Behind the dark red curtains is a confined corridor made of similar designs. Booths, closed curtains despite being empty, each shoves a golden plate hanging down from the ceiling.

Six in total. Unlike the ebony wooden floor outside, this place is plated with thick burgundy rug. All that you see is either red or shadows of red by the heavy folds of curtain.

Lev doesn't lead me in, he stops at an inconspicuous cabin by a small table with rows of opened scotch and a small bottle of champagne next to a bucket of ice. Everything here looks in union but polar from the scene outside.

Pulling a door open reveals a small TV screen the size of one's face. Circuits fill the next few slots under with hints of orange light from the switches at the bottom. But what caught my eyes initially was the wall of notes stuck on the door of cabin. In clear ordinances, rows after rows each has a few numbers in quick scribbles and none oversteps or blocks the other.

"Please excuse the quality and the lack of sound." Lev hid the wall of secrets manually by standing in front of them and plugging the monitor back on with a flip behind the screen.

The screen flashes and shows the basement outside. Judging from this angle, I made a mental note there's a camera installed at the left corner between the elevator and the bar entrance door. The footage had clearly been filtered since even with the neon signs on there was no way the basement would be this bright. The edge of the camera view contorts like painting a picture with steel glass.

.....this ought to be amusing the next time I meet Xiao.

And he's not joking about the video quality, it's shit. Even more so when he claws his finger into the side and pushes the rewind button.

The screen lets out a loud hiss before it starts doing what's intended. Even though there's no sound to the recordings, the very presence of the static is undeniable and surprisingly similar to the ones I have in my apartment building.

The filtered screen moves to the point when the steel gate opens and I walk backward out all the way to sit on the wall and flashes of light fly themselves back to my fingertips like a low-budget stage play or show of a real magician. The goofy scene runs for about 15 seconds before I collect the boxes of cigarettes on the ground and stash them in my jacket, and moonwalk back into the automatically opened elevator door. Half a second later, those two men and woman rush into the elevator too with rigid movements.

Then there's nothing.

Nothing after the elevator door closes. Sure sometimes people come in alone or in pairs like those two Qins I ran into but most walk straight into the warm incandescent light inside the elevator like moths to a flame, some litter around the 'Stynx' sign for few seconds(in fast-forwarded time), some even wave at the exact position of the peephole camera on the sign but nothing happens. After a while, the vendors downstairs move their cargos and valuables out, the few Russians at 4th underground strides off to the stairs like they own the whole place, three Japs in vests and one with silver grey hair.

Lev gives me occasional quick glances but mostly focuses on the screen as well.

Before the earliest few mercs and vendors, there was nothing. The view of the basement is an inactive scene as if the monitor's showing a picture except for the numbers indicating the time counting back which is the only proof that the record's working.......

"Did you hear shots on your way here?" Lev asks out of the blue with his eyes moved to mine since god knows when. The incoherent and inconsistent statics still bop on and off, and the timer on the left corner is moving past this morning at about 9 o'clock. I turn my head before my eyes would give up on searching for any signs of importance.

"Quite hard to miss. I heard whistles too." Lev tilts a side of his brow and acts surprised,

"Whistle?"

"Radio tuning static." He blinks at my answer with almost perfect confusion in his look, brows ephemeral knitting, thin eyelids squeezing the corner, thinner lips open silently.

What are you up to this time?

"That's what I heard." I shrug and shift my line of sight back to the timer currently at 6 and a half.

"Sure they weren't cleaners?" Lev asks with an acerbic tone and a palm massaging his nape. The timer moves to early morning about 4.

"They came down in a fucking police patrol with ballistic helmet," I answer dryly and start using the little trick taught by that..... homeless- looking fella at the overpass. Painting the image of the basement as a whole and look for anomalies like searching a fly in a white room.

"Hmph that's a strange coincidence." A shock of head. He states each syllabus slowly as the timer passes 3 and the last drunk-as-hell patron trots each step and..... disappears in a blink like a shadow.

Son of a bitch quicken the replay.

"I heard a police patrol car was stolen two weeks ago......." A slap of pain cracks the side of my head like a short circuit while trying my best to maintain composure. The words of caution from Cal and the patrol car at the corner from yesterday. And by that half a second of cold sweat, the last customer of yesterday had left with the others following not far behind.

"You think someone's playing cops and robbers?" Lev let out a condescending smirk while turning his eyes back at the occasional shed of light from the steel gate opening and the elevator door creaking. Customers leave the facility in high spirits or dire need of a crutch, sometimes the patrons from Stynx meet someone from the lower level at the stairs, sometimes they just walk by as if the other person doesn't exist.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

But those are all fleeting and abnormally white eyes through the filters, they flash by hardly leaving a trace and barely recognizable like ghosts of midnight. And by the few wasted mugs I can distinguish, not a far stretch.

"Wouldn't end well if they are. And if so, begs the question who's the robber....and where did your enthusiasm come from?" I let out an exhalation like a cough. The timer just passed 12.

"I thought assumptions ain't your jurisdiction."

"It's not." A thin grin, like a dog showing its teeth.

But he sure as hell likes to trigger them. The timer past 11 and the drinkers start walking out of the steel gate to greet the warden before walking backwards up the stairs like Nutcrackers. You can almost put a mirror on the timeline between 11:30 to 12:00. Those who left in early morning arrived at midnight, and those who left at midnight came as soon as the place opened.

As much as everyone loves to hang around this place, a large some of them treat the pub like a billboard tapped with job description sheets. They came, picked up what they wanted, and left a hefty tip. You could see the same flash of a figure going in and out the next second, and as the times push forward back to younger nights this happens more rapidly. At 10 I caught a glint of orange-brown on the camera, ginger must've had a clear purpose in mind since he came out 30 minutes later passing a lean figure walking in strides.....

Warden stop him for a second longer than most. One second of interpretation couldn't divulge much for the man's head was bending low, chin touching the collar of his shirt. But the pose of his hands in pocket and arm hugging sleeves up the tight blazer looks.....

Before I could paint the rest of the picture in my head, the second had passed, warden let in possibly one of the first patrons of that night. And a buzz in the back of my head materialized with a faint pressure on my neck, telling me something was off.

The edge of my vision catches Lev side glancing at me with an evasive look before shifting them back to the monitor. The flood of customers and patrons and wandering scoundrels and hobos slowly die out as the night grows younger until nothingness reminds the entrance of the market and Stynx what this place truly looks like. Dead and decaying silent. And it keeps it that way for a longer time than last, especially so without Lev's distractions. He deliberately robbed my attention at 3 am this morning and whatever it was for, succeeded.

What was he hiding?

When the neon sign's off, the color of the basement becomes a unit of a linen grey like a flimsy veil, a brush of lime powder. The still image accompanying the static only gave my paranoia more space to exact its influence.....

But only until the timer hits 3 again.

I put my hands in pocket and lean closer to the screen, trying my best to make out the identity of everyone passing through that gate. Three freelancers I've never seen walk out first, few vendors from the B5 market with rickety steps, and a figure who greatly resembles Ann strut out a while later......I flinch my eyes at the timer.

1:27 am.

Smiling internally at my ability to only run into the ones I despise.

About a minute on my watch passes and the numbers on the screen dash toward the midnight watershed, as if by cue of some sarcastic make-believes of fairytale. The princess in a black wool coat covering every inch of her skin strides out with complementing lipstick and boots. Though she probably just killed the prince on her way out with those eyes in a storm..... 11:53. Two and a half after I left.

Well, that is a surprise. She doesn't drag her present when the due's met...... few more long-ranging thoughts shot in my head before I was pulled back to the monitor by the sheer amount of patrons leaving and coming in that night. I sure missed a party.

Faces come and go in the blink of an eye, at some point, all I could focus on was whether I knew the last person. The timer ran particularly slow at the expense of my concentration as each second dissipated. But at some point around 10, I notice the timer slow down. Lev had dialed down the replay speed.

"Are we getting closer to the footage?" I tilt my face but keep my eyes on the screen.

"Yes." The bartender answers in a brittle voice like there's a lump in his throat. "But for clearance, it's a very brief one.....and you won't like what you see." Coming up with the ominous tone I guess that lump is laughter which makes me more worried now.

The timer goes past 10 as both of our eyes lock on the 30 by 30 screen with a resolution worse than Glen Avenue's peephole. At 9:20 or so a ghostly figure walked backwards down the stairs without a raise of shoulder or glancing back, the full black coat proof to be Vera in all possibilities since I remembered entering Stynx about the same time as...

Two muffled clicks behind the monitor and the replay speed got dialed down to the normal without any acceleration.

What in the...

Lev throws me a confirming look and pulls his hand off the control. Leaning by the closet door, he hugs both arms in front of the chest. Three minutes later, a man in a shaggy, baggy bomber jacket with a face I couldn't look straight at even in this crude portrait, sidestepped out and walked backward toward the stairs just like Vera, though his steps were in direct contrast, one's of glided sliver, the other, with everything hooked on his heel.

He stops the replay.

***

From the stairs, the man in heavy cloth and strange pacing moves closer to under the camera angle. A few knocks on the door ring deep thumps in my head as there are only statics.

He waits with his arms hanging by the pocket. The door swung open by the clue of light on his cheek, and just now do I realize the man was squinting his eyes unconsciously. His mouth twitches like a puppet.

Clunk!

The bartender's knuckle on the left corner pulls my attention to the stairs behind. Lev then moves his right hand to the back of monitor again.

The man curves a smile and shrugs tensely but somehow heedlessly at the same time, now at the edge of my view as I'm fixated on the lenient contour in the dark, between the stair handles.

The chunk of shadow blocking the light finally moves where the screen doesn't show and the man in a ragged jacket leans in impatiently...A twitch at the back of my head spread to my neck, a shiver down my spine in less than a second as if my nerves aflame. As abruptly as my hunch, Lev stops the replay in motion.

With the statics growing louder from a mosquito's buzz to rocks against peddle walks, the screen grows brighter till the floor in front of the bar entrance becomes a glitch...

And the outline of the figure clears. It prowls behind bars of stair handles with a leg down two stairs, the other crouches down as a balance and torso against it, a looking face above with a blade shaped blank next to it, shimmering in the supposed dark. It's almost like a motion picture, a visual novel. Each space between balusters conveys a movement, they spell primal violence almost unhinged yet reserved through the stretch of tense muscle that can be observed under this distorted footage.

The only thing that remains ambiguous is her face, the motionless expression with feral eyes. Her short black hair behind her ears, red dress held no part of her agileness. A perfect knife.

I breathe in and out the emotions in my head. Turning towards Lev who’s been side-eyeing me in a suggestive manner.

I nod. He presses play.

The figure...the woman behind the stairs slips the blade dangerously close to her cheek, before hinging her wrist and pulling her left arm back. The blade hides between her index and thumb, it draws just as I step through the edge of the screen. By the one millisecond before she releases the sling of her arm, just while the pressure at the back of my head crosses the threshold to physical pain. She leaps away.

Left leg pushes her entire body off the position in bewildering speed as her torso turns swiftly. Four seconds later, the light from within the bar got taken back in a swing of the door.