Speaker 1: Hollo. I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. It's only my second overnight shift,
so the ape behind my eyes still feels raw and chemical,
like a hangover that refuses to translate to real fatigue.
The city outside sees and visible factories run against the
edge of hearing, and the wind pushes of the plate
glass with a dry insistence. But inside everything is hollow
and expectant, a vacuum left in the wick of ten
empty floors. My hired on key ring weighs heavy at
my belt, printing uncomfortable ships into the cloth of the
loner uniform. The intrue vestibule is harsh and greenish and
a failing fulorescence. As I let myself in by sliding
my new badge, awkward encoded with someone else's coding errors,
I hear footsteps echo further back in the lobby. The
only face round it this eisle belongs to loose the
night janitor, mopping steadily beneath the fruit court atrium. He
barely looks up, but gnats all the same and expression
dowt across as features a blend of misplay, sympathy, or
maybe apology. I nod back, feeling as if more should
be said, but he docks behind a column in the
silence camps down double roucine the perverse comfort of it.
Check all lobby doors confirm the glasses and cracked were tagged.
Circle the security desk and rebadge on the internal scanners
of the logs. Somewhere upstairs. No, I've arrived. My phone
stubbornly refuses the building WI FI, the app with my
schedules and incident log stalls, freezes and resets, feeding back
a spreadsheet that now registers three consecutive interests for a
flour five verify status between midnight and three and the
copy piste error. I reason though I hadn't noticed it before.
My thumb flecks through the lists, blinking against the back light,
but no notifications or explanations clarify the repetition. The elevator
doors open too slow, exhaling a dry breath from within.
As I step inside, a flinch of coal desk looks
along my ankles, a draft out of sync with the
building's persistent warmth. I glance upwards. All the lighted floor
buttons hid a note except for five, which pulses faintly,
with the others dead. I press one, then five, then
one again, and the iicon's response luggishly, as if reluctant
to climb I five. The ride shutters to a halt.
The dose pot under in a naturally still hallway lined
with blond wood doors and a cramped kitchen in set
among vending machines, A thin dust films every surface, fuzzing
the shine from stainless steel supposedly vacant. No company has
leased this floor in over a year, storage only such
as a Bland building manual tucked into my jacket pocket.
As I move down the hall, a sound layers itself
over the whine of distant traffic, not a mechanical thumb
or settling piped, something more precise, A steady, persistent ticking,
faint at first, barely distinct from the hum of lights.
My steps slow unbidden. The ticking sharpens as I approached
the double doored supply closet at the far end. Despite
its sturdy latches, one of the locks heels to my key, metal,
protesting as I force it. The sense of trespass is physical,
A prickle between my shoulders I can ignore. Inside the
space is cramped with shelving chemical drums. Una cheap ancient
analog walcock facing outward on a splinter shelf for moving hands,
frozen at three seven. Its casing is plastic, yellowed by age,
but the soft and impossible to compulses from within it
all the same. Heap upon heap of incidant reports, glossy
and fresh, crowd the shelf below. I run my fingers
over a stack pages printed with logos of every business
in the tower. Yet many of them bear heavy pen marks,
notations and jagged unfamiliar characters. Margin scribbles run to the
edge times the initials symbols. Some reports are blistered with arithmetic,
or sketched with little rotating triangles and unfinished dates. One
page appears to have been written only minutes ago. Somehow,
the room contracts around me. I sense a presence in
the outer hallway. The timber of breath would hell the
static tension of scrutiny for a long moment. I fight
down the urge to slant the door and retreat. I
carry just one battered flashlight and the jangling keys. My
own heart beat sketches a counter rhythm to the hidden clock.
I gather up two of the stranger reports and step
back into the corridor. I'm watched, but cannot say from where.
In the elevator. On the way down, my phone vibrates
violently in my pocket. The lock screen blinks twice, then
reverts to its dull, empty self, no record of any message.
Only the background hum and my drawn face in black
glass keep me company on the descent. A week ago,
my life had nothing in it except drifting iOS in
the static of daytime television. Looking back on that, there
is almost a naive comfort in the difficult as I
thought were mine alone. I'd spent six straight months fruitlessly
applying to warehouses, day labor gigs, anything, until old union
contacts dried up, and every promisingly turned sire or silent.
When a recruiters sent me the offer for in night
security temp, immediate start, I took it before asking questions.
The job started with daylight interviews in the main lobby,
cheap coffee, and a whif of antiseptic. My supervisor, a
mid career woman named Janet, walked me through the paperwork
with clinical boredom. Buildings old but nothing tricky, she said,
barely glancing up from her cheap, big pen. Most tenants
are corporate law, HR or software company. Upstairs is storage
four or five hasn't leased out, so you won't be disturbed.
Her glasses caught the sun. Eye contact minimal call as
if anything's off, don't wander in an authorize owns. My
training consisted mostly of a feeble slideshow and a building
hand behalf of it at a date were cycling rules
for doors that didn't exist in five plans that included
basement archives already brick shut. My schedule demanded twelve iron knights,
but for overtime pay and vague promises of potential permanence,
I swallowed the irregular sleep or d during blackout curtains
on short notice. My mother called on Sunday afternoons, my
sister on Thursdays, both and convinced. When I brushed off
their concern cross their pauses. I heard myself explaining the
job again and again, as if he citation could make
it more stable than it truly was. There were routines
to develop, clocking him with an incooperative digital badge, running
door checks every two hours, and filling thick signatures into
logbookxholder than I was a single CCTV feed oversaw the lobby,
elevators and upper corridors, grainy and stubbornly delayed. If I
lost time or skipped steps, an email for management, and
never signed by a natural name, just stop. Desker would
arrive with polite reminders. No one truly worked nights but me,
except for Lewis, the janitor, and occasionally Pete, the gruff
Pockwark maintenance man. Lewis preferred cleaning the lobbies, pushing his
mob like a monk, hands always in Laide's gloves, even
when off the clock. He kept his cap tugged, low
eyes darting at the sound of every elevator chime. Once
on my second night, he gestured at my key ring, whispering,
keep them in your pocket seat otherwise things around here
I walk away. He wouldn't elaborate when I pressed, He
just shrugged, mouth flattening into a line. He, by contrast,
thrived on idle complaints. He fixed burst pipes or dying
eggs at signs, muttering about new management, always skimping on
papagheera and too much tech, too little sense. When I
asked about four or five, his eyes flickered, but he
simply said it used to hold a big insurance for him.
All closed now before shifting focussed a whistling air vent.
He watched that supply closet locks go missing. I blame
building ghosts Hall, just kidding, but padlock at all the
same daytimes the world shranked at the half lit security
breath in my four smiles at a mess Caulfield, the
day receptionist, whose cheerful greeting sounded slightly to deliberate, like
someone remembering a roll pass. Badges returned visitors, and the
low white nose hum of computers filled myn omb eyes.
I tried not to seem like I was waiting for
something to go wrong, Even then, hints collected at the margins.
Once an unfamiliar five F storage key appeared at my desk,
only to vanish two shifts later. He excused it as
may be a duplicate. We get spares. There was something
about the upper floors I couldn't pinpoint. The further up
I walked, especially in the hush affaiturey m the thicker
the air became, with a kind of chemical staleness, heavy
with dust that didn't settle or shift, as if the
rooms held their breath between real uses if fast, I'd
have told you. The buildings seemed to be waiting for news,
its corners taut and silent, its lights never fading or flurian,
indifferent to the human traffic that brushed throughsave for the
fifth floor, which, even in its vacancy, managed to feel oddly,
minutely occupied, as if a record play a needle hover
just above the first groove. On my fourth night, I
found myself beginning RAN's feeling, almost comforted by routine. The
rhythm lulled my mind, only partly snagging on the recollection
of the incident reports had stashed to my locker. At
one twenty eight a m I paused outside the elevator
bay to examine the scuffed metal, rubbing at a chalky
fingerprint that wouldn't lift. Directly beneath the wall vent I
spotted a company badge laminated blue with the name Marshar Felman,
Floor eight. Curious A cross checked the directory on my phone.
Feldman had left the company months ago. According to the
h R master Alyss, her clearance coats were roked. No
one on side had scheduled after Iyre's access, certainly not
for the graveyard rhythm. Still here was badge recently dropped.
I pocketed it and tried to ignore a crawling unease.
The elevator lolctured by policy times damp every entry, every movement.
Scanning my own badge for an axis test, I saw
nothing untoward. The logs for the whole building registered as normal,
but something gnawed at the back of my mind. Small
disruptions struck me as out of place, cumulative rather than singular.
On my next sweep, at two forty eight m I
found two office jes out from the desks in a
vacant conference room on the sixth floor. The cleaning schedule
written on the whiteboard showed nothing for that night, and
the lights switched off automatically upon my entrance, requiring my
passcord to reactivate, suggesting that no one had entered recently.
The kitchen at two holes Over, supposedly unused, offered a single,
still wet coffee ring on her cheek, claim of that
bore the faded Quintin Life insurance logo, one of the
earlier four tenants that, according to records, vacated the space
last winter. There was an oily smudge on the rim.
I lifted the mug, feeling it warm, spider along my
palm and ran a finger along the sidely corm as
if abandoned. Not more than half an hour before routine
demanded I fill an incident report. When I did a
toast note in the digital lug about unidentified access coffee
and odd badge, I discovered a completed entry with that
very description already locked. Its handwriting was unfamiliar, brusque and angular,
signed with the initials are al. I thumbed back through
recent logs and found other reports cross referenced by a
similar pen clustering always between two forty and three ten
a m tagged to the fifth floor or its staircase exits.
When I phoned management the next morning, Janet, my supervisor,
sounded and concerned. Old file cycle up sometimes, especially when
we clear our tenant folders for accounting cleaning crews, may
be clerical errors. Four or Five's the lowest priority in
the building, Nothing to worry about. She talked around my
questions until it felt like I was boxing at the
air still every peculiar thing, every slit radiated outward from
the fifth four in its margins. Walking the silent upper corridors,
I became aware of a second cadence of occupation, one
that flicked between prisons and absence, always leaving behind impression.
As Tactile's finger prints. Six nights in the Constellation of
Oddities began to pattern itself more stubbornly. That evening, I
lingered after my usual three eh m circuit, leaving the
supply closet until last. The memory of the ticking clock
and its frozen hands persisted. I unlocked the door, pum sweaty,
and examined the shelves once more. The stack of reports
sat undisturbed, the clock unchanged at three seven, but a
thin slip of paper was protruding from beneath a new
incident report TAN stamped two fifty four detailing air recurring
access nonomally on the service stairwell door, filed by op's desk.
The stairs themselves, when I checked, showed no sign of disturbance.
That there was the faintest scent of shaving soap in
the aerochemical fragrance that could have been twenty years out
of date. I ran my thumb over the incident's slip.
It sinks mirrored slightly fresh. That unsettled me more than
I wanted to admit. I took a photograph and shut
the closet, relatching the lock with deliberate patience. Each minor
disruption the badge, the mug, the chair seemed arbitrary, but
together they circled something unseen and close. On impulse, I
spent a slow eye of the night reviewing the lost
month of Axiss records, drawing up print outs from the
security center. The times didn't add up. The log cycle
through badge entries and elevator stops for the fifth floor
blat shore in access at impossible intervals several times per
week between two forty five and three fifteen a m.
But no accompanying security video, just time stamp blanks in
the motion record. The CCTV in the guide booth was
all pixels, coughing and to blur if the system was nudged.
The fifth floor feed was especially puruntastatic and shadow as
if signal interference bled in from the city outside. I
wound back time on the terminal, focusing on a two
week window. Hattens repeated every night, always a precisely three
seven a m. The fifth floor corridor flickered into static
that lasted for twenty seconds. Light jeitted in the reflection
of the glass doors, a movement present, but never direct,
always at the periphery, as if some one stood just
out of sight, letting a sleep rushed the pin before
ducking away. Other times a shimmer out across elevated doors,
perhaps a trick of headlights from outside yeth always too regular,
too internal. I replayed these intervals, fingers going numb on
the track pa. Never a clear face of silhouette emerged,
just a sense of interruption, a suggestion of a figure watching,
but never visible were expected. The strangeness was manting, and
even the so called professional distance demanded by my job
started to wear. The next night, after one of these
dead intervals, I caught loose in the brake room, eating
cold left of us from a paper bag. His hand
shook as he fished out his key card. Lewis, I asked, quietly,
you ever hear anything up on five? I made my
tongue casual, as if asking aboutlyach runs. He wouldn't meet
my eyes, but uncertain Spanish, with a tight edge. That floor,
no mee guster. Some one is there walking. I clean
other places, but not there, not after midnight. The light's
upstairs A flick, yes, he shivered, then added poor favor,
just lock it up. I found this last week. He
handed me a badge hole silvered, the name half scraped away,
but the plastic still bore the logo of a logistics
firm that had lost its lease a decade ago. Where
I asked and he pointed upward vaguely, as if afraid
to give a precise answer. Tape and side ceiling felt strange.
The badger's code didn't register in the system. Later, as
I sat in the lobby reviewing the logs, Pete ambled
by with his battered tool bag. When I press him
at the upper floors, he surprised me with a click tail.
Urban legend maunt goes back to old ownership fellow who
ran this place half a century ago, never sold the
fifth floor. Not really used to say, don't let it
linger empty, or it'll tone odd on you. People talk nonsense,
missing tools, file's gone, maybe even someone getting lost up there.
Management doesn't want ways, got to keep new tenants happy,
so when weird stuff pops up, they were classify it.
I say, lock up everything. And if you see that
storage clauset, open, shut it tight. Some spaces, learn your
habits that show me more than I care to admit.
I resolved to check the supply clauset myself alone later
at night, past three a m. While the constant taking
crawled back across the tile, I let myself in. The
reports had been tidied, the clocks at upright unmoving. This
time a single sheet of paper had slipped under the door.
It boor dated to day's unpenciled. Beneath the pre full
text a scrolled message cam's bed slash three seven aero
slash change locks. Handwriting was unfamiliar, but neat more recent
than anything else in the pile. Curiosity about the source
who was using the supply closet is a drop kept
me awake. The next afternoon I wandered the aisles of
the lobby in Neuston, watching staff as drift through on
coffee runs, seeing if any match the print up pulse
of the after iOS anomalies, but no one gave themselves away.
That evening, while finishing my rounds, I found a heavy
envelope in my mail books containing a printed email for read.
The chain open with tense questions about the fifth floor
access codes, who changed them? Who else has entry? Then
a request to physically inspect the service decas near the
north end of the floor. The sender match to finance
manager whose file stated they'd been out of the country
for three weeks the time stamp two fifty five a m.
Last night. It wasn't just all file shoffing to the top,
I realized some one or several someones were using the
dead spaces of the building as routes and hiding places.
The patterns pulled tighter each night, coiled round the spindle
of that faultless, ever ticking clock. Around midnight, my phone
shop with the fresh maintenance requests fifth four storage claus
at strange noise, possible vandalism, please investigate. I climbed the
stairs badge in hand and found the doors shut but
unlocked to minor procedural breach. Inside the stack of incident
reports had grown teetering, and the clock still pointed doggedly
at three seven. But the feeling of intrusion was no
longer just psychic. As I reached for the topmost folder,
a clang echoed from further down the whole, the unmistakable
thing of an elevator arriving, though the panel on all
floors read idle. My body tends to half expecting a
voice or figure, but instead in silence that followed, I
became aware of a change in the supply closet. The
sheet of paper in the low shelf were marked with
a fresh column of note, and a new hand tucked
in one instant sheet under the tight complaint camistatic persists.
At three seven a m. Some one had added, this
is not an error. The air already cold, skewed sharper.
I felt more than how to shifting prisons down the
side corridor beyond the elevator bay. My pulse staggered. I
yanked the closet door fully open and saw that the
back panel was not flash against a wall. The pail
seemed suggested a hidden service hatch. Small and rarely disturbed.
I forced myself to inspect further. Running my fingers over
the wat would, to my surprise, it moved beneath my hand,
A gentle hinge almost welcoming. As I pressed, A draft
of piepe smoke, old and fint slid past my face.
A flicker in the glass behind me drew my attention sharply.
My reflection held then for the briefest pulse between seconds,
the second blurry shape rose behind my left shoulder vanishing
as I spun my own adrenaline, hunting my chest second exhilarating.
I stepped back inside to unbalanced for caution, and found
about a chief of legal documents folded behind a clock,
property paperwork, curling with age, the topmas sheet burying the
head in the lease agreement, floor five. The final signature
bore the name of the building's original owner, clipped and exact,
under which someone had written in a slanted hand the
words occupant retains rights until release, a date barely legible
beneath the ink, the very day the owner had been
reported deceased. I stood there, listening behind me, on the
edge of the supply closet door. The ticking continued, steady, compulsive.
My own name now appeared in the margin at the
newest report, half hidden, as if someone had already documented
my presence. I backed out onto the fifth floor corridor,
key jangling in my fist, and stood down its length
everywhere and nowhere at once, watched by an intelligence old
enough to have learned all the building's rhythms. I'm powerful
enough to press a thumb on the scales of time.
The fifth floor waited, quiet and alert, and outside the
city's lights blinked, refusing to Tuesday or night. A split
seconds hesitation rooted me there, half in half out of
that narrow well behind the closet. The hush pressed forward.
Strangely attentive, I started back down the hallway, every treade
marked out for an audience I couldn't see, but now
believed in My eyes. Fluttered between each bland door panel,
waiting for movement or another switch in the air. There
wasn't so much as a squeak of hinge or a
cough of pipe. The fifth floor simply held its electric
quartch near the kitchenette alco. I realized my fist clenched
the folder, the old lease, and a fragment of soft
graphite pencil perhaps dropped, perhaps left for me. I slid
the lease into my vest and forced myself to check
the kitchenette one more time. The fridge still hummed for
ess and tubes glowed, and the same sickly angle but
faint scrape marks mired the linoleum. Just inside the mock closet,
I set my boot against one, then knelt, running fingers
over the shape four, five, six times. Someone may be
drugging something heavy or simply pacing had made a nerve
of a circuit of this spot. The scratches were recent, silvery,
standing out from the soft brown elsewhere on the floor.
A wave of embarrassed fear passed through me, then faded
into something colder. I ducked into the elevator and pressed ground,
holding my breath until the doors closed. They stuck for
a heartbeat, then jettered down, as if the building had
finally allowed me an exit. I reached the lobby behind
the security glass. Lewis was stacking his cleaning caddy, movements
jerky and impatient. I raised a hand without thinking. He paused,
looking at me for longer than usual, then ducked his
head and hurried off toward the loading dock. He left
the mob's cue against the stairwall, water pulling darkly at
the toile's edge. I returned to the booth, double checking
every lock on the glass partition. The risk of being
found on camera in this and rattle briefly cost my
mind to just another wondering security casual hand shaking over
a cup of over hot, fending coffee. My phone vibrated
weakly on the console. When I looked the locks, green
glitch white. Theiner set always a beat behind my movements
that had become its rhythm. Quiet. I quesced until something
on the fifth floor changed. After two loops around empty
ground level halls, I texted Pete, you get any old
files from five to night. I didn't expect a nswer
that late, but within moments a reply came. Nope, a
word five at night. Don't risk it. Someone's messing. W
logs tucked to opsurfergent. The pile of incident reports was
now a puzzle, too thick to carry home. But I
sat and thumbed through the two most recent trying to
find a pattern. Margins filled with check marks, I refractions,
odd glyphs, reminiscent of in complete floors and blueprints. One
page asked, in shakeyp lock letters, who watches at doors
three seven? An beneath in a different hand, see me
in the gas. With every page, the air and a
booth grew denser, as if papped with humid breath and
intense surveillance. I put the lease next to the incident
files and stared at its brittle signature. Their original owners
penmanship celed in a sharp, precise loop, almost stylish. It
hurt to concentrate, but I forced myself to compare the
name to anything else in the files. Though most reports
were unsigned or initials, several bore the same looping ar
alt rolandell in the oldest property records with the state
pending tide below. I made a list lost keys, badge
for a long gunn employee, recent coffee mug, strange emails,
looping camera fees, original owners, and broken leaves. Seen individually,
any one was just oversight. Taken together, they outlined someone
deliberately structuring confusion. The word preserve floated up from memory
Peatch's remark about old own as reluctant to let go uneasy.
I logged a formal note in the building system, explaining
I'd recovered suspicious documents and believed there was active and
authorized use of the fifth floor closet. The online form
lagged as I completed it. On submission, flickered error, messaged,
then posted too identical tickets time stamp to fifty seven
a m minutes apart, both bearing my name but with
my last initials. What once are on once pe a
coincidence or a mock and patch of clerical nonsense, I thought,
But it landed like a taunt. A low click echoed
from the console, one of the lope book dividos, jostled
by a breeze or perhaps settling on its own, I
tucked the files into the safe front of the desk.
My hands were sweating, and I realized I was counting
down the seconds to three seven. Without meaning to, I
decided abruptly to stay off the fifth floor for a while,
to see if the tension faded or crested without my provocation.
The nights that followed blurred, heavy, and jittered. I performed
rants with rigid decision, stopping at every office door on
lower floors, avoiding eye contact with security cameras, whose blinking
red lights now a peergd is mental, not merely functional.
The building itself felt hyper alert, as if aware of
my evasion. Still, the fifth floor pulled at the edges
of my mind. When I passed its gray elevator call button,
my pond tingled and my footsteps inevitably slowed. At exactly
two fifty nine one night, the elevator chimed, though I
hadn't pushed the button. I watched the doors shutter open
to reveal only my own pale, startled face in the
mirrored room, nothing behind me but the dull industrial light.
Lewis grew more reserved. A few times I caught him
tracking my position on his evening runs. His mop paused,
his eyes quick and reflexive. When I asked if he
ever saw anyone around the fifth floor late, he shook
his head rapidly, then was just above a hiss. He
go careful, people vanish up there. Sometimes they just don't
turn up the next shift. He tapped a finger on
his wrist clock never moves right. Its stays until they come.
Rather than reassure, his words buckled my determination further. The
power chill of the building's upper air vents felt like admonition.
On the third day after the odd duplication of my
online report, Janet herself arrived at dusk. She moved through
her routine badge in paper lock book, a few tired
slow stats along the security desk. She asked oftenately if
I deleted any mistake in entries, and when I denied it,
she just nodded, her face unreadable behind a mask of
managerial efficiency. She pointedly avoided discussing the fifth floor, brushing
aside my mention of closet keys just focus on occupancy.
If anyone comes and after business errors, walk them out,
lock their idea. Move on. Storage upstairs is only for
scheduled reckors, drop offs. Let's not get creative. Her presence,
instead of reassuring me, lent way to every suspicion. She
spent a long time scribbling in the incident book, pausing
only to ask, have you been in the server closet lately?
Don't bother, It's not our responsibility. When she left, she
ducked into a new boat with a harried look, clutching
a Ford labeled internal audit. I pushed through the rest
of that shift with a nod growing resolve. The original
owner's lease gnawed at me. Why keep a legal fiction alive?
Why not clear out the property and start over, unless
someone had a use for the dead space, someone who
never officially left. When I finally laid down the next afternoon,
my sleep broke with odd visions halways that nodded, and
split doors with no handles of conference table set for
a meeting that never started. The ticking pervaded. I woke,
gasping with the shape of the cock face stamped an
awfr image on my closed eyelids. At the next scheduled circuit.
I was overtaken by a strange sense of determination, as
if gathering clues within these rituals justified my presence at all.
I wonderily just past one, entering the fifth floor, knot
by the main elevator, but taking the rarely used silver
stairs behind the vending alcove. The stairwall was narrower, choked
with coiled wiring and the faint scent of long dead
concrete dust. A pair of forgotten hard hats hung on hooks,
shrouded in grayish gaus. Mid flight, I paused to catch
my breath, not from exertion but tension. The door at
the top, marked five f north Utility, resisted my key
at first, then relented with a cough of rast. Inside
I stood surrounded not by halways, but by shows fellow
shall access panels, a maintenance cot with dried paint flakes,
labels cut on ancient fuse boxes. I ran my fingers
along the wall, noting hairlines, seams, tracing out shapes, a
mirror of rooms beyond, suggesting false dolls or block corridors.
I pressed just lightly on several of the scenes. Nothing
moved until in the corner behind a stack of insulation rolls,
A small panel click loose. I levoed it up gingerly
and found a dark coll space, fibers muffling the air
of rat that had not been locked or monitored by
any scan. A voice rattled the quiet Peete, his boots
recognizable on the tiles, had entered behind me. He poked
his head in shouted over his shoulder, what's keeping you
these days? Lights out? Again? I strattened up, hastily, closing
the panel. Nothing broken, I said, carefully, just curious about
the blueprints. Figured there had to be a secondary run
for power. He frowned. Don't push it. These spaces armed
for us men, for electricians, repairs only. He hesitated, then
lowered his voice. Keep at tad A crawl, friend, they say,
the old man built loops in here, trapped doors, one
way corridors. Let see get lost too easy. Best not
to test him. His words twined with something more than
here says something possibly lived. I nodded, made mixcises and descended.
Pete watched me go. I sidelong and hard to read,
as a waying whether to rescind some half offered warning
in the lawby I checked the front for any after
io's deliver is none, then use the secure computer to
google old article's mitone commercial for floor dispute roll in
lumper to state sudden death mysterious lease. Archive scans yielded
a photo a narrow faced bespectacle man rolland Lempert himself
standing before the very building where I now sat, flanked
by a modest crowd of city officials. The article, almost
gleeful in its tone, stated sudden passing on premises, delayed transition,
family contest ongoing, least technicalities unresolved. I scrolled further, noting
that all coverage ended abruptly six months after Lampert's death,
with a paragraph stating simply the estate was legally resolved.
Floor five transferred into trust details confidential. I pressed on,
looking for potential and resolve business discreet mentions, intendant needslet
as the sort of gossip filler written for insurance clerks.
Detailed missing paperwork, lost axis cards, tenants reporting odious late
night lights that couldn't be explained by official bookings. One
from four years ago included a photo of a conference
room behind the glass a blowd so wet impossible to identify,
but somehow conveying a sense of distance and immor focus.
The caption netshift shot who's pulling overtime? The article below
equipped we've all left something behind. That phrase stuck with
me well into the next shift. I checked the reports again,
mapping every cryptic three seven against the schedule of maintenance calls,
elevator logs, staff absences. Like a cautious investigator, I annotated
my own spiral notebook, one column for tangible oddities and
one for namesaw al at the top my own name
uneasily several rows below. Lewis avoided me now, even when
we overlapped. In the cafeteria, the cleaning caddy had been
replaced by about shoulder bag, and he kept one hand
in his pocket, fingering keys out of sight. One night
I pushed a cup of soupy vending coffee toward him
at the edge of the main lobby. Can you tell me, really,
why no one wants the fifth floor? He stay, roared
into his mug. One night, he said, I cleaned friars.
Her voices like radios from inside the vents came out
cock stuck floor cold, elevator doors kept opening, always empty,
no footsteps, just waiting, decided I work only where people belong.
You should too. His honesty came at a price, discomfort
so acute I nearly apologized, but I thanked him instead
and watched as he faded back down the lower hall
mop squealing a quick protest behind the next few shifts
passed in the same freighted limbo routine, making me more jumpy,
not less. At moments I would catch movement in a
kongero's flick of shadow in the glass cabinets, a computer
screen flickering awake on its own, always lickoing the pattern.
Fifth floor. After midnight three seven a m. Something shifted
the night before I reached my breaking point. I came
in early tension, gnawing at sleep, and double locked the
security desk. Every log showed usual inches except for one
line near the bottom pending incident. Fifth floor keys missing,
notify r L the documents footter trigged me version saved.
At three seven a m. I checked the clock. It
was just past one. Compelled, I made a cuckle choice
to take my next round earlier and more deliberately. I
radioed in all clear, picked three different master keys, and
took the stairs, hugging their wall, trying to blend my
breathing with the rumble of machinery from the generator in
the abasement below the fifth four. At this time no
longer surprised me with its chill. It wrapped its quiet
about me, like a smothering quolt. Not ticking from the closet.
The hallway was perfectly still, But as I leaned in
to check the supply door, I heard a now, the
sound soft, almost a whisper, A single word so stretched
it was hard to pass, as if the floor it
self exhaled a name. When I pressed my ear to
the white painted wood, nothing followed, only the faint pressure
from behind. The closet's lock, when tested, was stubborn, as
though freshly changed. I forced it to metal screeping, and
was greeted not by the familiar pile of insidant reports,
but by a single envelope sailed with an ink mark.
It was heavy in my palm. I pocketed it and
hurried back out, my pulse tremory in my chest. At
the elevator, I paused, turning the envelope over. It was
addressed to night Watch for immediate entry. Only inside were
two things, A rudimentary map of the fifth floor, showing
not rooms, but a hidden corridor looping at the building's core,
and a slip of paper reading simply, if you see
our alp, do not follow. Wait until three seven, then
lock both doors, no signature, no explanation. At two fifty eight, trembling,
I let the elevator ferry meat to the ground floor,
with the lobby windows tinged blue gray with city reflections,
and early birds from the day's staff shuffled in with
sullen resignation. I locked the incident reports in the me
indesk safe and left the envelope inside, afraid to carry
it any further. The next shift, I made my decision.
I would enter the corridor at three seven, radio silent,
leaving the main lights off. No incident, no action, just
presence observation. My ritual had found its hour, but the building,
it seemed, was already a step ahead, and whatever weighted
behind the leisure of routine was ready at last to
close the distance. I arrived from my next shit sleepless,
the well outside grainy and unfocussed, aluminal haze caught between
dusk and dawn, blinking up at the building's harsh angles.
I thought about the map burning a crease in my
back pocket to sketch labeled with no street directions, just
a wart black loop half way into the guts of
the fifth floor, and a single imperative wighed until three seven.
The lobby's glass was still smeared with rain from the afternoon.
A single thorescent over the entrance stuttered and died as
I passed underneath, scattering phosphorescence across the marble. The security
desk fortressed like an empty bristle, with paper reminders and
half scribbled notes left by day's staff. I set my
badge on the scanner and hesitated, breathing the dark ad
deep into my chest, trying to find calm. Louis was there,
coiling head funds into his jacket pocket with nervous, practiced hands.
He glanced toward me and away, at a signal of
both warning and resignation. We exchanged a mute look across
the tile, his eyes shiny as if he were measuring whadow.
To speak at all, anything to night, I ventured, almost
a whisper. My voice sounded alien. He shook his head rapidly,
not a four or five stay clear. His tone was final.
I wondered if, like me, he felt the hooks of
the building drawing tighter, collecting debts no one remembered, and curring,
I made my rounds, checking the first through fourth fours
with a rigor close to compulsion badge tapsickers off silent doorways,
the stapped incident logs from the days before, felt radioact
of a puzzle inside a trap evidenced no one above
my pay grade was ever Once made clear, I checked
each stair well, made note of a sticky window seal
on the third floor, and lingered by the back frayed elevator,
where an old stack of reading service entree only had
faded near to eligibility. By one thirty, the building had
settled into its true overnight hush, and my tension wound
itself into my spine, twitching an alert. When finally I
approached the fifth floor, by passing the main elevators in
favor of the service stairs, I felt my pulstick in
the tamber of a countdown. The walls was pinched and
sound as except for the rising squeal of my shoes
against the rubber tread. The corridor on five was different
to night light tuxasity bled from the overhead fixtures tracing
everything with the nectaric edge. The air curiously stagnant, held
a flavor of burnt electrics and something else, faintless wheat,
disturbingly out of place, like old pipe to baccle clinging
to heavy drapes. I moved softly, pointedly, not glancing into
the supply closet, even as its door gaped diffraction. That
haiden seemed just visible in the linoleum's geometric repeat. There
were other changes, each minute, but cumulative. The kitchenett's work
chair now angled and fightingly toward the hullway to gloss
left drying on the counter, the faintest days of condensation
still fog in its room. On one wall, a message
golden cleaning marker of reed. Checked doors twice, not once.
I touched the handle and glanced behind no one. Memory
and foreboding tangled in the space behind my sternum to night.
I decided I would not run. I would follow the map,
a crude lines and narrows thing, but enough to suggest
away inside. If the notes were accurate, I could enter
the inner corridor for a maintenance hatch behind the kitchenet's
mop closet. I slipped into the alcove, hot hammering and
crouched low. The hatch was there exactly as drawn, a
flat panel with no label, pain thickening its edge from
decades of overcoats. I worked the edge with the tip
of my master key, prying gently, resisting the jitter in
my hands. The panel gave, and the cold, grassy breath
of stabboring cold space there rose up to meet me.
The gap admitted me, shoulder first, scraping at my jacket.
Beyond a shallow passage caled left, then right, then deepened
into darkness. I had brought the high beam flat slight
Pete had recommended, of all power, none of the subtle
red safety settings. Light flared forward, swallowing motes of ancient
dust in his cone. I crawled, lifting my knees carefully
to avoid slap in the conduit lines that I squirming
through insulation lint that clung like soft wire. The hush
in here felt clitical, showing of all sound but my
own breath. And yet a few paces in A heard
a whisper, low and undulating, not words, but the associated
rhythm of human speech. Someone's recorded monolog bleeding through the
air conditioning shafts. I couldn't tell if it was truly
external or only a function of nerves. The building slow
pulse tickling my ears. The crawl space splintered, as a
map suggested. I found a hatch to the right, agent reeled,
fitted with a hook latch, A press it, inching the
door opened teeth grit to keep from coughing. The far
side was warm, unexpectedly so, and I spilled gently forward
into avoid, lined with concrete and the bruised brown of
smashed blaster patches. Now upright, the tunnel widened just enough
for me to stand and turn. The map adjusted for
the shift. At the next fork, a narrow corridor would
curl around to the court chamber. There, according to the
half smudged draw, with the true heart of the fifth
floor the loop, nobody acknowledged the room, nobody ever included
on a tour. The scent of smoke and old sweat
thickened My flasklight beginning to twitch in my hand, caught
the glint of scattered pipper over ports, blueprints tacked to
the walls, yellowing photographs pinned at odd angles. I saw
faces I didn't recognize, some invaded holidays, witers, some in
the stiff suits of the nineteen eighties, name tags flapping
crookedly at their lapels. Photos of rooms I now recognized,
to the kitchenette, the western conference room, staged when their
furniture was new and plush, their walls unsully by hid
years of vacancy. Time was out of order. Here, history
compacted to a paper box museum in an airless ring,
a esculamed ahead, not contemporary, but a classic oake monster
battered at the corners, every inch of its top colonized
by slips, manila folders, and most unnervingly o' clock seven
or eight, each duck its freet event the minute, hands
jittering spasmodically at attempted movement. Behind this fortress of memory,
someone moved. A man hunched over the desk's far side,
shoulder sharpestaprincissus, beneath a thin handstith jacket, even under his
pallor was jarring milk skin. Despite the sweat on his brow.
He muttered to himself, shuffling paperwork, his hands flickering over clocks,
nudging their crowns, reordering them endlessly. Pipe smoke rose from
a chip bowl on the desk, gone cold. Excuse me,
I managed, it was barely more than a croak. He
froze for a fractional second, then continued sorting slips. Not
looking up. You're not supposed, he rasped, and I heard
the intent fracture in his gaidance. Not supposed to come here,
You'll break it. Can't letty can't let Don't you see
what they do? They move the chairs, They irritate the calendars.
People think everything is random. I'm just on security, I said,
careful to keep my hands in plain sight. But things
keep happening things they Shouldn't you know about the clock,
the lock closet, the reports. He shot me a look,
then quick burd bright fronds it. The whites of his
eyes bulged around, iris as yellowed at the room. The
reports are for the system, he said, and the system
forgets what it needs every night. So I write it down,
I preserve I fix it. No one from management as
was underneath any more, not since I stopped meeting their deadlines.
I swall feeling oddly small? Are you Roland Lambert? He
winced at his own name, a trembling line of pain
across his cheeks. I'm here because I have to be
heart stopped poised to finish, but they never filed the
proper release. Lease holds until memory equals records. If I forget,
the floor falls away, that gets replaced, retires itself. His
hand last out, flipping a stack of incident reports. Oh,
they lock it up and call the mistakes clerical. But
I can show you. I can show you how to
keep it what it is. He seemed both lucid and not,
each phrase veering off into troutologies and frightened parentheses. I
saw the compulsion in how he kept reordering the stack,
one page up, one down, one for the gap, and
one for the air. The timeless moment of three seven
lived in his hands, every tick and shuffle, pling the
building tighter around. Our double presents a circle mapping a
cautious rectangle in the room seeking exits, passages narrowed at
odd intervals. Threads of wiring droop from the ceiling, where
mice hadnored insulation into improbable feathers. The walls were a patch,
were half blueprints, half polaroids, labeled nineteen ninety one, furnbac
its two thousand seven and unnervingly three seven. Every night
in one the reflection of an elevatorbor er shape. I
now saw as thempet himself hunched eternally. At the edge
of the next minute, he jowed a pencil at a map.
I kept the corridor so the tenants would last. But
they started changing the doors, swapping the glass hardened now
to reset. Files move by themselves. If I don't catch them,
they bring in new people. No memory, only process. I
have to keep the clock still, or else he lifted
a clock hands arrested at that impossible minute, or else
this place falls and I go with it. Who else
knows you're here? I pressed. Part of me wanted him
to scream, to break the spell by pure violence. Instead,
he wipes wet from his neck and turned the conversation
back on itself. Management pretends as long as the rent flows,
so be it. They see the came errors and shrug.
The cleaning men they know to keep away. Sometimes they
help without seeing it. Sometimes they get caught. I pictured
Lewis's shaking hands, Pete's visions, the reports. I said, they
mentioned my name. The system repeats my rounds. Why he stared,
Because you check, you observe. The building likes to be watched.
Documentation keeps it alive, but only if you mean it.
They didn't notice, never did. But your notes, they are new.
They threatened to finalize things. I tried then to step backward,
but the door through which I had entered the chamber
was gone, seamless concrete now, no cross base outline at all.
My heart jabbed up near my throat. I looked for
another exit, noting how the walls seemed to flex and shimmer,
as if the distance is between turns altered in my
peripheral vision, footsteps above not just mine. Sudden panic bit me.
I have to go, I said, with the surge of
misplaced bravado. You can't stay here, You can't. This is
in your building anymore. He stood, rigid is a string
pole tight? If I leave, it falls. The lease holds
the building to gaze. If I'm gunn, I've seen pieces
of it disappear already, call boxes on six stair doors,
half the ceiling tiles gone over night. If I finish,
if you forced, the haunted ends not just for me,
for everything in here, every record, even the new ones.
A series of sharp metallic clicks filled the air above,
A ripple through the air vents, possibly the elevator safety relays,
or perhaps something else. Warning drawn tight on the desk,
one of the wall clocks stutters, bucking back and forth,
then stopped. The second hand juttered once exactly at three seven.
Limpert lunch, then wild eyed voice warped past civility. No,
not yet, you can't, You mustn't, he growled from my wrist.
Icy and desperate for a moment, I saw the actual
ruin of him in. Not a ghost, not any rational prisons,
but a man whose entire reality had crackton spread out
through a building that refused to release him. He tried
to push me aside, forcing a lever under the desk.
The wall beside a shuddered, and a panel jerked half open.
From the mouth of that hidden corridor came a draft,
shimmering with the scent of scalded metal. Alarm Cluckston's moaned,
sudden and choking in the distance. Some one else had
forced entry above, or may be been drawn into the
circuit of this sire by the pressure of so much
and accounted for memory. I broke from limp at grip
and stumbled toward the panel, flashlight flickering as if caught
in magnetic interference. He fumbled at the scattered piles, desperately
restacking them, paper slicing his skin without his noticing. If
you publish, he shrilled, if you lock it down, the
watchers come. They're the raise every line, even you. But
the words trailed off resents la. Thus, in a click
of approaching footsteps along the surface ladder, maintenance or security
or perhaps management come to sanitize the situation. I pressed
into the opening. The whine of the alarms close the
pane behind lempered collapse onto the desk, his arms upon
around the clocks, as if clutching the minutes his core.
Blue white light flickered across his gaunt face. Shadows strode
by the passenge of police or AMT flashlights out in
the main holes, the fabric of reality stuttering in rhythm
with each sweep. I shoved the panel back behind me,
sprinting blind through the subcarridor barely keeping my head above
the descending tide of panic. At a tea junction, another
panel yawned wide. I levered myself through boots, squatching into
a utility storage base filled with long boxes labeled with
the company names Lawn, since erased from directories, bove a
newly cut hole and sheet ricolette and wavering light. Pete's
voice shouted down and moved. Now sunken and wild, he
sounded not all like the wary handiman from before. I
clambered up, emerging into a half little electrical room ringed
by snake and cables, in the corpse of a ceiling fan.
Pete yanked me to my feet, grit so tight a hurt.
Did you see him? He panted, staring into the shadow below,
eyed eye Did I managed? He still down there? He
searched my face, face, pinch and spat. Was afraid of that?
All these years I never went that deep. Janet called
the copse, said, alarm with nuts, you all right? He
kept one hand on a folding lock bar, wedged against
the only remaining core space VAP. We both listened. Nothing followed,
no clamor, no furious pursuit. Just the persistent were recycled
drone of the building's heart, A pulse sent throughout. They
tod pipes and insolation. He glanced at the door behind us.
Theem pulled me into the main holly by the sleeve.
Police were already there, two tents, uniforms and one suited
man from operations, all barking questions, neither of us answered.
In the swirl, I saw Lewis at the far end
of the corridor, his anxiety hidden beneath the studded blankness.
Arms trembling. They swept the service panels, shined lights into
the hidden chamber. When the officers reached the core loop,
they found only piles of age blueprints, crumbling clocks, and
empty folders. The desk and lemper, if they'd ever been
visible to another's eye, had vanished into the soup of
the fifth floors architecture. I sat in a sagging conference
chair under the cold stare of fluorescent panels, while the
operations manager, du face wary man I'd never met, explained
in voice muffled tones, that I should understand the limits
of my role. He flicked through the incidant records I
had compiled, pulling pages out by groups, scanning signatures, archiving others.
We'll tidy this, he asserted. Somebody is played at making
coast storers, cleaning error odd readings. Security logs would be corrected.
Pete stood by, stony and silent as the police took
perfunctory statements nothing dangerous. They recited the justice quarter false alarm.
I recognized the tone practiced able to dismiss anything not
easily filed. Lewis left without a word, eyes rimmed and read.
By the end of my statement, half the files I
found were Gondem's place, The manager said, brow fro and
over legal note bets. Please refrain from further inquiry. Your
contract will be resolved as of this evening. We'll deliver
pay in particulars by post. Please return your badge sign here.
I drew a slow breath, trying to protest, not about
supernatural claims, but about safety, the falsification of records, the
fat of my name appearing in reports never written by me.
The operation's manager leaned in, lowering his voice to a
flat knol. You'll sign this NDA, or you'llgred it. There
are more doors in this city than you think, and
most open only one way. Before I left p he
clat me in the back, rough but not unkind. Don't
loose sleep, he said, softly placed shoes of people you
did right, not going deeper. Most don't come back out.
He handed me about it, fold at one slip of
legal sized paper inside. Keep a copy, even if you
throw it out later. Sometimes record matter. When I stepped
out into the thin blue pre dawn, the building's windows
gave no sign of their contents. The fifth floor from
the street was indistinguishable from any out of another warsh
of pale rectangles in the flavor of a different illumination.
My next days passed in a kind of float, swept
by interviews with corporate hr Endless females are going with formulae,
apologies and pointed threats. My security badge was deactivated. Final
deposits end and silence. The NDA sticulated not just silence
on unusual events, but a broader injunction. No public communication knowed,
speculative story telling on social media message boards. The incident,
the paperwork stated, was noise disturbance, No laws incurred. They
couched every phrasing in double negatives, tight as locks. A
week later, out on a rented sofa in a studio
apartment across the city, I read through the fold Apete
had given me. It was only the oldest map, the
same one night found behind the kitchenetchive, and its edges
felt thinner, more ephemeral than before. I put it in
a drawer I never opened. But normalcy, whatever that was,
never returned. I grew hypervigilant, checking my own apartment locks
three four times a night whenever I passed office buildings
after midnight. May of civilian observer. Again, I found myself
watching for signs. A light on in an empty window,
bay alone, elevator descending when none should be called, the
flutter of blind's left half drawn even on odd jobs,
lost prevention in a supermarket, attempts stint as a hospital aid.
I kept glancing back, half expecting to feel the draft
of old smoke lingering behind the next crash door. Lewis
texted me once months after, still uncleaning floor five. Fine since,
but sometimes doors close wrong you okay? I replied, with
vague reassurance, offering neither comfort nor real vulnerability. That was
a coldiff. Something persisted. He locked it up and moved on.
Day by day, items left my life. My copy of
the building lease, the penciled incident's lips, the incident photographs
had snuck on to my phone. All seemed to evaporate, storage, dry,
failed printed copies, mislaid or soaked by spilled water. I
blamed exhaustion or the universe's own in erged to ward clutter.
Still something hovered, the world's rhythm resumed for everyone else,
but for me time was always a little off, microwave
beeps ringing up six seconds late, while clocks and hallways frozen.
Even after a new battery. My own watch were setting
to three seven one power flickered. Once my phone chimed
with a calendar notification I hadn't set to midnight watch rotation.
I flinched, deleted it at night when the shadows stretch,
I heard scraping footsteps overhead, where my building had no
fourth floor. It wasn't until late December, a full season
after being cut loose, that the final artifact arrived. I
came home to the wheeze of ancient radiator pipes, the
city's first real snow frosting the fire escapes. An envelope thick,
legally typerton in address waited on my kitchen table. Unsigned.
I hadn't told any one this address. I opened it
with the same reluctance I'd felt every time I touched
the fifth four's closet handle. Inside was a single footo cappy,
the last incident report i'd filed before all ended, except
it was covered now with heavy, jagged marginal notes. The
marks were unmistakable, the pencil sharpness exactly Lambert's. In the
lower right corner, my name flickered after race, written with
two letters reversed. There in the white space, a single
rough roaring the wall clock's face, its hands stuck at
three seven, bracketed with arrows aboff in inky capitals for
the one who listens at midnight. On the back, a
series of tiny triangles looped across the page, pervoting from
an use to you in wait. As the flogging rotations
of some invisible watch, I put a face down. The
city outside was neither silent nor allowed to just burden
by its own uninterrupted existence, all windows aglow with their
own lives. I stood by my kitchen door, eyes on
my cheap plastic clock as its hands in stubbornly past midnight.
A minute later, as I poured water to boil, the
room grew all most imperceptibly colder, the air tightening. I
looked up. The second hand ticked, Then just before it
hit seven, it stopped, shivered, and resumed its forward crawl.
In my ear, behind the drawing of water pipes, I
saw they heard the soft measure tick that had haunted
the fifth floor, the same deep rhythm, neither fast nor slow,
neither imaginary nor wholly drue, and from the far side
of the whole mirror, a shadow, perhaps only my own,
kept perfect pace, with every movement, waiting for watcher, waiting
for the next hour to claim it pulse. My heart
hammerd behind my ribs as I stared at the cheap clock,
its hands trembling in the uncertain air, thatck echoing a
hollow measured thing through the hush that had settled over
my narrow kitchen. The envelope lay on the counter at
the ghostly clock, faced fixed an insistent three seven. Again
and again, I pressed a report between my palms, its
edges pricking sweat from my lifelines. Out in the corridor,
paper thin footsteps shuffled and faded, rendering the silence even
more acute. I waited, half certain that the next second
would bring some rip in the routine, but nothing materialized
except the pitch of the radiator, flexing hot hond the pipelines,
the city sullen benie, the night's heap of snow pressed
at the windows, its restlessness and low, grave vibration. Still
I stayed where I was, attention fixed on the mottled wall,
listening for more, another tick, a message tucked inside the plumbing,
perhaps even a voice. I heard only breath. I forced
myself into motion, carrying the envelope to my batter desk,
the page crackling and my grip. No signatures offered closure,
just a panicscript familiar in the worse way, and a
ghost's claim for the one who listens. At midnight, I
turned the incident report over once, resisted the urge to
tear it pot. Instead, I slid it into the bottom drawer,
whished under a half broken calculator, and shut it away.
I ran my thumb along the edge of the desk,
half expecting another scene to give, a passage opening in
the grain, like those seak of panels along the fifth floor. Nothing.
For hours. I wrestled myself out of watching mine, slipping
back to the eyes and glass, the shift in the elevator,
the conviction of a pattern beginning again. Some were just
out of sight. I reminded myself over and over that
I had left it behind. Any further pursuit would change nothing.
My job was gone, my name erased from payrolls, my
store or we reduced to a non disclosure clothes bared
among the rent notices in my drawer, but sleep wouldn't come.
Each time I drifted, I fell through flashes, the hidden
office lined with clocks, lempus, chalk, white face fixed by
the distant like thin the corridor, and that incessant ticking ratchet.
In the minutes apart, once I greamed of spirals knock
corror doors, but elevators coiling and impossible angles doors opening
onto window, This room stocked only with work of books
and clocks, each page a dublicate with the necks. I
walked like with a cold to my own skin toward dawn.
Unable to rest, I got up and paced half consciously.
I checked the lock on my door, then the security chain,
then the window latched for a fourth time. The city
remained unchanged, a few fiery windows burning across a deep
blue gray. The snow swept into ribbons by plas already
at work. I wanted reassurance, but saw only the reflection
of my own tired outline, framed in the glass like
a silhouette pin to a different dire. Some morning, later
days ahead, though how many I couldn't have said, I
received another envelope this one hand, a levered buttonsigned. The
paper inside was softer worn by sweat or rain. It
bore a list names in numbers, incident tire tis all
in a quivering hand. Next to mine, a note key
rotation begins again, do not lose the iro beneath, as
if as an afterthought, another clock sketched in the margins,
always at three seven. That was the last I received,
at least in that form. Still variations echoed. At supermarket
night shifts. I noticed how the freezer units timers would glitch,
always resetting. When I passed on my second week of
hospital temp work, I found that one of my colleagues,
a quiet older man who covered emergency codes at nightmark
the same hour every day in about a lock initialed
with a keffelar aisle. When I asked about it, he shrugged,
deflicting just part of the routine, keeps the system honest.
I never asked for more. Others nearby began noticing in
the small ways lock supply cause its turning up open
lost ID badges recovered with names that didn't match any
roster emails, time samped a full date into the past,
then gone. At first, I told myself. I was overlaying
the fifth floors patterns on too innocent things and mine
stuck in the groove of its owner knees. But there
were details that refused to fade the sensation of being watched.
During the last ten minutes before shifting the way, every
temp blog I submitted would come back with corrections in
an unfamiliar angular hand. In late February, I spotted a
janitor in the hospital's staff break room, stirring tea with
a hand that shook just so, the same rhythm as Lewis.
I watched until he noticed and looked at me, dark
eyes shining with a flick of recognition or warning, though
no words passed between us. One night, on my way home,
I took a deter by the old office building, not planned,
just a drift borne out of something between curiosity and dread.
There was construction tape at the side entrance, scaffolding reaching
up to the fifth story. A security car idled on
the street, its occupants sludged had over his face. I
hesitated only a moment before moving on, But as I
crossed the road, I glanced up by refix behind the
fifth floor glass, a wavering light flicked into being someone.
Something moved between the shades, brief and pale. I stopped.
The glow faded just as quickly, leaving the reflection of
the street lights bleaming over the facade. I shivered my
breath fog in the cold, and kept walking. As the
city's thaw began that spring, I adapted, or believed they did.
I worked at the hospital in the evenings, sleeping in
brief snatches during the day, taking jobs as they came,
ringing the same trusted contacts for steady eyos, never security,
never again, night rounds or records or keys online notes. Still,
every time I walked into a new building, I checked
the floor listings for that telltal gap. Where was the
vacant level, the storage floor, the least held in limbo
by accident, error, or the insistence of some one long gone.
I caught myself glancing into service closes whenever I passed,
and always in the whispering hush before dawn, I'd be
drawn back, by involuntary memory to the hollow at the
heart of that floor, of the liminal space Limpitt had
found preserved or perhaps imposed with his fear. I heard
near the end of April that Pete had retired, and
note in the obituaries breathe and plain. Another dispatch came
from Lewis, this time in the form of a horsemail. Say,
ought I go to new place now clean, no tics,
just pipes if you could, Yes, be careful, don't take
the old keys, no matter whose sends. His voice faded
in static. I tried texting back, but the number failed.
I lived in a cycle more functional than not, careful
not to collect new routines with the same intensity, Careful
not to become the next watcher. But I couldn't wholly
let go. The city was too busy to keep secrets
for long. Yet everywhere I saw the ads, the points
where time stuttered and purses flickered, Wreckers fell out of order,
and a new watcher seemed to step in one light shift,
I forgot myself and dozed in the staff lounge. My
phone fell between the cushions when I fumbled for it.
On Wiking, I found an open incident log on screen
of temples uncanly identical to this from the fifth floor system.
Unlike before, this one was blank except for a blinking cursor.
At the time Feel three seven, I stared frot dry,
until the screen dimmed and the app force itself closed.
The log was gone. I told myself it meant nothing,
an idle fragment or a cursive echo borne of anxiety
and the dull chain of sleepless nights. But for the
next week, every time I woke at night, my bedside
alarm would blink three seven, just as I turned to
face it. Sometimes a noise, soft and regular, looped beneath
the usual hum of traffic ticking in the radiator until
I pulled the plug twice. Some one left foot coop
is in my inter office mail box, each insigned one
bore sketch of my own apartment. The kitchen window, oddly exaggerated,
a tiny arrow pointed to the baseboard eater, and below
a note checked the vent at the IRA. The other,
less direct listed a series of dates and times, all
corresponding to my former shifts at the tower. I scanned
the paper, my pulse rising, then triddered both documents, their
peculiar gliss hovering in my mind. I received packages from
agencies for other safer rolls, but the naw of uncertainty
remained a taper beneath my days. It was in my
manner of the tendency to monitor exit routes, to note
how every institution hid its forgotten spaces. When I trained
new HighRes temping as a supervisor, I found myself warning
them never to linger between shifts, never to swap keys
without triple checking the lock. So the weeks rolled forward
in the world failed to reset properly, though at the
margins everything looked as it should A drifted to night
and back. Winter fumbled into spring, and buildings changed hands,
with bland ceremony still On certain evenings, alone in the
middle IROs, I'd sometimes catch a half fawned reflection moving
just behind mine in the glass of the hospital supply closet,
I feel the pressure of old surveillance, a palimpsist devise,
watchful judging recording. It was earily May when the lostick
or blured the line between my old job and the
rest of my life. I was assigned to do inventory
in the hospital's archive, a cramped forescent that warns decked
high with patient records and personnel files. Alone in the
nerve death quiet after midnight, I completed the log and
cross to the corner where a broken shudder crouched. I paused,
felt the same pimping pressure I dreaded in those elevator landings,
that tensing of breath, that ripple of time. I turned there.
Tucked into a file on the far shelf was a badge,
blue laminated Marshaw Feldman. It was identical to the one
from the fifth floor, left months ago, except here in
this place it had no meaning, no history. I ran
my thumb along the edges, and for a moment the
corridor was lights flickered, as if a ghost circuit from
the other building had warned its way into this one.
I checked, no Feltmans on staff, not for years. I
left it where it was, unwilling to move, something destined
for another watcher drawn into another circuit. As I left,
the air felt pregnant with a familiar cold. The ticking
resumed in the hall. My phone left atop box. She
ret to LifeLock screen flash and once thin, Settling on
a blank black field, A calenderbly appeared midnight watch rotation acknowledge.
I dismissed it, and as I walked up past the
empty nurse's station, I swore I saw another figure reflected
among the monitors, a shapehocking above the blueprints and bundles,
moving papers until they aligned, hands flicking to and fro.
But when I turned only to humming computers and sat
plastic chairs, waited. Exhaustion grew ragged at the edges. I
started to lose my balance, to drift between the ticks
and the stilled world. In those gaps, I sensed something
like compassionate wish, not for harm, but for witness, the
need to mark every cycle so nothing fully slipped from
the record. I began to understand a sliver of Lumpert's
desperation memory as structure routine, a salvation. Everything forgotten, eventually repeated, repetition,
eventually twisted. One dawn, as I headed home on the subway,
I caught the eye of a stranger, middle aged. Brief
kiss on his knees. He studded me too long. Just
as the train breaked, He reached into his coat and
handed me a warn slip of paper. Wordlessly, I looked
at another hand drawn clock, three seven inc shop the note
in the back. Some buildings never let go of their ire,
keep moving. Our eyes met His face was gone, haunted
but not mad. Something in me wanted to deny the
whole cycle, but I nodded silent approval or warning, and
stepped off as the door was stuttered. Why after that
the signs grew saddle, but they never truly faded. In
every city since, no matter of the neighborhood, the architecture,
or the rhythm, I found the pattern, the vicant floor
on directories, the doubled entry on notronic locks, theological cult
spot in the stairwells. Sometimes I catch a night janet
oppressing a key tight in his palm, sometimes as spot,
a maintenance walk, a lingering near the surface corridors, shoulders
tense with unspeakable knowledge. I never try to explain, not really,
no store tell I can. The incident report remains in
my locked desk, untouched, heavy as a stolen ire. I
check it some nights, the ink blurring, the marks still shop.
The clock face were proving my own name carve twice
once forward wants a bleak, I'm careful to lock up,
to note the ire, to walk the rounds. In every
job I take reatail, medical office, temp. I find myself
on night watch, self appointed, and every building rewards me
with a silence that is never fully empty. The low
tick tick tick of some old unresolvable loss, stitched into
the marrow of its structure. But that's how it has
to be. To night, as I cross my small apartment,
the city huffing out its in saunia. Just beyond the glass,
I notice the weak light from my ovens clock. The
digits burn three cullin zero seven, though it's neither three
nor seven pass neither midnight nor dawn. My phone chimes,
watch rotation verified. I press the button to dismiss, but
my finger stutters. From the hallway. Through the gap under
the door comes a sliver of cold. For a heartbeat,
I hear alone, patient ticking, then it stops. In the
silence that follows, I know, not fear exactly, but a
kind of complicity. I am neither watched nor warcher, only
another part of the cycle. Another I will waiting to
be seen somewhere in some hidden room. The old clock
star record shuffle as the handre sets, and the building,
any building, waits for its watchair, patient and particular, holding
each secret until memoried and time finally a line, and
that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I
will see you in the next one.