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Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.

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Let's get into it. It was two twenty three, eight

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a m. But I would have guessed later. Time loses

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its outlines at night, specially on the highest floor of

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the Sylphin Tower, where each corridor seems to float above

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the city like a forgotten attic. I leaned against my

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mock Hart hands brace on the yellow handle, catching my breath.

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The hum of the floor buffer faded behind me as

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I swaped tools, settling into the gentle rhythm of another round.

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The lights up here were always over bright, spilling an

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official day laid long copped a holes lined with motivational

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posters from five Corporate were Branziger, but the real world

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beyond the sealed glass remained black and a noble. He

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had to learn the difference, especially working nights that could

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keep you from going strange. I'd just finished entering a

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recycling bin in a conference enclave known for its endless

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key card meetings, and had started my window check. Not

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a job requirement, exactly, I just made a habit. At

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each stop, I rested a hand in the glass and

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took a on look out. After a while, he get

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tuned into these tiny rituals. Most nights, the only thing

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out there would be the cheap orange glow from the

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parking lot, may be a shimmer of till lets along

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the bypass, But sometimes you'd catch something else out of

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the corner over eye, a pigeon fluttering on a ledge,

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or a distant blink of a traffic signal. To night though,

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a metallic clint surfaced on the glass of crisp isolated

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flicker just above head level. At first I thought it

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was a relic left over from a sunset i'd worked

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straight through, or maybe the reflection from my ring of

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worn bresquees. But then it pulsed, not a one off,

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a slow, deliberate shimmer signal almost from the tent floor

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in the window of the small boardroom. Every instinct argued

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that I should ignore it. I'd learned caution in this job,

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but the movement didn't look like an accident or a

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trick of the light. I paused with one hand, still

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holding them up, feeling the echo of blood behind my ears.

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I rolled my cock closer, feet moving without quite deciding.

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When I reached the end of the corridor and glanced

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down toward that glass. I saw it again, the glint

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fainter naw but accompanied by shape, a shifting out lined

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human height, slender withing, just passed the spot where the

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window frosting ended. All meetings were larved by the iyre.

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But nothing ran this late, not on this floor. I

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strained my hearing for a voice, laughter, the clink of

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a mug, Nothing except the hut behind the walls and

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the fluorescent lights that always ran just a little too

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loud at night. I stood a moment, gripping the handle

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of my cot before turning toward the door. The key

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slid into the conference room lock, with the familiar metallic

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report inside. I breathed in the cold conditioned air and

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saw out the head of the table a bone white

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mug with a swirl of steam, next to a notebook

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flipped open, no other sign of life. I felt pinned

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in place by something behind the glass, by my own reflexion,

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or maybe by the city lights blinking beneath me like

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distant most coat. I checked by the coat rack and

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under the table, all clear. My shoes made too much

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noise in the carpet. But I crossed to the mug

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and touched it, still hot, I tapped the notebook open

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another inch, expecting the usual scribbles from an after Iro's report. Instead,

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page after page ram with tight lines of numbers, somewhere

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ranged into grids, others scattered, marked with leaping ciphers, iurrs,

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and strange symbol clusters. Some handwriting looks bitery, careful. Another

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hand was urgent, as if the numbers themselves were chasing

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their author. Across the page. Just in front of the window,

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a print gracemear drew my attention, half way erased to

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the edge of the glass, A partial fingerprint truncated at

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the swell glossy where the light hit it. I glanced

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behind myself, sensing the prickling at the base of my scalp.

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The silence deepened, stretching until the only thing I heard

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was the dull, irregular click and tick of my cart

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wheel spinning out friction. A shadow flickered on the wall,

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maybe a bulb struggling with its ballast. I moved to

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the door and listened, heart thudding. The floor was empty,

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I was sure of it, but the room seemed full

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of someone else's breath. The note trembled slightly in my hand.

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The numbers called cross the ruined paper like a coat

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sent from the wrong world, a language that wanted not

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to be learned. I wanted to put it down and leave,

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but couldn't, not yet, not until I tried to make

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sense of it, or at least checked each corner again

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for whatever might have left that half finished coffee, that mark,

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and the peculiar shiver up my spine. What I didn't

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know then was how much further the unknees would burrow

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in ways I thought I'd trained myself as night worker,

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never to feel. I started cleaning this building seven years earlier,

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two months after my old Genian contract lapsed, and I

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finally surrendered the hope of a job among day people.

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Night works suited me. Solitary, systematic work in between empty

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meeting tables and humming printers, no reminders of birth days

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or retirements, no one calling my name to ask for

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a favor. Each evening. A commute up the traffic choke

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tail made the city seem possibly large, but everything felt

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smaller once the lobby door swallowed me. The world contracted

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to bad swipes, keyrings, and elevator chimes. My routine started

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at the lowest floor, three room accounting annex staled with

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monitored silence, then up floor by floor legal HR operations.

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Each area had its signature. Human Resources was a blur

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of color of sticky notes, family photos, desktops half bare

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of understacks of on boarding kits. By contrast, the compliance

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wing had a strictness you could feel in your shoes,

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not a pen out of alignment. There were patterns everywhere,

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if you had the patience to notice. That's what night

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work is. A life spent among patterns. Take the security guard,

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for instance, Jose, a grizzled man with a jar of

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minton and a so spade pinned inside his jacket lapel.

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His entire philosophy was covered by three nods, once for hello,

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once for sea anything, once always with a note of accountability.

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For nothing to see. We rarely talked. I'd shuffle my

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way to the end of the lobby, find him in

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his office with the bank of Agian monitors playing out

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slower fees, of nobody ever doing anything wrong, except for

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once three winters back, when someone naturally tried to steal

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a printer. Even that, stories seemed to have faded around

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the edges until it was a punchline. He'd tell if

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the old coffee pot ever overflowed. But mainly he watched

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his greens, and I made my rands, each of us

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bracing the night for the other, but never closer. As

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for the staff still present during those hours, there were

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only a handful business analysts determined to work through expensive

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audits or genius from legal fighting to meet some nebulous deadline.

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They signed out on the big white love book at

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front desk, and each one left before eleven, regular as clockwork.

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I could have called out the potting footsteps from memory alone.

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The deeper you worked into these ires, the more the

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building itself seemed to breathe. Old heating pipes ticked, ducktwork

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said like a throat, clear the halls. The ones with

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gray green industrial carpet had a way of viaging your footsteps.

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When you passed a line of glass walled offices, you

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call the stutter of yourself in the reflection, tired anonymous.

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Over time, I gave into my own little inventory of changes.

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I knew when a stapler was out of place, when

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a chuckle some one's laughter had left a trace in

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the air, when a photo had been swapped on a

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mid manager's shelf, new baby vacation, somewhere warm, A dog

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in a red scarf I noticed and cataloged. Though I

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never said a word, these patents helped the building makes

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sense and kept me grand it in a way, one

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manned effort, perhaps to answer the question of where the

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buildings forgot you as soon as you left. Then there

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were the rules. Don't disturb personal items, don't open closed

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offices for those you hoover carefully around the threshold, and

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leave no mark. If you must move something out of

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the way to sweep, put it back exactly. This was

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how you stayed invisible, how you finished a shift without

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complaints or the shame of overstepping your station. But now

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holding the notebook, hot still spike from the near miss

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of a presence in the room, I realized one of

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those self written rules had already been breached. I had

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touched some one's things, And unlike the odd half eaten

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sand which were the rough forgotten bag, this coffee was

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too fresh, the evidence too deliberate. Some one was here

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intentionally moving just beyond record, leaving things barely out of place,

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as if to conjure an audience. The next week, every

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instinct I trained in myself pined ressless on certain each

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time I entered the tower. At first I tried to

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go back to the method ignore what didn't concern me.

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But late Wednesday into Thursday I spotted the same jittery uncertainty.

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It started at a desk on the nine floor, remarkable,

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a finance pot with seven identical work stations, each with

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a cheek keyboard, a mug at, a paper calendar. The

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first thing was a jacket navy blue, folded inside out

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and draped across the back of a chair by it

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self trivill. But the next morning, on my return sweet

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it was up and hanging on the coat rack, sleeves

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newly aligned, as if a tailor had adjusted it. Elsewhere.

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A bullpunt pen midnight blue always and Captain laid diadonly

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across an open ledger suddenly clicked shut and set vertically

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as if measuring time. On the legal floor, a favorite

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mugg at one with the chip at the handle had

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been swapped out for something identical except for a faded

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sticker at the bottom. Nothing egregious, just small, careful edits,

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like someone had gone through writing the set. Soon I

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saw computers left flickering with open files, the screens even

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never engaging, sometimes only for moments, sometimes for the stretch

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of an entire sweep. It didn't match the after IROs

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patterns of the regulars, but I assumed at first I'd

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simply missed a late staying associate. Only the programme's open

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wint resembling any normal spreadsheet or report. Instead windows full

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of numbers in scattered formats. Not the neat columns of payrolls,

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but rag of EVROS symbols and side cells strings of

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four or five numbers separated by unfamiliar delimiters. A few

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times when I passed on my return sweep, the monitors

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had gone dark on their own, as if he ever

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left them open, was watching my route, tying the black

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out to the sound of my approaching cart. I asked

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the cleaning supervisor casually if anything odd had come up

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on the schedule. He grunted, scanning his clipboard. Bash records

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went weird last night, figures in and out after midnight,

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then backtracked system glitch. They say he hadn't lost a

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moment's sleep. It was only after I found the same

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string of numbers I'd seen in the conference notebook. Hastily

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scribbled and black marker onto a whiteboard in a supposedly

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locked legal office, one with the separate security badge reader,

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no sign of forced entry. That I started to write

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things down myself, not for the supervisor, not for any manager,

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just for my own sanity. I bought a cheap pocket

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notebook and began recording desk numbers, dates, and minor discrepants

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of someone's trash can swapped out for another, a new

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scratch on a disc clap the way a plastic paper

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clip holders seemed to have been rotated by a precise

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angle in the night. The connection, though, between all these

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strange edit was elusive. I'd notice a number to touoed

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onto a sticky note then lost to the shredder by morning,

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a file left open come before the next shift. It

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all felt deliberate, but designed to deny me certainty. That weekend,

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the regular Friday crue cleared out of the expected eyre.

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Only Saturday morning I find clatter on three out of

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the seven suspect ESSK coffee cups, left at odd angles,

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paper shuffled, or in one case, an entry entirely reversed.

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At first, I thought it was just Lack's habits, text

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running laid, but over time the circle of altered desks

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grew a calculated expansion, something searching for eyes or systematically

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avoiding them. By the end of that shift, I was

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sure of something. Whoever had left the coffee, whoever had

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written those numbers, hadn't left. They were in my building.

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They might have been watching me. As I watched the

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smallest details they'd abandoned behind. It felt vaguely but unmistakably

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like a game. It grew harder after those first two weeks.

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To ignore the growing weight of strangeness. I held out

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from talking to Hossey. I figured he'd wave it off,

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say it was above at pay grade, and wore me

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not to get mixed up with other people's secrets. In

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the end, necessity overpowered all that. One Thursday, I changed

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my path. Instead of starting at the ground floor and

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working up, I mixed up the order, resolving to loop

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back around the legal suite to second time, just ahead

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of my normal schedule. The elevators responded with their usual

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sluggish anxiety, and when I hit floor six, it was

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drenched in silence. A meeting had dividently run late, which

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I was half pulled out from the table, remnants of

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half eaten pastries lingering on a plate, the air still

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carrying the memory of cologne. From the end of the row,

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I heard something, an unmistakable shuffle of vapor, the faint,

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decisive kind of a fow drawer being pulled open. I

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00:11:03,320 --> 00:11:06,600
moved in quietly, sticking to the corridor. Through the glass,

238
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I saw what looked like the edge of a coat.

239
00:11:08,240 --> 00:11:11,399
A shadow steeped lo out of falcabinet, rifling through the folders.

240
00:11:11,799 --> 00:11:14,039
I raised my phone, meaning to snap a quick photo

241
00:11:14,080 --> 00:11:17,320
habit not intention But by the time I pressed the button,

242
00:11:17,320 --> 00:11:19,279
the figure had slipped away, as if they'd sensed me.

243
00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:22,759
No way they could have, not with the silence. But

244
00:11:22,840 --> 00:11:24,519
when I went in, only the faint heat of a

245
00:11:24,559 --> 00:11:28,159
handprin hovered on the locker, fresh but fading. Fifteen minutes later,

246
00:11:28,360 --> 00:11:30,759
I reversed back to cleaning the lobby of distraction, trying

247
00:11:30,799 --> 00:11:33,279
to make it all seem routine. I glanced into the

248
00:11:33,279 --> 00:11:37,519
security monitoring room, hoping for reassurance. Instead, I found the

249
00:11:37,639 --> 00:11:40,440
night guard stirring too intently at his feed. When I

250
00:11:40,480 --> 00:11:42,759
asked for a reaply from about twenty minutes prior, he

251
00:11:42,840 --> 00:11:46,000
cleared his throat maintenance and the system. He muttered, I

252
00:11:46,080 --> 00:11:48,720
was not quite meeting mine. The feat showed a twenty

253
00:11:48,759 --> 00:11:51,720
minute segment only pidentical pixel for pixel, sterile as a

254
00:11:51,840 --> 00:11:55,360
washing machine cycle. You only saw that when well, when

255
00:11:55,360 --> 00:11:58,440
some one had doctored the tape. I exited, shaken and

256
00:11:58,440 --> 00:12:01,279
focused on the little things. Under a recycling bin and

257
00:12:01,279 --> 00:12:03,679
an unusual pen, I found an edge of paper smood

258
00:12:03,799 --> 00:12:06,639
folded carelessly, tucked away as if meant to be discovered.

259
00:12:07,240 --> 00:12:12,039
It read, in hurried caps, window of opportunity. That was all. Later,

260
00:12:12,159 --> 00:12:14,720
another scrap, torn along the margin and left half submerged

261
00:12:14,720 --> 00:12:16,879
in a dying fern pot showed the same phrase, but

262
00:12:16,919 --> 00:12:20,039
in looping cursive it a closed office an hour after midnight,

263
00:12:20,080 --> 00:12:22,840
beneath a stapleer the same message, this time encoded within

264
00:12:22,879 --> 00:12:26,639
a column of numbers W nine point twenteen I twelve

265
00:12:26,639 --> 00:12:31,200
point fourteen, IN fourteen point twenty, D three point five,

266
00:12:32,000 --> 00:12:35,919
fifteen point seventeen, W nine point twenty. There was a

267
00:12:35,960 --> 00:12:38,840
rhythm to it, as if the word itself was a schedule,

268
00:12:38,840 --> 00:12:41,919
an interval, a ritual, a call sign. I copied each

269
00:12:41,960 --> 00:12:44,440
strange detail into my note book, realizing as it did

270
00:12:44,440 --> 00:12:46,120
that there was no way to continue pretending this was

271
00:12:46,159 --> 00:12:50,000
some one else's problem. Still habits die hard. I kept

272
00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:52,399
a careful distance from anything that felt like direct witness

273
00:12:52,440 --> 00:12:54,720
until the U S B drive. It was a plain

274
00:12:54,799 --> 00:12:57,360
black stick, almost buried under half an inch of shredded

275
00:12:57,360 --> 00:13:00,519
receipts in the recycling bin for office supplies. I shouldn't

276
00:13:00,519 --> 00:13:02,759
have taken it, but a part of me felt watch,

277
00:13:02,919 --> 00:13:06,000
as if obeying rules was only drawing attention. That night,

278
00:13:06,159 --> 00:13:08,600
while running a cloth over the keyboard in an unused office,

279
00:13:08,639 --> 00:13:11,559
I plugged it in. It spun up incently. No encryption prompt,

280
00:13:11,559 --> 00:13:14,320
at least not at the menu level. Three files, all

281
00:13:14,320 --> 00:13:18,039
with generic, corperate sounding names. One was a spreadsheet, but

282
00:13:18,120 --> 00:13:21,360
jumbled with wild sums, decimal points, mis aligned references to

283
00:13:21,440 --> 00:13:24,080
window an code read. The second was a folder of

284
00:13:24,120 --> 00:13:27,200
dummy versus lists of obscure into national vendors and amounts,

285
00:13:27,279 --> 00:13:30,039
each roughly the same, with dates clustered in the shadow irs.

286
00:13:30,679 --> 00:13:33,360
The third was a text file full of apparent gibberish cells,

287
00:13:33,399 --> 00:13:37,559
swarming with peculiar transaction codes and odd memos. Doubly, while initiated,

288
00:13:37,600 --> 00:13:41,279
a window held open close before dawn, standing there, screen

289
00:13:41,360 --> 00:13:43,440
light flickering, I heard a soft echo in the corridor.

290
00:13:44,159 --> 00:13:47,080
I froze for a moment. I was certain it was

291
00:13:47,080 --> 00:13:49,919
nothing but the building's old bones, but a part of me,

292
00:13:49,960 --> 00:13:52,080
the deeper, quite a voice was served for things that matter,

293
00:13:52,159 --> 00:13:55,559
knew better. I shut down the machine, pocketed the USB,

294
00:13:55,720 --> 00:13:58,600
and rolled up my cleaning cot. The sensation of being

295
00:13:58,639 --> 00:14:01,240
followed dogged me through the rest of the shift. The

296
00:14:01,320 --> 00:14:04,360
elevators seemed to stutter between floors, and every mirrored section

297
00:14:04,399 --> 00:14:07,519
of window glass became another eye. The following evening, the

298
00:14:07,559 --> 00:14:11,159
unees ratcheted up another turn. The cleaning supervisor complained at

299
00:14:11,200 --> 00:14:13,639
roll call, too many logs gone weed last night. Badge

300
00:14:13,720 --> 00:14:16,120
is gone in at two, out at three, then backtracked

301
00:14:16,120 --> 00:14:18,720
to before midnight. H L says, system glitches. But how

302
00:14:18,799 --> 00:14:21,600
if I know? That night the building felt stranger than

303
00:14:21,600 --> 00:14:25,399
ever usually, even at its most vacant, Sylvin how felt stable,

304
00:14:25,399 --> 00:14:28,279
a monument of toold steel and class, but the emptiness

305
00:14:28,279 --> 00:14:32,039
seemed charged, now electrified. Even the vending machines seemed to

306
00:14:32,039 --> 00:14:35,840
wear and blink with nervous purpose. Each mob struck felt dangerous,

307
00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:38,559
as though inking a line across a forbidden map. The

308
00:14:38,639 --> 00:14:40,559
places were a prison's lingered to the echo of a

309
00:14:40,600 --> 00:14:42,480
shoe on the wrong floor, the tab on an empty

310
00:14:42,480 --> 00:14:44,919
trash bag, tight and unfamiliar, not seen to refraft back

311
00:14:44,960 --> 00:14:47,759
at me, your being watched. A few days later, the

312
00:14:47,799 --> 00:14:51,120
mood broke sharply before my shift began. I wandered into

313
00:14:51,120 --> 00:14:53,399
the lobby to find a cluster of staff and characteristically

314
00:14:53,440 --> 00:14:57,759
animated h r in hamovsuit was gesticulating urgently to two managers.

315
00:14:58,399 --> 00:15:01,200
The security guard was there, lipped tight, tapping at a clipboard.

316
00:15:01,799 --> 00:15:05,120
I have heard casually close ears open. He never arrived home.

317
00:15:05,200 --> 00:15:08,480
I caught one of the manager's whispering voice tenses piano wire,

318
00:15:09,200 --> 00:15:11,879
not even a text, as partner called nothing since midnight.

319
00:15:12,440 --> 00:15:15,440
The subject was Ragish, a finance analyst ut routinely seen

320
00:15:15,480 --> 00:15:17,639
as one of the late stays, always logged out by eleven,

321
00:15:17,840 --> 00:15:20,440
always leaving his jacket in precisely the same spot. Shoe

322
00:15:20,440 --> 00:15:23,840
swapped trainers for the walk home. I froze, peezing back

323
00:15:23,879 --> 00:15:26,279
his desk. Strange details, how just the previous night it

324
00:15:26,320 --> 00:15:28,240
had seemed even more older than ever. The bullpened a

325
00:15:28,240 --> 00:15:30,960
line at a perfect right angle, the entry emptied. Now

326
00:15:31,080 --> 00:15:33,039
his work space was a blanket clean sweep, as if

327
00:15:33,039 --> 00:15:35,519
he had never existed, no photos, no jacket, a crack

328
00:15:35,559 --> 00:15:38,440
of adhesive on the Desquare's badge. At hum I swept

329
00:15:38,440 --> 00:15:40,639
the rest of the floor, listening for gossip, but I

330
00:15:40,720 --> 00:15:44,480
was stonewolled by management. H R repeated with mechanical finality,

331
00:15:44,519 --> 00:15:47,840
personal leave as of this morning, confidential, no further comment.

332
00:15:48,440 --> 00:15:51,639
The night card when I pressed, demurred he probably just

333
00:15:51,720 --> 00:15:54,320
needed some time off. Josse offer, but his eyes wouldn't

334
00:15:54,320 --> 00:15:58,639
meet mine. That Chief sulviintaw felt transformed. Each light flickered

335
00:15:58,679 --> 00:16:01,879
with new anxiety. Elevators ground their way between stops, as

336
00:16:01,879 --> 00:16:04,600
though reluctant to open for me. Even the air grew

337
00:16:04,639 --> 00:16:07,399
heavier thick with the end st After midnight, in a

338
00:16:07,440 --> 00:16:09,399
stall of the men's room on floor eleven, I found

339
00:16:09,440 --> 00:16:11,639
a fahe hastily wiped down, hidden at the bottom of

340
00:16:11,679 --> 00:16:14,200
a bin. It was password looked, but when I pressed

341
00:16:14,200 --> 00:16:16,840
the power button, a single text notification flashed up before

342
00:16:16,840 --> 00:16:19,440
the screen turned out to night. After the window closes

343
00:16:20,080 --> 00:16:22,759
don't be seen how simple it were been to latago,

344
00:16:23,399 --> 00:16:26,240
but the array of closed, the cryptic numbers, the rearranged objects,

345
00:16:26,279 --> 00:16:29,320
the darupted badge records, and Ragish's abrupt disappearance had built

346
00:16:29,320 --> 00:16:31,240
a momentum none of my old rules could account for.

347
00:16:31,879 --> 00:16:34,639
I wasn't a detective, but I was caught up and

348
00:16:34,679 --> 00:16:37,360
somewhere some one intended that I be seen, or else

349
00:16:37,399 --> 00:16:40,519
not seen and never spoken of again. The difference between

350
00:16:40,519 --> 00:16:43,360
the two, I realized, was narrowing with every ira I worked.

351
00:16:44,080 --> 00:16:45,840
I spent the rest of that shift in a fog,

352
00:16:45,919 --> 00:16:47,840
caught between duty, in the chilling sense that I was

353
00:16:47,879 --> 00:16:50,960
crossing an invisible threshold. The slap and squeak of them

354
00:16:50,960 --> 00:16:53,039
mop on tile echoed weirdly back at me as I

355
00:16:53,039 --> 00:16:56,679
cleaned the already spotless kitchenettes. At times I kept my

356
00:16:56,720 --> 00:16:59,120
own reflection in a glass partition, startled by how hollow

357
00:16:59,120 --> 00:17:01,639
my eyes looked. My hands moved through the steps of

358
00:17:01,679 --> 00:17:03,879
my work, but my mind was reviewing everything I'd seen,

359
00:17:03,879 --> 00:17:06,839
looking for some order in the chaos. At every corner,

360
00:17:06,920 --> 00:17:09,160
paranoia bloomed, a shadow at the crook of a doorway,

361
00:17:09,200 --> 00:17:11,319
a tiny change in the alignment of office chairs, the

362
00:17:11,319 --> 00:17:13,599
peculiar hum of a vending machine starting up by itself.

363
00:17:13,599 --> 00:17:16,119
At two forty seven a m. When I reached the

364
00:17:16,119 --> 00:17:18,240
final floor, I paused at side the small light tea

365
00:17:18,279 --> 00:17:20,480
office one of the rare places that always seemed immane

366
00:17:20,519 --> 00:17:23,640
to the oddrey arrangements to night. Though the door stood

367
00:17:23,640 --> 00:17:25,640
ajar and a cone of light shone softly from within.

368
00:17:26,279 --> 00:17:28,880
I hesitated before pushing it open, feeling nerves bike in

369
00:17:28,920 --> 00:17:32,559
my wrists. Inside, all the desks were a manned A

370
00:17:32,640 --> 00:17:35,160
screen glowed from a standing terminal on a coroner cycling

371
00:17:35,160 --> 00:17:37,720
through a spreadsheet whose head of red simply window proceeders.

372
00:17:38,359 --> 00:17:40,960
I inch closer, pulse beating in my neck, and scanned

373
00:17:40,960 --> 00:17:43,319
two columns, first dates and times, costed always at night,

374
00:17:44,119 --> 00:17:48,079
second cryptic remarks a w amended three at a transfer

375
00:17:48,119 --> 00:17:52,079
confirmed a clear s. The pattern was undeniable now though

376
00:17:52,079 --> 00:17:54,799
the meaning stage just out of reach. What made me

377
00:17:54,839 --> 00:17:57,200
back out wasn't the screen, but the sound is stifled

378
00:17:57,319 --> 00:18:01,079
rapid click clack of feet somewhere overhead. I wa was

379
00:18:01,160 --> 00:18:03,720
some one above on the roof, or just frayed wiring

380
00:18:03,720 --> 00:18:06,160
plain tricks. I left the room as I found it

381
00:18:06,200 --> 00:18:08,000
and tried not to run. As I pulled my cotaway

382
00:18:08,559 --> 00:18:10,880
on the maintenance staile. Landing, I stopped to steady my

383
00:18:10,920 --> 00:18:13,160
breath and review the notebook that started running. My thumb

384
00:18:13,200 --> 00:18:15,839
over the rag of paper. The details felt heavy with

385
00:18:15,839 --> 00:18:17,599
ever shift to littany of the strange that had come

386
00:18:17,640 --> 00:18:20,960
to overlay the familiar. Every check door, every sweat corridor

387
00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:24,119
had begun to take on another more secret dimension. Back

388
00:18:24,160 --> 00:18:26,200
in supply, I rinsed the mop in the bucket, letting

389
00:18:26,200 --> 00:18:28,920
the cold water numb my hands. The metal shelves with

390
00:18:28,960 --> 00:18:32,480
spare light, bult gloves and garbage backs seen suddenly precarious,

391
00:18:32,599 --> 00:18:34,480
as if the whole edifice of my nightly rich were

392
00:18:34,480 --> 00:18:37,240
stood on weaker legs than I had known. I considered

393
00:18:37,240 --> 00:18:39,160
simply erasing it all from the numbers I'd written to

394
00:18:39,160 --> 00:18:41,880
the USB stick in my pocket, just throwing it away

395
00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:44,640
and pretending I was just a janitor again, not a witness.

396
00:18:45,319 --> 00:18:47,160
But as I stepped into the elevator from my last

397
00:18:47,200 --> 00:18:49,799
circuit of the evening, a memory flash two weeks earlier,

398
00:18:49,839 --> 00:18:53,319
passing ragius and exchanging knots in a lamplet silence. An

399
00:18:53,440 --> 00:18:56,680
ordinary moment, but now freighted with meaning. Had he known

400
00:18:56,720 --> 00:18:59,720
he was being watched? Had he wanted to be? I

401
00:18:59,759 --> 00:19:02,599
wrote to the ground floor, uneasy, the elevator's mirrors reflecting

402
00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:05,640
me and end its receding pairs. The lobby was deserted

403
00:19:05,680 --> 00:19:08,000
except for the security desk, where Josey sat with his

404
00:19:08,039 --> 00:19:11,400
headphones on one iro on the monitors. I considered asking

405
00:19:11,400 --> 00:19:13,720
about Ragees really pressing this time, but something in his

406
00:19:13,759 --> 00:19:17,519
posture made me pause. Instead, I signed out like all ways,

407
00:19:17,559 --> 00:19:19,559
the pen scraping on the cheap paper, and nodded in

408
00:19:19,559 --> 00:19:23,799
his direction. He nodded back three times. On the sidewalk outside,

409
00:19:23,920 --> 00:19:25,680
dawn was just a blue rumor at the edges of

410
00:19:25,720 --> 00:19:28,720
the sky. I trudged home, past the bustipot, the notebook

411
00:19:28,759 --> 00:19:31,599
burning against my hip. I told myself that by nightfall

412
00:19:31,599 --> 00:19:33,920
I'd have decided what to do, maybe even morked up

413
00:19:33,920 --> 00:19:36,160
the enough to show someone in the USB. But that

414
00:19:36,240 --> 00:19:39,119
resolve whethered under the ordinary weight of day, when new

415
00:19:39,119 --> 00:19:41,480
work nights, sleep can erase worry as easily as it

416
00:19:41,519 --> 00:19:44,759
erases time. The following evening, the weather had changed hot

417
00:19:44,799 --> 00:19:48,440
or suddenly, thunderheads massing far beyond the city's lights. My

418
00:19:48,599 --> 00:19:50,880
entry badge clicked green at the lobby turnstile, but the

419
00:19:50,880 --> 00:19:53,440
interior of the building felt alterward, like the air inside

420
00:19:53,480 --> 00:19:56,720
had thickened. I moved through the familiar start of shift procedures,

421
00:19:56,799 --> 00:19:58,759
but it was as if I was floating inside each

422
00:19:58,799 --> 00:20:01,279
gesture at the key checks, the supply closet run, the

423
00:20:01,279 --> 00:20:04,559
loading of the mot bucket and waistbags. Foset wasn't at

424
00:20:04,559 --> 00:20:06,920
his desk, just a thermas of coffee where he usually sat.

425
00:20:07,640 --> 00:20:10,079
For reasons I couldn't a got that absence made everything

426
00:20:10,079 --> 00:20:13,880
more ominous. Even the elevators seemed off longer between stops,

427
00:20:13,880 --> 00:20:17,200
slight jolts before each floor. The sequence of sounds had changed.

428
00:20:17,920 --> 00:20:21,000
I'd memorized the harmonics of doors and panels across these years,

429
00:20:21,079 --> 00:20:22,960
so the out of patents dotter sat my nose on

430
00:20:23,079 --> 00:20:26,119
edge on the sixth floor. The legal suite still carried

431
00:20:26,160 --> 00:20:29,079
the faint smell of printer toner. As I dusted the

432
00:20:29,079 --> 00:20:31,519
glass conference table, I noticed that the chests didn't line

433
00:20:31,559 --> 00:20:33,079
up perfectly at the edges of the way the des

434
00:20:33,079 --> 00:20:34,799
crew left them. They formed the shallow co of now,

435
00:20:34,839 --> 00:20:38,079
as though people had gathered urgently in haste. Papers left

436
00:20:38,079 --> 00:20:40,920
behind displayed nothing special except for a single sticky note

437
00:20:40,960 --> 00:20:43,160
which had apparently magrated from one side of the glass

438
00:20:43,160 --> 00:20:45,960
to the other. Since my last sweep scribbled in purple

439
00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:47,839
ink was a time two forty five, a few minutes

440
00:20:47,880 --> 00:20:52,039
before my usual pass. Nothing else, just the time underlinedwise.

441
00:20:52,720 --> 00:20:55,680
I stood there, staring, struggling to pass the meaning. Was

442
00:20:55,720 --> 00:20:58,200
it a rendezvous occurred? Or had it only ever been

443
00:20:58,200 --> 00:21:00,519
in inname reminder? And I was reading too much in it.

444
00:21:01,240 --> 00:21:03,759
Second guessing became its own waking dream around my route

445
00:21:03,799 --> 00:21:06,799
but hardly remembered, clearing waste baskets, over filling toilet rolls,

446
00:21:06,960 --> 00:21:09,319
every motion shadowed by the nagging certainty that I was

447
00:21:09,359 --> 00:21:11,440
being observed not just by eyes in the building, but

448
00:21:11,480 --> 00:21:14,680
by the building itself. On the eighth floor, the hous week,

449
00:21:14,680 --> 00:21:17,279
cluttered and half traumatized from the latest round of layoffs,

450
00:21:17,400 --> 00:21:19,920
was silent, safe for an insistent mechanical click from one

451
00:21:19,920 --> 00:21:23,039
of the desk fans. I lingered longer than needed, watching

452
00:21:23,039 --> 00:21:26,359
for more out of place details. Sure enough, the display

453
00:21:26,359 --> 00:21:29,119
screen on the supervisor's Desko digital picture frame showed for

454
00:21:29,160 --> 00:21:31,440
a split second a glitch. A string of numbers and

455
00:21:31,519 --> 00:21:34,000
characters flashed across the screen before resuming its loop of

456
00:21:34,079 --> 00:21:38,039
vacation photos. I jotted the numbers down fourteen point ten

457
00:21:38,079 --> 00:21:40,519
two w I N nine three point fifty two. It

458
00:21:40,599 --> 00:21:42,599
matched to fragment I just scribbed from the white board

459
00:21:42,640 --> 00:21:45,079
days before, so it stuck the shirt to my back

460
00:21:45,119 --> 00:21:47,079
as I rode the elevator up to the top floor,

461
00:21:47,240 --> 00:21:49,400
unable to shake the idea I was walking towards something

462
00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:52,279
rather than away. The door to the ten floor boardroom

463
00:21:52,319 --> 00:21:54,359
where the metallic lint at first drawn me in, was

464
00:21:54,400 --> 00:21:56,200
closed to night, and when I tried the handle it

465
00:21:56,240 --> 00:21:59,200
was locked, for the first time since it started. I checked,

466
00:21:59,400 --> 00:22:02,359
sirptitious for any signs of forced entry or tampering, but

467
00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:04,960
there was nothing except the blank mirrored veneer. My own

468
00:22:04,960 --> 00:22:08,119
anxious face multiplied back by three a M and a

469
00:22:08,200 --> 00:22:10,519
pres of stillness straight the upper floor was punctuated only

470
00:22:10,559 --> 00:22:12,720
by the faint electronic beap of badge readers. As I

471
00:22:12,759 --> 00:22:15,480
made my interest. While emptying a trash bin outside the

472
00:22:15,519 --> 00:22:17,839
et he helped usk cubicle, I caught sight of unusual

473
00:22:17,839 --> 00:22:19,839
papers sticking out from beneath the cold phone, called a

474
00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:21,839
torn piece of official looking at ahead, with only the

475
00:22:21,839 --> 00:22:24,720
phrase w BO clear third windows scribbled in the margin.

476
00:22:25,279 --> 00:22:29,000
No signature, no date, just that curious message. Clearing out

477
00:22:29,000 --> 00:22:31,240
the debris, I spotted a flash of pastic a visitor's

478
00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:34,240
badge half melted as I scorched. I didn't touch it,

479
00:22:34,359 --> 00:22:36,119
just nudged it with my brute and pushed it deeper

480
00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:38,559
under the trash, and surer whether to leave evidence alone

481
00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:41,119
or remove it as quietly as it appeared. The rest

482
00:22:41,119 --> 00:22:43,440
of the night passed with the peculiar quickness of fear.

483
00:22:44,079 --> 00:22:46,119
I realized how tuned I'd become to every tick of

484
00:22:46,160 --> 00:22:48,799
the structure, the hydraulic breadth of door closers, the momentary

485
00:22:48,799 --> 00:22:50,920
dimming of lights in the corridor before they came back.

486
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:54,480
Painfully bright objects held new meaning. A staple, a left

487
00:22:54,480 --> 00:22:56,680
open became a question. A blank space on a bulletin

488
00:22:56,720 --> 00:22:59,640
board felt like a warning. The next day, Jose was

489
00:22:59,640 --> 00:23:03,079
at his pale and shrunken eyes room red. We hadn't

490
00:23:03,079 --> 00:23:05,559
exchanged real words and weeks, but as I signed in,

491
00:23:05,680 --> 00:23:09,079
he spoke low, quick, compulsively, not meeting my gaze. He

492
00:23:09,200 --> 00:23:11,920
seen the badge locks, He asked for scratching at the

493
00:23:11,960 --> 00:23:15,079
edge of a whisper. Don't trust him, glitches, some things

494
00:23:15,160 --> 00:23:18,240
meant not to show, I answered, with a non committal shrug.

495
00:23:18,920 --> 00:23:22,200
My voice wouldn't work properly. We both let the silence settle,

496
00:23:22,319 --> 00:23:24,599
mutually and willing to admit that the building's hierarch as

497
00:23:24,640 --> 00:23:26,960
had shifted, putting us each janitor and garb in separate

498
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:30,079
lock boxes of the same unspoken threat. Later that night,

499
00:23:30,279 --> 00:23:32,480
while rolling my cut through the odd, echoing hush of

500
00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:34,880
the compliance department, where even the a smell processed, I

501
00:23:34,920 --> 00:23:36,759
caught sight of movement through the narrow window of the

502
00:23:36,799 --> 00:23:40,000
Prince storage cause. It a flock of shadow, sharp and certain,

503
00:23:40,039 --> 00:23:42,240
the rustle of fabric, the briefest slip of a slouett

504
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:44,799
against the low light. I stopped in the hall, waiting,

505
00:23:44,839 --> 00:23:47,079
hot banging in my ribs, but saw nothing. When I

506
00:23:47,119 --> 00:23:50,319
peered in. Still a metallic tang, almost a burnt smell,

507
00:23:50,400 --> 00:23:52,319
or the sharpest of cold coins lingered in the air.

508
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:54,440
It occurred to me then, how much of what I

509
00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:57,200
had noticed relied on absence rather than presents. Things missing

510
00:23:57,200 --> 00:24:00,440
from the ordinary empty spaces were familiar faces for or

511
00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:03,440
even objects used to be The rhythms I trusted could

512
00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:07,359
no longer be counted on desk arrangements changed subtly between shifts,

513
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:11,000
file folders magraded between cabinets, growing heavier with secrets. Even

514
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:14,079
my notebook filled up with cross reference times, dates, fragments

515
00:24:14,079 --> 00:24:16,319
of code, and anxious little drawings. A cluster of stick

516
00:24:16,319 --> 00:24:18,839
figures via window, A cuban circle with errors of for

517
00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:22,640
PUE with inserved markings. That Friday, after another sleepless day,

518
00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:24,480
I decided I had to make a move, if only

519
00:24:24,519 --> 00:24:26,640
to prove to myself I wasn't just sliding into delusion.

520
00:24:27,200 --> 00:24:29,279
I waited until the building was at its most deserted,

521
00:24:29,319 --> 00:24:31,799
double check every hallway, then found the nearest free computer,

522
00:24:31,839 --> 00:24:33,880
a legal TEMP station on the seventh floor, and plugged

523
00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:37,000
in the USB drive once more, this time knowing what

524
00:24:37,079 --> 00:24:40,240
I was searching for. A trolled deeper. I checked the metadator,

525
00:24:40,279 --> 00:24:42,920
searching for author names and found trace user accounts that

526
00:24:42,960 --> 00:24:46,400
didn't match any posted staff list the Damian versus reference

527
00:24:46,440 --> 00:24:49,839
shipping companies with no digital footprint. There, beneath a layer

528
00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:52,759
of spreadsheet tabs, I found the hidden tab labeled access logs,

529
00:24:52,759 --> 00:24:55,000
manual edits, and pieced together the badged numbers of at

530
00:24:55,039 --> 00:24:57,720
least three workers I'd barely ever seen in daylight, along

531
00:24:57,720 --> 00:24:59,839
with timestown soul clustered in the two zero to three

532
00:25:00,039 --> 00:25:02,640
thirty a m window with cross references to a window, open,

533
00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:04,720
slash close events and arcane codes like a job B

534
00:25:04,839 --> 00:25:08,039
forty two initiated A vender ten ninety seven cleared they

535
00:25:08,079 --> 00:25:11,119
were acting systematically exploited a gap most likely and intentional

536
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:14,119
loophole where oversight failed and records could be white, rewritten,

537
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:16,960
or simply ghosted from the system. I nearly jumped out

538
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:19,519
of my skin when a cleaning supervisor came down the corridor.

539
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:22,759
I yanked the USB, shoved it in my pocket, and

540
00:25:22,799 --> 00:25:26,480
feigned emptying the recycling. He didn't stop, disgrunted, and kept moving.

541
00:25:27,079 --> 00:25:31,039
Once he was gone, adrenaline surged. All the confirmations I'd

542
00:25:31,039 --> 00:25:34,359
collected clustered like a true pattern. Now feeling reckless, I

543
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:36,319
tried the door to the server room, but it needed

544
00:25:36,319 --> 00:25:39,240
a second level badge. Only as I pressed the knob,

545
00:25:39,319 --> 00:25:41,759
I spotted out the baseboat, an old cleaning tack faded

546
00:25:41,759 --> 00:25:44,480
to a legibility. I picked it up, pocketed it, then

547
00:25:44,519 --> 00:25:47,400
moved on pulse, still skipping in my chest. When the

548
00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:50,039
shift ended, I found myself sitting in herse's break room

549
00:25:50,079 --> 00:25:52,400
with a bank of old security monitors still flickered with

550
00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:55,559
pale blue feats. He was pretending to watch, but his

551
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:58,920
focus was elsewhere, somewhere deep inside himself. I sat for

552
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:00,920
a long time, stare ring at a canter feed of

553
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:04,400
the loading dock while he nursed his coffee in both hands. Finally,

554
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:06,480
he spoke so quiet I nearly missed it. Some nights,

555
00:26:06,559 --> 00:26:09,599
this building leaves a mark, he said, don't let it.

556
00:26:10,279 --> 00:26:12,720
What was I supposed to do? Go to the police.

557
00:26:12,759 --> 00:26:14,759
Of the pile of pat and pens and password protected

558
00:26:14,799 --> 00:26:18,839
spreadsheets quote at hr, the same chart that had perched

559
00:26:18,880 --> 00:26:21,680
all mention of radish, raised the anomaly from the roll call,

560
00:26:21,759 --> 00:26:25,839
regurgitated the word confidentiality whenever anyone pressed. I left the

561
00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:27,519
Knight's kit in the locker and walked home through the

562
00:26:27,519 --> 00:26:29,839
blue gray dawn, the streets empty except for the first

563
00:26:29,839 --> 00:26:32,319
sprinters to the CrossFit gym and alone Cabby nodding behind

564
00:26:32,319 --> 00:26:35,079
the wheel. My apartments, stale but safe, felt like a

565
00:26:35,119 --> 00:26:38,039
different country. I laid out my notebook in the USB

566
00:26:38,119 --> 00:26:39,599
and the counter and sat for a long time with

567
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:42,680
the windows closes, trying to bring the threads together. There

568
00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:44,880
was a pattern and a plan, and whatever it was,

569
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:47,720
it wasn't just about stolen mugs or badge clutches. It

570
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:51,799
was more powerful, more purposeful. The next day I slept late,

571
00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:55,119
walk upsweading, the details of my dreams already fading. A

572
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:58,160
phone buzz near my pillow. The building automateds scheduling line

573
00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:01,799
text terse and I personal night chief confirmed. Arrived by

574
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:04,839
nine deero PM to night routine maintenance. Upper floors restricted

575
00:27:04,839 --> 00:27:08,920
post midnight, no explanation. I arrived from my shift on edge.

576
00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:12,200
The sense of foreboding was now total. The security staff

577
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:14,880
two new faces, both with crisp unreadable as stood by

578
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:18,440
the lobby turnstiles. Jose was nowhere to be seen. I

579
00:27:18,519 --> 00:27:20,599
tried to keep my head down, signed in as always,

580
00:27:20,759 --> 00:27:24,279
and started my rounds. The elevators, for what it was worth,

581
00:27:24,400 --> 00:27:26,519
worked again, but carried a hitch at the ten floor,

582
00:27:26,519 --> 00:27:29,400
as if pausing to consider my presence. The top floor

583
00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:32,000
boardroom's door was locked, but that was no longer unusual.

584
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:34,920
Desk changes had slowed a little, as if the building

585
00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:37,720
itself were catching its breath. But on the seventh floor

586
00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:40,319
I found a blue fold a lying perfectly squared at

587
00:27:40,359 --> 00:27:42,359
the junction of the corridors, a spot nobody would have

588
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:45,960
picked unless intentional. Inside were dated four plans printed on

589
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:48,759
security paper, each annotated in the margin with the same

590
00:27:48,759 --> 00:27:52,359
looping phrase window opens two zero three thirty proceed quiet,

591
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:56,359
No signature, just that severe handwriting. That night, as I

592
00:27:56,400 --> 00:27:58,480
returned to the supply closet near the sixth floor. I

593
00:27:58,519 --> 00:28:02,799
heard voices raised in argument some way or above. Hush, insistent, unintelligible,

594
00:28:02,799 --> 00:28:05,839
but the urgency was clear. I held my breath, pressed

595
00:28:05,839 --> 00:28:08,039
my ear to the cold metal door, but couldn't catch more.

596
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:11,000
When the voices faded, I merged to find the corridor

597
00:28:11,079 --> 00:28:13,240
empty except for the faintest trace of cologne and a

598
00:28:13,279 --> 00:28:15,160
candy wrap, a crush flat on the floor of badge

599
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:18,000
numbers gold on the back, and panic black ink. Returning

600
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:19,519
to my cart, I caught my own gaze in the

601
00:28:19,519 --> 00:28:22,640
glass and almost didn't recognize myself, face, drawn eyes, frantic,

602
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:26,200
my hands usually so steady, jittered around the notebook and pen.

603
00:28:26,839 --> 00:28:29,319
I considered leaving the building right then, just walking out,

604
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:32,680
but another false curiosity or dredda kept me rooted down

605
00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:35,240
sirs again. I tried to act normal, but the atmosphere

606
00:28:35,279 --> 00:28:37,440
was so thick now that every small sound and elevated ding,

607
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:40,079
the trumpeting sigh of an event, even the water cooler gurgle,

608
00:28:40,119 --> 00:28:43,240
seemed freighted. With consequence, I realized I hadn't eaten and

609
00:28:43,319 --> 00:28:45,200
I was, and tried to summon the ease of routine,

610
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:47,119
but nothing taste of ride, and each bite stuck in

611
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:50,279
my throat. In the empty lobby, I noticed the Janet's cart,

612
00:28:50,319 --> 00:28:52,920
identical to mine, but new, gleaming under the hard light,

613
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:56,720
standing aband a near reception. I hesitated glancing around, but

614
00:28:56,799 --> 00:28:59,559
nobody seemed to be nearby. Something about it made my

615
00:28:59,599 --> 00:29:01,680
heat stand and I gave it a wide berth as

616
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:03,839
I rolled my own cart out to the hallway. But

617
00:29:03,920 --> 00:29:06,039
as I turned on to the main concourse, I saw

618
00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:08,599
with cold certainty a faint reflection moving in the glass

619
00:29:08,599 --> 00:29:10,559
panels twenty feet ahead of shape. No one else should

620
00:29:10,559 --> 00:29:13,000
have been able to cast. By the time I reached

621
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:15,519
the spot, the corridor was empty, but an elevator pined

622
00:29:15,559 --> 00:29:17,359
up to ten, and the doors closed quietly, as if

623
00:29:17,359 --> 00:29:20,759
someone was already inside. That night, I slept badly, if

624
00:29:20,759 --> 00:29:22,720
at all, feeling like I had failed some crucial tests

625
00:29:22,759 --> 00:29:26,079
by investigating, by watching, or maybe bus surviving. When my

626
00:29:26,119 --> 00:29:28,359
alarm woked me for the next night's shift, fetique led

627
00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:31,839
the boundary between sleep. I'm waking, But the strangeness of Sylvantow,

628
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:34,039
the way it pushed back against scrutiny, the way its

629
00:29:34,079 --> 00:29:36,640
stores blinked in and out with each missing employer, had

630
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:40,079
become impossible to disregard. If there was a window for secrets,

631
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:43,279
it was closing one normal, exhausted janitor's shift at a time.

632
00:29:43,839 --> 00:29:46,240
The changes began at the margins, small enough that quite

633
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:48,839
a person might have ridden them off the main entrances.

634
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:51,400
Glass doors, so often scuffed by traffic, were polished to

635
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:54,400
polish that threw back. My face was startling clardy. The

636
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:56,680
overhead bulbs in the lobby now hummed, louder tuned a

637
00:29:56,680 --> 00:30:00,319
half step. Two sharl security presents doubled. Two younger guards

638
00:30:00,319 --> 00:30:03,680
and tailored windbreakers flight the badge desk, Their eyes great

639
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:06,400
restless followed every motion, making a show of a tenderness

640
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:09,559
with ever word. Josey's theramist, its battle bled smear with

641
00:30:09,559 --> 00:30:13,000
sticker residue, was there, but its owner had vanished. I

642
00:30:13,079 --> 00:30:15,559
greeted the silence as if it owed me something on

643
00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:17,559
my way in the creak of my shoes against the

644
00:30:17,599 --> 00:30:20,880
newly waxed tile carried out into the echoing atrium. No music,

645
00:30:21,119 --> 00:30:24,079
no radio playing from the guard post. Even the coffee

646
00:30:24,119 --> 00:30:26,279
machines stayed dark, as though it too had been cautioned

647
00:30:26,279 --> 00:30:29,160
into a kind of waiting. Most at said lyneval hand

648
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:32,039
lettered fliers on two of the elevators warning of scheduled

649
00:30:32,039 --> 00:30:34,119
maintenance above the six four. Never a good sign in

650
00:30:34,119 --> 00:30:36,799
this building, and an unlikely coincidence, given the pattern of

651
00:30:36,799 --> 00:30:41,319
closed circusicracy had already witnessed. A network engineer, sometimes passed

652
00:30:41,359 --> 00:30:43,559
by Nina, always with her head froms clamped on, walked

653
00:30:43,559 --> 00:30:45,599
briskly out of the elevators with a box of cables

654
00:30:45,599 --> 00:30:48,920
and a determined frown. She didn't look my way. Down

655
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:51,039
the hallway, a cleaning cot moved, but the man behind

656
00:30:51,079 --> 00:30:53,279
it was new, older than me, his posture still army, straight,

657
00:30:53,319 --> 00:30:56,279
looking anywhere but at me. A subtle shuffle and routines.

658
00:30:57,039 --> 00:30:59,079
I moved around him, giving as wide a berth as

659
00:30:59,079 --> 00:31:02,440
he'd given me. Inside the narrow staff corridor, unlocked my

660
00:31:02,440 --> 00:31:05,559
supply closet. Some one had relocated the first EVE kit

661
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:07,920
and replaced it with a stack of untouched blue rags.

662
00:31:08,319 --> 00:31:11,359
The inventory sheet was gone. On one wall. A sign

663
00:31:11,440 --> 00:31:14,160
read all incidents to be reported immediately to Building admon

664
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:17,079
at ex ten twenty two. That number I knew was

665
00:31:17,079 --> 00:31:19,720
not the usual number for ADMIN, a warning that was

666
00:31:19,799 --> 00:31:23,720
meant for me. Perhaps the building's mood was brutal by

667
00:31:23,799 --> 00:31:26,119
my second circuit, I'd already had to just my normal

668
00:31:26,119 --> 00:31:29,880
cleaning path twice to accommodate restricted floor access. Flour Or

669
00:31:29,880 --> 00:31:32,559
eight bore the strongest warning in bold red maintenance shut

670
00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:35,640
uno entry after eleven fifteen p m. Judging by the

671
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:37,839
scattered dust outside the door frame, the work inside was

672
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:40,880
less about eachtrac repair than privacy on the doors to

673
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:45,119
legal another yellow Flier schedule update. Apartment relocation begins immediately.

674
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:48,799
Just yesterday, this wing had housed three dozen staff thereaftermuth

675
00:31:48,839 --> 00:31:51,799
present in the usual debris of human occupation to night,

676
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:54,480
it was hollow, with only the memory of voices clinging

677
00:31:54,519 --> 00:31:57,880
to the corners. I found myself drifting whenever the holes emptied,

678
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:00,480
glancing over my shoulder at the new guard's pacing the lobby.

679
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:03,079
It was impossible to say whether I was being watched

680
00:32:03,160 --> 00:32:05,480
or simply watched myself. But when my cart wheel squeaked

681
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:07,519
a little too loudil near the main stairwell, one of

682
00:32:07,519 --> 00:32:09,319
the new guards leaned and to examine a panel in

683
00:32:09,359 --> 00:32:12,160
the wall. Listening of surveilling, I couldn't be sure. There

684
00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:14,640
hadn't been a word from a char since Ragish disappeared.

685
00:32:15,319 --> 00:32:17,640
No sign of his badge number on any checklists, no

686
00:32:17,759 --> 00:32:21,079
whispered updates from the morning staff. What passed for normalcy

687
00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:24,599
was as fragile as old glass upstairs. The stranger's change

688
00:32:24,599 --> 00:32:27,680
was the atmosphere itself, Every corridor more pressurize, every shadow

689
00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:30,559
more abbrusive. When I finished a circuit and returned to

690
00:32:30,559 --> 00:32:34,079
restop my supplies, I found a siled cardboard box, unexpected

691
00:32:34,119 --> 00:32:36,559
and a marked on the floor by my closet. I

692
00:32:36,599 --> 00:32:38,440
opened it to find nothing more that a packet of

693
00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:41,319
their filters, stacked in nervous symmetry, and a scrawled note

694
00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:46,079
routine maintained visibility, no name, just those words. It wasn't

695
00:32:46,079 --> 00:32:49,559
my handwriting. Later, after the supervisor finished lecturing the other

696
00:32:49,599 --> 00:32:52,079
cleaners about strict deterrence to assignment, I checked the lower

697
00:32:52,119 --> 00:32:55,440
conference rooms that had always felt safe, always predictable, But

698
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:57,920
they'd taken on the qualities of a news props. Too correct,

699
00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:01,400
too clean, Each chair back firmed into place, lights glaring

700
00:33:01,440 --> 00:33:04,920
and harsh, no mugs, no pens, no indication of any

701
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:08,079
human that day or evening. The setting was drained of personality.

702
00:33:08,720 --> 00:33:11,519
On the upper floors, budge readers now blinked unpercolor. I

703
00:33:11,519 --> 00:33:13,559
hadn't seen before, and a little light above the ten

704
00:33:13,640 --> 00:33:16,799
floor boardroom blinked twice whenever I approached, as if considering me,

705
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:19,920
then disregarding. I reached for my master key and found

706
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:21,839
it had been replaced on my ring by another identical

707
00:33:21,839 --> 00:33:24,160
in shape, but it testated in the lock catching at

708
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:26,359
a subtle point, as though a new tumbling had been installed.

709
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:29,200
Deep in the supply closet, I sat atop a box

710
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:32,079
of cleaning rags, the USB drive in my hand. With

711
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:34,440
my thumb, I clicked and unclicked the covering to bidding

712
00:33:34,440 --> 00:33:37,680
my next move. Every instinct said to wait, to observe more,

713
00:33:37,759 --> 00:33:40,680
but a new counterforce, anxiety maybe, or in emerging sense

714
00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:42,640
that time itself was narrow and refused to let me

715
00:33:42,680 --> 00:33:46,039
stand still. Just past midnight, I stirred my cart, made

716
00:33:46,039 --> 00:33:47,960
my way to the idy bullpen, and docked under a

717
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:50,680
ceiling cam I had long ago realized didn't record anything useful.

718
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:53,119
After two in the morning, a terminal, I hooked the

719
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:55,559
US be in and began the slow, careful troll again.

720
00:33:56,200 --> 00:33:59,680
This time I navigated deeper the mass SPREADSHEETABS when just

721
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:02,359
dummy data, they were reference points connectable to the badged

722
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:05,480
numbers I had cataloged in my pocket notebook. Reviewing the

723
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:09,039
digital bread combs, a rhythm emerged columns of numbers, names

724
00:34:09,039 --> 00:34:11,480
of employees, each followed by two time stamps in a

725
00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:14,679
three letter code. The gaps told the story as clearly

726
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:17,440
as the data one window for access two zero a m.

727
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:20,239
To three thirty a m. Almost every Thursday and Sunday night,

728
00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:22,840
with log at its matching credentials for upper management badged

729
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:27,440
numbers alongside those recently disappeared from staff rosters. My stomach rowled.

730
00:34:28,079 --> 00:34:31,199
The transfers appended to transaction memos w I N nine

731
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:34,199
point three DOOEP forty two close before dawn, had references

732
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:38,039
to international accounts, shadow vendors, and phrases misticably lifted from

733
00:34:38,039 --> 00:34:41,719
the window of opportunities grabs i'd found cross referencing. I

734
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:44,440
recognized names at the top of the digital hierarchy. Directors

735
00:34:44,480 --> 00:34:47,360
of finance VP, even the legal supervisor, everyone placed higher

736
00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:49,360
than the night workers, everyone with access to the part

737
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:52,679
of the network nobody mentioned at regular meetings. I became

738
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:55,440
conscious as I scrolled of the building, settling around me,

739
00:34:56,039 --> 00:34:58,400
each mechanical breath of the eight track, each click from

740
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:01,000
a distant door now sounded measure like a clock winding

741
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:04,719
down to some necessary event. I noted badged numbers, matched

742
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:07,079
them to offices I had found alder the same small group,

743
00:35:07,199 --> 00:35:10,400
night after night, each linked by invisible threats. As the

744
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:12,679
morn its glow faded, I saw also how close I

745
00:35:12,679 --> 00:35:14,599
had come to being one of those missing my own idea,

746
00:35:14,639 --> 00:35:18,119
my route a dupakeki. They thought themselves invisible, but they

747
00:35:18,159 --> 00:35:21,000
hadn't counted on the quiet tentionin papery someone below the radar.

748
00:35:21,639 --> 00:35:23,440
For the first time in weeks, I felt the group

749
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:25,159
of certainty, a map not of hope, but of the

750
00:35:25,199 --> 00:35:28,559
inevitable I'd left there. He bulpin in automatic motion, potful,

751
00:35:28,599 --> 00:35:30,880
and pulse shot behind my ribs. When the elevator of

752
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:34,559
Chandon settled on nine, doors opening far too gently, the

753
00:35:34,599 --> 00:35:37,320
interior was empty, save for a thin dusting of carpet fibers.

754
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:39,760
Some one had swept the cab in recently, or hidden evidence.

755
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:42,639
I stepped in from the button for ten and found

756
00:35:42,639 --> 00:35:45,880
myself holding my breath through the short, slow ride. On ten.

757
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:48,960
Nothing moved. The whole was each bit as voided as ever,

758
00:35:49,079 --> 00:35:50,800
save for the low mutter of a vending machine. In

759
00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:52,800
the break area, and the faintest drift of what smelled

760
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:55,039
like burn coffee, the last token of someone working hard

761
00:35:55,079 --> 00:35:57,639
to cover up a restless night. But as I turned

762
00:35:57,679 --> 00:36:00,199
toward the frosted glass panel outside the conference room, a

763
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:02,639
set of shadows shifted behind the glass, quick and sure,

764
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:05,559
the faint scrape of a rolling chair. I ducked backward,

765
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:08,880
flattening myself into the elcho for the janitor's closet. My

766
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:11,920
hand slid into my pocket, feeling for the notebook. My

767
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:14,920
fingers shook. A whisper rose from inside the room of

768
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:17,719
voice I recognized as belonging to one of the senior managers,

769
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:20,159
speaking and clipped phrases with that warm window was set

770
00:36:20,239 --> 00:36:22,880
clear entry check the logs again. I could not make

771
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:25,079
out the response, only the clatter of a keyboard, the

772
00:36:25,159 --> 00:36:28,480
dry cough of papers being shuffled. My vantage point afforded

773
00:36:28,519 --> 00:36:31,119
me only the outline of those inside, four maybe five,

774
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:35,199
all familiar silhouettes. I forced myself to move, taking the

775
00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:37,639
stairs down one flight, then back up, circling past the

776
00:36:37,639 --> 00:36:40,440
dead elevator bank to reach my preferred vantage of maintenance closet.

777
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:43,360
Why with a silent security panel from the gap between

778
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:45,440
the door and jam. I watched the conference room through

779
00:36:45,519 --> 00:36:48,559
layers of glass, in the blue globe of monitors, figures,

780
00:36:48,599 --> 00:36:52,280
hunt Schover's greens, passing envelopes and hard disks, muttering in low,

781
00:36:52,480 --> 00:36:55,480
urgent voices. A flash of a foreign bank logo on

782
00:36:55,519 --> 00:36:59,360
a boldging envelope, the rednick passage of cash counted and divided,

783
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:02,840
packed with the efficiency of practiced hands, one tall figure

784
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:06,559
bolding narrow shoulder to type, fiercely costurcking screens with the novostick.

785
00:37:07,239 --> 00:37:09,800
I fished out my phone, tolding it to the thinnest angle,

786
00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:12,480
hoping to snag in, and blowed photo without risking a flash.

787
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:14,840
My gaze flicked from the edge of the window, tracking

788
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:17,599
each face to the reflection, until my own eyes multiplied,

789
00:37:17,679 --> 00:37:20,719
stared back. Someone inside saw me in the flicker of

790
00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:24,239
a laptop screen. They hesitated, A warning word was hiss.

791
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:28,119
All heads turned swift as bods Panick drove me back

792
00:37:28,159 --> 00:37:30,880
from the door, stumbling toward the silver stairs, heard hammering

793
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:33,400
a flourry of motion behind me, she is tharting. The

794
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:35,719
hiss of a startled voice forced me into fly, careening

795
00:37:35,719 --> 00:37:38,440
down darken corridors. I'd cleaned a thousand times but suddenly

796
00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:42,480
found sinister and foreign. They knew I'd pushed too far.

797
00:37:43,199 --> 00:37:45,960
I darted into a shadowed alcove, pressed my shoulders to cold,

798
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:48,840
drywal fought to still my ragged breathing down the hall

799
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:52,800
fist up. Sneered slow, now measured, searching predatory in their confidence.

800
00:37:53,519 --> 00:37:56,360
Desperate for escape, I doubled back and found tucked behind

801
00:37:56,400 --> 00:37:59,159
an unused conferent suite, an arrow side passage concealed by

802
00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:03,000
rolling potition. It led past electrical cabinets and hidden stacks

803
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:05,360
of cardboard ship in boxes, farther than I had ever

804
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:08,280
known the floor to go. Half way down, I spotted

805
00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:10,519
a door, unmarked except for a ristue shadow, where a

806
00:38:10,599 --> 00:38:13,320
room namply it used to be my master key, sweating

807
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:16,280
in my palm, turned with a reluctant click. Inside, the

808
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:18,440
air was different, close, stale, with the chemical burn of

809
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:22,519
old paper. Insolvent fluorescent tubes flickered overhead, illuminating a space

810
00:38:22,559 --> 00:38:25,360
crowned with bags of shredded documents, boxes marked with years

811
00:38:25,360 --> 00:38:28,639
now long passed. In one corner, the batter desk board,

812
00:38:28,679 --> 00:38:30,000
the weight of what appeared to be a pile of

813
00:38:30,039 --> 00:38:32,960
plastic id badges, a drift several inches deep, all names

814
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:36,320
and faces, a decades worth gun missing on the nearest one.

815
00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:39,719
I recognized Ragish's picture, cracked and dirty. His eyes in

816
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:42,199
the photo seemed to follow mine. At the center of

817
00:38:42,199 --> 00:38:44,440
this hidden room, a single lamp burned atop a stack

818
00:38:44,480 --> 00:38:47,039
of papers, dozens of invisses, each signed and stamped with

819
00:38:47,119 --> 00:38:49,920
foreign insignias, corded with the now familiar directional arrows and

820
00:38:49,920 --> 00:38:54,000
cryptic window references. Here was the ledger of disappearances and movement,

821
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:56,880
left half complete. A click of a tongue behind me,

822
00:38:56,920 --> 00:38:59,519
a sound I couldn't dread. I turned and was not

823
00:38:59,559 --> 00:39:01,760
startled to see the night Gud standing in the door frame.

824
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:04,719
OSE's shirt was still rumpled, but a new badge hung

825
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:07,519
around his neck, one that read Operations Supervisor, a roll

826
00:39:07,559 --> 00:39:10,920
he'd never mentioned. Holding his voice quite but commanding, caught me.

827
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:15,199
You shouldn't be here, he murmured, you really shouldn't. I

828
00:39:15,199 --> 00:39:17,920
stared at the display of badges and shredded paper, unable

829
00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:21,280
to summon even a whisper. He studied my reaction, then added,

830
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:23,960
nothing good comes to those who ask too many questions. Here,

831
00:39:24,119 --> 00:39:27,440
most just disappear proof no one keeps looking. I managed,

832
00:39:27,679 --> 00:39:30,199
rageous the others. What do they do with them? They

833
00:39:30,199 --> 00:39:32,280
had just taken out of the pattern. That's all you need.

834
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:35,760
His look wasn't quite threatening, almost pitting. You want to

835
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:38,119
get home to night, walk away, forget what you saw,

836
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:41,039
Leave the key. He never saw me. His hand tightened

837
00:39:41,039 --> 00:39:43,039
subtily at his side, but he didn't bar the door.

838
00:39:43,599 --> 00:39:46,960
In other rounds about to start, he continued softer. The

839
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:51,199
window closes and opens, always another janitor, another night. My

840
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:53,599
mind flashed from the badges to my own, the notebook

841
00:39:53,599 --> 00:39:55,599
in my pocket, the USB stick, a record of everything,

842
00:39:55,679 --> 00:39:58,519
but a record others might never see. I stepped backward,

843
00:39:58,639 --> 00:40:01,679
edging past Jose, barely believing he let me go. I

844
00:40:01,719 --> 00:40:04,519
found myself pouring through the labyrinth of corridors, stair walls

845
00:40:04,559 --> 00:40:08,159
and side howles, mind spinning through implications. Escape became a

846
00:40:08,199 --> 00:40:11,360
matter of instinct. The clarity I had felt earlier replaced

847
00:40:11,360 --> 00:40:14,079
now with a primal urgency, get out, get away, before

848
00:40:14,119 --> 00:40:16,119
whatever fade awaited. Those who saw too much could catch

849
00:40:16,199 --> 00:40:18,320
up with me as well. I emerged in the bleak

850
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:20,719
silence of the receiving dark, the mechanical arms of the

851
00:40:20,760 --> 00:40:23,840
recycling chutess humming as though ushering me out. I slipped

852
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:26,000
my badge off my shirt, tucked it into my coat pocket,

853
00:40:26,079 --> 00:40:29,760
and shuffled into the night. Air windows high overhead reflected

854
00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:31,840
nothing but city fog and a jittering grid of office

855
00:40:31,880 --> 00:40:34,719
lamp Late an hour or later, having circled the block

856
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:36,679
three times to make sure I wasn't followed, I stood

857
00:40:36,679 --> 00:40:40,199
outside Silvian Tower, stirring at its blank facade. The bees

858
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:42,639
whipped around my ears, biting at the remains of my resolve,

859
00:40:43,239 --> 00:40:45,199
my hand closed out in the u s b feeling

860
00:40:45,199 --> 00:40:48,119
its angles dig into my skin. I was alive for now,

861
00:40:48,159 --> 00:40:50,559
but the knowledge I carried separated me, made even the

862
00:40:50,559 --> 00:40:52,960
air itself feel like glass between myself and the world.

863
00:40:53,599 --> 00:40:57,599
No sirens sounded, no rescue came. The only evidence the

864
00:40:57,679 --> 00:40:59,800
night left was a stray scrap of torn badge linearuts

865
00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:03,400
stuck to my butte fredbare, anonymous, disposable. The threat was

866
00:41:03,400 --> 00:41:05,800
never spoken, but it was all around stay out or

867
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:08,480
vanish as easily as those whose names were never mentioned again.

868
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:11,280
The next morning, my phone blaired with texts from the

869
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:15,320
cleaning company shift change. New supervisor were poor for de

870
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:18,559
crew induction at one zero p m. No reason given,

871
00:41:18,679 --> 00:41:21,840
no invitation to ask, had words spread or was it

872
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:24,719
just a sudden convenience for those in charge? The question

873
00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:27,320
ham unanswerable. As I washed out the bitter taste of

874
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:30,199
office air from my math at my new station, daylight

875
00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:32,840
and bustle, florescented without the bite, I found myself shadowed

876
00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:35,239
on training by yet another stranger, A brisk woman with

877
00:41:35,239 --> 00:41:38,440
a budge reading tempadman. She washed me closely, her clipboard

878
00:41:38,519 --> 00:41:42,000
near still eyes, cool inascessing. Keep to your assigned areer,

879
00:41:42,079 --> 00:41:44,559
don't swap tasks, she said quietly, as she led me

880
00:41:44,559 --> 00:41:48,519
through my paces. Building policy non negotiable hand of very

881
00:41:48,599 --> 00:41:52,760
strictly monitored staff. Numbers onswered, and floors were altered. Fewer people,

882
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:56,360
new faces, brighter uniforms. Desks that had played a part

883
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:59,119
in my prior night's obsessions had been emptied, their contents

884
00:41:59,119 --> 00:42:02,880
sealed and cowdboard collected. No mention of ragiush, no talk

885
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:06,360
of anyone's absence, no sign that those spaces were ever personal.

886
00:42:06,880 --> 00:42:08,960
The windows in the upper floors now shimmered with a

887
00:42:08,960 --> 00:42:12,800
strange film added for privacy, whatever that meant. More signs

888
00:42:12,840 --> 00:42:16,320
warned about alert levels at its rights, strict monitoring. A

889
00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:19,480
polite but sharp eyed security officer supervised every shift change,

890
00:42:19,519 --> 00:42:22,760
now jotting notes into a thiche red notebook, even the

891
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:26,679
smallest deviation from protocultrig good questions the building wants only

892
00:42:26,719 --> 00:42:28,559
a place to white, clean, to set right, have become

893
00:42:28,559 --> 00:42:31,840
a system for rendering whole people invisible. I finished out

894
00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:35,039
that first day shift adrift, each task to connor knew

895
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:38,199
provisial quality, to linger anywhere, felt risky to speak with

896
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:41,280
any worker for too long a breach. When my relief arrived,

897
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:43,280
showing me out just as the afternoon light cut away

898
00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:45,559
from the facade, I found myself more fitted thanat or

899
00:42:45,599 --> 00:42:48,400
any night. Spend awake on the city bus home. As

900
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:50,480
towers slid past in a haze of even light, I

901
00:42:50,519 --> 00:42:52,679
realized I'd never feel peace in the presence of blank

902
00:42:52,719 --> 00:42:55,840
glass again. The face is I'd seen play acting loyalty

903
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:58,760
by day, complicit by night, would haunt every hallway, every corridor,

904
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:02,280
every flick of reflex. Even with the USB still cold

905
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:04,639
in my coat and the notebook now hidden beneath my mattress,

906
00:43:04,679 --> 00:43:06,880
the pattern had already consumed its witness, me joining the

907
00:43:06,960 --> 00:43:09,039
ranks of those change. If not a for I vanished,

908
00:43:09,679 --> 00:43:12,800
a weak blurred by silence replaced the talk that once

909
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:16,079
hovered at the outer rings of office gossip, absences, rules,

910
00:43:16,159 --> 00:43:19,800
changed routines, new hires. The odd joke about the window

911
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:22,760
had faded, supplanted by stride in tone less like camaraderie,

912
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:25,880
more like caution. No one mentioned missing faces, but you

913
00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:28,039
could see the alertness in their eyes, fear of stepping

914
00:43:28,039 --> 00:43:30,480
on in a building where the edges ran in. Then

915
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:32,960
one afternoon, as I left, a manager from h R

916
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:36,280
stopped me, smiling too broadly. Thank you for your service,

917
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:38,480
she said, but to morrow please report to the down

918
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:40,679
town site. There is a new opportunity to better fitting

919
00:43:40,679 --> 00:43:44,360
your experience. All requested materials will be transferred. What choice

920
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:48,119
did I have? None? They'd dokstrated the handoff, not out

921
00:43:48,119 --> 00:43:50,920
of petty vengeance, but because machinery run by secrets can't

922
00:43:51,000 --> 00:43:54,320
risk a single attentive bastender. The building would schurn out

923
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:57,440
another janitor, another set of silent rituals, and the cycle

924
00:43:57,440 --> 00:44:00,519
would continue. My own replacement already linger at the edge

925
00:44:00,519 --> 00:44:03,159
of vision, cleaning rags over his arm, face as hard

926
00:44:03,199 --> 00:44:05,679
to remember as my own reflection in those haunted mirrord holes.

927
00:44:06,400 --> 00:44:08,599
At night, I found myself for tracing my road of memory,

928
00:44:08,639 --> 00:44:11,159
each desk, door and corridor mapped in a lattice work

929
00:44:11,159 --> 00:44:13,840
of dread. When sleep finally came, they was pierced by

930
00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:16,920
false alarms, figures in class in crooked patterns, the dull

931
00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:19,760
repeated tap of keys, typing messages. I could never decode

932
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:22,800
my hands. It's for evidence, but Clarty had always belonged

933
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:25,320
to some one else. On my last pass out of

934
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:27,239
the building, a dusk as hot and badly lit as

935
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:29,880
any night previous, I paused brief in the lobby, feeling

936
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:32,920
watched by the new security. My final badge swag came

937
00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:36,440
harder than intended, the plastic flexing of protest. The silence

938
00:44:36,519 --> 00:44:38,679
roared in my ears as I crossed the threshold, leaving

939
00:44:38,719 --> 00:44:42,599
behind surfaces white clean, and all stores scrub tash. That night,

940
00:44:42,679 --> 00:44:45,000
unable to sleep, I wandered past silver in towers based

941
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:47,960
neck crane to the upper stores. The windows glared back

942
00:44:48,119 --> 00:44:50,679
blank and infinite, but in one pulsey glinches at the

943
00:44:50,679 --> 00:44:53,920
meeting of darkness and Foressen speckoned the city, thrumbed and

944
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:57,159
attentive to a janitor's anxiety. I waited, as if for

945
00:44:57,159 --> 00:44:59,519
a sign, the building looming over at Saiwa Kingdom and

946
00:44:59,599 --> 00:45:02,760
burdened the memory of a thousand quiet hands. A passing

947
00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:05,800
bus blared its exhaust into the blue black dark. In

948
00:45:05,840 --> 00:45:08,239
that instant, the ten floor conference room when a flickered

949
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:10,599
a court, maybe by the arc of a passing car's headlight,

950
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:13,239
or maybe it was something else, a signal to those

951
00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:16,920
watching from within. I stepped closer, squinting up against the glare,

952
00:45:16,920 --> 00:45:18,960
and for a split second saw a face press pail

953
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:22,239
to the glass, amoving almost luminous features blurred beyond recognition.

954
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:25,199
Something in the posture suggested not a guard on duty,

955
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:28,079
nor relaid worker, but someone waiting to be seen. The

956
00:45:28,159 --> 00:45:30,800
moment broke as a truck rumbled by reflections sliding across

957
00:45:30,840 --> 00:45:33,719
the facade. A sharp then sound echoed behind me from

958
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:36,679
the building's atrium. I glanced through the doors and noticed

959
00:45:36,679 --> 00:45:39,400
the new janitor's cut gleaming pristine, very much at a

960
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:41,400
place abandoned in the low be where no one lingered

961
00:45:41,440 --> 00:45:44,199
the ire. When I reached from my phone, my hand

962
00:45:44,239 --> 00:45:47,519
brushed against my jacket pocket, where something light and unfamiliar waited.

963
00:45:48,079 --> 00:45:50,159
I fished out a slip of folded paper, smaller than

964
00:45:50,199 --> 00:45:52,440
a business car, textured as if handled by many others

965
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:55,920
before me. It read in neat block letters, you were seen.

966
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:59,599
The window is never truly closed. A breeze snapped at

967
00:45:59,599 --> 00:46:02,519
the paper. I let it fall to the sidewalk, stepping

968
00:46:02,519 --> 00:46:04,840
away from the tower head, lower the whole edifice behind me,

969
00:46:04,880 --> 00:46:07,519
humming with secrets that would never surface again. As my

970
00:46:07,559 --> 00:46:10,199
footsteps faded on the empty street, I realized I would

971
00:46:10,199 --> 00:46:12,719
never walk past glass in darkness without wondering who or

972
00:46:12,719 --> 00:46:15,960
what was watching from the other side. As my footsteps

973
00:46:15,960 --> 00:46:18,440
faded on the empty street, I realized I would never

974
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:20,760
walk past glass in darkness without wondering who or what

975
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:23,599
was watching from the other side. A day later, I

976
00:46:23,639 --> 00:46:27,000
returned from my new assignment. The city's morning light streaking

977
00:46:27,000 --> 00:46:29,760
in through my apartment window lent Sylvie entarror, false innocence

978
00:46:29,760 --> 00:46:33,320
that felt insulting. After everything had seen, washing up, dressing,

979
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:35,880
packing my simple kit for the daytime work, I performed

980
00:46:35,880 --> 00:46:37,840
each at with care, as though preparing for a test.

981
00:46:37,880 --> 00:46:40,519
No one would grade, half expecting my successor on the

982
00:46:40,599 --> 00:46:43,599
night shift would furanish as quietly as the last guilt

983
00:46:43,599 --> 00:46:46,440
and gratitude nagged at my insides. I had survived, kept

984
00:46:46,440 --> 00:46:48,599
my data points and doubts, but could not rid myself

985
00:46:48,599 --> 00:46:50,880
of the conviction that survival was a kind of complicity.

986
00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:53,599
At the new office of bright Glass heavy complex in

987
00:46:53,639 --> 00:46:56,800
the commerce district, everything was visible and carefully documented. Signing

988
00:46:56,880 --> 00:47:00,159
logs were digital cleaning schedules. Webb shared new highest peruss

989
00:47:00,239 --> 00:47:03,559
with the pointed formality. My supervisor, a heavy set man

990
00:47:03,599 --> 00:47:05,960
with thick wrists, never left his station in the main office.

991
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:09,800
He checked everything twice, logging, even in scheduled bathroom brakes.

992
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:12,719
There was none of the hush, none of the invisible

993
00:47:12,719 --> 00:47:15,519
burdens of silver in tower. I missed the quiet, but

994
00:47:15,559 --> 00:47:19,599
not the secrets. A week dissolved in restless routine. Once

995
00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:21,960
I saw the same brand of cleaning caloth those blue

996
00:47:21,960 --> 00:47:24,639
plastic bins. Those racks were tiny brushes popped in the

997
00:47:24,679 --> 00:47:28,079
loading dark. For a fleeting moment, I tense, half expecting

998
00:47:28,079 --> 00:47:30,079
a fragment of shirt of plastic or stray badge to

999
00:47:30,119 --> 00:47:34,360
fall out. Nothing did. My own badge replaced twice in

1000
00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:36,840
six days, now sported a red stripe and a series

1001
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:40,440
of numbers, lays of oversight, little more than camouflage. Everywhere

1002
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:44,320
I went was watch counted. Evening found me restless. The

1003
00:47:44,480 --> 00:47:46,360
urge to walk pulled me across the city toward the

1004
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:49,920
tower's gleaming silhouette. From a distance, the building looked to

1005
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:52,519
nerve the kind of neutral present security planner's dream about.

1006
00:47:53,159 --> 00:47:56,840
But I knew too much. Pedestrians passed by, self absorbed,

1007
00:47:56,880 --> 00:47:59,159
everyone looking into their devices or at the patterns of

1008
00:47:59,159 --> 00:48:01,920
the street lights. As day bled into evening. Across the

1009
00:48:01,960 --> 00:48:05,000
road directly opposite the white glass doors, I stopped beside

1010
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:07,400
a cafee busting with after work business, and watched the

1011
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:10,920
lobby through flares of sunlight on glass. The new janter, tall,

1012
00:48:11,000 --> 00:48:13,480
gray haired, pushed his cot with brisk efficiency. I fixing

1013
00:48:13,559 --> 00:48:17,360
the floors for an instant, his gaze lifted toward me, unflinching.

1014
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:20,679
I felt exposed, a ghost haunting my own former routes.

1015
00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:24,079
My phone chimed a message from the cleaning contractor. Cut

1016
00:48:24,360 --> 00:48:27,119
no return to press, sight, assets removed, end of rooker.

1017
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:31,400
I deleted it without answer, No more invitations, no apology,

1018
00:48:31,599 --> 00:48:34,679
not even a polite warning. Inside my back, the old

1019
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:37,719
usbe rattled against my note book. I thought more than

1020
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:39,880
once of dropping it down a steel grate or crushing

1021
00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:43,039
it under my heel. Both times I hesitated not because

1022
00:48:43,039 --> 00:48:45,199
I believed it could clear anything up, but because its

1023
00:48:45,199 --> 00:48:48,599
existence anchored memory. That night in the secret room, rose

1024
00:48:48,599 --> 00:48:50,440
of badges and shred swept into the pale light, the

1025
00:48:50,519 --> 00:48:52,840
hush of the god's warning. I kept that silence, but

1026
00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:55,800
it had marked me. Late that Friday, I heard from Nina,

1027
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:58,519
the network engineer, by Emil A. Blant's subject line, a

1028
00:48:58,599 --> 00:49:00,800
single line in the body. Send any keys or tags

1029
00:49:00,800 --> 00:49:04,280
he still have shreuding scheduled Monday. A line break, then,

1030
00:49:04,519 --> 00:49:07,599
don't use your name in responses. My hands tingled as

1031
00:49:07,639 --> 00:49:09,639
I replied with a foul photo of the janitorial close

1032
00:49:09,639 --> 00:49:13,039
at tag faded. It is curled. No further answer came.

1033
00:49:13,599 --> 00:49:15,519
The days ahead blurred, filled in by the silt of

1034
00:49:15,559 --> 00:49:18,960
habitual caution. I skirted busy lobbies, tied my commutes to

1035
00:49:19,000 --> 00:49:21,800
avoid the rush. If the city felt less like home,

1036
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:24,800
it was because every mirrored elevator, every glass walled lobby

1037
00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:27,880
was suspect. Whatever habits I brought with me, I kept

1038
00:49:27,920 --> 00:49:30,519
my eyes down, my voice low, never speaking. Sylver in

1039
00:49:30,599 --> 00:49:33,400
towers named to anyone who might still be listening. A

1040
00:49:33,440 --> 00:49:37,679
fortnight passed, one afternoon were drifted through the cleaning staff,

1041
00:49:37,800 --> 00:49:40,480
and another attempt missing from a downtown law firm staff shuffle.

1042
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:43,760
Some one said a paper economally, some one else, No

1043
00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:47,960
one pressed. The union's muttered, then quieted. The pattern at

1044
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:51,079
her remove was always the same. Back at Sylvin Tower,

1045
00:49:51,159 --> 00:49:54,159
the stores dried up. No more odd bad swipes, no

1046
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:56,639
more rumors of people on floors they shouldn't have access to.

1047
00:49:57,280 --> 00:49:59,760
One manager I remembered fondly, with a knack of stained

1048
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:02,400
tie and friendly nods in the corridor was replaced by

1049
00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:05,000
a stranger who's introductions were clipped and whose eyes tracked

1050
00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:09,920
every badge scanned. Time thickened. I ran through routines, mob

1051
00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:12,360
about the kitchenette dust. The vending machines scribbed the same

1052
00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:15,440
hamprint smudges from the glass. The city went on as

1053
00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:18,039
it always had. Yet the building loomed over the evening

1054
00:50:18,039 --> 00:50:21,599
tram rides, its surface blank, impossible to read. I found

1055
00:50:21,639 --> 00:50:24,599
myself on humid nights, drifting and consciously toward its base,

1056
00:50:24,639 --> 00:50:26,920
studying the high lightless windows for a sign, glint of

1057
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:29,880
a monitor, hince, queak, any sign. The old pattern lingered

1058
00:50:30,480 --> 00:50:33,639
each time I saw only the indifferent geometry of illuminated glass,

1059
00:50:33,639 --> 00:50:36,480
the shadows inside moving just out of reach. It is

1060
00:50:36,519 --> 00:50:38,320
strange what the mind will do to keep a secret

1061
00:50:38,320 --> 00:50:42,239
it never asked for. I absorbed irritations like a sponge.

1062
00:50:42,360 --> 00:50:44,320
My apartment felt smaller, The towel weighed more on the

1063
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:48,039
sky line each morning. Sometimes in tether dreams, I found

1064
00:50:48,039 --> 00:50:50,480
myself in those empty offices, following as may on the window.

1065
00:50:50,559 --> 00:50:53,719
My reflection never quite lined with my own face. Once

1066
00:50:53,880 --> 00:50:57,000
I passed rageous, pognised vacant in a supermarket aisle, focused

1067
00:50:57,039 --> 00:50:59,480
on cans of soup, as if reading a code. I

1068
00:50:59,519 --> 00:51:03,079
almost oak, almost confessed. But what would I say? That

1069
00:51:03,159 --> 00:51:05,639
the missing person had simply left a gap in the cemetery,

1070
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:08,760
not a story, not an answer. My silence rendered the

1071
00:51:08,840 --> 00:51:11,840
encounter as another red file and a folder. It was

1072
00:51:11,880 --> 00:51:14,480
early Jeane. When passing the tower in a thunder storm,

1073
00:51:14,639 --> 00:51:16,519
I noticed an entire row of light snap on late

1074
00:51:16,559 --> 00:51:19,039
at night, up of floors, but familiar block of conference rooms.

1075
00:51:19,719 --> 00:51:23,880
The top window flickered reflexively. I slowed my steps. The

1076
00:51:23,920 --> 00:51:26,480
city around me was washed clean, soundless. Beneath the rain,

1077
00:51:27,079 --> 00:51:29,320
A part of me still believed wild itself, to believe

1078
00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:32,639
that some breach had opened again. The next day, cycling past,

1079
00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:35,559
all was calm and dane. Press releases talked about a

1080
00:51:35,760 --> 00:51:40,840
reinvestment and modernization, new compliance standards, embracing transparency, as if

1081
00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:43,239
the city's oldest secrets could be paved over with metrics

1082
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:46,440
and glass. Days became weeks with no further word, no

1083
00:51:46,559 --> 00:51:49,400
further sign. Yet, some evenings, in the hush of my

1084
00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:51,760
new cleaning route, I'd catch a send of burn coffee,

1085
00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:54,199
glimpse of reflection moving against patten in the long core

1086
00:51:54,239 --> 00:51:57,079
door's glass. My hands would close tight around my keys,

1087
00:51:57,079 --> 00:51:59,400
hot beating with the muscle memory of flight, of secrecy.

1088
00:52:00,039 --> 00:52:02,760
The old notebook dough Jered Warren remained buried under sweaters

1089
00:52:02,760 --> 00:52:05,000
at the back of my closet. I never opened it,

1090
00:52:05,039 --> 00:52:07,400
though sometimes and in even light, I felt its gravity

1091
00:52:07,400 --> 00:52:10,320
pulling at me. The USB lay in a drawer, weightless

1092
00:52:10,360 --> 00:52:14,280
now but not discarded. Its secrets, I suspected were engineered

1093
00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:16,239
to remain secrets. Every shridder in the tower proof that

1094
00:52:16,280 --> 00:52:18,960
erasure was the preferred end to any story. In the

1095
00:52:19,039 --> 00:52:21,760
months that followed, rumors flickered on the city's message board,

1096
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:24,480
Strange badge swipes in another tower, files over written late

1097
00:52:24,519 --> 00:52:27,639
at night, junk conference room monitors left flickering lawn after midnight.

1098
00:52:28,199 --> 00:52:30,119
I read them with care, as if any pattern could

1099
00:52:30,159 --> 00:52:32,920
unlock the anxiety. I still lived with no one ever

1100
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:35,239
named Silvan Tower, but the questions echoed in the shape

1101
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:38,280
of the stores. That autumn. To staff dinner, I found

1102
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:40,840
myself seated with another former knight, Janitor Boulder, with a

1103
00:52:40,920 --> 00:52:43,159
tremor in his hands and an aversion to eye contact.

1104
00:52:43,800 --> 00:52:46,320
He asked, suddenly, and with no preamble, whether I'd ever

1105
00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:49,480
worked high rises at night. I met his gaze, and

1106
00:52:49,559 --> 00:52:51,239
for a moment we shared a pale smile and not

1107
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:54,400
spoken affirmation. Neither of us rose so unpack. There are

1108
00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:58,119
some stores only understood, but quietly initiated. A final shift

1109
00:52:58,159 --> 00:53:00,679
came near the year's end, a replacement or a shuffle

1110
00:53:00,719 --> 00:53:04,079
the administrative handishing new keys, blank leanards, all old routines

1111
00:53:04,079 --> 00:53:06,880
erased and reassigned. I carried my new kit with the

1112
00:53:06,920 --> 00:53:09,599
resignation of experience, feigning calm as a briefed my success

1113
00:53:09,679 --> 00:53:11,920
or another face in the long pattern, another worker who

1114
00:53:11,920 --> 00:53:14,920
would learn quiet, careful habits. When I turned in the

1115
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:17,079
last of my old badges, I caught a glimpse on

1116
00:53:17,119 --> 00:53:19,000
the bottom of the return pile of an id from

1117
00:53:19,039 --> 00:53:22,000
the prior year, grainy image marred by ink. I wondered

1118
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:24,400
if any one would ever tirely how many were truly lost,

1119
00:53:24,480 --> 00:53:27,199
how many simply slipped through the cracks of routine. There

1120
00:53:27,199 --> 00:53:30,119
were no memorials, no loss reports, just a hollowed space

1121
00:53:30,119 --> 00:53:32,559
where memory should have been. The pattern was perfect, and

1122
00:53:32,559 --> 00:53:35,920
self sustaining absence was the only proof. After my last

1123
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:38,519
exit from the familiar glass attrium, my shoes clicking louder

1124
00:53:38,519 --> 00:53:40,559
than before, the guard on g delocked the badge box

1125
00:53:40,559 --> 00:53:43,639
without acknowledgment. The building exhaled. As I left, I had

1126
00:53:43,639 --> 00:53:45,480
a sense for the first time in months that this

1127
00:53:45,559 --> 00:53:47,840
chapter had ended, not by my intention, but because the

1128
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:51,360
pattern closed itself around the wound. In the years that followed,

1129
00:53:51,480 --> 00:53:53,679
I learned to avoid windows at night to cross street.

1130
00:53:53,719 --> 00:53:56,159
When I saw the shimmer of hot towers above. My

1131
00:53:56,280 --> 00:53:58,480
vigilance receded, not because I had less to fear, but

1132
00:53:58,519 --> 00:54:00,800
because that fear had become ordinary and another rhythm in

1133
00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:04,000
the metropolis on sleeping Heart still, though, when knights went

1134
00:54:04,079 --> 00:54:06,119
under Rattle's glass, where a flush of blue white light

1135
00:54:06,159 --> 00:54:08,239
cuts through an empty office floor, when I feel the

1136
00:54:08,280 --> 00:54:11,000
old pattern pulsing through the city's veins, I know I

1137
00:54:11,039 --> 00:54:13,599
am not alone in that knowing. Walking home along the

1138
00:54:13,679 --> 00:54:16,920
rain polished sidewalk, I pause as the bustrundles passed, headlights,

1139
00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:20,679
momentarily revealing the thin story face of Sylvan Tower. There

1140
00:54:20,719 --> 00:54:22,960
in the high pane of the conference room's glass, something

1141
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:26,360
glints for a single impossible moment, A face stares out,

1142
00:54:26,480 --> 00:54:28,039
not of the shift or of the last, but of

1143
00:54:28,079 --> 00:54:31,159
some one gone, waiting to be recognized. My hands close

1144
00:54:31,199 --> 00:54:34,800
automatically on invisible keys. I stepped back from the glare.

1145
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:38,719
The window above blinks from light to shadow. At my feet,

1146
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:40,880
the breeze stirs, something like a slip of paper snagged

1147
00:54:40,880 --> 00:54:44,719
against my boot. I stoop. You were seen. The window

1148
00:54:44,760 --> 00:54:47,440
is never truly closed. I watched the wind take it

1149
00:54:47,559 --> 00:54:49,519
and let the building keep its secrets, knowing the city

1150
00:54:49,559 --> 00:54:53,480
will always hold more windows than answers. And that is

1151
00:54:53,519 --> 00:54:55,960
the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see

1152
00:54:56,000 --> 00:55:09,199
you in the next one.