Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I press record, then stop, then
record again. The digital clock on my bedside table flashes
twelve thirty nine a M. I climb my phone between
cheek and pillow, throat tight with fatigue, but cracked open
by the voicemail. I must capture, analyze, pick apop for
any mistytail outside. Try to rumble up and down the
service row. Their tail light's occasionally throwing a lick of
red across the tattered curtains. My cheap lamp buzz is.
I griped the phone. The message starts in the voice
of Stephen Jelly. At least that's here the missing person
sister told me to expect. His tone is already on
a knough edge, panic giving way to confusion, confusion chasing
another emotion I can't identify. Maybe it's disbelief or the
beginning edge of something worse. Caroline. I need you to
call me as soon as you get this thide. I
don't know what's happening here. The last shuttle left forty
minutes ago, and there's almost nobody left. All the display
save flight ten eighty four is boarding, but the lights
are off at the gate. Security. Now a came note
once around except a guy mopping the floor, and he
went talk to me. He's whispering now, as if some
one might hear him. This is this announcement. It's been
repeating for fifteen minutes. Sudden loud, hollow feedback through the
dead zone of static. A woman's voice, UM's metallic and
oddly flat. Attention, all late night travelers proceed to the
second arrigate for additional routing staff wole assist shortly attention,
all late night travelers. The words trip and roll together
the cadence wrong syllables, clipped and stretches if spliced from
other phrases. Background now surges something scraping, a door, slamming,
a sob caught in Stephen's throat, Caroline, are you there?
If you get this, don't come, don't shuffling movement, rash, desperate.
I picture him jostling through a row of empty chairs
as searching the gleam darkness of the concourse. The sound
of his breathing clothes to the phone, speeds up to wait.
Some one's coming. A hearer VI's a low guttural's grape
then the same distorted announcement, surge and louder echoing sir hard.
It nearly drowns out his final half form plea, then
a gasp, a flurry of static, abrupt silence. I replay
the message, straining for a clue in a tone of
the audio nomally the time stamp two thirteen a m.
Four days ago, dead of night, fourteen minutes after the
last commercial flight was scheduled to land a terminal that's
officially closed from midnight onward by county ordinance. The police
filed this as a routine missing adult likely wandered off,
but the called out number tractor papern and the arrival's
level one that supposedly out of order. I file the
call under active investigation on my phone, though I suspect
I'll be the only one pursser in it. My note
at crees inkstained edges culled from coffee spill sits propped
against the lamp, half filled with snippets of names and
fragmented time lines. The Jailer family already called every one
else who might help. Nothing. If there's something that can
be pieced together, however small, I'm determined to find it
broken Arrow Regional terminal. For three weeks, It's been a
dot on my Google map, a slow out of my
window at night, a source of stubborn static on my
recorder the night after this call, I know where I'll
begain and what doors I tend to rattle. Nobody else
seems interested. Maybe I'm the only one looking in the
right places at the wrong ire. I never planned to
be the kind of person who listens to strangers whisper
into the dark about disappearance, as nobody else believes. Once
bylines came easy city reporter with a glossy headshot at
desk covered in press releases, passable coffee gratis from newsroom machines.
But prestige evaporates vast misattributed sources. A prominent official's reputation
ruined by my misguided trust in a tip sir with
a grudge. I lost more than a job after that.
It was the right to ask questions people felt obliged
to answer. Now the motels look the same from town
to town. One faded bedsburg puch, the odor of mildew carpet,
and the wet exhaust of roadside trucks is traded for another.
My stories once mombastic have shrunk local curiosities. Stubius claims
occasionally a missing pet for online classifieds. The man is
just enough to float me for another week each time.
I've learned at the families who ring me up don't
expect a polished hero. They just need someone to listen
without rolling their eyes. My room, the temporary state in
off Rout forty eight comes with the constant mechanical drum
from the soda machine outside and never present chill in
the AC system nobody has fixed for years, and I
would draw friendly frontess clerk who eyes me with suspicion
whenever I collect my mail to night. Though distracted by
the message, A barely noticed the blue TV glow leaking
beneath the Johnning door or the sickly flicker of the
ceiling bowl. Those first days alf the Caroline Jello's initial
email came like every other assignment, cautious hope, temperate expectations.
I called a local precinct, no leads, talk my way
through the regional press desk, no interest track down two
part time as at the Jeller's last confirmed destination, both
too exhausted to recall a young guy in a gray
hodie waiting by the arrival's exit. The further I d doug,
the more things seemed to dissolve in a kind of
civic apathy. The airport itself is another matter, A minor
regional stop overt disguised by grand old sign boasting travel numbers.
It hasn't met in decades, broken arrow terminals, its law
against the horizon, mostly concrete and glass, its faded bronze
lettering visible from the highway. At ground level, the facade
is a tangle of cracked concrete ramps leading nowhere for
godden security checkpoints, vending machines with out of surface signs,
faded pale by sun and time. There are no chain
restaurants or newston, so only a follow on snap bar
that closes at dusk, and a smoking pen fenced off
beside the taxi rank. I begin my days late, since
nothing of importance seems to happen before sundown. I shadow
the skeleton staff desks, one or two harrid airline reps,
a janitor pushing a cracked yellow mop bucket, security guards
who carry more radios than actual authority. Mostly I ord
a bottom of pop coffee and nurse at the sal
a lip waiting area. The plastic benches creak with ever
shift of weight. I jot down cummings and goings, trying
to match every face and badge to logs have paid
for online. Are my numbing process made harder by the
oily residue claim to every public surface. The airport at
seven p m. At nine p m is simply tie
a tallow heart. At night seems almost peaceful, and yet
something's always askew out lying in the long term lot.
The silhouettes of abandoned cars, some were tags months out
of date, the endless, blacked up graveyard for forgotten vehicles.
I narrate into my recorder, and it feels apt in daylight,
these glitches fade filmly at night. Does the disrepair start
to feel pointed? A few evenings in as midnight approaches,
I note how the post of flight schedules flick of,
sometimes listing arrivals that aren't confirmed on national databases, or
showing a delayed status for flights canceled iOS before the
staff don't seem to care. Once a young woman in
business attire paces the concourse, clutching her bag with white knuckles,
eyes darting to the overheads long past one a m.
When I approach to offer directions, she mutters unjust waiting
for them to call it. She doesn't clarify who they are.
This is my routine now, every late shift, notebook in hand,
observing the shape of the emptance, tracking slow decay in
real time. It's a life best lived at arm's length,
the stubborn refusal to fade away, one empty waiting room
at a time. The first break comes after four nights
a hiccup. As I flicked through pages of dates, names
and the terminal sporadic traffic locks, easing spreads, sheets s
downloaded from the Department of Transportation, acquired through legal gray zones,
and missing persons bulletin source from local databases. I begin
to see at the constellation of oddities, all knotted around
the same hons. Names repeat, the conditions echo each other.
Every missing traveler broken arrow at least does not choped
up to myn arteltessel creditors was lost seen in the
iOS after midnight, universally on nights when flights were delayed
or canceled. Without much explanation. It's a small sample size,
but the pattern as sharp as a blade. Flight manifests
from the nights of disappearances almost always have holes, blanc rows,
missing identities, sometimes even duplicate landing times for the same aircraft.
No one has ever reported this the stores when they
make it into the paper at all, or a flurry
of loss scene at a rival's gate before trailing, often
to follow up pieces about no evidence of foul play.
Family asking for privacy, I push further in the archives
at the public library. There's nothing more than a brief
two paragraph news wire. Police seek public's help after area
man fails to return from regional airport. Spokespercin declines comment.
I memorize it, but it tells me nothing going back
further years rather than months. Similar interests cost are eighteen
returning from a band trip, a businessman scheduled for a
late layover to college room, its struveling back from a concert.
Each is filtered through the lens of closed circuit and
no new information, phone records and conclusive after closing eyres.
One night, I managed to slip past the main security gate.
The janitor, a guy named Mason, who seen me scrouping
in my notepad and decided I look calmus enough, tells
me to watch my step and don't touch anything with
the green tack. He props open a door near the
arrival's concourse. The air inside is a few degrees colder,
even though the outdoor temperature is holding steady at a
muggy seventy eight degrees. My breath comes out invisible, missed
until I move further from the door. The symmetry is unnerving.
Every confirmed last sighting takes place at or near gates four,
five or six o'cluster off a single concourse, the same zone.
Always with my phone in hand, I test the signal
three bars dropped to zero. The battery half full, plunges
of fifteen percent within minutes. I jot the times and locations,
then walk past the vending machines that line the far wall,
which there behind a snap of display is a rolling
sick HeSE half hidden station with guests rarely linger. It's
battered and grimy, supper broken one wheel. Jane at an
unnatural angle, I stoop a name tap dangles from the
handle listole. She mashes one of the close case missing
travelers from three years back. Listed has never had he
arrived at her hotel. The bag is open, clothes are
scattered like someone rooting hastily for something important. Phone charger, paperback,
a sandal with a strap snapped, a page torn out
from a boarding pass. The last item pinched between toilet
dres is a half finished crossword, the clues filled with jagged,
frowned at penmarks. I try not to make too much
of it yet, but it's one more name, one more
trace left in hasee one that no report ever bothered
to mention. The next night, I step up my approach.
I start with Mason, the janitor who got me backstage.
We meet by the staff entrance and he fidgets with
his bundle of cleaning racks affordable. He must still present
in his voice, you got a badge to flash now, misjournalist.
I show him my notebook instead, flipping to the pattern.
I map theel. You ever notice anything we are during
those late shifts, he shokes, but his eyes flicked to
the ceilings, off, weighing how much to say terminals always
got its quirks. Sometimes the announcement plays on loopole late
night travelers and the rest way after every no one's left.
Some nights, I see shadows, figures moving downe by the
maintenance corridor. Could just be old screens flickering, or maybe
it's rats. The way he says it tells me he
believes Neider. Anyone ever followed those figures. Lady, please, he grins,
thin but honest. We get paid enough to clean the floors.
That's it. Night after night, I haunt the arrivals area,
one step removed from accusation. Next, I hail a taxi
outside to Gregg reads the name on the dash, and
he's one of the few drivers willing to collect from
the almost abandoned terminal. After midnight. People call for a
pick up, but sometimes they never come out, he sists,
and jerking toward the exit doors. Radio acts up, and
my GPS re routes or drops signal completely could right
through the windows. Only ever happens late at night. Once
sat here so long for a fair figured I must
have missed him, checked, and no one ever shows up.
No clue where they go. I scribbled his statement, piecing
the narrative together the best I can. It's the cold,
as much as the absence is that rattles the staff.
More than one repeat, it always that same chill at
the north end, A sense of time slipping, electronics failing
without at all. This reason, my own equipment is a battleground.
Audio files play back in reverse of skip ahead recorded
time stamps to erase themselves between segments. Every time I
try to upload a file, this static, a hum that
creeps in and grows until it devores the whisper of
forces I am trying to preserve. For completeness, I sit
down with Jasper, a bulfab security garb with the handleby
mustache and thick weathered hands at forest. He refuses to
be recorded, filing nervously with his keys. Eventually I earn
enough trust for him to admit in a low voice,
I've gone back to review for Dejen those odd knights,
whole fees, blank static, blux greens, garb of messes. If
I ask the bosses, maintenance tells me ron feed several
glitch move Alon except to have seen two different badchelis
shift for records showing one thing, footage showing another. He
rubs wet from his brow. I imagine it must be
tough to know irresponsible for a place that eats people.
Each new day ridges up another piece of the puzzle.
I dig into airport records, requesting forms under assumed names
when necessary thorough check ins with no corresponding boarding records,
logs that leap inexplicably from one gate to another within seconds.
Maintenance overrides. One document reads listing badge numbers that don't
match any known employee. Other logs are simply gone. When
I compare these to the nights with disappearances, the match
is uncomfortably through to night. I focus on retracing Stephangello's
final call. I find a rival's area pephone ancient, still bolted,
beside a plexiglass map of the terminal. There's a thick
layer of dust, the coins lot jammed with lint, but
when I check the phone's number plate it matches exactly
to the one listed in the Jello case file and
the recent force mall. There's no sign of recent tampering,
no physical evidence left, but the hands it still fits
warm in my palm, as if some unjust hung it up.
The cold here is suffurgating, even in a sticky dog
day heat. The air by the arrivals is brisk enough
to leave breath trailing. Goose flush rises along my arms.
I sackle my phone camera, but the battery drops to
zero as soon as I raise it. There are moments
as I examine the corners of the terminal, when I'm
almost certain I am not alone, a shivering half glimpse
movement by a fire exit. Third steps echo their pattern wrong,
pausing when I do, resuming only when I force myself
to move again. I catch glimpses of faces in the
plastic Haijien barrier hanging at the rental cock counter. Sometimes
in a bent reflections there's a shadow beside me that
doesn't correspond to any living body. I retreat to the
empty curve, keys clutched in my fists, every muscle tensed.
But the next morning, what I remember most is not
the terror, but the sense of being watched by the
belting or its echoes, or perhaps by something that's taken
up residence in all its broken things. Two days later,
just as my others are giving into exhaustion, my phone
vibrates private number. I hesitate, then swipe to answer. No
voice comes right away on the line, only static at first,
a throb and tick so faint I almost miss it.
Then a voice filters through, warped by electronic distortion. Gentleness
layer with the mechanical buzz each words carefullys base as
a scripted, stop digging, we'll go missing too. Watch to
night's arrivals camera. It's not a threat, not overtly, but
it sets my teeth on edge. I check the clock
on my burner phone. Twelve twenty four a m. In
my clotted room, I hunch over my laptop on a
public access flight track at the last scheduled late night
arrival is about to land. Flight twenty two seventy six
delayed until one ten a m. Using one of the
open IP camera links I found through a backdoor and
artifact of my years and newsrooms, I guess that connect
to the broken arrow arrivals feed. The resolution is blurry,
but the scene is a mistakable. The lawn drop corridor
of the arrival's concourse. For a moment, nothing moves. The
frame stutters, then loops backwards, then jumps ahead. When the
picture clears, a figure fluckes into view at the edge
of the frame. Sento left tall instinct, moving with the
speed that somehow wrong, bordering on a glitch. One moment
at the security gate, the next nearly halfway down the corridor,
as the living announcement starts up again, Attention all late
night travelers proceed to the secondary gayfer the voice's louder hearer, stuttering,
warping into digital wines. The live feed glitches, blurs, then
erases the figure. I frantically try to screenshot to record,
but my screen freezes, pixels, bleeding time mark of flicking
to all zeros, and even cold A wave washes over me. Then,
though I miles from a terminal, the power in my
room dims, my phone resets to its welcome screen. When
I try to play back the message again, all I
get is the secondary gate loop, deepa more alien rasping
in a tone that vibrant beneath my robes. It's clear,
too clear now that my investigation is being stifled, not
by accident but design. The next day, I collect every
time line, every pattern I can verify, laying out all
the time stamps and axis logs, the PA announcements, the
moments of off system malfunction, even the logs showing convenient
technical difficulties sits a script. The apparent message always first
appears at the end of a cluster of flight delays
and gate mix ups, always in the same stretch of
the terminal, always in a window from midnight to just
before three each victim vanished after being shunted to the
arrival's corridor, always rerouted by the urgent, wrong sounding PA invitation,
The electronics fail, the cold sweeps in, and the prote
coal repeats itself. It's as if the system is baiting people,
then wiping the sleigh clean. Not willing to wait any more,
I convince Mason to pot with an old staff badge, expired,
edges scratched beyond. He winks passing it off in exchange
for a promise not to mention his name. They never
clean me out of the axis list completely. Don't tell
the boss. I slip back into the terminal during a
midwikle testing the badge on the sealed stairwell. I watch
as the led blings green, unlocking a door that's been
out of the system for months. The stairwell smells of
old smoke and cleaning product, but the air is motionless,
as if no one's been here in a year. At
the end of the corridor is a steel axis plate
riddled with calibration stick is not listed on any public
maps I've seen. Reviewing maintenance logs a night, I find
more anomalies, shifts credited to names that don't appear in
any personnel database entry records with over Lapentine's thuns two
staffers and two places at once. When I call the
terminal's personnel office for clarity, the manager snaps those reports
are outdated, no comment, Do not call again. The audio
has a peculiar echo for a phone line. It sounds
like his office is carved from stone. Before I finish
compiling my notes, I catch a glimpse of a white
van park outside the motel. It's engine idles for ten minutes.
A man in a maintenance uniform visible and silhouette beside
the driver. The vehicle leaves only when I pull out
my phone, backlit by the fragile glow of the screen.
In my palm the night, as the hallway hushes, I
hear gro voices as boots scuff pass my door, indistinct,
the words blowed by the rattle of the old heater.
Every movement, every wreck, every interview has led to this
surveillance is tightening the line between my paranoia and their
trap is dissolving fast to night. I make my move.
There's no other way. I arrive at Broken Arrow Terminal
at eleven fifty nine p m. The sky is blank,
no moon, Everything saturated in amber from the sodium floodlights.
The parking lot is empty than ever. Two cars, both
dust crusted. The breeze presses damp air into my lungs.
A grip the badge Mason gave me slip a voice
recorder into my pocket and shoulder my backpack. I walk
up to the main entrance, glancing over my shoulder just
once inside. The atmosphere vibrates with silent prett The lights
overhead spot are showering the terrazzo and sickly bands of
gold and green. Every footstep echoes beyond what should be
The chicken characters are closed, their monitors flickering, no service
in ghostly serf. I stride past the rental car area,
pausing beside the same arrivals rode where the cold reaches
its peak. It feels like wandering into a basement from
the center of summer. I sit down in the nearest bench, likes,
barely managing to still themselves. The PA system clicks once,
then again there's a drawn out pause. My recorder cracks
with static as a press play. The announcement invades the hush,
her voice modulated, and Gray rolls through the main hallway.
Attention all late night travelers. Proceed to the secondary gate
for additional routing. Staff will assist. Shortly, the words vibrate
in my chest. I feel my hand drifting to the phone,
as if pulled by muscle memory, except I have nowhere
to call, no instructions but to listen. Peripheral vision tugs
up me. Shadows coil at the edges by the vending
machines where I found the suit case, and again in
a mirror facade of Gate six. The glass multiplies my face,
splitting it into a half dozen wat masks, all watching
with identical trepidation. The cold sharpens each breath, punishing. I
test my phone and it shutters in my palm, screen
glitching between naps. I didn't open fees. I never streamed.
The looping announcement grows insistent, almost frantic, pushing at the
holes in my will. I hear snatches of other voices
ride in the static Stephen perhaps or Caroline. Their words muffle,
pleading lost beneath the mechanical drone. Even the floor seems
to gently Pigeons sway under foot like a jet in
sudden turbulence. I follow the script that's claimed so many others.
I stand slow, drawn on in visible strings. The arrival's payphon,
now dimly lit, sit as a waymarch just beside it,
and you see if visible brick slightly proud from the
wall behind Gate six. I stepped closer, feeling every sel
screaming at me to run a coll for help. A
faint hiss sound the mechanics of a hidden mechanism on
may be just the heating system stalling. But know the
wall shudows, and a panel slides open barely six feet away,
A coal bloom denser than before it gushes over me.
The door opened soundlessly. Standing in its shallow depths, is
a figure, no reflective vest, no name badge, just a
shape court in a cantable shadow. They beckon, arm extended,
but I cannot see a face. The chill is absolute.
My legs buckle towards the door. I try to ask
a question, to demand why or who or what is
behind all this, but my voice cracks nothing but vapor.
The door swings wider, as of un command. In the
corridor behind it is blacker than the deepest part of night,
and the broken announcement echoes now distorted beyond familiarity, rolling
over itself in slow, monstrous syllables. I step forward, unable
to stop myself as the darkness claims me. The dry
click of my souls on the lineoleum falls away, sam vanishing,
as though the air in here swallows it hall. The
door glides close, sealing me in with a figure who
stands just out of reach, neither advancing nor retreating. From
this nearness, I make out lettle talish, wrapped in institutional
gray eyes, perhaps hidden. No features comeing to focus, no
matter how hard I try to adjust the light from
the outer concourse already seems impossible, as if a hundred
yards behind, a ribbon of weak elimination from the emergency
exits sign above tint everything a ghastly chemical green. I hesitate,
searching for a flicker of human presence, named badge, familiar shape,
some reminder this is only a passage and not a
burial vault. Instead, the figure stepped backward, deliberately and silently,
retreating into a passage not visible from the concourse side.
The air pressure stiffens, impossibly coal, forcing the skin on
my bare forearms to contract. I force out a word
of weight, barely a whisper turn apart by the wide
silence to either side. The figure stops as if considering,
then tilts its head of fraction, a gesture more curious
than hostile. I take another step and another, unable to
resist the tug of some compulsive beating just beneath my root,
caage a drummine I can't identify. After the second step,
my phone vibrates a single final shudder in my pocket
before sputtering to black and cold as ice. The voice
recorder in my hand flashes, stutters, and dies, but for
a split instant the little screen reads wrecketh three free,
with the last part of the yell of voice mapulsing
from the on board speaker. But Someone's coming, I hear.
The static fills the corridor, vibrates through my bones, then
cuts off, leaving a peroxide hush. The figure ahead raises
an arm and points a directionless stabbing gesture down the
passage into blackness. I scanned the corridors into block walls
painted an institutional bage that's aced to yellow pips hissing
quietly in the ceiling and along the floor. Ahead the
scratched drag marks of something heavy and rubber wheeled my
heart pounds so hard it drowns out everything else. But
turning back is not possible. Now the door behind yields
no knob, no seam, already vanish into the surface behind me,
with a figure moving just beyond my reach. I follow
one foot, then the necks, each step sending dull aches
into my shins, where the chill seeps through denim. The
corridor angles left around a reinforced corner. Here the smells
of old bleach and spent coffee grounds, as if lost
cleaned a decade ago. The rigid green tinge light marks
only a few yards ahead, the rest lost an impenetrable shadow.
I try to ground myself with touch, hand tracing the wall.
My finger tips catch on tacked up notices, thin plastic sleeps,
bolted to concrete, empty or containing roth, sheets of paper.
The print faded to a legibility above the pipe' hum relentless,
some emitting an occasional drip. I can see the figure
leads confidently, pausing only once at what looks like a
steel bulkhead door. They don't reach for any keys, just
press a hand against the surface. It hisses open. Inside,
the darkness grows even thicker, becoming the kind that feels
like it clings to your tongue and fills your lungs.
Beyond the door, a wedge of batter twel forms the foe.
I can just make out a series of cots to
one sided luggage copts of the old sort, the canned
with chippednmal handles and battered wheels. Their surfaces are crusted
with salt and streaks of a muddy, dried residue that
could be anything cleaning fluid, spilt soda, or something else
impossible to tell in this dimness. I turn in an
instinctive circle, searching for exits, cameras, any sign this is
simply another and a maintain zone of the airport. Instead,
a feint electricum begins again above my head, a di
fuse piae flutter tinney and walped, threading itself through the
structure overhead all late night travelers secondary gate staff will
the words to solve and start again. Caught an unmobious loop. Ever,
just beyond understanding, I realize, with mounting dread that the
figure is gone, not disappeared with a flourish, just imperceptibly
faded away, as if merged with the walls. Or slept
through a seam. I never saw I call out, but
my voice is made in now, the acoustics of the
space swallowing all syllables as soon as they emerge. I
press ahead, following the hum of the warp, PA deeper,
each step, producing a new shiver as the cold intensifies,
until my joint take my backpack feels heavier than before.
I force my breathing slow, desperate to fix every detail
in my mind, every smell, every scene in the floor tile,
every colorless bit of the trite is discarded in the gloom.
Anything could be a clue or a warning. Turning another corner,
I nearly stumble over a battered heap, half concealed under
a plastic drop top, A pile of a band and coats,
travel pillows, duffel bags with worn straps and tags still attached.
Some are torn open. A content spewing out magazines three
years out of date and inhaler, a charity ristband, a
paperback with the cover worn slick. I kneel sifting for
the smallest sign an I'd a wallet, anything with a
name matching lilist. I come up with a boarding past
fragment barely legible Tolly Lisa, her suit case and now
possibly her final possessions. The terror intensifies. I want to scream,
but the imposing walls press the empel's flat. I'm in
the web, now, unable to retreat. A new metal dose
stands ahead, prop open just enough to leak an icy
draft the pier behind me. Fades were placed by a
series of halting, whispered voices I cannot understand, and maybe
radiostatic may be real people or something else. I edge
through at once the space opens up an amplan expansion,
or perhaps an annex built before the airport's public phase
and abandoned after the ceiling rises a bare bulb casting
a ragged yellow light on exposed network, capling straw and
haphazardly across patched walls. Here, the chill is almost numbing.
I rub my own arms, desperate to cook some blood
back to my skin. In this place, the silence is
so complete it rings in my ears. Yet as I
adjust my at tension is drawn to movement. At the
far end, a blur of shadow detaching itself from deeper recesses.
A figure shorter at this time, wearing a maintenance vest,
paces the length of the wall, keys jangling quietly with
each listless, looping circuit. He doesn't see me at first.
I flattened myself alongside a stack of discarded airport furniture,
folded stanchions, battered signach, a crapplex glass or rivals, slush
departures display through an arrow gap. I observe in fidgeting
with a panel mounted low on the wall. Cable snake
from the hole, acking into battered pier receiver. He ad
just a knob, then leans in and listens, his postured
hence whatever he hearing, it unsettles him. He shudders, mutters
a word I can't catch distantly, so fainet. I'm not
sure if its really human voice reverberates, help please anyone.
It sounds painfully like Stephen jell A thin and terrified.
The maintenance worker recoils, hands, snapping away from the console
as if burned. He pivots, scanning the shadows. I'd a clore,
careful not to make a sound. He straightens abruptly. Thy
is catching mine only for a second, but enough to
send a lightning bolt of panicut my spine. He turns
toward a side passage, vanishing quickly, footsteps rapid, as if
he'd always intended to flee, and I gave him reason.
I wait. After a count of thirty in my head,
I risk stepping into the open. The console is still lived,
though the cable shiver with residual vibration. I reach out,
hands trembling, and nudge a main dial the PA system.
He says, what comes through this time is not words
but babbel, patchwork of dozens of overlapping voices, all caught
on the wind of whatever carries the announcement, frantic, stretched
and woven together into a too fast side of speech.
Some plead for help, others simply whisper, echoing naanes, dates
and unintelligible numbers. I hit record out of reflex. Though
the device's red light is now steadily dem other than bright. Still,
the capture means something I may yet approof, if I
can ever get back to the surface. A breeze stirs,
impossibly call from the passage the worker took. The sound
of shuffling feet rises of this approaching, or perhaps only echoes,
reanimated endlessly by the promontories of concrete and glass. I
can't steady my breathing my heart's hammering almost drowns out
a pier indecipherable loop. I double back, looking for anything
in a place to hide, or even better, to advance.
Unseen to the right, a half open storage locker stands
in the gloom. The edge of the janitor's key ing
dangles from the lock. Inside the gloom is thicker but dryed,
scented of moth balls and chemical soap. I call inside paper,
scripping my knees. Within the locker sits an object I
nearly mace, another id bad which laminated so long ago,
its images faded to a spectral blur. The name L Ramirez.
Flipping it over. The back is scuffed, but a printed
number catches the light tape below it. A sticky note reads,
do not reassign denied. Something in the organization hears off.
This has not lost property, but an ot fact left
with intent. I inch deeper, feeling along shells. My hand
clothes is on something cold. A disposable cell phone is
casing lifeless, but when I hold down the power, it
flickers briefly to life, enough to show a list of miscalls.
All from numbers labeled in the logs are weeks old.
One inra text displayed in all caps confirm gate six, reset,
mainshift free A. I snap a photo with my own device.
If its of as what's coming through the half open door.
I glimpse two more figures. They speak in undertones, horred words,
bancing off the metal lockers late to night chekhovyde then
lid the prompt again. One shelves of black duffel at
the other quart ashort. We need another, or it'll be us.
She'll seep through my shirt. This is more than a
system error or receies of unlucky vanishings. Those purpose some
plan and undangerously close to the core. I wait, un lessen,
straining for anything else. But soon their voices fade, and
the footsteps receid towards some more distant part of this labyrinth.
My legs numb. I push the locker open. The passage
before me splits. One way runs deeper, another angles gently upward,
where the air is less cold and tinge faintly with
industrial soup. I don't know if that means it's safer
or simply closer to the surface. Indecision claws at me.
Should I follow nearer the hub of activity? Or risk
climbing out before I miss whatever whoever organizes this twisted routine.
A faint warping echo rides the ductwook the disorted pier
em betting a new phrase one I haven't heard before.
Its syntax grotesquely scrambled. Travelers perceived for expedited a surface
of routing through secondary. The cathance is staccato, ron cluded.
I pocket everything I can carry, badge, disposable phone, even
to post it note, and set out toward the source
of the sound. As I reach a junction, movement in
the FoST side catches my eye of figure crossing heavy
work boots, visible flashlight clan from the one arm in
the beams reflected glow. I glimpsed the insignia on a leave,
an old maintenance patch, colors washed out. He turns, shining
the light down a side tunnel. I freeze as the
halo sweeps my way for a breathless second, his eyes
locked with mine. His mouth twists as if alarmed, and
with a sudden determination, he starts to advance. I break
into a run back duck slapping at my side. The
corridor spins out ahead, tight turns and dead ends. More
discarded parphernalia of the maintenance trade of mop heads, cones,
cans of unabel cleaner. I don't look back, foot stopped
pound behind me, boots gidding on painted concrete. When I
duck through a narrow gap behind an unhinged five door
of the world contracts or a pinpoint tunnel vision leading
me forward deeper into the maced reading beneath broken arrow
terminal into spaces. Never meant to see travelers late night
or otherwise. My hands fumbled in the freezing dark, every nerve,
spocking walls. I pressed against the concrete, searching for traction.
The footsteps that are chased me fell away behind a
metallic slummad door may be were a drop tool. I
crouched low, slick, with sweat in my coat, despite the
glacial air, lungs rasping, shallow, and shop. For several heart beats,
I distant putts rattling, muffled shouting in the direction from
which I had run. Then only the familiar, drowned pulse
of the malfunctioning PA somewhere above. I ventured to look behind.
Only shadow thickened and disturb greeded me. The silence pressed
harder now except for a single tinue note that ed
and rose like the tider, warped and traceable snippet announcement
bleeding through the walls, secondary gate expedited service, always the
same as cadence were on a life line. I both
clung to and recoiled from above the pounding of my heart.
I registered and allow smaller sounds, something brushing, hesitant to
the scoff sneakers of the janitor if he were creeping
on tiptoe or a ghost wild Useless thoughts gullided which
way was out? Would someone find the discarded faune the
badge if I didn't return O. These fragments only collectest,
overlooked and unexplained, like Tully suitcase or Jellers unfinished message.
I pressed forward, low, feeling my way by palm and
broken til edge, passed two sprawling cats battered with contraband
stickers and logo decals from mail ends long gone. Bove
the light was gone. I moved by the memory of
greenish haze and the so silc lint of metal random
intervals along the corridor wall, turning down a dog lick.
My ears filled again with the inhuman blend of the
PA announcement somewhere closer. Now it seemed to issue from
a physical mouth behind a vent joined by a breath,
were too too close to be electronic. My lips stuck together.
It was so cold the moving out stung the skin
inside my nostrils. I squeezed the items in my fist,
of the faded Ramier's badge, the temporary phone found in
a locker, the paper scrap, anchoring myself with what little
evidence I could gather. The corridor broadened at random intervals,
splitting into fox with no signage, and twisting deeper, sometimes
rising slightly, sometimes plunging down abrupt steps. As I pressed on,
I started chalking tiny lines with a bit of soft
stone I collected from under a battered office chair, keeping
count out of habit, always marking one side of every intersection.
If I lost my wits, or if the cold made
me delirious, at least it was a bread from trail.
Further along chalk lines already marred. One wadle blurred into
mud asterisks. I nolt to inspect them and found a
chewed up en cap sitting nearby, as if recently dropped
people had tried to map this before felled. I arose
just as a distant voice rebounded, carried with a vitriloquous
hollowness art row meat quota by three or switched to
a verride, a pause, then softer and resign next flight's ires,
a shuffle of boots, then silence again, no escaping. Now
that what was happening below broken arrow terminal was deliberate
to pattern, scripted and run night after night by people
using that same twisted message and cold de corridors as
their tools. In a branching alcove, I found a passage
marked by a fresher bureaucratic sign authorized personnel only, no
unauthorized entry. The paint was scraped a knife, the metal
freshly dented. Someone had fought their way and were out
here recently. I hesitated, clutching at the resolve that had
brought me this far, then edged through the door into
an even chillier run. There lit it against the far wall.
A gathering of objects sent a new spike of adrenal
and through me. Scattering of wallets, a small stack of
line arts, half loaded suitcisses bursting with toilagers, and the
mundane comforts of travel. Some had boarding texts bearing dates
from the week, others yellowed to near white, all war
film of dust, except for one lips extained coffee cup,
still bearing renants of water warmth when I picked it up.
Farther into the gloom, beyond a warrant of old cleaning
equipment lay the bones of airport bureaucracy, a locker door
propped open, paper spilling free inside. As I rifled with
shaking hands, I found documents listing employee schedules, maintenance cycles,
and more disturbingly as spreadsheet with columns and evenly title
quorter meets last night, a target gait and confirmation code.
The times in the quart of column match the dates
from my own missing person's list, nearly to the minute.
Every metric is seemed accounted for someone who would vanish
each line item a life cut and pisted on to
the routine. I took out my phone, hoping the charge
would hold for one picture at least, and snapped images
of every page I could, my breath clouding and gusty plumes,
my hand cramped numb from the incessant cold. These papers
were too heavy for just one pair of hands, but
I tucked what I could into my coat. Someone would
have to see them. Down the adjoining tunnel. I heard
the murmur of voices, again, echoing off the hard plaster.
I recognized none, but the tone suggested familiarity, hierarchy. I
inched forward, ear straining, words floating out and not. Our problem.
Only job is the switch time tables from upstairs. Another
more urgent cut through. Missed the pick up last week.
Head Quarters will want of reason a third hollow and
nearly robotic. Then make sure the announcement runs right this time,
no errors arter or lost olay. They started looking. I duck, low,
breath shallow, shifting into another side nook. I pressed myself
to the wall, holding in even the small sound. The
remainder of the documents in my pocket felt heavy, but
also electric. The theft should be discovered, would be proof
I was here at the wrong iron, had seen too
much bov An engine all. What sounded like a generator
kicked alive, sending a fresh fabration through the pipes of
her head. My teeth chattered in response. Chold and desperate,
I pressed on every sense, tuned for the small but
growing knowledge that I was now deep inside the true
machinery of broken Arrow's darkness. Turning yet another corridor. I
stumbled over a length of tangled extension cord. My shin
barked against how plastic, and the noise must have echoed.
A pair of voices in the near distance cut off,
replaced first by a quickening footfall, then heavy silence. I retreated,
wedging myself behind a rent back of unbalanced custodial supplies,
bleached bottles, mock buckets, litter pickers, all stacked with kalless haste.
I wetted. Paulse thudding as a figure passed mail. Late third,
as blue covers marked operations bar he was wheeling a
ct filled with sealed black containers and glancing repeatedly over
his shoulder. I dared not move. His steps grew fainter,
replaced again by the ever present rattle upon announcements. Bleeding
through the vents, collecting myself, I resumed mapping my route,
chalk marks trailed always in the right edge. The deeper
into the tunnels I pressed, the less plausible it seemed
that any ordinary maintenance schedule could sustain or justify all
this complexity. The corridors crossed beneath the outer edge of
the parking lot. At one point in Old corrugated iron
round bled down into the earth. The temperature impossibly fell
further still here, half hidden by the rounds, vote, I
stumbled on about its suitcase, its fabric wet and mildewed.
The tag faded but legible read K Collins. Pulling the
zipper revealed the detritus of a journey suddenly interrupted. A
folder filled with sheet music from a school band, a
prepared phone card, a birthday card and scent and unsigned.
I pulled a card free, slipped it into my coat.
Another connection, another disappearance. A low animal sensed something close
to panic cold at my stomach. The evidence was not
just technical or digital, but physical names and faces, soon
to be reduced to cells of CORTI sheet. As I navigated,
I made a black plastic piping snaked overhead, humming with
pulsing energy. Occasionally a sharp metallic wine would announce itself,
the sound of electromagnetic interference, or perhaps someone manipulating the cables.
Every so often, the flicker flashlight arcs dance on the
far wall. Always I kept low and move silent, honkering
in weight, until the steps faded. At last, a glint
of pale light to break in the gloam loose in
the knot in my chest. I moved toward it, careful
not to trip another alarm, and found myself peering through
a service grade into recessed alcove. There a makeshift offic
supplywood benches and battered terminals tum and faced one another,
when in a wrinkled white collar shirt, the other in
a kne unvested genes, arguing in undertones, I told you
the headcount won't work on Thus we stick to the plan.
If operations reveal use the feet before I pull it,
they won't. I have admin credentials. They only check surface reports.
Nobody reviews the backup except me, And when someone asks
about the bodies, we don't talk like that. Not here,
lost luggage maya maintenance request filed. The tray keeps going
until they tell us to stop. What about the buyers?
A flick of silence, The man in the shirt looked away,
left prest in a tight line. They are only interested
if we hit QUARDA missing a night means investigation. No
one's going to risk it. Just follow the protocol. He
gestured at a battered fold mart with the airport insignia
and a bowl of red closed systems stamp. The maintenance
worker took it, flipping rapidly through the pages, scanning, confirming.
If there's a glitch and a PA doubles, you hold off.
Last time, despatch got a complaint and we nearly lost everything.
If the outside is still poking, closer rout, don't open
the service entrance. Those are the rules, as long as
you stick to it. He broke off, heads waning. Suddenly,
my presence must have been detected. I inched backward, hot thudding,
and ducked down into the main corridor and away before
they could spot me. I move fast, mouth dry, but
senses sharpened. If I missed a step. If I hesitated,
I'd miss my window. Farther on passed a line of
broken rolling chairs and narrower passage curved up toward what
might have once been a public area, across traffic between
back offices and the Lost and Found. Here, the walls
were ribbed with steel cabling and spass warning de cow's
warning of high voltage. A wall clock no longer tacked,
hands frozen at two fifty four. It's battery long since stead.
The thickened air hummed with residual energy, as if the
power flickered in and out of the system, never quite settling.
The ambient called it thought only a bit, But the
old sweat on my skin now burned with icy sting,
a contrast that made my breath catch. Here a new anomaly.
A locker left ajar inside bundles of cell phones in
wrap is disposable and traceable, filed with methodical paranoia. A
battered foul box flipped open revealed handrad in notes, spoorting times,
passenger profiles, page after page compelled in the same sharp,
urgent scripped. Each row had a confirmation timestamp. Each note
matched the moment the secondary gate pier looped its message.
I took for it was quickly hands quivering. A print
out at the back showed a crew diagram connecting areas
of their arrival's concourse, their heart zones, the ones where
most disappearances accounted to the maintenance access points in back
of house passages. The annotations were frenzied luepley bakir confirmed
shut a camera badge overide c Jensen for code. I
tore the bottom half free, sliding it into my coat
beside the rest. This, more than anything, was evidence, not
merely of accident or neglect, but permititation, a system for selection, targeting,
and disposal, operated by the quiet actors of night clearing
the locker. I pressed further into the heart of it all.
The broad's passage yet opened up a kind of operations depot,
humming with lasen electricity and the ear of a prison
static of the pa rote it overhead. It was here,
braced by walls of flickering screens and stacks of paper logs,
that the machinery of the conspiracy truly revealed itself. The
central terminal behind the clucks and glass, a balding man
in a sports coat hunched over a bank of monitors.
This was no mere maintenance worker. His burying had the officious,
inward turning focus of someone used to executing orders without scrutiny.
Surface plackouts identified him as Eric Brodskyll operations manager. He
eyed the monitors without blinking, lips moving in silent rectation
as he clicked rapidly through dats stream's flight logs, staff schedules,
pre a system, status reports, all updating in real time.
I dipped into deeper shadow, hands locked onto my phone,
recording as much video as I could. This was the
core of the nerve center. The less on screen ran
in column's full names, flat noss destinations, remark a code
that seemed to set some apart star or a checker
against a handful a grayed out ellipses. In the far corner,
Olaofie played out the arrival's corridor, empty opal with after
Io's light, except for an occasional flurry of movements so
fast the image blurred. Playback clutched and froze, then skip
minutes at a time, camera angle swapping at random, as
if automated routine, scrubbed the record to keep up appearances
above the PA kicked in, this time even more gobbled,
only half the words intelligible, the cadence so flattened it
felt personal, the voice almost weeping. By the third repetition,
Brosky finally spoke in full voice, hands bracing the desk.
Tonight's protocol starts on the quarter. Iire, did they confirm
the outsider's count? From the edge of the room, A
younger man, nervous one nodded but avoided eye contact. Camera
sixer went blank when the last one entered. They've marked
with chalk must be close. Brotsky's mouth twisted more tired
than angry. No extraction and help we lock the prompt
on time, pull up last Ja's pat and cross checked
the midnight corridor temperatures with the PA frequency. If there's
any sign of double processing, run the back up lip.
We'll claim it was a test. The younger man hesitated,
chewing his bottom lip. What about the missing flights? This
many delays? Someone's going to ask, they already did, Brosky said, flatly.
We send the emails, father reports, and for outsiders the
familiar answer, maintenance difficulties. That's the trade leadership wants. No gaps,
no anomalies on paper. Anyone who pushes get cycled through
an audit. Travelers who listen to directions either end up
where we need or don't end up anywhere at all.
The junior's eyes widened. You mean, Brosky cut him off
with the glacial patience. You do not ask questions. You
never say bodies or buyers or missing. You say passenger irregularity,
an incident, not a person. For a moment, I nearly
lost my nerve to hear the full machinery spoken not
in Goose stores, but the management platitudes drove home the
finality of the trap. I pressed my phone closer to
the vent, determined at all costs to record a world
that could be presented in sound and word to any
one who'd listen. Suddenly, Brodsky lean back, stirring hard. A
single manta displaying a thermal map. The arrival corridor pulls blue,
cold as eyes the only zone in the matrix below
freezing as something's in the system, he muttered. The younger
man tensed. I felt the hair on my arm stand up,
sweat icing over. Brodsky's hand hovered over a secondary switch.
A new announcement, low and guttural, washed through the room. Attention,
all late night travelers, expedite your out staff will The
voice broke midword, the solving into gravelly static. Then from
beyond the glass another movement, some one approaching fast alarm.
The younger men opened a side door. I shrank back
against the col steel frame, holding my breath as both
men exited, keys jangling, leaving the corps unguarded. I counted
to ten, then darted forward, passed a jumble of packing
crites and paperwork into the opsender lights blinked on every console,
casting my shadow in a dozen directions. The surveillance bank
was a blizzard of corrupted footage faces elongated by digital drift,
frame maff of frame jumping and dissolving, the great outlets
reappearing with everythnic certainty. I snapped pictures of every screen,
every live log, the redacted cords spreadsheet, the overrided history
for the pier. At the back of the main desk,
a battered thum drive sat plugged into a hub. I
yanked it free, tucking it deep in my pocket. My
hands trembled as I opened the one email program still
live on a secondary monitor. Dozens of outbound messages, ticketing issues,
staff error, please route to secondary, all copied to addresses
outside any airport or municipal domain. More than anything, it
was the indifference that curdled my blood. The mechanics of
disappearance reduced to codes, schedules, forms. My jaw tightened as
I realized how futile it would be to explain, to
plead for outrage, to hope someone would see this. In act,
a thud snapped me back. The commotion outside the glass.
It was close, angry boot squelching on old linoleum. One
voice called out there, she's in the op room. The
panic that seized me was a cold knife. I shoved
aside a box of disused walkie talkies, ducked below the
main consol, and watched as a pair of men crashed
through the entryway. They wore security badges, but their eyes
flickered with the barest trace of fear, not authority. One
shouted stop, as if he were truly sure what would
happen if I complied. In the chaos of their entrance,
the pia deepened into a low, regular pulse. The panels
overhead flushed for it. The entire terminal it seemed buzzed
with anticipatory violence. I made a break for the far exit,
shoving papers and hardware out of my path, as a
long cheeked in the background. As I burrowed into the
nearest corridor, I heard Brotsky's voice, now sharp as glass
were set, all rout shut, all doors locked, full containment.
I sprinted, pocket cramped with truth, breath sowing fast, every
inch of skin ache from cold. I heard the footfuls
closing echo, multiplied by the long, low tunnels. In the
recesses of my mind, I conjured the faces of everyone
I've read about Telly yellow collins, where mirrors enforced myself
to put one foot in front of the other. The
knowledge was mine now, and if I failed, there would
be no one else to speak. A heavy fire door
klan shut ahead of me. I changed course, ducking down
a maintenance ramp, drawing the last dregs of energy into
my muscles. The overhead static broke, suddenly replaced by the raw,
half familiar recording of Jello's final voice, Caroline, Now use
some One's coming in the audio flicker, then split into
dozens of voices at once, some pleading, others silent, a
symphony of loss. At the lowest point in the tunnels,
my phone vibrated once, resurrecting briefly. I thunder the upward
link from my backup cloud, watching the spinning icon crawls,
the signal wavered at one bar. Every file picks, audio
crany video transferred in a stuttering rush above. Boots pounded closer.
I pressed my back into an alcove, knees drawn up
to chest, holding still as beams of how shall leady
light cuff path the men surging furiously. She cared to
have gone far when grunted such old vents. If she
gets out there. My thoughts converged, sharp and urgent on
what resources I had left. The disposable cell now inert,
the badge still clutched tight, the hard copy of the
quarterphile creased beyond saving but real in my pocket, the
battered phone almost dead but still ticking, the thumb drive
burning a hole in my coat. When the men retreated,
I slung forward, mind racing as I traced the route
back toward the first locked door I had marked where
my clim had begun. The cold was now so keep
that shaking had become involuntary, making it hard to even type.
An idea warmed its way in. Could I force an
override from here to serrupt the system that enabled so
much hiding and loss? If nothing else, I had proof,
and now the power, however brief, to jam it irvocably
into the open. I found another service panel the bas
mason had given me, miraculously, still scanned as valid. I
swept it the panels. A leady flickered and sure, then
blinked green. The hatch slid open with a creek, behind
a skeleton of rotters and switchboards, labels, faded switches marked
back apee eh announcement loop with others with hand written tapes.
Do not touch hedman only brinding white teeth against the cold.
I fumbled through the wires. Some connections were already loose,
as if someone had sabatosst or experimented with the sequence.
I mapped out based on the intake, which would cut
the pie in a sloop for the night. The door
behind vibrated, locked ONWN protocolon away. I realized that they
discovered my peasants here would risk daylight on everything. The
pressure mounted every second, narrow in my options. Suddenly the
world shouted, the lights faded overhead, The mechanical voice grew
in volume, the secondary gate loop morphine into what sounded
almost like my own voice, spliced between words for help,
secondary danger. On the fieldlance drew me, and yet I
clonted the data, knowing that without its escape was meaningless.
A radio crackled overhead. Systems down on level sy broadskises
secure op center finder static, then more urgent. Don't let
her reach the surface. I rummaged, hands, roar and rigid
until I found a data port and Johann the thumb
drive in. I told Oldernius, which marked remote back up
A warning blinked, then a status bar crawled. I prayed
it would be en f prayed it would push a
full copy to Summer Safer, somewhere with a public address.
The sound of pursuit drew closer, boots and showed orders, flasklights,
slicing through the gloom. Staggering back to the main corridor,
I ducked around a massive concrete pillar and doubled back,
squeezing past clumps of orphan baggage and storage bin stacked
uphazardly along the wall. The perpetual draft became a gale,
whistling between the air and takes, as if the terminal
itself was shivering. At each turn, there was another sign
of human desperation. Abandoned scarves, crumpled water bottles, scattered pages
from in flight magazines, each mocking a point where hope
had died, and a seal of bureaucracy replaced it with silence.
I kept going hot, pounding wildly, breath caught between gasps
and coughs. A head, a flicker of white light back
in the promise, perhaps or a lure. Each step became
horrider numbss everywhere, mine swimming in fragments of presidiouscripts, and
because of lost travelers. I followed the last stretching of
my shot marks, verily legible, now praying that what waited
at the end was escape and not erasure. Voices grew louder.
There By, Intake four cut her off the stairwell. My
path up oat limbed ahead. Every part of me rebelled
with exhaustion and panic, yet oppressed toward the stairs. A
heavy clying echoed behind me, and with all careful silence abandoned,
I raced. Near the midpoint, A side door opened, a
shadow broad sky, himself leaming larger now, face twisted in
irritation rather than fear force biting as an iceland. You
don't understand what you're doing, he snarled, for its breaking
over itself almost two torned. It can't be stopped now.
The system is beyond you. Upload what you want to,
will listen. Every traveler, every outsider, ends up an nodded
or archive. That's how it's always worked. His words were
half threat, half confession. I tried to bite pass him,
but his hands seized my coat, fingers digging through fabric,
pinning me. I spat they will if I make them.
I have everything uploaded and crypt it backed up. He
stared at me with weary, raged jaw set. You'll disappear,
doors will close behind you on you. No one ever
walks away, not after seeing the turn back lists. He
wrenched me closer, icy breath covering much he as the
PI a now fully corrupted, screamed Traveler's secondary staff proceeded
a narrow drowning all sound desperate. I need him in
the grain. Wrenching myself away, I stumbled up the stairs,
battered jacket horn. The panic gave me strength. I burst
through the last metal fire door, chasing the light. A
new section opened, hidden behind what at wants be a
utility closet. Plaster hastily patched I barrel through the cold,
blooming unbearably, knees buckling as the space yawned out beneath
the rival's gate six it was an operations center. Yes,
bitmore rocks of silvers, blinked routers stacking cables to the ceiling.
Every wall line was Switchboat's label for every zone in
the terminal. At the center, a ring of plastic chairs,
luggage heaps in the center, evidence dumped and enclaimed on
a raised platform, A microphone and speakers at the source
of every wopped announcement. Above, banks of monitors displayed grainy,
stuttering feeds of arrivals, departures, gate events. I heard movement below.
Brodsky staggered in blood on his lip, as wild you
should have stayed in the dark. Now you're just cargo.
He reached the central control board, His finger poised over
a red switch labeled full cycle. The piaist tracks stuttering,
dissolving into a storm of clashing voices, A mine, many others,
all begging for intervention, for rescue, for end. I lurched
toward him, mine blank, but fists clenched. He smiled, miserable
and victorious. They won't stop. Buyer's protocols arc as do
you get it yet? He pressed the switch. The temperature plummery.
The metal in the walls began to howl as the
lights flickered. Shadows poured from every tunnel mouth half formed, waiting,
drifting close on the subser air. Some more human guards
staff mostly but others taller, translucent faces, an open blank.
The operation blowed between material and immaterial, fingers, pulling eyes
wide and deep with nothing. Multiple hands seized me, wrenching
arms behind my back, twisting the data stick from my grip.
I kicked, bucked, shouting hoarsely, the racket now enough to
rattle the bones of the room. In one last effort,
as Brodsky drew up to the speaker with a business
like calm, I smashed my heel down. The mansover rack
wobbled it, threw my weight against it, sending the switchboard crashing,
sparks on audio cables bursting. I jerked the microphone cord loose,
and the pie stuttered into white noise. Brodsky yelled in shock,
diving for another backup. The shadows surged, pressing him against
the ring of plastic chairs, their ships now flickering, merging
with the panic staff. Every iota of evidence, every slight hope,
centered on one burning fact. Mapping had almost certainly finished,
and that chaos. Even as the hands drugged me back,
blow of vision and the border of unconscious, I saw
broadskik of himself and dial a hard wire desk phone.
It's done, he intoned, Prepare the next phase. The cold
closed in, scraving years from my bones. The lights browned out,
compressors howled, and my scream dissolved into the corrupted course
of the last announcement, after the struggle, after the crash
and surge, I lay still dazed, tasting copper and sweat,
surrounded by darkness and the sound of sirens, only equader.
I heard nothing but those voices in the PA terrified,
pleading becoming static, becoming silence, all traces of light weather.
My last memory is the world drew itself shut. The
upload I can spinning to completion, conformation, text blurring, but
present back up complete. That was all I got. My
final act, shivering on the border between knowing and oblivion,
was to take a battered phone in my pocket and
said it to an aught to asceern sequence, photos, audio,
every file, all roaded by time of through ascade of
proxies to the inboxes of media contacts and activist watchdogs.
Had barely trusted the circuit. For a moment was mine alone.
There was only the empty air, a whiff of disinfectant,
and the shifting in distinct faces gathering behind the glass.
In the instant before my senses winked out, I realized
that above me, the real airport had already returned to
business as usual, and that my story, whatever shape it
took above ground might slip into the same cracks and
erasures as those who line in the court sheet, waiting
eternally for boarding calls that never came. So in the darkness,
not gone, but not conscious, I existed in a sort
of limboy gap stitched between awareness and erasure. The cold
went arrow deep, leaching the edges of my sense of self,
and in the empty hush, I felt as if I
had become nothing more than another intake in a system
designed to consume and forget. Rigid on the floor, ringed
by the crushed remnants of data cables and pulling liquid
from a rotch of maintenance line, I havoed at the edge.
I remember our details, the scent of electrical burn, the
distant hydraulic thump of something cycling off, and somewhere a
series of measured ways, this as reciting status updates. In
the far off halls above. No one rushed in. There
were no alarms, no stumped of authorities come to rescue
or detain. Instead, after a blackness, I can't measure. Hands
grasped my rests and ankles, impersonal and practiced. I was
dragged limp narrow service corridors, the overhead lights glare and
too cold to focus on resolving only as lines of
pain across my vision. I couldn't move, couldn't muster even
a whimperer, as we slipped behind nondescript doors and through
secondary passages that never led to daylight. The voice's mail
urse sealed by routine spoken clip code, delta, cleared and
put resolved package for clean slate confirmer cycle. Each exchange
registered as half heard hollow. The rhetoric of men performing
necessary evils too many times did well onmodive. My consciousness flickered,
surge and ebb. Sometimes for a glancing second, I caught
my own reflection in some slab of maintenance glass, a
smudge of humanity, vacant eye face and marked by story.
Sometimes I tasted metal, copper and ozen on my tongue.
At some point, the hands left me wedged up right
in what I came to understand was a storage alcove,
so deep in the context that the true were the
one of sun and highway, must have been a hundred
yards or more above there. I remained how long I cannot,
never fighting to recover enough agency even to stand, I
became a thing lepenstasis my fate unresolved. My senses were
calibrating the only company, the tiney reverberations of the warped announcement,
and more chilling, the flutter of a thousand and directed
voices emerging from the events embedded in the walls, one voice,
high pitched and certain, crystallized with then the cacophony, as
if directed only to me. If you hear this, if
you really remember us, remember a name scrolled on a
store badge flashed in my mind. Em Celler, sibling to Stephen.
No guarantee either of them were alive, but some echo
of their tear now fused with my own. The longer
I waited, muscles Ridget and Bruce, the clearer it became
that this wasn't mere neglect or failure, but perfect a technique,
clean slate, package, or recycle. The procedural terms reduced each
vanishing to a matter of documentation. The bureaucracy of forgetting
as much a prison as any locksail. The proto colored
stripped away outrage, compassion, even curiosity from the staff. None
would risk stepping out of line lest they end up
among the erased. On occasion, footsteps were verberated beyond the door,
and a shadow would pause, hesitate his of sensing some
anomaly before shuffling on. My heart would freeze in my chest,
then mazoom. Once a single key clicked in the outer lock,
but after a half seconds in decision, the sound faded
away again, replaced by an indifferent silence. It was only
when a fierce vibration through the flooring made the panel
showed a redeviation from the routine, some alarm or powerfulctuation
up above, that my senses felt not loose from the
imposed torpor an opportunity. My hands, though as cold, retained
sensation my legs barely functional, found just enough perches to
push my back at the wall. I sent my mind
hunting for tools, Scanning the gloom by the silvery gleam
of a failing emergency light. Beside the heap of mop handles,
a loose panel gaped, exposing a tangled bundle of fiber
optic cable, some newly caught in fraying. I pried one out,
sharp bend, bitten smooth by repeated messuse. If the door
was on a fall back clatch, maybe I could reach
or trip the mechanism. It took try after tried, knuckles
abraided by corrugation, but at last a heavy latch gave
with a chunk and a panel popped. On the other side,
the pawer sausage was empty, buttomming, as if the entire
structure were enforced back of power. No more footfalls, only
the drone of h AC units and the restless static
of the BIA. Now stuck on a partial phrase, I
shuffled forward, no destination beyond the compulsion to move to act,
while disruption reigned. Half blind, I stumbled through the honeycomb
of maintenance arteries. The clues were everywhere for those who looked.
Anonymous paperwork scattered and beat princes pressed deep into a
patch of insulation dust. My oiler chalk marks were scored
as much someone had tried to raise them, but not completely.
I oriented by sound and chill, steering always toward air
foes that suggested escape, ard at least a boundary with
areas in use somewhere above. A fierce argument erupted, voices
raised in panic. They dumped the locks, They uploaded it,
find all servers, no leaks at side ops, Broadkey's gone under.
The panic was real, this time as a chain of
command began to fracture, revealing human nerves for the first
time before. Remixed with terror. My instinct shift ud shocked them,
then disappeared before anyone could process what precisely had transpired.
Years of institutional stasis had made them slow. Fear of
oversight of investigation now made them frantic and careless. I
move faster, following the sound of a pressures stor cycling
open some afar ahead. Jess of cold airbit at my lungs.
I hunched against the wall, waiting as a trio of
carried bags, their zip is popping, tumbled from a tet
luggage dolly. Evidence always more evidence of the travelers already
lost to this place. As I passed through a side corridor,
a glimpsed of body slumped, not dead, but sedated I
had lolling against fuward panel, the badge on his belf
reeds securityy Paullard, just another loyal cog traded away at
the end of some invisible line for him, nothing dramatic,
a gentle somnolence, a ticket off the roster, hauling down
another entry in the database with a personnel transfer, oral
leave of absence, no closure, no pursuit. I press upward, now,
hands sliding along the uneven walls, numbness in my fingers
matched by the rattle of my own breath. When at
last I found a flight of service stairs, rising toward
more stable rhythms of fluorescent light. I climbed, never pausing,
never sparing breath for caution. At the landing, a threshold
between blow and above, the world bent round the aftershooks
of what I'd done. An emergency panel above the door,
polesed amber a clackson, flowering only intermittently, As if unsure
whether true evacuation or stem it was underway. I pressed
upon to the eggs a bar, and the door miraculously
swung free. I rapted into a service corridor that ran
parallel to the main concourse, a half dozen paces from
the arrival's vestibule. Here the normal world blundered on in
oblivis safety, baggage carts clattering, vending machines swallowing good bills
and splitting out coins, a board cleaner sweeping the painted
line between tael and carpet. The air bit with refrigeration,
but lack the separchal cold of the space below. Every
step I steeled myself against the gates of those who
might notice my battered state. My hair was disheveled, jacket
torn eyes, while but nobody looked long at the far end,
glass windows divided this whirl from the necks the arrival's
curb emptied but for the idling taxi cabs and the
silhouettes of passengers hunched over their phones waiting for rides
that would never come. It was over, No, not over.
I was above ground. The main portions of the system
still hums, still trained, their malfver hungry for the next intake.
What I had accomplished, uploading evidence, subverting protocol might yet
be stymied by more practice hands. As I melted into
the flow of the living once again, I resolved that
my escape would not be the last act. That if
the world would not see, would not take action, I
would force their hand. Even now, the tremor in my
legs told me I might not last long, but what
I put in motion would ripple well beyond my pinched,
fragile body. A maintenance work eyed me as I pass.
His gaze, direct and devoid of surprise, seemed to hold
a warning oar, perhaps sympathy. The merest ghost. He bent
a mop, and though he said nothing, I heard the whisper.
It meant just for me. They cover it up. Always
get up while you can, so I did at through
the man lobby, pasted yet another bank of security monothis
scrolling their decayed footage, passed custodial cuts, and mute travelers
in the low ever prison jabber of the pia now
reverted to generic Welcome to broken arrow. Delays of possible
due to maintenance staff will assist you. No trace, no stain,
no confession. I stepped into the night, a terminal behind me,
glodonemic gold, the parking lot of black Sea, swallowing all
lines and forms. I didn't look back, not until I
crossed the last row of vacant luggage. Cuts in the
gravel at the edge of the low crackled underfoot. At
the curb, a single cup waited, rumbling at idle. As
I docked inside the driver, a tied man with crows
feet and a faded baseball cap glanced at me in
the rear view, compassion flickering through his fatigue. The tough night.
How airport gets to you. After a while, I managed
to nod the first genuine movement I'd made since the dock.
He pulled away without comment. In the mirror, the terminal shrink,
swiftly evaporating from the horizon, as all things due when
their moment passes. I didn't know then, in that slump
silence if the outside world would ever care, would ever
notice the missing, or would brush even this eruption into
Someone examined shaddow. But the files were gone, dispatched into
the great digital wash, scattered beyond the capacity of any
local director, any Brodsky, to contain no silence. As the
city lights began to pulse ahead, civilization returning in a
grid of sodium vapor in halogen, my eyelies drooped the
way to sleep. Almost overwhelming, I surrendered to the exhaustion,
knowing I might never again step foot and brognarow terminal,
knowing too that escape meant only exile resolution. I woke
eyeurs later, in a non script motel with paper thin
walls and the antiseptic sense of transcends. My phone, miraculously alive,
blinked with dozens of unread notifications, a frenzy of water
replies and security alerts. As I scrolled the first headlines
caught my eye. Anomalous airport audio, leaked prompts in turn overview,
missing persons, database glitch, nothing to see SA authorities, a
terminal quarantined, no service advisory for region. The coverage was thin,
full of platitudes and denials. There was no incriminating image,
no chilling detail. The administrative cipher had performed its duty.
Even the watchdog sites, usually quick to tropic conspiracy, issued
only skeptical half measures carriots theory without outrage. In my inmooks,
a new message file, receive, a source confirmed, will circulate securely,
no signature, no follow up. That's how it ends for
most of us. A flash, a glitch, a ripple, and
then as of coriogre to return to stasis. Quarters were calculated,
system file scrub, protocols restored, no search ardies, no roll calls,
no restitution for the vanished. I stepped into the morning sun,
world unchanged, the city bustled, trucks, commuters, early risers lining
for bad coffee. No one the wiser, no one haunted
by echoes of the brutal, frigid silence weighing beneath broken error.
Somewhere above the pier would soon announce boarding for the
next delaid flight, and as it did, another name would
disappear into the termill's darkened occaves, and I, reduced to
a shadow flitting between dead mortalverns and rendered post office boxes,
would carry the knowing with me for the rest of
my fugitive days. New travelers would arrive exhausted, just wanting
to go home, and the cycle would re say. Even
a stores flickered and died in the digital mail in
the terminal's interior. As the sun climbed and the rush
of early morning picked up, a young woman her to
hogate her ticket fly out, but her attention caught not
by bureaucracy, but by the stacatto enancement overhead attention for
expedited service. Proceed to the secondary gate entrance stuff will assist.
Shortly No one paid heed butter A cold shiver traced
her spine even as she pressed forward, suitcase rattling behind.
No amount of headlines or warnings could pride the story loose,
for the routines are the indifferent. Beneath the floor, The
humming continued, and another anonymous hand adjusted the dial, reading
for the next cycle. Outside life carried on unaware and
warned and touched by the pier, by the knights of Coal,
or the echoing voices that had begged not for rescue
but merely to be remembered. The glass doors closed behind
the next late arrival, and the endless broken loop began
to play again and changed and challenged, And that is
the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see
you in the next one.