—Randy
Step Step Step
Late shift again. The kids are probably asleep by now.
The Silentium never really closes, not for the cleaners anyway, there's always something that needs maintenance, always something that needs looking after, always some junior who forgot to file their report and left the mess for the next shift. And that responsibility? It's mine
Tsk.
Flint at 1AM is a specific kind of quiet. Not peaceful. Just empty. The kind of empty that reminds you most people have somewhere to be in the morning. Somewhere worth sleeping for.
Step Step Step
I've walked this route for 3 years. Same cracked sidewalk. Same busted mailbox on the corner of Saginaw. Same parked truck that hasn't moved since February. You learn a road the way you learn a person
not by studying it, just by showing up enough times that the details stop being details and start being furniture—Which is why I noticed immediately. The streetlight on the corner. It was dark. Not flickering. Not the amber flicker of a bulb going out. Just—dark.
Step
I stopped walking.
Step
Old knees. Old back. Old man who should've retired three rejection letters ago. None of that stopped me from stopping completely and looking at that darkness ahead, the way you look at a door you didn't open.
I've seen the reports. Been seeing them for longer than those kids have been working here. Long before Cael stumbled into our clean up crew with secrets he thinks nobody's noticed—Long before little Evelyn survived what she survived and started carrying energy bars like they were oxygen.
Tall. No face. Black suit. Red tie, those words from that stupid report that Mr. G gave came to mind
Tsk.
I looked at the darkness for a long moment. The cold worked its way through my jacket. My knees ached the way they always ache after a long shift, bone deep and patient, the kind of pain that's just furniture now.
The darkness didn't move.
Didn't need to.
Step Step Step
I walked past it. Eyes forward, without changing my pace. The same way you walk past a dog that's watching you—not fast enough to look like running, not slow enough to look like you're waiting for something.
Don't fear it.
That was the first rule. I'd read enough of those redacted reports to know that much. Fear was the hook. Obsession was the line. You give it either one and you've already handed it the work. So I walked.
Step Step Step
My apartment building smells like old carpet and someone's cooking on the third floor, always, no matter what time it is. I've never found out who. Never tried. Some things you let be furniture.
Creakkkk
The door to my apartment. I should oil that hinge. Been saying that for two years, yet I never oiled it.
Click
Dark inside. I don't turn the light on immediately. Old habit. You live alone long enough you stop needing lights to navigate. The furniture stays where you put it.
Meowwwww
"Yeah yeah."
The cat appeared from somewhere, winding around my ankles, tail up. Gray. Missing the tip of her left ear from before I found her. She has a name but I don't say it out loud when I'm alone. No reason to. It's just me and her in this place.
And as I usually do, I set my bag down. Filled her bowl. Stood at the kitchen window while she ate.
Meowww
The street below was empty. Two streetlights. A parked car. The sidewalk. Both streetlights on.
Tsk.
Of course. That's how it works. You look directly and there's nothing to see. The second rule. You have to be the one who starts it. You have to recognize it first.
Well. I recognized it.
Step Step
The drawer under the telephone—nobody uses the telephone, hasn't been connected in a year, but the table stayed because her mother gave it to us and some furniture you don't move — I opened it and took out the folder.
Mr. G's handwriting on the tab. Neat, precise, the handwriting of a man who takes care with things. I set it on the kitchen table. Sat down. The cat jumped up beside me, which she's not supposed to do, but I didn't move her.
Inside the folder—Reports. Security incident logs. Psychological evaluations with entire paragraphs blacked out. Witness statements that got shorter the more times they were revised, heh like those Epstein files back in days., like something kept erasing the details between drafts.
And at the back, Mr. G's note. The one he left when he handed this to me.
It's already started. The new one will figure it out eventually—he's read enough to recognize the shape of it. Until then, watch the juniors. Don't let them separate.
Playing all mysterious, and shit, yet doing nothing, only ordering others to do his bidding. Tsk. I hate it, but there's no other choices. I looked at the note for a while before looking at my cat.
"Don't give me that look."
Meowww.
"Tsk. I'm handling it."
I closed the folder. Left it on the table. Made myself a cup of tea, the cheap kind, the kind she always said tasted like hot water with ambitions. Drank it standing at the kitchen window. Both streetlights on. Street empty. Normal.
I finished the tea. Rinsed the cup. Went to bed. The cat settled at my feet, which she's also not supposed to do.
Tsk.
These Old bones need their sleep.
Tomorrow those kids are going to need someone paying attention.
Tsk.
—Evelyn
Today was your usual cleaning session, well except the fact Cael had to leave early, he looked rather out of it, yeah out of it I guess.
Fshhhhhh
The shower was hot, the way I always liked it, hot enough that the mirror fogged over completely and the bathroom turned into its own small world, some days hot water the nicest thing, it melts your mind and turns you relaxed
Click
Towel. Hair. The my wolf cut dried fast, which was the whole point, I had longer hair once, until I realized long hair with diving helmets weren't exactly a comfortable 'experience'
Pad Pad Pad
At night, my room just feels perfect The walls stopped being dramatic in the dark and became just—walls. The shelves of gear caught the lamp light in interesting ways, the curved glass of the older helmets, the brass fittings on the vintage regulators, the soft gleam of the oxygen tank in the corner.
I settled cross-legged on my bed, phone in hand, wrapped in an oversized hoodie that had lost its drawstrings two years ago. Opened Let'sChat first because that's what I always do, not that I'll ever tell anyone about it, they probably knew
Scroll Scroll
Someone's cat doing something stupid. A cooking video she watched three times in a row not because she'd ever make the recipe but because the sounds were satisfying. A girl doing an incredibly complicated dive entry from a cliff in Croatia that made Eve sit up slightly straighter.
Scroll
I saved that one. There was another about a cat girl with grey ears and blueish eyes cosplaying? Huh, that's unique, there were some about cats, others about diving tips and so on. Just your typical for you pages
Scroll Scroll
Ttube next. I have a playlist—ambient underwater footage, the kind with no music, just the sound of bubbles and pressure and the particular quality of light that only exists thirty meters down. I placed it on in the background the way other people put on rain sounds when they can't sleep.
The familiar hiss of a regulator from the video's audio.
Hhhh—Kshhhhh
There. That was the sound. I thought to myself as I exhaled calmly
Scroll Scroll
Forty minutes passed the way forty minutes do when you're not trying to track them. At some point I found myself reaching on to my nightstand without looking and took an energy bar, which I unwrapped and ate half of before setting the other half down.
I wasn't exactly hungry but, habits I suppose.
Pad Pad Pad
The vintage double-hose regulator on the middle shelf was one I found at the estate sale in Ohio it had taken six weeks of careful cleaning to get the internal valves moving smoothly again. And as always I picked it up the way I always did before sleep—just to hold it
Just to check the weight of it, the specific solidity of something built in an era when equipment was made to last fifty years, well vintage equipment's do have their own charm after all~ I thought to myself as I fiddled with the valve
Hssss
Hmm?
Place Pick Turn
Nothing. No sound. The valves were sealed, there was no air source connected, there should be no reason for any sound to come from it at all. Maybe it was my imagination? It is late at night after all, tired brain, the underwater video still playing in the background—Wait? did the video ended?
I looked at my phone once more, for some reason it had shut down, that was weird… I thought to myself as I powered it on again, and after 3 minutes, it's back online ready to stay with me till the end of my doomscroll, but of course before that—
I set the regulator back in its place on the shelf. Straightened it slightly so it sat flush with the edge. Perfect they look like nice, I then reached out my other hand for the other half of the energy bar I left behind
Munch
The Ttube video had moved on to a new clip—ocean floor footage, the camera moving slow through a kelp forest, shafts of surface light coming down in long pale columns. Beautiful. The kind that made you silent as you could only admire the view
Scroll Scroll
I should sleep. Early shift. Jeremy would complain if anyone was late and then immediately be the last one through the door, which was just how he was. Annoying one could say, but eh at least it's fun.
I found myself smiling out of no where, memories of my previous teammates seemed to fill my head with nostalgia.
And after a while, it was time for me to do my final check—or habit, the kind that had become so automatic it didn't feel like a ritual anymore. Each shelf in order, left to right. Regulators. Helmets. The spare tanks in the corner, valves closed, the way they should be.
At somepoint my eyes had wandered to the oxygen tank in the corner of my room
Large. Brushed metal. The kind of presence a thing develops when it's been in the same corner of the same room long enough. It's been with me for 5 years. I knew its weight, its valve resistance, the particular sound it made when it's tapped the side to check the fill level.
I looked at it for a moment longer than usual. Not with any specific feeling. Just—looking. Why was I looking at it again? the answer was at the tip of my tongue, what was it again-? Oh right.
Diving.
Right.
Click
The room went dark. The Ttube playlist still running softly on my phone—the underwater ambient, the hiss of bubbles, the comfortable pressure-sound I've been falling asleep to for years.
Hhhh—Kshhhhh
I pulled my blanket up and closed my eyes, wondering to myself, perhaps I'll dream myself exploring the Mariana Trench or something, ehh maybe one day. Yet those thoughts only lingered for a moment as sleep came fast, the way it always did.
What Eve didn't notice however was that the vintage double-hose regulator on the middle shelf had fogged over on the inside. Both valves sealed. No air source connected. No warmth to condense against. It hadn't done that before and—
BZZZT
—The fact her phone had unknowingly turn off again.