1
00:00:05,200 --> 00:00:08,560
Speaker 1: Hollo. I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.

2
00:00:09,160 --> 00:00:12,080
Let's get into it. It's only my second overnight shift,

3
00:00:12,119 --> 00:00:14,279
so the ape behind my eyes still feels raw and chemical,

4
00:00:14,359 --> 00:00:16,960
like a hangover that refuses to translate to real fatigue.

5
00:00:17,399 --> 00:00:20,320
The city outside sees and visible factories run against the

6
00:00:20,359 --> 00:00:22,239
edge of hearing, and the wind pushes of the plate

7
00:00:22,239 --> 00:00:24,839
glass with a dry insistence. But inside everything is hollow

8
00:00:24,920 --> 00:00:26,679
and expectant, a vacuum left in the wick of ten

9
00:00:26,719 --> 00:00:29,760
empty floors. My hired on key ring weighs heavy at

10
00:00:29,800 --> 00:00:32,119
my belt, printing uncomfortable ships into the cloth of the

11
00:00:32,119 --> 00:00:35,240
loner uniform. The intrue vestibule is harsh and greenish and

12
00:00:35,320 --> 00:00:38,560
a failing fulorescence. As I let myself in by sliding

13
00:00:38,560 --> 00:00:41,560
my new badge, awkward encoded with someone else's coding errors,

14
00:00:41,560 --> 00:00:44,159
I hear footsteps echo further back in the lobby. The

15
00:00:44,240 --> 00:00:46,359
only face round it this eisle belongs to loose the

16
00:00:46,439 --> 00:00:49,920
night janitor, mopping steadily beneath the fruit court atrium. He

17
00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:52,320
barely looks up, but gnats all the same and expression

18
00:00:52,359 --> 00:00:54,640
dowt across as features a blend of misplay, sympathy, or

19
00:00:54,640 --> 00:00:57,960
maybe apology. I nod back, feeling as if more should

20
00:00:58,000 --> 00:00:59,640
be said, but he docks behind a column in the

21
00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:03,640
silence camps down double roucine the perverse comfort of it.

22
00:01:04,280 --> 00:01:07,079
Check all lobby doors confirm the glasses and cracked were tagged.

23
00:01:07,159 --> 00:01:09,879
Circle the security desk and rebadge on the internal scanners

24
00:01:09,920 --> 00:01:12,920
of the logs. Somewhere upstairs. No, I've arrived. My phone

25
00:01:12,920 --> 00:01:15,280
stubbornly refuses the building WI FI, the app with my

26
00:01:15,319 --> 00:01:18,640
schedules and incident log stalls, freezes and resets, feeding back

27
00:01:18,680 --> 00:01:21,200
a spreadsheet that now registers three consecutive interests for a

28
00:01:21,239 --> 00:01:24,120
flour five verify status between midnight and three and the

29
00:01:24,200 --> 00:01:27,000
copy piste error. I reason though I hadn't noticed it before.

30
00:01:27,560 --> 00:01:29,879
My thumb flecks through the lists, blinking against the back light,

31
00:01:29,959 --> 00:01:33,760
but no notifications or explanations clarify the repetition. The elevator

32
00:01:33,799 --> 00:01:36,280
doors open too slow, exhaling a dry breath from within.

33
00:01:36,840 --> 00:01:39,079
As I step inside, a flinch of coal desk looks

34
00:01:39,079 --> 00:01:40,920
along my ankles, a draft out of sync with the

35
00:01:40,920 --> 00:01:44,760
building's persistent warmth. I glance upwards. All the lighted floor

36
00:01:44,760 --> 00:01:47,200
buttons hid a note except for five, which pulses faintly,

37
00:01:47,200 --> 00:01:49,920
with the others dead. I press one, then five, then

38
00:01:49,959 --> 00:01:52,719
one again, and the iicon's response luggishly, as if reluctant

39
00:01:52,760 --> 00:01:55,400
to climb I five. The ride shutters to a halt.

40
00:01:55,959 --> 00:01:58,319
The dose pot under in a naturally still hallway lined

41
00:01:58,319 --> 00:02:00,359
with blond wood doors and a cramped kitchen in set

42
00:02:00,439 --> 00:02:04,200
among vending machines, A thin dust films every surface, fuzzing

43
00:02:04,200 --> 00:02:07,680
the shine from stainless steel supposedly vacant. No company has

44
00:02:07,760 --> 00:02:10,120
leased this floor in over a year, storage only such

45
00:02:10,159 --> 00:02:12,599
as a Bland building manual tucked into my jacket pocket.

46
00:02:13,039 --> 00:02:15,400
As I move down the hall, a sound layers itself

47
00:02:15,400 --> 00:02:18,360
over the whine of distant traffic, not a mechanical thumb

48
00:02:18,439 --> 00:02:21,439
or settling piped, something more precise, A steady, persistent ticking,

49
00:02:21,520 --> 00:02:23,919
faint at first, barely distinct from the hum of lights.

50
00:02:24,639 --> 00:02:27,800
My steps slow unbidden. The ticking sharpens as I approached

51
00:02:27,800 --> 00:02:30,599
the double doored supply closet at the far end. Despite

52
00:02:30,599 --> 00:02:33,439
its sturdy latches, one of the locks heels to my key, metal,

53
00:02:33,479 --> 00:02:36,520
protesting as I force it. The sense of trespass is physical,

54
00:02:36,560 --> 00:02:39,520
A prickle between my shoulders I can ignore. Inside the

55
00:02:39,560 --> 00:02:42,719
space is cramped with shelving chemical drums. Una cheap ancient

56
00:02:42,759 --> 00:02:45,479
analog walcock facing outward on a splinter shelf for moving hands,

57
00:02:45,520 --> 00:02:49,120
frozen at three seven. Its casing is plastic, yellowed by age,

58
00:02:49,159 --> 00:02:51,240
but the soft and impossible to compulses from within it

59
00:02:51,240 --> 00:02:54,240
all the same. Heap upon heap of incidant reports, glossy

60
00:02:54,319 --> 00:02:57,520
and fresh, crowd the shelf below. I run my fingers

61
00:02:57,560 --> 00:02:59,800
over a stack pages printed with logos of every business

62
00:02:59,800 --> 00:03:02,159
in the tower. Yet many of them bear heavy pen marks,

63
00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:06,199
notations and jagged unfamiliar characters. Margin scribbles run to the

64
00:03:06,280 --> 00:03:10,360
edge times the initials symbols. Some reports are blistered with arithmetic,

65
00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:13,879
or sketched with little rotating triangles and unfinished dates. One

66
00:03:13,919 --> 00:03:16,800
page appears to have been written only minutes ago. Somehow,

67
00:03:16,840 --> 00:03:19,039
the room contracts around me. I sense a presence in

68
00:03:19,039 --> 00:03:21,080
the outer hallway. The timber of breath would hell the

69
00:03:21,120 --> 00:03:24,240
static tension of scrutiny for a long moment. I fight

70
00:03:24,280 --> 00:03:26,719
down the urge to slant the door and retreat. I

71
00:03:26,759 --> 00:03:30,120
carry just one battered flashlight and the jangling keys. My

72
00:03:30,199 --> 00:03:32,560
own heart beat sketches a counter rhythm to the hidden clock.

73
00:03:33,240 --> 00:03:35,280
I gather up two of the stranger reports and step

74
00:03:35,319 --> 00:03:38,319
back into the corridor. I'm watched, but cannot say from where.

75
00:03:38,879 --> 00:03:41,319
In the elevator. On the way down, my phone vibrates

76
00:03:41,360 --> 00:03:44,240
violently in my pocket. The lock screen blinks twice, then

77
00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:47,439
reverts to its dull, empty self, no record of any message.

78
00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:50,159
Only the background hum and my drawn face in black

79
00:03:50,159 --> 00:03:53,120
glass keep me company on the descent. A week ago,

80
00:03:53,319 --> 00:03:55,319
my life had nothing in it except drifting iOS in

81
00:03:55,319 --> 00:03:58,319
the static of daytime television. Looking back on that, there

82
00:03:58,400 --> 00:04:00,319
is almost a naive comfort in the difficult as I

83
00:04:00,360 --> 00:04:03,439
thought were mine alone. I'd spent six straight months fruitlessly

84
00:04:03,479 --> 00:04:06,800
applying to warehouses, day labor gigs, anything, until old union

85
00:04:06,800 --> 00:04:09,840
contacts dried up, and every promisingly turned sire or silent.

86
00:04:10,520 --> 00:04:12,280
When a recruiters sent me the offer for in night

87
00:04:12,319 --> 00:04:15,240
security temp, immediate start, I took it before asking questions.

88
00:04:15,840 --> 00:04:18,160
The job started with daylight interviews in the main lobby,

89
00:04:18,240 --> 00:04:21,600
cheap coffee, and a whif of antiseptic. My supervisor, a

90
00:04:21,600 --> 00:04:24,240
mid career woman named Janet, walked me through the paperwork

91
00:04:24,240 --> 00:04:27,600
with clinical boredom. Buildings old but nothing tricky, she said,

92
00:04:27,800 --> 00:04:30,800
barely glancing up from her cheap, big pen. Most tenants

93
00:04:30,800 --> 00:04:34,439
are corporate law, HR or software company. Upstairs is storage

94
00:04:34,480 --> 00:04:37,079
four or five hasn't leased out, so you won't be disturbed.

95
00:04:37,560 --> 00:04:40,800
Her glasses caught the sun. Eye contact minimal call as

96
00:04:40,839 --> 00:04:44,040
if anything's off, don't wander in an authorize owns. My

97
00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:46,720
training consisted mostly of a feeble slideshow and a building

98
00:04:46,720 --> 00:04:48,600
hand behalf of it at a date were cycling rules

99
00:04:48,600 --> 00:04:51,120
for doors that didn't exist in five plans that included

100
00:04:51,120 --> 00:04:55,439
basement archives already brick shut. My schedule demanded twelve iron knights,

101
00:04:55,519 --> 00:04:58,399
but for overtime pay and vague promises of potential permanence,

102
00:04:58,480 --> 00:05:01,040
I swallowed the irregular sleep or d during blackout curtains

103
00:05:01,079 --> 00:05:04,480
on short notice. My mother called on Sunday afternoons, my

104
00:05:04,560 --> 00:05:07,319
sister on Thursdays, both and convinced. When I brushed off

105
00:05:07,319 --> 00:05:10,720
their concern cross their pauses. I heard myself explaining the

106
00:05:10,800 --> 00:05:12,920
job again and again, as if he citation could make

107
00:05:12,959 --> 00:05:15,839
it more stable than it truly was. There were routines

108
00:05:15,879 --> 00:05:19,079
to develop, clocking him with an incooperative digital badge, running

109
00:05:19,120 --> 00:05:22,040
door checks every two hours, and filling thick signatures into

110
00:05:22,040 --> 00:05:26,079
logbookxholder than I was a single CCTV feed oversaw the lobby,

111
00:05:26,160 --> 00:05:30,240
elevators and upper corridors, grainy and stubbornly delayed. If I

112
00:05:30,240 --> 00:05:32,680
lost time or skipped steps, an email for management, and

113
00:05:32,720 --> 00:05:35,120
never signed by a natural name, just stop. Desker would

114
00:05:35,199 --> 00:05:38,600
arrive with polite reminders. No one truly worked nights but me,

115
00:05:38,720 --> 00:05:41,160
except for Lewis, the janitor, and occasionally Pete, the gruff

116
00:05:41,279 --> 00:05:45,000
Pockwark maintenance man. Lewis preferred cleaning the lobbies, pushing his

117
00:05:45,079 --> 00:05:47,360
mob like a monk, hands always in Laide's gloves, even

118
00:05:47,360 --> 00:05:50,079
when off the clock. He kept his cap tugged, low

119
00:05:50,199 --> 00:05:53,199
eyes darting at the sound of every elevator chime. Once

120
00:05:53,240 --> 00:05:56,120
on my second night, he gestured at my key ring, whispering,

121
00:05:56,279 --> 00:05:59,160
keep them in your pocket seat otherwise things around here

122
00:05:59,240 --> 00:06:01,959
I walk away. He wouldn't elaborate when I pressed, He

123
00:06:02,079 --> 00:06:05,519
just shrugged, mouth flattening into a line. He, by contrast,

124
00:06:05,600 --> 00:06:08,759
thrived on idle complaints. He fixed burst pipes or dying

125
00:06:08,800 --> 00:06:11,680
eggs at signs, muttering about new management, always skimping on

126
00:06:11,720 --> 00:06:14,920
papagheera and too much tech, too little sense. When I

127
00:06:14,959 --> 00:06:17,040
asked about four or five, his eyes flickered, but he

128
00:06:17,079 --> 00:06:19,319
simply said it used to hold a big insurance for him.

129
00:06:19,360 --> 00:06:21,839
All closed now before shifting focussed a whistling air vent.

130
00:06:22,480 --> 00:06:24,879
He watched that supply closet locks go missing. I blame

131
00:06:24,959 --> 00:06:27,639
building ghosts Hall, just kidding, but padlock at all the

132
00:06:27,680 --> 00:06:30,920
same daytimes the world shranked at the half lit security

133
00:06:30,959 --> 00:06:33,160
breath in my four smiles at a mess Caulfield, the

134
00:06:33,199 --> 00:06:36,639
day receptionist, whose cheerful greeting sounded slightly to deliberate, like

135
00:06:36,680 --> 00:06:40,240
someone remembering a roll pass. Badges returned visitors, and the

136
00:06:40,240 --> 00:06:42,439
low white nose hum of computers filled myn omb eyes.

137
00:06:43,160 --> 00:06:44,879
I tried not to seem like I was waiting for

138
00:06:44,920 --> 00:06:48,319
something to go wrong, Even then, hints collected at the margins.

139
00:06:49,079 --> 00:06:52,040
Once an unfamiliar five F storage key appeared at my desk,

140
00:06:52,279 --> 00:06:55,399
only to vanish two shifts later. He excused it as

141
00:06:55,439 --> 00:06:58,120
may be a duplicate. We get spares. There was something

142
00:06:58,120 --> 00:07:00,920
about the upper floors I couldn't pinpoint. The further up

143
00:07:00,959 --> 00:07:03,519
I walked, especially in the hush affaiturey m the thicker

144
00:07:03,560 --> 00:07:05,800
the air became, with a kind of chemical staleness, heavy

145
00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:07,680
with dust that didn't settle or shift, as if the

146
00:07:07,720 --> 00:07:10,879
rooms held their breath between real uses if fast, I'd

147
00:07:10,879 --> 00:07:13,000
have told you. The buildings seemed to be waiting for news,

148
00:07:13,040 --> 00:07:15,839
its corners taut and silent, its lights never fading or flurian,

149
00:07:15,920 --> 00:07:18,199
indifferent to the human traffic that brushed throughsave for the

150
00:07:18,240 --> 00:07:20,879
fifth floor, which, even in its vacancy, managed to feel oddly,

151
00:07:20,959 --> 00:07:23,279
minutely occupied, as if a record play a needle hover

152
00:07:23,399 --> 00:07:26,079
just above the first groove. On my fourth night, I

153
00:07:26,079 --> 00:07:29,560
found myself beginning RAN's feeling, almost comforted by routine. The

154
00:07:29,639 --> 00:07:32,399
rhythm lulled my mind, only partly snagging on the recollection

155
00:07:32,439 --> 00:07:35,199
of the incident reports had stashed to my locker. At

156
00:07:35,199 --> 00:07:37,519
one twenty eight a m I paused outside the elevator

157
00:07:37,560 --> 00:07:39,720
bay to examine the scuffed metal, rubbing at a chalky

158
00:07:39,759 --> 00:07:42,800
fingerprint that wouldn't lift. Directly beneath the wall vent I

159
00:07:42,800 --> 00:07:46,000
spotted a company badge laminated blue with the name Marshar Felman,

160
00:07:46,120 --> 00:07:49,759
Floor eight. Curious A cross checked the directory on my phone.

161
00:07:50,199 --> 00:07:52,560
Feldman had left the company months ago. According to the

162
00:07:52,720 --> 00:07:55,639
h R master Alyss, her clearance coats were roked. No

163
00:07:55,720 --> 00:07:58,639
one on side had scheduled after Iyre's access, certainly not

164
00:07:58,720 --> 00:08:02,480
for the graveyard rhythm. Still here was badge recently dropped.

165
00:08:03,040 --> 00:08:05,360
I pocketed it and tried to ignore a crawling unease.

166
00:08:06,040 --> 00:08:09,480
The elevator lolctured by policy times damp every entry, every movement.

167
00:08:10,120 --> 00:08:12,399
Scanning my own badge for an axis test, I saw

168
00:08:12,480 --> 00:08:15,920
nothing untoward. The logs for the whole building registered as normal,

169
00:08:16,079 --> 00:08:18,720
but something gnawed at the back of my mind. Small

170
00:08:18,720 --> 00:08:22,000
disruptions struck me as out of place, cumulative rather than singular.

171
00:08:22,680 --> 00:08:24,560
On my next sweep, at two forty eight m I

172
00:08:24,560 --> 00:08:26,399
found two office jes out from the desks in a

173
00:08:26,480 --> 00:08:29,480
vacant conference room on the sixth floor. The cleaning schedule

174
00:08:29,480 --> 00:08:31,680
written on the whiteboard showed nothing for that night, and

175
00:08:31,720 --> 00:08:34,559
the lights switched off automatically upon my entrance, requiring my

176
00:08:34,600 --> 00:08:37,600
passcord to reactivate, suggesting that no one had entered recently.

177
00:08:38,159 --> 00:08:41,559
The kitchen at two holes Over, supposedly unused, offered a single,

178
00:08:41,600 --> 00:08:43,480
still wet coffee ring on her cheek, claim of that

179
00:08:43,480 --> 00:08:45,679
bore the faded Quintin Life insurance logo, one of the

180
00:08:45,720 --> 00:08:48,840
earlier four tenants that, according to records, vacated the space

181
00:08:48,960 --> 00:08:51,879
last winter. There was an oily smudge on the rim.

182
00:08:52,159 --> 00:08:54,759
I lifted the mug, feeling it warm, spider along my

183
00:08:54,840 --> 00:08:57,279
palm and ran a finger along the sidely corm as

184
00:08:57,279 --> 00:09:00,360
if abandoned. Not more than half an hour before routine

185
00:09:00,360 --> 00:09:03,200
demanded I fill an incident report. When I did a

186
00:09:03,200 --> 00:09:06,320
toast note in the digital lug about unidentified access coffee

187
00:09:06,360 --> 00:09:08,440
and odd badge, I discovered a completed entry with that

188
00:09:08,600 --> 00:09:12,840
very description already locked. Its handwriting was unfamiliar, brusque and angular,

189
00:09:13,039 --> 00:09:15,960
signed with the initials are al. I thumbed back through

190
00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:18,360
recent logs and found other reports cross referenced by a

191
00:09:18,360 --> 00:09:21,240
similar pen clustering always between two forty and three ten

192
00:09:21,279 --> 00:09:24,039
a m tagged to the fifth floor or its staircase exits.

193
00:09:24,519 --> 00:09:27,519
When I phoned management the next morning, Janet, my supervisor,

194
00:09:27,639 --> 00:09:31,480
sounded and concerned. Old file cycle up sometimes, especially when

195
00:09:31,480 --> 00:09:34,279
we clear our tenant folders for accounting cleaning crews, may

196
00:09:34,279 --> 00:09:36,639
be clerical errors. Four or Five's the lowest priority in

197
00:09:36,639 --> 00:09:39,639
the building, Nothing to worry about. She talked around my

198
00:09:39,720 --> 00:09:41,600
questions until it felt like I was boxing at the

199
00:09:41,639 --> 00:09:45,919
air still every peculiar thing, every slit radiated outward from

200
00:09:45,960 --> 00:09:49,879
the fifth four in its margins. Walking the silent upper corridors,

201
00:09:50,000 --> 00:09:52,399
I became aware of a second cadence of occupation, one

202
00:09:52,440 --> 00:09:55,799
that flicked between prisons and absence, always leaving behind impression.

203
00:09:55,799 --> 00:09:59,279
As Tactile's finger prints. Six nights in the Constellation of

204
00:09:59,320 --> 00:10:02,679
Oddities began to pattern itself more stubbornly. That evening, I

205
00:10:02,759 --> 00:10:05,519
lingered after my usual three eh m circuit, leaving the

206
00:10:05,519 --> 00:10:08,720
supply closet until last. The memory of the ticking clock

207
00:10:08,759 --> 00:10:12,279
and its frozen hands persisted. I unlocked the door, pum sweaty,

208
00:10:12,360 --> 00:10:15,159
and examined the shelves once more. The stack of reports

209
00:10:15,159 --> 00:10:17,720
sat undisturbed, the clock unchanged at three seven, but a

210
00:10:17,759 --> 00:10:19,840
thin slip of paper was protruding from beneath a new

211
00:10:19,840 --> 00:10:23,159
incident report TAN stamped two fifty four detailing air recurring

212
00:10:23,200 --> 00:10:26,080
access nonomally on the service stairwell door, filed by op's desk.

213
00:10:26,720 --> 00:10:30,159
The stairs themselves, when I checked, showed no sign of disturbance.

214
00:10:30,200 --> 00:10:32,000
That there was the faintest scent of shaving soap in

215
00:10:32,000 --> 00:10:34,480
the aerochemical fragrance that could have been twenty years out

216
00:10:34,480 --> 00:10:37,000
of date. I ran my thumb over the incident's slip.

217
00:10:37,480 --> 00:10:40,759
It sinks mirrored slightly fresh. That unsettled me more than

218
00:10:40,799 --> 00:10:43,279
I wanted to admit. I took a photograph and shut

219
00:10:43,320 --> 00:10:46,960
the closet, relatching the lock with deliberate patience. Each minor

220
00:10:46,960 --> 00:10:49,639
disruption the badge, the mug, the chair seemed arbitrary, but

221
00:10:49,679 --> 00:10:53,200
together they circled something unseen and close. On impulse, I

222
00:10:53,240 --> 00:10:55,039
spent a slow eye of the night reviewing the lost

223
00:10:55,080 --> 00:10:57,159
month of Axiss records, drawing up print outs from the

224
00:10:57,200 --> 00:11:00,960
security center. The times didn't add up. The log cycle

225
00:11:01,039 --> 00:11:03,559
through badge entries and elevator stops for the fifth floor

226
00:11:03,639 --> 00:11:06,440
blat shore in access at impossible intervals several times per

227
00:11:06,480 --> 00:11:09,039
week between two forty five and three fifteen a m.

228
00:11:09,159 --> 00:11:12,039
But no accompanying security video, just time stamp blanks in

229
00:11:12,120 --> 00:11:15,000
the motion record. The CCTV in the guide booth was

230
00:11:15,039 --> 00:11:17,559
all pixels, coughing and to blur if the system was nudged.

231
00:11:18,120 --> 00:11:21,159
The fifth floor feed was especially puruntastatic and shadow as

232
00:11:21,159 --> 00:11:24,200
if signal interference bled in from the city outside. I

233
00:11:24,200 --> 00:11:26,519
wound back time on the terminal, focusing on a two

234
00:11:26,559 --> 00:11:30,240
week window. Hattens repeated every night, always a precisely three

235
00:11:30,360 --> 00:11:32,879
seven a m. The fifth floor corridor flickered into static

236
00:11:32,919 --> 00:11:36,000
that lasted for twenty seconds. Light jeitted in the reflection

237
00:11:36,080 --> 00:11:38,240
of the glass doors, a movement present, but never direct,

238
00:11:38,360 --> 00:11:40,360
always at the periphery, as if some one stood just

239
00:11:40,360 --> 00:11:42,159
out of sight, letting a sleep rushed the pin before

240
00:11:42,200 --> 00:11:45,840
ducking away. Other times a shimmer out across elevated doors,

241
00:11:45,879 --> 00:11:48,879
perhaps a trick of headlights from outside yeth always too regular,

242
00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:52,600
too internal. I replayed these intervals, fingers going numb on

243
00:11:52,600 --> 00:11:55,440
the track pa. Never a clear face of silhouette emerged,

244
00:11:55,519 --> 00:11:58,039
just a sense of interruption, a suggestion of a figure watching,

245
00:11:58,080 --> 00:12:01,519
but never visible were expected. The strangeness was manting, and

246
00:12:01,559 --> 00:12:04,080
even the so called professional distance demanded by my job

247
00:12:04,159 --> 00:12:06,759
started to wear. The next night, after one of these

248
00:12:06,759 --> 00:12:09,360
dead intervals, I caught loose in the brake room, eating

249
00:12:09,399 --> 00:12:11,799
cold left of us from a paper bag. His hand

250
00:12:11,840 --> 00:12:15,519
shook as he fished out his key card. Lewis, I asked, quietly,

251
00:12:15,720 --> 00:12:18,279
you ever hear anything up on five? I made my

252
00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:21,759
tongue casual, as if asking aboutlyach runs. He wouldn't meet

253
00:12:21,799 --> 00:12:25,240
my eyes, but uncertain Spanish, with a tight edge. That floor,

254
00:12:25,399 --> 00:12:27,759
no mee guster. Some one is there walking. I clean

255
00:12:27,799 --> 00:12:30,440
other places, but not there, not after midnight. The light's

256
00:12:30,480 --> 00:12:34,000
upstairs A flick, yes, he shivered, then added poor favor,

257
00:12:34,200 --> 00:12:36,559
just lock it up. I found this last week. He

258
00:12:36,639 --> 00:12:39,240
handed me a badge hole silvered, the name half scraped away,

259
00:12:39,279 --> 00:12:41,240
but the plastic still bore the logo of a logistics

260
00:12:41,279 --> 00:12:43,840
firm that had lost its lease a decade ago. Where

261
00:12:44,480 --> 00:12:46,960
I asked and he pointed upward vaguely, as if afraid

262
00:12:47,000 --> 00:12:51,039
to give a precise answer. Tape and side ceiling felt strange.

263
00:12:51,519 --> 00:12:55,000
The badger's code didn't register in the system. Later, as

264
00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:57,320
I sat in the lobby reviewing the logs, Pete ambled

265
00:12:57,320 --> 00:12:59,840
by with his battered tool bag. When I press him

266
00:12:59,840 --> 00:13:02,120
at the upper floors, he surprised me with a click tail.

267
00:13:02,399 --> 00:13:05,000
Urban legend maunt goes back to old ownership fellow who

268
00:13:05,080 --> 00:13:07,120
ran this place half a century ago, never sold the

269
00:13:07,120 --> 00:13:09,559
fifth floor. Not really used to say, don't let it

270
00:13:09,639 --> 00:13:12,279
linger empty, or it'll tone odd on you. People talk nonsense,

271
00:13:12,279 --> 00:13:15,919
missing tools, file's gone, maybe even someone getting lost up there.

272
00:13:16,000 --> 00:13:18,480
Management doesn't want ways, got to keep new tenants happy,

273
00:13:18,519 --> 00:13:20,600
so when weird stuff pops up, they were classify it.

274
00:13:20,639 --> 00:13:22,480
I say, lock up everything. And if you see that

275
00:13:22,519 --> 00:13:25,399
storage clauset, open, shut it tight. Some spaces, learn your

276
00:13:25,440 --> 00:13:27,840
habits that show me more than I care to admit.

277
00:13:28,399 --> 00:13:31,440
I resolved to check the supply clauset myself alone later

278
00:13:31,559 --> 00:13:34,399
at night, past three a m. While the constant taking

279
00:13:34,440 --> 00:13:36,960
crawled back across the tile, I let myself in. The

280
00:13:37,039 --> 00:13:40,159
reports had been tidied, the clocks at upright unmoving. This

281
00:13:40,279 --> 00:13:42,600
time a single sheet of paper had slipped under the door.

282
00:13:43,200 --> 00:13:45,519
It boor dated to day's unpenciled. Beneath the pre full

283
00:13:45,600 --> 00:13:48,879
text a scrolled message cam's bed slash three seven aero

284
00:13:48,919 --> 00:13:52,799
slash change locks. Handwriting was unfamiliar, but neat more recent

285
00:13:52,840 --> 00:13:56,000
than anything else in the pile. Curiosity about the source

286
00:13:56,000 --> 00:13:58,759
who was using the supply closet is a drop kept

287
00:13:58,759 --> 00:14:01,559
me awake. The next afternoon I wandered the aisles of

288
00:14:01,559 --> 00:14:03,679
the lobby in Neuston, watching staff as drift through on

289
00:14:03,679 --> 00:14:05,919
coffee runs, seeing if any match the print up pulse

290
00:14:05,960 --> 00:14:09,000
of the after iOS anomalies, but no one gave themselves away.

291
00:14:09,559 --> 00:14:12,320
That evening, while finishing my rounds, I found a heavy

292
00:14:12,399 --> 00:14:14,879
envelope in my mail books containing a printed email for read.

293
00:14:15,480 --> 00:14:17,879
The chain open with tense questions about the fifth floor

294
00:14:17,919 --> 00:14:21,519
access codes, who changed them? Who else has entry? Then

295
00:14:21,519 --> 00:14:24,000
a request to physically inspect the service decas near the

296
00:14:24,039 --> 00:14:26,840
north end of the floor. The sender match to finance

297
00:14:26,879 --> 00:14:29,080
manager whose file stated they'd been out of the country

298
00:14:29,120 --> 00:14:33,159
for three weeks the time stamp two fifty five a m.

299
00:14:33,360 --> 00:14:36,240
Last night. It wasn't just all file shoffing to the top,

300
00:14:36,279 --> 00:14:39,360
I realized some one or several someones were using the

301
00:14:39,360 --> 00:14:41,840
dead spaces of the building as routes and hiding places.

302
00:14:42,480 --> 00:14:45,000
The patterns pulled tighter each night, coiled round the spindle

303
00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:48,960
of that faultless, ever ticking clock. Around midnight, my phone

304
00:14:48,960 --> 00:14:51,639
shop with the fresh maintenance requests fifth four storage claus

305
00:14:51,679 --> 00:14:55,600
at strange noise, possible vandalism, please investigate. I climbed the

306
00:14:55,639 --> 00:14:58,039
stairs badge in hand and found the doors shut but

307
00:14:58,120 --> 00:15:01,720
unlocked to minor procedural breach. Inside the stack of incident

308
00:15:01,759 --> 00:15:04,559
reports had grown teetering, and the clock still pointed doggedly

309
00:15:04,559 --> 00:15:07,159
at three seven. But the feeling of intrusion was no

310
00:15:07,240 --> 00:15:10,440
longer just psychic. As I reached for the topmost folder,

311
00:15:10,559 --> 00:15:12,960
a clang echoed from further down the whole, the unmistakable

312
00:15:13,000 --> 00:15:15,200
thing of an elevator arriving, though the panel on all

313
00:15:15,200 --> 00:15:18,159
floors read idle. My body tends to half expecting a

314
00:15:18,200 --> 00:15:21,080
voice or figure, but instead in silence that followed, I

315
00:15:21,120 --> 00:15:23,639
became aware of a change in the supply closet. The

316
00:15:23,639 --> 00:15:25,360
sheet of paper in the low shelf were marked with

317
00:15:25,360 --> 00:15:28,039
a fresh column of note, and a new hand tucked

318
00:15:28,039 --> 00:15:31,000
in one instant sheet under the tight complaint camistatic persists.

319
00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:33,200
At three seven a m. Some one had added, this

320
00:15:33,320 --> 00:15:36,679
is not an error. The air already cold, skewed sharper.

321
00:15:37,240 --> 00:15:39,240
I felt more than how to shifting prisons down the

322
00:15:39,279 --> 00:15:42,559
side corridor beyond the elevator bay. My pulse staggered. I

323
00:15:42,639 --> 00:15:44,600
yanked the closet door fully open and saw that the

324
00:15:44,600 --> 00:15:47,399
back panel was not flash against a wall. The pail

325
00:15:47,440 --> 00:15:50,440
seemed suggested a hidden service hatch. Small and rarely disturbed.

326
00:15:51,039 --> 00:15:53,559
I forced myself to inspect further. Running my fingers over

327
00:15:53,600 --> 00:15:56,559
the wat would, to my surprise, it moved beneath my hand,

328
00:15:56,600 --> 00:15:59,759
A gentle hinge almost welcoming. As I pressed, A draft

329
00:15:59,759 --> 00:16:02,240
of piepe smoke, old and fint slid past my face.

330
00:16:02,919 --> 00:16:05,279
A flicker in the glass behind me drew my attention sharply.

331
00:16:05,919 --> 00:16:08,720
My reflection held then for the briefest pulse between seconds,

332
00:16:08,720 --> 00:16:11,279
the second blurry shape rose behind my left shoulder vanishing

333
00:16:11,320 --> 00:16:15,080
as I spun my own adrenaline, hunting my chest second exhilarating.

334
00:16:15,600 --> 00:16:18,279
I stepped back inside to unbalanced for caution, and found

335
00:16:18,279 --> 00:16:20,480
about a chief of legal documents folded behind a clock,

336
00:16:20,519 --> 00:16:23,679
property paperwork, curling with age, the topmas sheet burying the

337
00:16:23,679 --> 00:16:26,519
head in the lease agreement, floor five. The final signature

338
00:16:26,559 --> 00:16:29,320
bore the name of the building's original owner, clipped and exact,

339
00:16:29,559 --> 00:16:31,919
under which someone had written in a slanted hand the

340
00:16:31,960 --> 00:16:36,240
words occupant retains rights until release, a date barely legible

341
00:16:36,240 --> 00:16:38,039
beneath the ink, the very day the owner had been

342
00:16:38,080 --> 00:16:42,120
reported deceased. I stood there, listening behind me, on the

343
00:16:42,200 --> 00:16:45,399
edge of the supply closet door. The ticking continued, steady, compulsive.

344
00:16:46,080 --> 00:16:47,919
My own name now appeared in the margin at the

345
00:16:47,919 --> 00:16:50,600
newest report, half hidden, as if someone had already documented

346
00:16:50,639 --> 00:16:53,559
my presence. I backed out onto the fifth floor corridor,

347
00:16:53,639 --> 00:16:55,759
key jangling in my fist, and stood down its length

348
00:16:55,759 --> 00:16:58,240
everywhere and nowhere at once, watched by an intelligence old

349
00:16:58,320 --> 00:17:00,799
enough to have learned all the building's rhythms. I'm powerful

350
00:17:00,879 --> 00:17:02,480
enough to press a thumb on the scales of time.

351
00:17:03,000 --> 00:17:05,839
The fifth floor waited, quiet and alert, and outside the

352
00:17:05,880 --> 00:17:09,240
city's lights blinked, refusing to Tuesday or night. A split

353
00:17:09,279 --> 00:17:11,720
seconds hesitation rooted me there, half in half out of

354
00:17:11,759 --> 00:17:14,799
that narrow well behind the closet. The hush pressed forward.

355
00:17:14,880 --> 00:17:18,240
Strangely attentive, I started back down the hallway, every treade

356
00:17:18,240 --> 00:17:19,960
marked out for an audience I couldn't see, but now

357
00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:23,200
believed in My eyes. Fluttered between each bland door panel,

358
00:17:23,440 --> 00:17:26,160
waiting for movement or another switch in the air. There

359
00:17:26,200 --> 00:17:27,839
wasn't so much as a squeak of hinge or a

360
00:17:27,839 --> 00:17:30,759
cough of pipe. The fifth floor simply held its electric

361
00:17:30,799 --> 00:17:34,240
quartch near the kitchenette alco. I realized my fist clenched

362
00:17:34,240 --> 00:17:36,720
the folder, the old lease, and a fragment of soft

363
00:17:36,720 --> 00:17:39,480
graphite pencil perhaps dropped, perhaps left for me. I slid

364
00:17:39,519 --> 00:17:41,400
the lease into my vest and forced myself to check

365
00:17:41,400 --> 00:17:44,160
the kitchenette one more time. The fridge still hummed for

366
00:17:44,319 --> 00:17:46,359
ess and tubes glowed, and the same sickly angle but

367
00:17:46,440 --> 00:17:49,359
faint scrape marks mired the linoleum. Just inside the mock closet,

368
00:17:49,960 --> 00:17:52,599
I set my boot against one, then knelt, running fingers

369
00:17:52,599 --> 00:17:55,319
over the shape four, five, six times. Someone may be

370
00:17:55,359 --> 00:17:57,759
drugging something heavy or simply pacing had made a nerve

371
00:17:57,759 --> 00:18:01,119
of a circuit of this spot. The scratches were recent, silvery,

372
00:18:01,319 --> 00:18:03,480
standing out from the soft brown elsewhere on the floor.

373
00:18:03,960 --> 00:18:06,440
A wave of embarrassed fear passed through me, then faded

374
00:18:06,440 --> 00:18:09,680
into something colder. I ducked into the elevator and pressed ground,

375
00:18:09,680 --> 00:18:12,440
holding my breath until the doors closed. They stuck for

376
00:18:12,440 --> 00:18:14,480
a heartbeat, then jettered down, as if the building had

377
00:18:14,480 --> 00:18:18,039
finally allowed me an exit. I reached the lobby behind

378
00:18:18,079 --> 00:18:21,440
the security glass. Lewis was stacking his cleaning caddy, movements

379
00:18:21,519 --> 00:18:25,640
jerky and impatient. I raised a hand without thinking. He paused,

380
00:18:25,720 --> 00:18:27,799
looking at me for longer than usual, then ducked his

381
00:18:27,839 --> 00:18:30,640
head and hurried off toward the loading dock. He left

382
00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:33,319
the mob's cue against the stairwall, water pulling darkly at

383
00:18:33,319 --> 00:18:36,359
the toile's edge. I returned to the booth, double checking

384
00:18:36,359 --> 00:18:38,960
every lock on the glass partition. The risk of being

385
00:18:38,960 --> 00:18:41,400
found on camera in this and rattle briefly cost my

386
00:18:41,400 --> 00:18:44,440
mind to just another wondering security casual hand shaking over

387
00:18:44,480 --> 00:18:47,480
a cup of over hot, fending coffee. My phone vibrated

388
00:18:47,519 --> 00:18:50,319
weakly on the console. When I looked the locks, green

389
00:18:50,359 --> 00:18:52,920
glitch white. Theiner set always a beat behind my movements

390
00:18:53,519 --> 00:18:55,839
that had become its rhythm. Quiet. I quesced until something

391
00:18:55,880 --> 00:18:59,000
on the fifth floor changed. After two loops around empty

392
00:18:59,039 --> 00:19:01,680
ground level halls, I texted Pete, you get any old

393
00:19:01,680 --> 00:19:04,359
files from five to night. I didn't expect a nswer

394
00:19:04,440 --> 00:19:07,079
that late, but within moments a reply came. Nope, a

395
00:19:07,160 --> 00:19:09,720
word five at night. Don't risk it. Someone's messing. W

396
00:19:09,960 --> 00:19:13,119
logs tucked to opsurfergent. The pile of incident reports was

397
00:19:13,160 --> 00:19:14,960
now a puzzle, too thick to carry home. But I

398
00:19:14,960 --> 00:19:17,000
sat and thumbed through the two most recent trying to

399
00:19:17,039 --> 00:19:20,359
find a pattern. Margins filled with check marks, I refractions,

400
00:19:20,440 --> 00:19:23,680
odd glyphs, reminiscent of in complete floors and blueprints. One

401
00:19:23,720 --> 00:19:26,599
page asked, in shakeyp lock letters, who watches at doors

402
00:19:26,599 --> 00:19:29,359
three seven? An beneath in a different hand, see me

403
00:19:29,400 --> 00:19:31,960
in the gas. With every page, the air and a

404
00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:34,279
booth grew denser, as if papped with humid breath and

405
00:19:34,319 --> 00:19:37,359
intense surveillance. I put the lease next to the incident

406
00:19:37,359 --> 00:19:39,920
files and stared at its brittle signature. Their original owners

407
00:19:39,920 --> 00:19:43,720
penmanship celed in a sharp, precise loop, almost stylish. It

408
00:19:43,799 --> 00:19:46,240
hurt to concentrate, but I forced myself to compare the

409
00:19:46,279 --> 00:19:49,079
name to anything else in the files. Though most reports

410
00:19:49,079 --> 00:19:51,440
were unsigned or initials, several bore the same looping ar

411
00:19:51,519 --> 00:19:54,839
alt rolandell in the oldest property records with the state

412
00:19:54,920 --> 00:19:58,440
pending tide below. I made a list lost keys, badge

413
00:19:58,440 --> 00:20:01,599
for a long gunn employee, recent coffee mug, strange emails,

414
00:20:01,640 --> 00:20:05,920
looping camera fees, original owners, and broken leaves. Seen individually,

415
00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:09,440
any one was just oversight. Taken together, they outlined someone

416
00:20:09,440 --> 00:20:13,279
deliberately structuring confusion. The word preserve floated up from memory

417
00:20:13,279 --> 00:20:16,759
Peatch's remark about old own as reluctant to let go uneasy.

418
00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:19,240
I logged a formal note in the building system, explaining

419
00:20:19,279 --> 00:20:21,839
I'd recovered suspicious documents and believed there was active and

420
00:20:21,960 --> 00:20:25,200
authorized use of the fifth floor closet. The online form

421
00:20:25,240 --> 00:20:29,039
lagged as I completed it. On submission, flickered error, messaged,

422
00:20:29,200 --> 00:20:32,039
then posted too identical tickets time stamp to fifty seven

423
00:20:32,079 --> 00:20:34,359
a m minutes apart, both bearing my name but with

424
00:20:34,440 --> 00:20:37,039
my last initials. What once are on once pe a

425
00:20:37,039 --> 00:20:39,839
coincidence or a mock and patch of clerical nonsense, I thought,

426
00:20:40,039 --> 00:20:42,599
But it landed like a taunt. A low click echoed

427
00:20:42,599 --> 00:20:44,920
from the console, one of the lope book dividos, jostled

428
00:20:44,960 --> 00:20:47,480
by a breeze or perhaps settling on its own, I

429
00:20:47,559 --> 00:20:49,359
tucked the files into the safe front of the desk.

430
00:20:50,119 --> 00:20:52,480
My hands were sweating, and I realized I was counting

431
00:20:52,480 --> 00:20:55,200
down the seconds to three seven. Without meaning to, I

432
00:20:55,319 --> 00:20:58,079
decided abruptly to stay off the fifth floor for a while,

433
00:20:58,160 --> 00:21:00,559
to see if the tension faded or crested without my provocation.

434
00:21:01,119 --> 00:21:04,440
The nights that followed blurred, heavy, and jittered. I performed

435
00:21:04,519 --> 00:21:07,160
rants with rigid decision, stopping at every office door on

436
00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:10,279
lower floors, avoiding eye contact with security cameras, whose blinking

437
00:21:10,319 --> 00:21:12,839
red lights now a peergd is mental, not merely functional.

438
00:21:13,440 --> 00:21:15,839
The building itself felt hyper alert, as if aware of

439
00:21:15,839 --> 00:21:18,680
my evasion. Still, the fifth floor pulled at the edges

440
00:21:18,720 --> 00:21:21,720
of my mind. When I passed its gray elevator call button,

441
00:21:21,759 --> 00:21:25,279
my pond tingled and my footsteps inevitably slowed. At exactly

442
00:21:25,279 --> 00:21:27,519
two fifty nine one night, the elevator chimed, though I

443
00:21:27,519 --> 00:21:30,119
hadn't pushed the button. I watched the doors shutter open

444
00:21:30,160 --> 00:21:32,200
to reveal only my own pale, startled face in the

445
00:21:32,240 --> 00:21:34,680
mirrored room, nothing behind me but the dull industrial light.

446
00:21:35,319 --> 00:21:38,519
Lewis grew more reserved. A few times I caught him

447
00:21:38,519 --> 00:21:41,400
tracking my position on his evening runs. His mop paused,

448
00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:44,039
his eyes quick and reflexive. When I asked if he

449
00:21:44,079 --> 00:21:46,359
ever saw anyone around the fifth floor late, he shook

450
00:21:46,400 --> 00:21:48,960
his head rapidly, then was just above a hiss. He

451
00:21:49,079 --> 00:21:51,680
go careful, people vanish up there. Sometimes they just don't

452
00:21:51,720 --> 00:21:54,000
turn up the next shift. He tapped a finger on

453
00:21:54,119 --> 00:21:57,559
his wrist clock never moves right. Its stays until they come.

454
00:21:58,119 --> 00:22:01,880
Rather than reassure, his words buckled my determination further. The

455
00:22:01,920 --> 00:22:04,519
power chill of the building's upper air vents felt like admonition.

456
00:22:05,119 --> 00:22:07,160
On the third day after the odd duplication of my

457
00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:10,759
online report, Janet herself arrived at dusk. She moved through

458
00:22:10,759 --> 00:22:13,759
her routine badge in paper lock book, a few tired

459
00:22:13,839 --> 00:22:17,440
slow stats along the security desk. She asked oftenately if

460
00:22:17,440 --> 00:22:20,160
I deleted any mistake in entries, and when I denied it,

461
00:22:20,240 --> 00:22:22,640
she just nodded, her face unreadable behind a mask of

462
00:22:22,680 --> 00:22:27,079
managerial efficiency. She pointedly avoided discussing the fifth floor, brushing

463
00:22:27,079 --> 00:22:30,720
aside my mention of closet keys just focus on occupancy.

464
00:22:30,880 --> 00:22:33,880
If anyone comes and after business errors, walk them out,

465
00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:36,720
lock their idea. Move on. Storage upstairs is only for

466
00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:40,279
scheduled reckors, drop offs. Let's not get creative. Her presence,

467
00:22:40,319 --> 00:22:43,680
instead of reassuring me, lent way to every suspicion. She

468
00:22:43,759 --> 00:22:46,319
spent a long time scribbling in the incident book, pausing

469
00:22:46,319 --> 00:22:48,680
only to ask, have you been in the server closet lately?

470
00:22:48,759 --> 00:22:51,799
Don't bother, It's not our responsibility. When she left, she

471
00:22:51,880 --> 00:22:53,720
ducked into a new boat with a harried look, clutching

472
00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:56,519
a Ford labeled internal audit. I pushed through the rest

473
00:22:56,519 --> 00:22:59,400
of that shift with a nod growing resolve. The original

474
00:22:59,400 --> 00:23:02,640
owner's lease gnawed at me. Why keep a legal fiction alive?

475
00:23:03,279 --> 00:23:05,759
Why not clear out the property and start over, unless

476
00:23:05,759 --> 00:23:07,680
someone had a use for the dead space, someone who

477
00:23:07,680 --> 00:23:11,119
never officially left. When I finally laid down the next afternoon,

478
00:23:11,319 --> 00:23:13,680
my sleep broke with odd visions halways that nodded, and

479
00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:16,160
split doors with no handles of conference table set for

480
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:19,839
a meeting that never started. The ticking pervaded. I woke,

481
00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:22,119
gasping with the shape of the cock face stamped an

482
00:23:22,119 --> 00:23:25,720
awfr image on my closed eyelids. At the next scheduled circuit.

483
00:23:25,799 --> 00:23:28,359
I was overtaken by a strange sense of determination, as

484
00:23:28,359 --> 00:23:31,400
if gathering clues within these rituals justified my presence at all.

485
00:23:31,960 --> 00:23:34,720
I wonderily just past one, entering the fifth floor, knot

486
00:23:34,759 --> 00:23:36,960
by the main elevator, but taking the rarely used silver

487
00:23:37,039 --> 00:23:40,559
stairs behind the vending alcove. The stairwall was narrower, choked

488
00:23:40,559 --> 00:23:42,799
with coiled wiring and the faint scent of long dead

489
00:23:42,839 --> 00:23:46,279
concrete dust. A pair of forgotten hard hats hung on hooks,

490
00:23:46,279 --> 00:23:49,319
shrouded in grayish gaus. Mid flight, I paused to catch

491
00:23:49,319 --> 00:23:52,039
my breath, not from exertion but tension. The door at

492
00:23:52,079 --> 00:23:54,680
the top, marked five f north Utility, resisted my key

493
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:57,920
at first, then relented with a cough of rast. Inside

494
00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:00,240
I stood surrounded not by halways, but by shows fellow

495
00:24:00,240 --> 00:24:03,200
shall access panels, a maintenance cot with dried paint flakes,

496
00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:06,680
labels cut on ancient fuse boxes. I ran my fingers

497
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:09,640
along the wall, noting hairlines, seams, tracing out shapes, a

498
00:24:09,640 --> 00:24:12,880
mirror of rooms beyond, suggesting false dolls or block corridors.

499
00:24:13,640 --> 00:24:17,359
I pressed just lightly on several of the scenes. Nothing

500
00:24:17,400 --> 00:24:20,519
moved until in the corner behind a stack of insulation rolls,

501
00:24:20,559 --> 00:24:23,599
A small panel click loose. I levoed it up gingerly

502
00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:26,079
and found a dark coll space, fibers muffling the air

503
00:24:26,119 --> 00:24:27,799
of rat that had not been locked or monitored by

504
00:24:27,799 --> 00:24:30,960
any scan. A voice rattled the quiet Peete, his boots

505
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:34,079
recognizable on the tiles, had entered behind me. He poked

506
00:24:34,079 --> 00:24:36,720
his head in shouted over his shoulder, what's keeping you

507
00:24:36,799 --> 00:24:40,079
these days? Lights out? Again? I strattened up, hastily, closing

508
00:24:40,079 --> 00:24:44,240
the panel. Nothing broken, I said, carefully, just curious about

509
00:24:44,240 --> 00:24:46,240
the blueprints. Figured there had to be a secondary run

510
00:24:46,279 --> 00:24:50,000
for power. He frowned. Don't push it. These spaces armed

511
00:24:50,039 --> 00:24:53,359
for us men, for electricians, repairs only. He hesitated, then

512
00:24:53,400 --> 00:24:56,599
lowered his voice. Keep at tad A crawl, friend, they say,

513
00:24:56,599 --> 00:24:58,960
the old man built loops in here, trapped doors, one

514
00:24:58,960 --> 00:25:01,119
way corridors. Let see get lost too easy. Best not

515
00:25:01,160 --> 00:25:03,559
to test him. His words twined with something more than

516
00:25:03,559 --> 00:25:08,000
here says something possibly lived. I nodded, made mixcises and descended.

517
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:11,160
Pete watched me go. I sidelong and hard to read,

518
00:25:11,279 --> 00:25:13,559
as a waying whether to rescind some half offered warning

519
00:25:14,079 --> 00:25:16,000
in the lawby I checked the front for any after

520
00:25:16,039 --> 00:25:18,599
io's deliver is none, then use the secure computer to

521
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:21,720
google old article's mitone commercial for floor dispute roll in

522
00:25:21,799 --> 00:25:25,680
lumper to state sudden death mysterious lease. Archive scans yielded

523
00:25:25,720 --> 00:25:29,440
a photo a narrow faced bespectacle man rolland Lempert himself

524
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:32,039
standing before the very building where I now sat, flanked

525
00:25:32,039 --> 00:25:35,200
by a modest crowd of city officials. The article, almost

526
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:38,799
gleeful in its tone, stated sudden passing on premises, delayed transition,

527
00:25:38,880 --> 00:25:43,559
family contest ongoing, least technicalities unresolved. I scrolled further, noting

528
00:25:43,559 --> 00:25:46,319
that all coverage ended abruptly six months after Lampert's death,

529
00:25:46,319 --> 00:25:49,240
with a paragraph stating simply the estate was legally resolved.

530
00:25:49,400 --> 00:25:53,480
Floor five transferred into trust details confidential. I pressed on,

531
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:57,640
looking for potential and resolve business discreet mentions, intendant needslet

532
00:25:57,680 --> 00:25:59,960
as the sort of gossip filler written for insurance clerks.

533
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:04,279
Detailed missing paperwork, lost axis cards, tenants reporting odious late

534
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:07,440
night lights that couldn't be explained by official bookings. One

535
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:10,079
from four years ago included a photo of a conference

536
00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:12,799
room behind the glass a blowd so wet impossible to identify,

537
00:26:12,920 --> 00:26:15,319
but somehow conveying a sense of distance and immor focus.

538
00:26:16,039 --> 00:26:19,759
The caption netshift shot who's pulling overtime? The article below

539
00:26:19,759 --> 00:26:23,480
equipped we've all left something behind. That phrase stuck with

540
00:26:23,559 --> 00:26:26,599
me well into the next shift. I checked the reports again,

541
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:30,240
mapping every cryptic three seven against the schedule of maintenance calls,

542
00:26:30,319 --> 00:26:35,079
elevator logs, staff absences. Like a cautious investigator, I annotated

543
00:26:35,119 --> 00:26:38,039
my own spiral notebook, one column for tangible oddities and

544
00:26:38,079 --> 00:26:40,359
one for namesaw al at the top my own name

545
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:43,759
uneasily several rows below. Lewis avoided me now, even when

546
00:26:43,799 --> 00:26:46,839
we overlapped. In the cafeteria, the cleaning caddy had been

547
00:26:46,839 --> 00:26:49,200
replaced by about shoulder bag, and he kept one hand

548
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:52,359
in his pocket, fingering keys out of sight. One night

549
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:54,480
I pushed a cup of soupy vending coffee toward him

550
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:57,440
at the edge of the main lobby. Can you tell me, really,

551
00:26:57,680 --> 00:27:00,200
why no one wants the fifth floor? He stay, roared

552
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:03,559
into his mug. One night, he said, I cleaned friars.

553
00:27:03,559 --> 00:27:06,039
Her voices like radios from inside the vents came out

554
00:27:06,039 --> 00:27:09,319
cock stuck floor cold, elevator doors kept opening, always empty,

555
00:27:09,359 --> 00:27:12,559
no footsteps, just waiting, decided I work only where people belong.

556
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:15,599
You should too. His honesty came at a price, discomfort

557
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:18,160
so acute I nearly apologized, but I thanked him instead

558
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:20,200
and watched as he faded back down the lower hall

559
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:24,000
mop squealing a quick protest behind the next few shifts

560
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:26,759
passed in the same freighted limbo routine, making me more jumpy,

561
00:27:26,839 --> 00:27:29,720
not less. At moments I would catch movement in a

562
00:27:29,799 --> 00:27:32,359
kongero's flick of shadow in the glass cabinets, a computer

563
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:34,960
screen flickering awake on its own, always lickoing the pattern.

564
00:27:35,039 --> 00:27:38,839
Fifth floor. After midnight three seven a m. Something shifted

565
00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:41,519
the night before I reached my breaking point. I came

566
00:27:41,559 --> 00:27:43,960
in early tension, gnawing at sleep, and double locked the

567
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:47,640
security desk. Every log showed usual inches except for one

568
00:27:47,640 --> 00:27:50,519
line near the bottom pending incident. Fifth floor keys missing,

569
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:53,880
notify r L the documents footter trigged me version saved.

570
00:27:53,880 --> 00:27:57,279
At three seven a m. I checked the clock. It

571
00:27:57,359 --> 00:28:00,480
was just past one. Compelled, I made a cuckle choice

572
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:03,240
to take my next round earlier and more deliberately. I

573
00:28:03,319 --> 00:28:05,960
radioed in all clear, picked three different master keys, and

574
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:08,200
took the stairs, hugging their wall, trying to blend my

575
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:10,240
breathing with the rumble of machinery from the generator in

576
00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:13,240
the abasement below the fifth four. At this time no

577
00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:16,079
longer surprised me with its chill. It wrapped its quiet

578
00:28:16,079 --> 00:28:19,200
about me, like a smothering quolt. Not ticking from the closet.

579
00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:21,920
The hallway was perfectly still, But as I leaned in

580
00:28:21,920 --> 00:28:23,720
to check the supply door, I heard a now, the

581
00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:26,880
sound soft, almost a whisper, A single word so stretched

582
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:28,640
it was hard to pass, as if the floor it

583
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:31,200
self exhaled a name. When I pressed my ear to

584
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:34,200
the white painted wood, nothing followed, only the faint pressure

585
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:38,000
from behind. The closet's lock, when tested, was stubborn, as

586
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:40,960
though freshly changed. I forced it to metal screeping, and

587
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:43,359
was greeted not by the familiar pile of insidant reports,

588
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:45,680
but by a single envelope sailed with an ink mark.

589
00:28:46,359 --> 00:28:48,720
It was heavy in my palm. I pocketed it and

590
00:28:48,799 --> 00:28:51,720
hurried back out, my pulse tremory in my chest. At

591
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:54,720
the elevator, I paused, turning the envelope over. It was

592
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:58,119
addressed to night Watch for immediate entry. Only inside were

593
00:28:58,160 --> 00:29:00,759
two things, A rudimentary map of the fifth floor, showing

594
00:29:00,799 --> 00:29:03,319
not rooms, but a hidden corridor looping at the building's core,

595
00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:05,519
and a slip of paper reading simply, if you see

596
00:29:05,559 --> 00:29:08,119
our alp, do not follow. Wait until three seven, then

597
00:29:08,160 --> 00:29:13,799
lock both doors, no signature, no explanation. At two fifty eight, trembling,

598
00:29:13,839 --> 00:29:15,759
I let the elevator ferry meat to the ground floor,

599
00:29:15,839 --> 00:29:18,440
with the lobby windows tinged blue gray with city reflections,

600
00:29:18,680 --> 00:29:20,680
and early birds from the day's staff shuffled in with

601
00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:23,759
sullen resignation. I locked the incident reports in the me

602
00:29:23,759 --> 00:29:26,519
indesk safe and left the envelope inside, afraid to carry

603
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:29,599
it any further. The next shift, I made my decision.

604
00:29:30,119 --> 00:29:32,640
I would enter the corridor at three seven, radio silent,

605
00:29:32,759 --> 00:29:36,480
leaving the main lights off. No incident, no action, just

606
00:29:36,559 --> 00:29:40,880
presence observation. My ritual had found its hour, but the building,

607
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:43,559
it seemed, was already a step ahead, and whatever weighted

608
00:29:43,559 --> 00:29:45,759
behind the leisure of routine was ready at last to

609
00:29:45,759 --> 00:29:48,920
close the distance. I arrived from my next shit sleepless,

610
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:52,200
the well outside grainy and unfocussed, aluminal haze caught between

611
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:55,240
dusk and dawn, blinking up at the building's harsh angles.

612
00:29:55,319 --> 00:29:57,000
I thought about the map burning a crease in my

613
00:29:57,039 --> 00:29:59,880
back pocket to sketch labeled with no street directions, just

614
00:30:00,039 --> 00:30:01,960
a wart black loop half way into the guts of

615
00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:05,160
the fifth floor, and a single imperative wighed until three seven.

616
00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:08,400
The lobby's glass was still smeared with rain from the afternoon.

617
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:11,440
A single thorescent over the entrance stuttered and died as

618
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:15,400
I passed underneath, scattering phosphorescence across the marble. The security

619
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:17,960
desk fortressed like an empty bristle, with paper reminders and

620
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:20,880
half scribbled notes left by day's staff. I set my

621
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:23,319
badge on the scanner and hesitated, breathing the dark ad

622
00:30:23,359 --> 00:30:26,519
deep into my chest, trying to find calm. Louis was there,

623
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:29,920
coiling head funds into his jacket pocket with nervous, practiced hands.

624
00:30:30,559 --> 00:30:32,519
He glanced toward me and away, at a signal of

625
00:30:32,559 --> 00:30:35,839
both warning and resignation. We exchanged a mute look across

626
00:30:35,839 --> 00:30:38,000
the tile, his eyes shiny as if he were measuring whadow.

627
00:30:38,039 --> 00:30:41,680
To speak at all, anything to night, I ventured, almost

628
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:45,759
a whisper. My voice sounded alien. He shook his head rapidly,

629
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:49,359
not a four or five stay clear. His tone was final.

630
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:52,000
I wondered if, like me, he felt the hooks of

631
00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:55,000
the building drawing tighter, collecting debts no one remembered, and curring,

632
00:30:55,519 --> 00:30:57,720
I made my rounds, checking the first through fourth fours

633
00:30:57,720 --> 00:31:01,039
with a rigor close to compulsion badge tapsickers off silent doorways,

634
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:04,240
the stapped incident logs from the days before, felt radioact

635
00:31:04,240 --> 00:31:06,279
of a puzzle inside a trap evidenced no one above

636
00:31:06,319 --> 00:31:09,119
my pay grade was ever Once made clear, I checked

637
00:31:09,119 --> 00:31:10,960
each stair well, made note of a sticky window seal

638
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:13,400
on the third floor, and lingered by the back frayed elevator,

639
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:15,559
where an old stack of reading service entree only had

640
00:31:15,559 --> 00:31:18,759
faded near to eligibility. By one thirty, the building had

641
00:31:18,759 --> 00:31:21,559
settled into its true overnight hush, and my tension wound

642
00:31:21,559 --> 00:31:24,720
itself into my spine, twitching an alert. When finally I

643
00:31:24,759 --> 00:31:27,480
approached the fifth floor, by passing the main elevators in

644
00:31:27,519 --> 00:31:29,880
favor of the service stairs, I felt my pulstick in

645
00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:32,440
the tamber of a countdown. The walls was pinched and

646
00:31:32,519 --> 00:31:34,480
sound as except for the rising squeal of my shoes

647
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:37,480
against the rubber tread. The corridor on five was different

648
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:41,039
to night light tuxasity bled from the overhead fixtures tracing

649
00:31:41,079 --> 00:31:44,599
everything with the nectaric edge. The air curiously stagnant, held

650
00:31:44,599 --> 00:31:47,160
a flavor of burnt electrics and something else, faintless wheat,

651
00:31:47,200 --> 00:31:49,880
disturbingly out of place, like old pipe to baccle clinging

652
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:53,440
to heavy drapes. I moved softly, pointedly, not glancing into

653
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:56,000
the supply closet, even as its door gaped diffraction. That

654
00:31:56,119 --> 00:31:59,599
haiden seemed just visible in the linoleum's geometric repeat. There

655
00:31:59,599 --> 00:32:02,599
were other changes, each minute, but cumulative. The kitchenett's work

656
00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:05,039
chair now angled and fightingly toward the hullway to gloss

657
00:32:05,079 --> 00:32:07,519
left drying on the counter, the faintest days of condensation

658
00:32:07,559 --> 00:32:10,400
still fog in its room. On one wall, a message

659
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:13,400
golden cleaning marker of reed. Checked doors twice, not once.

660
00:32:14,079 --> 00:32:18,039
I touched the handle and glanced behind no one. Memory

661
00:32:18,039 --> 00:32:21,319
and foreboding tangled in the space behind my sternum to night.

662
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:24,279
I decided I would not run. I would follow the map,

663
00:32:24,279 --> 00:32:26,720
a crude lines and narrows thing, but enough to suggest

664
00:32:26,759 --> 00:32:29,799
away inside. If the notes were accurate, I could enter

665
00:32:29,799 --> 00:32:32,200
the inner corridor for a maintenance hatch behind the kitchenet's

666
00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:35,160
mop closet. I slipped into the alcove, hot hammering and

667
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:38,200
crouched low. The hatch was there exactly as drawn, a

668
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:40,519
flat panel with no label, pain thickening its edge from

669
00:32:40,559 --> 00:32:43,359
decades of overcoats. I worked the edge with the tip

670
00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:45,839
of my master key, prying gently, resisting the jitter in

671
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:48,920
my hands. The panel gave, and the cold, grassy breath

672
00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:50,799
of stabboring cold space there rose up to meet me.

673
00:32:51,319 --> 00:32:54,119
The gap admitted me, shoulder first, scraping at my jacket.

674
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:57,440
Beyond a shallow passage caled left, then right, then deepened

675
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:00,240
into darkness. I had brought the high beam flat slight

676
00:33:00,279 --> 00:33:02,440
Pete had recommended, of all power, none of the subtle

677
00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:06,359
red safety settings. Light flared forward, swallowing motes of ancient

678
00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:09,440
dust in his cone. I crawled, lifting my knees carefully

679
00:33:09,440 --> 00:33:11,839
to avoid slap in the conduit lines that I squirming

680
00:33:11,839 --> 00:33:14,720
through insulation lint that clung like soft wire. The hush

681
00:33:14,759 --> 00:33:16,839
in here felt clitical, showing of all sound but my

682
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:18,839
own breath. And yet a few paces in A heard

683
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:22,319
a whisper, low and undulating, not words, but the associated

684
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:25,559
rhythm of human speech. Someone's recorded monolog bleeding through the

685
00:33:25,599 --> 00:33:28,680
air conditioning shafts. I couldn't tell if it was truly

686
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:31,200
external or only a function of nerves. The building slow

687
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:34,200
pulse tickling my ears. The crawl space splintered, as a

688
00:33:34,279 --> 00:33:37,640
map suggested. I found a hatch to the right, agent reeled,

689
00:33:37,720 --> 00:33:40,319
fitted with a hook latch, A press it, inching the

690
00:33:40,319 --> 00:33:42,839
door opened teeth grit to keep from coughing. The far

691
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:46,079
side was warm, unexpectedly so, and I spilled gently forward

692
00:33:46,079 --> 00:33:48,079
into avoid, lined with concrete and the bruised brown of

693
00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:51,559
smashed blaster patches. Now upright, the tunnel widened just enough

694
00:33:51,599 --> 00:33:54,039
for me to stand and turn. The map adjusted for

695
00:33:54,079 --> 00:33:56,519
the shift. At the next fork, a narrow corridor would

696
00:33:56,519 --> 00:33:59,279
curl around to the court chamber. There, according to the

697
00:33:59,319 --> 00:34:01,640
half smudged draw, with the true heart of the fifth

698
00:34:01,640 --> 00:34:04,759
floor the loop, nobody acknowledged the room, nobody ever included

699
00:34:04,799 --> 00:34:07,319
on a tour. The scent of smoke and old sweat

700
00:34:07,319 --> 00:34:10,760
thickened My flasklight beginning to twitch in my hand, caught

701
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:13,199
the glint of scattered pipper over ports, blueprints tacked to

702
00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:16,760
the walls, yellowing photographs pinned at odd angles. I saw

703
00:34:16,880 --> 00:34:20,039
faces I didn't recognize, some invaded holidays, witers, some in

704
00:34:20,079 --> 00:34:22,559
the stiff suits of the nineteen eighties, name tags flapping

705
00:34:22,559 --> 00:34:26,039
crookedly at their lapels. Photos of rooms I now recognized,

706
00:34:26,039 --> 00:34:28,480
to the kitchenette, the western conference room, staged when their

707
00:34:28,519 --> 00:34:31,039
furniture was new and plush, their walls unsully by hid

708
00:34:31,159 --> 00:34:34,199
years of vacancy. Time was out of order. Here, history

709
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:36,400
compacted to a paper box museum in an airless ring,

710
00:34:36,960 --> 00:34:39,920
a esculamed ahead, not contemporary, but a classic oake monster

711
00:34:40,199 --> 00:34:42,800
battered at the corners, every inch of its top colonized

712
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:46,320
by slips, manila folders, and most unnervingly o' clock seven

713
00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:48,639
or eight, each duck its freet event the minute, hands

714
00:34:48,719 --> 00:34:52,480
jittering spasmodically at attempted movement. Behind this fortress of memory,

715
00:34:52,679 --> 00:34:55,639
someone moved. A man hunched over the desk's far side,

716
00:34:55,679 --> 00:35:00,480
shoulder sharpestaprincissus, beneath a thin handstith jacket, even under his

717
00:35:00,559 --> 00:35:02,960
pallor was jarring milk skin. Despite the sweat on his brow.

718
00:35:03,559 --> 00:35:07,039
He muttered to himself, shuffling paperwork, his hands flickering over clocks,

719
00:35:07,280 --> 00:35:11,119
nudging their crowns, reordering them endlessly. Pipe smoke rose from

720
00:35:11,119 --> 00:35:14,079
a chip bowl on the desk, gone cold. Excuse me,

721
00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:18,280
I managed, it was barely more than a croak. He

722
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:21,280
froze for a fractional second, then continued sorting slips. Not

723
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:24,599
looking up. You're not supposed, he rasped, and I heard

724
00:35:24,639 --> 00:35:27,840
the intent fracture in his gaidance. Not supposed to come here,

725
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:29,800
You'll break it. Can't letty can't let Don't you see

726
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:32,119
what they do? They move the chairs, They irritate the calendars.

727
00:35:32,159 --> 00:35:35,559
People think everything is random. I'm just on security, I said,

728
00:35:35,639 --> 00:35:37,760
careful to keep my hands in plain sight. But things

729
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:40,079
keep happening things they Shouldn't you know about the clock,

730
00:35:40,239 --> 00:35:43,079
the lock closet, the reports. He shot me a look,

731
00:35:43,119 --> 00:35:45,960
then quick burd bright fronds it. The whites of his

732
00:35:46,039 --> 00:35:48,760
eyes bulged around, iris as yellowed at the room. The

733
00:35:48,840 --> 00:35:51,159
reports are for the system, he said, and the system

734
00:35:51,199 --> 00:35:53,440
forgets what it needs every night. So I write it down,

735
00:35:53,559 --> 00:35:56,039
I preserve I fix it. No one from management as

736
00:35:56,079 --> 00:35:58,920
was underneath any more, not since I stopped meeting their deadlines.

737
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:03,280
I swall feeling oddly small? Are you Roland Lambert? He

738
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:05,440
winced at his own name, a trembling line of pain

739
00:36:05,480 --> 00:36:08,079
across his cheeks. I'm here because I have to be

740
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:10,480
heart stopped poised to finish, but they never filed the

741
00:36:10,519 --> 00:36:13,519
proper release. Lease holds until memory equals records. If I forget,

742
00:36:13,559 --> 00:36:17,280
the floor falls away, that gets replaced, retires itself. His

743
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:20,559
hand last out, flipping a stack of incident reports. Oh,

744
00:36:20,599 --> 00:36:22,400
they lock it up and call the mistakes clerical. But

745
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:23,920
I can show you. I can show you how to

746
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:26,800
keep it what it is. He seemed both lucid and not,

747
00:36:27,039 --> 00:36:30,639
each phrase veering off into troutologies and frightened parentheses. I

748
00:36:30,679 --> 00:36:32,920
saw the compulsion in how he kept reordering the stack,

749
00:36:33,159 --> 00:36:35,559
one page up, one down, one for the gap, and

750
00:36:35,599 --> 00:36:38,440
one for the air. The timeless moment of three seven

751
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:40,440
lived in his hands, every tick and shuffle, pling the

752
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:44,119
building tighter around. Our double presents a circle mapping a

753
00:36:44,159 --> 00:36:47,760
cautious rectangle in the room seeking exits, passages narrowed at

754
00:36:47,800 --> 00:36:50,280
odd intervals. Threads of wiring droop from the ceiling, where

755
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:54,079
mice hadnored insulation into improbable feathers. The walls were a patch,

756
00:36:54,159 --> 00:36:57,440
were half blueprints, half polaroids, labeled nineteen ninety one, furnbac

757
00:36:57,519 --> 00:37:00,880
its two thousand seven and unnervingly three seven. Every night

758
00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:03,639
in one the reflection of an elevatorbor er shape. I

759
00:37:03,679 --> 00:37:06,119
now saw as thempet himself hunched eternally. At the edge

760
00:37:06,119 --> 00:37:08,719
of the next minute, he jowed a pencil at a map.

761
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:11,320
I kept the corridor so the tenants would last. But

762
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:13,920
they started changing the doors, swapping the glass hardened now

763
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:16,320
to reset. Files move by themselves. If I don't catch them,

764
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:18,639
they bring in new people. No memory, only process. I

765
00:37:18,679 --> 00:37:21,159
have to keep the clock still, or else he lifted

766
00:37:21,159 --> 00:37:24,480
a clock hands arrested at that impossible minute, or else

767
00:37:24,559 --> 00:37:27,199
this place falls and I go with it. Who else

768
00:37:27,239 --> 00:37:30,599
knows you're here? I pressed. Part of me wanted him

769
00:37:30,599 --> 00:37:33,719
to scream, to break the spell by pure violence. Instead,

770
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:35,840
he wipes wet from his neck and turned the conversation

771
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:39,519
back on itself. Management pretends as long as the rent flows,

772
00:37:39,639 --> 00:37:41,800
so be it. They see the came errors and shrug.

773
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:44,320
The cleaning men they know to keep away. Sometimes they

774
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:47,159
help without seeing it. Sometimes they get caught. I pictured

775
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:51,119
Lewis's shaking hands, Pete's visions, the reports. I said, they

776
00:37:51,199 --> 00:37:55,039
mentioned my name. The system repeats my rounds. Why he stared,

777
00:37:55,719 --> 00:37:58,320
Because you check, you observe. The building likes to be watched.

778
00:37:58,360 --> 00:38:00,960
Documentation keeps it alive, but only if you mean it.

779
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:03,199
They didn't notice, never did. But your notes, they are new.

780
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:07,480
They threatened to finalize things. I tried then to step backward,

781
00:38:07,519 --> 00:38:09,039
but the door through which I had entered the chamber

782
00:38:09,119 --> 00:38:11,960
was gone, seamless concrete now, no cross base outline at all.

783
00:38:12,639 --> 00:38:15,039
My heart jabbed up near my throat. I looked for

784
00:38:15,079 --> 00:38:17,920
another exit, noting how the walls seemed to flex and shimmer,

785
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:19,960
as if the distance is between turns altered in my

786
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:25,280
peripheral vision, footsteps above not just mine. Sudden panic bit me.

787
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:27,719
I have to go, I said, with the surge of

788
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:30,840
misplaced bravado. You can't stay here, You can't. This is

789
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:34,159
in your building anymore. He stood, rigid is a string

790
00:38:34,199 --> 00:38:37,239
pole tight? If I leave, it falls. The lease holds

791
00:38:37,280 --> 00:38:39,400
the building to gaze. If I'm gunn, I've seen pieces

792
00:38:39,400 --> 00:38:42,119
of it disappear already, call boxes on six stair doors,

793
00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:44,480
half the ceiling tiles gone over night. If I finish,

794
00:38:44,480 --> 00:38:46,440
if you forced, the haunted ends not just for me,

795
00:38:46,559 --> 00:38:49,039
for everything in here, every record, even the new ones.

796
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:51,960
A series of sharp metallic clicks filled the air above,

797
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:54,880
A ripple through the air vents, possibly the elevator safety relays,

798
00:38:55,119 --> 00:38:58,639
or perhaps something else. Warning drawn tight on the desk,

799
00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:01,199
one of the wall clocks stutters, bucking back and forth,

800
00:39:01,239 --> 00:39:05,119
then stopped. The second hand juttered once exactly at three seven.

801
00:39:05,679 --> 00:39:09,639
Limpert lunch, then wild eyed voice warped past civility. No,

802
00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:13,280
not yet, you can't, You mustn't, he growled from my wrist.

803
00:39:13,480 --> 00:39:16,199
Icy and desperate for a moment, I saw the actual

804
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:18,760
ruin of him in. Not a ghost, not any rational prisons,

805
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:21,239
but a man whose entire reality had crackton spread out

806
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:23,800
through a building that refused to release him. He tried

807
00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:26,159
to push me aside, forcing a lever under the desk.

808
00:39:26,239 --> 00:39:28,480
The wall beside a shuddered, and a panel jerked half open.

809
00:39:29,039 --> 00:39:30,960
From the mouth of that hidden corridor came a draft,

810
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:34,400
shimmering with the scent of scalded metal. Alarm Cluckston's moaned,

811
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:36,440
sudden and choking in the distance. Some one else had

812
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:38,519
forced entry above, or may be been drawn into the

813
00:39:38,519 --> 00:39:40,400
circuit of this sire by the pressure of so much

814
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:43,199
and accounted for memory. I broke from limp at grip

815
00:39:43,239 --> 00:39:45,800
and stumbled toward the panel, flashlight flickering as if caught

816
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:49,800
in magnetic interference. He fumbled at the scattered piles, desperately

817
00:39:49,840 --> 00:39:53,239
restacking them, paper slicing his skin without his noticing. If

818
00:39:53,239 --> 00:39:55,360
you publish, he shrilled, if you lock it down, the

819
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:58,079
watchers come. They're the raise every line, even you. But

820
00:39:58,199 --> 00:40:00,559
the words trailed off resents la. Thus, in a click

821
00:40:00,559 --> 00:40:03,960
of approaching footsteps along the surface ladder, maintenance or security

822
00:40:04,119 --> 00:40:07,480
or perhaps management come to sanitize the situation. I pressed

823
00:40:07,519 --> 00:40:09,400
into the opening. The whine of the alarms close the

824
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:12,960
pane behind lempered collapse onto the desk, his arms upon

825
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:15,119
around the clocks, as if clutching the minutes his core.

826
00:40:15,679 --> 00:40:18,280
Blue white light flickered across his gaunt face. Shadows strode

827
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:20,440
by the passenge of police or AMT flashlights out in

828
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:22,960
the main holes, the fabric of reality stuttering in rhythm

829
00:40:23,039 --> 00:40:25,639
with each sweep. I shoved the panel back behind me,

830
00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:28,800
sprinting blind through the subcarridor barely keeping my head above

831
00:40:28,800 --> 00:40:32,000
the descending tide of panic. At a tea junction, another

832
00:40:32,039 --> 00:40:35,880
panel yawned wide. I levered myself through boots, squatching into

833
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:38,480
a utility storage base filled with long boxes labeled with

834
00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:41,800
the company names Lawn, since erased from directories, bove a

835
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:44,679
newly cut hole and sheet ricolette and wavering light. Pete's

836
00:40:44,719 --> 00:40:48,079
voice shouted down and moved. Now sunken and wild, he

837
00:40:48,159 --> 00:40:50,960
sounded not all like the wary handiman from before. I

838
00:40:51,039 --> 00:40:53,760
clambered up, emerging into a half little electrical room ringed

839
00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:55,840
by snake and cables, in the corpse of a ceiling fan.

840
00:40:56,440 --> 00:40:58,599
Pete yanked me to my feet, grit so tight a hurt.

841
00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:02,239
Did you see him? He panted, staring into the shadow below,

842
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:06,079
eyed eye Did I managed? He still down there? He

843
00:41:06,159 --> 00:41:09,519
searched my face, face, pinch and spat. Was afraid of that?

844
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:11,920
All these years I never went that deep. Janet called

845
00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:14,880
the copse, said, alarm with nuts, you all right? He

846
00:41:14,960 --> 00:41:17,360
kept one hand on a folding lock bar, wedged against

847
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:21,679
the only remaining core space VAP. We both listened. Nothing followed,

848
00:41:21,679 --> 00:41:25,639
no clamor, no furious pursuit. Just the persistent were recycled

849
00:41:25,679 --> 00:41:27,679
drone of the building's heart, A pulse sent throughout. They

850
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:30,920
tod pipes and insolation. He glanced at the door behind us.

851
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:32,800
Theem pulled me into the main holly by the sleeve.

852
00:41:33,519 --> 00:41:36,239
Police were already there, two tents, uniforms and one suited

853
00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:39,400
man from operations, all barking questions, neither of us answered.

854
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:41,800
In the swirl, I saw Lewis at the far end

855
00:41:41,840 --> 00:41:44,639
of the corridor, his anxiety hidden beneath the studded blankness.

856
00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:48,079
Arms trembling. They swept the service panels, shined lights into

857
00:41:48,079 --> 00:41:51,000
the hidden chamber. When the officers reached the core loop,

858
00:41:51,039 --> 00:41:53,719
they found only piles of age blueprints, crumbling clocks, and

859
00:41:53,840 --> 00:41:56,960
empty folders. The desk and lemper, if they'd ever been

860
00:41:57,000 --> 00:41:59,320
visible to another's eye, had vanished into the soup of

861
00:41:59,360 --> 00:42:02,519
the fifth floors architecture. I sat in a sagging conference

862
00:42:02,599 --> 00:42:05,199
chair under the cold stare of fluorescent panels, while the

863
00:42:05,199 --> 00:42:08,400
operations manager, du face wary man I'd never met, explained

864
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:10,679
in voice muffled tones, that I should understand the limits

865
00:42:10,679 --> 00:42:13,039
of my role. He flicked through the incidant records I

866
00:42:13,079 --> 00:42:17,280
had compiled, pulling pages out by groups, scanning signatures, archiving others.

867
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:21,719
We'll tidy this, he asserted. Somebody is played at making

868
00:42:21,800 --> 00:42:25,400
coast storers, cleaning error odd readings. Security logs would be corrected.

869
00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:28,480
Pete stood by, stony and silent as the police took

870
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:34,320
perfunctory statements nothing dangerous. They recited the justice quarter false alarm.

871
00:42:34,599 --> 00:42:37,280
I recognized the tone practiced able to dismiss anything not

872
00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:40,679
easily filed. Lewis left without a word, eyes rimmed and read.

873
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:42,960
By the end of my statement, half the files I

874
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:45,719
found were Gondem's place, The manager said, brow fro and

875
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:49,280
over legal note bets. Please refrain from further inquiry. Your

876
00:42:49,280 --> 00:42:51,679
contract will be resolved as of this evening. We'll deliver

877
00:42:51,719 --> 00:42:55,199
pay in particulars by post. Please return your badge sign here.

878
00:42:55,679 --> 00:42:57,719
I drew a slow breath, trying to protest, not about

879
00:42:57,760 --> 00:43:00,840
supernatural claims, but about safety, the falsification of records, the

880
00:43:00,840 --> 00:43:03,199
fat of my name appearing in reports never written by me.

881
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:06,519
The operation's manager leaned in, lowering his voice to a

882
00:43:06,519 --> 00:43:09,840
flat knol. You'll sign this NDA, or you'llgred it. There

883
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:11,440
are more doors in this city than you think, and

884
00:43:11,519 --> 00:43:13,880
most open only one way. Before I left p he

885
00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:16,960
clat me in the back, rough but not unkind. Don't

886
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:20,199
loose sleep, he said, softly placed shoes of people you

887
00:43:20,239 --> 00:43:22,519
did right, not going deeper. Most don't come back out.

888
00:43:23,159 --> 00:43:24,960
He handed me about it, fold at one slip of

889
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:28,320
legal sized paper inside. Keep a copy, even if you

890
00:43:28,360 --> 00:43:31,480
throw it out later. Sometimes record matter. When I stepped

891
00:43:31,519 --> 00:43:33,760
out into the thin blue pre dawn, the building's windows

892
00:43:33,760 --> 00:43:36,840
gave no sign of their contents. The fifth floor from

893
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:39,559
the street was indistinguishable from any out of another warsh

894
00:43:39,559 --> 00:43:41,880
of pale rectangles in the flavor of a different illumination.

895
00:43:42,559 --> 00:43:44,599
My next days passed in a kind of float, swept

896
00:43:44,599 --> 00:43:47,639
by interviews with corporate hr Endless females are going with formulae,

897
00:43:47,679 --> 00:43:51,800
apologies and pointed threats. My security badge was deactivated. Final

898
00:43:51,800 --> 00:43:55,639
deposits end and silence. The NDA sticulated not just silence

899
00:43:55,639 --> 00:43:59,159
on unusual events, but a broader injunction. No public communication knowed,

900
00:43:59,199 --> 00:44:03,239
speculative story telling on social media message boards. The incident,

901
00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:07,000
the paperwork stated, was noise disturbance, No laws incurred. They

902
00:44:07,039 --> 00:44:10,159
couched every phrasing in double negatives, tight as locks. A

903
00:44:10,199 --> 00:44:12,239
week later, out on a rented sofa in a studio

904
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:14,519
apartment across the city, I read through the fold Apete

905
00:44:14,519 --> 00:44:16,920
had given me. It was only the oldest map, the

906
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:19,159
same one night found behind the kitchenetchive, and its edges

907
00:44:19,159 --> 00:44:22,239
felt thinner, more ephemeral than before. I put it in

908
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:25,519
a drawer I never opened. But normalcy, whatever that was,

909
00:44:25,679 --> 00:44:29,280
never returned. I grew hypervigilant, checking my own apartment locks

910
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:32,639
three four times a night whenever I passed office buildings

911
00:44:32,679 --> 00:44:35,480
after midnight. May of civilian observer. Again, I found myself

912
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:37,719
watching for signs. A light on in an empty window,

913
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:40,280
bay alone, elevator descending when none should be called, the

914
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:43,480
flutter of blind's left half drawn even on odd jobs,

915
00:44:43,519 --> 00:44:46,320
lost prevention in a supermarket, attempts stint as a hospital aid.

916
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:49,039
I kept glancing back, half expecting to feel the draft

917
00:44:49,039 --> 00:44:51,960
of old smoke lingering behind the next crash door. Lewis

918
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:56,199
texted me once months after, still uncleaning floor five. Fine since,

919
00:44:56,199 --> 00:44:59,599
but sometimes doors close wrong you okay? I replied, with

920
00:44:59,679 --> 00:45:03,679
vague reassurance, offering neither comfort nor real vulnerability. That was

921
00:45:03,719 --> 00:45:06,320
a coldiff. Something persisted. He locked it up and moved on.

922
00:45:07,079 --> 00:45:09,400
Day by day, items left my life. My copy of

923
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:12,599
the building lease, the penciled incident's lips, the incident photographs

924
00:45:12,599 --> 00:45:15,719
had snuck on to my phone. All seemed to evaporate, storage, dry,

925
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:19,400
failed printed copies, mislaid or soaked by spilled water. I

926
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:22,519
blamed exhaustion or the universe's own in erged to ward clutter.

927
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:26,960
Still something hovered, the world's rhythm resumed for everyone else,

928
00:45:27,079 --> 00:45:29,400
but for me time was always a little off, microwave

929
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:32,239
beeps ringing up six seconds late, while clocks and hallways frozen.

930
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:34,280
Even after a new battery. My own watch were setting

931
00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:37,519
to three seven one power flickered. Once my phone chimed

932
00:45:37,519 --> 00:45:40,400
with a calendar notification I hadn't set to midnight watch rotation.

933
00:45:41,119 --> 00:45:44,440
I flinched, deleted it at night when the shadows stretch,

934
00:45:44,559 --> 00:45:47,000
I heard scraping footsteps overhead, where my building had no

935
00:45:47,039 --> 00:45:50,239
fourth floor. It wasn't until late December, a full season

936
00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:53,440
after being cut loose, that the final artifact arrived. I

937
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:55,679
came home to the wheeze of ancient radiator pipes, the

938
00:45:55,679 --> 00:45:59,480
city's first real snow frosting the fire escapes. An envelope thick,

939
00:45:59,559 --> 00:46:02,800
legally typerton in address waited on my kitchen table. Unsigned.

940
00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:06,199
I hadn't told any one this address. I opened it

941
00:46:06,239 --> 00:46:08,239
with the same reluctance I'd felt every time I touched

942
00:46:08,239 --> 00:46:11,760
the fifth four's closet handle. Inside was a single footo cappy,

943
00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:14,320
the last incident report i'd filed before all ended, except

944
00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:17,679
it was covered now with heavy, jagged marginal notes. The

945
00:46:17,760 --> 00:46:21,360
marks were unmistakable, the pencil sharpness exactly Lambert's. In the

946
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:24,280
lower right corner, my name flickered after race, written with

947
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:27,599
two letters reversed. There in the white space, a single

948
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:30,280
rough roaring the wall clock's face, its hands stuck at

949
00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:34,519
three seven, bracketed with arrows aboff in inky capitals for

950
00:46:34,639 --> 00:46:37,239
the one who listens at midnight. On the back, a

951
00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:40,079
series of tiny triangles looped across the page, pervoting from

952
00:46:40,079 --> 00:46:42,159
an use to you in wait. As the flogging rotations

953
00:46:42,159 --> 00:46:45,599
of some invisible watch, I put a face down. The

954
00:46:45,639 --> 00:46:48,280
city outside was neither silent nor allowed to just burden

955
00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:51,280
by its own uninterrupted existence, all windows aglow with their

956
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:54,159
own lives. I stood by my kitchen door, eyes on

957
00:46:54,199 --> 00:46:56,880
my cheap plastic clock as its hands in stubbornly past midnight.

958
00:46:57,440 --> 00:46:59,400
A minute later, as I poured water to boil, the

959
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:02,760
room grew all most imperceptibly colder, the air tightening. I

960
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:06,599
looked up. The second hand ticked, Then just before it

961
00:47:06,679 --> 00:47:09,519
hit seven, it stopped, shivered, and resumed its forward crawl.

962
00:47:10,199 --> 00:47:12,400
In my ear, behind the drawing of water pipes, I

963
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:14,480
saw they heard the soft measure tick that had haunted

964
00:47:14,519 --> 00:47:16,960
the fifth floor, the same deep rhythm, neither fast nor slow,

965
00:47:17,119 --> 00:47:20,000
neither imaginary nor wholly drue, and from the far side

966
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:22,320
of the whole mirror, a shadow, perhaps only my own,

967
00:47:22,440 --> 00:47:25,239
kept perfect pace, with every movement, waiting for watcher, waiting

968
00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:27,840
for the next hour to claim it pulse. My heart

969
00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:30,119
hammerd behind my ribs as I stared at the cheap clock,

970
00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:32,599
its hands trembling in the uncertain air, thatck echoing a

971
00:47:32,639 --> 00:47:34,880
hollow measured thing through the hush that had settled over

972
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:37,559
my narrow kitchen. The envelope lay on the counter at

973
00:47:37,559 --> 00:47:40,199
the ghostly clock, faced fixed an insistent three seven. Again

974
00:47:40,199 --> 00:47:43,000
and again, I pressed a report between my palms, its

975
00:47:43,039 --> 00:47:46,199
edges pricking sweat from my lifelines. Out in the corridor,

976
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:49,440
paper thin footsteps shuffled and faded, rendering the silence even

977
00:47:49,440 --> 00:47:52,519
more acute. I waited, half certain that the next second

978
00:47:52,519 --> 00:47:55,599
would bring some rip in the routine, but nothing materialized

979
00:47:55,639 --> 00:47:58,280
except the pitch of the radiator, flexing hot hond the pipelines,

980
00:47:58,840 --> 00:48:01,480
the city sullen benie, the night's heap of snow pressed

981
00:48:01,480 --> 00:48:04,840
at the windows, its restlessness and low, grave vibration. Still

982
00:48:04,920 --> 00:48:07,599
I stayed where I was, attention fixed on the mottled wall,

983
00:48:07,639 --> 00:48:10,400
listening for more, another tick, a message tucked inside the plumbing,

984
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:14,199
perhaps even a voice. I heard only breath. I forced

985
00:48:14,199 --> 00:48:17,039
myself into motion, carrying the envelope to my batter desk,

986
00:48:17,159 --> 00:48:20,280
the page crackling and my grip. No signatures offered closure,

987
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:22,559
just a panicscript familiar in the worse way, and a

988
00:48:22,559 --> 00:48:25,199
ghost's claim for the one who listens. At midnight, I

989
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:27,719
turned the incident report over once, resisted the urge to

990
00:48:27,719 --> 00:48:30,719
tear it pot. Instead, I slid it into the bottom drawer,

991
00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:33,559
whished under a half broken calculator, and shut it away.

992
00:48:34,159 --> 00:48:35,880
I ran my thumb along the edge of the desk,

993
00:48:36,039 --> 00:48:38,440
half expecting another scene to give, a passage opening in

994
00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:41,639
the grain, like those seak of panels along the fifth floor. Nothing.

995
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:45,159
For hours. I wrestled myself out of watching mine, slipping

996
00:48:45,199 --> 00:48:47,519
back to the eyes and glass, the shift in the elevator,

997
00:48:47,559 --> 00:48:50,079
the conviction of a pattern beginning again. Some were just

998
00:48:50,119 --> 00:48:53,239
out of sight. I reminded myself over and over that

999
00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:56,639
I had left it behind. Any further pursuit would change nothing.

1000
00:48:57,280 --> 00:48:59,679
My job was gone, my name erased from payrolls, my

1001
00:48:59,719 --> 00:49:02,039
store or we reduced to a non disclosure clothes bared

1002
00:49:02,039 --> 00:49:05,039
among the rent notices in my drawer, but sleep wouldn't come.

1003
00:49:05,599 --> 00:49:08,000
Each time I drifted, I fell through flashes, the hidden

1004
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:10,360
office lined with clocks, lempus, chalk, white face fixed by

1005
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:13,280
the distant like thin the corridor, and that incessant ticking ratchet.

1006
00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:16,239
In the minutes apart, once I greamed of spirals knock

1007
00:49:16,239 --> 00:49:19,559
corror doors, but elevators coiling and impossible angles doors opening

1008
00:49:19,559 --> 00:49:21,719
onto window, This room stocked only with work of books

1009
00:49:21,719 --> 00:49:24,800
and clocks, each page a dublicate with the necks. I

1010
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:27,719
walked like with a cold to my own skin toward dawn.

1011
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:31,159
Unable to rest, I got up and paced half consciously.

1012
00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:33,519
I checked the lock on my door, then the security chain,

1013
00:49:33,599 --> 00:49:36,039
then the window latched for a fourth time. The city

1014
00:49:36,039 --> 00:49:38,599
remained unchanged, a few fiery windows burning across a deep

1015
00:49:38,599 --> 00:49:40,960
blue gray. The snow swept into ribbons by plas already

1016
00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:44,159
at work. I wanted reassurance, but saw only the reflection

1017
00:49:44,199 --> 00:49:46,320
of my own tired outline, framed in the glass like

1018
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:49,239
a silhouette pin to a different dire. Some morning, later

1019
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:51,280
days ahead, though how many I couldn't have said, I

1020
00:49:51,320 --> 00:49:54,719
received another envelope this one hand, a levered buttonsigned. The

1021
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:57,760
paper inside was softer worn by sweat or rain. It

1022
00:49:57,840 --> 00:50:00,440
bore a list names in numbers, incident tire tis all

1023
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:03,320
in a quivering hand. Next to mine, a note key

1024
00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:06,599
rotation begins again, do not lose the iro beneath, as

1025
00:50:06,639 --> 00:50:09,159
if as an afterthought, another clock sketched in the margins,

1026
00:50:09,280 --> 00:50:12,079
always at three seven. That was the last I received,

1027
00:50:12,079 --> 00:50:16,679
at least in that form. Still variations echoed. At supermarket

1028
00:50:16,800 --> 00:50:19,840
night shifts. I noticed how the freezer units timers would glitch,

1029
00:50:20,199 --> 00:50:23,239
always resetting. When I passed on my second week of

1030
00:50:23,239 --> 00:50:25,599
hospital temp work, I found that one of my colleagues,

1031
00:50:25,639 --> 00:50:28,199
a quiet older man who covered emergency codes at nightmark

1032
00:50:28,239 --> 00:50:30,360
the same hour every day in about a lock initialed

1033
00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:32,760
with a keffelar aisle. When I asked about it, he shrugged,

1034
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:35,679
deflicting just part of the routine, keeps the system honest.

1035
00:50:36,199 --> 00:50:39,480
I never asked for more. Others nearby began noticing in

1036
00:50:39,519 --> 00:50:41,880
the small ways lock supply cause its turning up open

1037
00:50:42,039 --> 00:50:44,599
lost ID badges recovered with names that didn't match any

1038
00:50:44,679 --> 00:50:47,079
roster emails, time samped a full date into the past,

1039
00:50:47,199 --> 00:50:50,119
then gone. At first, I told myself. I was overlaying

1040
00:50:50,119 --> 00:50:52,440
the fifth floors patterns on too innocent things and mine

1041
00:50:52,480 --> 00:50:54,880
stuck in the groove of its owner knees. But there

1042
00:50:54,880 --> 00:50:58,239
were details that refused to fade the sensation of being watched.

1043
00:50:58,320 --> 00:51:01,519
During the last ten minutes before shifting the way, every

1044
00:51:01,519 --> 00:51:03,719
temp blog I submitted would come back with corrections in

1045
00:51:03,760 --> 00:51:07,280
an unfamiliar angular hand. In late February, I spotted a

1046
00:51:07,320 --> 00:51:09,800
janitor in the hospital's staff break room, stirring tea with

1047
00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:11,880
a hand that shook just so, the same rhythm as Lewis.

1048
00:51:12,559 --> 00:51:14,840
I watched until he noticed and looked at me, dark

1049
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:17,400
eyes shining with a flick of recognition or warning, though

1050
00:51:17,440 --> 00:51:20,679
no words passed between us. One night, on my way home,

1051
00:51:20,719 --> 00:51:22,920
I took a deter by the old office building, not planned,

1052
00:51:23,039 --> 00:51:25,639
just a drift borne out of something between curiosity and dread.

1053
00:51:26,199 --> 00:51:29,039
There was construction tape at the side entrance, scaffolding reaching

1054
00:51:29,079 --> 00:51:31,599
up to the fifth story. A security car idled on

1055
00:51:31,639 --> 00:51:34,880
the street, its occupants sludged had over his face. I

1056
00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:37,159
hesitated only a moment before moving on, But as I

1057
00:51:37,199 --> 00:51:40,400
crossed the road, I glanced up by refix behind the

1058
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:44,039
fifth floor glass, a wavering light flicked into being someone.

1059
00:51:44,119 --> 00:51:47,280
Something moved between the shades, brief and pale. I stopped.

1060
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:50,239
The glow faded just as quickly, leaving the reflection of

1061
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:53,159
the street lights bleaming over the facade. I shivered my

1062
00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:55,840
breath fog in the cold, and kept walking. As the

1063
00:51:55,840 --> 00:51:58,719
city's thaw began that spring, I adapted, or believed they did.

1064
00:51:59,320 --> 00:52:01,480
I worked at the hospital in the evenings, sleeping in

1065
00:52:01,519 --> 00:52:04,039
brief snatches during the day, taking jobs as they came,

1066
00:52:04,280 --> 00:52:08,079
ringing the same trusted contacts for steady eyos, never security,

1067
00:52:08,159 --> 00:52:12,480
never again, night rounds or records or keys online notes. Still,

1068
00:52:12,559 --> 00:52:14,440
every time I walked into a new building, I checked

1069
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:16,639
the floor listings for that telltal gap. Where was the

1070
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:19,039
vacant level, the storage floor, the least held in limbo

1071
00:52:19,079 --> 00:52:22,000
by accident, error, or the insistence of some one long gone.

1072
00:52:22,440 --> 00:52:25,519
I caught myself glancing into service closes whenever I passed,

1073
00:52:26,199 --> 00:52:28,760
and always in the whispering hush before dawn, I'd be

1074
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:30,800
drawn back, by involuntary memory to the hollow at the

1075
00:52:30,840 --> 00:52:32,639
heart of that floor, of the liminal space Limpitt had

1076
00:52:32,639 --> 00:52:35,840
found preserved or perhaps imposed with his fear. I heard

1077
00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:38,119
near the end of April that Pete had retired, and

1078
00:52:38,159 --> 00:52:41,639
note in the obituaries breathe and plain. Another dispatch came

1079
00:52:41,639 --> 00:52:44,360
from Lewis, this time in the form of a horsemail. Say,

1080
00:52:44,360 --> 00:52:46,519
ought I go to new place now clean, no tics,

1081
00:52:46,719 --> 00:52:48,880
just pipes if you could, Yes, be careful, don't take

1082
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:51,920
the old keys, no matter whose sends. His voice faded

1083
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:55,559
in static. I tried texting back, but the number failed.

1084
00:52:56,159 --> 00:52:58,519
I lived in a cycle more functional than not, careful

1085
00:52:58,519 --> 00:53:00,880
not to collect new routines with the same intensity, Careful

1086
00:53:00,920 --> 00:53:03,360
not to become the next watcher. But I couldn't wholly

1087
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:06,360
let go. The city was too busy to keep secrets

1088
00:53:06,360 --> 00:53:08,559
for long. Yet everywhere I saw the ads, the points

1089
00:53:08,559 --> 00:53:11,679
where time stuttered and purses flickered, Wreckers fell out of order,

1090
00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:14,639
and a new watcher seemed to step in one light shift,

1091
00:53:14,679 --> 00:53:17,639
I forgot myself and dozed in the staff lounge. My

1092
00:53:17,719 --> 00:53:20,000
phone fell between the cushions when I fumbled for it.

1093
00:53:20,039 --> 00:53:22,079
On Wiking, I found an open incident log on screen

1094
00:53:22,079 --> 00:53:24,800
of temples uncanly identical to this from the fifth floor system.

1095
00:53:25,400 --> 00:53:28,280
Unlike before, this one was blank except for a blinking cursor.

1096
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:30,800
At the time Feel three seven, I stared frot dry,

1097
00:53:30,920 --> 00:53:33,280
until the screen dimmed and the app force itself closed.

1098
00:53:33,920 --> 00:53:36,800
The log was gone. I told myself it meant nothing,

1099
00:53:36,840 --> 00:53:39,159
an idle fragment or a cursive echo borne of anxiety

1100
00:53:39,199 --> 00:53:41,800
and the dull chain of sleepless nights. But for the

1101
00:53:41,840 --> 00:53:44,239
next week, every time I woke at night, my bedside

1102
00:53:44,280 --> 00:53:46,320
alarm would blink three seven, just as I turned to

1103
00:53:46,360 --> 00:53:49,880
face it. Sometimes a noise, soft and regular, looped beneath

1104
00:53:49,880 --> 00:53:52,079
the usual hum of traffic ticking in the radiator until

1105
00:53:52,079 --> 00:53:55,039
I pulled the plug twice. Some one left foot coop

1106
00:53:55,079 --> 00:53:57,960
is in my inter office mail box, each insigned one

1107
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:00,920
bore sketch of my own apartment. The kitchen window, oddly exaggerated,

1108
00:54:00,920 --> 00:54:03,239
a tiny arrow pointed to the baseboard eater, and below

1109
00:54:03,480 --> 00:54:06,039
a note checked the vent at the IRA. The other,

1110
00:54:06,320 --> 00:54:08,599
less direct listed a series of dates and times, all

1111
00:54:08,599 --> 00:54:11,639
corresponding to my former shifts at the tower. I scanned

1112
00:54:11,639 --> 00:54:14,679
the paper, my pulse rising, then triddered both documents, their

1113
00:54:14,719 --> 00:54:17,960
peculiar gliss hovering in my mind. I received packages from

1114
00:54:18,000 --> 00:54:21,400
agencies for other safer rolls, but the naw of uncertainty

1115
00:54:21,480 --> 00:54:24,280
remained a taper beneath my days. It was in my

1116
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:26,679
manner of the tendency to monitor exit routes, to note

1117
00:54:26,719 --> 00:54:29,960
how every institution hid its forgotten spaces. When I trained

1118
00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:32,880
new HighRes temping as a supervisor, I found myself warning

1119
00:54:32,920 --> 00:54:35,599
them never to linger between shifts, never to swap keys

1120
00:54:35,639 --> 00:54:38,639
without triple checking the lock. So the weeks rolled forward

1121
00:54:38,639 --> 00:54:40,679
in the world failed to reset properly, though at the

1122
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:42,880
margins everything looked as it should A drifted to night

1123
00:54:42,960 --> 00:54:45,719
and back. Winter fumbled into spring, and buildings changed hands,

1124
00:54:45,760 --> 00:54:49,559
with bland ceremony still On certain evenings, alone in the

1125
00:54:49,599 --> 00:54:52,559
middle IROs, I'd sometimes catch a half fawned reflection moving

1126
00:54:52,639 --> 00:54:55,199
just behind mine in the glass of the hospital supply closet,

1127
00:54:55,760 --> 00:54:58,559
I feel the pressure of old surveillance, a palimpsist devise,

1128
00:54:58,840 --> 00:55:02,440
watchful judging recording. It was earily May when the lostick

1129
00:55:02,480 --> 00:55:04,159
or blured the line between my old job and the

1130
00:55:04,199 --> 00:55:06,800
rest of my life. I was assigned to do inventory

1131
00:55:06,840 --> 00:55:09,440
in the hospital's archive, a cramped forescent that warns decked

1132
00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:12,639
high with patient records and personnel files. Alone in the

1133
00:55:12,679 --> 00:55:14,840
nerve death quiet after midnight, I completed the log and

1134
00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:18,079
cross to the corner where a broken shudder crouched. I paused,

1135
00:55:18,119 --> 00:55:20,840
felt the same pimping pressure I dreaded in those elevator landings,

1136
00:55:20,920 --> 00:55:25,039
that tensing of breath, that ripple of time. I turned there.

1137
00:55:25,159 --> 00:55:28,000
Tucked into a file on the far shelf was a badge,

1138
00:55:28,159 --> 00:55:32,679
blue laminated Marshaw Feldman. It was identical to the one

1139
00:55:32,679 --> 00:55:35,000
from the fifth floor, left months ago, except here in

1140
00:55:35,079 --> 00:55:38,440
this place it had no meaning, no history. I ran

1141
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:40,559
my thumb along the edges, and for a moment the

1142
00:55:40,599 --> 00:55:42,679
corridor was lights flickered, as if a ghost circuit from

1143
00:55:42,679 --> 00:55:44,639
the other building had warned its way into this one.

1144
00:55:45,039 --> 00:55:48,199
I checked, no Feltmans on staff, not for years. I

1145
00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:50,719
left it where it was, unwilling to move, something destined

1146
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:54,360
for another watcher drawn into another circuit. As I left,

1147
00:55:54,400 --> 00:55:57,280
the air felt pregnant with a familiar cold. The ticking

1148
00:55:57,320 --> 00:56:00,519
resumed in the hall. My phone left atop box. She

1149
00:56:00,599 --> 00:56:02,920
ret to LifeLock screen flash and once thin, Settling on

1150
00:56:02,920 --> 00:56:08,119
a blank black field, A calenderbly appeared midnight watch rotation acknowledge.

1151
00:56:08,679 --> 00:56:10,719
I dismissed it, and as I walked up past the

1152
00:56:10,760 --> 00:56:13,599
empty nurse's station, I swore I saw another figure reflected

1153
00:56:13,599 --> 00:56:16,320
among the monitors, a shapehocking above the blueprints and bundles,

1154
00:56:16,440 --> 00:56:19,000
moving papers until they aligned, hands flicking to and fro.

1155
00:56:19,639 --> 00:56:22,199
But when I turned only to humming computers and sat

1156
00:56:22,239 --> 00:56:26,320
plastic chairs, waited. Exhaustion grew ragged at the edges. I

1157
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:28,440
started to lose my balance, to drift between the ticks

1158
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:31,199
and the stilled world. In those gaps, I sensed something

1159
00:56:31,239 --> 00:56:34,199
like compassionate wish, not for harm, but for witness, the

1160
00:56:34,280 --> 00:56:36,519
need to mark every cycle so nothing fully slipped from

1161
00:56:36,559 --> 00:56:39,440
the record. I began to understand a sliver of Lumpert's

1162
00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:45,159
desperation memory as structure routine, a salvation. Everything forgotten, eventually repeated, repetition,

1163
00:56:45,199 --> 00:56:48,719
eventually twisted. One dawn, as I headed home on the subway,

1164
00:56:48,760 --> 00:56:50,639
I caught the eye of a stranger, middle aged. Brief

1165
00:56:50,719 --> 00:56:54,320
kiss on his knees. He studded me too long. Just

1166
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:56,280
as the train breaked, He reached into his coat and

1167
00:56:56,320 --> 00:56:59,480
handed me a warn slip of paper. Wordlessly, I looked

1168
00:56:59,480 --> 00:57:03,079
at another hand drawn clock, three seven inc shop the note

1169
00:57:03,079 --> 00:57:05,440
in the back. Some buildings never let go of their ire,

1170
00:57:05,599 --> 00:57:08,639
keep moving. Our eyes met His face was gone, haunted

1171
00:57:08,679 --> 00:57:11,239
but not mad. Something in me wanted to deny the

1172
00:57:11,280 --> 00:57:14,079
whole cycle, but I nodded silent approval or warning, and

1173
00:57:14,079 --> 00:57:16,800
stepped off as the door was stuttered. Why after that

1174
00:57:16,960 --> 00:57:19,960
the signs grew saddle, but they never truly faded. In

1175
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:22,719
every city since, no matter of the neighborhood, the architecture,

1176
00:57:22,840 --> 00:57:25,400
or the rhythm, I found the pattern, the vicant floor

1177
00:57:25,440 --> 00:57:28,639
on directories, the doubled entry on notronic locks, theological cult

1178
00:57:28,679 --> 00:57:31,800
spot in the stairwells. Sometimes I catch a night janet

1179
00:57:31,800 --> 00:57:33,960
oppressing a key tight in his palm, sometimes as spot,

1180
00:57:33,960 --> 00:57:36,800
a maintenance walk, a lingering near the surface corridors, shoulders

1181
00:57:36,800 --> 00:57:40,480
tense with unspeakable knowledge. I never try to explain, not really,

1182
00:57:40,519 --> 00:57:43,480
no store tell I can. The incident report remains in

1183
00:57:43,559 --> 00:57:46,800
my locked desk, untouched, heavy as a stolen ire. I

1184
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:49,239
check it some nights, the ink blurring, the marks still shop.

1185
00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:53,159
The clock face were proving my own name carve twice

1186
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:56,679
once forward wants a bleak, I'm careful to lock up,

1187
00:57:56,719 --> 00:57:59,159
to note the ire, to walk the rounds. In every

1188
00:57:59,239 --> 00:58:02,039
job I take reatail, medical office, temp. I find myself

1189
00:58:02,079 --> 00:58:05,519
on night watch, self appointed, and every building rewards me

1190
00:58:05,599 --> 00:58:07,559
with a silence that is never fully empty. The low

1191
00:58:07,599 --> 00:58:10,880
tick tick tick of some old unresolvable loss, stitched into

1192
00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:13,320
the marrow of its structure. But that's how it has

1193
00:58:13,360 --> 00:58:15,960
to be. To night, as I cross my small apartment,

1194
00:58:16,000 --> 00:58:18,320
the city huffing out its in saunia. Just beyond the glass,

1195
00:58:18,440 --> 00:58:20,880
I notice the weak light from my ovens clock. The

1196
00:58:20,920 --> 00:58:24,280
digits burn three cullin zero seven, though it's neither three

1197
00:58:24,320 --> 00:58:27,960
nor seven pass neither midnight nor dawn. My phone chimes,

1198
00:58:28,000 --> 00:58:31,400
watch rotation verified. I press the button to dismiss, but

1199
00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:34,480
my finger stutters. From the hallway. Through the gap under

1200
00:58:34,480 --> 00:58:37,119
the door comes a sliver of cold. For a heartbeat,

1201
00:58:37,239 --> 00:58:41,199
I hear alone, patient ticking, then it stops. In the

1202
00:58:41,239 --> 00:58:43,719
silence that follows, I know, not fear exactly, but a

1203
00:58:43,800 --> 00:58:47,519
kind of complicity. I am neither watched nor warcher, only

1204
00:58:47,559 --> 00:58:49,920
another part of the cycle. Another I will waiting to

1205
00:58:49,960 --> 00:58:53,039
be seen somewhere in some hidden room. The old clock

1206
00:58:53,079 --> 00:58:56,760
star record shuffle as the handre sets, and the building,

1207
00:58:56,800 --> 00:58:59,800
any building, waits for its watchair, patient and particular, holding

1208
00:58:59,800 --> 00:59:04,000
each secret until memoried and time finally a line, and

1209
00:59:04,079 --> 00:59:06,519
that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I

1210
00:59:06,519 --> 00:59:10,480
will see you in the next one.