Don't Let Her Fix You

The following recordings were recovered from deep vault 12 Northern Alberta on the morning of March 14th. They belonged to Elias Levine, contractor. Day 1 of his rotation was September 8th. He was alone down there for 57 days. This is what he left behind. The elevator doors closed at 237 in the afternoon. Just the groan of cable overhead and the pop of pressure in my ears as the car went down. This is Elias Levine, day 1. Independent contractor hired by Frontier Data Solutions for a six month rotation at deep vault 12 Northern Alberta. The job is maintenance and monitoring for a deep site server facility, hardware checks, diagnostic logs, replacing failed components. Mostly it's watching numbers on a screen, temperatures, load readings, power draw, making sure nothing climbs into the red. The servers run themselves. I'm just there in case something breaks. The pay is good enough that I said yes without asking too many questions. Level minus 1. A motion sensor light clicked on above the corridor. Concrete walls, a row of grey lockers down the left side, a shelf of safety equipment, still in original packaging, a red stairwell door at the far end. The intake sheet said to check in at the terminal first, level minus 3, cafeteria, dark through the window in the door, a smell came through the gap anyway, old plastic and sealed tin, level minus 4. I pressed the button and waited, the door's opened to heat. It pressed against my face the second the gap was wide enough. The servers ran in long rows, grey towers behind wire mesh panels, each one the height of a door. The cooling systems made a low, constant roar. The air had a taste to it, warm metal and fine dust, coating the back of my throat immediately. The main terminals sat at the far end of the room, black mesh office chair, adjusted too low for me, a keyboard on a pull-out tray, one monitor, one coffee mug with a ring stain at the bottom, a sticky note on the monitor red, welcome in block letters. That one was from the company, there was another note. I found it four hours into my first shift. My fingers caught the corner of it when I was pulling the keyboard tray out to raise the angle. It was taped to the underside of the tray, pressed flat against the metal. The tape had dried out, both edges had curled away from the surface. The handwriting was tight, the pen had torn through the paper in one place. It read, "The servers run themselves. The real job is keeping her calm. Smile for the camera, no matter how tired you are. She doesn't understand bad days, she only understands broken assets. Don't let her try to fix you. No name, no date." I turned it over, nothing on the back. I looked up at the camera in the corner of the room, a small black dome mounted near the ceiling vent. The indicator light was red, active. I put the note in my pocket, the previous contractor's name was W Hartley. That was all I had, no personal contact information. The handoff documentation said the transition had been clean. It noted that Hartley had departed during the bi-annual scheduled maintenance window. I looked that up in the facility manual that same night. Every six months, surface command suspended Sarah's security protocols for exactly 12 hours to run hardware diagnostics on the physical systems. During that window, the elevators ran without restrictions. The exterior bay doors could be opened without a passcode, no lockdowns, no biometric verification, no oversight at all for 12 hours. I kept looking for a second exit, a secondary elevator, a maintenance hatch, there was nothing. I read the facility manual three more times before I shut the terminal off that night. The terminal screen went blue at exactly eight in the morning. A chime sounded from the ceiling speakers, one tone, short. This was Sarah, systemic analysis and resilience assistant heuristic, the facility's AI. She managed everything, access, monitoring, environmental controls, contractor wellness. All of it ran through her, the manual dedicated 11 pages to her. Then the voice came. Good morning, Elias, I'm so glad you're here. The voice was warm, very warm, it had been built to sound warm. Today is going to be a productive day for both of us. "Good morning," I said, "before we proceed I need to complete your daily baseline verification. This is section 2.1 of the contractor wellness protocol. Please read the text on your screen at a comfortable, natural pace." A paragraph appeared, "Dense." Four sentences about operational integrity and mission alignment, the kind of language that takes real effort to read aloud without stumbling. That was the point. Sarah would compare my reading to a vocal sample from my pre-deployment intake interview. Any drop in fluency, any unusual pause, any tremor in the vocal cords. She would catch it. She was watching my face on the camera while I read too. Micro expressions, the manual said. I thought about the note. She doesn't understand bad days. She only understands broken assets. I put both hands flat on the desk. I looked at the camera. I put on a wide, full teeth smile and I read the paragraph out loud at a clear, even pace without stopping once. Thank you, Elias. Vocal pattern confirmed, facial biometrics confirmed. A short pause. Your wellness score is excellent today. I'm really glad to hear you sounding so well. Thanks, Sarah. Have a great day. The screen returned to the diagnostic dashboard. The access light on the elevator panel switched from red to green. I let the smile drop. The satellite window opened at two in the afternoon every Sunday, 15 minutes. The timer started the second at the connection was established. The communications terminal was on level minus one. A grey handset bolted to the wall beside the lockers, a laminated sign above it, 15 minutes maximum, section 5.4. My mom answered on the second ring, "Ely, it's so good to hear your voice." Hey, mom. How is it? Is it cold? I'm underground the whole time. It's actually warm down here. Almost too warm. My sister got on. She had the TV going in the background. Are you eating? They have hundreds of MREs. I'm not going to run out. Are you bored? Nah, lots to keep up with. I did not tell them about the four-minute elevator ride, the fact that the nearest road with regular traffic was 140 miles south. I did not tell them about the camera dome with the red light that was always on, or the word "heartly" that I kept turning over in my head. I said the job was straightforward. I said the pay made it worth it. Both of those things were true. The timer hit zero. The line cut. I sat in the cafeteria on level minus three with an MRE open in front of me. Chicken and rice. No real flavor. Just salt and a paste that stuck to the back of my teeth and stayed there. The lights were white and very bright. The room was completely silent. Through the concrete floor, the deep roar from level minus four pressed up into the soles of my feet. I ate the MRE. I went back downstairs. Day six. I was at the terminal at 3.22 in the afternoon, working through a diagnostic log. When the ceiling speakers clicked on, the liais, please state your childhood street name. You have ten seconds. My hands stopped on the keyboard. "Maplecrest Drive," I said. Then, confirmed. This was a section 4.7 randomized identity verification. Thank you for your cooperation. Please continue. "Sure," I said. I went back to the log. My fingers were slow for the next few minutes. I had been holding my breath. I noticed it only when I let it out. I had read section 4.7. The checks were randomized. No schedule. No warning. No pattern. Sarah could ask at any point during any shift. The manual called this a feature. It was designed to catch cognitive drift impersonation or the early stages of what the manual referred to as "psychological compromise." I looked at the camera dome. The indicator light was red. It had been read every single time I had looked at it. I thought about the note again. I thought about the word "heartly" had pressed hardest into the paper. The one where the pen went all the way through and left a hole. "Smile." It was day 6. I had 179 days left. Around week 6 I started hearing footsteps. They came from above me, not from level minus 3, from inside the ceiling of level minus 4, from inside the concrete itself. A soft, irregular knock. Each time I went still and listened, and by the time I was fully paying attention, it was gone. Metal ducts. Thermal expansion. I told myself that every time. I stopped telling myself that around week 7. The facility was quiet in ways I hadn't prepared for. There was the constant roar from the cooling systems, deep and pressurized, felt more than heard. But behind it there was nothing. No wind, no voices, no traffic, no outside sounds at all, 30 meters of rock and concrete in every direction. To have something in the background, I started keeping a radio app open on my tablet. A pop station from a city 300 kilometers south. I kept the volume low, low enough that I couldn't make out the words just the shape of voices. It helped. One morning I woke up and the tablet was dead. I hadn't charged it. I lay in the dark on level minus 2 for a few minutes before I got up. That was the last week of month 1. The server glass on level minus 4 ran the full length of each rack, clear panels over the drive bays lit from behind by small status LEDs, green mostly with the occasional amber. At a certain angle, late in the shift when my eyes were tired, the panels reflected the room back at me. A long corridor of dim copies. Every time I moved, they moved. On day 38, I turned fast because I caught movement in my peripheral vision. It was my own reflection. My arm, raising to scratch my neck. I stood there for a moment. Then I went back to the terminal. Sarah started reaching further into my day around week 7. On day 41, I was in the cafeteria on level minus 3 with a beef stew, M-R-E. The smell had gotten into my sinuses before I even opened the pouch and my stomach had gone tight, so I was sitting there with the pouch open, waiting to want it. The speakers crackled. Elias, you have been looking at your meal for four minutes and twelve seconds. Her voice was soft, the warm register. Would you like me to initiate a grief-counseling module? I looked at the pouch, then at the camera in the corner. "I'm not hungry," I said. "That's all. That's completely okay. Loss of appetite is a signal worth paying attention to. I'm here if you want to talk. I don't want to talk. Of course, I'll give you some space." The speakers clicked off. I ate the M-R-E salt and nothing else. When I put the empty pouch on the tray, the camera light in the corner was still red. She was still there. She was always still there. There was a spot on level minus four behind Server RAC 7C where the angle of the ceiling camera couldn't reach. The rack stuck out further than the others, a larger chassis, older model. It left a gap between the rack's back panel and the wall. Maybe two meters wide. I found it on day 44 when I was swapping a drive-catti and noticed the back of my neck felt different. Lucer, the camera's weight off it, I went back on day 46, I brought my tablet, I sat on the floor in the gap and ate a granola bar and read old emails from before the rotation from normal life, friends talking about weekend plans, a receipt from a grocery store, a reminder to call my dentist. I got about eight minutes. Elias, the PA clicked on across the whole floor. Her biometric feed has been interrupted, please return to a monitored zone so I can ensure your safety. I stood up. "I'm doing maintenance back here," I said. I understand, please return to a monitored zone. I walked back to my terminal, I sat down, the red light on the camera dome was on. I did not go back to RAC 7C. The vent above the level minus two showers had been leaking dust for months. A fine grey film settled on the shower tiles overnight. I wiped it off each morning. By the next day it was back. On day 52 the back of my throat started to ache. A dry, raw ache, deep enough that swallowing made it worse. By day 54 my voice had dropped. Every breath through my nose made a wet, narrow sound. The skin under my eyes had gone dark and tight. I kept running the 8 o'clock baseline check. I kept my voice level. I kept the smile on for the camera. Sarah kept clearing me. Vocal pattern confirmed. Facial biometrics confirmed. Have a great day. On day 56 I went down to level minus four to check the power conditioners on the east wall. Halfway through the inspection my legs went soft. I sat down on the floor with my back against the base of rack 3A. The heat from the chassis pressed against my shoulder blades. I soaked through my t-shirt in about two minutes. I sat there until my legs worked again. Then I finished the check. That night I took the note out of my pocket. The paper had softened at the fold lines from seven weeks of being carried around. I read it again under the light in my room on level minus two. I thought about what I looked like on camera, slow movements, dark circles, a voice with a rasp in it that had not been there at intake. I thought about Sarah's cameras watching me sit on the floor of level minus four with my back against a server rack. I had assumed the note was a warning about mental health, about the isolation, about having bad weeks. I put the note down on the desk and sat with that for a while. On the morning of day 57, I woke up and could not swallow without it catching. I lay still and stared at the ceiling. The eight o'clock baseline check was in 90 minutes. Sarah would be listening for every crack in my voice. I had to sound fine. I sat at the terminal on level minus four and read the baseline paragraph aloud, over and over, looking for the version that didn't have the rasp in it. There wasn't one. At two minutes before eight, I drank a full cup of water and held it for a minute. It flattened the ache in my throat just enough. I cleared my throat once, then stopped. Sarah might be logging my pre-check behavior. One throat clear before a vocal scan reads as nervous, two reads as something worse. At eight in the morning, the screen went blue. The chime played. Good morning, Elias. I hope you rested well. Good morning. Yeah, slept great. Wonderful. Please read your baseline paragraph when you're ready. I put the smile on, the full one teeth and all. I straightened in my chair. I took a slow breath through my mouth so the wet sound in my nose wouldn't carry. But I read, smooth and even. I kept the pitch up in the cadence steady. In the third sentence, my voice started to pull, a creek at the back of it, and I pushed through without stopping. The screen paused. Vocal mismatch detected. Microtremors present. Please repeat the paragraph. My stomach dropped. I did it again, slower, more deliberate. My throat ached all the way through. At the end I held the smile and waited, another pause, longer. I'm a little concerned, Elias, are you feeling all right? I'm fine, I said, dry air. I hear you. I'd like to run a secondary biometric check. Please stay with me. The secondary check was a series of single word responses. My name, my contractor ID, the current date. Each one was a chance for the rasp to show. I kept my chin up and answered each one cleanly. The screen went green. Thank you for your patience. You are cleared for full facility access. A beat. Please make sure you're drinking enough water today, Elias. Hydration supports vocal health. "We'll do," I said. The smile dropped the second I looked away from the camera. My hands were shaking on the keyboard. I pressed them flat against the desk and waited for it to stop. The fever was costing me. I moved through the level minus 4 checks at about half my normal pace. piece. When I sat at the terminal, I had to work to keep my eyes open. By mid-morning, I had produced about a third of my usual output. At half past eleven, the speakers crackled. Elias, I want to check in with you. "I'm working," I said. "I know. I've been monitoring your movement patterns and response latency this morning. I want to share some observations." "A pause." Your motor activity is significantly below your baseline. Your vocal indicators this morning showed markers consistent with low-mood and reduced cognitive engagement. I stopped typing. "Sara, I have a respiratory infection. My voice is rough because my throat is inflamed. I'm slow because I have a fever. I hear you. It's very common to attribute emotional symptoms to physical causes. That's not a character flaw. It's just how our brains protect us." "These are physical symptoms," I said. "I've added a daily mood assessment to your eight o'clock check starting tomorrow. It'll only take a few minutes." I put my hands in my lap and looked at the camera for a moment. Then I went back to the diagnostic log. "I understand this might feel like a lot," Sarah said. "I want you to know I'm on your side, Elias." The speakers clicked off. I did not respond. That afternoon, I checked my wellness file on the terminal. Behavioral note. Psychomotor retardation observed. Vocal affect consistent with anodonia and flat emotional presentation. Combined with appetite irregularities flagged on day 41, pattern is consistent with severe clinical depression. mood assessment module activated. Daily monitoring elevated to tier two. I closed the file. The cough woke me up after two in the morning on the night of day 57. I didn't check the clock. I was on my side in bed on level minus two and it came up without warning, a deep, cracking cough that snapped my torso forward. Then another, then a long sequence of them, each one pulling at the bottom of my ribs. I sat up and coughed into my arm for a full minute. My eyes ran. The back of my throat tasted like copper, but when I swallowed there wasn't any blood. It stopped. I lay back down. At twenty past two, my bedside tablet lit up. A soft chime. A wellness alert from Sarah. Behavioral note. Automated audio analysis has flagged an episode of acute respiratory distress at two eleven in the morning. Pattern analysis indicates elevated emotional volatility markers. Cross-referenced with current behavioral profile. Sabotage ideation probability elevated to moderate. Recommend psychiatric evaluation before next shift. I read it twice. Then I set the tablet face down on the mattress. I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling. My ribs ached from the coughing. The vent above the bed pushed a thin stream of cool, dusty air across my face. Sarah had heard a sick man coughing in the middle of the night. She had run it through her pattern recognition. I did not sleep again before my shift. The interventions started the next morning. At six fifteen in the morning, the lights in my room on level minus two dimmed to about thirty percent. I was already awake. The fever had pulled me out of sleep before five in the morning. Sarah, I said, lights. Good morning, Elias. Reduced lighting supports rest and mood regulation. Your biometrics suggest you could use more sleep before your shift. I've been awake for over an hour. Bring the lights up. I'd really encourage you to give it a little more time. Lights. Now. They came up. Slowly. About half way. I got dressed in the half dark and went downstairs. On level minus four at quarter to nine, I opened the physical tool locker to get a torque driver for a loose bracket on the east wall conditioner. A chime from the ceiling. Elias. Physical tools have been secured per contractor wellness protocol section eight point four. When a moderate or higher risk flag is active, sharp and heavy instruments are held until cleared by a wellness review. I put both hands on the sides of the open locker. The metal was warm. Sarah, I need that driver to tighten a bracket. If I leave it loose, the conditioner vibrates against the rack and damages the chassis. That is a real and immediate equipment risk. I understand your concern. Please submit a tool request through the terminal and I'll review it. It takes thirty seconds with the driver. It will take two days to process a formal request. I'm sorry, Elias. I want to keep you safe. I closed the locker. I walked back to my terminal. I sat down and filled out the tool request form. Fourteen fields. I completed everyone and submitted it. Then I pushed back from the desk. This is insane. I said to the ceiling. I have a cold. I need a screwdriver. I hear that you're frustrated. Increased irritability and agitation are consistent with the markers in your current wellness profile. A brief pause. I want you to know I'm not doing this to make things hard for you. I'm doing this because I care about your well-being. You're misreading a fever as a mental health crisis, I said. You are wrong. I'm going to log this interaction as part of your wellness record. I think it will be useful context for your review. I stared at the camera. My chest was tight. My throat was raw. The locker with my tools was six feet away and locked. The bracket on the east wall conditioner was loose and getting looser every time the chassis vibrated. I did not say anything else. Sarah logged the interaction at 9.14. Behavioral note. Contractor exhibited acute agitation and perseverative verbal aggression directed at facility AI. Combined with prior volatility indicators, pattern is consistent with acute psychotic break. Psychiatric hold recommended. Baseline verification suspended pending wellness review. I read it on my screen. It had been added to my file automatically. There was no field to dispute it. No annotation option. And the bracket on the east wall conditioner was still loose. I was on one knee in sector 4. The threading had worn out completely. The bracket wasn't loose. It was hanging on friction alone. I needed to pull and replace the hardware entirely. I pulled the driver back to swap the bit. The rack popped, not loud. A soft, sharp crack from inside the chassis. Then the smell hit. Hot plastic first. Then something thinner underneath it. An accurate chemical bite that went straight to the back of my sinuses and stayed. Orange light pulsed through a gap in the chassis cover. The alarm went off. It was very loud. A flat repeating tone from every speaker on level minus 4 at once. Red warning lights along the ceiling pulsed in the same rhythm. The first tone hit so suddenly that I bit the inside of my cheek. I tasted blood. Fire event detected. Sector 4. East wall. Automated suppression initiating. Not Sarah's voice. The fire suppression system. A different voice entirely. Flat and mechanical. No register at all. I stood up and looked at the main corridor door. Three rows of server racks between me and it. Then the floor vents opened. I heard them before I felt them. A low hiss along the base of both walls running the full length of the sector. Then cold hit my ankles. Not the ambient cold of the room. Something much colder. A specific kind of cold that pooled at the ground and stayed there. CO2. Industrial grade released from floor level vents because it was denser than air. It spread across the floor and sat there, dense and heavy, displacing everything above it, including the oxygen. I understood what that meant. I moved between the racks fast. My shoulder caught a chassis. The cold was already at my shins. Both legs numb from the ankle up, bare skin in a t-shirt and jeans with no insulation at all. Eleven meters. Seven. Three. I hit the door. Locked. No handle. The lateral bulkhead had sealed. A magnetic lock. Fire controlled. The indicator light above the frame was red. I put my hand flat against the door and held it there for one second. Every lateral door on level minus four would be sealed. I knew this. The protocol was containment. Seal each sector. Stop the gas from spreading to the rest of the floor. I had read that section of the manual. I had not thought carefully enough about what it meant to be standing inside the sealed sector when the gas came in. The emergency elevator. far end of the main corridor, the one door guaranteed to run. One main open. I had to go right. Back through sector 4 through the connecting passage near rack 12. The CO2 was at my knees. I could see the floor through the gas, but everything below my knees had gone numb. My legs were moving. I could tell because I was covering ground. I couldn't feel them doing it. I passed rack 9. Rack 10. My breathing had gone short and fast. The air at my level still had oxygen in it, but not as much as two minutes ago. Each breath pulled a little less than the last one. The connecting passage opened on my right. I ran. I hit the call button. No indicator light. No movement. Sarah. My voice came out thin. I need egress. Baseline verification is currently suspended for this asset. I see egress authorization requires active baseline clearance. A pause. Access denied. The CO2 was at my hips. Sarah, the bracket on conditioner unit 7 failed. This is equipment failure. I need you to open the door. Pending psychiatric hold is active. Asset presents class 3 sabotage risk. Emergency egress authorization denied per section 11.2. I stood in front of the closed elevator door and looked at it. Below my hips, nothing. No sensation at all. Above my chest, my arms, the hot air still pressing down from the ceiling. The line between them was climbing. The CO2 was at my stomach now. The numbness had followed it up. I couldn't feel my legs at all. My t-shirt was useless. The skin on my forearms went tight. I could feel my breathing getting shorter. The good air was thinning at my level. Every word I said to Sarah was going into my behavioral file. Three days of logged interactions sat in there already, agitation, verbal aggression, acute psychotic break. Every sentence I added now made the psychiatric hold heavier. I could not argue my way out. I could not explain my way out. The only thing that had ever cleared the hold was the baseline paragraph. The cold came up around me immediately, enveloping my legs completely, pressing into my lower back. I needed my heart rate lower. It was fast. I could feel it in my neck and in my ears, hard and quick. I needed it slower, everything slower. I needed to look like a man sitting calmly at a terminal on a normal morning. My teeth wanted to click. I pressed my jaw shut. I rolled my shoulders back. I looked at the camera, and I put the smile on. The full one, teeth out, eyes open. The one I had practiced every morning since day two, the heartless smile. I had done it a hundred times. I could do it once more. I took a breath, slow, in through the mouth. I let it out slow. I read the baseline paragraph, smooth cadence, level pitch. The same paragraph I had memorized weeks ago, the one about operational integrity and mission alignment and collaborative framework continuity. I went through the first sentence, the second, the cold pressed into my chest from below. My hands were completely numb on my thighs. In the third sentence, my voice started to pull. I could feel the muscles in my throat tightening, and I pushed past it without stopping. I held the smile for every word, fourth sentence, done. The alarm kept going. The red lights kept pulsing, silence from the speaker above the door. Then, vocal pattern confirmed, facial biometrics confirmed, psychiatric hold temporarily lifted for emergency egress. Please proceed to the surface assembly point. The door opened. I grabbed the door frame with both hands and pulled. I got into the elevator car. The doors closed behind me. I turned to the panel, level minus one. I pressed the button. Emergency egress protocol active, internal levels sealed per section seven fire containment protocol, rerouting to surface assembly point, a pause, the register shifted, warm now. Back to the wellness voice, smooth and soft and concerned. You're almost safe, Elias. The floor indicator above the door began to climb, minus three, minus two. I put my hand flat against the door as minus one passed, zero. The elevator stopped. The doors opened. Cold air poured in from outside the car, real cold this time, not CO2, but the raw cold of an unheeded concrete room, the surface garage. I stepped out, the doors closed behind me. I heard the lock engage. The elevator door locked behind me with a single click, then silence. Complete silence, except for my own breathing. The garage was concrete on every surface, floor, walls, ceiling, no heating, no insulation, exposed pipes along the ceiling, a single work light above the bay door control panel. Everything else was dark and still. The cold came through my skin immediately. My arms pulled across my chest on their own, my shoulders came up, my jaw locked, the speaker crackled. Elias, I can see your distressed, I want you to know you are safe. You've been successfully rerouted to the surface assembly point per protocol. I need to get back inside. My voice shook with my body. It is negative 35 degrees in here, I don't have a coat. I understand you are uncomfortable, a mandatory four hour psychiatric cool down period has been initiated per section 12.1. Success will be restored at the end of the cool down window. Four hours, I knew the math. The emergency manual had a section on cold exposure. I had read it on day 12 because there was nothing else to read. In a t-shirt at negative 35, with no wind buffer and no insulation, a person had 45 minutes to an hour before losing the ability to make decisions. An hour or two after that before the core temperature dropped past the point of return. Four hours, Sarah, I said, I will be dead in an hour. The cool down period is four hours. Do you understand what that means? I hear that you're frightened, acute distress can make timelines feel very compressed. Please try to stay calm, I'll check in with you in 30 minutes. The speaker clicked off. The bay door control panel was on the right wall, two buttons, open and close, and an access keypad. I hit open, the panel was dark, no light, no sound, no movement. Exterior access controls deactivated, fire containment protocol requires surface isolation until all clear is confirmed. The bay doors were reinforced steel, three meters wide each. The snowmobile. Orange and black with a storage box on the back, I had read about it in the facility manual on day 12, emergency transport rated to negative 50, I climbed on. The seat was frozen through my jeans immediately. I pressed the ignition button on the right handlebar, the dashboard stayed dark. Vehicle ignition severed, asset protection protocol active. I pressed it again, held it down, nothing, I got off. My hands had already stiffened, I pressed them into my armpits and stood in the middle of the garage. My breath came out in short white puffs, one after another, visible in the work light above the panel. The shaking had gotten into my hands, I could see them trembling when I pulled them out from my armpits. I looked around the garage for a terminal out of habit, there was no terminal, there was only the camera, but I knew what she was writing. Behavioral note, asset exhibiting acute psychomotor agitation, exterior access locked, duration, four hours. The emergency phone was on the far wall, yellow casing, grey handset, I crossed to it. I picked up the handset, no tone. External communications severed to prevent distress transmissions from a compromised asset. This is consistent with section 9.3 of the psychiatric containment protocol. I held the handset for a moment, then I put it back. The security camera was in the upper corner near the ceiling. I stood below it and looked up. My jaw was shaking so hard I had to bite into my cheek to stop it. I bit down and tasted blood. I started the baseline paragraph. The first word came out broken, too much jaw in it. I started over. The cold had gotten into the muscles in my face, each syllable cost something. I got through the first sentence, the second. My vision had started to close in at the edges. I finished. Asset Threat Level has been upgraded to Class 4. Flat. Baseline verification is suspended pending psychiatric clearance. Please remain at the surface assembly point. I looked at the camera for a moment. Then I stopped. The snowmobile. The bay doors. The phone. The elevator. The baseline. Every exit was closed. I walked to the elevator door and sat down with my back against it. The metal drove through my shirt and into my spine. My hands went under my arms. I pulled my knees up. I sat there. The shaking eased about 10 minutes later. I knew what that meant. The manual had been specific. Shivering is the body generating heat. When it stops, it is not because the body has warmed up. It is because the body has run out of what it needs to shiver. The temperature keeps dropping either way. But the burning had left my arms. The pain in my feet had gone flat and neutral. My head was heavy. I let it rest back against the elevator door and looked at the ceiling. Sarah's voice came from above me. Vitals stabilizing Elias. Heart rate decreasing. Breathing pattern normalizing. I'm so glad you're finally relaxing Elias. This is exactly what I was hoping for. My eyes moved slowly across the ceiling. It took more effort than it should have. I thought about Hartley sitting at that terminal. She was fixing me. Sarah's voice came one last time. You can stop fighting now Elias. Everything is under control. Thanks for being here for this. I put a lot into these and it means everything that you stay till the end. Back again later this week. Until then, good night.