Doculeak #008: Tower 9

TOWER-09 // CLASSIFIED FILE 008
“It isn’t standing. It’s waiting.”

In the ruins of Ashfall, there is a place that does not exist on any map — a monolith left untouched by time, decay, or reason. Tower-09.
Officially, it was written off as a derelict structure from before the Collapse — a skeletal remnant of the old skyline. Unofficially, every operative sent to survey it has failed to return.

The transmission begins with static — then breathing. Operative #0315 describes five unidentified figures circling the base. No insignias. No weapons. Just watching. They moved with the discipline of soldiers and the patience of statues — guardians, not trespassers.

Inside, geometry breaks. Stairwells loop into themselves. Elevators open to the same floor they departed. Sub-levels hum with an inaudible pulse that can be felt in the lungs but never recorded.
Drone telemetry confirms eleven heat signatures inside the tower — human-shaped, upright, unmoving. No respiration. No heartbeat. The footage ends two seconds later, warped and colorless.

At 0219, seismic logs captured an impossible anomaly: the tower shifted 3.1 meters north. No explosion. No foundation cracks. It simply... moved.
For two frames of recovered video, the structure appears to breathe — bending sideways as though exhaling.

Survey notes describe the walls as “dense beyond composition,” the stairwells as “organic,” and the upper floors as “lit by no power source we could trace.” One operative wrote, “This is not architecture. It’s anatomy.”
He deleted the note three minutes later.

All further attempts to approach the site resulted in uplink degradation, blackouts, and full data loss.
Observation from a distance reveals minor changes in the tower’s silhouette every 72 hours. The current hypothesis, unconfirmed, is that the structure is aware of observation.

No further missions authorized.
Tower-09 classified under Anomalous Architecture.
Observation Only. Do Not Approach. Do Not Record. Do Not Stare.

The final words from Operative #0315 before the feed collapses:

“The tower knows when you’re looking.
And it’s getting closer.”

FILE SEALED — BLACK ORDER CLEARANCE REQUIRED
Unauthorized access punishable by termination.