Vacant lot, North District
Three nights after Site-19 lost its signal
A new door stood in the weeds.
Freestanding. Matte black. No handle on the outside.
A paper sign had been taped to it with duct tape:
**CONTAINMENT SPECIALISTS WANTED**
No degree required
No references checked
No background you can't outrun
Pay is survival
Apply within
At 01:13 a.m., the first applicant arrived.
Her name was Riley Quinn, twenty-two, former art student, current runaway from three different cults.
She smelled like gasoline and cheap incense.
She read the sign twice, shrugged, and knocked.
The door opened by itself.
Inside was not a room.
It was a subway platform that didn't exist on any map.
Tiles the color of dried blood. One working fluorescent tube flickering overhead.
Elias Vark sat on the only bench, legs crossed, reading a newspaper written entirely in redacted text.
He looked exactly the same as every missing-person bulletin (except the eyes were older now, and the smile never quite reached them).
Riley hesitated on the threshold.
"You're the guy who quit the Foundation," she said.
"I'm the guy the Foundation quit," Elias corrected, folding the newspaper. "Come in before the platform decides you're late."
She stepped over the chalk circle someone had drawn around the bench. The door shut behind her without a sound.
Elias studied her the way a coroner studies a body that's still breathing.
"You've met three anomalies in your life," he said. "One of them still lives under your skin. That's why you're here."
Riley's hand went unconsciously to the scar on her collarbone (a perfect circle of teeth marks that never healed).
"I didn't come here to be read," she said.
"Good. I'm not hiring mind-readers. I'm hiring rule-breakers."
He tossed her a small object.
A brass key, identical to the one he used to carry, except this one had a tag tied to it with red string.
On the tag: **R. Quinn – Probationary Specialist**
Riley turned the key over in her fingers.
"What's the job?"
"Same as mine used to be," Elias said. "Find things that shouldn't exist. Close the doors they opened. Try not to become one of them."
He stood.
"Difference is, we don't fill out forms in triplicate. We don't ask permission. And when we fail, nobody amnesties the survivors."
Riley looked back at the door she'd come through. It was gone. Just brick wall now.
"How many of you are there?" she asked.
"Forty-seven doors opened when I left," Elias said. "Forty-seven pieces of me walked out. Some of them still think they're on the Foundation's side. Some of them want to burn the world to prove a point. I'm trying to hire faster than they can recruit."
He gestured down the tunnel.
A train was coming (no lights, no sound), just the sense of something huge moving in the dark.
"Your interview starts now."
The train stopped without brakes.
The doors slid open.
Inside: six other people sitting in scattered seats, each holding an identical brass key. None of them looked happy to be there.
A woman with clockwork eyes.
A teenage boy whose shadow moved three seconds late.
A priest whose rosary was made of human finger bones.
All of them stared at Riley like she was either the new hire or the next anomaly.
Elias stepped onto the train.
"First rule of the new job," he said over his shoulder.
"Never trust the guy who hired you."
The doors began to close.
Riley took one last look at the empty platform, then stepped in just before the gap disappeared.
The train lurched forward into absolute black.
Somewhere far behind them, the freestanding door in the vacant lot dissolved into rust and wind.
The sign fluttered to the ground.
Someone had added a line in fresh red marker:
**Positions still open.
The mirror is hiring too.**