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"Please, Tim," he says. "Please," he says, and the glare Tim sends him is so dark there could be monsters in it, but Tim's mouth opens and he speaks.
Martin knows that the way the words come pouring out of him, fluid even though his mouth twists around them like bitter bile, is the Institute's power and not anything to do with Martin himself. Still.
He remembers, always, that Tim did not want to tell.
It's not like it's huge, unarguable proof or anything. Martin is a nice and polite British boy who phrases things as suggestions and hints and questions rather than orders. The point of the word please is to ask people to do something they wouldn't have done in the first place.
But it is... noticeable, because people actually doing what Martin asks of them has never exactly been a thing before.
He doesn't test it, because that's not right. Accidents are something, using people like guinea pigs to experiment a theory is another.
But when weird things just happen to happen — when he thoughtlessly asks his colleagues something, expecting a no, and they unhappily do it anyway — well. Studying that coincidental data is yet a different thing.
"Just... just don't die, Jon."
He doesn't think it can work like this. Maybe it could work through a tape recorder? Martin doesn't know enough to be sure if they belong only to the Institute's patron or if they can channel and serve other purposes, but he does know that those things are powerful in some way. Still, tape recorders aside, it wouldn't seem right for it to work without the person actually hearing his command; in the same way that Martin can guess, feel, when a statement is going to record on the laptop or not, he doesn't feel like this will work. And if they do ever hear this one, it'll be after the fact, anyway.
There's really nothing lost in trying, though, just in case.
"Just," he whispers into the whirling eye of the tape wheel. "Just everyone please make it back home."
Yelling at Elias to shut up doesn't work, either, no matter how much force and anger he puts in it, but Martin's not surprised about that one. It wasn't part of the plan, anyway.
Later, though, huddled in the archives, when Melanie's fury swells again like a wave and she won't listen to what he's saying normally, a detached part of him thinks better control than violence and the word that comes out of his mouth is: "Please."
And she stops.
She trembles and shakes as though against restraints, and for a long few seconds she only breathes, silent, as though she physically cannot speak other words than the ones she eventually spits out: "All right." Her eyes are dark, her teeth clenched, her fists tight, and it is abundantly clear that she does not agree with this, that this is not her own desire or decision, but she stops. She does what Martin wants her to do, what Martin wants.
Martin closes his eyes and bites his lip and stays quiet after that, doesn't even open his mouth in fear of what might roll out of it, just to be sure, because: it's not like what he wants is bad, but that's exactly the kind of shite Elias spews too.
Martin finds he doesn't really care about potentially not being quite fully a human anymore, and he doesn't feel bad about controlling his coworkers if they are being actively destructive and putting all of them at risk — but he doesn't want to become another Elias. Better not risk it. Keep silent, right now, until he can be sure that his will is his own again, and not something else's. Using, and not being used.
So Martin keeps his eyes closed and sits silent, at the centre of his carefully weaved little web, and waits.
Jon didn't die, by the way.
Sitting beside the hospital bed, staring at Jon's unseeing open eyes, Martin idly wonders: is it worse, whatever he's going through right now? They said it hurts, all the escapees from the End, all the ones who should have died and didn't. They said it's wrong and it hurts and they want to die for real. They all wanted death rather than being caught in-between.
It's probably not because Martin asked — told — him not to. After all, Tim sure went and died anyway.
Maybe Martin didn't wish it quite as hard enough for Tim, though. Maybe he didn't put in quite the same desperate energy in it when thinking of Tim and the others as he did when thinking of Jon.
Or maybe Jon just isn't human enough anymore to die, maybe he just didn't need that heart anymore to start with and it's nothing to do with Martin. Maybe Martin can't control him, maybe nothing about Martin can ever affect Jon.
But. There is nothing lost in trying. Just in case.
Eyes closed, Martin whispers: "Wake up, Jon," and focuses on threading the word on his tongue, spinning saliva into silk, pushes it out of his lips and throws it out through the air like a thin gossamer string to catch Jon: "please."