The Stillness At Parcel Six

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Hello, I'm Wilkins, stories all the time.

The lad you are here.

Let's get into it.

The suitcase wheel caught on a ragged patch of carpet and newly tipped,

sending my things in a sideways lurch against my leg.

I caught it, nerves jangling and pushed forward, following the landlord's stiff back

as he led me down the sixth floor corridor of the agate building.

The ceiling forrests and sizzled and blinked overhead,

dulling every surface to the paleis grey.

They felt wrong, somehow too thick for such a drafty office block,

dense with the latent weight of dust and old, recirculated air.

My shoes made slow, definite sounds on the scoff floors we passed on marked doors,

windows blurred behind security film every wall marked by slanted strips of sunless crime.

The landlord is key and dangled at his thigh too loud in the harsh.

He glanced back once or twice, pupils overly bright,

and offered a quick smile that didn't reach the rest of his face.

We'll have you set up in no time Miss Kessler,

not many take the sixth, too quiet for freelancers, most say.

I nodded, willing away the prickle on my spine.

It was just an office, and I'd signed the lease two days earlier.

I had worked to do.

I watched him fumble the lock on Suite 60, fingers uncertain for a man

who'd claimed to own the building for 20 years.

The door swung open with a protesting groan.

I stepped inside and stopped, suitcase bumping my shin.

At first, the suite looked exactly like the photos,

square and bland, two windows onto the concrete alley,

battered all desk in the far corner.

But the smell hit instantly all coffee gun moldy,

stale paper that sharp-tangu sometimes get in libraries no one's visited in years.

I drew a shallow breath and tried not to wrinkle my nose.

You'll want to erode out, the landlord said,

setting a set of keys on the ledge by the kitchenette.

Got the basics of desk, some file cabinets heat,

windows don't open much, city law.

That, at least, was true.

I tried the frame with one hand.

It held shut, grudging and immovable.

I kept scanning the single room.

On the desk sat a mug, half full,

bring dry dark inside.

Hiles of an opened envelope slouched against one cabinet.

The old computer, CRT monitor,

because a single block was still plugged in,

the green power light pulsing quietly.

I glanced at the desk calendar and faltered.

The month was correct October,

but the last date had a wild entanglement of marks

and short-end that meant nothing,

nested question marks, arcs, bold numbers.

Below the desk, the toes of a pair of boots,

short-duff men scuffed at the heel, half forgotten.

I tried a joke.

I don't suppose the last analyst ever finished packing up, huh?

My voice sounded chirpy, see through in the stillness.

Behind me, the landlord gave a rope

to swift reply, people come and go,

rent steady, that's what matters.

Sixth is just hard to rent out, suits you, maybe.

He visited himself with a carbon copy of my lease,

careful not to meet my eyes.

You'll find your own rhythm,

call if you need anything for lockup or mail,

and all, please make sure the door's secure nights, I mean.

I trailed him back to the door,

gaze-catching on a stack of faded post-it notes

curling on the monitor, gets applied,

call Harper, a mail back.

The gritty presence of old fingerprints in their

suggested regular occupation up until what,

last week.

I looked at the boots again, the half-front mark,

the odd chill that seemed to leak from the walls.

He has taded, one hand on the knob.

Any questions that did the last person leave suddenly?

I asked trying for casual.

This looks fresh.

A hint of strange rue is lips then.

Ball always do, a better job comes up,

maybe, or the quiet gets on their nerves.

He squeeze my hand briefly, skin cold and papery.

Try to settle in, you'll get used to it.

I waited by the window until his footsteps faded down the stairs,

keys rattling, doors signing shut one by one.

Night came quick in as part of the city

just the weak orange of distant traffic lights

limming the blinds.

I pulled up my old cold and a pillow,

laying my little world atop the batter vinyl sofa.

Alone now, I let myself feel it, the odd,

pulsing hash of the floor,

the almost damp cold up fogged up the inside panes,

even as the pipes knocked and weased in the walls.

Each sun seemed amplified,

water somewhere tricking endlessly,

bursts of metallic chrome strumbling through the four boards,

and almost softer,

at the edge of perception of faint,

tuneless whistle.

I wrapped my coat tighter and set my suitcase against the door,

determined not to let the old figure get to me.

Whatever goes clung to parcel six,

I told myself I had worked in rent

and too much to lose to run again.

Sleep, when it came that first night,

was restless as a fever.

Shadows moved along the ceiling in the light of passing trucks.

Somewhere nearby,

metal-growned as a thunder-great strain,

the sun trailing off into a hush that lasted long

after my eyes had adjusted to the dark.

The next morning, I will myself up

with the city's rising roar outside.

My little kettle hissed weakly.

I stood by the window holding a cup of instant coffee,

watching the geometry of morning routine play out below,

streams of suit jacket finishing into revolving doors,

the hunched form of a curry-wrestling

a dolly up the steps,

taxis crawling through the perpetual murk of traffic.

Every so often, a shape would move down the hallway outside,

foot to its hollow and unhurried,

never pausing near my door.

We're called.

Analyst life.

I checked my messages,

plugged my phone in by the window for better signal,

propped my battered laptop open and tried to focus

on shipping manifests and dry contract clauses.

My clients existed only through phone or email one in Boston,

one in Miami, both with voices that always

seemed a little too far away,

the words punctuated by digital static.

They needed me to have a physical address

for legal docs and sensitive returns.

Postal 6 was the cheapest office that didn't feel actively dangerous.

The rent cost less than a downtown co-working locker

and promised a piece I hadn't found since breaking the lease on my last place.

Between calls, I sorted the previous tenants

to be a slow, meditative task,

shifting folders and forms,

mapping little islands of their now absent order.

The drawers yield a little at first,

cheap pens run dry,

a few-inch and government-issue envelopes,

multiple sticky notes with abbreviations that meant nothing to me.

In a second drawer,

Jan Tite, I found initials carved on the inside of a SH

and the faint trace of Italian mark,

two vertical lines repeated over and over along the wood's edge.

Somehow it made the whole suite feel even more temporary

as if no one ever made a pass counting their days.

I paused to glance around,

late morning and already the lights seem thinner.

The window inched open only a sliver before sticking hard.

I gave up trying,

settling for the errors it was thick, vaguely metallic.

A little before noon,

I made my first attempt to meet other tenants.

The elevator was slow and ancient,

shuddering every few floors

like an animal unsure of its own bones.

Down in the lobby,

a security guard sat behind glass,

eyes locked on a crossword.

I asked if the property manager,

IMS, Richie, was around.

He barely looked up.

Tried Tuesdays were called,

shall answer.

I'd already tried.

Back in the elevator,

a woman with an ID from trade

and more attacks prep eyed me over the room of her coffee.

She pressed five,

but her thumb hesitated over six as I told her my four.

Six, she said,

soft as a warning.

Brush her eyes and mess up there.

She got out early,

elevator doors nearly closing on her briefcase.

On my own again,

I started peering into the half-leg corners of six.

Most doors had no nameplates,

or their metal tags had been pried off,

adhesive scarring the paint.

A faint,

I could send Drifted down the locked hallway to my left,

tinged with all printed toner and something sharper,

almost chemical.

Once or twice,

I hovered by neighboring doors,

all scene shut tight blindstone.

Once, I door creaks on my five-a-dance

grape of metal on rubber,

then silence.

Routine was supposed to ground me,

I kept at it sorting the unopened mail,

organising PDF for grumpy clients.

I washed the mug-eyed inherited,

cleaned the dried ring of someone else's routine

from inside,

and left it ready for myself.

Each day followed the same pattern,

coffee, emails,

brief phone check-ins,

lawn stretches of trying to ring coherence

from dull spreadsheets.

It should have been exactly the piece I wanted.

Still, by day three,

I started feeling pinched

by a new slow dawn in unease.

The mail for a,

S.H. kept coming,

as did letters for Lindsay Strud

and Birchella Holdings Hall

with identical block-letter no longer

at this address scrolled in the envelopes.

My attempts to meet the elusive amess

for which you always hit a wall,

message is an answer.

Calendar invite you turned

with Kurt Otto responses

or rescheduled with no explanation.

Nights, my sleep-fractured grey-suited,

and distinct figures crowed

in the periphery of my dreams.

I'd wake blanketed and sweat

fruit-roars if I'd been shouting through glass.

Even when awake,

tying grew slippery,

I'd look up at four

in the afternoon

and struggled to recall

what I'd done since lunch.

The eyes grew smudged at the edges,

everything slightly skewed

from the clean divide

I once trusted.

Despite it all,

a stubborn was all settled in.

I needed to stay put.

Rent was stable,

my contract dire is predictable.

Peace, I told myself,

maybe found in boredom,

in these long stretches of nothing.

But there was always

that little,

knowing a tiny kernel

of awareness that,

in chasing quiet,

I'd landed someway different

than I'd bargained for.

Some place whose silence

wasn't empty as at all,

but a blanket thrown

over a living thing

waiting out of sight.

On the third morning,

I padded over

to the desk with fresh coffee

and stopped.

Setters and pins

had moved paperweight

slightly rotated,

and noop had flocked

up until a bunk page,

my laptop angle

was checked,

but I'd left it off.

For a moment,

I'd blame my own fatigue

maybe I'd reorganised

without noticing.

But the calendar caught my eye,

and you marked scratched

in the boxes for the

previous two weeks.

These weren't the

mundane ticks of meetings

or routine tasks.

Spiraling initials,

slashes and loops,

little clusters of dots

and numbers crammed

into corners at first,

abstract,

then growing jagged,

urgent.

Several dates repeated

the same sequence,

CHKNXT door,

4-3SND,

the sense of being

watched never entirely

left.

I started setting a phone

alarm for

every afternoon,

worried by my

growing tendency to

lose time at that

iron.

The first day I tried,

my alarm worked me

from a kind of

blank staring fit at the

window on certain

how I'd cross the

door.

My look from that

afternoon showed a

gap of nearly 50 minutes.

I tried to laugh it

off.

I must be more tired

than I thought.

In the elevator

that evening,

I encountered the same

mold attendant

frontry and more.

I tried a friendly

nod.

Long day on 6 I

offered.

She diverted her

gaze, pressed the

button for 4, then

turned fully away just

as I began to follow

up, strangest thing

up there today,

she shot out as

soon as the door was

partied, not

glancing back.

Back in my office,

scratching came

from behind the

vent in the corner,

then vanished as

soon as I shifted my

chair to listen.

Muffle voices drifted

through the wall

between 60 and its

neighbour, tones too

indistinct for

words, never lasting

long enough to greet,

and never repeating

phrases when I

strained to catch them

again.

I checked the mail bin,

now sacking, with

enveloped address to

at least three

previous tenants.

Each bore a new

scroll, while T.S.

gone to the dry

stamp of official

change of address.

I spent that evening

with my laptop,

and I found a

sweet documents.

What I found was

unsettling in its

pattern, a string of

online listings.

Each marking suite

60 is available

immediately.

Every rental period

lasting only a few

months.

Searching the scattered

names from my old

millios, no real

profiles, just

bare bones listings.

Social feeds already

dead in an

update at the occasional

and just thread on

a tenant's forum.

Quiet neighbor,

weird drafts on six,

and chillingly.

How do you block

the noises?

Each message

vanished as quickly as

it was to suspect this

wheat, and maybe the

floor itself didn't

want to be filled for

long.

I wondered, as I set my

alarm for four 0pm

again and arranged my

things with extra

care, just how many

people had tried to make

parcel six work.

Compulsion took over the

days that followed.

Driven by a mounting

sense that something in

this wheat was

shifting, I began

logging every minor

occurrence in a notebook

times when pens were

misplaced, when keys

didn't fit a snag, or

the power flickered for

just a moment.

I inventory defile

cabinets contents

checking for any

changes overnight.

In a carefully

classified, we're

returned to odd places

international shipping

mixed in with legal

disputes, one yellow

personnel file marked

on EJR, leaned against

a stack of old forms

in the bottom drawer.

Digging deeper, I found

a ring of mismatched

keys jumbled in the

jam desk drawer,

non-matching my

sweet or anything

else I could find.

Pushed into the very

back and covered a thick

envelope sealed with

duct tape marked only by

four names in a sequence

of dates each ban

under six months,

ending with a single

rub slash.

The building's

management remained

resolutely absent,

glass revealing only

a flicker of shadow

moving behind an

old, distorted logo.

My calls dumped to

voicemail, messages

unreturned.

I started to wonder if

the security guard

danced as even reported

to anyone at all.

Fear-bred resource

fulness.

I borrowed a motion camera

from a friend

and IT a clunky

black plastic wedge,

never meant for anything

more sinister than

checking for office

breakings and

positioned it at my

sweet store overnight.

I watched the blinking

light from the couch,

unable to shake the

sense that the air was

tightening, thickening

to the consistency of

the desk's morning.

The camera was

unlisted but when I

checked the memory card,

the file was a

disappointment except for

one frame,

buried and corrupted

static, as single,

blurred out lines

suggesting a hunch

shape at my door,

too toil and a distinct

to be certain it was

human.

I pressed harder,

tracing online

breadcrumbs from the

envelope's list.

One social media

account registered to a

sH was a wreck of late

night anxious posts,

cannot sleep whispers

from vent, who is next

door.

And finally, in the

last update before

no replies. No trace since. Days blurred but the patterns intensified. A stack of old four

plans waged on a shelf behind the fridge review of more than I'd expect to, civil

neighbouring suites on six marked and thick, red permanent, muckeryate, sea, six B, seven A,

now all listed vacant in the property record. The listed companies were lawn-desolved.

The last name on the personnel roster of someone no-no needs is a hopper to resurface

in a single reference in the city's business closure archive, perhaps unexplained.

Afternoon's stretch and contracted. I'd lose 10 minutes sometimes, a vivid spell of nothing,

then find myself at the window again always near for, watching the Alice Dimmon Shadows lengthen.

Other times, I'd check my phone log and see a blank period screen and touched.

I started interrogating the cleaning crew at night when I saw them down the stairwell

for S and Trollers pausing at the edge of the six floors threshold. One young man,

I was starting, confirmed what I'd long suspected, don't clean the hole unless the boss makes us,

something's always open, even when you lock up, not right up there. The older worker behind

him to shook his head, muttering in a language I didn't recognise. I stopped calling

friends late at night my anxious tone, desperate for validation, was wearing them down.

My sister left word voicemails, each one a little more distant, asking if I needed a break.

I could feel myself slipping, but the compulsion had sunk deep, if I stopped logging,

if I let the pattern break, I might never entangle what parcel six was hiding beneath the

tas of silence.

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apply. Obsessed as I was, the next escalation came almost naturally. I stayed late, hunched

over the desk with envelope and file plans, freezing in the ambient chill and watching the little

clock tick nearer for. Somewhere in that haze, I found myself finger tracing a barely visible scene

between my office wall and what should have been a hallway. It didn't look like an original

partition nothing in the materials matched, and the whole section ran hollow when I knocked.

No one had ever told me about a maintenance passage running parallel to the hallway,

but the file plans made it clear, a narrow stairwell marked service only, ran behind what was

now my wall connecting the entire north side of the floor. The door if it still existed should

have been hidden behind a supply closet. I grabbed my flashlight and tools and set out heart

tamarind, driven by something equal parts terror and grim anticipation. Because it was

sistered, but the panel inside moved within ease that suggested frequent use.

On the other side, a cramped land in the sender, steps barely wide enough for my shoes.

I worked my way down, hand-braced on clammy cinder block. The life from my phone code on full

and wires, as she peds it, the walkbook of what must once have been a security monitor.

Most of it was covered in dust, thick enough to muffle any recent footprints,

but one head from Jack Glean with a cleanness that suggested it had recently been unplugged.

Halfway down the stair, an hour opening yawned in the wall, a trianilo notch,

glass paint darkened, pointing straight into my office's shadowed corner.

I leaned close, careful not to make a sound a perfectly camouflaged people expertly set where

my routine bought me each afternoon. Cold panic rose in my chest. Below, a battered box overflowed

with cassette tapes, each labeled with three initials, a date span, and a recurring string of numbers.

I fumbled through then, breath-catching. Whoever had set up this nest had done so to watch

maybe study whoever tried to last in sweet six. Han expected a sudden fitstep overhead.

Someone was coming slow, measured, echoing on the linoleum above.

Heart-bracing, I bolted up the stair, careful to reposition every scrap of cardboard and trash,

as I found it. I ducked back into the supply closet just as the corridor filled with a

purging keys and the unmistakable hush of someone pausing, listening. I locked myself in the office

and waited to clutch my back and taped box in my chest. Long minutes passed. When I finally

dared to move again, I found my calendar torn clean off the desk, replaced with a fresh page.

The new knot yet filled included one entry in a neat blockand, you watched too.

The lights overhead hum louder. The piped hull then faded. I sat on the edge of the batter couch

clutching the envelope close, and listened for whatever my come next, knowing that,

whatever this place was, I was suddenly more deeply entangled in its design than anyone

wanted me to be. I sat on the couch, every muscle still taught with left of her fear,

the battered box of cassette sticking into my thigh where I clutched it.

I waited for the sound of retreating footsteps, but the hallway outside was silent safe

for the sporadic wine of pipes and the distant hammer of an elevator returning to the lobby.

The silence seemed to breathe with me, reluctant to let me go. The new calendar page lay on my desk,

disturbingly crisp, its smooth surface broken only by the blockies growl. I ran my finger

lightly across the walls you watched too, searching for some hint of a hand I might recognise

some groove or pressure point in the ink. It looked like it had been left just minutes ago,

the fibers of the paper still pressed flat under what might have been a fist.

The office felt smaller. I told myself to move to do something, anything,

rather than just sit and sweat under the gaze of the camouflage people I now knew was dairy.

The window's reflection revealed only my own rest's posture, outlined in the faint flicker

from the parking lot below. The vents in the far wall clicked, then fell dead. For the first time,

since I'd arrived, the air tasted close. My phone buzzed on the table a notification for a

client call scheduled in 30 minutes. I stared at it, considering how absurd I must look from the

vantage point behind the wall, a woman unraveling surrounded by old male clutching out of

fact she shouldn't have found. I straightened, letting go of the cassettes only when my

arm began to tingle with the pressure. If there was someone on the other side of that wall,

I decided I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of watching me run. Not yet.

With the last rigs of resolve, I scooped up the calendar, slipping it into my messenger bag,

then carefully repackaged the tapes, nesting them between stacks of papers and an old sweater.

Whatever was going on here, it would have to wait until after I'd at least made a show of

business as usual. The rest of the work did pass in a kind of fugue. My clients' impatient

chiding never noticed my mind wasn't on their contracts. I read and read the same paragraph

until the margins went blurry. Every few minutes, I caught myself glancing out the window,

looking for movement in the alley or reflected in neighbouring glass. A city full of people and

I felt as isolated as a bug under glass. When five o'clock rolled around, I forced myself to act

normal. I packed my laptop, tossed my mug in the box of dishes that lived beneath the counter,

and turned the dead bulb with trembling fingers. The sick floor hole was deserted as always.

Down on the street, evening traffic rumbled steady and slow. The office lights above me flickered

through their usual cycle as dusk settled. I considered going home, picking up take-out,

calling my sister to hear voice that didn't seem to belong to disappearing names.

Instead, I found myself ducking into the 24-hour copy-place two blocks away,

paranoia rendering me reluctant to return to my apartment empty-handed and obvious.

Under the harsh for-assent lights, I spread the cassettes on the calendar page on a clean

section of counter, careful to stack my coat as a partial barrier from friendly eavesdroppers.

I set my phone to record and press play on a frisk set.

Saddick greeted me, mingled with the soft hiss of magnetic tape before clumsy,

urgent breathing came through then this grape of a chair, a voice too feigned for words.

The town-stomp on the label matched a dip from the previous calendar, four months before my

only started. The next tape was different to woman's reedy gas, half-choked with tears,

repeating the word again, again, again before fast-forwarding into more static.

Others yielded little, the ambient crush of pipes, fanned piano music, and at one point,

the scuffle boots on the knollie and back going back with an intimacy that sharing my stomach.

I tried not to jump as a copy-shot staffer passed behind, muttering softly as he gathered the

last printup from a nearby machine. Eventually, I gathered everything up and walked back to my

building through amaze of streetlights in the low drones of traffic. My skin felt her

person-sensitive, my breath shallow and cool-nigh. I replayed every step wondering if someone followed,

if the same eyes that watched through the people had moved lower to the street. Every window above

me pressed in, blank and pale. I kept stairs, I found the sweet and touched, but something was

different. The faintest whiff of cleaning fluid hound in the air and the desk had been brush-clean

of dust at the very edge just enough for someone to have sat down their hand. All my possessions,

from the battered box to the mugs in the kitchen sink, had been carefully shifted an inch or two

west. I stared at them, unable to decide whether it was thread or invitation. My neighbors door

stood open to crack for the first time since I had arrived. It was just enough to catch a wedge

of yellowish lights billing out into the hallway. I debated leaving a B-rationalizing too many risks,

too few rewards, but my curiosity I've ran good sense. I approached footsteps carefully

muffled by the new tension in my legs. Inside, the suite was empty-safe for the remains of what

might have been a telecommunication start the poise crisscross the carpet and a bank of old routers

blinked in silence, synchronized rhythm against one wall. The place had an abandoned quality,

yet traces of recent occupation lingered, a still warm cup of tea, the soft hum of a fridge that

hadn't yet cooled down from running. I listened, half-open, half-fearing to hear voices,

but the only sound was a weak cyclical ticking from the ceiling vent. On the far desk, another

battered calendar lay open, this one with three days circled in red, each followed by increasingly

frantic exclamation points. Next to it, a no-bad mob by deep scoring and frantic score.

Keeps coming back, don't answer knocks on six, only silence. I photographed it, my hands shaking

almost imperceptibly. Set a movement from the corridor made me step back with the no-putt

tucked under my arm. The cleaning crew again, this time the older worker with the unreadable eyes.

He looked through me as if I were already gone, mottoed a brief, guttural phrase, then moved on.

I retreated to my own suite, hoping my absence hadn't been noted. My heart fomed with adrenaline,

but it was accompanied this time by more concrete anger. Some on several summons, most likely had

known for years that this floor wasn't just hard to fail, but a kind of trap. I'm waiting tenants,

a cycle of brief stays, routine race nearly as soon as it began. I couldn't fit all the pieces

together, but the outlines were growing clearer, observation, psychological pressure,

records manipulated from someone inside. I spent that night cross referencing the four names and

dates from the envelope with any trace I could pull from property records, business listings,

even city permitting tools. The names always circled back to shell companies consulting

outfits or abruptly closed private firms. Descrapants is abounded, sudden dissolutions, missing end dates,

forums left and complete. The most recent, the one ending just before my own move in,

this did no forward in address just a contact filled left blank, zeroing out every possible

avenue for follow-up. A two in the morning, exhausted, I heard it again, a low, continuous moon

from the pipes, soft footsteps that never quite reached my door, the faintest hatch on the

out-and-out too slow for a mistake, too quiet for someone tired or careless. I held my breath in the

dark, my notebook pressed flat to my chest, I'm waited until the noise is faded. When morning came,

I avoided the elevator and instead took the stairs, eyes wary for any sign of movement in

an ebulous echoes that filled each landing. On the fourth floor, I found the woman from tray in

morrigan, fidgeting with her phone. I forced my voice steady, do you know who manages six?

She froze, then looked over my shoulder as if someone was standing behind me. You live up there

to for now, trying to get a straight answer, ever see anyone from management during the day?

Her lips pressed thin, she checked a notification, then finally muttered, if you have problems up there,

best to move, every few months, new faces, doors close, things get shuffled, the super is never

around for six. She loaded the elevator with a touch too much urgency, leaving me staring after her.

The morning unfolded in fits and starts. A voicemail from MS, richly at last a robotic voice intoning,

meeting for ten and of six is rescheduled the abruptly cut off was static. No call-back number.

Back in my office, I risked examining the taped more systematically. Each time I press play,

the hissing sound filled the room, settling over me like a shroud.

One take from early summer brought a fragment of what sounded like an interview.

No, I haven't seen anyone only the files move, the calendar fills itself in, yes,

I tried to file a formal complaint, but then a sudden trick of feedback.

Another simply repeated, they are watching, they are watching, over and over until my skin

rose in goose flesh. I lobbed everything meticulously, snapping photos, storing audio files

redundantly on my laptop in a new cloud folder. This was evidence, I told myself something solid.

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Casino. The police, if it ever came to that. But with every new discovery, the evidence itself

seemed to unravel just a little, details are racing themselves or far as marking

corrupt the next time I tried to open them. By late afternoon, my patients were waiting on

another snapped. If management wouldn't come to me, I would go to them.

I descended to the office on the ground floor, wrapping firmly on the frosted glass.

The shadows inside stilled then resumed their idle pacing. I knocked again, and the door

finally cracked, chain still latched. A woman's voice floated through to calm, too cheery.

The office is closed, sorry, all inquiries by full nor email.

I pressed, I've left six messages on an email every day.

Sweet 6D, my files are missing, property disturbed. There are, honestly,

I don't know how to say this, but something is wrong with that floor. No reply.

The chain stayed taught. The saw went behind, the glass was motionless.

Finally, the door clicked shut, and I was left standing in the lobby. The dull roar of traffic

and the faint echo of elevator dings and a score in my dismissal. The security guard watched

me return with a little less indifference than before, saying nothing as I re-enter the elevator,

only marking a note within a small battered lock because the metal door slipped closed.

The evening pressed in one of those heavy city items that crimped the last daylight before 7.

I made a half-hearted dinner in the kitchen at the micro waves hung the only sound.

Afterwards, I tunneled into research, driven by a mountain obsession as doctors claimed the

windows and the alas geometry faded to a dim blur. The puff-luckered.

Nozzas came sharper now, a precise tapping, three-slow, three-rapid from inside the vent.

I grabbed my phone, setting the camera to record the vent's mouth in case anything crawled or

clattered out. Minutes ticked by, the feed remained blank, except for the faint ripple of air.

Distracted, I opened my inbox, searching for early documents I'd sent myself for safe keeping.

Half the files wouldn't open, flagged as in ballad format.

In panic, I reopened the cloud folder, ended. A quick check of my laptop's hard drive corrupted

audio logs, images reduced to squares of digital static. I banged from the hole we shouted my focus.

I jumped, knocking the half-former to the floor, coffee-pulling on the tile. I shoved my laptop away,

trembling and stood up. For several breaths, nothing happened. Then, a noot slid under my door.

My legs barely obeyed, but a step forward and crouched.

Plain white printer paper, the kind you buy in a tin-ream pack.

Block letters, again, door must stay closed at 403. The letters pulsed in my vision,

memory-toting back to the short-hand on the old tenon's calendar, for, for Ysindi.

The patterns were looping, folding in on themselves. I pressed my head against the still warm

metal of the door. No sign of retreating footsteps, only that humming pressure in my ears that said

I was no longer alone. The urge to flee wrestled with the need to know. I returned to the couch,

note trembling in my hand, and made another video, stating my name, date, sweet number,

cataloging the tapes and calendar, the event so far. I left instructions to upload it directly

to the cloud if I didn't manually cancel the upload by morning. Maybe the slayer of insurance

would buy me time or safety. The buildings ridden deepened with the night, radiate or is rattling,

phones occasionally vibrating with upcalls. Once through the window, I saw a figure in the alley

someone in an oversized suit jacket, standing to still, hiccuped up toward my floor. When uplinked,

the alley was empty again, nothing left but a drifting take-out bag, and the neon

moon of a sign had got the street. In a smudge glass, my own reflection seemed to shift

to double exposure, as if someone was standing fractionally behind me, waiting for the right moment

to emerge. This is how it begins, I whispered, not sure if I meant the unraveling or the acceptance.

I tried to sleep, but dreams came, looping and fragmented, hands in the glass,

scribes rooms partition over and over again, wild sunlight through the cracked windows,

and always voices, just out of reach, reciting lists I couldn't remember upon waking.

The alarm I'd set for fall worked me not from sleep, but from an eye of blank staring.

My mouth was dry, tongue heavy and slow. I forced myself to write down what I could recall,

pounding in the walls, something no, someone breathing through the vent, calendars flipping

ahead of their own accord, marked up with symbols that glowed blood red. I showered and changed

early, grabbing a sweater for the surprising chill that hovered even as the old boiler choked

out its warm. I opened my notebook again, cataloging every sign. Winded stuck again,

three keys missing from Kear and Shadow under door at 3.55 pm, no one in corridor at 4.10

male for else, throat returned stamped fine, I'll notice unable to deliver.

By 9, my hands ache from writing. A brood another cup switched from email to phone to text,

searching for any foothold. That day, the elevator was down out of order,

sign freshly printed, but already starting to curl at the corners. I used the stairs,

listening for the scrape of others, but hurried only my own progress a musical sequence of

echoes tapping along with each step. On the way back to my sweet after collecting a package

that was addressed to a haper door, a saw a wedge of light under or door at the north end of the

floor. For a moment, I stood and waited. Was it the landlord? Another tenant? I moved closer,

footsteps quiet. The lights snapped off the door closed to my face before I could raise my hand

to knock. Back at my sweet, the phone rang area code and listed, I deblocked. I let it roll to

voicemail, but the message played anyway after a single ring. The voice was warped metallic,

gentulous, doors must remain closed at the ira, stay, do not answer, do not leave. I ripped the

phone jack from the wall trembling. Heart hammering, I dashed off another video update. I staged the

tapes calendar and notes on the table as evidence shielding them from the people as best I could.

I blocked every cord from the wall except my laptops, shut down bluetooth and wifi, and stared at

the clock. Minutes later, adult tremor passed through the floor as if heavy machinery had started

up below. Every event in the room seemed to breathe that once all air tinged with a compound scent,

chemical, metallic, something too artificial for a city event. My eyes watered, I pulled my sweater

collar up and waited it out, fistballed at my sides. As the quiet reasserted itself, I realized

my error. Every destruction, every repeated step was being logged by someone for some reason I

still didn't fully understand. And in discovering the watching that behind my wall and collecting

the tapes, I broke them or devour and spoke and will govern my part and parcel sixes ceaseless

turnover. I hunched over, burying my face in my hands. The event circle relentlessly felt

less like a line of investigation, more like years in a loop, each tenant cycling through the

same script and tell for one reason or another is ceased to appear in the building's memory.

All that remained was question. Was there any way to break the loop, or was my only agency in how

quietly I chose to disappear? In the shuddering vacuum of the sixth floor, I found myself less afraid

of the strange noises, the missing files, or even the phantom watcher in the wall. What terrified

me was how easily my own habits had been to match the unexplained choreography the rope-posted notes,

the schedules, the daily cycles of fear and recording. When my eyes finally pride themselves

from the ruined list of evidence on my desk, the cassettes, the notepad, the calendar with its

new blank threat I realised the chilled air had grown newly in mobile. Breathing felt like waiting

through syrup, every inhale thickened by the vent's strange undertone. After days of fighting

back and urge to flee, I forced myself off right, moving methodically as if his watchful eyes behind

the wall would be counting any erratic gesture as a signal to escalate. A adrenaline sharpened each

sense, the way my cheap keys glittered, where I dropped them near the door, the ever-sofane

creek of floorboards low on the aisle, the dust melts hanging in the late afternoon's waning light.

I pressed my palm against the cold slot in the wallless bot, I now knew from which tenants were

watched. My arm prickled. Imagine that behind the partition far enough from the usual maintenance

rose, someone might be pressing a hand against the other side in perfect imitation. A question not

at me, what were they waiting for? Was it me who'd broken the arrangement, or was I now only another

subject, another cycle begun? I moved the tapes, calendar, and notepads into my messenger bag,

securing a close to my body. I left the old calendar page with the menacing you watch to,

entry-propped on the desk, hoping it would serve as a challenge or warning, depending on who came

for it next. The air had a charged clarity as sense that the moment before stone had somehow

snuck indoors. I'd find out what this place meant, whether it took another sleepless night or a

week. If it was orchestrated, I wanted to know the rules. I sat quietly for an iron, forcing myself

to drink water and eat half a gran old bar, running through a time-on of everything I'd found,

keys that never matched, fell shuffling, phone calls from nowhere, the sequence of faces visible

only in angled glass. Piece by piece, I tried to construct the rhythm the last tenons must have

felt closing in how routine could be tuned, pressure increased or relieved, until impatience or

panic drove someone to leave or worse, to vanish with only an incomplete forwardly address left behind.

I was so absorbed in my mental mapping that the outside walls seemed to warp. The droning pipes

receded, replaced by a soft murmur threading through the walls, a medley of muttered syllables.

For a second I thought I heard my own name moving in, but it faded before it could be certain.

It was my own face that startled me in to motion the warp presence of my window's reflection.

For a heartbeat the image was wrong, my outline doubled, features mirrored as though I were trying

to step out of sync with myself. Fear and anger blur together in my chest. The next day, I gave

myself no time to hesitate. At first light, washed out and grainy, I laid out every tape and page I

collected, lining the evidence along the couch like ritual items for forgotten right. I emailed

copies of my locks and photos to paranoid backup address I created used before, while outside my

usual cloud storage. The files uploaded, but I could sense the transience of digital protection

the same ease with which earlier evidence had gone missing or corrupted. With the bag over my

shoulder, I chose a brisk practical tone for my inner voice. I would follow this through,

put it all together, expose whatever deliberate strangement the six floor enacted upon its

residence. I gathered the tapes in notepad, placed a cassette player in my largest pocket,

and left the suite by the stairs, head high. I would not slink out as a casualty. Breakfast was

a vending machine coffee in the lobby, where the security guard eyed me openly for the first time.

Our exchanges thus far have been little more than monotones, but today his gaze was curious,

even a little pitiful. Finding it all right upstairs, he ventured, tapping his pen on a page I

couldn't see. Any chance you could let me up to management. I asked a bite of fatigue in my voice

betraying the edge beneath my request. I found something in the maintenance stair on six that's

not the usual broken radiator. He set the pen down, hands flattening on the glass.

Management handles six themselves. Always have, he said.

Odd little floor. I waited, but that was all I get. His demeanor radiated baffled sympathy,

as if he'd seen my con come and go, none lasting long enough to warrant real concern.

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Back upstairs, I set my phone to record while I played through the cassette again,

this time from beginning to end. The audio, which the night before

had been jumbled, seemed more coherent in the indifferent daylight.

At first, only static and muffled voices background clicks in the relentless side of forced air.

But after several minutes, longer stretches of dialogue and marriage are sometimes clear,

sometimes overlaying, as if more than one track had been layered logically atop another.

One voice recurred, cautious, almost withdrawn, repeating a warning in different words again and again.

Don't answer. Don't bask. Just stay quiet.

There was an urgency there, but also resignation.

It was not theatre. Not to contrive tension is just one resigned soul reminding another

that help would never come through the door. I sorted through the rest of my findings.

Several of the odd symbols that had adorned the old calendar andular.

Runeck marks matched logos I glimpsed in company listings cross-reference from the floor plans,

a triangle within a circle, a stylized eye, a fuse pair of chevrons.

Checking the business registry, I uncovered a string of dissolve firms, each uttered abruptly

after a internal audit or a lease breach. The names repeated in city paperwork, sometimes out of

order, as if pieces were transplanted from one document to another to muddy the record.

As a unit perch, my phone vibrated with a strange hidden call. I almost silenced it,

but a compulsion to document everything pressed me to answer. There was no greeting just a distortion,

the voice manufactured or so layered by filters as to be in classifiable. You don't leave,

you don't talk, it raps, each consonant clip short. You don't answer questions on six to

erase all evidence, say still. The line went dead before I could blur anything. My heart pounded.

I forwarded that message at desperate, hail Mary to my back of address. The action felt hollow.

Still, I persisted. By late afternoon, I amounted the full of names, visualized the timeline at

top of the floor plans, marked every hand of every sudden absence, every company dissolve

without forwarding details. Each fact nudges a suspicion dangerously close to certainty

this building, this floor, was not random in its churn. I took breaks now and then holding my breath

until forced to inhale. At one point, half by accident, my pen scribbled the same triangles and

chevrons that marked both calendar and company led ahead. My body, too, was starting to echo the

choreography of the sweet my attention flicking to door and vent, hands wary of touching anything

directly beneath the slot in the wall. To push back against that pattern, I set up a live stream on

my phone. I positioned it toward the entrance, aligning to shot with the odd seam where the walls

people must have sat. It was a crude defence, but the idea of recording real time of exposing

whatever orchestrated these patterns felt like my remaining avenue of control.

Maybe I thought if something happened at 4 p.m. I would at last have visible proof,

something usable outside my unreliable memory and the city's chewed up bureaucracy.

I had just enough time to test the fee before the eye returned.

For a clock approached, the lights in the ceiling harmed, the pitch sliding so subtly

upward that it bypassed conscious notice at first. A five minutes after every both flickered off,

then restarted in a sequence, one overhead, one in the kitchenette, one by the window.

I was sliding into anxiety when in a natural silence pulled in the hole.

Something deep evaporated through the building almost a subsonic drum only felt through bones,

not heard. My phone's live view warped in strobe, the colours and verding and sharpening.

I found myself shoving backwards through on as much by the need to avoid the watchous gazes

by the compulsion to see what would happen next. At 4 p.m. a thin line of light crept under my door,

an elimination colder and blue than anything I'd seen from the fixtures over ahead.

The corridor, when I strained to glimpse it, seemed warped, elongated as though the perspective

had slipped and failed to write itself. Instinct overrode caution. I found myself in the hallway

before I chosen to go there, full and still in hand. At the north end, a door stood wide for

the first time light-slash sideways across the carpet, the sickly-bly mixing with the old city goal.

Through the slight crack, I glimpsed a figure hunched over a monitor bank,

they's hidden behind a spill of wires and screen-glare.

Shadows played along the wall more than one, it seemed, shifting independently.

I forced myself forward, not bothering with stealth. My steps were overly loud,

muffled by the carpet yet echoing rhythmically. The figure on mistakenly human and outline,

resolutely indifferent did not turn. Rows of security fees flickered, some displaying empty

offices, others leaping through stills of individuals pacing, sitting, working, or disturbingly

stirring into blind camera lenses as if aware they were observed. Who are you? I demanded,

using the full force volume my voice could muster. The figure did not respond. As if summoned by

that energy, the door snapped inward and slammed home with a force that knocked my breath back.

Machines were down to silence, lights flipping off in bizarre sequence as if an old play had reached

its final cue. Silence standard. Hesonely, I retreated into the hall. I clutched the phone,

reviewing the live-feet file half expecting to see nothing but static. Instead, I watched horrified

as the recording showed me leaving the suite, but in each shot a blurred shadow trailed at my

heels, not quite human, not quite animal, and moving out of time with my own gestures.

The force seemed to tilt. Back in my office chilled to the marrow, I checked my desk for the

tapes and files. All were gone. In their place, a non-belope. I opened it with shaking hands.

Inside was another calendar, edges too sharp, the whole sheet uncovered to bleaklyne.

The entrance spelled up three commands, one per day, stay quiet, stay still, stay.

My resolve, so solid, for most of the day, fractured under a cold tide of dread.

I heard my name whispered from the hallway, the sibilance distorted, but unmistakable.

The window's reflection showed not only myself, but several faces in the glass

none belonging to anyone I knew, yet all bearing faint resemblances to the faces from old

employee rosters, faded tenant lists, and police missing notices. Familiar yet not.

Watching me as I watched them, our eyes locked, none of us quite blinking.

I paced for iris, the calendar on my desk amused threat.

My every move felt, anticipated, as if rehearsed.

In desperation, I tried to warn the remaining occupants of the building, pounding on doors,

calling numbers scratched in one directories. Responses, if any, were muted by fear or confusion,

one phone simply gave a mechanical number disconnected. No one answered their doors with the

third floor, and the lights on six flickered in and out, as though the building itself was

trying to erase my attempts to connect. Back in my suite, the internet died in intervals

pages held up and jammed, spinning wheels frozen. The power flickered in sequence at 4-3-4-5-4-8

as though the timing itself was being nudged, tested. At one point, an overwhelming stench flooded

the room and not melgy or dust, but a sharp, chemical tang that bit at my tongue and raised an

instant headache. For long minutes, breathing through my sleeve, I watched as the events churned

with cold vapor manufactured stillness, not a drought, rolling through incalculated pulses.

I gagged, then doubled over with a wave of nausea, emerging with my own saliva pulling

bitterly in the bathroom sink. The air would later taste flat, acrid, yet masking hummed from

barely contained panic. I tested the emergency stare, a chainsnake through the handrails,

threaded with locks. The emergency pulls by each door were inert, fire alarms and touch,

no blinking lights or alert beacons. My phone pinged with a cascade of usmails,

rapid fire from blocked numbers, don't, then seconds later, too late, then watch at watch,

don't leave. Each one breathed into the next, as a focus traded from a safe room behind the wall.

I recorded everything, voice low in urgent, onto a flash drive, I tucked into her shoe into the

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We've hit minutes later, the device registered blank, all fire zeroed out, labeled as empty.

A clean sweep, fannics sharpened attention. I went on the new hunt for a hidden surveillance

in my suite, found a black dot behind the thermostat, a raised circle concealed under the elevator

button to six, a plastic tap protruding from the fire extinguisher box. Each device upon

closer inspection was a silent electronic no-brand, no lights, utterly non-descript,

yet the placement was intentional. I documented, photographed, then stood my findings with the

sick awareness that they wouldn't stay long. Hatton's a marriage, looping back to the original

calendar, bursts of psychological pressure that would break up a routine, make working impossible,

induce sickness or fear in regular, measured intervals. I realized then, none of this was an accident,

it was a pressure test, a mechanism. Each tenant brought to an edge, forced to leave by the

precision of orchestrated discomfort, surveillance, data erasure. As I processed this, another

call came blocked again, voice now strained nearly to breaking. If he won't leave quietly help

will be sent. Nothing more. The line poles dead. I scrambled to stage one last stand, fun prop

for a live video, notes a raid in front, speaking my full name, the building, the pattern, what I'd

found and what was being done to me. But halfway to my report, the screen fracture, the face on

cover bled at the edges, morphing into a stranger's features, jaw too long, a colour wrong, glide

of light over skin painting and unfamiliar geometry. My voice rose in pitch, syllables tripping over

each other. Fighting rising panic, I stopped, looked directly into my own blood eyes on the screen.

I uploaded the file, backed it up to every service I could access, then refresh only to find each

copy vanishing, marked, found, not found, unknown error, or in a glitchy final message, record

as not exist. For a long time I sat cross-legged in the sweet synthetic rug, phone in my lap,

head resting against the cool metal leg of the desk. Time melted, congealed.

Distantly as I've filtered through miles of city and years of repetition, the words from

the old calendar poles beneath my skull you watch too, stay still, they don't leave. In a final

act of resistance, I skyrocketed the immoxes of earlier tenants for any chance of help.

One draft thread unsigned, finally bore fruit and message flagged as urgent, never opened,

copied redundantly into two stray backup accounts. Meet me, after midnight, metrodiner,

burner number attached, be alone. The relief flooded in evidence of an earlier survivor,

or at least someone who'd carried the story beyond the building's walls. Midnight came in a cold

haze. I took nothing but my messenger bag, layered myself in old coats, and kept my wallet,

and notebook flushed to my ribs. The city outside felt and cannolly alive, the hum of side streets

and passing radio smoothing over the jagged pissing of my thoughts. The metrodiner's neon sign

hummed in the drizzle. I waited at the last booth shivering with anticipation and a growing awareness

of every reflective surface each plate glass window potential camera. A figure entered,

gallant, almost hurried to transparency by bad light and whatever ordeal they'd endured.

Their eyes flicked to mine, reading something in my posture, and they slid into the booth

across from me without a word. We spoke in short measured phrases. The questions were implicit

the answer sparse. How long did you last? Five months, two before I noticed, everything gone after.

Do they ever stop watching? A bit of smile thin as a scar.

Sixth floor is an extraction point, not just for day to yourself. They try things there,

stress tests, information theft, psychological pressure, companies you've never heard of,

each boring faces and names cycling new subjects through, always the same old silence, stillness,

and disappear quietly. Why me? Why any of us? Brandem, sometimes, sometimes, are referral,

sometimes you just show up at the right moment on their list. Sixth has never been empty,

only the names change, the process never ends, just for cycles with who's next.

The hunger for explanation burned. Has anyone escaped, broken the cycle?

If you're clever, you leave no trace, you walk away at dawn and don't look back, leave

everything, don't take the calendar, don't report it, vanish, or you slip from the record too.

We sat for a moment the dinos was crowding the ensuing holler. You have to let go of what you found,

or if follows you remix you, leave the evidence your files won't survive anyway.

Outside, the drizzle had migrated into a slow, soaking rain. I left the booth alone.

As I walked back to the agate building, my skin prickled with the dull horror of confirmation

not from ghosts or monsters, but from a plan played out thousands of times, with each new arrival

in parcel six. At the entrance, my badge no longer worked. The six digit keycode threw red errors.

I pressed my face to the security glass. Above, on the sixth floor, the lights in my sweet

blaze bright, not the usual sickly fluorescence. A silhouette paced in front of the window my

figure, a mistakeable in posture, but wrong in the set of the shoulders, the slant of the head.

Watching the street below, just as I had every evening since moving in.

Blood pounding, I ducked into the alley, circling to the rear stair.

Whopped. No response from my pounding. No flicker of movement of the windows that lined the

stairwell. I tried the min doors a dozen times, my reflection blurring into polished brass

plate until I could barely distinguish myself from the glassy overlays of the street.

I gave up. I left the building, secured us, never retracing the same block twice.

It was nearly dawn when I found myself slumped in a folding chair in a generic rental,

miles from the airgate. My bag contained only my phone and wallet, each white and replaced.

All evidence, as the survivor promised, have vanished from my cloud inbox files.

I pressed recovered deleted items, but every search returned empty or flagged corrupted.

The building's email returned to mailbox not found account does not exist.

For three days, I lived a transient life haunted by a keening whale of pipes rising in memory

every time I passed a building older than 30 years, hot racing with each unexpected tap at a new door.

I paid in cash, left no forwarding address, shredded the first page of every mail that came

original of forgetting. When the exhaustion of vigilance faded, I tried once to file a police report.

A detective with the unimpressed face of someone who'd seen every tenant complaint in the city

met my gaze at account. Six floor complaints, hot paperwork never matches,

we check nobody's there, no anomalies, all up to code, some folks don't take well to the quiet,

that's all. A shrug, a thin-lipped smile, a note jotted on a pad that would never be

entered anywhere real. I'll pass this along. I moved farther. I took a new name on my lease

corresponded only by burner email. Yet still, I felt it the gaze that had watched me on the sixth floor,

now reflected in cab windows, in the eyes of delivery men who lingered a fraction too long,

in the glint of glass doors as I entered a left rundown grocery stores after midnight.

Some nights I was gasping, heart-hammering, show the calendar on my nightstone with venue marks.

The sleep that followed was thin and scattered, riddled by the sound of numbers chanted

in a dozen broken voices, the smell of chemical air, the weight of knowing I would never be

entirely free. One evening, weeks into my attempt to reconstitute a life, a letter slipped

under my door no name, no return. I opened it with trembling hands. Inside was a single calendar

page crisp, white, current down to the date. At the top, written in the same block script as from

parcel six was one word next. In that moment, I knew the water had not let me go.

The cycle would always find a way to continue her pattern as old as the city, as insidious and

patient as anything human invention could design. The stillness of the sixth floor, I understood,

didn't stay in a building. It was portable, transferable, contagious. The real escape was knowing

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That night, 10 stores above the city and saw me settled in with a lead and gravity.

Each time I checked the locks or appeared nervously through the curtains, I imagined the outline of

my vacant office, reborn in some other building for the next analyst for a career, or temp

work a drone by low rent and the promise of peace. At 3 a.m., the world pin drop silent, I began

another sweep of the room. My new home is smaller, two rooms in a kitchenette,

views blocked by a squat office across narrow bus lane. I swept for bugs, jet the walls for scenes,

press my palm to every cold line along the baseboards, wary of the telltale click of hidden

devices. Every time I routed linked, my mind ticked off a list is this the signal. Is this

the time of starting over? I circled the windows, careful not to stand long enough in front of any

glass to form a habit, fumbling with the curtain, opening and shutting it half hoping to be proven

paranoid, half expecting to see my own outline multiplied in every mirrored surface.

That's when I noticed a small calendar on the side table, one left by whoever lived to you before

me. The days were all blank, safe for a single date circled in heavy, blood reddened three days

from now. The hair was along my arm's rows. My legs locked in place, an old cold certainty

floating through me. I picked up the calendar. Flipping it to the marked day, I found a new symbol

impossible to mistake. The double chevon, a twisted triangle wrapped around the circle, the same

marks as an Apostle 6 calendar, inked on company letter heads to solve Geo's ago, burned into my

waking memory from every iteration of the six floors tests. The phone on my count hurled up without

ringing. In its dark screen, my own face reflected but behind me, another shape hovered a

shadowy figure in grey, just out of reach, features blurred, posture-watching, waiting. I stared

breath-caught. Frozen at the window, I stood transfixed as my own reflection shimmer, the glass

surface gone into sink to no longer entirely my own, not wholly familiar but hollow silent and

internally watchful. And across the city, in an office sweet that no longer remembered my name,

the six floor waited for its next arrival, the old patterns winding up. This stillness was never

truly left behind. It simply found new ground to haunt. I lingered in place so long that my muscles

began to ache, fingers no more, I clenched the calendar. The red mark on the page burned into

my vision a color too saturated to be a normal pain. I smelled the faintest whiff of metallic ink,

bitter and accurate, and remembered the exact tenor of the air on six whenever something new was

about to break. Outside, nothing stirred. The distant pulse of car horns returned me to my

prison to this new city hush, so much like that fateful floor threatened to co-around my routine

again. I forced myself to move to break the paralysis that came when you played the observer in

someone else's experiment. Dropping the calendar face down, I crossed the room. I flipped the light

switch twice, bracing for the dumb sequential flick that used to ripple down the six floors hallway.

Here, nothing happened just a cold brightness humming electric, slightly too quiet. I went to the

window and pressed my palm to the glass. A fine layer of condensation blush beneath my fingertips

not from the warmth inside but from the persistent chill outside. Across the alley, a silhouetted

figure shifted in an office window, just briefly. My heart buckled. I recognized the posture,

high shouldered, careful, a tilt of the head my own, or something trained to mimic it.

Heat swelled under my tongue. I brazed myself, forcing logic into the hollow places in Ziety Bird.

You know the patents now, I told myself. You could shot them in your sleep, the mailed warning,

the shifting locks, the echo of your own, face staring back from every reflective surface.

None of this is supernatural, not strictly. It's process. Method.

Someone, somewhere, is tuning these routines, testing how long you can last. A message pinged on

my laptop, sharp and discordant. A gasp then immodely cursed at the reflex. The sender ID was

pure gibberish, a string of symbols and numbers, like the worst of the calendar codes.

In a preview text, did you move? No greeting, no signature, just that demand.

The time stamp showed it had been sent up for a 3pm while I'd stood, frozen by the window.

I locked a laptop, wiped my sweaty hands against my jeans, then circled the kitchen.

The old paranoia rose spectrally searching under the table behind the cabinet,

even fussing with the light fixture to see if it's funny easily, as if concealing a lens.

I found nothing obvious, but the age persisted. It wasn't about the presence of bugs,

it was the certainty that you never spotted a real device until after it had already served as

purpose. Phoned it up again with an unlisted call. I nearly ignored it, but let it play to

voicemail this time, watching to counter-tick down. When I played it back, I heard only the crackle

of static, pierced by what syllables barely form your phrase, always clopped in still watching.

I clicked in silence. My stomach curdled. With trembling fingers, I fetched my back,

gathered what little paperwork I brought to this place, and started packing things together.

But as it the bag shut, my hand brushed against the calendar again. I forced myself to study

the circle date three days out. It was a Friday, I realised, and for some reason that day's

significance made my pulse lurch. Fridays were for turnovers on six. These cut-offs changeovers.

That's when you were either chosen to stay, or quite was squeezed out. I tried to sleep that night.

I had felt too soft, the sheet's clanny was sweat pulled at my spine. I found myself shifting,

always keeping one eye cracked toward the cut in the window, it was straining for the his

events or the peculiar knock of boots on the nolium. As darkness thickened, I slipped between

dreams and waking jitters, doors closing just beyond my reach. Voices in treating, stay still,

stay quiet, don't leave. Each time I just fully awake, the calendar laid just inside my peripheral

vision. When morning bled in, I stood in study in a cool light, catalogging the eggs in my

body like old friends. My phone buzzed, another anonymous message. This one simply said,

will you check the neighbor's name for us? Underneath a symbolous queue triangle surrounding a

the olded circle my heart. I swallowed a mouthful of sire coffee and thumb for my new buildings

directory. Names all of them. I recognized none, but some angels were scuffed at their labels

replaced just like those in the six, half-peeled, initials instead of proper names. What would happen

if I knocked? Would the floor's old script demand the same shape here in neighbor, startled,

cautious, deflecting my questions about the landlord or complaints? I paced a while then resolved

to try. Every piece of closure I'd sought before, every time I'd demanded a face to explain,

what is happening on this floor and met only silence had all but destroyed my sense of trust.

But I was no longer content to simply be watched. I slipped on a sweater,

shrugged off a fatigue and opened the hallway door. The building smelt of dust and reheated air,

the same recycle flatness I remembered too well. The door to the unit's down was shut tight,

but pale light lined its bottom edge, and I heard the low homophot television behind it.

I raised my fists then hesitated. Throat dry, I knocked three measure taps. For several long

seconds, nothing happened. Then the door opened, just enough to reveal an eye-pan to chain an elderly

woman, curly grey hair framing a wary frown. Yes, I found myself momentarily speechless.

Sorry, I just moved in. I wanted to check on something in the directory. Do you know if anyone's

lived in this apartment before me recently? She sighs me up, gaze darting down the hall before

applying. This place isn't long on regular tenants, she said eventually. A few months here,

a couple months there, some folks come and go before you've even got a name. Why? I tempted a half

smile. Nothing, I just, someone left a calendar in my kitchen, marked a day, I thought it might be

for delivery or something. The woman frown more deeply than matter. You'd do best to toss it,

things have a way of turning up that aren't yours to keep. She let the chain fall back into place,

the door thudding shut with the finality I felt in my teeth. Walking back to my unit, I

knurled his fresh beep prints on the carpet dark and damp, as if someone had just entered from

the rain, though I hadn't heard the front door open. They trailed away from my apartment,

looking to the stairwell at the end. I bent to inspect them, hard hammering against my ribs.

I touched the wet outline, my finger came away blackened with city grit. Unnerved, I tried to

the stairwell door. It's one open easily, no chains or locks, only the subtle resistance of

an underused spring hinge. I bounced down the stairs one bare bulb illuminated the first

turn, then only darkness. A fleeting warmth wafted upward, tinge fendly with it old,

metallic scent from the sixth floor's vented air. I fought down Nalse. Steps creeped above me,

the muffled, business like pace of someone ascending. Shadow shifted just outside my sightline.

I backed away, retreating to my own apartment and locking the door behind me. I sat against it,

knees hiked to my chest, breath shallow. My apartment, so new and impersonal, was already shrinking

around me with the pressure of old patterns returning. I told myself it was a culmination of stress.

How some recognition become pathology, perhaps the mind echo in trauma, folding coincidences into

conspiracy. But I could not dismiss what I saw next. My phone, lying face up on the table,

flickered to life without my touch. It stalks green captured my reflection, as before, but now the

camera lends the dolmond to go to dull blur. I leaned over it, watching as my mirror dies drifted

out of sync with my own, the jaw slackening, the head tilting at a natural angle and my

memory. I jerked away, heart skipping. The air was vibrating, faintly, with the promise of a

voice yet to utter its threat. Light shifted, stretching my shadow across the laminate floor,

long enough to brush the threshold. I heard a footfall outside at a deliberate pause,

then another step. Not loud, but purposeful, as if the owner was considering coming in,

or perhaps waiting for my own routine response, call out, open up, check the lock. Instead,

I crawled to the window and peered outside, watching the alley for movement. Nothing.

Only the glint of a distant streetlight on slick pavement. I crawled back, retrieved the

calendar again and stared at the circle day. Time felt heavy every eye or weight.

My thoughts cycle of trying to break the circuit or understand what the system wanted for me.

If I vanished now, would I end it or merely pass the pattern to the next and suspecting tenant

seeking quiet and cheap rent? As doctors built, I made a decision. I scrolled my own warning on

the sticky note of do not stay, do not follow the routine and slipped it under the neighbor's door.

I knew, deep down, it was more gesture for myself than for anyone else.

By midnight, the cycle asserted itself even further. My emails glitched out,

timestamp shifting, and was setting half-written druffs spawning in my outbox with words,

I never typed, I watched to, stay, did don't dance or knocks.

The message repeated, embedding itself in auto-save fields and clogged back-ups,

as if the pattern was running through the devices themselves.

Hannick simmered beneath my roots. I unplugged the router, powered down every screen,

and pressed my forehead to the cold glass. That's when I sought to cross the alley,

the figure stood again at the window, but its head was turned, watching not me put the calendar

in my own hand. The glass shimmered between us, a temporary membrane, showing me what was expected,

compliance, silence, erasure. I closed the blinds, culled up on the couch, cold sweat trickling

down my back. My mind drifted, always to the same point, who designs this. Who orchestrates the

chair and the faces, the erasure of memory, the pressure to disappear without noise or evidence.

Just before sleep took me, thin and fragile, I heard it gins off, almost kind,

the old tuna swissled drifting through the vent, carrying the pulsative session that had overtaken

every tenant who came before. The calendar still faced upward, red mock shining even in the dark.

Morning sunlight revealed another change. Someone enslaved Cod beneath my door overnight.

This one was heavier stuck expensively printed, raised letter in stock in the natural light.

It was no name or address, just the shiver on triangle symbol stamp in red, and the words,

welcome sweet awaiting. On the back, in my own hand writing of the best imitation of it were the

words, better to leave them to see yourself watch. I dropped the card as if it might burn. Every cell

in me screamed to run, to let go, to avoid the final demand for participation. I packed what I could

fit in a backpack, left the rest behind, and forced myself down the empty hallway one last time.

The lobby was deserted as I passed through. Only the elevator camera blinked, the light inside

flaring as I crossed its lands. Outside, the world felt change not just by my own agitation,

but as though the city itself held its breath. As I turned on to the next street, I paused, glancing

back at the building. At a high window, the silhouette remained my posture to the inch,

expressionless, immobile, watching. I watched back for a moment and then forced myself to move on,

shoulders hunched against a wind in the possibility that I would see that poils, that blurred

mimicry again wherever I tried to settle. That night exhausted, I checked into a chain motel

on the edge of the city. I left no forwarding address, no hint of which bus I'd taken. I tossed

the calendar in the trash can, doused it with water, and sealed the mess in a plastic liner.

The urge to warn someone everyone was strong, but already the knowledge of Possible Six felt as

fragile as missed. I typed up everything I could remember, sent it to every trussess back by

code, then deleted the drafts. I tried calling my sister, but the costalled the line dead,

as if the city itself refused to connect us. In the short, fevered sleeper followed,

I dreamed only of windows endless rows of them, each framing a watcher, each fold with someone

failing to look away as the path in repeated. When morning came, nothing had altered in the world

outside, but I felt smaller. The sense of being washed diminished by degrees, but never quite

disappeared. I knew then with the clarity of a fever-breaking that the stillness wasn't just a

property of the Six-Four. It was the system bread wherever people isolated themselves behind

locked doors seeking quiet and chaos, trusting and in emitting to shield them. And so I kept moving

never staying long enough to collect even a week's worth of new mail, never falling into habit,

always watching for signs that the stranger in the glass had noticed my presence again.

The pattern would continue, fresh-immented, bearing down on someone else drawn by low rent and

the siren call of peace. Somewhere in a city that never truly sleeped but never truly wakes either,

the Sixth floor waits. The chevrons and symbols will be redrawn, initials were labelled,

and another analyst or temple opened an envelope or calendar and find their own name

erased replaced by the single Chilling Label next. And that is the end. Thank you for listening,

and I will see you in the next one.

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