Clara had almost convinced herself he wasn't real.
The blue-suited technician. The one who stood too still. Watched too long. Said nothing.
She'd replayed the moment in her mind—had even noted it in the black notebook under a heading marked "Visual Events." But the entry had always stood alone. No confirmation. No recurrence. Just a strange man near the maintenance corridor at the end of a long, fractured day.
Until now.
It was mid-morning, and the Bell building pulsed with its usual hive rhythm—wheeled carts squeaking across tile, typewriters hammering in the admin wing, someone dropping a stack of forms and swearing softly behind a file cabinet.
Clara was passing the stairwell between floors two and three, clipboard in hand, when she saw him again.
Just a glimpse at first—through the slatted glass of the door that led into the technician wing.
Same coveralls. Navy blue. Bell Systems patch over the chest.
He stood with his back to her, face angled slightly toward the elevator bay as if he were waiting—not for someone to arrive, but to make sure no one followed.
He didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Clara stopped walking.
Two other employees passed behind her, chatting. Neither gave the man a glance.
She turned slowly, pretending to scan her clipboard, and caught a clearer view through the glass.
The man turned, just slightly.
He had no nametag. No tool belt. No clipboard.
Just those deep-set eyes. Watching the hallway without expression.
And then—he stepped back.
Out of view.
Clara walked forward again, faster now, heart thudding.
But by the time she opened the stairwell door and looked down the technician hall—
He was gone.
Clara stood in the hallway a moment longer than she should have, staring at the spot where the man had been. The corridor smelled faintly of varnish and dust, and all the doors were closed.
No footsteps. No echo of movement.
She took a tentative step forward, peering into each side office window as she passed. Filing rooms. Storage. A long-defunct breakroom.
Then—
BZZZRT. BZZZZRT.
The overhead alarm snapped on with a screeching buzz. Harsh. Tinny. Unmistakable.
"Fire drill in progress. All personnel evacuate to your designated assembly points."
Clara froze.
She looked toward the nearest exit sign, then back down the technician hallway.
Too convenient.
She hadn't heard of a drill scheduled today—and she read every memo with paranoid care now.
A security guard in a red armband appeared around the corner, motioning briskly. "Let's go, miss."
Clara hesitated. "Is this a—?"
"Drill," he said flatly, already turning. "Out the front, please."
She pocketed her notebook and walked briskly to the stairwell, descending with a crowd of half-awake clerks and operators muttering about lost lunch breaks.
Outside, the March wind clawed at her coat. The sidewalk filled quickly with milling employees, all staring up at a building that wasn't burning.
Clara scanned faces, searching for blue coveralls.
Nothing.
She craned her neck to look up at the windows. Floor two. Floor three.
No movement.
Whoever he was—he wasn't standing outside with the rest of them.
He hadn't evacuated at all.
By the time the fire drill ended, Clara had made a decision: she wasn't going back to her desk—not immediately.
When the crowd was waved back in through the main lobby doors, she slipped past the bellhop's desk and took the side stairwell up to the technician wing. The lights overhead flickered slightly as she ascended, a dull buzz following her like a warning.
At the second-floor landing, she paused.
The hallway was empty again. All the doors were shut. The only sound was the faint wheeze of the old ventilation duct near the ceiling.
She moved cautiously now. Quiet.
Then she saw him.
Not down the hall this time—but stepping into a hallway she hadn't noticed before. It was narrow, recessed between two filing rooms, framed by an arch painted a dull gray. The man in the blue coveralls didn't look around. He moved slowly. Calmly. Like someone going home.
A small placard hung crookedly beside the doorway:
> 314B – Restricted Maintenance
Clara had never heard of Room 314B.
She worked that floor. She lived in that building half her life. There were no rooms past 310 on the map in the staff manual.
She crept forward, notebook tucked under one arm, shoes quiet on the linoleum.
She reached the hallway's mouth just as the man turned the corner—his shoulder vanishing behind the frame of the doorway.
She stepped into the arch and looked.
It was dim. No lights except a low, blue bulb flickering above the threshold. The corridor bent sharply left after twenty feet, disappearing around a blind turn.
No sounds.
Clara moved to follow.
Then—click.
The door swung closed behind him.
She stepped up to it and tried the handle.
Locked.
No rattle. No give. As if it had never been meant to open from the outside.
She leaned forward and read the number again: 314B.
A number that shouldn't exist.
Clara ran her fingers along the cold metal of the doorknob—smooth, matte, institutional. No keyhole. Just a flush plate and an unyielding frame. She leaned closer.
Nothing from the other side. No footsteps. No voices. Not even the faint buzz of machinery.
She stepped back and studied the door again.
The numberplate was real—brushed steel, slightly crooked, riveted into the wall like all the others. But the paint looked... newer. Less smudged. As if this door had been installed more recently than the surrounding hallway.
She pulled her notebook from her coat and jotted quickly:
> "314B – technician wing – locked door. Followed blue suit. Not on map."
She paused, then flipped to the back of the book and added the number to her growing list of anomalies—under "Rooms." It was the first entry in that column.
She glanced left, then right. No one. No footsteps.
She took one last look at the door, then turned and left the hallway, pulse still fast but steady.
When she returned to the operator's floor, she walked straight to the bulletin board in the breakroom where the floor schematic hung.
She traced the second-floor outline with her finger. Every room labeled.
312 – Supply
313 – Admin Overflow
315 – Supervisor Storage
No 314B.
Not even a blank space where it could be.
She stared at the map.
It wasn't just that the room wasn't listed.
It was that—on paper—there was no space for it to fit.
Clara waited until the building quieted.
Past six, most of the staff emptied out for the evening shift change. By seven, the maintenance corridor was still and dim, lit only by the occasional flicker of dying fluorescents.
She walked it again. Slowly this time.
Same hallway. Same filing rooms. Same long strip of institutional tile.
But the doorway wasn't there.
Where Room 314B had been—where the crooked plaque had glinted under that sickly blue bulb—there was now only blank wall. Seamless plaster. No indentation. No frame. No sign anything had ever been there at all.
Clara stopped cold.
She turned in place, eyes scanning for signs—new paint, dust disturbances, screw marks on the wall. Nothing.
She walked to the exact spot where she'd stood earlier, right where she'd seen the man in blue disappear. She even placed her hand on the wall, expecting—what? A false panel? A warm seam?
Only cold drywall. Flat and unbroken.
Her breath caught.
She looked down at her notebook, at the line she'd scribbled earlier that day:
> 314B – technician wing – locked door. Followed blue suit. Not on map.
She underlined it twice.
Then, next to it, added in clean pencil strokes:
> Now gone.
She stood there a while longer.
Listening.
But the hallway stayed silent.
And the wall stayed whole.