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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. I started my first solo grave

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Yar chiffed ip its cold logistics, with the headache booming

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behind my left eye and the coppery taste of nerves

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thick in my mouth. No traffic comm outside, only the

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ticking of the security clock in the persistent or of

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ancient cooling units went through the bones of the building.

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Every corridor hummed with cold, a cold heavy enough that

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the air itself felt and cooperative were sissing each breath.

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Nights rain outside the loading bay windows made the interior

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lighting seam harsher, as if the warehouse's own shadows were

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scented elimination. A week of daytime shadowing hadn't come close

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to preparing me for how monstrous the place felt empty.

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I'd watched the agent Knight's supervisor, mister Dalkar, rifle keys

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on a battered iron ring, his hands brought and scabbed,

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his voice always just above a whisper to night. When

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he met me by the door mark security, arms folded

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over his yellowed uniform shirt, he barely bothered a glance

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up from paperwork. These are yours now, Dalka grunted, setting

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the ring of keys and the batter day with the

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thumb heavy enough to rattle my teeth. Don't lose them,

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don't skip your zomes. Fill out the logs, every crate,

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every pass understood, he paused, when I brush sharp as

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a bent nail. If you see anything out of place,

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you log it, and if you see anything unusual, repeat

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the protocols is written. Don't get creative. He moved through

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the process by roadsign this, read that. Memorize code numbers

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for padlocks and exits. Recite them back. My tongue stumbled

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around the numbers, pencil, trembling as a copper down combinations

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onto my palm. Dhalka finally shoved the brittle map toward me.

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Corner soft from decades of folding, stick to the floor plan.

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He tapped a finger on the circle section labeled so

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in fourteen and lowered his voice. Stay out of the

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back when you can trust me. If you get stuck,

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radio me. Otherwise, just do the job. Easy money right,

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It didn't feel like money at all, Not with the

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sigh looks the day crew fired my way as they

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clocked out. Not with the way the conveyor belt seemed

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more suitable for moving copses than box syrups and shook

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grab pallets. Even the forecliffs iding by the dock avoid

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I contat, or at least the grizzled operators did, steering

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their machines through the aisle with military precision. One short

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and stocky beneath his reflective vess caught my eyes. He

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hissed by. But don't bother counting friezer goes, he called forced,

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muffled by his collar. They don't log into the system,

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and they don't clock out either. His wink might have

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passed for a joke, but neither of us laughed. Dalka

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faded into his own office cocoon and left me with

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the Knight, the keys on my hip, the warehouse mat

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gritting against my knuckles, the check us dangling from its clipboard,

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the raw immensity of vapex, and curled before me. Aisles

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lined like ribs, each lay in a corridor of icy

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air and gray metal framing Censers blinked discreetly overhead. Their lights,

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meant to reassure, looked like warning signals in the gloom.

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I started with the routine, My steps are going louder

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than they had beside my trainer manual inventory, double checked

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the padlocks, No sense a status, nothing to worry about,

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except the way silence pulled in some corners like standing water.

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I yanked my collar tider certain aisles empty even of pallets,

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chilled the air by several degrees. My skin prickled as

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I pass, breath fogging despite the thermost at reading. All

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the while the overhead floressens pretested flickering and humming like

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a dying heart. My gloved hand pressed into each checkpoint,

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cold leeching, eager as a sickness. Between the rack rows,

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only the scuff of my boots and the groom drag

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of my own nose breaking up the hush. At the

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far loading dock, white doors. Gaping into the parking lot's

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empty dark, I found it a crate not on my manifest,

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shorter than the usual refrigerated pallettes. Beproader, sitting alone in

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the freshold space were neither dock nor whare has claimed it.

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It was coated thicken frost, so pale it seemed to

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glow where my flashlight caught the slow swell of vapor

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rolling off it. TIC's ear and marked, no skew, no

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shipping barcurred, nothing except streaks were fingers or perhaps something

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else had melted the hoar frost. The room was cold,

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but the air around this crate felt arctic. That she'll

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sinking deep enough. My eyes waded. I approached clove, stiffening,

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and clicked off the checkliss. No entry in the manifest,

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nothing schedule for arrival, nothing noted in storage. I crouched

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to no details, the mist icing over my boots. When

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I raised my flashlight. It's being jumped, cleared out by

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the swirling frost, then stable as to just as a

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gust of breath, I thought, tickled my collar. I pressed

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the cold button for dalka static chute at my ear,

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at the connection, hissing before dissolving altogether. I tried again, anxiety,

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winding as tightly as the circuit cables, vanishing into the wall.

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While I waited, I made a careful diagram of a

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crate in my lock, noting its peculiar chill, the complete

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lack of any label or mark. Hand a little ashamedly

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that I dared not touch it. My hand hovered over

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the wood, a spark of childish free riching my skin.

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The cold swirling off the crate deepened. I shivered. I

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turned back to glance at my list, eyeing my block

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letter entry and tight box DOC five frost. Then I

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looked up. The crate was gone, not moved, not slid away, gone.

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No scrape of wood, no goudge in the frost, just

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an empty concrete slap and a lingering halo of cold,

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as if the air were it had rested, was slower

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to warm. I stood frozen. I searching for the logic

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in this, but the logic were coiled. A new patrol

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look clamped under one arm, doctor skalsboots clunking over the

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astone laced tiles should have been ordinary. Instead I entered

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a routine I had never quite mastered. My alarm clock

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always needed a second nudge, and every bus ride from

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out of a stuffed department in Elive Park was a

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hollowed out ira wasted. It wasn't lost time exactly, but

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the well pressing down with pressure that didn't let up,

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Not even in dreams. Those mornings still belonged to dull hope.

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Before Apex, I spent mon'strolling sheep jaw boards, pawning my wristwatch,

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letting the fridge run low so I wouldn't see the

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mole curling in the back. The job at Apex arrived,

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like all life lines, a blind office call, the interviewee

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in gray slacks, some paperwork could barely finished reading it

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paid enough to catch upon rent by bus tokens, and

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if I save, maybe replace my dead phone screen. Shift

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work at its own rituals. Day crew agitated, big shouldered,

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bursting through the break room with microwave needles and jokes

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about unionizing. They filed out a round sunset, faces drained,

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loosening their muddy boots. I hovered at the periphery, drifting

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through their exhaust trails, trying to catch fragments of routine

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here all night, ha said Loopid, the janitor, pressing him

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up into the bin's ring of glancing up at me

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with tired eyes. Don't go too far toward the freezer

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after midnight gets colder than it should. Her tone was

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neither warning nor welcome, but an invitation to leave certain

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topics alone. Near the time clock. I learned to fight

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with a faded digital display, stabbing up buttons as the

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machine shirped or beat in confusion, unlucky nights, I managed

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to punch in before the line of dayshift, as coal

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less behind me, the knuckles rapping desk surfaces in impatient morse.

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Sometimes I spent five minutes coaxing the system into remembering

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my badged number before its bat out of paperst up

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the size of a postage stamp inflorescent bus brekroum leope

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and I stall moments of silence, feeding coins into the

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sinus burning soda machine. She had the slow patience of

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someone used to knights to try dis dust dropped in vosses,

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snack wrappers crinkly underfoot shift changes, she said, popping the

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tab of a bitter iced tea. You see the ones

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who stay the rest they get replaced, always have her

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lips tightened when she spoke of old faces, each departing

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with some piece of the warehouse's shadow. Every corridor was

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an ice box, no matter how closely the thermosts read

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four degrees. See some corners radiated waves of coal through

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the soles of my boots. The echoing stretches between racks

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amplified every sund so my unbreath felt louder, nerves leaping

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at each metallic climb when the cooling unit cycled behind me.

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Day crew gossiped about pay cuts and audits. Night crew

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drifted into silent pears, head down, gripping battered clipboards. Apex

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didn't inspire camaraderie, just a soilen contract of mutual noninference.

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The regular forklift stay low yellow with ship paint and

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mourning stickers culling at the corners, navigated aisles and looping routines.

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The drivers, their faces half shadowed beneath hoods or binais,

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seldom lifted their eyes. My own nose grew teeth as

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I padded through Their bad dials rose thirty fourth through forty,

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always empty, unexplained frost clumping along the beams, even when

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the rest of the system ran dry. Once later my

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first week, I watched the supervisor looking and inventory cut,

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pausing to drot something on a paper slip before tearing

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it off and tucking it up a sleeve. The routines

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pressed against my brain, insisting on compliance. If you hesitated,

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you invited error. An error at Apex meant warning slits

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posted on your locker three and you were gone. The

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bosses watched payer all with the heat seeker's attention. I'd

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heard sores of firing, so suddenly didn't have time to

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clear your thermos. But I kept returning inexorably. My checking

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account ran in the red. The late feast stacked on

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their own special towlers, and I had already pourned my

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father's ring. Once nights at Apex meant survival. My time

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was mine, but it was paid for, and that mattered

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in the law. Between snack brakes, I restocked cloves in

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the supply cupboard, a ritual for freezing fingers, and a

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brained unnumb from Barckwoods. The top drawer stuck. When I

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finally rattled it loose, A pile of laminated employee badges

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spilled out. The plastic cards fluded onto the shelf, and

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familiar names stark against their faded faces. Some smiled sincetare flatly.

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Most I realized had never smiled at all. A handful

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I recognized from orientation faces that had disappeared well before

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my stint began. A pair Alder and sun Bleach, looked

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like they dated back to Apex's first ear The topmost

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badge read Calvin Leavitt. The next Mulenda dragomere. I rolled

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the bundle into a scrap of paper, intending to leave

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it fore loupe, but instead shoved them to the back

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of the drawer, feeling distinctly superstitious. It was routine, yes,

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but the edges of that routine felt shot, every so

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often catching skin and drawing a thin line of a knees.

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After the incident with the vanishing crate, my efforts to

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convince myself I'd seen nothing grew thinner. I logged the

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event in the security spreadsheet under abandoned inventory eyes, flicking

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to the poldons that let me choose codes for missing

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or destroyed. When I sent the incident report to the

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after iOS supervisor in books, nobody replied not then not.

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By the end of the week, whatever I had seen,

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nobody wanted log I supposed it was easier that way. Still,

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I doubled back to the dock toce each shif half

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hoping the blasted crate would drow, materialize and render me

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merely forgetful. On my nightly rounds, the sense of being

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watched twisted tightly as wire. Sometimes it was nothing but

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the where else's and broken sight lines, echoes bouncing oddly

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against pallet wrecks. But some nights, especially after two or

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three in the morning, it was different. The refrigeration drones

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studded with mechanical precision, but every so often ad hero

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stutter a hitch like a skip bee, and then just silence.

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I started to keep my own inventory lock. I mapped

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every cold aisle, every room, copying badge entry records from

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the digital terminals. Patterns flickered at the edge of my attention.

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On three occasions I found sequence numbers in the logs

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that jumped crates supposedly process but never shipped. When I

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checked the paperwork, I found them crossed out. Would shake handwriting.

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One ancient dust coated crate listed as destroyed was in

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fact still sailed and stored in Zone fourteen A. The

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labels so sunfaded I could barely make out the numbers.

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The coldest patch of all lay across the north wall

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of Zone fourteen A. Were hoops of frostlaced light veins

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along concrete seams. The temperature sensors there meant to alert

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as soon as anything did below safe fanling simply blinked

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and reset. Their logs grew out into normal within minutes.

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The air in its own burned in side yew lungs

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prickling the throat even through a double scarf. One night,

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growing boulder, I took Adeter into the security office, my

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own checkmen vicinity before clockett, I pulled up six months

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of manifest logs, the database crawling at glacial speed. The

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deeper I dug, the more often I found records overridden

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in a frantic blocky script were attacked, sea attached, ship

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date corrected, crates would vanish from one part of the

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record and re appearer a week later. Further back blanks

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filled in afterward with someone else's initials, overlaying the data.

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I noticed another pattern, stranger still leach violation, each missing

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or overwritten entry clustered around particular aisles. The sensors and

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cameras in these zones failed or rebeated several times a week,

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always around the same time, just before three thirty in

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the morning. No explanation in the equipment logs, no work

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00:11:22,120 --> 00:11:24,799
orders linked to the failures. That night, handed by the

233
00:11:24,879 --> 00:11:27,960
humm of monitors, I let my curiosity pull dacker. I

234
00:11:28,000 --> 00:11:29,960
wandered past the untouched locker at the edge of the

235
00:11:29,960 --> 00:11:33,320
security room, the one assigned to Sea Leavitt. The sticker,

236
00:11:33,519 --> 00:11:35,480
curling at the edge, bore a name that matched one

237
00:11:35,480 --> 00:11:38,559
of the old badges. The combination lock was rust in

238
00:11:38,559 --> 00:11:42,159
place inside untouched on the jacket the color of frozen

239
00:11:42,159 --> 00:11:45,759
ash and a battered thermos. Levett's notes cold and cheap

240
00:11:45,799 --> 00:11:48,559
notebooks were still slotted in the top shelf, testimony to

241
00:11:48,600 --> 00:11:51,559
whoever walked off a shift and never return. Maybe that's

242
00:11:51,639 --> 00:11:54,159
what happened when secrets crew too heavy. They simply waited

243
00:11:54,159 --> 00:11:57,360
for the next set of hands. My insomnia took new shape.

244
00:11:57,480 --> 00:12:00,000
Muscle memory bend into a rhythm that wasn't entirely mine.

245
00:12:00,639 --> 00:12:03,240
Most nights I clock out breathless, mind racing, But some

246
00:12:03,399 --> 00:12:06,120
night I lingered. Sleep no longer waited for me. Back

247
00:12:06,120 --> 00:12:08,559
at the apartment, so I sat in the chilled security office,

248
00:12:08,600 --> 00:12:11,159
watching split screen security fees as the cloth pushed toward

249
00:12:11,200 --> 00:12:14,080
four a m. On the third such night, I froze

250
00:12:14,080 --> 00:12:16,159
the tip at the heart of so own fourteen. I

251
00:12:16,200 --> 00:12:19,639
cycled through a week's worth of midnight footage. Always at

252
00:12:19,679 --> 00:12:22,440
three twenty eight two things happened. The cameras feed crackled

253
00:12:22,440 --> 00:12:25,080
a gray digital static, slicing the image and every censor

254
00:12:25,159 --> 00:12:27,600
in ailes thirty nine through forty one blipped offline before

255
00:12:27,600 --> 00:12:31,200
returning status light's flickering. The third night, in one brief

256
00:12:31,200 --> 00:12:34,679
interval of unbroken video, something moved frame by frame, my

257
00:12:34,759 --> 00:12:37,960
heart hammering, I advanced through those seconds. At the edge

258
00:12:37,960 --> 00:12:40,360
of Asle forty one, a figure passed a blow, taller

259
00:12:40,360 --> 00:12:42,039
than any one I knew from the crew, bulkier than

260
00:12:42,039 --> 00:12:45,039
any manager, his shadow pulling at the refrigerated air around him,

261
00:12:45,559 --> 00:12:49,039
No check badge scans, no record of entry or exit.

262
00:12:49,600 --> 00:12:52,799
The times I buried in digital snow sweatsizzled in my palm,

263
00:12:52,879 --> 00:12:55,480
even as the war has called further. I spent an

264
00:12:55,480 --> 00:12:58,000
io tracing the figures probable route using the list of

265
00:12:58,039 --> 00:13:00,360
crates locked as shipped from the section near cross Referencing

266
00:13:00,440 --> 00:13:03,759
sured half a dozen ever left the shells. Seeking confirmation,

267
00:13:03,879 --> 00:13:07,000
I called the APEX Incident tip line. The computer answered

268
00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:10,960
a calm unnervingly lifelike voice that asked for my badge number, then, oddly,

269
00:13:11,039 --> 00:13:14,240
my birthdate, then a strain of questions, has anyone reported

270
00:13:14,279 --> 00:13:16,559
missing your shift? Do you have a recording of your incident?

271
00:13:16,639 --> 00:13:18,480
Or did you see anyone else with you at your location?

272
00:13:19,120 --> 00:13:21,279
There was no way to enter an only press one

273
00:13:21,279 --> 00:13:23,879
for follow up, pressed two to enkoll, I press one,

274
00:13:23,919 --> 00:13:27,639
heart throbbing. The call cut off at once. Next shift,

275
00:13:27,720 --> 00:13:31,039
I returned to the affected zones, my flashlight barely pushed

276
00:13:31,080 --> 00:13:34,080
through the haze, culling along the floor. In Zone fourteen A,

277
00:13:34,320 --> 00:13:36,759
I found something she prints in the frost patterns that

278
00:13:36,799 --> 00:13:39,720
didn't match any plain warehouse issued arrow deep leading toward

279
00:13:39,759 --> 00:13:42,960
the silk curates and vanishing beneath shelves. I crouched and

280
00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:45,480
found a gray work gloff, frozen solid, half melted into

281
00:13:45,480 --> 00:13:49,320
the floor the fabrictors. I tried to extract it. Near By,

282
00:13:49,440 --> 00:13:52,559
a sticker was pressed against the concrete Starlight Express nineteen

283
00:13:52,639 --> 00:13:55,080
ninety six, the logo of a company swallowed by bankruptcy

284
00:13:55,159 --> 00:13:59,480
decades past. It didn't belong here. No recent supply referenced

285
00:13:59,480 --> 00:14:03,000
that name. I returned to the security office. With the

286
00:14:03,080 --> 00:14:05,960
night's silence thickening, I set to downloading the video sigments

287
00:14:05,960 --> 00:14:09,679
direct from the system's archive. The files decompressed, slowly, cycling

288
00:14:09,679 --> 00:14:13,240
through time stamps, frames, flickering and jumping in the segments

289
00:14:13,240 --> 00:14:15,720
from three twenty eight. In the dead corners of each feed,

290
00:14:15,720 --> 00:14:18,399
a cat faint ripplelike distortions, movements that resolved in the

291
00:14:18,399 --> 00:14:21,519
shape of human forms, slinking between rocks, never upstream, never

292
00:14:21,559 --> 00:14:24,240
into direct line of sight, always hovering at the edge,

293
00:14:24,759 --> 00:14:27,240
far from soothing. The suns embedded in those clips set

294
00:14:27,240 --> 00:14:30,639
my nerves on edge against the hum of refrigeration. A soft,

295
00:14:30,720 --> 00:14:33,320
almost spoken kittence rose from the ambient noise, as if

296
00:14:33,360 --> 00:14:35,159
all the air in the building carried a fracture. Chan

297
00:14:35,440 --> 00:14:39,080
not yet, not yet, not yet. Desperate to confirm that

298
00:14:39,120 --> 00:14:41,200
I wasn't alone in my observation, I dug out one

299
00:14:41,200 --> 00:14:44,240
of the old lopbooks from Levi's abandoned locker. Its first

300
00:14:44,240 --> 00:14:47,159
page's detailed routine checks crate forty one eight empt normal

301
00:14:47,320 --> 00:14:50,960
padlock replace, but a few entries into handwriting. Grew heard

302
00:14:51,720 --> 00:14:55,000
margins filled with phrases hurrowd knocking to night, son cold

303
00:14:55,039 --> 00:14:57,799
but no warning, and in new arrival, didn't log why

304
00:14:57,879 --> 00:15:00,679
is no one answering the terest grew short shop air

305
00:15:00,759 --> 00:15:03,080
static in's own thirty nine canned open, crave, don't let

306
00:15:03,120 --> 00:15:04,919
it to the last page, cut off the impression of

307
00:15:04,919 --> 00:15:07,440
a scrolled line torne in the page. Heard something in there.

308
00:15:08,039 --> 00:15:10,399
I closed the book, but you'll seeping into my bones

309
00:15:10,399 --> 00:15:13,320
deeper than usual. One shift later, the radio on my

310
00:15:13,360 --> 00:15:16,440
belt crackle to life. During a routine walk, MUSHes clicked

311
00:15:16,440 --> 00:15:21,000
over tiles, streak, revise, Hello security either a voice twisted

312
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:24,159
in static, distant and rough edged. You have to come

313
00:15:24,200 --> 00:15:28,320
helps on fifteen past the lock maintenance dore. I hesitated.

314
00:15:28,559 --> 00:15:30,759
No one else worked on fifteen at lease not now.

315
00:15:31,399 --> 00:15:33,600
The cheft rosser had left the section dark for months.

316
00:15:33,600 --> 00:15:36,840
The paperwork a tangle of pending repairs and forgotten extension codes.

317
00:15:37,679 --> 00:15:40,399
I pressed a receiver of static, chewing the channel. Who

318
00:15:40,480 --> 00:15:44,039
is this? I waited silence thickening, then the voice return weaker,

319
00:15:44,080 --> 00:15:48,440
slicing through the static. Hurry, bring your flashlight. The corridors

320
00:15:48,440 --> 00:15:51,159
grew sharper, frost and casing racks and turning forward, tiles

321
00:15:51,159 --> 00:15:54,240
slick into foot. I followed my map that muscle memory

322
00:15:54,279 --> 00:15:57,559
guide me through looping turns past the lock maintenance dore.

323
00:15:57,679 --> 00:16:00,759
The fl tallow as if space compressed by inches. The

324
00:16:00,840 --> 00:16:04,440
lights flickered once twice and then quit entirely. The emergency

325
00:16:04,440 --> 00:16:07,120
battery stripped tripwire to life, dotting the path with sallow,

326
00:16:07,200 --> 00:16:10,519
hastened illumination. Each step tamped down the crunch of frost.

327
00:16:11,279 --> 00:16:14,480
My own breath fogged in rolling plumes. Somewhere ahead a

328
00:16:14,559 --> 00:16:17,080
doorstood to draw his own fifteen's far the storage chamber.

329
00:16:17,720 --> 00:16:20,240
My flashlight pan left and right. A shaped tall stooped

330
00:16:20,320 --> 00:16:22,279
in distinct slid from view at the end of the corridor,

331
00:16:23,000 --> 00:16:25,440
inside the friture chamber, against the fire wall by the

332
00:16:25,440 --> 00:16:28,480
compressor room breasted. Another created the same size and design

333
00:16:28,519 --> 00:16:31,200
as the one I'd first seen this ones they'd gaped

334
00:16:31,200 --> 00:16:35,120
open inside the chill struck like a slap. A step closer,

335
00:16:35,200 --> 00:16:38,799
hot stumpeding, and glanced in. At first, I couldn't place

336
00:16:38,840 --> 00:16:42,879
what A sore tangle of objects dusted in frost, photos, wallets, keys,

337
00:16:42,960 --> 00:16:46,080
and old work badge walked by cold. Closer look, the

338
00:16:46,159 --> 00:16:49,080
id badge caught the flashlight's beam, bearing the namer incoosts

339
00:16:49,120 --> 00:16:52,440
of photo of two thousand nine security. I recognized the

340
00:16:52,440 --> 00:16:55,960
faded features he'd appeared in the old storientation materials gone

341
00:16:55,960 --> 00:16:59,519
before my time. I thoumb through the bundle, the wallets

342
00:16:59,600 --> 00:17:02,759
laminated with rhyme, its cud stuck together receipts dating back

343
00:17:02,759 --> 00:17:06,400
eight years, A crumpled photograph. Three security gods standing arm

344
00:17:06,440 --> 00:17:09,359
in an arm one tall, broad shouldered features matching the

345
00:17:09,359 --> 00:17:12,279
blurry footage had seen in the tapes. A chill anced

346
00:17:12,319 --> 00:17:14,880
my gut. That slow at the one prowling through the

347
00:17:14,920 --> 00:17:17,240
security freeze wore the same face, the same steep, the

348
00:17:17,240 --> 00:17:19,920
same jacket as Marin cuz its off. Was it a

349
00:17:19,960 --> 00:17:23,920
replay a haunting the crate, the logs, the vanished workers,

350
00:17:24,720 --> 00:17:27,319
or something slower, colder, some mechanism meeting at the edges

351
00:17:27,319 --> 00:17:29,440
of the warehouse and letting the cold serve a smokescreen,

352
00:17:29,480 --> 00:17:33,200
port collies or passage. Footstuff clipped behind me. I ducked

353
00:17:33,240 --> 00:17:36,079
behind a crate through a split into boards. I watched

354
00:17:36,079 --> 00:17:38,319
as a figure rounded the corner, jacket zipped up against

355
00:17:38,359 --> 00:17:41,039
an impossible freeze, breath jetting visibly in the black air.

356
00:17:41,640 --> 00:17:43,480
The figure bent to peer into the open crate, before

357
00:17:43,519 --> 00:17:45,720
dropping something onto the icy concrete, a lane nailed with

358
00:17:45,720 --> 00:17:48,960
clipped id which spun in erratic circles. When the figure

359
00:17:49,000 --> 00:17:51,799
moved away, I inged forward, careful not to speak or sugar.

360
00:17:52,440 --> 00:17:55,440
The badge's name read Calvin Leavitt, my mind word as

361
00:17:55,440 --> 00:17:58,920
I pieced it together. The Venish warn't gone something about

362
00:17:58,920 --> 00:18:01,599
this place. This cold kept them here not only as memory,

363
00:18:01,640 --> 00:18:04,079
but trapped in a cycle of haunting an echo, and

364
00:18:04,160 --> 00:18:06,799
with each vanished person, the anomalies, the zones of dead air,

365
00:18:06,920 --> 00:18:11,000
the missing inventory, the freezing crits intensified. I gathered myself,

366
00:18:11,079 --> 00:18:12,920
drawing a slow, care for breath as the frost crept

367
00:18:12,920 --> 00:18:16,799
over my boots. The cold wasn't just an accident of thermodynamics.

368
00:18:17,440 --> 00:18:20,319
At Adak's coal was a key, and whatever it opened,

369
00:18:20,359 --> 00:18:23,160
I had already started to turn the lock. I waited their,

370
00:18:23,200 --> 00:18:25,359
pressed between workeed crate boards and the brick wall. As

371
00:18:25,440 --> 00:18:28,359
Leavit's badge settled in its lazy spin, a quite grew

372
00:18:28,359 --> 00:18:30,799
so deep my own harpe began to echo, a distant thunder,

373
00:18:30,880 --> 00:18:33,680
muffled by ice. The figure, if it was even levitt,

374
00:18:33,680 --> 00:18:35,599
if their face hadn't belonged to someone else by now

375
00:18:35,599 --> 00:18:37,880
moved through the shadows without stumble, as if the cold

376
00:18:37,880 --> 00:18:40,720
air held some private map. His boots left no mark

377
00:18:40,759 --> 00:18:44,319
on the freshly glittering frost. I watched, frozen and reasoning

378
00:18:44,319 --> 00:18:46,559
that a panic would be worse than stillness, teeth throbbing

379
00:18:46,599 --> 00:18:49,200
from the urge to chatter. The sound of his passage

380
00:18:49,200 --> 00:18:52,240
faded in its wake. The lights in the corridor sizzled,

381
00:18:52,279 --> 00:18:54,720
then blinked abruptly into brightness again, as if the cold

382
00:18:54,759 --> 00:18:57,160
itself had blinked away and the electricom had dared return.

383
00:18:57,880 --> 00:19:00,240
Only then did I move, unfolding limbs of still, as

384
00:19:00,240 --> 00:19:02,880
the wrapped cables overhead, levered up by the nervous logic

385
00:19:02,920 --> 00:19:06,160
that demanded evidence sun token of this encounter. I reached

386
00:19:06,160 --> 00:19:08,720
for the lanyard, gingerly, half expecting a jolter, for the

387
00:19:08,720 --> 00:19:10,720
thing to bite me, as if the plastic and metal

388
00:19:10,759 --> 00:19:14,160
had absorbed some violence. The laminate was clouded too thick

389
00:19:14,160 --> 00:19:16,519
with frost crystals to read from one angle, but close

390
00:19:16,559 --> 00:19:19,440
up the name was there, Leavitt the photoor dead eyed

391
00:19:19,480 --> 00:19:21,200
in a way that could have belonged to any of us.

392
00:19:21,240 --> 00:19:24,079
The hollow look of resignition or in complete sleep, not

393
00:19:24,240 --> 00:19:26,079
so unlike my own eyes when glimpsed in the break

394
00:19:26,160 --> 00:19:29,039
room mirror at foy M. I pocketed the badge, and

395
00:19:29,039 --> 00:19:31,000
the cold bled the plastic to my palm, ticklish and

396
00:19:31,039 --> 00:19:34,160
painful as it thought my mind was gathering the fragments

397
00:19:34,200 --> 00:19:36,880
the vanish create the badge, Morin's effects and the cycle

398
00:19:36,920 --> 00:19:39,079
showing itself and blips on a monitor in the jumpy

399
00:19:39,079 --> 00:19:42,119
fidish that refused to make linear sense, and I remembered

400
00:19:42,160 --> 00:19:45,839
Blue paced warning trailed by her lingering sidelong gays. The

401
00:19:45,960 --> 00:19:47,920
urge of fleabuck did inside me, and I considered it

402
00:19:47,960 --> 00:19:50,440
slipping out, making up some excuse to explain a thermal

403
00:19:50,480 --> 00:19:54,200
system's check, feigning a fever, quitting overroy. But panic would

404
00:19:54,200 --> 00:19:57,359
only draw attention. I'd learned already that attention in this

405
00:19:57,400 --> 00:20:00,079
place was as hazardous as forgetting, which turning to our

406
00:20:00,160 --> 00:20:03,599
troll was an exercise in feigning routine. I shuffled paperwork

407
00:20:03,680 --> 00:20:05,960
where checked padlocks with glove fingers to cribbled numbers in

408
00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:08,400
the margins of my log marking the places that felt

409
00:20:08,440 --> 00:20:11,200
colder by a degree or two than any logical engineering allowed.

410
00:20:11,839 --> 00:20:14,519
Each time I entered his own especially fourteen and now foteined,

411
00:20:14,519 --> 00:20:16,559
the cold sharpened at the edge of my awareness, as

412
00:20:16,599 --> 00:20:19,039
if the temperature didn't dip so much as drop out altogether,

413
00:20:19,200 --> 00:20:22,200
and the absence rather than a presence. The next morning,

414
00:20:22,279 --> 00:20:24,440
I lingered after clocking out, slutched in my car on

415
00:20:24,480 --> 00:20:26,240
the far end of the lot, with engine id lane

416
00:20:26,319 --> 00:20:29,799
stirring at Levit's badge and Marin's photoed evidence. I scrawled

417
00:20:29,839 --> 00:20:32,279
through my own phone no messages, no return call from

418
00:20:32,279 --> 00:20:34,599
the so called supervisor, but a brief female from h

419
00:20:34,680 --> 00:20:36,880
R confirming I had one accruede sick day if needed.

420
00:20:37,519 --> 00:20:40,400
There was no option here for WAD to rapport. My

421
00:20:40,480 --> 00:20:42,960
apartment felt foreign that day, even with sun slanting through

422
00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:45,400
the street window glass in the ancient radiator climbing away

423
00:20:45,400 --> 00:20:47,839
in the corner. I set the badge on my desk

424
00:20:47,880 --> 00:20:50,079
and stared at it as I made coffee, hoping irrationally

425
00:20:50,160 --> 00:20:52,200
that if I looked away and then back, it would vanish,

426
00:20:52,559 --> 00:20:56,799
or at least become simple again, transmuted back into anert plastic. Instead,

427
00:20:56,880 --> 00:20:58,599
I caught the sunlight and sent a beam across my

428
00:20:58,599 --> 00:21:01,519
scuff calendar, ticking the cold or by another day. I

429
00:21:01,559 --> 00:21:03,640
didn't sleep but a couple of hours, jolted by the

430
00:21:03,640 --> 00:21:05,799
sense that some ran into apex had taken up residence

431
00:21:05,799 --> 00:21:08,680
behind my eyes when I work, heart racing, and one

432
00:21:08,759 --> 00:21:11,039
slippert for a frozen from a draft beneath the window.

433
00:21:11,119 --> 00:21:14,279
I forced myself to rationalize if the warehouse wanted to

434
00:21:14,279 --> 00:21:16,319
bleed its secrets, it would do so only to those

435
00:21:16,359 --> 00:21:19,240
who pressed hard at its scaps. I returned at night

436
00:21:19,240 --> 00:21:21,920
early inventory she folded in my chest pocket levis bad

437
00:21:22,000 --> 00:21:24,680
shaped away. The break room TV was on for once,

438
00:21:24,720 --> 00:21:28,440
spitting snow and static tinto a channel between stations. Lupey

439
00:21:28,519 --> 00:21:31,680
was there, quietly, eating string cheese and scanning faded newsletters.

440
00:21:32,359 --> 00:21:34,880
She glanced up at me. Not quite expectant, not quite

441
00:21:34,880 --> 00:21:38,240
a very I weighed the risk. You know anyone from

442
00:21:38,279 --> 00:21:41,279
security who quit before I started? My voice was low,

443
00:21:41,319 --> 00:21:44,319
aimed at the floor, lop appeled another length of geese.

444
00:21:44,440 --> 00:21:48,079
Lips pursed. There's always someone quitting, she said, after a pause.

445
00:21:48,839 --> 00:21:52,039
They never say goodbye. Just one day they're gone. Palell says,

446
00:21:52,039 --> 00:21:55,880
own't ask her gaze sharpened. You see something last night.

447
00:21:56,559 --> 00:21:59,680
It's the same guy, I said, testing her reaction at all.

448
00:21:59,720 --> 00:22:03,079
Burd shouldered murn, we'll levett. She exhaled breath of fog

449
00:22:03,119 --> 00:22:06,079
in the two coal room. Sometimes I hear old keys

450
00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:09,319
jangling and nobody else there. Things move, crates, mop buckets,

451
00:22:09,480 --> 00:22:11,799
even my own shoes. You write it down, someone will

452
00:22:11,839 --> 00:22:14,279
shed the paper in the morning. She folded up the

453
00:22:14,319 --> 00:22:17,559
last bit of cheese and regarded the floor. Ye mind yourself,

454
00:22:17,680 --> 00:22:20,720
she said, you want to stay here, don't stay too creous.

455
00:22:20,759 --> 00:22:22,200
I got a kid. I don't dig too deep. If

456
00:22:22,200 --> 00:22:24,480
I want to keep the job, I respected the limit.

457
00:22:24,519 --> 00:22:26,599
In her eyes, she'd already risk more than she meant.

458
00:22:27,240 --> 00:22:29,599
After she left, I found myself drifting to the place

459
00:22:29,640 --> 00:22:32,599
where Marin's effects had been stashed. Sewn fifteen compressor room,

460
00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:35,880
bull cut padlocks still hanging from the latch. Nobody had

461
00:22:35,960 --> 00:22:38,319
checked the sight, not even a note from the maintenance team,

462
00:22:38,359 --> 00:22:41,079
as if it had vanished from the shift's consciousness. In

463
00:22:41,079 --> 00:22:43,640
the haze of refrigerant, the scentling good of cold metallic

464
00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:47,640
sharper than simple eyes. If the vurnishings were cycles, repeating patterns,

465
00:22:47,640 --> 00:22:50,119
then this room was a hinge. I pulled my own

466
00:22:50,119 --> 00:22:52,559
phone out, snapped photos of the crate, the badge, the

467
00:22:52,599 --> 00:22:55,839
open wallet with its decade old receipts. Still my hands

468
00:22:55,839 --> 00:22:58,480
shook as I tried to steady the lens. I found

469
00:22:58,480 --> 00:23:00,640
a small stack of paperwork down into a weather sailed

470
00:23:00,720 --> 00:23:04,279
envelope wedge beside the compressor. Inside time cuts from two

471
00:23:04,279 --> 00:23:07,240
thousand nine, each stamped with Marin's name for three extra shifts.

472
00:23:07,240 --> 00:23:09,359
The handwriting and the checkouts slip did not match. The

473
00:23:09,480 --> 00:23:13,319
check in one was tight, blocky. The checkout's signature was

474
00:23:13,319 --> 00:23:16,359
a simple collision of scroll lines. My skin felt tight,

475
00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:19,519
stretched over my bones. I tucked the photos and envelope

476
00:23:19,519 --> 00:23:21,640
deep into my side coat pocket and cleared the zone,

477
00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:24,759
persisting the urge to look back each footstep away from

478
00:23:24,799 --> 00:23:27,319
that chamber. The air seemed to warm fractionally, a reward

479
00:23:27,359 --> 00:23:30,240
for putting distance between myself and whatever ran beneath the floor.

480
00:23:30,839 --> 00:23:32,440
The rest of the night, I kept my rounds as

481
00:23:32,519 --> 00:23:35,839
ordinary as possible, but the intervening eyes carried a different

482
00:23:35,920 --> 00:23:39,119
kind of tension. Shadows played differently now. A normal skitter

483
00:23:39,119 --> 00:23:41,400
of rodents and ceiling spaces turned to my ear into

484
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:44,480
careful footsteps that never quite matched my own. The camera

485
00:23:44,519 --> 00:23:47,200
feets flickered more often than before, sometimes going dead for

486
00:23:47,319 --> 00:23:49,640
entire minutes, leaving me to guess what moved in those

487
00:23:49,640 --> 00:23:53,279
blind spots. When three thirty a m came around, I

488
00:23:53,319 --> 00:23:56,519
was in Zone fourteen, badge scanner in hand. The reader

489
00:23:56,519 --> 00:23:58,960
flashed the wrong collar, a deep red, before stuttering and

490
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:02,119
showing green, a muffunction or something else. I took a

491
00:24:02,119 --> 00:24:04,640
step into the biting coal between rows, and somewhere in

492
00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:07,240
my periphery, a metallic line was unded, not echoing the

493
00:24:07,240 --> 00:24:09,680
way dropped metal shirt becoming and going in an instant

494
00:24:10,359 --> 00:24:13,599
drawing breath. I edged closer to the source, behind one

495
00:24:13,599 --> 00:24:15,680
of the heavy carbon steel doors. A voice and near

496
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:18,200
whisper nail and tired hissed, don't let them in. After

497
00:24:18,240 --> 00:24:20,759
the last syllable, only my pounding heart and the familiar

498
00:24:20,799 --> 00:24:24,559
caizorus of the refrigeration system remained. I pushed tentatively on

499
00:24:24,559 --> 00:24:27,839
the door. It swung open into a gap. The light

500
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:30,839
inside for a moment revealed a narrow corridor not marked

501
00:24:30,880 --> 00:24:33,039
on any version of my warehouse map, a passage lined

502
00:24:33,079 --> 00:24:35,200
with rocks so tightly packed that a grown adult would

503
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:37,519
need to a side wos to fit there in The

504
00:24:37,519 --> 00:24:40,079
passage didn't just feel coal, it was lifeless, as if

505
00:24:40,079 --> 00:24:42,559
refrigeration had scared all trace of oxygen away and left

506
00:24:42,599 --> 00:24:45,960
behind only a hollow space insulated from everything else. There

507
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:48,640
were crates stacked along the central spine, covered in layers

508
00:24:48,640 --> 00:24:51,440
of rags, frozen stiff, handriton labels faded to eligibility with

509
00:24:51,519 --> 00:24:54,920
water damage in crun wild. I hesitated, then ducked in,

510
00:24:55,039 --> 00:24:58,559
pressing myself between racks. My boot grazed something that gave

511
00:24:58,559 --> 00:25:01,880
a water stained folder, mouth dry, escorted to retrieve it.

512
00:25:02,519 --> 00:25:05,839
The papers inside repayrol manifests all tied with a confidential

513
00:25:05,839 --> 00:25:08,960
destroyer after reading, but as I scanned e after date,

514
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:13,039
one stuck out marinecosets ofv last payment February two thousand nine,

515
00:25:13,119 --> 00:25:15,240
and beside it note I could barely decipher, and shakey

516
00:25:15,279 --> 00:25:19,559
block letters returned not processed sea footage. The folder contained

517
00:25:19,559 --> 00:25:22,000
one more slip in old security VHS taped labor appealing

518
00:25:22,079 --> 00:25:24,599
at the edge night two slash fourteen's lash nine z

519
00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:27,359
own fourteen A. I jammed it into my breast pocket

520
00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:29,599
and ducked out, feeling as if the very fast in

521
00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:32,160
the air was reaching to snout my collar. It took

522
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:33,960
the remainder of the shift for my pulse to settle,

523
00:25:33,960 --> 00:25:35,640
and only then, in the safety of the break room

524
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:37,759
behind a door i'd wedged with the heavy mop bucket,

525
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:40,079
I unspoiled the tape from its case. There was no

526
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:42,039
way to play it here, but it served as yet

527
00:25:42,039 --> 00:25:44,440
another link to the vanished, the cold and the buried

528
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:47,599
las of Apex. As dawn crept up, bringing the sun's

529
00:25:47,599 --> 00:25:50,039
watery light through the stained windows, I finished my report

530
00:25:50,079 --> 00:25:54,440
in near automatic phrases incident observed anomaly, lock malfunction. I

531
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:57,599
didn't mention the folder, the passage, or the voices. I

532
00:25:57,640 --> 00:25:59,680
didn't mention Leavitt's I D badge, now wrapped in my

533
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:02,319
circle drawer, it home. Something told me that was the

534
00:26:02,319 --> 00:26:05,119
only reason it hadn't already slept from reality like the rest.

535
00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:08,359
Later that week, returning for the start of my next rotation,

536
00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:10,720
I found an envelope in my lockernot ABIs branded but

537
00:26:10,759 --> 00:26:14,960
slick plastic wet from condensation, inside a single transfer form

538
00:26:15,039 --> 00:26:18,039
with the relevant names blowed out in comments called an

539
00:26:18,079 --> 00:26:21,400
unfamiliar hand for year safety, submit or destroy. There was

540
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:23,920
no signature. I knew then that I was not the

541
00:26:24,000 --> 00:26:27,640
only one watching, nor the only one being watched. That evening,

542
00:26:27,839 --> 00:26:30,559
as the shift began, Ducas's presence at the door radiate attention.

543
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:33,240
He barely looked at me as he handed over keys,

544
00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:35,079
but his voice liked the forced and difference of our

545
00:26:35,119 --> 00:26:38,359
first exchange. Stick to your logs, he said. Lower this

546
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:42,720
time managements checking the back sectors themselves, thinny questions called

547
00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:46,279
the main office only understood. I nodded, wondering if Dukell

548
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:48,880
was another ghost of flesh rather than memory. Another ketaker

549
00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:51,680
left circling the cold By two a m I had

550
00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:53,839
mapped the zones of greatest chill to a grid overlaying

551
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:57,759
the known disappearances, inventory mismatches, and sense of failures. The

552
00:26:57,799 --> 00:27:01,119
pattern was uquy and inescapable. Missing items in the dead

553
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:04,000
spots matched with the vanished worker's Leavitt Morine, and two

554
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:06,720
others whose names I'd only seen unfaded badges or half

555
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:09,680
torn logs. The phone in the break room usually a

556
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:11,279
dead line to know where it rang. As I poured

557
00:27:11,319 --> 00:27:14,000
coffee into a muggtched with some one else's name, I

558
00:27:14,039 --> 00:27:17,559
picked up static at first, and then a voice masculin firm,

559
00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:20,079
if you want to keep this job, you'll stop poking around.

560
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:22,599
Apex looks after its own considered this your only warning.

561
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:25,200
The line went dead before I could stammer a reply.

562
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:28,160
Muskin prickled in the heated space, and I caught my

563
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:30,839
own reflection in the street winter pane, gaunt older by years,

564
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:34,079
frost in my heron under my eyes. I made my decision.

565
00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:37,079
Before the end of the week, I'd watch that VHS

566
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:40,640
if Apex's secrets lived in cold, maybe to take capture

567
00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:43,440
their outlines at a crucial air one last round of

568
00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:45,079
the isles. Then I'd call in a friend with the

569
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:47,400
right equipment, asked for a favor and risk that thin

570
00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:51,440
line between job and hazard. The warehouse never slept, even

571
00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:53,440
in the heart of the night. Some section blinked back

572
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,480
to life, retractable gate's lowering Forcliff's trumbling in the distance,

573
00:27:56,519 --> 00:27:58,680
a dull, rhythmic clang that could as easily be machinery

574
00:27:58,680 --> 00:28:02,279
as something stranger. But in Zombforteina that night all was still.

575
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:04,680
The frost in the surface of the north wall now

576
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:08,039
climbed in thick tonguesen before it reached almost to the ceiling,

577
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:10,920
a rib so wide it almost glowed. I ran a

578
00:28:10,920 --> 00:28:13,359
glove finger over frost stuck in walls, the cold biting

579
00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:16,680
through the nitrial, pinching my flesh. I listened every sense,

580
00:28:16,720 --> 00:28:19,640
straining some were further back in the deep corridor. I

581
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:22,559
discovered something or someone shifted with the hisl like exhaled steam,

582
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:26,079
not footsteps, not quite human, an echo perhaps of those

583
00:28:26,079 --> 00:28:28,400
who had come before me. But I knew better than

584
00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:31,160
to look too deeply into the dark. As I turned

585
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:33,359
to leave, a stack of manifests near the door tumbled

586
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:35,559
to the ground, turning the air into a flurry of paper.

587
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:38,079
I stooped to gather them my hand, closing over a

588
00:28:38,119 --> 00:28:40,680
single page mat with the name Calvin Leavitt, last entry

589
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:43,680
March to twenty eleven. The stump beside the entry simply

590
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:46,720
re final check cut. There was nothing else, no transfer,

591
00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:49,759
it equipped without notice, termination for caused, only the finality

592
00:28:49,799 --> 00:28:52,559
of a process completed. I tucked the page away, heart

593
00:28:52,599 --> 00:28:55,359
pounding in you. The coals at Apex was only half

594
00:28:55,359 --> 00:28:58,240
the story. The rest lay bare, it stitched into paper

595
00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:01,039
work and inventory numbers, into the from a failed cameras,

596
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:03,440
and the accumulation of badges and names that no longer

597
00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:06,160
belonged to any one living. But it was becoming clear

598
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:08,279
how difficult scape would be, how easy the system made

599
00:29:08,319 --> 00:29:10,480
it to raise a person, but how stubborn those raised

600
00:29:10,519 --> 00:29:13,960
prisonces remained. On my final round before daybreak, I found

601
00:29:13,960 --> 00:29:16,200
a scrap of paper jawned under the security office door,

602
00:29:16,279 --> 00:29:18,359
folded and folded to the size of a playing card.

603
00:29:19,119 --> 00:29:21,400
I unfolded it under the flickering disc light. It was

604
00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:23,319
a map of the warehouse, but this version had hand

605
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:27,319
drawn lines added, new corridors, shortcuts through walls never opened

606
00:29:27,319 --> 00:29:29,519
to the rest of us, with several zone sharply circled

607
00:29:29,519 --> 00:29:32,039
in in the color of dried blood. One zone was

608
00:29:32,039 --> 00:29:34,359
marked with a set of initials M K see AL

609
00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:37,640
and a date months before my hire. Another section, the

610
00:29:37,680 --> 00:29:40,119
one that had coughed forth the hidden corridor, was simply

611
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:43,839
labeled forgotten. Don't open. I leaned back, cracked my knuckles,

612
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:46,799
close my eyes. The air smelled of burnt ozon and

613
00:29:46,799 --> 00:29:50,160
the dull grease of overworked gears. Whatever Apex was, it

614
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:53,079
was more than cold storage. It was a cemetery built

615
00:29:53,079 --> 00:29:57,240
from return's return goods, returned workers, return gorse, each circling

616
00:29:57,279 --> 00:30:00,400
the circuits for their own reasons. Tomorrow I would bring

617
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:01,839
the tape to a friend who owed me a favor

618
00:30:01,839 --> 00:30:04,720
of adeotech, who didn't ask questions. If the ghost of

619
00:30:04,759 --> 00:30:06,839
Apex wanted to be seen, I boorreed the eye that

620
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:09,799
wouldn't blink, but to night, the loss of my nerves

621
00:30:09,799 --> 00:30:13,160
burned with adrenaline, I locked off, left early, tried to

622
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:15,319
get lost in empty city streets. Though the frost on

623
00:30:15,400 --> 00:30:17,519
my wind should seemed to spell warnings in the language

624
00:30:17,519 --> 00:30:20,359
I was only beginning to read. The badge in my pocket,

625
00:30:20,359 --> 00:30:22,279
pressed cold to my thigh, the ghost in the grainy

626
00:30:22,279 --> 00:30:24,599
footed war face I already knew, and the colt against

627
00:30:24,599 --> 00:30:27,920
all expectation, kept rising, sharpening, promising that whatever I found

628
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:30,039
on that tape would not grant peace, but only more

629
00:30:30,079 --> 00:30:32,839
questions twisted into the ice. When I slept, I saw

630
00:30:32,839 --> 00:30:35,960
frost patterns crawl through my dreams, charting invisible corridors with

631
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:38,039
symbols I half recognized and face as I could not

632
00:30:38,079 --> 00:30:40,799
forget Leavitt, Morin others whose names still clonged to the

633
00:30:40,799 --> 00:30:43,960
coils of wire above the wrecks. The air was always coal,

634
00:30:44,200 --> 00:30:47,480
even under my apartment's tattered blankets. Every sound in the

635
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:50,440
waking world carried a warehouse echo. By the next morning,

636
00:30:50,480 --> 00:30:52,680
my priorities had congealed as firmly as the frost on

637
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:56,079
the night floors. The VHS tape, it wine of possibility,

638
00:30:56,119 --> 00:30:58,039
growing too urgent to ignore, was the thread I would

639
00:30:58,039 --> 00:31:01,119
follow no matter where it unraveled. I kept it shape

640
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:03,559
to my jackets inside pocket all for a sleepless stone,

641
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:05,240
weighing it in my hand. As I rode the half

642
00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:07,519
empty forty two bus to the edge of the industrial district,

643
00:31:08,119 --> 00:31:10,799
I met Rena, an old friend from the electronics counter

644
00:31:10,839 --> 00:31:13,279
at Valleutronics, in the mossy walk up. She rented above

645
00:31:13,319 --> 00:31:16,079
a shotted liquor store. We didn't talk much, except to

646
00:31:16,119 --> 00:31:18,119
place the tape on the table beside her batted player.

647
00:31:18,759 --> 00:31:21,119
I handed over A twenty with shaking fingers. She raised

648
00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:23,200
one eye rowt only saying you want me to leave

649
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:25,759
the room. Her voice was softer than the hard edges

650
00:31:25,759 --> 00:31:28,480
of her new haircut. No, just to just queue it up.

651
00:31:28,599 --> 00:31:30,519
You can watch if you want, but I can't promise

652
00:31:30,559 --> 00:31:33,319
it won't get weird. She popped the cassette in fiddling

653
00:31:33,319 --> 00:31:36,240
with the tracking knob. The old TV hissed before flickering

654
00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:39,200
into grainy monochrome for a moment. The image jumped a

655
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:41,640
time stump to slash fourteen slash nine on fourteen a

656
00:31:41,759 --> 00:31:45,400
three twenty eight two. We both leaned closer. The video

657
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:47,440
shirt eyl after aisle of in distinct forms as the

658
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:50,720
camera pan on its slow mechanical sweep. Frost glimmered along

659
00:31:50,759 --> 00:31:53,359
the walls, were fracted light dancing, and spikes across the lens.

660
00:31:54,039 --> 00:31:56,319
At three twenty eight thirty fourth, the video glitch ha

661
00:31:56,480 --> 00:31:59,279
wash of snow, then a ship's stuttering into view. Weena

662
00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:02,559
leaned forward, hair falling into her face. That's not just

663
00:32:02,599 --> 00:32:04,880
a person, she breathed, voice so low it stuck in

664
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:08,000
my throat. The sail load figure on the tape, broad shouldered,

665
00:32:08,039 --> 00:32:10,799
heavy jacketed, face smudged by digital ghost, walk straight down

666
00:32:10,839 --> 00:32:12,839
the aisle, then stopped by crate identical to the ones

667
00:32:12,880 --> 00:32:15,960
had found. Frost, caked, spilling vapor. He reached for it,

668
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:19,119
a cellar shape, almost transparent klute's shoulder, impossible to name,

669
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:22,759
but definitely there. The next minute, the thief flickered. The

670
00:32:22,799 --> 00:32:25,720
figure opened the crate, bracing himself as if expecting assistance.

671
00:32:26,359 --> 00:32:28,960
He would drew something of bundle ambiguous, then stepped backward,

672
00:32:28,960 --> 00:32:32,119
clutching it behind him. The frost on the wall repaired itself,

673
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:35,160
snaking upward as the spawn alife. Then, just before the

674
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:37,799
scene bled out into static, the figure turned toward the camera,

675
00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:41,079
not a direct look, more luxome when registering movement from

676
00:32:41,079 --> 00:32:44,200
the corner of their vision. The eyes, though blurry, found

677
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:46,839
the lens. Even through distortion, the image froze me. The

678
00:32:46,839 --> 00:32:50,200
face was almost familiar. Figure set the bundle down, one

679
00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:52,480
hand on the crate, laid, and the camera abruptly shut off.

680
00:32:53,039 --> 00:32:55,400
We're in a squeeze my arm is this is this

681
00:32:55,519 --> 00:32:58,079
real time? He said? This was years ago it's from

682
00:32:58,079 --> 00:33:00,640
a missing guard murrain cousin itself, and I think he's

683
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:03,880
still there. I felt suddenly childish, as if speaking the

684
00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:07,119
woods would flatten them into harmlessness. I copied the tape

685
00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:09,839
to my pohe snagging a digital version as Rhena schiffad

686
00:33:09,839 --> 00:33:13,160
despite the radiator huffing behind us. I didn't see anything

687
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:15,759
on that. She said, voice shaky and needed. Did you

688
00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:18,640
are we clear? I thanked her, packed up the original,

689
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:22,319
and left for the warehouse. Violet dusk frosted the city windows.

690
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:24,839
Every TAXI sprayed slut across a cub As I walked

691
00:33:24,880 --> 00:33:27,920
the fooduce image is trembling in my pocket. Back at APEX,

692
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:31,000
the hush before shift change was thicker than usual. Workers

693
00:33:31,039 --> 00:33:33,680
filed out without meeting my eyes. As I hung my

694
00:33:33,759 --> 00:33:36,039
jacket in the security cubicle, I caught a sliver of

695
00:33:36,039 --> 00:33:39,440
conversation outside, the two voices too low to distinguish. I

696
00:33:39,519 --> 00:33:41,359
bent to lace my boots hard in my teeth, and

697
00:33:41,400 --> 00:33:44,559
when I glanced up, Lupey was standing there. She closed

698
00:33:44,559 --> 00:33:47,799
the door, lowering her voice. Management asked if he'd seen

699
00:33:47,839 --> 00:33:50,480
anything weird. Said, you were talking to venders after ires.

700
00:33:50,599 --> 00:33:54,039
That true. Her expression was both worry and warning. I

701
00:33:54,119 --> 00:33:57,279
found a tip. I whispered form Murin's last shift. He

702
00:33:57,319 --> 00:34:00,720
never left, did he lupepress trembling finger to her lips.

703
00:34:01,519 --> 00:34:03,200
They told us not to talk about the side of

704
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:05,160
the building. They did the same one that it vanished.

705
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:07,920
We sweep the aisles, We keep our noses down. Her

706
00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:11,920
eyes flickered, but they know always did, maybe always will.

707
00:34:12,480 --> 00:34:15,000
She didn't wait for a reply. I watched the door

708
00:34:15,039 --> 00:34:17,239
shut or solower, framed by a pane of glasses. She

709
00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:20,519
heard of keys jangling. It was early, but I began

710
00:34:20,559 --> 00:34:23,719
my rounds, nose wire tight. I moved between Zone thirteen

711
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:26,199
and Zone fourteen, a ticking off roteen checks while tracing

712
00:34:26,199 --> 00:34:28,840
every badge login for the evening. As I passed the

713
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:31,639
blast doors to the back sectors, an older forklift driver's scout,

714
00:34:32,159 --> 00:34:35,079
face tight with tiredness, paws beside me. He flicked his

715
00:34:35,119 --> 00:34:38,440
cigarette toward the bus shelter. Saw management roll in at

716
00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:42,000
midnight last night three even he jerked his head. If

717
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:44,559
you've got anything to hide, now's the time I heard

718
00:34:44,559 --> 00:34:46,599
them talking about a sweep. People who asked too much

719
00:34:46,639 --> 00:34:49,360
have a way of not being scheduled again. I nodded,

720
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:51,920
gripping the line out in my pocket until my knuckles blanched.

721
00:34:52,639 --> 00:34:55,159
After my first lap, I tucked myself in the break room,

722
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:57,599
writing a list of names, the missing, though quitters, the

723
00:34:57,679 --> 00:35:00,119
unexplained transfers, then cross referenced them with a pair or

724
00:35:00,239 --> 00:35:02,800
slips I found in the folder. Five were listed as

725
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:06,639
process not completed. With each the record trailed off las

726
00:35:06,639 --> 00:35:10,960
pay lascan final shift, no exit, restless thought, slooping. I

727
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:12,920
dialed a number had found in one of Murn's old

728
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:16,079
files and number of her family conduct. An automated operator

729
00:35:16,119 --> 00:35:18,199
picked up the script clip to rehearst the number you

730
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:21,119
have dialed is no longer in service. I tried the next.

731
00:35:21,199 --> 00:35:24,119
A woman answered, brusque and thin voiced you are calling

732
00:35:24,199 --> 00:35:27,800
from APEX. Her tone tone called his ice. We don't

733
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:30,599
talk to you people, not after what happened, The line

734
00:35:30,639 --> 00:35:34,079
went dead before I could answer. Next attempt, another disconnect

735
00:35:34,119 --> 00:35:36,719
and unfamiliar voice warning, don't bring this to our door.

736
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:39,679
We moved on. You should two they wanted dispair door

737
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:42,559
were true afraid to unearth it. The word spuns fiercely

738
00:35:42,599 --> 00:35:45,400
as the city's cold front, kneedling and numbing by turns.

739
00:35:46,039 --> 00:35:47,920
I spent the next two nights, cross reference in the

740
00:35:47,960 --> 00:35:51,920
shipment manifest against legal records, all police evidence DAX cropped

741
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:55,360
up barely disguised crates marked for special storage. Sections of

742
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:58,599
the warehouse label did not access. More than a handful

743
00:35:58,639 --> 00:36:01,320
had been received from company's type and scattered news clips

744
00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:05,760
to racketeering, fraud, or even disappearances never resolved. A pattern

745
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:09,159
snapped into place. The cold zones went just random. They

746
00:36:09,159 --> 00:36:11,719
clustered around the shipments brought and under corporate handshakes, and

747
00:36:11,760 --> 00:36:15,519
no questions asked. Midnight unloading the ghost reel or metaphorical

748
00:36:15,559 --> 00:36:19,159
guarded something valuable or dangerous hidden with him. One afternoon,

749
00:36:19,199 --> 00:36:21,280
my phone pinged with the text tonight see the deep

750
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:24,840
locker unsigned. I stared at it as the sun buried

751
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:26,920
itself under a dirty city snow, the oscillation of the

752
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:30,239
last week drawing tighter. Some one on the inside, maybe Dalca,

753
00:36:30,599 --> 00:36:33,360
maybe someone watching him, wandered this exposed, or wanted to

754
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:35,920
see what I would risk for truth. That night, on

755
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:38,199
my nominal night off, I walked two miles to Apecs

756
00:36:38,239 --> 00:36:40,960
under a skycomb black with a nielding weather. Passing the

757
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:43,559
main entrance, I slid around to the unmonitored side gate,

758
00:36:43,599 --> 00:36:46,480
the skeleton key still in my pocket. The door stuck,

759
00:36:46,519 --> 00:36:49,480
giving with a shriek. No one challenged me, no guards,

760
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:53,039
no cameras flicked anyone on the screen. Inside, the air

761
00:36:53,119 --> 00:36:55,800
was heavy and sterile. Each light overhead pulls once, then

762
00:36:55,800 --> 00:36:59,000
withdrew into a sigh of gloom. I moved quietly, but stirring,

763
00:36:59,039 --> 00:37:02,000
dust frozen to the tie. My breath rose and vanished

764
00:37:02,039 --> 00:37:05,000
in trails of crystal past so and fourteen. The inventory

765
00:37:05,039 --> 00:37:08,119
sets grew denser. Some crates hunched against the walls, half

766
00:37:08,159 --> 00:37:11,119
swallowed by condensation. I made for the sector mark to

767
00:37:11,159 --> 00:37:13,159
deep Locket on the old hand draw map, a place

768
00:37:13,239 --> 00:37:15,840
untouched by work orders or daily checks, ringed by heavy

769
00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:19,119
steel doors with analog blocks. Lawns since painted over. My

770
00:37:19,199 --> 00:37:22,320
hands shook as I worked the combination. The metal grownd

771
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:26,039
then swung outward with an almost living reluctance. Damp, fetid

772
00:37:26,079 --> 00:37:28,199
air rolled over me, far colder than the rest, as

773
00:37:28,199 --> 00:37:31,480
if this section sat outside the building's jurisdiction. Though deep

774
00:37:31,519 --> 00:37:34,320
Locket resembled a sub basement more than a room, The

775
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:37,320
ceiling was low. Pipes crusted with frost tangled above head

776
00:37:37,360 --> 00:37:40,800
high racks along the back wall, rows of unlocked, wooden

777
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:43,719
crated jost out side by side, older than anything transported

778
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:46,639
in ears. At the center a bolded cabinet with a

779
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:50,039
rotary dial, the antique kind used for secret files, FBI evidence,

780
00:37:50,159 --> 00:37:53,480
or wartime cold books. A drawer hung half open, jammed.

781
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:55,920
I yanked until it jerked free, and a cascade of

782
00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:59,119
shredded paper snowed on to my boots. I knelt, the teeth,

783
00:37:59,159 --> 00:38:02,159
grinding with cold. Sorting slips from the mess. Most were

784
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:06,360
payroll records, names dissolved almost beyond reading, mixed in flickering

785
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,400
polaroids of men and women in apex uniforms, faces blurred

786
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:12,880
by double exposure, penciled diagrams of warehouse layouts, key spots

787
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:15,960
blacked out in heavy slashes. Another drawer revealed a dozen

788
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:18,440
VHS tapes marked with dates, each paired to a last

789
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:22,239
scan badge Al Lopis twenty ten, Calvin Levitt twenty eleven,

790
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:26,039
m cousets of two thousand nine. I thumbed through, numb fingers,

791
00:38:26,039 --> 00:38:28,920
pinching labels until one caught my eye. Emergency, no exit,

792
00:38:29,559 --> 00:38:33,119
no date, only smuch writing, adrenaline burning. I stuffed the

793
00:38:33,159 --> 00:38:35,320
tape and a handful of documents into my backpack and

794
00:38:35,360 --> 00:38:37,320
moved to the deeper darkness. At the end of the locker,

795
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:40,480
A faint hum vibrated through the floor, as the refrigeration

796
00:38:40,559 --> 00:38:42,679
units had burrowed and too deep or something older still

797
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:46,199
was stirring beneath the concrete. My radio, which had silence,

798
00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:49,519
stuttered on of its own accord. Static shivered. Then lay

799
00:38:49,519 --> 00:38:52,679
of voices echoed an impossible stereo. Some I recognized to

800
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:56,960
dalka maybe or a levet from orientation films. Others were shadow.

801
00:38:57,039 --> 00:38:59,880
It was pro quiet, hissing out warnings, don't open, stay out,

802
00:39:00,039 --> 00:39:03,400
and not for you. I pressed forward. The cold here

803
00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:06,400
was paralyzing, gluing breath to my throat. At the furthest

804
00:39:06,400 --> 00:39:08,719
point of the locker, I nearly tripped on something soft

805
00:39:08,719 --> 00:39:11,400
and orange, vest torn and frozen, half concealing a pile

806
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:14,159
of scattered effects. Keys corroded by ice, a battered id,

807
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:17,559
a family photoglued by frost, to a metal case. These

808
00:39:17,599 --> 00:39:20,679
were not artifacts left by chance. They were deposited, arranged,

809
00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:23,599
as if some ritual required their order. Even as I

810
00:39:23,599 --> 00:39:26,519
passed my flashlight over the bundle, a sand soft footfalls

811
00:39:26,519 --> 00:39:29,000
on the corridor outside to set my hot hammering I

812
00:39:29,079 --> 00:39:31,960
killed the light, pressed myself lap behind the stacks, brudshellow.

813
00:39:32,559 --> 00:39:35,280
A man entered the room, tall in a supervisor's heavy jacket.

814
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:39,000
BOT silent on the floor. He didn't search. He merely

815
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:41,719
looked down the rows, paused, and then spoke softly into

816
00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:43,599
his phone. For was carried back to me by the

817
00:39:43,639 --> 00:39:47,760
chill acoustics it handled. He's here now. He pocketed his

818
00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:50,840
phone and waited, unmoving. With a groan of metal, the

819
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:54,159
door slam shut behind him. He turned, and only then

820
00:39:54,199 --> 00:39:57,639
did I recognize Dahuka. His face was pale as candle wax,

821
00:39:57,719 --> 00:40:00,800
I sunken. He caught my gaze. The line between fear

822
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:04,320
and threat blurred. You need to let this go, he said, quietly, barredly,

823
00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:06,679
more than a bath. If you walk out now, it'll

824
00:40:06,679 --> 00:40:08,920
be like you are never here. If you don't, he

825
00:40:09,039 --> 00:40:11,480
let the words high. You think EPYX is just a

826
00:40:11,519 --> 00:40:13,440
cold warehouse? Do you think you're the first to see

827
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:16,199
what's spin? Kept down here? I kept silent, feeling for

828
00:40:16,199 --> 00:40:19,239
the nearest takes it. DOC stepped forward, not blocking me,

829
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:21,960
but not letting me pass. DA People like you come

830
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:25,079
through every decade or so, they get close. Sometimes management

831
00:40:25,159 --> 00:40:28,559
lets them move on. Sometimes they don't. His gaze was distant.

832
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:31,480
Sometimes I think the cold wants to keep them more

833
00:40:31,480 --> 00:40:34,920
than the company does. I try to stoudy myself the

834
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:38,239
missing guards morin lovette. Did they die here? My voice

835
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:41,400
scratched the stale air. Dalka shook his head, more exhaustion

836
00:40:41,519 --> 00:40:44,519
than denial. It's not about dying, it's about being erased,

837
00:40:44,559 --> 00:40:47,840
same as those crates were dacted, missiled cold until unrecognizable.

838
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:49,800
They start out as people, then the cold gets them.

839
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:52,800
After that, they don't want much except for company. He

840
00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:55,880
stepped aside, gesturing to the fall wall. This place is

841
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:58,159
a tomb, not just for products, but for everything. People

842
00:40:58,199 --> 00:41:01,480
want to forget. Companies, crimes, whole lives, he let out

843
00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:04,880
along shuddering sigh. You can leave, but you can't take anything,

844
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:07,679
even if you try. There's more burn bags in the

845
00:41:07,679 --> 00:41:11,159
main office than you'll ever see, he finished, softer, shred

846
00:41:11,199 --> 00:41:13,400
the things burned evidence, The only place left for it,

847
00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:15,960
always down here with the rest of us. A sudden

848
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:18,119
gale of freezing air batter at the rows, tearing at

849
00:41:18,119 --> 00:41:21,039
the scattered paper, and rattling the lights overhead. From the

850
00:41:21,079 --> 00:41:24,159
darkness behind Dalka shapes moved figures anew from the photos

851
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:28,400
Levett Morin Lobiz, their faces unfocused, stepping out from the racks,

852
00:41:28,679 --> 00:41:34,280
frostcrystalizing at their heels. Dalka didn't flinch, His eyes gone wide, flickered,

853
00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:37,400
not with fear, but an ancient, weary resignation. They won't

854
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:40,320
let it rest. Now, he whispered, you have to choose.

855
00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:44,519
The lights died in the absolute dark. The temperature plunged.

856
00:41:45,239 --> 00:41:48,320
My body shook uncontrollably as the spectral presence's edge closer.

857
00:41:48,400 --> 00:41:51,199
Their voices layered over the wind. Here now stay with

858
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:54,280
us and not outside, not any more. I lunge for

859
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:57,360
the side exit, shoving a rack aside. The cold prass

860
00:41:57,360 --> 00:42:00,599
my blood. They can slow, heart pounding, I have stumbled,

861
00:42:00,639 --> 00:42:02,440
half crawled from the locker, the faint glow of my

862
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:04,840
phone leading the way. I was crunching under every movement

863
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:07,760
behind me. I heard dark A whisper again, not words,

864
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:10,440
just as sound, as brittle as the frost. My mind

865
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:13,000
tore it itself. Run escape or turn and pull someone

866
00:42:13,039 --> 00:42:16,159
out into the light. Faces behind me levis pleading stair.

867
00:42:16,320 --> 00:42:19,119
Marin's haunted silence warred with Darka's grim guzzliness, and the

868
00:42:19,159 --> 00:42:22,480
utter dark, pressing from all corners. I reached the stairwell,

869
00:42:22,559 --> 00:42:25,719
fingers burning with the onset of frostbite as I battered away,

870
00:42:25,760 --> 00:42:27,920
as crossed the cobwebs. A crate at the landing slid

871
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:30,239
open all by itself. The chill vapor enveloped my shoes

872
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:34,800
inside another bundle of effects with seats, palil slips, another

873
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:37,639
battered ID, my own name already stamped across the top,

874
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:41,159
the date listed to night shift. Some one had written

875
00:42:41,199 --> 00:42:43,880
process not completed in hasty block letters all across the

876
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:46,880
form NAM. I pushed my way outside as so called,

877
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:50,000
my lungs held in protest. The parking lot burned with

878
00:42:50,039 --> 00:42:52,320
flood lights and noise, as sudden world alive with sound

879
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:55,960
and color. My phone was dead. I staggered through to

880
00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:58,239
the street, flag the passing bus, with hands barely able

881
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:01,719
to clutch the rillings. I go home. I squatted in

882
00:43:01,719 --> 00:43:03,920
a late Nike Fay, warming my hands around a mug

883
00:43:03,920 --> 00:43:06,440
of bitter black coffee, staring at the shreded documents in

884
00:43:06,480 --> 00:43:09,440
my backpack. I pulled out the digital tape and transferred

885
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:11,480
it to every service I could. Email cloud accounts too,

886
00:43:11,519 --> 00:43:15,280
encurted drives. Every few minutes. I scanned the windows behind me,

887
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:17,800
half expecting to see Dalka in the reflection, or one

888
00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:20,599
of the ghost pressing icy palms against the glass. In

889
00:43:20,639 --> 00:43:24,039
the days that followed, APEX went into lockdown. Media coverage

890
00:43:24,039 --> 00:43:27,800
described day power outage, a refrigerant leak, unexplained system failure.

891
00:43:28,320 --> 00:43:31,920
Workers were reassigned shipments rouded under the rear. A city

892
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:35,320
inspector on local radio said, unfortunate technical issue, no threat

893
00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:38,920
to safety, no mention of missing staff, no face or

894
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:41,840
name spoken out loud. I heard from Lepe once a

895
00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:44,760
brief voicemail, her voice small warning, don't pick up shifts

896
00:43:44,760 --> 00:43:47,920
from numbers you don't know. She didn't reply to further calls.

897
00:43:48,599 --> 00:43:50,599
The tape was picked up by a half dozen websites,

898
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:53,639
churning the story into conspiracy urban legend and burying it

899
00:43:53,639 --> 00:43:56,159
with enough digital debris to ensure only the already paranoid

900
00:43:56,199 --> 00:43:59,960
would come looking. But the paranoid didn't fade nearly evermore,

901
00:44:00,039 --> 00:44:02,119
urning a car idol that the curb outside my apartment

902
00:44:02,199 --> 00:44:05,679
windows tinted never the same twice, mail book stuffed with

903
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:09,159
junk fine print, peppered with failed threats, artificial looking letters

904
00:44:09,159 --> 00:44:12,360
from tent agencies offering midnight jobs in climate controlled environments.

905
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:15,599
I started to recognize some faces asle over aisle shoppers

906
00:44:15,679 --> 00:44:17,719
at the supermarket, whose coats always looked a little two

907
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:20,880
uniform hands, always gloved. One night, the pipes in my

908
00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:23,239
kitchen began to wind the same low frequency as the

909
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:27,519
refrigeration system at Apex. When I checked, fostkels around the spigot,

910
00:44:27,599 --> 00:44:29,440
swirling down toward the floor in the shape of a

911
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:32,920
company logo. Half race per time. I posted everything the tape,

912
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:35,960
scan pastoffs, payroll records, my own notes and routes on

913
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:38,679
an encrypted site, then send anonymous packages to half a

914
00:44:38,719 --> 00:44:42,480
dozen reporters, one to the local police. Unsign but I

915
00:44:42,519 --> 00:44:45,400
included the folder look for those whose process was not completed.

916
00:44:46,039 --> 00:44:49,320
Still no one replied. The city kept going, the chill

917
00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:51,880
that started in Apex, threading outward through the service jobs,

918
00:44:51,960 --> 00:44:54,400
the temp jobs, the jobs that never made the news.

919
00:44:55,039 --> 00:44:58,000
At last, thou left my apartment. My nerves could no

920
00:44:58,079 --> 00:45:01,519
longer tolerate cycle work, freeze, high repeat. I found a

921
00:45:01,559 --> 00:45:03,679
job pouring drinks till late night diner on the edge

922
00:45:03,679 --> 00:45:06,800
of the city. Fewer questions at least, and the chill

923
00:45:06,840 --> 00:45:08,719
at my heel some times seemed only the product of

924
00:45:08,719 --> 00:45:12,360
too little sleep, But dreams didn't forget. My nights were

925
00:45:12,360 --> 00:45:15,079
haunted by corridors lined with crate, icy hands at my throat,

926
00:45:15,119 --> 00:45:17,800
a whispering that always ended with my own name. Some

927
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:20,719
weeks later, on a sweltering evening, a courrier appeared at

928
00:45:20,760 --> 00:45:23,719
the diner, just off the sunset. She pressed a package

929
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:25,760
no return ad dressed into my hand, turning away before

930
00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:28,760
I could even thank her. The box radiated coal, beads

931
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:31,119
of water streaming on to the tile, breath visible around it,

932
00:45:31,159 --> 00:45:34,599
despite the temperature outside. I waited until my breaked open it,

933
00:45:34,679 --> 00:45:37,760
sitting with my back to the window. Inside, cushioned by

934
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:40,360
a thick envelope of dry eyes, sat a single security

935
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:44,159
badge nine. The photo was blurry, as if taken through

936
00:45:44,159 --> 00:45:46,960
a sheet of ice. Under my image, the time stump

937
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:49,519
showed a date two nights in the future. Below the

938
00:45:49,559 --> 00:45:52,719
badge a plain slip of paper in block letters. We

939
00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:56,400
hope he reconsider some records. Never thought my chest constricted

940
00:45:57,000 --> 00:45:59,320
for a moment, the room fell away, the coffee pot strip,

941
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:02,000
the hum of the free ridge, the ambient chatter, all

942
00:46:02,039 --> 00:46:04,000
noise muffled by a heavy humming cold that drew the

943
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:07,480
world's warmth into itself. I put the box down in

944
00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:09,920
the shining strip of my fun's reflection. On the counter

945
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:12,480
of brush metal, A tall figure limbed at my shoulder, jacket,

946
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:14,719
pail of frost, headcot at an angle of patient waiting.

947
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:17,440
I closed my eyes and listened to the air itself, shudder,

948
00:46:18,079 --> 00:46:20,719
Frost on the badge crept outward, branching over my hands.

949
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:23,639
The memory of all those vanished at apex, lingering between heartbeats.

950
00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:27,480
Something cold moved through the diner's glass doors, slow and inevitable,

951
00:46:27,519 --> 00:46:30,159
the memory of unfinished process, the echo of a door forever,

952
00:46:30,199 --> 00:46:33,280
A jaw still as the rasins on fourteen. I held

953
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:35,239
tight to my own name, breath fogging in the silent

954
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:38,880
inn and the cold, faithful as ever came calling. I

955
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:41,519
didn't move for several seconds, hands planted in the counter,

956
00:46:41,760 --> 00:46:44,199
hot hammering somewhere, and my throat like it wanted out.

957
00:46:44,840 --> 00:46:47,400
My coworkers on the light shift hadn't noticed anything except

958
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:49,119
maybe the way I locked up. Just a guy gone

959
00:46:49,119 --> 00:46:50,960
blank for half a minute on a muggy night, while

960
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:53,360
a puddle of water widened a round a batted package.

961
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:56,920
Someone whistled over by the grill pots and pans climbed

962
00:46:57,480 --> 00:46:59,800
the fridge doors squeaked, and that cold and decept to

963
00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:02,639
come identical to a hundred humming compressors. Back at apex

964
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:05,880
cut through the background noise, I stared again at the badge,

965
00:47:05,920 --> 00:47:08,400
a photo not just cold blurred, but somehow warped at

966
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:11,239
the edges. My own eyes stared back, but not in

967
00:47:11,280 --> 00:47:12,840
the way I'd ever seen in a mirror or on

968
00:47:12,920 --> 00:47:15,840
any other official id. Something old and exhausted lived behind them,

969
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:17,920
as if in that image at least, I had already

970
00:47:17,920 --> 00:47:19,800
given up pushing against the weight of all the ice.

971
00:47:20,519 --> 00:47:23,280
I should have thrown it away. Instead. I put the

972
00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:25,719
badge down and watched frost creep across the battered for mica.

973
00:47:26,639 --> 00:47:29,280
I pressed my thumb against the surface, then drew it back.

974
00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:31,639
The skin stuck for a s bliss second, each ridge,

975
00:47:31,639 --> 00:47:34,320
fine and bloodless, like skin pressed against a windshield on

976
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:36,880
the coldest night of the year. I shut the box

977
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:38,880
and pushed it aside, trying to breathe through the tension

978
00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:42,800
in my chest. Work dragged itself forward. I clear plates

979
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:46,000
and refulled chipped coffee mugs. After midnight, the crowd thin,

980
00:47:46,079 --> 00:47:48,119
and I caught glimpses of myself multiplied in the front

981
00:47:48,119 --> 00:47:50,960
glass of double exposure, the real shape of me offset shadowed,

982
00:47:51,199 --> 00:47:53,719
with the after image, always a little taller, shoulders wider,

983
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:55,760
as if someone stood a fraction of the second behind,

984
00:47:55,920 --> 00:48:00,000
echoing each movement. On break, I stepped outside to breathe

985
00:48:00,079 --> 00:48:03,159
daction nighter. The city's noise should have comforted me, but

986
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:06,199
even the nearest street lights wore film of condensation. Orange

987
00:48:06,199 --> 00:48:09,000
Bob's fuzzy with fog. The car idled by the coat,

988
00:48:09,039 --> 00:48:12,039
barely eliminated again with the tinted glass, always a new

989
00:48:12,039 --> 00:48:14,719
make and model, always one driver, a hunched motionless behind

990
00:48:14,760 --> 00:48:17,079
the wheel. I turned up my collar and tried to

991
00:48:17,119 --> 00:48:20,440
pretend it didn't matter. The air was thick summer's tail, humid,

992
00:48:20,519 --> 00:48:23,000
and full of the threat of storms. But right where

993
00:48:23,000 --> 00:48:25,039
I stood in the pool of lamp light, it was colder,

994
00:48:25,679 --> 00:48:27,920
not much, but enough, as if some pocket of air

995
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:30,800
had been preserved from the warehouse. A shiver worked up

996
00:48:30,800 --> 00:48:33,719
my arms. I looked back and saw that even with

997
00:48:33,760 --> 00:48:36,400
the diner's glass fog with grease and fingerprints, a frost

998
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:39,239
pattern had found its way inside, thin, ghostly crystals feathered

999
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:42,679
from the sill and radiated upward in a branching web inside.

1000
00:48:42,679 --> 00:48:45,880
My coworkers had noticed the cold now too, Margo. He

1001
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:48,079
manned the counter and spent most of her evening's nose

1002
00:48:48,119 --> 00:48:50,519
deep in sci fi paper packs, pulled us sweatd tighter

1003
00:48:50,519 --> 00:48:53,639
and frowned at the wolf thermometer. Honestly, she muttered. As

1004
00:48:53,639 --> 00:48:56,760
I returned, It's like the Walkin's leaking. She clacked her

1005
00:48:56,760 --> 00:48:58,440
tongue as if to blame me for running a phantom

1006
00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:01,599
air conditioner. T thirty a m. We amp to pots

1007
00:49:01,599 --> 00:49:04,039
and lock the door for final sweep. The box from

1008
00:49:04,039 --> 00:49:06,480
Eerlat still sat on my station, pulling its own halo

1009
00:49:06,480 --> 00:49:09,199
of cool air across the counter. I finally slid the

1010
00:49:09,199 --> 00:49:11,760
badge and note back into the envelope, closed it, and

1011
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:14,280
stuffed the whole thing deep in my back back. I

1012
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:17,119
thought about dropping it in the alley dumpster. I even

1013
00:49:17,159 --> 00:49:19,360
reached the swaying back door and balance and the threshold

1014
00:49:19,480 --> 00:49:22,800
heart pounding, but I couldn't. It was as if moving

1015
00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:25,000
it out of my possession would snatch something inside me,

1016
00:49:25,199 --> 00:49:27,559
or maybe set off a trap wire directly into my luck.

1017
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:30,639
When I came back through the kitchen, the lights flickered,

1018
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:33,800
not the usual restaurant bulbs stutter, but a rolling, dark,

1019
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:36,760
one fixture to the next, cycling toward the dry storage room.

1020
00:49:37,280 --> 00:49:39,760
For a moment, every fan stopped, and the well became

1021
00:49:39,760 --> 00:49:41,559
a chamber with nothing but my own breath and the

1022
00:49:41,559 --> 00:49:44,840
grind of compressors in the walls. A shape, unmistakably tall

1023
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:47,280
shoulders hunched across the reflection of the glass walkin' and

1024
00:49:47,400 --> 00:49:49,920
was gone by the time I whipped around. I dropped

1025
00:49:49,920 --> 00:49:52,440
the box. It thudded on to the floor, lid popping open,

1026
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:55,840
as if it too kneaded her. Margo's voice cut through

1027
00:49:55,840 --> 00:49:58,760
the hush. You okay, you look like you saw a ghost.

1028
00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:01,360
She tried to laugh at her own joke, but her

1029
00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:04,840
face faltered when she caught my expression. Just tired, I said,

1030
00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:08,280
voice strangled and unconvincing. I keep thinking, I hear things.

1031
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:12,639
She reached for her purse, watching me sidelong. Maybe ask

1032
00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:16,559
for few graveyard shifts. She said, it's not good for anybody,

1033
00:50:16,719 --> 00:50:19,559
you know. I nodded, knowing full well that sleep wouldn't

1034
00:50:19,559 --> 00:50:22,079
fix what gnawed it way beneath my skin. After we

1035
00:50:22,159 --> 00:50:24,360
finished and punched out, I walked Margo to her car,

1036
00:50:24,480 --> 00:50:27,039
like always, scanning the night for signs of movement. The

1037
00:50:27,079 --> 00:50:29,480
same sedan still sat by the curve, exhaust spilling in

1038
00:50:29,519 --> 00:50:33,000
an endless low cloud. I stared, challenging some unseen watchure,

1039
00:50:33,119 --> 00:50:35,920
but the windows held steady, avoid reflecting city light instead

1040
00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:39,679
of revealing passengers. When Margot's tail lights disappeared down Maine,

1041
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:42,559
I started back toward my place on foot. My apartment

1042
00:50:42,599 --> 00:50:46,320
loomed farther than usual, roads slick with condensation. Every surface

1043
00:50:46,320 --> 00:50:48,559
seemed to glow with a pale, wavering sheen, as if

1044
00:50:48,599 --> 00:50:51,719
street lights couldn't quite break the warehouse dock. Halfway there,

1045
00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:54,119
my phone pinged a new message from an unknown number.

1046
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:58,679
Stop final warning. The screen froze a moment longer than

1047
00:50:58,800 --> 00:51:01,199
if I shut off entirely, back a dreifour seconds earlier.

1048
00:51:01,280 --> 00:51:04,400
Now stone dead, I felt for the badge, the note

1049
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:08,920
still there, Still cold at home, I locked every bolt

1050
00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:10,639
and chained the door, drew blinds to block out the

1051
00:51:10,679 --> 00:51:13,599
outside world. But in the stillness, the coll derived again,

1052
00:51:13,639 --> 00:51:15,519
creeping in from under the door from the seams of

1053
00:51:15,519 --> 00:51:18,599
window frames. The memory of voices nuzzled at my ears

1054
00:51:18,599 --> 00:51:20,800
in the dark, not loud, but real enough that I

1055
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:23,880
checked each room twice, convinced something had followed me upstairs

1056
00:51:24,599 --> 00:51:27,079
above my head. The tenant stomped and muttered piped banging,

1057
00:51:27,559 --> 00:51:29,840
but even the familiar urton failed to dissolve the chill.

1058
00:51:30,519 --> 00:51:33,000
I placed the security badge on my desk, wrapped in

1059
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:35,599
its damp envelope, and sat staring at it until dawn.

1060
00:51:36,119 --> 00:51:38,440
I could have fled further. I could have tried to

1061
00:51:38,519 --> 00:51:40,840
vanish cut ties and disappeared the way Levett hat the

1062
00:51:40,840 --> 00:51:44,719
Waimerin had, but sleep. When it finally came deep and resistible,

1063
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:46,960
dragged me straight backward into the maze of racks and

1064
00:51:47,039 --> 00:51:50,559
worrying units and unfinishable checkists. I saw the warehouse and

1065
00:51:50,599 --> 00:51:53,039
cross section, every aisle gloring with heat, except Z and

1066
00:51:53,079 --> 00:51:55,480
fourteen and the rows nearest the sub basement deep locker.

1067
00:51:56,119 --> 00:51:58,440
In my dream, I wandered, badge in hand, trying each

1068
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:01,800
lock as frost spread beneath my feet. Somewhere out of sight,

1069
00:52:01,840 --> 00:52:04,519
the tall figure trace roads and the map, slow, deliberate, patient.

1070
00:52:05,280 --> 00:52:07,920
Sometimes it wore dlca's heavy jacket. Sometimes it wore my

1071
00:52:07,960 --> 00:52:11,239
own face, sometimes neither. Always it kept moving away from me,

1072
00:52:11,400 --> 00:52:14,880
disappearing around corners just as I arrived I woke, sweating,

1073
00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:17,639
the badge clutched tight in my numb fingers. I blinked

1074
00:52:17,679 --> 00:52:19,719
at the smear of condensation in the window and tried

1075
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:22,079
to laugh at myself, but the sound was clapt in hollow.

1076
00:52:22,639 --> 00:52:25,360
The city had moved on. Work at the Dino started

1077
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:28,679
feeling normal, banal, even except for the brief jolting reminders

1078
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:32,159
the world wasn't watching the warehouse in its ghosts. If

1079
00:52:32,199 --> 00:52:34,440
they'd ever cared about my life before, seemed content to

1080
00:52:34,480 --> 00:52:37,360
recede as long as I played by certain rules. I

1081
00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:39,280
kept the box with the badge tucked under the loose

1082
00:52:39,280 --> 00:52:41,679
floor board, and I stopped answering calls from numbers. I

1083
00:52:41,719 --> 00:52:44,360
didn't her, but the sense of being watched didn't leave.

1084
00:52:45,079 --> 00:52:47,480
It simply shifted, like the coal, to lay just beneath

1085
00:52:47,480 --> 00:52:50,280
the surface of waking. One evening in late August, as

1086
00:52:50,280 --> 00:52:52,559
the Dinah's log through the slow IROs after midnight, a

1087
00:52:52,639 --> 00:52:56,119
customer slid onto bakstuolonko hat low face, obscured by shadow.

1088
00:52:56,639 --> 00:52:58,840
I washed from the corner of my eye for fifteen minutes,

1089
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:01,880
waiting for some movement was sign. Then the figure beckoned

1090
00:53:01,920 --> 00:53:04,400
one gloved hand and I approach, stealing myself for some

1091
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:08,719
pranc or confrontation. You work security, didn't you. His voice,

1092
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:11,880
though muffled, was familiar, not exactly Dalka's, but cut from

1093
00:53:11,920 --> 00:53:14,559
the same cloth. I braced for the worse, knuckles going

1094
00:53:14,599 --> 00:53:17,400
white as I gripped the coffee pot. Not these days,

1095
00:53:17,519 --> 00:53:21,239
I said, aiming for casual, just slinging coffee. Management found

1096
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:24,159
someone else. His lips curved in a dry half smile.

1097
00:53:24,800 --> 00:53:28,719
Doesn't matter. Some places keep better records than others, he paused,

1098
00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:31,639
set something on the counter, a USB stick. If you

1099
00:53:31,719 --> 00:53:34,320
care what happens next, meet me outside in five minutes.

1100
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:37,199
Then he left a quiet, measured step to the door.

1101
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:40,000
I waited a shame that my own obedience, then slipped

1102
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:42,519
it after him, passed the kitchen into the alley with

1103
00:53:42,559 --> 00:53:44,280
the heat pressed down but the air still biff with

1104
00:53:44,280 --> 00:53:47,880
inexplicable cold. He waited by the dumpster, breathing plims of

1105
00:53:47,960 --> 00:53:50,760
visible vapor in the summer night. You want them to win,

1106
00:53:50,920 --> 00:53:53,280
she asked, pressing the USB into my palm as if

1107
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:56,639
it were radioactive, because right now they are raising at all.

1108
00:53:56,719 --> 00:53:59,159
You think they'll leave you alone? Ask Merin, ask Levitt

1109
00:53:59,159 --> 00:54:01,519
if you can get them ten sir, I tried to

1110
00:54:01,559 --> 00:54:05,599
steady myself. Who are you? My voice sounded smaller in

1111
00:54:05,639 --> 00:54:09,840
ni Alla's brick canyon. It doesn't matter, he murmured. Names

1112
00:54:09,840 --> 00:54:12,639
are for payil and burn sheets. He held my gaze

1113
00:54:12,639 --> 00:54:15,440
for a heartbeat. Play the files, then decide if you

1114
00:54:15,480 --> 00:54:17,519
want to forget. If you do, drop the badge in

1115
00:54:17,559 --> 00:54:21,639
the river. If not, he trailed off, eyes narrowing, Well

1116
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:24,880
then you already know what comes next. He turned and left,

1117
00:54:24,920 --> 00:54:27,880
blending into the cities eddy of headlights, leaving only frosts

1118
00:54:27,880 --> 00:54:30,840
where he gripped the metal of the dumpster back inside,

1119
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:33,639
Hans trembling, I excuse myself for the rest of my shift.

1120
00:54:34,280 --> 00:54:36,800
I headed home Dee during more than once certainly rashly

1121
00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:39,480
or not that I was being followed. At home, I

1122
00:54:39,559 --> 00:54:43,000
jammed the USB into my old laptop. There were several files.

1123
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:47,280
Most were video snippets, grainy security footage, some from my tenure,

1124
00:54:47,400 --> 00:54:50,000
some much earlier, each showing a figure moving between aisles

1125
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:53,159
and the so called dead zones. Sometimes the tape stuttered,

1126
00:54:53,239 --> 00:54:56,000
replaced by static or streaks of light. In one, the

1127
00:54:56,039 --> 00:54:58,639
camera caught a moment of clarity, Levitt walking away from

1128
00:54:58,679 --> 00:55:01,000
the camera with a bundle of personal effix batch, barely

1129
00:55:01,039 --> 00:55:03,480
swinging at his hip. The temperature of the laid it

1130
00:55:03,599 --> 00:55:05,920
below zero as he crossed frame and disappeared through a

1131
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:09,280
door that never appeared on any current foe plan. Another file,

1132
00:55:09,320 --> 00:55:11,519
the most re ensured me at the warehouse, dropped from

1133
00:55:11,559 --> 00:55:14,760
a strange angle. I recognized my own clumsy walk, the

1134
00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:18,199
way I hunched my shoulders, the nervous glances backward. But

1135
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:21,000
in that video, a second shape followed about ten paces behind,

1136
00:55:21,119 --> 00:55:24,119
all shadow, all blurred edges. At the moment the real

1137
00:55:24,119 --> 00:55:26,800
may paused and turned, the shadow stopped in perfect synchronization,

1138
00:55:27,119 --> 00:55:30,039
as if chained to me by invisible thread. A document

1139
00:55:30,159 --> 00:55:35,079
assets unrecovered Pyeral Cyclotine, list of names, dates, Marine, Levett, Lopez,

1140
00:55:35,119 --> 00:55:38,199
others now including my own employee number, my old dress,

1141
00:55:38,840 --> 00:55:42,800
all marked process and complete last known locations in fourteen

1142
00:55:42,800 --> 00:55:47,000
a deep storage. Attached were images of manifests annotated by

1143
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:51,079
hand aros deletions notes file under overflow pending freeze it

1144
00:55:51,159 --> 00:55:54,280
do not process without dual sign off. Last transfer rejected.

1145
00:55:54,800 --> 00:55:57,320
The paperwork tre is not just shipments, but people cycling

1146
00:55:57,320 --> 00:55:59,639
them through inventory. The way damaged crate were relabeled and

1147
00:55:59,679 --> 00:56:03,119
hidden in a final smallest file, A brief audio clip

1148
00:56:03,119 --> 00:56:05,760
played a massive spoken in a slow, careful voice. All

1149
00:56:05,760 --> 00:56:08,119
records must close the loop. Those who remained and processed

1150
00:56:08,119 --> 00:56:10,480
are retain in cold storage till ready for final shipment.

1151
00:56:10,519 --> 00:56:13,360
For your safety, do not return a penny dropped. The

1152
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:16,239
process wasn't about all crimes or random trouble, not really.

1153
00:56:16,880 --> 00:56:21,159
It was automatic, bureaucratic, impersonal inhuman. If APEX couldn't process

1154
00:56:21,199 --> 00:56:23,760
your paperwork, he stayed in holding pattern lives filed and

1155
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:27,079
a cold storage waiting for some algorific completion that never arrive.

1156
00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:29,480
And if you dubbed deep enough, if he made noise,

1157
00:56:29,519 --> 00:56:32,039
something in the dark or the organization that summoned it

1158
00:56:32,159 --> 00:56:36,199
marked you for absorption. My hand shook some urge defiance

1159
00:56:36,199 --> 00:56:38,719
for self preservation rose up sharp as the frost still

1160
00:56:38,719 --> 00:56:40,920
burned into my palm where I greted the USB much

1161
00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:43,880
too tightly. I opened the envelope from the package again

1162
00:56:43,920 --> 00:56:46,320
and looked at the badge, really looked. Let in my

1163
00:56:46,360 --> 00:56:49,840
thumb trace the ridge text. With a sudden, reckless energy,

1164
00:56:49,920 --> 00:56:52,000
I grabbed the badge, the note and the U S

1165
00:56:52,079 --> 00:56:53,840
B and headed down five flights sent out to the

1166
00:56:53,840 --> 00:56:56,960
street directions until I hit the river's edge. The city's

1167
00:56:57,000 --> 00:56:59,320
light shimmered on the dirty surface, the bridge a hundred

1168
00:56:59,400 --> 00:57:02,719
yards off. I stowed badge in hand and concerted the

1169
00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:06,840
command drop it in, end the unfinished loop, wash myself

1170
00:57:06,880 --> 00:57:08,920
clean as a fritual. A river could erase what had

1171
00:57:08,920 --> 00:57:11,920
been seen or what I'd become. But standing on that bank,

1172
00:57:12,039 --> 00:57:13,960
I remembered the faces in the bracrium, the names in

1173
00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:15,880
the folders and in the files, the coiled fear in

1174
00:57:15,960 --> 00:57:20,079
Lupy's voice, walk away, and the pattern continued. All those

1175
00:57:20,119 --> 00:57:23,320
others vanished with no warnings, wept under as in complete process,

1176
00:57:23,559 --> 00:57:26,760
records never closed, never thought. I weighed the badge in

1177
00:57:26,800 --> 00:57:29,679
my palm instead of tossing it. I pulled out my phone,

1178
00:57:29,719 --> 00:57:33,679
miraculously working again, battery at one hundred percent. I took

1179
00:57:33,719 --> 00:57:36,079
a picture of the badge thereover skull Lion and send

1180
00:57:36,119 --> 00:57:37,800
it with the other files to every news outlet and

1181
00:57:37,840 --> 00:57:41,079
labor Roat's chowel. I could think of personal and anonymous alike.

1182
00:57:41,760 --> 00:57:44,239
I stood there for long minutes during someone or something

1183
00:57:44,239 --> 00:57:46,519
to step from the dark and stop me. But the

1184
00:57:46,559 --> 00:57:48,840
only ribbles on the surface came from went across the water.

1185
00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:51,760
When I got home, a new envelope waited, perched on

1186
00:57:51,800 --> 00:57:54,719
my door, out with surgical precision, no name, just the

1187
00:57:54,719 --> 00:57:58,920
suggestion of address. I opened it with shaking fingers, inside

1188
00:57:58,960 --> 00:58:01,920
a single sheet of thermal. You had your chance. Not

1189
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:05,719
everyone gets another. Watch the door. My head swam. I

1190
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:08,639
scanned the apartment from the hallway, noting every shadow for movement,

1191
00:58:09,119 --> 00:58:12,239
but inside nothing stirred. The frost on the windows had

1192
00:58:12,280 --> 00:58:15,880
melted in the rising heat. I waited. Over the course

1193
00:58:15,920 --> 00:58:18,199
of the next week, things seemed, if not normal, then

1194
00:58:18,199 --> 00:58:21,360
at least no worse. The badge was gone from my desk,

1195
00:58:22,039 --> 00:58:26,440
the frost retreated, no cause idled outside, even the phone

1196
00:58:26,440 --> 00:58:30,000
call stopped. It was as if by refusing to disappear quietly,

1197
00:58:30,000 --> 00:58:33,159
I've become too troublesome, too unpredictable to bother with. Or

1198
00:58:33,199 --> 00:58:35,719
maybe I'd just been filed under a longer, slower process,

1199
00:58:35,760 --> 00:58:38,760
one whose paperwork moved at glacial speed. On my last

1200
00:58:38,840 --> 00:58:41,159
night at the diner before switching to ALI shift, Smargo

1201
00:58:41,199 --> 00:58:43,280
found me in a pantry, glancing at the colou door

1202
00:58:43,320 --> 00:58:46,320
as if she could see through the metal. Hey, she murmured,

1203
00:58:47,079 --> 00:58:50,719
you feeling better. She watched my face tone gentle. I

1204
00:58:50,760 --> 00:58:52,880
opened my mouth to explain to tell her about Apex,

1205
00:58:52,920 --> 00:58:55,000
about the badges, about the voices and boxes, and the

1206
00:58:55,039 --> 00:58:58,400
freezing cold. But the words dissolved there. I nodded, managed

1207
00:58:58,400 --> 00:59:01,880
to smile. I didn't quite feel out, and nally after closing,

1208
00:59:01,920 --> 00:59:04,760
the wind felt hot. The city kept its secret moving.

1209
00:59:05,360 --> 00:59:07,719
But in the shadows I saw that faint, slow, pulsive

1210
00:59:07,719 --> 00:59:10,119
air that not quite cold, the reminder that unfinished things

1211
00:59:10,159 --> 00:59:13,159
never left, just ripened in storage, waiting for a cloak

1212
00:59:13,159 --> 00:59:15,719
to stamp them final and send them off. I checked

1213
00:59:15,719 --> 00:59:18,320
the mail again, hoping for some sign the cycle had ended.

1214
00:59:19,000 --> 00:59:21,400
All I found was a fly where hiring cold storage

1215
00:59:21,400 --> 00:59:25,199
technicians needed flexible night shifts, competitive pay, A plain person

1216
00:59:25,280 --> 00:59:28,360
reference is optional. The ghost of a smile quirked my lips.

1217
00:59:29,039 --> 00:59:30,880
I tore up the paper and watched the pieces drift

1218
00:59:30,920 --> 00:59:34,079
down the gutter that night, one last stream, a corridor

1219
00:59:34,079 --> 00:59:37,599
of racks, endless and perfectly aligned. All the old badges

1220
00:59:37,639 --> 00:59:40,280
hung in a line at the midpoint. I passed them

1221
00:59:40,280 --> 00:59:43,480
and turned, brushing finger tits against each marine livet lobis

1222
00:59:43,559 --> 00:59:47,239
myself on the last ring, a blank crud, still blistering

1223
00:59:47,239 --> 00:59:50,199
with frost waited. I left it there and touch and

1224
00:59:50,239 --> 00:59:54,039
didn't look back. Morning sang its usual burden. Sunlight stipulled

1225
00:59:54,039 --> 00:59:56,119
the city and left the frost to melt for no air.

1226
00:59:56,800 --> 00:59:59,280
I went to work, pouring coffee for the early risers,

1227
00:59:59,320 --> 01:00:01,679
feeling the gravel of unfinished stores pull at the edge

1228
01:00:01,679 --> 01:00:04,320
of every hour. And when a coal returns, because it

1229
01:00:04,320 --> 01:00:06,880
always does, creeping under doors or whispering through the air ducks,

1230
01:00:06,880 --> 01:00:08,360
I will be ready, or at least I will know

1231
01:00:08,440 --> 01:00:10,480
to listen for the shuffle boots on tile, for the

1232
01:00:10,480 --> 01:00:13,079
cyveair that isn't any ordinary draft, for the silence that

1233
01:00:13,119 --> 01:00:17,039
falls only in abandoned aisles. Not everything stored away stays sealed.

1234
01:00:17,599 --> 01:00:21,440
Not all records given time disappear, But sometimes that's enough

1235
01:00:21,480 --> 01:00:24,079
to warn the next outsider looking for shelter from the cold.

1236
01:00:24,760 --> 01:00:27,719
Sometimes it's enough to keep going, and in the residue

1237
01:00:27,760 --> 01:00:29,480
of all that chill deep within the systems that at

1238
01:00:29,519 --> 01:00:31,639
last flesh a memory. I, like a badge, still waits

1239
01:00:31,639 --> 01:00:34,400
for process to finish, but to night, at least the

1240
01:00:34,440 --> 01:00:38,559
door remains closed, and that is the end. Thank you

1241
01:00:38,599 --> 01:00:48,559
for listening, and I will see you in the next one.