The space beneath the supervisor's desk was suffocatingly small. Mac was folded into himself, his knees pressed so hard against his chest that his ribs ached. He buried his face into the rough canvas of his jacket sleeves, squeezing his eyes shut until he saw bursts of static in the dark.
Do not look at the shoes of whoever walks past.
The wet, tearing sound of the footsteps had stopped right in front of the desk panel. The smell of stagnant water, rot, and old copper was so thick it coated the back of Mac's throat like grease. He had to breathe through his mouth in shallow, microscopic gasps to keep from gagging.
He started counting in his head. One. Two. Three. He needed to reach six hundred to hit the ten-minute mark.
For the first minute, the thing just stood there. It didn't speak. It didn't breathe. It just leaked.
Drip. Squelch. Drip.
Heavy droplets of something viscous were falling from its mass, hitting the beige carpet inches from where Mac's boots were tucked under his thighs. The cold radiating from the entity seeped through the heavy wooden desk, dropping the temperature in Mac's cramped hideout to near freezing.
Sixty. Sixty-one. Sixty-two.
Then, the entity moved. It didn't walk away. It began to slowly circle the desk.
Squish. Draaaag. Squish. Draaaag.
Mac's heart slammed against his sternum like a trapped bird. He tracked the sound. It moved to the right side of the desk. Then around to the back, behind the chair.
It stopped.
The heavy leather of the supervisor's chair squeaked as a massive, wet weight settled into it.
Mac stopped breathing entirely. The thing was sitting directly above him. The only thing separating them was a single inch of cheap particle board. He could hear the wood groaning under the impossible pressure.
One hundred and twenty. Two minutes down. Eight to go.
Something tapped on the top of the desk.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It was the sound of a long, hardened fingernail clicking against the veneer. It was testing him. Checking to see if the prey was home.
Mac pressed his eyelids together so tightly they twitched. Don't look. Don't move.
"Maclin."
The voice drifted down through the crack between the desk and the back panel. It wasn't the smooth corporate voice from the phone anymore. It was Elias. It sounded exactly like the desperate, terrified man who had begged at Mac's door, but the audio was distorted, like it was playing through a blown-out speaker filled with muddy water.
"Why didn't you open the door, Maclin?" the Elias-thing gurgled. "It hurts in the dark. My eyes... they took my eyes. Look at them. Just look at what they did."
A heavy, wet thud hit the floor right beside the desk.
Mac's entire body went rigid. Human instinct—that desperate, ingrained need to identify a threat—screamed at him to open his eyes, to peek just past his knees and see what had been dropped on the carpet.
He didn't. He locked his jaw until his teeth ground together, continuing the count in his head. Three hundred. Halfway.
"Look at them!" the voice suddenly shrieked, the sound warping from Elias into a chorus of layered, agonizing screams that vibrated the floorboards. The heavy desk shook violently as the entity slammed its fists down on top of it.
Mac clamped his hands over his ears, burying his face deeper into his knees, his whole body trembling violently.
The shrieking abruptly cut off.
The silence that followed was worse. It was expectant.
Four hundred. Four hundred and one.
Mac heard the leather chair squeak again as the weight lifted. The entity was moving.
Squish. Draaaag.
It walked around to the open front of the desk. Mac felt the freezing cold draft wash directly over his hunched form. It was standing right there. If he simply opened his eyes, the "shoes" would be the first thing he saw.
Slowly, agonizingly, the sound of joints popping and tendons snapping filled the small space as the creature crouched down.
Mac could feel its putrid breath on the top of his head. It was hovering inches above him, peering into the dark space under the desk.
"Ten... nine... eight..." the watery, layered voice began to count backward, a mocking imitation of a timer.
Mac's mind raced. Was it counting down the ten minutes? Had he counted too fast? Or was it counting down to something else?
"...three... two... one..."
Mac braced himself for the physical impact, waiting for bloated hands to grab him and drag him out into the infinite aisle.
Nothing happened.
The creature let out a low, wet sigh that smelled of the grave. The joints popped again as it stood back up.
Squish. Draaaag. Squish. Draaaag.
The footsteps began to move away, receding down the main central aisle. They grew fainter and fainter, eventually swallowed by the ceaseless hum of the fluorescent tube lights overhead.
Mac didn't move. He didn't open his eyes. He forced himself to finish the count, slowing his pace deliberately just to be absolutely sure.
Five hundred and ninety-eight. Five hundred and ninety-nine. Six hundred.
He added another sixty seconds, his muscles cramping painfully from holding the rigid position. Only when the ambient temperature beneath the desk felt normal again did he finally open his eyes.
He was staring at his own dusty boots and the beige carpet. There were no shoes.
He slowly uncurled his stiff limbs, groaning quietly as his joints popped. He crawled out from under the desk, sweeping his flashlight beam across the carpet.
Where the entity had been standing, a dark, foul-smelling puddle of muddy water and black oil stained the beige fibers. But what made Mac's stomach turn over was the object sitting in the center of the puddle.
It was the heavy metal padlock he had removed from the janitor's closet on the East Wall. It had been twisted and torn completely in half, the thick steel sheared like wet paper.
He didn't want to know what it had done to the closet.
Mac pulled his phone from his pocket, his hands still slick with cold sweat. He hit the power button.
The screen glowed. 3:30 AM.
Panic, cold and sharp, flooded his veins.
Rule 4: At exactly 3:33 AM, you must conduct a perimeter patrol of Sector G.
He had three minutes.
Mac spun around, looking desperately at the plastic placards protruding from the tops of the endless gunmetal-grey cabinets. He was standing in front of aisle C-1.
"C, D, E, F, G," Mac muttered frantically. It was four full blocks of filing cabinets away. In the infinite expanse of Basement Level 4, a single "block" could be the size of a football field.
He didn't hesitate. He broke into a dead sprint down the central corridor, his flashlight beam bouncing erratically off the rows of metal.
The fluorescent lights overhead began to flicker in time with his footsteps, a strobe-light effect that made the aisles seem to stretch and warp as he ran. The air was getting thinner, harder to breathe, as if the room itself was trying to suffocate him before he reached his destination.
He sprinted past the D block. The cabinets here were completely rusted over, the metal flaking onto the carpet like dead skin.
He hit the E block. 3:31 AM.
The F block cabinets weren't grey; they were painted a stark, blinding white, and they smelled faintly of ozone and burning hair. Mac didn't slow down. His chest heaved, his legs burning from the explosive exertion.
3:32 AM.
He saw the placard in the distance, glowing dimly under a flickering bulb: G-1.
Mac pushed himself to the absolute limit, his heavy boots pounding the carpet. The seconds ticked away in his head. He could feel the 3:33 AM deadline pressing down on him like a physical weight, a crushing temporal gravity.
He reached the edge of Sector G just as his phone buzzed violently in his pocket, signaling an alarm he hadn't set.
3:33 AM.
Mac didn't stop to catch his breath. He turned sharply on his heel, stepping perfectly into the long, dark corridor of aisle G-1, and began to walk at a steady, measured pace.
Step. Step. Step.
He held his breath, listening.
For a second, there was only the sound of his own heavy boots and the hum of the lights.
Then, exactly one aisle over, perfectly mirrored behind the wall of the G-1 filing cabinets, another set of footsteps began.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
They weren't wet or dragging. They were sharp, heavy, and purposeful. They sounded exactly like a guard wearing heavy boots, walking perfectly in sync with him.
You will hear footsteps walking in sync with yours, one aisle over. Do not break your stride. If you stop, they won't.
Mac locked his eyes dead ahead, his jaw set in a grim line.
"Just a walk," he whispered to himself, the sound of his voice instantly swallowed by the endless aisles. "Just a late-night patrol."
He kept his pace perfectly even.
Step. Step. Step.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Then, the footsteps in the next aisle began to speed up.