded
and yellowing, wedged in the back of a death drawer
I seldom use. The handwriting is quick, nearly illegible. Do
not open the sixth drawer, Kay, no sweet number, no giveaway. Instinctively,
I check every drawer in the room. There is no sex,
not in this s room, not now anyway, of course
there isn't. I try bringing up the name at lunch,
just to see what conversation it stirs. Instant discomfort. The
senior secretary, blond, dry humor, always friendly, claims she's never
heard the name. An older temp pressed shrugs and changes
the subject. On the tower of the new receptionist seems
half intrigued, staring at her sand which would wrinkled worry
before mutter ring. They say, all the records got boxed
up after something happened, but you didn't hear that from me.
The next day, as I settle at my desk, I
find a memo pushed under the door. It's so out
of fashioned, tight yellowed on an old corporate let head
bearing three logos, two of which don't exist any more.
My hands feel oddly numb as I read inventory areas
West's supply, Acqua cages, file room, BEAMNIS three all day
to be conducted at nineteen eleven, twenty three three two nineteen.
I recognize these times. Each match is odd. Moments during
my late hours over the last month, moments I was
alone or believed myself to be there's no signature, no date,
no return address. Sliding back in my seat, I tell
myself to let it be, but the folder was borne
against my hands. The old supply logs refuse to align,
and every reply about Karen Roch's name rings with the
stillness of a story never willingly retold. Some things aren't
meant to be found. Maybe, but I can't ignore the
feeling of being watched for something poised just outside the
reach of these weak, quivering desk lamps. The smell of
paper cuts and distant coffee is crept into my clothes.
Some part of me wants to shake it off and
forget the whole affair, but I can't. Something is here,
compressed in the paper and the files, and the strange
gap Karen Roch left behind, more real than the stacks
of toner cartridges that my grate by themselves, more insistent
in the fading hum of the West supply closets sold
forescant lamp. It's getting harder to pretend this is just
another ordinary office. On Monday, I spread the folders across
my desk and careful rose and said about coming a
few surviving digital arc outs for something, anything concrete. The
supply requests with Karen's name fit no normal pattern. After
her apparent departure, her initials started cropping up more and more,
like a spreading stain cheres staplers, old inventory from sweets,
nobody now occupied. I get a distinct sense these requests
were just routine. They were aimed at specific rooms that
don't appear on the latest diagrams. The further back I
dig the mess at the trail, there's one quarter where
entire admint locks approach. The digital backs contain only corrupted stubbs,
but the supply orders with her name march on regular
as clockwork, all the way through the Vanish months. I
paged her reception locks for the earr, looking for any
sign of her reappearing. She doesn't. The only anchor is
our signature of always the same, the slant a little
shopper at the infan forms destined for dead spaces. By
mid day, I've nearly convinced myself it's just a clerical fluke.
There are always must placed boxes, always orders a loss
and rediscover, But that stick enough keeps taunting me. Do
not open the six straor ket Is it for me now?
Or was it a warning intended only for herself. I
approached the crush obliquely. Over lunch at the communal table,
I asked the older admin about storage procedures. Remember anyone
called Karen Rotch. I watch her flinch ever so slightly.
She wipes her mouth and shakes her head. No, can't say,
I do honorable. That's a while back, though. Gregg fixing
a cabinet by the door over hears and snorts, you
folks love your mysteries. Just let it go. Yeah, I
pro but he offers nothing more, only tour o Linga's
in the room. As I pack up, She waits until
the others file out, then whispers some things are better
left boxed. People say she was nice, but she can't finish.
Why afternoons, as if the air tightens every time I
pass some one in the corridor. I pushed through tasks
day to enteres, organizing pens sorted by color preference for
people who never say thank you. Un tell my focus dolls.
When I return to my office, another memo waits, this
one even older and more brittle. If such a thing
is possible, it less inventory checks in specific areas, precisely
during windows of time when no one was ever scheduled
to work late. I check the audit program, cross referencing names. Nothing.
It's a footprint with no owner, a shadow without a body.
I fold the latest memory way and check the hallway.
The air presses against me as if I've opened a refrigerator.
The lingering sense of being watched isn't gone. If anything,
it sharpens. Whatever currents pass through this place there stronger
at night, as if the walls themselves are holding breath.
I push the folders aside, telling myself to return to routine.
I work late, none the less. Each task is harder now,
each file drawer heavier, each window reflection less familiar. I
feel thin as I write this. The feeling is back,
a cold, ditching wrongness at the nape of my neck,
the certainty that I have missed something vital. Instability haunts
each transition. My hands fumble, my mind blanks in unexpected moments. Still,
the supply requests glow on the screen, persistent as the
pulse under my skin. Karen Rotch's name is everywhere and
nowhere at all. The old note we do not open
the sixth drawer runs like static through my thoughts. The
investigation gnaws at me, So I dig deeper. Now I
take the folders home, savoring the illusion of safety in
my carn't third floor rental, with its weak latch and
on the present buzz of traffic. The blank folders create
their own presence in my room. A catnapp in fits
waking with the feeling some one else's flipping pages in
the living room. Tuesday, I bite down and carve out
the lunch time slot to trowl through further digital and
microfilm records in the dead End admin rumor claimed as
a sand jury. Most of these archives were scanned on
obsolete machines. The PDF half corrupted or truncated mid page. Still,
I persist cross checking, scribbling marginalia in a battered notebook
from my university days. My finger tips ache from the repetition,
so I let myself drift and pull up all phone
call locks. The spreadsheet versions of since Lona nearly useless,
I indulge in a compulsion clicking for ancient Excel macros.
I discover anomally's phone lines going dead for days after
certain extensions are dialed. The vast majority are routine, someone
calling the main switch, ending or beginning their shift, but
a sequence crops up in the West Offices segment, dozens
of calls every year, terminating in static or dropped off
of five rings. If I dial those extensions now, nothing
happens unless they time it late enough, and then only
then subtle whispering rises at the periphery of the connection,
a mishmush of shirsching and frantic charp phrase as I
cannot quite pass. It unnerves me more than I care
to admit. When I bring it up to Greg, hoping
for even a half heard explanation, he just scowls martyrs
and go digging into old staff kid and walks off
a limp shoper than usual in his exit. The more oppress,
the more squirming silence I encounter. Several phone calls to
former employees I met with Clitt, defensive answers or attract
denials of knowing anyone by the name Karen Rotch. One
somewhat familiar voice simply his is forget her. Before the
line ends. The click final is a slammed ledger. I brave.
There came paper archives in the locked basement, cardboard boxes
teeter in the dark, smelling of damp and solvent. There
I uncover a heavily redacted incident report from two decades ago.
Details she had away with thick black marker. All that
remains are fragments unauthorized access. Internal audit required a removal
from premises. No names, but enough to give context. If
you know what files to compare, and I do now,
it starts to make sense. A hazy cir cued as sense,
but sense all the same. I focus on Sweet four
hundred ten and non script space in the west wing
now blocked with has tip and a cheap asbestos remediation notice.
No one has dead question its tenants on all directories
appear burnish them reappear like clockwork. An insurance agency one year,
a logistic start up, the next always an account of
for by year end. I returned to my office, mind racing,
only to find an envelope physically at this time on
my chair Typerton time stumped nineteen ninety nine. Though the
Prince's crisp as if fresh, it may be absent from
the western stairwell at six thirty nine of them management,
that's in twenty minutes. My pulse stutters, but something stubborn
in me refuses to give up. I'm in the supply room,
peering out at exactly six thirty nine of them. The
stairwell echoes with rubbid footsteps, muffle voices, multiple hushed, heated.
I catched tight through the crack in the door of
instinct shapes, moving fast as if chasing something or someone.
But nobody passes the supply closet. The footsteps recede, swallowed
by the larynx of the old holes. Something is working
in Loot. I realize I've been slatted into someone else's shadow,
replaying stats already taken. The edges of the wound still ouse.
I'm running low on nerve now, but I can't stop
entering the back offices. Late on Thursday, I cross into
the western stairwell at once You're up and well after
the time on the memos, But the echo in the
metal banis de vibrates with a memory older than I am.
I reach for the fire extinguisher in the corner, more
out of desperate hope than logic, and there, which behind
a dusty nozzle, is a crumpled memo. I smooth it
on my thigh. It's written to Karen Watch by name,
warning her to avoid subable offices West Corridor after closing,
referencing something called Reintervention Protocol. It's signed with only the
initials JEHY, which mean nothing to me. My throat rise
as I tuck it away down the hall behind a
prop open door. Voices muffled by aging dry will rise
and fall in an urgent whisper. I flattened against the wool,
careful not to let my shoes squeak through the frosted glass.
I catch Mess Durnell and a man with a file
fold under one arm. They are arguing too softly for
distinct words, but I hear a phrase, a hymn, then
a Mess Darnell's voice sharper, No, not him. The kate
back in the files again, I freeze. The pronoun is deliberate,
but there's no one else left hunting the stacks except me.
I retreat, blood pounding in my ears, then slip into
the security archives of five droperat mays of tate spools
and sh box is marked recorded A destroyed by two
thousand and six. The latest tapes look barely touched, unspool
one at random, labeled only with the year nineteen ninety
nine on the flickering monitor. I clamp beneath my arm
a watcher ship stepping into room. Karen rotch hare in
a practical knot, arms full files, entering the west supply closet,
The tip flickers, seconds pass, the tape ends. She never
steps out. I have no words for the chill that brings.
They hadn't lost her. They had erased her, piece by piece,
until the only traces left where the folders the system
forgot to destroy. My hands shake as I return the reel,
uncertain if ever placed it in the right order. But
before I can process, my computer chirrups for a message
un sent by any visible user. The words crawled jagged
across the bottom of my screen. Stop now, this is
for your own good. The building seems to grow darker,
pressing in every nerve. Endings roll as I pat my
work back, checking the whollway twice before leaving that night
a home. Every floor boat grown sounds like a warning.
Something has shifted. I sleep in my shoes, fragments of
files on office odors crowding my dreams. I wake ass oriented, hot,
bounding the faded sticky note from the old drawer, do
not open the six drawer flashing behind my eyes like
a remnant of memory. Shock. Desperation makes me braver. The
next morning, a corner gregg behind the service elevator, holding
out the crumpled memo. He looks at it, then at me,
his lips inning, until they all but vanish building changed hands.
After one. He rasps there was something bad. A lot
of folks got paid off. Others just gone. They told us,
Let things be, keep your head down, nothing here but paper.
He meets my eyes for the first time, and while
has seasil there's pure on the infir Sweet four hundred ten,
he his is, don't ever go in there unless you
want to be next at my desk. I start mapping
the anomalies, obsessively, noting every missing file, every ghostupply order,
every forced resignation, every odd time stamp memo. They all
thread back inexorably to a single epicenter into records, all
at odd nighttime ires, all orbiting Sweet four hundred ten,
and administrative procedures. After IRES, I gather all the evidence,
digital and otherwise, voice memos, screenshots, scanned post its. Oddly enough,
the peculiar memos seem predictive. One received an hour before
my elevator went out of service. War on me eustairs
malfunction expected. I obeyed. Thirty minutes later, someone else on
second got stuck for two hours. HR calls me in
for a routine performance review. I'm not due. My axis
cud wiped herself. The next morning, Gregg gets me back in, whispering,
you're in over your head. I try collating everything for
a proper expe se a mass release to the press,
or at least to someone's block. As I qued the documents,
I check a master log and freeze. My own name
now appears in the digital archives as a filing recidient,
redact its supply orders, performance refus for periods I don't
recall working. It's the same pattern Karen Roch left behind,
multiplied another ghost, another set of footprint race just before
the body is removed. The dread is constant now, even
in daylight. I make my decision, find the original record
since we four hundred ten, or let the building consume
my name the same way it did hers. In this
I the path forward feels as tight and served in
as a drawer roll shut on trembling hands. If the
truth doomed cairen rotch, I suppose it will damn me too.
But If I don't try, I'll never know what waits
at the heart of this ancine, haunted directory, What fate
the building reserves for those who persist one step too
far beyond the ordinary closing time. That afternoon, the storm outside,
one of those city squalls that drape the windows and
ropes of hammered water, drives most everyone home early. I linger,
fainting some after ires biseruk, the halls ring with the
hollow receding echo of departing shoes, leaving just the arrival
and departure chains of the elevator. From my vantage, I
watch a mess Dunel's umbrella blue and black it cost
to lobby, and even Gregg's two note parting nod as
he shuffles out, keyring jangling like nervous when chimes by six.
It's just the cleaners, and their progress is easy to
follow by the melody of vacuums switching on and off,
the squeak of the janitorial cot, the faint trail of
artificial sitters. I position myself by the West corridor, posted
as supply covered, on pretense of managing an after IRE's delivery.
My badge clipped, my heart banging The plan is simple,
stay close, blend in, and see what else emerges. Now
that the building is at its most hollow, A sudden
blast of static from a ceiling speaker makes me flinch.
Some one patches through the intercome o warble, then nothing
in the stillness. Every creak in the linnoli might be feet.
The deep plumbing groans mimic distant voices. I force myself
to catalog each sound, naming them so as not to
be spooked by every random bump. My nerves are taught
an irow crawls past outside the windows. The street lights
flare against the ripping glass. I scroll through the notes
on my phone, reviewing the evident mapped out anomalous supply
locks typer to mornings. Karen's name like a splinter in
the pulse of every vanished file. I almost miss the
tug of fabric behind me, a mop handle scraping too close,
a cleanest movement. I turn, and she pauses, watching me.
Her name tags Sisseruth. She hasitate in the act of
wringing a rag, then, in a low, almost apologetic tone, says,
you shouldn't stay this late, Not in the hallway. I
try for casual inventory to night. Each r insisted. Ruth
doesn't answer. Instead, she glances over her shoulder, then leans in.
All files should stay locked away. Office has a way
of holding onto more than just the dust. The look
in her eyes is pure warning. But what she seen?
I want to ask, but she wheels her card away
so briskly the words lock in my throat. Her footprints
glistened for a moment on the tile, then fade. It's
as if the building itself is trying to breathe me out.
I fight the urge to bolt, force myself to finish,
stacking lost quarters, copy peper in neat columns. The motion
is calming. I try opening the messaging up, half jokingly,
meaning to text a friend stuck at work. Ghosts won't
let me leave, but I freeze when my own fingers
twitch on the screen, composing a new message to contact
named Kernadman, a name I've never entered. When I try
to delete it, the screen glitches, freezing for a slow,
jittering count of ten before blinking back to my home page.
Ten minutes later, the overheads flicker once twice, and a
dim buzz floods the corridor. He offers a victory and
the alcoves illuminated. A rare sight this lay. I move closer,
curious the Sweet numbers swim and walk plastic beneath Sweet
four hundred ten the blocked room. Someone has added a
new label, handritten clumsy handing odd it initiated my reflections
gates crossed the case spectral stretch malphoned by the convex surface.
I move and the reflection hesitates A half breath behind reality.
My phone vibrates. It's the office p again, a feedback thump,
a single syllable blurred into the stuzzo of digital artifacts.
The moment passes, but when the static dies away, leaves
in its place a creeping dread, as if the announcement
system is catching fragments of some repeated hidden message movement
triol this time snabs me out of it. Footsteps behind
the glass oil leading to the sub corridor. Not a cleaner,
not Gregg's lopside, its dread. I duck into the shadow
beneath the display, domming, my phone heart hammering from the
slice of glass between the door frame and the utility closet.
I catch sight of a MS. Darnell crossing not alone
A man in a suit trailing her tall gray temple,
less familiar, but I've seen him once in a late
afternoon fire drill. Their conversation is a thread of sund crisp,
low but rising in urgency. We have to get head
of it this time, says a mess darnel tone coughd
from granite. They always do this, the man hisses, always
one who won't let things lie. This one's younger, not
as worry. A pause, a coustal bird in resignation. If
it comes to it, protocol stands. The voices pass, their
footsteps fade toward the stairwell, and I realize I've been
holding my breath. I relax too soon. The emergency lighting
at the end of the whole winks on, throwing everything
into deep shadow and cold light, the effect theatrical. I
peer out the fire alarm strobers and flashing from any
testing I know, Steadying myself, I move with purpose, Sir Kamav,
getting the long way round through the brick room and
doubling back toward the west supply closet. If there were
ever a moment to discover what their hope, and I'll
leave alone is now the closet door feels subtly different
under my palm. I check the lock, a fresh run
of scratches. Yes, but more The barrel itself feels loose,
as if changed out in the past several hours. That
itch returns the sense that the locks, the folders, the
warnings have all shifted position, rearranged themselves to be less accessible.
The closer I get, I risk stepping inside, had long
clip to my collar. The familiar smell of old wax
and meldy greets me, but it feels stronger, more insistent,
as if thea has grown thick with something I spent.
The cabinet is where I left it, except the top
drawer is now slightly ajar. Swallowing my fears, I opened
it the rest of the way. The folders inside pulse
with stillness, too neat, but now single new diition joins
the row attag bearing my own name, Maris Colter. The
ink is fresh, the paper thinly warm, as if just pressed.
Thanek clenches tight in my chest. I riffle through the
stack below. There is one with heavy paper sealed at
the sides, with yellow tape across the front. Block caps
red completed c J he I know that initial from
the memo to Karen. My hands tremble as I lit
the tape, careful not to disturb the whole order inside
not paper. A faded photo of Karen Rotch, blurred as
if drugged in motion, standing at the edge of what
must be the suboval office. Is a doorway behind her
yawns too dark, out of scale, as a sketched in
scrolled on the back impen both hurried and sharp, not
safe alone Odit begins at nineteen eleven. Remembered doors do
not open from outside. The four horse starts to cull
as rooms that don't exist on maps, Audits that repeat
when can additions are met, Names that cycle through folders endlessly,
always starting with just the right compulsion. The right help
are found after everyone else has left, the sound of
a door slamming further down the hallway brings the adrenaline.
I stuff the folder, photo and all inside my jacket
and step out, closing the supply calls it as quietly
as I can. I pass my desk, except now the
monitor is on a curse of blinking in a blank window.
Words fade in Typerton font left justified audit log assistant
to call turn m status pending door seal Sweet four
hundred ten. Next action required entry. For a moment, my
reflection on the monitor is not my own. I blink
and it returns, but the after image crawls behind my eyelids.
I cannot bring myself to touch the mass. I don't
want to see what the next field might autofill. A
final movement to some one fast walking behind the glass
partition headed for the blocked west corridor spurs me on.
There's a tug of war in every footstep. Logic tells
me to quit, go home, call for help, but a
doomed practicality takes over. I swing around toward the main hallway,
tailing the faint echoes. I glimpse through the frosted partition.
Amess Darnell in urgent conference with the gray suit of man.
She is holding something smaller flash drive or keep her
voice cipt. It shouldn't take more than a month to
clear the transition, she says. The directories will be rewritten
if any one asks. I ye, missapp blamed hernover. The
man glances past her right in my general direction, but
doesn't seem to notice, and the assistant Darnell's looks flatten
let's give it one more cycle. These things tidy themselves
up one way or another. When they turn away, I
press myself against the wall. Memories in each word, every
last hesitation or theory I might have had its replace
with certainty. Some one is orchestrating this, shaping records and
rooms and even memories, to consume the office as a
living system, adapting to each new layer of witness, or
resist her feeding on silence, surviving revision. Back at my desk,
the foldest fob with new weight, one folder for every cycle,
a blank entry for every person who tried to remember
and vanished. It's not rumor or bad record keeping. It
is a ritual of sorts, vanishing by protocol. I open
an the audio log my voice steadier than it should be.
This is Marius Colder. If you find this, if you're listening,
please check the West supply closet there or files. Do
not remove them until some one outside this building can
bear witness. The clock above my desk has stopped. My
phone battery inexplicably is draining in real time, tick by
anxious tick. I scribble a map in my notebook, lines
for the West Corridor excess for where doors have been
mudded shut circles for each hidden entry. I barely finish
before a faint, persistent tap, tap, tap begins on the glass.
It is slow to liberate. Three taps, pause, three taps.
The rhythm is to exact to be accidental. It's time.
I slide the notebook into my backpack, take one last
look at the burned out sid eater the smudge glass,
and close the night behind me. The next step is clear.
If Karen was made to disappear for what she found,
There's no safety in ambiguity, and the lock on Sweet
four hundred ten is waiting for the right pair of hands.
I check the corridors once more, and for an instant
I spot Gregg through the breakroom window. Frowning eyes weary.
He flicks his gaze to the corridor, then back to me,
and Mau's a word I can't quite decipher. Soon then
he vanishes, melting away as if the building themselves absorbed
his bulk. The error is no longer stale. It is charged, potent,
quivering with the anticipation of a story revised and repeated.
I walk steadily toward the west wing, counting my steps.
The full, depressed, tight against my rips. Behind me, the
directory lets flicker, and somewhere it all a lot for years,
closes with a gentle, triumphant click. The night has set
itself like a bruise over blakely towers, swallowing the city's
last sounds with methodical patients. If I listen, I can
hear even the slow twitch of old circuits in the walls.
My jacket feels too tight under my arms. As I
hunch in the kitchenette. It scented ma asm of lemon
oil and burn popcorn. Familiar, almost normal, But the clipboard
on the candor, the fold is pressed inside my messenger back,
and the persistent bleach white of the whole way lights
all say otherwise, this isn't routine. Now, not salvage, it's trespass.
I flip my phone on again, second battery, screen, dimmed,
voice or corder running. There's a ritual to preparing yourself
for something bigger than the rules. Counter up the steps,
tell yourself what matters most. Try to ignore the way
your own heart kicks, like a warning inside your ribs.
If you're hearing this, I didn't make it out, I
say quietly. My voice. Find an odd steadiness as it
skates over the silence. Karen Rotch wasn't just attempt. She
tried to raise the alarm and the building or something
inside it swallowed her. They are orchestrating something here. If
I disappeared, that fold out the photos. The locks there
on my back up drive and are set to send
if I don't check him by summrise. I run through
the plan in my head. It is simple, but simplicity
here is always an illusion, Gregg's whispered at Viservs's grim punctuation.
Avoid the camera on the security landings. Give the fire stairs.
Motion detectors have been stuck on alert for weeks. Memorize
the route through the unlocked copy room and pass the
break area. I pat my pockets, badge, pen light, lock
picks one battered flash drivery to up blood files. At
the briefest tap. My mouth is dry as all paste.
I let myself remember how Gregg looked as he pointed
to the emergency panel in the break room ceiling. Feuse four,
come back skip five, that's two black out window five minutes.
Don't stall kid, building never lets go so easy. I
take the stairs and measured silent progress, passing row after
row framed office achievement of wards. They glass cloudy with
a pattern of decades. There's a rhythm to the order
of procession that hasn't changed, not even when tenants rotated
or businesses winked out of existence. Each gold nameplate sits
with geometric certainty. I wonder fleetingly what would happen if
I tried to rearrange them, if I could even budge
one without the wall itself protesting second form. A badge
still scans green, but the display stutters, pausing on pending
odd it. I keep my head down, moving with the
forced intent of someone sent for after Io's paperwork, careful
to ignore the metallic taste rising in the back of
my throat, past the rest from hallway meetings, breaking up
a straggle of local insurance brokers, their faces pinched with fatigue.
They don't look at me, not one nod, not even
a quicker night for an instant I do not exist.
I dart through, slip into the server's corridor, shoving a
rolling bin up against the wedge where the maintenance cup
of cracks open. The camera at the end of the
hall square and ugly in its antiquated bash winks with
a pulsing diode. I passed beneath it to reach hard
clanging with this spectation, but there is no larm in skeleton.
Lick kitchenette, a croach at the service panel. Wedge my
flat head into the fuse lock. Four clicks, one mist
for solid. The old honecomb glass overhead flashes out, leaving
a corridor shallow pastel pond of back blighting. I slide
the panel shut and count five minutes. The west halways
emptied now stretch ahead. The exit lights offer only a
deluted chad or to follow. A tumble of copy stands
lines the passage to the blocked corridor. Their plastic featureo
slightly in a draft, as if moved by something passing through.
On the wall behind a copy paper crate, the taped
to over asbestos warning covering Sweet four hundred ten sign
has peeled back along one corner. The word underneath a
reserved or it bleeds drew beneath the adhesive. The lock
A clumsy steel insert his new scrapes at the keyhole,
some recent, some pale with old abrasion. I search for
the master I'd found in Gregg's supply drawer fingers clumsy,
every movement waited by the sense that this entire act
has happened before. The corridor seems both longer and shorter
than last week, as if the geometry folds up when watched.
Each step is accompanied by a whispery abrasion of old's
carpet under foot, my throat burning with the urge to
turn and flee before the rubber of my shoes leaves
more prints than I can explain. I am half convinced
I will be stopped by alarm, by the arrival of security,
by some sudden turn in the plot of the building's
own making. Yet no one intercedes. The city beyond the
windows has shrunk behind the double glazed reflections. All that's
real now is the fluorescent clothes that seeps beneath the
battered office door. I tried the keys, slotting each with
tense purpose. The first two clock and protest. The third
slides home surprisingly smooth. The bolt draws back, and the door,
heavier than a vault, telts mward an injer theer petulant,
sticky exhalation my hand leaves a sweat dark print on
the knob. I enter three four hundred tenth swallows my footfalls.
Stillness is absolute, thick was caught time, preserved like a
waspin amber. The air inside smells like burnt dust and
old electrics. The carpet is deep blue, checkered within square stains,
exactly as the directories from nineteen ninety eight described. No
particle of modernization has touched this room. A war on
wooden desk dominates the entry, flanked by banks of filing cabinets,
A series of CRT monitors, gray greens hibernating line the
far wall, beside dead phones, and stacks of yellowed forms
collated and reclated into an order. Only their creator could explain.
My pulse thunders with the urge to reverence. It makes
me want tiptoe to whisper. There are personal touches and
my greeting hr because people are complicated. A calendar forever frozen.
On July nineteen ninety nine, catchein Cat's cavorting over an
empty grid. The low drone of the buildings, a slash
sea is muffled here, every noise caught by the old
drop ceiling. I don't linger in the entry. My hands
are useless things until I make them move rummaging through
desk drawers, yanking loose hanging files. Familiar labels, yes, but
each now with a coated sigil or sign off. Nothing accessible,
All locked in bureaucratic cipher. One deep drawer offers a
secret an entire folder labeled Incident heavy with sheets inside.
At first I think this is a decoy, but no,
the locks are complete, organized with the taut anxiety of
someone who knew their work would be read under duress,
maybe even after their own disappearance. I flip pages, fall
light trembling in my grip it inferrals seen by seeing
Karen Rotch noted as uniclerical temp probationary period covered a
baccent and freight elevator personnel and accounted for fatality not
disclosed in external reports. Tubleful offices suspected of for a
record tampering by administrative staff. Notes on disciplinary meetings Karen
warned about unauthorized midnight audits. Management instructed to intervene discourage escalations.
The kicker at subject Arboschi, did not return home night
of June fourteenth, despite text confirmation with agency personal effects
box for immediate removal. No further record. Here's the wedge
a sheet labeled protocol finalization, full list of sign offs
by initials, nearly overed acted the last line. If containment fails,
transition to directory reassignment, destroy all surplus files, all to
cycle resets. I'm so caught in the horrid logic that
it takes a moment to register the photoclip to the
bach keren herself, hair up, tired, eyes standing by the
West Supply closet, half turned as if listening for someone approaching.
My need to hurry is a living thing, now knowing
my every movement. I snap pictures, email the packet to myself,
paying it off to an outside back. My foam legs
starts to pixelate the screen, but it hangs on ice starting.
I tug open each file drawer in sequence. The sound
is too loud in the hush, a metallic scraping that
seems to hold the air's attention. Draw six sticks just
a fraction. My fingers are slippery with nervousness. I wedge
it open, expecting more bureaucratic banality. Forms may be another memo.
No paper presents itself instead a stack of office are
d badges, most crash beyond use. All bearing names are
suddenly recognized for phantom files, replacing them. In the rear
slot is a single badge mine clamped atop a neatly
folded sticky note directory transition and progress assume compliance, Jay
underneath a gum wrapper, and horrifyingly a folder with my
own name and touched but poised to top the stack
paper as crisp as a front off this afternoon. The
implication is so called it feels sur real. I am
not just Cairn's fallower. I am the next audit noise.
I freeze shuffling footsteps, not mine. Travel hollow and certain
from beyond the reception area. I flatten myself after the
row of cabinet, hard hammering so hard at camouflages all else.
A distorted shape passes through the warp frosted window, tall,
tight shouldered. The door knob twists slow. Is the death
of a hope. I try for stealth, but it is
futile in this bright tumb of a room. The door opens,
a full hand span mass darnell, bracketed by the suited manager,
A face I now matched, a cluster of faded childless
James Eusty's Senior Audit, nineteen ninety eight fills the doorway.
Their eyes settle on me with a fatigue that signals
long over you, inevitability, not surprise. You should not be here,
Marius Darnell notes. Is not a threat nor an order,
just a pronouncement in the voice of someone who has
already filled out the paperwork for your absence. I lower
my phone, thumma, not blow trembling. Mister Eusty's j from
the memo stepped forward, hands lightly up, casual, strangely and threatening.
This is not new. Every decade or so someone comes
charging into records. We wondered who it had beat a cycle.
His tone is kindly, as if discussing officer innovations, not
the slow excision of a life. I cannot find myself
what happened to Karen Rotch. Darnel regards me with tired annoyance.
She reported what she shouldn't have, elevators, midnight audits a lot.
Management handled it, the direct trees needed cleaning. I'm quiet,
records on healthy for stability. She makes a small practice
ton gesture that silence is used to I've forced cracks.
That doesn't none of this this is criminal. EUSt To
shrugs long ago, perhaps not any more. Policy is policy.
There is always a file, one for each who tries.
If you're not the first, if I'm not going quietly,
I say my words sound thin, theatrical, faker than any
bluff I could conjure. That's not your decision, Darnell says,
But I do not wait. The flash driver is in
my hand. I make for the desk, knock the sticky note, loose,
jam the drive into the computer's single port. Its light
flick is one, two, three times. The foul tree jumped
a life uploading all I have logs, photos, scan memos,
audio entries everything. I send coppies by auto forward to
my old friend, to a legal, a blog, to the
only city journalist whose address I remember. Darnel's voice sharpens.
That won't save you. Access controls are absolute. You think
back up servers aren't routinely scrubbed. But the little drive's
a lady flashes green, then blue, and unfamiliar color before
dying altogether. Mass Darnell sighs, as if I just handed
in a late form, pinching the bridge of her nose. You'll, neds,
you accompany us. It's not too late for the paperwork side.
Alter your files. Sign the andie move you quietly, otherwise
the protocol applies. Mister eusts. His hands are gentle but firm,
as he motions me from the room. Take the offer, Marius. Otherwise, well,
the building is thorough. Fear is ugly, more so when
shame laces it. But even as my arms are guided,
the folders tucked away with ritual neatness. I summoned stubborness
from somewhere. If you're so sure, why keep all this?
Why not just burn the files? Eusty smiles, sad, knowing
you cannot burn what. The building reloads itself every order
the files returned. The ghost box is never empty, that's
its nature. As we move through the winding holes, my
badge no longer grants access. I'm corraled, led not by
force but the ultimate bernality of a process already begun.
The building feels aware. Every glowing egged sein brighter, corridor
angle chopper. Thus welcoming by the yard, they walk me
to reach oar. The room is untouched by recent renovations,
seem thus filmed glass. Same corporate motivational post is now
so laughable in context. A chair is produced, three papers
stepped from me, a blank resignation sheet, a no disclosure form,
and a final performance review marked a regular sea bore.
My phone scanned by security emits A defeated ping signal
will stay blocked, says the younger of the two gods,
this pity in his eyes, like he's seen this before.
They make their case with tired thoroughness, sign and leave
or remain part of an incomplete audit, which the Warren
is not to any one's benefit. Careers disappear a mess,
Darnell says. Families forget. No one wants that. The offer
is hard to dismiss. I can feel them shaping a
story in which I depart for health reasons, may be
burned out. It has, after all, happened before to people
like Cilander, to others whose coffee mugs were left behind.
I hesitate, glance at my phones and nuts green at
the flash drive. Now pow did a wave and likely
destined for a sterile disposal. But I know the upload happened,
at least briefly. The blue light was new different. I hope,
against hope someone received it. Oh mess. Darnell's eyes exasperated,
her patient's finally guttering at going noble rarely works out
as you expect. They march me as far as the
Lobbino liff. Only the endless clack of practical shoes and
the dull tread of resignation h R flanks me. No
one else is there. Security wits by the revolving doors,
eyeing me for panic. I turn once, catching the shine
of sweet four hundred tent windows, the reflection walked by
age and double glazing. No one waves, No one calls
after me. They deposed me in the cub as Don
crawls over the city skyline, the building looming behind me
a mineral silhouette. I feel altered and murrored strip bear.
My badge is deactivated with a hollow chirrup. The doors
swing shut behind me, as final as a gavel. For
a while a walk the city has never looked so foreign.
Even abouts and fields and cannae folted through us, now
chained to different frequencies, likely to the sound of paper
flipping and passing wind of the metal click of far
off locks. My phone finds signal eventually, but the app
hosting my back up files returns error after error four
hundred four not found. The emails I sent colleagues are
on read some addresses, bouncing others left to languish in utboxes.
With the automated detachment of the modern age. For the
first few days, I expect a summons of calls and
dark portent. There's nothing, only hollow CHOI. I can pulsively
check local news, scroll city blogs with a fainter solution
to have vanished audit assist into a long forgot an
elevator vitality when something finally appears a story on an
odd news for in my hot leaps bureaucraticosts, the hidden
means of office attrition, most common is treated as a joke,
poking fun at the urban decay of blakely towers or
spinning ghost stores for fun. At night, I start to
notice things. I'm maroon cars idols opposite my apartment for ires,
engine ticking over windows blurry with condensation. Once I set
out to confront the occupant, but as I crossed the street,
it blinks into life and slides away. Steady is a
service elevator closing on its spoken seekers. My phone, usually
in appendage, has become unpredictable. Contact numbers blink out, Tara Gregg,
even my mother's name once replaced by a generic no number.
Banking records load with hiccups. A transfer delays, then vanishes.
When I try to reach Gregg, his replies distant, be amused, sorry,
who is This didn't work with the mares if you
have the wrong number. There are days I doubt my
own record, My transcripts, my degrees seemed to slip slightly
out of reach with each request marks out of order.
Employment references omitting must end at Blakely Towers, as if
I spend those months in a different city or dream,
I can quite recapture. Desperate for any semblance of validation,
I line up an interview at a temp agency. The
recruiter is cheery, efficient. We have something for you. It
did entry, contract, office services, familiar territory. It's in town.
A courtschat, hope memorize in the ADDRESSY recites one hundred
seventy a New Broad Street, Sweet seven Cy. That night, uneasy,
I search the address. What I find is less than nothing.
The building was condemned three years ago. Local news records
show the address arrays from the directories the suite no
such number. I call back, ask for clarification, but the
recruiter lasts it off. It's a ten gig, details changed
last minute. If you want out, just let us know.
There's a stinging familiarity to the brush off. When I
passed by Newbroad Street curiosity, knowing at better judgment, I
find the building a silent hulk, boarded at every window, redevelopment,
pending banners, secing on lock fencing. There is no way,
in no way to verify even the ghost of a
job offer back home. The enees is complete. Emails hang
and sent. An old friend Jasmine never answers an urgent
voice note. My days grow hollow, weeks pass, The sense
of being observed never leaves. Shadows clump in street corners,
and sometimes my phone vibrates with calendar reminders for meetings,
never scheduled, a performance review, border check, in a return
to files, Even in sleep, I retrace holes and dreams,
searching for doors that open the wrong way, always one
step behind. Karen Roch is vanishing. Finally, the lost lay
appeals a way inexorably, a city records request, basic stuff,
birth certificate, employment registration returns stamped, no file found, a
page tree from my wallet in a panic, my state
idea is intact, but the issue date is off by
two years, and the address bells of Blackly Towers amissing
well mocking every certainty I have ever clung to, the
world has started adjusting itself to my absence. I realize, shivering,
how there are the building's hands must be. There comes
a moment when dread dissolves into necessity. I've nothing left
but obsession, a compulsion to prove even now that I
was there, that I existed amid those endlessly relabeled doors
and those whispered protocols. So I go back one more time,
trespassing after midnight, when the city's pulse is at its
fintest and the shine of commerce is gutted out. Blakely
Tower stands as it always has, hunched different, with its
windows a gleam and resolute. The main doors are locked,
but I know the side service entrance, the whint gregg,
once propped open with a pencil for five quiet years.
The lock fights me, but all locks here eventually give
way if you persist. It is as something the building
seems to allow only for those it recognizes. Inside. Every
surface gleams too brightly. The floors reflect more light than
they could ever remit on their own half the rooms
I passed seem full, and now shadows slick against glass walls,
keupiccles bristling with new and familiar furniture, desks arranged where
i'd swear only voids did last month. There are no people,
but I sense presences, seen only as movement out of
the eyes direct axis, as if the wrecords have been
pruned of all active names, only the echo of activity
left behind. Down the grand floor hall, the wall of
staff photos has changed. Once the frames bore the faces
of several generations hr Head's maintenance occasional tempagency portered. Now
one by one the faces are gone or blurred, features
leached of all distinction. Karen Roach's headshot is a blank oval,
so as Yellanda's Every fort was named Blate just read's
process nothing more. Then the lobby, a new directory has
been posted to digital smooth, its green glowing faintly. Where
staff were once named, There is only a pulsing blank.
After administrative assistant tap this green and another manicycles in.
Previous occupant Karen Roch, previous previous occupant Maris Calder, My
own name present and absent the screen, ping's wants inviting
input I do not touch it. Turning for the exit,
I catch my reflection in the vestibule's darkened glass. My
outline blurs, the face wavers, a suggestion, not a certainty.
I try to fucspit. The harder I look, the thinner
my features become, as if I am drifting out of
my own frame. I record a final hushed audio lock,
the red dot blinking its readiness. If there's anybody left
to find this scheck, the west supply closet audit locks repeat,
the files will always resurface. Be careful. I I'm not
sure who I am when I say this, or if
I ever truly worked here at all. But I know
the feeling of being washed, and I know the shape
of the old locks under my palm. If I was
meant only to fill the next empty folder, so be it.
But if the story survives, maybe the cycle breaks. I
let that hand a moment, hearing only my own breath.
Beyond the glass, city night swells and recedes. In this moment,
there is only silence and the persistent smell of warming
toner from the hidden heart of Blakely Towers. I turn
and leave, the doors whispering closed behind me. Sure is
the sound of paper sliding into a waiting file, just
one more name, ready for deletion, or perhaps somewhere Sunday remembrance.
I emerge in a rain that feels colder than a
should in spring, the streets, exhaling steam every lamplight forty
A pale ghost on the slick black sidewalk. I tried
to turn south toward home, but my feet betray me.
I walked several blocks instead, before stopping under a scaffolding
grid riuvulous drumming above. It takes me a minute to
catch my breath, longer to admit I'm stolen. My key
cart inert in my jacket weighs more than brass and plastic. Ever,
should I slide it out to look at it one
more time? The hologram has faded, the logo's colors washed
to white. There's a shall groove now running exactly where
my thumb always pressed. It's strange what lingers the urge
to inventory in my own life, To scan windows for movement,
to cansteps between safe harborers, to fact check every memory
as if it could be yanked, rewridden, and returned without warning.
I forced myself to keep moving, pushing past empty bus
benches and stacks of bundled fires, past the old corner
store with its humming colors, and the small deer tabloid rack.
Each stop feels like a checkpoint, a ritual from my
life before office conspiracy became my only animating certainty. Half
way home, my phone blips. I nearly drop it. The
alert is that sharp, that unexpected. I fumble open the screen.
Some mudie has replied to one of my midnight emails,
or so the posh notification claims. I read it hot thudding.
The sender is a string of numbers, no name, but
the messages are mistakable. Do not return. You are still audited,
Subtle time, laikes signature directory and complete. The moment chills
me deeper than the night air. It's impossible to tell
if this is a warning, a threat, or a glitch.
For the first time in days, I wonder if what
I upload it actually made it out, if someone is
on my side, or if I've simply tricked the per
to colone and it is only a matter of Rand's
before I am shuffled beyond recal My building is dark.
The lone window with a yellow square of light is mine.
I have her at the threshold. My own lock for
a moment resists. I have to push hard, as though
it were not meant to yield on this particular evening. Finally,
I shoulder through and collapse. Inside home is less home
than holding cell. My things look touch reorganized, only slightly
rom the folder of records, the old sticky notes of
Fallbucky RESPI, you are still under the list floorboard, but
the battery on my spare phone is dead. A whiff
of ozon have in the room. I turn, scanning every shadow.
Reflex tells me to delete all traces. But a deeper instinct,
the one the building must have installed the demands I
keep gathering, documenting, refusing to let this all Atrophy Boys
is filled up from the hall. A neighbor tired, calling
for her cat. I scan emails again, searching for hope,
but none of the real contacts answer. The anonymous message
stares back for an hour. I sit in the dark
until the city fades around me. In the mechanical pulse
of office life becomes odible in memory again. A chorus
of printers phones into calms whispers. Sleep is fragile, rare
and satisfying, always marched by images of endlis corridors, doors
that pivot the wrong way, the burnished stage of file
folders labeled for people who never worked out. If I dream,
it is of directories, looping, cycling through names, the absence
in each line somehow more acute than the presence. I
wake to find the door knof to my flat sticky
with some risen honey, maybe spilled from my neighbor's bag,
but more likely assign something left by those who tend
these profcolls. I clean it mechanically, the nerves of my
hand slow, chobey. The world outside flows on buses, squade pigeon,
scavenge onun overhead cloud snuckle into the sunrise like nothing
at all is wrong. I want to believe that if
I keep playing my roll, gliding through temp gigs, shopping
at the late night supermarket, smiling at the barrow, so
everything else will reta there resume, but I know the
gaps will not close again. One morning, out of deep habit,
I set an alarm and go hunting for office jobs.
Online reflex drags me to old bookmarks, city job streams,
stafford direct the insidious aggregate boards. I rolle pings up
office admin inventory control, flex schedule, strong record keeping. The
address looks suspiciously familiar. I open the map. It's blakely towers.
The marker's stubborn. Even as I click away, my handshake
was something that is not quite fear and not quite compulsion.
As I scrolled the job details, the abbocation field offers
a list of previous employees pre filled auto suggested. Karen
Roch is there, as is my own name. When I
try to delet or edit, the app freezes. I cleared
a page and close the laptop, unable to stop a dry,
brittle laugh. Desperate for outside confirmation I exist. I scan
my own picture with a new site's up of furtive utility.
The software railroads me identity not verified, then no features detected.
I stare until the window times out, then moved to
my bathroom mirror. My eyes flat with exhaustion and rimmed
with sleeplessness. Glare back. I reach out and touch the glass,
half expecting my assistance. It's only cold, but the chill stays.
A week passes in this suspended exposed anxiety. Those update late.
My least reminder is addressed to Lieutenant. Occupied packages go missing.
Calls from a non numbers dropped to static. As soon
as I pick up. I try call in Jasmin once more,
only for a cryptic voicemail to click through a voice
barely audible archive ordered to leave now if you want
a story to end, I save the file, knowing it
will not last. One evening, I find myself staring at
the wall ware until recently I tape my degree an
old staff badge. Both are gone, the blue tack is
still fresh. I searched the floor, checked behind the radiator.
Not then, when I try to accuse the landlord, he
gives me a polite, blank look. The residue of my
past is being scrapped, methodical, silent, inexorable. Does it end
the raisure or is something else in play? I knock
at the door, breaks my impass, not the landlord or delivery.
This is knuckles, not an electronic ring. Deliberate and uneven.
I peer through the fish air. Gregg stands there. At
least the shape is gregg hair, more silver faced, halfer
than habit. He squints at the spy hole until I
pull open the door, mouth dry, nerves like tax For
a moment, he seems uncertain, searching my features the way
someone scrutinizes a long forgotten name on a half burned raster.
You're going to let me in? Or do we talk here?
He says, voice and ear as if unused. I step
aside Gregando's pausing just inside the threshold, scanning the room.
He nods, slow and cautious. It's worse than before, he says,
not unkindly. I barely made it out last time, back
when the suits tried to blame the elevator's on weather.
He sinks into my aunchair, the one with the tear
in the left arm. For a moment, there's just the
soft drowne of traffic beneath my window. Both of us
fugitives in a city that cares less for souls than ledges.
How are you here? I ask? Finally, he said the
last time that you didn't know me. He shrugs, a
motion bristling with pain. Not supposed to remember one, supposed
to be able to find you. But every so often
cracks show up. Some cycles, one or two of us
slipped through her name mosettes detailed blur. He looks up.
Did you find her? Did you fix it? My hand
clothses on the edge of the folder are still hidden
under the board. I tried, they stopped me. I got
the files up. I'll plat it. What I could whore
gives a tight smile, nostalgia brittle in it. Sometimes you
wouldn't by leaving something the building can't catch. Other times
you get swept clean. They wipe my records too, peril,
gone pension vanished. When you're not in the files, you're
not in the world, at least not where it matters.
I want reassurance, crave like air, but I know better
than to ask if there's a way forward. Fegg leans forward,
elbows on knees. If you're lucky, you fade and build
something new. The rest well, they walk halls in their
heads for the rest of their lives, keep seeing badges
with their own names. Gone doors that don't open, he
he states. But every story, every time the cycle gets interrupted,
pieces slip out, like a pebble in the gears. Maybe
you got one free? Yeah. His eyes dart to my laptop.
Anything left still on there. I drag out the last
drive still taped to the bottom shell. It got a
partial uploat. I say the confirmation pink blue. Does that
mean anything to you? Gregg's smile fades He shakes his head.
Who never saw blue red? That's a warning green temp
save maybe blues outside reception. Maybe it means he got through,
or maybe it just means the building's rude in the rules. Again,
his gay sharpens, almost hopeful. He checked the news lately.
I shake my head, pulling up the search I headlined
from a miner out of town block surfaces of all
which shadows temp agencies, vanishing act, no names, no a dresses,
only veiled references. But in the comments beneath the static
and conspiracy chatter, a user writes, saw old records, someone's
keeping coppers alive. Store is not dead yet. For a minute,
both of us stare at the screen. Gregg straightens, digging
through his coat. One thing I always wandered people like us,
do we go looking for these cycles or does the
plays find us self? Selecting right? His eyes track the wall,
as if to coding the movement hidden in shadows. I
wanted to fix it, I say, voice thinner than I
like I thought. If I just kept the wreckers safe,
if I left the trail, maybe it would make a difference.
Craig gets up, careful and slow, as if the floor
itself poses risk. Every file's a name. Every name in
a fold is a story unfinished. That's what keeps the
tower alive. Don't become just another line in the directory.
Walk away if you can. He shuffles to the door,
stops with his hand poised. If you ever get a
call for another audit job, don't take it. You already
know what's back there. Let the new ones try. His
glance turns momentarily haunted, as if he weighs whether to
offer a hand shack. Then he seems to think better
of it, and instead taps the door for him. Be
seeing you, kid or not, depends which way the pages
fall next audit. After he leaves, I sit unmoving for minutes,
maybe ires. The street lights swim in the rain behind
the glass, the city restlessly alive, heedless of my dilemma.
Craig's words rattle in the empty corners of the room,
his warning nesting alongside the shirts of hope that the
blue flash meant something may be, freedom may be in
in complete rasure, Restlessness eats at me. I pace the
apartment in spirals, returning again and again to the window. Inevitably,
my gaze latches, and the old building from certain angles
it still looks hollow, just a shell or cuchet. But
every so often a light will blink at a window
I know isn't wired, or the triinsecurity lamps by the
rear entrance pulse and fade with mechanical intent. I try
searching for Karen Rotch on every engine in city filings
on social media. Her name is a whisper, a punch
line in a message bord thread, a typo in a
scan tamp agency roster. It is as though every echo
is already half drawn by the hum of the wider archive,
waiting for the next story to be layered over the first.
Several mornings later, a letter arrives, no postage sloughted beneath
my door. It is impossibly a blakely tower's envelope. Inside
the letter bears a familiar type compliance and complete pending audit.
Please report for directory reconciliation management. No signature, no date,
only the certainty that the cycle begins, and you may
be with me, may be with someone else. Faded to
count keys, reconcile files, and prove day after day that
they exist. By the grid under their nails and the
pass exsistant smell of dry toner in the skin. I
consider burning it, shredding it, but my hand refuses. Instead,
a scannet en upload another copy to the cloud, one
more pebble thrown into the gears. But something in me
has shifted. After Gregg's visit, I don't walk toward the
building again. I start retracing my old self in small,
deliberate steps, breakfast of the grease he's prewn on seventh,
a visit to the planetarium, on a whim, a phone
call to my old professor in another city. I force
new patterns over the pot of life that the old
directors can't quite map. My connections grow brittle, the world
slow to remember me, but every so off and no
waitress will smile and use my name, or a friend
on social media will like a year's old photo. These
small proofs twine into a life line. Yet at the
age of everything, the dread remains, and with it the
suspicion that the next told it will find a new assistant,
tracing old patterns, perpetuating the ritual. I keep backups and
connected to the net, tuckatian caps who beneath the floor.
My face appears a little clearer in the mirror some days,
but the possibility that this is wishful thinking nags me
even in sleep. One more night in Psalmny drives me
to the city center, where the avenues bleed neon, strange
as drift in and out of dancing light, and office
teros eruple with secrets behind their facades. I find myself
across the street from Blakely Towers, which stands quietly like
a mistake. The planners forgot to erase the lobby light cycle,
the revolving dose gleam of the polish of a thousand
brief lives come and gone. The digital directory has been
updated again, as I see from a distance, administrative assistant,
previous occupant Karen rochbryor Maris call to the castle pulses
where my name should be a blank so loaded with
meaning is practically a dare. Inside alone, Janetor wipe smears
from the glass. The entrance is seal. I make no
move to enter, simply watches a name swell and vanish
a line of CAB's idols at the curb. I turn away,
let the cities nows swallow me a loud, indifferent reel
and add my own name to a hundred applications for
jobs that may or may not exist. Days later, as
I sort my files and does my half empty shells,
and notification pops onto my screen. An anonymous file has
been uploaded to a secure server, my own, seated weeks ago.
There is no metadata, nothing but the found name. Ought
to complete. Next, I double click, breath stilt. It's an audiophile.
The voice is not mine, nor Kirns nor Gregg's. It's
a dry click female reciting directory roussette. All anomalies accounted for.
Await new audit participant, Please maintain redness previous occupant's archived
compliance assured. There is a mechanical wine. Then the click
of a tape stopping it is standard message, impersonal and chilling.
I sit back, knowing this is as much closure as
the building ever allows. Un finished waiting, the cycle pregnant,
with the next vanishing, the next rebellion, the next set
of names, typed over blank folders that survived by the
resilience of the people determined to remember to leave a mark.
However fleeting. I shut my laptop, draw the curtains, and
breathe deep outside. Morning has come with indifferent optimism. Burton
the aroma of burned coffee from the shop below, the
jangle of traffic, the rhythms of a well too large
for any archive to fully contain. Still, some nights awake,
as if to a silent alarm, certain that a door
somewhere is swinging shot, or that my name is being
a raise for Mlissa never chose to join. I remind myself.
Proof is what persists, even if only for the time
it takes a single fold to flicker back into the light.
That knowledge, un yielding, tenuous, precious is what I have left.
And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and
I will see you in the next one.