Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In Melanie’s defense, she wouldn’t have had to do it if working at the Magnus Institute wasn’t so freaking boring . 

You staple papers together. You type up bogus ghost stories - which, granted, Melanie loves a good ghost story, but most of them aren’t even well-written. If you’re going to make shit up, at least toss in a little spice or narrative structure. You suffer your absolute prick of a boss, you awkwardly avoid his really creepy boss who finds way too many excuses to drop in on an Archive full of young women, and you frequently break some minor and unimportant laws such as breaking and entering. Melanie was a deft hand with a lockpick due to a childhood misspent, but for some reason she was constantly being asked to work her ‘small and unthreatening’ angle to squeeze information out of informants. Why did they have informants? They were an archive !

It was dull, and when it wasn’t dull it was weirdly terrifying and extremely criminal. Still, it wasn’t as if the job market for Film majors was great right now. And the job paid well. Like, weirdly well. 

So Melanie really had no choice but to play a prank on their boss. What else was she supposed to do, work?

“Why don’t you actually do some work for a change?” Basira asked, flipping listlessly through her book. 

Melanie sputtered indignantly. “I thought you’d want to help me! Don’t you still hate Jon because he stole your promotion?”

“Oh, I’ve already gotten my revenge on him.” Basira’s expression darkened. “Every minute he spends in a job he isn’t qualified for...every second caught on video of him trying to hide his ever-increasing nervous breakdown...my revenge grows.” She looked back down at her book, and if Melanie craned her head she could see that the title was Principles of Psychological Warfare . “Besides, I never gave back my key to Artifact Storage. If I wanted to prank him, I’d just dump one of those cursed artifacts on him.”

Wow, she really was fearless. Melanie couldn’t help but admire Basira, even if she was a bit of a frigid bitch. Artifact Storage really was the crucible in which badasses were forged. “I mean, it’s either we prank him or we work.”

Basira paused. “True. Okay, I’m in.” She glanced at the desk next to her, where Daisy reclined in her chair playing Candy Crush with a half-lidded stare, completely checked out of everything. As always. “Daisy?”

“Yeah, I’m in.” To Melanie’s shock, she dropped the phone and stood up from her chair, stretching. Her shirt rode up, and Melanie’s lesbian ass couldn’t help but notice the gigantic scar stretching across her stomach. “Psychological torture or physical torture?”

“I was thinking more torment,” Melanie said, deeply alarmed and feeling a little as if this situation had already grown out of control. “Or maybe closer to humiliation?”

“I don’t know.” Basira flipped through her book thoughtfully. “He humiliates himself every day. There’s no challenge in that. Let’s gaslight him.”

“Word.” Daisy crouched down and opened one of the drawers of her desk, giving Melanie a slight insight into the entire prepper kit neatly packed in the bottom drawer, before pulling out a gigantic K-BAR knife the size of her forearm. “Alright, here’s the plan -”

That’s when they all heard the sound of an office door opening that was ingrained into Melanie’s nightmares. In barely the span of a second, an overly tall and terrifyingly bony figure stepped from the small hallway out of the main office space into the small cow pasture where the Assistants grazed. He stopped in the doorway, taking in the scene: Basira clutching Principles of Psychological Warfare , Melanie with her work computer on screensaver, and Daisy holding a gigantic fuck-off knife that never should have gotten through the weirdly invasive metal detectors at the front door of the Institute. 

Jonathan Sims, stuffy asshole extraordinaire in tweed chic, looked at each one of them with narrowed eyes, judging their sins. His penetrating yet nerdy gaze lingered on Daisy, and more specifically her giant knife. Everyone held their breaths. 

Finally, Jon spoke. “Melanie, do try to get to the Leniken statement today.”

Then he turned sharply on his heel and retreated into his office, slamming the door behind him and apparently locking it. 

Silence reigned over their little pasture, before Melanie screamed and threw up her hands. “Why does he always pick on me! Daisy’s the one who has never filed a single thing in her life, who carries live weaponry into the Archives, who incessantly plays phone games -”

“He’s scared of her,” Basira said flatly, “and I’d tear his balls off if he said anything to me. Sorry, Mels. You’re the weak link.”

“One of these days I’ll be fucking scary,” Melanie muttered, reluctantly shaking her mouse to get her computer back on the dumb and boring Leniken case. “I’ll carry knives around like a real badass and wear fishnets and everyone’ll go, oh look at Melanie she’s so cool and unhinged, wish I was her. This fucking sucks.”

“You can borrow one of my knives, if you think it’ll help,” Daisy said sympathetically, or as sympathetic as Daisy ever got. 

“You never should have lied on your CV,” Basira said to Daisy flatly, clearly unamused. “Now you’re going to have to keep up this serial killer schtick the rest of the time that we work here just so you won’t have to admit that you don’t know how to file.”

“Or you could learn how to file?” Melanie suggested. 

Daisy threw the knife into Melanie’s desk, sliding into the wood panel with a thin shink , and Melanie kept her mouth shut after that. 

It wouldn’t be so bad if Melanie had a life. 

She didn’t really have any friends, mostly because whenever somebody made friends with her she got overly suspicious as to why they were hanging out with her and drove them away. No girlfriends, because whenever anybody liked her she suspected them of playing a mean practical joke and made them go away. Mom’s dead, serving as a wonderfully fertile breeding ground for her abandonment issues, Dad was...eaten by clowns, which nobody believed her about but that totally happened  - point is, most of Melanie’s social interaction was through her daily vlogs. On her YouTube channel. That nobody watched. 

Film school had been a waste . 

As it was, at the end of the day Melanie was no better than Jonathan Sims: she really had no life outside of work. She had to assume Jon didn’t have a life outside of work, anyway - he wasn’t on any social media and the guy didn’t really seem to go home, so it was a reasonable assumption. 

She...liked...her coworkers, but she always felt as if she was third wheeling whenever she was with them. They hadn’t explicitly said anything, but Melanie was reasonably sure that they were married. At least fucking. There was something happening, Melanie’s gaydar was very finely attuned. 

Point is, Melanie didn’t have very many friends or people to talk to. If she did, she probably wouldn’t be getting coffee with the Distortion - or, as she always put it, “Call me Helen!”. 

She hadn’t actually been very clear on if Helen was her name or not, but - well, beggars can’t be choosers. 

They were at their usual coffeeshop, the same coffeeshop where Helen had stalked Melanie for several days in what Melanie was forced to assume was the most socially awkward maneuver to make friends ever. Maybe they didn’t teach social skills in Monster School, she didn’t fucking know. 

Jon was consistently annoying about Helen, saying that ‘she didn’t exist’, which was just a rude thing to say about someone. Basira kept saying it was ‘dangerous’ to hang out with an obvious monster with yaoi hands. Daisy had already stalked her to the coffeeshop twice to try to murder Helen. Melanie...wasn’t sure that they were wrong, but didn’t have any other friends, so she’d take what she could get. 

“So, to be clear,” Helen said, delightfully shredding a styrofoam coffee cup like a bored cat, “is your coworker actually a serial killer?”

“Maybe it’s a joke?” Melanie said desperately, gnawing on her cake pop. “I mean, if she’s like, actually killed people, then she wouldn’t just...say it, right?”

“Did she ever mention why she joined the Institute?”

“Uh.” Melanie struggled to remember their first day of work. Daisy had worked in the library or something, but all Melanie could remember of it was her constantly sleeping in the stacks and kicking out anybody who interfered with her naptime. She hadn’t been able to access the Gs for months . “I think she said she was on the run from the law? But I figured that was for, like, you know, something that...wasn’t…” Melanie deflated. “Okay, she’s definitely a serial killer. I’m just not certain if I should care or not.”

“Oh, do I just love this drama,” Helen rumbled, carefully eating the styrofoam off her fingers like she was eating a kebab. “I do so love when life’s zany like this. A little bit of confusion really makes my day. Is there any way we can convince Daisy to kill more people? As a treat?”

“You’re welcome to ask?” Melanie shrugged listlessly, chewing her own plastic stick as she propped her chin in her hands. “Hey, you’re like, the anthropomorphic personification of gaslighting people, right?”

“I once convinced a man to live in the basement of someone else’s house for two months,” Helen said proudly, impressing Melanie. “Lay it on me, sugar, who do I need to torture!”

As Melanie shortly explained her idea to Helen, her smile grew wider and wider until it was more of a gaping slash across her face than any real expression. It was like her jaw was attached by a hinge, and it just slipped further and further. If Melanie looked at her dead-on, groundedly, then it could almost pass for a normal smile, but out of the corner of her vision…

“Darling, you absolutely have to count me in on this one,” Helen purred like a chainsaw, one of her eyebrows skittering oddly. “There is nothing better than screwing with an Archivist.” Demonstratively, she held up a claw-like finger and twisted it into a corkscrew. 

“An Archivist?” Melanie leaned forward a little, trying not to seem too eager. “Did you know Gertrude?”

Helen’s bright smile froze on her face, turning to plastic. “Nobody really knew Gertrude, dear.”

“Basira says that they were drinking buddies -”

“Gertrude wouldn’t know the definition of a friend if it killed her -”

“Are you guys exes or something?”

Helen stared at her, eyes faintly rippling. She attempted to massage her brow, except her hands were knives and she accidentally impaled herself. She didn’t seem to mind, and nobody else noticed. 

“Let’s go hang out in the funny dimension, they said,” Helen muttered to herself. “It’ll be entertaining seeing if the Archivist starves to death if nobody makes him shit tea, they said. Good lord.” Then she straightened, pasting an unhinged smile back on her face. “Now, honey, let’s talk shop. I’m a professional, we simply must get creative. First order of business: spiders yes, or spiders yes ?”

Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. 

The weekend was spent plotting through the Assistant group chat, which was mostly used for Starbucks orders and bitching about Jon. Usually, if Melanie needed to let Daisy know about something, she texted Basira about it and Daisy found out somehow. Melanie wasn’t quite at the point where she was stalking them to their homes to see if they lived together, but she was getting close. 

Melanie got to work at 9:15 sharp, and entered the Archives at 9:19 - delayed, because she had to take the long route in order to avoid Elias. Creep. Basira, who arrived at work at 9 like she was supposed to, was already there and for all appearances fastidiously hacking into a police database for private information just like she was supposed to. Jon’s door was closed, but his overcoat was on the coat rack, which meant that he probably got to the office at seven am, as usual. 

Loser, Melanie thought to herself, in order to make herself feel better about also being a loser. 

Jon’s schedule was consistent. After one too many times collapsing at his desk after forgetting to hydrate for days on end, his doctor had apparently forced him to keep a water bottle at his desk so he would occasionally at least drink something. This information had been pried out of him by force two weeks ago when Basira had found Jon at the office at nine am running on two day’s worth of no sleep, and had seized the opportunity of his non-lucidity in order to wring his weaknesses out of him. Apparently, he was weak on his right side, and had a personality profile that made him susceptible to kidnapping. She had received a bonus from Elias a week later, which everybody forced themselves to believe wasn’t related. 

Therefore, he left the office to go to the bathroom in the outside hallway that connected the Archives and Artifact storage four times a day: 10:00, noon, 3:00, and 4:30. So far as they could tell the man didn’t exactly take lunch breaks. Melanie had assumed he ate at his desk until Daisy rooted through his garbage and reported that he didn’t seem to eat anything, actually. Melanie was rapidly building a theory that he was some sort of vampire who didn’t require subsistence or sunlight. Basira was slightly convinced that he had a neurological disorder that resulted in his complete lack of ability to hold a normal conversation or remember that he had a mortal form. Daisy just thought he was an idiot. Daisy was probably correct. 

They would strike at these times throughout the day. It would be a three pronged affair, one strategy for each day. any shorter than three days and he would dismiss it as a fluke, not that he wouldn’t anyway, and any longer than three days he would probably go insane, not that he wasn’t already. Helen had already volunteered her services, so they had the power of god and anime on their side. There was no way the plan could fail. 

Day 1: Misdirection. 

Daisy arrived at work at 9:50, a little more than an hour earlier than usual. Melanie had been brimming with nervous excitement all day, heady with the thrill of a job well done. She had already put new tape into the retro hip lo-fi camcorder she used to record her vlogs. She wouldn’t film anything too embarrassing of Jon...probably. Unless it was really funny. 

At 10:00 am exactly Jon left his office, not even sparing a backwards glance at them as he power-walked out the door of the Archives. The minute the door clicked shut behind them, everybody leapt lethargically into action. Basira withdrew a bobby pin from her hijab, Daisy grabbed her giant knife, and Melanie excitedly filmed Basira effortlessly picking the lock to Jon’s office. 

The door swung open with a soft creak, the refracted light from the hallway softly illuminating it, and Melanie felt the need to narrate to all ten of her viewers. 

“The secret depths of our boss’ office is now open to us. Yes, we’ve seen it before...yes, we’ve stepped inside. But never have the Archive assistants been given free reign. For, you see, Jon always locks the office door behind him. And Jon almost never leaves his office empty for such a pursuit. But we have a secret weapon today: the power of illusion.”

Exactly on cue, they heard a soft rattling of the door to the Archives. Perfect. 

Basira, with her usual skill for breaking the tension of the moment, flipped the lights on, turning the office from a sublime den of mystery into just a normal office. The only thing that set it apart from other offices was how crowded it was: a few feet away from the wall was Jon’s desk and his ratty desk chair, but the walls were completely covered in metal storage shelves holding cardboard boxes full with paper statements, books, and files. She had no idea how Jon organized it, or how Gertrude had organized it - but, well, Gertrude hadn’t. 

Honestly, Basira dropping her obvious envy over the Head Archivist position after a few weeks made sense. Melanie wouldn’t wish the job on her worst enemy. 

Melanie used her advanced Film degree to take a very atmospheric, cinematic shot of the office as Daisy and Basira went straight for the desk. Basira worked her bobby pin magic and popped open the desk drawers as the faint sound of thumps echoed on the door to the Archives. Distantly, they could hear the sound of shouting. 

“No man should have this amount of hair ties,” Daisy said, poking through the top drawer. That surprised Melanie, actually - Jon had short hair, styled into sharp twists. Sometimes Melanie kept a lot of elastics on her even though she was rocking short hair that year, but it was just out of habit. “This is boring. Just pens and shit.”

“Keep looking,” Basira said sharply, opening the drawers on the opposite side of the desk. “Just pens and blank cassettes here.”

It was only in the second drawer down on the right side that they struck gold: a little stuffed plush of Jack Skellington, with a bow tied around its neck. Clearly not bought by Jon. Underneath it was a CD copy of a My Chemical Romance track. Everybody stared at both items, confused out of their minds. 

Simultaneously, both Daisy and Basira looked at Melanie. She flushed. “It’s a band. Popular among...uh, the goths and emos and punks and stuff.”

“Are you a goth?” Daisy challenged, as if there was a right and wrong answer. 

“...no, I’m more of a hipster -”

“This man’s desk is just as boring as he is,” Basira said, slamming the drawers shut. “All I found here were some confidential fires written by Gertrude Robinson that said ‘In the case of my death’. I’m releasing the kraken.”

The kraken, Melanie quickly found out, was also hidden underneath the depths of Basira’s startlingly voluminous hijab and quickly placed in one of the desk drawers. It was one, single…

“Is that a Garfield desktop calendar?” Melanie asked, startled and terrified. 

Basira just smiled thinly. “Let’s move, girls.”

It was only 10:06, but it had felt like a lifetime. When they re-entered their cow pasture they found the Archive door shaking, as a tall and remarkably impatient man repeatedly thumped on the cheap wood. Gracefully, elegantly, and sadistically, Basira walked forward and opened the door as Melanie and Daisy skittered into their seats. 

Jon stood at the threshold, panting, hair in slight disarray. “ Why was the door locked, Basira? Did you lock me out?”

But Basira just perfectly delivered Neutral Face No. 38: I’m Disappointed That You Would Waste My Time Like This. “The Archives door doesn’t lock, Boss. It was probably just stuck.”

“I - no, it was definitely - what?” Jon exhaled heavily, walking into the Archives and walking around the open door, squinting at it. Melanie surreptitiously filmed the encounter from behind her laptop. Jon prodded the doorknob, frowning as he noticed the complete lack of lock. “But it was definitely locked. I swear, it was clicking against my hand...it didn’t feel stuck..what the…”

“How late did you stay up last night?” Basira asked, concern trolling masterfully. “Honestly, coming into work sleep deprived?”

“Downright unprofessional,” Daisy grunted, and Jon flushed. 

“I’ll be in my office!” He barked, whirling away in a rush of tweed and embarrassment. His office door thumped shut behind him, and the entire room held their breaths one, two, three beats, before exhaling in ridiculous and muffled laughter. 

Melanie couldn’t remember the last time she laughed this hard. She put her head down on the desk, wheezing softly, as Daisy chuckled sadistically to herself and even Basira huffed in a somewhat amused way. “Jesus christ, did you see his face ? His entire life flashed before his eyes.”

“You were right, Melanie. This is way better than work.”

“That’s for sure.” Melanie stifled her laughter, pressing pause on her camcorder. “What was with that thing at his desk, though?”

“Oh. That.” Basira’s eyes glinted. “That’s a surprise tool that will help us later.”

“...the Garfield desk calendar ?”

“Don’t you have a case to debunk?”

Melanie sighed. Back to the grind. 

Day 2: Deceit

The next day was the second phase of the plan. Melanie, as their resident creative writer - Basira had professed to being psychologically and physically incapable of either reading or writing fiction, citing a moral anathema against falsehoods of all sorts, and Daisy didn’t like reading anything more challenging than a comic book - had stayed up late to perfect their newest prank. In her opinion, it was fairly masterful. A much better lie than all of those boring and lazy fakey ghost statements.

The previous day, for the first time that Melanie could remember, she and her coworkers had actually gone to the pub after work. They didn’t tend to socialize recreationally all together, and Melanie was high on the juice of social interaction all night. Basira and Daisy had frighteningly robust alcohol tolerances, and Melanie didn’t want to make an idiot out of herself in front of her new friends (?!?!), so she settled for nursing a pint of beer as they all exchanged sedate conversation about their hobbies outside of work and dunking on Jon. Apparently, according to Basira, in order to defeat your enemy you must understand your enemy. 

She had filched a napkin from the dispenser and drew out a pen from within the folds of her hijab that was apparently some sort of pocket dimension, scribbling frantically on it - or as frantically as Basira ever got, which wasn’t very. 

“Let’s review what we know about him,” Basira said, downing her virgin margaritas as if they could save her. “Twenty nine years old -”

“Wait, holy shit,” Melanie cut in, holding up a hand. “The guy’s not even thirty ? He’s my age? I thought he was, like, in his forties at least. Like, you know, ancient.”

“Watch it,” Daisy, forty three year old, said. Melanie watched it. 

“Blood type B, of Afro-Caribbean ethnicity. Birthday in 1987 on February 14th - Valentine’s Day.”

“That’s hilarious. How do you know this.”

“I hacked into his employee file, obviously,” Basira said crisply, still scribbling on her napkin, as if that was a normal thing to say or do. “Raised in Bournemouth, attended Oxford -”

“Ponce,” Daisy muttered into her whiskey. 

“ - moved to London. Has...five criminal charges on his record, though they were all dropped for one reason or another.”

Melanie’s jaw dropped as Daisy whistled. “What the fuck. Is he a serial killer too?”

“No, just a lot of drunk and disorderlies and breaking and entering.” Basira pursed her lips, as if she hadn’t just raised a truly incredible amount of questions. “According to his official Magnus Institute psych eval -”

“I didn’t get a psych eval,” Melanie said, insulted. 

“Not that you knew of.”

“Mine said I was a serial killer in the making,” Daisy said flatly. “Rude.”

“Anyway,” Basira said, beginning to get a little annoyed at all of the interruptions, “apparently, according to the psych eval, he’s neurotic, likely undiagnosed ADHD, definitely queer of some sort -”

“In the weird way or in the gay way?” Daisy asked. Apropos of nothing, she said, “I’m not a homophobe. Gay people are great.”

“We’re all very glad you think so,” Melanie said, uncertain if this proved or disproved her ‘my coworkers are married’ theory. “Why and how did a psych eval test for his sexual orientation?”

“Low self esteem, impulsive, and easy to manipulate.” Basira put her pen down, brown eyes staring fixedly at both Daisy and Melanie. “First of all, Melanie, you know gay rights are very important to me.”

“Uh huh.”

“Nothing but gay rights in this office. I consider myself an ally of the gay community.”

“Yeah, me too,” Daisy said quickly.

Melanie’s suspicions that they were fucking were confirmed. 

“Second, the gaslighting yesterday absolutely worked. Thanks to Helen’s involvement in making him think the door was locked - and, of course, the door not actually having a lock - he’s now doubting his reality.” Basira took a careful sip of her margarita. “Unfortunately we didn’t find any good material in his desk, but I doubted that he would keep anything incriminating in the office anyway. Fortunately, we were able to use the opportunity to install a tool that will act as a background agent in our plans.”

“The Garfield desk calendar,” Melanie said slowly. 

“The desk calendar that’s always three days ahead.” Basira smiled mysteriously. “ And , it’s Garfield Minus Garfield.”

Melanie stared at Basira, realizing for the first time that both her coworkers were idiots. 

Still, nothing beat their cunning. Melanie nodded along, high on the thrill of belonging and camaraderie. She felt a little bad that this was all at the expense of Jon, but you know what they say: the enemy of both me and my coworkers can be used as a method of friendly bonding and friendly violence. 

“So what’s next?” Melanie asked. “What’s the next step? Oh, maybe we can break into his flat -”

“It’s boring,” Daisy said.

Melanie stared at her, unwilling to come to the conclusions her mind was jumping to. “Did you break into his -”

“I have an idea for our next prank,” Basira said, “but it’s going to be a delicate maneuver. We aren’t going to need Helen, but it’ll require a slight of hand and more than a bit of creativity.”

“I’m in,” Melanie said enthusiastically. 

Daisy shrugged. 

It was really great being friends with her coworkers. 

Maybe, Melanie let herself believe, they’d still be friends after this. This could be, like, an icebreaker, right? Maybe even after this was over, they’d talk about their personal habits and their hopes and dreams, go to each other’s houses and play board games -

Or they’d spend the rest of work vaguely friendly with each other, and never really go beyond that. Faint acquaintances, semi-friends but never quite close enough to provide the support and affection that Melanie didn’t want to admit that she needed. 

But Melanie knew that was just life. People crossed paths, were either insignificant or significant, and eventually left. Friendships where you’d die for each other, romance where you supported each other despite everything - that kind of thing only existed in wish-fulfillment books. In real life, everybody was alone. In one way or another.

Everybody in Melanie’s life left, one way or another.

This job wasn’t going to be a big part of her life. Just a blip, probably. She would work it until she found something better that actually used her dumb degree, and she’d never step foot inside the office again. She would get a handshake from Basira and Jon when she left, and probably a faint nod of acknowledgement from Daisy, and then she’d never see any of them again. They weren’t that kind of people, who reached out to you and tried to make you stay - or maybe Melanie wasn’t the kind of person who was worth staying for. 

Melanie thought about this as she sleepily dragged herself to work, her creative writing project hiding in a folder in the bottom of her unprofessional backpack she dragged to work that both Jon and Elias bitched at her for. It wasn’t until she got to work that she realized that she had accidentally gotten there an hour earlier than she usually did, and as a result desperately needed coffee.

She lingered in the kitchenette longer than she should have, watching the keurig slowly spit out lukewarm water into the small pile of instant coffee powder as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. 

Stupid job. Stupid London. Stupid life. She was meant to be a director of an indie project that swept Sundance, not filing papers. Where had she fucked up so bad that this was her existence -

“Excuse me.”

The familiar voice made Melanie jump, and quickly slide to the side of the kitchenette so the speaker could reach the cabinet of mugs above the sink. It was Jon, engaging in his rarely seen external habitat. This must be the time of day, before everybody else arrived, that he actually moved around the office. 

Maybe he didn’t feel comfortable doing it when they were around.

All traces of sympathy disappeared when Melanie saw that Jon didn’t have to stand on his tiptoes like she did, instead just easily reaching up and grabbing the mugs. Tall people privilege. 

Melanie had her theory about both tall people, which Jon easily and objectively was, men, which Jon probably was, and hot people, which Jon subjectively was but that was such a common and well-known fact even among the three WLW on staff that it had never even been discussed. 

The theory was this: that women like Melanie, who were medium height and a lady and kind of average looking, had to speak up just to get noticed. She was kind of socially awkward and definitely prickly, and Melanie had to develop a sense of humor just to even get a voice in the group. This is why all comedians are ugly. 

But hot, tall, men? Everybody paid attention to them anyway. They didn’t have to fight to be noticed, because they were tall and hot. So they took attention for granted, and didn’t bother to grow a personality. 

It was Melanie’s firm belief that this life of privilege explained everything about Jonathan Sims. 

In her tired, sleep deprived state, as Jonathan filled up his plain black mug with tap water, she told him directly, “I feel oppressed by you.”

Jon stared at her. Melanie wished that she was dead. 

After a long few seconds of uninterrupted eye contact, Jon said, “That’s kind of an insensitive thing to say.”

Melanie stared blankly at him back, realizing that it was an incredibly insensitive thing to say. What with the...yeah. Jon ripped open a packet of PG Tips. 

“...so what are you making!” Melanie said, overly loudly. 

Jon stared at her as he dropped the bag of PG Tips in his cup of cold water. “Tea?”

Melanie stared at him, then at the bag of cold water with the tea bag in it. Jon silently put it in the microwave, pressing the beverage button and standing back. 

The keurig chugged. Melanie silently died inside. 

They stood awkwardly in the kitchenette, Melanie seriously considering abandoning her coffee to escape the situation, incapable of doing so at eight am. 

For some demented and probably slight hung-over reason, Melanie decided to break the silence. She was a nervous talker, a habit number fifty six that she hated about herself. “So, uh…” She desperately searched for a conversation topic, trying to remember the rundown on his life that Basira had given them all in a drunken haze last night. “Gay rights?”

Jon stared at her. 

Melanie, refusing to be cowed, stared back.  

Finally, Jon said, “I’m an ally of the gay community, yes.” His brow wrinkled in worry. “Have I been microaggressing you? I’m very sorry, it wasn’t my intention -”

“No, no, you’re good,” Melanie said quickly. “I mean, even if you did, I think we’re one for one on those -”

“Has anybody else been bothering you? I’ll deal with it if they have.”

He was painfully sincere about it, making Melanie actually feel kind of bad for how she and her gang of lesb - sorry, ‘Gay Allies’ - were bullying him. Not bad enough to stop, but kind of bad. “No, no, everyone’s been lovely.” She leaned against the counter, desperately staring at the keurig, which refused to finish out of spite. “Really, uh, we’re just an office full of - you know, an office full of gays, which is great. Even Elias, for some...reason…”

Jon stared at her blankly. “I thought Elias was a homophobe.”

“You can be a homophobe and gay.”

They stared at each other. 

Then something clearly occurred to Jon. “I’m a heterosexual, actually. Have an - an ex-girlfriend and everything. Actually, you two are very similar -”

“Does she live in Canada?”

“No, she lives in London.” Jon paused a beat. Melanie felt kind of bad for this probably imaginary ex-girlfriend, constantly being trotted out as proof that Jon was straight. Bi people existed, king. “Wait, Daisy and Basira are LGBT?”

He said it like that. El Gee Bee Tee. It was great. Melanie found herself stifling a laugh. “Have you been in the same room with them? Their sexual tension is off the charts. Either they’re fucking or they’ve been married for twenty years and the love is still as alive as ever.”

Hilariously, Jon’s ears flushed a bit, and he looked pointedly above her. “I - I avoid being in the same room with them. And don’t be crude, Melanie. I’m sure they’re just good friends.” Abruptly, he looked somewhat anxious. “Do I really not seem straight? What about me doesn’t seem straight? Is it something that’s easily fixable? Is it in my outfit?” Jon looked down at himself, in his tweed glory. “Is tweed LGBT?”

For the first time, Melanie felt an odd and abrupt, yet strangely intense, sense of shame that Basira had outed him through privacy invasion and that they hadn’t all thought twice about it. Christ, she hadn’t known the guy was in denial. Maybe they were all just so used to intense and eternal invasions of privacy that they stopped thinking twice about it. Like, Basira had the school records of the children of anybody who had ever given a statement. It was a little ridiculous. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Melanie said sympathetically. For a brief moment of insanity she considered supportively clapping his shoulder, like an emotionally absent father, but she decided against it. “Think of it this way: if you are queer, then that’s something we all have in common.”

Jon flushed deeper, anxiously glancing at the microwave as if it would save him. Ten more seconds. “C - common, huh?” He played with his fingers a bit before sticking them in his pockets. “So if, hypothetically, maybe, someone was, er, uninterested, and possibly even deeply disgusted  by, um, many - aspects - of, you know, uh -”

Then the microwave went off, and Jon quickly grabbed his mug out of the microwave and beat feet all the way back to his office. Melanie watched him go, slightly bemused, and looked back at the keurig only to see that it had finished quite a while ago. She grabbed a stirring stick, swirling around her coffee and dumping in a load of cream and sugar, slightly in shock that she had a genuine human moment with Jonathan Sims. The man who she was slightly convinced couldn’t possibly be a human at all.

If Jon was a ‘human’ with ‘feelings’, then things that were normally just really funny were, perhaps ‘somewhat mean’, and could possibly be construed as ‘bullying’. If Jon had feelings, if even annoying and rude and persnickety bosses, had feelings, then…

Melanie dismissed these thoughts because they were inconvenient and made her feel bad, and went back to her desk and pretending to work. 

Basira and Daisy arrived soon enough, this time together, at the exact time that Jon was filing a few bogus statements in one of their infinite filing cabinets. He saw them arriving together, and slowly his eyes widened before looking at Melanie. Melanie nodded significantly, and Jon mimicked the significant nod obviously not really understanding what he was doing. 

Both women made interpretive hand gestures at Melanie, and then the entire office was in a state of looking at each other significantly for completely different reasons before Melanie remembered about the prank. She quickly dived for her backpack, rummaging through it as Daisy and Basira played distraction. 

“Hey, Boss,” Daisy said.

Jon squeaked, barely restraining himself from jumping a foot in the air. His psych profile had been right: he was neurotic. “Y - yes?”

“How many bones are in the human body,” Daisy said, completely straight faced. 

“I - two hundred and six?” Jon quailed. “Why - why do you want to know?”

“Which one’s the hardest to break?”

“The femur? The smallest bones in the body are in the ear, the malleus, anvil, and stirrup, so I imagine those would be the most fragile -”

Then Jon was off and roaring, telling them all everything they’d ever wanted to know about bones and more. Basira only interrupted him to ask how the fuck he knew any of this, to which Jon responded in a somewhat offended tone, “I do read , you know,” which got him off again about the power of literacy. Then Basira was asking him about if he had read the compendium of flesh eating fungi in the Archive library, to which Jon was quick to assure her that obviously he had, what did she think of the -

“Boss, I got another weird statement!” Melanie announced, standing up and pushing out a manila folder filled with the bogus statement, as well as some bogus preliminary follow-up. Jon cautiously took it, flipping through the file as if it was a bomb. “We tried audio recording it or typing it up, but it just fuzzed. I think you’ll have to take down this one in person.” 

Jon pursed his lips like a grandma, holding the file by two fingers like a dead rat. A bomb in a dead rat. He didn’t like it, is what Melanie was saying. “Right. I’ll get started on this one immediately, then.”

Then he swept back off into his office. The minute the door clicked shut, Basira and Daisy high fived. Melanie settled for smiling to herself, proud of her very incredibly great accomplishment, and when Basira stepped closer to her and held up her own hand for a high five she found herself kind of surprised. But it gave her a warm and fluttering feeling in her own stomach, so it couldn’t be too bad. 

They high fived. It was awesome. 

Upon first blush, this prank might not be that impressive. For one thing, they hadn’t bothered installing a remote camera in his office - Jon always seemed to know when something was watching him, which might just be because he always felt as if something was watching him, so even an insane clock was right twice a day. But anybody who might think that this prank was weaksauce was missing a crucial bit of information:

Jon was a theater nerd.

It was a bizarre personality trait for someone who was as simultaneously timid and bitchy as Jon was. But there was no denying it: when he was reading one of the weird statements, and only when he was reading one of the weird statements, he got positively melodramatic. Melanie, as an ex-theater kid, could almost respect it, if she wasn’t so sure that Jon was the pretentious kind of theater kid. She had once asked him his opinions on Hamlet and he had devolved into a twenty minute lecture about how Dr. Faustus was infinitely superior. 

But he must have poured a lot of time and energy into his monologues, because when he got into a statement he got really into it. 

They all pretended to work, keeping a careful ear out for the tell-tale signs of Jon beginning a statement. Soon enough, they heard the tell-tale sounds of a cassette clicking, and everybody scrambled into the hallway to press themselves up against the door. Melanie, who already had her camcorder out and had been quietly narrating the situation the entire time, had carefully aimed it at the very visually interesting door and waited for the moment of truth.

“Tea’s cold again. Damn it.” Jon cleared his throat. “Statement of Egon Spengler, regarding a business dedicated to busting ghosts. Statement given April 4th, 2016, statement recorded...” He trailed off. “ That can’t be right.” A long pause echoed. 

“I remotely changed the date on his computer,” Basira whispered. 

“Statement recorded...what day is it...I can’t be that sleep deprived…” Jon coughed. “Anyway. Statement recorded -”

As Jon wound himself into a slightly dramatized re-telling of the plot of Ghostbusters, they all found themselves a little disappointed. Jon wasn’t doing the dramatic theater kid thing - he was just reading out the piece of paper. He stopped to take sips of his gross and cold tea, but he read through the entire statement without incident. 

“Statement ends. According to the follow-up, all of the involved people in this story went on to have successful careers in...busting ghosts.” Jon scoffed lightly. “Ridiculous. Ghosts are not green and slimy. Everybody knows that, in all recorded instances of ghosts, they’re transparent and humanoid. Additionally, human technology is nowhere near the stage necessary for building those handheld fusion reactors.” He paused contemplatively. “It could have been aliens, I suppose. It warrants further investigation. End recording.”

Everybody quickly scampered away, slightly disappointed but still thoroughly amused. Melanie’s bet had paid off: Jon hadn’t seen Ghostbusters, like every other normal person. Dude probably did nothing but read anatomy books all day. 

Nothing happened the rest of the day, and Melanie boredly seduced men on the phone in order to squeeze information from them. Her favorite, and most effective trick, was imitating voices of wives or loved ones in order to trick unsuspecting civilians into revealing their personal information. She impersonated a cop quite frequently, when Daisy wasn’t in the room - when Daisy was in the room, she was heckled for her performance to the point where she was insecure about it. Basira spent her time hacking into government databases for follow-ups, and Daisy played candy crush on her phone. 

The only strange thing that happened all day was at five, when everyone was shrugging on their coats. Basira and Melanie were lightly chatting about the stupidity of people who used the same passwords for everything when they noticed that Daisy hadn’t moved, still playing her game. 

“Are you coming?” Basira asked. 

“We can go to the pub again,” Melanie said, trying hard not to sound eager. Go for cool and aloof, Melanie. Just like Basira and Daisy. She hadn’t decided if these women would have bullied her in middle school, or if they would have been juvenile delinquents. Maybe both. 

“Go on without me,” Daisy said, eyes rooted to the phone screen. “I’ve almost beat this level.”

“You need a hobby,” Basira said flatly. 

“This is a hobby.”

“A real hobby.”

“You said that about the gun range,” Daisy said, slightly aggravated. 

“Yes, because shooting things isn’t a hobby.”

“You’re unpleasable.”

But when Basira rolled her eyes her lips were twitching into a smile, and although Daisy didn’t look up from her phone her eyes were somewhat crinkled, and Melanie mentally changed her estimate from they’re fucking to they’re in love .

Gross. She tried not to be jealous. 

So they left separately, hashing out the plan for the prank tomorrow, and by the time she got on the tube to head home she found herself humming. 

Things, for once, were looking up. 

Melanie got into work at 9:15 the next morning to see a disaster. 

“And then I said - Gerry, you’re holding a giant knife, of course they’re afraid of you.”

Daisy barked a laugh, slapping her knee. “That’s incredible! I’d party with that guy.”

“Gerry’s a terrible friend. I only hang out with him for his cat,” Jon said mournfully. “He says I keep him out of trouble. Recklessness and literal inability to feel fear is a terrible combination.”

“Tell me about it,” Daisy snorted. They were sitting at Daisy’s desk, both their legs propped up on the table, sharing a bowl of popcorn. Melanie wondered if she was having a stroke. “What about that, uh, ex girlfriend? Georgie?”

“Oh, yes. They’re frequently partners on her rare book hunts. Georgie’s collection is growing quite large, actually, she’s thinking about attaching a nameplate to them. Do you think ‘from the library of Georgina Barker’ has a ring to it?”

“Sounds like a terrible idea. I love it.”

Jon and Daisy laughed uproariously. 

“Uh,” Melanie said, “what the fuck?”

Both of them turned in their seats to look at Melanie. Jon abruptly looked extremely embarrassed, dropping his feet down off the desk and stiffly standing up, readjusting his tweed waistcoat as if it could cover the indignity of having a genuine conversation with a human being. 

But Daisy just tossed more popcorn in her mouth, looking bored. “We’re working. Obviously.”

“I have some statements to file,” Jon said quickly. He glanced down at Daisy, who mashed her popcorn in her mouth. “Daisy, uh - please actually get some filing done today.”

“Don’t want to.” Daisy threw popcorn at Jon, who winced. “I’ll file if you watch the Archers.”

“Daisy, ow, that hurts - stop it - that radio drama is for old people -”

“Fits you perfectly. Watch it and I’ll file.”

“I shouldn’t have to bribe you to do your job - ow, ow, fine!”

“What the fuck,” Basira said, coming in after Melanie. Melanie shrugged helplessly. 

“You have to know something about this,” Melanie hissed to her, slightly disturbed by Basira’s abjectly confused expression. Basira was the expert of always looking like she knew exactly what was going on, even when she had absolutely no idea what was happening. She had tricked Melanie into thinking that she spoke Punjabi for a solid four hours. 

“I have no idea what this is,” Basira hissed back. “How did this happen?”

Melanie didn’t know what was more surprising: that Daisy and Jon were having a civil and friendly conversation, or that Basira hadn’t known about it. 

But, like a skittish cat, the minute that Jon fully registered that other people were in the cow pen he quickly mumbled an excuse and disappeared back into his office. Melanie was beginning to wonder if he was an asshole prick, or if he was just intensely socially awkward and anxious. 

The minute he disappeared into his office, Melanie and Basira fixed Daisy with an intense, questioning stare. Daisy pretended to ignore them, swiping her finger along the inside of the bowl for butter. 

“What,” Basira said slowly, walking over to her desk next to Daisy, dropping her bag on her desk perhaps a little more severely than she strictly had to, “the fuck was was that.”

“We were just talking,” Daisy said, crossing her arms over her chest and raising an eyebrow at Basira. “That a crime?”

“To Jon ?” Basira hissed. “The same Jon who practically pisses himself when he sees you? The same Jon who cannot get you to actually do your job for the life of him because, again, he’s terrified of you? He’s never held a conversation with you. What’s going on?”

“We’re best friends,” Daisy said blandly. 

Basira stared at Daisy. Daisy stared at Basira. Incapable of reaching either of the women’s minds, Melanie wondered what the fuck was going on.

Finally, Basira said, in a voice that was almost hurt, “I thought I was your best friend.”

“I can have two best friends.”

“It took years of us knowing each other for you to even admit that we were friends!”

“You aren’t as cool as Jon.”

Basira opened her mouth, then closed it. Melanie, for her part, wasn’t sure which was more surprising: that Daisy was now best friends with Jon, that someone on Earth had called Jon cool, or that Basira had feelings. 

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and for the first time that Melanie had ever seen Daisy actually booted up her computer. Was she going to do work? Was Daisy Tonner going to do her job? Melanie felt as if she was about to have a stroke. She was dizzy. 

Then Basira swiveled in her chair, distressed out of her mind. “What about the psychological warfare, Daisy!”

“I don’t want to do psychological warfare anymore,” Daisy said. Like Gandhi. 

Basira buried her face in her hands and quietly screeched. 

“Wait,” Melanie said, desperately trying to regain some control over the situation. “Are the pranks cancelled? Because we had a really good idea, and Helen volunteered to bring the spiders -”

“Pranks are cancelled,” Daisy said, with the wisdom and serenity of the Buddha. “I don’t prank best friends.”

“Hm,” Melanie said. “Well. I. I’m. Happy. For you?”

“Thanks.”

Basira faceplanted on the desk. 

The rest of the day was...well, it wasn’t normal. It gave the appearance of being normal, even mundane, but something about it was irrevocably different. For one thing, Daisy was half-heartedly shoving files in boxes. Granted, she stopped every thirty minutes to play Space Pinball on her computer, but when Jon came out for his ten am bathroom break he actually stopped and quietly explained to Daisy how to do it. In a very friendly, bro kind of way. Basira shoved her head in her book, pretending none of this was happening. 

Eventually Daisy and Jon disappeared into the library - either to file or listen to the Archers, and quite possibly both. Melanie quietly vlogged this series of events, even if it probably wasn’t interesting to anybody but her. But to her , the world had been turned on its axis and shaken like a six year old’s piggy bank on the release date of the new Pokemon game. Basira seemed to be having a quiet aneurysm. 

It was only during lunch that Melanie got the full story from Daisy. They normally ate together or in silence in the Archives - when they tried eating in the cafeteria it was hard not to notice the obvious stares and badly disguised exorcism attempts - but today Basira swept out the door in a flurry of skirt and impetuousness. Daisy watched her go before shrugging and unwrapping her steak. Daisy only ever ate barely cooked steak for lunch. Straight. Maybe she had an iron deficiency?

This was Melanie’s chance. She had once harbored dreams of being an investigative documentary maker, and this was a great chance to start. After surreptitiously turning on her camcorder, she cleared her throat and leaned in. “So...you and Jon, huh? How’d that happen? Also I’m recording this hope you don’t mind thanks.”

Amazingly, Daisy answered. Through a mouthful of steak, but still. “Stayed late last night to finish my phone game. Jon came through at about six, still churning away at the old cogs or whatever. But for the first time he just, like, completely blew up on me.”

Melanie opened up her own enchilada, enthralled. “Did you kill him?”

“Nah. I respect that. To be honest, I was pushing him just to see how far it would go until he grew a spine. Turns out he just didn’t see it appropriate to rip me a new one during work hours.” Daisy chewed her meat slowly. Was that blood dribbling down her chin? “Yelled at me for, like, an hour. It was awesome.”

“I’m guessing people don’t rip you a new one very often,” Melanie said cautiously.

“Yeah. Wonder why.” Daisy swallowed and shrugged. “Anyway, we were able to actually talk after that. Turns out he’s a cool bloke. We hung out here long as we could and he walked me to my Underground stop. Good mate.”

“Uh huh,” Melanie said, “and now you’re best friends?”

“Yep.”

“Hm.”

Melanie ate her enchilada. 

After about ten minutes Daisy checked her watch, sighed, and stood up from her chair. She walked into the little hallway and knocked on the door to Jon’s office before throwing it open. 

“Are you planning to ever eat!”

Melanie launched her rolly chair closer to the hallway, desperate for insight into what was the weirdest day of her life at least since she met Helen. She barely even had to: Jon, in his panic, shouted back just as loudly. 

“Leave me alone, woman!”

“I’ll leave you alone when you actually eat lunch!”

“I didn’t bring lunch!”

“I brought an extra sandwich! Come out here and eat or I am coming in there and dragging you out.”

“You can’t -” Jon stopped short, likely realizing that she can, would, and must. Finally, Jon begrudgingly poked his head out, and Daisy dragged him by the ear over to the cow pen. She dropped Jon into the spare visitor’s chair next to her desk she normally used for putting her feet up, shoved what actually looked like a nicely made sandwich at him, and then promptly began ignoring him to play SpaceCadet Pinball.

Jon chewed his sandwich mutinously. “You’re playing that game wrong.”

“How the fuck do you play pinball wrong?”

“Type hidden test before the first ball goes, you can control it with your mouse.”

Melanie stared blankly at Jon. “Does not cheating count as playing the game wrong?”

“You should use all resources available to win,” Jon said snootily. “Playing is about winning, not just having fun.”

“Sometimes winning doesn’t always get what you want.”

They stared at each other. Melanie wondered if this was sexual tension or not, before promptly dismissing the idea. It was...it was beyond the acceptable threshold limit of weird. 

“Hey,” Melanie said, for once in her life feeling brave, “let’s eat outside. It’s a nice day.” She glanced at Daisy. “You could probably still play your game on your phone?”

Daisy and Jon looked at each other, before shrugging and standing up. Melanie stood up too, taking one final glance at her camcorder. It was still running, the little red light blinking.

She reached over and turned it off. Some things didn’t have to be recorded. 

At 1 pm on the dot - Jon, as it turned out, was very fastidious about the length of their lunch break, which was the downside of getting lunch with your boss - they all trooped into the Archives, laughing at Daisy’s disturbingly accurate impression of Elias. Jon looked distinctly guilty to be laughing at the way Daisy puffed out her chest, but he couldn’t stop from hiding his laughter behind a hand. 

It had been one of the nicest lunches Melanie had remembered in a while. She couldn’t remember the last time she just spent a nice work lunch with - people she was friendly with? A nice conversation, even amidst so much boredom and struggle. Was it possible, for people like them - a haphazard office filled with people with no friends, no social skills, no hope - to finally squeeze something purposeful out of this purposelessness?

They opened the door, laughing and joking, into chaos. 

The first thing Melanie noticed was the two strangers in the Archives. They were both wearing business casual clothing, distinguished by their matching sunglasses and puffy black jackets with blue bars that distinguished them as - fucking coppers?

In Melanie’s archives?

Stupidly, the first thing that ran through Melanie’s mind was - oh my god, they’re here for Daisy. Her life of serial killings’ finally caught up with her. But when she glanced at Daisy out of the corner of her eye, she didn’t look terrified or like she was about to cover up her murders with more murders - she just looked mildly surprised, and also mildly pissed. That was when she noticed that Basira was standing at her desk, arguing furiously with the taller copper. 

He was a guy, East Asian and weirdly attractive. His partner, an equally tall woman with brown skin, curly hair down to her back, and a killer outfit, sat perched on Melanie’s desk with a laptop balanced on her knees, tapping furiously at her keyboard. They were both weirdly glamorous, kind of intense, and neither one had visible pores. 

“Show me your warrant and you can search my workplace,” Basira was saying, arms crossed. Her eyes glanced quickly at the door, where Jon was standing behind Melanie and Daisy. “But until you do, you’re not allowed to search anything and you’re not allowed to question my boss.”

Without missing a single fucking beat, Melanie and Daisy both quickly shoved Jon back out of the Archives and closed the door behind them. Melanie whipped out her phone, shooting out a very quick text to a friend who she wasn’t sure even owned a phone, before sticking her phone in her pocket and quickly focusing on not looking suspicious whatsoever. 

“Luckily for the both of us,” the smarmy guy said smarmily with a smarmy smile on his face, “Your Director’s already gave us permission. And as this is...oh, his building, not yours? I think we get to search whatever we want.” He glanced down at Basira’s laptop, sitting innocuously on Basira’s desk, absolutely stuffed to the brim full of illegal activity. “Starting with that. We’re confiscating it.”

“What is going on?” Daisy cut in, just as Basira’s face was going flushed with apoplectic rage. “Who are these guys?”

The smarmy guy swiveled to look at Daisy and Basira. His eyes skimmed Daisy quickly before lingering on Melanie, making her cross her arms uncomfortably. 

“Detective Tim Stoker,” Smarmy Asshole said, who did not deserve a name, walking forward and flipping out a badge. Daisy scrutinized it closely, as if she knew how to tell if it was real or not. Which...Melanie didn’t know Daisy’s life. “We’re here investigating a disappearance.”

“Disappearance?” Melanie butted in. “Disappearance of who?”

“More like of what,” the woman sitting on the desk said, without looking up from her laptop. “Constable Sasha James. Is there any reason why I can’t find any records of Gertrude Robinson’s files on your company drive? Also, can I talk to your boss?”

Instinctively, Melanie glanced backward, but Jon wasn’t there. She looked at Daisy, who was the nominal adult here, but one look at Daisy’s gritted teeth signalled how letting her in the same room as cops was probably close to - well, letting Daisy in the same room as raw meat. Basira opened her mouth to cut in and probably say something very adversarial, and it was only then that Melanie realized that she had to be the calm and even tempered adult here. Which had really never happened before. 

She locked eyes with Daisy, and with Basira. They all nodded slowly at each other. Jon might be a priss, a prick, socially awkward, and basically a very bad manager - but they were not snitches. And the Archives protected its own. 

“She was an old lady who hated technology, so I’m not surprised,” Melanie said smoothly. “And our boss is out today, sorry.”

“That’s weird,” Constable James said, tapping on her computer. “He clocked in this morning.”

“He left early,” Melanie rapidly made up. “Because he was sick.”

“He didn’t clock out either,” Constable James said mildly. 

“Doctor’s appointment. That level of sick.”

“It looked really contagious,” Daisy volunteered.

Both of the cops glanced at each other, doing some weird eyebrow thing that combined with the sunglasses for an effect that made them look like twitching bugs. Detective Stoker stepped forward, grinning brightly with perfectly straight white teeth, and seemed to zero in on Melanie. 

He held out his hand for a shake, and Melanie forced herself to remember that they were trying not to be confrontational with the cops. She shook it, smiling weakly, and let Detective Stoker gesture her away from Daisy. Melanie very much did not want to be away from Daisy, who had a knife, but she carefully let him pull her away. In the other corner, Sasha appeared to be awkwardly attempting to get somewhere with Basira, which was rather like interrogating a brick wall that both hated you and judged you for wearing sunglasses indoors. 

“Look, I don’t think I properly introduced myself,” Detective Stoker said. He took off his sunglasses, revealing strange eyes. They should have been handsome, dark and almost sparkling, but they weren’t. There was something…”Detective Tim Stoker, but you can call me Tim. And your name is, uh -” He snapped his fingers, as if he was trying to remember. 

“Archival Assistant Melanie King,” Melanie said flatly. 

“Melanie! Lovely name.” Stoker sparkled at her. Melanie crossed her arms. “Listen, I promise what we’re doing here is completely above board. We’ve cleared it with your Director, and we are highly trained professionals who are just here to help.” He grinned widely at her. “So, if you could just let us know what you have on Gertrude Robinson, we’ll be right out of your hair. And you’ll be out of our hair. Sounds good?”

Sounded great. Except for one thing: Melanie had spent the last few months learning how to be a champion bullshitter, not that she wasn’t one already, and she knew bullshit when she heard it. 

Stoker’s words might as well have been filtered through a BS machine. It wasn’t above board - because nobody who was doing something completely above board had to say so - and she doubted that they were as accomplished and professional as they said. And there was no way they were here to help. Nobody with those eyes was here to help anybody. 

“We don’t know anything,” Melanie said flatly. “You can’t possibly be looking for Gertrude Robinson. If she was up to anything...shady, or whatever, you can’t exactly dig her up and interview her.”

“That’s the thing,” Stoker said, slow and careful. It should have made him sound deliberate and thoughtful - instead, it just made him sound mocking. “We’re not looking for Gertrude Robinson. We’re looking for her body .”

The words seemed to freeze the room. Daisy and Basira’s eyes widened, unconsciously drifting closer together, and Constable James’ eyes narrowed. She hadn’t stopped typing on her keyboard. Was that code reflecting on her sunglasses?

Stupidly, all Melanie could say was - “W - why?”

But Stoker just shrugged. “That’s need to know. And sorry, honey, but you don’t need to know.”

“Then you don’t ‘need to know’ anything,” Melanie said coldly. “We don’t know what you’re talking about, we don’t know why you’re here, we don’t know where our boss is, so you’re wasting both your time and ours.”

Her heart was jackrabbiting in her chest, but Stoker just stared at her blankly, face impassive. Melanie desperately tried to figure out where she had seen those eyes before, in whose face they were familiar. Finally, he glanced backwards at his partner. “Sash, be a doll and let me know what we have on Melanie King?”

Constable James pushed her glasses up on her nose, letting them glint in the light of the laptop. “Several counts of breaking and entering, suspicious activity from her IP address, and implication in several active sectioned crime scenes.”

It barely even took two seconds. She must have already had the information drawn up. Melanie found herself, yet again, slipping into the dark and swirling pits of her famous temper. She moved closer to Daisy and Basira, desperate to present a united front. Her mother had always warned her it would get her in trouble today - maybe that day was fucking today.

“That’s an invasion of my fucking privacy,” Melanie spat out, rounding on Stoker. He put on a faux-apologetic face. “You can’t come in here and - and intimidate us like this! Are you police or cheap Mafia thugs?”

“Melanie, please. Be reasonable.” Stoker spread his arms out, mockingly inviting. “We’re the good guys.”

In that moment, Melanie understood. It was only then that she recognized the look in his eyes: it was from a nature documentary on wolves. Not in their size or shape or color, but something of their glint in the fluorescent lights. 

They were the eyes of a predator. 

“We don’t have any of the information you want,” Daisy said, calmly and coldly. She was standing next to Basira, both of their arms crossed, scowl lightly etched across her face. “It’s best that you get your answers from Elias. Take whatever you need from the Archives if you want, but Elias signing off a warrant doesn’t entitle you to confiscate any of our private belongings unless you have reasonable cause to think that they have something to do with your investigation.”

It was the most Melanie had ever heard Daisy talk, and she had to fight not to stare dumbfounded at her. Only the cops were unphased, Constable James’ glasses glinting as she tapped a few more keys on her computer. 

“You know a lot about the law,” Constable James observed mildly. “Is it because you were a police academy drop -”

That was about when both Melanie and Basira had to hold Daisy back, because she was already leaping forward to try to claw Constable James’ face off. Constable James didn’t seem perturbed, just staring at her blankly, but it was impossible to miss the hot crack of rage across Detective Stoker’s face. He stalked up to Daisy and deliberately put his hand on his nightstick, making everybody freeze. 

“Tell me where Jonathan Sims is,” Stoker said, almost pleasantly, “or you’ll all find yourself dragged into the station on whatever charges I can find. Attempt to assault an officer, maybe? Your choice.”

“I can say,” Melanie said, staring Stoker right in his creepy little eyes, “that I have no idea where Jonathan Sims is.”

Stoker stared at her, for a long minute, before stalking to the door out of the Archives and throwing it open. The hallway out was, of course, abandoned. He glanced back at Constable James, who just shook her head. 

“He’s not on the security cameras. Why does this place have so many security cameras?” She typed a little bit more. “Or on CCTV?” For the first time, Constable James frowned. “Where on earth could he be?”

Earth was, perhaps, the wrong place to look. 

“We’ll be back,” Stoker spat, glaring daggers at Daisy. She was glaring at him just as fiercely back. Somehow, she was more intimidating than him. “With your warrant .” He turned his back on her, gesturing at the woman who was still sitting primly on the desk. “Let’s go, Sash. Nothing but washed up dykes in here.”

They swept out, as evilly as they had swept in, and Melanie barely had time to catch Constable James’ sympathetic glance before the door slammed shut behind them. 

The Archive Assistants stared at the closed door, dumbfounded and scared, which none of them would ever admit. They glanced at each other uneasily, searching for reassurance on each other’s faces, finding none. 

Only the sound of a creaking door behind them diverted their attention, and they all whirled around. Set into a previously blank wall, a jagged and jaunty yellow door opened. A familiar tall, annoying, amazing, fantastic figure stumbled out of the door, looking slightly green. A very self-satisfied approximation of a womanish person leaned on the doorjamb behind him, looking like the cat that had trapped the canary in its endless twisting hallways. 

Apparently acting on best-friend-since-yesterday wavelengths, Daisy ran forward and grabbed a wastebasket bin just in time for Jon to ralph into it. Everybody politely looked away as Jon finished, finally wiping his mouth clean as he heaved. 

“That is the last time,” Jon gasped out, “that I am ever going in there.”

“Hell of a way to thank the extra dimensional being who saved you from getting speared for lunch by pigs,” Helen said mildly, or as mild as Helen ever got. She winked at Melanie, one eye winking into nothingness before alighting again. “Don’t mind him. He’s never grateful.”

“Will those cops be showing up again?” Basira asked, always the one to redirect the conversation to its most salient point. 

But Helen just giggled lightly, like sandpaper rubbing up against bare skin. “Most definitely! You could say that Mister - sorry, Detective Stoker and Constable James are key players in this little charade. I’d keep an eye out for them, if you know what I mean.” Helen winked ostentatiously.

Jon frowned, as lost as the rest of them. “I don’t know what you mean, actually.”

“Who does!” Helen giggled, waving her knife fingers in an affectionate goodbye that made Jon dive out of the way to avoid getting speared. “Good luck with your pranking, you rambunctious delinquents! Say hello to old Elias for me!”

Then the door slammed shut, winking out of existence, and the Archive was left alone again. 

They all looked around at each other. Exhausted, and in Jon’s case somewhat dribbled with vomit, but alive. The thought was so ridiculous and strange it made Melanie want to laugh. How ridiculous, to be grateful for living! Normally Melanie lived her life full of wanting, wanting, wanting - wanting friends, wanting something better, wanting to be happy. She was always so angry and betrayed when she didn’t get it. But today, she was just happy to be alive and not in jail. Happy that everybody around her was safe too. 

She wanted to laugh  - so she did. She couldn’t hold it in anymore. She belted out a hysterical, wheezy laugh, unable to stop. Everybody stared at her as if she was deranged, and maybe she was, but then Basira barked out a sharp laugh too, and then Daisy was huffing in amusement, and even Jon was giggling hysterically. 

They laughed together, feeling like idiots, feeling like a team for the first time. 

Eventually, they all calmed down. Basira was the one who spoke first, wiping a tear from her eyes. “Jon, there’s something that we should probably tell you.”

Melanie’s first instinct was to shush Basira, because despite everything she did not want to get fired, but when she glanced at Daisy she just looked...very self-satisfied.

“Yeah,” Melanie found herself saying too, “we really have to fess up to something. I’m really sorry, but the last few days we’ve been -”

“Playing pranks on me?” Jon’s mouth twitched into a smile. “I was fully aware.”

Basira and Daisy gaped at him, and Jon seemed to revel in the looks on their faces. It was only when they both noticed Daisy hiding a smile behind her hand that Basira’s eyes widened, putting the pieces together. 

“You told him,” Basira accused, rounding on Daisy. “You totally told him!”

“I totally did,” Daisy said cheerfully. 

Jon shrugged with one shoulder, looking rueful. “Why else would we come up with that stupid plan to pretend that we were best friends?”

Holy fucking shit. They had been played. 

The same thought crossed Basira’s face, the shock and stress of the day making her expressions actually understandable for once, and she seemed to go through the five stages of grief simultaneously. She groaned, collapsing on her desk chair. “Of course. There’s no other way Daisy would become best friends overnight with Jon , of all people.”

“Well,” Daisy said, scratching her chin as Jon looked faintly insulted, “to be fair, after Jon ripped me a new phone for playing phone games all day, we totally had an overnight ‘get drunk on the wine Jon keeps in his desk’ bonding session before we came up with the plan.” She half-smiled at Jon, who hesitantly half-smiled back. “I’d call us actual friends at this point.”

“Wait,” Melanie said, desperately trying to keep up with this, “didn’t we search his desk?”

“False bottom. Oldest trick in the book.” Jon grimaced apologetically. “My apologies, you two, but to be fair - you very much did deserve it.” He glanced at Daisy cautiously, almost hesitant. “And I’m glad to have made one friend out of this whole mess.”

“More than one,” Melanie said firmly. “Us gays have to stick together!”

“I’m not -”

“Yeah, I’d call us legitimate best friends at this point, today was great,” Daisy said. 

This was, apparently, the final straw for Basira. She screamed from gritted teeth, grabbing the closest object to her - a ridiculously heavy compendium on the anatomy of the eye - on her desk and chucked it in a fit of fury at the wall.

They all watched in horror as the book’s corner broke into the cheap plaster wall, smashing a solidly sized hole in it. 

Then the worms started crawling out. 

Highasakite: LOVE the channel Mels!! Makes me want to come in and give a Statement myself - make sure to get my good side ;)?

Jh: lol

xxMCR4EVAxx: New favorite channel. Automatically subscribed. Ten out of fucking ten. 

Comein2myparlor: This is my FAVORITE way to keep up with your life, Melanie!! Your vlogs are a gift that keeps giving! I’m subscribing to your patreon!

Teaandjumpers: Great video as always, Melanie! I really enjoy seeing your workplace. I’m glad you all survived those worms just fine. I hate worms, so gross! We should set up a guest star with my cooking show sometime - how to eat fried worms, maybe?

Teaandjumpers: By the way, your boss -  wow. He’s smoking hot. Is he, you know, single? I’m asking for a friend. The friend is me. 

Chapter Text

“Okay,” Melanie said, “ did you kill Gertrude Robinson? Promise I won’t be mad.”

“This is a safe space,” Basira said, projecting an air of calm and serenity. “We won’t judge you for it or anything.”

“I would, perhaps, be very relieved if you were the one to kill her,” Jon added. Basira had finally wrangled him into the shower and a clean change of clothes, so he was a little bit less disgusting than he had been the past few weeks, but that wasn’t saying much. His shirt read ‘Masjid Elfarouq’s Third Annual Summer Camp’, suggesting that it was Basira’s but raising so many more questions. “You can tell us, we’re your friends.”

Daisy stared up at them, sitting in her desk chair as they all crowded around her trying to project an air of friendliness and trustworthiness.

Finally, as if she had been deep in thought over the matter, trying to remember if she had killed Gertrude Robinson after all, really she killed so many people it was hard to keep track, Daisy finally said, “Didn’t do it.”

Basira threw her hands up. Melanie groaned. Jon screamed into his fist. 

“Well, if nobody here is willing to admit to it,” Basira said passive-aggressively, throwing herself into her own desk chair, “then we’re stuck here watching somebody have a paranoia fuelled breakdown -”

“I said I was sorry about that!” Jon cried. “Can you blame me for being a little worried?”

“Just be glad you didn’t start stalking us,” Daisy said blankly. 

Melanie leaned in next to Jon, going up on her tiptoes so she could whisper in his ear. “But if you had, hypothetically, stalked them to their homes, would you be able to tell if they were mar -”

“The point is,” Jon said loudly, somewhat embarrassed, “we still have to figure out who killed her.”

Daisy tossed a stick of gum in her mouth. “Why.”

“Because they might want to kill me too, darling,” Jon said, with exaggerated patience. “I don’t like being dead, darling, it’s bad for my complexion.” 

“Why,” Daisy said, still bored and chewing aggressively on her gum. She leaned back in her chair, propping her combat boots on the desk and ignoring Jon’s little cry of pain. “Maybe they just wanted to kill Gertrude, honeybear.”

“There are a lot of reasons someone would want to kill Gertrude,” Basira said contemplatively. 

“I heard she was a real bitch,” Melanie said, patting Jon’s arm in a show of support. “You barely talk to anybody, so nobody knows what a bitch you are, Jon.”

“You really do only know us,” Daisy pointed out. “Who else has the motive?”

“If we haven’t killed you by now,” Melanie encouraged, “who would?”

Thankfully, this actually seemed to work. Jon seemed subdued after that, secure in the knowledge that he only knew five people and that there were only two serial killers among those five people, neither of which had the motive to kill him. Basira had been the one to point out that Georgie had sufficient motive to kill Jon considering the fact that she had dated him for three years, but if she hadn’t then she probably wouldn’t now. Besides, just because Georgie could and would kill anybody she wanted, didn’t mean that she had. 

That was what friends were for, Melanie reflected as she sat down at her own desk and resigned herself to doing work instead of solving a murder mystery. Like some kind of complete fucking boring loser who didn’t solve mysteries. God, her life sucked. Still, friends were there to stop you from going further into a paranoia fuelled breakdown. They had let him indulge in his manic tendencies for a week, mostly because it was really funny and Melanie wanted some more drama for her vlogs, but after Jon started getting weird about it they tossed out his conspiracy board and shoved him into a cold shower. It was remarkably easy to kidnap him when they had Daisy and Basira, muscle freaks, on their side: he was tall, but severely malnourished - a clear weakness. 

Maybe Melanie should start working out too. She had to get swole if she was going to start punching clowns. Daisy had already started teaching her knife fighting, maybe they could be workout buddies? If she started a side channel to film Daisy working out, that would get some serious hits. They could split the profits. 

But, despite how much they complained, Jon was easy to handle. Although he was unruly, snappish, and paranoid, chances were if you gave him a biscuit, some milk, and had Daisy threaten him, he quieted down. Melanie was beginning to suspect that the reason he was so rude was just constant low blood sugar. That was one problem solved. 

That just left the cops. 

To be fair, the cops were their only actual problem.

Elias was what some would call a ‘hands-off’ boss, which meant that whenever he stepped into the Archives Daisy threatened to cut off his hands. She claimed it was because he was a creep, which he absolutely was, but Melanie suspected that she just didn’t like how he stressed out Jon. Jon got annoying when he was stressed out. Exhibit A: every second pre-worm incident. 

Thankfully, they were now a few months post worm incident, and Jon was no longer a problem either. Running away from worms and getting lost in a never-ending hallway with Daisy was a great bonding experience, and apparently Basira had found a cool table in Artifact Storage and proceeded to Lincoln-Douglas debate it to death. Helen, for her part, had just found the whole thing funny. Which could honestly be said about everything.

Besides the PTSD and worm scars they were doing great, basically. Ha ha. 

But no matter what they did, they just couldn’t shake That Pig Stoker and Constable James. Ever since they had ‘discovered a corpse’ or something in their basement or whatever those two had constantly been sniffing around. Melanie would have thought that they would finally check discovering a corpse off their to-do list, but apparently their appetites were never sated. Now they were trying to solve the murder or whatever. As if cops did that. 

Mostly it just seemed as if they were harassing her. 

It was Monday, which meant that due to Daisy and Jon’s yoga class and Basira’s book club they all went their separate ways instead of going to a coffee shop (Tuesdays and Thursdays), park (Wednesdays), or the pub (Fridays). The rigorous over-scheduling had been the only solution they found that stopped Jon from working past five every day, which held long-term benefits in making him much less annoying, but everybody had found that they somewhat enjoyed the social interaction. Melanie wondered if they were growing slightly co-dependent. 

Or maybe they were just all losers, and Melanie’s mistake had been thinking that she was the only one. 

Melanie stepped out of the Institute at 5:09 (four minutes wasted due to avoiding Elias, yet again), adjusting her scarf to combat the September chill. Fall was Melanie’s favorite time of year, and she was already putting together the Halloween movie marathon she was going to force the group to watch. Halloween wasn’t just for Americans , it was for everyone , and she’d prove it or die trying -

“Melanie! So good to see you!”

Melanie, who had never heard anybody say that to her in her life, tripped over her feet. 

When she righted herself and glanced to where she heard the voice, she saw That Pig Stoker leaning against the outside wall of the Institute. He was in casual clothes, clearly off work, wearing black jeans that clung way too tight, a navy blue soft cotton t-shirt, and a ‘stylish’ distressed leather jacket. He looked like a preppy Greaser. He was smiling widely at Melanie, as if they had just happened to meet in the street, and that he wasn’t stalking her.

Melanie walked faster.

“Hey, don’t be like that! I just want to talk.” Insultingly, Stoker caught up to her in a few strides, keeping pace easily no matter how fast she powerwalked. “Can’t you spare a second? I know this really excellent coffee shop down the street, honestly, my treat.”

“Touch me and I’ll scream,” Melanie said. 

It was the first time she had actually seen him in person since the worm incident. She had escaped the Institute only to find Stoker and his team standing outside, patiently waiting for all the worms to disappear before heading in to count the bodies. If it wasn’t for Melanie screaming her head off about how she found a corpse in the tunnels, he probably would have shrugged about good riddance to bad rubbish and left. 

But now Stoker had been proven right -  that he and James’ pet project to run down the Gertrude Robinson investigation was on the right trail - and they hadn’t seen him since then. Beat cops had been sniffing around and carting out tapes, but not Stoker. Melanie would have been glad if she didn’t feel the same way about Stoker that she did snakes in the grass: best when you don’t have them, better when you can see them, worst when you know they’re there but can’t tell where.

But Stoker just pulled his expression mock-hurt, as if she was inconveniencing him by making him stalk her. “You’re one tough bitch, you know that?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard it before.” Melanie picked up the pace of her walking, until it was as fast as she could go without running. “Do you need something?”

Stoker, the bastard, effortlessly kept up. “I’m here as your friend, you know.” His eyes narrowed - easier to see, now, that he wasn’t hiding behind those bug-eyed sunglasses. “I can come back as someone who’s not your friend, if you want.”

“We aren’t friends,” Melanie said, but she stopped short anyway. Stoker stopped too, smarmy grin on his face - the kind that read that he clearly thought he had won. She had the sense that Stoker was used to winning. She narrowed her eyes at him. “We’re going to La Madeline .”

“I’d never treat a lady to anything less,” Stoker said loftily. 

Melanie: im being kidnapped by a cop. If i dont survive this can daisy take my cases k thnx

Basira: That’s just called being arrested, Melanie. 

Basira: wait

Basira: Are you being arrested?

Basira: also Daisy says she’s not taking your cases.

Melanie did end up letting Stoker pay for the food. Her Mum always said never to let a guy buy you a drink, because then he feels like he owns you, but Stoker already felt like that and if she was going to be harassed by Daniel Dae “Police Corruption” Kim then she might as well get free food from the most expensive cafe she could think of from the top of her head.

She did, however, order black coffee as Stoker spent five minutes detailing the most complicated order she had ever heard to the terrified cashier. Melanie tried to blink in morse code for ‘send help’, but honestly they were both too deep in it now. 

Eventually she found herself sitting stiffly across from Stoker in an unfortunately private alcove, under unfortunately dim lights, with an unfortunately high level of privacy. A black coffee and a chocolate croissant sat in front of her, untouched. Stoker was slouching in his seat, taking sips of his extra large protein shake monstrosity with too much whey and ‘energy powder’ in between bites of the power bar he had taken from his pocket. 

“Man, have I been having, like, a fuck of a month at work,” Stoker said, demolishing his power bar like a bodybuilding machine. He pulled out his glossy latest edition iPhone and scrolled through it, seemingly bored. “That place just sucks the soul out of you. Always telling me to do this, do that, jump this high. Lame. Not to mention you are seriously a bitch to find. Are you always hanging out with your coworkers? What are you, like, dating? Some kind of weird threesome? That’s kind of hot.”

Melanie opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again as something occurred to her. Stupid. Stupid. What were the chances he just so happened to be waiting to catch her the one day she left work alone? “Have you been stalking me?”

“I’d never stalk a woman,” Stoker said, way too offended for someone who had literally been stalking her . “It’s for a case, so it’s not stalking. It’s just doing my job, Mels.”

“Well, I already texted my - my Dad where I am, so make it quick,” Melanie snapped. “Wouldn’t want to get him arrested for assaulting an officer.”

But Stoker just scrolled through his phone, seemingly bored. “Your Pops died years ago. You kept on telling the police...ah, here it is -” He adopted a mock falsetto, all breathy and tearful. “ ‘He was eaten by clowns, officer, you have to believe me, Grimaldi turned his skin inside out and wore it!’.” He snorted, tossing the phone down on the table. “Too bad we couldn’t put out an APB on Pennywise. Try threatening me with that muscley woman, that would go over better.”

Melanie’s temper raged, hot and fierce, and she took a second of deep breathing to push it back down. It was what he wanted. He wanted something, anything , to use against her. And he wouldn’t have spent all that time stalking her if there wasn’t something he wanted from her. All she had to do was figure out what it was.

“They didn’t believe you,” Stoker continued, tracing a finger over the rim of his coffee. “It was our mistake. The situation didn’t seem…’weird’ at first.” He made actual finger quotes over the word weird.  “We had to section three officers out of that mess, I think. Very messy.” 

“Section?”

Stoker explained. Which - okay, fine. Fine. If there was some kind of government and police cover-up of the supernatural - well, that explained a lot. For how many freaky and terrible things happened to so many people, all the time, it felt more like an open secret than anything else. If the government was invested in making sure nobody talked about it...well, it made sense. 

It also, unfortunately, lit up the conspiracy theory parts of Melanie’s brain, and she recognized the tell-tale jump in heartbeat over the prospect of a mystery and investigation. She couldn’t stop herself from leaning in, breath caught. She couldn’t stop herself from noticing the way Stoker’s eyes flashed, the twitch of a smile he covered up with a sip of his coffee. 

“Obviously, we only have so many sectioned officers, and everyone’s a little invested in making sure we have as few as possible. Double obviously, anytime there’s a call from the Magnus Institute, we don’t send over the mainstream cops. Triple obviously, as you can tell, I’ve been put in charge of all Magnus Institute related bullshit.” He scowled into his coffee, for just a brief second, before replacing it with a more affably friendly expression. “My partner and I have been given a great deal of freedom in this case. In return for almost a complete lack of oversight and  no expectation of...playing by the books, I’m expected to wrap this case up quickly so nobody else has to think about it again and we can all go back to pretending that the monsters under the bed don’t exist.” Tim leaned in, dark eyes flashing, and Melanie forced herself not to lean back. “So you can imagine the kind of pressure I’m under. And you can imagine…” He pulled a faux-sympathetic face. “...since we found the body, nobody around here really cares about warrants anymore.”

Melanie leaned back in her chair, thinking. 

Melanie had a lot of personality flaws. She knew it, okay? She was overly angry and impulsive and took jokes too far and was socially awkward and wanted to be an investigative journalist more than any normal person should. She worked hard to address these flaws, or at least she felt as if she did, but somehow she found herself repeating the same patterns of behavior over and over again. She hated the kind of person her flaws made her into, but she had never really been incentivized to change. 

For the second time in her life, Melanie was abruptly aware that if she let her flaws get the better of her, people around her were going to suffer. Any spark of self-centeredness, of desire for a mystery, of biting anger that pushed for the slaughter, was abruptly snuffed out. The only thing that remained was the cold, fervent, and intense desire for her and her friends to be okay. 

“So what you’re telling me,” Melanie said slowly, “is that you’re desperate.”

There it was: that flash of anger, the same flash that Melanie had thought she might have imagined. The gritted teeth, the shallow eyes reflecting something dangerous back at her, before it was hidden again. 

Stoker leaned back, desperately trying to cover up that anger with a charmingly cocked eyebrow and a winning smile. “You’re not as stupid as everyone says you are, Mels. I’m afraid that we got off on the wrong foot. I hope we can still be friends.” His smile practically gleamed. “I’m a really good friend to have.”

“You called me a dyke,” Melanie said flatly. 

Stoker had the courtesy of wince. “I lost my temper! Honestly, get over it, it’s no big deal. You people are so sensitive.” He took another swig of his protein drink, wrinkling his nose. “Really, I got no problem with you people. Love the gays. So long as it’s not, you know…” He waved a hand absently. “...all in my face. I’m an ally, though! Love gay rights. You know?”

(“Yeah,” Tim said, much later, lying down on her desk with a popped Hawaiian shirt collar luxuriously drinking a margarita as Martin chased Jon with a knife in the background, “so I was like, super repressed, sorry about that.”)

“Yeah,” Melanie said dryly, “I know.”

(“Yeah,” Melanie said, stealing a sip from his margarita, “I know.”)

“So I have your cooperation?” Stoker asked hopefully, pushing the last of the protein bar into his mouth. “You’ll pass along what information you know, let us in on any suspicious activity, that kind of thing?”

“Sure,” Melanie said, “sounds great.”

“So I’m thinking that we lie out of our ass to him.”

“That’s a given,” Basira said, looking up from her book (‘ 50 Spells for Self-Confidence’ ) for once. “Why would we actually tell him anything?”

“I think he assumed that he had successfully intimidated me,” Melanie said dully, grabbing a Mars bar from their small pile in the middle of the table and ripping it open with her teeth. “Or that he had successfully dangled something in front of me that I want. Joke’s on him: I’m too depressed to want anything.”

They were crowded around one of the tables in the library, once again flagrantly refusing to work. Jon had joined them, making his usual annoying noises about them actually getting work done before Daisy shoved a fidget cube at him, effectively shutting him up. They had raided Jorge in Accounting’s desk for his secret candy stash a few days ago, and were still munching the benefits. Every time Jon looked up from his cube to complain about the rampant theft, Daisy passed him some Smarties and he shut up. She should start carrying a diaper bag. 

Daisy, who was playing a handheld plastic Sonic game that looked like it came from a McDonald’s Happy Meal, just grunted as she scored a goal. “If we don’t give him anything then he’s going to take it by force.”

“Exactly,” Melanie said, satisfied. She had spent all yesterday afternoon thinking about this, trying to draft some semblance of a plan. “We have to give him shit leads. Pick out random useless names from our statements like...uh…”

“Adelard Dekker?” Jon suggested, fastidiously flipping the little switch on the cube on and off and on and off. 

“Nerd,” Basira said. “We’ll all come up with some bullshit to feed him next time he comes knocking. We should also start making a habit of hiding the more illegal shit we get up to.” She eyed Jon balefully, who didn’t even have the decency to look guilty. “Like hacking into police databases.”

“That’s a crime?” Jon asked, confused. 

“That explains so much,” Melanie said, fascinated. 

“I know a lot about the law and that’s my official stance,” Jon said quickly. “Anyway, there should be a good hiding spot in my office. Daisy accidentally found a loose floorboard when she was killing a spider for me, and since we tossed out the garbage we found underneath it should have more than enough space for Basira’s laptop and anything else we don’t want Detective Stoker finding.”

“You have to call him That Pig Stoker,” Daisy said. “House rules.”

“Yes, of course.” Jon cleared his throat. “That...Pig...Stoker.” He paused a beat before crumpling. “Daisy, my inherent need to please authority instilled in me by a stern grandmother and Pentecostalism doesn’t let me do that.”

Daisy patted his hand, switching the game to her left hand so she could play one handed. “We’ll beat that out of you.” She paused a beat. “I mean life will beat that out of you.”

Jon passed Daisy a Crunch bar. 

“Don’t worry, Jon,” Basira said reassuringly - so, exactly like she said everything else. “As soon as you stop projecting your absent father figure onto Elias, you’ll stop trying to make us do real work, and then everyone will be happy.”

“Believe it or not, it is still possible for you to get fired -”

“Actually, I have a theory about that -”

That was when they all heard the door to the Archives creak open, and everybody rapidly grabbed some thick books that Basira kept stacked on the corner of the table and cracked them open, pretending to read and do work. 

Faint footsteps - high heels, so not Elias - echoed into the room, almost hesitantly. Jon stood up from his chair with a clatter, hesitantly ducking into the main room from the library. Soon enough, they heard the faint sound of voices, and the sound of Jon’s office door opening and closing. 

Probably just a statement giver. Basira clearly had the same thought, because she stood up and tucked her book underneath her armpit. “I’ll go spy on them. Be back later.”

With both Jon and Basira gone there was nobody for Melanie to make fun of, so she resentfully nabbed another chocolate bar and munched on it as she tried to imagine how severely Jon was going to hurt the poor woman’s feelings this time. Daisy had been doing her best to mitigate the number of screaming matches that Jon found himself in - not by encouraging Jon to be any nicer, but by standing behind him with a knife. That, at least, reduced the screaming. Still, if they were ever going to let Jon fly free from the nest into the scary world of society one day, they had to train him up with actual social skills. Basira had used the Institute card to buy a few books on socializing children, which had resulted in the most awkward invoice ever as they were forced to try to explain to Elias why they had bought it. He had approved it immediately, which was worrying for a whole other set of reasons. 

Melanie found her eyes drifting to the trapdoor in the corner. They had all piled very heavy furniture on it in an effort to make Jon stop going down there, mostly because the guy needed more sunlight and partly because they were all afraid that he was going to get eaten by a tunnel monster. None of them really trusted the guy in dangerous situations. That was what they had Daisy for. 

Speaking of which, she glanced back at Daisy, who had progressed from playing her game and ignoring the conversation into pretending to play her game and trying to keep an ear out for any signs of screaming. 

“Are you worried about the tunnel thing?” 

Daisy mashed more buttons on her game. “Nope.”

Melanie just shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Because, like, there’s no way that there’s no monsters down there. And there’s also no way that we’re going to keep both Jon and Basira from putting on their detective hats and trying to explore it and getting eaten. I would do it too, but I know that if you hang out with Helen too often then you become, like, extra susceptible to twisting labyrinths.”

“Or maybe it’s like a vaccine and hanging out with her makes you less of a pussy.”

“No, I’m pretty confident that’s not it.”

“Whatever,” Daisy said. But her eyebrow twitched down, which was clear Daisy-speak for ‘I am also extremely concerned about this’. “I’ll nail it shut later.”

“Will ignoring the problem make it go away?”

“Yep.”

“Oh, thank god.”

Still, Melanie had to assume that made sense. They had been getting along just fine not knowing there were tunnels underneath the Institute, and they could continue getting along just fine pretending it wasn’t there. Melanie regularly pretended lots of concerning things weren’t going on, like global warming or child slavery. She was pretending that her Mars bar was ethically sourced right now, that’s how good she was at this. 

Still, their office possessed the two most boring wild cards known to man: sedate nerds until aggravated, at which point they both went batshit. Daisy wasn’t a sedate nerd, but it was hard to miss how she was also constantly on the knife’s edge of losing her shit.

Oh no, Melanie realized, with a sick short of horror, she was the only sane man . Fuck, those were always the most boring characters! Was this the price she paid to be the sole competent person on this team? Did she have to be Head Archivist now?

No sane person wanted to be Head Archivist. Not even Jon wanted to be Head Archivist, and it was literally his job. The Assistants, because they were great and supportive friends, had been doing their damndest to get him demoted, but all of the HR complaints they submitted were probably put in the shredder. They really needed new jobs. 

But...if she was in a different job she might actually have to do something...and this position did pay weirdly well…

“Daisy!”

Jon’s voice, echoing throughout the Archives in mild panic. Before Melanie even had time to react, Daisy jumped up, letting her Happy Meal toy drop to the floor as she flew out the door. Melanie was hot on her heels, darting through the door she threw open and spilling out into the hallway. The door to Jon’s office was open, and Melanie could clearly see Basira standing inside with her back to the door, speaking quickly and sharply to somebody. Melanie couldn’t help but wince - that was her ‘I’m going to destroy your self-esteem in a complete monotone’ voice. 

Daisy quickly muscled her way inside, and Melanie trailed in after her. Jon, sitting at his desk, was abjectly relieved to see her. In fact, the sight of Daisy looking ready and willing to rip off a head and Basira’s barely concealed desire to do the same distracted Melanie so severely that it took her a few seconds to even register the familiar face of the statement giver. 

Constable Sasha James was perched in the uncomfortable chair in front of Jon’s desk, looking somewhat abashed yet unashamed. Just like Stoker yesterday, she was in more comfortable clothing, just a blouse and a pencil skirt with high pumps. Her bug-eyed sunglasses were gone, replaced with far more demure small glasses.

If Daisy was surprised to see her there, she didn’t show it. She just held the door open, fixing James with her best flat stare. “Out.”

“I’m not here on official business,” James said, holding up her hands in a show of peace. “Trust me, if my supervisors found out I was here I’d be super fired. I just want to talk.”

The others seemed to relax at this, while Melanie just bristled. “That p - Stoker said that you have no supervisors, when it comes to this case. Nobody’ll fire you for coming in here for an ‘unofficial’ talk.” She made dramatic air quotes around the word ‘unofficial’, and her friends were back to bristling again. Daisy’s hand was drifting to her waistband. 

James’ mouth tightened, subtly peeved at being caught out in her lie. “Last time I checked it’s a little illegal to pass on evidence from an active crime scene.” She picked up a cassette on Jon’s desk, holding it out for inspection. Melanie caught sight of a familiar, spidery scrawl before Basira snatched it out of her hands, inspecting it closely. “As I was telling your boss, these tapes can help your own investigation. You should have them.”

“And as I was telling Constable James, this is entrapment and I’m not falling for it.” Jon leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms. “And as I continued to tell her, if she doesn’t get out of my office Daisy is going to come and do it for you.”

“You’re supposed to call security,” James said, somewhat baffled. 

Daisy cracked her knuckles. 

“I don’t know why a copper is trying to facilitate our internal investigation into trying to find out if someone’s trying to murder our boss,” Basira said, crossing her arms too. Melanie hurriedly crossed her arms, just to present a united front. “You have no innocent reason to help us. Your good cop, bad cop routine isn’t going to work.”

“And, like, dick move to prey on this innocent man’s mental illness to make him think that someone’s trying to kill him,” Melanie said disapprovingly, ignoring Jon’s offended squawk. 

“We only just stopped him from going through the trash, and you come in here and try to ruin our hard work?” Basira asked, shaking her head. “Never thought law enforcement would stoop this low. I used to admire you people.”

“He’s very delicate.” Daisy cracked her knuckles again. “Now out.”

There was little else to say. James just nodded, standing up, and they all agreed by silent consensus to let Melanie escort her out of the building. As she held the door open for James, she heard the faint sounds of Jon complaining about Basira and Daisy not letting him run his own investigation, or have a paranoid breakdown, or do anything fun -

“You guys really care about each other,” James said, “huh?”

Melanie started. James wasn’t looking at her, her eyes fixed on the floor, a wry and sad smile on her face. She seemed far away, reminiscing on something Melanie didn’t understand. 

“Uh - I mean, I guess? We’re just coworkers.” Melanie shrugged uncomfortably. She didn’t exactly do open displays of affection. “I guess we’re friends.” She paused, uncertain. She wanted to say that Stoker was too much of a psycho to have friends, but… “You and Stoker seemed pretty friendly back there.”

For a simple yes or no question, James took her time to think it over. They climbed up the stairs in silence, Melanie’s sneakers scuffing against the cement and echoing up the tall stairwell, and James’ pumps clicked with a businesslike precision. 

Finally, when Melanie opened the door for the ground floor, she said, “I’m not sure either of us are capable of being friends with anyone.”

Oh, great. 

Melanie fought the urge to groan. She knew how this was going to turn out. But she knew, equally well, that there was absolutely no other choice. “He sure acted like he was the big man on campus last time I saw him.”

James winced. They stepped out into the hallway that lead, at one end, to the lobby, and at the other end to the cafeteria. Melanie found herself directing James closer to the cafeteria, stopping in front of the vending machines. There was a coffee dispenser next to the recently repaired vending machine, and Melanie distracted herself by feeding a bill into the machine and punching in the combination for a very strong latte with a shitton of sugar. If James was wondering why Melanie hadn’t dumped her out the door at the first opportunity, she didn’t show it - too wrapped up in her own thoughts, staring fixedly at the floor like it was a crystal ball. 

“I’m really sorry for him. He - he didn’t really mean it.” 

“Mean what?” Melanie asked sarcastically, watching the machine whirr and chug. 

James flushed, looking up and gesturing with her hand. “You know...saying…”

“Saying what?”

“Using...uh, negative...language...look, Tim’s a good guy.” Who was Tim? Oh, right. Melanie flushed the knowledge of the name from her memory. She had better things to remember. “He really is, I swear. He just had...you know, a really rough time of it growing up. Makes it hard for him to connect to people.”

“Uh huh.”

“He has a strong commitment to justice,” James said quickly. She sat down on the bench opposite the vending machine, tucking in her skirt primly. “There’s nothing he hates more than seeing bad guys get away. I’ve never met a guy who...you know, cared so much. It’s really admirable. It’s just that sometimes he just..over-focuses. You know, he gets tunnel vision. You know?”

Sure. The machine spat a thick stream of creamy coffee into the styrofoam cup, and Melanie kept her eyes on it instead of looking at James. She was much more talkative once you got her alone, Melanie noted. Shy? Or cautious? “And what about you?”

“What?”

The coffee sputtered out, and Melanie tucked a lid over it before picking it up, turning around, and leaning against the wall as she sipped her coffee. “What’s your excuse?”

James’s rich brown eyes widened. “What excuse?”

“For why you’re a cheap, two-bit bully.” Melanie sipped at her coffee. “I’d love to hear it.”

Obviously, James bristled. Melanie expected a denial that either of them were bullies, that they were perfectly good people, but she said something far more interesting instead. “That’s just Tim, okay? I know I’m - cold or detached or whatever, I’ve heard that one my whole life. But I’ve never done anything wrong.”

“Weird. Stoker said the same thing.” Melanie took a dramatic sip of her coffee, ignoring James’ flinch. “Look, Constable, I get it. I’m not good with people either. I’m bullheaded, I’m rude, and my temper’s a bitch. It’s hard, when you’re a person who’s difficult to love. But...I still deserve it, you know? And the people who love me deserve the best me there is. You need someone to change for .” She pushed herself off the wall, turning around to leave. “I guess me and my friends are so close because without each other, we’d all be terrible people. I thought you might get that, but maybe not.”

She left James there, clutching her own skirt, staring at the floor. Probably having an existential crisis. 

Whatever. It really wasn’t her problem. If James having an existential crisis got her off their backs, then that was great.  

When she got back to the Archives, she was treated to the sight of Basira and Jon sitting at desks in the cow pen - Basira at hers, Jon at Daisy’s - profoundly sulking. Throughout the Archives, loud sounds of thumping and the whirring of a drill could be heard. 

“I really hope nobody but me walks in on this,” Melanie said, taking another drag from her coffee for strength. She grabbed the external door lock they had bought for this express purpose, shoving it under the doorknob and setting it up so the door couldn’t be opened from the outside. They called it the Anti-Elias deterrent. “What the fuck is going on here?”

“Daisy’s impeding our investigation ,” Jon snitched, still sulking. He resentfully wiggled Daisy’s computer mouse and opened up SpaceCadet Pinball, ruthlessly cheating. 

“I don’t know why we can’t at least check it out,” Basira complained. “There’s an entire secret underground tunnel network and none of you want to even see what’s inside? Isn’t it part of our job to break into dangerous and abandoned places and almost get eaten by monsters?”

“That’s not part of my job,” Melanie said flatly. 

“You all do your jobs?” Jon asked. 

“Been there, did that,” Daisy said, ducking into the hallway holding a gigantic drill in one hand with a plank of wood thrown over her other shoulder. “Almost got eaten by worms. No thanks.”

Everybody stared at her. 

“I’m sorry,” Jon said politely, “the worms were in the Institute. Which is not abandoned.”

“Nah, I was checking out the Carlos Vittery statement and ran into one’a those worm nests.” Daisy shrugged, making the wood plank scrape the ceiling. “Good thing I always carry explosives on me or that coulda ended bad. ‘Scuse me, I need more nails.”

Nobody complained about Daisy nailing up the trap door after that. Melanie just couldn’t believe that Daisy had ever checked up on a statement, ever. 

Still, it was for the best. Being friends with Jon was like owning a ferret: if you didn’t keep the noodley little creature from constantly trying to throw itself off tall cliffs and eating its way into your couch cushions, it would die in a week. He was high matinence, but you were rewarded by the novelty of owning a ferret. 

Actually, that was also an apt metaphor for being friends with Daisy and Basira. What are we, Melanie thought grandly, but ferrets in the great plastic tubes of life? 

It was impossible to get any work done with Daisy’s banging, so Melanie contented herself for the rest of the day by typing up her psych eval of Constable Sasha James and Detective Tim Stoker and putting it on Jon’s desk. 

When she left that day, it was to the sight of Basira and Jon crouched over the psych eval, Basira occasionally jumping up to make a mind map of the best ways to psychologically devastate Stoker and James into giving up. Melanie caught the terms ‘unrequited love’, ‘sexual tension’, ‘treason’, and ‘daddy issues’. She deeply did not want to know how they all fit together. She, quite frankly, didn’t think it was any of her business. 

Although, come on. If Daddy Issues walked and talked then its name would be Timothy Stoker. Seriously, look at the guy. He was probably forced to play football as a kid. That’s child abuse. 

She took advantage of the confusion to steal the tape James left on Jon’s desk, plugging it into the omnipresent tape deck and listening to it. Great, more useless Gertrude bullshit. Mean old lady. She reminded Melanie of her homophobic grandma. Melanie broke the tape in half, dumping it in the garbage filing cabinet drawer that Jon didn’t even know existed. Gotta keep those ferrets alive. Man, if James was going to interrupt their light-hearted workplace comedy with her NCIS shit, couldn’t she bring over some more interesting illegal evidence? She should at least be interesting, if she was going to bother Melanie all day. 

Melanie sighed, removing the door lock as she clocked out. Hopefully things would calm down soon. No more visitors to the Archives. Society has progressed past the need for visitors to the Archives. 

They got a visitor to the Archives a week later. Which was bad enough.

The situation only went downhill from there, because the visitor was a crying teenager. 

Melanie didn’t know what to do with teenagers. She and Jon were the youngest ones in the Archives, but besides vague and hazy memories of weed and spray paint she didn’t remember her teenage years well. Jon was probably a better bet - he seemed the type to incongruously remember every second of his lonely teenage years spent wearing sweater vests and living in the library. He probably got bullied. Melanie could smell that shit on people. 

The teenager was a small, slight kid, at Melanie’s estimation about sixteen. Their gender was a little ambiguous, with pretty golden blonde hair cut to their chin and fluffing out around their ears. They were wearing cuffed dark blue jeans and a puffy orange windbreaker. They looked fairly demented, but all teenagers looked like that, so it could have meant anything. 

He had come into the Archives ten minutes ago, and they hadn’t gotten anything out of them except for a slightly hysterical demand for paper. They sat at Basira’s desk, frantically scribbling away at liberated printer paper with some pens filched from Basira’s meticulously organized pen cup. 

“ - and it was taking a left here, and, and then a right here, but then it moved in this loop , see it just got all turned around , and I found myself back here, at - at the beginning, except it was at the end , but the right turn wasn’t there, and -”

“Please save me,” Basira gritted out. 

Nope. Nope. Melanie didn’t care if she was turning into the team therapist, she wasn’t dealing with this. She looked at Basira significantly, conveying with her eyebrows ‘they’re at your desk, you deal with them, I bet you love teenagers’. 

“I have never been a teenager in my life,” Basira whispered. “Get them away .”

Melanie looked beseechingly at Daisy, who abruptly panicked. She rolled her chair closer, holding out her Happy Meal video game. “Hey, uh, kid, want...Sonic?”

The kid didn’t look up, their pen skittering from the printer page to make a long gash on Basira’s desktop. Basira frantically slipped in some new printer paper under the pen, still gritting her teeth. 

Daisy just shrugged. “I got nothin’.”

Ferrets . Honestly. 

Thankfully, Jon appeared from the depths of his office, ready to solve the problem, which was a sentence that had never been said before. He shot Melanie a significant glance, letting her see the large pile of their stockpiled candy he had in his arms, and with one foot dragged a spare chair to the other side of the kid before carefully depositing the candy on the desk. He took a Crunch bar, carefully unwrapped it, and waved it in front of the kid’s face. 

That did it. With the hand not holding the pen, the androgynous and demented child grabbed the candy out from the air, quickly decimating it. The sheer act of eating seemed to calm them down a little, and eventually they were able to drop the pen and just focus on eating. Fat tracks of tears still trailed down their face, and they sniffled a little as they ate the chocolate bar. 

“Now then,” Jon said, faux brightly. Melanie adjusted her conceptualization of him from terrible with everyone to terrible with adults . “Feeling a little better? Would you like some water?”

The kid nodded shakily. Daisy immediately got up and grabbed a bottle of water from the kitchenette, along with an old half of a sandwich. She placed it in front of the kid, who moved onto both after they finished the candy. 

“Can I ask your name?” Jon said, still infuriatingly nice. 

The kid inhaled deeply, taking a big gulp of the water. “Sure. I haven’t eaten in - god, when was the last time I ate - what’s the date -”

“October 2nd, 2016,” Basira said brusquely. “Kid, what -”

The kid dropped the water - no, his hand spasmed and the water fell down onto the desktop, rolling gently and splashing water all over his careful scribbles. Basira grabbed her laptop and moved it out of the way, cursing under her breath. 

“A month?” The kid screeched. “I was in there for a month ?”

“I’m beginning to see why he’s here,” Daisy said flatly. 

“What’s your name?” Melanie asked directly, feeling second-hand stressed out. She remembered teens as being dramatic, but this was ridiculous. “How old are you? Where are your parents?”

“Michael,” the kid said, voice turning upwards at the end of the very simple answer as if it was a question. “Michael Shelley, I’m eighteen, I don’t - where is anywhere , when you think about it, really -”

Then they off again, and Basira frantically shoved some more paper underneath the kid’s sprawling pen. Melanie coughed awkwardly. 

“It’s great to meet you, Michael. Uh, awkward question, are you...a boy...or…”

Michael looked up, eyes wide, and Melanie saw for the first time that they were wrong. 

There was something demented in them. Not in any human sort of way, but demented in the same way Helen’s were. As if you could fall into them, an endless whirlpool of nothing and everything and something after all. Helen’s were a toxic green, but Michael’s were the kind of blue that swallowed you whole. 

“I’m a boy?” Michael said, voice cracking uncertainly. “I think? I don’t know !”

It took another five minutes to calm him down again, assure them that gender identity was a complicated thing, plenty of young people just like him were still figuring themselves out, he/him pronouns were okay that’s great, and that maybe he might want to start drawing on the floor? Would you like that? Let’s draw on the floor, before Basira throttles you.

Melanie texted Helen, not expecting an immediate answer. She hadn’t seen her in a few weeks, but Helen was exceptionally bad with time. She was never quite where you expected her to be, and was always popping up in the places you would least expect - save, of course, when you really needed her. She was always there, then. 

Melanie: did you eat a child? you can be honest. 

After they moved aside some of the desks and spread out as much printer paper as they physically could, Michael seemed a bit calmer. He muttered under his breath as he drew, narrating the strange and twisting spirally corridors he was marking out, but as they managed to draw out somewhat of an explanation he calmed down a little. 

“We were on a cruise, I think,” Michael said. “Me an’ my folks. Da won it offa some sorta work raffle. Just chance, you know. Everything’s chance. What’s the chance of anything happening, really, how do you predict the weather, it’s a thousand little heres and theres that make up this everything that spins itself into just funnels of -”

“What happened on the cruise?” Basira asked. Once he was off her desk, she was proving talented at keeping him on track. Basira had a unique ability to filter through bullshit, which was why they made her deliver their monthly progress reports to Elias. 

“We, uh, were walking around the deck. We were...the ocean’s so big, you never know where you are. Somewhere, I think, definitely there. Mum was playing the roulette, watching it spin and spin, and Da wouldn’t stop rolling the slots, so I wandered off. The cruise ship was so big...” His pen dug into the paper, tearing it. “I got lost. I’m always, you know, getting lost, Da used to get so mad...all the doors looked the same, the hallways were just going on forever...I thought I saw our cabin door, and I went in, but our cabin door wasn’t yellow …”

Then he started crying again, and no amount of gentle coaxing from any of the Assistants could get him talking again. Basira started searching through police reports for a missing person fitting Michael’s description, although the cruise aspect complicated things - if the cruise was long enough, they might not even be back . If whatever took Michael spread to the rest of the cruise, then maybe nobody had come back. 

“Hey, Michael,” Daisy said, from her position at the computer, doing the same. “Do you remember if your cruise had stopped by the Carribean?”

“Oh fuck no,” Basira said. 

“Bro, fuck this,” Melanie yelled, throwing down her pen from where she had been drawing butterflies on the paper. 

“I live in hell,” Jon muttered, haunted. 

“Yes? I think?” Michael said, looking confused instead of frantic for once. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Daisy said quickly, clicking out of the news article with the headline that read in large, screaming letters BERMUDA TRIANGLE CLAIMS ANOTHER CRUISE SHIP. “Absolutely nothing to worry about. How attached were you to your parents?”

“Not very?”

“Good habit to have,” Daisy said approvingly. Basira, Jon, and Melanie all nodded. “How did you get here? Bahamas to London’s a long way.”

Michael just shrugged uncomfortably, hand sketching spiral after spiral after spiral. “I dunno. I made a map, I got out…” He gestured expansively at his very normal and intuitive map, “...and I was stepping out of a shop I didn’t remember walking inside. Some weird dude who smelled like weed told me I’d feel better if I talked to you. Bought a cab for me. Said I’d get lost otherwise…”

“Nobody who talks to Jon has ever felt better in their life,” Melanie said sympathetically. “Why don’t you hang out here and play some computer games? We have Centipede.”

The kid had mostly stopped drawing, and they felt safe enough to deposit him in front of Daisy’s computer and a web browser version of Centipede, which seemed to enthrall him. Through psychic Archival connection, they all agreed to huddle in the library, trying desperately to figure out how to solve this tiny and gender confused problem. 

“He came here to give a statement,” Jon pointed out, frowning at a pen mark on his hand. “Why don’t we just let him do it? Maybe it will make him feel better. I heard they’re - uh, cathartic.”

“Don’t be naive, Jon. Nobody’s ever felt better talking to you.” Basira stroked her chin as Jon slumped in defeat. “Why did Elias direct him here, though? He hardly goes out hunting for people with supernatural trauma. Who the fuck would do that.”

“We don’t know it’s Elias,” Melanie pointed out diplomatically. 

Daisy squinted at her. “How many other short stoners in London are there?”

“A - a lot, actually -”

“Only helpful suggestions, guys,” Basira cut in decisively. “It would be a complete waste of time to make this traumatized child spill his life story to Jon. We’d be here all week, you know how long those things go. Nobody ever shuts up when they talk to Jon.”

“Maybe I’m easy to talk to,” Jon protested, offended. 

“Sure, whatever. The second thing is that this traumatized child is also probably a supernaturally induced orphan, because the Bermuda Triangle ate his parents.”

Everybody stood in silent acceptance of this stupid yet tragic turn of events. 

It was Jon who broke the silence. “Actually, being orphaned at a young age isn’t that bad.”

Everybody shot him the stink eye, and Jon quailed. “Wow,” Daisy said, “that’s really fucking insensitive, dude.”

“Did you just say it’s easy to be a baby orphan?” Basira demanded. “Do you even know the definition of the word empathy?”

“You’ve said a lot of shit in your day, Jon, but this is the worst,” Melanie said. 

“So what do we do?” Basira cut in, crossing her arms. “Call the cops?”

Everybody stood in silent observance again of inflicting Stoker on Michael - or maybe Michael on Stoker. It wouldn’t end well. Also, seriously, fuck that guy. 

“You’re right,” Jon said to nobody, stroking his chin. “We can’t rely on the police force. Melanie, have you contacted your supernatural demon friend that seems to be the personification of twisting deceit?”

“Yeah, I texted her,” Melanie said. She paused a second, uncertain of how to broach this. “I’m, like, ninety percent sure this is her fault. But, like, hey! It’s Helen! Fear demons gotta fear demon, you know? I don’t want to cramp her style.”

“You have no morals,” Basira said to Melanie, which was pretty rich coming from the ringleader of the ‘Let’s gaslight this clearly mentally ill man’ brigade. 

“This job burned them out of me long ago,” Melanie said darkly. 

“I never had any morals,” Daisy volunteered, as if that helped.

“Let’s just deal with the situation as it is,” Jon said, almost soothingly. “His parents were eaten by the Bermuda Triangle. We can’t call the cops, because we hate them. I’m not taking his statement, because that’s what Elias wants me to do and we hate the bastard.”

“Also statements are boring.”

“They’re fun for me , Daisy,” Jon said. He clapped his hands. “Worst case scenario, he lives here now!”

Everybody stared at him. 

He deflated a little bit. “We have a cot,” Jon said defensively, “and a kitchenette. The floor has a bathroom with shower. One could, conceivably, live in this basement. Not that I’ve - not that I’ve tried or anything. That would be silly. Ha ha.”

“You’re a freak,” Daisy proclaimed, like a judge delivering a life sentence. “Let’s avoid that. Break, everyone.”

When they slunk back into the cow pen, it was to the sight of a calmer Michael engrossed in a video game that was once, perhaps, Centipede, but could no longer be categorized under the definition of ‘video game’. Daisy had to wrench Michael away from the sheer horrortrauma occurring on her computer screen as Basira unplugged the entire machine and shoved in their quarantine box for evil demons. Melanie could already tell that their new child was going to require a lot of babysitting.

After a quick run up to the mailroom, blatant lying to the clerk there about why they needed a giant roll of butcher paper, and the requisition of tape and markers from a secretary who quite severely did not want to know what they needed it for, they managed to settle Michael inside the cow pen with a roll of butcher paper taped to the floor and a brand new six pack of Crayola markers. They let him go wild, Daisy started filling out the requisition form for a new computer (“Reason: spooky shit”), Jon started combing through all their old statements on the Spiral and fear demons in general, Basira came back with three books on the Bermuda Triangle, Melanie recorded the entire situation for her vlogs,  and the archives finally settled back into some measure of peace. 

Melanie and Daisy were just rock-paper-scissoring to see who had to take Michael home with them - Jon was out of the question, and Basira was recalcitrant on if she actually lived with Daisy - when they heard the sound of a high, terrified screech. Everybody whirled around, eyes darting to the roll of butcher paper, but Michael was gone. He was standing in front of the door out of the Archives instead, probably intent on going out to the bathroom or stretch his legs - the same door that was now yellow and crooked, creaking open. 

“Oh my goodness! I was wondering where he went! Thank you so much for looking after the little scamp!” 

Helen, in all of her seven foot tall and fuckhandy glory, stepped out of her door, smiling delightedly. Michael blanched, scrambling backwards, and Daisy wasted no time in grabbing him by the puffy windbreaker and yanking him behind her. 

“It’s - it’s - it’s you!” Michael stammered, unabashedly hiding behind Daisy. “You’re the casino dealer, the lady with the -”

“Kiddo! Lady’s a strong word. I’m more of an experience .” Helen winked, one unholy light in an eyesocket winking in and out. The slow and panicked spiral of Michael’s own eyes, their personal whirlpool, began spinning slowly to match. A perfect match. 

“Gender goals,” he whispered. 

“Helen, hi, great to see you again, did you get my text?” Melanie stepped forward, also doing her best to block Michael from her sight. “Haha, of course you did, that’s why you’re here. Hey, quick question: what the fuck?”

But Helen just shrugged. “A girl’s got to eat, babe! You know how it is.”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” Melanie said, waving a hand. “But, seriously, an entire cruise ship? That’s just kind of overkill, don’t you think?”

“I’m actually quite proud of myself for that one,” Helen said, puffing out her chest into another dimension. “See, you have the layer of the casino gambling, then you have the element of getting lost in an infinite ocean expanse, then you have the whole Bermuda Triangle thing -”

“Why did you let him go?” Jon piped up. He must have heard the noise and come out from his office, lingering at the back of the group and craning his head. “Why didn’t you just eat him with everyone else?”

“ Eat me ?” Michael screeched. 

“Like an overripe banana,” Helen promised. “Or like Daisy on Valen -”

“You really don’t want to finish that sentence.”

“Understood, queen.” Helen saluted mischievously. “Let’s just say it was a little bit of a catch and release. That, and our dear Michael is quite hard to chew. Really, I wouldn’t be surprised if…”

She trailed off, staring into the distance. One of her claw-like fingers were twitching absently. Michael anxiously looked at his own hands, as if he was expecting them to turn into claws any second. 

Then the distant look in Helen’s eyes snapped back to reality, and she was grinning broadly again. She clapped her hands. “Change of plans! Since I enjoy existing, how would Michael feel about being my brand new intern?”

Everybody stared at her. 

“No way,” Basira said flatly, crossing her arms. “You can’t intern with a fear demon .”

“Are you implying that eating Michael would kill you?” Jon asked curiously. “Like bad sushi?”

“How much does it pay?” Daisy asked. 

“Room and board!” Helen said cheerfully. “The board is me, of course.”

Daisy looked down at Michael. “I don’t know, kid, that’s a good deal. London real estate’s a bitch.”

But Helen was only looking at Michael now, their mirror image eyes swirling in tandem - one green, one blue. Something about them seemed to resound, an identical note in both their songs, and Michael slowly drifted closer to her. They didn’t break eye contact, but Michael didn’t seem scared. Just - curious. As if he was looking at a distant star through a telescope, overcome by its beauty, and he was reaching out a hand as if he could touch it. 

Jon was wringing his hands, glancing anxiously at Basira. “Is this normal? Is this a normal thing that fear demons do? Should we stop him?”

“I’m not sure if we can,” Basira murmured, looking faintly disturbed yet fascinated. “Maybe the hallways are...I don’t know, the other half of him, now. I don’t think he can stay.”

But Daisy was already reaching out, grabbing Michael by the shoulder and spinning him around. She looked seriously at him, hands both hands clasping his shoulders, and slowly his eyes re-focused on her. 

“Go where you have to go,” Daisy said seriously, and it seemed as if Michael was truly hearing her. Melanie had been afraid that he couldn’t. “But don’t forget to come back and visit. It was good meeting you, Michael.”

From some weird, forgotten, demented impulse, Melanie pushed forward next to Daisy, and quickly hugged Michael tightly. “We’ll see you again, kid. Right?” She released him, glaring at Helen. “ Right ?”

“I’d never harm a child who could potentially harm me in the future,” Helen swore quickly. “Scout’s honor, really!”

But Michael was suddenly hugging her back, weak but real, and despite everything he was still solid. Despite everything, he still felt like flesh and bone. “Thanks for everything,” he said into Melanie’s shoulder. “I’ll see you again. It’s already happened, you know. In some time, in some place…”

“Man, are you a funky little bean when you’re half digested,” Helen said. She quickly pulled Michael back, her long claws draping over his shoulder. “Well, see you crazy girls later!” She looked down at Michael, who was staring up at her seven foot majesty with wide eyes. “Goodness, this is a strange universe. Musn’t linger. Cheerio!”

With no further ado, she pushed him through into the swirling infinite nothing, and followed quickly after him. The door shut, disappearing through the cracks in the walls, and in a second it was as if nothing had ever happened. 

The only markers of Michael’s presence were the scattered water bottles stacked on sandwich wrappers, and the long stretches of butcher paper mapping out infinite hallways that did not exist - or, maybe, to Michael, they were the only real thing at all. 

Everybody stared at the blank wall. 

“Well,” Basira said finally, “that happened. I think.”

“Let’s never talk of this again,” Jon agreed. 

“I’m getting a fucking drink,” Daisy said, throwing her jacket over her arm. “Sims, you’re with me, let’s go.”

But Melanie couldn’t stop staring at the blank wall, desperately trying to make sense of what the fuck Helen meant by universes, incapable of doing so, and knowing that the incapability was the whole point. 

“Man,” Melanie muttered, “we are never seeing that kid again, huh.”

They saw him again the next day. 

More accurately, Jon saw him, at seven am. He had gone inside the library to indulge in his early morning book smelling, when he saw Michael standing on top of the trap door. His outfit had, somehow, become even more eighties. The patterns on his windbreaker now hurt the eyes. 

Michael had stared at Jon, with large and reflective eyes. “You had a man yelling in your basement,” he said serenely. “Beatin’ and thumpin’ on this boarded up trapdoor. Sounded real old. Don’t worry. I put him someplace else.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Jon said, very tired. 

“I’ve self-actualized,” Michael added, “they/them pronouns, please.”

“Uh,” Jon said, “yay, trans rights?”

“Down with cis,” Michael said wisely. 

“Right,” Jon said. 

Somehow, they survived until December. 

It hadn’t been a guarantee. Ever since Melanie started rubbing elbows with fear demons, corrupt cops, and Daisy, her life had gotten a lot more dangerous. As usual, her daily existence at the Magnus Institute was predominantly boring busy work breaking the law, and sometimes extreme danger that left her thankful for the busy work. The only difference lately had been that the Assistants had unionized, overturned their bourgeoisie manager, and went on strike. That is, whenever Jon started complaining too loudly that none of them ever did anything they locked him in his office. 

Helen had started dropping by more frequently, bypassing their usual coffee shop appointments and occasional spa days to open a door in the Archives and immediately begin bothering Jon. Michael usually tagged along with her, looking just a little stranger each time. They were a weird kid and frequently dramatically recited their lifetime of repression and confusion over their gender identity before the Spiral helped them disregard all obligatory adherence to societal roles and how this meant that the Spiral said gay rights. Melanie still wasn’t exactly sure what the Spiral was, and she refused to think about it too hard in case she accidentally found out, so she settled on buying them a pride flag and enthusiastically validating them. She always figured it was best to make friends with eldritch fear demons, and eighteen year olds who needed a friend, and this case was both. 

Stoker texted Melanie occasionally asking for updates, which made her want to dunk her phone in bleach. Melanie randomly spilled about stupid, useless statements Jon would read, like the ones about the weird darkness cult or those weird fire capitalists. All useless, but it kept Stoker off her tail. 

Both Stoker and James. James didn’t come back, which was basically the only positive thing you could say about her. Basira had hacked into her employment file, and they had all gathered after work at the pub to comb through it. Jon hadn’t been invited. They had told him that they were going to talk about their periods, so he fucked off to go try to convince his two flatmates not to break into a Scooby Doo style haunted house (Supposedly - Melanie really didn’t want to meet his flatmates). 

“She’s a shining example, all right,” Basira had said, nursing the sugariest drink physically possible as Melanie sipped from her pint and Daisy slammed back her hard whiskey (“I’m watching my weight.”). “Dozens of awards and nominations. Winner of the 2015 award for ‘Exemplary Women in Policing’, apparently.” Everybody snorted in unison. “She’s all over the pamphlets, too. Oh, here’s her baby pictures. How adorable. Look at her little first communion dress.”

“Great,” Daisy said, “a Catholic.”

“She’s part of the International Association of Women In Police. Wow. True feminist.” Basira sighed, closing the laptop. “I can’t believe I almost wanted to do that. Talk about dodging a bullet.”

Basira backstory? The rarest currency of all? Melanie perked up, even as Daisy uninterestedly called for another whiskey. “What changed?”

But Basira just looked a little uncomfortable, creasing her napkin in firm and straight lines. “I wanted to be a Detective. Like in the telly shows, you know. Real Sherlock Holmes type. I was an adrenaline junkie who wanted to hunt down mysteries and clues and just prove to everyone how smart I am.” Her voice took on a slightly bitter edge. “Even went to all of the introductory workshops for the Police Academy. Did all of that pre-career stuff. I didn’t realize that nobody wanted to work with someone smarter than them. The sheer hostility was overwhelming. They knew I was better, smarter, more dedicated. I knew the law and procedure better than they all did. And they all hated me for it.” She shrugged, leaning back in her chair and taking a swig from her drink, pseudo-casual. “Maybe I would have stayed if I had found anybody to stay for. But..I didn’t. So I didn’t.”

“Bro,” Melanie said gently, “you posted emotional vulnerability on main, you are going to gain sympathy.”

“What the fuck are you saying.” 

“What about you, Daisy?” Melanie glanced at the other woman, who appeared to be trying as hard as he could to get as drunk as possible without success. “Why did you drop out of the Academy?”

“Got depressed.”

Melanie stared at her, dumbfounded that Daisy had actually told her. 

Daisy shifted uncomfortably. “What? You asked.”

“I...didn’t expect you to answer?”

“Then why did you ask?” Daisy crossed her arms on the table and looked away uncomfortably. “I thought it would help me protect people. I like protecting people. But...realized that it would have just been protecting myself. When you have power, you know, other people can’t hurt you. Better to hurt.” She took another sip of her whiskey, almost self-consciously. “Then I was like, wow, that’s a super fucked up thing to think, I might be depressed due to my childhood trauma, I should go get therapy. So I did. It’s great.” As Melanie silently reeled from this, Daisy eyed Basira’s laptop speculatively. “You think Stoker and James ever learned that?”

“Maybe I can be their therapist,” Melanie said speculatively. 

“Can we get Jon a therapist?” Basira asked. 

“You know,” Daisy said, “let’s put a pin in all of these ideas and come back to them.”

The important take-away from that conversation, Melanie decided, was the fact that they had to spend the next ten minutes convincing Daisy that she and Jon didn’t need couple’s therapy. Daisy didn’t seem to understand that couples therapy was for two people in a relationship, not a neurotic man who desperately needed therapy/SSRIs and his emotional support lesbian. 

Still. It wasn’t a bad idea. Melanie put a few pamphlets for Zoloft on Jon’s desk, very subtly, before spending ten minutes convincing Basira that dissolving Xanax into his tea would only cause further problems. Basira did not seem to know the definition of reasonable force, so in retrospect it was probably a good idea she hadn’t become a cop. 

Jon had started sublimating his nervous energy about death, Gertrude’s death, his death, and homicide in general into reading a lot about natural disasters. He seemed to get some satisfaction from reading out the statements, in what Melanie could only assume was a horror movie type catharsis, but as he tended to ask them to actually follow-up on the statements and, theoretically, get actual work done, they had started trying to get him to stop. Daisy’s idea of constantly stealing the tape recorders and gaslighting Jon into thinking that he had just misplaced them worked for a while - until tape recorders started appearing from nowhere. Eventually Melanie was able to work up a pretty good racket exploiting the infinite spawn tape recorder glitch in the Matrix by reselling them on eBay, but after a tense email from Elias asking for a cut of the profits they were forced to change tactics. 

Change of tactics was just annoying and distracting him to death, preventing him from getting any work done. Daisy was best at this. Through her expertise gained from sleeping in the library for three years, she managed to distract him with some tasty literature on his favorite theme: absolutely everything but arachnology. 

It worked like a charm: Jon latched onto the books like a rat with peanut butter, devouring them with frightening speed that conveniently distracted him from actual work. They all congratulated each other on weaponizing Jon’s ADHD against him, patting each other on the back about a job well done. Melanie began to plan to put the books in little cardboard tubes for next time, to prevent him from eating them too quickly. 

It was during one of those short, stressed, and sleepy days, marked only by Melanie struggling half-heartedly to put up the holiday decorations that Rosie had given them before giving up when she realized nobody in the office was Christian, that they received a visitor to the Archives.

Even worse, it was Stoker. 

He didn’t knock, text, call ahead, or warn. One minute, Melanie was sadly staring at a cheerful cardstock reindeer, and the next minute the door to the Archives had been roughly shoved open, and a disgustingly buff man was storming inside. 

Melanie froze. Basira carefully closed her laptop. Daisy slowly reached under her desk, where she had taped a giant hunting knife. 

“Why the fuck,” Stoker said furiously, “was Sasha here without me?”

Everybody stared at him blankly. 

“Who’s Sasha,” Basira panned. 

“As if you don’t know her fucking name.” Stoker scowled, stalking up to Melanie and encroaching way too far in her personal space. She carefully pushed her chair backwards, bumping up against the spare desk’s chair, but before she could blink Stoker had reached out and grabbed the back of her chair, reeling her back in and getting in her face. She clenched her seat, fighting to keep her fear from her face. 

He was wearing the large, reflective aviator glasses with the puffy blue jacket he had worn the first day, and Melanie could see herself reflected in those glasses: distorted and strange, her eyes wide and scared. She looked small.

“What the fuck did you say to her,” Stoker snarled, and Melanie winced back as she felt his hot breath on her face. 

From the corner of her eye, Melanie could see Daisy throwing her arm back for a killer punch straight to Stoker’s neck, but at the last second Basira grabbed Daisy’s arm and wrestled it back down. The last thing any of them needed was an assault charge. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Melanie said, as defiantly as she could considering the fact that her heart was jumping into her throat. Her arms were shaking - from fear or from rage, she couldn’t tell. She tightened her grip on her chair.“Get out of my face.”

“I don’t listen to fucking liars .” Stoker’s expression twisted in a scowl. “She came here behind my back with a cassette from our investigation. What did you say to her? Are you blackmailing her? I swear to god, if you’ve so much as fucking touched her -”

“She came to us!” Melanie yelled, stopping Stoker short. “She wanted to talk, we kicked her out! I don’t know what your fucking -”

“You’re a lying bitch, and I’m going to fucking prove it -”

“Get out of my fucking face!”

“Fuck you!”

“That’s enough.”

Melanie craned her head back, and Stoker looked up. Standing in the entrance to the hallway, Jon had fixed Stoker in a calm and cold gaze. His tweed jacket was off, and his tie was gone. His normally perfectly buttoned shirt was slightly askew, his perfect hair somewhat out of shape, and he looked as if he didn’t care about any of it. His face was a blank mask of rage, his eyes piercing Stoker like a butterfly on a pin. 

In that second, for the first time, Melanie was scared of Jon. 

“Step away from her,” Jon continued. 

Stoker’s face twisted in a mockery of a smile. “So the pussy finally comes out of hiding. Sick and tired of hiding behind three women?”

“Step away from her.”

“Or what?” Stoker snarled, straightening. Melanie was at eye level with his belt, now, her eyes hypnotically drawn to his taser and baton. Daisy could take him. Daisy could take him. Daisy - Daisy would get arrested if she did, and then they’d find out she was a serial killer, and then there would be nobody left to make Jon stop assigning them work, and then Jon would get all tragic, and - “What could you possibly do to me?”

Jon’s face darkened, and for just a second Melanie could have sworn that his hair tangled a little in a nonexistent breeze. “I don’t know, Detective. What are you so scared of?”

Oh, no. Melanie screwed her eyes shut, her fingers gripping painfully into where she was clenching her seat. Jon was going to -

“I’m scared of everything,” Stoker said, and Melanie choked on her spit. “Seriously, I live every day in constant fucking terror. Everything and everyone seems like a threat to me. I’m terrified of something happening to Sasha, the only person in this fucking world I still care about, and I’m terrified of the brass work finding out what I’ve been doing behind their backs. I guess it’s no surprise. I’ve been scared ever since I was a kid. My childhood wasn’t exactly happy.”

“Uh,” Daisy said, “what the fuck?”

Stoker had backed up, never taking his eyes off Jon, and Melanie felt as if she could breathe again. She scrambled out of her seat, rushing to hide behind Daisy without a single ounce of shame, and Daisy quickly covered her as they all gawked at Stoker. His eyes were strangely distant, even as they fixed on Jon without moving.

“My little brother’s name is Danny. Just eighteen months younger, but he was everything I wasn’t. Confident, fun, sociable, happy . Everybody liked him. My parents sure as fuck loved him more than me. He could get away with murder, and everyone would just pinch his little cheeks. I was always the scapegoat, the one who took all the blame. I always went along with it, of course. In our little suburban elementary school, we were the only Korean kids, you know? But everybody doted on him and made fun of me. I didn’t get it. I wanted them to like me. I loved Danny. I wanted him to love me too. It wasn’t my fault that he never did.”

“Why is he telling us this?” Basira asked, confused. 

“This is so awkward,” Daisy muttered. 

“He was the one who convinced me to cut across that construction lot after school one day. Not for any real reason. He was a thrillseeker, always pushing and pushing. I always went along with it because I couldn’t bear to tell him no, no matter how hard he would tease and bully and hit me. When we heard the screaming, he - he dared me to go. Said he’d tell Mum that I broke his calculator if I didn’t. So I crawled through that hole in the fence after him and saw - and saw -”

But Jon didn’t look like he felt awkward and weird. He looked intent, just as fixated on Stoker as Stoker was on him, and it was like they were circling in their own little universe. But he looked - he looked -

He didn’t look like Jon . 

Not the Jon that Melanie knew. Not her friend. She pushed Daisy aside, running across the room, ignoring Daisy’s shout. She skidded to a stop in front of Jon, who didn’t so much as look at her. 

“I had never seen a corpse before -”

“Jon!” Melanie yelled. She grabbed him, shaking his thin forearm. “Snap out of this! It’s really awkward!”

But Jon didn’t react, fixated completely and utterly on Stoker. And it - and it -

It made Melanie really mad . 

“Jon! You don’t want to know this! There’s no - there’s no point in knowing this!”

And Jon looked at her. 

It was like a spell had snapped. Stoker’s voice shuddered to a halt, gasping and wheezing, and Jon looked down at her as fear creeped into his features. He looked terrified, as if he had seen a ghost, or if he had seen something within himself that he didn’t like. 

“I - I’m sorry,” Jon stuttered, “I got scared, and mad, and -”

Stoker choked, and without even stopping to threaten any of them again he sprinted out of the room, door swinging behind him. But Melanie couldn’t give a shit about him - she was focused on Jon, just Jon, who looked more scared and confused than she had ever seen him.

“That was weird,” Melanie said bluntly, “so don’t do it again. Seriously, why were you just standing there when Stoker gave us his life story? Like, who gives a shit?”

“I - it seemed interesting at the time -”

Basira and Daisy had caught up to them, both looking varying degrees of worried, and Daisy quickly pulled Jon in for a surprisingly demonstrative hug. She reached up and patted his head. Jon looked very emotional about it.

“Don’t do that again,” Daisy said, “I don’t give a shit about anybody’s backstory.”

“No humanizing Stoker,” Basira said severely, and Jon nodded fervently. “Stop reading those statements, they’re bad for you.”

“Those - yes, I suppose.” Jon still looked fairly dazed, and Daisy smacked up on the back of the head until his eyes focused. “Yes, of course, you’re right. When I think about it, those statements are a little upsetting. I should find better things to occupy my time with.”

“Like actually Archiving?” Basira said archly, folding her arms.

But Jon just looked a little sheepish. “Ah, I’m afraid I don’t - actually really know how to archive things. Sorry.”

“I hate you.”

“Yes, I’m aware.” But Jon just smiled a little more broadly at her. “Drinks?”

“Obviously.”

But Basira patted his arm, which was the most she had ever touched him. 

Melanie reminded herself to install another lock in the Archive door. That would probably fix their problems. Maybe Jon finally cutting it out with the stupid, boring statements might help, but - no, definitely the lock would fix things. 

No more visitors to the Archives. Society had progressed past the need - 

“Ah, Ms. King.”

Melanie groaned and turned around.

Nine am. Her bus had been early. She hadn’t looked at her watch. Now, Melanie was trapped in her worst nightmare - a hallway on the ground floor of the Magnus Institute, leading directly to the steps that descended into the basement, at nine am, the exact time that a certain someone arrived at work and walked down this hallway to climb the steps to his office. 

Melanie organized her entire schedule around avoiding him. She hated being in the same room as him. She didn’t like being out of the Archives in general, really - the Institute gave her the creeps, and everyone was always staring at her. The least time spent above ground the better, that was her motto. And besides, it made it easier to avoid -

“Hey, Mr. Bouchard,” Melanie gritted out, from clenched teeth. “How’s tricks?”

“Going quite well, thank you.” Elias had stopped in the hallway, smiling pleasantly at her, and the suffocating rules of social convention dictated that Melanie stop and smile too. Her smile was probably closer to a grimace, but - well, whatever. “Are you having a good morning?”

“Oh, just great. Very...cloudy outside.” Melanie sidestepped him. “Well, gotta dash.”

“Actually, I was hoping to speak with you.” Elias effortlessly sidestepped her back, still standing directly in front of her. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a while, but it’s been difficult reaching your email and whenever I try to enter the Archives the door seems to stick. You’re a difficult woman to get a hold of.”

“Yeah, haha! Weird!”

“Indeed!”

They both laughed. 

“No, but seriously, come talk to me in my office or you’re fired.”

Melanie went. 

Elias Bouchard was a short, evil little man, who was about Melanie’s unimpressive 160cm and clearly compensating for it. Basira and Melanie had once spent a solid week trying to figure out if he wore lifts. He had grey, short-cropped hair, a grey thick overcoat, a grey suit, grey slacks, grey patent leather shoes, and a grey tie with a - you guessed it - tie clip with the evil eye on it. He also had a bracelet made entirely out of evil eyes. The entire effect made him seem somewhat washed out, like a photograph left too long in the sun. Melanie couldn’t help but wonder why he needed so much protection against evil spirits. 

He also constantly smelled of weed, which ruined the whole boring asshole manager look he was going for. The only thing pointed about him were his eyes - a dark brown, a similar color to Jon’s, which never quite focused on you. 

Melanie dejectedly followed him up to his office, making agonizingly pointless small talk the entire time and waving hello to Rosie. Elias held the door open for her as they walked into his office - a big but boring thing, with four blank walls. A couch was pushed up against one wall, with a coffee service and a small table, but otherwise the most notable thing was his large desk gratuitous quantity of vintage Superman comic covers. Melanie sat down warily in his uncomfortable visitor’s chair as Elias collapsed into his own chair. 

She couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t unlocked the office door, and his briefcase was already on the ground. Why had he been just off the lobby if he just got there? Bathroom? There was a bathroom on this floor. There had to be a good reason that wasn’t ‘my boss was totally stalking me’. But it was all Melanie could think of.

Which was ridiculous. Ha ha.

Maybe she could get Daisy to kill him. She’d do it. 

“I understand that there was some unpleasantness with Detective Stoker yesterday,” Elias said, relaxing in his chair. 

Melanie bristled. “He attacked us! Can’t you file a complaint?”

“Sure, I’ll get right on that,” Elias lied. “Did you get any good blackmail on him?”

Melanie stared at him. He stared back, not blinking. 

Finally, Melanie said, “I mean, I set up a digital camera for my vlogs, so I recorded the entire thing. It started fuzzing out a little bit after Jon...uh, talked him down, but…”

“Excellent! Send the footage to me, I’ve been needing a bit more dirt on Stoker.” Elias kicked his feet up on the desk, leaning back in his chair. “Useful to know that Constable James is his weak point.”

Strangely, Melanie found a kindred spirit in her boss. “Basira’s found a lot of irregularities and citations in his file,” Melanie volunteered. “He was the arresting officer in a lot of cases that got dismissed due to misuse of police force.”

“Great work. Slip those under my door in a flash drive by tomorrow.”

“Uh. Sure.” Melanie shifted awkwardly in her seat. “So, is that everything, or -”

“I found Jon’s behavior during that alcertation quite interesting, didn't you?” Elias said, suddenly and randomly. He swiveled a little in his chair, keeping his brown eyes fixed at some point just above her left shoulder. “It’s strange. How he got Stoker to divulge his life story. How he had him...do the kids say, uh…” He snapped his fingers. “Spill the tea!”

“Right,” Melanie said slowly. “Well. I’m not sure. I think the statements stress him out? He gets weird when he’s stressed out. He, uh, stops showering, and -”

“Yes, yes, he’s a freak,” Elias said, waving her away. “Your team solidarity is heartwarming. But you’re coddling him! He needs a good...you know, kick in the pants.” Elias’ eyes fixed on her, for the first time in the conversation, and she felt shot through. “The statements are good for him. Even if they make him uncomfortable. What about the next time Stoker comes around? How will he protect you then?”

“I can protect myself,” Melanie said, feeling strongly as if she and Elias were having two entirely different conversations. “When you’re a team you protect each other. Besides, what’s so important about the statements? Who cares?” Then Melanie remembered that the statements were, technically, her job. “Uh, I mean -”

“Imagine something, Ms. King.” Elias cut her off abruptly, eyes large and unblinking, and Melanie shut up. “Imagine you were...oh, let’s say promoted. Or hired, whatever you like. Imagine you were hired for a job you weren’t strictly qualified for. You made a few mistakes, or some mistakes made you, and suddenly everybody around you seems to think you’re something you’re not. But you know how to make it through that imposter syndrome, even when you really are an imposter. You smile, copy everyone else, and act like you belong. That’s half of success, isn’t it?”

Daisy flashed through her mind, falsified CV and all. Jon - who didn’t really know how to archive, who wasn’t qualified for his job at all. Basira, Melanie - scattered and placed in a position so ill-suited for themselves that they never did any work at all. 

“So you do your job. You’re just trying to fit in. You push that this way, you nudge this that way. Things fall into place. And everyone tells you what a great job you’re doing.” Okay, this was getting less relatable. But Elias just looked thoughtful, swiveling slightly in his chair, Superman soaring behind him. “Although you aren’t really sure why you’re doing it. Mostly it just seems as if you’re doing it because that’s what everyone around you expects you to be doing. Nobody’s making you do anything, you just - feel obligated. What would you do then, Ms. King?”

Melanie blinked at him. Cautiously, she said, “I think, if that was my situation...I’d do whatever I wanted, you know? I mean. Life’s short.”

Elias just stared at her, unblinkingly, arrestingly, terrifyingly. 

“Yes,” he said finally, “you’re right. Life’s short. I’m not exactly that kid at Oxford anymore. There’s no time to waste.” He laughed sharply, strangely, more of a hoarse wheeze than a real laugh. “Best get back to work, Ms. King. I’d hate to keep you.”

Melanie escaped with the barest presumption at pleasantry, and Elias waved her off as she fled back to her safe haven as quickly as possible.

The last thing she saw before she closed the door was the winking of Elias’ evil eye bracelet in the reflected sunlight - guarding against spirits that, perhaps, wanted more from him than he was willing to give. 

That was it, Melanie promised herself, as she burst into the cow pen and tossed her satchel down. No more talking to strangers. No more mysterious bosses who always smelled like weed. No more extremely terrifying pigs who somehow terrified Jon into hypnotizing them. No more hackers who had ridiculous will-they-or-won’t-theys with, again, terrifying pigs. No more statements. No more statement givers. Society had progressed past the need for -

“Uh, hello?”

Melanie screamed in rage. 

“I can come back!”

But when Melanie jumped up and turned around, ready to throttle whoever dared ask her to do her job, all she saw as a familiar figure standing in the doorway. He seemed anxious, wringing his hands together and frowning slightly. Small, stout, and altogether extremely pleasant looking, he was somebody who Melanie had never seen in person but who was nevertheless extremely recognizable. 

“ Martin Blackwood ?” Melanie sputtered. “What are you doing here?”

Basira looked up from her book, rolled her eyes, and went back to reading. Daisy looked up from her nap, saw who it was, narrowed her eyes, and growled at him. Martin smiled politely at her. Okay, so Melanie was on her own. That’s fine. 

Martin Blackwood, producer and host of the popular YouTube cooking show Tea and Jumpers , was what some kids might call an ‘internet friend’ of Melanie’s. They were Twitter mutuals and had an active and ongoing series of DMs about homophobia. He was her vlog’s number one fan, and Melanie admired his extremely deft knifework. Real ASMR type stuff. Martin’s channel specialized in traditional Chinese recipes (as well as traditional Korean, Japanese, and Thai recipes, which he all claimed were from his grandmother), his soft and gentle voice, and general coziness. It would have been twee if it wasn’t - well, it was twee, but sometimes you just wanted something relaxing. 

But Martin just smiled awkwardly, waving hello as he stepped inside. “It’s great to see you in person, Melanie! I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve run into you. I came by a few months back to give a statement, and I’ve been hanging out around the library, but I guess you were out sick -”

“Why are you in my house,” Melanie said flatly. 

Martin’s eyebrows raised slightly, but his pleasant smile didn’t falter. “Last time I checked, this was a workplace. And I’m here to give a statement, actually. Is Jon around?”

Okay. No. No. They were not doing this. Nope. Melanie stalked towards the door, very politely grabbing Martin’s shoulder and pushing him back out. Martin let her push him out, somewhat shocked, as Melanie physically bullied him out of the archives. 

“No more statements,” Melanie snarled, ignoring Martin’s wounded look. “No more. None! We’re on an embargo. They’re bad for Jon.”

“How are they -”

“They hurt his tummy.” Melanie solidly fixed Martin outside the Archives in the hallway, crossing her arms. “Be honest. Do you actually have a statement?”

“If I say I don’t will you let me in?” Martin asked hopefully. 

“If you say you don’t I’ll assume you’re just here to talk to my boss that you are incredibly thirsty for.”

Martin’s silence was incriminating. 

Maybe he caught her expression, because Martin quickly added, “Look, I’m not going to say that’s a small -”

“Small -”

“Gigantic part of this, but I do legitimately have a statement! Look, I have this whole scalpel wound and everything -”

“Martin?” 

Melanie glanced backwards, and she saw Jon hovering in the doorway. His eyes were wide, and it was like he wasn’t seeing Melanie at all - he was solidly fixed on Martin, mouth hanging slightly open, and when Melanie glanced back at Martin she saw that he had flushed a deep beet red. 

It was only then that Melanie realized something terrible, something so deeply offensive she almost rejected it. But it was true, no matter how little Melanie wanted it to be. 

They were going to have to give Martin the shovel talk. 

“Jon!” Martin squeaked, still flushed. “I thought I’d drop by and, uh -” At Melanie’s poisonous glare, he quickly tripped over his sentence, “ - take you to lunch?”

Judging from the mortified look on his face, Martin hadn’t entirely thought that sentence through. Jon’s mouth dropped in shock for a second, but then his face quickly lit up. “Yes! Yes, that sounds lovely, absolutely -” He glanced at Melanie, who was still glaring. “Uh, if I’m...allowed?”

Melanie huffed. “Fine.” She jabbed a finger in his chest. “Absolutely no shop talk. Ask him about knives, he loves that topic.”

But Jon just brightened, looking back at an embarrassed Martin. “I love talking about obscure topics! Do you have a collection, Martin?”

“Y - yeah! I’m a bit of a knife enthusiast, haha.” Martin demonstratively pulled out a long black knife from what appeared to be a hidden holder in his caulderoys. “This is my KA-BAR Full Size US Marine Corps Fighting Knife! Isn’t it pretty?”

“It’s gorgeous! Have you ever used it?”

“Well, funny story about that -”

Melanie sighed, and left them to it. Her job here was done. 

The Archives were quiet - quieter, without Jon. But they were peaceful, and maybe more importantly they were hers. No matter what weird shit was happening that day, or weird superpowers Jon was pulling from his hat, they could handle it. 

She picked up her camcorder, flicking the on switch and aiming it directly at an unamused Basira. “Another day, another dollar at the Archives! We have a special guest star from a neighboring show, so stay tuned to see him come back and ask my boss to marry him! Basira, what’s your thoughts on our special guest?”

“Well,” Basira said, not appreciating the interruption to her reading, “he’s just as thirsty as the last time I saw him.”

“He’s a nice guy,” Melanie said diplomatically. “He’ll find out Jon’s unfuckable eventually.”

But Daisy just growled deep in her throat, eyes narrowed and fixed on the closed door where they could hear faint strains of desperate sounding laughter from both ends. “That man is a twisted fucking psychopath and nobody fucking believes me.”

Everybody stared at her.

“Well,” Melanie said finally, for the benefit of her audience, “that’s all for right now, folks! Stay safe, and stay tuned!”

She flicked the camcorder off, and watched the screen go dark.