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In his dreams, there is silence.
The first few nights, he can’t take it, and he makes as much noise as he can, yells and blasts his radio and tv. Nothing penetrates the stillness. Eventually he stops trying, and waits until he wakes up, the silence so still it rings in his ears, oppressive in its unending presence.
After a week, he begins to walk. Out of his empty, oppressive room, he roams into the stillness. The ordinarily bustling streets of London echo with absence, fog filling them as if early in the morning. He can almost believe that, if he tries, and his footfalls as he makes his way into the heart of the city are muted against the cobblestones. Cars loom ominously, still as the buildings and strangely dark. They’re unnerving to look at.
In the alleyways and behind shops he begins to see the silhouettes of people. At first he tries to talk to them, but when this tact proves unsuccessful, he resorts to watching the air eddy around them, swirls of fog hiding their faces. Near them the fog is thickest, almost as if it emanates from their skin.
The first person he finds like this looks homeless, slumped in a back alley and wrapped in layer upon layer of ill-fitting clothing. He can’t see their face, but he tries anyway, leaning close in the dim light. When he finally gives it up as a lost cause, he looks down and sees needles littering the ground. The person reaches out for one, bares a track-marked arm, and when the needle falls the person goes even stiller than before. The fog closes in, and Martin wakes.
***
It is several days, this time, before he dreams of the stillness again. Jon hasn’t stirred, but Martin isn’t the only person visiting him anymore. There’s someone else, just out of the corner of Martin’s eye, and it makes him ache, like an old wound reopened, like the dream has followed him into the silent hospital room.
Or maybe that’s why he dreamed it in the first place, Martin muses, as he reads a novel in the back-breaking chair beside the bed. Jon hasn’t moved, but he tries to keep him company. He turns a page and forgets what was on the last, but that’s okay. It’s a rubbish story.
At the end of visiting hours, a nurse ushers him out, and he stands shivering on the front walk. It had been daylight when he arrived, and warm for January; he’d left his coat behind.
“Need a ride?” a genial voice asks from right beside him. Martin jumps, shivers violently in surprise.
“Erm.” He looks up into a grizzled face, which, despite the weather worn skin and graying hair looks to belong to a man not much older than him.
Peter Lukas laughs and holds out a hand. “Martin, right?” At Martin’s nod, his smile seems to widen. Or does it? Martin takes his hand, shakes once. “You were visiting Jon? The poor man. Meddling in things too big for him to understand.”
Ice shivers down Martin’s spine, and he can feel his hair standing on end. Peter is still holding his hand, and he doesn’t pull away, carefully does not tense. “You know Jon.” It’s not a question.
“Yes, I do. Well. We know of each other.” Peter holds his hand a moment longer, long fingers dwarfing Martin’s, and then lets go. “How is he? No changes, I gather?” A cab seems to materialize at the curb, and Lukas steps down and opens a door. Turns back to look at Martin.
Martin trembles, and nods, and climbs in after him. “No changes.”
“Pity. We’ll be needing our Archivist.” Martin opens his mouth, then closes it, considering.
“You’re the new boss,” he says at last.
“Very good!” Peter turns towards him as the cab eases out into traffic, easy grin still plastered across his face, and Martin feels as if he’s falling. “It’s too bad about Tim, you know. He would have been useful too. No, don’t look at me like that, I know an asset when I see one.” He glances at his watch and tuts. “You were there all day, too. I wonder, do you really think he’ll wake if you just watch him long enough?”
“I just don’t want him to be alone.” He earns a chuckle for that, but instead of making him feel more at ease, Martin can only think of a cat just before it pounces. His mouth tastes sour.
“I wouldn’t worry about all that. Listen, Martin, there’s some things I wanted to discuss with you.”
***
This time, the fog surrounds Martin too, so he can barely see. He runs through the streets of London, desperate for a sign of anyone else alive. He trips into a nightclub, only to discover a dance floor thick with fog, bodies barely visible in the jumble. Stumbling back out into the night Martin finds that the fog is coming off him in tendrils, reaching out into the empty streets. He rubs his hands down his arms, trying to calm himself. This doesn’t feel like a normal dream.
He makes his way to the Magnus Institute, lets himself in. Tim’s desk is empty, bare and dark, and the fog thickens as he stands and stares down at it. Two other desks are occupied, Melanie’s and Basira’s, and while fog trickles off of them and hides their faces, their bodies seem real, solid, untouched by it.
They don’t hear him when he calls their names. His hands pass through their bodies when he tries to grasp their shoulders, and Martin doesn’t realise how much fog is streaming off him till he raises his hands to wipe the tears from his eyes.
There are no mirrors in this world, Martin learns, when he rushes to the men’s room to check. To see if he’s obscured by the fog yet. They’re simply gone. Everything else is the same, the furniture, the buildings. But when he makes his way out onto the street, he realizes why the cars had looked so strange; none of them had wing mirrors, and the windscreens were completely opaque. Apparently, even travel was lonely here.
***
He returns the next night, to the quiet place. The panic is starting to set in, that he’ll disappear in the fog, and against his better judgement he makes his way downtown to the hospital where Jon is being kept.
The hospital is littered with cloudy people, and it seems to take longer than normal to get from one end of a hallway to another. Bodies in scrubs move between people in casual wear, and the rooms are near-impassable with mist. Martin takes the stairs to avoid seeing more people, and discovers instead that on nearly every landing someone is doubled over, sobbing. He quickens to a run and makes the last flight two steps at a time.
Where is Jon? In a place this lonely, he must be positively drowning, unable to See anything.
This thought makes Martin pause on the landing, hand on the door. The doctors claimed Jon might never wake, but somehow Martin knew that he was still looking for statements, that he needed to feed that supernatural curiosity even in this state.
Martin opens the door, steps through –
***
– and jolts awake in bed, alone as always, in his dark and empty flat.
His phone is ringing. Martin sits up and looks at the caller ID: Unlisted. He clicks the answer button.
“Hello?”
“Martin, you weren’t sleeping, were you?” Martin’s heartbeat, which had begun to calm, picks up. Before he can answer, Lukas continues: “Listen, I’ve got a shipment coming into Lowestoft, and, well, I need someone to pick it up. You can drive, right?”
Martin opens his mouth to answer but is once again cut off. “‘Course you can. There’s a van downstairs waiting for you, keys in your mailbox. I’m sending you the address. You know Mikaele Salesa?”
***
It’s freezing on the docks at night, Martin discovers.
He’d neglected to bring a proper coat, just a thin jacket that leaves him shivering, and the night fog coming off the waters reminds him uncomfortably of the fog in his dreams. With the dream hospital fresh on his mind, anxiety for Jon is riding low in his belly, an unease he cannot shake.
All Martin wants right now is his own bed and a night without dreams, or a coffee. Or Jon to wake up. Maybe-
Movement out on the water diverts his attention, and he squints into the gloom. A barge trundles into view, smaller than most he’s seen but still quite large, and slowly manoeuvres alongside the dock where he’s standing. It’s a slow process, in such a narrow port, but finally the barge slows to a halt and for an instant, all is still.
Then a door swings open, and a large man shrouded in shadow steps out. He’s got a dolly beside him, and on it sits a large box. A handful of other people (the ship’s crew, Martin assumes) appear on deck and silently let down a ramp, and the man makes his way carefully down onto the dock with his cargo. He examines Martin without shame, and in the low light of the dock Martin can see that while Salesa’s long, dark hair is pulled back in a low bun, some of it has started to spring free in tight curls. The man looks exhausted, but even so, after a long moment his lips quirk up in a smile.
“You’ve got a van?” he asks, low voice heavily accented. Martin lifts a set of keys and eyes the box – now that it’s closer, he can see it just comes up to his hip.
“Is that it?”
Salesa chuckles. “Don’t underestimate this little nasty,” he replies, and takes the keys from Martin’s hand. “I’ll load it for you.” He steps past towards the van and Martin follows, keeping some distance between himself and the box. His instinct proves correct, as he watches Salesa slide on thick rubber gloves before handling it.
When he notices Martin watching, Salesa’s lips twitch again. He strips off the gloves and returns the keys to Martin, then stops and looks at him seriously.
“Don’t touch it, don’t stop, don’t look at it if you can avoid it. I don’t know why Peter’s using an amateur, but I’ve lost good people because they didn’t know what they were dealing with. Don’t make the same mistake.”
Salesa walks away, leaving Martin shivering and alone in the mist, a condition with which Martin is rapidly becoming familiar.
Martin climbs into the van. It’s a long, lonely drive back to London.
***
Martin visits Jon after work: no change. He’d left his number with the nurses, ages ago, and they know to call him if Jon wakes up, if he moves, if anything changes. Still, he wants to see with his own eyes what he already knows is true: that Jon is never waking up.
The hospital room is silent. For the sake of thoroughness, a pulse ox is attached to one of Jon’s fingers, and an oxygen mask rests on his face
The respirator is not on. No pulse flashes across the monitor beside the bed, and though Jon has a drip nestled in the crook of one arm, his blood does not pump.
He looks dead. He is dead. Martin knows that, if not for the leads attached to his head, Jon would have been buried next to Tim. Martin winces. He hates to think of his friends dying.
“I bet you’re eating well in there,” Martin says quietly, standing at Jon’s bedside, one hand resting atop Jon’s pale, limp own. Against all odds, the skin is warm. “All those people lost in your dreams. You’re in them too, right? The dreams?” He knew, of course; he’d heard the statement Elias had recorded.
“I wish you’d wake up.” Martin’s voice cracks, and he covers his mouth with the other hand. “I wish- I just wish you’d wake up, Jon. Breathe, blink, twitch- something. I need to know you’re okay.” Jon’s forearm crutches lean against the wall in one corner, gathering dust. Martin had insisted on bringing them long ago; now, it feels like they’re taunting him.
The clock ticks. No one answers him.
Martin leaves the room, avoiding the nurses’ eyes- he can’t stand it anymore.
Today is a good day; he makes it all the way to his own front door before the tears come.
***
Jon isn’t in the hospital in Martin’s dreams. Martin wanders the halls, which are nearly impassable with fog, and he lets the tears fall until he can’t see. If he could just find Jon, just know that he’s okay, he thinks.
Eventually the fog fills his vision, and he wakes.
***
It’s his day off, and he sits once again at Jon’s side with a book, hand once again resting atop Jon’s. When a nurse kicks him out after visiting hours, he meanders down to the cafeteria and sits staring at a sandwich for far too long. From the corner of his eye, he can see mist rising from his hands and trailing behind passing patrons. He blinks, and the mist is gone.
“Too tired,” he mutters, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses.
A chair slides out across the table from him, making him start.
“Not going to eat your sandwich?”
He hadn’t seen Peter Lukas walk up, and he adjusts his glasses back into place and stares at him, waiting. His blood shivers in his veins, anticipating the chill Peter brings even as it settles over him.
“You did well the other night,” Peter continues. “Have you given any thought to my offer?”
Martin sighs and tugs his jacket closer nervously. “I- I need more time.”
“I won’t wait forever, Martin. I need an answer soon.” When Martin still didn’t respond, Peter sighs in exasperation and leans forward, resting his hands on the tabletop. “Jon isn’t going to wake up just because you beg him. The Extinction is coming, you know that. Someone has to stop it before it emerges.”
Martin swallows, clears his throat. “I need to think about it. I- I’ll let you know.” He stands abruptly and grabs his sandwich, walking quickly away from the table without looking back. If he had, he would have seen Peter smile.
***
That night, Martin finds himself back in the hospital, wandering the halls once again. But Jon isn’t there, and it rankles him, to think Jon might not exist here, in this lonely universe.
He finds himself wandering out onto the streets, making his way down into the tube tunnels, unsurprised yet unnerved to find that none of them are running. As he walks on, the fog thickens around him, and the chill of being alone – so utterly alone – thickens too. Lost in thought, he doesn’t realize where he is till he wanders into King’s Cross Station. To his surprise, he can see a train on the track beside him. The doors open, and he watches a young woman step aboard the empty car.
Something niggles in the back of his mind, a memory he can’t quite access, but this is a dream and memories don’t function right in dreams. So he follows her onto the train, one car back. She doesn’t seem to see him, though he can see through the fog billowing from his body that she’s barely obscured by the mist at all.
Why is she here?
The train pulls away as she sits, seeming not to notice Martin standing at the junction between the cars and watches her through the window. He should know her, he thinks, as he watches her get up and examine her surroundings. The train moves, and she checks her watch, again and again as dirt seams to appear in the train surrounding her. And then, as the train stops, she starts to move towards the other end of the car.
Martin follows her, curious, as she makes her way through several cars. He remembers, suddenly, a statement Jon had taken in person about the Buried, from a young woman riding the tube.
Sure enough, when she opens the door to the next car, he can see that the metal walls and ceiling are warped and filthy. The door slams shut behind them, and he watches her go through the motions Martin remembers her describing to Jon, checking the doors and seeing the only other passenger on the train. She seems weary, as she speaks to the man trapped in a seat, like she’s done this all before. But then, as she lies down, she looks to her left. “Help me,” Martin hears through the door, the sound far away, and he follows her gaze.
Jon stands at her side, seemingly unaffected by the walls as they crumple around him. Martin stares at him, drinking him in; he leans casually on his crutches, like he does when someone is talking in the break room and he’s only partially listening, and Martin can see the red plastic of his AFO peeking out between the hem of his trousers and his sock. He looks healthier than Martin has seen him in several months; he looks alive, staring at the woman on the floor – Karolina, Martin remembers suddenly – as if he can’t get enough. Hungrily, Martin realises, completely focused on her fear and agony.
She repeats herself now, struggling against the floor that wraps up around her. “Please, help me!” She moves her head, looks down her body towards Martin, and through the fog he realizes that she can see him too. “Help me, help me—”
Jon turns slowly, eyes large, and stares into Martin’s own. Martin finds he cannot look away as he is stripped bare, and the fog billows around him until Jon is completely obscured from sight.
***
Martin wakes with a yell, thrashing against his blankets. It takes long, painful moments for him to realize he’s home in his bed, not in the underground, not being buried in a warped subway train.
He lets out a dry sob, then stands and makes his way to the bathroom and turns on the water as hot as it will go. He peers into the mirror at his own face till it fogs over with steam, and he breathes deeply as the billows obscure him from view.
***
Peter calls him while he’s talking to Jon. Jon isn’t answering, of course, Jon never answers, but he talks anyways. Begs him to wake up, to help them. Martin doesn’t want to be alone, doesn’t want Peter Lukas to be his only recourse. But Jon does none of these things, just lies there in silence, body warm and vacant.
He supposes that counts as alone after all, Martin thinks as he glances at the caller ID. He swipes to answer the call.
“Yeah.”
“Jon’s not waking up,” Peter says immediately; their words overlap.
“Yeah, I know. I’m—look. I’m actually with him now.” Martin sniffles, rubs an arm across his face. “You were right.”
“Someone has to stop the emergence, Martin. Protect your friends,” Peter reminds him, tone patronizing.
“Y – yeah. I know.” Peter sighs into the phone, and Martin takes a deep breath, brushes his fingers through Jon’s hair. “I – will they be safe?”
“You know I can’t guarantee that, but I’ll protect them where I can.”
That’s not enough. It will have to be enough. “Okay.” Martin inhales sharply, steadies himself. “Okay! I’ll do it.”
“Excellent. That’s just what I was hoping to hear.”
“Yeah. Sure thing.”
The line goes dead, and Martin pockets his phone quickly. He lets his fingers linger on Jon’s face, just for a moment, then stands. “I’m sorry. Goodbye Jon. Sleep well.”
He leaves the silent room, hands clenched. Let Jon feast in the Beholding forever, if that’s what he wants to do. There’s work to be done.
***
Jon is alone in his dreams again. He can feel the Eye watching him; he has always been able to feel the Eye watching him.
He is on the train again. Karolina does not beg. She has only begged once, but that’s over now. She smiles as the dirt buries her, as the train contorts around her broken body. Jon drinks in her fear.
He can hear, far away, a voice. He observes it, even as the world around him shifts, and he stands in the rain, watching two men open a coffin. The voice speaks of running away, of escape. Of failure to escape.
He can never escape. But he can leave the dreams. He raises his head to gaze up through the black, towards the ever-seeing Eye. He is Seen. He Sees.
Jon opens his eyes.