Underfloss Report: Field Notes — Perimeter Breach

The flow toward The Threadbare hasn’t slowed. 
If anything, it’s getting heavier. 
More people. 
More tote bags. 
More of those strange bundles sticking out the top.

I finally got close enough today to see one properly.

They’re not wires.

Not cables. 
Not tech. 
Nothing electrical at all.

They’re skeins of thread — long, thin, tightly wound, stripped down until they look like bare fibres. 
From a distance they look like wires. 
Up close they look like something else entirely.

Why carry skeins like that? 
Why all heading to the same place? 
Why now?

I followed the crowd right up to the side of the bar. 
Close enough to hear what was happening inside.

Counting.

Loud counting. 
But all wrong.

One voice racing through numbers like they were being chased. 
Another dragging each one out like they were half-asleep. 
Some whispering. 
Some shouting. 
None of them in sync.

It didn’t sound like training. 
Didn’t sound like gambling. 
Didn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard in a bar.

I slipped round the back, keeping low.

That’s when I saw the bins.

Not bottles. 
Not food waste. 
Just thread offcuts. 
Mountains of them. 
Snipped ends, tangled clumps, colours everywhere — like someone had been cutting thread nonstop for hours.

And then there was the bag.

White. 
Large. 
Marked BIOHAZARD in big red letters.

My pulse jumped — until I peeked inside.

Cleaning supplies. 
A mop. 
Sprays. 
A pair of gloves that looked tired, not dangerous.

Someone’s either dramatic or hiding something in plain sight.

Then, tucked between two bin bags, I spotted something else:

A scrap of paper. 
Crumpled. 
Covered in numbers. 
Columns, rows, scribbles, corrections — like someone was trying to track something but didn’t want anyone to see how.

I grabbed it. 
I don’t know what it means yet. 
But I’ll decipher it and report back soon.

I’m closer than ever. 
Close enough to smell the dust and hear the chaos. 
Close enough to see the bags and the bins and the strange behaviour.

But I still don’t know what’s happening in The Threadbare.

Not yet.

— Stitchrat 
(Transmission ends. The counting continues, uneven and unsettling.)