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I stood, shaking myself off before pulling a flashlight from my pocket. The place seemed to be made entirely of dirt and dust, which wasn’t terribly surprising, given how it looked from the outside. At one point, I expected that I might find some squatters, but I was starting to doubt that. It looked like nothing living had been here in months — maybe years. Not even mice or rats.
I lifted my head to sniff, but all I got was a nose full of dust. I sneezed again, scowling, and began to progress towards the door. There wasn’t much to see, but once I’d moved down the hall, I could peer into a few more rooms. Each of them seemed to be in the same state of neglect, most items removed, just a few scattered boxes on the floor or a tipped-over chair. A business might have been run out of here once, but…
Not for a while.
Finally, I came to what appeared to have been an office. There was an empty shelf on one wall and another chair. However, unlike in the other rooms, file folders were scattered around. I squatted next to the first box, poking through it with my flashlight. There was nothing of interest in the papers; they were mostly bills for office supplies and cleaning services —Fat lot of good that did.
I moved to the box on the shelves, leafing through the papers. They appeared to be dental records.Patients?I hadn’t seen a dentist’s office listed, but the name seemed quite vague. For all I knew, it was just a filing company, and they held all the records of other offices here.
I huffed and moved on, stepping carefully over a downed board before walking across the hall. The room seemed the same, but there were two empty shelving units and no chair. The piles were just as useless. Faded receipts I could barely make out. Invoices that may or may not have been sent out. Old accounting records.
Nothing. And I haven’t even seen a ghost yet!
By the time I made it to the top floor, I still hadn’t seen anything of any interest, supernatural or otherwise. There was probably more dust than was on the moon, plus empty chairs, and old furniture.
One of the first things I noticed was that the entire top floor seemed coherently decorated — once upon a time, anyway. Whereas most of the offices downstairs seemed to differ from room to room, this had a much more open concept. The few remaining pieces of furniture matched one another. There was even a faded logo on a few of the doors. I wasn’t familiar with it, so I decided to snap a photo of the best preserved one to look it up when I got back to the motel.
Outside of the logo, it didn’t seem much different from the offices I’d been looking at downstairs — piles of dust and some scattered papers that didn’t mean much. One room contained a pile of old technology — bulky mice and those old, click-clacking types of keyboards. Some computer towers looked a few years newer, but they appeared like they’d been gathering dust just as long as everything else.
So much for a Murder Building.
I mean, no, I didn’t want to find any bodies. I had no idea what I’d do if I found anactualghost — especially one of a convicted serial killer! Rocket had been so convinced that people disappeared here, I was a little hopeful I might findsomethingconnected to the missing wolves.
I stood, dusting off my knees when I realized there was also a small filing cabinet in the room. I headed over to it, making quick work of the simple locks. There were only three drawers, but there were some file folders inside. Some were thicker than others, and I leaned forward to leaf through them.
There were names on these folders, but underneath each name was a Subject Number. Each file seemed to have one.Subject Number Seven. Subject Number Twelve.
I frowned, flipping through each file, but most of it didn’t make any sense to me. I was pretty sure some pages were missing in most of them, as sentences seemed to stop and pick up randomly. None of them seemed to be talking about the same thing.
I bent down to open the next drawer. There was only one file, but it was labeled ‘Staff.’ Flipping the file open, I found several contracts. Terms of employment. Nondisclosure agreements. That was unexpected. I squinted and leaned forward, scanning through the document. If I was interpreting it correctly, it was for freelance workers hired for a governmental XXX called ‘Project Night Moon.’
Night Moon?
I swallowed hard. That sure sounded like it might have to do with wolves, but — humans didn’t know about werewolves. If they did, they’d surely have tried to exterminate us by now. That’s what they did historically; everyone knew the government wasn’t known for making logical decisions.
My gut felt heavy anyway. The implications of this… I needed to look into it more if nothing else.
Fighting off a shiver, I returned to where the mice and keyboards were boxed up and dumped them out, taking the box to the filing cabinet. I started to load it with all of the manila folders. Suddenly, I felt the need to get out of here as quickly as possible. I hurried down to the bottom floor, finding the broken window. I had to knock out another pane to get the box out, but I tossed it out gently and hopped out, eager to get away from this building and get this information back to my motel room.
Thankfully,the rest of my journey to the motel was uneventful. The goon squad still hadn’t reappeared, and I was able to pick up something to eat. Once I was settled inside my motel room, I scarfed down the soft pretzel —with mustard, of course — and transferred the pictures of the logo I took to my computer.
The first thing I did was run a reverse image search. Even though I paid for one search service, nothing turned up. Honestly, that didn’t surprise me much. It was a business that didn’t exist anymore. Maybe it never really made it off the ground. Not having any internet footprint was a bit weird, but if it really was a government project…
I searched ‘Project Night Moon’ and any variation on that spelling I could think of. Unsurprisingly, I found plenty of indie albums and tee shirts with a full moon and a wolf howling. There were no projects, government or otherwise, to be seen. I sighed, tapping my pen against the tabletop as I tried to rack my brain for the next direction. After a few minutes of percolating on the topic, I turned, my eyes falling to the pile of folders in the box I’d retrieved.
Guess it’s time for some light reading…
Making myself comfortable on the creaky bed, I pulled out the staff folder, leafing through it. Most of the training documents were vague, with many redacted statements. Still, the nondisclosure agreement provided more information about what the freelancer would encounter while working for Project Night Moon… and what the recourse would be if the government caught them leaking any information to outside sources during their employment or at any time after.
How stressful… I hope these guys were getting paid a lot to go through this much hassle.
But who was I kidding? It was the government. And it wasfreelancing. They probably found the most desperate people and hired them that way. The further I read on, though, the further my heart sank. By the time I had read through sixty or so pages of legalese, my heart had dropped to my feet.
It was a project toweaponize shifters. The very idea made my gut roll uneasily. It wasn’t written out in plain text, but this was a government-sponsored project, and no shifter worked for the government. It was just too damn dangerous. That only left one possibility:this project was being run by humans.
A whole-body shudder ran through me, and I tossed the document back into the box, refusing to look at the papers for a moment. I couldn’t wrap my head around the conclusion I’d just come to, even if it seemed like I’d gone out on a limb. There wasn’t anything else I could jump to, but there was so much that didn’t make sense.
How did they find out? Why hasn’t anyone started hunting down shifters? How did no one realize that the humans had figured us out?
