Dr. Harold Winslow was the last of his team still present, seated at his station in the dimly lit, cavernous vault. A fortress of servers hummed softly around him, each one storing decades of classified data, some of which had never been seen by the public eye. The Data Vault was meant to be secure, impenetrable—an archive of secrets too dangerous for anyone but the highest authorities. But lately, the vault had become something else entirely.

Harold had always believed the whispers were just his imagination. After all, he was the last of his team, and isolation breeds all sorts of strange thoughts. But the voices were undeniable now.

It started with a faint hum, like an old television set tuning into a dead channel. At first, he could ignore it. He kept his head down, typing away, trying to finish his work before he too vanished, like the others.

The others.

He could still remember the faces of his colleagues, their weary eyes and quiet smiles as they worked late into the night, each one slowly unraveling under the pressure of the vault’s weight. All but one of them had disappeared without a trace. No notes, no messages, not even a single mention of their names left in the records. Just gone.

Harold was the last, the last to stay. He hadn’t left for weeks, his fingers typing automatically, his thoughts lost in the repetitive patterns of data. But then… the whispers grew louder.

He was alone tonight. The empty hallways of the vault stretched out like endless corridors of forgotten time. But something was different now. The air felt thick, as if the very walls were pressing in on him. And the voices… they weren’t just whispers anymore.

“Harold…”

A voice, soft and distorted, seeped through the speakers above him, causing his heart to skip a beat. It was faint, but undeniably human.

He froze, staring at the blank monitors before him. No one else was in the building. No one should be here.

“Harold…”

The voice was clearer now, almost desperate. It sounded like his colleague, Dr. Sarah Meeker, who had vanished two weeks ago. Harold remembered her final moments in the vault—her frantic tapping on the glass, eyes wide with fear as she screamed something about them before she was swallowed by the dark corridors of the archive.

He slowly rose from his chair, his body stiff with tension. The hum was louder now, vibrating through the walls. It wasn’t just coming from the speakers—it was coming from everywhere.

The voice broke through again, a guttural rasp, distorted beyond recognition.

“Get out… Harold…”

The monitors flickered. Data streams scrolled endlessly, lines of code rapidly disappearing, then reappearing. He had no idea what he was looking at anymore. There were faces there—faces he didn’t recognize—blurry, contorted. Their eyes burned through the screen, pleading, screaming, but no sound came.

“Who are you?” Harold whispered, his voice hoarse, the air in the vault growing colder with every breath.

The flickering faces stared back at him, unblinking. The hum turned into a low growl, deep and suffocating. He had to leave. He needed to get out.

But the door, the massive steel door that led to the outside, was locked. He hadn’t locked it—he never locked it. The security protocols were automated. Something was wrong, something terribly wrong. He turned back to the monitors. More faces—familiar faces now—his colleagues, his friends. Sarah again. But she was different. Her skin was pale, her eyes sunken, her mouth twisted in a silent scream.

“Harold…” Sarah’s voice came again, but this time it wasn’t from the speakers. It was in his ear, soft and chilling, a breath he could feel against his neck.

He spun around. Empty.

The vault had always felt sterile, clinical, like a place of cold, unfeeling technology. But now… now it felt alive. The air thick with presence. The whispers turned into voices—hundreds of them—speaking over each other, shouting, pleading, accusing.

“Get out! We’re still here!”

The temperature dropped sharply. Harold could see his breath fog in the air. The walls began to pulse, as if the vault itself were alive, breathing with him. The faces on the monitors twisted into grotesque mockeries of his colleagues’ faces, mouths gaping open in silent screams.

He ran. But the vault seemed endless now, the corridors stretching into infinity, and no matter where he turned, the whispers followed him, growing louder, until they were deafening.

Then, in a final, breath-stealing moment, a voice broke through all the others.

“We never left, Harold.”

He felt it then, the icy grip on his arm, pulling him into the darkness, dragging him back toward the vault. He struggled, gasped for air, but it was too late. The vault had claimed him, just as it had claimed them. The voices swirled around him, alive, echoing in every corner, in every crack. He could feel their cold fingers brushing against his skin, hear their whispers clawing at his mind.

As the darkness consumed him, Harold understood the truth. They hadn’t vanished. They’d been absorbed. The Data Vault had become a prison for their souls, and now, it wanted him too.

In the morning, the vault was silent once again. But somewhere, deep within its metal walls, the voices continued to echo, waiting for the next scientist to stumble too close to the truth.

Harold’s name was erased from the records.

But the whispers never stopped.