Chapter Text
It all started with a YouTube comment.
Which was odd, because her channel had zero subscribers, and her videos were set to unlisted. Her videos were rarely titled anything but the camera file name, and that’s the way she liked it. They were for her, not for anyone else. A way to document the one exciting part of her life, her one indulgence from the monotony of corporate accounting.
And yet, “GOPR0783.mp4” has one comment on it. About six months after she uploaded it. For no apparent reason.
Even though it’s absolutely a spam bot, curiosity gets the better of her, and she decides to take a look. What’s the harm?
Except, if this is a spam bot, she has no idea what the goal is here. It’s an empty profile, with only the default gray profile picture and the name “Suzie A,” and the comment is… fine?
Oh, wow, I can’t believe that’s still there! Sorry, this must be weird, but I just got this link, and I couldn’t NOT click it. I must’ve toured that building 8 or 9 years ago at this point. I don’t really remember why the deal fell through. It’s in a decent location, and the plot was large enough for any number of uses, so I figured someone would’ve picked it up by now! I wonder who’s paying for the power, must be some company that just forgot to close the account. Oh, and that weird headset is still there! I guess curiosity got the better of you too haha! Did you also see the lights? I got a headache for a few hours after putting it on, but I never really knew if I imagined that part or not. Anyway, it was really neat to see this again after so long. Thanks for sharing this! Hope you have a good day! :)
Abigail sits back in her chair and tries to work through what she knows.
One, the video is set to unlisted. She didn’t accidentally make it public; somehow this “Suzie” got the link. Which isn’t impossible, she supposes.
Two, she did put on that headset—she thought it was a retro VR headset, but apparently it’s been there for nine years? It was only very briefly shown in the video before she put her camera down and it was out of frame. It looked like some old computer peripheral, she didn’t even comment on it in the video.
Three, she did see flashing red and blue lights, and four, it did give her a headache for the next few hours.
So, either this is a spam bot making the guess of a lifetime, or this “Suzie A” really has been there, and the building has been left alone for nearly ten years.
And based on the state of the place, a decade of disuse seems like an understatement.
“This is… weird.” She stands up and heads to her kitchen. Weirdly knowledgeable YouTube comments require a cocktail to process. Or, they would, if she wasn’t out of everything but gin.
She sighs and looks at the clock. 8:52. Fuck it, she’s going to a bar. Future Abigail can deal with the hangover at work. Present Abigail needs to not be sober.
The weather is uncharacteristically warm for mid-December, and she barely notices the wind as she taps on her phone. It’s been ten minutes, the bus should’ve been here by now, but this city and “reliable public transit” don’t belong in the same sentence.
Her phone is showing her nothing but the continual fire hose of bad news that the world seems to consist of these days, and she’s really been trying to kick her mobile game habit. She clicks it shut and slips it back in her pocket, leaning back against the bus shelter. Unfortunately, with no phone, she’s left with nothing to do while waiting but look around. And watch the bus going the other direction stop, as if taunting her.
Just as she starts to roll her eyes and look down the road for her bus, she has to do a double take. For what is maybe the first time in anyone’s life, someone actually reads an advertisement on the side of a bus. And more than that, reads a real estate ad on the side of a bus.
Sure, three pictures of three people who look maybe in their mid-to-late 30s, some company name, some website, whatever, but one name sticks out under the leftmost picture.
“Suzie J. Ackerman”.
Abigail blinks. She blinks again. She rubs her eyes. No, it’s real, she’s not imagining it. “There’s no fucking way…” The bus drives away as she tries to think. It would line up: the comment talked about touring the building. If it was eight or nine years ago, she’d be… early 20s? A few years younger than she is now, and she’s a few years into her career. No, this is ridiculous. There’s no way she gets a comment from a real estate agent an hour before running into one of their ads in the real world. The odds are practically nonexistent.
And yet, something in her isn’t quiet. Something feels wrong.
“Okay, fine,” she mutters, and takes her phone out again. A quick search verifies that the ad isn’t some elaborate cosmic joke at her expense. Suzie J. Ackerman is a real person. She really is a real estate agent working at a real company, and she has a real-seeming email address and a real-seeming phone number. “I’m just going to put it out there, and I’m not going to get a response, because it’s just a random comment. I’m just going to get a boring response email asking if I want to buy a house I can’t afford.”
But she starts to type anyway. It’s short, with just enough information to prove her identity and not enough to give anything away if, when, it’s not the commenter. Just enough to prove to herself that this Suzie isn’t the Suzie who knows too much about that abandoned office building.
She hits send just as the bus arrives. She steps on, pays her fare, and sits down for the ride.
She’ll need more than the negroni she was planning on ordering at this rate.