###002: THE FILE

//VESPER//

I stared at the empty doorway for I don’t know how long. One second, ten maybe. A minute? My brain wasn’t working right. All I could think was that he was just here, his fingers still ghosted on my face, and I let him touched me.

I’ve been so paralyzed I didn’t even blinked.

Then my senses slammed back into me like a ton of bricks.

“The file,” I gasped, my hands scrambling over the scanner bed.

It was gone.

I started to panic, frantically trying to find the black card stock folder. Hoping to catch a glimpse of the gold embossing. The photo of those terrifying pale eyes. It was as if the desk had swallowed it whole. I checked the floor, the trash, the rotting boxes behind me. Underneath the scanner.

Nothing.

My knees gave out. I hit the floor. The concrete bit through my pants, and that was what finally broke the spell.

He took it.

I crawled across the floor like a total idiot until my hand found the red panic button under the desk. I slammed it, then sat there with my back against the cold metal drawers and waited.

They came fast. Three guards, heavy boots, carrying flashlights even though the lights were already turned on. They scanned the room until their gaze landed on my curled figure.

“What happened?”

I tried to stand, but my legs shook and the words came tumbling out frantic, disjointed, and a little too fast.

“There—there was a man. A—a patient. H—he was in here. He took—”

“Slow down. What man?”

“A—Azrael Atlas St. Claire. He was right here. He took his file.”

The guards exchanged knowing looks that made my stomach turn. One of them keyed his radio.

“Get me security footage for the archive wing. Last thirty minutes.”

There was a static pause before a voice drifted back. “Checking.”

We waited. The silence was deafening. Finally, the radio crackled again.

“Pulled it up. There’s nothing. Archive wing’s been empty all day. Just the clerk at her desk.”

My stomach dropped and the floor felt like it was shifting under my feet.

“T—that’s not possible. He—he was right there! He even look my ID and s—say my name!”

The guard stared at me, his eyes flat and clinical.

“Ma’am, the cameras show no one entered or left this room all day. You’ve been standing there staring at the wall for twenty minutes.”

“The camera was wrong! I wasn’t staring at the wall! I was talking to him!”

The guard let out a short, sharp barking laughter, a mocking sound that echoed off the concrete walls and slapping right at my face.  He stepped closer, leaning into my space, but unlike Azrael’s presence, this just felt oily and wrong.

“Listen to yourself, sweetheart,” he sneered, his tone dripping with condescension. “Do you even know whose file you were talking about? That’s St. Claire. The Architect.”

He shook his head, looking at me like I was a broken toy to be discarded.

“Ma’am if he truly stands this close, much less touched you, you’d be dead by now. A slit through your throat or a broken neck. He doesn’t speaks to people so casually. He dismantles them.”

I stood there, trembling, mouth gaping as the phantom of Azrael’s gentle fingers still burning against my skin.

“Maybe you should come with us. See the footage yourself.”

Two hours later, I was in a small, windowless office. The footage played on constant replay in my head. I stood there alone.

“We’ve reviewed the footage multiple times,” the HR woman said, her voice dripped with a fake, practiced empathy that felt like acid.

“Ms. Martin, we're concerned. There’s no evidence anyone was in that room. But a maximum-security file is missing, and you were the only one there.”

“I’m not crazy,” I whispered.

“No one said you were.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, exhaustion bleeding through. “Look, the archives can mess with anyone. All that isolation, the endless files... it gets inside your head.”

She leans forward and offer a brief, almost apologetic touch on my shoulder. “We’ll let you know about the job. Go home, alright? Just... go home.”

I knew what that meant. I’m fired.

Someone had scrubbed those tapes. Edited him out frame by frame. Made Azrael St. Claire a ghost, on the monitors and in my head.

So I went home. I have no choice.

“So they let you go.” Mom’s disappointed voice yanks me back from daze.

The kitchen smelled like chicken soup. She stirred the pot, back to me, not looking. Same soup she always made when she wanted to pretend I wasn’t falling apart.

“They’re investigating, mom.”

“Three weeks, Vesper. You barely even lasted three weeks. This is why I told you to marry Kevin. He’s stable. Kind. But you wanted to be independent.”

“A dangerous man was in the room, mom. A murderer. And someone deleted the footage.”

She finally looked at me, and it was that look. The one she gave me when I was fifteen, claiming I saw a man standing by my window. The there-she-goes-again look.

“I’m sure you just…imagine the worst. It’s a creepy basement, honey. Anyone would get jumpy.”

I groaned, didn’t stay for the soup and went straight to my bed. If I stayed, I’d start wondering if she was right.

The next day, the city was gray and wet and full of people who had jobs. Recently unemployed—again. I walked for hours and applied and tried not to think about him. The cold rain soaking through my thin coat. I passed coffee shops and high-rise offices and stores I couldn’t afford to breathe in. Every ‘For Hire’ sign I saw, I went in. Every application, I filled out until my fingers cramped.

Experience? Archives, three weeks. Education? A degree I was still paying for. References? None that would answer.

By five o’clock, my shoes were squelching with every step, my hope was a guttering candle, as I was ready to give up and crawl back to my mother’s I-told-you-so soup.

Then I saw it. A dinner called Frankie’s. Neon sign flickering, windows streaked with grease, and a hand-written sign taped to the door: WAITRESS NEEDED. APPLY INSIDE.

I went in. The air smelled like bacon and old fry oil.

“You here about the job?”  The woman behind the counter had to be in her fifties, with big hair and a smile even bigger.

Frankie, according to the faded name-tag. She looked like she’d seen a hundred girls like me walk through that door.

“Yes..I’m organize. I show up. I…I really need work,” my voice cracked a little at the end, sounding more desperate than in intended.

Frankie laughed and tossed a dishrag at me.

“Honest. I like that. Start tomorrow. Six a.m. Don’t be late. Welcome to the shitshow, honey.”

I smiled. For a second, the world didn’t feel so heavy.

The walk home was long. By the time I reached my building, the shadows felt too thick. The hairs on my neck stood up.

I ran up the stairs, locked the door and slid the chain home.

Mom’s gone to her cousin’s place and I am all alone.

I fell asleep with the lights on.

Morning came too fast. 5:15 AM. I swung my legs out of bed, rubbing my eyes, ready to start my first day at the diner. But then something caught my eye.

A small box sat on my nightstand. Faux leather with gold fringes. Right where I’d left my phone last night. That box hadn’t been there when I closed my eyes.

My hands shook as I opened it. Inside, on a bed of velvet red cushion, was a bullet.

A real copper with a dark, tacky smear across the tip. Dried blood. Underneath it, a slip of paper with a single word in elegant handwritten script.

—Soon.

I dropped the box. The bullet rolled out, coming to rest against my bare foot. Cold as ice.

Then I looked down at the floor.

A single, large footprint in the dust.

He stood right next to my bed. Where I’d been sleeping. Watching me.