The facility was listed in the Archive index as Unoccupied / Utilities / Low Priority.
A regional research center, built in the late 1990s on the edge of an industrial park. No major accidents recorded. No active permits. Power to the main structure had been cut five years prior, according to municipal records.
I arrived at 08:41 under overcast sky, ambient temperature 3°C, light wind from the north. The parking lot was empty. No vehicles. No fresh tire tracks in the frost.
The front door was unlocked.
I noted that in my recorder as I stepped inside.
“Initial entry at 08:43. Exterior shows expected signs of long-term vacancy. Interior security appears to have been left unarmed.”
The foyer smelled faintly of dust and toner. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead when I found the breaker panel and restored partial power. Emergency strips along the hallway glowed a dull green.
It felt like walking into a building that expected company.
The first sign that something was wrong was my name.
On the wall just past reception, a whiteboard still hung in its metal frame. Someone had wiped it mostly clean, but faint traces of older notes remained where the cleaning solution had dried unevenly.
Over those ghosted abstractions, in darker, newer ink, someone had written:
WELCOME, FINCH
The letters were blocky and careful, spaced with the precision of someone accustomed to technical diagrams. Below that, a bulleted list:
Orientation
Access badge
Safety briefing
Each item had an empty checkbox beside it.
My surname is not common.
I checked the Archive assignment sheet again, though I already knew it by heart. The request for assessment had been submitted two weeks prior. It listed the facility by its municipal designation. Under “Assigned Personnel,” only my name was recorded.
I took a photograph of the board, then ran a finger lightly over the ink.
It smudged.
Whoever had written it had done so recently.
The main corridor led past a series of glass-walled offices. Desks still held computer monitors, keyboards, paper trays. Some chairs were pushed back as if their occupants had only stepped away for a moment. Coffee mugs ringed with sediment sat in place beneath a thin film of dust.
On one door, a narrow brass slot held a nameplate.
The plastic insert read: H. FINCH, ONBOARDING
I stood there longer than I should have.
The plaque was not aged like the others. The lettering was sharp, free of the sun-fading that had bleached the adjacent names nearly to illegibility. The screws holding the frame appeared newer as well, their heads uncorroded.
Inside, the office was almost aggressively neutral. Empty bookshelves. Clean desk. No personal effects. The only item on the blotter was a laminated checklist titled NEW STAFF INTAKE – H.F. with several fields already printed:
ID photo – PENDING Building tour – PENDING Lab access briefing – PENDING Emergency procedure review – PENDING
At the bottom, a line for a signature had been pre-filled in block letters: H. FINCH.
The line above it, where the “Supervisor” should sign, was blank.
The pen resting beside the sheet was uncapped.
I moved more carefully after that.
At 09:12, I entered what had once been a break room. A microwave, silent. A refrigerator, unplugged and half open. A corkboard covered with yellowing flyers.
Near the sink, a ceramic mug sat inverted on a drying rack. Someone had written a name in permanent marker along its side.
FINCH
The edges of the letters showed no cracking. The ink had not aged the way the other markings in the room had. When I lifted the mug, the ring of dry water beneath it was still neat and circular, unaffected by dust.
I checked the cabinets. One shelf had been cleared to make space for a row of identical mugs, all blank. A roll of masking tape and a permanent marker lay beside them.
On one of the taped labels, half-peeled and unused, someone had started writing a letter F.
My recorder clicked softly as it continued to capture the ambient noise of the facility: the hum of aging ballasts, the faint tick of ductwork. No voices. No machinery.
There were too many small, deliberate preparations.
The lab spaces were clustered along the west wing. Their windows were papered over from the inside with sheets of printer paper gone brittle at the edges. When I opened the first door, the lights came on without hesitation, triggered by a motion sensor that had no reason to be working so reliably in a building this old.
The room had been partially reset.
Equipment had been pushed back against the walls. Benches cleared. At the center of the floor, someone had taped out a rectangle with blue painter’s tape, two meters by one. Next to it, in clean handwriting:
“STATION FINCH – CALIBRATION”
There was nothing inside the taped area.
On a clipboard hanging beside the door, a printed sign-in sheet had been filled out in advance. All the fields under NAME read FINCH (H.). Under TIME IN and TIME OUT, someone had left the columns blank.
Only one box—Orientation complete?—had been ticked, though no such orientation had taken place.
I left the room lights on and stepped back into the corridor.
At 09:38, the facility acknowledged me.
I had reached a small conference area off the central hall. Its glass walls were covered from the inside by Venetian blinds, slats half-tilted. On the table lay several spiral-bound safety manuals fanned out, all turned to the same page: “RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE NEW INSPECTOR”.
I heard the tone first. A click of a relay, then a soft burst of static overhead.
The intercom in the ceiling crackled.
“Doctor Finch,” a voice said. “You’re late.”
The audio quality was poor, compressed, as though recorded onto a cheap answering machine and played back through old wiring. There was no carrier hiss, no ambient noise under the words. Just silence before and silence after.
I didn’t answer. It wasn’t a real-time channel. It had the cadence of something scheduled, or triggered.
After a moment, it repeated, identical down to the smallest fluctuation.
“Doctor Finch. You’re late.”
I checked my watch. 09:39.
The intercom remained silent.
The deepest part of the facility housed the server room.
According to the blueprints, it was a long, narrow space with two rows of racks and a raised floor. According to reality, it was something else.
The racks were there, most of them empty. But the far wall had been cleared. In its place, someone had mounted a grid of clipboards, each holding a single printed page.
Row upon row. Dozens of them.
Every page contained a version of my name.
Finch, Halloway – ARRIVED Finch, H. – RESCHEDULED H. Finch – CLEARED FOR ACCESS FINCH (H.) – DENIED ENTRY
Dates varied, but they were all recent. Many were duplicates with minor differences: a changed time, a different stamp, a new notation in the margin.
Some were marked CANCELLED in red. Others: PENDING.
One, directly at eye level, had no stamp at all. Just my name, clean and unaltered.
H. FINCH – EXPECTED
No date. No time.
The clipboard beneath it was empty, awaiting another page.
At the base of the grid, a cardboard box sat open, filled with forms identical to the ones on the wall, all blank except for the pre-printed heading:
“SITE PREPARATION CHECKLIST – FINCH (H.)”
I found the control room for the public address system adjacent to the server room. The console’s display was dark at first, then blinked to life when I approached.
A queue of pre-recorded announcements filled the screen. Most were marked TEST. A few had labels: FIRE DRILL, EVACUATION NOTICE, SYSTEM RESTART.
One file sat at the top of the list, flagged as REPEAT UNTIL ACKNOWLEDGED.
MSG_1022_FINCH_ARRIVAL.wav
Its runtime was listed as 00:03.
I played it through the local monitor.
My own voice emerged from the speakers, flat and tired.
“Doctor Finch,” it said. “You’re late.”
The waveform on the screen matched my speech patterns almost perfectly. Spectral analysis would later confirm a near-exact match to my vocal profile.
I had never recorded that announcement.
I left the building at 10:04.
On the way out, I passed the reception whiteboard again. The message had been altered.
The checklist beneath WELCOME, FINCH now had one item ticked.
Orientation ☑
Access badge ☐
Safety briefing ☐
I hadn’t touched the marker.
Halfway across the parking lot, I looked back.
Through the glass, in the dim of the foyer, the board looked the same as before—no new marks, just faint reflections of the emergency lighting.
It wasn’t until I reviewed the photograph I’d taken earlier that I noticed the difference.
In the first capture, the heading read WELCOME, FINCH.
In the second, taken as I left, the same board showed new text written in smaller letters along the bottom margin, crowded between the existing notes and the frame.
The handwriting was my own.
YOU’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE.
There was no corresponding pressure mark on the board in the physical building when the team returned to secure the site.
Only the image had changed.
[End of recovered material]