PHASE ONE — NORMAL
Logs #001 — #020 | First weeks at the facility
I arrived this morning. The flight was 11 hours. Private jet, no windows after the first hour — they blacked them out before we landed. I don't know exactly where I am. Desert. I know that much. Kuwait, they said. Underground facility. There was a bus from the airstrip, then an elevator that went down for a very long time.
My name is Shiromiya Rei. I am a researcher now, apparently. I voiced Reimu in Kussoo☆☆☆☆ about a year ago. Before that I was just a normal person. I will continue writing these field logs as per the orientation packet. They want documentation of everything. I will document everything.
The man who brought me here is named Iseamoa. He left without saying goodbye. He will be back, I think. I don't like him.
My bunk is in Block C. The bed is clean. The air smells like recycled AC and something faintly sweet that I can't identify.
Orientation today. I met Director Benikurage. She is a thin woman with very precise posture and very cold eyes. She shook my hand once and looked through me, not at me. She said: "You will do fine." I do not know what I will be doing that requires fine.
I met Noel today. She is also Japanese — from Hokkaido. She has been here four months. She looked tired but smiled genuinely when she heard I had done cookie dramas. "I know reu," she said. "Is reu here?" I said I didn't know. She went quiet after that.
I met Meguru and Kohaku at dinner. They are my age, they are kind. Meguru talks too fast. Kohaku barely talks at all but she listens to everything. I think I will like them.
I found reu today. She was in the eastern cafeteria, eating alone. She recognized me immediately. "SRMY!" she said, and hugged me. I have never met her in person before but it felt like we had known each other for years, the way cookie people do.
She looks tired. There are dark circles under her eyes. She has been here three months. She seems okay though. A little quiet. She changed the subject whenever I asked about her work. I assumed she wasn't allowed to discuss it.
My assigned work area is Sublevel 3. I will be reviewing and categorizing anomaly documentation files. The files are very thick.
Met more staff today. Ruka is a security guard, short and efficient, not unfriendly. She showed me where the emergency exits are. There are fewer of them than seems reasonable for a facility of this size. I mentioned this and she smiled like she'd heard it before. "You'll get used to it," she said.
Yuuhi works in the lab. He is cheerful in a way that seems slightly forced but I do not hold it against him — I have been cheerful in forced ways too. He made a joke about the ventilation system that I didn't understand yet.
Akane runs the medical bay. Very professional. Very calm. She gave me a health check and printed something out that she folded before I could see it. Standard procedure, she said.
Genpatsu is head of security. Large man. Doesn't smile. Looked at me for four full seconds when we were introduced, then wrote something in a small notebook and walked away.
Found out what the sweet smell in Block C is. It comes from the air filtration unit. Yuzuyu, who does cleaning, says it's been there since she arrived. "Like sweet medicine," she said. "You stop noticing it after the first week." She was right. I stopped noticing it today.
Started reading anomaly files in earnest. Most of what I'm assigned to is Category-2 or lower — objects that behave strangely, temperature anomalies, minor psychological effects on prolonged exposure. Nothing dramatic. The facility handles these routinely.
Hisui stopped by my desk today. He is a senior researcher, been here longest of anyone on my floor. He seems brilliant. He asked what I had been assigned to and looked relieved when I said Category-2. "That's good," he said. "Don't ask for more." I asked why. He said: "Because they will give you more."
One week and a half. I am settling in. The facility is large but navigable. I know the route from Block C to my desk to the cafeteria to the medical bay. I know the elevator codes for Sublevels 1 through 4. I am not authorized below 4.
Kanna from admin said she can get me access to the library on Sublevel 2. I want to read more about how this facility was established. She was hesitant. "The founding records are restricted," she said. I said that's fine, I just want general history. She said she'd see what she could do.
Dinner with Meguru and Kohaku tonight. It was nice. Meguru does impressions. She did a spot-on Reimu voice and I laughed so hard I spilled my tea. Kohaku shook her head at both of us. It felt normal. It felt like being a person.
Met Paseri in the medical bay waiting area. She is a nurse. She was looking at something on her tablet that she minimized very quickly when I sat down. She's cheerful, easy to talk to. She has a collection of small figurines on her desk — she wouldn't tell me what they were from.
Eska, one of the guards, passed me in the corridor today and said without stopping: "Don't use the elevator on the east side of Sublevel 3 after 11 PM." I turned around to ask why but she was already gone. I made a note of it.
I am still not sleeping perfectly. The air down here is very still. I miss weather.
Two weeks. I have reviewed 114 anomaly documentation files. None of the Category-2 files are genuinely frightening. They are strange — objects with impossible histories, a chair that is always slightly warm, a box that adds to its own contents overnight — but none of them feel dangerous. The documentation is meticulous. The facility seems competent.
I am starting to think Iseamoa's threat was bluster. Maybe I can do this job, do it well, and go home in a year. Maybe it is fine.
Vivian from anomaly research joined us for dinner. She has a theory that the "psychological effect radius" of Category-2 anomalies is being systematically underreported. I asked why anyone would do that. She shrugged. "Makes the numbers look better," she said. She said it very casually. I filed it away.
Had my first look at a Category-4 file today. I was given it by mistake — misfiled in with my Category-2 stack. I started reading it before I realized what it was. Anomaly KWI-031, the phone room. I read two pages before Mikami from tech support appeared behind me, said "that's not yours" very quietly, took it from my hands, and left.
I had read enough. A room. A rotary phone. It rings at 3:17 AM. It speaks to whoever answers in their mother tongue and describes events from their childhood.
I live on Sublevel 3. The phone room is on Sublevel 2.
I could not sleep that night. Not because of the phone room. Because at 3:17 AM, I heard, faintly, through the walls — something ringing.
Almost three weeks. I am doing fine. The work is routine. I have good colleagues. The food is not bad. The air still smells sweet but I have stopped noticing it.
reu and I had lunch today. She seems brighter than when I first saw her. She told me she's started a private journal too. "Important to have a record," she said. "Important that something is written down." I asked if she was worried about something. She looked at her food for a moment. "No," she said. "Just. You know."
I did not know. But I nodded like I did.
I think things are going to be okay here.
[Note: This is the last log in which I think things are going to be okay.]
PHASE TWO — GETTING WEIRD
Logs #021 — #050 | Things begin to shift
Maintenance on the east elevator. I took the stairs for the first time. The stairwell is narrow and the lighting flickers on the landing between Sublevels 3 and 4. There is a door on that landing that is not on any floor plan I have seen. It is a gray door with a yellow handle. There is no lock visible. I tried the handle. It did not move.
I asked Uzuki about it. He maintains the stairwells. He said there was no door there. I walked him to the landing and showed him. He looked at the door for a long time. "Yeah," he said. "I know that one." He did not explain further. He walked back down.
Vivian told me today about the psychological effect radius discrepancy. She's been compiling her own data — staff accident rates, reported sleep disturbances, cafeteria incident logs. The numbers, she says, are about 40% higher than what is filed officially. "Someone is correcting the reports before they go to Benikurage," she said. "Or Benikurage is doing it herself."
I asked if she had brought this to anyone. "I brought it to Shinonome," she said. "He told me to get more sleep." She laughed but it didn't reach her eyes.
I noticed I have been sleeping lighter lately. Not badly. Just lighter. I wake at small sounds. I have started leaving the bathroom light on.
The first security flaw I documented formally: Camera coverage gap in the northeast corridor of Sublevel 3. There is a 14-meter stretch between Camera 3-NE-07 and Camera 3-NE-08 where there is no coverage whatsoever. I walked through it three times. Not a single angle captures that space. I submitted a formal note to Genpatsu. He wrote back: "Noted." Nothing changed.
Sananana — who handles Category-3 anomalies — stopped me outside my office today. She was very calm. She held up her hand and showed me her palm. There was a small circular mark on it, reddish, about the size of a coin. "Do you see it?" she asked. I said yes. "Good," she said. "Check yours." I looked. Nothing. She nodded like this meant something. She left.
One month in. I am trying to be clinical about this. Here is what I know: The facility is real. The anomalies are real. The documentation is thorough but selectively incomplete in ways that pattern toward minimizing severity. Someone, either Shinonome or Benikurage or both, is making decisions that prioritize operational smoothness over safety margins. The camera gap is still there. I know of at least two other structural inconsistencies in the security system.
Meguru and Kohaku know about the camera gap now. We walked through it together after dinner. We stood in it for a while, not saying anything, feeling the absence of oversight like a physical thing. Meguru laughed nervously. Kohaku just looked at the ceiling. "Something is wrong with this place," she said. She said it very quietly and then we went back to Block C and didn't talk about it anymore.
I had a dream that the phone rang.
Hisui asked me today if I had been hearing things. "In the vents," he said. "A voice." I said no. He looked at me for a moment. "You will," he said, and went back to his files.
That night I heard it for the first time. I was in bed, almost asleep. From somewhere in the ventilation grating above me, very faint: a voice. Feminine. Performing dialogue. Touhou dialogue, specifically. I recognized the scene. It was from the original Cookie Kiss — reu's lines, actually. The voice was not reu's voice. It was close. But slightly wrong.
I lay very still and listened until it stopped. I did not get up. I did not look at the vent. I am not sure why. It felt important not to look at the vent.
I found a second camera gap today on Sublevel 4, in the corridor adjacent to where they store the Category-5 materials. This one is 22 meters long. I have not submitted this one to Genpatsu because I do not believe he is the right person to tell. I am not sure who the right person is. Maybe no one here.
Macota — who cooks — makes very good food but has been making increasingly strange food. Today she served something she called "comfort meals for uncertain times." It tasted fine. But she didn't write the menu on the board the way she always does. When I asked her what it was she said "whatever you need it to be" and smiled in a way that was entirely normal-looking and yet made me not ask again.
The voice from the vent came again. This time it was performing uzuki's lines. Still slightly wrong.
I have now documented five distinct security failures in the facility's physical and electronic security systems. I listed them in my internal report: camera gap NE-3, camera gap adjacent Category-5 storage, the unlogged door on the stairwell landing, an anomalous fluctuation in the lock firmware for Containment Block B that occurs every 73 hours (I timed it), and a complete failure of the backup power routing for emergency lighting in Sublevels 5 through 7.
I compiled this report and walked it to Director Benikurage's office. Her assistant Rurima took it from me. She read the title page. She put it in a tray. She said "I'll pass this along." She was looking at her screen while she said it.
That was eight days ago. I have heard nothing.
reu told me today that she's been having the dreams again. I asked what dreams. She described a version of the facility with no staff in it — all the lights on, all the doors open, all the anomaly cells empty. "Everything out," she said. "All at once." She shuddered visibly. I told her it was just a stress dream. She nodded but I could see she didn't believe me. I'm not sure I believed me either.
The voice in the vent spoke my lines today. My actual lines. From Kussoo☆☆☆☆. The voice was mine, exactly mine, performing a scene I remember very well. Then it said one additional line that was not in the script. I am not going to write what it said. I think it is important not to write it down.
Yamin, who specializes in psychological anomalies, pulled me aside today. He had a folder with my name on it. He was not supposed to have a folder with my name on it. He said: "You've been submitting security gap reports." I said yes. He said: "Stop. Or at minimum, stop putting your name on them." I asked why. He said: "Because Benikurage has a list." He would not say what kind of list.
Azusa told me that two researchers who were here before I arrived are "no longer with the facility." She used that exact phrase. I asked what happened to them. "Reassigned," she said. Then a pause. "They didn't say goodbye. They were just gone one morning." She seemed uncomfortable. I thanked her and went back to my office.
I have been sleeping very badly. The bathroom light is always on now.
I compiled a new security gap report today. I did not put my name on it. I put Rurima's name on it. Then I felt guilty and changed it to "Anonymous Concerned Staff." I submitted it through the internal mail system, not in person.
Koga found me in the library today. He works with Category-6 anomaly handlers, the ones that go into the deeper containment blocks. He looked like he hadn't slept in two days, which maybe he hadn't. He sat down across from me without asking. He said: "There is something in Sublevel 7 that Benikurage has been studying for three years and we have seen the documentation and it should not be here." I asked him what it was. He said he couldn't tell me. I asked if it was dangerous. He said: "Everything here is dangerous. That one specifically is dangerous in a direction that goes outward." I nodded. He left.
I went to dinner. I could not eat. Meguru and Kohaku ate my portion. They didn't ask what was wrong. I think they already knew what was wrong.
PHASE THREE — SCHIZOPHRENIC DECLINE
Logs #051 — #080 | Sleep deprivation, paranoia, fracture
The voice in the vent last night. It spoke for a long time. I timed it: 47 minutes. It ran through every Cookie drama in sequence. All of them. In order. Every voice. The voices were all slightly wrong in the same specific way — like a recording of a recording of a recording, each generation losing something. At the end it stopped. Then, after a pause, it said my name. Just "Shiromiya." Once.
I didn't sleep after that.
In the morning I asked the ventilation maintenance crew if there was anything in the vents. They said no. I asked if sound could travel through them from somewhere. "From where?" one of them asked. I said I didn't know. He looked at me the way people look at you when they have decided you are the kind of person who hears things.
Maybe I am that kind of person now.
Hisui has been behaving strangely for the past week. He stares at things for too long. He stopped eating in the cafeteria and eats at his desk from packages he keeps in a drawer. Today I saw him standing in the northeast corridor camera gap — the 14-meter blind spot — standing very still with his eyes closed. I watched him for about two minutes from the end of the corridor. He didn't move. Then he opened his eyes, saw me, and walked past me without speaking.
At his desk later I heard him humming something. I recognized the melody. It was from Cookie☆. He was humming reu's part. Very quietly. He didn't seem aware he was doing it.
I wrote this down immediately because I needed to write something down. Writing things down feels important. Writing is a record. Records are the only defense against something that doesn't want to be remembered.
Today I found out why the elevator on the east side of Sublevel 3 should not be used after 11 PM. I used it at 11:23 PM to get something from my office that I had forgotten. The elevator stopped between floors 3 and 4. It stopped for six minutes. The lights were normal. The music was normal. The only difference was that at some point during those six minutes, the button panel displayed a floor that does not exist: Floor 12. Not sublevel 12. Floor 12. Positive 12. Above ground. I pressed it. The button lit up red and then the elevator started moving again, downward, and delivered me to Sublevel 4, which is not where I had asked to go. I had to walk up two flights of stairs past the gray door with the yellow handle to get back.
I submitted a formal maintenance report about the elevator. Mikami from tech support told me the elevators had been checked two days ago and were fully functional. "Maybe you pressed the wrong button," he said. I know what I pressed.
I am sleeping three to four hours a night. I know this is bad. Akane offered me medication at my last check-in and I said no because I am worried about what being less aware might cost me here. This may be the wrong decision. I don't know anymore what the right decisions are.
Vivian's data on the psychological effect radius is now significantly more concerning. She shared an update with me tonight. The numbers, she says, are not 40% higher than reported — they are 120% higher. "The Category-2 files you were given," she said, "some of them are actually Category-5. They were reclassified before you got there." I looked at my stack of files. I have been breathing the sweet air of Block C for sixty days. I asked her what the sweet air is. She didn't answer.
I think I am afraid. I think I have been afraid for a long time and I have been calling it other things.
The voice in the vent last night said something that was not from any Cookie drama. It said: "We have footage of what you did before. We know about your sister. We know where your parents live in Kyoto." Iseamoa's exact words. His exact words, from the day he came to my apartment. Spoken in my voice. My voice performing his words.
I sat up in bed and said out loud: "I know you are there." Then the voice was silent for a very long time. Then it said, in a voice that was not my voice and not any Cookie voice I know, just a flat affectless tone: "Then you also know where you are."
I did not sleep at all that night. I wrote this log at 4 AM. I am writing it very carefully. I want every word to be exact.
[Note from SRMY: This log was physically taken from my notebook by Benikurage's staff during my sleep. I am reconstructing it from memory. The original contained documentation of what I saw on Sublevel 7. I had accessed it with a borrowed keycard. I had seen Riran's cell. I had seen what was inside. I had seen the marks on the walls. I had seen that the locks on the cell had not been properly rated for what was inside them — I could see the rating placard: Class-3 Containment. The entity I saw required at minimum Class-7. I knew this from the files. I had seen the entity. I will not describe it here because writing it might make it more real. But it knew me. It looked at me through the door window and it knew me. It said my name. In my voice. And it smiled in the wrong direction.]
REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED
[The entity in Sublevel 7 is Riran. Miramikaru Riran. She is categorized as an "anomalous cognitive entity." She has been here for three years. Benikurage brought her here specifically. I believe Benikurage brought me here because of Riran. I do not know why yet. I am going to find out.]
I told Meguru and Kohaku about what I saw on Sublevel 7. We were in the camera gap, the three of us, the only place I trust now. Kohaku was very quiet for a long time. Then she said: "We need to get out of here." Simple, clean. I don't know how. None of us know how. There is one surface exit — through the elevator, which requires Level-9 clearance we don't have. There may be other exits. I have been looking. The gray door on the stairwell landing has been on my mind.
Meguru held my hand for a while in the dark of the camera gap. She didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. We stood there together in the only blind spot in this whole building and it was the safest I had felt in weeks.
I am seeing things in the corners. I know they are not there. I see them anyway. They are at the edge of where my vision goes — a darkness that isn't the room's darkness, something shaped, not moving. When I look directly at a corner it is just a corner. If I look slightly away I see the shape again. I have started sitting with my back to walls. I have started sitting in the center of rooms so no corner is closer than any other corner.
Hisui didn't come to work today. He sent a note: "Resting." Sananana said she saw him last night walking the sublevels below 4. She said he was holding a piece of paper and reading it to himself under his breath. She couldn't make out the words but said the cadence was like a prayer, or a script.
I am still writing these logs. If you are reading this I want you to know: I was a person before this. I had a voice, a nice one, that people liked. I did something fun with it. I would very much like to have that back.
Hisui came back to work today. He was different. He sat at his desk and worked but something was missing from him, some quality of presence. He did not make eye contact. He did not hum. When I put a coffee on his desk he looked at it for too long and then looked at me and said: "She knows you're documenting." Just that. Then he looked back at his files.
She. Benikurage, or Riran? I do not know. Either possibility is bad.
I have started writing the most sensitive things in very small handwriting in the margins of other documents. In case this notebook is taken too. In case someone is going through my things. I don't know anymore if the paranoia is justified or if the paranoia IS a symptom, if something is working on me the way Vivian said the anomaly fields were working on all of us.
Maybe both things can be true at once. Paranoia can be justified AND be a symptom. I think that is where I am right now.
Hisui did not come to work. The next morning, his things were gone from his desk. His locker in Block C was empty. No note. No goodbye.
Vivian told me tonight. She said she had seen it before. "When they go quiet like that," she said. "When their things disappear." She was shaking slightly. I held her hand. We did not have words for what we were feeling because the words for what we were feeling are very large and we were underground and the walls were close.
I washed my face and looked at myself in the mirror and the reflection looked back correctly. I was grateful for that. I am at the point where I am grateful that my reflection looks correct.
I am writing this at 2 AM. I am very tired. I have been very tired for weeks and it has started to feel like a landscape, like tiredness is a country I live in now, with its own geography. I know the topography of my own exhaustion. I know where the hills are.
I had dinner with Meguru and Kohaku tonight and they are scared. Kohaku is very good at hiding it but tonight she forgot to and I could see it in her face and it was the scariest thing I have seen here because Kohaku is the bravest person I know in this building. If it's showing on Kohaku something is very wrong.
The lock firmware fluctuation I documented — the one on Containment Block B that happens every 73 hours — it happened again tonight. I checked the time. 73 hours exactly. I submitted ANOTHER report. I put Rurima's name on it again. I'm sorry Rurima. I hope she never finds out.
I heard reu singing in the cafeteria today, just humming to herself, and it was the Cookie Kiss song, the right version, the real reu version, and I wanted to cry from how normal it was.
something is about to happen. i do not know what it is but i can feel it the way you feel weather changing underground even though there is no sky here. something is about to happen.
PHASE FOUR — THE BREACH
Logs #081 — #100 | THE NIGHT THE FACILITY ENDED
I was asleep. I woke to a smell. Not the sweet air of Block C. Something different — acrid, like the air before a thunderstorm, like ozone and something organic underneath. Then the alarm. Not the fire alarm — a different one I had never heard before. Three tones, descending. Then three tones, ascending. Then silence. Then the lights went red.
I sat up in bed. Through the wall I could hear Meguru's voice: "SRMY. SRMY wake up." I was already up. I looked down at the gap under my door. A thin wisp of black gas was sliding through it. Just the thinnest thread. Moving across the floor like it knew where it was going.
I put on shoes. I grabbed this notebook. I grabbed reu's badge from my drawer. I grabbed nothing else.
I opened the door. The corridor was red-lit and full of people and the black gas was there too, in threads, in the air, drifting. Meguru was outside her door. Kohaku was outside hers. We looked at each other.
"What do we do," Meguru said.
I said: "We don't go below. We go up."
We went up.
We found Kanna in the stairwell. She was sitting on the steps, very still. She looked up at us with an expression I cannot describe precisely — there was something behind her eyes that was not panic and not calm. Something very flat. "Kanna," I said. "Come with us." She shook her head. "It's already here," she said. "It was already everywhere. I breathed it." She touched her own throat. "I can hear it thinking."
I took her arm. She pulled away. She said: "Go. It doesn't want you to go but it isn't stopping you yet. Go now." She pushed us up the stairs. I looked back once. She was sitting on the steps again. Very still. The black gas was collecting around her feet like water.
Found Noel in the Sublevel 2 corridor. She was running toward us. She grabbed me by both shoulders. "SRMY. SRMY listen. The main elevator is locked — Genpatsu's locked it. I don't know if he knows what he's doing or if something is making him do it. There's another way. The ventilation shaft on Sublevel 2, east side. Ruka told me last month — she said if things went wrong, the east ventilation shaft goes up to the surface. She said she had mapped it." I asked where Ruka was. Noel's face changed. "She was on duty in Sublevel 4 when the alarm went off."
We ran to find Ruka. We should not have. We lost time. We lost Noel.
At the junction of Sublevel 3 and Sublevel 2, the gas was thicker. A door had come open — a containment door for one of the Category-3 rooms. From inside came a sound, low, rhythmic, wrong. Noel stopped. She looked at the open door. Meguru grabbed her arm. Too late. Noel took one step toward the door. Two steps. Then she was through the door. The door closed itself. We could not open it.
We found Uzuki near the maintenance access tunnels. He was trying to manually re-route the emergency power. He had the panel open and was working by flashlight. "The backup lighting for sublevels 5 through 7 is down," he said. "Whatever is happening down there, they can't see it." He worked for another 30 seconds. Then something from inside the wall panel reached out and took hold of his wrist.
I am writing this very carefully. Something from inside the wall panel reached out and took hold of his wrist. An arm. Not clearly an arm. Something that was performing the shape of an arm. It pulled him in. The panel closed. The panel did not have room for a person. He was in there anyway. We could hear him for approximately eight seconds. Then we could not.
We found reu. She was in the northeast corridor — in the 14-meter camera gap. She was standing in the middle of it. She was holding a radio and she had been trying to contact the surface. "I'm getting through," she said. "Intermittently. Someone is listening." She showed me the radio. Static with shapes in it. Maybe language. Maybe something that sounded like language.
The four of us moved toward the east stairwell. reu had the radio. Meguru had a flashlight. I had this notebook. Kohaku had a fire extinguisher she had pulled from the wall and was holding like she planned to use it on something. We moved quickly.
At the top of the east stairwell stairs, reu told us to go ahead and she would stay and try to get a clear signal. I said no. She said "thirty seconds." We waited thirty seconds. Then from below us — from Sublevel 3, from somewhere in the camera gap — we heard something. I cannot describe the sound. It did not have a shape that language fits. It lasted about four seconds. After the four seconds, reu's radio was on the floor of the stairwell. reu was not. Her badge was.
I picked up her badge. I put it in my pocket. We kept moving.
Paseri was in the medical bay, trying to gather supplies. She had filled two bags. She was calm in that professional nurse way — calm that is a skill, not a feeling. She said: "I gave myself an injection forty minutes ago. I don't know if it will do anything but it keeps me focused." She joined us without being asked.
We found the ventilation shaft on Sublevel 2, east side. The access panel was behind a water filtration unit. Behind the unit was, indeed, a shaft going upward at roughly a 30-degree angle. It was large enough to crawl through. Barely. We could feel air movement — real air, moving upward. Surface air. Desert air.
There was a sound below us. From the elevator shaft. Something riding the cables upward. Not the elevator car. Just. Using the cables. Coming upward.
"We go now," Paseri said. She was already in the shaft.
We went.
Paseri was ahead of me. She was twenty meters up the shaft when I heard her make a sound. Short. Surprised. Then nothing. Then I crawled past something in the shaft that I am choosing not to describe in these logs. I kept crawling. I did not stop. You must not stop.
SRMY. Meguru. Kohaku. Moving. Crawling through the shaft. The air getting drier. Hotter. The smell of the surface. I could hear Meguru breathing behind me. I could hear Kohaku behind her. I did not stop. None of us stopped. The shaft curved twice. The shaft branched once — we took the branch that had more air movement. There was light ahead. Not red light. Not facility light. Dawn light. Dawn light through a grate.
I kicked the grate. It took five kicks. My foot hurt. I did not care. The grate gave way. Hot air. Desert air. The sky was going orange. I crawled out onto sand and rock and I lay there for a moment face-down and breathed sand and did not mind one bit.
Meguru crawled out. Kohaku crawled out. We were above ground. We were in Kuwait. The desert stretched in every direction. There was a fence line to the east. There was nothing else visible. The facility entrance — which should have been somewhere near us — was not visible. Just flat ground. Whatever we had crawled up from was seamlessly hidden.
We ran east. Toward the fence. We ran until we couldn't.
We found hinase. DIYUSI. She was on the surface already — she must have found another way up, or found this shaft earlier. She was crouching behind a concrete pillar near the fence line. She had her comms equipment. She had gotten through to someone. "I reached the surface liaison," she said. "Rurima. I told her what happened. She said—" Hinase stopped. She looked at the equipment. "She said she already knew. She said she'd been told an hour ago." She looked up at us. "Who told her? An hour ago we were still inside."
We did not have an answer.
We started cutting through the fence with the wire cutters Kohaku had taken from the maintenance bay. Hinase was still on her equipment. Then the signal cut. Just stopped. Hinase made a sound. Then Hinase made a different sound, very short. I turned. Behind her — having come from somewhere that was not the ground, was not the air, was not anything I can name — was the thing that had been riding the elevator cables. I will not describe what it did. I will write: Hinase is gone. I will write reu's badge is still in my pocket. I will write that is all I know to write right now.
Through the fence. Kohaku had finished cutting. Three of us now: me, Meguru, Kohaku. Running. The desert flat and huge. Nowhere to hide. Hot already and the sun just barely up.
We ran until we found a road. A road meant cars. Cars meant people. People meant—
I was still thinking "safety" at this point. I had not yet understood that the options were: what was behind us, and what was in front of us. That neither option was safe. That there was no safe.
There was a vehicle on the road. We flagged it down. Military. Kuwait Armed Forces. Three soldiers who did not speak Japanese and we did not speak Arabic and the look on their faces when they saw us — torn clothes, sand-covered, wild-eyed — was not comfort. Was not safety. Was the beginning of the next thing.
We were taken to a military vehicle. Then to a temporary holding area in a compound I cannot identify. We were separated for questioning. I was questioned in English by a woman in civilian clothes who did not give her name. She asked where we had come from. I told her. She wrote things down. She asked about the facility. I told her everything. She wrote things down. She had a flat professional face that gave nothing away.
I asked about Meguru. I asked about Kohaku. The woman said: "They're fine. Being debriefed separately." I believed her then. Later, a soldier brought a meal and when I asked again about Meguru and Kohaku the soldier looked away. The look of someone who has been told to say nothing about a specific thing.
I asked the next person who came: Where is Meguru. Where is Kohaku. Neither response was clear. Both were the kind of response that is designed not to be clear. I sat with what this meant. I am still sitting with it.
They brought a Japanese translator on day 83. This is when things became clearer and also much worse. The translator told me that there were no records of the facility I described. I said I was inside it for 81 days and could provide documentation. I showed them this notebook. The female officer photographed every page. She said: "We are having this reviewed." I said: "Also Akane is down there and Yamin and Vivian and Sananana—" She held up a hand. She said: "We are aware."
"You are aware," I repeated. She didn't answer.
They asked me many times if I had initiated the breach. I said I had documented six security failures and submitted reports that were ignored. "So you knew the security was inadequate," she said. "Yes," I said. "And I reported it." "Did you access Sublevel 7?" "Once. Briefly. With a borrowed keycard." She wrote something. I did not like what I saw on her face when she wrote it.
They asked me about Kohaku. Specifically. By name. They asked how I knew her. They asked what her role was in the facility. I told them she was a researcher, a friend, someone I trusted. They asked if she had mentioned anything about the security systems. I said: "I mentioned the security systems. I'm the one who documented the gaps." "Did Kohaku have access to Sublevel 7?" "No. I was the only one who went to Sublevel 7." More writing.
Then the female officer put down her pen and said: "Shiromiya Rei, we recovered two individuals from the desert this morning. One is in medical care. One did not survive the night." She said this to my face, watching my face when she said it. I knew what she was telling me. I knew before she said which name.
I sat in the room for a long time after that. The officer left. The translator left. I sat. I had reu's badge in my pocket and I held it in my fist. I cried for a while. I am not ashamed of this. Then I stopped crying because I was too tired to cry. Then I just sat.
I am not doing well.
100 logs. I did not think I would write 100 logs. I did not think I would survive to write 100 logs. Here is what I know to be true as of log 100:
reu is dead. uzuki is dead. hinase is dead. kanna is dead. noel is dead. paseri is dead. hisui is dead. meguru is dead. kohaku is dead. I do not know the status of: ruka, yuuhi, akane, genpatsu, eska, vivian, sananana, yamin, nadeko, macota, yuzuyu, azusa, koga, mai, mikami, shinonome, rurima, suzu, benikurage, riran.
I am alive. My hands are shaking as I write this. That is okay. Shaking hands are alive hands.
They think I did this. They think I caused it or at minimum enabled it. Maybe I did. I documented the gaps but I did not fix them. I put names on my reports that were not my name. I went to Sublevel 7 alone with a borrowed keycard and looked through the door at something that looked back and said my name. Maybe something I did in those 81 days made it happen sooner. Maybe it would have happened regardless. Maybe those are the same thing.
I think about this a lot.
riran is still out there. she is not in the facility anymore. she went somewhere. she went down, not up. she went deeper. whatever is deeper than Sublevel 7 — she went there. i don't know if that makes her more dangerous or less. i think more. i think much more.
i am tired. i am so tired. i want to go home. i am going to write more logs because i have to write more logs because writing is the only thing keeping the inside of my head from becoming one continuous sound.
PHASE FIVE — ESCAPE: THE LONG WAY OUT
Logs #101 — #130 | During and after escape — what SRMY saw
I have been writing the escape logs in order but I want to go back and document things I didn't have time to write in the moment. On the way through the facility during the breach, I saw the following:
Sublevel 3, main corridor: The mirror anomaly (KWI-001) had shattered. The fragments on the floor each reflected something different. Not different angles of the same room. Different rooms entirely. In one fragment I saw what looked like the inside of a very old building. In another, a room full of empty chairs. In another — and this is the one I keep returning to — a fragment that showed the same corridor I was standing in, identical, except there were no people and all the lights were off. I did not stop. I kept moving.
The long worker (KWI-007) was in the eastern maintenance corridor. I saw it as I passed the entrance to that corridor. Still had its back to me. Still 2.9 meters tall. Its head was moving very slowly — a rotation, like it was listening for something. I went another way.
I found ruka on Sublevel 4. She was alive at that point. She had been trying to seal the corridor between Sublevels 4 and 5 using the manual lockdown mechanism — a huge steel wheel that requires two people to turn. She had been turning it alone. "I almost have it," she said. She looked at me. "Help me." I helped. We turned the wheel together. The door sealed. From the other side, from Sublevels 5 and below: sounds that I will not attempt to describe. We both stood back from the door.
Then the door unsealed itself. From the inside. The wheel turned back on its own.
Ruka looked at the wheel. She looked at me. "Go," she said. "Go up. I'll hold it." She grabbed the wheel again. I ran. I did not want to run. I ran anyway. I heard her behind me, fighting the wheel, for approximately forty-five seconds. Then I heard something else. Then silence.
She is why the three of us made it to the shaft. ruka turned the wheel. ruka held them back. I am alive because of ruka. I hold that. I will hold that.
On Sublevel 2, running toward the east shaft: the phone room (KWI-031). The door was open. The phone was ringing. 5 AM exactly by my watch. Not 3:17 AM. 5 AM. The phone was ringing and I could hear it from the corridor and something in me — something tired, something broken, something that was maybe not entirely me anymore — something in me wanted to answer it. I know what you're going to tell me, I thought at the phone. I already know. I did not stop. I kept running. The phone rang behind me for a long time as I ran and then I turned a corner and I couldn't hear it anymore.
I think about who answered it. Someone must have. The phone was ringing. Something in that building was still answering phones.
I saw yuuhi in the stairwell during the escape, I forgot to document this earlier. He was going downward. I was going upward. We passed each other on the stairs. "yuuhi," I said. "Come up. Come with us." He looked at me and his eyes were strange. Not blank like kanna's. More like he had made a decision and reached a kind of peace about it. "I need to go to the lab," he said. "I need to check on something." I said: "The lab is on Sublevel 5. Don't go below." He said: "I need to check on something." He kept walking down. I kept walking up. I don't know what he needed to check on. I don't know if he found it. I know I never saw him again.
It was the cheerfulness that got me. Even at the end, going down into that, he was calm in the way he was always cheerful — slightly forced, but genuinely chosen. He had decided something and he was at peace with it. I hope whatever he needed to check on was worth it.
the questioning is the same every day. did i initiate the breach. did i access areas i wasn't authorized for. was i in contact with anyone outside the facility during my time there. i answer the same things every day. the translator translates. they write things down. i don't know what they're building. maybe a case. maybe a story. maybe something to explain to people who did not go underground in kuwait and breathe the sweet air and hear the voice in the vents and see the thing riding elevator cables — maybe something to explain it to people who live in a version of the world that has not been expanded the way mine has.
they gave me a sedative at night now. i told them i didn't want it. they said it was for my health. i take it. i sleep. i don't dream, which is the first mercy. in the morning i feel slowed down. like thinking through cotton. i don't like this but i don't know how to not comply. compliance has been built into me. iseamoa built it in. the facility built it in. cooperation is what i do now. i perform cooperation while keeping this notebook.
riran is still out there. that is what i think about when the sedative lets me think.
Something happened today. A doctor came. Not an interrogator, not an officer. A doctor. She sat across from me and asked very gently how i was feeling. Not about the facility. About me. I told her i was fine. She asked if i was eating. I said yes. She asked if i was sleeping. I said they give me something for that. She wrote something. She asked if i was having intrusive thoughts. I said — and this is the first honest thing I have said in this place — "yes. constantly." She wrote more. She asked if i heard things. I said "sometimes." She asked what i heard. I said "voices." She asked whose voices. I said: "mine. and things performing my voice. and the voice of an entity i observed in sublevel 7 which i believe is now uncontained and at large in or below the kuwait desert." She wrote a great deal. She thanked me for my honesty. She left.
The next day was different. The tone was different. The questions were different. They started asking me about my mental health history. Whether I had experienced episodes before. Whether I had a diagnosis. Whether I had a history of "reality distortion events."
I see what is happening. I saw it coming. I am not surprised and I am terrified.
they're saying i imagined the facility. this is the new direction. careful, professionally phrased, using words like "confabulation" and "dissociative episode" and "stress-induced psychosis." they have a person with a calm voice and kind eyes who explains to me very gently that i was found wandering in the desert with no ID, no passport, no documentation of employment, two badges that are not registered to any existing institution, and a notebook full of — and i am quoting — "a very detailed and internally consistent but entirely unverifiable narrative."
i showed them the security gap reports. the ones i submitted from inside. somehow those don't exist either. i showed them my scars — i have a burn on my right forearm from the ventilation shaft crawl, where i brushed against a hot pipe. the doctor examined it. "consistent with a minor domestic burn," she said.
everything i have is consistent with something else. that is the genius of it. everything i experienced is explainable as something that a person in a dissociative state would invent. the facility knew this. the facility is designed this way. no records, no location, no GPS, no paper trail, only people who are underground and breathing sweet air until something happens that leaves no physical evidence except the trauma it writes into the people who survive.
i am so tired.
i am so tired i am so tired i am
they are transferring me to a hospital. they said this gently. they said it was for my "recovery and stabilization." they said it was not punitive. they showed me a form in japanese and english and asked me to sign it. i signed it. i don't know why i signed it. compliance. compliance has been built in. maybe if i cooperate enough they will let me go. maybe if i say the right things to the right doctors i can go home. maybe my parents are still in kyoto. maybe everything is okay. maybe i can
maybe
i have reu's badge in my pocket. they haven't taken it. as long as i have it i have evidence that she was real. that she existed. that she was there and then she was gone and i was there and i saw it and it happened and it was real. the badge is real. the burn on my arm is real. this notebook is real.
i am going to a hospital tomorrow. i am going to keep writing.
PHASE SIX — CAPTURED / INTERROGATED
Logs #131 — #145 | In custody
They drove me in a white van. Windows I could see through. Kuwait City. I hadn't seen a city in more than three months. The buildings were very tall and the light was very bright and there was traffic and people and I pressed my face to the window like a child and I watched it all go past and felt nothing that I recognized as feeling. All my feelings are labeled wrong now. Things that should be relief feel like warning. Things that should be calm feel like the eye of something waiting.
The hospital is large and white. Al Amiri psychiatric facility. The woman who checked me in was kind. She gave me a room with a window. Real window. Real light. Real sky. I sat at the window for a long time. The sky was enormous. I had forgotten how enormous the sky is. Underground you forget. Underground the sky becomes a myth, a thing you remember having believed in. Looking at it now it didn't quite feel real. Too big. Too open.
they let me keep the notebook. they let me keep reu's badge. they are kind here. I am aware that kindness can also be a containment strategy. I keep the badge in my shoe.
The psychiatrist is Dr. Hamad. He has a soft voice and very patient eyes and he takes extensive notes. I like him and I don't trust him and those two things exist simultaneously. He asks about my childhood in Tokyo. He asks about the voice acting. He asks about Cookie☆ — he has read the translation briefing about it. He says it with the wrong stress on the syllable. I correct him. He thanks me. He writes something.
He asks about reu. About meguru. About kohaku. He calls them "people you perceived as colleagues." I say they were colleagues. They were real. He doesn't argue. He writes something. He says: "You cared about them very much." I say yes. He says: "That care is real regardless of the context in which you met." I think about this for a long time after he leaves. I think he means it as comfort. It is not comfort. It makes everything worse, somehow.
There is another patient on my floor. She sits in the garden and talks to herself constantly. I cannot hear what she says. The nurses walk past her without noticing. She has been here a long time, I think. I wonder what she says. I wonder if it is important.
i have been given new medication. it is different from the sedative. this one is for daytime. it makes the corners of the world soft. i don't like this. soft corners are where things live. i need the corners to be sharp. i need to see into them. i reduced my dose by half by hiding part of each pill under my tongue and disposing of it in the bathroom. Dr. Hamad says i seem "more relaxed." i say thank you. i keep the corners of my eyes sharp.
The woman in the garden. I learned her name. Mai. Not my mai from the facility — a different mai. Or maybe. No. I'm not going to go there. Different mai. She talks to herself constantly. I sat near her today. I could hear her clearly. She was describing a room. A very small room with very smooth walls. A room that kept changing size. "But the change is slow," she said, to no one. "So slow you don't notice until you are already pressed against the wall." She did not seem to notice me sitting there. I stayed for an hour. She described the room the whole time. The room had no doors.
I am eating. I am sleeping. I am talking to Dr. Hamad. I am performing recovery with professional precision. I have spent 80 days in a facility that required careful performance of normalcy to survive. I know how to perform.
But at night. at night when the soft medication has worn off enough. i hear it. not in a vent this time. in the white walls. in the hum of the air conditioning unit. a voice. performing. cookie drama lines. mine. not mine. close.
riran is not in the facility anymore. riran went deep. i don't know what deep means in this context. i don't know the physics of what riran is. but the voice. the voice that used my voice before is in these walls now. is in the kuwait air now. is in the environment now. i don't know if this means riran has gotten larger or if she was always this large and the facility was just where she was concentrated.
i should stop thinking about this. i will not stop thinking about this.
I found a phone. Not the rotary phone. A smartphone. Belonging to a patient who left it in the common room. For five minutes I held it and thought about calling my parents in Kyoto. I know their number. I know it perfectly, it is the one number I have always known perfectly. I thought about hearing my mother's voice. I thought about what I would say. I thought: she would not believe me. Or worse: she would believe me and she would be afraid and there would be nothing she could do about it and I would have made her afraid for nothing.
I put the phone back.
Then I picked it back up and took a photograph of every page of this notebook. I emailed it to an address I made up on the spot. I don't know if that email address exists. I don't know if anyone has that inbox. Maybe somewhere someone received 173 photographs of a Japanese woman's handwriting and thought: spam. Or: interesting. I hope interesting. I hope someone, somewhere, reads every page. I hope you are reading every page.
I put the phone back. I went back to my room. I sat at the window and looked at the enormous sky and thought: riran is somewhere under that sky. something that uses my voice is somewhere under that sky. benikurage is somewhere. iseamoa is somewhere. and somewhere there are 300 people who went into a building underground and most of them did not come out.
I need to get out of this hospital. I need to get out of this country. And I need to go somewhere that is not where I am.
I started planning.
PHASE SEVEN — THE HOSPITAL
Logs #146 — #163 | Plans and deterioration
the plan is simple because simple is what I can manage. the hospital has a service entrance on the west side. I know because I watched it from my window for six days. at 5:30 AM a truck comes for the laundry. it stays for twelve minutes. the driver goes inside with a cart. the back of the truck is open for those twelve minutes. i am not going to think about what happens if this plan fails. i am only going to think about what happens if it succeeds.
things i need: shoes. reu's badge. this notebook. something to eat. something to drink. some money, which I do not have, which is a problem I have not solved.
things i have: shoes. reu's badge. this notebook. and a determination that I am only now understanding is not really mine — it is partially reu's. it is partially kohaku's. it is partially meguru's. it is the determination of everyone who didn't make it out. I am not just surviving for myself. I am surviving for everyone who is surviving through me because they cannot survive through themselves anymore.
this sounds grandiose. I know. I am aware of how I sound. I am a person who has been diagnosed with a dissociative break who is talking about being the vessel of dead colleagues' survival instincts. I know how this sounds. it is true regardless.
dr. hamad told me today that my "prognosis is encouraging." he said i am "demonstrating significant signs of reintegration with consensus reality." i said thank you and smiled and meant none of it and was grateful that human beings have faces that can perform gratitude independently of what the rest of the human being is doing.
mai in the garden described a new room today. this room had a vent in the ceiling. she did not describe a voice coming through the vent. she described a smell. sweet. like medicine. like recycled air. "it makes you calm," she said. "it makes you not notice things. and then you have been here so long and you notice you have been here so long but you are not alarmed about it which is how you know something is wrong." she looked at me when she said this last part. directly at me. first time she has looked at me directly. her eyes were very clear. she said: "you know about the air." i said: "yes." she said: "then you know you have to go." i said: "yes." she said: "soon." i said: "yes."
mai said nothing else. she went back to describing the room. i went back inside.
there is a new patient on my floor. she arrived two days ago. i have not spoken to her. she does not speak. she was brought in by military personnel and checked in under a name i couldn't read from where i was standing. she is young. she has the hollow eyes. the stare-at-corners stare. the not-quite-here quality. she is from the facility. i know she is from the facility the way i know things now — not from evidence, from something below evidence, from the new sense that the facility burned into me alongside everything else it burned.
i cannot talk to her. if i talk to her someone will notice. if someone notices that i recognize her it will complicate the "encouraging prognosis." i watched her at dinner. she ate half her food. she looked at the corners of the room. the lights flickered once and she gripped the edge of the table with both hands. she was afraid. she is still in it. she hasn't come out of it the way i have come out of it — which is to say she is still in the facility in her head. i know what that is. i was in it for months before i learned to perform not being in it.
I want to tell her: it was real. all of it. you are not broken. you are just expanded beyond what you were before and you haven't found the new shape yet. You will. Or you won't. But it was real.
I could not tell her this. I ate my dinner. I went back to my room. I looked at the enormous sky. I thought: three more days.
Something happened in the night. I was awake — I am always awake — and from outside the window, from the direction of the garden, I heard: singing. Cookie Kiss lines. The right ones. Real ones. reu's actual voice. not a recording. not wrong. right. I went to the window. The garden was dark. No one was in the garden. The voice continued for maybe ninety seconds. Every note exactly correct. I know that voice. I know it perfectly. I have heard it wrong so many times that hearing it right was like cold water. I pressed my hands to the glass and listened until it stopped.
then silence. then from very far away, as if from beneath the garden, from below the garden in the direction of deep underground: an answer. not reu's voice. not wrong either. different. the flat voice. the voice from the vent. completing the line. the call and response of it. reu above. riran below. like they were talking to each other. like they had been talking to each other this whole time.
I don't know what this means. I don't know if it's good or terrible. I think it is both. I think reu is not only dead. I think things do not end the way I used to think they ended.
I have to leave tomorrow. I cannot wait another day.
5:30 AM. truck. twelve minutes. i was in the laundry.
the truck dropped laundry at a hotel and picked up hotel laundry. i waited behind a cart until the truck was moving again, then climbed out at a red light. i was in salmiya district. i recognized it from a window i had looked out of once, months ago, going the other direction.
i had no money. i had reu's badge in my shoe. i had this notebook. i had a pen. i was wearing hospital clothes which are not exactly street clothes. i walked north for forty minutes. i found a mosque that was open. i sat in the entrance for an hour. no one asked me to leave. i was grateful. i counted what i had. i had: my hands. my voice. my memory. the contents of this notebook. and something else that is harder to name — something the facility gave me that was not trauma, or not only trauma. a different way of sensing things. an expanded perimeter. i don't know what to call it. it keeps me alive. it kept me alive in the shaft. it is keeping me here now.
i found a tourist's lost phone near a bus stop. i took it. i'm sorry. i needed it more. i used it to send this notebook to more email addresses than i could count. i used it to post on message boards i remembered from before. i used it to write the beginning of whatever this is — whatever it becomes after i cannot write anymore.
then i dropped the phone in a bin and kept walking.
i am not going home. home is a place iseamoa knows. home is a place with people i love and if i go there whatever follows me will find those people too. i am not going home.
i am going somewhere else. i don't know where yet. somewhere deep, i think. somewhere that is not on maps that iseamoa has access to. somewhere quiet enough that i can hear if riran is still singing.
somewhere deep.
PHASE EIGHT — GONE
Logs #164 — #173 | No ending
i am somewhere. i am in a building. it has walls and a ceiling and i slept on the floor last night. there is a window. there is always a window in the places where i sleep now and i always sit at it and look at the sky and remember that the sky exists and is above me and not below me. this seems important to keep knowing.
i have been writing these logs for a long time and the writing has changed and i know it has changed and i am watching it change and i cannot stop the change and i am not sure i want to. i was one kind of person before the facility and that person is gone and the person i am now is what came after and she knows things the before-person didn't know and she hears things the before-person couldn't hear and she feels the shape of underground places even when she is above ground and she knows when something is using her voice instead of her and she knows to listen to walls and she knows which corners to keep watching and none of this is useful in a normal life. i do not have a normal life. the things i know now are useful for the life i have.
reu's badge is still in my shoe. i take it out sometimes and look at it. it says her name and her department and her employee number. it says she was real. i know she was real. i will always know she was real.
i think about riran. i think about her a lot now. she was in sublevel 7 for three years before i arrived. three years in that cell, class-3 containment for something that needed class-7, benikurage studying her, learning from her, building the facility around her the way you build a building around a crack that goes all the way down. and then the breach. and then riran goes deeper. not up. not out. down.
what is below sublevel 7. what did riran find below sublevel 7. is she still going down. is there a bottom.
sometimes i think she is still singing. sometimes i think i can hear it from very far below wherever i am standing. the cookie kiss melody, deep and slowed down, like a record at the wrong speed, like something very large and very patient singing a very small song.
i think about benikurage. i don't know if she survived the breach. i don't know if surviving the breach means what it used to mean. i think iseamoa is looking for me. i think whoever iseamoa works for is looking for me. i am small and i move carefully and i stay in places that are not on the kind of maps they use.
i am getting better and worse at the same time. better at surviving. worse at being the person i was before. i have stopped trying to be both.
the corners are populated now. not with shapes i can't see clearly. with shapes i can see very clearly and have learned the shapes of and have given internal names to because naming things keeps them at a manageable distance. they are not threatening. i think they are just present the way air is present. the expanded perimeter picks them up. they have always been there, i think. i just couldn't see them before. the facility took the thing that was filtering them out. i'm not sure if that thing was a protection or a blindfold. maybe both.
I found a poster today. A missing poster. My missing poster. Someone printed it from the USB files. Someone in kuwait put it on a wall. It has a picture of my chibi character from the kussoo drama and my description and the phone number. +1 828 756 0109. Someone put that up for me. Someone read the files and thought: this person should be found. I held the poster for a long time. I am not going to call the number. I don't know who is on the other end. I am not going to be found. But I held the poster and felt the strangeness of being missing and present at the same time. both things true. like always. both things at once.
meguru. kohaku. reu. uzuki. hinase. kanna. noel. paseri. hisui. ruka. yuuhi. akane. eska. vivian. sananana. i say their names in order. every day. before i sleep. it takes less than a minute. some days it's the most important minute.
the voice in the walls here is not riran. it is not wrong-me. it is not cookie drama lines. it is something quieter. it is the sound of a very deep place broadcasting upward through rock and soil and desert and city into the walls of wherever i am sleeping. not words. a frequency. a feeling transmitted as sound. and i think what it is transmitting is: still here. still here. still going down. still. here.
and i think: yes. i know. me too. still here. still going. somewhere deep. I know.
i have reu's badge. i have this pen. i am going somewhere deep.
reu's badge.
my voice.
their names.
somewhere deep.
meguru. kohaku. reu. uzuki. hinase. kanna. noel. paseri. hisui. ruka. yuuhi. akane. eska. vivian. sananana.
i am going somewhere.
i am going deep.
— END OF RECOVERED DOCUMENTS —
THE USB DRIVE CONTAINED NOTHING AFTER THIS. THE PHOTOGRAPHS SENT FROM THE TOURIST PHONE ENDED AT LOG #163. LOGS #164-#173 WERE ON THE USB ONLY. THE USB WAS FOUND 4 MONTHS AFTER LOG #163 WAS SENT. SRMY HAS NOT BEEN FOUND. THE PHONE NUMBER IS DISCONNECTED.
SHE WENT SOMEWHERE DEEP.