The Seventh Floor Keycard

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With verbal care, help is always ready before,

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Because a great trip starts with peace of mind.

Hello, I'm Wilkins Stores all the time.

The loud you are here.

Let's get into it.

At Somayo, when most city windows dim

and nobody expects anything urgent from anyone,

except maybe an automated process or two,

I was there perched half on, half off my office chair.

The building was newly silent,

just the steady wharf cooling fans

from racks behind my desk and every now and again,

a murky plumbing groan of the old,

what remained 12 stores beneath me.

The VPN problem I had been chasing

through my second mug of instant coffee

was irritating not hard, just persistent.

Like a glue-down menu, no should open,

but instead just flickers a stubborn red cross.

I'd started thinking in patches and timeouts,

idly clicking through the server dashboard

to see if there were less obvious network hangups

waiting to surprise me.

I was still there at three, 17 in the morning,

rubbing a spot behind my ear

when my monitor pinged, soft, but insistent.

It wasn't the VPN this time,

it was the segmentedly white glow of a security alert

in the B have physical access control pain,

a little motor box overlaid over my remote desktop session,

blinking, key card hash 11,947,

unauthorized access, floor seven status, terminated.

Beneath that, a time stamp, 3176.

It was a kind of alert I might usually dismiss

plenty of half-interested bliped flight by a misled reader

or stuff badging enough to our eyes,

but that word terminated.

That wasn't standard.

Terminated meant the user account was flagged,

permissions revolt, badge wiped and scuttled

in the HR database.

For a long breath, I didn't move.

Floor seven.

I ran my mouse over the employee columns

to cross check the card.

The account name was ghosted,

Beverly Tommanson slash slash term,

January 2021.

No reason shown just gone.

But the logs didn't lie out 317 AM.

That card listed as dead was reading in.

That act of a column flickered green, then back to gray.

My hand hovered over the phone to call security.

I pictured Mark in the God booth,

heavy littered, listening to audio books

at the edge of sleep.

We were supposed to flak anomalies straight

to facilities via the ticket,

let someone in maintenance reset the card reader by daylight.

But there was something about that axis that felt wrong.

Floor seven had been off limits

since I started its elevator button was taped over.

The only mention of an occasional snick about the ghost floor.

I remembered the onboarding sheet saying

the floor was condemned for infrastructure remediation,

shot after a cabling fire.

No one seemed to recall in detail.

A distant elevator tie echoed,

faint and quickly absorbed by acoustic panels.

Otherwise, total silence stretched out for my office,

passed the murky window glass

into the cockpit of Glim of the holes.

I hovered my mouse over the log files,

telling myself I'd just check a few entries.

Just in case it was a caching issue

or a test script left over from last quarter.

I pulled up the audit logs flipping quickly through day fields.

The badge and question belonged to no active employee.

Last use, December 2020, then dead air until tonight.

Hesitating, I jotted the keycard number

in the exact timestamp on a line sticky note.

It felt like that,

coughing down fragments of database.

My finger drum, the bar of my mug.

The more I looked, the clearer the patent race

itself a little shadow

and the otherwise neat set of axis logs.

I should have called it in.

I told myself I'd let someone if it happened again.

That someone else would have already fired this.

But by then, as my brain started connecting,

what I saw to the rumors I'd brushed aside,

I'd already made the first of so many small compromises.

When the phone at security is desk rang,

brought the ghosts in a pit silence,

I flinched as though someone else were watching me.

I waited for Mark's voice or the sound of footsteps.

Nothing followed.

Only the low grade home of after IO's electrical systems

and the knowledge that for all my denial,

something or someone had returned to a floor

left empty years ago.

I capped my band, sticky note pressed into my palm

and forced myself to return to the VPN issue.

But I capped the terminal open,

every flick of movement in the lock stretching

between curiosity, protocol,

and in knowing sense that what I'd seen

would not be easily explained away

nor easily forgotten.

For two months before that night,

my job at Atwell Cross Consulting

had been an exercise in managed monotony.

I joined from a start of the crashed out spectacularly

in April after a slow motion mutiny

over phantom features in vaporware.

At Atwell, things weren't so dramatic.

I slayed into the role among the usual medley

of caffeine holics, earnest batai project managers

and long time analysts surviving unmuscle memory.

My days were spent fearing tech tickets

between outlook and the company's lumbering jeer board.

Password assets here, lost mass dongles there,

the occasional reprieve of a broken printer jam.

People were courteous in a way that carried no obligation,

smiles in the elevator,

it doesn't perfectly civil,

how's it going, then the way to the break area

and then back to work.

I kept to myself partly by disposition,

mostly by practice.

My cube was tucked by a far wall

to down from the janitors' closet,

somewhere between the mechanical room

and the restrooms no one liked.

The building itself was modern,

at least a few squinted glass curtain walls

and touched marble in the lobby

and six floors of intentionally unremarkable office space.

There was, technically, a seven story stunted above us,

visible from the street,

but never discussed accepting jokes about extra-servor space.

On the elevator,

that seven was covered by an aging square of grad brown tape

that the candle should have been replaced years ago.

Once or twice a day,

I passed the elevator and ran a thumb over that ridge,

feeling it soft beneath my finger, but never pressed.

No one went to four-seven.

Supposedly, there'd been an electrical incident years prior,

a wiring fire that closed the space indefinitely.

If you glanced up the fire starrows,

you saw a solid grey door

under a weathered condemned stecker

padlocked from the inside.

It became something to ignore,

like the stain on a tile near the cafeteria fridge

or the odd flicker in the lobby lights.

Questions about it were answered

with compressed rugs and a joke were occasionally a stir.

The one admin who'd been here since before the remodel said,

all the four plans got redacted by legal fewer agress points.

That's liability that way.

I'd let a drift to the back of my mind

until the key card incident brought it awake.

Routine at Atwell was both comfort and low-keysification.

Tickets trickled and from cubicles

and remote project teams.

If I was lucky,

I'd glimped flashes of personality

at a coffee station like Marsha from Accounts,

who always added three ping packets to her cup

and talked in looping riddles about rotations

and cross-department audits.

My supervisor, Neil,

especially liked to catch up at inconvenient times

and always seemed to have six tabs open

to company policy manuals he'd never read.

There were oddities,

even then the little things you don't question

until they pile up.

People in my pod sometimes

book in a kind of shorthander

has a lane loggered her floor plan yet

that did you get your rotation notice

or on a few occasions

an invite title assessment intake

sent to all staff at random Ayers

before being swiftly deleted.

The HR director, Hannah Row,

kept her tones moved to such an oblique brightness

that I wondered if she remembered anyone's name

yet she insisted on in-person check-ins

every two weeks tucked behind half-shot blinds.

At my last check-in,

she slid a small stack of extra onboarding forms

across the desk, muttering,

just a procedural refresh for your personnel file,

please review and bring them back to more.

I skimmed one later buried

at the bottom were new non-disclosure enhancements,

a space for biometric consent

and a form titled a detention readiness survey.

Legally sick enough to slow you down,

but not so complex seed risk asking questions.

The company's rituals, surface levels they were

had the feel of something designed

for more than just routine compliance.

I never saw birth as marked,

never once caught a retirement goodbye,

only that endless,

pletlipping over workplace best practices

and an unspoken pressure to be adaptable.

The only emotion ever voiced

behind close conference room doors

was a kind of fugitive stress,

half joking, half sincere.

Everyone seemed eager to get home,

yet always watching who was caulking in early

who lingered into docus.

Money kept me here for a longer than pride.

This start-up had drained my savings.

I needed a regularity, the relative peace.

Apple paid on time.

If sometimes the forums grew intrusive

of the procedures veered toward the ritualistic,

I tried to chalk it up to corporate inertia.

At the edge of my thoughts, though,

I often noticed the little lines

that separated our glossy open plan wall

from something older, colder, lying just above my head.

None of the seemed remarkable

until the week after the alert.

That was when the pattern started shifting,

first a small errors,

then growing with a frequency I could not ignore.

It began with a surgeon after I or support tickets,

password reset not working badging in from home,

the office not appearing in booking system.

At first, these seemed easy enough glitches caused

by a patch in the main building management system

or off-site staff logging in from VPN.

But as I reviewed the atis logs,

I saw recurring string in the location

field room 710A, 712C, 714.

None of those rooms should have existed.

The director realisted only six occupied floors.

Some of the ticket will link to names I'd never seen,

each with a badge number associated with a terminated

or inactive user account.

All logged between 2am and 4am.

Curiosity kept me late one Tuesday night,

combing through five years of system access data,

looking for a bug to squash.

That's when I noticed a handful of active users

with duplicate keycards on their personal records.

Slide by side in the M and pay in card 104,000,

512, 430,000 access, a card 118,000,

334 were restricted floor seven only.

None of them should have needed two cards.

I ran a quick query, there were nine current staff

with duplicate cards and each duplicate was set

for the seven floors dead access points.

I tried to find an excuse for this,

maybe a migration error or an archive training badge.

I couldn't shake the unease.

After hovering over to card entries for several minutes,

I decided to gently bring it up to Ramon,

a mid-level analyst who I'd worked with on a room

scheduling fixed during onboarding.

Hey, I'm seeing weird badge permissions

in the import logs know anything about extra cards

I should lately.

Ramon's stiffened doing his best to shrug.

Sometimes I have issues a second,

one of someone's locked out late,

you know, purd calls just part of the floor rotation.

For rotation?

I press careful to keep my tone light,

but his eyes darted to a point behind me.

He gathered his things within seconds, mumbling.

I'm late for my morning cross check,

ask H.R. if he need badge info.

That afternoon, I caught him glancing

where really from the break room across the atrium

avoiding me or maybe just the questions I might ask.

Gossip found me, as it always does,

when Ellie's suspected it.

I passed by the watercolour late afternoon,

catching a snatch of conversation.

Only the special ones ever get the elevator up,

Gicle Carla, the admin who'd been around

before the floor was sealed.

Ghost floors for the ones who worked too hard or not at all.

Her words raised a ripple of laughter,

but her hand tightened on her badge,

and the others didn't quite meet her eyes.

Late that night, as I was looking off,

another security alert chime in my inbox.

This time it was different

after Irish entry granted user E. White.

E. White was still listed as active

and engineering lead who started a month before me.

The badge had been used on floor 7 at 2.41 a.m.

by someone who, as far as I could tell,

was working from a different country

that week on a support rotation.

All the logging made less and less since the more I saw.

I went home that week trying hard to let it go,

but I'd already started saving the system traces,

tucking them into a folder, floor 7 it goes.

They stayed tucked away on my desktop,

quietly multiplying each one a tiny piece

of a puzzle I never expected to finish.

Obsessions settled over me like a fever.

By the end of the week,

I'd blocked out the Saturday in the office,

coming in under the pretext of quarterly server

patching a task no one ever disputed.

The first four I was passed in a haze of coffee

and clicking.

I started with user permissions,

tumbling deeper into the old logs,

then piecing to get access badge records

dating back to the 2018 Infrastructure Incident.

Patents emerged.

Each employee with a seventh four only badge

vanished from email and calendar records

within three months of receiving it.

This simply stopped showing up in meeting threads,

the name scrubbed from routine slack history.

Some left resignation notes filed away in personnel

offboarding, but half were blanks are transferred

no forwarding address.

If they'd died,

there would have been compliance tickets

or legal documentation.

Instead, there was air.

Turning over the tape on the elevator's seven button

during lunch on a dare to myself,

I pressed it experimentally.

The display blipped, then stayed dark.

No chime, no response.

My own badge, when tapped, just flushed red.

But the plastic sheathing on the button was worn

as though we used far more often than advertised.

My heart pounded.

Behind the elevator's mirrored panel,

I thought I saw another set of fingerprints.

Later that day, a folded slip of paper waited on my keyboard.

Its edges crumpled, but phrasing oddly formal.

Protocols, compliance or transfer necessary

kickered all depending.

No name, no header.

It was a sort of memo usually sent by HR via email,

not left on a desk in plain sight.

Someone had been to my station.

Perhaps during the brief 10 minutes,

I was in the stairwell trying the badge readers

on each floor out of idle curiosity.

The door to floor seven in the fire,

stairs resisted all pressure thick,

cold, covered and grime.

The lock cross-balled it from the other side.

I snapped a photo just for proof.

The flush reflected off decades of dust.

That afternoon, braving a bite of confession,

I brought up badge questions at the tail end of her check-in,

meeting with Hannah, the HR director.

She was unusually clipped.

There are many levels of clearance

in a firm this large nothing to worry about,

stay within your ticketing queue, please.

She gathered her planner and left me with two unsigned

and DA amendments and no further explanation.

Curiosity faded toward anxiety.

I started reviewing building surveillance footage

after I was granting myself the privilege

under an obscure RT audit protocol.

Most angles were empty vacant corridors,

janitors making rounds.

But on the feet covering the seven floor elevator lobby,

a cul-de-shape, a dark smear of movement

where no one was scheduled to be a shadow

that crossed the camera's range at 3.22 a.m.,

then disappeared off the digital tape.

Returning the scrubber to that time,

I realized the timestamp was within five minutes

of the Beverly Tommons in Kikotalarm.

Worse followed.

Technical glitches mounted file vanish in the cloud as I worked,

replaced with abrupt and no reference errors.

Audit logs were redacted in real time,

entire incident records replaced by blank blocks

with cryptic references to policy-migrated.

A Wednesday morning system update was digitally signed

by names I'd never seen,

with keys dated years in the future.

Growing edgy with sleepiness,

I became a chin to the building's resting noises,

air handler shifting, faint rushes of water,

the elevator breathing at slow mechanical size.

Once, listening to backshifts security tapes,

I heard beyond the wine of the cleaning cruise vacuum,

a stutter in conversation,

too low to make out spiraling into a gasp.

Another night, I swore a caught brief weeping,

snuffed up the instant I hit replay.

I found sticky notes waiting on my monitor,

watched the last train, you're almost ready.

The handwriting varied the distant echo

of three or four different co-worker scripts.

I started housing my valuables

in the car sleeping uneasily,

dreaming in muffled loops and shutdowns.

By this point, the lines between curiosity

and fear had long since blurred.

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One Tuesday morning, with sleep pulling under my eyes

and adrenaline stretching every novedot,

I was called abruptly and with only the burst of pretext

to an HR wellness check.

The email arrived at precisely 10 and 17,

subject line all soft concern.

Let's touch base about your workload and development goals.

Hannah was waiting in her glassed in office,

but she wasn't alone.

A sharp, suited executive I'd never seen

before Saper-Side Helene, silent with nothing but a notepad

and the faintest hint of a wireless earpiece

under perfect departed hair.

The badge glinted silver in the desk lamp.

Hannah's tone was coated with sugar.

We want to ensure you're settling in well

to the culture at will.

It can be a lot of the transitions,

the unique procedural load.

Her companion measured me with chill predatory patients.

Would you describe your mood as consistent with your baseline?

Or have you found your endagement level fluctuating?

He prompted the word fluctuating lingering

and air fraction longer than necessary.

Baselines unchanged,

I replied reaching for plausible cheer.

Just the usual new staff stress late nights,

little things in the system that need tuning.

My hands stay folded, knuckles wide arm monies.

They asked about sleep about how I felt adapting

to recent shifts in company structure.

Probing ambient questions with no clear stakes,

except for a sequence of checkboxes

that seemed to material as on Hannah's form.

I noticed her sliding a silver key guard out

for a moment warm with no visible number,

just a blank hologram.

She made a show of placing it on the desk,

where I'd see it a smile suddenly running dry.

The company takes performance analytics very seriously.

The words hovered between threat and command.

It's important to cooperate fully with advanced assessment.

You'll find it is less stressful to embrace next steps.

She toned the card over, tapped the corner softly.

Or if you prefer,

we can initiate a resignation agreement,

quick, confidential, no questions.

The unspoken implication left no room for protest.

My heart hammered in my chest,

but I summoned the kind of compliant,

not I'd seen in onboarding videos.

Whatever you need, I'm here to cooperate.

I forced my old life.

I live in brief compliance.

Underneath, I was planning.

I would say what they wanted.

I would sign what they put in front of me.

But before this was finished,

I was going to learn everything I could about floor seven,

whatever it cost.

Leaving the office the day,

I felt the gaze burning into my back right up

to the elevator's edge.

Swiping my badge, I caught a flicker

on the admin panel my permissions,

now labeled restrict to depend in evaluation.

I'd been mocked, there would be no way to go back to before.

Every line between normal and forbidden was gone.

And though I moved through the rest of the day

with my head bowed, performing every tough to protocol,

I understood with absolute clarity.

Now they were watching, every step, every click, every breath.

My only choice was to keep moving deeper,

even as I felt the old tape at the edge of the elevator

button peeling up under my thumb,

the thin gold, seven gleaming, waiting.

By Thursday, normality had become a performance

I wore like an elf fitting suit.

Each movement sipping weak coffee in the kitchen,

trading juteful nods with Neil when passing his desk

was accompanied by an awareness of invisible relevance.

No word felt unexamined, no click of my mouse seemed private.

I ran diagnostics, generated reports,

nobody requested, calibrated phantom servers

just to justify my presence.

The only real task left was to keep my head below the tide

while my mind tucked upward, floor by forbidden floor.

For a day evening, I waited for the last light outside to die.

At will emptied with a predictable exodus,

elevator bells announcing packs of consultants

heading for trains.

It saw a staff clutching weekend-toped bags.

I pretended to fuss with a recalcitrant script

until the sound of voices faded.

When facilities locked their rolling bins

and shut down the conference-wing lights,

my only companions with a humming-sover closets

and my own breath echoing in my chest.

I now in 47 p.m.

The building could have been a muscle-eum.

I keyed in a network admin override,

watching the occupancy counters dwindle to just 3 myself,

marked the night guard and his booth,

and someone in unnamed staff-batch-lingering

in the conference level below.

The entry-pinked often on a couple times before stabilizing.

According to the system, I should have been alone.

I opened the key-cut management panel

scrolling the logs slower this time.

Rose and Rose of badge events displayed

in chronological order, authorized, denied,

timed out 20 a minute.

I filtered per floor.

Traffic was fairly normal for two, three,

and five cleaners, IT, a few late workers.

Then a single anomaly made way down the list at 9.19 p.m.

Card 116,299 read is authorized

in the elevator's 7th floor panel.

My stomach tensed.

The event matched to duplicate badge assigned

to someone I'd seen in the logistics branch,

but with permissions that had supposedly been pulled

three weeks ago.

10 minutes later, a second read,

same card this time,

a denied access outside the fire stairs in the ground floor.

I scrolled back.

For every flagged badge report I found,

four or five nearby readings vanished

as I tried to highlight them,

replaced in the audit table with a single word, reduct.

Someone or something was scrubbing traces,

but not fast enough to keep up with my pace.

Goaded by pulse of reckless curiosity,

I opened up command shell and snoop beyond official logs,

hidden process lists, old backup files

that it proved calls never quite deleted.

For as cross-through, connection logs I couldn't trace.

Locked token signed by system users I'd never seen.

Lately, the 7th floor's door controller

had pinned a shadow while the speaking,

one stamped with emaci address outside the building's

standard range.

Some days, the beacon activated every four hours.

Other days, it didn't show at all.

I glanced toward the ceiling where pipes

snaked up into darkness.

I could see the edge of a high vendor

by my cubicle, dark except for the faintest clint

of sheet metal.

My phone vibrated, a short burst

and old group chat revived for half-hearted joke

from Marsha about donuts.

I typed a reply, let myself exhale,

yet every minute that passed and quite drove home

to certainty if I waited any longer,

all evidence would slip away, burned out of the system

with one automated purge.

Searching for something maybe control,

maybe just proof that I still existed

outside their reach, I slept my badge from my line-out

and pressed the elevator call button.

The lobby was empty, floor shining

with a gloss that mirrored the low-ceiling lights.

The walk across the marble felt both weightless

and deliberate, while footsteps tracked and dry

gray salt from the weak's rain.

The elevator arrived, doors gliding open

with programmed civility.

I stepped inside, inspecting the panel.

Six illuminated circles, the seven still denied

by the same ancient tape now curling at the edges.

My hand trembled as I slid a fingernail

beneath the adhesive and peeled it upward,

revealing the seven.

My thumb hovered.

A simple co-press beep and then nothing.

Just a redding, then silence.

It would not move.

The someone's been up there tonight, I whispered.

My voice soaked into steel and faintly

echoed by my own reflection.

Suddenly a cough sounded a close and not from above.

It came from a corridor outside

followed by the faint shuffle of shoes.

I let my pump fall, pretending to check my watch, listening.

The foothold stopped just behind an angled wall.

I risked to look, then the hallway

silhouetted against the bluish spill of emergency exit lights

was marked.

He stared toward the security monitors oblivious,

his phone held up to his ear.

But a movement caught the edge of my vision,

someone ducking into a meeting room,

a tale of a suit jacket flaring behind glass.

I retreated into the elevator,

my safe cloak shredded by adrenaline.

The doors nearly closed, but I wedged my foot out.

I returned to my cubicle hall, my badge around my neck,

and feigned a furious attempt to debug a silver issue

in the ticketing system.

I forced myself to breathe,

waiting until the clock cycled steady to 10.45 p.m.

That night I started leaving myself markers.

I drew a tiny dot on the underside of my keyboard,

set a blank sticky note to Maduro's little test

to see if anything would shift, even an inch,

while my back was turned.

I scrolled through personnel entries one more time,

now searching for the recently missing.

Matthew Klein terminated no note.

Sarah Bell status transferred to GF holdings.

Even Neil, my supervisor,

now at a fresh annotation,

access pending evaluation.

His calendar had gone blank.

Saturday blurred into Sunday.

I barely left the building.

Periodically, the telltale mechanical thumps

and motorwares above me signaled the elevator's

idle adjustments assistant test

according to facility procedure.

Still, on two separate occasions

during the graveyard hours,

the elevators and use indicator for floor

seven glow green for several seconds at a time.

I became a ghost to my own cubicle,

working around the edges of resume tweaks

and fake IT reports,

living off-crusted granola bars and energy shots

from the emergency snack stash.

I Monday, the inside of my mouth,

tasted like cheap foil, my temples aching.

But the logs and the patterns they drew

became clearer as my mind sharpened under threat.

That morning, I arrived early to watch

which of my co-workers came in alone.

All looked as they always did,

but when I greeted Carla, the entry,

a badge flashed with subtle second color

on the reader, a striper hadn't noticed

before silvery glint beneath the usual blue.

I tried to engage her, waving like any other Monday.

She hesitated a beat too long before saying,

very quietly.

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You shouldn't stay late, not this week.

Why?

I replied as low as I could muster.

Her face went blank.

They monitor assessment and agement.

You'll lose context if you violate

discolation protocols.

She forced a smile, voice reanimated, and cheery.

See you at the team stand up.

She ducked away, plus a card glinting,

her walk quickening.

I kept my desk, my email pinged

with another policy acknowledgement required.

Notice this one alone wall of text

about adaptive team fluidity and critical transition support.

Every third clause crossed reference the prior

written a survey with an automatic consent check

already ticked.

My hand shook as I scrolled.

When I checked the attached signature block,

it was digitally signed, but not by any current employee.

It bore Beverly Tomlinson's email address.

I typed a reply short and professional.

I believe there may be a user provider

with this form, please confirm.

Within moments, a fresh email swept in from Hannah.

Thank you for your attention to detail.

No action needed at this time.

Please keep your workflow consistent.

The subject line, friendly reminders.

I read it three times before closing the tab.

Mid-morning, as Reins got it against the glass

and light-turmbled, I caught Ramon

in the corridor between print rooms.

I mashed his pace, pulling a half-blight frown.

Any chance he left the badge duplicator locked

in last week, I'm finding all kinds

of ghosts and audit logs.

He fumbled a pen, caught it before it hit the carpet.

I didn't touch access, only maintenance, I swear.

Maybe ask Walter and compliance.

I pressed a bit harder, lowering my voice.

Ramon, have you heard anything about staff

being moved upstairs?

I'm just trying to close a ticket,

but logs don't make sense.

His hand trembled enough that his much love tie was skewed.

His mouth worked silently for a second

before he found words.

Nobody asked to go.

They offer you a transition meeting

or they get you to sign something.

Then you're just here.

He stopped eyes wide.

A lot of that is someone in the next room

dropping a stack of printers or chair, perhaps,

but it cut Ramon's confession short.

He muttered a half-formed apology

and heard off trailing silence and tension behind.

That afternoon, Audity shouted everything.

My outlook calendar flickered, events being scheduled,

deleted, rescheduled out of nowhere

each new meeting-bearing titles

like personal movement, assessment results,

or, chillingly, compliance check seven.

My team's chat history never long

to begin with, thinned out.

Martian no longer replied to regular queries,

even Yale, normally verbose,

sent only clipped, delayed messages.

I checked my sticky note marker.

Vaughn replaced with another,

fresh yellow square, stack overflow,

produce load or rear-up process.

This time, it was typertine

and even the glazed smell, different shop and chemical,

not like the dusty office supply area of our usual batch.

Deciding I couldn't keep circling the same drain,

I made a plan to test the boundaries laid out before me,

I got to the pretext for visiting facilities,

claiming a conflict with H-track,

and that he caving on floor plans,

which gave me a pass to the Harvard cabinet

adjacent to the elevator controls.

The facilities office was a shoebox

of this array spools of wire, spare locksets,

a chip mug marked B-shift.

No one was present, but a punch clock beaped up to date.

I moved as quietly as possible.

On a high shelf, I found an old badge and print book.

Nothing about four, seven in the listed permissions,

but tucked between two blank visitor passes,

a hand-drawn map, elevators marked,

a thick black X over a spot labeled seven back core.

Scribbled in the margin,

only active unstacked night rotations.

I snapped a picture on my phone.

As I did, footsteps echoed

from the loading dock beyond the door.

Plutching to bind it to my chest, I ducked behind racks,

the air-pungent with dust and chemical solvent.

The sound trailed away, just someone moving bins, probably.

I can now elevator at lobby,

I pressed the seven button again,

now allegedly uncovered.

No luck as before until, by force of habit,

I turned my badge sideways,

letting the outfit chip brush not the official pad,

but a wafer thin symbol of the control panel.

The elevator hung the lower,

richer note than the usual one.

Furblink, the doors hesitated,

and a thin panel between called buttons flicker blue.

In that moment, something inside the mechanism unlocked.

The doors hung up in just a little longer

than normal before snapping type.

When I returned to my desk out of breath,

the login online monitor had auto-locked,

prompting a force pass would change.

I complied hand-shaking.

A message immediately populated the screen,

compliance process required,

you have been flacked for further evaluation.

Labeled with the names of both Hanaroa

and the shop-suited executive,

now revealed in the admin record

as committee member transition authority.

Clicking the link broad upper permissions error.

I felt it then palpable static the realization

that events were cycling faster now,

no longer waiting for my slow methodical query.

The system was changing to catch me.

Before I could decide on my next step,

the intercom snapped alive,

please report to the HR suite for an urgent follow-up,

bring your equipment.

Mechanical unyielding.

No name attached.

My equipment, this meant my phone,

laptop, badge credentials.

I packed everything,

palm press so hard to the plastic,

I felt it's ridged edges in my bones.

Crossing from IT into HR,

glass walls bled lamp light onto white carpet,

the hashbrook can only by the soft,

controlled murmur of voices behind a half closed door.

I approached, clear my throat and hastily knocked.

Han is silhouette was implacable behind the glass.

She motioned me in with an almost tired wave.

The shop-suited executive was present,

this time standing near the lone window,

hands folded behind the back.

Han had gestured toward a chair, her voice flared.

We'd like you to do a brief follow-up,

some unusual technical logs of come to our attention,

policy dictates a deep assessment.

She said it as a freeing from an inner teleprompter.

And if I refuse,

I asked for, since steady,

regretting the challenge the incident left my lips.

Her companion stepped closer,

gaze fixed to a point just above my eyes.

Her adaptation is not optional,

employees who cannot transition

are offered alternatives, no record is kept.

His smile was the absence of warmth,

a negative photograph.

Han a-handed across a clipboard.

Sign here took knowledge, procedural compliance

and continued employment term.

I took the pen, let a hover over the line.

The document was a wall of dense text,

but my eye fell on one segment, highlighted in peach,

by initially below the signatory grounds apple,

cross-consulting the right to undertake any

and all measures necessary to ensure compliance

with post-assessment relocation,

including transitional support

and retention program proofcalls.

My every instinct was to bolt.

Instead, I scrolled my name carefully, eligible,

a copy of my oldest careless signature from years past.

Han a-check the paper,

initialed the form aside it placed it

inside a folder marked seven floor pending.

The executive handed me a glinting rectangle,

a second key card, silver edge,

blank as a mirror safe for a raised number

I recognized from my earlier screens.

I pocketed it with upcomment.

Transition protocol begins at 2 a.m.,

Han a-said voice dry.

He'll be paged, we advise compliance.

There was no possible argument.

I nodded, stood slowly,

and retreated with my equipment clutched to my chest.

The walk back to my office was sharper

than any I could remember.

Each light seemed to linger,

flickering at the edge of burnout,

as though the bulbs themselves debated extinguishing.

At my desk, I stared at the key card under lamp light,

feeling the weight of a to-not heavy,

button-bendable program for a future I could not accept.

I fumbled it onto my lanyard, Han slow.

My monitor locked itself again.

An authorised session detected contact compliance.

Message repeated across all open tabs.

My phone paused with a meeting request

to transition preparation one.

Attached was a file with my personnel photo,

edited strangely pale.

Something in the cropping made my own expression

unknown to me.

By now, I had lost the ability to deny the power,

but also the fear that had guided me until then.

I was marked they would watch every move.

Yet there was a clarity, a way perimeter of calm.

If my career, my life here, ended on that floor,

at least I would know what haunted outdoors condemned heights.

As midnight approached,

I disabled an essential security on my company,

laptop and forced the dump of the building's elevator

and access logs, saving them all site.

On a private machine, I'd long to go hidden from inventory.

I encrypt a copies of every older personnel file,

stashed screenshots, mapped out the odd blips

and badge assignment history,

even took a shaky video of elevator panel's blue flicker.

It all went carefully labelled

into a folder titled simply seven.

I washed my face in the bathroom,

the mirror giving back a warp dicko,

circles under my eyes,

Joe clenched as though an eye was old anger.

Stepping into the corridor,

I heard a sound from high in Stoelahum,

an electric wine cycling up down up.

Against a rational instinct, I checked the fire stairs.

The lock at the seventh floor was engaged,

both four been under my fingers

with an almost mechanical heartbeat.

Back in the edge, he pit,

I lay my head against cool laminate,

breathing slow and ragged and waited for two a.m.

My badge glinted, the secondary card nestled beneath,

dead as the iron, but burning a hole against my skin.

The elevator would open soon.

I would have waited a ghost,

living a corporate I intended to meet it on my own terms.

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I made a register that night,

so some deeper cover shoving paper,

with jicking logs, muting desktop notifications,

while the iron slept toward the scheduled transition

protocol.

The windows beyond my cubicle stayed black,

looking back the pale glow of my screens,

as if nothing lived outside at waspattern glass.

Still, the feeling of being observed grew so intense,

I caught myself glancing at ceiling corners,

hunting for cameras, and you too well.

At 1.12 a.m., my phone buzzed with a message,

not from any official number,

but from an internal direct message in gateway.

If you can read this,

use Incognito and Valsover,

not all of us go willingly, disconnect Wi-Fi now.

I locked the screen by Reflex Hot Tripped

and for a full minute I wondered if I'd hallucinated.

Then, almost gently,

the message vanished short or expired,

no trace in logs,

even the notification blur white from memory

the next time I toggled the display.

But something immediately tightened.

I plugged away at a script to mask my system traffic habit

and fairbitten into muscle memory from years and startups,

a last chance defense against managerial snooping.

I propped open the browser and tunneled

into the deepest system logs the ones we only used

for audits after ransom were scarce.

There were files labeled 7th floor initiative

and transition interviews, each triple encrypted,

each time stamped in the IR between 145 and 40 AM.

The document owner feels trickled

for a blend of current executives and old names,

Beverly Tommans and E. White.

Even one amp bonds are GF holdings

who had not appeared in any org chart I'd ever handled.

I decrypted a handful,

pray my subterfuge would stay ahead

of whatever digital watched of this set loose.

The policies inside were more psychology

than IT routine languages about a government of filtration,

consent, transformation and state readiness.

Next to each record was a scoring rubric,

adapted from some third party analytics platform

but with columns for risk, adaptation

and variance fall cost referenced

about numbers were transition room entries.

I tried to cross check these with the ghost key cards

and found a tense geometry each instance

of a transition protocol coincided

with a sudden cessation and user activity

just before the digital identities died altogether.

My hand ached, my jaw locked as I dug deeper

for company blueprints, rooting around

and forgotten share point folders

and archive directories.

The fire report for 2018 was their tight,

dry, with a single black and white photograph

of burn cabling.

Oddly, the timeline of the shutdown overlap

with mass badge updates, executive promotions

and a spike in terminated users.

Security of grade and vices poured in the same month.

The board adapt well when from piecemeal consultant parents

to a sudden clutch of outside contract and names

none of them easily traced.

It found handwritten site notes,

buried in furdo archives labeling the seven floors

critical transition zone access only by cross validation.

If the fire was real, it had been opportunistically timed.

A tap against the glass wall rattled my focus.

My monitor screen snapped dark.

I flattened myself back, forcing my breathing to even out.

The office was dead silent,

even the servers burned down into hibernation.

I checked the time 147 AM.

14 minutes to whatever a child mandated.

Too close now to back away.

A chat notification bloomed,

hovering just above my system clock,

watch for the two way, I'm elevator.

If you're ready, follow if not, hide and forget.

I traced the sender to an internal handle,

X31 shadow.

No other identifying markers, no reply option.

Automatically, I began to pre-stage whatever

things I could.

I loaded copies of encrypted company memos,

transition schedules, access logs,

unlinked drive folders onto my external stick,

slotting it against Michael in a sock,

so worn any thorough search would read it as trash.

Back up video files from building security

I zipped an email to private offshore dress

I'd created years earlier as a jerk.

In a cleaners supply closet,

I hit a phone loaded with pictures, badge logs,

elevator button close-ups,

weird survey forms, anything traceable to a date and time.

It was time to make myself both invisible

and present hidden from those who might search,

but ready to observe what would happen.

I doused my office lights and pressed against the gloom.

My only weapon was obscurity.

From the lobby, I heard the motorized tone

of the elevator carriage descending,

then rising again.

I precisely won 59 AM.

The indicator for a new elevator

won lid up on my laptop to building controls dashboard.

I could see from the real-time status grid

that the car was parked at 4.6,

the seven button was not illuminated.

A sliver of booted foot solid pasta gap

under my cubicle wall.

I glimpsed the tail of a suit.

My blood ran cold.

I waited at 10.60 seconds,

listening for any sound hash voices,

a whistle, cough, or the soft click of a clutch.

Silence were assumed as the elevator finally dinge,

the sound was thinner than I expected,

quickly subsumed by the floor's concrete throat.

I risked a look in a glass lobby ahead.

Hanaro, hair swept into her habitual loose

swiped her card at the elevator panel,

then held out upon to guide two employees behind her.

One I recognized, Micah,

a projectly dolphin praised for adaptability.

The second, pale woman,

whose blazer hung loose on bony shoulders,

stared at her shoes as if tracking invisible ants.

Trailing, almost in unison,

another staff member joined a man who's long,

square hands bunched at his sides,

face clenched with wary anticipation.

He waved a card one of the silver cantana

had displayed for me eyes earlier

and the elevator beeped, door sliding open.

At this depth in,

something mechanical shifted

as if an old relay had frozen,

then finally discharged.

None of them looked back.

I counted to 10 waiting for sign,

any sign that someone saw me,

but the corridor remained empty,

safe for the elevator's soft exhale as it began its climb.

I forced my feet forward, nerves on edge.

Without time for clear planning,

I slid my own silver card from my lanyard

and pressed the call button,

ready to bought and feigned for getting a venue and caught me.

A vibration emanated from beneath the panelist data field

so delicate, I sensed more than felt it.

The door's parted.

I slipped inside and pressed the uncovered seven.

For two heartbeats, nothing moved,

then the seven gold-cold gold,

the doors compressing with a hiss,

and the car rows, swift and dry,

like an unblinking eyelash sliding up a cheek.

What happened next felt both stretched

and compressed a slice of minutes folded inside

and near weightless drift.

The elevator made no stops at other floors.

My badge pressed tight and my fist didn't beep, didn't blink.

There was no moment of confirmation

only that strange humreturning, climbing in pictures,

the car rows higher than I'd felt possible

in this low building.

When the doors lit apart,

I stepped out into the seven floor

for the first time or perhaps,

our later suspected for the last.

The air up here was called with all ventilation.

More than cold,

expectant, chemically clean,

threaded with a feigned irritation that set my tongue dry.

Them overheads one and four

seemed to cast islands of light over long, empty carpet.

The cubicles were mostly bare,

safe for heaps of old monitors,

rolled in woods,

and one lonely cork board,

some tax arranged in minima shapes.

Deeper in, I could make out glass-walled offices

with the blinds twisted the skew.

Some chairs were upright, pushed against desks

as though waiting users,

others lay toppled,

wheels split outward.

Halfway down a corridor, digital clock,

long dead, showed 313 or maybe E-13.

All the scenes peer frozen,

left intact to discourage trespass.

But at the whole far end,

temporary lighting spilled beyond black cloth

cut in his hung floor to ceiling,

set in crew frames.

That way, the hum was stronger and nervous,

low away from the fluttered in my inner ear

and raised static along my arms.

It was here, behind those curtains,

that pro-call, or punishment lived.

I scouted, careful with each step,

pausing at intervals to listen.

One wrong turn here, one flicker caught on

in tenels of valence,

would mean a force to exit or an assessment.

Still, a part of me,

the stubborn side that once stayed up

to deep a overnight server failures alone,

demanded I see it through.

From inside, the curtain dairy came voices,

conversational but strained.

I hugged a column,

tearing through a slit between two curtains.

A group of five receded at a round table,

the lights of a sharp and clinical.

Hannah presided, committee badge hanging low.

Next to her, a man in medical scrubs,

sleeves rolled,

and that shop-suited executive,

face-early neutral.

Their hands lay at top folders arranged in front of them.

Across the table, sat Micae is backstreet,

though the clasp of his hands gave away fair.

The others watched, expectant.

Hannah began, her voice carefully modulated.

Please recount deviations in your workflow

over the last two weeks,

be as detailed as possible.

Micae's knuckles widened.

I sometimes moved tickets between cues,

fight a backlog for review,

downloaded some department to start for a sprint.

That's all.

Did anyone direct these actions?

The man in scrubs leaned forward,

crisp and calm.

I didn't email prompt you at any point after 8 p.m.

Micae swallowed, glancing away.

My vantage point was poor.

I caught his profile,

lips moving and a halting reply.

I just tried to be proactive.

Nobody directed me.

I wanted to keep up with targets.

The shops who did executives pens crouched the folder.

His words cut close.

Did you discuss compliance markers

with an authorized staff?

Micae shudder then nodded slightly.

Someone asked about access looks.

They told them it just to be careful.

Hannah reached into a bin with drawing a stylus

and tapped an unseen terminal.

The record shows badge duplication outside protocol.

You end age with the inquiry, she pressed.

Micae panicked now his shoulders quivering.

It was nothing.

It was just a question.

The logs didn't make sense.

I didn't mean it.

Her words cut him off, non-compliance noted.

With a tablet, she swiped sending a chiming response

to the committee console.

I heard a faint, strangled cry from the woman seated

to Micae's left, the pale one I'd seen

joined the group in the elevator.

She pulled away from the table as the man

and scrubs rose and lean out of sight,

addressing her with hushed urgency.

Behind a different curtain,

I heard a different fuss of women's,

not familiar speaking on the edge of angry tears,

can't remember the interview,

can't remember if I was even here last week

of her word slurred,

as though repeating lines in a dream.

I pressed forward too far,

a heel brushed a fallen box,

setting a creaking against tile.

The sound ricocheted down the empty lines of cubes,

striking the silence like a snap branch.

Within moments Hannah raised her face,

expression white blank.

She said quietly, please pause recording.

The room stalled.

Footfalls whispered my way,

and the sharp suited executive murmured

something inaudible before rising.

I ducked behind a stack of old printer crates,

pressing back into the shadows

the committee steps into the corridor.

One pair of shoes thick-sold,

male came with an inches of my hiding spot.

I fought the twin urges to flee or try to blend.

Instead, I waited.

The steps paused, then sidled away.

From the curtain gap,

I could just see a computer caught blinking,

its display cycling personnel bad to its names

by magic graphs.

One readout was marked Candidated Optician in complete.

Another, transferred ready for final reduct.

All at once, it made sense or at least,

the shape of the process became grimly clear.

These weren't just HR meetings.

They were decisions of deviance,

nameless procedures for conformity,

using pressure, observation, memory audits,

and perhaps more.

Then transferred was not a promotion, but a deletion.

Nearby, a small of terminal display transcript enters,

each labeled with a timestamp

and section headings of pre-interview,

assessment, outcome and a recording button currently read.

My own name hovered in the menu, Evolpending,

night of 6 slash 14.

I snatched absent-minded photos with my phone,

sending them as able to the private cloud.

The blinking panels began to swirl,

perhaps the committee was resuming their process.

Part of me hoped the others the scared ones could resist,

but the terror on their faces told me the odds within.

A column of air-shifted, cold and immediate.

I sensed the approach before hearing the footsteps.

A member of the committee,

not Hannah, but a sinew woman with copped salt hair

moved into the corridor,

scanning from my perspective more with intent and chance.

I pressed flat, slowing my breath,

as her silhouette paused at my hiding place.

There was a moment's hesitation.

I steeled myself my badge in one hand,

phone and the other,

ready to drop both of C's.

The woman leaned down,

sharp eyes level with mine.

We stared her gaze unreadable,

my fear barely contained.

After two long seconds,

she sat under her breath,

run now, don't look back.

Then she straightened and strode back

toward the main curtain, her piss brisk.

I weeded.

Sound fell away at the home,

the electrical pulse,

the anxious voice is all stalled.

Then came a single slow alarm,

not the digital chime of systems gone wrong,

but a soft haunting sound like a singing ball steady round,

vibrating in my forearms.

A transition in action.

Every instinct told me to flee,

but I needed proof.

I snapped more pictures,

badge crates, unused lockwicks as labeled committee only,

and another batch of folders marked permanent reduction bulk.

I noted a cabinet full sky high with old line-outs,

each looped over a dowel, none with names.

On one shelf, a pile faded in D8,

sigged as blurred by repeated copying.

The committee resumed their chant of questions quick,

ritualistic, but the answers

from those facing them grew softer,

sometimes stopped midward.

I caught a lost look at the database terminal,

only to realize my own personal file was being accessed live.

A blank field flickered marked in process.

My picture grainy taken that morning faded in a note,

as if the system itself didn't know

whether to mock me present or absent.

I took too long.

The hind me, a panel door clicked a jar.

Without looking back,

I slid away from the curtain,

crossed to a maintenance corridor

and slipped into darkness just as another figure a man tall,

urgent moved to it and to sit me.

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Our eyes met in the gloom.

You don't belong, he mad, barely a whisper.

Neither do you, I said, clutching my badge teeth on edge.

A standoff, but neither of us moved.

Then a voice thundered down the corridor,

the shop suited executive, clipped and furious,

contained the area.

No exits before protocol completes.

The taller man vanished back into the office maze.

Alone, I sprinted through the cubicle expanse

heart in my mouth.

A spotlight swung overhead,

shadow scattering barely enough time

to duck beneath a rolling cart.

I found the stairwell exit,

its lock now disengaged,

whether by code or oversight I never learned.

I pressed my whole way against it.

It swung open.

On the stair, a single sticky note,

if you survive this far,

choose silence or warning.

There is no exile after here.

I ran.

Down seven flights,

shoes barely gripping concrete,

badge lanyards slapping my chest,

slipping past power closets and H.R. cages.

The hum from the seventh floor faded,

replaced by the mundane drone of night lighting

and distant genetorial vacuums.

By the time I reached the eyed pit,

cooling fans sounded almost like a lullaby.

I collapsed at my desk,

wretching into my hands,

refusing to let terror carry me any deeper.

But even there,

shadowed in the calming buzz,

and knew I was not safe.

The program and I was running it would circle back.

For days afterward, I played the pot.

Logging helped tickets.

Smiling from morning video calls.

Carefully scripting my words,

so nothing would give me away.

My encryption stick,

double wrapped, stayed hidden at home,

a stone in the lining of my jacket.

The shifts became immediate, poisonous.

Co-worker stopped catching my eye.

Every conversation was brief and clipped.

No one gathered in the kitchen anymore.

H.R. weekly check-ins dried to mass emails,

policy update, behavioral markers,

I may inbox filled with reminders

to complete all compliance modules

and survey forms at your Alice convenience.

I ignored what I could have falsified while I could not.

On a rainy Monday,

I cornered Marshall one of the few

who had ever spoken plainly.

I passed her a folded paper

with a string of file hashes on it.

If anyone requests a late meeting,

don't accept, go home, I said quietly.

She blinked and for a moment,

comprehension washed across her face.

She pocketed the slip,

knotted, and left without offering a word.

Meanwhile, the company kept eating itself.

Carla and Ramon vanished over a single

weekend and no out of office, no goodbye email.

Rumors trickled that both had been transferred

for efficiency.

The few who remained grudistant,

faces glaze behind screen glare

at their desks increasingly bare.

Worse, the protocols from flow

seven began seeping downward.

Transitions of his embedded questions about memory gaps

have you ever lost time at work.

Biometric scanners popped up on conference room doors,

clinical performance interviews

replaced casual supervisor check-ins.

Each day, I found Trace's new forms

with unfamiliar letter heads,

others flied with color tags

that matched committee markings from above.

The secrecy, the double binds,

the lingering reminders I carried at all,

and it marked me.

My sleep fractured, haunted by looping dreams

for office's spiral dupured into faceless,

glass walled rooms and the seven

on the elevator panel shone with a hungry red.

I started flinching at the sound of printer warming up.

My own signature looked for and on the routine documents

I was never required to sign in Tribal Kid every week.

Yet slowly, I learned to read the Cohen's

beneath that wool skin.

I avoided meetings between 9 p.m. and midnight.

I pretended not to notice

when old badge numbers blinked out of existence.

I developed a new set of rituals,

laying my badge a certain way before I left each night,

running my hand along my computer cable while looking out

as if to remind myself that at least for the moment

I was still tethered to someplace real.

It couldn't last.

The more I knew, the closer they studded me,

I saw every digital trace I left whittled down,

cut with corporate and deceptic.

My user profile now flagged assessment ongoing.

Security cameras tracked my headlong walk to the exit,

the sensors lagging half a second just long enough

for plausible denobility.

In the end, I handed in my laptop and badge

at the front desk on a dull yellow lit Thursday.

The office had grown bare and whole pods entered,

new contractors filling chairs with no introductions

or laughter.

A new receptionist received my hardware

a kid, fresh out of college,

wearing a blue line-up with no second stripe.

She smiled and distracted.

As I placed my badge and equipment on the glass,

the elevator behind me dinged softly.

I turned.

Its doors had opened, empty and waiting.

The panels, seven button restored,

pulsing a faint, insisting gold.

On the elevator's worn steel threshold,

someone had left to play Manila envelope.

My name printed in a handwriting

I recognized from countless sticky note and HR memos.

Inside it weighed nothing I found both of my key cards.

The stand-out company blew in the silver-etched

committee variant, now crispy fused

into a single slab of plastic.

Attached to the back, in tiny, careful block letters,

everyone adapts, see upstairs.

I held the card up to the fluorescent light.

Where they joined, the color blood no longer blue,

not quite silver, more like a sheen of oil on old asphalt.

The edges were warm as though recently pressed.

The elevator doors waited patient.

They did not begin to close,

not until a step back heart hammering.

As I exited into the echoing marble lobby,

only then did the card begin to rise.

There's seven on the panel bone,

its gold, a solitary watchful eye.

Everywhere, the glass gleam brighter,

as if reflecting faces I could not see watching,

taking measure and seen yet and forgotten.

Outside, the first warm of the daylights

scratched through a bruise of clouds,

but I felt the building's hum carry down the block

after I'm a process still unfolding,

eager for the next candidate.

I knew then that at Wells program reached further

than a single four, a set of memos,

or an unlucky handful of employees.

Then my remained.

I would never truly escape assessment.

The elevator ascended the scent of chemical air

and recycled rituals trailing behind.

In my pocket, the card fused the last gap

between present and absence of permission

that could never be destroyed, only recycled and renewed.

And in the mirrored glass of Atwell's doors,

I caught the flicker of my own eyes, almost acquainted,

not quite returned.

For a moment, I saw the seventh floor with total clarity,

not a location but a process

for circuit completing forever overhead.

And the quiet message written in my hand,

or someone else's remained, everyone adapts.

Everyone.

I don't remember letting go of the envelope

just the tackous light of old adhesive

as my thumb pressed along the seam,

a flotto of my fuse key cards resting in my palm.

I crossed the lobby with careful steps,

watching the dull reflections of recessed light sliding

over marble as I walked.

My senses stretched wide, raw, tuned for aftershocks,

I've always calling me back,

astray for for breaking from behind the reception desk,

any indication that I was being pursued.

But the only sounds were the hush of climate control

and the distant metallic echo of the elevator cables

flexing far above my head.

I pushed through the revolving door,

my breath clouding the faint,

called morning just outside.

The sun was a pale crescent behind clouds,

leading a cards deliverer of light across the wit cement.

I passed the lozenge of my fuse badge from hand to hand,

unsure whether to pocket it or fling it far

into the shrubs lining the entry.

But through it, it away felt meaningless,

some part of me already understood

at what mattered wasn't in the plastic.

Across the avenue, the windows of a baker who blinked on.

The aroma of east, sweetness,

warmth whaffered through the cold, tickle of cedier.

For the first time in what felt like days,

my stomach cramped with hunger.

I walked along the street,

my senses still straining for danger,

unable to shape the sense that every step marked me,

someone might be watching even now,

locking my choises,

scoring my movements from a hundred and seen glass size.

I bought coffee with clumsy hands,

mumbling thanks as the Boris to slid the paper cup to me.

Steam curled up, and for a second I closed my eyes

just to let the muted heat fog the edge of my vision.

Normal life went on here, people cued for bread,

checked phones, nudged their way past one another

with delicate urban choreography.

Yet in every unfamiliar phase I searched for recognition

for some sign they too were in on the secret,

assumed to return to a floor no one would admit existed.

The card weighed heavily in my pocket

and emphatic presence against my thigh.

My every instinct told me to flee the city

to take a train anywhere it erases myself.

I would have, maybe, if the bad chat

and felt so much like the final clasp

in a sequence I couldn't to marvel.

I sat in a bakery window, sipping hot coffee,

re-enticking against the glass.

Every time the door jangled I snapped my eyes up,

searching for a familiar silhouette,

hand as precise dried,

or that executive's watchful stare.

But that morning, nobody followed me.

Outside, buses heaved along their routes.

Kids on scooter splashed for shallow puddles,

laughter echoing, reminding me of a time

before my mind was divided by secrecy and fear.

I wandered so badly to believe that this was the transition

that I passed her at was machine with memory

and truth more or less intact

that the world would let me be just another citizen now.

Yet as the eye stretched forward,

a bone-deep anxiety set in.

If they wanted silence, why mark me?

Why not simply cut me loose as so many others had been?

Was some part of the test store ongoing

some experiment left him fold in the open?

I found myself dialing a number I hadn't used in months,

a ticker-cruiter I'd met while rebuilding my savings

after the collapse of my last startup.

He answered on the third ring,

foes muffled with early morning fatigue.

Out, well, oh yeah, I remember you.

Listen, your references still go,

got your resume on file, need anything?

I hastated.

Just wanted to make sure I'm still documented

as having worked there in your system.

Sure, absolutely.

They made big layoffs last month.

Right, I remember seeing something on LinkedIn

thought about sending your name to a couple of clients,

still interested.

My breath hitched.

Maybe let's give it a day or two

want to make sure everything's clear with HR first.

Take your time, just drop me an email.

We signed off.

I let the phone call in my hand, numb.

If everyone disappearing had really been fired,

their betrayers exit interviews,

references, thinkton updates, angry glass door reviews.

But there was nothing.

That was its own kind of answer.

I spent the day window shopping jobs,

reading contracts, scanning headlines

for names any ex-atwal staff,

any sign that Ramon O'Cala had serviced us where.

Nothing came up.

The world remained flat, deniable.

In the margins of an old notebook,

I met Patent's high-dates,

Spage anomalies, committee promotions,

helping something fresh would leap out.

Instead, the details blurred as the iris bone passed.

I found no new handholds.

Back home, my apartment felt newly vacant.

I took stock of my hidden evidence,

five drives, two battered old laptops,

a hardbound notebook full of dates and log entries,

and the stick hidden inside the lining of my jacket.

I lay my finds across the coffee table,

sifting them into piles.

Even alone, I whispered as I worked,

as if fearing a microphone embedded somewhere

in crack-dry will all light sockets.

My sleep then to begin with splintered further that night.

I woke to nightmares.

Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing.

Victory Lane?

Yeah, it's even better with Chamba by my side.

Race to ChambaCasino.com, let's Chamba.

Don't purchase necessary, VTW Group,

voidware prohibited by law, CTNC's, 21 plus,

sponsored by ChambaCasino.

Borescent lights flickering above a panel of faces blow

by endless class reflections.

The elevator door was prying open

and closing with agonizing patients,

always a floor too high.

Each time I surfaced, panting,

I felt the subtle insistence

of the badge waiting for me on the nightstand.

I sat up with the door on certain for a moment

that voices whispered my name just beneath

the rustle of city traffic.

That first week away, I didn't hear from Apple.

I avoided the towel by several blocks

changing up my patterns.

Convinced, I'd see Hanacross in a street

or a committee member standing

I'm linking in a subway car.

My friends texted, then called,

then gave up one by one,

their sympathetic check-ins dropped away

replaced by bursts of routine life.

I loaned not to answer when pressed about my transition,

citing company and E.A. privacy,

some pre-ticks about mental health.

I watched, restlessly, for something to break the pattern,

some sign that the secret was loose,

that the world would acknowledge

what circled in the upper area of my old office.

And for almost a month, nothing rippled the surface.

Until a plane enveloped, slipped through my mail slot.

No return address.

Inside, a single slip of printer paper, clean crisp.

At the top, my Apple photo ID and I'm flattering

headshot hair matted from the rain that day.

Across my face, in the same block letters

from the elevator card, adaptation monitored,

civil follows.

On the back, a short URL out to an online portal

branded only as behavioral continuity check.

I hesitated, but curiosity pressed me to load the page,

using a board laptop and a privacy VPN for good measure.

The survey was banal to the point of cruelty.

How many irres of sleep do you average nightly?

Have you experienced memory gaps at work or at home?

Do you feel watch, even in private?

Do you trust your current employer?

I laughed, sharpened mirthless, at the last one.

The final section instructed me to please tap your at

well-bashed geodevices and F.C.

read-of-for-compliance confirmation.

I closed the tab, shut the laptop,

and stuffed the card deeper into a desk drawer.

Days blurred into tedium haunted by minor glitches.

My phone would vibrate in small eyes,

no notifications visible on waking.

Old at-well colleagues, or the few who remained on my social

feet, stopped posting altogether.

When I searched for my car, I found as account locked

to no recent updates, the last photo-blurry group lunch,

faces intact.

Attempts to message him bounced.

Even Marsha, who'd taken my warning, never replied.

Once, passing the atleta on your desk,

I saw a janitor scraping something off the brass elevator

panel from the outside and maybe glue, maybe just graffiti.

I paused at the kerblon enough to watch the glass shimmer

and catch the flicker of movement seven stores

above the street, arrest the shadow breaking

the geometry of the windowless wall.

I looked for the briefest sign of a face, a raised hand,

but found only glare.

I tried to rationalize.

Organization shed employees all the time.

I told myself.

There are always compliance surveys and badge anomalies.

But certain nights, the hum of the city resolved itself

into something more into it, a low vibration in my bones.

I couldn't know but imprinted somewhere far beneath language.

The badge had seemed to grow heavier,

not with weight, but with attention.

I began to dream in nested surveys and mutation warnings,

my memories flickering at the edges during waking ires.

The mundane world slipped backwards

for place by a growing sense of dual existence won for public,

one held in trust for the committee above.

One evening, after spending ires backing up

log data to card servers around the world, I got an email.

Plain text, unsigned, the sender addressed a random ice string.

Did you see it yet?

It's always recruiting, don't use the card if you value yourself

and destroy it if you can bear it, otherwise welcome back.

Something inside me snapped.

I fished the badge from the drawer and hot pounding,

tried to break it press, twisted,

even smashed it against the towel of my bathroom.

The casing gave way, but no real damage.

The ship flashed a green LED, a feature I'd never noticed,

and the apartment lights flickered just for an instant.

I almost tossed it from my window, but my hand froze.

Something stub and pry, or perhaps a deeper compulsion,

forced me to keep it, lodging it behind my passport

in the far back of a lock box.

What does I try to sleep, a chill certainty settled in,

I'd only postpone the inevitable.

The line between inside and not no longer held.

A week later, a new envelope appeared,

this time from a shell company, supposedly a recruiting firm.

Inside, an onboarding packet to no let ahead,

but a familiar logo half-ghosted at the footer,

an export from Atwall's ancient document templates.

At the bottom, a single line, first day training on site,

please bring all prior credentials.

That night, my dreams from Votention.

I reached in them for a panic button

that never quite materialized, doors refusing to open,

the elevator always drawn inexorably upward.

I worked tangled in sheets, the badge now lying on my pillow,

though I did not remember retrieving it.

In resignation or defiance, I dressed as a for another interview,

combed my hair, and made my way through the groggy

of a bright dawn back toward the place

I'd spent so much of my recent life avoiding.

The lobby seemed warmer than I remembered,

more full contract workers and brandless outfits

push bins through the halls, receptionists,

swap shifts with dial, careful smiles.

As instructed, I handed over my appointment letter

to the desk attendant.

She nodded, scanned my badge this time,

both blue and silver stripes illuminated,

pattern spiraling across the screen.

Great, you're cleared for orientation upstairs.

I tried one last time to dimmer,

I wasn't scheduled for a floor seven induction, was I?

Her eyes slid off me, fixing on something I couldn't see.

Everything's in order, they're waiting for you

in the executive suite.

Bebedience moved my feet.

I pressed the elevator call.

The doors yawned open, the silver seven gleaming

and shrouded, waiting.

Inside, the cast maled as clinical as the room's above

a ghost of solvents, some sharp cleaning fluid,

the metallic tang that always haunted the upper floors.

As I pressed the button, the machinery clicked into focus

in the panel locks displaying a message,

welcome candidate, assessment resuming.

Rising, the city fell away.

The elevator didn't grow in a trine,

it slid within humans' mooders,

a cap so carrying only a single cargo.

In my reflection, I searched for someone frightened

but mostly found composure layer tightly over submission.

The doors opened on a corridor,

I recognized yet subtly alter.

Where once there were curtains and shadows,

now glass panels reflected precise, empty light.

Fans adorned corners, two green and heavy,

the pots suspiciously free of dirt.

Half a dozen workstations stood ready,

screens already alive with onboarding documentation.

Hannah roasted in the entryway, hands folded.

She smiled, but it cracked instantly

as she gestured me forward.

Thank you for returning, compliance is efficient

when met in Goof-Aid, she said,

gliding toward a small office whose window

overlooked nothing at all.

Inside, the committee sat.

Three I recognized, the shop suited executive,

the woman with salt hair and a young man I'd never seen,

but whose eyes were sunk deep with exhaustion.

Please, sit, the executive said,

voice exactly as measured as ever.

I did.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

The only sound was the tablet stylus

clocking across a digital surface.

At last, Hannah looked up.

We appreciate your discretion, she said.

Most don't make it this far with memory and tack,

you showed initiative provided evidence of compliance

and non-compliance both.

It's rare we allow a candidate this opportunity.

I met her eyes, my own questions crowding the silence.

Why me? Why the badge?

Why shall me the mechanism at all?

She considered.

The process is not about secrecy, not anymore.

We measure adaptation flexibility, memory, capacity

for denial, some adapt, some count.

Those who see the program,

and return those are the ones we need.

The shop suited man added, every structure has a core

and a membrane, the seven floors both.

It absorbs tests, recycles,

you're to help design the next iteration

that's your promotion.

I backed the chair away,

shocked at my own obedience,

my own relief of being offered purpose

instead of oblivion.

What happens if I refuse?

Then you forget, you leave, another will take your place,

and in time you'll wonder what work ever meant at all.

The woman with cell tests mild, not unkindly.

Or you can stay and become part of the process.

Adaptation isn't always voluntary,

but neither is departure.

I stayed at my badge, their faces, the glass beyond.

I knew the building would swallow my decision

like an old trick, seamless and notalous,

the day sliding forward with all evidence erased.

I realized, in that moment, that no job,

no life or resume or professional passage

could guarantee separation from this floor

of this mechanism.

That assessment had never truly ended.

It was a recursive function, an algorithm without an exit.

Somewhere in the script of my life,

bright and terrifying as a bug discovered too late

to prevent rollback, I felt the click of consent.

Or perhaps the ghost of it because truly,

there was no consent in what was required for survival,

only the soft certainty that in time I would do as I must.

I nodded, ritual resumed.

Hapers laid in front of me, a new signature block.

My name appeared in digital ink, repeated, pixelated.

I signed again and again, felt nothing.

The badge, now warm in my palm,

lit up with colors near the blue nor silver,

but infinitely variable-posmatic,

unreadable from any angle except dead center.

Afterward, I was ushered to a workspace,

given a new laptop, a new set of development tickets.

The screen opened onto a portal-abelled continuity operations.

The first task, review adaptation records.

Score for resilience.

Prepare reports.

As the office emptied and knocked with bustle,

but with a gentle vanish of a monitored system,

shutting off a new statement's hand-pulls by my desk.

She placed a hand-flat over mine for a second,

a gesture of solidarity or command, I couldn't say.

You'll get used to it, she said, gaze off, tire.

We all have.

When she left a setback, rolling my badge

between thumb and forefinger,

watching Shad his wax and wane across the screen.

From somewhere deeper in the office,

the elevator hummed again.

I heard, or imagined I heard, voices from the lower floors,

not words, but the civil and syllables

of lives-envolving in parallel,

compliance interviews, security checks, new inductions.

A loop.

A recursion feeding itself.

I worked then.

What else was there to do?

In a hallway, the badge scan a flicker

accepting a fresh code, and somewhere beyond the walls,

another new candidate was riding upward,

clutching a packet heartbeat matching the mechanical scent.

In the mirrored glass ahead, my face returned,

composite and a noble, already receding

into the process I'd both survived and become.

And beyond the walls, the city spread

in different under-del morning, like a grid of lives,

a floors of doors leading up and never quite out.

The elevator doors never truly closed.

Up here, everyone adapts, upstairs, everyone does.

And that is the end.

Thank you for listening, and I will see you in the next one.