The office buzzed with a cold, administrative sort of quiet. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a sterile sheen on the floor's waxed surface. Monitors flickered softly from the rows of occupied desks, while agents murmured over digital tablets, reports, and scrying stones humming low with arcane pulses. Chelsie stood out in the room—not just because she leaned against a desk with all the casual defiance of a wolf in a cage—but because her presence came with a kind of gravitational weight. People glanced at her, then looked away. She had that reputation.
Across from her stood one of the higher-ups: Director Velrem. Trim suit, steely eyes, a thick folder tucked under one arm like it was a loaded weapon.
"You're going to the eastern border of the city. Right along the dead-zone fringe." His voice was flat, but his gaze held something else. Not quite worry. Not quite command. "Old commercial complex. Former textile hub. It's been shut down for decades, but people started disappearing in front of it. Vanguard patrols. Civilians. We lost a drone yesterday."
Chelsie frowned. "What kind of disappearances?"
"Clean cuts. No blood. No wreckage. Just... gone." Velrem opened the folder and spread a handful of surveillance photos across the table. Grainy shots of an overgrown road, faded signage barely visible under creeping moss, and one particularly chilling frame—a patrol car caught mid-frame, next to a blurred figure in the corner. That figure was not human. At least, not anymore.
Chelsie's eyes narrowed. "You sure this isn't a prank? You've got four divisions handling class-four anomalies, and I'm sent to chase spooks in an abandoned warehouse?"
Velrem shook his head. "This one's yours. Everyone else is either deployed or recovering. It's not just the building—it's the road in front of it. Something's wrong with that space. Government wants answers, not body bags."
"So I go in alone?"
"Standard loadout. No backup unless the gate alarm triggers. We can't risk pulling more agents into this if it turns out to be another spatial tear."
Chelsie exhaled through her nose, brushing a hand through her short-cut hair. "Lovely. I just love when space-time decides to eat people."
Velrem smirked faintly, then pushed the folder toward her. "You leave in an hour. Load up, take what you need, and don't linger. You've done solo ops before. Just… don't vanish on us."
Chelsie took the folder, tucked it under her arm. "Wouldn't dream of it."
Her garage locker hissed open, and the scent of cold metal, cleaning oil, and enchantment ink hit her like nostalgia. She moved like someone who'd done this dance a thousand times. Vest on. Charms clipped to the belt. Ammo sorted into clips marked with sigils—some glowing faintly, others pulsing like heartbeats.
She pulled the porcelain-hued triple-barrel shotgun from its case. Engraved runes ran down the barrel like ivy vines, glowing faintly under the locker's light.
"You'll behave, right?" she muttered to it, slinging it across her shoulder with practiced ease.
Next came the refitted AMT Hardballer—matte steel, heavily modified with both mundane and magical components. Sleek, deadly, and loud as sin. She holstered it at her thigh, then tossed an extra coat over her shoulder and headed for the vehicle bay.
The widebody Torino sat there like a sleeping beast, black as obsidian with a matte finish and chrome teeth that caught the light like fangs. The growl of the engine echoed across the loading dock as she started it up, digital screens lighting up across the dash alongside the cracked leather seats. The interior smelled faintly of cinnamon gum, gunpowder, and cold night air.
She tossed the gear bag in the backseat, shut the door, and peeled out.
The drive was long. The city gave way to decaying industrial outskirts—the sort of places where buildings stood like bones in the skin of the earth. Cracked roads, long stretches of rusted fencing, and streetlights that flickered like dying stars.
Snowfall thickened as she left the last of the city's warmth behind. The blizzard wasn't violent yet—just steady, with a kind of whispering cold that crept through the vents and brushed the back of her neck. Trees lined the road like skeletal sentinels, their limbs bare and black against the storm.
As she drove, her eyes flicked to the radio. It had gone dead about ten minutes ago. No static. No hum. Just... nothing. That wasn't right.
Then she saw it.
The building loomed like a tombstone at the end of a split road, its form warped by distance and shadow. Old bricks, shattered windows, ivy choking out the old company name that had once sat above the doorway. She slowed to a crawl. The Torino's headlights washed over the perimeter fence—partially collapsed—and then over something else.
A patrol vehicle. Empty. Door ajar. No footprints in the snow.
Chelsie cursed under her breath and parked a good distance back. She opened the car door slowly, shotgun in hand, eyes scanning every movement in the dark. The air was still. Too still. Her boots crunched through the snow as she approached the car.
"Officer?" she called softly.
No answer.
She glanced inside the vehicle. Lights were still blinking. Keys in the ignition. Coffee in the cup holder, half-frozen. No blood. No sign of struggle. Just... absence.
Her breath misted in the air. Her eyes flicked upward to the building again.
And she swore it blinked.
She tapped her comm device. No signal. Of course not.
"All right, you creepy bastard," she muttered, stepping forward. "Let's see what you've got."
The cold bit deeper, the air itself feeling thick—like she was walking through the edge of a dream she couldn't wake up from.
And behind her, on the road she'd just driven down, the snow covered her tracks faster than natural.
As if something didn't want her to leave.
The wind had teeth.
Chelsie kept her coat collar up and shotgun close as she began her sweep of the perimeter. The cold wasn't normal—it pressed down like a blanket soaked in ice, and no matter how tight her gloves were, her fingers ached with every movement. Visibility was low, but not impossible. Snow fell at a slant, whispering against her coat, as she moved along the cracked sidewalk encircling the structure.
The building towered above her in silence. A husk of something old and stubborn—brickwork covered in frost, old security cameras sagging from rusted poles, all blind and dead. No movement. No sound. Not even crows.
She checked corners, shadows, and every collapsed awning and chained-up loading dock. Took her exactly forty-three minutes to circle the building. Nothing moved. Nothing watched. And yet she could feel it. That hum beneath the quiet. Like a song just outside the range of hearing. A cold sweat clung to her spine beneath her vest.
She clicked the side of her comm device. Static answered.
"Perimeter's clear," she muttered into it. "No signs of recent activity… or anything. I'm going in."
The only entry was a broken iron door on the east side—half off its hinges, frame warped as if pulled open by something too strong and too fast. She ducked under the twisted metal and stepped through.
Inside hit her like a gut-punch of wrong.
The air was stale, yes, but not dusty. Not old. It smelled… faintly sterile. A hint of cleaning solvent, metal, and something else. Something chemical. The corridor beyond was lit—barely. Flickering bulbs overhead groaned with every other second, casting the hallway in uneven pulses of yellow light. It stretched out far longer than it should.
She stepped back outside. Looked up again at the building's size—maybe three floors tall, wide enough for maybe fifteen rooms deep. Then turned back to the hallway inside.
"…That doesn't make sense," she said under her breath, staring at the corridor. It went far too deep. Like it belonged to a complex five times this size.
She held her shotgun tighter, checked the shells.
"This is off. Way off."
Back inside, she took a slow step forward. The floor was linoleum, scuffed and cracked in places but—clean. No graffiti. No moss. No vines. No broken glass. No trash. Just a hallway with peeling wallpaper and lights that whined like they were tired of being alive.
Her boots echoed softly as she moved in.
"If this place is abandoned…" she muttered, eyes scanning every doorframe, every ceiling tile, "...then where's all the usual shit? Vandals. Nature taking it back. Anything."
But the walls looked freshly cleaned. No rot. No grime. The fire alarm casings were intact. Some rooms had doors that looked recently oiled. It was too quiet. Too preserved.
She paused at one hallway junction, watching as a light at the far end flickered. For a split second, in the dark blink between flickers, she thought she saw someone standing at the end. Just a silhouette.
Then the light returned. The figure was gone.
Chelsie didn't move for ten seconds. Just stood there. Listening.
Nothing.
She exhaled, slow and low. Her breath came out foggy despite being indoors.
"…Fuck this."
She resumed walking, this time quieter. More deliberate. She didn't speak again.
Something was off about the way her footsteps landed. The echo didn't return right. The hallway seemed to absorb it. And each door she passed, even though most were shut, gave her the distinct feeling they were listening. Not what was behind them. The doors themselves.
At one door, she stopped. Its placard had no label—just the number "104" etched in rusted brass. The metal looked freshly polished.
She reached for the knob.
Stopped.
A sound—barely audible, from somewhere further down the hall. A wet, dragging scrape. Something heavy, moving.
She raised the shotgun, stepped back, eyes locked forward.
Then silence again.
Chelsie didn't move for a long while.
The hallway ahead was still. Empty. But the sound—the dragging—hadn't been a trick. She was sure of it. It scratched something ancient in her mind. Something that told her not to take another step forward. That told her whatever made that noise wasn't walking.
Her finger hovered near the trigger guard of the shotgun. Not on it. Not yet. She knew better than to waste ammo in a place like this. One bad pull, and it could wake something you weren't ready for.
Another breath, slower this time. She leaned her head slightly to the left, listening again.
Nothing.
Her other hand reached to the comm. "Anyone reading this? Come in. Possible activity on lower floor. Requesting—"
Click.
The comm died in her hand. The green light blinked once, then nothing. Battery was still good. Display still showed full bars. But no sound came out. It was just gone.
Chelsie lowered it slowly. "Nope. Not good."
She took another step forward. The hallway changed again.
Not visibly. No doors opened. No lights went out. But the feel—the weight—shifted. Like the building was breathing in slow, shallow inhales, waiting for her to do something wrong.
Room 104. That unmarked brass plaque gleamed faintly.
Against better judgment, she reached out and twisted the knob.
The door opened.
It creaked gently—too gently for the rust it wore. The hinges moved like they'd just been greased. The room beyond was a standard office space. Desks. File cabinets. A water cooler in the corner.
But all the chairs were facing the wall.
Every single one.
Chelsie stepped inside slowly, sweeping the shotgun across the room in a slow arc. Her boots were dead silent on the floor now. The sound just… didn't return. Like her footsteps were being swallowed the moment they touched down.
She looked closer.
The desks weren't dusty. Some had paperwork on them—dated only a few weeks ago.
No names. Just files labeled "Observation," "Case Red," "Third Floor Migration," "Donor Pool Failed."
She opened one folder. Typed notes. Scattered sketches. One showed a distorted human form—limbs wrong, head bent backward in a way no vertebrae should allow. Labeled "Failed Merge."
Another was just a single line, printed over and over:
IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO STAY
She backed away from the desk.
That's when she noticed the walls.
Not what was on them—what was missing. No outlets. No switches. No vents. Just smooth paint. As if whoever built this space never wanted anyone to leave, or breathe, or control the lights.
And then came the knock.
Three knocks.
Not from the door she came in.
From inside the walls.
She whipped around, shotgun raised toward the nearest section.
Silence.
The knock came again—this time from behind a filing cabinet. But when she turned that way, there was just solid wall.
Something moved just past the edge of her vision.
She turned, fast—just in time to catch the chair nearest the wall turning back to face the center of the room.
It hadn't been like that before.
She aimed. Waited.
Another chair turned. This one slower.
Then a third.
No sound. No scraping legs. Just motion, like invisible hands were gently rotating them one by one.
"Okay," she whispered. "Nope. No more of this."
She backed out of the room, shotgun still raised, eyes darting to every surface.
As she stepped into the hall again, the light above her burst. Sparks rained down—cold, dead sparks that didn't even sizzle.
And then… the hallway had changed.
Not drastically. No walls had shifted. But the light at the end? It was gone. Darkness swallowed the last ten feet like ink spilled in water. The hallway breathed again—this time deeper. Hungrier.
She looked back.
The door to Room 104 was gone.
Just smooth wall now.
Chelsie swore under her breath, loud enough to hear it echo.
Except it didn't echo.
Instead, something repeated it. Her own voice—mocking, half-whispered—echoed back from down the hall:
"Nope. No more of this…"
But it wasn't her voice exactly. The cadence was off. Wrong emphasis. Like someone else was trying to wear her words.
She didn't hesitate now.
Boots moved fast across the floor, past where 104 had been. Shotgun ready, body tense. She moved forward with trained urgency, every hallway light flickering harder as if trying to catch up.
Then—
A stairwell.
At the end of the corridor.
She hadn't seen that before.
Steel door. No sign. Just slightly ajar. Cold air poured out of it, heavy and wet, like it had been sealed for years and now breathed again.
Somewhere far below, she thought she heard a radio crackle. A faint voice, too quiet to make out.
She stepped toward it.
Down into whatever waited beneath.