The Unclaimed Voicemails

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Hello.

I'm Wolken.

Stories all the time.

Glad you are here.

Let's get into it.

The message jumped in the middle of my breath.

A woman's voice bowled through the headphones, frantic enough to scrape the lining of the

tape.

Allowed it to me, don't tell let them.

She named the street by the river and my mother's maiden name in the same sentence.

Suspicion hit me in the jaw.

I slammed a rewind and the speaker for an on-later's desk clicked alive.

Status now allowed, Marda.

Her voice was flat and official and instantly made this a problem for more than me.

I pushed the headphones up with both hands and listened again.

The woman didn't finish her sentence.

The playback crackle then fell with a steady, low analogue hiss under her voice.

I checked the counter on the cassette deck.

The cassette had been sealed in evidence the previous week.

The counter said the tape hadn't even moved since it was locked.

I thumbed the laminated it on my line out and felt the edge where the plastic had split.

My fingers were steady because I had kept this joke by being steady for three years.

Phil came next, not the abstract kind, but the electrical salt that made my palm sweat.

Heal because anything I did or fail to do at three in the morning could affect someone's

life.

Where did that come from?

I said.

My voice sounded small in the control room.

Marda tapped the corner of her clipboard with a fingernail, a buttoned, practice sound,

which cassette.

She asked evidence box two, cider.

Tape seven, sealed last Wednesday.

I read the tag out loud and watched her shoulders tighten.

Marda's jaw worked play it once.

Done tea save anything.

I want a time stamp on it.

Now she spoke like a supervisor, like someone used to getting small disasters contained

before the grew teeth.

I played the message again more than once.

Because the woman said a street name only my mother, and I used, and because she mentioned

the name of a neighbor who had moved away two years ago.

I wrote those names on a sticky note and stuck it to the desk.

The sticky notes stuck it to the groove of the headphone cable.

Samur, the overnight attack popped his head from the alcove behind me and squinted it

away from on my monitor.

That's not a normal artifact, he said.

Samur had light lined at the corners of his eyes from too many fluorescent nights and

light to see things that complicated my life.

Look at the carrier under the voice.

Same frequencies across three different aims.

He tapped the screen.

This shouldn't be identical.

He sounded like someone reading another person's report aloud, calm, precise.

But the words translated into a new urgency so it's a cross-patch.

I asked not exactly, it's layered a sub audio carriage.

I'm going to pull the headers, he already had a cable stripped and a terminal open.

He worked with fingers that moved faster than his mouth.

I watched his face for a reaction.

He really didn't, he blinked until I said, Samur, be straight, that was the way I,

learned to get facts out of him.

He looked up the coal record shows nothing.

No outgoing line.

No load dial.

The cassette timestamp is earlier than this recording.

He pointed to the evidence tag with a pen.

It's impossible, Alip.

Either the system is lying or someone is adding audio files to the archive after the

tags are sealed.

Moda cleared her throat.

You flagged this because you were paid to listen for anomalies.

You file the report.

Do not escalate unless instructed.

She'd the last part like a warning I'd heard before.

I remember the feeling of my jaw tightening then.

Suspicion shifted into doubt.

That made me check the chain of custody again.

I opened the archive door and the metal hinge excelled like old breath.

The shelf light started.

I wasn't supposed to be in the archive without authorization, but I had stayed late

night's cataloging tapes until my head aged.

I had a key on my line art.

I chewed the inside of my cheek and slid out tape seven.

The outer seal was intact.

The evidence lock had my signature on the page for the initial intake.

The date matched.

Samur looked over my shoulder with a frown.

If somebody's been writing audio to the backup, they need physical access to the server

who has access.

I asked three people on night rotation, me, you, you and Marda, plus constructors when

they come in for maintenance.

But maintenance waits for daylight, Marda folded her hands on the clipboard so the options

are either external tampering or an internal protocol failure.

Either way we follow reduction.

We mark it as contaminated and discontinued it.

She discontinues if the word would erase what was on the tape.

I felt my teeth grind guilt forced a decision.

If Marda marked it discontinued, the file would be taken offline, and the police would

be told a bad master tape had been corrupted.

If I kept a copy I borrowed protocol and everything else.

Marda watched me like she could read my hands.

I put the headphones back on and copied a message to a secure drive that wasn't listed

in any inventory.

My hands were deliberate and quiet when I did it.

That was the first thing I lied about to myself.

I told myself I'd make a copy only to study the anomaly.

I told myself I wasn't teaprotecting anything.

That's how guilt starts by reassigning the reason for a choice.

Famer pulled up the headers, their identical analog art facts under three names.

Different speakers, same carrier.

Whoever made this hit a phrase under the hiss.

Listen, he isolated a low frequency hum and replayed at half speed.

The phrase came out, syllable slightly warp but readable.

Do not open the edge, the words were not poetry.

They were a command buried under static.

My stump turned.

Fear arrived with the sun, a physical tightening in my ribs.

I pushed my chair back hard enough that it's great the linoleum.

Do not open the edge.

I'm motted.

Motted's face lost color who that she demanded is essence of the carrier, same ear under

the low band.

Whoever engineered that nose are encoding, Motted's pen paused.

I'll call the liaison and corporate.

They need to know before police, and I or later, with the fluorescent hum louder than

outside, officer raised walked into her office with the tide.

Box look of someone hoody delivered the night runs and kept police records in a neat

stack.

He flipped through the notes Motted handed him and did that slow police face, where everything

is considered possible and none of it is urgent.

You expect me to treat a voicemail like evidence?

He asked, it mentions a missing person by name, Marda.

Her voice had an edge I hadn't heard before, it references private details only the operator

would have.

We need to flug it, she spoke the words without waiting for him to respond because she

knew how to turn the room into a procedure.

Officer raised looked at me, ellet, I told him what I knew, he tapped his pen and asked

for time stamps, I give them.

He if anyone else had access to that, I told him the same three names.

His face tightened and then folded into the same practical shrubid scene when he explained

an unrelated theft to someone's neighbor.

We'll look into it, he said.

File a formal report.

I signed the forms while Marda watched.

Emotion shifted from fear into a brittle, mechanical concentration.

I worked like someone who knows the consequences of paperwork.

Marda made me initial every line and then said, don't your cop is, do not post anything.

This continue after officer review, she slid an on disclosure form across her desk and

waited until my name was in the dotted line.

At 4.40, fly them, I went to the server rack with Samir at the room's melt of metal and

warm plastic.

Samir's flashlight made bright bands across the wiring.

He checked locks with his tablet, scrolling lines of numbers at a speed my eyes could not

rid, someone injected audio packets after the archive closed, he said.

They found a way to write our disaster recovery mirror without leaving a trace in the main

dialogs.

He tapped a rhythm on the cabinet like a man explaining something impossible.

Could someone outside town do that?

I ask.

He shrugged, maybe, but the roading points to the decommissioned line toward the river.

Old infrastructure.

Once in a while a contractor will use it for tests.

I pictured the river line, rusted poles, overgrown insulators, a shove-off box we used

to pass on morning runs.

The image was a concrete place I could go to.

The guilt that had sat in my palms made a new sound resolve.

I told Samir I would drive to the line after my shift.

He looked at Marda who had returned to the lobby with a clipboard and a tired, watchful

expression.

Marda's voice was low.

Do not go at anyone near that infrastructure alone, Elliot.

If you go, you risk your clearance and your job, then revoke my clearance, I said.

I will still go.

She folded her arms, Elliot.

You know I can dissension that.

If corporate finds out you took action outside a prud call, they'll cut ties.

Samir I'll come with you.

I don't trust a single lock that now, he used the pronoun not in solidarity, but like

a technician who needed a witness.

We left the building in the grave dawn.

My hoodie smelled like stale coffee and the thermos at my side rattled with the

drags.

The town was wet from an overnight drizzle.

We drove in Samir's truck with a heater on low, and neither of us spoke until the crack

tooling that ran past the river came into view.

At the roadside, the decommission box sat half-barred under Ivy, the lid had been prized,

grew slain nearby, concrete just stuck to the bolts.

Samir crouched and ran a glove finger along wiring, someone unbolted this recently.

See the fresh grape marks, he held up a connector that still had a sliver of blue paint on it,

and look, fresh oil marks.

I felt the second emotion shift there and, from resolve to a raw, cold fear, the physical

evidence made the voicemail real in a way the tape couldn't tea.

A passerby could have unplugged an antenna at any time, but the scratch has matched a

metal pry.

Someone had engineered access.

I climbed a bank and stood under the leaning pole.

The pole's metal plate listed the old company code.

The pole swung faintly in a breeze and made a metallic creek.

The river beyond it was low and flat, brown water reflecting nothing.

I tossed the pole and felt its cool roughness in the fine grit on my fingertips.

Samir Nalt imploked a small analyzer into the box.

He muttered numbers and then looked up signals present.

Not full power, just to carry it as being fed from somewhere else now river or then

follower, I said.

My voice gave a way that I wanted to be done with the waiting.

Marta had told us not to go, but Marta had also ordered discontinuation.

The contradiction lodged in my teeth.

Samir started down the maintenance part with a flashlight.

The path was only travelled grass the kind of few people used.

The ground gave under our boots.

I had a small shoulder bag with my head and the carpet file on a compact drive.

I kept my hand close to it.

Halfway under a stand of trees the carrier noise thickened.

I could hear a faint whore of tape hiss inside my ear even without head fronds.

The static had become a thing I could walk toward.

I told myself I was being objective that was the third emotion shift.

Objectivity replacing raw fear, a clinical shell that let me note details and old pump

house discarded cassettes tangled in roots, shoe prints leading deeper.

Samir held the flashlight on a cassette half-barred near root.

It had a hand, written label.

Sider remembered the handwriting slanted like mine when I signed in tick sheets.

He swore under his breath and looked up at me.

That's one of Irish's.

I picked it up.

The plastic edge was gummy from water.

The tape smell hit my nose.

Vinegar and scorched plastic, a fly landed on the cassette and crawled in tiny, urgent

circles.

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My pulse pad and I felt memory tightened into a single motion.

The patient efficiency with which I'd a cup of defile and hidden it under my jacket in

the control room.

Gilt returned to sharper.

I'd smuggle to copy out of procedure.

We need to log this samier.

If my overseas is before we do, I started.

Then we make a fine, not a theft, samier finished.

He used the word fine like a man rearranging consequences.

We followed the footprint's pass-up pump house.

The trees opened onto an abandoned lot where foam booths stood with one hand set missing

and a padlock had been cut.

A cassette glinted under the glass.

The low carriers and came from a narrow trench leading toward the overgrown tracks.

The trench smelled like river mud and old paper.

A metal door lay half open in the trench and inside, a small room had been built from

plywood and old shelving.

On a shelf sat an all-played back-unit screaming with a small light that paused in time with

the carrier.

Somebody had set up a field rig.

The rig was wired back toward town on a cable that looked newer than anything in the

area.

A small stool held a ledger with names crossed out and underlined.

The most recent entry read.

Elliot Hayes listened, do not trace.

The entry was not written in my hand.

I've read it aloud in the sound of my voice surprised me.

Elliot Hayes listened, do not trace, samiers wore.

He lifted the ledger, look at these names.

All local missing, called from nowhere, a wind pushed through the trench and rattled

to plywood like a dry throat.

I felt a low sickness at the base of my skull.

A voice that wasn't on a tape murmur in my memory of the phrase Samo had isolated earlier.

I said, do not open the edge and the words made a click in the back of my teeth.

We back the ledger and the play back-unit into the back of Samo's truck and covered them

with a top.

The physical hoard in that trench turned the voicemail from an anomaly into a pattern.

Now it was a sequence of decisions.

Who to tell how to keep evidence safe, whether to contradict Marta's order?

The guilt had changed into anger, anger at being told to stop looking.

When we drove back Marta called.

Her voice over the line was shorter than usual, Marta.

I said, where are you?

Her question came like a command.

We found a set up by the river.

Play back-unit and a ledger.

I kept my voice steady.

Silence on her end.

Then do you have the tapes?

We were bringing them in.

Do not touch chain of custody.

Bring everything to the lobby.

Wait for me.

We popped under the same fluorescent bars as before and carried the gear into the lobby

with the top flapping like a private flag.

Marta was waiting with a cup of coffee gone cold.

Officer Ray's washed from the doorway with the same boxy patience.

We set the play back-unit on a table and unwrapped it.

Marta's mouth drew thin.

Samier, how many copies?

She asked.

He gestured at the ledger, enough to make this a pattern.

Marta turned to me.

Elliott, did you copy anything you were not authorized to copy?

I met her eyes.

They were tired and sharp.

I had lied once already that morning about the duplicate on my private drive.

I could keep the lie simple and say no, yes, I said.

The single word felt like an acknowledgement and a small relief.

Marta's hand tightened on the clipboard.

Then you have to explain why you broke procedure because I couldn't just discontinue it, I said.

I said the truth, I had rehearsed on the drive-home.

Because the message mentioned a missing person and gave details only an operator would know.

Marta's expression slackened for a fraction of a second.

Wish name?

She asked.

I told her she made a call with clipped efficiency.

Officer Ray stood with his arms folded.

Samier opened the ledger and pointed to a page where three names were circled.

This ledger links voices to missing persons and to the carrier phrase.

Whoever runs this rig is choosing names.

They re-selecting targets, Marta listened and then said,

we close this room to the public.

No statements.

I will notify corporate.

We log everything under incident code discontinued.

A tense argument started.

Marta insisted we follow protocol.

Samier argued to the ledger and field rig were outside our normal operations and required police investigation.

I argued for full disclosure to the officer.

The confrontation lasted six rapid-back and four lines were names and roles were repeated so that nobody could

must hire them, Marta, if he doesn't continue the file.

We lose the ledges lead, Samier's voice snapped.

Samier, he did not authorize this field operation, Marta answered.

Neither did you offer as a rogue being set up in the woods.

Samier shot back officer Ray's.

What do you advise, Marta?

Officer Ray's stared at the ledger for a long beat and then said,

we take custody of the equipment.

We run prints.

We interview personnel.

But if this is a pattern, you might be under orders to downplay it.

Under orders from who?

Marta.

He showed from higher up.

We've seen cases where companies nudge incidents away from publicity.

Marta's jaw worked.

She folded the clipboard and said, if corporate steps end, they will take over the investigation.

We file the evidence now and wait for their directive.

Her finality felt like being handed a sealed-on-the-loop.

I wanted to tear the envelope open.

Gil and Anger tingled in me again.

I said, Marta the ledger has my name on the most recent entry that says do not trace.

I didn't he write it.

She looked at me hard.

Do you think someone is framing you?

I don't he know, I said.

The word was honest and small.

It shifted the room.

Officer Ray's took the ledger and bagged it.

I'll run prints and check the handwriting, he said.

We process the equipment into the locked evidence room.

Marta filled out the chain of custody while I watched the clock.

Every time the speak from hummed, I imagined it ringing with the voice that had my mother's

maiden name.

The office noise swallowed the Ios into a sequence of boxes.

Stemps, seal bags.

When Marta finally left for a meeting with corporate, she tapped the dossier shot and

said, Elliot, stay out of any public channels.

No social posts, no confessions.

If you breach that you'll be the first suspect, the words landed like cold lead.

She walked out with her badge clipped and her clipboard hugged her chest.

Samus sat on the edge of the evidence table and finally let go of his professional mask,

Elliot.

I think he need to see what I pulled from the backups.

He slayed a tabla across the desk.

On it, an audio file opened with a wave from that look like a small ridge.

We listened.

Midway through the file, my own voice came through the headphones.

It, I deleted the file.

I can't let them find it.

The sentence was spoken slow and resigned, but I recognized the cadence.

It was my cadence.

My throat clenched and I barely stopped myself from ripping off the headphones.

I hadn't said those words.

I couldn't remember saying those words.

Samus hand hovered over the you didn't teetap that, right?

I shook my head.

The room shrank in a different way.

The air felt colder against my forearms.

My mouth tasted like metal.

The emotion that rose then was a raw animal fear.

Not the thin professional fear of paperwork, but a terror that made my hands tremble.

We need to show Mardo Samir.

No, I said before I thought.

The word was automatic, a small protective action.

I had already hidden one copy.

If Mardo sees that, she will mark everything discontinued.

He'll lose the ledger.

Samir looked at me with an expression I didn't like.

Part accusation, part calculation, Elliot.

If your voice is on a file confessing something you didn't do that changes everything,

we argued for several short chop exchanges.

I insisted we keep a working copy.

Samir insisted we hand everything to the police.

Officer Reyes had already taken the ledger for prints.

In end, we compromised.

We handed physical ledger and a playback unit to the officer and kept a single encrypted copy

on a dried Samir wipe traces from.

Each of those choices felt like a notch being filed into a ledger of consequences.

That night, after Marta's meeting stretched beyond the day shift and the lobby grew quiet,

I slipped one copy of the corrupted tape into my jacket.

I told myself I would turn it over in the morning.

I told myself I was sleep.

I didn't tear first light I walked with the tape in my pocket.

The street smelled like wet tar and coffee.

I passed the bakery when Mrs. Halgrew swept the front step and smiled at me with a careful

kindness of someone who knew nothing about voicemails or carriers.

My phone buzzed and I pulled it out.

A new voicemail notification let the screen from an unknown number.

My thumb hovered and a small cold knot formed under my wrist bone.

I press play.

It was the same carrier phrase and beneath it, a voice that said, you shouldn't have taken

that tape, Elliot.

The voice was close.

It used my name and a detail only someone who had watched me carry it out of the lobby

would know.

The dent and the thermos lid that I always kept in my back.

My hand closed around the tape in my pocket.

The morning light made the metal of the lampus bright.

The final paragraph of this chapter ends when my phone vibrates again on a single bright

tone.

I filled a vibration against the skin of my palm and I hear the carrier under the static.

The new message begins with the sound I have already recorded in my head.

The low, layered command that started this whole night.

Do not open the edge.

I did not press play.

I folded the tape into my palm and walked toward the bridge toward a place where the decommissioned

line runs and were a decision to accumulate light grit.

The carrier hummed under my skin.

I slipped the tape back into my darkest and kept going.

Mardus slammed the control room door in the fluorescent panel over the desk jump once,

then stared it.

Elliot, what did you wrote to escalation?

She demanded in her voice felt the small room so quickly that I knocked my coffee mug

with my elbow.

Spissions sat behind my teeth.

I had kept the tape.

I have rounded until the spoolsqueal because the woman's name had sounded like a crack

and a warning at the same time.

Mardus stepped up to the console, eyes lopped on the cassette and the problem became immediate

and loud.

Calls were arriving that should not have existed.

I pushed the headphones away and stood.

My hands trembled without warning a short, joking thing, and I heard my own breath too close

to the magmata.

I flagged that file because it said River Street, and my mother's meant name on the same

line, it said, saying it made the memory concrete.

The woman's voice had cut into my breath.

Elliot, it's me.

Don't heal at them.

Her name details no one outside my family would know.

I had the tape in my head and felt a new emotion pull at my ribs.

Kill, I had kept it because I couldn't tea-let-a-beer-est.

Mardus jaw tightened.

You don't tea-copy or retain fagged files, Elliot.

You escalate them and hand them to me.

You understand company policy.

Her voice was clipped, the exact word she used on the training checklist.

The room smelled like warm plastic and stale coffee.

Her phone was clipped to the inner seam of her blazer, where a redacted badge gleamed like

a dull coin.

I did escalate it, I said.

I put a note.

I thought, my sentence broke when Jeremy shoved the equipment room door open and leaned

in, breathing fast logs, he said without preemble.

He held a small print out, the edge is still warm from the cup here.

You need to see this.

Jeremy's arrival shifted the room.

He dropped the paper on the console.

His fingers left smudges on the top sheet.

Mardus grabbed the log and re-di-scanning the columns.

My suspicion widened into a different shape, clarity, because the print out list of time

stands and trunk highs that could not break calls.

There were numbers issue years ago, numbers decommissioned the week my mother had changed

her name after she remarried.

The print out showed calls roared at from phantom trunks.

The evidence looked like a breech, and a misfiled warning stitched together.

"'This can tea be human error,' I said.

My voice was thin, East trunks have been offline for six years.

Marta re-delowed, voice flat, the tines stamped 234, origin trunk hole 397, destination

in book's operator 7.

Colored Null wrote in shows grew up 3D commission switch bank.

She looked up at me, Elliot, did you do anything to the roading?

Her words were fast now.

I walked into exacting pieces, no, I listened.

I reported, I tapped the cassette case beneath the console, where I had slid it after copying,

I copied it because I couldn't eat it.

There was a hardness behind her eyes, you can tea copy.

You know the procedure?

I know the procedure, I said, but I heard her say, River Street, and she said my mother's

made a name.

Marta, I knew he gave her the name then, because the tape had said it word, perfect, but

I stopped.

The tape was the proof, and if it stayed buried, the proof would be gone.

Jeremy leaned on the cabinet and rubbed his temple.

Elliot showed me this segment.

Let me run a spectra.

If there's something lay at it, I'll see it.

We replayed the clip.

The speaker in the console gave back the voice like a wet echo.

The woman's words tore through the tight air.

Elliot, it's me.

Don't tea, let them.

River Street.

Made in.

The audio started in one place.

Royal consonants clipped by static.

Marta's hand tightened on the cassette box until the paper creaked.

Who's she talking about?

Jeremy.

His voice had an edge I had not had before for men.

He hadn't always been easy with hardware, never this quick with suspicion.

She didn't say I lifted my shoulders, only the details mod barked.

Then we quarantined and redaction.

Now I've copied a secure, destroy original, notify corporate.

I felt my jaw set.

Don't make my fingers clenched into my palm.

The urge to keep the cassette burned like a fever I want to destroy it, I said.

Marta's eyes narrowed, Elliot, you will follow protocol or you will be fired.

If we destroy it, we lose the only lead we have.

If it's connected to missing persons, my sentence hung there.

The word pushed through the air.

No one else in the room could pretend it was to possibility.

In the previous night, the tape had named a local child's nickname from an old missing

person notice.

That detail had turned a weird file into something that pulled to the town's under surface

winds.

Marta reached for the phone and her fingers moved with a train motion of someone here

had done this too many times, corporate once reduction clean.

We'd done tea archive anomalies without approval.

We'd done tea leak operations.

We'd contain.

Her mouth formed the word contained like a hammer.

Jeremy interrupted.

Containment isn't key containment if calls keep coming.

Look at this, he pointed to another line on the printout.

It listed a set of time stamps, a cluster of calls, wrote it, then dropped, then we

wrapped.

These are and tea isolated.

It's a systemic.

I felt a new shift in me.

Felt shifting into anger.

If this was systemic, if someone or something had found a way to stitch names and local

details into voicemail boxes, then destroying tapes would not stop it.

It would only hide it.

Marta, if you delete everything and stop digging, we'll be doing a ton of disservice.

She set the phone down with deliberate patience.

Elliott, you were risking people's privacy.

You know what that does to families.

You know what corporate would do with private information leaks.

I know my answer was blunt and small, but I also know a woman's for said River Street

and my mother's mad in name.

I can tea on, hear that, Marta stared at me for a long moment.

Then she moved toward the archive closet, if you value this job, you handle the copies

of everything you have.

We will redact what needs redacting under supervision.

I looked at the cassette again, tucked beneath the console lip.

My finger slid against the plastic, rough edges digging into my skin.

The cassette felt warmer than the room.

I thought of my mother's hands folding laundry of a way she straightened the edge of a

tablet cloth, and that memory pushed at the guilt in me until it changed shape into

defiance.

I rose and followed Marta to the archive with the cassette in my pocket.

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I set the cassette honor with one careful motion and opened the console to run away from

analysis with Jeremy.

He leaned over the monitor and adjusted the slider, eyes narrowing, play it slowly.

He said, I need to see sublairs.

We slowed the playback and the audio folded in on itself.

Beneath the frantic voice, a low repeated under a layer harmed, slowed down, and then

became modulated articulate when we put it at half speed.

My stomach dropped because the slow recording repeated my home address, street number,

then an exact time.

The discovery showed up like a printed ticket, a hostile invitation that had been hidden

in plain audio.

My fear intensified into something immediate, a personal target.

I felt my hands go clammy, Jeremy ruined.

Again he did and the monitor displayed the way from as a jagged spine.

Marta came in and looked at the screen without comment.

Her professional face softened for a beat in a way I had to see before.

A flash of concern behind the corporate mask you saw it, I asked.

My voice had a thin edge, she didn't answer right away.

Then she said that's not a random artifact.

If it's directing information at you that changes everything, we argued about procedure

for the next 15 minutes.

Three rapid exchanges snapped between a select flint.

We delete the source.

We notify corporate and wait.

We secure the tape and run a forensics weep.

We open the line to look a law enforcement.

We risk a leak if we involve them.

We risk lives if we don't eat.

The room filled was short artillery of sentences.

Each line named a risk.

Each line forced a choice.

At the end of the exchange, Marta made the call.

I will call corporate now, she said.

Jeremy frees the logs.

Alid, give me that set.

I hesitated long enough to change the shape of the night.

My fingers closed around the tape into my herty

and I felt the cassette's edge press into skin.

The responsibility in that instant was not an abstract weight.

It was a choice pressing into my palm.

I moved away from her and toward the desk instead of handing it over.

Marta, I'm making a copy first.

Then I'll give it to you.

She blinked as if she deepened struck.

You will not.

And it over now, her voice had a new, brittle edge.

I opened the desk drawer and pulled out a blank cassette.

My hands worked faster than my thoughts.

I threaded the tape press record

and ran the segment into the blank.

The room hung with old motor noise of the recorder

and the red record light bled into the shadows.

Marta stepped forward, Alid stopped this now,

I kept copying.

The recorder clicked and word.

The red light never wavered.

Jeremy watched, Joe Clunch.

Marta's face read every possible corporate reprimand,

but she did not strike.

Instead she called Culver at the low staccato for a speech steady and precise.

The trance were finished.

I took the new tape, slid it into my jacket in a pocket

and the paper tag whispered against my chest.

Outside the control room, the parking lot here hit me with coal

that felt like another skin.

I had the cassette tucked against my ribs

and I walked to my car with my head down.

My mouth tasted of metal and warm plastic.

The town was quiet in a way that stretched.

Immunisable street lamp buzzed.

I sat in the driver's seat

and the tape in my jacket thudded softly when I sailed.

I started the car and my phone lit up with a short notification.

Voice mail saved.

I ignored it at first.

Then the light flashed again.

My hand went to my pocket without thinking.

The voice mail was two seconds long,

breath and a phrase I could not make out.

My chest tightened and I felt the final emotion shift

from the fides into acute fear.

The noise of the engine seemed suddenly too loud.

I drove slowly, headlights cutting a tunnel

through the near dawn fog.

The copied cassette beneath the seat,

like an unwanted heartbeat.

Back in my apartment,

I sat the tape on the kitchen table and listened to it

once more through my own headphones alone.

The woman's urgency was ragged.

She served River Street and the maiden name again

and then a different line and instruction

that cut off mid-phrase.

The underlayer slowed and repeated my address

in the exact time printed on the spectra.

Concrete specific and timed, I called Jeremy at 9.30.

He picked up on the second ring, Jeremy.

He saw the logs.

What do you think?

My voice tried to be casual and failed.

He was quiet for a long time.

When he finally spoke, he said,

Elliot, I patched the old switch bank in college once.

It's not supposed to respond.

If someone found a way to emulate the ultron guide

and wrap them through the system,

whoever did that has technical access

beyond what we have on-site, so who?

I asked, I don't know, he said.

It could be an external engineer,

it could be a malicious script,

or it could be someone with credentials.

But it's precise.

Whoever did this nose or ten's pockets,

modicled later,

force first measured then ragged at the edges.

Corporate wants us to hand over all incident logs

to the legal department.

They want a full report before they authorize anything else.

She pauls and then add it,

do not contact law enforcement until we get clearance.

Her words were the corporate directive

she had been trained to deliver,

but the paurs after them carried a non-verbal message.

Do not trust anyone above us to act quickly.

I started to track details the way

and operate attract a failing connection.

I made a list.

Sometimes the font and calls occur at trunk heights,

the names and nicknames you used,

the spots and the tape with the underlayer voice

my address in time.

I took the copied cassette and backed it up

in a separate player,

burned a digital copy to an offline drive,

and hid the original inside a box

of old company forms in my closet.

The actions made me feel like I was assembling a map.

Every three or four paragraphs of my life

that night brought a new external event.

A neighbor knocked at the door,

asking if I had heard the siren from down by the river.

I told them no, and then lied that I had to work.

A radio news ticker mentioned a scheduled utility test

that would run through our area in the early morning

and not detail, but then again,

utility tests were common.

Each external detail felt like a new knot

in a rope around a problem.

A two in the morning,

I woke to the phone vibrating on counter.

The calorate was blank.

The voicemail was long this time,

a low-layered ham under a woman's voice that said,

plainly, did not hand it over.

The line ended with a breath

and the faint scrape was something metallic.

I sat in the kitchen floor and pressed my forehead

to my knees.

My breath made shapes against the tile.

The next morning, I brought the copper tip

to Jeremy's camp department.

He had a small lab bench with oscilloscopes

and a soldering iron.

He greeted me with a slab of toast

and two black coffee cups.

You look be, he said.

He had a habit of saying what was obvious

in ways that felt like comfort.

We ran the digital copy to a different set of tools,

once he had downloaded onto his private machine.

He pulled frequency bands, ran deconvolution,

and set out the segment in a way

that looked almost like a child.

There are artifacts here

that indicate active manipulation, he said,

and our carrier signals that shouldn't be present

on plain voicemail data.

Someone is embedding data underneath the audio

who would gain from embedding my address in a time.

I ask, he looked at me for a long moment.

Either this thing is trying to scare you

or it's trying to direct you.

Strange guilty logic took hold in me then.

If it was trying to direct me, then someone wanted me to act.

If someone wanted me to act

and anyone I trusted could be under influence.

The suspicion that had first lodged

in my throat returned but deepened.

I questioned not only the recordings,

but also my own judgments.

Change in internal and or created

another emotion shift from suspicion to pernaia.

My hands went cold.

I kept moving because sitting still allowed the fear

to organize itself into a list of possible betrayals.

At midday, I mardy called an impromptu meeting

in the control room with the torso gender.

Corporate on the line, logs displayed,

and a list of decisions to be made.

She had that corporate face again,

the one that flattened everything into procedure.

I brought the copics set and placed it

on the console before sitting down.

Jeremy had the printed logs and a thumb drive

for his private dump.

The conference co-looped in corporate's legal license.

I'm my name Peters, who spoke in generalities and deadlines.

He for all assets and told us to hold

until the legal team could vet them.

Mardy argued that the voicemail

referenced local missing person cases

and that local police needed notification.

Peters declined and repeated the hold.

Mardy's hands trembled when she set the phone down.

Mardy will tell him we can't just sit on files

at name local children, I said.

We have a duty to report.

She met my eye and then called blinked off.

She exhaled, Elliot.

I know what this feels like,

but corporate controls the process.

If we break chain, we break chain legally and operationally.

They will come down on us.

Jeremy slammed his palm onto the table once.

A quicks to cut up Peters can TV the only option.

Elliot, did you keep anything else?

Did you save our files?

I nodded.

I have the copics set on a digital dump.

I slid the drive across the table toward Jeremy.

The drive looks small and unremarkable.

My heartbeat thudded.

Mardy watched it move like a hawk.

That was when the console phone ran.

The system displayed an impossible collarhead

at trunk head that had been decommissioned.

The hands it sat on the cradle like a cat quiet.

Jeremy moved first, grabbing it, his face pale.

He thumbed a speaker and a synthetic version

of Mardy's voice came through,

clipped in the dry cadence we used for system prompts.

Initiate destruction of backups now the voice said.

Bebet a reduction protocol.

Destroy tapes and drives immediately.

The voice sounded like martyr

but with a thin mechanical ring layer beneath it.

For a moment no one spoke.

Then Mardy's mouth opened and closed.

That's not me, she said.

Her voice came out small and flat.

I didn't call.

The phone rang again with the same impossibly.

The automated martyr instructed the same thing.

Jeremy held the like alive wire.

This is an impersonation.

It's using our voice templates.

I felt my knees go weak.

The room narrowed into the console

and the handset and the cassette in my jacket.

Gill, defiance and a roar,

naked for your nodded together inside me.

Someone had found a way to emulate our authority

and speak orders in Mardy's voice.

They had given themselves power inside our room.

Mardy moved like someone who had practiced

crisis moves for years.

She dialed corporate through a secure line

and demanded immediate authentication.

Her phone connected but corporate requested verification

before any protocol could change.

The automated martyr on our console reiterated the order

faster now and the command had the mechanical certainty

of a machine.

I reached instinctively for my jacket pocket.

The tape was their warm.

The choice flashed.

Handed over under that false command

and obliterate the evidence,

I keep it and become the person they could punish.

My hands closed around the cassette and I swallowed.

I want to do it, I said aloud.

My voice surprised me with how steady it sounded.

Mardy looked at me like a person

seeing someone else for the first time.

Elliot, you can justify a verified command

of corporates as otherwise.

That's not a verified command, I said, it's a fake.

It sounds like you, but it's not you.

We can confirm with logs the trunk ID is impossible.

She went why.

Then her face, which had been controlled and clipped all night,

shifted into something harder.

If you keep that tape Elliot,

you're putting yourself and everyone here at risk.

You are out of protocol.

Jeremy put his hand on the console and said,

we can shut down the console.

We can isolate the system.

But we have to act now.

I moved away from the console.

The weight of the tape in my pocket felt like a living thing.

My breathing had an edge of madness in it.

The final decisive choice

imprinted itself into my muscles.

I would not hand the tape to a voice

that could be manufactured.

I slid the cassette into my coat pocket, zipped it,

and then walked calmly to the door.

Elliot, where are you going?

Mard called out.

I said, I need air.

I pushed the door open and stepped into the cold.

The dawn had sharpened into a thin blue.

I walked past the cars and the parking lot lights

that humble.

My body remembered the road to my car.

I climbed in, turned the key, and drove away

with the tape under the passenger seat.

Jeremy watched me go from the window

until I disappeared.

A short way down the road, my phone buzzed again.

Another voicemail arrived three seconds long this time.

I pulled over and listened.

The clip was most esthetic.

Then a voice, low and modified, said he should have obeyed.

The message ended with a breath,

and the breath sounded like a promise.

I sat in the car with my hands on the wheel,

and a copied cassette like a small stone against my leg.

The chap does immediate conflict resolved

in one concrete act.

I'd refused the order and fled with the evidence.

The room at the center had been confronted

the impersonation revealed at a fracture open

between the staff and culprit orders.

But the night's final sound and unintelligible voicemail

that ended with a threat left the outcome unresolved.

The tape was hidden under my jacket

and the system's fake voice still had the ability to command us.

I started the engine and drove home with the tape,

and the knowledge that the problem would not stay

in the office.

The last thing that happened before I climbed the stairs

in my apartment was the phone's light blinking again.

I answered on the second ring.

A single phrase distorted in immediate.

He chose wrong, then the line went dead.

I set the phone down and put the cassette in the kitchen table

with a red record light of the old player

who'd once pals like a heart.

The tape slept beneath the lamp light.

I sat opposite it and watched the shadow

through across the laminate like a blunt, certain shape.

I could not sleep.

I held the choice I had made like a small, sharp object,

and the night waited for me to decide what to do next.

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A sealed set ejected and began to hum in my hand

before I managed to sit.

The tiny spool spinning like a heart that wouldn't de-stop.

Spish and Titan, my daughter moment,

the voice came through the headphones.

The same had breath woman from the tape I had kept.

Same my mother's maiden name and the street by the river.

I dropped the cassette in the metal shelf

and a player kept eating air and returning it.

As if it wanted me to hear the part

I had ruined until it gagged.

The central problem was suddenly visible.

Recordings existed outside our locks outside custody

and someone wanted them to be found.

I'd been a night shift listener

for the small time exchange for three years.

I could not afford to lose that job.

I held the cassette between two fingers,

felt the cheap plastic of the shell,

smelled the oil and tipped dust.

The municipal lock or smelled of industrial cleaner

and winter grays.

Deputy Klein stood at the door with his jacket zip to his chin

and his palm folded like he was holding a duty

that would not fit in his pockets.

You sure that's one of ours?

Klein, he put his badge on the locker table

without looking at it.

He my name before answered,

which made the room feel small.

It's marked with our catalog stamp I said.

But it shouldn't be playing itself.

I sit the cassette in my palm

and watch the small window

where the tape ran turn and turn.

Marta arrived 10 minutes later with her clipboard

clapped under her arm.

She moved through the hallway

like she owned the light fixtures.

She ell it, secure everything and hand it over.

Now her tone was short enough to make an escrow

of the fluorescent bulbs.

Marta, it started on its own.

I said it played in the locker.

I watched it.

Marta's mouth flattened.

She glanced at Klein.

Evidence protocol.

She said chain of custody.

We redact seal and forward the redacted set to records.

Elliot, she used my name wrong on purpose,

clipping the syllables,

but do what he were told.

The conflict was immediate and physical.

Klein shifted his weight and put his hand on the cassette

as if to keep it from jumping again.

Marta held the clipboard

so it's tightly the sticky notes rattled.

I took a breath and remembered the first tape I had capped.

The woman's voice, Elliot,

it's me, don't tell let them.

I had named the revistry to my mother's murder name.

That voice had been a jagged thing in the tape player.

I had rewinded twice.

I had capped it hidden.

Marta had come in that night

and slammed the control room door.

The fluorescent panel had jumped once, then started.

I thought of that moment now

on how I had kept the tape

instead of following the procedure.

Klein, if it's playing without power or a player,

that's not standard.

We should log the event and take custody.

Marta, log what?

We don't hear corporate liability.

We redact, we seal, we delete cop is in source.

She folded her hands and did not look at the shelf.

A sudden argument leaned across the table

like a cutting lie.

Yuri trying to bury it, I said.

Yuri saying we erase anything that looks bad.

My hand rubbed the edge of the cassette.

My fingers left all the smudges.

Elliot, we do this to protect people.

Marta, we do this to protect the company

and the community.

If you hand this to the police, records will leak.

You understand that Klein looked between us.

I worked for the county, he said.

I'm not a company man.

If something anomalous is in evidence,

I take it through to proper channels.

Attention shifted into anger and back

into suspicion like a faulty circuit.

Marta's jaw tightened, cleaners fingers curled.

I kept thinking of the woman's name

and the river street and the way she had sounded

like someone who had run out of rat.

We transferred the cassette to a surveillance shelf

when I stayed with the playback deck.

I fed a suspect tape into the machine,

more out of habit than planning and press play.

The recorded voice started with a breath

and then named a mug on the desk.

I had not realized I was holding.

There is a chipped coffee mug.

The voice out, dry and patient.

You keep tapping your left index finger twice.

Your watch faces cracked.

Dawn teabling at the window.

The tape named what I was doing as I listened.

I looked at my hand and saw my finger tap in the wood.

I looked up and saw Marta's shoulders tense.

An emotional lurch.

I could not name pushed through me.

That became alarm in a single motion.

I jerked the headphones away

and the voice kept listening things

that were happening even after I unplugged the device.

The room felt watched and knocked by person

who could be asked to stop.

That's impossible.

Marta, that's audio bleed or a feedback loop.

Old equipment plays back no sometimes.

Playing crossed his arms.

The log shows this tape was routed here

15 minutes ago from a municipal locker.

The origin trace is odd.

I set up a live trace because I could not stop moving.

I patched a loop into the internal network

and watched a monitor produce a visual

that looked like bat handwriting.

Multiple numbers, duplicate call entries,

timestamps that have alapt instead of running in sequence.

One line flyers originating inside our own building.

It's coming from inside the building, I said.

My hands were steady, but my voice dropped.

The traces internal Marta check again

have wasted not ask.

It ordered.

I checked again.

The line blinks steady.

The trace led to a service conduit

and then to a junction under the floor

behind the equipment room.

We moved as a unit.

All of us aware of the brightness

of the fluorescent lights and the slap of our shoes.

Clined unlocked a maintenance door.

Marta held the clipboard in front of her locker shield.

I followed the wiring with a flashlight

beam pinned to the floor.

The corridor, stank of duct sealant, and winter rain.

My chest tightened in the rational part

of me kept naming steps to take.

Follow the wiring, locate the panel, secure the source.

Suspicion pushed me forward.

After that, guilt slid in.

Guilt for the tape to head not handed over.

Guilt for the tape I had kept.

We unlocked the equipment room

and found headphones playing on an empty bench.

A single set of over earcans lay

on a catastrophic metal cart

and from them my own voice poured into the room.

I kept it.

I kept the tape.

I couldn't, he followed the order.

I ate the voice and the headphones said words.

I had not spoken in full that night

and then continued into sentences.

I had no memory of forming.

Marta burst in behind me and saw me freeze.

A face run hard enough to cut light.

L it she said stop.

Step away from that.

Now I fumbled to pull the headphones off.

The voice did not stop.

It kept narrating actions as soon

I had taken and plans I had never voiced.

The recordings were not replaying colors anymore.

They were replaying listeners.

It mirrors the listener, I said.

My mouth felt raw at the recordings

mimic the person who listens.

Marta stared at me.

Client half laughed, a sound that held no humor.

How do you expect me to contain

something that records our choices?

Marta, if this spreads people panic.

If it leaks, the company dies.

Client, we document, we secure,

we inform the proper legal channels.

We did not let a private enterprise delete evidence.

The argument skated into a fast exchange.

You re-throwing away protocol, client snapped.

You re-going to delete evidence.

You re-calling law when you mean headlines.

Marta fired back.

L it, sell everything and hand it to record.

I won TB party to cover a client.

The back and forth for short and jagged.

Each name landed like a small punch.

Marta slid a sticky note from her clipboard

and wrote something with a dot of nail-clicking the paper.

In the middle of the fight, the speaker's buzzed

and the headphones played a voice

that leaned forward and named three things in the room.

Marta smold above her eyebrow,

the dendin' climbs cruzaki,

and the dendt on my thermos lid.

It then set, plain,

model order, deletion.

Client will hesitate.

L it will copy one tape.

Everything stopped.

The three of us looked at each other.

Marta's hands went white in the clipboard.

Client's jaw set.

I did the only thing that did not feel like surrender.

I swapped two casthets and a fly sliding afresh,

labeled archive or copy into the one Marta had marked a burge.

My fingers left this mirror of oil on the label.

That minute was a turning point.

The spission shifted to fear

and then to a brittle kind of resolve.

I did not speak my resolve aloud.

I moved with a small deliberate motion

and kept my mouth closed.

The tape I placed in my pocket was a deception and a promise.

We returned to the control room.

Marta restarted the reduction processing

and gave orders and clit sentences.

See every tape from the locker, she said.

Wipe the redundant servers,

re-index the public logs,

climb over see this.

L it, hand over any physical copies you have,

climb hesitated.

He looked at me and his face softened

enough that I felt the temptation

to hand him the secret tape and a must leave.

Deputy client, Marta,

if you want to file a report,

do it with record sealed.

Now media, no leaks,

climb worked at the console and tapped the hee hee

and can take this into evidence

and we can file an incident report.

It doesn't have to go public.

Marta's lips thinned,

we will have a corporate representative

performer reduction review.

No outside access without corporate approval.

That's final,

they argued in short rounds, I let them.

My mind kept replaying the equipment room

and the way my voice had said things I had not spoken.

The recordings matched the listener,

the shifted everything I thought I knew

about what made a call a call.

During the purge, people moved like,

while drilled machines.

Marta dictated file numbers,

client checked, enters on his pad.

I clopped through the servers

and discreetly copied the one cassette I had hidden

in my pocket onto a fresh shell.

I worked with tools I had put on the shelf line

to go for quiet tasks.

Splicing tape, small precision screwdrivers,

a label maker.

At one point, Marta barked,

Elliot stopped fiddling

and hand over any physical media.

Now there were three sharp lines of dialogue.

Client, Elliot, listen to me.

Give me anything you have,

I opened my mouth and closed it.

Then I did what the voice in the headset had said I would do.

I slid a seal cassette across the table to climb,

keeping the copied shell hidden under my jacket.

The client took it with a practice motion.

He said it under his arm.

He clicked his pen and said,

I'll escort this to her cause myself.

I'll log it, I'll seal it.

He did the right thing handing it to me, Elliot.

Marta watched him,

and then she turned to the console to start the purge.

Her fingers moved across keys

and the monitor spun up reduction software

that spat lines of code and black bars.

She tapped a command

and the server began to scrub duplicates.

She did not look at client when she said,

we finished this now.

Pine walked out with the cassette,

promising official procedure.

He left a building carrying evidence

in the weight of a promise.

Marta locked the archive door

and began to feed tapes into a shredder

for fuzz-marked for purge.

The room smelled of hot plastic and metal.

I stood at the console and watched the numbers countdown.

My throat felt rural.

The copied shell under my jacket

lay cold against my ribs like a second pulse.

I thought about leaving it in my locker

in a bank envelope, sending a tour reporter.

I thought about handing it over to Client when he returned.

When Client came back, he looked thinner

and worn in a way that much mine.

Eh?

They want to let me out with more than a seal chain.

Records took custody and issued a hold.

I spoke with Sergeant Paulson.

He'll review it.

He paused looking like he had swallowed something.

Marta folded her arms and said, that settled then.

Records will contain it.

We will not have a public incident.

No one else needs to know.

Client's doll moved.

If something illegal occurred tampering with evidence

we'll have to investigate.

I can file a complaint about an authorized reduction

if necessary.

Marta's response was called, then do your job, deputy.

My job is to contain harm.

You do yours.

We'll cooperate on legal lines.

The moral collapse came sharp and clinical.

Marta held the reduction process like a scalpel.

Client stood in the door.

We like a man who knew the right thing

and could not press it into being.

I felt both of them like two hands holding a rope.

I had to walk across.

I slipped out to my car during dawn.

I wanted Aaron a chance to think without fluorescent lights.

I sat behind the wheel and pulled the carpet

set from under my deck.

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Good.

My phone lit up.

There was a voicemail from my own number

with a time stamp two minutes earlier.

My thumb hovered and I pressed play.

The voice on the message was not my recorded voice.

It sounded like the same woman who had named the river street.

Common close to the mic.

Elit she said.

You did what you could.

Do not speak of what you heard on tea.

Give it away.

Keep the coffee sealed.

They will come to look for it if you talk.

Drive away now and do not call anyone.

I hit stop and held the phone in my palm like it was a live thing.

The message had a sharp instruction

that felt like both a warning and a cage.

I thought of the tape in my glove compartment

and the way Klan had taken the sealed shell records.

I thought of Marta's decision to purge servers

of Klan's hesitation of how the recordings mirrored listeners.

A final twist came unmoved from ceremony.

I drove back to the building.

I walked in without knocking.

The control room was half empty.

What stood by the console face set.

Klan's cruiser was gone.

The shredder sat like a dentist relic.

I pushed my jacket aside and sit the carpet

cassette in the desperate weeness.

Model looked at the shell.

Her eyes narrowed.

She, you shouldn't, he have it.

You disobeyed my order, I said.

You would have destroyed everything.

I could he let that be the only record.

Pline returned then, not in uniform.

He stood with his hands in his pockets.

He I checked with the county.

Records filed a restricted hold.

We have a procedure.

If you hand that to me,

L it, it becomes evidence.

If you don't, T, I can T protect you.

Mod is step forward.

She put her hand on the tape

like she wanted to claim it.

She, L it, you don't understand the reach.

We will stop it.

We'll stop this bread.

If corporate finds out it leaked,

there will be panic.

There will be lawsuits.

There will be layoffs.

Klan looked at motto and then at me.

I'm not here for the company.

I'm here because someone might be getting hurt.

If these recordings can observe a listener,

that's a public safety issue.

We handle it through the law.

There was a short argument then,

fast and jagged three to five lines each.

Marta, Klan, L it.

Marta, containment is safety.

Klan truth is safety.

I said nothing until Klan if he could log the cassette.

I handed it over.

Because that's laid across the desk

like an object that had carried a secret long enough.

Klan clicked on a recorder and said,

this is deputy Klan taking custody of evidence.

Shane begins now.

He's spoken the measured terms of his job.

Marta watched him sign the entry.

Her chin lifted like a woman closing a door on her own choice.

She, I will document the reduction request.

I will explain the steps.

We follow corporate policy, Klan.

We will also file this with the county

and request for answer imaging.

If there's anything criminal,

we will execute warrants,

Marta's shoulders sagged a fraction.

Later, in the parking lot,

she handed me a small slip of paper and said,

Elliot, you did not follow protocol

and you could have put people at risk.

But you saved one thing, keep your head down.

Don't make anything worse.

I folded the paper into my wallet.

I thought of my mother's maiden name

and the reverse treat and the woman's voice.

I thought of how the recordings mirror the listener

and how that changed culpability.

The guilt I had carried shifted into a different shape.

The knowledge that my decision had consequences

that might not stop me from sleeping

but might stop other people from harm.

Plain left with the cassette in a sealed envelope.

Marta returned to the console

and finished reduction runs

until the monitors blinked and called.

She called corporate and said the word she had been trained to say,

we contain a system of regularity.

We acted to preserve dider integrity.

Records will be sealed.

I drove home at a quiet speed.

The morning light made strips

of silver across the windshield.

I put the copper shell on a shoebox in my apartment

and slid the lid on.

I left it sealed in a place a thief might ignore

under all receipts and a dent aton.

The tape felt heavier because it carried choice now.

That night I could not sleep.

The phone buzz once on notification

from a local bulletin I had never read.

An article had appeared

about a municipal equipment failure.

The town official quoted corporate lines about containment.

The article included a photograph

of our building and a vague sentence

about service irregularities.

It named no names.

The story felt like a window

that had been covered with a blind.

I drove back to the exchange

the next morning to return a badge.

Marta met me in the hallway.

She looked older.

She, you could have handled this differently.

You could have gotten us both fired, I said.

Maybe.

I couldn't let them delete every trace.

She exhaled a short noise.

Elliott, I protected the company

because if this goes public in the wrong way,

people panic.

If it leaks in the wrong way,

the town sews and the injured get nothing.

I didn't choose the easiest option.

I chose what I could justify.

Plankane down the hole with a paper in his hand.

He records completed the forensic imager.

Forensics flied anomalous duplication

across lines and timestamps that shouldn't he exist.

They want to escalate to the state.

They are opening an inquiry.

Marta's face changed.

Her mouth went hard.

She, then we will cooperate

within the legal framework.

We'll provide cuts where necessary.

We will contain the media, a client looked at me.

He did the right thing, giving me that tape.

The county will take over the inquiry.

I can tea promise what they will do.

But you won't be alone in that process.

There was a resolution in the words.

An institutional hound of rather than a tidy victory.

Marta remained in place that day,

but it's way over reduction decisions thened.

Plain file documentation

that placed a hold on corporate purging for the inquiry.

The company instituted a review

and a license from records arrived

with the stamp envelope and a list of protocols

that involved outside oversight.

After the legal wheel started,

some relief spread across me like steadyworm.

The arc of the personal had shifted.

Spission to under deferred to action to relief.

Emotion shifts that change my choices at each step.

I'd acted to preserve evidence.

Marta had acted to preserve company's stability.

Client had acted to preserve lawful order.

Each of us made choices that bent the event

toward accountability rather than erasure.

Two weeks later, I sat in a small room in records

of the forensic tech dean of control playback.

He played the tape I'd hand a climb.

Forensics produced a waveform in a transcription.

The woman on the tape spoke,

but the track contained segments

that match my breathing pattern,

my tapping, the exact rustle of my jacket.

The tech tapped the waveform and said,

this is observer, dependent modulation.

They've record correlated signals

from the listener environment.

We have to call it something provisional.

I felt the old guilt and a new wary steadiness.

We had a label now that could be tested.

Names would follow.

Procedures would be drafted.

The county would recommend oversight.

Marta would need to justify her purchase to report.

Client would testify.

I would appear in depositions.

The choices I made had given the topical legal frame.

On the evening that the record was formally entered,

I sat alone in my cheap kitchen

and took the tape from its shoe-box.

The label read the same as when I had copied it.

An archival scroll and a sticky note with the date.

I press play in an old deck I had kept

for ritual rather than necessity.

The voice came and it did something I had not expected.

It said my name, then listed three people in town

who had received calls this word they had not made.

It named an address on Wilkes Avenue, a diner booth number

and a child's middle name I had never heard.

Then it said, do not tell anyone

about what will happen next week.

The message ended with static

and a single sharp knock on the audio.

I switched the deck off and took the tape into my hands.

I realized I had reached the end of the fight,

not because everything was closed,

but because the evidence had moved

from secrecy into purses.

Modus Parage had been stopped long enough

for G-Purses to act.

Client had taken a stand that meant records now belong

to the state rather than the company.

My guilt remained, but it was puzzled

into things I could address.

Giving testimony, answering questions

and keeping my actions documented.

The recordings would be studied, protocols would change.

People might be protected or harmed by those choices.

I could not pretend I had saved everyone

by copying one set.

What I could do was be accountable

on the open channel now established.

As I drove back to my apartment,

my phone buzzed with a new voicemail.

I listened.

The voice said simply, did not speak

of what will happen next week.

Heaped the tape sealed until they call you.

Drive to the river at dawn.

It ended with a soft exhale.

I start the car and set my phone down.

I did not call anyone.

I drove toward the river at dawn.

I parked, got out and watched the water

grind against the bank.

I felt the cold, concrete shock against my face.

I thought of my mother's maiden name

at the woman I'd said months ago

of Marty's choices of clients

pen clicking the evidence lock.

I placed the seal tape in the shoebox

in the passenger seat and locked the car.

A squad car swept past on the road

and shone its lights for a second and the water.

I watched the reflection break.

A clock's voice from the county had asked me earlier

if I wanted protection.

I said no.

I wanted to be the one to keep the tape safe

because I had already done the wrong

and the right by the same act.

At sun up, I walked to the river age

and left the shoebox in a public locker

behind the municipal pier.

I wrote the locker number on a scrap

and slated under my office keyboard.

Then I walked back to the exchange

and resumed my life with a different burden.

Not the secret of a hidden tape

but the responsibility of participation

in an official process.

I traded one kind of fear for another.

The final concrete action of the chapter was a small one.

I gave a sworn statement to Sergeant Polson

which marked me pleased on temporarily pending

the inquiry and so client receive a commendation

for preserving evidence.

The recordings were now an item of legal import

not only corporate property.

Town would decide what to do with a normalist audio

that to know the listener.

I still sleep with headphones by my bed.

Sometimes I hear a voice in the dark

that states a simple fact.

A fact that I can prove I did not say

and I answer by checking the locks

by writing down times, by locking my conversations.

I do not know whether I did the right thing

for the right reasons.

I know only that when the tape sings

about what a listener will do

and adjust choices into motion.

I locked the shoebox in my car trunk one last time

and slid the key into a drawer at home.

I promised myself I would follow every subpoena,

every forensic request and every lawful call

for testimony that is concrete, that is action.

The tape sits now under an official hold at records.

The county has a chain of custody.

Marda is under review.

Plain is on the witness list.

I am on the list of people

who will be called to explain

the night shift decisions I made.

I will show up.

At dawn I left my apartment to go to the county office

my phone bus once and then went quiet.

The message indicator stayed lit.

I looked at the screen and there was no number

only my own voicemail icon.

I let it sit.

I have learned to let things be recorded

and checked under someone else's light.

I walked out the door coat button

a small shoebox key in my pocket

and a record of every choice.

I felt guilt and suspicion

and a cautious steadiness that came

from making a decision and facing its consequences.

I did not know whether silence would keep anyone safe

and you were only that I would not let

the last piece of evidence be burned without a hearing.

That was the choice I could make

and the act and I would keep making.

And that is the end.

Thank you for listening

and I will see you in the next one.

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