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Jon aches. He barely makes it up the stairs to his flat, every muscle screaming as the copious amounts of pain medicine he’d been given by the EMTs begins to truly wear off. The process of taking everyone’s statements, hearing about the worms again and again and again, had been agonizing, but he’d grit his teeth and pushed through it because it was important to get it all on tape. He couldn’t let anything fall through the cracks, couldn’t let anything get lost—couldn’t let himself get lost. Forgotten.
Martin had looked at him with cloying concern and said, “Are you sure you’re okay, Jon?” after the tape had clicked off and Jon had become, once again, quite aware of the fact that his skin was peppered with holes.
He had dozens. Gertrude Robinson had three. And he wasn’t sure which scared him more.
“I’m fine,” he’d snapped, and he hadn’t been coherent enough to feel bad about it. “Please, just- just leave, Martin.”
And for once, Martin had listened. Just given him a quiet, If you need anything, please call, before leaving Jon alone in his office.
Alone, with the musty scent of worms and that same oppressive feeling of being watched.
Fear and anxiety had driven Jon out of the archives more quickly than he thought he was capable of, swiping statements and tapes into his satchel at random and trying desperately to escape the smell that made his skin itch and crawl until he was blocks from the Institute, his free hand clenching and unclenching reflexively as he desperately tried not to itch the throbbing wounds on his arms and face.
He’d intended to take the tube. He made it halfway there before the pain in his leg became too much to walk, even with his new cane, and he reluctantly called a cab.
The driver said nothing at his bandaged face and shaking hands. Which was something, at least.
The moment Jon finally, finally makes it into his flat, his stomach twists sharply in time with the click of his front door locking, and he barely makes it to the bathroom before he’s retching, the cloying taste of earth and salt on his tongue as his body desperately tries to rid itself of something it no longer has inside it. His hands grasp the edge of the toilet with white knuckles and he sees red blossom against the bandages wrapped around his hands, wounds reopening from the pressure of his grip. It sends agony, sharp and piercing, through his hands and up his arms, and he can’t help the whimper that slips free from his lips.
He doesn’t move for a very, very long while.
At some point, his hands find his satchel—strewn across the floor of the bathroom, still halfway tangled around his shoulders—and he withdraws the opioid pain medication he’d been given. It takes him five tries to get a solid enough grip on the plastic lid to unscrew the bottle, and he doesn’t think, just takes three pills dry. The scrape of the pills against the rubbed-raw flesh of his throat barely registers against the hazy red backdrop of pain that’s turned his vision blurry. He rests his head against the cool tile floor and tries to ignore the way that it puts pressure on the bandage that sits just above his temple. Or the one just shy of his left eye.
If he had opened his mouth to scream, would they have burrowed into his tongue too, into his gums, into the softness of his throat?
Jon closes his eyes tight and tries very hard to think of nothing at all.
Eventually, the opioids dull his pain enough that he can stand without shaking, can make his way to the kitchen and drink a glass of water without spilling it, though his fingers still struggle to maintain their grip, too much muscle having been consumed and left hollow. His flat is almost entirely devoid of food, only a few canned goods and several packages of biscuits being something one could consider ‘edible.’
He forces a biscuit past his lips and is just thankful that he’s able to keep it down.
Days turn into nights turn into days turn into nights, and now Jon’s standing in front of his bathroom mirror, staring into brown eyes framed with dark bags that speak of many sleepless nights spent trying and failing to find a position that didn’t place pressure on a bandage, that didn’t reopen a wound. The plasters on his face are stained with dried blood, curling around the edges, and he considers the new, pristine white bandages sitting on the counter in front of him.
Every two to three days, they’d said as they pressed bandages and pain killers and discharge papers into his hands, either not seeing the glassy look to his eyes that spoke of a mind a million miles away or just not caring. Get someone to help you if you can. Wash your hands to avoid infection. Be careful to avoid re-opening wounds, as this will delay healing.
They’d said a lot of things, he thinks. None of them had been about whether or not Jane Prentiss was actually dead, or who killed Gertrude Robinson, or if he was going to be next. None of them were important.
But his arms are beginning to itch, his hands going to them absently as he lies in bed and tries to poke through the statements he’d brought home—all meaningless drivel, none of them important, none of them real, he’d need to go into the Institute soon and pick out some better ones—and so he needs to do this.
Rationally, he knows he’s just healing. That this is part of the process, the itching, and that scratching will only make it worse, more prone to scarring. But he can’t shake the feeling that the worms are still in him, that the ECDC missed some, that Jane Prentiss is still alive and so the worms are too and he’s becoming just like her, he’s becoming a monster just like her—
His hands find a plaster on his cheek, a large one stained in several places, and he pulls it away too-quickly.
There are holes in his cheek. He knows this, of course, of course he knows this, but knowing that your body is riddled with holes and actually seeing them are two different things entirely. There are holes in his cheek, red, aching holes, and even though they’re closed over with scabs and halfway to healing by now, he can’t stop looking at them and seeing the worms burrowing into his skin, like he’d seen for a long, agonizing moment before the carbon dioxide fire suppression system had kicked in and his brain had finally given him the small mercy of unconsciousness. His fingers are at his cheek before he can stop them, his nails finding the edges of the scabs and scratching, like he can somehow remove the memory if he just scrubs hard enough at his skin.
All he gets instead are red-tipped fingers and a new, visceral wave of nausea at the sight of the newly-opened sores. He runs his hands under the tap with a numb efficiency before affixing a new plaster over the wound, feeling the knot in his stomach loosen slightly as the holes are once again hidden.
Red colors the bandage immediately, a persistent reminder of what lies underneath, and Jon has to look away from the mirror.
It takes him several hours to get through the rest of the bandages. He manages to keep himself from scratching all but a few. One on the inside of his wrist, before he can stop himself; another on the side of his hip, deeper than the others, the itch coming from within his bone and nearly consuming him with the need to rid himself of it. The one on his leg, messy from the corkscrew and with lasting damage that has him leaning on his newly acquired cane when he walks. It places an unfortunate amount of pressure on the hole that lies in the center of his right hand, nearly emerging through to the other side. That one—the one on his leg—itches the most, though of all the wounds now covered by bandages, that’s the one he’s most certain is simply a hole, devoid of anything that may be lurking beneath.
Thoughts of corkscrews and tapes and a strong arm around his shoulders, guiding him through the dark, flash behind his eyes like stop-motion pictures. He closes his eyes and tries to lose himself in them, to remember what it felt like to not know.
To not know that one of the people he’s spent months working with and getting tea from and eating cake and wine and ice cream with is a murderer. And that he’s probably next.
When Jon opens his eyes again, there’s only him, staring back at himself in the mirror. He barely recognizes himself beneath all of the bandages and the bags under his eyes and the exhaustion that pulls every part of him down until he’s hunched in on himself, the only thing keeping him up being his palms where they’re placed flat against the countertop.
They’re going to scar, he thinks numbly. A living reminder of the way the worms felt as they squirmed beneath his skin. A constant mark of terror.
He considers, for a moment, calling Tim. Tim would understand. Tim had been there. They could sit on Tim’s couch and watch some horrible movie that Tim had picked because Jon, you chose the movie last time, don’t you remember? and eat greasy pizza that always upset Jon’s stomach if he had more than a few slices.
Someone killed Gertrude Robinson.
Or Sasha, Jon thinks. Sasha had always been reliable; he could trust Sasha to get the job done, even when he didn’t quite understand how to get it done himself. Sasha could sit him down and they could talk and he could finally unravel the dark, twisted knot of anxiety and fear that’s been building in his stomach since he woke up with half his body encased in bandages. Sasha could help him.
Gertrude Robinson was shot, three times in the chest, in the tunnels beneath the Institute.
Even Martin. Martin, who brings Jon tea even though Jon doesn’t ask for it and who wields a corkscrew more adeptly than he wields his university degree. Martin, who apologizes for such little, insignificant things but who still gets that sharp, demanding tone to his voice when he’s scared or frustrated or both. Martin, who offered to help Jon, who asked if he was okay despite Jon’s increasingly sharp retorts as the painkillers worked their way out of his system.
Martin, who found Gertrude Robinson’s body in the tunnels, surrounded by tapes and with three metal bullets buried in her chest, put there by someone in the Institute.
Jon turns away from the mirror, retrieves his cane, and leaves the bathroom. He doesn’t look in the mirror for the rest of his required bed rest, only catching his reflection once as he’s preparing to return to the Institute, his suit jacket too-tight against the healing wounds on his arms.
His face is still peppered with bandages, hair pulled back to reveal another sitting just behind his ear, and he looks tired. So, so tired.
He looks away. The click of the front door closing behind him as he leaves his flat sounds identical to the safety of a gun, clicking off.