Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I started my first solo grave
Yar chiffed ip its cold logistics, with the headache booming
behind my left eye and the coppery taste of nerves
thick in my mouth. No traffic comm outside, only the
ticking of the security clock in the persistent or of
ancient cooling units went through the bones of the building.
Every corridor hummed with cold, a cold heavy enough that
the air itself felt and cooperative were sissing each breath.
Nights rain outside the loading bay windows made the interior
lighting seam harsher, as if the warehouse's own shadows were
scented elimination. A week of daytime shadowing hadn't come close
to preparing me for how monstrous the place felt empty.
I'd watched the agent Knight's supervisor, mister Dalkar, rifle keys
on a battered iron ring, his hands brought and scabbed,
his voice always just above a whisper to night. When
he met me by the door mark security, arms folded
over his yellowed uniform shirt, he barely bothered a glance
up from paperwork. These are yours now, Dalka grunted, setting
the ring of keys and the batter day with the
thumb heavy enough to rattle my teeth. Don't lose them,
don't skip your zomes. Fill out the logs, every crate,
every pass understood, he paused, when I brush sharp as
a bent nail. If you see anything out of place,
you log it, and if you see anything unusual, repeat
the protocols is written. Don't get creative. He moved through
the process by roadsign this, read that. Memorize code numbers
for padlocks and exits. Recite them back. My tongue stumbled
around the numbers, pencil, trembling as a copper down combinations
onto my palm. Dhalka finally shoved the brittle map toward me.
Corner soft from decades of folding, stick to the floor plan.
He tapped a finger on the circle section labeled so
in fourteen and lowered his voice. Stay out of the
back when you can trust me. If you get stuck,
radio me. Otherwise, just do the job. Easy money right,
It didn't feel like money at all, Not with the
sigh looks the day crew fired my way as they
clocked out. Not with the way the conveyor belt seemed
more suitable for moving copses than box syrups and shook
grab pallets. Even the forecliffs iding by the dock avoid
I contat, or at least the grizzled operators did, steering
their machines through the aisle with military precision. One short
and stocky beneath his reflective vess caught my eyes. He
hissed by. But don't bother counting friezer goes, he called forced,
muffled by his collar. They don't log into the system,
and they don't clock out either. His wink might have
passed for a joke, but neither of us laughed. Dalka
faded into his own office cocoon and left me with
the Knight, the keys on my hip, the warehouse mat
gritting against my knuckles, the check us dangling from its clipboard,
the raw immensity of vapex, and curled before me. Aisles
lined like ribs, each lay in a corridor of icy
air and gray metal framing Censers blinked discreetly overhead. Their lights,
meant to reassure, looked like warning signals in the gloom.
I started with the routine, My steps are going louder
than they had beside my trainer manual inventory, double checked
the padlocks, No sense a status, nothing to worry about,
except the way silence pulled in some corners like standing water.
I yanked my collar tider certain aisles empty even of pallets,
chilled the air by several degrees. My skin prickled as
I pass, breath fogging despite the thermost at reading. All
the while the overhead floressens pretested flickering and humming like
a dying heart. My gloved hand pressed into each checkpoint,
cold leeching, eager as a sickness. Between the rack rows,
only the scuff of my boots and the groom drag
of my own nose breaking up the hush. At the
far loading dock, white doors. Gaping into the parking lot's
empty dark, I found it a crate not on my manifest,
shorter than the usual refrigerated pallettes. Beproader, sitting alone in
the freshold space were neither dock nor whare has claimed it.
It was coated thicken frost, so pale it seemed to
glow where my flashlight caught the slow swell of vapor
rolling off it. TIC's ear and marked, no skew, no
shipping barcurred, nothing except streaks were fingers or perhaps something
else had melted the hoar frost. The room was cold,
but the air around this crate felt arctic. That she'll
sinking deep enough. My eyes waded. I approached clove, stiffening,
and clicked off the checkliss. No entry in the manifest,
nothing schedule for arrival, nothing noted in storage. I crouched
to no details, the mist icing over my boots. When
I raised my flashlight. It's being jumped, cleared out by
the swirling frost, then stable as to just as a
gust of breath, I thought, tickled my collar. I pressed
the cold button for dalka static chute at my ear,
at the connection, hissing before dissolving altogether. I tried again, anxiety,
winding as tightly as the circuit cables, vanishing into the wall.
While I waited, I made a careful diagram of a
crate in my lock, noting its peculiar chill, the complete
lack of any label or mark. Hand a little ashamedly
that I dared not touch it. My hand hovered over
the wood, a spark of childish free riching my skin.
The cold swirling off the crate deepened. I shivered. I
turned back to glance at my list, eyeing my block
letter entry and tight box DOC five frost. Then I
looked up. The crate was gone, not moved, not slid away, gone.
No scrape of wood, no goudge in the frost, just
an empty concrete slap and a lingering halo of cold,
as if the air were it had rested, was slower
to warm. I stood frozen. I searching for the logic
in this, but the logic were coiled. A new patrol
look clamped under one arm, doctor skalsboots clunking over the
astone laced tiles should have been ordinary. Instead I entered
a routine I had never quite mastered. My alarm clock
always needed a second nudge, and every bus ride from
out of a stuffed department in Elive Park was a
hollowed out ira wasted. It wasn't lost time exactly, but
the well pressing down with pressure that didn't let up,
Not even in dreams. Those mornings still belonged to dull hope.
Before Apex, I spent mon'strolling sheep jaw boards, pawning my wristwatch,
letting the fridge run low so I wouldn't see the
mole curling in the back. The job at Apex arrived,
like all life lines, a blind office call, the interviewee
in gray slacks, some paperwork could barely finished reading it
paid enough to catch upon rent by bus tokens, and
if I save, maybe replace my dead phone screen. Shift
work at its own rituals. Day crew agitated, big shouldered,
bursting through the break room with microwave needles and jokes
about unionizing. They filed out a round sunset, faces drained,
loosening their muddy boots. I hovered at the periphery, drifting
through their exhaust trails, trying to catch fragments of routine
here all night, ha said Loopid, the janitor, pressing him
up into the bin's ring of glancing up at me
with tired eyes. Don't go too far toward the freezer
after midnight gets colder than it should. Her tone was
neither warning nor welcome, but an invitation to leave certain
topics alone. Near the time clock. I learned to fight
with a faded digital display, stabbing up buttons as the
machine shirped or beat in confusion, unlucky nights, I managed
to punch in before the line of dayshift, as coal
less behind me, the knuckles rapping desk surfaces in impatient morse.
Sometimes I spent five minutes coaxing the system into remembering
my badged number before its bat out of paperst up
the size of a postage stamp inflorescent bus brekroum leope
and I stall moments of silence, feeding coins into the
sinus burning soda machine. She had the slow patience of
someone used to knights to try dis dust dropped in vosses,
snack wrappers crinkly underfoot shift changes, she said, popping the
tab of a bitter iced tea. You see the ones
who stay the rest they get replaced, always have her
lips tightened when she spoke of old faces, each departing
with some piece of the warehouse's shadow. Every corridor was
an ice box, no matter how closely the thermosts read
four degrees. See some corners radiated waves of coal through
the soles of my boots. The echoing stretches between racks
amplified every sund so my unbreath felt louder, nerves leaping
at each metallic climb when the cooling unit cycled behind me.
Day crew gossiped about pay cuts and audits. Night crew
drifted into silent pears, head down, gripping battered clipboards. Apex
didn't inspire camaraderie, just a soilen contract of mutual noninference.
The regular forklift stay low yellow with ship paint and
mourning stickers culling at the corners, navigated aisles and looping routines.
The drivers, their faces half shadowed beneath hoods or binais,
seldom lifted their eyes. My own nose grew teeth as
I padded through Their bad dials rose thirty fourth through forty,
always empty, unexplained frost clumping along the beams, even when
the rest of the system ran dry. Once later my
first week, I watched the supervisor looking and inventory cut,
pausing to drot something on a paper slip before tearing
it off and tucking it up a sleeve. The routines
pressed against my brain, insisting on compliance. If you hesitated,
you invited error. An error at Apex meant warning slits
posted on your locker three and you were gone. The
bosses watched payer all with the heat seeker's attention. I'd
heard sores of firing, so suddenly didn't have time to
clear your thermos. But I kept returning inexorably. My checking
account ran in the red. The late feast stacked on
their own special towlers, and I had already pourned my
father's ring. Once nights at Apex meant survival. My time
was mine, but it was paid for, and that mattered
in the law. Between snack brakes, I restocked cloves in
the supply cupboard, a ritual for freezing fingers, and a
brained unnumb from Barckwoods. The top drawer stuck. When I
finally rattled it loose, A pile of laminated employee badges
spilled out. The plastic cards fluded onto the shelf, and
familiar names stark against their faded faces. Some smiled sincetare flatly.
Most I realized had never smiled at all. A handful
I recognized from orientation faces that had disappeared well before
my stint began. A pair Alder and sun Bleach, looked
like they dated back to Apex's first ear The topmost
badge read Calvin Leavitt. The next Mulenda dragomere. I rolled
the bundle into a scrap of paper, intending to leave
it fore loupe, but instead shoved them to the back
of the drawer, feeling distinctly superstitious. It was routine, yes,
but the edges of that routine felt shot, every so
often catching skin and drawing a thin line of a knees.
After the incident with the vanishing crate, my efforts to
convince myself I'd seen nothing grew thinner. I logged the
event in the security spreadsheet under abandoned inventory eyes, flicking
to the poldons that let me choose codes for missing
or destroyed. When I sent the incident report to the
after iOS supervisor in books, nobody replied not then not.
By the end of the week, whatever I had seen,
nobody wanted log I supposed it was easier that way. Still,
I doubled back to the dock toce each shif half
hoping the blasted crate would drow, materialize and render me
merely forgetful. On my nightly rounds, the sense of being
watched twisted tightly as wire. Sometimes it was nothing but
the where else's and broken sight lines, echoes bouncing oddly
against pallet wrecks. But some nights, especially after two or
three in the morning, it was different. The refrigeration drones
studded with mechanical precision, but every so often ad hero
stutter a hitch like a skip bee, and then just silence.
I started to keep my own inventory lock. I mapped
every cold aisle, every room, copying badge entry records from
the digital terminals. Patterns flickered at the edge of my attention.
On three occasions I found sequence numbers in the logs
that jumped crates supposedly process but never shipped. When I
checked the paperwork, I found them crossed out. Would shake handwriting.
One ancient dust coated crate listed as destroyed was in
fact still sailed and stored in Zone fourteen A. The
labels so sunfaded I could barely make out the numbers.
The coldest patch of all lay across the north wall
of Zone fourteen A. Were hoops of frostlaced light veins
along concrete seams. The temperature sensors there meant to alert
as soon as anything did below safe fanling simply blinked
and reset. Their logs grew out into normal within minutes.
The air in its own burned in side yew lungs
prickling the throat even through a double scarf. One night,
growing boulder, I took Adeter into the security office, my
own checkmen vicinity before clockett, I pulled up six months
of manifest logs, the database crawling at glacial speed. The
deeper I dug, the more often I found records overridden
in a frantic blocky script were attacked, sea attached, ship
date corrected, crates would vanish from one part of the
record and re appearer a week later. Further back blanks
filled in afterward with someone else's initials, overlaying the data.
I noticed another pattern, stranger still leach violation, each missing
or overwritten entry clustered around particular aisles. The sensors and
cameras in these zones failed or rebeated several times a week,
always around the same time, just before three thirty in
the morning. No explanation in the equipment logs, no work
orders linked to the failures. That night, handed by the
humm of monitors, I let my curiosity pull dacker. I
wandered past the untouched locker at the edge of the
security room, the one assigned to Sea Leavitt. The sticker,
curling at the edge, bore a name that matched one
of the old badges. The combination lock was rust in
place inside untouched on the jacket the color of frozen
ash and a battered thermos. Levett's notes cold and cheap
notebooks were still slotted in the top shelf, testimony to
whoever walked off a shift and never return. Maybe that's
what happened when secrets crew too heavy. They simply waited
for the next set of hands. My insomnia took new shape.
Muscle memory bend into a rhythm that wasn't entirely mine.
Most nights I clock out breathless, mind racing, But some
night I lingered. Sleep no longer waited for me. Back
at the apartment, so I sat in the chilled security office,
watching split screen security fees as the cloth pushed toward
four a m. On the third such night, I froze
the tip at the heart of so own fourteen. I
cycled through a week's worth of midnight footage. Always at
three twenty eight two things happened. The cameras feed crackled
a gray digital static, slicing the image and every censor
in ailes thirty nine through forty one blipped offline before
returning status light's flickering. The third night, in one brief
interval of unbroken video, something moved frame by frame, my
heart hammering, I advanced through those seconds. At the edge
of Asle forty one, a figure passed a blow, taller
than any one I knew from the crew, bulkier than
any manager, his shadow pulling at the refrigerated air around him,
No check badge scans, no record of entry or exit.
The times I buried in digital snow sweatsizzled in my palm,
even as the war has called further. I spent an
io tracing the figures probable route using the list of
crates locked as shipped from the section near cross Referencing
sured half a dozen ever left the shells. Seeking confirmation,
I called the APEX Incident tip line. The computer answered
a calm unnervingly lifelike voice that asked for my badge number, then, oddly,
my birthdate, then a strain of questions, has anyone reported
missing your shift? Do you have a recording of your incident?
Or did you see anyone else with you at your location?
There was no way to enter an only press one
for follow up, pressed two to enkoll, I press one,
heart throbbing. The call cut off at once. Next shift,
I returned to the affected zones, my flashlight barely pushed
through the haze, culling along the floor. In Zone fourteen A,
I found something she prints in the frost patterns that
didn't match any plain warehouse issued arrow deep leading toward
the silk curates and vanishing beneath shelves. I crouched and
found a gray work gloff, frozen solid, half melted into
the floor the fabrictors. I tried to extract it. Near By,
a sticker was pressed against the concrete Starlight Express nineteen
ninety six, the logo of a company swallowed by bankruptcy
decades past. It didn't belong here. No recent supply referenced
that name. I returned to the security office. With the
night's silence thickening, I set to downloading the video sigments
direct from the system's archive. The files decompressed, slowly, cycling
through time stamps, frames, flickering and jumping in the segments
from three twenty eight. In the dead corners of each feed,
a cat faint ripplelike distortions, movements that resolved in the
shape of human forms, slinking between rocks, never upstream, never
into direct line of sight, always hovering at the edge,
far from soothing. The suns embedded in those clips set
my nerves on edge against the hum of refrigeration. A soft,
almost spoken kittence rose from the ambient noise, as if
all the air in the building carried a fracture. Chan
not yet, not yet, not yet. Desperate to confirm that
I wasn't alone in my observation, I dug out one
of the old lopbooks from Levi's abandoned locker. Its first
page's detailed routine checks crate forty one eight empt normal
padlock replace, but a few entries into handwriting. Grew heard
margins filled with phrases hurrowd knocking to night, son cold
but no warning, and in new arrival, didn't log why
is no one answering the terest grew short shop air
static in's own thirty nine canned open, crave, don't let
it to the last page, cut off the impression of
a scrolled line torne in the page. Heard something in there.
I closed the book, but you'll seeping into my bones
deeper than usual. One shift later, the radio on my
belt crackle to life. During a routine walk, MUSHes clicked
over tiles, streak, revise, Hello security either a voice twisted
in static, distant and rough edged. You have to come
helps on fifteen past the lock maintenance dore. I hesitated.
No one else worked on fifteen at lease not now.
The cheft rosser had left the section dark for months.
The paperwork a tangle of pending repairs and forgotten extension codes.
I pressed a receiver of static, chewing the channel. Who
is this? I waited silence thickening, then the voice return weaker,
slicing through the static. Hurry, bring your flashlight. The corridors
grew sharper, frost and casing racks and turning forward, tiles
slick into foot. I followed my map that muscle memory
guide me through looping turns past the lock maintenance dore.
The fl tallow as if space compressed by inches. The
lights flickered once twice and then quit entirely. The emergency
battery stripped tripwire to life, dotting the path with sallow,
hastened illumination. Each step tamped down the crunch of frost.
My own breath fogged in rolling plumes. Somewhere ahead a
doorstood to draw his own fifteen's far the storage chamber.
My flashlight pan left and right. A shaped tall stooped
in distinct slid from view at the end of the corridor,
inside the friture chamber, against the fire wall by the
compressor room breasted. Another created the same size and design
as the one I'd first seen this ones they'd gaped
open inside the chill struck like a slap. A step closer,
hot stumpeding, and glanced in. At first, I couldn't place
what A sore tangle of objects dusted in frost, photos, wallets, keys,
and old work badge walked by cold. Closer look, the
id badge caught the flashlight's beam, bearing the namer incoosts
of photo of two thousand nine security. I recognized the
faded features he'd appeared in the old storientation materials gone
before my time. I thoumb through the bundle, the wallets
laminated with rhyme, its cud stuck together receipts dating back
eight years, A crumpled photograph. Three security gods standing arm
in an arm one tall, broad shouldered features matching the
blurry footage had seen in the tapes. A chill anced
my gut. That slow at the one prowling through the
security freeze wore the same face, the same steep, the
same jacket as Marin cuz its off. Was it a
replay a haunting the crate, the logs, the vanished workers,
or something slower, colder, some mechanism meeting at the edges
of the warehouse and letting the cold serve a smokescreen,
port collies or passage. Footstuff clipped behind me. I ducked
behind a crate through a split into boards. I watched
as a figure rounded the corner, jacket zipped up against
an impossible freeze, breath jetting visibly in the black air.
The figure bent to peer into the open crate, before
dropping something onto the icy concrete, a lane nailed with
clipped id which spun in erratic circles. When the figure
moved away, I inged forward, careful not to speak or sugar.
The badge's name read Calvin Leavitt, my mind word as
I pieced it together. The Venish warn't gone something about
this place. This cold kept them here not only as memory,
but trapped in a cycle of haunting an echo, and
with each vanished person, the anomalies, the zones of dead air,
the missing inventory, the freezing crits intensified. I gathered myself,
drawing a slow, care for breath as the frost crept
over my boots. The cold wasn't just an accident of thermodynamics.
At Adak's coal was a key, and whatever it opened,
I had already started to turn the lock. I waited their,
pressed between workeed crate boards and the brick wall. As
Leavit's badge settled in its lazy spin, a quite grew
so deep my own harpe began to echo, a distant thunder,
muffled by ice. The figure, if it was even levitt,
if their face hadn't belonged to someone else by now
moved through the shadows without stumble, as if the cold
air held some private map. His boots left no mark
on the freshly glittering frost. I watched, frozen and reasoning
that a panic would be worse than stillness, teeth throbbing
from the urge to chatter. The sound of his passage
faded in its wake. The lights in the corridor sizzled,
then blinked abruptly into brightness again, as if the cold
itself had blinked away and the electricom had dared return.
Only then did I move, unfolding limbs of still, as
the wrapped cables overhead, levered up by the nervous logic
that demanded evidence sun token of this encounter. I reached
for the lanyard, gingerly, half expecting a jolter, for the
thing to bite me, as if the plastic and metal
had absorbed some violence. The laminate was clouded too thick
with frost crystals to read from one angle, but close
up the name was there, Leavitt the photoor dead eyed
in a way that could have belonged to any of us.
The hollow look of resignition or in complete sleep, not
so unlike my own eyes when glimpsed in the break
room mirror at foy M. I pocketed the badge, and
the cold bled the plastic to my palm, ticklish and
painful as it thought my mind was gathering the fragments
the vanish create the badge, Morin's effects and the cycle
showing itself and blips on a monitor in the jumpy
fidish that refused to make linear sense, and I remembered
Blue paced warning trailed by her lingering sidelong gays. The
urge of fleabuck did inside me, and I considered it
slipping out, making up some excuse to explain a thermal
system's check, feigning a fever, quitting overroy. But panic would
only draw attention. I'd learned already that attention in this
place was as hazardous as forgetting, which turning to our
troll was an exercise in feigning routine. I shuffled paperwork
where checked padlocks with glove fingers to cribbled numbers in
the margins of my log marking the places that felt
colder by a degree or two than any logical engineering allowed.
Each time I entered his own especially fourteen and now foteined,
the cold sharpened at the edge of my awareness, as
if the temperature didn't dip so much as drop out altogether,
and the absence rather than a presence. The next morning,
I lingered after clocking out, slutched in my car on
the far end of the lot, with engine id lane
stirring at Levit's badge and Marin's photoed evidence. I scrawled
through my own phone no messages, no return call from
the so called supervisor, but a brief female from h
R confirming I had one accruede sick day if needed.
There was no option here for WAD to rapport. My
apartment felt foreign that day, even with sun slanting through
the street window glass in the ancient radiator climbing away
in the corner. I set the badge on my desk
and stared at it as I made coffee, hoping irrationally
that if I looked away and then back, it would vanish,
or at least become simple again, transmuted back into anert plastic. Instead,
I caught the sunlight and sent a beam across my
scuff calendar, ticking the cold or by another day. I
didn't sleep but a couple of hours, jolted by the
sense that some ran into apex had taken up residence
behind my eyes when I work, heart racing, and one
slippert for a frozen from a draft beneath the window.
I forced myself to rationalize if the warehouse wanted to
bleed its secrets, it would do so only to those
who pressed hard at its scaps. I returned at night
early inventory she folded in my chest pocket levis bad
shaped away. The break room TV was on for once,
spitting snow and static tinto a channel between stations. Lupey
was there, quietly, eating string cheese and scanning faded newsletters.
She glanced up at me. Not quite expectant, not quite
a very I weighed the risk. You know anyone from
security who quit before I started? My voice was low,
aimed at the floor, lop appeled another length of geese.
Lips pursed. There's always someone quitting, she said, after a pause.
They never say goodbye. Just one day they're gone. Palell says,
own't ask her gaze sharpened. You see something last night.
It's the same guy, I said, testing her reaction at all.
Burd shouldered murn, we'll levett. She exhaled breath of fog
in the two coal room. Sometimes I hear old keys
jangling and nobody else there. Things move, crates, mop buckets,
even my own shoes. You write it down, someone will
shed the paper in the morning. She folded up the
last bit of cheese and regarded the floor. Ye mind yourself,
she said, you want to stay here, don't stay too creous.
I got a kid. I don't dig too deep. If
I want to keep the job, I respected the limit.
In her eyes, she'd already risk more than she meant.
After she left, I found myself drifting to the place
where Marin's effects had been stashed. Sewn fifteen compressor room,
bull cut padlocks still hanging from the latch. Nobody had
checked the sight, not even a note from the maintenance team,
as if it had vanished from the shift's consciousness. In
the haze of refrigerant, the scentling good of cold metallic
sharper than simple eyes. If the vurnishings were cycles, repeating patterns,
then this room was a hinge. I pulled my own
phone out, snapped photos of the crate, the badge, the
open wallet with its decade old receipts. Still my hands
shook as I tried to steady the lens. I found
a small stack of paperwork down into a weather sailed
envelope wedge beside the compressor. Inside time cuts from two
thousand nine, each stamped with Marin's name for three extra shifts.
The handwriting and the checkouts slip did not match. The
check in one was tight, blocky. The checkout's signature was
a simple collision of scroll lines. My skin felt tight,
stretched over my bones. I tucked the photos and envelope
deep into my side coat pocket and cleared the zone,
persisting the urge to look back each footstep away from
that chamber. The air seemed to warm fractionally, a reward
for putting distance between myself and whatever ran beneath the floor.
The rest of the night, I kept my rounds as
ordinary as possible, but the intervening eyes carried a different
kind of tension. Shadows played differently now. A normal skitter
of rodents and ceiling spaces turned to my ear into
careful footsteps that never quite matched my own. The camera
feets flickered more often than before, sometimes going dead for
entire minutes, leaving me to guess what moved in those
blind spots. When three thirty a m came around, I
was in Zone fourteen, badge scanner in hand. The reader
flashed the wrong collar, a deep red, before stuttering and
showing green, a muffunction or something else. I took a
step into the biting coal between rows, and somewhere in
my periphery, a metallic line was unded, not echoing the
way dropped metal shirt becoming and going in an instant
drawing breath. I edged closer to the source, behind one
of the heavy carbon steel doors. A voice and near
whisper nail and tired hissed, don't let them in. After
the last syllable, only my pounding heart and the familiar
caizorus of the refrigeration system remained. I pushed tentatively on
the door. It swung open into a gap. The light
inside for a moment revealed a narrow corridor not marked
on any version of my warehouse map, a passage lined
with rocks so tightly packed that a grown adult would
need to a side wos to fit there in The
passage didn't just feel coal, it was lifeless, as if
refrigeration had scared all trace of oxygen away and left
behind only a hollow space insulated from everything else. There
were crates stacked along the central spine, covered in layers
of rags, frozen stiff, handriton labels faded to eligibility with
water damage in crun wild. I hesitated, then ducked in,
pressing myself between racks. My boot grazed something that gave
a water stained folder, mouth dry, escorted to retrieve it.
The papers inside repayrol manifests all tied with a confidential
destroyer after reading, but as I scanned e after date,
one stuck out marinecosets ofv last payment February two thousand nine,
and beside it note I could barely decipher, and shakey
block letters returned not processed sea footage. The folder contained
one more slip in old security VHS taped labor appealing
at the edge night two slash fourteen's lash nine z
own fourteen A. I jammed it into my breast pocket
and ducked out, feeling as if the very fast in
the air was reaching to snout my collar. It took
the remainder of the shift for my pulse to settle,
and only then, in the safety of the break room
behind a door i'd wedged with the heavy mop bucket,
I unspoiled the tape from its case. There was no
way to play it here, but it served as yet
another link to the vanished, the cold and the buried
las of Apex. As dawn crept up, bringing the sun's
watery light through the stained windows, I finished my report
in near automatic phrases incident observed anomaly, lock malfunction. I
didn't mention the folder, the passage, or the voices. I
didn't mention Leavitt's I D badge, now wrapped in my
circle drawer, it home. Something told me that was the
only reason it hadn't already slept from reality like the rest.
Later that week, returning for the start of my next rotation,
I found an envelope in my lockernot ABIs branded but
slick plastic wet from condensation, inside a single transfer form
with the relevant names blowed out in comments called an
unfamiliar hand for year safety, submit or destroy. There was
no signature. I knew then that I was not the
only one watching, nor the only one being watched. That evening,
as the shift began, Ducas's presence at the door radiate attention.
He barely looked at me as he handed over keys,
but his voice liked the forced and difference of our
first exchange. Stick to your logs, he said. Lower this
time managements checking the back sectors themselves, thinny questions called
the main office only understood. I nodded, wondering if Dukell
was another ghost of flesh rather than memory. Another ketaker
left circling the cold By two a m I had
mapped the zones of greatest chill to a grid overlaying
the known disappearances, inventory mismatches, and sense of failures. The
pattern was uquy and inescapable. Missing items in the dead
spots matched with the vanished worker's Leavitt Morine, and two
others whose names I'd only seen unfaded badges or half
torn logs. The phone in the break room usually a
dead line to know where it rang. As I poured
coffee into a muggtched with some one else's name, I
picked up static at first, and then a voice masculin firm,
if you want to keep this job, you'll stop poking around.
Apex looks after its own considered this your only warning.
The line went dead before I could stammer a reply.
Muskin prickled in the heated space, and I caught my
own reflection in the street winter pane, gaunt older by years,
frost in my heron under my eyes. I made my decision.
Before the end of the week, I'd watch that VHS
if Apex's secrets lived in cold, maybe to take capture
their outlines at a crucial air one last round of
the isles. Then I'd call in a friend with the
right equipment, asked for a favor and risk that thin
line between job and hazard. The warehouse never slept, even
in the heart of the night. Some section blinked back
to life, retractable gate's lowering Forcliff's trumbling in the distance,
a dull, rhythmic clang that could as easily be machinery
as something stranger. But in Zombforteina that night all was still.
The frost in the surface of the north wall now
climbed in thick tonguesen before it reached almost to the ceiling,
a rib so wide it almost glowed. I ran a
glove finger over frost stuck in walls, the cold biting
through the nitrial, pinching my flesh. I listened every sense,
straining some were further back in the deep corridor. I
discovered something or someone shifted with the hisl like exhaled steam,
not footsteps, not quite human, an echo perhaps of those
who had come before me. But I knew better than
to look too deeply into the dark. As I turned
to leave, a stack of manifests near the door tumbled
to the ground, turning the air into a flurry of paper.
I stooped to gather them my hand, closing over a
single page mat with the name Calvin Leavitt, last entry
March to twenty eleven. The stump beside the entry simply
re final check cut. There was nothing else, no transfer,
it equipped without notice, termination for caused, only the finality
of a process completed. I tucked the page away, heart
pounding in you. The coals at Apex was only half
the story. The rest lay bare, it stitched into paper
work and inventory numbers, into the from a failed cameras,
and the accumulation of badges and names that no longer
belonged to any one living. But it was becoming clear
how difficult scape would be, how easy the system made
it to raise a person, but how stubborn those raised
prisonces remained. On my final round before daybreak, I found
a scrap of paper jawned under the security office door,
folded and folded to the size of a playing card.
I unfolded it under the flickering disc light. It was
a map of the warehouse, but this version had hand
drawn lines added, new corridors, shortcuts through walls never opened
to the rest of us, with several zone sharply circled
in in the color of dried blood. One zone was
marked with a set of initials M K see AL
and a date months before my hire. Another section, the
one that had coughed forth the hidden corridor, was simply
labeled forgotten. Don't open. I leaned back, cracked my knuckles,
close my eyes. The air smelled of burnt ozon and
the dull grease of overworked gears. Whatever Apex was, it
was more than cold storage. It was a cemetery built
from return's return goods, returned workers, return gorse, each circling
the circuits for their own reasons. Tomorrow I would bring
the tape to a friend who owed me a favor
of adeotech, who didn't ask questions. If the ghost of
Apex wanted to be seen, I boorreed the eye that
wouldn't blink, but to night, the loss of my nerves
burned with adrenaline, I locked off, left early, tried to
get lost in empty city streets. Though the frost on
my wind should seemed to spell warnings in the language
I was only beginning to read. The badge in my pocket,
pressed cold to my thigh, the ghost in the grainy
footed war face I already knew, and the colt against
all expectation, kept rising, sharpening, promising that whatever I found
on that tape would not grant peace, but only more
questions twisted into the ice. When I slept, I saw
frost patterns crawl through my dreams, charting invisible corridors with
symbols I half recognized and face as I could not
forget Leavitt, Morin others whose names still clonged to the
coils of wire above the wrecks. The air was always coal,
even under my apartment's tattered blankets. Every sound in the
waking world carried a warehouse echo. By the next morning,
my priorities had congealed as firmly as the frost on
the night floors. The VHS tape, it wine of possibility,
growing too urgent to ignore, was the thread I would
follow no matter where it unraveled. I kept it shape
to my jackets inside pocket all for a sleepless stone,
weighing it in my hand. As I rode the half
empty forty two bus to the edge of the industrial district,
I met Rena, an old friend from the electronics counter
at Valleutronics, in the mossy walk up. She rented above
a shotted liquor store. We didn't talk much, except to
place the tape on the table beside her batted player.
I handed over A twenty with shaking fingers. She raised
one eye rowt only saying you want me to leave
the room. Her voice was softer than the hard edges
of her new haircut. No, just to just queue it up.
You can watch if you want, but I can't promise
it won't get weird. She popped the cassette in fiddling
with the tracking knob. The old TV hissed before flickering
into grainy monochrome for a moment. The image jumped a
time stump to slash fourteen slash nine on fourteen a
three twenty eight two. We both leaned closer. The video
shirt eyl after aisle of in distinct forms as the
camera pan on its slow mechanical sweep. Frost glimmered along
the walls, were fracted light dancing, and spikes across the lens.
At three twenty eight thirty fourth, the video glitch ha
wash of snow, then a ship's stuttering into view. Weena
leaned forward, hair falling into her face. That's not just
a person, she breathed, voice so low it stuck in
my throat. The sail load figure on the tape, broad shouldered,
heavy jacketed, face smudged by digital ghost, walk straight down
the aisle, then stopped by crate identical to the ones
had found. Frost, caked, spilling vapor. He reached for it,
a cellar shape, almost transparent klute's shoulder, impossible to name,
but definitely there. The next minute, the thief flickered. The
figure opened the crate, bracing himself as if expecting assistance.
He would drew something of bundle ambiguous, then stepped backward,
clutching it behind him. The frost on the wall repaired itself,
snaking upward as the spawn alife. Then, just before the
scene bled out into static, the figure turned toward the camera,
not a direct look, more luxome when registering movement from
the corner of their vision. The eyes, though blurry, found
the lens. Even through distortion, the image froze me. The
face was almost familiar. Figure set the bundle down, one
hand on the crate, laid, and the camera abruptly shut off.
We're in a squeeze my arm is this is this
real time? He said? This was years ago it's from
a missing guard murrain cousin itself, and I think he's
still there. I felt suddenly childish, as if speaking the
woods would flatten them into harmlessness. I copied the tape
to my pohe snagging a digital version as Rhena schiffad
despite the radiator huffing behind us. I didn't see anything
on that. She said, voice shaky and needed. Did you
are we clear? I thanked her, packed up the original,
and left for the warehouse. Violet dusk frosted the city windows.
Every TAXI sprayed slut across a cub As I walked
the fooduce image is trembling in my pocket. Back at APEX,
the hush before shift change was thicker than usual. Workers
filed out without meeting my eyes. As I hung my
jacket in the security cubicle, I caught a sliver of
conversation outside, the two voices too low to distinguish. I
bent to lace my boots hard in my teeth, and
when I glanced up, Lupey was standing there. She closed
the door, lowering her voice. Management asked if he'd seen
anything weird. Said, you were talking to venders after ires.
That true. Her expression was both worry and warning. I
found a tip. I whispered form Murin's last shift. He
never left, did he lupepress trembling finger to her lips.
They told us not to talk about the side of
the building. They did the same one that it vanished.
We sweep the aisles, We keep our noses down. Her
eyes flickered, but they know always did, maybe always will.
She didn't wait for a reply. I watched the door
shut or solower, framed by a pane of glasses. She
heard of keys jangling. It was early, but I began
my rounds, nose wire tight. I moved between Zone thirteen
and Zone fourteen, a ticking off roteen checks while tracing
every badge login for the evening. As I passed the
blast doors to the back sectors, an older forklift driver's scout,
face tight with tiredness, paws beside me. He flicked his
cigarette toward the bus shelter. Saw management roll in at
midnight last night three even he jerked his head. If
you've got anything to hide, now's the time I heard
them talking about a sweep. People who asked too much
have a way of not being scheduled again. I nodded,
gripping the line out in my pocket until my knuckles blanched.
After my first lap, I tucked myself in the break room,
writing a list of names, the missing, though quitters, the
unexplained transfers, then cross referenced them with a pair or
slips I found in the folder. Five were listed as
process not completed. With each the record trailed off las
pay lascan final shift, no exit, restless thought, slooping. I
dialed a number had found in one of Murn's old
files and number of her family conduct. An automated operator
picked up the script clip to rehearst the number you
have dialed is no longer in service. I tried the next.
A woman answered, brusque and thin voiced you are calling
from APEX. Her tone tone called his ice. We don't
talk to you people, not after what happened, The line
went dead before I could answer. Next attempt, another disconnect
and unfamiliar voice warning, don't bring this to our door.
We moved on. You should two they wanted dispair door
were true afraid to unearth it. The word spuns fiercely
as the city's cold front, kneedling and numbing by turns.
I spent the next two nights, cross reference in the
shipment manifest against legal records, all police evidence DAX cropped
up barely disguised crates marked for special storage. Sections of
the warehouse label did not access. More than a handful
had been received from company's type and scattered news clips
to racketeering, fraud, or even disappearances never resolved. A pattern
snapped into place. The cold zones went just random. They
clustered around the shipments brought and under corporate handshakes, and
no questions asked. Midnight unloading the ghost reel or metaphorical
guarded something valuable or dangerous hidden with him. One afternoon,
my phone pinged with the text tonight see the deep
locker unsigned. I stared at it as the sun buried
itself under a dirty city snow, the oscillation of the
last week drawing tighter. Some one on the inside, maybe Dalca,
maybe someone watching him, wandered this exposed, or wanted to
see what I would risk for truth. That night, on
my nominal night off, I walked two miles to Apecs
under a skycomb black with a nielding weather. Passing the
main entrance, I slid around to the unmonitored side gate,
the skeleton key still in my pocket. The door stuck,
giving with a shriek. No one challenged me, no guards,
no cameras flicked anyone on the screen. Inside, the air
was heavy and sterile. Each light overhead pulls once, then
withdrew into a sigh of gloom. I moved quietly, but stirring,
dust frozen to the tie. My breath rose and vanished
in trails of crystal past so and fourteen. The inventory
sets grew denser. Some crates hunched against the walls, half
swallowed by condensation. I made for the sector mark to
deep Locket on the old hand draw map, a place
untouched by work orders or daily checks, ringed by heavy
steel doors with analog blocks. Lawns since painted over. My
hands shook as I worked the combination. The metal grownd
then swung outward with an almost living reluctance. Damp, fetid
air rolled over me, far colder than the rest, as
if this section sat outside the building's jurisdiction. Though deep
Locket resembled a sub basement more than a room, The
ceiling was low. Pipes crusted with frost tangled above head
high racks along the back wall, rows of unlocked, wooden
crated jost out side by side, older than anything transported
in ears. At the center a bolded cabinet with a
rotary dial, the antique kind used for secret files, FBI evidence,
or wartime cold books. A drawer hung half open, jammed.
I yanked until it jerked free, and a cascade of
shredded paper snowed on to my boots. I knelt, the teeth,
grinding with cold. Sorting slips from the mess. Most were
payroll records, names dissolved almost beyond reading, mixed in flickering
polaroids of men and women in apex uniforms, faces blurred
by double exposure, penciled diagrams of warehouse layouts, key spots
blacked out in heavy slashes. Another drawer revealed a dozen
VHS tapes marked with dates, each paired to a last
scan badge Al Lopis twenty ten, Calvin Levitt twenty eleven,
m cousets of two thousand nine. I thumbed through, numb fingers,
pinching labels until one caught my eye. Emergency, no exit,
no date, only smuch writing, adrenaline burning. I stuffed the
tape and a handful of documents into my backpack and
moved to the deeper darkness. At the end of the locker,
A faint hum vibrated through the floor, as the refrigeration
units had burrowed and too deep or something older still
was stirring beneath the concrete. My radio, which had silence,
stuttered on of its own accord. Static shivered. Then lay
of voices echoed an impossible stereo. Some I recognized to
dalka maybe or a levet from orientation films. Others were shadow.
It was pro quiet, hissing out warnings, don't open, stay out,
and not for you. I pressed forward. The cold here
was paralyzing, gluing breath to my throat. At the furthest
point of the locker, I nearly tripped on something soft
and orange, vest torn and frozen, half concealing a pile
of scattered effects. Keys corroded by ice, a battered id,
a family photoglued by frost, to a metal case. These
were not artifacts left by chance. They were deposited, arranged,
as if some ritual required their order. Even as I
passed my flashlight over the bundle, a sand soft footfalls
on the corridor outside to set my hot hammering I
killed the light, pressed myself lap behind the stacks, brudshellow.
A man entered the room, tall in a supervisor's heavy jacket.
BOT silent on the floor. He didn't search. He merely
looked down the rows, paused, and then spoke softly into
his phone. For was carried back to me by the
chill acoustics it handled. He's here now. He pocketed his
phone and waited, unmoving. With a groan of metal, the
door slam shut behind him. He turned, and only then
did I recognize Dahuka. His face was pale as candle wax,
I sunken. He caught my gaze. The line between fear
and threat blurred. You need to let this go, he said, quietly, barredly,
more than a bath. If you walk out now, it'll
be like you are never here. If you don't, he
let the words high. You think EPYX is just a
cold warehouse? Do you think you're the first to see
what's spin? Kept down here? I kept silent, feeling for
the nearest takes it. DOC stepped forward, not blocking me,
but not letting me pass. DA People like you come
through every decade or so, they get close. Sometimes management
lets them move on. Sometimes they don't. His gaze was distant.
Sometimes I think the cold wants to keep them more
than the company does. I try to stoudy myself the
missing guards morin lovette. Did they die here? My voice
scratched the stale air. Dalka shook his head, more exhaustion
than denial. It's not about dying, it's about being erased,
same as those crates were dacted, missiled cold until unrecognizable.
They start out as people, then the cold gets them.
After that, they don't want much except for company. He
stepped aside, gesturing to the fall wall. This place is
a tomb, not just for products, but for everything. People
want to forget. Companies, crimes, whole lives, he let out
along shuddering sigh. You can leave, but you can't take anything,
even if you try. There's more burn bags in the
main office than you'll ever see, he finished, softer, shred
the things burned evidence, The only place left for it,
always down here with the rest of us. A sudden
gale of freezing air batter at the rows, tearing at
the scattered paper, and rattling the lights overhead. From the
darkness behind Dalka shapes moved figures anew from the photos
Levett Morin Lobiz, their faces unfocused, stepping out from the racks,
frostcrystalizing at their heels. Dalka didn't flinch, His eyes gone wide, flickered,
not with fear, but an ancient, weary resignation. They won't
let it rest. Now, he whispered, you have to choose.
The lights died in the absolute dark. The temperature plunged.
My body shook uncontrollably as the spectral presence's edge closer.
Their voices layered over the wind. Here now stay with
us and not outside, not any more. I lunge for
the side exit, shoving a rack aside. The cold prass
my blood. They can slow, heart pounding, I have stumbled,
half crawled from the locker, the faint glow of my
phone leading the way. I was crunching under every movement
behind me. I heard dark A whisper again, not words,
just as sound, as brittle as the frost. My mind
tore it itself. Run escape or turn and pull someone
out into the light. Faces behind me levis pleading stair.
Marin's haunted silence warred with Darka's grim guzzliness, and the
utter dark, pressing from all corners. I reached the stairwell,
fingers burning with the onset of frostbite as I battered away,
as crossed the cobwebs. A crate at the landing slid
open all by itself. The chill vapor enveloped my shoes
inside another bundle of effects with seats, palil slips, another
battered ID, my own name already stamped across the top,
the date listed to night shift. Some one had written
process not completed in hasty block letters all across the
form NAM. I pushed my way outside as so called,
my lungs held in protest. The parking lot burned with
flood lights and noise, as sudden world alive with sound
and color. My phone was dead. I staggered through to
the street, flag the passing bus, with hands barely able
to clutch the rillings. I go home. I squatted in
a late Nike Fay, warming my hands around a mug
of bitter black coffee, staring at the shreded documents in
my backpack. I pulled out the digital tape and transferred
it to every service I could. Email cloud accounts too,
encurted drives. Every few minutes. I scanned the windows behind me,
half expecting to see Dalka in the reflection, or one
of the ghost pressing icy palms against the glass. In
the days that followed, APEX went into lockdown. Media coverage
described day power outage, a refrigerant leak, unexplained system failure.
Workers were reassigned shipments rouded under the rear. A city
inspector on local radio said, unfortunate technical issue, no threat
to safety, no mention of missing staff, no face or
name spoken out loud. I heard from Lepe once a
brief voicemail, her voice small warning, don't pick up shifts
from numbers you don't know. She didn't reply to further calls.
The tape was picked up by a half dozen websites,
churning the story into conspiracy urban legend and burying it
with enough digital debris to ensure only the already paranoid
would come looking. But the paranoid didn't fade nearly evermore,
urning a car idol that the curb outside my apartment
windows tinted never the same twice, mail book stuffed with
junk fine print, peppered with failed threats, artificial looking letters
from tent agencies offering midnight jobs in climate controlled environments.
I started to recognize some faces asle over aisle shoppers
at the supermarket, whose coats always looked a little two
uniform hands, always gloved. One night, the pipes in my
kitchen began to wind the same low frequency as the
refrigeration system at Apex. When I checked, fostkels around the spigot,
swirling down toward the floor in the shape of a
company logo. Half race per time. I posted everything the tape,
scan pastoffs, payroll records, my own notes and routes on
an encrypted site, then send anonymous packages to half a
dozen reporters, one to the local police. Unsign but I
included the folder look for those whose process was not completed.
Still no one replied. The city kept going, the chill
that started in Apex, threading outward through the service jobs,
the temp jobs, the jobs that never made the news.
At last, thou left my apartment. My nerves could no
longer tolerate cycle work, freeze, high repeat. I found a
job pouring drinks till late night diner on the edge
of the city. Fewer questions at least, and the chill
at my heel some times seemed only the product of
too little sleep, But dreams didn't forget. My nights were
haunted by corridors lined with crate, icy hands at my throat,
a whispering that always ended with my own name. Some
weeks later, on a sweltering evening, a courrier appeared at
the diner, just off the sunset. She pressed a package
no return ad dressed into my hand, turning away before
I could even thank her. The box radiated coal, beads
of water streaming on to the tile, breath visible around it,
despite the temperature outside. I waited until my breaked open it,
sitting with my back to the window. Inside, cushioned by
a thick envelope of dry eyes, sat a single security
badge nine. The photo was blurry, as if taken through
a sheet of ice. Under my image, the time stump
showed a date two nights in the future. Below the
badge a plain slip of paper in block letters. We
hope he reconsider some records. Never thought my chest constricted
for a moment, the room fell away, the coffee pot strip,
the hum of the free ridge, the ambient chatter, all
noise muffled by a heavy humming cold that drew the
world's warmth into itself. I put the box down in
the shining strip of my fun's reflection. On the counter
of brush metal, A tall figure limbed at my shoulder, jacket,
pail of frost, headcot at an angle of patient waiting.
I closed my eyes and listened to the air itself, shudder,
Frost on the badge crept outward, branching over my hands.
The memory of all those vanished at apex, lingering between heartbeats.
Something cold moved through the diner's glass doors, slow and inevitable,
the memory of unfinished process, the echo of a door forever,
A jaw still as the rasins on fourteen. I held
tight to my own name, breath fogging in the silent
inn and the cold, faithful as ever came calling. I
didn't move for several seconds, hands planted in the counter,
hot hammering somewhere, and my throat like it wanted out.
My coworkers on the light shift hadn't noticed anything except
maybe the way I locked up. Just a guy gone
blank for half a minute on a muggy night, while
a puddle of water widened a round a batted package.
Someone whistled over by the grill pots and pans climbed
the fridge doors squeaked, and that cold and decept to
come identical to a hundred humming compressors. Back at apex
cut through the background noise, I stared again at the badge,
a photo not just cold blurred, but somehow warped at
the edges. My own eyes stared back, but not in
the way I'd ever seen in a mirror or on
any other official id. Something old and exhausted lived behind them,
as if in that image at least, I had already
given up pushing against the weight of all the ice.
I should have thrown it away. Instead. I put the
badge down and watched frost creep across the battered for mica.
I pressed my thumb against the surface, then drew it back.
The skin stuck for a s bliss second, each ridge,
fine and bloodless, like skin pressed against a windshield on
the coldest night of the year. I shut the box
and pushed it aside, trying to breathe through the tension
in my chest. Work dragged itself forward. I clear plates
and refulled chipped coffee mugs. After midnight, the crowd thin,
and I caught glimpses of myself multiplied in the front
glass of double exposure, the real shape of me offset shadowed,
with the after image, always a little taller, shoulders wider,
as if someone stood a fraction of the second behind,
echoing each movement. On break, I stepped outside to breathe
daction nighter. The city's noise should have comforted me, but
even the nearest street lights wore film of condensation. Orange
Bob's fuzzy with fog. The car idled by the coat,
barely eliminated again with the tinted glass, always a new
make and model, always one driver, a hunched motionless behind
the wheel. I turned up my collar and tried to
pretend it didn't matter. The air was thick summer's tail, humid,
and full of the threat of storms. But right where
I stood in the pool of lamp light, it was colder,
not much, but enough, as if some pocket of air
had been preserved from the warehouse. A shiver worked up
my arms. I looked back and saw that even with
the diner's glass fog with grease and fingerprints, a frost
pattern had found its way inside, thin, ghostly crystals feathered
from the sill and radiated upward in a branching web inside.
My coworkers had noticed the cold now too, Margo. He
manned the counter and spent most of her evening's nose
deep in sci fi paper packs, pulled us sweatd tighter
and frowned at the wolf thermometer. Honestly, she muttered. As
I returned, It's like the Walkin's leaking. She clacked her
tongue as if to blame me for running a phantom
air conditioner. T thirty a m. We amp to pots
and lock the door for final sweep. The box from
Eerlat still sat on my station, pulling its own halo
of cool air across the counter. I finally slid the
badge and note back into the envelope, closed it, and
stuffed the whole thing deep in my back back. I
thought about dropping it in the alley dumpster. I even
reached the swaying back door and balance and the threshold
heart pounding, but I couldn't. It was as if moving
it out of my possession would snatch something inside me,
or maybe set off a trap wire directly into my luck.
When I came back through the kitchen, the lights flickered,
not the usual restaurant bulbs stutter, but a rolling, dark,
one fixture to the next, cycling toward the dry storage room.
For a moment, every fan stopped, and the well became
a chamber with nothing but my own breath and the
grind of compressors in the walls. A shape, unmistakably tall
shoulders hunched across the reflection of the glass walkin' and
was gone by the time I whipped around. I dropped
the box. It thudded on to the floor, lid popping open,
as if it too kneaded her. Margo's voice cut through
the hush. You okay, you look like you saw a ghost.
She tried to laugh at her own joke, but her
face faltered when she caught my expression. Just tired, I said,
voice strangled and unconvincing. I keep thinking, I hear things.
She reached for her purse, watching me sidelong. Maybe ask
for few graveyard shifts. She said, it's not good for anybody,
you know. I nodded, knowing full well that sleep wouldn't
fix what gnawed it way beneath my skin. After we
finished and punched out, I walked Margo to her car,
like always, scanning the night for signs of movement. The
same sedan still sat by the curve, exhaust spilling in
an endless low cloud. I stared, challenging some unseen watchure,
but the windows held steady, avoid reflecting city light instead
of revealing passengers. When Margot's tail lights disappeared down Maine,
I started back toward my place on foot. My apartment
loomed farther than usual, roads slick with condensation. Every surface
seemed to glow with a pale, wavering sheen, as if
street lights couldn't quite break the warehouse dock. Halfway there,
my phone pinged a new message from an unknown number.
Stop final warning. The screen froze a moment longer than
if I shut off entirely, back a dreifour seconds earlier.
Now stone dead, I felt for the badge, the note
still there, Still cold at home, I locked every bolt
and chained the door, drew blinds to block out the
outside world. But in the stillness, the coll derived again,
creeping in from under the door from the seams of
window frames. The memory of voices nuzzled at my ears
in the dark, not loud, but real enough that I
checked each room twice, convinced something had followed me upstairs
above my head. The tenant stomped and muttered piped banging,
but even the familiar urton failed to dissolve the chill.
I placed the security badge on my desk, wrapped in
its damp envelope, and sat staring at it until dawn.
I could have fled further. I could have tried to
vanish cut ties and disappeared the way Levett hat the
Waimerin had, but sleep. When it finally came deep and resistible,
dragged me straight backward into the maze of racks and
worrying units and unfinishable checkists. I saw the warehouse and
cross section, every aisle gloring with heat, except Z and
fourteen and the rows nearest the sub basement deep locker.
In my dream, I wandered, badge in hand, trying each
lock as frost spread beneath my feet. Somewhere out of sight,
the tall figure trace roads and the map, slow, deliberate, patient.
Sometimes it wore dlca's heavy jacket. Sometimes it wore my
own face, sometimes neither. Always it kept moving away from me,
disappearing around corners just as I arrived I woke, sweating,
the badge clutched tight in my numb fingers. I blinked
at the smear of condensation in the window and tried
to laugh at myself, but the sound was clapt in hollow.
The city had moved on. Work at the Dino started
feeling normal, banal, even except for the brief jolting reminders
the world wasn't watching the warehouse in its ghosts. If
they'd ever cared about my life before, seemed content to
recede as long as I played by certain rules. I
kept the box with the badge tucked under the loose
floor board, and I stopped answering calls from numbers. I
didn't her, but the sense of being watched didn't leave.
It simply shifted, like the coal, to lay just beneath
the surface of waking. One evening in late August, as
the Dinah's log through the slow IROs after midnight, a
customer slid onto bakstuolonko hat low face, obscured by shadow.
I washed from the corner of my eye for fifteen minutes,
waiting for some movement was sign. Then the figure beckoned
one gloved hand and I approach, stealing myself for some
pranc or confrontation. You work security, didn't you. His voice,
though muffled, was familiar, not exactly Dalka's, but cut from
the same cloth. I braced for the worse, knuckles going
white as I gripped the coffee pot. Not these days,
I said, aiming for casual, just slinging coffee. Management found
someone else. His lips curved in a dry half smile.
Doesn't matter. Some places keep better records than others, he paused,
set something on the counter, a USB stick. If you
care what happens next, meet me outside in five minutes.
Then he left a quiet, measured step to the door.
I waited a shame that my own obedience, then slipped
it after him, passed the kitchen into the alley with
the heat pressed down but the air still biff with
inexplicable cold. He waited by the dumpster, breathing plims of
visible vapor in the summer night. You want them to win,
she asked, pressing the USB into my palm as if
it were radioactive, because right now they are raising at all.
You think they'll leave you alone? Ask Merin, ask Levitt
if you can get them ten sir, I tried to
steady myself. Who are you? My voice sounded smaller in
ni Alla's brick canyon. It doesn't matter, he murmured. Names
are for payil and burn sheets. He held my gaze
for a heartbeat. Play the files, then decide if you
want to forget. If you do, drop the badge in
the river. If not, he trailed off, eyes narrowing, Well
then you already know what comes next. He turned and left,
blending into the cities eddy of headlights, leaving only frosts
where he gripped the metal of the dumpster back inside,
Hans trembling, I excuse myself for the rest of my shift.
I headed home Dee during more than once certainly rashly
or not that I was being followed. At home, I
jammed the USB into my old laptop. There were several files.
Most were video snippets, grainy security footage, some from my tenure,
some much earlier, each showing a figure moving between aisles
and the so called dead zones. Sometimes the tape stuttered,
replaced by static or streaks of light. In one, the
camera caught a moment of clarity, Levitt walking away from
the camera with a bundle of personal effix batch, barely
swinging at his hip. The temperature of the laid it
below zero as he crossed frame and disappeared through a
door that never appeared on any current foe plan. Another file,
the most re ensured me at the warehouse, dropped from
a strange angle. I recognized my own clumsy walk, the
way I hunched my shoulders, the nervous glances backward. But
in that video, a second shape followed about ten paces behind,
all shadow, all blurred edges. At the moment the real
may paused and turned, the shadow stopped in perfect synchronization,
as if chained to me by invisible thread. A document
assets unrecovered Pyeral Cyclotine, list of names, dates, Marine, Levett, Lopez,
others now including my own employee number, my old dress,
all marked process and complete last known locations in fourteen
a deep storage. Attached were images of manifests annotated by
hand aros deletions notes file under overflow pending freeze it
do not process without dual sign off. Last transfer rejected.
The paperwork tre is not just shipments, but people cycling
them through inventory. The way damaged crate were relabeled and
hidden in a final smallest file, A brief audio clip
played a massive spoken in a slow, careful voice. All
records must close the loop. Those who remained and processed
are retain in cold storage till ready for final shipment.
For your safety, do not return a penny dropped. The
process wasn't about all crimes or random trouble, not really.
It was automatic, bureaucratic, impersonal inhuman. If APEX couldn't process
your paperwork, he stayed in holding pattern lives filed and
a cold storage waiting for some algorific completion that never arrive.
And if you dubbed deep enough, if he made noise,
something in the dark or the organization that summoned it
marked you for absorption. My hand shook some urge defiance
for self preservation rose up sharp as the frost still
burned into my palm where I greted the USB much
too tightly. I opened the envelope from the package again
and looked at the badge, really looked. Let in my
thumb trace the ridge text. With a sudden, reckless energy,
I grabbed the badge, the note and the U S
B and headed down five flights sent out to the
street directions until I hit the river's edge. The city's
light shimmered on the dirty surface, the bridge a hundred
yards off. I stowed badge in hand and concerted the
command drop it in, end the unfinished loop, wash myself
clean as a fritual. A river could erase what had
been seen or what I'd become. But standing on that bank,
I remembered the faces in the bracrium, the names in
the folders and in the files, the coiled fear in
Lupy's voice, walk away, and the pattern continued. All those
others vanished with no warnings, wept under as in complete process,
records never closed, never thought. I weighed the badge in
my palm instead of tossing it. I pulled out my phone,
miraculously working again, battery at one hundred percent. I took
a picture of the badge thereover skull Lion and send
it with the other files to every news outlet and
labor Roat's chowel. I could think of personal and anonymous alike.
I stood there for long minutes during someone or something
to step from the dark and stop me. But the
only ribbles on the surface came from went across the water.
When I got home, a new envelope waited, perched on
my door, out with surgical precision, no name, just the
suggestion of address. I opened it with shaking fingers, inside
a single sheet of thermal. You had your chance. Not
everyone gets another. Watch the door. My head swam. I
scanned the apartment from the hallway, noting every shadow for movement,
but inside nothing stirred. The frost on the windows had
melted in the rising heat. I waited. Over the course
of the next week, things seemed, if not normal, then
at least no worse. The badge was gone from my desk,
the frost retreated, no cause idled outside, even the phone
call stopped. It was as if by refusing to disappear quietly,
I've become too troublesome, too unpredictable to bother with. Or
maybe I'd just been filed under a longer, slower process,
one whose paperwork moved at glacial speed. On my last
night at the diner before switching to ALI shift, Smargo
found me in a pantry, glancing at the colou door
as if she could see through the metal. Hey, she murmured,
you feeling better. She watched my face tone gentle. I
opened my mouth to explain to tell her about Apex,
about the badges, about the voices and boxes, and the
freezing cold. But the words dissolved there. I nodded, managed
to smile. I didn't quite feel out, and nally after closing,
the wind felt hot. The city kept its secret moving.
But in the shadows I saw that faint, slow, pulsive
air that not quite cold, the reminder that unfinished things
never left, just ripened in storage, waiting for a cloak
to stamp them final and send them off. I checked
the mail again, hoping for some sign the cycle had ended.
All I found was a fly where hiring cold storage
technicians needed flexible night shifts, competitive pay, A plain person
reference is optional. The ghost of a smile quirked my lips.
I tore up the paper and watched the pieces drift
down the gutter that night, one last stream, a corridor
of racks, endless and perfectly aligned. All the old badges
hung in a line at the midpoint. I passed them
and turned, brushing finger tits against each marine livet lobis
myself on the last ring, a blank crud, still blistering
with frost waited. I left it there and touch and
didn't look back. Morning sang its usual burden. Sunlight stipulled
the city and left the frost to melt for no air.
I went to work, pouring coffee for the early risers,
feeling the gravel of unfinished stores pull at the edge
of every hour. And when a coal returns, because it
always does, creeping under doors or whispering through the air ducks,
I will be ready, or at least I will know
to listen for the shuffle boots on tile, for the
cyveair that isn't any ordinary draft, for the silence that
falls only in abandoned aisles. Not everything stored away stays sealed.
Not all records given time disappear, But sometimes that's enough
to warn the next outsider looking for shelter from the cold.
Sometimes it's enough to keep going, and in the residue
of all that chill deep within the systems that at
last flesh a memory. I, like a badge, still waits
for process to finish, but to night, at least the
door remains closed, and that is the end. Thank you
for listening, and I will see you in the next one.