"You aren't you just because you think you are." A low whisper in his ear jerked him back from the void. He opened his eyes and saw coworkers crowded around, none close enough to have been whispering.

"Are you okay?" Mr. Nolen asked nervously, eyes darting around in the 'don't sue the company' way he saw any time someone slipped and fell or found moldy cheese on the shelf.

"I think so." He said as he sat up and assessed his state. He felt… a little odd but nothing he could put his finger on. It didn't hurt to breathe but his head hurt a bit when he ran a hand through his hair.

"You hit your head pretty hard when you fell." Melissa supplied helpfully with that incessant smile of hers. There were rumors she moved to town from Desert Bluffs when she was a child and has always smiled like that. It was unnerving.

"Feels like it… I think I'll be alright, though." He assured the gathered crowd as he got to his feet. They began to disperse though there still seemed to be nothing to do. The clock indicated he'd been unconscious for almost two hours and he doubted he'd been clocked in by Nolan the Cheapskate. So much for squeezing in an extra hour.

Muttering to himself he went to clock in and pretend to be busy, pulling boxes flush with the edge of the shelves, turning candy so the labels all faced up, wiping at imaginary dust as often as real dust. It was a neverending job in a desert town, no matter how good the seal on the door, dust seemed to pass through walls when no one was looking. Aside from almost dying in the parking lot it was just another boring day.

So boring it was boring into his skull… he could almost feel the drill… booooooooooring...

It wasn't funny, it was a very stupid thought. Even so it brought a chuckle out of him. It just got funnier the more he thought about it and he couldn't think of anything else and soon he was roaring with laughter and everything seemed to be getting kind of… yellow. It was hard to breathe and his coworkers were rushing over to find out what was going on but he couldn't stop laughing. Soon the lack of oxygen began to affect him and as things started going dark again he saw people around him falling to the floor clutching their throats. Somehow that was even funnier and he struggled to gasp for breath as he sank to the floor.

He woke in a brightly lit concrete room with four other people. They were lying in a neat row on the floor by order of height. He was in the middle. There was a heavy metal door with no window or handle and a sign on the wall that said only 'YOU ARE GOING TO DIE' in very unfriendly block letters. He had seen less encouraging things during his life but not many.

"Remain where you are. Do not speak." An unfamiliar but unmistakable vocoder enhanced voice ordered from a speaker.

Jason nodded and sat still. What more could he do? The Sheriff of Night Vale was a fair but unforgiving person. Arguing would do no good, it would only fulfil the prophesy of the paper hastily taped to the wall that much faster.

I don't want to die. He thought aggressively at the paper. Not that I have a lot to live for… single, working a dead end job in a city that forbids the use and appreciation of yo-yo's.

The reasoning behind that had always eluded him. What was wrong with yo-yo's? Harmless toys, really. He'd considered that maybe too many people got violent when the string got knotted but then it occurred to him that Steve Carlsberg was probably having the same thoughts and started thinking about whether his lawn needed mowing yet or not.

Of course it hadn't, most of the grass was either dead or stealthily being replaced by weeds that stayed low to the ground as if that would prevent anyone from noticing them. He was still dwelling on spiteful and unwelcome plantlife when one of the others, Samantha, woke and looked around.

"What happened?"

"Do not speak. Remain where you are." The unseen sheriff repeated.

Jason shrugged. Samantha sat up, saw the note and glared at him. She mouthed 'this is your fault' and crossed her arms over her chest, staring straight ahead. He scowled indignantly at her. His fault? All he did was go to work! There hadn't really been a choice and what did he do, anyway?

Over the next half hour the process was repeated as each person woke, glared at Jason with varying degrees of intensity and waited. They all knew not to defy the order of the Sheriff. At best you would disappear to an unknown fate, at worst there was the Dark Box where you would be erased from history.

He didn't like thinking about the Dark Box… he couldn't remember his father. His mother was quite certain he had one but she couldn't remember him either. Steve Carlsberg once told him that meant his father had done something bad enough to get sent to the Dark Box and now no one could remember him. It did make sense but he'd rather think it was something like this… a strange accident that removed him from their lives, not a willful disobedience to known laws.

"Who was the first to be exposed?" The unseen Sheriff asked. All fingers pointed at him. "Stand and approach the door. Do not speak."

He stood and quickly made his way past glaring people, Even Melissa was scowling at him. As he neared it the door swung open just enough to allow him through. On the other side were four people in hazmat suits and before he could ask what was going on, he felt the jab of a needle in his neck and once again fell into darkness.

Breathing hurt. As he fought his way back to some semblance of wakefulness all the aches and pains catalogued themselves neatly in his mind. It felt like he got into a bar brawl, went down early and got stomped on while everyone else kept going.

He groaned as he pushed himself into a sitting position and looked around. he was in a large room, he could tell that much from the way his groan had echoed. There was very little light, only a vaguely rectangular shape formed by light seeping in around a door. It smelled dusty, the air was stale… that was not an encouraging observation. He considered not making further observations but it didn't seem there was much else to do.

He stood and made his way carefully toward the light. There were footprints in the thick layer of dirt around the door, he could make out a few sets and a drag mark that was probably made by him. The door was locked. Of course. Well, it wasn't locked so much as barred from the other side. Jason glared at the dark gap in the light that marked the location of the bar and sighed. He hated the Night Vale Justice System. This wasn't a first degree warning, that usually involved waking up outside in the desert somewhere. It could be a second degree warning where there was a way out if he could figure out what to do.

What worried him most was that it could be punishment. He had no idea what he was being punished for aside from disregarding a warning over the radio but that shouldn't have been a punishable offense. He paced, frustrated and bored. If it was punishment he had simply disappeared as far as anyone knew and he would probably die here. Locked away and forgotten. How many of these places did the City Council have?

Sighing heavily he began walking along the edge of the room, one hand on the wall. It was round. Very large and very round. Cylindrical. His helpful inner voice said. Half cylindrical is all you can honestly say. On the far side from the door to the outside he hit the frame of another door. That glowing rectangle seemed so far away…

After further examination by touch he found a keypad. There was no way to tell whether it was numbered or even operational but it wasn't like he had anything else to do so he started pressing. There was a simple square of nine buttons so it seemed logical that hitting the right combination would automatically release the locked door. Most keypads like this he had seen used four digit codes so he started systematically hitting four key combinations. It wasn't like there was anything else to do.