Speaker 1: The hum of the security flashlight in my hand was
the only steady sound on the twenty second floor at
two seventeen a m. Everything else, the distant city traffic,
the elevator somewhere below, even the art that of a
duck's settling, seemed caught under a soft, isolating dome. Now
did the redmontaw cleave time sharply up here above the
neon and sodium lights. The mundane vanished and was replaced
by something mineral, cold and watchful. I'd been warned about
the silence, but they didn't mention how pressed in, as
if the floors themselves were listening. My patrol was simple
on paper. Start at lobby security, work up the floors
in sequence, verify all sweets, locked, lets off alarm set
the flashlights. Beam jittered over old carpet and glass office doors,
each with its own and as huming Placout, Iron Corp,
Flurry Advisory, Fontsworth Analytics. It was a parade of companies.
No one seemed to know the name, somehow interchangeable. Only
when the start up floors did it. Monitors, Blue Flobra, Tree,
Recent Life. The rest was darkness shaped into rooms size boxes.
Checking the lobby look book was part of every loop.
The ledger sat on its battered counter, a pen chain
to the side. Each round at cribble Initial's mind a
time men flicked through the handful of signatures from the
desk guards the occasional technician, delivery names and tidy loops.
But lately it spotted someone else's mark in the stack.
That's where our swore had been alone a DISTINCTI d
K would appear slightly smudged a flick of ink, as
if left handed. Tonight, the feeling was ratchet tight as
plumbing beneath old walls. My feet hit the edge of
the renovations on a full floor, stripped and awaiting construction,
with only a handful of security lights surviving. Overhead ceiling
panels gaped, the hush ear was padded, all sound trapped
in fibers of torn carpet and blank drible. I followed
the route, hand steady on my keys, passing the shell
of what once might have been an office suite room
at one hundred eteen was marked for demolition. Its door
was closed, glass into dark. Harvid had me twist the
handle locked as usual. The keep ep beside it was dead.
No tenants no cleaners, no reason to enter. That was
when the smell caught, not the sharp tang of cleaning solvent,
not old dust, but coffee, fresh, browed, as if some
one had just poured it. I pressed my u pond
to the glass. Nothing moved in the room, just a
moon at desk. But on the edge of that desk,
bordered by a pale ring of condensation, stood a styro
from cup, stullstiny. I hesitated, looking up the whole, no
one in sight. A quick check of my phone confirmed
no one had boused into this for since midnight the
only traffic was my own. Added every iron in the
internal system. I tried the door again, thence wid my
pass guard. The lock clicked. Inside the room felt less
like a deriult than the set papers found on the desk.
Chair pulled out just so, a sense of recent departure
in every detail. I went straight for the cup, careful
not to knock it. It radiated heat. The surface was
untouched except for a faint lips to print on the rim,
deep red set in its styropham grain. The coffee inside
was dark, half full. No sugar packets, no stiff straws,
just the cup. The ring of condensation, nearly soaking through.
Suddenly aware of the cameras overhead, I glanced to the wall.
Nothing had flickered since I'd stepped onto the floor. Training
said checked twice, leave a note if something looked amiss.
As I backed out, I closed the door behind me,
tried the handle again, locked. I returned to the lobby
by habit, passing through a dozen on the script open cubes,
each worn empty with desktop to try as frozen in place.
Back at the security stand, I pulled up the camera
feed for the past ire split across four monitors. Not
a shadow besides my own had crossed the tweet or
the entire renovation floor. The record was as vacant as
the holes themselves. I set my pen in the ledger,
started to lock the event, then left the details vague.
Foun Cup investigated was it worth reporting? There was no
one else there, no sign of entry or exit, no
alarm stripped, nothing but a lingering trace of a prisons
that shouldn't have been stepping away. I caught sight of
the d K signature again, just a few lines above mine.
The ink looked wet, a little blurred, fresh as the
coffee I just found for a moment, I stood at
my palm on the register and certain was this some
prank and aside joke among the staff, or just the
low trucks and empty building plays on a tired mind,
I signed, and the echo of my ballpoints seemed to
carry down the lawn empty corridors. Half a year back,
I'd been a new face in another city, tossing out
job applications as easily as empty coffee sachees. One afternoon,
beneath the flickering lunch room light, I was called into
the Redmond Tower's management suite for an interview. My resume
emphasized reliability may be too much, so the building manager
at all neat Man named Wolf, glance at me over
a wire room computer monitor. Nights tend to be uneventful,
he told me, worning carefully. Mostly, I'll monitor entry two rounds,
keep the log up to date. This tone dared me
to admit I was looking for a job that demanded
less imagination and diligence. I'd nodded, answering, Honestly, I needed
the iras between failed tutoring gigs in a tempole that
had dried up. I was desperate for reliability. Night work
was less covet at, fewer interruptions, fewer expectations, a straight
shot at rent in the time to keep to myself
as an interval. The prospect of silence wasn't daunting, it
was relief. The apartment I'd found was little more than
a rectangle above a sandwich shop. His beege walls, cheap lines,
and pre furnished so for felt neither friendly nor hostile,
just anonymous. Every evening, after heating a packet of noodles,
I'd fire up a water kettle for instant coffee. The
nights alternated between them through paperbacks and scrolling job boards.
The city sounds outside flattened into a faint, perpetual growl,
starting the security jaw. I quickly slatted into its rhythms.
Mason the Descardes was already packing up by the time
I arrived each evening. He always seemed to have an
excuse to leave early. A heavy sat man with a
deep tan, Mason appeared immune to the buildings oddities. He
never lingered past a handshake in the exchange of the
heavy clipboard, saying sign it, check your route and don't
go poking wearer or not needed. Each night I cocked
him by scanning my idea and the chip reader. The
system beap with the same tired note, granting me seven
nocturnal eyos that unspoiled. With ritual precision, I made my
rounds with a checkless tip to the back of my badge.
Check all fire doors, test three random alarms, wipe my
finger across high traffic surfaces looking for dust. An odd metric,
but one that kept me focused on the rare occasion
across the pass with lingering tech workers or the tail
end of an office party. Our conversation never drifted beyond
the weather of complaints about the elevator speed. The building
itself was more alive at night than I expected, though
most sites were dark, the monitors often doors locked, an
occasional blue glow flickered behind frosted glass, and the tech
heavy floors, trails of hastily entered desks and half dismisschairs
acted as evidence of late iris in the city's on
ending grind. It was the emptiness, ironically, that first brought
the building to life for me. Each four had its
own flavor of a band, and the old furniture shunted
to corners, cubicle walls, bearing ghosts of long lost sticky notes,
lobby directories papered over with tapenink, the company names in
the big wooden signboard downstairs, a tornic sagebridge, mahony, a
little seemed almost methic, lay one over the other in
a collage no one could actually decipher. Most shifts glided by.
I'd open a paperback if the tabletops hadn't gathered more dust,
or flick through the buildings arc house, old newsletters and
manifestos left behind the relevance lost with the staff. More
than once I had contemplated the lives of the people
who must have typed those words, checked those las udges,
left their mugs in the break room for some pore
night guard to find a decade later. If the atmosphere
pressed close, I shoved it off. I told myself, all
buildings feel odd at night, once the foot traffic and
the janitors vanish. My friends, those few who answered my
calls found the job amusingly dull. You're just a ghost
in a ghost office, one had said, laughing. But recently
I started to wonder how true that really was. The
log book, for instance, was a sea of regularity, a
parade of match to initials in office numbers until a
certain oddities caught my eye, not just d K, but
the frequency with which the same signature swirled up On
nights I saw no one. It became my custom to
pour over the sign and register on each sweep, looking
for patterns, letters that repeated handwriting I couldn't account for.
I felt like a minor puzzle, something you chase out
of idle curiosity but never expect to solve. By midnight,
I'd put the building into what I called sleep mode.
Lights trimmed to a sliver, all alarms, set, cameras live
on the monitors in my small office. On slower nights,
I found myself reading the odd back issue of the
Business Weekly, looking for clues about the attendants, where they
came from, where they'd gone. Always my mind drifted before
I could retain much the archive, falling back into static.
Mason never showed an ounce of concern for detail. You
do your sweeps. He'd grunted the rest, sorts itself out
buildings old. You'll hear things that I thought might be
the truce and only worn in anyone gave the second weakened.
The job began in the same dullcadence, every corridor echo
of the previous night. But the ledger changed everything. I
noticed it during my usual postmid night patrol. The entry
from d KAY, usually a solitary signature a curiously needs skripton,
now appear twice, once at one nineteen, again at two six.
Both times, according to the lock, I'd be neither in
the stairwell or half way across the min lobby, nowhere
near the point where a second party could have slipped
by curiosity. Bit deeper, I double checked the building's interior
cameras for those spans. Motion logs confirmed I the only
bilip on every floor was my own circuit, my own
badge opening doors, no visitor with a matching name, or
any living trace. But it wasn't just the ink that
stood up. Small things began to feel off kilter. A
waste basket I emptied at one forty was now skewed
beside the janitor's closet. The next sweep around, a computer
in the conference room blowed faintly left on, though building
policy demanded everything off at midnight. A heavy black staper,
always glued to reception, was found poised in the mean
room as if mid errand I poked into the kitchen.
Swe No one had signed in since the early afternoon,
and the tenant, according to my records, have vacated two
months back. But in the trash a half eaten granola bar,
still soft wrapper, damp with reason touch. I stood with
the lip propped open, listening for some one else. Only
silence replied. Determined to clarify whether this was coincidence or conspiracy,
I tore pink post it from my supply and left
a square sticky note on the break room counter one
fifty two who left fruit. By the time I passed
that way again an hour later, the note was gone.
In its place a new post it, the writing on
it cramped in deliberate ree fy forty three d k
muskin prickled. I peeled the note away, tucking it into
my pocket. On the way back through the renovation zone,
I stopped outside the sweet where I had found a
coffee cup. I tried to handle, locked as always, press
my face to the window. The desk was bare, the
cup had vanished. There wasn't even the ring from condensation
left behind. Each time my cataloged a disturbance, I left
a mark in my personal lock Initially it was curiosity.
Soon it was ritual. But as the days ticked by,
the note started to disappear or repair changed, often overwritten
with cryptic times, initials, or sure if the clerk of
words were checked, a wait again, it felt increasingly like
a dialog orbeat when I hadn't initiated. None of these
things were proof, But when strangeness adds up, certainty d
windows the moments I tried to rationalize, the gernol la barre,
the move staple blowed into a fog of possibilities. Only
the deep, recurring dread that some one else was or
had been, walking the same circuits I did, remained sharp.
I stopped pretending the anomalies were tricks of fatigue. It
was easier to admit that something was. Often to keep
patching together unlikely explanations for the details in the corners.
From then on, I approached my patrol with a new vigilance.
I stopped just looking. Times and floors erode down. Anything
out of place, adrift of unfamiliar scent, the wall of
a fingerprint on frosted glass, a yellowish streak of maugracity
on the edge of an empty desk. At first, the
list was short. A faint speck of chemical cleaner in
a room supposedly sealed a sense of warm flingering in chairs,
hinting at recent occupation. I began cross referencing Tanant records
out of mild desperation, scanning for patterns. Most of the
companies renting suites on the upper floors had names that
might as well have been algorithms France with Analytics, Ardencorp,
Flurry Advisory, Thecovex systems. But looking at their contact information
yielded little websites that tined out, linked in company pages
long since Grope phone numbers that rang only to a
droning This line is not in serrus. I tried phoning
as a lost resort. The numbers pasted inside the old
building directory served no better. The digits all dead, with
one occasionally interrupted by necker of digital static, as if
some one was listening on the other end but could
into a wooden speak. Fax is sometimes buttered up by
accident from the mill room's antique machine. Once I lifted
a brittle strip of Thermo Fax's paper addressed to Flurry
adviser Ate Sue twelve O eight. The date touched and
faded blue read March nineteen, twenty twenty seven, over a
year in future from when the company had reportedly dissolved.
There were always traces if I sought them out aggressively.
One Wednesday, well after three, I let curiosity lum me
into a long disuse suite. The door slightly a dark
revealed a chaos of paper and signed contract staff four
high on every work stition monitors caught midpower off even
a handful of black and white photos torn in half,
faces cut out with precise diagonal alliance on a computer
screen a digital poistic layout nine fifteen j H. No
explanation program or elaboration provided. I took the liberty of
flipping through the abandon mail CABI in the basement, expecting
nothing but rat droppings. Instead, I found a stack of
old yellowed faxes, dated by hand in attack cus of
some from two years earlier, although as not even matching
any current calendar. One urgently worded the mostly lost to
black in print reference a meeting at a time so
late four thirty am it seemed intended for nocturnal staff,
or perhaps no one at all. I brought a handful
of these anomalies to Mason. As our shifts overlapped, Ye
ever noticed the room names showing up on the sign
and sheet? I asked it as I handed him the clipboard.
He barely looked up from his thermos. This building's had
more ghost than tenants. Don't let it get in your head.
It's just old. He left quickly, lips pressed thin, but
his indifference struck me as to studded the scents. Persisted
that the building was filled more with habits and left
ofvers than people, and that the routine sweeps, sign ins,
checklists were being watched and subtly re arranged by a
unseen hand. More and more often I heard footsteps traversing
the uppermost floors at ires when the directory claimed this
should be entirely empty. Sometimes I'd take the stairs to
intercept the source. Every time I'd stand alone, AMN echoing
drywall and silent and blood printers. One night, as rain
lashed hard against the windows and the security monitors glowed faint,
the lock rattled on the office door. It wasn't just
the wind. I stepped over to check every nerve tight
and unlocked the door into the corridor. Nothing. No footsteps
running off, no sound on the thick linoleum. Returning, I
found my own clipboard for lipped open and a new
page statted one I hadn't turned myself. The building was
returning my focus with a vigilance of its own. Determined
not to let the confusion fester, I decided to dig deeper.
Security office in the Managements Wheatthouse. The master key boxes
steel cabinet bolted to the wall, supposedly only opened by
high trust staff. The key log inside a heavy binder
of paper slips, documentative or checkout. Scanning the pages, I
noticed the pattern immediately. The side familiar initials in WED
for Mason Wolf, HD for Helen Town the maintenance chief
were recurring outside our entries DK once or twice, an
unfamiliar jh orr FG next to each. A series of
recorded times bled out just past the listed return iron
cross Referencing with HR files told me all these people
were either no longer employed or never listed in the
first place. The sense of duplicity stretched further. I leafed
through a filing cabinet near the security desk and found
a thick DOSSI labeled nightly incident reports. The folder was
crowned with patrol locks from guards who came before me,
each sheet recording the same routine, a handful of anomalies,
a checklist, but with inexplicable absences. Some reports stopped abruptly midshift,
half sentences left stranded at the edge of the page.
Several more bor resignation notices slipped in his one liners
at the end, or were annotated in the building manager's
tight hand no further contact. I sat back before the
camera fees and scrolled through ARCAV security footage, hunting for
a glimpse of the oddent loper whose signature marred the ledger.
The feeds were thorough, except for infuriating skips and digital voids,
where the recording dropped out for several seconds. Almost every
time those gats coincided precisely with the appearance of new
initials in the log sheet or disturbances and work speices.
I knew for certain I checked minutes before. This wasn't coincidence.
It felt austrated. The traces left behind from these apparent
ghost staff grew more frequent on my nights, waxing in
intensity whenever a new guard came on to the roster,
as if the building itself was assessing who paid attention,
who would see only what was permitted, and whom I
probed deeper with a dry mouth. I devised a plan.
I prepare a few small traps, leave microposted notes on desk, prows,
snapped foots with my phone of suites are locked, use
of body camera I'd borrowed from my last job for evidence.
If there were rules for this routine, I intended to
break up bend and to expose what else moved in
the lanes of routine. After midnight, my night's patrol escalated
like the first page of a new ledger. I took
my rounds twice, then a third time, out of sequence.
The building didn't just withstand the scrutiny emt it at
every step, but always one half beat ahead. Cabinets were relocked,
fresh pens left in my wake, security lights flickering back on,
just as I swore had powered them off. It was
the low book that gave the moment a wayward. The
surface of every day tasks peeled back. I was alone,
pen dangling between my fingers as outdated a page. When
a new entry appeared an empty line below. For an instant,
the blue bulpin surged upright, gliding on the page, nothing
holding it, no shadow to explain away to movement. D
eat K three seven a M. The pen fell silent,
the ink was wet, my hand hubvered over the ledger,
knuckles wif from grobbing the cover. I could see a
pulse in my own neck reflected in the lobby's glass.
The only human prisons as definite as the shadow that
had just signed its name. Outside the city was just
beginning to think about morning. Inside the Redmond Tower, there
was only me and something, determined to keep the ledger
filled night after night. I have never been the sort
to imagine things, That's what I kept telling myself, even
as the pulse faded in my ears and my skin
prickled with coltsweat my thumb pressed hard into the stiff
rage of the love book's page, terrified that if I
flipped it, the fresh signature would vanish for multipla. But
d K three seven a M was written in the
same steadies slanting hand as before, and still glistening with
the dissenter of the cave brushed against the paper grain.
I stood back. My next motion, slow and deliberate, was
to back away, leaving the pen exactly where it fell.
Leading my hand and clench above the desk. The security
feet played their silent repetitions. I watched myself in their
cold monochrome blow a lone figure hunched over the desk,
nothing moving in the blind spots, no phantom arm swooping
the pen, just an empty building, a man and a
page that rode itself. I forced myself to move, to
break the spell that had me rooted to the spot. Quickly,
I checked the time, three eleven a m. This was
in tiredness, or some hiccup of a expectation from a
week on distorted night. Iurs I'd witnessed something happening, something concrete,
albeit unexplainable, something that left physical evidence in a record.
Plucking my phone from my belt, I snapped photos of
the ledger, deliberately, including my hand in fun for scale,
every movement loud as thunder in the hush of the
empty lobby. What did I do next? I tried to
think rationally, to approach the situation like the security professional
the management clearly wanted me to be. Was this an
elaborate prank, programmed automation, some digitalffect, remote control pen? Perhaps
my mind grasp for even slightly plausible tricks, remembering stores
of escape rooms, or viral marketing stunts that left fake
clues and fake scares for employees to puzzle over. But
there was nothing remote about the weight of that pen,
the wet line embedded into raw pulp. There was a
presence to it, something not meant for show. I looked
up with sudden certainty, feeling the air of the lobby shift,
as if perhaps I would see a d K standing
at the security gate filling out the sign and sheep
with the rychrug. Instead, only the slice of early morning
city light, great and half hearted cut through the window glass.
I turned earned, moving instinctively, needing to walk, to check
every door, every stairwell, every sweep between the lobby and
the granite slabs in the rooftop terrace, if any one
or anything was moving in sync with me. I wanted
to know. My radio clip was static at my hip,
the loose wire brushing my thigh in a welcome reminder
of the world of systems and policies. Security front desk.
I tried, foced thin, hoping for any sign a building
manager was monitoring the colms at this ire no reply
only circuit hiss. I cycled channels. Still nothing. It wasn't upright.
Fury yet more, the sensation you get on an empty street,
one footstep sick or behind yours, but never gain nor recede.
My mind spun back to Mason's silence, his refusal to
elaborate in the building's corks, the way he always clocked
out with one iron the door. Perhaps he'd seen something
similar more than once and learned to move past it
to preserve as sanity in his paycheck. I swept the
elevator lobb as, tapping badge after badge against the locked doors.
Nothing out of place on the ground floors up above
the renovations, almost exactly as I had left it to,
No coffee cups or led to Prince, no rearranged chairs,
of phantom footprints. Each suite, when checked, revealed only stillness,
des modes, floating, and security light like drifting insects. I
looped through the janitor's closet, pausing to test the radio again,
but the only thing that greeted me was the persistent
hum of the building's midnight systems, a fan turning somewhere,
always one floor away from direct scrutiny. Returning to the
security office, I sat and let the silence accumulate, waiting
for sunrise, checking and rechecking the security monitor clocks for
skipped seconds or missing footage. On a whim, I searched
the day's kissinett lugger. No mysterious enterers, nothing recorded since
Mason's signature hours earlier. The only proof was the log,
with itself sitting under a dom or fon fluorescent light,
the page now culled. As Dan tried, I sat in
the office, drinking the lust of my Saale coffee, ladding
tank callers done. Finally broke the dig. Ard arrived right
on schedule, his face waxen in the early light, eyes
flicking over the tidness I must have radiated. He didn't
ask if I'd slept well or if anything had happened.
He just motioned toward the log, nudging it closer with
the blunt finger. Don't forget to sign out, he said,
was clipped. I hesitated, then scrolled my initials, taking care
to avoid the line where d' kay it signed in
the pre dawn ire. If Mason noticed how I paused,
he gave no sign as I handed off my badge
and left Redmontow for the morning. The world outside seemed
too bright, its bustle artificial. After the half world above
the sleeping city, I walked a long strip back toward
my apartment, every surface laid with the fog of the
surreal night. At home, the routine returned, if unconvincingly. I
make coffee that tasted flat, stared at the paperback stack
by my bed, tried to read a single chapter. My
vision blurred over the lines in a window. The city
gleamed indifferent. Pull inside me grew a question that gnawed
itself raw. Was I the only one who saw? When
I woke sunset had already painted a city orange. I
felt a moored skin, it ching as if dusted with
concrete powder. My evening meal went and touched I word
it might stick in my throat of her tride. By
the time I walked back into the building, Mason was
already waiting, and patience cut into the set of his shoulders.
He wordlessly shoved the clipboard into my hands, transaction as
brisk as a bribe maid in a dark alley. Anything interesting,
I asked, keeping my voice light. He snorted, not unless
you like. Lamp time is failing and kit breaking into
the loading dock keep an eye in the fifth forthore
fixing a leak. The phrase told me everything and nothing.
I looked to the lot because he left, counting down
the seconds it would take for him to escape into
the waking city. The pen was where it always was,
But as I ran my finger down the page, I
saw in the margin nearly erased, as if a careless
thumb had tried to scrape it out of no trailing.
The last decay signature not alone to night. My pulse
kicked again, but I pushed it down, forcing a smile
that only the empty lobby could see. As the night
tacked on, I abandoned any claim to normalcy. I was
lost their edges. The drudgery of the routine was perforative
with new intent. Each weep of the corridors became an inspection,
a hunt for They overlooked the replace, though not quite
bright on the upper floors. Another waste basket nurged a
fraction from where it had sat. All light at the
end of corridor beep us twice, then flickered out. Just
as I rounded the bend. Peering into an unused conference room,
I noticed the white board had been wipe very recently too,
recently given the dry cleaning pads sitting in the corner
the break room on twelve, where it found the granola
bar now contained nothing but spotless surfaces. On the counter. However,
a new post it elevens of ventine shift. His handwriting
matched the decay in the ledger, each letter constructed as
if by some one who rarely wrote or remembered only
the gestures rather than the words. I collected the note,
folded and slipped it into my shirt pocket with the
same carry devoto a lucky charm or a bad luck coin.
Determined to hold on to every small lotdity, I made
another circuit of the renovation floor. This time a slight
bridge caught my foo. A strip of blue painter's tape
stretched across the front of sweet at one hundred eighteen.
There hadn't been taped year before. Leaning down, as quinted
and saw printed faintly in ink midnight return, something approaching
fear blossomed in my chest, a tight call that made
each next breath slower, then slower still. But I made
a note in my own note bad, took a quick
forto and pressed my thumb down heart against the papers
as stamping myself back into reality. I finished my rands
more quickly than usual, half hoping for a confrontation, half
dreading one it. Subsequent round brought sut low disturbances, A
twisting thread of colonnass and had indon or recognized drifting
in the stairwell, a thin scratch on a closed door
as if a key had fumbled, and missus Locke somewhere above.
A printer took a brief half page into the small eyres.
Unbidden by the fourth round, every shadow felt like a companion,
every reflection of possible antagonists in the security office, I
began cross referencing more heavily with my phone, balance on
my knee, I dug into the tenant roster, pulling up
linked in the last modified dates on company where it
presence is Google street View archives. Three of the companies
currently allegedly renting entire floors, Fonsworth Analytics, Flurry Advisory, Iden
Corps had vanished from the Internet entirely. The website staed Way,
butt Machine, Entrant, fragmentary and addresses all reverted to Redmond
Tower's general inbox. I called every number I could find,
pen pressed a page, keeping a running tally of deadlines
and a NaNs of rings. On a whim, I emailed
the generic addresses listed in all directories, hoping for even
a bannt back or spam bought response. I was later
I was still waiting, left another of my own notes
to check. Twelve thirty nine a men k propped by
a coffee machine in the main kitchen. During my next weep,
it had been moved angled into the corner behind the
decaf khan. The difference was delivered a signal of presents,
or at least of manipulation, not mere drafts or vibrations.
That night, rowing protocol aside, I left a half feed
and granold boss sitting on the break room counter and
scrolled for d K on another pastor square. If roteen
could become communication, I would try to speak in its language.
My next week becisely. Sixteen minutes later found gerneal crumbs
dusted across the sink stainless lip posted replaced by its
own cryptic reply routine matters two six m d K.
When I reached the security office, I found the monitor
left on camera feed split two by two, but my
computer's clock had frozen for seventeen minutes. Then suddenly leaped
forward to match my phones perfectly. I pulled handset locks
and found a miscoll labeled simply older jar. The time
step matched the ledger's last d K entry. On instinct,
I called the number. Electronic beaps gave way to statical
lay silence, then a hiss of breathless where less noise.
I hung up the handset, shaking slightly in my grip.
Something in the building's night logic had taken the bait
of the day and was answering, if only in riddles,
through it. All my hands moved and consciously checking desk
drawers from marks, photograph and chair positions, marking wate baskets,
rotation relative to the doors, trying to force language onto
the silent, stubborn facts of the place. This was no
longer mere pattern. It was contest into play. I'd entered
the manager suite off the front lobby with every intent
on routine, flashlight being cutting through blind snap shot. I
rummaged carefully through the drawers, finding nothing new, paper clips,
spare cards, a pile of not yet laminated ID badges. Finally,
at the very back I found the stack of employee
of the month's certificates, each yellowing at the edges, dating
so far back that even the latter head had changed.
The earliest boy the name D. Krasker, awarded for a
night Security Excellence two thousand one. The picture was grainy,
but the swooping quay in his signature matched the ledger precisely.
The hairs on my arms stood up. The urge to
run was nearly overwhelming, but instead I forced myself to
see in the manager's cracked leather office chair, breathing in
through my nose, out through my mouth, letting the silence
fill me, hoping for some sense of psychicquilibrium. Was I
being toyed with by the building itself or merely the
legacy of some buried memories, its loyal routine, as cef
long it lasted by the jobs they could not quit.
A faint knock echoed from the hallway door, single deliberate,
neither heston nor peremetry. I rose, every sense keening, and
found myself standing just behind a gas waiting for a face,
a shadow, anything definite. But the hallway remained empty, only
the egsit signs red glow painted to far wall. In
defiance of night, I pressed the heel of my hand
to the cool glass, gathering my scattered focus. Redmond Tao's
Knights had become an elaborate choreography, one in which I
seen both participant and ordinance. The ledger was the script,
the only document that outlived its actors, course guards, the
real and the remembered. As my shift newed its end again,
I prepped the logbook for Mason, stacking it with my
own careful notes. To my relief. Infrustration, though d Kay's
signature was precisely where it had always been, beneath mine,
a record no less physical than the night izincd in
my own hand, daylight when it at last crept over
the skyline felt abstract. The narrow wedge of window in
my apartment showed sit escapers and yielding his memory. I
closed the blinds and pisced the kitchen, letting instant coffee
boil over. My mind cycled back through every strange moment,
every brush of the unfamiliar, every sly tree, suggesting the
Knight's rituals were both watched and curated. In the coming weeks,
I resolved to escalate further. I would leave, not just
post as befolded notes inside seal drawers, locked doors and
particular sequences, taped threads across hinges to spot movement. If
the building played by rules. If dy K and the
vanished companies obeyed some secret order, I would shift the pattern,
force the routine to respond. That was the only way
I'd ever know if I was still working security for
a barely viable commercial property where had instead become part
of its ingrained, unending, acknowledged staff. The lighter waited for
its next entry. The city rolled into morning, and I,
between two wolts, counted down the aisles until I could
walk the empty halls once more, knowing the building would
already be waiting for me. The page prepared the trap,
set my own name ready to be written by anun
seen hand. The lawbrook didn't leave my thoughts. Where I
finally stepped out into the pale band of dawn, roctack
slung on one shoulder, skin still prickling with memory, even
peel from the rhythm of the tower, I found myself
glancing sideways at the fox stage of my apartment's kitchen table,
half expecting to see those looping initials d Kay, scold
and blue. I could barely meet my own eyes in
the bathroom mirror, jaw sumbled and face drawn, the Knight's
resty still clinging to my hair and under my finger nails.
I'd spent so many days believing I could slide beneath
notice just another ghost passing through the city's concrete marror.
But now, in the steryl hush of early morning, I
realized I'd ripped aside a veil that was never meant
to be moved. I slept in snatches, caught between a
brittle alertness and the slow burrow fatigue. When my phone
chirp from its bat atop a paperback, I jolted upright,
convinced for one ruined moment that some specter from Red
and Tower had found a way through the bands of
my locks green. It was only Mason, the day guard,
sending the usual texture on tonight, like nothing at all
had changed. I typed yes and watched the coosa blink
as if daring me to add more. I let it go,
fingers resting just above the glass, leaving for my shift.
The city looked altered around the edges, shop lights flickered,
pedestrians seemed to move an oot synchrony, and the wind,
cold papers and tight instructions at my feet. My chest
ecked strangely, as if the Knight's ledger held my autonomy
hostage in one of its marked margins. Redmond Harris stood waiting,
indifferent as ever. I scanned in heart tripping when the
door hesitated before yielding. Mason looked at me with his
usual weariness. He looked worse than I feel, He remarked,
a sideways glance that bordered on challenge. We're off one elevator,
got stuck again. I shrugged. Someone's been signing an overnight again.
D kay, not a soul on the cameras. He barked
a laugh so loud it startled me. You were just
getting your initiation, is all building likes to make sure
the new ones pay attention. But something about his posture,
one foot pointed toward the revolving doors, hand closing tight
on the clipboard reminded me of the way people used
to edge around stray dogs. I checked a log as
soon as the law be ente. My entry from hours
before was there, clean and precise. Below it a fresh
smudge dear k time stamped. Two minutes after Mason departed,
I traced the path through the security office, hunting for
the echo of movement, for a warmth lingering in the
fabric of a chair or a mug out of place,
but each object cloned firmly to the prison. Everything looked
as it should until you remembered what shouldn't be there
at all. I hesitated at the door to the renovation zone.
The air coola by fraction, the emptiness too symmetrical. No
trace of last night's presence in the desk, no coffee cup,
no ring, nothing you except the sense I carried the
ghosts forward with me. The security fee blink at random,
once freezing on an empty corridor, A lattice of gray
across the screen, then a spider's silk. I washed my
own image slightly delayed, flicker from corner to corner, an
impostor in my own uniform. Determine not to let the
night vanish into dream. I quit myself for confrontation. Extra pens,
two note books, my phone, a light with a fresh voice,
or corder app running every pocket, heavy with contingency. On
my first sweep, I snapped pictures every threshold, paused at
every door, left posts along the tape boundary. In at
one hundred eighteen n k here ten forty seven p m.
On my second round, the notes were gone, each replaced
by a neatly routine matters d K. The small things unraveled.
Then I found the master a key log in the
manager's office, again, this time left out rather than boxed away.
The log now showed a new spate of entries, three
in a row from dcay times, slowly leaking past each
listed patrol. I compared them with the building's alarm report,
finding the censors armed and disengaged in Patten's match in
my own habits, as if d K moved only in
my mirrors. In curiosity, more desperate than brave, I tried
calling another of the disconnected numbers from the most recent
ten in directory. My call was answered this time, but
not by VOSS, only the cadence of office noise, filtered through
static background murmur of funds and laughter, and a brief
snippet of a meeting agenda action points for j H routine.
As always, I held the phone tight to my ear,
pulse pounding until the sun blinked out. At one eight
a m. The elevator worred into life on its own.
I caught a glimpse of the display panels, all fours
illuminated at once. The doors opened on twelve, the lights
inside flickering in time of my heart. The cabin was
empty save for the faint puffume of berntos, a scent
I recognized now as one of the buildings impossibilities. I
tried the door to the supply closet on five, where
the flickering of radiostatic chased my movements. As I passed,
the noise snapped into folk's brief fragments of corporate speak,
rewritten policies, numbers, marching like ants across a ledger, broutine, routine, brutine,
a female voice and tone, then laughter, guttural and deep,
spliced by the hum of the buildings, all transformer. When
I opened the closet, the radio fell silent. Somewhere in
the gaps of that night what began? As richevered toward collision,
I found a coded message wedged under my locker handle,
on the three look beneath four fifty eight a m
f G. The note was folded so many times I
felt almost laminated, being pressed impossibly neat. The eyres moved
differently now I every sweet I left chalk marks in
the thresholds. By the time I circled back, some marks
were simply gone, others smeared into unfamiliar For Prince Chutred's
neither mine nor masons sigging into an out of rooms
supposedly left and touched my tools, voice recorder or camera.
Note how it became a bulwark against being gaslighted by
the billing itself. With the evidence piled without clarity on
a lock desk, I found a photo of a company
partty smiling faces cups raised in cheer. Half the faces
were circled with ballpoint. Many others eck set out, their
identities erased. The back was dated February twelve, twenty nineteen,
and stamped eyed and corpse staff only. I added it
to my expanding file of the inexplicable. The coded message
from my locker gnawed at me until I could not
ignore it. A precisely four fifty seven. I stood before
the lock supply hatch in the sub basement, fist tied
around the original post it. The air felt colder than
any draft could justify. When I watched dict four fifty eight,
I used the master key. The lock turned with the
reluctant hunt, and the hatch open so stiffly I had
to shoulder it open. Inside the cardboard file boxes draped
with a layer of orange construction dust, their labels faded
stamped across the lad's apparel twenty fourteen clothes stuff, twenty
sixteen incidents night, each one packed with files the color
of old newspaper, slips of green pail paper made up
to names I had seen nowhere else e Lask and
m or to go. Jay has within the recurr mud
crusker in a pocket folder forgotten emails drafted but never sent,
pleaded to management. This is too much. The routine is
changing last night, it wrote back. Some of the files
were scorched at the edges, blackened as if by fire
or something chemical, the odor tang of burned plastic or regret.
A final box contained more party photos, names and dates,
some of them matching the lob book stranger's signatures. I
snapped one more photo with my phone, closed the hatch
and pocketed a codno outside the quiet, pressed harder, my
breath billowing white in the corridor's halogen gloom. On each patrol.
I felt less alone, not because I saw any one,
but because the building responded shifting under my attention. The
rhythm of Redmond Hower wasn't just disturbed, It seemed to
pulse with the will. Sometimes that will felt hungry. I
returned to the lobby at the end of my shift,
hands trembling as I opened the ledger. The pen was
gone from its chain, my own blue left up right
beside the pages if waiting from my hand. I saw,
almost hoping for something, a sound, a whisper, a sign
that the mysterious occupant would show itself plainly. Instead, the
silence nested deep in my chest. The page was already turned,
a fresh line, vacant except for the date, and a
small looping flourish at its beginning. D K hovered above
the blankness, adare and an instruction. My phone timed message,
no number, keep the ledger, fill routine, keeps this whole management.
The icon showed, the tower blurred in the dawn. Suddenly
I no longer felt i'd interrupted something old and patient.
I felt as if I'd been drafted, and I'm witting
in the study of learning their lines. On opening night.
The following night, I came prepared for war or communion.
I wasn't sure which layered in fleece and armed with batteries,
fresh notebooks and the body camera strapped tight to my chest.
I started my patrol at ten and ten p m.
Determined to record everything cites Sund's intervals, the thrum of
my own heart, chalk in hand, and marked thresholds in
every sweet careful not to duplicate a pattern, I paced
my rounds as irregularly as possible, double backing, changing stairs
me before pausing and pretending to forget my order. Still
fresh footprints never match in my treads over at my
marks by the time I leap around, I passed a
pizza delivery guy on the sidewalk as I came in.
He was new, tall and narrow, idling by the vestibule
with a stack of boxes. I offered a nod. Someone
ordered that late. He looked out, blinking. Always get calls
for upstairs, Never see who takes it. Cash left in
the map every time. The detail haunted me as I
watched and set the pizza and the runners rug inside
the east entrance. Twenty minutes later, both the box and
the cash were corn as if furnished mith fold from
the space between one blink and another, reading into the
building's digital files. I found managements spreadsheet open to a
peculiar document Sweet Allocations December present Act of Tenants blinking
as green and filled, all tied to companies without employees,
without income, without any sign of legitimacy. I hit print,
but the system froze, then rebuted itself a blank desth stop,
greeting me as if nothing ever existed. I dug into
the county's business property records, cross referencing every act of
SWEET with business registrations. Every one of the three largest
companies listed as occupying the post start Up floor Side
and Corp Farnsworth Analytics Flurry Advisory had been dissolved at
least two years ago. Their addresses redirected mail to the
billdlding's main p O box. Any web search led only
to defunct sites four hundred four company no longer exists,
or placeholder text that seemed resistant to the calendar. On
the fourth floor, a small office with batter blinds revealed
a stack of color photographs office parties, conference rooms, spreads,
group shots, each face circled or x ed out in blue.
Some I realized with a jolt, were the same as
the names from the resigned staff in the instant logs,
the faces that had turned up again years apart as
initials in the ledger. I pressed on Paul s Loewen,
with the grim at dissipation that had nothing to do
with routine. If the building's ledger meant to draft me
into a ritual, I could at least record each violation
in full. The air felt denser the longer I stayed
on task, as if the corridors themselves grew more resistant, doors,
heavier linoleum growing beneath my boots. At midnight, every monitor
winked out for a breath, then came back on as
if blinked. The body cam as little red light stayed solid.
The only comfort I recorded everything. Voices creeping into the
static when I passed the janitor's closet, elevator panels that
listed random sweet numbers in shifting order, phone forcemelts that
arrived and vanished the moment I tried to play them
some more clear, leave the ledger alone. One muffled, almost
beyond parsing, repeated keep routine, don't forget, don't forget. When
I pressed for playback, the colla id read unown routine.
The building began to resist not just in subtle ways,
but an active ones. Light fixtures stuttered overhead, an elevator
and coal shot up from lobby to sixteen in a
single breathless sweep, then quietly returned to three installed doors
half open. I watched the live feed from the office monitors,
empty cabin lights flickering in a maxillaw motion. My skin
crawled sends his sharpened as it expecting attack. No sound
but the clunk of ANOV relay in the walls, mouthing
instructions I couldn't decipher. On the seventh sweep, exactly one
seventeen a M. I found a note in my own
handwriting that I'd never written, tipped to the Security Monitor
Review four fifty eight a m h R. Underneath a
file of all paced lips sat impossibly with the drawer
lot When I tried to check it. These were made
out not only two crosscut d but also Aunt Kendall.
My own name is sprinted several times below. The connection
wrapped itself around my chest, making me dizzy. I poured
through old emails found in the draft folders. Never sent
these to upper management. Desperate careers about extra signs in
the ledger enters written during rounds. When God's claim emphatically
to be elsewhere help one reads shuddering, it wants us
to finish the pattern. As dawn pressed against the walls.
I tucked these proofs into my own note book snap
photos submitted a complaint to building management. The response bounced
back auto reply message not deliverable, routine in progress. The
next day, the sun rose dull and cold, stabbing strips
of glare through the lobby's glass. I tried to phone
in sick voice wrought, but was told by perfunctory texts
that routine coverage required a subnot available. My bank accoutpaigned
with an early deposit, night shift retainer plus bonus sender unlisted.
I asked Mason for coffee before a shift started. He
eyed me and asked too quietly, he still seeing the signatures.
I nodded, showing him a picture on my phone. Mason
sucked his cheek. He want my vice play along the
while keep the wheels on. You get a raise. The
building always wants someone to check the book. He slipped away,
never furnishing his coffee, not meeting my gaze. The elevated
doors sealed behind him on their own unnatural house, siphoning
every ounce of normalcy from the lobby. Left alone again,
the radio in the janitor's closet began to crackle, tumbling
into distorted laughter, fragments of names, initials blurring into numbers.
F G finished at four fifty eighth j H reviewer
two thirteen n K pending, pending, pending, over and over
until I yanked the plug from the wall. On my
next patrol, the coded message led me back to the
supply hatch. This time I found the manilla envelope at
the bottom of the dust ferred box on the outside,
do not break routine and k confirmentary. The contents sent
a cold to back up my spine. A fresh print
out of the log Every signature now crossed reference with
employment dates, termination dates for a real employees, a new
column for a ledger continuity, all marked in progress at
the bottom written in careful blued you are next. All
the evidence pointed to a single conclusion. The building's logic
was recurse of every guard, every manager, every temp drifted
in as a replacement. With the exsp petition that routine
would cover over the gaps, hide the decay race wood.
It could not explain if you followed the rules, if
you played your part, he became part of its protection layer.
Refusing to be made complicit, I returned to the manager's office,
dug out the master key, and open every locked cabinet
echoed inside a new d'Orsay, thicker than the rest Night
Staff Incident File nineteen ninety eight, present inside a parade
of reports identical to my own, each ending with the
resignation and non response or a missing persons alert. Most
bore my current handwriting, as if I had written the
reports of years before I started working at Redmond Tower.
I scrolled back to every camera feed, hunting for the
moment depend in the lock moved by itself. The footage
every time dropped out for exactly eight seconds, then resumed
with a pen back in a cradle and a new
signature listening on the page. The times outmatched the dates
of resignations and company closures in the tower, and always
on a new page, initials appeared decay F G J H,
never fully erased, always overlapping, never explained. With dawn rising
and reality thin to tissue by lack of sleep, I
made a plan. I would say, pasture of change. If
routine trucked gods in its pathens. It might also punish
those who refused to comply. I set up every piece
of equipment at my disposal, body camon and running phone
recording noteped in hand. Secondary come appointed at the lopuk itself.
When Mason shift was due, I ignored the urge to
meet him. A crouch behind the security desk, waiting, writing
every sound and flicker into my notebook. As time slowed,
the lobby glass reflected everything in double. ME crouched, ayes
wide and unblinking. The pen now pright atop the log,
the faintest finger print pressed in the waxy blue ink.
The clock behind me read five forty nine. A M,
my own name appeared below d K as signature in
my writing, but with a flourish I had never practiced.
The signature looked back at me n K broutine confirmed.
I staggered up from behind a desk, caught thundering, and
opened the doors. The city morning was bright but unwelcoming.
As people streamed by, I left Fredmontow behind it. But
even in my escape, the pressure of unfinished routine followed.
A hand on my collar. A name old was ready
to be written in you. I tried to file a
complaint with the building's management. There was no human answer,
only a silent, blinking cursor at the bottom of a
web forum and a line at the top routine, a
safety routine's continued employment. My applications to other job to
received only formed letter rejections, fast as if qued by
someone with my finger prints. My bank statement showed to
retain status bonus after bonus, arriving without requests. Even a
pizza delivery guy when I tracked him down on a
cigarette brake would only shake his head. They tipped real code,
but he never see who takes it. I tried to quit.
I wrote an email filled with venom and desperation, listing
every strange thing, attaching photos. Two minutes later I had
a reply appreciated routine noted night shift coverage still active
for weeks. I felt myself being shrunk to fit the
building's needs. The routines I once performed a guard now tangled.
My very thoughts, rationality freed at the ages passes by
in the whole appeared twice in a moment, moving in
mirror jerks. Each time I thought of approaching the lobby.
My hand tingled memory of the inquirt on a page
I'd never signed, I'd signed in another life. I asked
Mason the few times I saw him if he remembered
Crasker or f G. He would look at me jaw
tense and shake his head, muttering, just ghosts. You just
keep the look up to date, It's all they want.
I tried leaving the city entirely thing to a friend's
flat across the river. The first night, an envelope slid
under the door in the small ayres inside a fresh
ledger sheet, my name end K wriggling up the margin
in blue. The tip of the pen still wept with
some one's invisible presence. On the second night, I heard
the roll of office chairs in the empty hallway. The
friends I stayed with received silent calls and a wrong
number voicemail, nothing but a beep and the shuffling of papers,
the drone of an office radio, a flat coal voice
reciting the time. The city itself seemed to know the contract.
I caught my reflection in a bus window two places
at once, inside the moving coach and on the sidewalk
in front of Redmond Tower. Uniform press note but in
hand all the city's attempts at normalcy, all its noise
was to vired by the expectations of the tower's routines.
At night, even surrounded by different walls, I heard the
whisper of names and times and orders, each won an
echo from the buildings. On ending night, the inevitable came.
I gave up applying elsewhere. My paystubs arrived unbidd and stemped,
with routine confirmed. Each day I felt the memory of
footsteps behind me, just out of sight, always circled back,
always waiting for the next shift to start. Memories of
the boardroom, where the coffee cup steamed with the ladger
rode itself, where the cameras blank lingered in every thirshole,
every turn of a key, the building never let go,
only let out line as needed. It was a Tuesday
when the final escalation crested. The radio in the janitor's
closet played an unbroken loop routine meeting in nine B
two seventeen, a m attendance mandatory. The elevator summoned itself
as the eyre approached, lights bright and a blinking doors
opening ahead of me, as if the building was setting
the stage. I followed the call, footsteps, measure, the echo,
and the carpet as clear as a heartbeat. The landing
on nine was so silent I could hear the clock
in my own chest. A new post. It was plastered
in the glass. Meeting two seventeen A M Willow in
smaller hand sweet nine B welcome man k the air thin.
As I approach, so called, it prickled my tongue. The
door opened before I touched the lock, heading to a
patent predefined a routine whose logic I could neither follow
nor break inside a tablow as if a board meeting
had only just adjourned. Coffee cups, pens, A ligned to
the edge of the table. Contracts scattered, but nothing moved.
Under my scrutiny, every trace half occluded. In the periphery
of vision. The ledger sat at the head of the table,
propped open. A pen atopped the page in the green
glove A single emergency light. Faint shadows hunched around the
long glass, rectangle forms flickering in and out, headless, substance
less seen only when I looked away. I activated the
body camera, holding it high, breath, held high in the
ir fee the impossible became undeniable as spectral hand swooped
into frame. Fingers thin and precise, grasped the pen on
the page below. My own initials appeared, looping in precise
and K, then d K beside it, date and time.
The hand dissolved when I tried to focus on it,
a flicker on the edge of sense, as if the
came lends itself was afraid to look directly. Breathless, I
backed against the wall, pen snapping to the table with
a thud. Behind me, the building's owner stepped into the
greenish light, face and readable suppressed so finely he looked
debrushed into being. He regarded me in profile. Every line
tens as piano wire. You've been thorough, he said. His
tone is too neutral to be Irritation and disappointment may
be a coal pride. The ledger mustn't be neglected. Without
the routine, things unravel. You see that, don't you? I
said nothing. My vision skeettered. He seemed out of focus
at the edges, like looking through steam glass. We kept
up appearances, nothing more. His hand spread palms up. These
companies are illusions now, but the illusion pays the bills.
Tenants stuff We maintain continuity on paper under the ritual's help.
If the building forgets itself, we lose everything. Some stuff
are more residual than others. Near By, the spectral hand
wrote again, roucine rucine routine. The pen rolled onto the
floor by my boot. You can leave if you want,
the owner went on, But the routine will pull you back.
It knows who can be trusted. He leaned closer. What
are you willing to do to keep this job, to
keep from being just another gap in the ledger? The
air splinter into ice. I stepped forward. You want me
to pretend nothing's wrong. I want continuity, he replied, simply
always some one must live inside the lines. That's easier
that way. Behind him, the shadows flicked a procession of staff.
There features a fever dream away from definition. Each one,
I realized, was marked in the ledger, name after name,
time after time. When one vanish, another took their place,
none ever left for good. I tried the door a
lock from the inside. On opening it, I found myself
looping back to a corridor I had already passed a
twist of geometry that left me facing the same security
office again time Fraid my hands tinkled. I looked at
the body comme, I saw myself behind myself, stiff as
the death chair and empty lobby. There was no way
forward beyond the script the ledger provided. I slammed my
hand against the glass. Through it, the city moved oblivious,
only a few meters away, yet impossibly distant. The owner
watched with mild curiosity. Attendants confirmed, he said, and the
pen began to move across the page once more. Right
roudine complete, next shift and k the next moment a
blink to walk in the lobby, sunlight slanting hard through
the glass, the well paid bright. By morning. The log
book was open in the counter, the pen rolling lazily
against the cover. My bones ached as if I hadn't
slept in years. Missu numbled in face unburned, eyes vacant.
He grinned, nudged the logbook closer and pointed at the line,
awaiting my initials. Just sign yeah, he said, voice and troubled.
All looks fine, quite knight. I nodded, numbs scrolling aunt kay,
then the next line, feeling the ledger's drag in every muscle.
The owner entered a few minutes later, eyes on me,
but conversation all business. You've been attentive, diligent. That's good.
There'll be an adjustment in your paycheck. You've proven you fit.
When I turned to leave, his hand landed on my shoulder.
Gentle but inescapable. Just keep to routine, don't break the chain.
Seeing's a privilege. Back home, go see. Fatigue followed me,
trailing shadow into corners. Every attempt to quit, the emails,
the resignation forms, even reporting to the police. Back on me.
Bank deposits a regular as a heartbeat application rejections, replied.
Before I finished typing, shadows in the hallway, a dust
miment forms from the ledger's archive phase half glimpsed, ty straightened,
a glance I recognized from an office photo I'd never taken. Sometimes,
leaving a room, I would glimpse another me reflected in
a gast panel. Turning back to check the same doors, initial,
the same lines, the old names in the ledge again neuclarity.
Every week. Each was just some one who failed to
step outside the lines. One night, returning late to my
friend's flat, an envelope waited under the door, inside a
fresh page from the Redmond Tower log book. Signatures innked
and familiar blue d k, then my own curses steady
time stamped two seventeen a m. The ear in the
hallway felt colder, and behind the door I could hear
the quiet skitter of rolling office chairs. That was the
moment I surrendered, in silence and shadow to routine. I
took the ledger out onto the balcony, the city unfelling
beneath me, lights blurring in the night. Somewhere beyond the
roar of buses and traffic, Redmond Tower still waited, its
holes empty, but accounted for every routine intact. I pressed
my thumb to the cold page, breath fogging out, the
familiar penroll to rest beside my hand. This was all
it wanted to name the line, a record of the night.
And so I signed and waited for the city to
sleep once more. And so I signed and waited for
the city to sleep once more. That morning, I woke
to find myself staring at the half curtained window in
my friend's bare bedroom. Dawn clet crossed my face. The
notebook with the loose ledger sheets sat upen on the
small borrowed desk, my signature as legible and fresh as
the slowly drifting dust in the air down the hall.
The flat was silent but for the ticking of pipes
and the creak of floorboards as the sun found new angles.
Coffee didn't help. I searched my in books, hoping for
a coherent response from one of the jobs I'd applied
to in a midnight fit, anything that would draw me
out of Redmond Tower's orbit. All that appeared was a brief,
unreadable message from anoraply at Redmont com the subject routine
fulfillment confirmed. No body, just a time stamped two seventeen. Ahem.
I let the foam fall in my lap. My friend
Evan poked his head around the corner, hair wild from sleep.
Were off night. You looked like you saw a ghost
when you got in. I tried to smile, broke and
sleep all job's dress, He gestured at the kitchen. May
toast this coffee, Hugh, I'll get an envelope slip under
the door. Last night's where I heard someone shuffling outside
up maybe too. My mouth felt dry, just some mist
delivered mail. Probably fell asleep before I checked. My voice
was pinched. The lies stung the inside of my jaw.
Evan only nodded it and filled his mug, already settling
back into the comfort of other people's routines. The rest
of that day drifted past as I tried to push
the previous night to the back of my mind. Yet
every so often the faint roll of phantom office chairs
and the shuffle of distant feet touched the edges of
my hearing. I scrolled through news on my laptop, half
expecting some story financial audit at Redmond Tower or Vanishing's
baffled security firms. Nothing just to weather a controversy a
city hall traveled Alayze near the river side. By mid afternoon,
my phone rang collar, I d blocked. I froze, debating
whether to answer. On the third ring, I pressed the button.
No greeting, but familiar and comfortably neutral voice. Routine is continuity,
Attendance is valued. Returned for review Friday twenty two zero.
It disconnected before I could reply Usbumps prickled up both
my arms. The city outside felt colder, though it was
late spring, and sunlight glinted on every concrete and glass surface.
I tried to rationalize companies could be implacable management circuit
and feeling the bureaucracy of employment able to loop anyone
into robotic suckles, but this was targeted personal expectant. I
resolved not to go that night. It was of my
phone woke me at two twenty a m. A notification
n K attendance missed routine noted as if from nowhere.
Another envelope was now on the threshold the lager sheet
with my missignature line left glaring and blank under the
name A d K. The impression was unmistakable. My absence
was already factored in no detract. The following day, I
attempted to call Redmond Hower's management directly. Every number terminated
in static and end, the slop of coal transfers, or
most unervingly redirected to my own voicemail. The message I
received to know words only the faint pound of breaths,
the low whirring of Hans keyboard clicks, and at the
very end, a dry scrape of a pen on paper
confirmed what I already feared. The system was closed. I
shut my phone off, stuffed it in my rucksack, and
told Evan only that I had to sort some final
work details. I walked the length of the city for
iras back, stiff with determination not to cave to the
building's gravity, even in the midday crowds with tramps squealing
and delivery bag sticks. Again, I fell myself, restrained a
tug behind my sternum that pulled every footstep one degree east,
always toward the block where Redmontaw's cuts against the sky line.
I entered a career center in a far suburb and
tried to file for unemployment. The clerk polite scare. I
id and frowned at his screen. We have you listed
as currently employed in property security, active status, last payment
process this morning. I blinked. That's not possible, I insisted.
He turned the monitor toward me. There in the column
marked current assignment was my name, my payroll number in
the line night Security Redmond Tawer retained duration indefinite. With effort,
excused myself from the office and walked Lake's numb until
I reached the bridge over the river. I leaned against
the railing, watching steam rise from manhal covers sit a
light mingling with the last blue of day. My own
face stared back faintly from the water. Hair rumpled a
stranger's resignation staining my eyes. It was the same face
I glimpsed in the tower's elevator glass, the conference room's window,
the lobby's reflection at two way m. The rest of
the week yawn at me, spending more time outside Evans,
I wandered, sat in parks, drinking coffee until the cup
was coal, tried to read, failed everywhere little signs. A
man at the next table with a building log book
in his messenger back, catching my glance and quickly turned
in away as city bust pausing a moment too lawn
in front of Redmond Tower's corner entrance, and in every
mirrored surface, my own tired face staring back, wearing the uniform.
I no longer physically possessed, yet stilled somehow woar. Thursday night,
as I tried to sleep, I heard movement out in
the kitchen. It was only Evan fiddling for a glass
of water, but he startled when he saw my silhouette
sitting uppard in the dark. You're going in, aren't you,
he asked, voice groggy. You keep talking about quitting, but
you keep checking your phone, checking the time. I didn't
answer immediately, I could only breathe in, breathing the question.
Friday evening, almost against my will, I found myself dressed,
shoes on, jacket in hand, the notebook, with the ledger
sheet stuffed in my pocket. I caught a boss that
snakedys through the dusk and stopped outside Redmond Tower. The
city had begun its weekend, people moving from work to bars,
music from doorways, but the entrance to the building was
as always in touch, pristine anonymous. I waited outside for
a full hour, but the compulsion didn't fade. If anything,
it increased. As the sky had tear and purple and
then black. I saw reflected in the building's glass at
convergence of dim faces, each one familiar from some view,
some echo of the camera fees, some blurred staff photo.
I blinked, and there was only my own face leftily
in expectant, stealing myself. I walked to the doors. This
time they slid open before my hand could even reach
for the handle. The air in the lobby was called
perfectly balanced, and the silence seemed to press against my
ear drums. The lawbook waited on the counter, open to
a fresh page, pennal lined to the margin. The moment
when she crossed the threshold, a subtle static charge tingled
through my souls. The lights in the lobby brightened fractionally.
No human was visible, but the sensation of being observed
evaluated was stronger than ever. I approached the lock, hand shaking,
and before I could reach for the pen, the surface trembled,
and a new signature rode itself into the page, and
K twenty two three above it, in the same shade
of blue. Already dried was the name d K. My
mouth went dry. I pressed my palm flat against the columinate,
hot drumming. The rules here were non negotiable. The routine
had enveloped me completely. No matter what I had done
to resist to break the cycle, the system incorporated me,
lowered my presence, kept the appearance of continuity. I tried
to leave, but every door led back to the lobby,
the lights always slightly dimmer unless I neared the lock.
Eventually it became clear the only way forward was through compliance,
through a repetition. The building held me, not just physically,
but with an existential weight that overrode even my refusal.
Waiting for anything of the ordinary world to bear some membrane,
I watched a fee from the lobby caomicycle on the
nearbus green. There in griscale, I saw myself half frozen
in place, as vacant hand hovering over the lock. In
the next frame, a blur at my side, tall suited outlines,
liquored in and out. Now you see him, Now you don't.
Suddenly the owner's voice, not loud but terribly clear, resonated
behind me. The building resists gaps, whether you want it
or not. Attendants fills itself. Welcome back, candle, you may
take a seat. I flinch, but the only seat remaining
was the chair at the security desk facing the lock brook.
The chest lit out as I approached, stop him with
a soft thud against the back of my legs. I
sat on the monitor. Time advanced in stuttering jump's clock,
hands rotating mechanically through the glass walls. A city mutated
to buildings, rising, advertisement flickering past and known years cause
outside my greeting from Sedan's to electric compacts, then to
face us rows of gridded lights, but always Redmond how remained,
same plaques in the wall, same log on the desk,
same empty space as kneading signatures. I tried to call Evan.
My phone turned to static. The screen flickering with the
words routine in progress, external contact locked. I scrawled messages
on paper, hoping for escape, hoping for a sign. Each
time I returned to my notes, my handwriting was not
quite my own letters shape for the awkward fluency of memory,
blurred by repetition. In the end, it was the exhaustion
that undid me. It was the collapse of time into routine,
the realization that everything outside a job's apartments friendships existed
only as distant signals, while the building pressed me into
service again and again, signature by signature, night after night.
All that remained was to sign the ledger, complete the
chief await the next The structure remained unbroken because I,
like all the others listed in its spiraling arc, I
filled the line required, the building contented for now polls
around me in silent expectation, I sat pen raised and
signed on the city street outside. The last bus hissed
away from the curb, a single passenger's face gleaming in
the window, then gone. Some nights later, long after routine
should have lost meaning, I noticed an envelope waiting at
the door of Evans apartment. Inside fold did need as
a pay slip was a blank ledge or page. My
own name appeared at the bottom, already written in fresh
blue time sumped was always in the small eyres and
in press, and feigned as handwriting in her dream marked
a second line d K. The ink shimmered, and as
I watched, new signatures ventured up from the bottom, un
familiar initials, dates yet to come. In the hallway, a
quiet procession, wheels of chairs, the hush of shoes went
rolling past, and visible, but an yielding. What finally struck
me was that the city, in all its sprawling indifference,
had not let me go. My trace now was part
of a pattern that would last as long as the
walls held, as long as the loop books needed filling,
as long as the building remembered its staff, and out
there beyond glass and concrete, Redmondtow kept its vigil, waiting
for the next name, the next night shift, the next
lingering touch of penti page