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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. The first night was always supposed

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to be the hardest, but they never told me how

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much the mind clings to patterns, even in a place

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that seems emptied of all meaning. At ten fifty eight

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p m. On September ten, I sat in a brittle

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glare of the Bryson office towers. Security held cheap noill

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on uniform tied across my shoulders, thum hovering over the

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record button on my sat assigned audio lock. I told

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myself I wouldn't need it, but protocol on phibition is unambiguous.

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Tape everything, even the boring parts. So my own muffle voice,

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dry from norse, attached, too eager to sound professional, echoed

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through the dimmer room. This is Torrors, Samuel. Monday, September tenth,

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twenty three hundred hours, first overnight, all quiet. The storm

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outside had gathered by then a late summer fury, bending

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the city's scaffoldings and hammering glass towers with wind and colds.

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Bit rain battered the Bryson's ancient window casings, setting my

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teeth on edge with each dull vibration near the panelights

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by terphalies circled the centers of blown out fluorescence in

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a corner at a closed circuit, bank of monitors flickered

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greenny corridors, silent elevator lobbies, where reception desk's form that

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the overnight shiping crowd were night cleaners the building once employed.

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I ran an easy fingers across the battered desk, a

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sticky ring of old coffee, A bad scanner, yellowed at

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the corners. My voice kept up its own play for normalcy,

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but my gut stayed tight as a snare. Bryson Tower

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was already infamous in the downtown district for its internees.

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Since the pandemic, much of its seventy year old bolk

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sat and rent each woe shading tenants until even the

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vending machines petitioned for removal. I flicked my radio offstandbar

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routine was supposed to anchor me a top to bottom

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every two hours, they'd said, tug every handle, check every

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thermosat sleep, waited for sunrise. My first patrol started at

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the lobby. Badge clipped boots scraping softly un a flat

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white noise from the storm in building fans the pristine

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security sign in sheet, my first task registered to here

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of visitors since Tuesday by eleven fifteen, I squared my

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shoulders and wandered to the lobby elevator. It greeted me

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with a grown mechanical belly churning somewhere unseen, doors giving

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a jutter as they slid apart. The elevator panel stood

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striped by green. In the reflection, all numbers a glow

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except four, which was absent, with a three perched above five.

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It should have been a simple data point old building

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skip forward for superstition, specially once built by financiers with

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a taste for imported designs. But to night in the

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warped perfection on polished steel, I caught dimmered glow just

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to flick of opposite my frame. Four led up steady

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for half a breath, then snapped out like a mechanical wink.

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I pressed three, Nothing happened. Press five of the elevator

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hum jittery tents. Half way up, the lights blinked off,

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jerking me into a space that fellst coached of oxygen,

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a grind of gaze. Then with a jolt so sharp

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I yelped the elevator jerk to a salon hall. The

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display in its little digital window read for the doors

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parted gently, as if inviting me to step through, except

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there was only a blank wall of crumbling plaster. A

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smear of dough or old paint marked the wall. Faded

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streak slipping, the ghost of a number four diod hand

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grew up in the now cold metal rail. Blood hammering

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in my ears, I told myself quickly, firmly that electrical

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failures were common. Maybe some tech rerouted forges for diagnostics.

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But as I thumbed the recorder in my palm, my

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voice wavered. The elevator stole between three and five doors,

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opened on a wall where no flour exists. Mockings barely visible,

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looks like an outline of afore might be a panel error.

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Yet the air vibrated, charged by more than storm. It

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prickled in my lungs, And when the door slid shot

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and the cor continued up part I couldn't shake the

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sense that adganced behind a musk. The building's real face

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barely covered the rest of my round. I saw that

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flicker everywhere, a faint hum behind the panels, a stubborn

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cold in the elevator's corners. Everything told me to move quickly,

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to file the memory as trivial malfunction. What else. But

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it took iurs for the storms that could, to fade

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from my pulse and let normalcy return, even for a moment.

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Beneath the ancient hum of barrice Ands, restless bones. At dawn,

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colorless light filtered through the east lobby. I rearranged my uniform,

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straightened my sparse notes, and tried to ignore the tightness

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behind my rib cages. Mister Leddo, the facilit ladies manager

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arrived to collect my lock, but quiet enough, Torres, he

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barely made our contact, already distracted by tablet loaded with spreadsheets.

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Pretty standard, I replied, focusing on paperwork. One minor hic

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cappellivator glitch stopped between three and five. Probable short. Maybe

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alls really opened on a wall, Nothing to see, he grunted,

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scribbled an a eligible note. All plays tech coorks everywhere.

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Just keep your notes in order, locks forts anything really weird,

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it was me, But don't lose sleep. He never asked

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what word meant, and I never clarified. Most knights embrycend

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how blurred into a single shuffle, small tasks and empty

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signage blinking out into the dark. By all outward signs,

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a place was heading toward a gentle kind of Ruin

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each level, a man past eight p m. Tenants quietly

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subtracting themselves, insureance agencies, divorce lawyers, male ordo start ups,

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who once filled the upper two floors with pink pond

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tables and economic chairs. Now even the echoes seemed to

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wait for summers. My routine developed its own rhythm. Floors

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who still sustained a weary sort of life. Missus Feldman,

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soul survivor of a consultancy, gutted last year, hunched at

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her desk beneath then our lamp, combing through ten kissed breadsheets,

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glasses perched half redone her nose at my knock. She startl,

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laughed nervously, and murmur about just one more phile. I

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learned not to startle her. Each night she packed the same,

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battered at a shape, raincoat folded, with nowhere to go

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but back to an empty house. The city kept people

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in motion, but Bryson seemed to preserve its denizens in place.

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Then there was Hector, the night janitor, he'd limpen around

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eleven thirty, carrying cottons of biodegradable sprays and humming sinatra

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covers more out of ritual than joy. In the supply closet,

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we share lukwon coffee, trading news about the weather, streets

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or rivers, carhorror, sam and swap gropes about management. He'd

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worked Bryson since before the pandemic, never see more than

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two people after midnight. Miamigo, not for years quite bled

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into every part of the building. In the basement, past

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the last set of descending stairs, the boiler room collected

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dust pipes, rattled, monitors, flickered for no purpose, unlabeled doors

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lined the corridor, electrical mainframe and one with no sign

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and at all pinch hip round layers of long forgotten locks.

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I locked the temperature, flashed my badge at the solitary sensor,

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sometimes peered him on the old key fit. Mostly out

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of boredom. Breysontower's architecture announced its faded grandeur marble tiles

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wanted on this ornamental molding part where chunks had cracked off.

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Nowhere was this starker than in the main rottenda, where

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faded out decko fixtures strained against the clutter of new

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security cameras, tiny electronic sentinels forced into baroque corners, decades

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of mismatch paint, some stains blooming yellow along the ceilane,

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betrayed water leaks that no contract plumber could ever seem

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to fix the bones of the building were showing through

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its new grafts. Strangers to me was the silence around

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the so cold fourth floor, no signage, nothing in a

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glossy acrylic directories mounted by elevator and stairwells, the heavy

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steel doors between third and fifth, feweldered shirt and the

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maintenance manual skipped straight past four, as if the floe

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belonged to another building. And yet sometimes when I walked

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past the elevator shaft, I sense a current light, the

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air turn colder, a whisp of movement. Seat for concrete.

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It's just all drafty seals, Labard said, fail bank, but

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voice just a notch too high. You've worked in older places,

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have anu Taurus. I just nodded and left the question alone.

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Military life taught me silence. It gave me a nose

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for routines and an appetite for long stretches of nothing.

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After injury and medical howl. I liked the solitude, even

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when it ditched into isolation would in brycin. The loneliness

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did not settle in gently. On my four shift, the

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pressure at the base of my skull lingered eyes after

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I had locked down the fire doors and finished the

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two way m rounds. Even so, there was comfort in

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the checks and rossets, review lobby feeds, shuffle through temperature

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print outs, pin each CAMO sensor until the system church complete.

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I told myself that was all anyone ever asked me for.

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Before dawn, i'd crossed the lobby one last time, lob

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wookd under my arm. Sighting the elevator cabin's polished blankness

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no four button, but around the middle rim of the panel,

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I sometimes saw dust stuck in the shape of numerals,

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or a single short black Esse nag where hundreds of

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pressed and hovered for decades, always just enough strangers to

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keep the question alive. When sunlight touched the crack text tile,

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revealing each day the building still stood. The second night,

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two nine a M. I took my break in the

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cramp's security booth, had it slung low to one near

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the rain, had died down, but inside a different pressure

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built behind a glass of weight of things unspoken. I

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leaned on the elevator console, thumbing through logs in the

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digital pad. At that time on the overnight rounds, the

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place could be funereal tonight, though the elevator's ready light

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blinked and consistently the green rain would brighten, pulse weakly,

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then stutter off, cycling just below the threshold of attention.

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When I pressed for the third four routine check on

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a drafty window, or so I told myself, the same

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pattern appeared. The panel showed only one, two, three, and five.

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I started to accept the missing for as just another

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quirky throbuck to fussy architects, more superstition in fact. But

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that flicker occurred right at my feet. The gangly red

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of a fore glimmer to faded, then died. Before I

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could reach out, I snapped a photo, not sure if

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the ghost digit would appear on screen. Nothing abnormal there,

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just the uneven reflection of my own face, drawn and

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hollow elle in the shift. As I checked the night's

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video clips, I noted that something had gone wrong. At

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two eleven a m. The feed for the llevator lobby

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on the main forget of violently popping in static, thin

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wearing me lines crawling up the image, I replated on

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the computer. Curiosity is smolitch. First came with scrolling snow,

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then a short audio burst, garbled but with a shape

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in the noise, a clept gasp or a brief and

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intelligible phrase swallowed by digital distortion. I leaned in headphones

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tight for a heartbeat. There beneath the static came sounds

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that were echoes, faint footsteps as stifled word may be

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a half laugh then, and nothing so total. I flinched

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away when chased itself along the holes on camera, the elevator,

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though blinked floor four. I rewound again. There was no

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four on the button panel, yet the display showed it

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for two seconds. When I pause, the elevator was stalled,

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not on three or five, but on something in the

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middle nowhere according to the blueprints. If I was honest

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with myself, it was only then I began to question

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more carefully. I dug out last month's logs, no mention

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of failures. I marked every time stem two eleven, three,

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twenty six, four, fourteen on a pad lines linking them

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a cross referenced the lists, hoping to find a pattern

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beyond the flicker. What I saw only deepened the problem. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,

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always the second eye or post midnight, always ending with

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the elevator posing for less than three minutes on a

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non existent four to four. Curiosity and caution ward to me.

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I went down to the lobby, flicked through every button,

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tried holding both three and five. The doors opened to

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the same blank panel of wool, though this time as

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I stepped in, I could feel cold seeping behind the boards,

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a cold so or shop. It made me cough. My

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hands flickered, and the thin beam from my pocket flashlight,

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and I thought I saw the outline of an old

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fire map, ghost traced with tape and grime. Until I

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blinked in the marks vanished. My note had filled with

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times and marginal observations. Though four flickered, the elevator hiccupped,

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always at the edge of something real. I addited my

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loger interest to sound measured professional, but I kept the

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second private set of notes. In those the words were

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run together footsteps twenty two twenty three, elevator satic two

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eleven panel and normally tued weelve cold draft, no button

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in the official logs. My knees stayed hidden. But each

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time I returned to the cold, dusty seen between floors,

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the wich at the base of my neck sharpened. I

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checked again. No four in the building directory. No mention

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on the master floor plan in the manager's office, not

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even an old name badge or fire escape rop mentioning

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the space. Yet the time fell into line, as if

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the building wanted to reveal a pattern, but just missed

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the chance. Three nights later, tied from the accumulation of

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too little sleep and too much coffee, I spent a

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quiet hour after midnight in the security room, in the

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drowsy hummer fans and the dark spaces on the screens,

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I queued up all tapes, ghosting back through weeks of

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night video. Each clip cycled by under a minute. Most

233
00:11:31,120 --> 00:11:34,679
showed stillness, pixelated shadows, hector steady progress up the holes

234
00:11:34,679 --> 00:11:36,960
with his cart, the bright flicker of missus Felman's lamp.

235
00:11:37,519 --> 00:11:39,360
But on the feed for the third floor lobby. At

236
00:11:39,360 --> 00:11:42,960
two eleven a m Thursday, something art caught my eye.

237
00:11:43,440 --> 00:11:45,919
The camera pointed straight down the hall by the elevated doors,

238
00:11:45,960 --> 00:11:48,799
caught Hector rolling his cut down the gleaming floor. He

239
00:11:48,919 --> 00:11:51,320
was humming mop buckets, slashing edges, blowed by the faint

240
00:11:51,360 --> 00:11:54,039
digital haze of failing night vision. As he neared a

241
00:11:54,039 --> 00:11:56,320
segment of wall that physically, in person was just a

242
00:11:56,360 --> 00:11:59,720
stretch of painted plaster, no seams, no doors, he hesitated,

243
00:12:00,360 --> 00:12:02,720
the cart, vanished for breath, as if swallowed by light,

244
00:12:02,799 --> 00:12:05,960
and for a heartbeat, Hector shadow blushed sideways. Then the

245
00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:08,639
image snapped back. He was walking away, whistling as if

246
00:12:08,720 --> 00:12:11,879
nothing had happened. Frame by frame, I scrawled it backward

247
00:12:11,919 --> 00:12:14,919
and forward. On a hunch. I checked the same camera

248
00:12:14,919 --> 00:12:18,279
at the same time on different nights. Sometimes, though vacant

249
00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:20,840
hallway lights flaked on for no reason, a few seconds

250
00:12:20,879 --> 00:12:23,200
of pale artificial glow slip through and then died, as

251
00:12:23,200 --> 00:12:25,840
if the space briefly remembered how to be used. On

252
00:12:25,919 --> 00:12:28,440
the log file, the digital system tracked the anomaly set

253
00:12:28,480 --> 00:12:30,799
at e g F l A freye A active deactivision

254
00:12:30,799 --> 00:12:33,759
and slash A. After an ire swept pebbling my brow.

255
00:12:33,840 --> 00:12:36,559
Despite the overactivisi, I put headphones on and replayed my

256
00:12:36,600 --> 00:12:39,799
most recent recorder lock hidden in the background, his were

257
00:12:39,840 --> 00:12:42,000
more noises much weaker than the four scrapes, like a

258
00:12:42,039 --> 00:12:45,200
chair dragging or rustle, A woman's voice cut short by distortion.

259
00:12:45,799 --> 00:12:47,639
The mood changed as I let the sand sloop, a

260
00:12:47,639 --> 00:12:49,879
suggestion just at the edge of hearing of some one

261
00:12:49,919 --> 00:12:52,840
searching through a foul box. Then a short phrase useless,

262
00:12:52,879 --> 00:12:56,240
safe for clarity of intent, but don't elevator. I tracked

263
00:12:56,240 --> 00:12:58,679
Hector down eily in his runs, pausing as he opened

264
00:12:58,679 --> 00:13:01,639
the janitor's closet near the second floor brek room. You

265
00:13:01,639 --> 00:13:04,279
ever get turned around up there? I mean past three?

266
00:13:04,679 --> 00:13:07,399
He looked up in the soft yellow light. He gave

267
00:13:07,399 --> 00:13:10,799
a slow dismiss of shrug. No sam, just old pipes.

268
00:13:10,879 --> 00:13:13,159
I do the floors and trash, never get lost you.

269
00:13:13,960 --> 00:13:17,120
I lead it, hang vaguely frustrated. Maybe he didn't want

270
00:13:17,159 --> 00:13:19,840
to see it, or maybe he couldn't. The next morning,

271
00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:22,519
curiosity prodded me back to the basement, long after Lebo

272
00:13:22,559 --> 00:13:25,360
had left for the day. The file room, cinder block,

273
00:13:25,399 --> 00:13:27,440
and stale sat under the weight of seventy years of

274
00:13:27,440 --> 00:13:31,240
misplaced folders. I run my through box's labeled utilities, the

275
00:13:31,320 --> 00:13:34,240
leases of fire, mushal slush, arch plans, looking for anything

276
00:13:34,240 --> 00:13:37,320
that might clarify the elevator pattern. Buried under a stack

277
00:13:37,360 --> 00:13:39,519
of faded time sheets from nineteen eighty, I found a

278
00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:42,960
roll of blueprints, some pages of chunks weredacted with white

279
00:13:42,960 --> 00:13:46,440
out thick blocks, obscuring texts and numbering. Yet in shivering

280
00:13:46,440 --> 00:13:48,440
half light, I could make out a faint scrip beneath

281
00:13:48,440 --> 00:13:51,200
the chemical fog, Bryce and Towner mezzanine level fourth floor

282
00:13:51,360 --> 00:13:54,240
research and records. The floor plan had been whited out

283
00:13:54,279 --> 00:13:56,559
on the nearer version, stitched between third and fifth, But

284
00:13:56,600 --> 00:13:58,000
if I held it up to the light, I could

285
00:13:58,039 --> 00:14:00,399
trace a corridor, a lunch room, a set off phes

286
00:14:00,559 --> 00:14:03,600
e Reco's room. A line drawn through the space divided

287
00:14:03,600 --> 00:14:05,519
it from the rest, just as in the real building.

288
00:14:05,639 --> 00:14:08,320
The elevation masks seemed to skip over the gap. I

289
00:14:08,399 --> 00:14:12,519
photographed the plans, puzzled and shaken. My superstition's never strong,

290
00:14:12,759 --> 00:14:15,879
but growing, prodded at the seams that shift. After logging

291
00:14:15,919 --> 00:14:18,600
everything twice, I brought the matter to Lebo, hoping for

292
00:14:18,679 --> 00:14:22,559
answers old habits, he said, curtly, as not leaving his tablet.

293
00:14:23,120 --> 00:14:25,279
Big Companies used to number mis a nine level special

294
00:14:25,320 --> 00:14:28,440
fire code's expansions whom number files nobody keeped puffect track

295
00:14:28,440 --> 00:14:31,279
any more. Some things get lost in a paperwork. He

296
00:14:31,320 --> 00:14:34,759
fixes attention on me worily. Just keep your logs, torus.

297
00:14:34,799 --> 00:14:37,679
Don't go exploring where you don't have keys, He dismissed

298
00:14:37,720 --> 00:14:40,039
me in the gentlest way possible, furnace under lay by

299
00:14:40,039 --> 00:14:42,759
a warning I couldn't ignore. Yet that night, the power

300
00:14:42,759 --> 00:14:45,399
died at three nineteen a m. Without so much as

301
00:14:45,440 --> 00:14:47,960
a flicker. At four, lights vanished, monitors blink black, and

302
00:14:48,080 --> 00:14:49,879
I was left in a hallway that felt suddenly for on.

303
00:14:50,039 --> 00:14:52,840
My footstep sicken with uncomfortable volume. In the stone stairwell,

304
00:14:53,440 --> 00:14:56,600
emergency lantern in hand, I moved slowly, noting every bend

305
00:14:56,600 --> 00:14:59,960
in the stair, every oddjill. My mouth dry above, vain

306
00:15:00,120 --> 00:15:02,440
and growing. I heard the unmistakable rhythm of footsteps not

307
00:15:02,480 --> 00:15:04,639
on the fifth floor, but higher are closer, as if

308
00:15:04,679 --> 00:15:06,960
pacing out steps on a wood four inches above my head.

309
00:15:07,559 --> 00:15:10,799
Each step came tanned in pairs walk Pau's shuffled drag.

310
00:15:11,399 --> 00:15:13,919
When I reached the fifth floor landing, the pattern abruptly

311
00:15:13,919 --> 00:15:16,240
cut off, as if the walker had realized I was listening.

312
00:15:16,759 --> 00:15:20,440
I retraced my rad again, listening for other signs. Nothing moved.

313
00:15:20,519 --> 00:15:23,919
The silence returned in a returning normalcy of artificial light.

314
00:15:23,960 --> 00:15:26,039
When the back of Cackton and the monoitis reawakened, I

315
00:15:26,120 --> 00:15:29,000
reviewed the feed. No one but myself on the stairs,

316
00:15:29,679 --> 00:15:32,480
nowhereb of but sheer blank wall. But as I set

317
00:15:32,480 --> 00:15:34,519
my radio on the counter, a small note of fear

318
00:15:34,519 --> 00:15:36,559
took root. The boundaries of this building did not always

319
00:15:36,600 --> 00:15:39,559
obey its own paperwork. By Friday, the fever of routine

320
00:15:39,559 --> 00:15:42,440
held little comfort. I drifted through the empty halls, more

321
00:15:42,480 --> 00:15:45,840
as a sentry than employee, watching for patents, mapping cold spots,

322
00:15:46,120 --> 00:15:48,919
locking every unmatched line. I wondered, who are what I

323
00:15:48,960 --> 00:15:51,919
was protecting and from whom. The shift began with loud,

324
00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:55,320
pelting rains striking a broad glass lobby. Midway through the night,

325
00:15:55,360 --> 00:15:58,000
at twelve thirty three a m. The security phone jolted

326
00:15:58,080 --> 00:16:02,039
me from half sleep. The screen read block collar. I hesitated,

327
00:16:02,080 --> 00:16:05,080
pulse in my throat. Company prote cal said to answer

328
00:16:05,120 --> 00:16:07,679
any of a night ring immediately. The voice was a

329
00:16:07,720 --> 00:16:11,600
grating was pro barely human, modulated by static, almost gentlest.

330
00:16:12,360 --> 00:16:15,559
Stop looking for the fourth floor, it said, some floors

331
00:16:15,559 --> 00:16:17,720
aren't meant to be found. Some people are not meant

332
00:16:17,759 --> 00:16:21,440
to be remembered. I stood every hair on end. Who's this?

333
00:16:21,759 --> 00:16:25,159
What do you want? A long electric silence followed by

334
00:16:25,240 --> 00:16:28,440
gobbled word erase, and the line clicked dead. For a moment,

335
00:16:28,519 --> 00:16:31,600
the room felt struck clean of air. Stunned A rifle

336
00:16:31,639 --> 00:16:33,799
from my personal file box, the one I borrowed from

337
00:16:33,840 --> 00:16:36,960
storage in a moment of over cautious diligence. Beneath a

338
00:16:37,039 --> 00:16:40,320
remarkable inverses and safety codes about a manilla envelope caught

339
00:16:40,320 --> 00:16:43,399
my attention. On the back, thumb smudged in dull pencil.

340
00:16:43,679 --> 00:16:46,960
Someone had s cralled Old Staff nineteen sixty two. Inside

341
00:16:47,039 --> 00:16:49,440
a black and white group photo creesed to the corners

342
00:16:50,159 --> 00:16:52,519
if people, women and men in conservative suits narrow a

343
00:16:52,559 --> 00:16:54,879
ties stood in bright formation, smiling in front of a

344
00:16:54,919 --> 00:16:58,799
sign bryce and tower, fourth floor research and record, no date,

345
00:16:58,840 --> 00:17:02,639
but the architecture matched all look pro toohead's high eyes expectant.

346
00:17:03,200 --> 00:17:05,559
Nowhere in that photo did the prison day directory mark

347
00:17:05,559 --> 00:17:08,680
a single office. The names in grease pencil couldn't be

348
00:17:08,720 --> 00:17:12,039
found in any digital file. I could access the floor itself,

349
00:17:12,039 --> 00:17:14,680
gone from bliprince raised from memory, I now held evidence

350
00:17:14,720 --> 00:17:17,559
it had truly existed. Slowly, I put the photo on

351
00:17:17,599 --> 00:17:20,160
my desk and head stop on the recorder. The room

352
00:17:20,240 --> 00:17:23,359
was exceedingly quiet, save for the storm twitching overhead. I

353
00:17:23,440 --> 00:17:25,759
dared not look too long at the elevator doors, reflected

354
00:17:25,759 --> 00:17:28,400
blackly in the glass and in the stillness. My whisper

355
00:17:28,400 --> 00:17:30,519
seemed both too loud and barely there. What the hell

356
00:17:30,559 --> 00:17:33,240
did dehi? But the night wouldn't let matter settle. Not

357
00:17:33,359 --> 00:17:35,799
after that call, I left the foto on the battered

358
00:17:35,799 --> 00:17:38,519
steel desk, half hidden under routine shift paperwork, and paced

359
00:17:38,519 --> 00:17:41,240
a jittering circuit of the ground floor. Even my foot

360
00:17:41,279 --> 00:17:43,839
sets felt unconvincing, softer than they should have been under

361
00:17:43,880 --> 00:17:47,400
aging tiles. The fullorescent lights this few left working castickly

362
00:17:47,480 --> 00:17:49,240
waves across the marble, and the tick of my watch

363
00:17:49,240 --> 00:17:51,519
seemed to echo in opposition to the building's deeper pulse.

364
00:17:52,279 --> 00:17:55,079
High above the elevator gears made a sound barely audible

365
00:17:55,200 --> 00:17:58,559
and certainly out of sequence. The thought lingered. The machinery

366
00:17:58,599 --> 00:18:01,839
was alive, hungry in its minos revolutions, yearning toward a

367
00:18:01,839 --> 00:18:05,359
space that wasn't in theory. There, the stormt's earlier violence

368
00:18:05,359 --> 00:18:07,759
faded to a persistent wine tapped incessantly at the window

369
00:18:07,759 --> 00:18:10,720
panes behind the front desk. The lobby, with its high

370
00:18:10,839 --> 00:18:13,440
ornate ceiling, seemed to draw in the smallest noise, fulling

371
00:18:13,480 --> 00:18:16,400
it to an unnatural fullness. By habit, I take the

372
00:18:16,400 --> 00:18:19,000
logs again, chasing any anomaly with my name behind it.

373
00:18:19,759 --> 00:18:22,920
Bank security men, you reported everything, even your own feelings

374
00:18:22,920 --> 00:18:25,759
of unease. I tapped a short update into the official

375
00:18:25,799 --> 00:18:28,119
lock no unusual activity and a far longer entry to

376
00:18:28,160 --> 00:18:31,799
my private password locked notes. Every moment since the elevator

377
00:18:31,839 --> 00:18:34,799
as midnight aberration was cataloged, pressed in the form of bland,

378
00:18:34,960 --> 00:18:38,319
measured sentences. But my mind rushed beneath the surface. The

379
00:18:38,359 --> 00:18:40,359
photo glared at me from under the pile, the words

380
00:18:40,440 --> 00:18:43,599
fourth floor, seepy fuelik InKo, floodwater. I flicked through the

381
00:18:43,599 --> 00:18:47,119
security feeds. Most lenses showed nothing of just the flat

382
00:18:47,359 --> 00:18:49,640
yellow dust to ghostliness of empty lobbies in the silent

383
00:18:49,720 --> 00:18:52,920
tash of Hernew's conference rooms. Yet every hour, as if

384
00:18:52,960 --> 00:18:55,119
on the schedule, static crawled in the lower right quadrant

385
00:18:55,119 --> 00:18:58,279
of the third floor's camera. It wasn't pronounced a brief waver,

386
00:18:58,359 --> 00:19:00,759
a suggestion of shadow or shimmer that rancounter to the

387
00:19:00,759 --> 00:19:04,240
corridor's right angles. Sometimes it looked almost like a figure.

388
00:19:04,880 --> 00:19:07,039
Every time I replayed it, my pulse laps the frame

389
00:19:07,079 --> 00:19:10,119
caught on something inexplicable, a shoe perhaps, or the edge

390
00:19:10,119 --> 00:19:11,839
of a cult, Always in the spot where the elevator

391
00:19:11,839 --> 00:19:14,279
should have oven on to the fourth floor. I turned

392
00:19:14,279 --> 00:19:17,079
away from the monitors, suddenly weary. The back of my

393
00:19:17,119 --> 00:19:20,519
neck prickles, as though charged cold gusts traveled the elevator

394
00:19:20,559 --> 00:19:22,799
shaft again, cycling into the lobby and beats that had

395
00:19:22,799 --> 00:19:25,640
nothing to do with their conditioning schedules or the storm outside.

396
00:19:26,079 --> 00:19:28,599
For the sake of professionalism, a perhaps self defense, I

397
00:19:28,680 --> 00:19:31,119
called it in leaving a terse message on Lepo's work

398
00:19:31,160 --> 00:19:34,319
force mail. When I finally sat again, hunger gnawing at

399
00:19:34,319 --> 00:19:36,519
mine size, the building choose that moment to remind me

400
00:19:36,559 --> 00:19:39,279
I was not alone. I shrieked the sword of rusted

401
00:19:39,279 --> 00:19:41,920
metal arms and scream older buildings produced, ripped up from

402
00:19:41,920 --> 00:19:44,960
the lower level half its length. The noise sounded mechanical.

403
00:19:45,119 --> 00:19:47,559
The rest, however, struck a tragic imitation of a human

404
00:19:47,599 --> 00:19:50,519
groan dissolving to a he keeping silence. My hand have

405
00:19:50,640 --> 00:19:53,000
it over the panic button of no use, but reassuring,

406
00:19:53,640 --> 00:19:56,680
I forced myself to make another check boiler room, mechanical closet,

407
00:19:56,759 --> 00:19:58,400
the a marked door in the basement, where the air

408
00:19:58,440 --> 00:20:01,319
always felt clammy. The the halls and those recesses were

409
00:20:01,319 --> 00:20:04,519
even quieter than usual. My footstep seemed not to register

410
00:20:04,599 --> 00:20:06,920
at all, and my radio, normally full of quiet static

411
00:20:06,960 --> 00:20:10,039
off at the hush of the truly disconnected resolute. I

412
00:20:10,119 --> 00:20:12,960
tested each door, shining my light around pipes and storage

413
00:20:12,960 --> 00:20:15,960
crates whose provements probably predated my own birth. In the

414
00:20:16,079 --> 00:20:17,880
layer of my flat light, the edges of the blueprints

415
00:20:17,880 --> 00:20:20,319
I had photographed earlier began to take on new clarity.

416
00:20:20,960 --> 00:20:23,400
I propped the images against the wall, tracing lines with

417
00:20:23,440 --> 00:20:25,240
my finger between the third and fifth fours on the

418
00:20:25,279 --> 00:20:28,720
original and the erase versions. The scale made no sense.

419
00:20:28,880 --> 00:20:30,640
There was simply too much space accounted for in the

420
00:20:30,640 --> 00:20:34,759
earliest drawings. One blueprint, clearly from the nineteen fifties indicated

421
00:20:34,759 --> 00:20:38,599
an additional electrical closet, a kitchenette, several windowless offices. That

422
00:20:38,799 --> 00:20:41,279
entire strip of rooms was missing from every subsequent version,

423
00:20:41,279 --> 00:20:43,759
each trace of research and records painted over, as though

424
00:20:43,759 --> 00:20:46,440
the people who labored there deserved only a budget. Lines oblivion.

425
00:20:46,880 --> 00:20:50,440
My radio buzzed abruptly, distorted full static in my palm.

426
00:20:50,720 --> 00:20:53,559
I answered, expecting Lebow's grouchy drowl, or perhaps hec to

427
00:20:53,559 --> 00:20:57,319
smooth banglish. Instead, what merged was a hess broken by

428
00:20:57,319 --> 00:21:00,000
deck of a woman's voice, urgent, close to sobbing. You shouldn't,

429
00:21:00,079 --> 00:21:02,160
don't listen to them, don't don't go before it, and

430
00:21:02,279 --> 00:21:05,200
end nothing. Only the gentle whine of interference in what

431
00:21:05,319 --> 00:21:07,680
might have been a low were sinful sigh layer beneath,

432
00:21:07,759 --> 00:21:10,039
chased by silence so complete at left my ears ringing.

433
00:21:10,559 --> 00:21:12,240
On a normal night, this might have been enough to

434
00:21:12,279 --> 00:21:15,359
send me home early, but curiosity or perhaps duty one out.

435
00:21:15,960 --> 00:21:18,440
I retraced my steps to the elevator again, armed with

436
00:21:18,440 --> 00:21:21,079
a portable recorder and a small stack of copper blueprints.

437
00:21:21,720 --> 00:21:23,839
The elevator all but greeted me with a low stutter

438
00:21:23,880 --> 00:21:26,519
and an amber warning light, as though protesting undue attention.

439
00:21:27,200 --> 00:21:29,799
I tried once pressing all available buttons and sequence, then

440
00:21:29,880 --> 00:21:32,279
on a hunch, held the open door and five together

441
00:21:32,319 --> 00:21:35,440
for a three count. The elevator stuttered as usual between

442
00:21:35,480 --> 00:21:39,200
the documented floors. For a cruel second indicator pulsed white,

443
00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:43,400
then red, four, then with all preambles cast a sigh.

444
00:21:43,640 --> 00:21:47,119
The doors parted on a blackened, featureless slab, only this

445
00:21:47,240 --> 00:21:49,200
time just above a level A patch of the wall

446
00:21:49,200 --> 00:21:53,000
a Jetti's paint underneath smeared in the texture of faded stenciling.

447
00:21:53,119 --> 00:21:56,480
I could read three letters wreck. I reached up, brushing

448
00:21:56,480 --> 00:21:59,640
my finger tips across the brittle wall. The plaster gave slightly,

449
00:21:59,720 --> 00:22:02,279
revealing the curve of Veno in a partial hour records

450
00:22:02,680 --> 00:22:05,079
my record as microphone dutifully looked the sound of my

451
00:22:05,119 --> 00:22:07,599
own nervous breathing, the friction of skin against all paint,

452
00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:10,720
and unmistakably to Gustavisi air escaping from cracks. I could

453
00:22:10,759 --> 00:22:13,680
neither see nor folly feel. With this new proof, I

454
00:22:13,720 --> 00:22:16,559
resolved to delve deeper on my next off shift as

455
00:22:16,599 --> 00:22:19,519
grounds for further traces, not just digital traces, but tangible,

456
00:22:19,599 --> 00:22:23,559
holdable things, disguised by armfuls of trush bags and old files.

457
00:22:23,559 --> 00:22:25,960
To lend myself an air of purposeful cleaning, I visited

458
00:22:25,960 --> 00:22:28,000
floors two and three year change over iOS when the

459
00:22:28,039 --> 00:22:31,160
holes were least likely to host another soul. Every closet,

460
00:22:31,279 --> 00:22:33,839
every half forgotten storage bin, every lock draw became a

461
00:22:33,839 --> 00:22:37,359
candidate for condestined scrutiny on the third floor, behind a

462
00:22:37,400 --> 00:22:40,279
door marked electrical loafer's staff only. I unearthed the battered

463
00:22:40,279 --> 00:22:43,240
cardboard box, filled not with tools, but with patented envelopes,

464
00:22:43,440 --> 00:22:47,200
yellowed ladderhead, and half burned staff rosters. Some Bourne names

465
00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:50,480
that matched no employee current elicited in bryzened human resources system.

466
00:22:50,559 --> 00:22:53,519
Still others had briefed nottitions of transferred nineteen sixty two

467
00:22:53,759 --> 00:22:57,920
inquiry pending, or simply erased each script in different colored

468
00:22:57,920 --> 00:23:00,640
inks and pencils, told of a frantic lost effort cover

469
00:23:00,799 --> 00:23:04,880
collapse in office's legacy. The rosters, organized by year, converged

470
00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:08,559
and separated like tributaries. The same handful of surnames Vance

471
00:23:08,640 --> 00:23:11,680
Zimmermann raised, cropped up repeatedly, each attached to positions in

472
00:23:11,839 --> 00:23:14,440
recos a file supervision of the still more cryptic car

473
00:23:14,519 --> 00:23:18,720
Cavil oversight by nineteen sixty four, though all their notations vanish,

474
00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:21,559
as though their entire existence within Bryce and Tower been deleted.

475
00:23:22,119 --> 00:23:24,160
An odd tingle trace my spine as I traced finger

476
00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:27,079
over the paper, sensing layers of authorship piled thick as paint.

477
00:23:27,680 --> 00:23:30,240
The implication wasn't lost on me. Some one with the

478
00:23:30,279 --> 00:23:32,440
shops sent for a rasure had worked methodically and not

479
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:35,359
just once, to shed the building's real story from routine scrutiny.

480
00:23:35,880 --> 00:23:38,799
That night, I pressed Hector, more insistent than before, you

481
00:23:38,880 --> 00:23:41,200
ever clean up near for or see anything weird oult

482
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:45,319
door's odd cold spots. He shook his head, grin weary, Sam.

483
00:23:45,440 --> 00:23:47,920
Sometimes you ask too much. Keep your mind on your rounds.

484
00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:50,759
That's how you keep your job here. The answer was light,

485
00:23:50,880 --> 00:23:53,000
but I caught the word glance. He dropped over his shoulder,

486
00:23:53,039 --> 00:23:55,960
as if afraid the wools themselves might frown. I blurred it,

487
00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:58,960
frustrated in the old staffless thurn names vance rays. Did

488
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:02,119
you ever? He turned away, his smug one suddenly busy

489
00:24:02,119 --> 00:24:06,160
stacking cleaning bottles, shoulders pinched. People come, people go, sometimes

490
00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:08,200
people go for good. Don't be the one looking werthers

491
00:24:08,240 --> 00:24:11,680
walk away? Sam. Unsettled, I let him leave, watching a

492
00:24:11,759 --> 00:24:14,680
shrinking figure vanish down the dim corridor before corporate branded

493
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:17,960
fire door closed behind him. Determined now, I waited until

494
00:24:17,960 --> 00:24:20,319
the building had fully slipped into post midnight stillness, then

495
00:24:20,359 --> 00:24:23,559
returned to the security office. The storm outside lent the

496
00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:26,200
night a brittle charge, every flash of lightning flashing pale

497
00:24:26,200 --> 00:24:29,400
blue over the marble floors, with the coppet floor plans,

498
00:24:29,480 --> 00:24:31,920
the stuff Roster and the group Furtile arranged under the

499
00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:34,519
desk lamp. I sifted through each piece, searching for some

500
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:37,880
narrative that would resolve into sense. But my findings only

501
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:40,599
compounded the mystery, a puzzle with no center, no border,

502
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:43,720
only edges that blurred more on every circuit and bidden.

503
00:24:43,839 --> 00:24:46,160
My thoughts looped again and again to the unlisted collar

504
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:49,519
whose warning had disrupted what passed for peace. Some people

505
00:24:49,519 --> 00:24:52,279
are not meant to be remembered. There was sadness in it,

506
00:24:52,440 --> 00:24:56,000
but also something angry and frey. A shiver rattled beneath

507
00:24:56,039 --> 00:24:58,480
my uniform, and the recorder in my pum always recording

508
00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:00,559
caught quaver in my voice as I might, What did

509
00:25:00,599 --> 00:25:03,039
they do here? My own words seemed to hang in

510
00:25:03,039 --> 00:25:05,839
the air for living the sterile hush. I drafted an

511
00:25:05,839 --> 00:25:08,039
email to a friend on City Pyerial, someone whose favor

512
00:25:08,119 --> 00:25:10,079
I twice returned, and he owed me at least in

513
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:13,519
evening's worth of record searching Bryce and Tower fourth floor

514
00:25:13,599 --> 00:25:16,119
self abrupt disappearance in sixty to sixty four? Can you

515
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:19,119
pull any city permit where incident reports lost in digitization.

516
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:21,720
I hit send before I could talk myself out of it,

517
00:25:21,839 --> 00:25:26,519
already picturing the repercussions. The feats demanded another check. I

518
00:25:26,559 --> 00:25:30,000
toggled through the split screens at two nineteen a m.

519
00:25:30,039 --> 00:25:32,680
To my astonishment, the monitor for the elevator camera displayed

520
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:36,000
a brief pulsing image. The digital readout showed fort bright

521
00:25:36,079 --> 00:25:39,279
as a wound red banded by ghostly static for a

522
00:25:39,279 --> 00:25:41,599
two second eternity. The doors drew open on the monitor,

523
00:25:42,160 --> 00:25:44,079
where before there had been only the street gray wall.

524
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:46,559
Now the feed shimmered with a faint cipia has almost

525
00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:48,920
but not quite, revealing the outline of a person within.

526
00:25:49,519 --> 00:25:51,960
I lunged for the digital capture, catching only the end

527
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:54,000
of the phenomenon, the frame freezing on a half scene

528
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:56,200
shape was shoulder slumped and hands pressed together, as though

529
00:25:56,240 --> 00:25:59,720
in supplication. Even as it faded, the pattern didn't. Each

530
00:25:59,839 --> 00:26:03,039
night light from that point some signal visual auditory emerged,

531
00:26:03,119 --> 00:26:05,240
only to be wiped up by the systems of Razillah

532
00:26:05,279 --> 00:26:08,720
self cleansing, data ridden and erased traces lost. Every morning

533
00:26:08,759 --> 00:26:11,799
in the archaz cycling buffer, the remainder of every shift

534
00:26:11,839 --> 00:26:14,160
came in exercise in doubt. Did I truly see what

535
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:17,599
I thought I saw with these patterns, merely my sleepless mind,

536
00:26:17,759 --> 00:26:21,440
coaxed by shadow and anxiety, drawing meaning when unexisted or

537
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:24,200
did The building itself built by hands who'd sign no confession,

538
00:26:24,319 --> 00:26:26,799
hunger to reveal its own betrayals, and flickering piece real

539
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:31,160
fashion Friday suns felt sharp edged, my limbs hung heavy.

540
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:33,200
Yet even the bitter coffee kept at my station, with

541
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:35,640
its vague taste of burned plastic, seemed to feel tension

542
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:38,200
rather than resolve it. On my way out, I paused

543
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:40,440
one last time in front of the elevator's blank panel,

544
00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:42,519
The spot where a for should have been seethed with

545
00:26:42,559 --> 00:26:44,799
a low static that buzst against my finger tips, and

546
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:47,200
I swore for the briefest instant the smell of sine

547
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:49,759
paper hung in the air. I commuted home on the

548
00:26:49,880 --> 00:26:51,920
washed out dawn, sleep with held by theories circling a

549
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:55,200
round something deeper than codes and maintenance. The city looked

550
00:26:55,200 --> 00:26:58,559
no different, skyscrapers rimmed in old gold rainwaters sluicing through gutters,

551
00:26:58,640 --> 00:27:02,519
crows tracing lines overhead, But some mood changed my phone flast.

552
00:27:02,519 --> 00:27:05,440
A single response just passed nine A m tours, heavier permit,

553
00:27:05,519 --> 00:27:11,640
inspection reports attached Bryson's citations, ree fourth floor word staff employed, disappearance, suicide, rumors,

554
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:15,559
repeated clothes, Colwyn offshift. Before even opening the files, a

555
00:27:15,599 --> 00:27:18,039
single thoughts spun unbidden. I was being watched, if not

556
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:20,039
by flesh and blood, then by the restless memory of

557
00:27:20,039 --> 00:27:22,680
a place determined not to be forgotten. The Bryson had

558
00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:24,759
its story to tell, and I was too entangled to

559
00:27:24,759 --> 00:27:27,119
walk away now, not without tearing away something from both

560
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:30,240
of us. In the growing daylight, the building's mystery seemed,

561
00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:32,559
if not tamer, then at least manageable by the light

562
00:27:32,599 --> 00:27:35,319
of public record and civic curiosity. But as I re

563
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:37,319
entered that ancient marble lobbied the next night, feet are

564
00:27:37,319 --> 00:27:39,680
going alone, elevated inan hollily. It was the memory of

565
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:42,359
the photograph, the redacted names, and the phantom floors and

566
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:45,759
quiet silence that shadowed my overystep. Whatever had tappened to

567
00:27:45,799 --> 00:27:47,920
the fourth floor and to those who once charted its boarders,

568
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:50,000
it would not release me easily, nor leaf quiet. The

569
00:27:50,039 --> 00:27:53,480
voices pressing faintly against the Knight's pale glass at seven

570
00:27:53,559 --> 00:27:56,200
hue m for recent light crept through the cracked windows,

571
00:27:56,240 --> 00:27:58,720
slats of the security office, painting about a desk in

572
00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:00,640
and even stripes and dimming the faded black and white

573
00:28:00,640 --> 00:28:02,799
photo I had left and covered up with some dun defiance.

574
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:05,720
The overnight still clung to my skin, thick a sweat,

575
00:28:05,799 --> 00:28:07,480
heedless of the chill, in a pit of my stomach.

576
00:28:08,039 --> 00:28:09,920
The last I was of my shift moved in jittery

577
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:13,240
fit fold of forms, half finish. Email windows opened and minimize.

578
00:28:13,279 --> 00:28:15,039
The photo was staring up at me with those cheerful,

579
00:28:15,039 --> 00:28:18,000
impossible faces. Eight people signed out of public memories completely

580
00:28:18,039 --> 00:28:20,960
as the phantom floor lead occupied all at once. The

581
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:24,640
building had changed, not by some overt destruction, no glass shire,

582
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:28,240
no sirens blared, but in a sutler shiveringly. My headset,

583
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:30,680
still plugged in from the storm, racked night buzzed and bursts.

584
00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:33,240
Even with the volume turn low, every monitor in the

585
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:35,400
control bank held some small tail, a warping of the

586
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:37,599
image at the edge, a stat at vertical bar calling

587
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:39,920
upward the tie in displaced, lifting back a few seconds

588
00:28:39,960 --> 00:28:43,200
and then correcting itself. The elevator, of course kept up.

589
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:45,400
A charade door was opening twenty tons and an ire

590
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:48,480
unclean barren anolium. But now each time my eyes caught

591
00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:50,720
the impression of movement behind the glass, a blip too

592
00:28:50,759 --> 00:28:53,880
fast for even the recording buffer. I didn't bother logging

593
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:56,240
the anomalies a simple malfunctions, and the more not after

594
00:28:56,279 --> 00:28:58,319
the message from the block number, not with the smuggled

595
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:00,519
velo of nestling on top of the city's setation print

596
00:29:00,519 --> 00:29:03,880
out about missing recos and vanished personnel to write. All

597
00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:06,519
quiet as I had on my first knight, felt suddenly absurd.

598
00:29:07,079 --> 00:29:10,240
I rode only enough to protect myself. Tetical glitch logs

599
00:29:10,240 --> 00:29:13,680
retained will clarify after sleep. Missus Feldman's light glowed on

600
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:16,559
floor too, as always, but even she seemed subdued. Fore

601
00:29:16,599 --> 00:29:19,039
had resting against dubtur and hands at her batter desk.

602
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:22,039
She didn't look up when I passed the glass walled office,

603
00:29:22,279 --> 00:29:24,559
nor did she acknowledge the quiet knock I rapped gently

604
00:29:24,599 --> 00:29:27,079
on the frame. Her eyes were peeled wide, but she

605
00:29:27,119 --> 00:29:30,279
seemed to be reading the air, not her spur sheets. Hector,

606
00:29:30,559 --> 00:29:32,799
mop bucket and toe hardly paused to swap gibes and

607
00:29:32,839 --> 00:29:36,720
complaints about management. His greeting, usually tinged with tired humor.

608
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:40,079
Was then you see it too, Sam, he whispered, glancing

609
00:29:40,079 --> 00:29:43,240
at the elevator. Before I could answer, he turned away,

610
00:29:43,279 --> 00:29:45,440
lips moving silently as he worked them up long, the

611
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:48,640
same section of floor circles, tightening focus somewhere else entirely,

612
00:29:49,279 --> 00:29:51,359
the weight of the building pressed in his secrets, no

613
00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:54,359
longer content to luck in diminishing patterns of static and chill,

614
00:29:54,960 --> 00:29:57,440
I found myself treading The next time the elevator doors

615
00:29:57,480 --> 00:30:00,279
would jutter open. I found myself thinking, the the only

616
00:30:00,279 --> 00:30:02,359
thing separating the living from me raised is how loud

617
00:30:02,359 --> 00:30:05,240
we keep telling the world we're still here. At eight one,

618
00:30:05,279 --> 00:30:08,079
a m leb arrived, moving briskly, face buried behind a

619
00:30:08,119 --> 00:30:12,039
thick folder. He paused outside the security office, eyes flickering

620
00:30:12,039 --> 00:30:14,079
briefly to the stack of my locks, then to this

621
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:16,359
liver of all photograph peeking from beneath a sheaf of

622
00:30:16,359 --> 00:30:19,680
maintenance forms. He didn't interrupt the silence as he sculled

623
00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:23,960
through the logs. Eventually he muttered, update camaufirmera again half

624
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:26,759
the feet's glitch. He didn't meet my gaze, not even

625
00:30:26,799 --> 00:30:29,519
when I approached the subject of the block call scam

626
00:30:29,559 --> 00:30:33,680
spam building's numbers everywhere he said voicelow and clipped, don't

627
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:37,920
obsess torrors. His hands hovered and surer over the photo's edge.

628
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:40,039
He only took what was nest free and slipped out,

629
00:30:40,119 --> 00:30:43,200
door whispering shut behind him. I watched the elevator, half

630
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:45,799
expecting it to open on nothing for him too, But

631
00:30:45,880 --> 00:30:48,920
the doors kept the silent whispers for after dark. Even

632
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:51,160
with the dawn diluting the buildings or as shadows, the

633
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:53,680
fourth floor felt more present, its origin now more fragile,

634
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:56,480
its memory parting like a loose tooth. I was left

635
00:30:56,480 --> 00:30:58,480
to drift through what passed for morning alone, with the

636
00:30:58,519 --> 00:31:00,839
knowledge that in these walls, seeks were maintained, like the

637
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:04,160
wires and pipes behind Bryson's art Deco shell patch, redirected

638
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:07,440
and always always humming, just beneath the surface. I left

639
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:09,440
work that morning, with the fort now transferred to my

640
00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:12,240
own folder, and the greeny screen capture from the elevator monitor.

641
00:31:12,799 --> 00:31:14,880
The two artifats pressed hot in my hand that the

642
00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:17,359
September air was called a steady drizzle, rinsing away to

643
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:20,559
city's surface. Grind. Home was not home, sleeper, shallow and

644
00:31:20,559 --> 00:31:22,720
a reliable, haunted by a feeling of being pursued not

645
00:31:22,839 --> 00:31:24,680
by a person, but by a place that had finally

646
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:27,519
started to take an interest in me. My phone, long

647
00:31:27,559 --> 00:31:30,440
set to silum, vibrated all the table before noon. The

648
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:33,079
message came through on the secure encrypted up favored by

649
00:31:33,119 --> 00:31:38,039
city investigators. Bryson employee incident, elevator complaints, disappearances in sixty

650
00:31:38,039 --> 00:31:41,680
two sixty four municipal archives. Theodefel R M three hundred

651
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:44,519
twelve sat morning only. Some records might require a sign

652
00:31:44,559 --> 00:31:48,039
off for copied discretion. By early evening, my waking life

653
00:31:48,079 --> 00:31:51,720
and my anxious, near hallucinated nights blurred together. Screens glimmered

654
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:56,119
with files qued from city databases, mechanical violations, electrical safety citations,

655
00:31:56,359 --> 00:31:59,519
noise complaints, all in them. Columns I th read stood

656
00:31:59,519 --> 00:32:01,799
out simple to any one who knew what to look for,

657
00:32:02,119 --> 00:32:04,839
not just a missing people nor the closed offices, but

658
00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:07,920
a pattern of official removals and a authorized four numbering changes,

659
00:32:08,039 --> 00:32:10,519
each waddled in bureaucratic language. To prine for accidents and

660
00:32:10,559 --> 00:32:13,880
to opick for coincidence. I skimmed through all news clippings

661
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:16,359
now stashed in my backpack. Onorn about a suicide penciled

662
00:32:16,359 --> 00:32:19,599
in the margins. Last seen boarding elevator twelve fifty three,

663
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:23,200
a m another duller, but more chilling. Fifth floor occupants

664
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:25,720
complain of strange noises over nigh date stamp. Late in

665
00:32:25,799 --> 00:32:29,680
nineteen sixty three, municipal inspectors flagged the building three times

666
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:32,839
for an accounted mechanical stoppages, the last just days before

667
00:32:32,839 --> 00:32:35,880
the fourth floor vanished from every map. With every new file,

668
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:38,880
Bryson Tower sharpened its intentions, as though the building itself

669
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:40,680
wanted to make sure I saw what had been so

670
00:32:40,759 --> 00:32:44,359
carefully vacuumed out of memory. On Saturday morning, I entered

671
00:32:44,359 --> 00:32:47,799
City Archives. Inside the well lit waiting area, with its

672
00:32:47,799 --> 00:32:50,759
industrial carpet and cookie cut off furniture, felt alien compared

673
00:32:50,759 --> 00:32:53,519
to the tower's half rou and grandeur. The receptionist a

674
00:32:53,519 --> 00:32:55,720
pale faced woman, thin hair, drawn back in and not

675
00:32:55,799 --> 00:32:59,519
frown over my requests, her fingers stolling on the keyboard. Bryson.

676
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:02,359
She began again, her voice fading at my nod. She

677
00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:05,599
scrawled the musk, sticking restlessly those files on flight for

678
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:08,640
routine issue. I pause, Her eyes lingered on my badge.

679
00:33:09,240 --> 00:33:11,920
Let me check the old permit ledgers. Wait here, I

680
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:15,240
paced between rows of metal bookcases. The arcous air was

681
00:33:15,319 --> 00:33:18,079
dry and metallic. Paper and tone are and something less pleasant.

682
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:21,039
When she returned, she handed me a thin yellow folder

683
00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:24,000
sealed with a brittle pink string. Be careful, she said,

684
00:33:24,079 --> 00:33:26,119
a warning hidden in her soft tone, though to whom

685
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:30,640
I could not say. Inside inspection reports, hand written amendments

686
00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:33,279
faded polaroids of what had once been full offices with

687
00:33:33,319 --> 00:33:37,079
glass typewriters and bulletin boards. The notes repeated the buildings

688
00:33:37,079 --> 00:33:40,440
odd formatteime mezzanine slip between third and fifth, then erased

689
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:45,079
and rebranded too many footnotes. The notation room never cleared

690
00:33:45,079 --> 00:33:48,519
for occupancy pending inquiry appeared beside every vanished office number,

691
00:33:49,079 --> 00:33:52,480
and alongside each a notation I'd seen before. Employee last

692
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:55,960
seen entering elevator two four a M. No further records.

693
00:33:56,359 --> 00:33:58,200
At the end of the file I found a binding,

694
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:00,079
a red legal ribbon tagging a stack of time I

695
00:34:00,079 --> 00:34:02,920
pretend statements and memos, all with the phrase for internal

696
00:34:02,960 --> 00:34:05,960
review only. It was there in the clet formal prose.

697
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:08,239
I learned about the suicides too, in the spine of

698
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:10,559
three months, in about the extraordinary pressure to keep those

699
00:34:10,599 --> 00:34:13,679
rumors out of the papers. Nothing was explicit, but the

700
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:17,119
implication was impossible to miss. People have vanished, wreckers had

701
00:34:17,119 --> 00:34:19,079
been scrubbed, and at least four of them had been lost,

702
00:34:19,079 --> 00:34:21,960
officially listed on the fourth floor, I closed a folder

703
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:25,480
with non steady hands. It didn't surprise me at the receptionist,

704
00:34:25,639 --> 00:34:28,000
now watching my every move, looked away as I returned

705
00:34:28,039 --> 00:34:31,480
the documents and scowled my signature records returned to Central

706
00:34:31,519 --> 00:34:33,440
Review Monday. She said, in a voice meant for no

707
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:36,559
one at all. If you need more, use the formal request.

708
00:34:36,679 --> 00:34:40,000
Don't mention this here, She hesitated, the only tell in

709
00:34:40,039 --> 00:34:44,440
an otherwise and passive face, missing floor. I nodded, thanked her,

710
00:34:44,480 --> 00:34:46,440
and left as smoothly as I could, the skin between

711
00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:48,360
my shoulder blades prickling in the way it always did

712
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:51,199
when the air grew too thick to breathe. By Sunday afternoon,

713
00:34:51,239 --> 00:34:54,679
the evidence was inarguable, if still partial. The elevator shouldn't

714
00:34:54,679 --> 00:34:56,800
fit in its shaft by any measurement I could reconstruct

715
00:34:56,800 --> 00:35:00,159
from city plans or the tower's original engineering drawings. There

716
00:35:00,199 --> 00:35:02,159
should be dead space enough for a hidden corridor or

717
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:05,119
cluster of offices between fours three and five, sealed by

718
00:35:05,119 --> 00:35:07,719
brittle walls. Nobody but the oldest maintenance cruise had ever

719
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:10,880
laid eyes. On the next shift, I returned to Bristom

720
00:35:10,880 --> 00:35:13,239
with the air of a man of business. The sky

721
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:15,360
threatened rain, but the air was clear, brittle as a

722
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:19,079
razor's edge. Before settling into the security office, I checked

723
00:35:19,119 --> 00:35:22,239
the stairwells. Nothing had changed visually, but in the gap

724
00:35:22,280 --> 00:35:24,480
between fours, a seam of concrete where a number should

725
00:35:24,480 --> 00:35:26,639
have gone, A faint breeze pushed against my finger tips.

726
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:29,800
I thought perhaps it was the breath of the space itself,

727
00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:33,159
reluctant to be forgotten. Inside the elevator, I pressed each

728
00:35:33,199 --> 00:35:35,719
button in sequence, holding them in odd combinations, trying every

729
00:35:35,719 --> 00:35:38,519
trick I gleaned from old elevator manuals and urban legends.

730
00:35:38,960 --> 00:35:41,559
At two twelve, they am, The doors shuttered and snapped open,

731
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:44,159
not with their usual mechanical indifference, but with the reluctant

732
00:35:44,199 --> 00:35:47,639
shivering lack between three and five, and the digital readout

733
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:50,320
there lingered just for a heartbeat, thoughfore again red and

734
00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:53,800
urgent or wound in a plastic I bent down, feeling

735
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:56,559
for seams that would mark a hidden panel. My flashlight

736
00:35:56,599 --> 00:35:58,880
found what the naked I could not scratch along the foe.

737
00:35:58,960 --> 00:36:01,679
A dusty hemisphere, ardy and stockpaint revealed the word erecus,

738
00:36:01,719 --> 00:36:04,480
half field, yet pure as first print. When the door

739
00:36:04,519 --> 00:36:06,800
slid open, there was no hallway, just a blank wall,

740
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:09,199
until as A stepped closer my way pressed down on

741
00:36:09,199 --> 00:36:12,199
a worn stone tile, something clicked inside the shaft, the

742
00:36:12,199 --> 00:36:15,320
faintest of latches. All at once, the air shifted, and

743
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:17,239
for an instant I felt as if I could step through.

744
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:21,039
My hand clutching the recorder was sick with sweat on

745
00:36:21,119 --> 00:36:23,440
the tape, only breath, the clock of my boot and

746
00:36:23,519 --> 00:36:26,719
the low, far off hum of electricity. I pulled back,

747
00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:29,079
and the wall seemed to resettle, the chill air as pating,

748
00:36:29,119 --> 00:36:31,719
as though nothing had occurred, but the impression lingered, a

749
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:35,719
presence close and insistent, neither friend nor autrefo. That morning,

750
00:36:35,920 --> 00:36:38,079
waiting for the building to stir, I saw an anonymous

751
00:36:38,119 --> 00:36:42,360
envelope slipped under the security door. Inside aged newspaper clippings

752
00:36:42,440 --> 00:36:46,079
dated from early nineteen sixty four with names are recognized Fance,

753
00:36:46,239 --> 00:36:49,519
Simmamin Rais and a fourth blurw to ellegibility by use

754
00:36:49,519 --> 00:36:52,639
of handling. All the short, inevitable head lines, each in

755
00:36:52,719 --> 00:36:55,880
desperate font said the same last seen heading to fourth floor,

756
00:36:56,519 --> 00:36:59,639
under lined three times in shaky blue ink. My fingers

757
00:36:59,639 --> 00:37:01,519
shook as I refold a do nvelope and slipped it

758
00:37:01,559 --> 00:37:04,320
into my pack. The message was clear. I was not

759
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:07,559
the first, nor perhaps would I be the last. The

760
00:37:07,639 --> 00:37:11,000
ghosts floor was not satisfied merely to be buried its

761
00:37:11,039 --> 00:37:13,320
memory and the memories of those it had swallowed. Hunger

762
00:37:13,400 --> 00:37:15,960
to be found demanded, not simple remembrance, but something like

763
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:18,760
a reckoning. On my next shift, the routine I kluantif

764
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:22,239
for comfort was gone, replaced by a trembling vigilance. Even

765
00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:26,000
small failures now felt auxtrated. My badge failed to scan,

766
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:30,039
the fire alarm chirped at random. Security phone rang and

767
00:37:30,119 --> 00:37:34,079
rang into silence each time, the number flashing unreadable. Hector's

768
00:37:34,119 --> 00:37:36,440
greeting was a mutter, and missus Feldman was gone, her

769
00:37:36,519 --> 00:37:38,760
lamp dark, heard a shame missing from her usual chair.

770
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:41,480
It was after midnight, and I was truly alone for

771
00:37:41,519 --> 00:37:44,480
the first time. I resolved then that fear of being

772
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:46,679
watched was not reason enough to hide from the truth.

773
00:37:47,119 --> 00:37:49,679
Quip with every KIA could borrow, my phone set to record,

774
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:52,480
and the battered city foldustache in my backpack. I waited

775
00:37:52,519 --> 00:37:55,079
until the building had settled into the deepest night. At

776
00:37:55,119 --> 00:37:56,880
the top of the eire, with my hot thudding, I

777
00:37:56,920 --> 00:37:59,760
called the elevator and watched the door spot with glacial slowness.

778
00:38:00,440 --> 00:38:02,880
This time, the panel glowed red, flickering from three, two,

779
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:05,079
four and back again, until it seemed the plastic itself

780
00:38:05,119 --> 00:38:08,119
would melt. I rode up, flashing my light along each seam.

781
00:38:08,119 --> 00:38:11,000
As the elevator trembled and stopped hard abrought between the floors.

782
00:38:11,679 --> 00:38:14,719
The doors pried open, resisting as if the space beyond

783
00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:17,400
was not made for people. What greeted me was at

784
00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:19,840
first only a gap of pitch black chamber, tight enough

785
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:22,599
to force me sideways. My feet sank into dust as

786
00:38:22,639 --> 00:38:25,800
thick as fine ash. I pressed forward, crawling for a

787
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:28,000
split at shoulder height, the world narrowing to the urgent

788
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:30,000
beat of my heart and the thin, uneven beam of

789
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:32,960
the flashlight. The core space was lined in warp plaster

790
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:35,559
and russ flake metal, like the inners of a disassembled building,

791
00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:39,719
half eaten by time and refusal. Inside there felt utterly motionless.

792
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:43,599
My breath rasped, steaming briefly in the beam. I pressed forward,

793
00:38:43,679 --> 00:38:46,440
now stooped in a corridor, two narrow for comfort. At

794
00:38:46,440 --> 00:38:48,760
my left, a partition of glass and yellowed paper marked

795
00:38:48,800 --> 00:38:50,400
what was once a window, now only a view on

796
00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:55,000
to more darkness. Folded benches, shredded upholstery, broken filing cabinets

797
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:58,000
cluttered the space where once there had been bustling off

798
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:01,760
as partitions. Only skeletal, firm nature stood guard. It might

799
00:39:01,800 --> 00:39:03,960
have been thirty seconds or thirty years before I first

800
00:39:03,960 --> 00:39:06,559
heard it. The sound of voices, distant and pitched on

801
00:39:06,559 --> 00:39:08,559
a weavent that by passed the year and settled straight

802
00:39:08,599 --> 00:39:11,719
into the skull. A chorus not in time, not in harmony,

803
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:14,559
of horrod conversations and half shouted warnings, each at once

804
00:39:14,599 --> 00:39:18,159
separate and overlapping. As I inched along the flashlight circle,

805
00:39:18,199 --> 00:39:21,400
picked out signs of previous occupation, a faded nameplate Zimmerman,

806
00:39:21,559 --> 00:39:23,760
a sprawl of papers fused together by fulth in time,

807
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:26,039
an overturned surround it mug that read Bryce and Tower

808
00:39:26,039 --> 00:39:29,119
Research go forth. I gripped my recorder, tied her my thumb,

809
00:39:29,119 --> 00:39:32,000
shaking against the stop button. The voices grew clearer as

810
00:39:32,039 --> 00:39:34,679
I pressed on a temperature in the corridor, dropping steadily

811
00:39:34,679 --> 00:39:38,039
each breath dampered in the last sudden movement of flicker,

812
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:40,280
just at the margin, white shirt of forms gathered in

813
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:42,559
silent conference heads lowered over what must have been a

814
00:39:42,559 --> 00:39:45,639
projector or a Telux machine. The lights started again, and

815
00:39:45,679 --> 00:39:48,000
they were gone, replaced by the impression of a desk

816
00:39:48,039 --> 00:39:50,239
and a pair of hands, ghostly and blue leaf and

817
00:39:50,239 --> 00:39:52,039
through files that felt to us the moment they turned

818
00:39:52,039 --> 00:39:54,920
the page. My phone recording caught the hushed rush of

819
00:39:54,920 --> 00:39:58,960
many voices at once. We were just doing our jobs. Remember,

820
00:39:59,039 --> 00:40:03,400
please let them see us, sir. The files, the files high, dim,

821
00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:07,119
and again the distorative phrase don't trust her. I pressed

822
00:40:07,159 --> 00:40:10,519
on one desk, held a cracked badge for rays. The

823
00:40:10,599 --> 00:40:14,119
lamp beside its bark flickered and died. I skirted around

824
00:40:14,159 --> 00:40:16,239
a spill of shred of plastic in paper, the misake

825
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:19,159
of texture carpet, nearly eeries beneath years of damp. The

826
00:40:19,199 --> 00:40:22,000
path narrowed further until I emerged, bruised and breathless, into

827
00:40:22,079 --> 00:40:24,639
what might once have been a Ricker's fault. The room

828
00:40:24,679 --> 00:40:27,079
had no true doors, opening yon like a wound split

829
00:40:27,119 --> 00:40:30,119
along the line of cinder block and gas. The walls

830
00:40:30,159 --> 00:40:33,239
patched with grimy tape and browning newspaper bore painted numbers,

831
00:40:33,239 --> 00:40:35,880
now nearly invisible. At the far end, a bank of

832
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:38,920
battered metal filing cabinets had been forced open draw slung

833
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:42,400
wide in a wild panic pattern. Here the air was different,

834
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:46,559
still charged, sharply metallic fluorescent light washed the space from nowhere,

835
00:40:46,599 --> 00:40:50,159
flickering with unsteady purpose. I stepped forward, drawn toward a

836
00:40:50,159 --> 00:40:53,360
battered cut stack with reels of magnetic tape typritain labels flapping,

837
00:40:53,400 --> 00:40:57,760
the only eligible one reading Incident January fourth, nineteen sixty three.

838
00:40:58,199 --> 00:41:00,360
I reached out hand trembling and pressed play on the

839
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:03,119
bat of reel to real player. White noise hissed out,

840
00:41:03,239 --> 00:41:06,400
resolving to a woman's voice, and clipped terrified rhythm. Four

841
00:41:06,440 --> 00:41:09,360
floor bordered shut after Discovery staff ordered to sign NDA

842
00:41:09,519 --> 00:41:13,199
offices cleared out, files and records disappeared. Elevator panel locked.

843
00:41:13,239 --> 00:41:16,599
Do not remain after midnight? Do not. A sudden shot bang,

844
00:41:16,639 --> 00:41:18,760
echoing not through tape but through the space itself, sent

845
00:41:18,840 --> 00:41:21,639
ust boiling from the top of the cabinets. A froze,

846
00:41:21,679 --> 00:41:25,039
barely breathing from the coroner. A shape resolved, a figure

847
00:41:25,199 --> 00:41:27,360
neither whole nor in fragments pressed out from the wall

848
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:30,639
like a press flower between failing pages. Its mouth opened,

849
00:41:30,679 --> 00:41:34,159
emitting a desperate, strangled sound. Help us, it said, not

850
00:41:34,239 --> 00:41:36,079
quite with a voice, but with the flat certainty of

851
00:41:36,119 --> 00:41:38,599
the mind press pass reason. We were a race. Do

852
00:41:38,719 --> 00:41:41,840
not let them. Another flash, this time dizzily bright, and

853
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:45,639
the rumor upted alarm Clackson's blight, the familiar, hated fluorescent

854
00:41:45,639 --> 00:41:48,960
whale screaming through the office. Pages soar from cabinets, as

855
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:51,840
if snatched by invisible hands. Typrotus clicked in a furious

856
00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:55,840
mirrored cadence. Outside the room, footsteps pounded, echoing in the

857
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:58,159
same double rhythm I'd heard in the stairwell weeks before.

858
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:00,840
Every muscle in my body screened to escape, but the

859
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:04,320
room held fast. The specter at the wall twisted, transparency,

860
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:08,440
blotting and warping with static voices, crestened out words mashed together,

861
00:42:08,559 --> 00:42:11,760
betrayed for goodden don't let them, and always don't trust

862
00:42:11,760 --> 00:42:14,719
the elevator. The walls pulsed, moving as though filled with

863
00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:17,360
liquid instead of old air, and behind them more nos

864
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:21,519
suffering bureaucracy and muffled angry grief, shoving tapes and papers

865
00:42:21,519 --> 00:42:24,440
into my pack. I staggered backward, fighting against wind that

866
00:42:24,519 --> 00:42:28,079
seemed to come from every direction. At once. My flashlight flickered,

867
00:42:28,159 --> 00:42:30,400
the light bending, so the shadows grew teeth and claws,

868
00:42:30,599 --> 00:42:32,400
narrowing the space until the only way out was the

869
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:35,239
way I'd come in. I crawled, scraped, banged elbows and

870
00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:38,920
knees on jutting plaster behind me. I felt the present spill,

871
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:42,199
the tension almost unbearable. Just as I reached the elevator,

872
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:45,719
the doors slam closed. The hall cowd juttered, hurling me

873
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:47,679
to the ground floor with a motion more violent than

874
00:42:47,679 --> 00:42:50,480
any I had experienced in years of military travel. I

875
00:42:50,559 --> 00:42:54,199
rolled onto the scuffed marble, boots, scraping longs burning. For

876
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:56,599
a long moment, I simply lay there, stunned and empty,

877
00:42:56,679 --> 00:42:59,280
the well asserting its ordinary gravity inch by inch, as

878
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:01,440
though I had been spared out from somewhere else. Entirely.

879
00:43:02,039 --> 00:43:05,760
The stillness that followed was Brittell's class. The security system

880
00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:09,480
rebuted in a slow, mechanical wine. I checked my pocket's recorder,

881
00:43:09,519 --> 00:43:11,679
still running, the battered sissy folder crisp and full of

882
00:43:11,679 --> 00:43:15,519
stolen evidence. The taped weighty is bricks at my side. Upstairs,

883
00:43:15,559 --> 00:43:18,800
the elevator panel oscillated between three and five, never again

884
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:22,039
pausing on for I remained where I was, knowing that

885
00:43:22,079 --> 00:43:25,039
in some critical way, the building itself had shifted. The

886
00:43:25,079 --> 00:43:27,559
events side witness couldn't be explained away, as power surges

887
00:43:27,559 --> 00:43:29,840
were all wiring the boundary between what was lost and

888
00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:32,880
what remained. It dissolved, albeit momentarily, showing me all that

889
00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:35,199
had ever been meant to stay hidden. The next day,

890
00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:37,400
I was summoned to Labo's office and a still little

891
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:39,760
room flanked by fire exit maps in a lean imposter

892
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:42,880
of high rise safety protocol. He sat behind the desk,

893
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:45,480
face fixed in the hard managerial kindness of someone trained

894
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:48,039
to make him pleasantness seem roudine. There was a break

895
00:43:48,079 --> 00:43:50,800
in Lebo asked, hand press a temple as he read

896
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:54,079
through a new batch of incident reports. Yes, I said,

897
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:56,760
each word, carrying the full weight of a mission file.

898
00:43:56,800 --> 00:43:59,239
Room made a tapes gone. He were on leave until

899
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:01,920
further notice, he said, I is never leaving the page.

900
00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:04,760
We've had complaints about your reports. They don't match with

901
00:44:04,800 --> 00:44:07,639
our logs. I left the room without arguing, clutching my

902
00:44:07,639 --> 00:44:11,440
batted backpack tighter. The contact at City Chez wouldn't answer

903
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:14,039
my messages. The phone want so a key story in

904
00:44:14,079 --> 00:44:16,679
its silence, claned twice the next night, each time disconnecting

905
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:20,119
the foy could answer. Contractors arrived Monday to modernize the

906
00:44:20,119 --> 00:44:23,599
elevator system. I watched from across the empty street, rain

907
00:44:23,679 --> 00:44:26,039
streaking the windshield. As a team in matching the uniforms,

908
00:44:26,039 --> 00:44:28,880
faerroed bricks and some men into the lobby. Signs went

909
00:44:28,960 --> 00:44:31,199
up a safe to modernization in progress, and by week's

910
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:33,480
end they'd sealed off the segment of all the elevator

911
00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:37,280
at once, reluctantly opened on. Afterwards, the lights on three

912
00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:39,400
and the five gluid steady, and afore it was no

913
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:42,400
longer flickered, but an absence complete. The city sent a

914
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:46,480
stack of new paperwork routine, impersonal and signed sensitive incident

915
00:44:46,559 --> 00:44:51,320
further review required, recommend suspension pending psychiatric evaluation. My own logs,

916
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:54,599
audio unwritten vanish from the company server. My keekad no

917
00:44:54,679 --> 00:44:58,199
longer registered in any system. Sleep was fractious, a patchwork

918
00:44:58,239 --> 00:45:01,480
of restless starts and sudden wakings. The forbidden voices from

919
00:45:01,519 --> 00:45:03,800
the fourth floor pressed in by tape and plaster, choking

920
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:06,719
inside elevator shafts long since. Blots started to seep into

921
00:45:06,760 --> 00:45:09,920
my dreams. Every night I heard the warning, don't let

922
00:45:09,920 --> 00:45:12,400
them seal the door again. My old skills, the ones

923
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:16,079
trained for vigilance, for noticing patterns, became a curse. One night,

924
00:45:16,239 --> 00:45:18,679
returning from a late walk, I found an email let

925
00:45:18,719 --> 00:45:22,559
it go, no sender, no reply. At three fourteen a

926
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:25,760
m a sharp knock landed on my apartment store. I

927
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:27,519
eased it open to empty air. A single sheet of

928
00:45:27,519 --> 00:45:29,760
paper lay at my feet, the clipped headline in padotype

929
00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:33,239
Bryce and tower Safey complete, no incidents reported. I took

930
00:45:33,280 --> 00:45:36,239
my evidence tapes, news clippings, the group photo, and weighed

931
00:45:36,239 --> 00:45:39,400
my next move. I rehearsed waste, exposed the truth, then

932
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:42,960
discarded each the city's indifference, the buildings hung over silence,

933
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:45,320
the machine's capacity to erase both the living and the dead.

934
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:47,719
I could slip everything to the press, But as I

935
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:49,800
sat at my breakfast table in the cramp blue dawn,

936
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:51,719
the weight of those other warnings worked their way, and

937
00:45:51,760 --> 00:45:55,159
whoever I told would soon join the forgotten. Behind my eyelids,

938
00:45:55,199 --> 00:45:57,639
the faces from the fourth four floated A blurredun insistent

939
00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:00,960
voice after voice demanding not exposure but re condition. I

940
00:46:01,039 --> 00:46:03,400
didn't answer, not yet, but pressed my thumb over the

941
00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:05,719
batted office keys, still swinging from a faded lineout at

942
00:46:05,760 --> 00:46:08,159
my throat. Late that night, I curled up with the

943
00:46:08,199 --> 00:46:10,639
tapes and played them through, letting the voice spill over me,

944
00:46:10,920 --> 00:46:13,119
learning the shape of a story that had once been

945
00:46:13,159 --> 00:46:15,400
buried in a sealed up room between one ordinary floor

946
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:17,679
and the necks. There was nothing for it nel but

947
00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:20,719
to act. On my last night before packing up my life.

948
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:23,159
I cradled the batted office key, knowing it would never

949
00:46:23,239 --> 00:46:25,800
open a door again. I queued up the final tape

950
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:27,320
on the bat of a corridor, and the reel spun

951
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:31,159
out into silence. My voice, dried and ragged with exhaustion,

952
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:34,079
played back from the middle of the recording security lock,

953
00:46:34,239 --> 00:46:37,920
fourth floor, no longer present, system, lugs wiped, contractor evidence sealed.

954
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:40,679
Project done. But before the tape spun to the end,

955
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:44,000
another voice cut in, not my own, faint, desperate, layered

956
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:46,920
by tones I recognized from the archive. We're still here,

957
00:46:47,039 --> 00:46:49,599
it whispered, not a plea or a warning, but a certainty.

958
00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:52,599
Please don't forget us, don't let them seal the door again.

959
00:46:53,159 --> 00:46:55,280
I let the recorder run to its final click, hands

960
00:46:55,320 --> 00:46:57,280
trembling as the room filled with the static punch of

961
00:46:57,360 --> 00:47:00,760
those old, obliterated voices. In my pot, the offics key

962
00:47:00,760 --> 00:47:03,159
pressed a pattern into my skin, the tag, once blank,

963
00:47:03,440 --> 00:47:06,559
now showing faint script. Floor for aside. The night lay

964
00:47:06,599 --> 00:47:09,480
still and unbroken. In some far corner of the city,

965
00:47:09,599 --> 00:47:12,119
a building slumbered, its secrets, pared away, yet still breathing

966
00:47:12,119 --> 00:47:14,480
in the dark. I watched the keitton listened for the

967
00:47:14,519 --> 00:47:17,599
elevator's ding, and when nothing came, I sat quietly, holding

968
00:47:17,639 --> 00:47:20,440
the silence close, remembering the voices pressed forever between the

969
00:47:20,519 --> 00:47:23,280
concrete floors. I watched the key and listened for the

970
00:47:23,360 --> 00:47:26,280
elevator's ding, and when nothing came, I sat quietly, holding

971
00:47:26,320 --> 00:47:29,199
the silence close, remembering the voices pressed forever between the

972
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:32,840
concrete floors. The next morning, sun, then a metallic against

973
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:35,079
a sky irritated to Peter, gave my apartment all the

974
00:47:35,119 --> 00:47:37,760
warmth of sheet metal. I stared at the battered brice

975
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:40,519
and fold a spread across my table grew photo stuttering,

976
00:47:40,559 --> 00:47:43,800
audio logs, faded blueprints, ghosting out floor that hadn't existed

977
00:47:43,840 --> 00:47:46,800
since long before I was born. The city outside jogged

978
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:49,159
to life, in cautious winds, and for a while it

979
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:51,599
felt as though I had strayed into reality parallel to theirs,

980
00:47:51,599 --> 00:47:54,000
a world whose forgotten dead throb just beneath the surface,

981
00:47:54,039 --> 00:47:56,239
but whose living never once aimed there. Iized the direction.

982
00:47:56,920 --> 00:48:00,000
I didn't return to the tower. My suspension became a female,

983
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:04,639
then a termination communicated by impersonal email position no longer available, restructuring,

984
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:08,239
Please return all company property of my night after the elevator,

985
00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:10,519
I remember a little at all, drifted a round my apartment,

986
00:48:10,599 --> 00:48:12,920
unwilling to sleep, The voices on those tapes swirling through

987
00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:14,480
the air so laid and plaint if I kept the

988
00:48:14,480 --> 00:48:16,320
speaker's turned low, as though even at a whisper, they

989
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:19,679
might rouse the neighborhood. The City Archives digital access shut

990
00:48:19,719 --> 00:48:23,239
down that afternoon, my password revoked without ceremony. Every back

991
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:25,480
up I tried to keep, Cloud and Crypto flash drive

992
00:48:25,519 --> 00:48:27,639
returned in error, the files deleted or walled off. So

993
00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:29,840
entirely it was as if I'd never type the queries

994
00:48:29,880 --> 00:48:32,400
at all. They didn't come for the physical papers or

995
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:34,960
the tapes, and I engineered my days around their absence,

996
00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:37,360
listening for footsteps in the hallway, cars idling tou lawn

997
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:39,719
beneath my window, the lurking premonition that anyone in an

998
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:42,920
elevator was a potential harbinger. When my phone rang at

999
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:45,760
untraceable arrows, the line always dropped dead before I could speak.

1000
00:48:46,519 --> 00:48:49,199
I dreamed of gaps between stone, hans pressed to glass

1001
00:48:49,239 --> 00:48:51,599
that wouldn't break, an endless spreadsheet of names with lines

1002
00:48:51,679 --> 00:48:54,880
drawn through every entry. Word drifted in from contacts at

1003
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:58,320
city Hall. Nothing concrete, just hints, inspectors let go. Suddenly,

1004
00:48:58,440 --> 00:49:01,000
floors were numbered in new audit documents. Minor fire is

1005
00:49:01,039 --> 00:49:04,480
reported and quickly resolved. Headlines never ran with the words

1006
00:49:04,559 --> 00:49:06,960
bryson or missing. And when a wat passed the building

1007
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:09,639
on and overcast Tuesday, the sword of brisk anonymous day

1008
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:12,320
that passes for autumn. Here, plastic barricades wrapped the entrance,

1009
00:49:12,360 --> 00:49:14,559
and a new signs swam above the doors, now lease

1010
00:49:14,599 --> 00:49:17,599
in modernized spaces available. If I looked too closely at

1011
00:49:17,599 --> 00:49:19,760
the procrook above the lobby, pale scars left from the

1012
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:22,880
patchwork showed with something older, something bearing letters in art deco.

1013
00:49:22,960 --> 00:49:26,000
Catchel had once been scraped away. Still, even as the

1014
00:49:26,079 --> 00:49:28,480
terror tried to reinvent herself, the charge of unease, The

1015
00:49:28,599 --> 00:49:31,079
knowledge of something unfinished clung to those streets like humidity.

1016
00:49:31,679 --> 00:49:34,159
Shadows that shouldn't have existed, parted across windows in the

1017
00:49:34,159 --> 00:49:37,639
fourth floor, quick and pointed contu sin to trust. Passing

1018
00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:39,840
late one evening across the street and in the sullen

1019
00:49:39,880 --> 00:49:42,119
hush of oncoming rain, an amber light flickered for an

1020
00:49:42,159 --> 00:49:44,840
instant above where the old panel should be, the shape

1021
00:49:44,840 --> 00:49:47,079
of a four, perhaps burned into my vision. I blinked

1022
00:49:47,119 --> 00:49:49,960
and saw nothing but the scuff or painted brick. By then,

1023
00:49:50,119 --> 00:49:53,280
I'd stop trying to warn anyone afright. My first attempts

1024
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:55,559
at cheering in the files are anonymized, routed through burner

1025
00:49:55,639 --> 00:49:58,719
email accounts to journalists whistle blower tip lines. City planners

1026
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:01,199
yielded either silence or respond says so noncommittal they might

1027
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:04,960
as well have been placeholders fones. When I dared to answer,

1028
00:50:05,119 --> 00:50:07,679
only offered silence. Static, and on a single occasion, a

1029
00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:11,039
mechanical voice reciting a warning do not approach elevator sealed

1030
00:50:11,079 --> 00:50:14,559
and authorized no further inquiry permitted. I deleted the message

1031
00:50:14,559 --> 00:50:16,599
and kept the tapes in the locked box beneath my bed.

1032
00:50:17,280 --> 00:50:20,320
Pressing on became an act of defiance against comfort. I

1033
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:22,320
arranged to meet with Hector on a park bench far

1034
00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:25,880
from Bryson's leaving outline. He looked thinner, his face more drawn.

1035
00:50:26,480 --> 00:50:28,760
When I offered him the yellow photograph the group from

1036
00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:31,679
the fourth floor, his hands trembled. I was a kid here.

1037
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:34,960
Old man cleaned these floors before me. He shook his head,

1038
00:50:35,079 --> 00:50:38,239
eyes wet and distant. Stores never leave, they hide. I

1039
00:50:38,320 --> 00:50:42,039
never saw four flour Sam, but sometimes I dreamed haud voices.

1040
00:50:42,159 --> 00:50:44,519
Now cleaning's just cleaning. You walk the straight lines. You

1041
00:50:44,559 --> 00:50:47,000
don't knock on doors that aren't there. What about the

1042
00:50:47,039 --> 00:50:51,079
people who vanished, I asked, did any one remember them?

1043
00:50:51,599 --> 00:50:53,920
He avoided my gaze, studding the pigeons at his feet.

1044
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:57,280
After a while, if the pay comes in and nobody's

1045
00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:00,440
asking the wrong questions, you let yourself forget. He did

1046
00:51:00,559 --> 00:51:02,719
meet my eyes then, and for a second both pity

1047
00:51:02,800 --> 00:51:05,960
and relief flickered there. Whatever you found, best to let

1048
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:08,440
the stores sleep that building. It chews up memory and

1049
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:10,599
spits it out as paperwork. You can fight, but it'll

1050
00:51:10,639 --> 00:51:13,440
be the papers fold up next. I thanked him, letting

1051
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:16,159
the silence bloom. I knew he was right, but still

1052
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:18,519
some injustice, gnawed with a coal from the elevator, had

1053
00:51:18,559 --> 00:51:22,119
never left me. Restlessness crept in, unable to sit with

1054
00:51:22,199 --> 00:51:24,760
my memories, I returned repeatedly to the box of tapes,

1055
00:51:25,199 --> 00:51:27,880
desperate for something concrete, a code, at a revelation that

1056
00:51:27,920 --> 00:51:29,599
would allow me to force the world to admit what

1057
00:51:29,679 --> 00:51:32,239
it had allowed to vanish. The best I could find

1058
00:51:32,360 --> 00:51:35,639
was a final mangled staff, rosters inman rays bounce, and

1059
00:51:35,760 --> 00:51:38,079
the last name obliterated by a spill of water long ago,

1060
00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:41,920
each struck through with diagonal lines. Months later, these details

1061
00:51:41,960 --> 00:51:44,840
suffaced in dreams, an elevator ride with no destination, a

1062
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:47,079
wall splitting wide to reveal a parade of suited office

1063
00:51:47,079 --> 00:51:49,239
workers walking single file into a room that sealed shut

1064
00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:52,280
behind them. But the waking world offered only the diminishing

1065
00:51:52,320 --> 00:51:55,719
returns of obsession. My apartment, now crowded with evidence no

1066
00:51:55,800 --> 00:51:58,239
institution would accept, became his own kind of arc. I've

1067
00:51:58,239 --> 00:52:00,480
every box labeled not by four or year, but simply

1068
00:52:00,519 --> 00:52:03,079
by the compulsion not to let more lives disappear unaccounted for.

1069
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:05,880
All that's left in the end is the choice to

1070
00:52:05,920 --> 00:52:08,719
step away or to act. I waited for weeks, hoping

1071
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:11,559
some new piece would fall through the cracks. Every night,

1072
00:52:11,679 --> 00:52:13,559
I watched the span of city where the tower cast

1073
00:52:13,599 --> 00:52:16,199
its longest shadow, listening as the street noises faded and

1074
00:52:16,280 --> 00:52:19,679
the sky line went vacant. Nothing changed except the feeling

1075
00:52:19,760 --> 00:52:22,280
that with every passing day the seal floor receded further.

1076
00:52:22,360 --> 00:52:24,480
It's inquired dead, pressing just a little harder at the

1077
00:52:24,519 --> 00:52:27,119
inside of my skull. The evening before I planned to

1078
00:52:27,159 --> 00:52:29,920
pack away the remainder of my life tapes files, Key

1079
00:52:30,079 --> 00:52:32,239
Oliver has sat with the recorder in my lap, thumbs,

1080
00:52:32,280 --> 00:52:35,559
tracing the battered plastic edges. The city's ordinary hum became

1081
00:52:35,599 --> 00:52:38,239
background static, and in that hush I believed I could

1082
00:52:38,239 --> 00:52:41,039
almost hear beneath every surface. The gentle hum of elevator

1083
00:52:41,079 --> 00:52:43,880
gives idling and endless cycles seeking stop, no longer permitted

1084
00:52:43,880 --> 00:52:47,000
by any of fission map. As rain tensed and slackened outside,

1085
00:52:47,079 --> 00:52:49,719
I queued up the last tape. My own voice was there,

1086
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:53,920
a herod worn detailing routine locks. But then under that drone,

1087
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:58,119
another layer, not mine, and unmistakably out of time, desperate, urgent,

1088
00:52:58,239 --> 00:53:00,719
a harmony of loss were still here. Please Stone, forget us,

1089
00:53:00,719 --> 00:53:02,920
Don't let them seal the door again. I let the

1090
00:53:03,000 --> 00:53:05,840
silence build, afraid to breathe too loudly, afraid I break

1091
00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:08,840
whatever fragile connection had momentarily pierced the worlds will loftance

1092
00:53:08,880 --> 00:53:11,519
to remember, my hands pressed to office, key, fat into

1093
00:53:11,519 --> 00:53:14,760
my palm, attack always blank, now legible, one word faded

1094
00:53:14,760 --> 00:53:18,039
almost to invisibility. Floor for I shut my eyes and

1095
00:53:18,119 --> 00:53:21,280
pictured the room, pressed between stone and plaster, voices filing

1096
00:53:21,320 --> 00:53:24,199
paperwork they'd never escape from, doomed to repeat a vanished routine.

1097
00:53:24,679 --> 00:53:26,320
I don't know if any one else could find the

1098
00:53:26,360 --> 00:53:28,880
same door again, or if my persistence had moved the seal,

1099
00:53:29,119 --> 00:53:31,519
if only an inch. But as the lust of the

1100
00:53:31,599 --> 00:53:33,840
recordings flickered out and the room fold with a twilight

1101
00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:36,039
that no lights could quite dispel, I decided I would

1102
00:53:36,079 --> 00:53:39,199
keep watch, at least for now, not to expose the story,

1103
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:41,039
not to call down the vengeance of a city eger

1104
00:53:41,079 --> 00:53:43,280
for simple endings, but simply to hold up the evidence

1105
00:53:43,320 --> 00:53:46,039
that between the third and fifth four lives had existed.

1106
00:53:46,719 --> 00:53:49,039
And until some one else asked again, until the silence

1107
00:53:49,039 --> 00:53:53,239
broke for another desperate force, I would not forget. And

1108
00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:55,760
that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I

1109
00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:56,880
will see you in the next one,