Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The foam vibrated with a rattling
urgency that cuts straight through the whiskey haze. I didn't
recognize the number, but I knew better than to ignore it.
The irisat sired in the bottom of a glass, deep
into the hush when city shows, but the secrets keeps reaching.
My office was a shoe box, battered desk, spattered with damperings,
half dead laptop, mangled file fold as crowding every flat surface.
A Gustavese he whispered through a gap in the window
frame as my hand found the phone thumb graze in
the crack glass. Another base no voicemail, my old nookie
reliable but obsoletes perched a top amount of case notes,
an insistent green dart poles in rhythm of my own pulse.
I almost left it, but the memory of missing something
important was a thin, unkillbulch. Sometimes she turned over the
wrong rock for the last time, and everything crawls out
at once. I picked up instead of recall it. Alert
chimed an email address scrambled to gibbershk character is barely
translating you wander, come back, start here, listen, close, trust.
Nobody underneath a single attachment had tine easy ip I
worred with reason for a beat. This reeked of trouble,
but trouble was all I had left. I carefully extracted
the file. My heart stuttered at the oddity of a
size nearly five hundred mb just for an audio track.
I booted my noise counseling cans static, too crisp to
be analog, Then a smooth fade office ambiens shoffering shoes
on tile. The chirrup of volas a printer back on
dialog blurred into language soup. I scanned ahead, mouse gliding
with compulsive slowness. There a click, then shivering static. The
room in the audio changed footsteps again, but thunderous, huge
cuff punctuated the echo, drawn out and lost in emptiness,
the sort of sound of person only makes when they're
trying hard not to alway. No Each fofosoct in the atmosphere,
as though the space itself objected. The tambo told of
concrete and steel, but hollow, abandoned. Another noise, metallic, distant,
impossible to place, then nothing, pure, dead air silence, as
if the mic itself was afraid. A chill tapped the
back of my neck. I stopped the playback, rewound, played
that splintered segment again, hot, now pacing with the footsteps.
My computer's meditator pulled up location co ordinates, latitude and longitude,
wrapped in a timestamp the last detail below sixteen Flora
lent And and Lloydiscue. I stared, frowning at the screen. All
routine concerns leaking out of mine, like whisky to a
countertop crack, corporate towers down, t un rarely crept into
my thoughts, let alone their floor plans. But a Lenten
and Lloyd Vold money very new power boned half the
horizon outside my window. The email vadished as I tried
to reply error message, send her no longer in existence
orastede erasing me if I wasn't careful, I apsent minded
a fiddle with a pen, replain the audio until my
ears blurred into the echo and static. The silence following
those last footsteps scene to stretch far longer than its
struck time, threatening to wrap around me. The footsteps not
at my nerves, off and on while the whisky, sat
and touched a shaking bilt inside me. I'd burnt two
many burgester resist a challenge like this story, so strange,
so bare, No one else would dare get close something
on that recording in the emptied out sound's space wouldn't
leave me? Who send it? What was I being pulled into?
I sniffed around, almost convinced I saw faint movement in
the black slice of my window, a neighbor or a watcher.
The thought made me mutter quietly, a reflex. If there
ever was anything anything left for me, maybe it starts
right here, deaf to reason, not caring if I was
playing into some one's game. I beat it up a
fresh note bed. Whatever was buried on the sixteenth floor.
Someone wanted me to find it, and I had always
been good at digging. I used to be good at everything,
if I'm honest. That was before my name became a warning,
before the lease dried up, before trust curdled into the
kind of silence that follows a bad smell. That morning,
like most mornings, I watched gray rain snake across the
kitchen window while the city down belows logged through half
hearted commuse coffee ground like gravel in my stomach. My
in books was a crowded graveyard, voltresponders, coal rejections, mass
deletions from editors who had once ramble for my byline
since the Derby scandal story a nailight hammer too far
and with aluminum facts. The doors had closed inaccurate inflammtry
not up to or standards, that's what they called it.
That was some one else's standards. Always when hatches of
old clippings, yellowed with coffee stains were pinned up next
to my office window, the kind of window that light
in almost no daylight, every morning I tried to believe
in the hunt that this day's wires, my click, was
something real. Every afternoon I'd surrendered to ritual of drafting,
pointed emails, tweaking salutations, clinging to a ghost of that
high breaking a story, hearing the foreigner ring with the
source who trusted you to dig. My reputation floated ahead
of me like swamp gas. On my better days, I
convinced myself truth was a patient creditor. Most days it
was all credited as the real ones. I owed money
to everyone, including myself from my apartment hunts atop upawn
shop I caught a slice of the Olentin and Lloyd facade.
Across the city plaza. Two angular towers joined in a
concrete embrace, mirrors flickering with drizzle, monolithic faceless. I'd walked
its fluorescent that la Ibby once years before, covering a
white collar union vote. Even from twenty four hours away.
The building put out a low magneticum that at lasted
the crowd that built it. On my way to the
corner store for groceries, bare shelves, fluorescmpu's coffee, I like
change my daily TEA word greeting with Missus Battel, the owner.
She knew my name, but we didn't pretend to know
each other any more. She'd once passed me free papers,
then clipping she thought would help. Now it was just business.
I settled for a nod and the cheapest rip she'd grind.
Back in my place, afternoon sunlight wreckshade off the crumbs
and the linoleum. The phone rang twice in familiar airy codes,
cly robotic voices, scammers or worse, My device was a
fair safe for lonniness. At least the scam is still
cared to call. The rain didn't let up. Somewhere in
my head, shame and memory did their overroutine. The roaring,
crowded news room, my voice rising with the excitement of
cracking something open, then the grayscale wash up. Nobody would
assign me a neighborhood dog story. Now still, no one
could take the thrill of a mystery pulsing right beneath
your fee. On a whim, half superstition, half knowing urge,
I burned another io. Combing through Lenten and Lloyd's digital
footprints the press, I chirped at a strain of fulnthropic platitudes,
community commitment, workplace diversity, transparent growth. Their executive team displayed
perfect muss, but none of the little wrinkles that came
from telling hard truths. Nothing obviously wrong, nothing wrong at all,
except maybe for that emptiness where something ought to be.
When the city lights ticked alive, I played the audio again,
this time shut in darkness. I'd heard silence like the
just once before, the first time I'd walked into a
crime scene and realized no back up was coming. The
hollow echo, unnaturally large, felt like it pressed in on
me from the wrong side. It got under my skin.
I listened twice more. Picking apart the metallic rattle, I
made marks in my notebook, tried to turn on the footsteps,
matched them against four plans I found in the public domain,
normal life. If this count it is normal. Proceeded until
there was only the loop playback, the geotage coordinates, and
the certainty that this would lodge somewhere in my bones
if I didn't act. I began quietly dialing old contacts,
flipping through the tatter of roholodics of people I hadn't
disappointed yet or not completely. Former Lenton and Lloyd employees
went in abundance. The company shaped people into ghosts, law
antenure high on NDA. The first two numbers rang out.
The third picked up her type voice were mail a
data analyst, no working contract gigs. He didn't want to
talk at first. I work the angle. You don't have
to tell me what you did there. I'm interested in
how people laughed. Anything odd about that? A rall laugh.
They handled departures quietly. Everyone gets the same call, the
same buyout. After that, there's just gone. He wouldn't say
more and hung up. I tried him twice again voicemail.
I turned to the digital alleyways. On message boards workplace
review sites. I found flickers of strange for Well's accounts
said to vanish lost seen time was stuck at midnight.
Social posts from three different staff as an accountant, a
project manager, and assistant cut off with the same phrase
voluntary resignation, no further comment. The posted h our responses
read like algorithmic camouflage. Curious, I requested building permits and
blueprints from public records. The schematic came straight from the
city's digital arcae fifteen floors mechanical penthouse seismic reinforcement diagrams.
I scrutinized the elevator layouts one bank for public, one
for tenants in VIP, floor fourteen, then seventeen for rooftop
events and exclusive functions. No sixteenth floor, at least not
on paper. But the film drive from the original email
included something else, a scan of a mangy staff handa.
The elevator button diagram looked off. Next to the fifteenth
button was a strange smudge. I enlarged it there between
fifteen and seventeen saturbutton darker, maybe unlet labeled with nothing
at all? Was it a copy error? No other staff.
Handouts from the ear showed it not in the sanitized
versions posted to recruiting sites. By evening, I was withdrawing
patents onto my walla court grid, inheriting pages of interview scribblings,
print outs of missing person posts, a web of tape
connecting those faces to flashes of badge are detucked into
group shots. Sixteen floor looming and mocker blank spased on
plans the elevator anomalies of vanishings. The desk vibrated again,
this time a play message no attached file ask about
the extra set of elevator doors. After midnight, be keful,
I called the number, but it disconnected with a tone
I hadn't heard, some style upstrange, hollow, almost as if
it was paying back something from my phone's own microphone.
The echo from the tape led into this new silence.
Obsession crept into my blood, and for the first time
in months, I felt awake, a living person in a
city of sleep walkers. Seized by the certainty that someone
may be many someone's wanted the secret to stay right
where it was. I spent the next two days in
the camouflage of public places, tracking a lenten and Lloyd
wherever they might pulse. Their headquarters sat at the city's
material crosspoint, rising over lesser buildings, the entrance guarded by
bald and passive uniforms. I dressed in smart casual, banked on,
looking like just one more job seeker, more hopeful and desperate.
Standing in the lobbys gleaming marble at noon, clipboard in hand,
I played the role, wide eyed, slouching beneath the glare
of the receptionist. I stood aside, eavesdropping as stuff swiped in.
The elevator. Bank had four cars, each with glossy brass panels,
fours one through fifteen, then a final seventeen button glowing
faint blue No. Sixteen. It caught the mirrored panel's edge,
quinting at a faint, scratched halo beneath one coll button
removed or never there. The elevator dinged, and I stepped
in with a group of real employees, half hoping to
catch the wrong button pressed inside. The ride was ordinary,
except for the twitch of my heart when four fifteen chimed,
the car paused. No one exited, then up to seventeen.
Several broke away to mingle at the roof up glass doors.
On my descent, I lingered, pretending it forgotten business. The
security guard tracked me all the way out, suspishon in
every step. By dusk, I tasted stoemel in from every
department flag my foyer, requests for internal foil lay aus
bounce back, proprietary information, Act of Security Exception h R
politely insisted they had no records pertaining to any unnumbered
floors or confidential employee assignments. It sent me a link
to their career's page. Every digital archive I probed employee
wikis linked in profiles yielded dead ends where four sixteen
should have been a routine typo. I sat for IROs
in macoracross the avenue, the city's hot slowing with the stars.
The Olenten and Lloyd Towers upper windows glimmered on, then off,
as if the building itself exhaled. At one thirteen a m,
a white, unmocked van rumbled to the rear loading dock,
no logo, no company name. Its stores drew in four figures,
head stucked. None came out. Even as the city deepened
into silence, My chemera caught only grayny silhouettes that faded
back into the glassy dark. My phone buzzed again, ANWN
number the same I answered what should have been silent, thumpdile,
then split, an echo of my own breathing, then static.
The sound from the tape stretched and replayed no voice.
The hairs on my arm prickled as I tossed the
phone aside. I wasn't the first to try this, was I.
I hunted down a former security guard, lured to meet
the promises of cash and anonymity. He slouched deep into
a boothin amalice, cheap beer sweating before him, puzzling on
a napkin. I only saw it twice in seven years,
he murmured, staring at the wall. Were faded fort poor
photo's morn better days service elevator usually skipped past thirteen,
jumps right to seventeen, but once the panel flickered, fifteen,
then sixteen lit up just for a flash doors of
I saw a cor door, no lights, just shadows. I
wasn't meant to see. The door opened, not for us.
I prass careful, but he shrank into his jacket. They
say people get sent up for HI mistakes, compliance reviews,
things that make the company nervous cleaners text sometimes people
who sneep they don't come back, or what they do,
but quieter, wrong, slower like their inside clocks all broke.
He glanced around the bar, lowering his voice until I
had to strain listen, just let this beat. Yeah. The
ones who ask questions sometimes they go away for good phones,
break bank accounts, close that kind of thing. It's never loud.
He walked up without finishing the bier, dignity in his limp,
regret in every step. A day later, on the fourteenth floor,
trailing a janitorial crew, I found it something real. Nearer
loading bay, the staff badge gunted from behind a stack
of forgotten moving crates, almost invisible unless you were looking
for the run thing. The badge broom cracked heavy plastic
stamp with the sixty minutes one hundred twelve k hull
I pocketed. It fell suddenly exposed, as if doors behind
me were already closing home that night. Hand shaking a
run search is for a que hold tied to a
len and Lloyd Lincoln's profile turned up grace or wet
where smiling avatar ought to be days ago. Last updated,
then profile closed. User does not exist. I skyloid the
corners for TRACE's foreign mentions, E mail fragments, a half
finished e vents sign up, no sign of recent activity.
The next morning, someone had been to my door. An
envelope hand delivered, rested, folded, clean on my mat and
no address, just my name, mimeticulous block caps. I tore
it open, adrenaline strangling any patients, A glossy print to
my back, unmistakable. Standing at the corner across from a
Lentin and Lloyd had tilting toward the building on the
back a post. It stuck at an angle, neat sharp,
I wrong questions, get wrong answers, panic and resolve collided.
I peered at a people and caught a sliver of movement,
not a figure, just the sense of retreat. The city
outside was grayer than ever. I shut my blinds, rolled
my desk's chair into the corner, and re listened to
the tape, knuckles white in the armrests. Paranoia was the
tax for being right, or at least for getting close.
Everywhere angles sharpened is if the building shade now bent
toward my window. For a while, it felt like every
answer only deepened the bit. But then a new email
arrived with the time and place written in the lifeless,
clipped tone of someone already overcommitted. I found myself in
a neon lit diner on the edge of the financial district,
half hoping no one would show. She made me first,
a small woman in a blazer, hands clenched around her
phone with the violence of fear. Lisa. She said, it
may be real, maybe not. No recordings, nothing in writing.
Ye get that. The look in her eyes made her
fragile form into steel. Take this, don't use it from
any machine you own. She slid a nondescript, flushed drive
across the table, fingers trembling so hard I half thought
she'd drop it. I tucked it silently inside my jacket.
Lisa's voice shook, but her words didn't hesitate. There is
a sixteenth floor. I never saw it, but every one knows.
Passwords circulate assignments you can't trace in the Internet. Those
are rostero names of people who never show it. Parts
her calls, but every one knows they are there somewhere.
She drew her coat tight. Not on the company server,
not in any real records. If you're assigned to sixteen,
who a already on your way out one way or another.
Her throat worked, emotions flickering, My friend a jody. She ducked,
too many questions, clan data, anomalies, nothing sinister. At first
they told her transfer, it was part of internal restructuring.
She was never seen again. Finally got a packet resignation,
glowing reference, a blank check, no funeral. Nobody at worked
talks about her, not any more. Inside the flash draws
folder marked security, I found locks encrypted, danced suspiciously incomplete.
Another file a truncated staff listing for sixteen, including kay Hall,
and the handful of recent departures are traced po if.
On the drive home, I braced for the betrayal of it,
but Lisa had included a second audiophile. This one was messer.
The sun warped by nervous shivering, someone muttering breathless, audible
only when you pump the gain high. There's no way out.
Walls moved, don't stop walking, don't stop walking. In the
last few seconds, hissed into static, the way room does
when all its air is gone. I looked for Lisa
the next morning. She was gone. No reply at the
burnet number should give in just an error tone as
if I'd been too slow at work, her desk forewards right,
company vo was mail never to her. This was it pattern,
mode of conspiracy. The buildings shadow sharpened and its secret
forcelotted into focus. Evidenceacked on my desk, security logs, rosters,
two whispered recordings with dead ends for voices, pieces no
one else could afford or wanted to fit together. It
was time for a break in, not for the old reasons,
by line, praise, redemption. The truth was by now it
didn't matter if I got myself cleaned o ruined. Someone
had left breadcrumbs, and I had already followed them farther
than caution allowed. Alone at my window, buffeted by static
from every device, I made my plan, knowing even as
I packed my back that if I failed, if I
went missing, if my name was scrubbed or replaced in
some HR memo, no one would blink. But if there's
any part of the city that remembers you once mattered,
it's found in the space between fifteen and seventeen, and
in the echo of footsteps lost on four sixteen. That
night was lightning, clear of chill, city lights huddling close
against the black When the next step revealed itself. I'd
always believe paranoia and preparation were two sides of the
same coin, but adrenaline had made my hands clumsy. I
checked and reached out my pine until it was warm.
Thin stinted at the public library for a principal fake
badge template, a backcock stock with nothing more radical than
a small digital corridor, a basic camera, pen, light cloves,
and a patchwork of believable lies should someone get nosy.
Saturday rolled a heavy and slow. I spent the afternoon
rehearsing personas at a mirror as quinting at a faded
time from some wedding two lifetimes ago. My alias Jackson
Cross Independent Facilities Consultants sounded plausible with the right line
art and hard face. It amazed me how credible I
could look with all traces of ideology tucked into a
frown and slumping walk. After midnight, I waited for foot
traffic to die. Two cabs doze curbside. The building's exterior
light carved the paws into distinctive blocks, and something about
the way those illuminated stones marched right up to the
doors gave me the odd ascent I was approaching an alder.
Inside the lobbieshsh stung after the city's muffled night roar.
I crossed the tiles quick rehears bage out Paul's suddying.
When the security got at the desk, guy at me
above a paperback, I hit him with a lazy smile
and clip fly. Consulting a night in inventory maintenance requested someone
check the fire panel. I slapped down a work order
official sills enough to deflect the tire. He barely looked up.
Sign in the clipboard was greasy with thumb prints. My
hand shook, and I forced myself to scroll with confidence.
He grunted, then flecked his attention back to his book.
I moved to the elevator and jad the button, the
hum of machinery blending with my heart. Inside alone, I
studied the panel floor one through fifteen, then the infamous
blueco of seventeen. My reflection shimmered in the metal surface,
A haunted and somniact version of every office drone in
the city. A press fifteen waded through the mechanical chatter
and soft rise. A single bleak indicator for each floor
flicker passed an obedient sequence, except for a faint impossible
flicker between two numbers less than a blink, as if
the display suffered a minus issue. Between fifteen and seventeen,
I stayed frozen until fifteen, stepped off onto generic gray carpet,
smelt cleaning solvents, and recirculated her I walked the corridors,
clipboard in hand, glancing for camera security dumbs above every stairwell,
but none in the elevator lobbies themselves. I pried up
in a janitor's closet flickor brutal schedules. Nothing out of
place except for an odd stick on the inside door,
a small faded sixteen cut from a larger label. The
glue rescue darted behind it. I went stairwell to stairwell,
trying every door. The step between fifteen and seventeen were
smooth and broken concrete, but on the landing between there
was a thin seam cut at knee height. I knelt
ear to the surface and thought I caught a gust
that shouldn't have existed, low musty, the exhale of a
sealed room breathing under pressure. I ducked back into the
hall footsteps fether light and loaded near the freight elevator
taking shaky photos of the service panels, one of which
had the coal button covered by a tight slip of
paper out of service, but the tape was yellowed, curling
at the edges as if placed months before and never checked.
For the next hour, I loaded, feigning busy work, until
the janitor with the line facing card of drooping mots
past me his eyelid over Jackson Cross without stopping. But
his card, I noticed, had a badge swinging from the
handle four seven fifteen stamped and read no mention of sixteen.
I nearly asked, but the right opportunity withered by, and
I let him go. A vibration in my pockety was
my burner knee text a single whir to night, followed
by an adress on a side street near the river,
the kind of place company's storaging tech or where old
service go when there ghosts finally outnumbered the living data.
There was nothing else, just the address in the time
three forty a m. I weighed my options, staring so
long at the screen that the dots burned into my eyelids.
If it was a trap, I'd walk further into worse.
My curiosity was not only fanned, it was being led
by the hand. I made my way over her, walking
brisk jacket pull tight. The city around me more deserted
than usual. The address resolved as a door nestled between
two deserted warehouses. A single wavering strip light flick of
above cast in my shadow into a lunatic silhouette. Inside.
The whole stank of dust and electronics, but the noise
is steady. Were and a hisspoon loud enough to mass
my entrance. Lisa waited in the cramped office space, her
face bone tired. A grocery bag under one arm. She
shoved it at me. The moment the door clicked, they
swept my desk. I had to clear everything they know.
She looked thinner eyes darting at windowless walls jerdy. She
left her keek uart in her locker. I grabbed it,
along with sim papers. These were meant for the shudder.
Yet she pressed a plastic badge into my hand. It
was newer than the other of the laminate glossy with
a cold reading sixty minutes, one hundred twenty five associate.
Inside the back. My fingers brushed manilla fold the stuff
with print at side tee tickets badge check ins stacks
of anomalous activity reports highlighted in yellow, redacted names bleeding
through the black marker. There was also a single elevator
maintenance manual dog aird and creased. Lisa's voice dropped low.
I'm leaving to night. If they find out, I'll beyond
that list. He want to know the scariest thing. There's
nowhere for me to go where this company doesn't already
own the lease. Before I could answer, she was already gone.
She slipped from the room with the speed of a
prey animal. I thumbed through the manual, translating pages as
fast as I could in the yard light. One page
was dog eared with inking. The margins service elevator paneltight
cea emergency stop between fifteen slash seventeen manual and lock only.
Internal phone line disabled below seventeen. After ires, I copied
the page, photographed twice, shelved it in my jacket, and
got the hell out before my own name became part
of some bullet point of briefing slide. The cold air
outside snapped me into focus. My hands were shaking, but
my mind buzzed, as if some critical piece just snapped
together in a puzzle. The company had not only hidden
a floor, they built in the mechanisms for isolation control
and a rasure. From day one. Back in my apartment,
torn bleeding fained around the black corners. I laid everything out,
time stamped badge logs, maintenance overies, employee incident reports annotated
with sixteen instead of a name. The wall of my
office grew wild with clapped photos and analytical links, as
if the clues could form a map or whatever was
sealed away. I tried a desperate round of calls to
it and facilities numbers that popped up in the maintenance
logs always dead ends, always the center was activating. Sent TRIPAI,
A woman's voice so bored it sounded automated, finally answered
on one line. After two tries, I dropped all prudence, Hi, sorry,
can you confirm a details about the elevator service schedule
for a Lenten and Lloyd? Double checking for an inspection? PAS,
who are you with again? I fumbled the response at
facilities support cross check, I'm following up on an anomalous lock.
You have an override regress at I checked the lock
sheet floor sixteen silence, then a clip reply. We don't
have anything scheduled on that floor. I pressed, you'll locks
show a series of facts as events last Wednesday, after
ires same two ID numbers, one out k Hall. The
turn hardened. I'm not supposed to talk to you. Remove
my number from your system. The lines napped off hard,
no click, no dial tone. Sleep was a distant theory.
My heart wouldn't quit it stumping the email chain Lisa'd
given me, gave up another dry trailer, weekly roster for containment,
support and internal terms of employment docks so dense with
legal ease it practically hummed the threat. In every clause
a vasive phrasing subject to reassignment as necessitated by operational continuity.
No one signed these pages with their own name. The
fields were printed as off numeric codes. The break came
from an unexpected quarter. My inbooks pinged faint. A response
from an old newspaper copy editor, Charlie, You who'd work
temp gigs at Lenton and Lloyd eons ago. You're still
at this Jesus listen if you want ghosts. That's the building.
People vanished in payroll all the time. I ran into
a tech guy whose wore there was an extra floor
only open between the devil's eres. Ever get hold of
an old elevator key, they sometimes show up in the
state lots, samped with numbers the company claims don't exist.
He included a shot a photo of a round brass
elevator key sixteen slash off slash emerk's last stop eshton.
If that key existed, it wasn't in any of the
plans I'd uncovered. It's byed a skyroduction listings, engineers forums,
and one strange online surplus ender seerring a non cello
of corporate keys collected from building maintenance clear outs. I
bought such overnight shipping praise triple what my bank would approve.
In the remaining hours before delivery, I tracked rumors on
stuff forums, banal surface level chatter until someone in an
anonymous discord let slip if you ever work sixteen ye,
don't talk about it. I saw guy in the stairwell.
Wants didn't look right, some kind of wrong about him,
skin didn't fit. I shivered more from the implication in
the words, one more confirmation, personal physical and digital evidence
converging around this unplaceable and disclosed floor. That night, exhausted,
I posted up near the building as lights flickered on
the upper floors. At two seven a m. A figure
moving slow, impossibly delivered cross from the alley to the
service door, a dull work coat over civilian clothes. I
caught the glint of reflection from their head, too round
as a shaved or hairless impossible to resolve at this distance.
They entered with a swipe, not the main badge reader,
but a hidden's enso set into the side brick, something
I'd missed before. I tried to phone again unknown number.
Some one picked up, but the only sound on the
other end was a slow tapping, Then the familiaco from
the tape cut with ragged breathing. Paranoia at this point
was more map than compass. I shifted apartments, sleeping elsewhere
a night or two, carrying my files in a battered
shoulder bag, watching for the same blissdan that seemed to
circle my block at least twice in the evening. A
nearby diner, my favorite waitress, Claris, caught me scribbling on
a napkin and nodded at my semi permanent seat in
the back. You look haunted, she muttered, not Unkindly, I
offered a ghost of a smile. You ever hear strange
things about the O, Lenten and Lloyd Building, She shrugged,
slicing another wedge of pie. My cousin worked there for
three months, wouldn't say anything. After quit, The city started
living wagh the hell out in camber never said why.
People who vanished, people who stuck around but stopped talking.
I'd been one of those once. It was a kind
of living death, a deliberate shrinking of space until he
became invisible, even to yourself. The elevator keys had arrived,
wrapped in a greasy towel, no return address, three keys,
each stamped with numbers and single letters. Dove sixteen was
the largest heavy breast, cooled by the autumn air. In
my hands, it smelt of old oil and static. I
examined it under a desk lamp. No digital traces, wholly analog,
as if built to slip through newer security measures. Now
came the hardest part, the last reconnaissance before a real attempt.
I mapped at the full building, including the support corridors
and the garbage dock. Note in every camera, every locked
five door, every posted security guard. Rotation gleaned from off
and backroam gossip and what my own eyes could see.
Two nights later, eleven forty eight p m. I slipped
round to the side delivery entrance, blending with a group
of actual maintenance staff whole and cleaning trollers. The security guard,
grunting with the effort of paperwork, barely glanced as I
swhitely susporowed badge at the service door. Inside the hum
of machinery dult every footstep. This swing was colder, less
cared for. Pipes rattled in the drops above, echoes multiplane,
until even a whisper seemed to spun the length of
the hall. I used the stairwall, pausing to let a
janitor clear three floors above before I slipped up to fifteen.
There at the far end of the corridor was the
server's elevator, pane chiped mislabeled free, no passengers. The plastic
cover over the coal button was loosened by years of prying.
But what drew my focus was the faint indentation in
the wall, a panel with the keyhole shaped to fit
the brass sixteen. My hands quivered, but I inserted the key.
The lock resisted. A twisted firmer heard a faint click.
They grow an issue from the walls of a mechanical
sliding deeper with in the coal. Button under my thumb flickered.
A filament glowed, chasing away the years. I pressed it,
and the elevator rumbled to life, A deeper balla somewhere
beneath the ambient hum The doors thudded up into a
chamber redolent of cleaning chemicals and cold steel. Inside another
panel is limouslot for a badge swipe blust the row
of floors, now between fifteen and seventeen. A button glowed
faint green sixteen. I stared at it, pulse beating in
my throat. I didn't press, not yet. My instincts screamed
co operation, with caution. There was more at stake than
a simple trespass. I took a deep breath, double checked
every angle through the tiny mirror of corno domes, and
closed it up. I returned the next night at the
same ire, with every bit of evidence in a waterproof envelope,
on the off chance that if I vanish, something would
uplast me. But when I retraced my steps, sidestepping a
cleaners cart, something felt off. The hallway was one meter
shorter than before. At least it felt that way, though
logic told me otherwise. The wall beside the fire exit,
previously painted a luminous white, had acquired a dull calcine stripe,
as if scorched by heat. Back in my apartment, weary
beyond comfort, as set my recorder running and dictated every
detail into the machine. If something went wrong, this would
be my last testament, proof that at least one person
had asked why sleep? When it came was a fever.
I dreamed of endless corridors, doorways that led back to themselves,
and maze mapped exactly like the floor plans they drawn,
but wrong and crusued. At the end of every hallway,
a silent elevator waited, the doors opening on too, nothing
but a cold, humming dark. I woke before dawn, gasping
the old tape still looping by my bedside. Footsteps, echo, cough,
and then the long ruin hush. I played it once
more with this tie, not just searching for clues, but
for any sign the person in the audio made it
out alive. I scanned through the log's Lisa had given me,
hunting for overlapsed time stumps, axis codes, the schedules for
risk management and containment support. In every pattern, twelve employees
listed entering restricted floors on one week. Eight the necks,
then seven, five, and so on. Names vurnished from the schedule,
replaced by numbers, then by nothing at all. The descent
into the unknown was nearly complete. My hands shook not
from the coal, but from the certainty that whatever waited
on sixteen, it was meant to never be found, never
be named. Every lock, every erased file, every vanish name.
It added up to a labyrinth design for one purpose,
to eat its own tracks. One final day remained before
I would push the button in the eye I was
leading up to it. I may calls to every editor.
I still trusted enough to send a blind drop something's
wrong at a Linton and Lloyd. I wrote, if you
don't hear from me in forty eight hours, publish everything attached.
No one replied, not directly, but two bounces returned to
mail boxes full, a hall mark of shutdowns. That night,
as I gathered my things, I caught a glimpse of
movement in the street below my window. A figure in
a maintenance jacket. Pause looked up. I killed my lamp
hot from him on my desk, the keys, the badge,
the stack of evidence glimmered in the city, sodium vapor
glow casting spider words of shadow across everything I thought
I understood. My face reflected in the glass looked both
like me and someone turned stranger by the very act
of following the echo. The ire was close. Four sixteen waited,
and if it held an answer, it would be one
board at a cost. The city, it seemed, had always
saved its final secrets for the ones willing to dig
deep enough past the silence, past the threat, down into
the hollow places where naming something men it could finally
be seen. And there, standing in the dark, my own outline,
blood by street light and trembling with anticipation, and neither
there would be no turning back. Preparation became a ritual,
each step more urgent in the last sleep. When it
arrived was a thin, nervous doze. I spent the day
inside by instrawn document sorted into cries for help must
be drives, labeled and tucked into the bottom of my fridge.
Envelope of keys and badger, sealed in an old birthday
card had meant to send my sister. My computer ran
on a VP in so slow I could hear the
lad between pressing a key and the screen responding. By noon,
PARANOI took over, and heavy footstep on the hallway outside
sounded deliberate. One last piece nagged at me, the encrypted
logs Lisa had passed over. I knew enough coat to
toy with them, but the deeper fields held nothing but gibberish.
Unless he had patience and the right tools. I bit
the bullet and dialed eyes Can an old friend from
college days, a hacker who wowed me a favor and
dislike sleeping more than I did. He answered on the
third buzz. His voice sounded flat by years of cafeen
and late night fear. I wondered, when you'd hit me
up story time? They I need your help. That's not
for printing, not yet. Something rotten net Lentin and Lloyd
security logs encrypted? Can you run them? Keep a copy
off site? I heard keyboard clicks. He's still working the
ghost stores. DI not ghosts, I said, watching the street
as a city utility van knows by missing people and
a floor nobody supposed to know about. Isaic wristled send
me what you've got, use the dad drop. I uploaded
the files to a decade old silva we'd once used
for leaking city frod audits shuffling papers. I started piecing
together my own time line within the ire I sit
messaged on signal logs decrypted ye seeing this first page
of the file was a mess of time stamps and
terminal id moost tacked at night, variably between two zero
and four zero AM over months. IC attached notes. These
aren't standard assignments. Devices don't much known inventory. They're using ghosts, terminals,
machines off the grid, operating only in those irons. He
parsed out department tags. Every flocked action led to risk
MIT or Risk Management sixteen not a typo. I pagd
he and saw email snippets almost every one referencing Interunnel
Solution team or a containment protocol. A few names matched
spanished employees. All assignments referred to personnel reallocation or containment duty.
ICE's final note sent my stomach sideways. Looks like anyone
with date on sixteen gets reassigned. Then why I found
three active eusonyms, then deletes all at weird intervals to
uque hull is last pain listed. It was confirmation at
a microscopic chilling level. When someone got too close to
dangerous knowledge. The solution was simple, assigned to sixteen, cycle
out of the orc charret and scrub every trail. Sometimes
containment was literal, not just a euphemism for burying a report.
I found ice back any sign in these logs were
fabricated for a whistle war trap, He snorted, no way,
These are system native, exported from an internal schedule of
digital paper. Trail is real, which makes it scarier. Something
bigers being swallowed, and only after ires the stakes bristled clear.
Everything pointed upstream from corporate error to manage disappearance as
renders of a risk made flesh and people. Floor sixteen
was the abloet where both secrets and the seeker keepers landed.
That night, I lay on my mattress upon light, illuminating
my notes one final time. I gathered every badge, the
elevator keys, the corridor, and ISAC's notes. My kit was
lean and practical. A phone with a dead batter retaped
inside a burner with ISAC's number pre programmed backup by
d camera and sweat of two sizes too big. I
slipped the copy of evidence into my jacket and case
I had to ditch it or myself in a hurry.
I decided not to tell any one where I was going.
No more warnings would come if it went wrong. It'd
be quick when complete. I left my building at twelve
forty three a m. Late, but not so late as
to feel alone on the streets. My breath ghosted in
the cold behind me, tire tracks pucker faintly in the gutter,
and a hush clamp down that felt thicker than the
io suggested. Following the patterns from my midnight stakeouts, I
walked the block twice, doffed a pair of city workers,
and made for the side entrance. The service corridor was empty,
its lights buzzing and intermittent. The frayed elevator beck and
paint frostpitchin the panel dinch black around the edges by
gloved hands or worse. I waited, rehearsed the story. At
this ire, only the unlucky or the truly authorized would
be present. I swiped the badge k hol spirit now
my com pass. The scanner blinked to namber paws, then
glowed green. I tugged my hat low and pressed the
elevator call. My hand shook, but every inch of me
was set, focused, ready. The doors parted, revealing the freight
car vacant but for a residue of cleaning product and
something sharper metal ozin. I stepped inside and felt the
coffin close, restrained of copperate architecture. I inserted the brass
sixteen key and twisted. The interior panels display a digital
relic from another ear, a chirp to life fifteen golid
blue seventeen silver between them a dull sixteen glimmer, barely
visible unless you knew. I pressed sixteen. The elevator lurch
sending my stomach downward in a slow spiral. The hum
dropped to a lower octa. The fluorescent fixtures and the
color buzzed harder, then flicker, plunging me into a claustrophobic
dum edge with violet static. Foor fifteen pass, and there
the briefest stutter sixteen lit up, the elevator, sliding sideways unrails.
I didn't noc move the car shodder had stopped. The
doors opened into corridorsufused with an airless hush, no ambient hum.
The lights above weresett half strength, some blinking, others dead.
It was a hint and unbranded in between of an
office building's nervous system. Emergency exit signs glowed faint red,
fragile as old blood. Dust coated every edge, but for
a narrow line tracing down the carpet, the path of
routine and ritual. Bare cubicles extended on either side of
desks without the stains of daily use, some with chairs
topped in, others splayed at odd angles. The texture of
the air changed. I tasted copper, the static of old
wires and old fear. The chill brought me fully alert.
I capt to the shadow. Every step measured, I could
hear nothing but the creak of my own shoe soles,
until a distant metallic clang echoed a rhythm not quite
matching the ventilation system. Glass walled offices stood in a row,
blinds drawn down at an uneven line, no names, just
code tags sixteen aon A, sixteen B, three, sixteen F.
Some office doors stood ajar shadows heavy behind. One was
padlocked from that side, hasp thick enough to withstand a riot.
A posted signed below, ridden in black marker at contaminant
sea facilities. Another door bore ripsticker sports slush containment only.
Did not enter until clearance free waiting fault like murder.
I kept moving record A running came slung at my hip.
They shared kitchenette, A mug waited, half veelved of coffee.
The drag stiff and maltinged wet ring on paper towel.
Some one was here not long ago. On a central table,
an uncollected pile of Darsier's all labled with the same
broad strokes, clientcoat's, project cud names and below block paragraphs
of HR legal warnings. All files must be reviewed on site.
No digital forwarding allowed all infractions to be handled per
Floor sixteen guidelines. A deep, vibrating klin cut through the
silence again. It echoed oddly, louder and closer, now above me.
Cameras pivoted the red paradots alive. Following movement. I ducked
deeper into the corridor, moving in the direction of the noise,
passing a side whollway lined with cubicles papered over by
brown craft sheets, graffiti and pencil. Don't sleep, Don't wait
I noted a gap in the carpeting, the seam of
what might have want been a secondary door, now walled off.
I found more evidence of rushed human presence, a pair
of torn id lineouts tossed in the trash once in dark,
another badge ferge and matching a missing in my trace
from my wall. Bits of blood dried and flucked, decorated
the white plastic. My breath hitched. They urged to run,
swept through me, then faltered. If I left now, I
might just vanish like the rest. A noise from the
far end, quake scraping called me on. I pressed ahead,
hot hammering so aloud it masked the building, subtle temperature tremors.
My phone set silent, buzzed, and alert popped up, screen
glowing lower signal sixteenth. The fell, no data, no bars.
I fired off a photo, praying the meditator would burn.
In location around a corner near the elevator lobbies twain,
an office door hung slightly open on a chain. Sound
of faint movement inside a mutter that could have been
words or else the cry of tired pipes. I hesitated,
then rat softly. He's someone there, My voice came out thin,
apologetic at trespasser's voice. The silence pulled a moment, then
a voice thicker with exhaustion and fear. Who's who are you?
I stepped in the office was scattered, bleaking the glow
of a utility lamp. A woman huddled by a desk,
stat with forms, dark hair streaked with gray eyes, wild
under frazzled brows. Her badge glinted sixty minutes one hundred
twelve k pole. She shrank from the light, shoulders notted
around herself, faced when mapton hope and suspicion. Kay hall
a ass She winced at her own name, but nodded,
staring as a frestling memory. Not supposed, not supposed to
be here. You hudded you the badge, I said, showing
it found yours. I am am a reporter Where I was?
Her eyes cleared slightly, but the haunted look lingered. They
left me here, not five to placed said it was reassignment,
but he never come back. You never see sky. Nothing
works down here. After iurs. They move us once a quarter.
There's few of us. I wake up in the dark
sometimes nerveaked it the walls. She chirkeed in the word
as if afraid, summoning it would make it real again.
Nay not write they change. People disappeared, always close up
in the corridor. Distant alarm shivered the steady hush shop,
then swelling, followed by an industrial wine red strobes pulls
faintly through frosted glass. K whole flinched, scrambling behind the desk,
I lunged to the window, peering out the glint of
heavy boots flask light sweeping. Wild security team suited in
dark uniforms was pounding down the main passage. Silenced radios
crumbling to hush over their calms. A single voice and
tone east sector possible breech, isolate and report in fear
caught me. I got Hall's arm, held a finger to
my lips. She nodded, silent, panic leaping in her throat.
We scuffled back through the offices, keeping below the line
of frosted's wing glass. A male voice, cracking with serge,
eckered down the corridor. We said to leave it alone,
Alex's last chance. I risked a glance. Two security men
and another behind, approaching too fast. My thoughts clicked blank
until one detail stood out. A side staal while behind
a di not enter has its sign headed padlock hanging open,
as if briefly carelessly left. Hal saw it too. She
moved first, stumbling but determined. We slipped through shoulder in
the door shut behind. The stairs twisted up and up,
each urn, bathed in red by the silent alarm, the
pounding of brutes gaining I pushed at the fire exit
on the roof jam age, only to have hauled delivered
a desperate shoulder that forced it open. The high air
outside hit us sharp and liberating damp, Bitter winds swept
our faces. Office lights burned below, river shimmered off to
the north, and traffic blinked on the bridge beyond. Hull
look ready to collapse. We have to keep moving. A
hissed an axis ladder dropped down, leading to the roof
top level, adjoining the building's malta level car park. We
half climbed, half fell, tumbling into gravel and steel. The
chase below continued, a dozen voices and no une, trusting
the stairwalls. By the time the first security headlights pearled
the uppermost windows, we'd already crossed onto the rear service access,
half shielded by generators, I edged open a maintenance gate.
The moment we hit the alley, the city seemed to resume, cars,
street lights, life. Nobody looked up. We limped in a
running now three blocks before ducking into brick arch where
off Faraday Street. I press holds badge into a trembling palm.
Can you walk? She nodded, silent sobs shaking her Never
go back, never, ye, don't you don't know what it does.
They raise you if they try to make keep out
of the secret. In the pre dawn shade of the archway,
everything felt unsteady, as if the world could telt again
without warning. I made a plan in a few crisp sentences.
We'd get her to my apartment, hide out until her
head cleared. When we arrived, my hands couldn't stop shaking
enough to slot the key in the door. The familiar
closeness of my little flat now felt untenable, too small
for my fear, barely enough for both of us. I
tucked hall into my only chair, said tea heating, drew
the curtains, jack the hallway for tales. Every muscle in
my body ached attention. When I finally locked us in,
Holly didn't speak At first, her gaze traced in visible
routes in the walls, pausing at every tape note or
investigative photo. They never feed us, right, she said, boys
barely there. Coffee crackers, surveillance, always the cameras. We write
memos and reviews of things that don't exist, shuffle digital
stacks back and forth. Doors, close voices over the and
calm tell us were essential, but we stopped remembering days.
Sometimes I'd sleep under my desk, then wake up in
another room, like the floor we arranged overnight. I tried
to ease her fear, but only managed to pour tea
with the rattle. How many peoples till there? I don't know,
four now, maybe five. Sometimes we see each other in passing,
but never for long. They say the rest transferred, or
we'll let go, she confuls with a bitter laugh. Nobody
lets go, not really. I set up my laptop across
the room started uploading my footage locks icix to curpse everything,
to three secure leaks and half a dozen journalists dead drops.
Careful to mass origins. I made sure all the metadata
was complete. Then I waited watching the news ticker, desperate
for any ripple. Nothing not an e mail, not a call, sileuns.
I tried to reassure me over signal mediumbargo, our phones
compromised about I think, I typed back. I've become a
walking ghost story. I watched fingers clench as nothing arraved
on any channel but spam or flat denial. A day
sly passed, hole drifted in and out of awareness. I
noted fresh cause set up along my block, a Navy
Sedan or Russ free pick a service van, which shiels
I doubted were for cable repair. Once the phone rang,
and for a moment I heard only the same echo
from the tape, halting footsteps, then a rising current of static,
then a line dropped. I answered the door only after
staring for you. The peep hull in mounting dread. Deliverers arrived, groceries.
I hadn't ordered a newspaper in a language. No neighbor read,
surveillance were ferret. Everything took on that flavor. Outside my window,
rain arrowed down in sheets, the city in monochrome. By midnight.
The only light was from passing ambulances. All stared from
sleep has wide and glassy. Did you ever see them?
The ones who came back it's not just memory the take,
it's something else, like a piece of you doesn't wake up.
The next day, my phone buzzed with a notification new
vire Quickened and conspicuous A Lenton and Lloyd confirms voluntary
departure of long time associate. Expresses gratitude and full support
for next phase. It was kay Hall's identity reduced to
two sentences. I tried again to reach out to old contacts.
One former editor who whispered tips to me for years,
picked up Michael. The voice on the other end was
almost robotic. I don't call again, Alex. You're making it
too dangerous for everyone. Someone else left a voice mail
while I was out chasing groceries. Foot step six maybe
eight steps, then A meet them as sharp in hail
and static, no words. The town sound was precisely two
forty three a m. The window of the logs had
always hovered around. I became convinced my apartment was bugged.
I found an unfamiliar wire under the table, but couldn't
trace it to any actual device. A slip of paper
crumpled behind the radiator. You were of what he wanted.
Remember what happens next? I shredded it, knuckles inching my nerves.
For eight sleep grew rare. I started expecting to see
my own face in the voluntary departure's wire some day. Soon,
the weight of things I couldn't unlearned settled deeper with
every silent day. Hall would not leave, yet resisted every
suggestion to see a doctor. She spent afternoon stirring at
the city, at my tiny window, muttering little phrases at
every door closes that were only as real as what
we remember. Her hands never stilled. I uploaded footage, cubicle rowse,
desk evidence, shaky audio. The moment the elevator admitted me
to the forbidden floor, I posted all over to whistleblower
servers encrypted in public hit if Lynx died. Within minutes,
sights fell on responsive emails bounced. PARANOI became the law
of my world. I slept in odd intervals on the
sofa when I watching Hall. Once waking at three ten
a m. I found her standing in the kitchen, glass
in hand, eyes fixed on nothing. I thought I heard
the elevator. She whispered, some things, they follow you out.
A week passed, and I resolved to make a scene
at Lenton and Lloyd. But the next morning a lobby
was packed with hired muscle, none of the stuff from
the prior weeks. Cameras pointed with a new assertiveness, and
the badge readers looked upgraded. I stood outside for ten
minutes before God, in an oversized coat sidled over. You
are not authorized, sir, Move on, I did. The company's
PR department denied everything in a bland email. No such floor,
No one scheduled departures, all staff accounted for. The letter
read like a template scrub for anything real. No one
would risk talking. I watched local news for days. Exhibitions
may all photo ops, nothing else. The building's lights never
all wented of at night. Instead I saw new cleaning crews,
new windows fitted one floor at a time. Never the sixteen,
of course, but the shadow it cast seemed wider shopper.
The last time I reached Isaac, his reply kinslow attire.
I'm shutting this down, Alex, I'm being followed. I'll kill
the logs, don't contact me. After that, he was gone,
I counts vanished, the dead server deleted, nets fell into
a sullen pattern. Cars outside churned for strangers, faces that
never quite looked up, soul wits that stilled if I
stayed too long. Once I caught some one watching my
window with the camera, but the moment I moved, they
dropped out of sight and didn't return. Haul refused to leave,
but I sensed her shrinking. She faded through the rooms,
shadows pulling at her like tides. Three days later, with
the city back in summer rain and the building cold
on the horizon, a package arrived, no sender, no stand,
heavy wrapped in brown paper, placed squarely in the center
of my doorm at someone who knew I'd looked before
stepping out. Inside, I found a black pham new, still
smelling of insulated plastic. It powered on it at me
touching it, the screen bloomed to life, opening on a
media player, a single saved audio file already cued a
press play. There was static. Then my own voice twisted, looped,
drawn out, like a shadow crawling up a wall. I'll
never forget what's on four sixteen. The words echoed cavernous,
as if recorded in some hanger. My syllables but dropped
an octave, stretched and layered over one another until they
dissolved into a course of footfall. Then silence. The voice
continued fainter and fainter, until a different sound faded in,
one I recognized from the original tape, the sustained sequence
of footsteps moving down a long hall, clicking softer and softer,
then pausing. The last noise was a cough, then a
metallic scrape, as if a hey slid home in a
door I couldn't see. I set the phone down and
leaned back. The device vibrated a soft deep in the table.
Would the screen pulls the single location tack sixteenth floor,
a Lenten and Lloyd h Q. Through the fogged glass,
I saw nothing but my own reflection, brittle and drawn,
then playing out across the surface, A ghost in my
own window. A metal elevator panel bloomed interview in it.
A line of buttons gave off their regular light, except
for one glowing green sixteen. The footsteps, too, seemed to
enter the room, echoing against kitchen tile, carrying with them
all the lost time. The day spent chasing store was
meant to be lost. I watched the green button pulse,
then to I outside the buildings had scraped the sky.
Inside my own shadow waited a cot between memory and
silence listening for the next call showed that if I
ever slept again, I'd wait to find a door where
none should be, and a corridor waiting, hungry at the
center of every culprit's seek at the city had ever
tried to bury? I couldn't move from ever a minute.
Hand hovering above the phone, part of me wanted to
smash it open, see what would spill, a black box
of warnings, or simply everything I hadn't managed to leave behind. Instead,
I watched my own reflection settle in the darkened green,
haunted and tired, unsure if any one coming down the
hallway would bother trying the knob, Would they knock? Or
would the door just swing open? One night and let
in all the silence I'd summoned. Hall's voice drifted from
the back room. She wasn't hallucinating, but her sentences sometimes
unraveled halfway through. Don't let them find you. I'd rather forget. Murmured,
head pressed against the warped plaster. It wasn't a warning
any more, but a ritual, a way to make the
memory less raw. I slipped the heavy phone into a
drawer with a thumb drive in the keys The next
step should have been escape, But where would I go?
My name and face were out there again, half bared
and burned out trial signals and flagged security footage. The
city felt as much a trap as the building now
may be less honest. At least the building alocked its
dangerous parts away. Rain battered the windows. Anew a paced
listening for surveillance, half dreading the sound of the actual
elevator stopping outside my door. I checked my leak sights,
my dead drops, none so much as pained. Whatever firewall,
a lantern and Lloyd had thrown up was tighter than
I believed possible. Rand four. I heard holes, footsteps, a
shuffle irregular as she made her way from kitchenett to couch,
the window never one settling. I almost asked her to
tell the story again, what she'd done, what she had
been told when reassigned, what the first iron sixteen felt like,
But it never came out. She seemed lost to questions,
her mind circling the same shore track. Instead, I drank
more coffee and wrote everything down in law hand names states,
the order of things, each with thero was knitting them together,
forming a map that started in the dead in books
and ended on afore nobody was supposed to survive. Two
nights passed like that, fifful. On the third, as morning
tried in successfully to blue the edges of the city,
I woke to a new vibration, not the phone, something heavier.
The table itself was trembling. It stilled as abruptly as
it started. I checked a hall way empty. No elevator
is running, not at this iron, not on my side
of the building. I took it as a prompt. With
holl sleeping, I snuck out for a walk, hood up,
hands and pockets, head down, as much from exhaustion as
from suspicion. The air outside felt wrong too. Still, the
tower was visible up the avenue, its glassy surface smeared
by rain. I circled the block, stopping twice to watch
new cars well by midnight blue Sedan's the kind you
rent ily for old fashion surveillance cakes. No one looked
out about, least not openly. I kept walking past the
glow of bush shelters, into the poles of small air
city life cabs, late shift hospital workers, a few drunks.
I tried in vain to feel like a blended in
but they urged to cross the street. Every time I
heard a costlow was impossible to shake. I wore it
for nearly an hour, hoping movement would listen attention. At
the river bridge where the morning market truck's prep crates
of limp produce. I squinted across the water. Olenton and
Lloyd's eate culumed as if it had grown by four
since yesterday. I tried to remember if there had always
been just two small red aviation beacons, or if there
were three. My phone vibrated again, Not the new black one,
the old Nokia until nas Island. I almost didn't answer.
The idea read and known, but the Erikov was local.
It was ISAC's voice, row, I'm rushed, don't speak, just
listen the back trace the drops. Some one's looking for
you at the old post office behind six. Don't go home,
at least not now. Any One who talks to you
is compromised that I've nowhere else, I whispered, but he'd
hung up before I finished. I hurried back mine, spinning
with plans. As I neared my street, I noticed some
one near the entrances, young overdressed, checking their phone and
eyeing every car Their face was too washed up and
farked me out. But I trusted the instinct that told
me plant or look out. I didn't go in directly. Instead,
I ducked into the pawn shop and asked the night
clock if he'd seen anything. We'd a new customer, anyone
looking for me. He shook his head but wouldn't quite
meet my eye. You looked tired, Alex. He said, maybe
you should get out of town. A few days. There
was a guy in a seat waiting on the corner
this morning, white car with the engine running odd for
this neighborhood. I thanked him and left by the side door,
taking a fire escape up the back of the building.
In my apartment dim as always, hole was gone from
the couch. The door to the bathroom was locked. I
kept my voice low. It's me, Are you all right?
A minute passed, then Hall opened it, blinking fiercely. He left,
She accused, but then her face crumpled. Sorry, I just
thought it's easy to lose time. Sometimes you step out
and that set you don't come back. I rubbed my temples.
We can't stay much longer. I think things are closing in.
She nod is hugging herself. What do you do when
you're already gone? Before? I thought, if I just did
the job, kept my head down, but the job kept moving,
kept swallowing, things kept swallowing us. We decided then to
leave at dusk. Hall insisted on packing a small duffel,
a change of clothes, one frame photo, nothing else. Where
will we go? She asked. I didn't answer. I doubted
any ordinary solution would work now. I stashed a black
phone deep in my pack along with my remaining evidence,
leaving only one of the thumb drews hidden under a floorboard.
We waited the rest of the day together, our nerve shredded.
I watched the window from Movement, delivery vans, late buses,
nothing ever. Stopping at sunset as promised, we slipped up
by the alley, keeping away from the mindoor. We made
our way down toward the East Market, plenty of crowds,
less likely to be noticed, or so I hoped. I
sent a last encrypted message to Isaac, not coming back,
no reply. As we merriaged with the crowd, I felt
the strange way of return, returning to movement to risk,
to the feeling that every face could be connected. Hallwart
quickly sometimes glancing behind, sometimes so focused on the path
of the head that she nearly collided with the cyclists.
Apologizing softly, we moved through three city blocks thenfore, always
angling away from the building, but never quite feeling distance.
Once in a crossing, a cause engine id old heart,
causing Hall to snatch my sleeve security. She whispered, but
as we darted forward, its bed off tire, spain, gutter water.
I led us into a small wall, night downer near
the edge of the district, greasy light, silent TV. A
waitress who checked ideep otherwise ignored us. While Hall went
to the restroom. I checked my messages again, nothing nothing,
Then a single new email sent from what appeared to
be ICA's back up, the subject don't trust your allies
inside just a string of numbers co ordinates that plotted
almost on top of the Alentin and Lloyd tower. I
sat numbly, fighting the urge to smash my phone. When
Hall returned, pale and red eyed, I forced a smile
will lilaugh. A few ires at least we each ordered coffee.
I kept my head down, eyes fixed on my trembling hands,
letting Hall watch the walls. The place was empty. But
for an elderly man at the counter of reading a
newspaper from two days ago, and a pair of students
in the far booth, talking so quilt lightly that only
the room of laughter traveled after. Neelie and I are
all startled, knocking her cup and spilling coffee across the table. Look,
she hissed, pointing discreetly through the window. Crossed the street,
a trio of people emerged from a gray sedan. Two
men in charcoal suits and a woman in a black overcoat,
each with linose but no visible logos. They split, one
leaning against the front of the car, the other two
surveying people as they moved through the street. Instead of
my breeding, tried not to stare. I wondered if my
paranoia was writ in ghosts over strangers. But hals Blanche
told me otherwise. There from facilities, she said, the dread
plane in her voice. They're the ones who escort people out.
They don't ask, they tell. We huddled in the bruth
waiting five then ten minutes the students left. The old
man paid and shuffled out, shock and posture. I stood carefully.
Let's go, I said, guiding Hall toward the back exit.
We reached for the door, but it stuck on its hinge,
a little resistance that made me sweat. Once out in
the cool night air, we slipped down the alleyway, keeping
close to the shadows. The farther we got, the more
certain I became that blending it was impossible. Every step
felt like walking in full view. Two blocks later, Hall staggered,
I can't I think I might think I'm being watched.
She pressed a hand to her chest, breath ragged the
air behind us, shifted to whether it was wind or
an actual person, and never looked back to check. I
pulled Holl along into an older part of town, where
abandoned door fronts off a pulse of shadow, and ducked
into a doorway stinking of mildew and rub brass. I
needed to pause to think. I reached from my pocket
to check the phone, but as I did, Hall pushed
herself against the wall, whispering, almost for herself. There are
doors everywhere if you know where to look, but not
all of them are exits. Suddenly her eyes caught on mine,
sharp as broken glass. Do you really know what you found, Alex,
Not just the floor, not just what they do. I
blinked for a second. It was as if kay Hall
wasn't talking. Her voice seemed to echo slightly out of time.
What do you mean, she wins, gripping her arms. Sixteen's
not just a place, it's a process. They clean up, yes,
but sometimes the walls. Remember. Sometimes the people who don't
want to be remembered are worse and the ones who disappear.
It landed like a cold slap. Was it possible? Hall's
warning felt frantic but also lucid. You think someone send
you there on purpose? She looked away. Sometimes when you're
inside you can hear them speaking, not out loud on
the intercom or in the pipes, or when you sleep.
Company men, but not the company. To start to imagine,
you hear all the departures happening up once, every apology,
every silence. She shivered and pressed herself, tied her to
the bricks. They'll absorb this too, You see, you never
truly get away, a sire and rose somewhere up the
avenue ambulance or police or the building's own security. We waited,
pressed together for warmth more than protection. When the noise faded,
I checked the phone again. The block one now vibrated steadily.
The message on its screen glowed return a GPS track,
a blink, showing me a map with a single blinking
point in the middle of the building footprint, the urge
to throw the thing away, fault with a deeper urge.
Maybe somewhere there was a final piece I'd missed that
answering the summons might reveal what kind of engine turned
behind the sixteen sealed flaws. Hall washed my face. It
pulls at you. Dozen makes you want to go back.
I turned the phone to her. Did you ever want to? No,
she said, voice small, But sometimes I dream I'm still there,
and when I wake, I'm afraid I never left. We
sat together until dawn threatened, the sky, silence growing so
dense I could hear her every shallow breath. Finally I
made the call. I typed out message tasks lost known alias,
going in one last time. Cover if you can, If
you never hear from me again, burn every trace. I
left Hall with cash, instructions not to wait, to take
a train out of the city if I didn't return
by nightfall. My plan was desperate, but clarity had come
with exhaustion. If I could just gather one more thread,
of truth, find something undeniable, perhaps the story would outlive us. Both.
To circle back to the building required nerve. At noon,
in plain sight, I approached a main lobby. Different guards
now bodger's helmets, block jackets, eyes blank. I'm here to
see facilities, staff meeting. I'm on contract. I handed over
my original badge plus the lifted one from hall, heart thumping.
The guard gave me a look that might have been
recognition or just the universal language of suspicion. Then with
a grunt, he nodded me forward. I glided through the checkpoint,
feeling watched all the way inside. The air had shoppened
since last time. Cool medicinal, the sort that dries the mouth.
The elevator bank greeted me, gleaming panel buttons gleaming behind glass.
This time I didn't use the brass key. I pressed fifteen,
witted out the ascent with two other silent office drones,
then slipped out on the floor. I walked with purpose
as locked ahead down the hall. Ispyed the faint scene
in the wall near the stairwell. No more faded stickers
marked sixteen, just a subtle impression, easily miss unless he
was searching for it. I drew a deep breath, turned
the corner to where the old service elevator stood. The
brass key hole gleamed, recently polished, no sign of tambouring.
I fished for the real badge, swept it, inserted the
sixtinct key, and pressed the unmarked button as before. As
the door slid closed, I felt the low churn in
my gut, every muscle anticipating consequence. The elevator rattle then descended,
then jerk sideways, the familiar sensation of shifting, rapid muscular
contraction of the infrastructure, as though the car was being
guided along in visible tracks only available in the shadow.
iOS a sudden halt. The doors opened four sixteen, as before,
but not as before. The hallway was already brighter. Every
keepicle glowed hash with new iledy fixtures casting sharper shadows.
Someone had laid down new carpet. Every desk held a
black phone identical to the one deliver to me screen
facing outward. Blank footsteps approached heels precise. Someone determined a
woman in her third is hair in a tight braid,
stepped forward, her bite read simply facilities her voice practice cordiality,
mister Redding, welcome back, Please follow me. Her tone so
neutral unnerved me. Behind her, another man appeared at all suited,
his face forgettable. I tried to record, but my phone
was dead, despite a full charge minutes earlier. The black
phones on the desk flickered to life as we walked,
Each green display in the same prays confidentially not remove.
She guided me to the end office, a room I
hadn't seen on my lost. The windows, if they were windows,
showed nothing but swirling gray light. Impossible to resolve. Please sit,
she said softly. I did. My hands felt huge. I
struggled to keep from trembling. She sat across, were glad
you've found your way back. My prow burned. Why not
stop me outright, or erase all this from the start,
She held my gaze. That's not how containment works. The
story propagates like a spill. If you cut it off abruptly,
it leaks out worse, but controlled, managed, it can be
folded back into the record, made official, even useful. She
gestured to my file, already sitting in front of her,
photos timelines of flight lines from my recordings. You will
be part of the documentation. No by line, but your
work will help future compliance that will prevent further leaks.
I've felt the bottom fall out, So this is what
the recruitment, she nearly smiled assignment. If you prefer you
already know what happens next. You won't be harmed, you
simply won't be public. You're right, But for us, the
lights overhead flicker harsh for a moment. I shook my
head well, and that is the end. Thank you for listening,
and I will see you in the next one.