Page 71 of Stay Scared

We reach a reinforced entrance marked AUTHORIZED OPERATORS. Its electronic lock glows green. Ash presses his hand against the reader, but nothing happens.

“Green usually means open,” I say.

“Tonight it means decoration.”

He removes a manual key from beneath his vest and inserts it into the housing. The key turns halfway, then catches. Owen crouches beside the lower panel.

Another black cable runs directly into the locking mechanism, the same kind of hardware we found attached to systems that stopped obeying Decay Brigade.

Owen pulls it free. Something heavy releases inside the door, and Ash opens main control.

Six chairs sit pushed away from the central console. Six headsets rest beside active keyboards. Nobody sits in any of them.

The wall map shows every zone inside Crimson Night beneath frozen green indicators, a perfectly healthy building displayed inside a room its own staff abandoned.

Ash enters slowly. “Six operators were assigned to this room.”

Owen checks the nearest station. He touches the headset, looks beneath the desk, then studies the chair.

“Nothing here suggests they were forced out. The chairs are intact, and the headsets were set down.”

Ash looks across the empty stations. “Then they left because they believed the instruction was legitimate.”

Owen straightens. “Or because it carried your authority.”

That lands harder. Someone has not only taken pieces of Crimson Night. They have learned how to make the people inside it obey.

Ash crosses to the main console, and a message appears.

WELCOME BACK, DIRECTOR.

His hands stop over the keyboard.

Owen comes closer. “That message is not part of our interface.”

Ash opens the emergency board beneath the desk. Another black cable has been connected directly into the housing. Owen reaches for it, but Ash catches his wrist.

“Mark first.”

Owen looks at Ash’s hand, then at him. Ash releases him.

Owen moves to the exterior-camera bank and selects Trailer Six. The screen stays black. He tries a second feed, then a third.

Nothing.

“Trailer Six dropped off the network sixteen minutes ago.”

My hand lands against the console. “It was active when we were in surveillance.”

Owen’s fingers slow over the keys. For one second, neither of us speaks.

Then he says, “Then we were already watching a recording.”

The room seems to shift around me. Mark did not disappear after we left surveillance. The system only waited sixteen minutes to tell us.

“Can you reach the trailer door?”

Owen searches the network. TRAILER SIX should appear near the exterior production lane, but it does not. He searches again.