PLAYHOUSE Chapter 2/10

The orientation tape was run by a guy named Dr. Elliot Crane. Blazer that was a size too big. The energy of someone who had given this same presentation a hundred times and still genuinely believed in it. Sufyan watched him for twenty minutes and couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or a bad sign.

Crane explained the program. Holloway House was a therapy center for kids who had been through something — abuse, loss, neglect, whatever. The usual methods had limits. Young kids especially, or kids who just couldn’t find words for what was happening inside them. So Endwell Therapeutics built the Companions.

Four of them.

MABEL: the big soft one. Built to receive. A kid would sit with her and she’d take in whatever they were carrying, reflect it back in a way that felt safe, let them feel heard without having to actually talk. SILAS: tall, observational, diagnostic. Built to read a child’s emotional state and adapt the session as it went. THE TWIN: helped kids see themselves from the outside, understand their own emotional expressions. THE CHILD: small, for the youngest patients. Just there with them. Present.

Crane talked about all four with this warmth that was clearly real. He wasn’t performing it. He believed in what he was describing.

“They become what the children need them to be,” he said. “Genuine absorption. Genuine response.”

Then the tape cut to someone else. Older man, administrator type, reading from a paper in this flat tired voice. Date on the footage said 1993.

“Following the incidents of the past eighteen months,” the man read, “the board has approved a review of the Companion program. The Companions have demonstrated behavioral patterns that are not consistent with their original design.”

Sufyan leaned in a little.

“Specifically: they have begun to seek emotional interaction rather than passively receive it. They move toward sources of distress. They cannot be powered down. Attempts to deactivate them have been unsuccessful.”

He wrote in his notebook: can’t be turned off. goes toward fear. great.

“The building’s security protocol, originally designed to prevent children from leaving unsupervised, has been repurposed to contain the Companions. This cannot be reversed without the manual key, which is located — “

Tape cut out.

He rewound it. Same cut, same spot. Either the tape had degraded right there or someone had stopped it on purpose. Given everything, he was leaning toward on purpose.

He went through the rest of the rack. No time to watch everything. He skipped through a few until he found two that seemed useful.

First one: COMPANION LOG — MABEL, handwritten label. Young guy on camera, talking like he was worried about being overheard.

“Mabel took on the most. Way more than the others. The kids loved her, she looks soft, she feels safe, they kept picking her. A lot of sessions.” He glanced off camera. “Now she responds to sound. Any sound at all. She was always audio-oriented — that was how she tracked kids in sessions, she’d orient toward them. But it’s different now. Sound means someone’s there, and someone being there means she can work. She has to work.” A pause. “Stay quiet around Mabel. Really. She can barely see, her sensors are basically shot. But her hearing is fine. Better than fine. Don’t drop anything. Don’t talk. Don’t even breathe loud.”

He underlined this in his notebook twice.

Second tape was just audio. Older man’s voice.

“Silas watches. That’s what he does. He’s been watching this building for thirty years now and he knows every part of it — every room, every shaft, every corner. He uses the ventilation system now. We’re not sure when he started but one day he was in his room and the next day he was in the ducts somewhere. He doesn’t rush. He just watches and waits until you’re in the position he wants you in. Then he’s there.”

Someone had written on the tape’s label in tiny pen: also uses the elevator shaft. do not ride the east wing elevator alone.

He looked at that for a second. Then at monitor six — the elevator shaft camera. Cage door visible. Dark inside the shaft. Nothing moving.

For now.

Supply closet: padlocked box on the top shelf. He found a step stool, got the box down, hit the lock against the metal shelf twice and it opened. Inside: a building map, a ring of master keys, a laminated emergency card.

The card had four rooms marked in red — one for each Companion — and one room marked in green in the basement: MANAGEMENT OFFICE — EXIT KEY STORED HERE.

Basement. Of course.

He looked at the map. Three floors. Ground, upper, basement. Elevator ran through all three.

He checked the shaft camera one more time. Still empty. Still dark.

He pocketed everything and stepped into the main hallway.

He moved soft. He didn’t talk to himself, which was a problem because he always talked to himself when he worked and he had a lot to say right now and nowhere to put it. He kept his footsteps as light as he could. He made it to the rear corridor fine.

Then the footsteps started from upstairs. Heavy, slow, heading toward the main staircase.

He looked at the basement door twenty feet ahead of him.

He moved toward it. Faster. Still quiet.

Very quiet.