I had woken up earlier when I heard a rustling at the door to my room.  I got up and saw a sheet of paper in the dim light that bled under the door from the lit hallway.  It gave me a strange disorienting moment of thinking I was staying at a normal, living hotel that was slipping the bill under the door, and as the thought passed, it just served to drive home the point of how odd this place was.  Aside from the lack of people and a bit of dust, there was little to distinguish it from what it must have been like when it wasn’t an abandoned monolith in the middle of this frigid valley.

The sheet of paper said I had been assigned to Team Two: Inventory (which I already knew) and that my assigned partner was Jefferson Wells, who I could only assume was the nephew that had piped up at the orientation the night before.  Going downstairs, I rounded a corner and found him and his uncle in an intense conversation.  Jefferson looked scared and angry, while Bramford just looked tired.

“Jeff, I’m not saying you are.  I’m trying to trust you, okay?  But you have to work with me here.  And stuff like last night at the meeting…or spooking yourself overnight…it needs to stop, okay?  Best case scenario, you’ll just freak yourself out and make your time here harder.  Worse case, you’ll start infecting the men with your b…stories, and I can’t afford that.  Neither of us can.”

I had stepped away and out of sight, but I could still hear the hurt in Jefferson’s voice when he replied.  “I get it.  I need to keep quiet or you’ll send me off.”

Bramford sighed.  “I’m not threatening you, Jeff.  I want this to work.  I just need you to meet me halfway, okay?  Now if you see signs…legitimate signs…that someone else is here with us, of course I want you to tell me.  But I’m telling you, this place has been cleared multiple times.  I went through the whole place myself yesterday morning, and I know what signs to look for if someone is squatting.  So keep your eyes peeled and all that, but I really think you just got spooked up.  Either way, stay on the lower two floors unless you’re doing inventory with your partner.  Just because this place looks like it’s in good shape doesn’t mean it doesn’t have places where its rotten.”

There was a moment of silence, and when Jefferson spoke again, there was resignation in his voice.  “I understand.  And I do appreciate it, Mike.  I’ll…I won’t be any more trouble.  I better get out there and find her.”