My phone screen glows in my hand, I read the message again.

BRING A FLASHLIGHT.
DO NOT TURN ON ANY SWITCHES.
ENTER THROUGH THE LOADING BAY.
BOX IS IN ROOM 3B, TOP OF THE STAIRS.
DO NOT OPEN IT.
DO NOT ANSWER ANY VOICES THAT SPEAK YOUR NAME, YOU WILL BE ALONE.

There was a winking emoji after that, like it was a joke.

It did not feel like a joke when the transfer confirmation hit my account, half up front, half on delivery. More money than I had seen in one place since I got laid off.

The first thing I notice is that the building looks like it is trying to sink into the ground. The bricks bow inward, the windows are blind and dust filmed, and someone has spray painted a crooked halo over the loading bay door like the place is a dead saint. It is one of those old industrial shells that sits behind everything you actually recognize, behind the retail park, behind the train tracks, behind the bit of town you admit you live in.

I stuff the phone back in my pocket. The November air has that metallic cold that feels like it is already inside your bones. I smell oil, damp wood, and something else, something like burnt plastic that has been left to rot.

I thumb the flashlight on.

The beam cuts across the loading bay door. The chain is already off, the padlock hanging open, the metal mouth waiting.

My hand is shaking, so I tell myself it is just the cold, and not the way the ad was worded, or the way the man on the phone had said my name without ever asking for it.

Standing here, I keep replaying how I got to this point.

Three weeks earlier, I had been counting coins on a greasy diner table, pretending I had a plan. I’d lost my job at the distribution center eight months back. “Automation”, management had said, as if the new machines had just wandered in off the street and demanded work. I did the usual circuit after that: CVs, emails, ignored applications, “we’ve decided to move forward with other candidates”, all stacking up like unpaid bills.

They cut the electric to my flat two months ago. I showered at the gym. I charged my phone in the library. I slept on a mattress that felt like it was remembering better days.

By the time I saw the ad, my bank account was a countdown. It was buried on a classifieds site I’d never heard of, the kind of place where people sell “mystery boxes” and questionable “vintage” electronics:

DISCREET COURIER NEEDED - ONE NIGHT ONLY
Contents not disclosed. No questions. No record.
Cash payment. Must follow instructions exactly.
Reply with phone number.

There was a photo attached: a cardboard box on a bare concrete floor. No labels. No scale. Just a box and the shadow it threw.

I should’ve scrolled past. I should’ve gone back to looking for legitimate work, something with uniforms and HR departments and bullshit about “family culture”.

Instead, I sent my number.

The call came an hour later. No caller ID, just Unknown.

The voice was male, but run through something that made it sound flattened, like it was coming from underwater or through a badly tuned radio.

“Is this Daniel?” it asked.

I’d never given them my name.

I pulled the phone away, checked the screen like that would help, then brought it back up.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Good. Do you have a car?”

“I can get one”

I couldn’t. But I figured that if someone was paying that much money, they could spare some for a rental. Or maybe I could borrow my cousin’s. Or maybe I’d drag the damn box down the street myself.

“You’ll get an address,” the voice said. “You’ll go there tonight. You’ll pick up a box. You’ll take it to another address. You will not open it. You will not look inside it. You will not ask questions about it. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” I said again, because what else was there to say?

“You will receive payment in two parts: half now, half on delivery. No negotiation”

There was a chime from my banking app. I glanced at the screen and felt my heart trip. It was real. It shouldn’t have been, but it was.

“Text with instructions in one hour,” the voice said. “You must arrive at the warehouse between 1:00 and 1:10 a.m. Not before. Not after”

“The warehouse?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

The line crackled. I heard something like a breath, but it was wrong, like the sound was playing backwards. Then it cut out. I stared at the black screen, thumb hovering like I might call back. Instead, I opened my banking app again and stared at the number there until it started to feel like it belonged to someone else.

Now it’s 1:04 a.m. The road behind me is empty. The rest of the city feels like a rumour. I slide the loading bay door up. It shrieks along the track in a way that sounds far too loud for a dead place. My flashlight beam cuts through dust that hangs in the air like it does not want to fall.

The inside smells stronger than the outside. Wet concrete, old oil, rust, and that burned plastic rot. The light beam passes over an abandoned forklift, stacks of pallets, metal shelving bent into tired shapes.

The instructions had been oddly specific:

ENTER THROUGH LOADING BAY.
WALK STRAIGHT 40 METERS.
DO NOT LOOK LEFT.
DO NOT LOOK RIGHT.
AT 40 METERS, TURN RIGHT.
STAIRWELL IS AHEAD. BOX IS IN ROOM 3B.
DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING ELSE.
DO NOT STAND ON ANY CHALK MARKS.

I check the little distance app I downloaded specially for this. I feel stupid doing it, like I am pretending to be a professional, but I also really do not want to miscount.

The floor is a long stretch of concrete. Faded tyre marks. Dark stains. Something that might be mold. Or might not. I step inside and pull the door down behind me. The sound of it closing is huge. When it slams into place, the building swallows the echo, and what is left is my breathing and the tiny high whine of my flashlight. I hold the beam dead ahead and start walking, counting under my breath, watching the app tick up.

Ten meters. Fifteen.

At twenty meters, something moves on my right.

Just a whisper at the edge of the light. The instinct to look is instant, the same automatic twist you make when someone says your name in a crowd.

I do not look.

I keep the light pointed forward so rigidly that my wrist hurts. I let the thing on my right scratch around in the dark without a shape. I feel it standing still watching the side of my face. Warehouses get rats, big ones, bold ones. I tell myself it is only that, claws on concrete, teeth in rot, a shadow that wants no part of me.

“Straight,” I mutter. “Straight, straight, straight”

The app ticks, twenty five, thirty.

On my left, something scrapes slowly along the concrete, like fingers dragging across the floor. The sound crawls up my spine. It is thin and dry, like whatever is making it has too many joints. It’s just rats, I tell myself. The place is old, rotting, full of gaps and rubbish. Rats fight, rats drag things, rats make noises that sound like anything if you let the dark name them. I do not let it. I focus on my feet. One in front of the other. Thirty four. Thirty five.

A voice snaps out of the dark to my right, “Daniel.. You are early”

I jolt so hard the flashlight beam jumps up the wall. My stomach drops. For a second my knees go loose, like my body is already trying to get away without asking permission.

It sounds like my brother.

My brother lives three hundred miles away, and I have not spoken to him since before I lost the job. There is no reason for him to be in this warehouse at one o clock in the morning, and absolutely no reason for his voice to sound like it is coming from a cracked speaker.

Every part of me wants to bolt. I know the door is behind me. I know I could turn, run, spill out into the cold and tell myself I did the sensible thing.

But my feet do not move that way.

Maybe it is shock. Maybe it is the way hunger makes you brave in stupid directions. Maybe it is the money already sitting in my account, heavy as a hook in my gut. If I leave now, I go back to the dark flat and the mattress and the library sockets. If I leave now, I still wake up tomorrow broke, except with a new kind of shame.

So I keep walking.

I bite down on the inside of my cheek so hard I taste blood. The instructions pulse in my head, do not answer any voices that speak your name.

The voice laughs. The sound skips, repeats half a second, like a glitching tape: “Dan, Dan, Daniel. You are ea, ea, early”

Thirty seven. Thirty eight. Thirty nine.

I tell myself it is a trick of acoustics, a squat kid outside with a speaker, some drunk bastard who thinks this is funny. I tell myself anything that lets me put one foot in front of the other.

The urge to turn and see is a physical pull on my neck, like someone has hooked a line into the tendons there and is gently reeling. I hate how fast my body wants to obey it.

At forty meters, I stop.

The sound on my left halts too. The laughter to my right goes quiet, cut clean off, like someone hit mute.

For a second, everything is just breath and dust and the quiet whine of old metal settling.

I pivot the light to my right.

There is a corridor where there should just be wall.

The warehouse layout does not make sense. From outside, this should be the far end, a solid rectangle of brick. But my beam hits a hallway, narrow, with walls made of something dull and grey, not quite metal, not quite concrete. A row of doors stretches down it, all identical, all closed. Each one has a number stenciled at eye level: 1A, 1B, 1C.

I do not let the light drift back to where the voice came from. I will not give it that.

The text said, at forty meters turn right. Stairwell ahead.

So I turn right and step into the impossible corridor.

The temperature drops as soon as I cross the invisible line. My breath fogs in front of me. The smell changes too, less of the oil and rust, more of that burnt plastic odor, sharpened with something almost sweet.

As I pass the first door, I notice there is something taped to it. A laminated card, the kind you see on office storage.

ARTIFACT 1A
CATEGORY: GLASS
STATUS: UNSTABLE - DO NOT OBSERVE YOUR REFLECTION

I keep walking.

Door 1B has a card that says:

ARTIFACT 1B
CATEGORY: ORGANIC
STATUS: QUIESCENT - DO NOT INHALE WHEN IT BREATHES

The strange cards keep lining the doors as I go, a steady procession of neat laminated warnings that get darker the further I walk, like the corridor is cataloguing itself in real-time and expecting me to understand.

One of the doors further down thuds, once, as if something inside threw itself gently at it.

My skin prickles. The flashlight beam feels too thin, too small, like the dark is thick enough to push back.

I do not stop. I do not read the rest. I just follow the text directions, stairwell ahead, like it is the only real thing.

At the end of the corridor, a metal stairwell angles up into shadow. Someone has chalked symbols on the first step, a ring, a triangle, a set of numbers that look like coordinates or a broken date. Some of the chalk marks are smeared, like someone stepped on them.

The instructions had been clear, do not stand on any chalk marks.

I angle my foot to miss them and put my weight on the bare metal instead.

The stair creaks, long and low, like a voice deciding whether to answer.

From behind me, down the corridor, the voice that sounds like my brother says, softer now, “You do not have to go up there, you know”

I tighten my grip on the flashlight and take the next step.

The stairs do not end where they should.

From the outside, this place is maybe three stories tall. Four, at most. By the time I stop counting steps, I am sure I have gone higher than that, and my legs tell me I have gone much further.

Then the stairwell simply opens.

One moment it is metal steps and flaking paint. The next, the walls fall away and I am standing at the lip of something that should not fit inside a building. The top feels like the mouth of a huge well, but part of that mouth has caved in, a ragged bite taken out of the rim. Broken concrete and rusted rebar hang over the drop like snapped teeth, and loose grit keeps skittering down into the dark, never finding a bottom.

My flashlight picks up rough stone under my feet. Not concrete, actual rock, uneven and cold. I take a careful step forward, and the tiny sound of my boot scuffing the ground explodes into an echo that rolls out and out into the dark.

It comes back slow, like it had to travel a long way to remember me.

I freeze, listening. No drip of water. No hum of machinery. Just that echo breathing itself out. The silence afterwards feels thick and padded, like the air is packed with insulation.

I sweep the light ahead.

It does not find a wall.

The beam goes and goes until it frays into nothing. The ceiling is lost in shadow. The place feels like a cave pretending to be a room, or a room pretending to be a cave. It smells like dust and cold metal and something faintly organic, like mushrooms or old soil.

I turn in a slow circle, hand tight on the flashlight.

Behind me, where the stairwell opens out, someone has nailed a metal sign into the rock. The letters are industrial, stenciled in black:

LEVEL 3 - B WING

My light drifts forward again and finally catches on something that does not belong here. Far ahead, in the middle of all that emptiness, is a house. Not a model. Not a shed. A small wooden house like something you would see at the edge of a village, sloping roof, small porch, a crooked chimney. It sits alone on the stone like it grew there. A warm window glows yellow, a tiny square of domestic light in the middle of this impossible cavern.

For a second my brain refuses it. It keeps trying to turn the shape into a stack of crates or a trick of shadow, but the details are too stubborn. A faint curl of smoke from the chimney rises a few feet and then simply stops, like it hits an invisible ceiling.

Next to the house, on the side facing me, there is a figure.

It stands very still, a thin bent outline against the warmth. My light barely reaches that far, I cannot see the face, just the shape of a person in a dress or coat that hangs straight down.

I know they are staring at me. Even from here, I can feel it, the prickle between the shoulder blades, the tightness at the back of my neck. The house is a pin of light in all this black space, and I am the only thing moving toward it.

I take a step.

The echo snaps out again, sharper this time, like the cave is paying more attention.

As the sound slaps back at me, the figure moves.

It does not wave. It does not call out. It just turns, slow and deliberate, the way very old people turn when they are careful not to fall. The movement is wrong though, too smooth, like someone rotating a cardboard cutout.

Then it shuffles toward the front door and vanishes inside.

The porch light flickers once and steadies.

I lick my lips, realize my mouth is dry. My phone is a rectangle of weight in my pocket. I know if I pull it out, the instructions will be the same, box is in room 3B, top of the stairs.

This has to be it. I do not see any other doors, any other rooms. Just the house and the endless stone.

I start walking.

Every step is an echo that gives away my position. It is like coming down a long hospital corridor at night, you know whoever is at the other end can hear you long before you see their face.

The closer I get, the more inconsistent the scale feels.

From far away, the house looked toy like, like I would reach it in a minute or two. But the walk stretches, the cave floor going on and on under my feet. My legs start to ache. My breath fogs, hanging low.

At some point, I realize there are markings on the stone, chalk again, faint white scars on the grey.

Circles, spirals, jagged shapes like broken letters. Some look fresh, some smeared, as if something heavy had been dragged across them. One is a perfect ring drawn around a crack in the rock, with two words written beneath it in careful block letters:

KEEP OFF THE SEAM.

I angle my feet to avoid all of them, picking my way across clear patches. Twice I nearly put my heel down on something that looks like a child hopscotch grid, each square filled with a different symbol. I do not know what happens if I mess up, and I do not want to find out.

As I get closer, I see above the door, nailed where a normal house might have its number plaque, a metal plate identical to the one back at the stairwell.

ROOM 3B ARTIFACT STORAGE - DOMESTIC

That burnt plastic smell is stronger here, threaded now with something homely, boiled water, dust, a hint of stale sugar.

The front door is half open, spilling warm light onto the rock.

I stop at the edge of the little yard of flat stone in front of the porch. Up close, the house looks old but solid, boards weathered, paint peeling in long curls. A thin curtain hangs in the window, patterned with faded flowers that do not quite match any plant I recognize.

There is a rocking chair on the porch. It rocks once, very gently, as if someone just rose from it. There is no breeze.

I climb the three steps, avoiding a chalk cross on the second, and stop at the door.

“Hello?” I call, before I can talk myself out of it.

My voice sounds small after all the echoes. Here, close to the house, the sound seems to die quicker, like the walls are absorbing it.

No response.

I tap my knuckles lightly against the wood. It is warmer than I expect.

“Hello?” I try again, quieter. “I, I am here to pick up a box”

Still nothing.

The gap between door and frame is wide enough to see a slice of inside, a table, a wall, a lamp with a yellow shade. Shadows move, soft and slow, like something shifting just out of sight.

The instructions said nothing about not going in.

I push the door.

It swings inward with a reluctant creak. As I cross the threshold, a small mean part of my mind whispers that this is the moment people shout at in films. Do not go in there. Turn around. Run.

But rent is due three weeks ago, and half the money is already sitting in my account, and the other half is dangling just out of reach like a prize on a game show. So I step inside.

The warmth hits me first. It is not stifling, just comfortably above the chill of the cave. The air smells strongly of tea, and something under that, old paper, mothballs, the faint sweetness of overripe fruit.

The place is simple. But not in any normal way.

The room is small and square, with a low ceiling that feels lower than it should after all that open space outside. The walls are white, but every now and then there is a hairline crack that does not look like a crack, more like someone drew a line with a pencil then changed their mind and tried to erase it.

The furniture is sparse. A table in the center. Two chairs. A sideboard. A lamp. No clutter, no piles of magazines, no random junk.

What there is, though, is wrong.

On one wall hangs a cuckoo clock with no hands. The pendulum swings steadily, but there is no tick, no tock, just the faint noise of something breathing inside the wooden case.

On the sideboard, instead of photos or ornaments, there are three glass jars. Each has a label written in neat handwriting.

The first says, LEFTOVERS. Inside is a coil of something like hair, but it moves occasionally, like it is rearranging itself.

The second says, VISITORS. It is empty, except for a single housefly. The fly looks dead, lying on its back, but its wings beat every few seconds, slowly, like it is practicing.

The third jar has no label. It is full of sugar cubes. I think. When I look straight at them, they are perfectly normal. When I look away and back again, there are more.

There is an old woman at the table.

She sits with both hands wrapped around a steaming mug, staring at the door like she has been expecting me. Her skin is lined in the way of people who have spent most of their lives outside. Her hair is a thin grey halo. Her eyes are pale and slightly cloudy, but sharp in a way that makes me feel like a specimen.

“Come in, dear”, she says. Her voice is soft, dry, a little frayed at the edges. No accent I can place, just a generic local sort of old lady voice. “Close the door, you are letting the cold in”

I close it without thinking. The latch clicks with a little finality that makes my stomach tighten.

“Sit”, she says, nodding at the empty chair across from her.

On the table in front of that chair is another mug. Steam rises from it in a straight line. The liquid inside is too dark to be just tea. It is almost black, with a faint oily sheen like petrol in a puddle. The surface does not ripple, even when I move the table slightly with my knee.

“I, I am here for a box,” I say. That much feels safe. “Room 3B”

She smiles. It is not unfriendly, exactly. Just practiced.

“Oh, I know why you are here”, she says. “You are right on time”. She tilts her head, bird like. “Your shoes are wet”.

I glance down. The soles are dry. When I look back up, she is still smiling, her eyes unfocused somewhere to the left of my face.

“Long walk”, I manage.

“Always is”, she says. “Sit. Have some tea. You look frozen through”

I sit, more because it feels like part of a process than because I want to. The chair is sturdier than it looks. The wood creaks once, then adjusts to my weight like it is glad to have a purpose.

Up close, the old woman smells faintly of lavender and something metallic.

She nudges the mug toward me with a bony finger. Her nails are neatly trimmed, stained a yellow that might be from nicotine or from something worse.

“Go on”, she says. “It is for you”.

The steam curls up into my face. It has the smell of over brewed tea and something else. Something sweet, but not in a comforting way. More like the sweetness of fruit that has just started to rot.

I wrap my hands around the mug without lifting it. It is hot, but the heat does not feel like it is coming through the ceramic properly. It feels like it is sitting on the surface, pretending.

“You came a long way”, she says. “Down”, she adds, with a small nod, as if correcting herself. “It is polite to drink what you are offered”.

The urge to ask what it is rises, but I swallow it. No questions. I have already pushed my luck with “I am here for a box”. That felt dangerously close.

“I am working”, I say instead. “After, maybe”.

She laughs softly. The sound is wrong, like it is coming a fraction of a second before her mouth moves.

“Oh, you are working”, she murmurs. “You have been working ever since they let you go, dear. Some folk do not get a day off after that. You just do not see the clock anymore”.

My grip tightens on the mug. My heart jumps once, sharp and rabbit fast.

“How..”, I choke it off, teeth clicking together. The question hangs there unsaid, buzzing like the fly in the jar.

Her eyes sharpen on my face. For a second, they look almost fully clear.

“That is better”, she says. “You mind your instructions. Good boy”.

The words hit a nerve, the way managers used to talk down to us on the floor, the way people on the phone sounded when they said I was not the right fit. I swallow it. The money in my account weighs the anger down.

“The box..” I say, because that at least is a statement. “I was told it would be here”.

“Oh, it is here”, she says. Her fingers drum once on the table, the knuckles clicking softly. “You will take it along, will you not, nice and careful now. No peeking. No asking. No listening when it remembers your name”

She says my name then, clearly, like tasting it, “Won’t you, Daniel?”

My skin goes cold under my clothes.

Her voice saying it and the voice on the phone saying it and the voice in the dark downstairs saying it all line up in my head into one long continuous sound.

I focus on the mug. I do not look up. I do not answer.

The house itself seems to hold its breath.

After a moment, the old woman nods, satisfied, as if I have passed a test I did not know I was taking.

“Tea is getting cold”, she says mildly. “Shame to waste it. But you always were stubborn”.

Always. The word sticks in my head like a burr.

She stands up slowly. The chair scrapes back without actually touching the floor. I see her legs under the table, thin, wrapped in thick wool stockings, feet in house slippers. The slippers do not quite line up with where they meet the floorboards.

“The box is in the back room”, she says, walking toward a door I had not noticed before. It is set into the wall behind her, low and narrow, like a cupboard door but with a handle like a safe. “I will show you. Do not worry, dear. It is only heavy if you think about what is in it”

She puts her hand on the handle.

My fingers tighten on the mug.

The steam has stopped rising, but when I glance down, the liquid inside is still rolling gently, as if something under the surface is moving around.

The back room is the kind of empty that feels intentional.

No shelves, no crates, no filing cabinets. Just four bare concrete walls and a single bulb hanging from the ceiling on a frayed cord. The bulb gives off a low, steady light that is too bright for how dim it actually is. There is no switch. It is simply on.

The floor is concrete like the warehouse downstairs, but smoother, almost polished. No stains. No chalk marks. A clean slate.

Except for the box.

It sits dead center on the floor, exactly like the photo from the listing, a plain cardboard box with its flaps taped shut. Seeing it here, in this place that should not exist, makes it somehow more real and less real at the same time.

Up close, I see details the photo never showed.

The cardboard is not the flimsy supermarket kind. It is thick, almost like thin wood pressed into shape. The edges are scuffed and darkened with age and handling, but not torn. Someone has re taped it at least once, there are older layers of tape, yellowed and brittle, half peeled and covered over with fresh strips.

There is residue from old labels on one side, a rectangle of lighter brown where something used to be, corners still clinging. Whatever information was there has been scraped away with something sharp, leaving faint gouges in the surface. No barcodes. No addresses. Just a few printed characters on one corner in faded black ink:

3B 01

No this side up, no fragile symbol. No sense of humor.

There are no ventilation holes. No seams beyond the normal box folds. No sound from inside. When I step close enough to cast a shadow over it, the box does not hum or pulse or do any of the things my nerves are waiting for it to do.

It just sits, patiently still.

“Go on, dear”, the old woman says behind me. Her voice is smaller in here, like the room eats it. “It is the right one”.

I crouch, joints protesting. Up close, the tape across the top looks too perfect, no wrinkles, no bubbles. Like it was laid by a machine, not hands.

Part of my brain waits for a smell, rot, chemicals, anything, but there is nothing. Just cardboard. Maybe a faint hint of dust.

I slide my hands under it and lift.

It is lighter than it looks. Not suspiciously light, just not matching what I expected. My muscles brace for a certain weight and meet less. It throws me off balance for a second, like stepping onto a stair that is not where you thought it was.

Something shifts inside. Not loudly. Not even clearly. Just a soft delayed suggestion of movement, like whatever is in there took a second to remember gravity.

I freeze with it halfway to my chest.

The urge to tilt it, to see if the weight rolls, is strong. To tap the side and listen. To shake it just once and prove it is nothing alive.

Do not open the box. Do not ask questions.

I bring it in against my chest. The cardboard feels faintly warm, but that might just be my own body heat. The edges press into my forearms. There is no obvious top or bottom marked, so I decide the taped seam is up and leave it at that.

When I turn, the old woman is still in the doorway, watching me with that politely interested expression people wear at funerals.

“Not heavy, is it?” she says.

I do not answer. I just nod once.

“Good” She steps back to let me pass. “You will not be going out by the stairs”

Something in my gut tightens. The box feels more solid in my arms.

“The instructions said..” I start, then bite my tongue. I almost say top of the stairs. I almost turn it into a question.

“The stairs only go one way”, she says mildly, as if this is obvious. “Up, up, up. They get hungry on the way back down”

She does not elaborate. She does not have to. My imagination supplies enough.

We leave the back room. As soon as we cross the threshold, the bulb in the empty room goes out with a quiet pop. In the main room, the table is just as we left it, two chairs, the mugs, the jars. The surface of my untouched tea is perfectly still now, like cooled tar. A thin skin has formed over it, faintly wrinkled.

The old woman notices me looking.

“Too late for that”, she says. “Shame. It remembers when people are rude”.

I shift the box in my arms. “I should go”, I say. That much feels safe.

“Oh yes”, she says. “You should. Out you go, then”

She leads the way to the front door. Her slippers do not quite sync with her steps. The room seems a fraction smaller than when I came in.

When she opens the door, the cavern outside is not the same blank dark space I walked into earlier.

A path has appeared.

It starts at the porch and stretches out into the black, a narrow strip of pale stone blocks set into the rough cave floor. On either side, at regular intervals, stand iron poles about shoulder height, each topped with a fire torch.

The flames burn high and steady, with none of the fuss of real fire. No smoke. Just hot orange and white light, snapping quietly. The torches run into the distance, paired like a hesitant parade, until they shrink to pinpricks and then vanish in the dark.

Beyond the furthest pins of light, something huge waits.

At first it looks like the wall of the cave, a darker shape in the dark. But as my eyes adjust, the shape resolves into lines and curves.

It is a ship.

A massive hull rises from a black expanse that might be water or shadow. It is wedged into the stone like it sailed here and then someone drained the sea. The thing is fat bellied and long, like an ark from a childrens book illustration, but stretched, exaggerated. Its flanks are studded with shuttered windows and sealed hatches. Ribs of metal and wood curve along its sides, half rusted, half polished by hands I do not want to imagine.

Along its hull, instead of a name, symbols are carved deep. Some look like letters from alphabets I recognize but mashed together, others like tally marks, others like crude eyes. The bow is shaped into the head of something with too many teeth. Its mouth is shut, for now.

I realize I am holding my breath.

“The ark ship”, the old woman says, like she is pointing out a bus stop. “You will go that way”.

“The staircase..” The word jumps out before I can catch it. My tongue feels like it is acting alone. I swallow the rest.

“Is not for you anymore”, she says. “You would only come back in pieces. Or not in the correct order”. She adjusts the shawl around her shoulders, though I do not remember it being there before. “The night keeper will guide you out. He knows the exits that still work”.

The phrase sits bitter in my mouth even without saying it. I can almost see capital letters hanging over it, like a title someone put on the wrong person.

“The path is yours”, she continues. “Door to door. The torches know the way tonight”. She fixes me with a look that cuts through the cloudy softness of her eyes. “You do not leave the path, dear. Not for voices. Not for shortcuts. Not for anything that looks like home”.

A shiver crawls right through me. The box feels heavier now, like the cardboard has soaked up some of her words.

“What happens if I..”. I stop. That is a question. My teeth click shut.

She smiles, small and tired. “You cannot afford to find out”, she says. “Not with that in your arms and all those debts still weighing you down”.

I do not ask how she knows about the debts.

She reaches out and, very gently, taps one corner of the box with a knuckle.

It makes no sound. The touch does not even dent the cardboard. But my fingers tingle where they grip it, like I have touched a television screen full of static.

“It will try to talk to you when you get closer to him”, she says. “That is its way. Ignore it. Ignore him too, if he starts asking who you are. The night keeper does not get names”. She pats my arm, her hand light and dry.

“Names are the only thing you have that is not rented”.

My throat is dry. The path flickers in my peripheral vision, torches bowing slightly as if in a wind I cannot feel.

“Straight on”, she says. “No counting this time. Just follow the fire. If you think you are lost, you are not. If you are sure you are not, you are. Remember that”

None of this makes me feel better.

“The night ends eventually”, she adds, almost kindly. “It always does. That is the only promise I still believe”. She steps back into the doorway, becoming part of the house again. “Off you go, then. You are being timed”.

That last part hits like a slap.

I step down from the porch, carefully avoiding a chalk ring someone has drawn around the bottom step. When my boot touches the first stone of the path, the nearest torches flare a little, like they are acknowledging me.

Behind me, the house door closes with a small final sound. When I look back, just once, the window is dark. No light. No curtain. Just a square of black set in darker wood.

The ark ship waits at the far end of the trail of fire, huge and patient.

I hitch the box higher in my arms, square my shoulders, and start walking.

The path feels narrower once I am on it.

It is wide enough for my boots, wide enough for me and the box, but not wide enough for mistakes. The stones are lighter than the rest of the cave floor, as if they have been bleached by all the things that tried to step on and did not make it.

The torches crackle as I pass. Each one throws a little circle of light and heat, a bubble of world. Outside those bubbles, there is only thick black. Not the kind of darkness that is just absence, but the kind that feels like it is full of folded up shapes, waiting.

After a dozen paces, I notice a pattern. When I move forward, the torches ahead flare a little brighter. The ones behind me dim. After maybe twenty steps, I risk a look back.

Most of the torches behind are out.

The ones that still burn are faint and distant, as if I have walked miles, not a minute or two. The house is gone. No porch, no crooked window, no old woman. Just flat black behind the weak smear of orange.

I turn back quickly.

The ark ship is still ahead, filling the horizon of this place. Its bulk is more disturbing now that I am getting the scale. Whole streets from my old estate could fit inside its hull. Rows of square windows flicker with dull light, like eyes half asleep.

The path slopes slightly downward. My arms start to ache from the way I am hugging the box. My fingers go a bit numb at the edges, but I do not adjust my grip. It feels wrong to shift it too much, like jostling a sleeping animal.

After a while, the cave smell changes.

It goes damp. Not dripping wet, but the heavy cool damp of a cellar. The air tastes sweet. I hear, faintly, a low churn, like water far below or machinery slow turning.

From the dark to my left, a voice speaks in a casual tone:

“Mate, you have gone the wrong way”

Cold shoots through me. My shoulders jump, and the box jerks in my arms before I clamp it back to my chest. For a second I am sure something is right beside me, breathing into my ear. The torchlight doesn’t reach that side at all, and the blank there feels thick enough to chew.

It sounds like one of the lads from the old job, Darren, with the cracked laugh and the terrible tattoos. My chest tightens. For a half second, I see him in my mind, hi-vis vest, steel toe boots, arms folded as we wait for another delayed truck.

“You do not want the ship”, the voice goes on, closer now. “They are taking the long route tonight. Come off the path, cut through here. There is a lift. Proper exit. I will show you”.

I clamp my jaw shut. Keep walking.

“You hearing me?” it says, a little sharper. “Dan. Daniel. You are not thick. Come on”

There is a faint scuffing sound in the dark to my left, keeping pace. I do not look. The torches on that side waver, stretching the shadows in jerky motions like bad animation.

“You know the sort of people who use ships like that?” the voice says, dropping lower. “Collectors. They do not let couriers off easy. Not with a box like that”

The box corner digs into my forearm. Sweat prickles under my jacket.

“Do not leave the path, dear. Not for voices. Not for shortcuts. Not for anything that looks like home”. The old woman words loop in my head. I keep my eyes on the stones. One foot. Then the other. The torches ahead flare, approving.

Eventually, the voice sighs. It stretches out, going thin and papery.

“Fine”, it says, further away, “See you at the bottom”.

The sound peels back into the dark like tape being lifted.

A few steps later, something shifts in the box.

It is subtle. A small rebalancing, like something inside turned over in its sleep. The weight adjusts in my arms, not heavier, just more aware of itself.

“Almost there”, I mutter to it, before I can stop myself.

The path does not like that. Or the box does not. Or me.

A torch to my right flares too high, fire lashing sideways. The heat slaps my face. I flinch, nearly stepping off the stones. At the edge of the light, the cave floor drops away into nothing, no more rock, just a smooth vertical absence that has no depth, like someone erased the world with a single stroke.

I jerk my foot back onto the stone. My heart bangs in my throat.

“Okay”, I whisper, to myself, to the box, to the torches, I do not know. “Okay. Okay”.

After that, I keep my mouth shut.

As I get closer, the ark ship resolves into higher detail.

The hull is not just wood or metal. It is patched together from both, plates riveted over planks, planks nailed into sheets. In some places, there are slabs of concrete studded with rusted rebar, fitted in like replacement ribs. Barnacle like growths cling to it, but when the torchlight hits them, they are not sea creatures, they are clusters of padlocks, welded shut.

The water it sits in is not water.

It is a vast, flat expanse of black. Not reflective enough to be liquid. Not solid enough to be floor. The torches light does not mark it. It is like someone cut a hole in reality and parked the ship on the edge.

The path ends at the gangway.

Up close, the gangway is a hybrid of ramp and jet bridge, metal railings bolted into wooden slats, with thick ropes looped along them like decorative veins. It slopes up into the opening in the hull. A pale cold light spills from within.

There is someone standing at the top.

Tall. Too tall to be entirely comfortable. The figure is thin in a way that makes the joints look like afterthoughts. It wears a long coat that might once have been black but has been patched over and over with strips of different fabrics, faded security uniforms, pieces of trench coats, scraps of something that looks like curtain material. Each patch has a number or a letter stamped on it, half visible. The coat sways even though there is no wind.

On its head is a cap, the kind station masters wear in old films. The badge on the front is a small opaque disc, neither metal nor plastic, something in between. Symbols crawl on it and then settle whenever I try to focus.

I cannot see its face.

Where a face should be is a mask made entirely of keys.

They hang from thin wires and hooks, overlapping and jangling softly in a nonexistent breeze. Door keys, car keys, long old skeleton keys, tiny locker keys, card fobs punched through with holes and wired in among the metal. They sway, forming a kind of curtain. Behind them, the space where its head should be is black. No skin. No eyes. Just hollow dark.

A bundle of keys hangs at its chest like a priest pendant, larger than the rest, every one of them blackened, teeth worn down.

As I approach, the keys all stir, chiming once. The sound is surprisingly delicate, like wind chimes in an empty stairwell.

“Courier”, the figure says.

Its voice is strange. It is not loud, but it has too many textures, paper tearing, an escalator hum, the murmur of a crowd heard through a wall. All of it mashed together into syllables. Somehow, under all that, there is a tone you would call polite.

I stop halfway.

“Cargo 3B 01”, it continues. “Origin, domestic sublevel. Destination, surface node Alpha Seven. Status.. sealed, unknown, insured” The keys clink as it inclines its head. “You are late”.

I check my phone, partly by reflex, partly for something normal to look at.

The screen is dark at first. When it lights, the time is 1:04.

The same minute it was when I arrived at the warehouse.

The battery icon ticks down one percent while I stare at it. Two unread messages blink from my landlord. I lock the screen and shove it back in my pocket like it burned me.

“Within tolerance,” the night keeper says. I know it is talking about whatever timetable this place runs on, not my phone

“Proceed”

It raises one long arm. The coat sleeve falls back a bit, showing a wrist wrapped in strips of tickets, tags, labels. Some are glossy with fresh ink, some yellowed and brittle, written in hands I cannot read, languages I barely recognize, and one that is definitely my own.

My name is on a torn piece of paper looped around its wrist, in my handwriting.

I do not remember writing it.

“Manifest”, it says. Keys clink. “State your name”.

My tongue moves on instinct, sheer habit from a lifetime of job interviews and security check ins.

“Dan..”

The sound catches in my throat like a hooked fish. The old woman voice slaps into my mind so hard it is almost an audible no.

“Names are the only thing you have that is not rented” she had said.

I cough. The single syllable I let out vanishes into the key rattle.

The night keeper pauses. The hanging keys sway, listening.

“Name”, it says again. “For record. For route”.

I swallow so hard it hurts. My fingers tighten on the box until the cardboard creaks.

“I was told..”, I say, picking each word like I am walking on glass, “you do not get names”.

Its head tips slightly, a dog hearing a new sound.

“Protocol requires identification”, it replies after a beat. “Cargo must be bound to a carrier. Routes are tied to names” A faint chorus of whispers murmurs under its words, like people reading from lists. “You will be unaccounted for”.

“That sounds fine”, I say, hoarse.

The keys clatter softly. It might be laughing. Or losing patience.

Long fingers, too many joints, each knuckle wrapped with some sort of paper, drift down to that cluster of blackened keys on its chest. It taps one. Somewhere deep in the ship, I hear a heavy bolt slide home.

“Very well”, it says. “Anonymous carriage. Limited liability” The torchlight on the path behind me dims a fraction more. “If you are lost, you are not my problem”.

“Story of my life”, I mutter, too low for anyone human to hear.

The keys all rustle faintly in response. Maybe they did hear.

“Board”, the night keeper says. It steps aside. The keys that make up its face chime as they turn toward the ship interior. “Hold your cargo. Do not set it down until we reach your stop. If you are offered a trade, refuse. If you are offered relief, refuse. If you are offered help, refuse”.

“That does not leave a lot”, I say, before I can stop myself.

“You were not hired for a lot”, it answers, without heat.

At the top of the gangway, just before the threshold into the ship, there is a line painted on the metal floor. Not chalk this time. Paint. Thick, dark, worn down by countless feet.

Three words stand beside it in peeling white letters:

NO RETURN CROSSING

I step over.

The air inside the ship is different. Not cave air, not warehouse air. It is travelled. Layers of smells on top of each other, dust from places I have never been, salt, ozone, the faint sourness of too many bodies passing through too small a space.

The corridor is long and slightly curved, following the hull. The walls are lined with doors, each with small plaques. Some have numbers. Some have words.

03 12: LOST PROPERTY
04 01: WEDNESDAYS
04 02: PROMISES NOT KEPT
04 03: REGRETS (UNCLAIMED)

Some doors have sounds behind them. Whispering. A scratching like branches on glass. Soft wet noises I do not categorize.

The night keeper footsteps behind me are almost silent, just the faint hush of fabric and the occasional key chime. The box in my arms feels like a center of gravity I am orbiting.

We walk.

At one junction, something shuffles out of a side door and into the corridor. It is a figure in a suit that has been eaten thin in places, the fabric hanging loose and tired. A briefcase dangles from its hand, but not in a normal grip. A rusted cuff has gone past the skin and settled into the wrist as if the bone grew around it, the handle welded there by time and use.

It turns toward me. The face keeps slipping out of focus, like my eyes cannot get a hold on what it is. I cannot tell if it is looking at me or past me.

Its mouth opens.

Not to speak.

A slow, thick strand slides out and drops to the floor with a wet sound. Then another. A ribbon of pale, slick tissue unspools from its throat in a steady, patient spill, like the inside of something being turned out. It is not gushing, just coming, heavy and quiet, folding over itself on the concrete. It leaves a faint glossy trail as it drags, steaming slightly in the cold air.

The figure stands there emptying itself without hurry, like this is routine, like it expects me to step around what it is shedding and keep going.

The night keeper brushes past it without a glance. We keep moving.

At another door, labelled PASSENGERS (EXPIRED), something thin taps a rhythm from the other side. A knuckle, a ring, a claw. It pauses as we draw level, then resumes once we are past, like it is counting.

“You will not stop”, the night keeper says quietly, its voice close to my ear now. “You will not converse. You will not listen when it offers to carry the weight”

I tighten my grip on the box.

“Has anyone ever..”, I start, then cut myself off. Question. No.

“Many”, it says anyway. “Few do it twice”.

The corridor bends and bends, then opens into a wider space, a kind of central hall. The ceiling arches high overhead, layered with ribs like the inside of a whale. There are benches bolted to the floor. Old posters peel from the walls, ads for trains that do not run anymore, ferries that never existed, holidays to places whose names are only consonants.

In the middle, set into the floor, is a circle of black.

The same black as the not water outside. A hole in the middle of the ship. It is fenced off by a waist high railing made of linked together handrails, turnstile bars, and bent security fences, all welded into a ring.

We skirt it at a distance. The box seems to lean toward it, like a compass needle.

“Destination, surface node Alpha Seven”, the night keeper says. “Transit in progress”.

I do not feel movement, not in the usual sense. No engine rumble. No sway. Just the disorienting sense that the world outside the ship is rearranging itself like scenery in a cheap play, while the ship stands still.

As we pass one of the benches, I see someone sitting there.

For a second, my brain misfires.

It is me.

Same jacket. Same boots. Same haircut I saw in the gym mirror two days ago. He.. I.. am sitting hunched forward, elbows on knees, holding an identical box. The only difference is in the expression, he looks tired, but there is nothing behind his eyes. No fear, no confusion. Just the blank burned out stare I have seen on people doing the night shift too long.

He looks up as we pass. Our eyes meet. My stomach lurches.

His lips move. No sound comes out. I read the words anyway.

“Do not..”

The night keeper hand closes on my shoulder.

Its grip is firm and dry, like being held by a tree branch.

“Don’t engage” it says, keys in its face rattling quietly.

I tear my gaze away. My double mouth keeps moving silently, over and over. “Do not. Do not. Do not”

The box in my arms gives a small, eager twitch.

The doors ahead start to change. Less abstract. Less cosmic joke.

ALPHA FOUR: SERVICE EXIT (CLOSED)
ALPHA FIVE: EMERGENCY EXIT (UNAVAILABLE)
ALPHA SIX: STAFF ONLY

We stop at ALPHA SEVEN.

There is no plaque on this one, just the number, stencilled in simple black. The metal around the handle is scuffed, like it has been used more than the others.

The night keeper steps in front of me. Keys whisper as it selects one from the blackened cluster at its chest. The chosen key is oddly small, hardly more than a nub. When it pushes it into the keyhole, I do not see the metal move, I see the space around it fold, like someone pushing a finger into thick fabric.

“Exit”, the night keeper murmurs. “Surface. Single passage. No return without rebooking”.

“Fine by me”, I manage.

Its head tilts. A few keys knock together softly.

“If you deliver your cargo unopened”, it says, “you may never see this route again”.

“That is the idea”, I say.

“If you fail”, it adds, almost as an afterthought, “you will see nothing else”.

The lock turns. The door edges glow once, faintly, then dim.

It pushes the door open.

On the other side is not another corridor. It is a darkness of a different texture. I smell cold air, real cold, night air, with that faint hint of car exhaust and wet pavement.

“Walk,” the night keeper says. “Do not look back after you pass through. Do not stop until you recognize nothing”.

Again with the half helpful, half terrifying advice.

I swallow once, adjust the box in my arms, and step through the door.

For a second, there is nothing under my feet.

Just a sense of falling sideways, of my body trying to remember which way is down and failing.

Then concrete. Wet. Rough.

I stumble, catch myself, hug the box tight. The door is behind me. I feel it. A rectangle of difference. Not light, not heat. Just a patch of reality that does not match the rest.

I do not turn around.

I walk.

The air is freezing and damp. A wind cuts across my face, sharp with the smell of the river. Somewhere distant, traffic hums. A train horn blows, warped by distance. The normal noises of a city at late o clock.

The darkness here is honest. Street dark. Cloud muted. Above me, there is a slice of sky, orange at the edges where the city glow hits the low clouds.

I emerge into an alley between two buildings. One is an office block with all its windows dark. The other is a brick wall with flaking posters and a graffiti tag I have seen a hundred times around town.

Behind me, the door clicks shut.

I turn, because I can now, because it is too quiet not to.

There is no door.

Just the dead end of the alley, stained brick, some exposed pipe, a metal security camera long since ripped down. Where I stepped through a second ago is a patch of wall the exact same as the rest, except my brain insists it is not.

My phone buzzes in my pocket.

The sudden normality of the sound makes my knees weak.

I shift the box to one arm and fish the phone out with the other. The screen lights my face blue white. It is 1:22.

New text. Unknown number.

DELIVERY STAGE
ADDRESS: (a street I recognize across town, near the river, behind the old power station)
DO NOT OPEN THE BOX
DO NOT LET ANYONE TAKE IT FROM YOU
PAYMENT ON COMPLETION
ETA: 00:23

I stare at that last line.

Twenty three minutes ago.

The box pulses once in my arms.

Not physically. Not anything a scale could measure. Just a sense, like a heartbeat out of sync with mine, or like the moment before a phone call connects.

From somewhere down the mouth of the alley, a voice calls, too cheerful for this hour:

“Daniel. That you, mate?”

It is Darren’s voice again. From work. From the other life.

I can see the street now, the glow of a lamppost, the silhouette of a figure standing at the end of the alley, hand up in an easy wave.

Every instinct says, relief, normal, human.

The box says nothing.

I remember the old woman. The night keeper. The instructions. The ship with my double on the bench. I tighten my hold on the box, lower my head, and start toward the street, away from the voice that knows my name.

I do not speed up when I hear my name again.

“Dan. Seriously, man, where have you been?”

The alley stretches, then snaps back to normal when I step out into the street. Sodium lamps turn everything the colour of old bruises. A takeaway shop buzzes with neon half lit, windows fogged. A fox raids a bin across the road, stops, stares at me, then trots off like it just remembered I do not count.

At the end of the alley stands someone in a hoodie, hands stuffed in the front, hunched against the cold. Just a guy. Just a shape.

“Been ages!”, he says, taking a step closer. I cannot see his face properly under the hood. Just the suggestion of features. “You all right, mate? You look wrecked”.

My arms feel like they are made of concrete. The box has the exact weight of a bad decision. I tighten my grip and angle away, toward the main road.

“Wrong guy”, I say.

He laughs, a fraction too loud.

“Come on, Dan. You do not even know me now? That hurts”. His tone drops into something wounded. “After all those shifts. All those nights”.

He starts toward me properly.

The air around him looks thicker. Like heat haze over tarmac.

I step off the curb without checking for cars. Headlights wash over me, horns blare, tyres hiss past, but none of them touch me. The box hums against my chest, the faintest buzz, like a phone in a pocket three rooms away.

I do not look back.

The voice follows for half a block, getting smaller and thinner. Then it cuts off mid word, like someone yanked the plug.

The address is burned into my brain from the text.

Warehouse district by the river, past the old power station. An area I know too well, half gentrified, half forgetting how to stand up. Bars and lofts on one side, derelict brick husks on the other. I walk on autopilot, the way you walk to a job you have done so many times your feet could get there without you.

Except things are wrong.

Not big wrong. Little, stitch level wrong.

Every billboard I pass is empty. Not blank, empty. The frames are there, the lights, the grime. But where ads should be is just wall. Brick, concrete, whatever behind. My eyes slide over them and my head tries to fill in shampoo brands, fast food, politics. Nothing sticks.

Parked cars line the street, but all their licence plates are blurred, like someone has smeared the numbers with greasy fingers.

I pass a bus stop. The long plastic panel where timetables go is full of paper, pages layered over each other, curling at the corners. They are all the same printed words.

WE APOLOGISE FOR ANY DELAYS.

Over and over. Some of the lines glitch halfway through, letters drifting out of alignment.

My phone feels heavy in my pocket. I check it once, under a streetlamp.

Time, 2:41. Battery, sixteen percent. Date, still today. At least something is holding on. I flick to my banking app, half to distract myself.

The number has gone up.

The second half of the payment is already there. Cleared. Solid. More money than I have ever had. Rent, debt, everything, taken care of in a neat digital sum.

“Makes sense”, I mutter. Motivation.

The delivery is not done, but someone has decided it is. Or decided I do not need the carrot anymore.

I pocket the phone and keep walking.

The address takes me to a street that smells like wet metal and old electricity.

The old power station towers over everything, its silhouette hulking against the low sky. I remember it from childhood trips on the bus, a big brick tooth, always there, always dead. Now it has been partially revived, one end glazed over for an art gallery, the rest still crumbling.

My destination is behind it.

The building at the address is nothing special.

Four storeys. Brick. A faded sign above the door reads ALPHA STORAGE SOLUTIONS in a font that was probably modern ten years ago. Half the letters are missing, ALP ST RA E SOLU IONS. The windows are dark. A single yellow strip of light leaks from the crack at the bottom of the front door.

The street is empty. No cars, no people, no lingering smokers from the bars further up.

I stand there a moment, box in my arms, feeling like a delivery driver at the wrong house.

The instructions said, do not let anyone take it from you.

They did not say anything about what happens when you hand it over.

I go up the three concrete steps and try the handle.

It turns easily.

The lobby inside is unremarkable in the way cheap offices are.

Grey carpet that eats sound. White walls with smudges at shoulder height. A plant in a corner. A noticeboard with nothing pinned to it but a single sheet of paper that says:

STAFF MUST NOT PROP THE DOOR OPEN.

There is a reception desk with no receptionist. Just an old computer, monitor dark, and a wired phone. The screensaver on the computer is frozen mid bounce, the company logo stuck in one corner, ALPHA 7 in a circle.

Behind the desk, a plastic sign holder stands empty. The little slot where a name should be is bare. No Hi, I am Karen. No nothing.

An elevator waits at the far end of the lobby.

The doors are already open.

The display above them does not show numbers. It cycles through letters instead, A, B, C, D, back to A. It ticks over to B as I watch and stops.

I glance around for stairs and see a door marked STAIRS on the right wall.

There is a thin ring of chalk around its base.

The box shifts slightly, a gentle correction in my arms, steering my attention back toward the elevator.

“You are being timed,” the old woman had said.

I step into the lift.

The doors close with a soft sigh.

Inside, there are no buttons. No panel. No emergency phone. Just four walls of brushed metal and a faint humming vibration that I feel more in my bones than my ears.

The lights flicker and settle.

On the back wall, someone has scratched words into the metal with something sharp.

NO UP
ONLY OUT

The lift moves.

Not up. Not down. The sensation is sideways, like the ark ship movement, but smaller and focused. I feel like someone is dragging the building along a rail I cannot see.

In the reflection of the metal walls, I do not quite look like myself. My outline is there, my jacket, the box, but my face is one frame out of sync with my movements. When I blink, my reflection blinks a fraction too late.

The humming stops. The doors slide open.

The floor I step out onto is not numbered.

No signs. No Level 3 or Offices or Meeting Rooms. The carpet is the same grey, but it is cleaner, like no one has walked it much. The air smells of toner, disinfectant, and something that reminds me of the ark ship, that layered, travelled scent.

There is only one door.

Big double frosted glass. No writing on it. Light glows behind, the steady white of fluorescent tubes. Shadows move now and then, figures crossing, pausing, going back.

My pulse is a fast, light thing in my throat. I shift the box, wipe my palm on my jacket, and push the door. They swing open without a sound. The room is an office. Of sorts. Open plan. Desks in rows. Computers, phones, paperwork. Fluorescent tubes buzzing overhead. The walls are lined with metal cabinets, the kind used for storing files. The cabinets have labels instead of numbers.

JOB LOSS - MANUAL
JOB LOSS - AUTOMATED
EVICTIONS
RESTRUCTURING
BURNOUT

At one cluster of desks, three people sit with headsets on, talking into microphones. Their screens show what looks like CVs, all scrolling too fast to read. As I watch, one of them says, in a bright call center tone:

“Hi, is that Mr Jones? I am calling from Human Resources, just to let you know we have had a lot of interest in the role..”

Another voice, at another desk, says:

“We regret to inform you..”

Another:

“It is just not the right fit at this time..”

Their faces are blurred, like the man on the ship with the briefcase. Outlines of mouths and eyes, but no features that stick. The more I try to focus, the more my gaze skips off them.

No one looks at me.

At the far end of the room is a glass partitioned office. The blinds are half closed, but I can see a figure inside, standing by a desk.

The door to that office opens. The figure steps out. They look normal. Smart black suit. White shirt. No tie. Late thirties, maybe. Neat hair. Ordinary face. If you passed them on the street, you would not think twice. But their eyes are the same cloudy pale as the old woman eyes. And when they smile, their teeth are just slightly too many.

“Daniel,” they say smoothly. “Wonderful. Right on schedule”

The way they say my name makes my skin crawl. Not because it sounds like a threat, but because of the suggested familiarity. Like they have been saying it to themselves in meetings. I do not answer. My throat has dried up again. “Come in, come in”. They gesture me toward the glass office. “Let us get you sorted”.

I walk through rows of desks. The headset people talk and type and scroll. On one monitor, I catch a glimpse of my own CV, name, address, old job at the distribution center, the line about being a self starter I copied from a template. An email pops up over it, “thank you for your interest, unfortunately..”.

By the time I sit in the chair opposite the desk in the glass office, my heart is pounding so hard it makes the box tremble. The person in the suit closes the door. The sound from the main office muffles to a dull mass of noise, like a television in another room. On the desk is a small brass plaque. No name. Just a word:

ACQUISITIONS

“Tea?”, they ask, out of habit more than hospitality.

“No”, I say.

“Good”

They sit, steepling their fingers. Between their hands, settling over the wood like dust, are small bits of paper, tickets, stubs, form corners. All of them have bits of handwriting on them. I catch pieces, notice period, final reminder, we are sorry to see you go.

“Let us see”, they murmur. “Cargo 3B 01, courier anonymous, route domestic to surface, unrecorded name. Very tidy”.

They tilt their head. “You kept to the rules”.

I do not say anything. The box sits on my lap. It feels colder now. Or my legs do. Hard to tell.

“Do you know what this place is?”, they ask.

I keep my mouth shut. It is not just the no questions rule anymore. It is something else. Like words are suddenly expensive and I am on a tight budget.

“Contractors rarely do”, they say. “That is all right”. They lean back. Their chair does not creak. “We take what people cannot carry anymore. Or do not want to. Up there”, they gesture vaguely upward, “they call it outsourcing. Down there”, a nod that somehow includes the ark ship, the old woman, the chalk marks, “they call it containment. We just call it work”.

Their gaze drops to the box.

“May I?”, they ask.

That word lands oddly. May. Like I have a choice. The instructions said: do not open the box. They did not say anything about watching someone else do it. I do not nod. I do not shake my head. I just hold my breath.

They take that as a yes.

Their hands look normal. Fingers, nails, skin. But when they touch the tape, it lifts without resistance. The layers unravel, old yellowed strips and new clear ones, peeling up all at once like they were never stuck down. The sound is soft, like paper being smoothed.

They fold the flaps back.

The box is empty.

Of course it is. There is nothing inside. No weight. No object. Just plain cardboard, bare and hollow.

Cold shoots through me. Not in my arms. In my chest.

The suited person peers into the emptiness with professional satisfaction, like a mechanic admiring a well oiled engine.

“Very good”, they say softly. “Still warm. We do not often get them this fresh”.

I open my mouth.

“What..”

That is as far as I get.

The word does not crawl up my throat. It pours out. Along with something else.

It feels like a long breath leaving all at once, but outward, not through lungs. It feels like someone pulling a thread from the centre of my spine up through the back of my skull. It feels like standing on a train platform and having the train go past too fast, taking your balance with it.

Images slam through my head.

Me at fifty, laughing at something on a battered sofa in a flat that is not mine, was not mine, will never be. Me at forty, sitting in a crappy office doing paperwork, bored but weirdly all right with it. Me at thirty five, standing outside a school gate, holding a tiny hand. Me at sixty, watching dawn over some nowhere lake, a mug of coffee cooling in my fingers.

They come fast, overlapping, badly drawn. Futures I never had. Futures I might have had. Futures I have daydreamed about on buses.

Each one hits and then flares, flaking away like burned film.

I see myself getting a job at another warehouse. Keeping my head down. Becoming a supervisor. I see myself moving to a smaller town. Driving a second hand car. Going fishing with someone I have not met yet. I see myself not taking this job. I see myself ignoring the ad entirely, scrolling past, finding something else in the listings.

They all peel away.

They curl up and fly out of me in a long invisible stream, into the box.

From my point of view, the box stays empty.

From the suited person angle, I can tell it does not. Their eyes track something rising from the cardboard, shapeless but heavy. They reach in, grip at nothing, and lift.

Their hands are full of the black space not-water from under the ark ship. Full of absence. They cup it like it weighs the world.

My chest feels light and hollow. My head, suddenly, is very quiet.

“No loose ends”, they murmur. “Excellent!”.

They lower whatever they are holding back into the box. Close the flaps. The tape slithers back over of its own accord, sealing it. The corners scuff themselves to match the old wear.

“It is a funny thing”, they say conversationally, tapping the lid. “People think the worst thing you can take is their past. Memories, shame, guilt. Very popular items. But futures, oh..”. They smile, and for a second there are too many teeth again. “Futures are premium stock!”.

I try to think of tomorrow.

Not in an abstract way. I try to picture what I will do when I leave this building. Where I will go. Who I will call. Which bill I will pay first.

My mind slides off it like it is oiled.

I can think of now. The chair under me. The box on my lap, now no different weight than before. The suited person tie less collar. The hum of fluorescent lights.

I reach for later and get nothing. A blank wall. No anxiety, no anticipation. Just absence.

“Side effects?”, they say, as if going down a checklist. “You will find it difficult to plan. To worry. To hope. You will live very much in the present. Moment to moment. Some people pay good money for that feeling” A small shrug. “Yours was a bit more organic”.

I feel sick.

“Money is in your account”, they add, reaching into a drawer. They pull out a paper I do not see clearly, stamp it with something that makes no sound. “You can walk out that door, pay off everything you owe, buy yourself whatever distractions you like. You just will not project”.

Their eyes rest on my face, searching for a reaction.

“How does that sound?”, they ask, genuinely curious.

I think about it.

Really think.

A few minutes ago, the idea would have terrified me, no future, no plans, no escape. Now, sitting here with the box of my gone futures on my lap, it lands differently.

Not good. Not bad.

Just factual. Like weather.

“I do not know”, I say honestly.

“Perfect!”, they say.

They stand, take the box from me with careful hands. It lifts out of my grip without resistance. My arms feel weightless for a moment, then strangely useless, like I should be holding something and have forgotten what.

“Contract complete”, they say. “You did well, Daniel”.

My name slides through the air between us, but it does not catch on anything inside me. It might as well be someone else name.

“Can I ask”, The habit is still there, somewhere. “Will I, remember any of.. this?”.

I gesture vaguely. Down, up, sideways. The warehouse, the house, the ark ship, the night keeper, the other me on the bench.

The suited person considers.

“You will remember enough”, they say. “Just without.. consequences”. They give the box a small pat. “The part of you that would do anything to avoid ending up back in that warehouse? That is ours now. You will find you are surprisingly calm about most things”.

They smile like this is a kindness.

“Contractors like you”, they add, almost absently, “rarely come back. Not because we bar them. They just do not look for the ad again”.

They walk to the door with the box. When they open it, the light in the main office dims slightly, like the contents of the room lean toward the cardboard for a moment.

“Enjoy your evening”, they say over their shoulder. “Whatever is left of it”.

Then they are gone.

The door eases shut. The buzz of the fluorescents seems louder.

I sit there.

I check my phone.

The banking app still shows the money. The landlord messages are still there, little angry paragraphs. A new one pops up as I watch:

Forget it, I have changed the locks.

I stare at the words. Try to get upset. Try to imagine where I will sleep tonight. Try to picture next week.

Nothing.

I stand.

My body goes through the motions of leaving. Chair back, door open, walk across the office. The headset people keep talking, their phrases looping,

“Unfortunately..”

“Going forward..”

“I understand that must be frustrating..”

In the lift, my reflection moves perfectly in sync again. My eyes look shallow. Not empty. Just less deep. Like someone lowered the water level.

In the lobby, the plant in the corner is suddenly thriving. Green and glossy, bursting out of its pot. Tiny chalk circles ring its base.

Outside, the air hits me. Damp and cold and full of car noise and stray music from a bar.

For a second, I stand there, under the ALPHA STORAGE SOLUTIONS sign, and feel a faint tug somewhere under my ribs. A sense that something important just happened. Something I should be angry about or scared of.

It dissolves before I can name it.

My phone buzzes in my hand.

A notification from the classifieds app.

NEW: DISCREET COURIER NEEDED - ONE NIGHT ONLY
Cash payment. Must follow instructions exactly.
Contents not disclosed. No questions. No record.
Reply with phone number.

There is a photo attached.

A cardboard box on a concrete floor.

For a heartbeat, I think, I have seen that box before.

Then the thought slides away like a fish in dark water.

I swipe the notification aside without opening it.

I start walking, hands in my pockets, collar up against the cold, my head pleasantly empty.

For the first time in a long time, I am not worrying about tomorrow.

I am not thinking about it at all.