Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I didn't realize Hasdale Office I
could grow after just a few months without anyone breathing
it in. He'd think emptiness would simply air out. But
stepping over the threshold of the Marbre Towers lobby, I
tasted the accumulated residue of lost weeks dust, the faint
town of old carpet glue, an aft taste of burnt
coffee across the crack marble. My footstiffs pronounced themselves to
no one in particular, Echoing off bronze elevated doors still
streaked with the ghost prints of dozens of late night commutes.
There was still sunlight, barely reluctant shafts snuffing through one
grimy set of automatic glass doors, and scattering lownedou de
stripes across the reception desk's dead monitor. In my left hand,
I held the battle clipboard, last in a series of
concessions to protocol, and in my right a rolled upset
of floor plans. He could almost believe, from the way
the lobby looked in the waning light that someone had
just left disposable coffee cups. One appended its brown puddle
boulder to the paper by weeks of evaporation, A broken
umbrella wltzing in the corner, a stack of internal memos
caught in the updraft from long gun central air. The
building was to be demolished in under six weeks, so
every trace felt careless and slightly ominous, like a grave marker.
And cave for one of the elevator banks had already
been stripped of copper by Nikruz. The stainless surfaces bited
in streaks where a metal thief's cloves had missed the polish.
My route took me past the security post, empty except
for the amber led and the outdated security panel. I
found myself thinking I should make a note fouldy lock
main doors, possible liability, But even there felt pointless. Nobody
cared about liabilities anymore. I was just here to check
this sentials sign off and close up. As a matter
of ritual, though, I liked to climb at least one
level on foot before starting the day's rounds, so I
headed for the sloping escalator, its paralyzed handrail still sticky
under a coat of dust. I half expected it to
hunt to reluctant life, the way a dog is trained
to snap awake at its own as footfall. But the
mechanisms were lawn since silent. Half way up the lights
of a flock at one guttered fully out, and another
buzzed with a death rattle, then steaded. The shadows cast
along the balustrade looked impossibly dense. A conference table dislodged
from some upper floor had been dragged into a corner
surface littered with rescue from a failed and promptu card game,
bent playing cards, a couple beer bottle caps, one phone
charger that no longer fit any device made in the
past decade. The deeper I moved, the more it felt
like I was trespassing in a doll I was abruptly
abandoned by children, each object a gesture toward grown up life,
suddenly rendered pointless. I paused at the top of the escalator,
breathing in a longful of the dry minerally ad just
as my phone vibrated sharply in my pocket. Reflexively, I
checked the time, five seventeen p m. And thumbed up
in my work email, expecting perhaps a reminder about a
sign out sheet. Instead, blaring at the top, a new
unread message, no send or name, just a string of
numbers that didn't make any sense. Subject line, please lock
up level five before you leave for the night. Below
a clipped body of text all staff reviews. The attached
list locked doors per portcoll There was an attachment, but
it wouldn't open. The message curiously was marked as just received,
and yet right below it the timestamp put it at
ten years ago. Ten years and yet there was my name, Spelwright,
addressed to my current work account with the regular SECA
format listing six and familiar names. None from departments I recognized,
not even the older charm manager who loved to bombard
us with compliance updates back in the day. I scrolled
up and down, trying to trace the threat, but the
rest of the thread was empty, nothing to reply to,
and the sender wasn't in our system. This wasn't just odd,
it was nearly impossible given our ACTI protocols. I was
about to forward it to my supervisor, more out of
curiosity than concern, until I caught sight of the elevator
panel just passed the gloss doors at the security desk.
There between the brush steel fort and The Warner six
button sat warn oblong and labeled button muddy black, slightly recessed,
as if someone had gouged at the five and wiped
a clean It wasn't in the clipboard plans, nor on
the rolled up architectural blueprints. The maintenance checklists I leave
through this morning skipped straight from four straight to six,
A quirker choked up to typo or a criminal oversight.
A sudden trimer crept up my neck, leaving the short
hairs upright. It was that old unkenny Planner's intuition, as
sensed that the building's geometry wasn't just wrong, it was
hiding something. I couldn't quite shake, the feeling, as if
the structure itself had subtly shifted while I blinked, and
that between fours four and six, some hidden volume of
air or time was waiting and watching for me to notice.
It should have been funny, were just annoying. Instead, I
felt observed, pressed by the stale exhalation of a hundred
hurried departures. By the time I forced myself to shruken
march toward the fire stairs, the message continued to burn
on my funds, dim and screen unresolved and very much
on read. If you'd ask me even five years ago
whether I would end up as a building inspector in
the dying corridors of dead developments, I would have laughed,
probably too hard. Back then, I was fresh from urban
planning grad school, fueled by the righteousness of responsible civic design.
For a while, I was something of an upstock, brought
into consoled on city, sent to rezonings. The Mark Tower
had once crossed my desk in a blizzard of sly decks,
oll glass and a live work synergy, the most buzzward
rich project for its time, heralded by magazines I'd since
learned to ignore. But then I'd made the mistake of
looking too closely at a series of expedited zoning approvals,
a thickening stench around city ha AOL's dealings with a
handful of developers whose projects, like Marlwick, always seemed to
squeak through by margin of error. I couldn't let go
my mistakes republic. The fall up was ugly. I always
informed that my perpetual questions made me an obstacle sidelining committees.
My open source complained against the city's Planning Division buried
and a month's of administrative hayes. A few of the
braver whistleblowers had spoken up on my behalf, but their
names faded quickly. I got cold, stubborn. Their names vanished
from directories. After a public fallout that ended with barely
coded derision in the local business section, I was blacklisted
from anything assembling my old job. Now I bounce from
temp contract to temp contract, never on the city pyrol,
always through some shadow third party firm that needed extra
hands during or actually after a project's life cycle. Utilities hemidding,
building compliance verification, which was code for inspector. It was
meant to be honorable, but by now it felt like
an endless, stuttering slide walk throughs with clipboard and hand
mottering compliance numbers, ticking inspected boxes for insurance ordering, then
moving on before the wall's case ain't done for real.
Marwick Tower was my fifth side close out at that spring.
Each morning, out of some vestigial habit, I would arrive early,
sometimes before the other few contract workers shuffled in. I
parked beneath the fluttering chain ink that looped the perimeter.
Most days, soft city traffic dulled the loneliness on site,
But by the time my boots thudded up the final
step of seven thirty, only the janitor and occasional city
agency inspected their faces as tired as yesterday's news made
their appearances. My work was methodical, almost cleansing in its
repetition mornings, electrical panels, whollway carpet, water stains, perhaps vermin.
Every third window cracked or jammed, sprinkler had sometimes dripped.
Emergency lights frequently failed their test. I'd motter findings into
my phone, save voice memos, and increase in the listless
file names, then upload my updates into the same dad
email chain reserve for every walk through. Lunch more often
than not, was eaten in silence on the thread or
carpet of the fourth floor, five stairs. Sometimes I'd look
out the narrow, smuged window over the city a perspective,
lifted half a mile into mediocre air, and tried to
recall the thrill of seeing city blocks as living systems.
That spark had dulled, but routine delivered, if nothing else,
consolation and regularity. My colleagues fleeting presence is a bearded
fire system inspector named Reggie who had a different sand
which every day, never said a word about the city.
The cleaning company rotated people, and except for Anna, the
janitor with the wildly fashionable scarves and the unnerving talent
for appearing at every floor's end, mop and cueuing in hand,
she always hid her head funds on. But late one
rainy afternoon, when we met by the broken elevator, she
pulled out one eghbor and said, don't mind the noise
at night, o K. These old places, floor shift pipes rattle.
Sometimes people talk about ghost floors, lost spaces, probably rats.
When I asked if she ever saw any such thing
in Marwick, she showed a half mischievous, half wary, just
city stories. Mister, you'll hear something, but it's all in here.
She tapped her temple, then turned away, letting the brief
confessions scatter in the hummet's dowel air. The process was
always the same. I'd start at the roof, then worked
down with each level itemised against what I could find
in the blueprints. Around a time I finished floor four,
a peculiar discomfort began to fester. There was a page
missing into plants, two sheets stuck together or printed out
of order, so the transition from four to six was
a jarring leap. The front desk shoved it off old
typo only four tenant fours anyway, But the more I verified,
the more the gap annoyed me. Still nothing in the
city file, no fight on the permit registers, nothing to
justify wasting time. Rumors about the buildings to my swelled everywhere,
Unlawful add ons, clandestine deals, a rash of untraceable modifications
that had brought a once glamorous adressed down to its knees.
When demolition was scheduled, nobody seemed more. Each shift became
adrift through empty plants and even emptier spaces, except for
the quiet, unresolved discomfort that there was something left and done,
always just out of reach. By the end of every day,
I'd pack up and check my reflection in the lobby mirror,
hoping to see some mark of usefulness, some evidence of persistence.
But mostly I just saw that shadow eversion of myself
invisible and at a place the prodigal urban planner faded
to the bottom rung, drawn endlessly to the unfinished. It
wasn't until the third week, in an otherwise and eventful dusk,
that the pattern reappeared. I was reviewing the checklist on
my tablet, clicking through themarked complete tiles of each floor.
My bags were packed by boots echoing in the hollostairwell.
Just before I shut off the security lights. The scream
bloomed white. A second email, a ride subject identical, please
lock up level five before you leave for the night
difference ender. A similar string of numerals succeeded to names
I didn't recognize this time. The attachment was a small
zip log file, which again wouldn't open. The body copy
was boilerplate, almost robotic, most eerie of all the seen
time stump three years prior under a long defunct out
he'd domain associated with the company I'd never heard of.
I forwarded it to my offset supervisor. The message bounced back, undeliverable.
I tried to push it aside another digital hicc but
old habits die hard, and I clicked deeper into the
building's electronic maintenance acheves. Most of it was bland routine
upkeep logs, coppet cleanings, semi annual fire suppression checks, endlessly
track folter replacements. Then reviewing a record from January of
the previous year, I stumbled across an entire column labeled
Level five the janitorial incense spill corridor E fifth floor,
A light tuber place Level five conference roomby routine smoke
tests Level five only j D signed March twenty two.
I stared the words flattening themselves with IROs of back
clock behind my eyelids. Several entriests stood out. Work orders
logged weeks after the last report attendant had moved out
before by maintenance contractors whose names didn't show up anywhere
else in active payroll. I cross referenced the signatures. Each
was checked initiate and confirmed in the margins. No access
at time of inspection and authorization see Sandra H. But
when I leave through a directory of current or recent
building staff, not a single Sandra H appeared. A nagging
curiosity to cold. I called the main office receptionist to
the voice stretched then over the late shift and inquired
about level five. A few keys cocks, she apologized for
the typo in system only four office levels top A six,
Thus sweet numbers not flaws after a pause, probably old
paperwork from before the last renovation, but the document trail
was too specific. Dates thins, service logs, maintenance consent, and
those e mails relentless. Now by eight p m. Auto
populated calendar invites began crowding my in books, all for
lock up level five, every one a decade old, none
burying a traceabile cender. I should have stopped, but by
then inerte of curiosity was impossible to ignore. The elevator
panel haunted me. I couldn't leave it alone. I took
another walk past a blanket, flashing my phone's light in
the plastic. It bore the residue of years of you,
smoothed edges, faint finger prints, mudge, the subtle discoloration left
by many finger tips. The others two three, four, six
stood sharp and rugged. That night, after reporting my findings,
I received a final flowed of stray calendar invites, all
ending the same way, Please lock up level five before
you leave for the night. I went home feeling as
if some one or something was struggling to remind me
of a responsibility I had never been briefed on. I
slept with my phone under my pillow every bars and
in like the stirring of some unburied secret in the
city's bones. Over the next week, my mild intriguementistacited into
a sustained obsession. One rainy afternoon, I convinced myself to
try the city's public record database, hoping for some forgotten
Rennan in the project's history. I dug through out of
date building registries, scan fire codes, submissions, and queered inspection permits.
But every database recognized only four commercial levels plus basement parking,
where a building scam mightless five. The fields simply jumped
from four two to six without comment. Even a digital
overlay from the most recent code compliance skipped straight over
the fifth gap, as if nature itself had conspired to
erase a floor. I circled back to the only saying
witness I had left Anna. I found her in the
sub basement after ires scraping congealbox from the baseboart. I
played up my confusion, half laughing, asking if she had
ever serviced a fifth floor in the Mawik. Her answer
came without looking up. Don't be silly, there was only four.
Maybe in old days someone called the basement five as
a joke. But when I pressed gently reminded her of
our earlier chat about ghost floors, she straightened, suddenly guarded.
You know, maybe once years ago, a guard said he
wouldn't patrol past four after midnight, something about a locked
door in the corridor that wouldn't open in the fire drill.
Maybe look, these buildings play tricks, you hear it, Its
stories flooded with night wind. It's all in the walls
of the vents. Goes if you want them, rats if
you don't. Before she could retrieve fully, I asked about
the old maintenance staff or any Sandra age who might
have signed off on the building logs. She shook her head,
muttered she was just contracted. He should try the management office,
then left without another word. Her nervous smile sat led
in on my mind. I tried reaching out to the
facility's manager. He responded gamely at first, insisted there was
no hidden floor, and offered to meet for coffee the
next week, but never replied to me follow up emails.
The quiet stonewalling of bureaucracy, the tutel brush off, made
me wonder if he'd even checked the building's administrative rooms,
mostly stripped of files. One night called to me. In
the hush glow of my flashlight, I pried opened desth drawers,
fishing for accident reports. Projected end at anything I found.
She for contract amendments, one labeled petition alteration, confidential workspace
authorization requires secure his own per attached NDA, no attached NDA,
no architectural diagram, just to composite signature, half legible and
a reference code leading nowhere in the building's current plan.
Another late night, I performed my ritual walk through a
circuit of the building's fire stairs, eyes keen for any
architectural slip. Steps led cleanly from four to six. The elevator,
jogged by my badge at midnight, flashed past the blank gap,
never landing, never pausing, no matter the button press. Mechanical
rooms full of humming pumps and as cake gages told
a different story. With a printed set of blueprints are
faded set rescue from a crumbling storage bin, a trace
the conduit layouts cross matching riser diagrams. There was an
anomaly marked runs of conduit and pipes drifting into dead
space between official floors, neither accounted for nor clearly terminated.
Nothing illegal on the face of it, just a lost
volume in the building's inn as a mufful of air
refusing to tell me what it had. The urge to
fill in the blanks overtook me. Night after night, I
linger beustracing the perimeter, sketching hypothetical room for prints based
on evidence, plotting, ghost corridors, and graph paper, just to
see if I could tease out rational explanation. The work
felt almost religious in its intensity. Searching for the invisible
by charting the shape left behind desperation crept in. I
began tinkering with the elevator's control box, holding the closed
door button while fretting a piece of wire between the
contacts of the unlabel button. Nothing. Later, I discovered a
raw maintenance terminal hidden in the security office, its ancient
CRT flickering blue behind the sea of dust. On impulse,
I tried to access the archad CCTV locks lopped, but
the password prompt irritated in the basic gave into passwardone
and the monochrome's greens built out. I was of footage.
One sequence jumped at me. A man, older stocky entered
the elevator with the cleaning cadd He hesitated, then pressed
the blank button. The door slow jut. Thirty minutes later,
the time stamped log blink forward. The same man stumbled
out into the lobby again, visibly shaken, pale, his shirt
soak through. I start into the far corners of the frame.
I cross checked the badge logs the next morning, as
credentials were marked as expired, A voluntary resignation the only
outward sign of any issue. I called the number on
his file dis connected. I trolled linked in, check in,
daid bisses, casual online directories. No trace of him after
the time stamp on the footage. That night, the city's
normal churn or something else. Logic scoffed, yet the doubt remained.
By degrees. My nights grew more restless, unaccountable noises prowled
the building. After midnight, A pulsing hammet set the duck
brook shuddering, catching the edges of my hearing like a
radio tuned off station. Once following a muffled footstep down
a perfectly empty corridor, the only answer was the echo
of my own heartbeat, taking faster as I reached the lidstowell.
I started wearing ear bluks, but the low, tremulous vibrations
seemed to slip right tough skin and bone. My dreams
took on a peculiar texture. Always the fifth floor, visible
only from a bird's eye view, pulsing softly, room spilling
across dark voids, inhabitants moving an exo be toward locked doors.
They never quite reached. Names woke me up in the darkness.
None I remembered by day. The set circled ever inward,
physical blueprints, digital cross checks, even calling and favors from
old contacts. The silence at every turn, no archived references,
no mention in city registers, felt almost deliberate. My rational
brin clung to the idea of an early construction error,
some administrative oversight, But with each piece of evidence, the
mystery gaped wider. I almost missed it. A brittle envelope
stuff behind the breaker box in the sub basement storage closet,
hand addressed and faded on company let ahead to operations
Level five LL remain secured for whistleblower safety. Under no
circumstances should files, plans, or personnel movements be recorded. Contact
O lin only, maintenance by author's badge only. Some proofing
upgrade installed five slash twenty w D. I read it
three times before folding it away. Whistleblower safety, no mention
in city records, Nur Saignovo lind in any staff directory
going back two decades on the defunct company's servers, even
order the list of former employees. He seed in the
recurring level. Five females, A few names I managed to
cross for reference. All had either resigned abruptly, died quietly, illness, accidents, suicide,
or simply dropped off the face of their professional earth.
A kind of terror, slow and quiet began it to
crawl up my skin. I needed to talk to Anna again,
A lifeline to actual memory. A coordnered her justice. She
was finishing her shift the night, A pushing in thirty
waves through the brooken lobby doors. Her hands clutched the
broom like a walking stick. Anyone ever disappeared in this building,
I asked you. Ever hear stores of people going missing?
Up there? She hesitated, glancing at the security camera, then
looked back at me. Listen, she said, Finally, I heard
only how milk crew talked about a couple people back
when the Fairs raided the marwork offices, rumors mine. They'd
say some staff hid out somewhere up in the lost
floor when the police left. Only some came back. Superstitious crap.
I always thought I'd just cleaned when I'm told, But
sometimes she paused. Even now at midnight, the Vince Talk
whispered things like someone asking not to be found. She
gave a sad little shrug, then left for the stairwell,
leaving the air colder in her absence alone. I picked
apart my scraps of data, the white space and the blueprints,
the purposely cycled locks, the erase badge ricors, the misvolv
work orders, the blank button. I only now did I
since it wasn't a slip or cover up. It was
a living erasure, a space methodically suppressed and then ritually
triggered by anyone who lingered too lawn near its edge.
Unable to shake it off, I returned home and tried
every avenue of urban Panel's logic, mistake, nonconformity, lost paperwork,
but the evidence said otherwise, And the entire time the
email chain kept adding new messages, each time sam from
a different year, each ending with the same request, the
same demand. In my apartment. Sifting through city maps, technical ovalays,
and half forgotten contracted directories, I decided to leverage every
nds of professional skill left to me if I couldn'tuncover
truth by official procal I do it by inference. First,
I matched the original blueprints to every revision order filed
with the city. Vertical riser diagrams, usually exact, showed odd
discurpances in piping runs, water and electrical means doubled back,
mirrored themselves, or simply looped out and vanished in the
space between the fourth and sixth floors. Heating networking, even
trashute showed similar bends, like nervous sticks in the building's
nervous system. It was as if space itself was made
to confuse or to conceal heat sent Some maps from
a recent fire drill found online showed a strip of
dead thermal dat in the gap between four and six
No explanation. Another piece of evidence and nearly lost series
of punch list reviews listing small jobs completed on in
level five, including paint touch shops, five suppression zeinofs, and
pest control visits. Long after the official lost occupancy sam
had signatures, none nashed any current administrative staff. My phone's
GPS proved just as unreliable. Every time I walked the
suppose for print of level five, the map would starter,
compass needles would spin, floor cants would flicker between four
and unknown. At first I laughed, assuming interference from steel beams,
but by the third time I watched the compass needle
circle endlessly while walking the interior hallways, I gave up.
I tempted to call in a favor with an old classmate, Delia,
who'd gone into private design work. At first I pitched
it as a code compliance puzzle or wayfinding nightmare word
gaps in a high rise. She asked to see the
blueprints and the annotated plans. After a long silence, she
quietly refused official involvement, but confessed she'd wance worked a
hush hush consulting job for a developer notorius in city
circles for designing floors you weren't meant to ask about.
Late at night, a skyward news hawks on whistle blowing cases.
Near the Marwick Tower. There was a cluster of storers,
all years old, in which corruption allegations built from an
anonymous all was working with insecure shelter, always at an
undisclosed downtown address. Names were never given. The City paper
reported two lawsuits disappear into sealed settlements. Details confidential and
a stop working past sunset. She quit the next week.
When I called to say goodbye, she claimed the new
contract was her own chuories, but her voice trembled sometimes.
She said, a building doesn't want to be found. Not really,
he wouldn't want to get stuck in the wrong spot.
After dark, I barely ate, barely slept, cycling evidence upon
my bedroom, all in a grid of mismatched Tannland's names
and four diagrams. The connections only clarified this shape. Level
five was no accident. I became convinced by architecture, by evidence,
by the pattern and a noise, that it was designed
as a sanctuary, more precisely, a forced omission for those
too dangerous or inconvenient for the city, a halfway house
for whistleblowers, information brokers, and the unlucky few who strayed
too near the truth. One Dursley Friday, close to midnight,
I risked official censer and tried something desperate. I used
my contract to law to schedule a deep clean and
ordered for or Level five through the creek as scheduling software. Amazingly,
the system accepted it, quitely, acknowledging the request under the
cove clee in five afters my badge when I swiped
it at the elevator. After ires sent the faintest flicker
through the control panel. That night, the building felt empty
than ever. The last of the city's glow filtered to
an ashe haze behind the filmy lobby glass. I pressed
the unlabeled button for ten seconds. Nothing happened. Then the
elevator chugged the fluorescent panel u of buzzing. The door
slide and closed with a sudden final snap. A thrum
of coal pressed and a round my scull, like diving
deep under water on a freezing day. The air and
the elevator thickened. The blank button glowed softly at first,
then brougher a faint phosphorescence like emergency exit tape, shining
back at a flashlight. My phone dimmed, buzzed, then went dead.
The elevator dropped, then ascend, the numbers blurring past escaping
for hitching, then pausing. The panel ob a flickered between
five and a blank expanse then still soft as a confession,
The doors potted. I peered through, heart slamming in my chest.
A corridor and spooled before me, dimly lit shrouded in dust.
The geometry of the walls wrong, neither parallel nor square,
as if purposefully reconfigured, or as a space itself had
collapsed and ver knitted along the hallway. Battered office doors
bore acronyms. They didn't recognize. A wlrm insafe, a dead
rotary foam mounted outside an office labeled though lynn. The
air was thick, no longer musty, but edged with the
chemical tine of stale coffee ozone and some clean I
couldn't pin down at my feet plastic crinkle. The visitor's
badge apparently forgotten. I picked it up. The Level five
visitor at reed. My name was ty written on its back,
being still fresh. Down the corridor, I made out shapes
behind the frosted glass, slightly shifting movements not fully human
or perhaps simply herd shadows somewhere as speaker bust a
familiar tiny voice repeating, please lock up Level five before
you leave for the night. The walls felt vaduly warped
office doors at hot angles. The distance is not quite
matching what the outer building implied. I stepped from the elevator.
Every hair standing on end senses alive to every ghostly sound,
bride to laugh, paper rustle, the too loud echo of
my own shoes on filthy carpet. Before I could decide
to turn back, metal shrieked. The elevator door slam shut
behind me, locking with a mechanical clang. The panel inside
winked out, smothered by blackout film. My return was cut
off as sharply as if I'd been buried alive here
between spaces in the corridor of the hidden floor. I
felt not only observed, but entirely known. Level five had
let me in, and my world now pivoted on whatever
it wanted to show or concealed from here on a
It took a full minute before I forced myself to move.
My pulse roared in my ears, and a salty prickle
ran down my back. It wasn't up as so much
as an optical romness. The moat, swirling in the fluorescent
haze seemed to drive from reverse with each shallow breath.
I lifted my phone almost out of habit, but its
screen jittered dully, then blacked off for good. Paper weight
now thine. I turned on my flask light and stepped
carefully forward, avoiding the crushed plastic badge and a scattering
of perfectly ordinary paper cut strewn under the radiator. The
sound of my boots on the ancient then carpet barely
registered under the hum of the ceiling fixtures. Every few
steps the world shifted. The corridor wavered at the edge
of my vision, now cramping in now yawning wide. I
passed the first door w L R M as frosted window,
fractured by hail line cracks taped to the glass, yellowed
memos rippled under stale air currents, third type lines obscured
by mocker strokes, and no entry. Quiet bad required further
on the door to win safe, hung slightly ajar. A
slip of new print had been wedged into the gap,
bearing early to day's date, but the year was wrong,
five years in the past. A low, mechanical wine started
up behind the walls. I pressed my hand to cold paint,
feeling for any pulse. None, yet I could swear somewhere
nearby printers were churning, keyboards rattling in another room. The
flicker of movement behind the misty glass resolved briefly into
the back of a woman's had nothing more abund of
silvery hair, vanishing at the edge of perception. The instant
I focused on it, against my better judgment, I called out, HULLO,
is some one here? The words rikosheted back in a
subdued parchment tri echo. No answer, only the soft insistent
voice for speakers overhead, Please lock up vel five before
you leave for the night. Every syllable landed like an
overplay tape, thin and scratched with H. I moved down
the hall, skirting past more relics, a styrofoam cup, lipstick
print fossilized into the rim, a battered briefcase at sipper,
rusty shot, a faded city planning manual annotated in urgent
red pen mayern handwriting, or someone's uncannily similar I reached
the door, labeled her, then, half expecting, half fearing some
figure would becka me in, But the glass was blocked
with cardboard. A miketure of privacy shield taped haphazardly in
place beyond a low bench flanked a water cooler. Strangely,
the bottle atop it was full and sealed. A ring
of condensation fogged its side, as if it had been
placed them minutes before. I brushed my fingers along the top,
still cold. An unforced laugh escaped me, sharp and too loud.
All right, you win, I muttered. My voice sounded alien.
From the end of the corridor. Came a subtle rattle,
the settling of ducktruk, of the unmistakable drag of a
chair's legs across tile. The sound ed and then returned,
alternating with the rhythmic tickle, like the winding of an
old wristwatch. I chose movement over paralysis, gravitating toward an
intersection marked conference b The door stood open, swinging slowly
on creaking hinges inside lawn tables gray for mica, corner
chips up beneath the suspended grid of brooken lights. Documents
actual paper, not digital records, spoiled in careful order across
the surface. Lists of names, incident numbers, incident descriptions rendered
in code, subject transferred whole, a shelter, extended coeo lynn,
cryptical little interest that refused to resolve into facts. At
the end of the table, a whiteboard was crowded with
jagged handwriting. Surveillance, fent, suspect, move save files, badge check
nine p M. Each item was ticked or crossed out
someone recently by the look of the incod underlined the
last line twice, no exits after sweep A strange, numbing
com settled as I fit pages and traced the trails
of others who like me, had garden this far. Each
fold of bore initials off, the matching the CC lines
of those endless emails. The files described information leaks, hush
money agreements, herd non disclosure signatures. Real people had hidden here,
operated in terror or complicity, Their names reflected in the
overhead lights curling at the edges, preserved if only on
level five. But none of them seemed to have written
the obvious question, how did you leave? A tremor charper
and colder than before? Lanced through my leg. I stepped backward,
knocking into a wheeled office chair. It glided smoothly two feet,
resting against the door frame, as if nudged by invisible hands.
I scanned the walls, no clocks, no windows to the
outside wilt, only those smeared panes, each one revealing nothing
more than blowed light and refracted shadow, sometimes the hasty
retreat of an indistinct outline. My breeding grew shallow, This
was no longer above architecture, a city records, or civic justice.
It had become a place outside the city, outside the
living daylight timulus yet bristling with the traces of lives
compressed and erased. I pocketed a single page from one
of the files, just in case my memory failed me.
My hands trembled as I folded it against the visitor's badge.
Speakers again louder, stammering, please lock up level five before
ye leave for the night. The pitch wobbled, flattening mid phrays. Maybe,
I thought someone, for all their efforts, never left at all.
Above the noise, the elevator let out a heavy final churn,
then fell completely silent, only my heart beat in the air.
Theyke cement moved with me. I kept going, every nerve,
tuned to the warping hallways, knowing somehow I had and died,
not just another floor, but record that did not want
to let go. I stood in the corridor, eyes adjusting
to the drab, faded amber of emergency lights just broad
enough to deepen every crooked chadder. The elevator behind me
was now only a memory, steel jolloseal tight panel, dark
no mechanism evident for calling it back forward. The warped
hall were drifted in gentle, wrong angled, sick, so no
endpoint remained. Every square before me I stepped ahead, were
resisting the impulse to press my upond flat to a
wall for assurance. The layers of paint were cold, ancient
thicke as lead. My flask light cut sharp, wedged through
the dim illuminating, scuffed carpet, pocked with stains, splayed coffee circles,
jagged ashmarks what could have been for Prince made by
herod wet shoes. Air Vents overhead carried a continuous metallic
sigh dust motes billiard with each yellow breath, as if
levels of lost occupancy resettled themselves with every new disturbance,
door after door, each with an acronym I couldn't translate.
Some half peeled off the original brass letter's dulled beyond
Redemption quiet room a W L R M, the conference B,
the one I had already entered, Record security, A heavier
steel door plated with CODs. My phone was dead. At
the screen of black mirror, I ran my finger across it,
as though trying to coax a memory of signal, but
the device remained stubbornly inert. Still everything declared recent use,
more vividly than the standard off his floor ever managed
a plastic water bottle barely touched, sweating fresh beads onto
the warped linoleum of a defunct side kitchen. A jacket
the caught up dated, but with pen and badge still
clipped to the breast, pocket slumped on a hook beside
an analog's security keep ad. The stillness was split by
the faint on off hum of a powered monitor be
handcracked frosted glass is blue WelCom screen, never resolving into login.
In the labyrinthine silence, the intercompiped up again, softer, now
nearly snick. Please lock up level five before you leave
for the night. Every syllable wrapped the hole in another
layer of uncannons, comfort warp into warning. I nudged open
one of the lighter doors, a quiet room, revealing a
space half pack with cardboard banker's boxes, some marked in
marker asset, A doctor w wel appending on the table
stood a barely warm mark, its contents ringed with frost residue.
I reached over, testing its warmth, hot not scalding. Some
one had made coffee minutes or at most an hour ago.
The tremor that ran through me had nothing to do
with caffeen into a corkboard, hown a lattice of overlapping
note cards, each with shorten and arrows meat t h
mid nitinsey for bad scheck, repeat nightly. A faded city
permit was stuck beneath a metal clap. It was dated
sixteen years back, issued for alternate use level five only,
then terminated line slashed with a red marker stroke and
a finale scold knell. Feeling unseen eyes at my back,
I returned to the hall, shining my torch through the
frosted panes of rooms to either side. Every now and
then a form flickered past the edge of perception, quick
reticent with drawing deeper into whichever pocket of shadow at
cold home. For a moment, I convinced myself it was
only my reflection, flickering and stuttering under broken glass. The
speaker throned again, more insistent, please lock up level five
before you leave for the night, louder flattening at the
upper register. I hesitated the instinct to shout for help.
Warring with the more ancient fear of drawing attention. At
the corridor's far end, a wider double door hung slightly open,
the black read record security I advanced swallowing, feeling the
room's temperature tumble into a dry, brittle chill. As I
entered here, the density of evidence climed to suffocation. Filing
cabinets lay open insides, ranswer to manilla folders. The tabs
grind from constant use. A sprowl of paper track cross
long battered meeting tables, busnell logs, incident reports, fragments of
nda all heavily redacted, if not with swaths of vink,
then by scalpel blade. Excision of names and dates, most chilling,
with the photograph's faces blurred by a hasty marker, eyes
entirely blotted out, as if the act of seeing or
being seen had become a dangerous liability. On the backs,
familiar names, tags that matched up with ceasied email chains,
or that surfaced in those odd auxiliary calendar invites. Some
files yellowed wrinkle, the tall truncated stores transfer from legal
shutter request granted long term accommodation level five. A sticky
note on a battered land line foam warned in coming
listen only no calls out. I lifted the receiver, only
a dead hum greeted me oddly extra dry, as if
static itself had been muffled. Drawn to the head of
the table, afflicked a switch on an ancient desk lamp.
A circle of light revealed a whiteboard ghosted with generations
of wiped and rewritten commands, secure events, suspect surveillance, to
check files before sweep shed after a witness exit. Among
the more recent notes, one startled me if found did
not trust the locks. Keep record by hand. I ran
my thumbs over a stack of folders. Several remarked testimony
shutter extension, CEO LYNN Each contained fragments of what looked
like whistle blowers statements, but all were so heavily sterilized
that only the skeleton of alligation remained. Of bribery threats
vowls walked out under cover of after eyros inspections. I
could fill in the blanks, having seen real world versions
of such reports, to solved dozens of scandalous stores into
bureaucratic vapor. In a far corner, a batted office chair
faced away from the door, steadily spinning with some imperceptible breeze.
The sound of typridor keys soft. A hethnik began taping
through the wall. There was no clock in the wall,
no ticking, but the place selt thick with time, compacted
into every inch of air. A singular icy drede replaced
my early curiosity, grief for all the people who'd come here,
whose rags of witness now blurred at the edges. Unable
to escape the building's gravitational pull, I tried the stairwell, solid,
no give in the panic bar. The elevator, called by
a desperate slop of the button, did not so much
as whimper. The only light in the stare Ucov came
from the floor indicator, flickering stubbornly. Between four and six.
The exit signs above doors blinked out of sequence, some
flashing exit backwards, others cycling through readable glyffs. I doubled
back each circuit of the corridor, re arranging itself. The
angle of the passage was subtly warped, as if the
floor plant was redrawing itself, for as if my sense
of direction was gradually being erased. My perspective, unanchored from
reality by the wall of the place. Somewhere to my left,
a noise brought me up short, a shuffle, scraping like
rubber soles against thin carpet, then a series of slowe
measured footsteps. Out of reflex, I docked into the nearest
open doorway and quieted my breath. Raising the flask light,
I saw the outline of some one hunch narrow dragging
a wide loop as they moved past the frosted glass.
The beam caught their feet, who scuffed and powdery angle's
bent as if in show where next to step. They
passed without stopping. I let a few creaking seconds tick
by before sliding out, glancing over my shoulder with desperate
hoperchance maybe for human contact. Outside in's safe I found them.
A man, middle aged, face shrouded by patcheek, graying stubble, shirt,
rumpled and spotted with grime. He seemed both shrunken and stretched,
his eyes tunneled with exhaustion in something wilder hollower, Hey,
I said, my voice hitching higher than I'd intended. He
recoiled almost violently, then peered into the dark between us,
as if fighting to recognize any one, friend, oufoe you?
His lips struggled to shape the word you got in.
I'm I, hes stated, the loss for how to introduce
myself here in a place that didn't exist. I'm just
an inspector. My badge let me up. I don't know
how to leave, he laughed to wreck sound. They let you.
And did you close the elevator? No, never close it.
Never let the door shut behind you. That's how they
keep you. That's the trick. He came further into the
circle of my light, wincing against his clare on his
test half concealed beneath the appel and old access badged route.
The photo was so faded it might have been any one.
But I recognized him, if only through layers of digital
artifact from the security monitors, the janitor o maintenance man
who had ridden the elevator and come out changed years ago.
How long have you, he interrupted, never meeting my eyes.
No clocks here they jumble everything. Time gets thin. You
write things down, you try to remember. Faces and numbers
hit all blurs after a while. Sometimes you see people.
Sometimes they ad just took goes. He pulled a battered
notebook from his jacket, gravelly, hands fluttering over the cover.
Hear these pages write what you see, who you are.
Don't trust the locks, don't trust the walls. I took
the notebook, running my fingers over its scorched, saying, cover
inside the opening page if found burnless. The rest a ragged,
frantic lock, scan badge enters, time stamps that made no sense,
no scold and varying hens, some frantic, some blocky. Can't
find the door. Coffee hot, It's night, but never sunrise
heard voices, don't answer, keep bad visible. They come at night,
he whispered, When this week the fours. If you're not
gone by then no one remembers. He left. Names go, fuzzy,
files get erased. He glanced up, sharply. That's what they do,
cover stores, silence, money, whatever it took. People who threatened
to talk hid out here until nobody could find them.
Sometimes they walked out with new names. Most didn't. He
reached out, gripping my form with desperate strength. Don't let
the alarms go, never let them think. He found the
right corror doors. His words failed as a slow rising
beep took through the wall like a hospital hert monitor
only harsh grating, he startled, releasing me. That's them. I
have to go. He retreated, shoulders hunched, vanishing into a
side office. I followed, but when I tried the door
after him, it refused to bunch machinery groaning with him.
Silence returned thick with the after tist of panic. I
opened the notebook, scanning his lopy. Scirl hage is chronicled
day after day of isolation, routine, and nuntin dread. They
come every night to a race. Don't trust the logs.
Only paper survives, file room key and the badge. Watch
for oatlen the vents. Don't listen too close. They are
not always the building. I've flipped ahead, breath shortening. If
you find a way out, burn the pages. The last
entry urged. Armed with this accidental testament, I pressed forward,
clutching the notebook and the scavenge badge in my pocket
until the outline dug into my palm. We turned in
two and safe. I tried the badge and the card reader.
The green light flickered and the door responded sluggishly. Metal
hinges squealing as a caved inward inside a vault like
room glistened with steel cabinets, each marked in black, mocker
contracts unsigned NDA's ear twenty ten twelve safe reports in
the center, a glass table, born encrypted drive as scattering
of keys, and a yellowed wall shop. I skimmed the
chot secure cleaning schedule for level five with hand pend
and just trailing back decades, each matching the maintenance logs
i'd seen. Specific dit coincided with the anomalous after Eyre's work,
always anonymized drawings on the wall technical annotated short how
the building's core was reverted date. A line spiraled into
isolated loops. Keepers and old fashioned physical locks cured doors
from both sides. The only outside axis routed through transcend
construction elevators and never registered in official city plans. I
pocketed the drive more for habit than hope, and paged
through on side contracts. Names matched the missing signatures marked null.
No witnesses upcomes blank. Here was a paper trail, so damning,
so perfectly complete. It clarified the building's purpose and administrative
ghost space, one designed to facilitate a rasure, never documentation.
The voices began again, louder angry. I pressed my ear
to the vent distinct phrases surfaced a cat let them
stay to archives must be moved, that's not per coal
all overlapping, always fraying before clarity, then blending back into
a humming, syncipated drone. The ceiling lights faded round alarm
skiening at the edge of hearing. I braced myself, feeling
the transitional living shutter in the walls, as if the
building rise to eject me, or worse, to absorb me
into its system. I stumbled into the corridor as the
entire floor shifted, panels and the walls blink. A live
secure mode enabled fire doors slammed one by one down
the length, bark and gun metal collapse overhead strodes, flared
glass bold popping with those untang The speaker now urgent,
hammered out. Please lock up level five before you leave
for the night. I ran, breath tearing as the spatial
logic of the place dissolved. Corridors telscoped out into endless
repeating suckles. One door previously to conference B now opened
only into record security no matter what direction I approached.
I doubled back twice, then three times, the layout ever recomposing,
taking liberties with three dimensional reality and new floors above
would never allow. Ships materialized just beyond the limits of
my cone of light. A row of backs, indistinct, motions, stuttered,
figures in dust, showed business attire, faced away board as frozen,
except when my attention drifted. Then they shadowed, as if
to refocus on some task forever incomplete, I ducked into
Records Security, slamming the lock through the frosted glass blowed
outlines stacked indistinct at first, but as my panic rose,
they sharpened. Featureless faces, eyes rubbed, roar, MOUs worked in
silent excruciation. Their badges, each swinging online yards, all bore
some iteration of mark tower, the old logos half worn.
I fumbled with the hard wardphone, the line connected, spewing
nothing but a chirin of chopped back of voices, interlaced
with what I recognized, the snatches of past testimony. Never
meant to hide it le locked in for the night.
They forgot my name. A juttering stata closed them out.
On the desk side a complex control panel, dusty but
let a blinking overide button reading a level emergency slash exit.
Next to it, a faded instruction sheet. Two badges required
one old one current enter pass code lock up level
five before exit. I suspect a crowd pressed closer, their
hands feathering at the glass, not knocking, but sliding down,
leaving streaks in the smear dust. I pulled both badges
from my pocket. I laid the survivor's battered card in
the reader, then my own their emergency slash eggs. If
light blinke fiffully waiting, I prompt on screen admin code
required last cleaning, scheduled date. My mind raised the notebook,
the cleaning logs, the chart on the wall. Match. I
punched in the date of my scheduled level five cleaning.
A panel buzzed motor somewhere deep in the walls, stuttering
to life. Red light flared down the hallway. Doors along
the courre all warmped and banged, as if magnetically locked
and unlocked at once. The elevator giant, unnatural, not like
any chime I'd heard on the floors above. I staggered
into the whole the vision of lost employees' knuckle lessing.
They turned toward me, half real, half documented, some mouthing
in soundless terror, others in suspicion. When reaching as if
to hook their fingers in my sleeve. Their faces were disfigured,
not by violence, but by the absence of memory, had
faded eyes, blank feature straped in a mist of administrative forgetfulness.
As I bolted, the survivor materialized in an intersecting corridor.
He looked at me without hope. If you get out burnet,
you can't have Rlettic comeback. The swelling, low frequency grown rose,
vibrating every cell in my body, a fury of the
building itself. The machinery, both ancient and new, determined to
deny me passage, or it sorbed me into the next cycle.
Doras now swinging and slamming in perverse and vitation, drove
me forward. I reached the elevator, nearly tackled by a
brush of cold that left my arms prickled, my flask
lights being flared then dimmed. The buddon at last glowed
not white, but with a bruised purple light. I staff it.
The doors parted in tears, waddled and strange hillogical shadows.
As I lunged inside, pale hands, dozens reached, grasping, some
pleading for help, others simply seeking to pull me back.
Clutching the notebook in the survivor's badge, I ran the
closed door button until the doors heaved ship. The elevator
shuddered still, then word in liminal ascent or descent, I
could not say which. The display ticked, flickered, landed for
a moment, En five, then rotated wounded too well. The
doors hissed open on to the ruined lobby, sunlight shitting
through the grimy glass, a world perfectly mundane, except for
the icy sweat that covered my body in the black
smears left on my arms. With us cold insistent hands
had seized at me, I nearly collapsed, let in the
slab like memory of Level five dissolve as bist it could.
In the new light my first impulse flight, I stumbled
through the empty foy hard, crashing the notebook, still clenched
in a hand that would not clench. I paused only
to press a trembling finger into the badge scanner one
last time, watching the axis denied display wing up permanently
out on the sidewalk, The air tasted thin. In you. Annah,
the janitor stood by her battered supply cart, lit pressed
tight as she took him My ragged gray face, busy night.
As she asked, too loud, too forced. I tried to
answer each word, cracking apart in my mouth. Just just finished,
I think, Anna, there's something down there hidden. She shook
her head, already averting her gaze. We all got ghosts, mister.
I just clean up. The new demolition notice had been
tacked to the main doors over night, bolder and more
final than the last. The city lock out was in place,
chained her own. I recognized the city Supervisor's signature, but
dared not seek him out. I filed my report or tried.
Nobody believe the war. My notes vanished from the company
service within a day, My email's bouncing back as unrecognized.
The survivor's notebook pages, once full of frantic locks and names,
had turned overnight into a clump of water stained grip. Hulp.
My phone, newly charged, stuttered and rebuted when I tried
to open message logs or photographs. I returned to the
site once from across the street, nothing to see, windows blinded.
Cordon's up. Anna was gone from the roster. Another inspector
saw rumor held, took a job at Marwick, and according
to Buildings super never picked up pay. No one would
speak to it, not city officials, not company contacts, not
even my old architectural colleagues. Level five was a race again.
I slept badly, dreams awashed with panic corridors and silent faces,
alarms endlessly pending their phrase gnawing from a tinny speaker,
leaping through the gray folds of memory. Please lock up
level five before ye leave for the night. The days blurred.
Each morning my inbooks refreshed with a long parade of
unread requests, mostly digital to try his from other failed contracts.
Then three days after my escape, a new message arrived,
please lock up level five before ye leave for the night.
Attached was a security camp photo from the exact morning
i'd left me hunted in the shadowed lobby, face ashen
under new daylight, but behind the glass entry where only
construction fencing should remain. A half dozen blurry figures crowded together, outlines, men, women,
each with a lineout or visitor badge, their faces lost
to the bone of reflection or a smear of movement.
They watched without expression, their pre and charged with the
silent unwasolffully. I deleted the e mail it returned intriplicate
immediately after. Outside my window, the blue glow of the
city turned on as if nothing had changed. No trace
of Margaret Tower in the sky line, no record of
Level five in any plan, still in the unmade stack
of my inboox, replandishing itself by the eye of the
same subject line gleamed each message as silent prod of
the responsibility lingered, A dread truth gnawed my thoughts, settling
into the pit of every subsequent night. Even as I'd
escaped the buried floor, Even as the city's memory cleansed itself,
some vital part of me and the lawn frozen secrets
of Level five would never wholly leave. I let the
new email pile up, paralysed before my screen, as the
senders a dress shape, shifted numbers, flickering, domain swapping in
and out of existence. Each time I deleted the message,
it returned in different permutations of chain a tree, always
with that every subject line demanding I do something I
had no words for. Even as I was trickled by
I tried to distract myself with the rituals of the
outside world. Coffee warming my hands, the stagger of city trains,
the noisy shuffle of vendors under my window. None of
it cleared the gray recidue from my senses. Reality it
a new have to taste, metallic and faintly chemical, as
if the arab of ground was still polluted by the secrets,
had stirred beneath it. When I fished what was left
of the notebook from my backpack, the survivor's frantic diary,
now bundle of water stained, almost featless, balpiram my thumbela
on the blackened edges and re read what faint lines persisted.
Remember only what you write, and further on, half obscured,
they will follow when you return. The rest migrated every
night into pure blurir sentences, dissolving in their own margins.
My work, such as it was, became a facsimile of normality.
After a few sleepless nights, I put in print waters
for newports and paperwork, stacking them neatly beside the battered
coffee pot, as if insistence alone could reconstruct the ordinary
from fragments. Even when my cell buzzed, I hesitated to answer.
In the foalt calum of daylight, I'd almost convince myself
what I'd seen could be written off as an episode
to break from the pressure a lingering fever. Then came
the subtle syncopation of details that didn't quite add up.
My apartment, which had always carried the soft clatter of neighbors,
seemed fainter, the walls less certain in their boundaries. Sometimes
just at the age of sleep, I thought I saw
doorways and places that couldn't exist, Angled windows that emitted
light which never shifted no matter the ire. Three mornings
after the escape, as rain lashed the glass weekly and
the city war it's habitual indifferent face, I pushed open
my apartment door to find a slim envelope and stamped
to slip beneath on the front just might name nothing more.
I crouched and pried it open, heart stumbling at the
unmistakable odor old towner carpet adhesive, the clinical estringency particular
to anuse copy rooms. They wafted up from the led
ahead before I even finished reading Marrik co Operations Personnel Finalization.
The page itself was bland, bureaucratic, and yet its edge
is prickle. Confermal. Level five documentation has been secured and
returned to administrative storage. Final access if required listed below.
There was a cold block at the bottom, as if
it expected a badge scan and a lock sequence. It
ended with the line I now dreaded, please lock up
level five before you leave for the night. I stared
the world of my flat slowering. On the back was
a scrall message, shaky uneven. If you see this, destroy it,
eh Amon. I could censor in the script the nervous,
rapid penmanship of someone used to leaving quick notes for
herself on service sheets. I'd been meaning to call her
check in see if she'd really left the janitorial company
for another job orer like me. She'd only tried to
map a rut summer father from memory, pause her hair.
I didn't say that it was just a joke of thought,
a slip, as if a wire inside my mind. Fraid.
I put the envelope down and washed my hands. Watched
the paper color little in the moist air of the kitchen,
like it was shrinking from me, like it feared being seen.
I returned to my computer, resolved to wipe out all
records of Marwick for my devices. I changed passwords, move files,
overwrote old logs with meaningless gibberish each time. I hit delete,
though the same ghost lines reappeared a level five lock up,
a cleaning request, excepted like a watermark, the script seat back,
restoring itself with the precision and futility of wind smoothing sand.
At the end of that week, I received an unexpected
call from Delia, my architect friend, the one he'd recognized
the signature of fas not meant to be found. She
spoke quickly, her voice low, smudged with static, as though
the city's regular noise had bled to the line. I'm
leaving town for a bit, she said, abruptly. Company moved
the project. Whether it's the line, I have a file
you should see all procurement documentation may be something to
help you put this behind you, or at least understand
how it was done. The implication it was still being
done somewhere by someone else twisted in my stomach. Where
can I meet you? A hesitation not the city, Come
up to Crosstown Park tomorrow noon. Bring nothing you want
to keep. She was gone before I could protest. The
next morning, gray miss moffling the city's edges, I made
my way through the subway and upside streets, dely awaited
by trashdrewn bench profile tot. She didn't sit, just slid
a data stick and a folded blueprint page from her
jacket into my hand. Oh call me, she said, don't
mention this. Whatever you think you saw, others saw to you.
Some left, some never showed up again. She looked around,
special twitching her features, then dropped her voice. They built
Level five into dozens of projects in the nineties, emergency
safe rooms, whistle blow stations, transfer corridor's design so that
any real record could be vanished. Those funding streins through
two dozen names, all paid by charities, advocacy groups, ghost companies.
They think it served a great acre, but buildings remember
even when people won't. She met my eyes. You don't
want to get caught between them and the secrets, theor Yes,
more than just blueprints. I tried to ask a battle,
learn about survivors. She raised a hand. I was told
never to ask. You shouldn't ear. She left before I finished,
and folding the blueprints head down against the wind, a
slip of color lost among scrub trees and trash. At home,
I scanned the data stick, pulling up a mess of
procurement sheets, secret construction authorizations, and at the center a
folder label to leave a five override inside a dated badge,
protocols lod purgescripted to run in the middle of the night,
emergency shut down processes that whited not only the floor
but its technologic memory from all databases. Even the atman
panel I'd used to escape, matched up, same buttons, same
bad sequence. It was as if the system existed only
for the briefest window triggered by ritual accident or compulsion,
then sealed up until the building's next scheduled disappearance. That night,
after hours of following trails that ended in digital I
sat at my kitchen table, haunted by the envelope with
Anna's note the data stick, the ever growing graveyard of emales.
I realize, sickened that the architecture wasn't just a trick.
It was an act of wool, a collective refuseal tell
alst certain truce any sunlight. That was why witnesses ended
up blurred, why my own memory buckled when I tried
to piece events together. The story had never been meant
to survive in this islands. I found myself repeating the
instructions in a half whisper lock up level five before
you leave for the night. And even as I heard
myself say it, part of me wondered if some habit
deeper than memory was compelled in my voice. I crashed
into an uneasy sleep. The boundaries between dream and we
can growing even thinner, I wondered, Endless corridors, sometimes the
gray passageway of level five, sometimes a version of my
apartment building with new doors, a blind hallway, voices murmuring
behind glass. The faces that turned toward me were always
half seen. Enna smile dearly as where he glanced the
survivor's sunken eyes. I tried to speak or remember their names,
but each sound tore open a new gentle panic. Occasionally
the elevator doors would open, somewhere impossible, at an till
all be yond before me, empty, safe for a handful
of silent watches, each pressing a dead visitor badge to
the hut, waiting. One dawn spilt harsh sunlight through the
bedroom window, waking me with an eyron jolt. I remembered,
as if it was a warning that i'd left deal
is blueprint enfrolled on the living room table, heart pounding,
I went to review it, only to find something new
scrolled at the bottom, and desperate pencil words I hadn't
written in hand, dritting, unfamiliar and urgent. Don't forget, don't
ever let the door shut. My phone buzz jarring me
from the days I fumbled for it, seeing Anna's name
flash up, improbable since I hadn't wrung her and she'd
quit the job the week before. She didn't wait for
me to speak. They sent the cleaning schedule here now,
her voice rasped. They want me to sign off on
something I never did. I get calls, they ask if
I remember you. I don't say anything. Don't come back
Oka some fours they deeper than you think. The lion
went dead, but not before stad a q wine rose
up that same stuttering distortion had heard on the Level
five desk phone. I set the receiver down gently. My
hand shook the knuckles icy and a nyielding, as if
I'd spent another night in that shivering gray corridor. In
the days that followed, a kind of obsessive isolation took rude.
I let emails accumulate, unable to face the constant return
of the message each time I thought to delete my account.
Another batch with flood in Level five, level five, always
escalating with the certainty of a candown. My world outside
the building shrank, Sidewalks seemed narrower, the cities now as
foaltering as if through thick a glass. Friends texted, but
their words failed to ground me. I passed entire afternoons
in a paralysis of drid shuffling through a living room that, sometimes,
out of the corner of my eye, long aided bend
in strange ways I couldn't rationalize. Occasionally, the bathroom light
flickered in a man or two, reminiscent of the elevator descent,
and I'd freeze, Convinced for seconds, I'd find myself stepped
back onto the wrong floor. One evening, desperate for any
sense of banality, I walked the length of my block,
rain gleaming beneath sodium lights. Each time footsteps rayng behind me,
I braced, expecting what that. I'd look back and see
one of the blurred watchers, a lionard swinging gently. Badge
reversed as if refusing even the act of reading under
the weight of uncene obs A tridul ordinary routines, grocery stores,
dry cleaners, a quick stop into the city, library. On
an impulse, I wandered to the reference desk, asking after
any documents on mart towed demolition schedules. The young clerk typed,
scanning databases. There's no Marwick tower, he sef frowning, you
mean market or maybe Warwick. I spelled it again. He
checked a thicker registry. No wrecker, he concluded, handing me
back my ID. If it was there, the city would
list in the project archive. There's nothing in the last
ten years. On the walk home, a passivacant lot where
Margaret had stood. Now it was only a gap in
the sky line, edged by a plastic chain link fence,
broken gas gleintin delly machines sat idle, half covered in tops.
On the security sign, a fresh sticker had been slapped
across the address, inspection ongoing, do not enter after nine
p m. Level cleaning schedule to be confirmed. Even in
a rasure, the instruction survived. When I dreamed that night,
my own hands were at the elevator panel, the blank
buttons locked beneath my thumb. I pressed it. The humovens
see machinery mounting a frequency that blanked out memory, turned
names into static faces, into smears in the reflection of
the elevator doors. My own image gradually warped, malforming words
my brain couldn't decipher. Behind me, a crowd gathered, matching
badges to faces with desperate hope or resignation. Each time
I tried to shout, I produced only a thin high wine.
The lights gutter. Then I was back in the corridor
at same endlessly by furcating hallway, always one step away
from the exit, always turning, always returning to the start.
I woke, heart convulsing, body, drenched and cold. In the dark.
I forced myself to confront the piles of evidence one
last time, deely as blueprint, AMAS, envelope, the disintegrating notebook,
one after another. I burned them in a shallow tray,
watching the fiber's curl disintegrate, crackle, and desot. The memory,
though didn't fade with the ash. I knew that nothing
I did, no act of destruction, could write what the
maze of Level five had done to my mind. There came,
in those final days before demolition, a hesitancy in my
work and movement, an unfamiliar reluctance to open any door
or trust, a pattern of ordinary architecture. Official letters arrived
in forming me my contract was concluded. I almost wept
from relief. They mentioned nothing about outstanding logs, nothing about
skere floors, only the usual platitudes in a signature, though
one line was bolded in faint gray thank you for
your service, do not return after ires on my last
visitist Such a thing can ever really be candied? I
lingered across the street at dusk, watching the demo Creuz
Gramble to put up extra fencing through the glare of
the spotlights. I thought I saw a slight movement in
the window was above the barre'st flicker, as of some
one pacing a dead hallway. Or perhaps it was only
the reflection of the city, or some facet of myself,
split and left behind. Before bed that night, the ritual
recurred in buss open emails, stacked thirty new unread at
the top of photo time stamp for the ire just passed.
My face, cast pale by the screen's light glare, glazed
and far away behind me, the faintest silhouettes pressed against
the blurry glass of the city's deepest absences. I chose,
almost without thought to answer. I tagged a single sentence,
almost a prayer who wants the door locked. As I
hit send, the room chair, a pressure gathering at the
base of my skull. For a breathless second, no response.
Then message after message returned, each from a separate featureless sender.
We do names must not be left unfinished. Please lock
up level five before you leave for the night. I
closed the laptop. City sounds pollsed under my window, the
neon line, the shudder of distant construction, the lawn, unbroken
hum of halt to progress. I pulled the shade and
sat in the dark, listening to my own heartbeat, willing
memory to hold just enough shape until morning. In the
time since living half living, the message never leaves. The
in box refills. The lines repeat, always one more variant,
always from a new dress, the city's silence, now flavored
by the infinite recursion of floors, both above and over
quite above. I passed through buildings, a lobby here and
elevator there, half show each time that beneath my feet
some secret corridor runs, populated by the ghosts of unfinished stories.
On rare nights, I wake with a start, certain I've
heard the elevator's wine, the soft plea of the speaker
echoing through drywall, insisting on its unfinished ritual. At first,
I tell myself I escaped, that is over. Then the
lights flicker, the inbox buzzes, or shadow moves beyond the
corner of my eye, and I recall so do buildings.
Their memories are simply kept, differently, written in pressure, in
the odd comfort of enforced silence, the the rituals that
can quite be stopped. What if? I wonder? Sometimes the
point wasn't to safety or secrecy, or even the machinery
of erasure. What if hidden in that blunt pose between
four and six, the true purpose was always witnessed, trapping memory,
storing it where only the lost would notice, keeping company
with the vanish, waiting for someone to attend to the
last message, to close it out. At last, Each iteration
of the email is its own record of failure and hope.
Each contains the same haunting refrain, leaping up from depths
I once thought were only structure on a air Please
lock up level five before you leave for the night.
As I write these final words, I see the screen flicker,
new notification rising, the unread count climbing. The old photograph
appended again at the bottom, myself frozen at the threshold,
gazed upon by the blurred company of all who remain unfinished, shadows,
waiting always for one more return of the key, for
the last voice to answer, for the final door to close.
And as long as I live, and as long as
some part of me remains unfinished, Level five will wait, unlocked, unwitnessed, unfinished, forever,
haunting the space between one ordinary dusk and the next.
And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and
I will see you in the next one.