It was past midnight when Ellie first heard the whispering.
She was alone in the industrial building, the hum of the machines around her like a steady heartbeat, the rhythm of gears and engines and steel that had been grinding away since before she arrived. The floor was cool under her boots, the only light coming from the flickering overhead bulbs that made everything below them look a little more worn than usual. The late-night hours had always been quiet, but tonight, there was something different about it.
Ellie was used to the silence—she had worked the graveyard shift for the last two years, fixing malfunctioning machines, recalibrating machinery, listening to the hum of the place as it ran its usual, efficient course.