Chloe's demand echoed once more through the processing floor, bouncing off concrete walls and dying somewhere in the darkness above us. Then nothing. Just the ambient hum of Madison's equipment and the sound of five people breathing too loud in the cold.
I watched the seconds tick by on Jake's camera display. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. A full minute of absolutely fuck all.
My gut, once coiled with tension, just felt hollow. We were standing in a circle like idiots, waiting for a haunted house to do a party trick.
Jake shifted his weight. The floorboards creaked.
Madison clicked her flashlight back on. The beam swept across our faces, painting everyone in harsh white light. Jake looked like someone had told him Santa wasn't real. Bree's expression was distant, confused, like she'd misplaced something important. Chloe's jaw was locked so tight I could see the muscle jumping.
"Is that it?" Chloe's voice cracked through the silence like a whip. She turned in a slow circle, addressing the empty air. "We came all this way for stage fright?"
Oh boy. Here we go.
"Maybe it needs an invitation." Jake raised his camera higher, his voice taking on that YouTube presenter quality he used when he was trying to salvage content. "Don't be shy! We've got all this fancy gear, the least you could do is knock something over for us!"
He waved his arms in broad, exaggerated motions. "Boo! I'm a scary ghost hunter! See? I'm provoking you! This is provocation!"
"Jake." Madison's voice was flat.
"What? I'm trying different approaches." He spun in a circle, arms still flailing. "Maybe it likes comedy! Maybe it's a ghost with a sense of humor!"
"It's not a Labrador," Madison said. "You can't just wave your arms and expect it to fetch."
Bree's approach was quieter. Her hands were still extended, fingers trembling slightly in the cold. "I know you're here," she whispered to the darkness. "I felt you earlier. In the van. On the road. Why are you hiding from me now?"
Her voice cracked on the last word. Actual hurt. Like the building had personally betrayed her.
Still nothing. The silence felt deliberate now. Mocking. Like the universe was laughing at us for thinking we were special enough to warrant supernatural attention.
I kept my mouth shut and watched. This was their show. I was just the skeptic they'd dragged along for demographic balance.
"This isn't working." Madison lowered her camera. Her tone shifted, became clinical. Detached. "Direct confrontation is just noise. We're contaminating the environment with our own energy."
Chloe turned on her. "Contaminating—?"
"Yes. Contaminating." Madison's expression didn't change. "Look, if this is a residual haunting, it's not intelligent. It's a recording. Yelling at it is like yelling at a movie screen expecting the actors to respond."
"I know what a residual haunting is, Madison."
"Then you know this approach is fundamentally flawed." Madison gestured at the empty space around us. "If it's an intelligent entity, it's clearly not interested in direct confrontation. We're just a bunch of loud apes with flashlights from its perspective. Why would it engage?"
Jake started to protest, but Madison kept going.
"We need to cover more ground and create multiple points of potential interaction. We split up. Two teams. We can monitor the static cams and audio sensors from different locations, see if our presence in one area triggers a response in another."
A pause.
"It's a more scientific approach," she added.
And there it was. The classic horror movie setup delivered with perfect logical justification. My inner voice was screaming every slasher film warning it knew, but I had to admit her reasoning was sound. If you believed in any of this, her strategy made more sense than standing in a circle begging the darkness to notice you.
Chloe's jaw tightened, then her eyes narrowed at Madison. A flicker of frustration crossed her face before she looked away, her gaze sweeping over the empty floor. She took a sharp breath, her shoulders squaring as she finally met Madison's stare.
"Fine. Two teams."
Madison was already moving, her mind clearly three steps ahead. "Okay. Chloe, your gear is best for direct EVP and thermal sweeps. You, Jake, and Bree take the ground floor and check the old freezer units in the back. According to the building records, that's where most of the accidents happened."
She turned. Her camera found me in the darkness.
"Rome, you're with me."