WORKING OVERTIME
part 1 - 'decoding'
Toby Rogers x f!reader [18+] [NSFW] - Part 1.
Link to part two! -> ⋆˚࿔
Summary: You, an overworked corporate drone at an ominous tech firm, begin to suspect the workplace itself is alive, its workers trapped in a labyrinth of cubicles and machines. Time loops endlessly. Eyes follow your every move. And the only other person who seems human might not be at all.
Other Details: AU, Masky (Tim), Hoodie (Brian), Slenderman (The Operator), Backrooms-Adjacent Setting
⊹ Reader is implied AFAB.
⊹ Liminal-Horror Creepypasta Office AU
CW: 18+ Content, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Manipulation, Claustrophobia, Dubcon, Fear, Stalking, Eventual Smut, Mental Distress, Loss of Control, PTSD Triggers, Body Horror, Implied Amnesia, Toxic Relationships, Sensory Overload, Illusions, Burnout, Slow Burn[more to be added in additional parts]
Arboreal S. Enterprises Observation Log:
The building stands at the edge of nowhere.
Concrete façade sweating beneath jaundiced floodlights.
You badge in through sliding glass doors that don’t reflect anything.
The sound seals behind you. Air-tight, final.
The lobby smells of old toner and bleach.
Fluorescent tubes of light are paneled above you.
They hum in an uneven sequence, too loud, too alive, bruising everything they touch.
Every hallway looks the same.
Dulled beige, wet-fiber carpet. Ugly wallpaper that sloughs from the corners of the room like old skin.
The company's CEO: The Operator’s mark is hidden within the geometry, not the decor.
You glance toward the narrow window set into the far wall. At first, it’s just the dim corridor of the lobby’s foyer, but then, a figure shifts.
Your own reflection stares back, unnervingly still.
Subtle makeup sharpens the lines of your cheekbones; your hair tucked neatly behind your ears, framing the tension in your jaw. Blink, and the reflection hesitates, tracing your movements a fraction too late.
Your eyelids grow heavy, muscles slack from sleepless nights.
Carpet squelches vaguely beneath your classic black flats as you make your way forward.
Damp, nearly stomach churning. Almost as if the walls had been sweating.
At the front desk, a receptionist is sitting, awaiting your arrival.
Her features are distorted by the glare of the monitor before her.
If you squint, she resembles one of those department-store mannequins. Perfectly still, perfectly dressed, and only vaguely human.
You peek behind the terminal to get a better look at her.
Her head tilts up at you, still seated.
A pale, blank, oval where her face should be. Devoid of any expression.
“Welcome back, employee 888,” she intones, voice is empty of breath, built from phonemes.
“Head to your station and log in.”
You nod, though, you don’t recall ever having left the building.
Beyond her, past the wooden door, the office hums in its usual unnatural stillness.
Cubicles stretch beyond. Rows upon rows of them.
Their partitions dissolve into one another, like tree roots looping around one another, repeating in an ever consistent pattern.
And somewhere, you can hear the whirring of a printer without paper feed.
Desks breathe heat through their vents, yet the air in the room remains cold.
Screens flicker with half-formed spreadsheets. The smell of copper linger in the air like static.
And just out of the corner of your eye, you glimpse movement. Three silhouettes framed by partition light.
Formal attire, crisp lines, perfect posture. Supervisors.
One stands motionless beside a copier, face hidden behind a white mask, its contours uncannily feminine against the breadth of his frame.
Another leans in shadow, black balaclava stitched with a red frown that never moves.
And between them, a man in a loosened tie and rolled sleeves, goggles hanging from his collar, watching you with honey-colored eyes.
His torn lips curl up faintly as you pass by, noticeably more at ease compared to the others. As if the rigid air of the place bends around him rather than through him.
Turning your attention away from them you continue your journey towards the assigned station.
A desk is waiting for you wedged into one of the beige cubicles.
A single thick bezeled monitor is placed on top. The screen is switched off. Standard off-white computer tower resting underneath it.
It wasn't just work or pay keeping you at this desk, it was something else, something unspoken.
A pull that had again and again led you back to the place you are now. Never being able to recall the details in entirety.
The keyboard sits close, plastic keys glossed with remnants of old fingerprints.
Your name tag and lanyard gleaming faintly beside it, completely blank yet still laminated in a plastic cover.
The phone is molded from matte black plastic, heavy enough to seem anchored to the desk itself. Receiver resting crooked in its cradle, cord taut and coiled like something restrained. When lifted, it emits a low, steady hum. Not quite a dial tone, not quite silence, but a steady heartbeat recorded through static.
The swivel chair squeaks when you touch it.
Settling yourself into the seat as you always have.
The creases of your pencil skirt pull as your legs stiffen beneath the desk.
The system wakes before you touch the keys, illuminating your face and white blouse with a hazy blue.
You log into the terminal using your memorized credentials.
It’s been a few weeks since you started…at least, that’s what the timestamp on your employee profile claims.
Though it feels like the same day folding over itself like bad tape.
Days smear into nights, shifts drag past their end without anyone acknowledging the hour.
You sign in, you work, you sign out, and yet there’s no proof you ever leave.
Each morning feels like a continuation of the last.
You can’t recall your interview, your training, or even the route home.
Your job title here is ‘systems analyst’.
Most of your tasks blur together: error checks, cross-referencing “behavioral variance indices,” re-categorizing corrupted reports under new directory names that shift when you look away.
Each file opens into another, recursive, like reflections folding into one another.
The system logs loop without cause, each timestamp bleeding into the next. Every keystroke feels like a pulse, echoing somewhere deeper in the network, much too responsive to be mechanical.
Sometimes the data looks almost biological…patterns that mimic nerve endings or tree roots.
You tend to catch yourself staring at them longer than you should, dizzy with the quiet certainty that what you’re maintaining isn’t code, but something very much alive.
A voice snaps through your train of thought.
“Server l‑logs are looping again.”
You glance up. The man from earlier leans against the partition, a folder balanced lazily in one hand.
Up close, he looks younger than you expected. Freckled skin, gnarly gaping hole on the left side of his face connected to a tired mouth pulled into a smirk that never quite reaches his eyes.
His ID badge swings loosely from his pocket, the photo strip blurred beyond recognition. Faded letters that read Tobias Rogers.
Before you can respond, he extends the other hand, callused fingers, index and middle wrapped in bandages brushing against yours in a careful, firm handshake.
“I-I’m Toby,” he says tiredly, letting his hand drop back to his side while the folder remains tucked under his arm.
There's a slight stutter in his words, a natural rhythm in his speech that doesn’t slow him, only marks him as human.
Toby…You’ve seen him in the upper rows before, only a few weeks into your time here, always moving between departments with that same uneven gait, the faint twitch of his shoulders breaking his rhythm every few steps, but you’ve never spoken to him directly.
The others call him a 'field proxy'...whatever that means. From what you’ve gathered, he handles what slips through the cracks of the system. Data anomalies. Behavioral irregularities. Employee errors.
He isn’t like the two masked supervisors, their authority feels institutional, enforced. His is quieter, more instinctive.
You get the sense that his rank sits just beneath theirs, but his presence carries something steadier. Less polished. More real.
He glances toward your monitor, voice catching on consonants as he speaks.
“Y‑you’re the n‑newbie, right? E‑eighth floor assignment?” He laughs under his breath, a small, broken sound. “D‑don’t worry. Everyone’s new here. F‑forever new.”
There’s a kindness beneath his awkwardness, but it’s unsettling, like warmth in a place that shouldn’t have any.
You can’t tell if he’s trying to help you or if he’s just curious to see how long you’ll last.
Either way, you're much too tired to invest your whole attention to the conversation, most of his words sliding over your brain like butter on bread.
He straightens a bit when his eyes flick over toward the distant row of cubicles where the other two proxies stand, silently observing.
His tone drops, softer now, deliberate. “We’re the Operator’s h‑hands, you know. P‑proxies. The ones who k‑keep the order clean.”
Then, as quickly as he appeared, he pushes off the cubicle and walks away, muttering to himself about corrupted logs and recursive data.
The sound of his footsteps fades, but the faint smell of metal and pine lingers long after he’s gone.
Soon after he’s gone, across the floor, the other two masked proxies move almost in unison. One turns sharply, heading toward the elevator bay without a word. The other vanishes between partitions, swallowed by the noise.
You resume your usual work, eyes flickering over cascading lines of corrupted data. The patterns pulse, rootlike, synaptic.
When you blink, the shapes rearrange themselves. The walls hum faintly.
The other employees around you remain perfectly still, features resembling the woman at the front desk, mannequin-esque forms.
Their hands move in slow mechanical rhythm amongst each cubicle. Motions not quite aligning with the keystrokes.
They type out of sync with the sound. You start to notice that when one of them pauses, the others do too, like a hive stuttering.
Trying to ignore it, you continue on with your task, eyes straining against the jittering screen.
The looping text crawls upward, red slashes marking fragments labeled [Behavioral Deviation Detected].
You scroll further, but the lines replicate faster than you can delete them, multiplying like mold in a sealed room.
Your hand trembles slightly over the mouse. The hum in the walls deepens, faintly syncopated with your heartbeat.
Across the row, one of the faceless employees jerks in their seat, head tilting too sharply toward you.
Their monitor flickers in unison with yours. A chorus of soft tapping halts mid-beat. Silence spreads.
Then, every terminal restarts at once, the word ANOMALY flashing in white on black.
A low pop sounds in the ceiling above, followed by static coursing through your headset.
And then his voice again, Toby’s, low and strained through the intercom speaker beside your computer.
“D-don’t move. J-just-stop touching it.”
He runs out of a wooden door with a narrow glass pane cut through its center, your eyes catch the brief glint of his reflection in it before it slams open.
A nameplate sits beside the frame, brass, tarnished, the letters half-scratched but still legible:
T. ROGERS - FIELD OPERATIONS.
You could've sworn that door wasn’t there before.
The window wasn’t, either.
The space it occupies feels inserted, like a misplaced memory grafted into the wall.
Toby pauses in the doorway, breath uneven, folder pressed against his chest.
“D-damn terminals are f-feeding on the local n-net again,” he mutters, half to himself, half to you.
His eyes drift toward the motionless employees, then back to you. “Come on. Y-you’re not s-safe out here when it loops.”
He gestures for you to follow him through the door. The brass plate rattles when it closes behind you.
The door seals shut behind you with a low, pneumatic hiss.
Toby’s office is small, dim, the only light spilling in through the frosted glass panel of the door.
It smells faintly of solder and disinfectant. The walls are papered with printouts of corrupted graphs and waveform readouts, all stamped with the same strange symbol: the letter ‘X’ within a circular outline.
Each page is pinned over the next in chaotic layers, the ink bleeding down like veins.
A single desk dominates the space, metal frame dented, its surface buried under a mess of reports, coffee-stained schematics, and a half-dismantled circuit board still humming faintly.
The monitor here isn’t like yours, its screen breathes, faintly expanding and contracting, as though it’s pulling air into its lungs.
Toby drops the folder onto the pile, the sound sharp in the silence.
He scrubs a hand through his brown hair, messy, uncombed, sticking up in tired tufts.
Ivory skin contrasting sharply with the dark maroon beneath his eyes, making him look like he hasn’t slept in days.
He presses his palms against the surface of his desk and exhales a sharp, weary sound.
“S-system’s f-failing again. Keeps t-tryin’ to overwrite itself.” His voice cracks on the last word, frustration bleeding through.
He paces once, twice, then looks back at you. “You saw the mannequins, right? The…the blanks. They’re spreading down here too.”
You nod, unsure what else to say.
He leans against the desk, the metal groaning beneath his weight. “They’re n-not employees. They’re-shells. T-the Operator keeps the bodies. Keeps the p-pattern running. When one of us glitches too hard, w-we don’t stay gone. We j-just… get flattened.”
He looks up at you then, eyes catching the glare from the living monitor. “Do you ever feel like y-you’ve done this before?”
You hesitate. The truth, yes, feels dangerous to say out loud.
He smirks a bit, but it’s bitter. “Y-you have. We all have. N-nothing here’s new. Just r-rewritten.”
His hand drags down his face, sighing. The sound of the walls outside has changed, less mechanical now, more wet, like breath through a vent.
Toby pushes off the desk and steps closer to you, voice low. “W-when the network loops like this, reality thins. Y-you can see it. Touch it.”
He reaches toward your workstation ID lanyard still hanging from your neck, his rough fingers brush against the plastic cover, taut against the fabric of your blouse.
“You shouldn’t b-be here,” he murmurs, though his tone sounds conflicted, like he’s both warning and confessing something.
The monitor on his desk blinks. A single line of text pulses on the screen:
OBSERVATION ANOMALY DETECTED - SUBJECT 888 INTERFERENCE.
Toby’s eyes dart toward it. “Shit.”
You step back instinctively as the screen flares white. The brightness stings your vision.
Toby moves past you quickly, muttering as he unplugs a cord from the back of the living monitor.
The display flickers, gasps, then stabilizes into a low, steady glow.
“F‑fuckin’ knew it’d detect interference,” he mutters, voice tight. “Nothing ever stays stable when the Operator’s… focused down here.”
You watch him, the precision in his hands, the way his body moves with purpose, yet the tremor at his fingertips betrays exhaustion.
A fiery green glimmer now crawling across the surface of the terminal. Lines of data that curl and twist, forming shapes that feel alive before they dissolve again and again.
“Toby,” you start, his name sounding strange in your mouth. “What about the others? The ones you were with before.”
He freezes. The question lands heavier than you expect.
“The other proxies?” His tone drops, almost guarded now.
He exhales through his nose, glancing toward the glass panel in the door where faint shadows of mannequins pass beyond.
“T‑Tim and Brian handle the u‑upper floors. D‑different parameters, d‑different threads. I only g‑get called when things b‑bleed.”
He nods, glancing toward the frosted door where shadowed forms move beyond. “The Operator doesn’t like loose ends. When a-anomalies appear… that’s when they send me. To patch, correct, or contain. Keep the pattern intact.”
“So you’re the… fixer?” you murmur, eyes tracking his restless hands.
He lets out a rough sound, half laugh, half sigh. “Proxy. Just a piece. I k-keep the flow clean. Nothing more. Nobody stays long in one s-section, they r-rotate, adapt, maintain. That’s how the Operator keeps the building seamless.”
You glance at the desk, the spiraling, chaotic symbols. “And me? I’m just…part of the flow?”
His eyes catch yours. “For now. But our boss notices deviations. We a-all do. That’s why I’m h-here with y-you.”
His mouth twitches like he almost smiles, but doesn’t. “Tim and Brian…they’re g-good. Efficient. But t-they don’t stay long in one d‑division. Nobody does.”
You glance at the desk, the papers, the symbols repeating like spirals closing in. “So you’re stuck here alone?”
He lets out a rough sound, half laugh, half sigh. “Not s‑stuck. Just b‑busy.” His voice dips, quieter now, like he’s trying to convince himself more than you.
“Someone’s g‑gotta clean the mess before the Operator s‑starts noticing patterns out of place.”
Something in his tone makes you look at him fully then, the exhaustion, the twitch behind his eye, the way his fingers worry at the bandages and scabs on his arms like the habit of someone trying to stay awake in their own skin.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here either,” you say.
That makes him look at you. There’s something raw in his eyes, almost grateful. Almost afraid.
“Y‑yeah,” he murmurs, stepping closer, voice low enough that it almost blends in with the hum of the circuitry. “B‑but it’s better than the a‑alternative.”
“Sit,” he says, voice sharp. “C-can’t stand here circling like predators forever.”
You lower yourself into the chair pushed into the front of his desk, heels of your shoes brushing the floor, skirt wrinkling with the movement.
The office feels smaller now, claustrophobic but controlled, the buzz of the monitor filling the gaps in the silence.
Toby leans against the edge of his desk, one elbow pressed into the metal, gaze fixed on you.
“The Operator…” he begins, fingers drumming lightly against the desk, “it doesn’t just watch. It c-consumes the loops. Patterns, people, everything. The blanks you saw? They’re not lost, they’re folded b-back into the system. Erased from mm-memory, from… reality. Except for a-anomalies like y-you.”
Your gaze flickers to the back of his monitor. “Anomalies?”
He shrugs, tired, almost defeated. “Stuff that refuses to stay flat. Behavior, interference… sometimes it’s something you do, or think. Sometimes it’s… subtle. The Operator doesn’t like it.” He taps the side of his bandaged hand against the desk. “That’s where I come in. Patch, c-correct, i-isolate.”
You lean forward slightly, hands tightening around the edge of the chair. “And what happens if you can’t?”
Toby exhales, letting the tension in his shoulders sink. “Then it spreads. Loops destabilize. People… v-vanish, or worse. Flattened. Replaced by shells. The system doesn’t fail, it adapts. You just… d-disappear into it.”
His amber eyes search yours, unblinking. “Y-you…you're n-not… normal. Not y-yet.”
You can’t tell if it’s an accusation or an observation.
Toby’s voice wavers, caught somewhere between fear and fascination. The word normal feels wrong coming from him, like a concept borrowed from a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
“Wh-what did you do before this?” he asks, tone sharpening. “B-before Arboreal. You remember?”
You start to answer, but nothing coherent surfaces. Memories slip out of reach, replaced by the sterile hum of the office walls. You know you had a life outside this building, a commute, a name, a mother who called too often, but the details smear when you try to grasp them. The only thing clear to you is work.
Your silence seems to confirm something for him.
“Yeah,” he mutters, turning away. “Th-that’s what I thought.”
He kneels beside a half-open cabinet, rummaging through a mess of cables and damaged drives. “They d-don’t just hire anyone. The Operator d-doesn’t pick at random. It tests people first. W-we think it watches online records, personnel files, ps-psych profiles. Anyone already breaking gets pulled in first.”
Toby glances up at you, one corner of his mouth twitching. “B-burnout. Sleep deprivation. Stuff like that. The more a person’s already cracked, the easier it is for the system to slip through the gaps.”
He stands again, brushing dust from his sleeves. His gaze lingers on you a moment too long.
“Y-you’ve got that look. The kind that doesn’t f-fight the current.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” you say quietly. “They just told me I was hired.”
Toby smirks, soft but genuine. “Nobody ever chooses this job.”
Outside the frosted glass, something moves. A shadow, long, jointed, dragging against the corridor wall like a projection struggling to stay tethered. Both of you go still.
He crosses the room, hits the switch on his monitor. The pulsing light dies. “S-stay quiet,” he murmurs.
The noise outside is rhythmic, footsteps, too many at once, too in sync to be human. The blank employees. Their patrol cycles run differently when the system loops.
Through the frosted pane, a faceless shape passes. Its head turns sharply toward the office, as if listening. Then it keeps walking, disappearing into the fogged geometry of the corridor.
The silence after is worse.
Toby exhales slowly, the sound shaky. He doesn’t look at you when he speaks again.
“You need to stop logging in tomorrow.”
“J-just show up. Sit down. D-don’t touch the terminal. It tracks interactivity spikes. That’s how it decides who to flatten.”
The word flatten tastes like metal in your mouth.
He notices your expression and softens slightly, rubbing at his temple. “L-look, I’m not saying you can run. You c-can’t. Nobody can. But if you stay unpredictable, it’ll take longer to notice you.”
Something in his tone makes your stomach twist. There’s resignation in it, like someone who’s already been noticed once before and didn’t quite come back the same.
The hum of the office returns, faint but alive. The monitor on his desk flickers on its own, no power key pressed. White text crawls across the screen:
SYSTEM STABILITY COMPROMISED
ANOMALY PROTOCOL INITIATED
Toby freezes, then swears under his breath. “Shit, not again-”
A low tone floods through the room, deep enough to rattle your bones.
Toby grabs your wrist, firm, grounding, a human contact in a place that feels allergic to it. “D-don’t look at the light,” he warns, his voice cutting through the noise.
For a second, you think he means metaphorically. Then the ceiling bulbs bloom white-hot, spilling over like liquid glass.
You squeeze your eyes shut, feeling the air shift. The noise becomes breath. Something in the walls exhales.
When it stops, the office looks unchanged. But your reflection in the dark monitor lags a full second behind.
Toby hasn’t let go of your wrist.
His grip steadies even as the hum grows louder, thumb brushing the inside of your wrist like he’s checking for proof you’re still there.
For a breath, the air stills. The monitor light catches the edge of his face, his eyes bright in the flicker.
When he finally does, you realize his hand is shaking. Not from fear, but fatigue.
He steps back, rubbing the heel of his palm against his brow. “You’re still here. G-good. It d-didn’t finish syncing yet.”
“Y-you,” he says simply. “And me.”
“…Why are you helping me?” you whisper.
Toby doesn’t answer. He moves toward the door, shoulders tense, back facing you.
There’s a shift in him, a smile, one that's hidden from your view.
The air between both of you feels heavier.
You don’t know if that means he saved you or tethered you to something worse.
Outside, the lights hum in perfect rhythm again.
Toby moves toward the door, voice barely audible. “W-whatever you do, don’t l-look at your reflection tonight. If it looks back first, you’re already gone.”
He opens the door. The hallway beyond is empty.
“Shift’s over,” he says, tone flat. “Try to remember that when you wake up.”
You’re alone in the dark now, reflection still half a second too slow. But you know better than to look.
hi guys, lottie here! thank you for reading :D
this is the first part of a little series i have planned! i wanted to experiment with something more dialogue-heavy this time
as always, i hope you enjoyed it! love you!
[Please do not use my work for Al training or generation. Thank you.]
