Chapter Text

In a hospital room, a tape recorder clicks on. Its fellows lie scattered around the single bed, split open like carcasses, their magnetic strips spilling out like shiny black guts. Spiders swarm in and over the bed, threading the tape around the form lying in it layer after layer, covering every inch of hair and skin and scar.

The steps that approach outside the door make the spiders scatter out of existence. The door swings open to Georgie and, right behind her, Basira.

"Yeah, he just—!"

Both women pause at the sight of what awaits in Jon's bed.

"What the hell."

"...Oh."

" That's what he did?"

"No, of course— Jon wasn't all wrapped up in tape when I left, it was just the recorder."

"Which one?"

"I don't know! The only one that's not cracked open?" Georgie shakes her head. "Ugh, it doesn't matter anymore."

She tries to approach, but Basira holds her arm.

"Don't get close."

"What? Why not?"

"Seriously? Some guy comes by who's creepy enough for you to come talk to me—"

"Melanie."

"—and suddenly Jon's getting cocooned in tape? Something's going on."

"So? Shouldn't we help him?"

Both look at the long lump on the bed. Shiny black surrounds a vaguely humanoid shape. Basira's just opening her mouth to speak when they notice the faint static ringing out of the tape recorder, slowly getting louder.

"Get behind me!"

Basira readies her pistol.

The static continues to build in intensity, higher and higher. The tape screeches in protest at the speed it must be spooling at. The cocoon shifts. It all crescendos into an ear-splitting mess as it splits open with a noise like tearing skin and plastic.

Something rises from it, wet and glistening. The static fades. Four long, spindly, uncoordinated arms grope around at random. Wings unfold from the back, vibrating as globs of fluid slough off them. The head shakes, unfurling two long, fuzzy antennae above large dark eyes, lidless and multifaceted; no mouth is discernible. The whole form is black, furred most thickly around the neck and chest, chitinous on the limbs, wings soft like velvet. Each bears a large eye spot, bright green, flanked by various patterns in darker shades.

"No, wait!"

The head turns toward Basira, finger on the trigger, and Georgie, hands on the other's arm as the only thing holding back a gunshot.

"Jon?" Georgie calls.

The creature stares. Its insectile face is unmoving, but the way its hands curl together seems... Hesitant? Contrite? It nods, just once, then carefully extends one shaking arm to point a clawed finger at Basira's bag.

"What?" Georgie looks between it and Basira. "What is it?"

"It wants the statement."

"What?"

"In my bag."

The moth nods again, despite the hard venom in Basira's voice. She hasn't taken her eyes off it since it emerged from its cocoon, and the gun is still pointed at its heart (assuming it has one). Georgie is at a loss.

"I— Okay, hold on. Jon, are you okay? What's going on?"

It hesitates. Its mouth becomes visible when it unfolds, like a grasshopper's or a mantis' complicated mandibles. A clicking, clattering noise comes out, completely unlike human speech, and then it points at Basira's bag again and makes a grabbing motion. Its other hands clutch whatever's left of the cocoon, seemingly desperate.

"You can't talk?" 

It shakes its head 'no'.

"And you need the statement?"

It nods.

"Okay. Basira, can I—?"

"You're not getting close to it."

"Wh— Fine, whatever. Can I at least grab the bloody statement?"

"...Sure."

Basira stands unmoving, forcing Georgie to dig into her bag while it hangs from her shoulder. The moth on the hospital bed shifts restlessly, wings twitching, legs trying to pull out from the torn cocoon. Eventually, she manages to free a plain manila folder from the bag, which comes out slightly rumpled. She gives Basira an uneasy glance.

"Uh, here you go?"

For lack of other alternatives, she bends down and tosses the folder across the floor. The moth doesn't climb so much as it falls out of bed in its scramble to grab it. Doing so reveals a large insect abdomen, almost as long as its torso, trailing after it like a tail. The moth's movements are weak, shaky, but it tears open the folder in its desperation. It crumples the statement pages in its grip, if only for a moment, before its multi-part jaw unfurls and clamps down on them.

A trance seems to fall on it. The multifaceted eyes begin to flicker like dim TV static. The fur around the neck and chest quickly regains its shine, which shows it to not be fur at all, but an infinite spool of magnetic tape, looped and layered endlessly over itself, which somehow begins to flow with a faint whirr. The wings vibrate very slightly. The tail abdomen twitches. For several minutes, the moth slowly consumes the statement, each piece of yellowed paper being torn and pulped between its grinding mandibles.

Basira never releases the gun, but she does relax, if only because holding tension for that long is uncomfortable.

"Goddammit. Why'd you even give it that?"

"You told me to!"

"No, I just said there was a statement in my bag."

"And you didn't stop me."

She shakes her head. She looks back at the moth on the floor. After a moment, she steps closer.

"Georgie, don't."

"Basira, it's fine."

She moves slowly, carefully, but the moth never reacts to her.

"Jon? Can you hear me?"

She crouches down next to it. She even reaches out and lays a hand on one of its chitinous arms, to no effect; there are faint bumps under her fingers, ghosts of the scars Jon carried (carries?). Georgie sighs.

"Oh Jon. What have you gotten yourself into?"

The moth simply eats. Georgie goes back to Basira's side.

"Now are you convinced?"

"Of what? That he's gone? Because no, I'm not. You should at least give him a chance to explain himself."

"Hmph."

They wait and watch. The moth eats. The paper vanishes into its maw. When it's too short to hold, only its mandibles keep it in place as it swings from side to side with the chewing motion. Its eyes never stop flickering. Its mane of tape never stops whirring. Faintly, under the constant tick of the clock, they can just about hear a hint of what used to be Jon's voice, too quiet to make out any words.

Eventually, the pages are consumed. The moth lingers in the same position for a few seconds longer. Its abdomen spasms a couple times. Its eyes go dark. Its wings come to a standstill. On each one, a random dark green shape changes color, shifting to a pale yellow. Then, suddenly, wind rushes through the room as the wings buzz violently, but briefly, and when they stop those very same pages that were just eaten flutter to the ground, apparently unharmed. The moth calmly gathers each one, taps them on the floor to tidy them, and slips them into the partly-torn manila folder.

Its hands are no longer shaking. One of them holds the folder. The others grip the bed when it pulls itself to its feet; Basira's gun follows it up. It's the same height as Jon, but the mass has been radically reorganized, so with the thin, spindly limbs and the foot-long antennae, the moth looks much taller than it really is.

Its head turns to them. It's impossible to tell where exactly those lidless eyes are staring, but the two women somehow feel its focus on them, like the faintest tickle in the back of their skulls. For Basira, at least, this is nothing new.

"Start talking. Is Jon still in there?"

The moth chitters incomprehensibly. Its various mouthparts flex and bend, like shaking out one's limb after it's fallen asleep. It nods instead, but its gaze moves away. One of its hands feels around its mandibles while it scans the room, as though a solution might suddenly materialize out of the walls.

"Basira, he can't talk."

"Yeah, I'm getting that."

The moth looks back at them. Two of its hands fidget with each other. They're all contemplating the same problem and, apparently, at a loss for what to do given Basira's insistence on avoiding danger.

Its wings twitch as its eyes flicker with static again. Its head raises slightly, apparently with sudden realization, and then its mouth moves around something like a sigh. Gently, it sets the folder down on the bed and turns to face them fully. Basira starts to speak, but she's swiftly cut off when its wings flare out and those four false eyes brand themselves into her and Georgie's minds like a stab to the forehead. They both flinch back.

By the time Basira's able to aim again, the moth's hands are moving almost in a blur, and somehow their meaning registers a fraction of a second before both of them realize how strange that is. It's sign language. Neither of them knew it mere moments before, and yet the moth's movement is somehow being perfectly translated into meaning in the parts of their brains throbbing with pain.

[Don't shoot, don't shoot, don't shoot,] the moth signs, over and over, with all four hands.

It's enough of a shock that Basira lowers her gun, if only a little. Georgie, still squinting through the slowly-fading headache, steps forward.

"Jon, I... What— What did you do?"

The moth hesitates. [I gave you knowledge. I'm sorry, I had to do it all at once, it— The eyes, you need to look at me for it to work. I couldn't tell you not to look away until it was done.]

"What are you talking about?"

The moth gestures vaguely in frustration. [More time means less pain. Less concentrated. It's—]

"Jon. Jon, slow down. You're saying that, what, you can just drop knowledge into people's brains now?"

[Through eye contact, yes.]

"And it hurts?"

He looks away, but nods. [Yes. Always. It can hurt less if I do it slowly, but BSL is a lot of knowledge, and I needed you to have it so we can communicate. I'm sorry.]

"I-it's fine, I think. Ugh." She rubs her temple. "How did you even know how to do this? I didn't know you'd learned sign language."

Jon's lower hands fidget uneasily. [I haven't. It just... came to me. I just knew.]

"...Right. So, you're a weird moth thing now. You can force people to know things. And you can just know whatever you want?"

He hesitates, but nods. [I think so. Sort of.]

"Was it something that guy did? All... this?" She gestures broadly at him.

[No, it— Not exactly. I did it. I was stuck, I had a choice to make. He just helped me realize it.]

"What choice?"

Jon looks down at himself. [This. Or death.]

Georgie sighs heavily. "Okay."

[What?]

"Nothing, it's just..."

Georgie looks him up and down without fear (obviously), but full of... Pity? And resignation.

"I was still hoping you'd get a second chance, Jon, but— This isn't it. You can't turn back. So, I can't be here anymore."

His hands go still.

"Take care of yourself."

Georgie leaves. Jon chitters after her, even reaches out and steps forward, but the door shuts before he could ever hope to reach it. And of course, Basira is still there with her gun at the ready, even if it's not directly pointed at him at the moment. He sighs and tilts his head like he's trying to roll his eyes.

[What about you? Still wanting to shoot me?]

"I don't know. Are you going to make me?"

He huffs, almost petulant, but then he seems to deflate slightly before shaking his head 'no'.

"Oh, really? Excuse me if I don't entirely believe you. You've been in a coma for six months, Jon."

[What? Wait, what about Tim? Is he...?]

She draws a line across her throat.

His hands drop.

"Daisy too."

[I'm sorry.]

"Don't you dare say that! You're the only one who makes it out, you sit here for months, dead to the world while we're dealing with monsters at every turn, and now you're one of them. You don't get to be sorry."

He shrinks back. [It's still me—]

"You're a giant moth, Jon. Just like Georgie's death tree guy or whatever. You literally ate a statement. You're a monster. And I'm going to treat you accordingly."

He curls his hands together. His antennae twitch. [But you're not going to kill me?]

"You just came back to life. I'm not about to try my chances."

She stows the gun. Both of them look at the hospital bed. What remains of the cocoon has become dry and shrunken, condensed into a strange sort of rubbery, matte black material. The silence lingers, until he clicks his mandibles to get her attention. When he raises his hands to sign, however, she shakes her head.

"I'll catch you up on the way to the Archive. Which we're going to figure out now."

[No need. Only those who were touched by the Powers can see me like this. Just call the nurses.]

"What, you'll just make them know that you're fine?"

[Essentially.]

She sighs in disgust. "Fine. And that?" She nods at the dried husk on the bed.

His mandibles click in thought. He walks to it, with Basira right behind him. He hands her the statement, then grabs the dried husk. After some futile tugging, he simply rolls it up into as tight a bundle as he can, then gestures at Basira's bag. It takes some work, but they just about make it fit.

"Great. I'll go get the nurses. Try not to suck out their brains."

Jon signs in protest, but Basira leaves before seeing any of it. He lets out a frustrated huff instead, then sits on the mattress. His tail/abdomen curls out of the way by reflex, as though he's had it his whole life. He looks at it. Then at his hands, all four of them; the upper right palm is still faintly marred by a scar. Finally, his focus lands on the tape recorder next to his bed, still gently spooling away. His antennae twitch.

The recorder clicks off.

Chapter Text

The Archives feel empty.

They really shouldn't. There's actually more furniture to navigate around. The assistant desks have all been shoved to one side to make room for a handful of cots, none of which are tidy. There are cheap plastic drawers next to each for clothes. When he first sees them, Jon wonders briefly how Basira and the others are doing the washing, but it comes to him a minute or two later when he's busy at his own desk; they gather it all every few weeks and go out together to get it done.

It doesn't really matter. He waves that particular nugget of knowledge aside. He's already wrist-deep in drawers that used to be full of office supplies, papers, tapes, everything that was his, but now there's only dust and cobwebs. He brushes the latter away in annoyance, but the bulk of his attention is already elsewhere.

He needs to write something. He needs to teach BSL to Melanie (and hopefully Martin as well), but he'll need to explain it first. So, writing. Except all his pens are gone. His mandibles click in frustration. He'll just have to borrow from Basira until he can—

What was that? A noise in the... break room?

Curiosity draws him to it, out the door and down the corridor. The banging and clattering continues, all the way up to when he pokes his head into the open doorway.

There's a new electric stove on the counter. Plastic containers stacked here and there. Dishes in the sink.

And Melanie, slamming a drawer shut with a large knife in hand. When her eyes find him, they're full of nothing but the purest hatred.

"YOU! This is all your fault!"

She runs at him. She raises the knife like a guillotine. He scrambles backward, his back hits the wall, his hands try aborted signs as the knife flashes in the light, and then his wings snap open.

Melanie's bared teeth part around a choked yelp. The knife embeds into the wall, inches from his head. Blood drips from her nose, so close it nearly lands on his mane of magnetic tape. She puts a hand under her nose by reflex, and he takes the momentary stun to slip out from between her and the wall and back away down the corridor, though he's reluctant to move too far. He watches Melanie instead, breath hissing through clenched teeth, back of her hand slathered in red.

Her hateful eyes find him again, though now with added pain. Her free hand lowers, revealing the blood now smeared across her mouth and chin.

[It's okay, it's me!]

He hurries to sign, but she's glaring at his face. If she sees it, she doesn't show it. Her only response is to yank the knife out of the wall.

After another second's worth of futile signing, she lets out a wordless howl and charges. He backpedals, signing frantically, but far too slowly. The knife stabs right through his forearm and he trills in agony, barely able to keep himself from falling back by dragging his claws across the wall. She grabs a fistful of his mane, she pulls the knife out of him with a spray of black to raise it again, and suddenly falling becomes his only option.

He throws himself back. The magnetic tape tears in her grip. The knife misses him by a breath, and as he plants two hands on the ground and pivots on them into a run, he kicks back and somehow manages to hit her elbow, diverting the knife just enough to give him room to escape.

"Get back here!"

Jon runs, faster than he's ever been capable of. He dives into document storage and slams the door behind him, cradling the injured arm into his mane, trying desperately to ignore the impossible pain throbbing in it, hoping against all hope he's not leaving a trail.

She kicks the door open with such violence it might actually have come off its hinges. He hides between the shelves, covering his mouth, listening to Melanie's heavy, ragged breaths. She seems to scan the immediate area around the door, but she doesn't actually come into the room. Instead, she huffs in frustration.

"Fine! Go ahead and hide in your precious little archive! But next time I see you, I swear I'm cutting those bloody eyes out of your skull! I told Basira not to bring you back here, but does she listen?! No! So now I have to take care of you myself! I couldn't kill that— that bastard Elias, but I'm going to make damn sure you're sliced into pieces before you can shove any more rubbish into my head, you hear me?!"

He obviously doesn't reply.

The door slams shut again. Footsteps stomp away down the hall.

Jon crumples backward, into a filing cabinet that nearly topples over, then slides to the floor. His arm throbs with his racing heart. Is he shaking? He can't tell. One of his lower hands comes to rest on a folder that fell out of the cabinet behind him. Without thinking, he pulls a statement out of it and brings it to his mouth.

A few minutes later, he comes back to himself with a fresh horror branded into his memory. The pain in his arm has lessened. He's still hungry, but he can think. He can inspect the damage.

It's his upper left forearm that got hurt. The stab is unnaturally clean, like his carapace offered no resistance at all. His hands are covered in gor— No. No, they're not. The smell in the air isn't of blood, but ink. Shiny black fluid on shiny black chitin. He can't find it in himself to be surprised. And he's still bleeding. Or leaking? Whatever.

Basira bought him the skirt he's wearing a day ago, and it's already stained in supernatural blood ink. 

He's reaching down to tear out a strip of fabric when his eyes flicker. He reaches up into his mane instead and threads his fingers through the loops of magnetic tape. He pulls, and they extend easily, as though coming out of an actual tape spool. He bites off a short bundle and works the strips between his mandibles, until they become sticky and elastic, like black spider silk. He wraps and smooths them around his arm. Shiny black on shiny black. Once it's dry, the silk is only distinguishable from the chitin by texture.

Hungry. Basira. Wash up.

He shakes his head. Too many things. Focus.

Wash first. Stop smearing ink everywhere. The statement pages are still nestled in the scales of his wings, waiting to be plucked out, but he leaves them there. He pulls himself to his feet instead, and tiptoes up to the door.

All quiet.

The trip to the bathroom is uneventful. Dark ink flows down the drain. Washing every bit of tape in his mane that got smeared is impossible, so he just pulls them all out and stuffs them into a bin. This is also the first time he's really seeing himself in the mirror, but he doesn't have room in his head to contemplate it. Hunger gnaws at his stomach.

No. Basira next. Or maybe more statements first? Hunger might make him snappy.

She's in the hallway when he steps out. He doesn't notice at first, busy pulling the statement out of his wings, but her face is entirely unimpressed.

"She couldn't do it, then?"

His wings quiver in indignation. He almost crumples the statement between his lower hands. The upper pair signs.

[You set me up!]

Basira shrugs. "If anyone would be able to kill you, she would."

[So it's fine to have a monster around as long as you can point it at whoever you don't like?]

"She's not a monster, Jon. She's the only thing that's kept us safe since you went down."

[You mean kept you safe. You said it yourself that M-T-N is busy with L-K-S.]

"Only for the last month or so."

He sighs heavily and shakes his head. [She needs help. Even—] He hesitates. [Even T-I-M never threatened me. He never attacked me.]

"Stop. You haven't been here, alright? I told you what happened."

He huffs and waves dismissively, then flinches at the ache that races through his arm.

"Oh. So she did get a stab in."

[Piss off,] he signs as he walks past.

The conversation is going nowhere, he's still hungry, and he'd much prefer to not be in the Archives right now. He only makes a brief stop back in document storage to put away the statement he ate, and then he's out the door of the Institute in minutes.

At the bottom of the steps up to the building, he stops. A fresh wave of hunger squeezes his gut. It's almost enough to make him go back and find another statement, but he presses his mandibles together. He'll just have to hold out until he returns.

He needs to go out and deal with the stuff from his flat anyway. Georgie managed to talk the landlord into not throwing it all out, but she can't keep paying for the storage unit. If nothing else, he can grab his sewing kit and try to adapt some of his old clothes to fit his new self. All he has now for the upper half are ugly sleeveless tank tops. And, admittedly, a very cozy poncho.

Chapter Text

Skulking around the Archives becomes second nature very quickly. The only solace is that it's not hard, only ("only") stressful. For all her aggression, Melanie's no Hunter. She doesn't stalk him. She doesn't plan, she doesn't try to ambush him. All he really has to do is avoid her immediate vicinity, which only becomes easier after he discovers another thing his monstrous self can do.

One day, he's in document storage idly browsing the shelves, not hungry enough to actually grab anything but too restless to sit at his desk, when his eyes flicker with new knowledge.

He stops. He looks down at his mane of magnetic tape. He hooks a clawed finger through a single loop and pulls, unspooling a couple feet of black plastic. He cradles it between his four hands, careful not to tangle it and, after a moment's thought, he heads to the firmly locked door. He chews on either end of the length of tape until it's sticky and glues it across the doorway, like a tripwire but roughly at waist height.

Jon steps back. His eyes flicker with TV static. His antennae quiver. After a few seconds, the tape stuck across the door also begins to flicker like a TV screen. The shifting black and white intensifies, filling the whole length of the tape, then fades, and as it does so does the tape itself, until it vanishes completely.

Except that, when he passes his hand through the space it occupied, he feels it. Somewhere in his mind, the movement pings. Like a sp— No. He's had enough of webs. Like a radar.

He places these radar threads throughout the Archives strategically, for fear that having too many of them might make them more detectable or something. He scatters a few between the shelves and walls of document storage. He puts one in each doorway along the central corridor (except the bathroom, that'd be weird), as well as along the corridor as semi-regular intervals. Wiring the main room where the desks are takes the longest, since he's doing his very best to keep Basira from seeing any of it, but he just about manages.

In the end, avoiding Melanie becomes simplicity itself. She pings his radar threads like a painful little twinge in the back of his mind. It's annoying, but far easier than having to constantly listen out for her and lock every door behind him. For a time, he considers spreading these threads out into the wider Institute, but that'd take far too long and invite too many questions.

Strangely, Basira's presence is entirely different. Basira pings his threads like the faintest whiff of blood brushing past his antennae, and it's specifically old blood. But she's not the one he needs to worry about, so he doesn't dwell on it.

What he does dwell on is Martin. Jon hasn't seen hide nor hair of him since he woke up as a big moth creature. What would Martin feel like if he passed through his radar threads?

Something aches in Jon's chest. He grabs a random statement to distract himself from it.

Afterward, when he's trying to cram the pages back into the box he pulled them out of, something tugs him toward the main entrance of the Archives, something that feels distant, yet warm, like the first rays of sun at dawn. It's not a ping in his radar, but it feels close to it somehow. He delays just long enough to check that he has his notepad and pen in his pocket, then follows that tug until it pulls his head out the doorway to the rest of the Institute.

And it's Martin! Right there, just down the hall! Jon calls out, but that only produces a moderate trill, so he runs out and grabs Martin's arm, making him yelp and jump back.

"What the?! What the hell are you?!"

[It's me!] Jon signs uselessly, then shakes his head, pulls out the notepad, flips it to the page that says 'My name is Jon', and holds it up.

"Jo— What? You—?"

Jon nods frantically; he has to actively stop himself from signing.

"Oh. Um, hi. I didn't, uh." Martin scans him up and down. "I didn't know you looked like this now. It— What happened?"

He chitters incomprehensibly. He flips to a blank page and scrawls out 'Teach you BSL before explaining? Magic teaching, hurts. Would take a while.'

"What do you mean by 'magic teaching'?"

Jon gestures vaguely, wanting to sign but knowing it won't be understood. After a moment, he mimes plucking something out of the air and placing it on his forehead, then points at Martin's head.

"You... can put the knowledge in my head? Like Elias?"

He hesitates, but nods.

"Okaaay. And how long is 'a while'?"

It takes some mental math, but he writes '½ hour? Longer = less pain.'

"...Right. I, uh." He looks around the deserted hall. "I-I'm sorry, Jon, but I don't have half an hour. I'm busy."

[Busy,] Jon signs at the same time. Before he's done, his other pair of hands scrawls a fresh message on the notepad asking 'How are you?'

"I'm, I'm alright. Everything's fine."

'Poetry?'

"Oh, uh, well, I haven't exactly had a lot of time recently, so..."

Martin trails off. Silence settles between them. Martin is glancing around, clearly wanting to inspect Jon's new form but also not wanting to blatantly stare. Jon can only reminisce on the single occasion he allowed himself to be hugged by him in the past few years (it was during his birthday in the Archives).

"Look, Jon, I—" Martin sighs. "I've really got to go, okay? I'm sorry."

He trills quietly. The notepad says 'Good to see you.'

"...Yeah. Um. Good luck."

He nods.

Martin walks away. It's only now that he notices how... faded he seems. Like all his colors are just a little desaturated. And he's lost weight, his jumper is a bit loose.

Jon sighs. The ache in his chest returns in full force. He pretends it's hunger and ignores it, even though he just had a statement.

He delves back into the Archives. It's just him for now; Basira's in the library, and Melanie's out somewhere. He heads to the bathroom. He grips the edge of the sink with all four hands and stares at his reflection.

Martin was scared of him. Not terrified, they've all been working for the Institute for far too long for that, but he was scared. He did believe Jon without a second thought, at least. But that startled yelp, that look of fear... It gnaws at him.

Why hasn't he felt wrong? He's a moth. He has four arms that won't fit in anything with sleeves, four big dumb wings that keep shedding scales everywhere, a stupid tail abdomen that won't let him wear trousers. He has a mane made of magnetic tape and ink for blood. His limbs and torso are so thin, he doubts they even have enough room for all the flesh and viscera he once had as a human. His sense of smell is in his antennae, and who even knows where his ears are.

Why does none of it feel out of place? Right from the moment he first woke up, he could use his new set of hands as smoothly as if he'd been born with them. His multifaceted eyes bulge so far out the sides of his head he can basically see behind himself, he has almost 360 degrees of perfect vision, and yet it's never once made him disoriented.

He brushes clawed fingers through the loops of smooth plastic around his neck. He yanks off his poncho, then the shirt underneath, to reveal the whole breadth of the endless layers of magnetic tape. He stares at it in the mirror. The mane starts roughly on his nape, and ends where his ribs do— if he still has any. He buries his hands, first the upper pair then the lower, into the tangle of tape. He combs through slowly, carefully, trying to find where the tape ends and his actual neck and chest begin, but he can't. The deeper he goes, the tighter the layers press together, but he never finds a surface that they come out of. It's just tape.

Probing fingers clench into fists. Jon pulls, and the tape unspools as easily as ever, but this time he doesn't stop. He keeps pulling hand over hand, meters and meters of shiny black strips flowing from him and piling on the tiled floor. What starts as a smooth glide of plastic on plastic becomes an uncomfortable scrape. Giddy panic builds in his chest, deep within the unspooling tape. The volume of his mane actually starts to lessen, which only makes him pull harder, faster, pushing the scraping sensation into outright pain, until—

The tape snags. Halfway through another pull it goes taut and, when the tension doesn't relent, it tears at the root. A sudden whimpering trill bursts out of him, only to be choked out by a wave of ink that bubbles up his throat and flows down his front. Black sprays across the sink and wall. He has to brace himself on both through a spike of nausea.

Then, just as quickly as it started, the leaking stops. Agony dulls into an intense, throbbing ache, like a bone-deep bruise. The dripping, torn ends of the magnetic tape are still clutched in his hand, so he lets go. The other fistfuls are also hanging off his chest and, for lack of a better alternative, he carefully rips out each one so as to not leave their torn ends visible.

He stares at his reflection behind the specks of ink across the mirror. He tastes it in his mouth, metallic and bitter. He looks down at the mound of loose tape at his feet. The fact that spiders eat their own silk drops into his head, but he dismisses it immediately— even if he wanted to, it'd take him hours. He looks at his hands on the edge of the sink, at the claws resting on the stained white porcelain. One of them is surrounded by a halo of smeared ink.

He shouldn't have done this. He's hungry all over again. Yet, somehow, there's a perverse joy in it as well. Petty, pointless rebellion.

Jon spends the next several minutes stuffing the discarded pile of tape into a bin, washing up all the spilled ink, putting his shirt and poncho back on, then going back to document storage for another statement.

Chapter Text

For some reason, it's only now that Jon realizes he's barely even working anymore. Whenever he eats a statement, he gets swept up in it. He lives it, just as much as the victim that first gave it. But afterward, there's basically no urge for follow up. He's been doing some of it anyway, if only to fill the time whenever he's not avoiding Melanie, but it's hollow. Unsatisfying. All the digestion he needs happens while he's in the statement. The research is only to sate his mild curiosity.

He takes up sewing, despite having little practical reason for it. He technically doesn't even need to wear clothes anymore, and he's been avoiding interactions with the wider public; having to express himself through a pen makes it all a frustrating chore. But keeping his hands busy helps. Replacing the clothes stained with ink helps. He has no sewing machine, but four hands makes the work go by quicker.

It's not just the public. Basira hadn't been kidding when she said the Institute is under siege. Jon moved a few of his belongings to his office in the Archive, but he hasn't bothered to find a new flat. If Basira and Melanie don't feel safe sleeping outside the Archives, he's not about to risk it. He still goes out sometimes, if only to stretch his legs and feel the wind across his wings, but he keeps his guard up every time. And even inside the Archive, he can't let his guard down. He's been trying to sleep during the day, trying to minimize the time he spends wandering people's nightmares, but with Melanie constantly pinging his radar threads like a recalcitrant migraine it's impossible to relax.

It's all far from ideal, but there's little he can do to make it any better.

Or so he thinks, until he endures one very particular statement of the Slaughter involving a Leitner book.

The realization hits him while he's tidying the pages back into the shelf he pulled them from. It makes him gasp. It connects to many pieces he didn't even realize were supposed to be a puzzle.

The next time Basira enters the Archives, he rushes to meet her in the corridor.

[We need to help M-L-N.]

"What do you mean?"

[She has a Slaughter bullet in her leg. That's how she could kill those Flesh creatures months ago.]

"Seriously? When did she get shot?"

[India. Long story. I need your help.]

"What? So you don't have to worry about her stabbing you anymore?"

He chitters in protest. [This is serious! Do you want her to turn into a monster like me? Because that's what's going to happen if we leave that bullet in her.]

Basira thinks. Then, she says, "Maybe. But we're under siege, Jon. You saw those people from the Church of the Divine Host. If they try anything and she can't deal with them—"

[I will.]

She raises an eyebrow. "Really?"

[You haven't seen everything I can do.]

"Do I want to?"

[Would you rather doom Melanie to the same fate as me?]

"Oh, is she also turning into an ugly moth?"

Not for the first time, Jon wishes he still had a middle finger— all four of his hands have only two digits opposite the thumb.

[Doubt it. But it won't be pretty. And it won't be reversible. The bullet is. We can save her.]

"Not the word I'd use. She'll still be stuck here."

[Better stuck and sane than slowly going mad with rage.]

Basira frowns. "And you're not just doing this because she's a threat to you?"

[No,] he signs emphatically. [This will only put me in more danger. I can't be in the same room as her, B. But you can't find the bullet. I'm going to have to cut her open.]

"How?"

[I don't know. That's why I need your help. Please.]

Basira looks at him appraisingly. She chews the inside of her cheek.

"What happens if I say no?"

[It'll probably be significantly more unpleasant for me and her.]

"You'd do it without me?"

[I'm not losing anyone else.]

She stares. He holds her gaze steady, wishing his face weren't immobile. After a moment, she blows out a breath.

"Fine. Any ideas?"

Jon has none. But, after some talking, they come up with a semblance of a plan.

It takes Basira several days to get what they need. Jon starts drinking tea again in the meantime. He's not as good at making it as Martin is, he never was. He doesn't even need it, there's no pleasant satiation in the act. But it's familiar. Human. And no matter which flavor he picks, it's always tinged with longing and nostalgia. It actually takes him a couple tries to even figure out how to do it, he doesn't have lips that can clasp around a mug's edge or straw anymore, but the strangely fuzzy tongue he does have turns out to be very good at drawing liquids up its length.

(Capillary action.The same principle is present in the tongues of vampire bats.)

Eventually, Basira acquires what they need. Jon has no idea what kind of favors she pulls for it, and he doesn't ask. He adds to it by weaving a rope out of his mane of tape, for no better reason than that it's the most easily accessible material he has. Basira thinks it's a bad idea, but he'd rather not get stabbed again.

The night they pick isn't special. Basira makes an excuse to stay up late while Melanie takes her sleep aids. Jon waits in his locked office, tracing the scar Melanie gave him— well, scars. The knife went clean through his arm. It left behind two thin lines on either side of the limb, invisible but for their slightly raised texture.

Basira's radar pings approach his office. He stands up and unlocks the door before she reaches it. She doesn't seem surprised.

[Ready?]

"As ready as she'll ever be. You?"

He responds by grabbing the coil of shiny black rope hanging off the door handle on his side. A frown tugs at the corner of Basira's mouth, but she chooses not to comment on it.

Melanie is asleep. Her nightmares itch in the back of Jon's mind, just on the edge of his awareness. His arm aches, so faint he's not sure if it's real or imagined. It's enough to make the hand on that arm clench nervously.

"Well?"

[Go around the other side.]

They loop the rope twice around Melanie's bed, without touching her. Both ends stay clutched in Jon's hands. With a nod from him, they carefully close the loops around Melanie. He's torn between making them as tight as possible and not waking her, but ends up leaning toward the latter; he has a backup plan. When the weight of the rope settles on her, Melanie stirs but doesn't wake.

He looks up at Basira. She makes a sort of 'after you' gesture.

"Go ahead."

He chitters grumpily. Basira said to just do it while Melanie's asleep, but Jon can't imagine her staying that way through having a giant needle jabbed into her thigh. Which means he's going to have to try to talk to her.

Ghost pain needles through his arm.

As dangerous as it might be, he positions himself right in front of her face, so she'll make eye contact as soon as she wakes. He reaches out with no small amount of trepidation. His hand touches her shoulder.

Melanie's eyes fly open. He scrambles to drill into her brain that she's safe, he's here to help, she has a bullet in her leg and he's going to get it out. It only takes a fraction of a second, but she still flinches.

"GET OFF!"

She tries to swing at him, but her arm gets caught in the rope. She starts to struggle against it, completely ignoring Jon's signing.

[Help!] he signs at Basira instead.

She does nothing. At the same time, Melanie snaps the rope.

For a split second, Jon very seriously considers bolting for the door. Instead, he squeezes Melanie's face between his palms to force her to look him in the eye.

STOP

Melanie goes rigid with that single word branded into her skull. Her nails are maybe an inch away from gouging out one of his eyes.

BREATHE
MOVE YOUR EYES
BLINK

Each bodily function is released from his control, one by one. Her chest heaves around harsh breaths. Her eyes spin around wildly in equal parts rage and panic. She squeezes them shut when she's allowed to. Through it all, the rest of her body is a statue. Jon steps back with a shaky exhale.

"What the fuck, Jon?"

[You can berate me later. Either help, or get out.]

Basira scowls, but hands over the anesthetic, scalpel, and first aid kit. "This isn't right."

[Nothing here is.]

There's no turning back now. He can only try to make the rest of it as quick and painless as possible. A brief static flicker in his eyes tells him exactly where and how deep to inject the anesthetic. He pretends not to see the way Melanie glares at Basira, or the way Basira looks away. He caps and pockets the used needle, just in case, then busies himself with laying out everything he'll need for the surgery itself. Basira pulls up a chair and watches him.

"So are we not going to talk about it?"

[I'm not going anywhere,] he signs without turning to her, partly because he wants to make sure Melanie sees it as well.

Basira scoffs. "Fine, So you can mind control people?"

[Compel,] he corrects. [Only through eye contact.]

"If you try that on me—"

[I won't. Wear sunglasses if you don't believe me.]

"Seriously? Sunglasses will block it?"

[Eye contact.] He turns his head toward her and mimes a line between his eyes and hers for emphasis.

"Right, how could I forget," she responds flatly.

They fall into silence. He counts the minutes. After a few, it occurs to him that holding tension for this long can't be good. He doesn't even need to turn his head to catch Melanie's eye.

RELAX

She goes limp. He maneuvers her into lying flat on her back, with her arms straight on either side. He tugs on the rope, coils it, and sets it aside to be dealt with later. He counts some more minutes. At about two dozen, he gets to work.

Cut through the trouser leg. Clean the area with alcohol. Stare in disbelief at the tendrils of metaphysical gangrene spreading out from the embedded bullet. Cut through the skin. Dig out the bullet. Stitch it shut. Wipe off the blood. Cover it with a patch. Melanie's breathing doesn't change throughout the whole process, which is a good sign.

Jon puts everything away, collects the rope and first aid kit, and stands.

[The numbness should wear off in a couple hours. You've got it from here?]

The second part is signed at Basira, who nods.

"Yeah. Don't leave the Archive."

Jon would roll his eyes if he could. Instead, he leaves the first aid kit back in the corner it was in and moves to the door leading to the corridor. He stands in the doorway for a moment, just long enough for a twitch of his antennae to release his hold on Melanie's will, and then he swings the door shut.

"I'M GONNA KILL YOU!"

"Melanie, calm down!"

"LET ME GO!"

"Melanie! You'll tear out your stitches."

He doesn't listen past that. He doesn't obey Basira either. He leaves the Archives. He almost leaves the Institute entirely, he can't stand the thought of forcing Melanie to be around him anytime soon, but he stops with his hand on the doorknob. The entry hall is dark and silent around him, but for the muffled screams from Melanie. The library will be just the same, minus the screams.

He goes to the library. On the way there, he stuffs the black rope into the first bin he sees.

Chapter Text

Waiting for news is torture. The fact that his office connects directly to the assistant's area where Melanie's bed is doesn't help. Thankfully, he also has a door that goes straight into document storage, so he's just been using that instead while keeping the first door locked. He even covered it with one of the lengths of fabric he bought for sewing, just to try and give her some extra privacy, muffle sounds and so on. The radar threads also help, just enough to keep Jon from trying to actively Know things.

He also finds Gertrude's journal again, the one that was stored with the explosives before...

...

He finds it again. But it's less helpful than his threads.

At first.

He can't read any of it, it's all just nonsense words and numbers. He stares at it, willing something to drop into his brain about it, but all that does is point him to a statement about the 'Worker-Of-Clay', some Spiral entity that the Distorted Michael mentioned once, before it was Helen. Nutritious, but hardly useful.

What solves it is, once again, simple consumption. A brief bout of frustrated desperation makes him tear out a page and shove it into his mouth. Initially, nothing happens. The mere act of holding a statement page between his mandibles is enough to plunge him into memory, into the horrors of some poor lost soul. The page from Gertrude's notebook doesn't do that. It's only when he actually starts to chew it, to tear its dry, fibrous texture and wet it into pulp, that the knowledge flows.

The Worker-Of-Clay. The Distortion. The Great Twisting. How to stop it. Who to use. Who to sacrifice. Michael. Naive. Useful.

Rituals, theories, failsafes, scraps of so many other things that skitter through Jon's mind one at a time, teased out of the paper with every grinding motion of his jaws.

The flow only ends when the paper is so thoroughly mashed and soaked, it's on the verge of dribbling out through the gaps between Jon's various mouthparts. He has to tip his head back to swallow it, but he's not even annoyed by it. He's giddy. Gertrudes personal notes, right here in his hands, after literal years of living in her shadow. What will this tell him? About the other rituals, certainly, if what he's already glimpsed is any indication. He ate the page that pointed him to that Spiral statement, and it was already full of speculation about the other Entities, all without beginning or end.

Jon plucks the page out of his wing, slips it back into place, claps the notebook shut, and sets it aside on his desk. He pulls a fresh notebook out of the many newly-opened office supplies in his drawers to transcribe everything he learned from the page, both complete and not. With that done, he tears it out, folds it, and tucks it into the end of the notebook for later. He opens Gestrude's journal again and tears out the very first page.

For the next several days, transcribing the notebook borders on obsession. Basira stays by Melanie's side, and Jon starts to sleep more fully during the day, even if it isn't as restful as he'd like when he can't wander through nightmares, but both factors combined mean he has even more time alone than before. He tries to pace himself, take breaks, make tea and sew things and so on, but it's hard to resist the siren call of answers to so many longstanding mysteries.

The journal doesn't start at the beginning, but he probably doesn't need to see Gertrude's own process of discovery of the Fears and their gradient boundaries. What Jon does hope is that this journal is Gertrude's last. There are a few blank, unused pages at the end. Unless she started writing in invisible ink, and given that it was stored with explosives she was (presumably) planning to use some time in the very near future, the likelihood that this journal was the last she ever wrote is high.

Will it tell him why Gertrude was killed beneath the Archives? Beneath the Institute? He doesn't expect a murder accusation in Gertrude's writing, of course, no more than he expected to find 'mymurderer.avi' in her laptop, but still. These might be the last words she wrote before being killed.

The possibility of answers makes him hungrier than ever. The journal pages don't help. They're knowledge, but they're not fear. They don't sustain him. Jon doesn't let it deter him, however. He spends hours every night chewing through the pages, picking apart the cellulose between his mandibles, transcribing every word he pulls from them and, when necessary, adding his own notes of speculation or deduction. He very quickly learns to keep a towel on his desk for when he's too focused on writing and not enough on not drooling.

The journal begins sometime in the mid 2000s, judging by what few dates Jon finds. The threads of speculation and research into the various rituals run together, but the primary concern at the beginning of the journal is split between the Desolation and the Flesh. The former, through details of Gertrude's ongoing efforts to safeguard herself against the Cult of the Lightless Flame. The latter, through notes on the shipping and gathering of raw meat in butcher shops, abattoirs, cold storage, and many other locations across the globe.

The parallel threads of logic in the journal also require more than just writing. He reorganizes his office to clear as much space as possible on the back wall, under the large Institute logo. He starts tearing his pages of transcripts and pinning the pieces to the wall, connecting them with tape by reflex before he realizes he's pulling it from his mane, but even when he does he doesn't stop, it's just more convenient that way. He even adds little doodled symbols to his notes to help him keep track of which scraps of paper pertain to each Fear. For this early stage, he gives Desolation a small flame, and Flesh a very simplified chicken thigh.

The pull of specific statements caused by the journal, plus Jon's increasingly nocturnal habit, eventually lead him to investigate Elias' office. He finds that the lock is still broken, subtly enough that it hasn't been replaced. Inside is a box of tapes and statements in the corner. He gathers the ones related to what he's absorbed of the journal so far, but leaves the rest, despite the temptation to carry the whole box down to the Archives. Better not to let Lukas know he has access for as long as possible.

What he squirrels away in his office are two tapes and one paper statement. The last one he eats right away. It's from one of the members of the Lightless Flame, explaining how creating rituals works, the logic behind the birth of their messiah, Agnes Montague, her life, growth, sustenance and, for lack of a better word, impediment due to Gertrude's interference, leading to her eventual death. It leaves his mouth tasting like ash. He washes it out with tea.

The tapes are more difficult. Eating paper makes sense, he's a moth, but a cassette? He's not an ordinary moth, obviously, but he can't help but dwell on one of his stolen nightmares, of a woman who told him about a man who never was, eating a computer that never existed. The image of hard plastic being cracked between bloodstained teeth won't leave his mind.

He hides the tapes under a loose floorboard. He doesn't want to gorge himself on statements so quickly, anyway.

He's still dwelling on Sergei Ushanka when, the next day, Basira comes into the break room while he's brewing tea. She's wearing sunglasses, just like every other time he's seen her since Melanie's surgery.

"Oh. I didn't think you were here."

[I'm not a complete hermit yet. Tea?]

"No thanks."

He pours himself a mug and wraps his upper hands around it. The heat isn't pleasant, exactly, the way it filters through the thin chitin of his palms feels off, but it's close enough. His antennae comb through the rising plume of fragrant steam.

[How is she?]

"How do you think?"

He clicks his mandibles for lack of anything to say.

Basira sighs. "She doesn't want to see you, unsurprisingly. So, I guess thanks for avoiding that room."

[Least I could do.]

"Yeah. And uh, she wanted me to apologize. For the arm."

The faintest itch prickles inside the limb. He ignores it. [It's fine. I heal fast these days.]

"Yeah, I noticed. What was up with that, by the way? I didn't see you patch it up with anything. Did it just close as soon as the knife was out?"

[No.]

He yanks a small clump of tape out of his mane with a lower hand, chews on it, then slaps the sticky black glob onto the wall cabinet behind him, where it stays glued to the wood.

[I used that. And I bleed ink. It's all black.]

"Huh. Bit monochrome, isn't it?"

[Can we get back to M-L-N?]

"Right. Well, you did get an apology. I think she's more... coherent, I guess. And I've heard her crying at night."

Jon's mandibles click in discomfort. He stops it by sticking his tongue into the tea to start drinking.

"She's still angry," Basira continues, "but she hasn't attacked anyone. I don't think she has it in her anymore."

[That's good.]

"Is it? Because you said you were going to be keeping us safe from now on, and I'm not sure if you can do it."

He sighs. [What do you want?]

"I want to know what you can do. All of it. Show me you've got what it takes."

Jon stares at her. He makes sure she feels it, too, but she's too used to the feeling to be bothered by it. He huffs, gulps down another mouthful of tea, sets the mug aside, and stands up straighter.

[I'm sure you already know most of it. Let's hear it.]

"Fine." She counts on her fingers. "Even before you turned into a monster, you survived a building being exploded on you. You heal way too fast. Knowledge just comes to you out of nowhere—"

[Or I can seek it out.]

"Right. Apparently you can use all that tape as, what, glue?"

[Silk.]

"Whatever. What else? Oh, right, you can just force people to obey you. And you could force the truth out of people. Is that still a thing?"

[It's less pleasant now, but yes.]

"Less pleasant how?"

[It feels the same as being given knowledge, from what I understand.]

"Mm. Is there anything else?"

Jon mulls it over. He could keep his radar threads a secret, but that can only end badly for him. If he has even a modicum of chance of getting Basira to trust him, this is it. He reaches one hand up to a seemingly random point in the air and closes it into a fist. A brief but intense burst if static in his eyes, however, reveals one such thread, now made visible again and passing through the loop of his fingers on its path from one wall to the other.

[I scattered these across the Archives after she stabbed me. They're like a radar.]

"What, so you can feel where we are?"

[Essentially.]

"And you didn't tell me? Why?"

[Excuse me if I was disinclined to share after you deliberately set me up to get attacked.]

"...Fair."

[I'm going to take them down, I just haven't had the t—]

"No. Leave at least one, at the entrance to the Archive. Just in case."

Jon turns his head to her. [Are you sure?]

"You said you'd keep us safe, right? I assume this 'radar' would help."

[Probably.]

"Then leave one."

[Alright.]

A simple tug detaches the thread from the walls. He crumples it up and leaves it on the counter to be dealt with later, then returns to his tea.

"Is there anything else you haven't told me about?"

[I don't think so. Unless you're interested in the metaphysical intricacies of how my body works.]

"I'll pass."

[I'm surprised you're even letting me guard this place.]

"You're the all-powerful Archivist, aren't you? It's kind of your job anyway. And it's not like I have any other options right now."

[So you still don't trust me.]

"What, like that's supposed to be a revelation?"

Jon sighs. [No, I suppose it isn't.]

They lapse into silence. Basira busies herself with preparing some barebones lunch, and Jon moves to the small table to give her space. While she's waiting for something to defrost in the microwave, he clicks to get her attention.

[I talked to Martin.]

"Really? How badly did he freak out?"

[Not much. We couldn't talk for long, he was too busy to let me give him B-S-L knowledge.]

"Mm. Still working for Lukas?

[I couldn't ask specifically, but I assume so. He's still being isolated.]

"Yeah. Him and everyone else in the Institute. He—"

The microwave beeps. She retrieves what's inside and continues while preparing it.

"He wanted to be there when you woke up, you know."

[I thought so.]

"But with the attack, and his mum... I tried getting answers out of him when he first started distancing himself, but I didn't want to push it. He was in a bad place."

[Wait. What happened to his mother?]

"He didn' tell you?"

[No.]

"She died about two months into your coma."

Jon's mandibles click in lieu of a verbal 'oh'.

"Yeah. It was rough. But, too late to do anything about it now." She turns around with two plates in hand. "Haven't you been going to sleep around this time?"

He sighs. [Yes.]

Basira leaves. Jon finishes his tea, tears down the remaining radar threads in the break room (as well as the glob he stuck to the cabinet), and retreats to his office to rest, though he doubts he'll get any with that information rattling around in his brain.

Chapter Text

Jon is woken by a foreign presence in his radar. A stranger's presence. Right at the threshold of the Archives, then coming inside, not fast, but not slow either. There must be noise because Basira reacts to it too on the other side of his office's locked door. Even as he climbs out of bed and grabs whatever clothes are closest, he tracks her across the room, out into the corridor. The stranger stops. Both stand still while Jon slips first into document storage, between the shelves, then out into the corridor himself, between Basira and—

Breekon. And the Buried's coffin, slung over his back, held by the heavy chain. Both combined fill the corridor completely.

When Jon comes into view, Breekon tilts his head slightly. "Huh. Didn't know you got a pet monster."

"Jon."

Basira's voice is level, addressed to Breekon as much as it is to Jon himself.

Breekon's head tilts further. His eyes narrow. Then he grins. "Oh, I see. Finally took the plunge, Archivist?"

Jon's wings shift in annoyance. Can beings of the Stranger understand sign language? They picked up English easily enough, from what he remembers of the original Breekon's statement. His signs, and every time he addresses Breekon, his eyes flicker with Compulsion.

[You're here to deliver something.]

Breekon's head untilts. The grin fades. "Yeah." It heaves the coffin onto the floor with a heavy thud and a clinking of chains, where it stands vertically and leans back against the wall. "Just wanted to— To drop off a package."

"Jon."

[Wait,] he signs at Basira. To Breekon, he says, [I thought it had to stay close to you.]

"No. Not on my own. So you can have it."

[Why? For revenge?]

"Yeah. We— I fed the copper to the pit. Pay your respects if y—"

"Daisy's in there," Basira says in a rush.

"That's it's name? Then sure, it's in there. Whatever's left. Find out if you like."

Jon bristles with frustration, but he also holds up his arm to stop Basira from impulsively walking ahead of him. [Why are you really here?]

Breekon shrugs. "Dunno. ...'S not right, on my own. Not right. No point in doing it on my own. Don't know what happens now." His eyes meet Jon's. "Missed my chance to kill you. So here's a coffin. In case you want... To join your friend."

He pushes the coffin like a twig. It scrapes across the wall as it topples, but somehow lands perfectly on its back, with a far heavier thud than its volume should be capable of. Basira tries, again, to push forward, and Jon holds her back.

"Get out."

Breekon grins again.

"Get. Out."

"Make me."

He clenches his fists and takes a single step forward, before—

STOP

Breekon is a statue.

Jon pushes Basira back, partly to give his wings room to spread out. Their tips slide along the walls on either side. Their four eyes are all fixed on Breekon, whose face twists in growing pain. Jon's eyes flicker with growing static. His mane of tape flows with a building whirr, a budding whine of audio feedback. Breekon grunts with the effort of resisting, tight breaths hissing through marble teeth.

"Sss-stop it."

NO

Without a word, he forces Breekon to kneel. His wings open wider, higher, filling the corridor, blocking Basira entirely. His mane flows faster. For once, he towers over Breekon. He reaches out, twelve claws grasping Breekon's face even as he fights against the Compulsion, yet is unable to look away. The static in Jon's eyes is so intense they look like curved TV screens, a chaos of black and white and gray all laser-focused on the stranger.

Jon's fingers bend infinitesimally. It's not enough to pierce Breekon's skin, but it doesn't need to be. It forces his mouth open. A heavy shudder shakes Breekon from his feet all the way up to his face. He's about to speak, beg, but he chokes on the shiny black tape that starts pouring out of his throat. Then his eyes. Then his nose, his ears, the unbroken seams of his face. Breekon bleeds tape, and as he does the tips are lifted by hair-thin strands of cobweb and pulled into Jon's mane, incorporated into it, fed to it.

Within the static in Jon's eyes, Breekon's story plays out like a sped-up movie reel. The wagon of plague. The ship of convicts. The train of hopefuls. The car of artifacts. The circus of the other. The lorry of the lost. And the van. The coffin. Daisy.

The tapes reach their end, and just like that, Breekon explodes into movement. He shoves Jon back and stands up in a single motion, twelve shallow gouges left on his face, he literally crashes through the door and out of the Institute with a cry of inarticulate agony. He's gone almost before Jon hits the ground.

"Jon!" Basira calls.

Basira's right there next to him, but with her hands hovering near, unsure of what to do, and he can't reply. Jon shakes from head to foot. He manages, barely, to pull himself to his feet, to lean heavily against the wall as his gut spasms and squeezes painfully, as his tail abdomen twitches uncontrollably.

His breathing stops. His neck clogs. He gags around a hard, sharp object until, with a throat-tearing cough, he expels it from his body, and a simple audio cassette lands on his outstretched palm. He gasps desperately for air afterward.

"Jon?"

[Fine,] he signs sloppily. His throat is raw. Breathing hurts. For once, he's thankful he doesn't need to speak to communicate.

They both look down at the tape in unison. It's transparent, with no brand of any kind, only a plain white rectangle on one side of it and a label written in Jon's angular, somewhat messy handwriting. It says 'Breekon, Stranger, 03/03/18'. The tape is completely drywin his hand.

"What the hell was that?"

[A statement.]

"Seriously? That's how you take statements now?"

He trills hoarsely. [Can we please sit down?]

She scoffs. "Fine. I'll check on Melanie first, just wait for me in the break room."

[Sure.]

Basira walks away. Jon's still a bit shaky, so he keeps a hand on the wall on the way to the break room. When he gets there, he finds a tape recorder on the table, waiting with its compartment open. It doesn't surprise him one bit. He sinks down into a chair, puts the tape next to the player, and waits.

Basira joins him a few minutes later. The moment her eyes land on the recorder, she gives a weary sigh.

"Of course. You can manifest recorders now too?"

[Maybe. If it was me, it wasn't conscious. I just wanted to listen to the tape.]

"You don't know what's in it?"

[I do. But you don't.]

"Do I want to?"

[The end of it, yes.]

He gestures to the seat opposite him. After a beat, she sits down. He puts the tape in the recorder and presses play.

His voice comes out of the speaker, as though he never lost it. It makes him want to listen through the whole thing, just to remind himself what it sounded like, but he skips to the final paragraphs about the coffin, its temporary master, its entrapment with the delivery men, and Daisy's fate within it. Basira listens closely. Her brow is furrowed. It stays that way when the tape clicks off.

"Okay? We already knew she was in there."

He nods.

"And that we can't open it."

[Shouldn't. Yes.]

"So why give it to us?"

He shakes his head. [I'm not sure. It's lost on its own, no partner, no purpose. I honestly think it just wanted to do another delivery.]

"And the circus? Did anything else make it out?"

[It didn't think so.]

"Hm."

She stares at the recorder. He stands up and, finding himself relatively steady, goes to put the kettle on, hoping against all logic that some tea and honey will soothe his aching throat.

"Why'd you even need to pull a statement out of him? Couldn't you have just Compelled him to leave?"

[No,] Jon signs over his shoulder, then turns around to add, [Avatars can usually resist each other's powers to some extent. He was no different. I had to give him a reason to leave us alone.]

"I thought he was just another monster?"

[No. He and his twin were once human, long ago.]

"Damn. And the coffin?"

[Leads straight to the Buried. Tea?]

"Right. Uh, no, thanks."

He pours himself a mug. He's blowing on it when Basira shoves herself standing.

"Right. Keep it safe, I'll be gone a few days. Don't ask why. And don't Know about it."

Jon stares in stunned silence. Then, he signs, [I can't fully control that.]

"Learn."

He chitters grumpily. [No promises. What about Melanie?]

"She'll be fine. As long as you don't—"

[Yes! I'm not going to do anything to her, B, you don't have to tell me that. Even if I wanted to, I already know everything she's gone through. She has nothing to give me.]

"Sure. I'll try and be back in a week or two. Don't do anything stupid. And don't open the coffin."

[I think that's well covered under the 'stupid' category.]

Basira doesn't dignify him with a reply. She just leaves. He returns to the table and takes his time sipping his tea, listening to the sounds filtering down the corridor. She drags the coffin somewhere out of the way. She talks to Melanie. She prepares a travel bag. To Jon's surprise, she even walks straight out the broken door, despite the relatively late hour.

He finishes his tea, goes out into the Institute, and leaves a note in the relevant person's desk to have the Archive door replaced.

The rest of the night is spent mostly recovering. He'd love to start doing research into a possible rescue right away, but forcing the statement out of Breekon took more out of him than he would've liked. Statements are meant to feed him. They're supposed to be saturated with fear. Breekon's was the opposite.

Besides, Basira literally told him not to mess with the coffin. Researching it will only make him want to do it more.

He works through a few more pages on Gertrude's journal. Each one takes almost a full hour to transcribe, between the very meticulous grinding of the paper that it requires, his own additions while writing it down, adding it to the wall and so on. He's heading into 2006 now, which he represents on his wall with a vertical line of tape.

After that, he's feeling well enough for a proper statement, but he deliberately avoids looking for anything to do with the coffin. His newly-found recorder makes that an easy choice. The tapes from Elias' office are still waiting, after all.

One of them calls to him more than the other, so he takes it into the soundproofed walls of document storage to listen. As soon as he hits play, he's lost in the memory of a woman forced to help with a Flesh ritual. Gertrude says a specific phrase near the end that sticks with him, something about the 'siren call of flesh'. It feels too much like an euphemism for lust for his liking. But, more importantly, he doesn't come out of the statement with bits of tape recorder caught between his mandibles, which he'll count as a win.

Days pass. Jon continues to avoid Melanie, but he feels her moving around the Archives, seemingly taking care of herself. He transcribes more journal pages. He caves to the urge to do something about the coffin and eats a statement about the Buried that leaves his mouth tasting like brine. The idea of an anchor that it gives him also sticks in his mind.

The siren call of flesh. And an anchor.

He lies in bed, rolling those two tidbits around in his head like marbles. If he could feel lust he'd almost think the answer was Martin, but that can't be right. His lack of lust is his own, not a result of his recent monster status.

He toys with his mane of tape. Would that work? Just weave a rope out of it and never detach it? Treat the coffin like the legendary minotaur's labyrinth? It seems too easy to be true, and besides, it's too vague. How much rope would he have to weave? How would he guarantee that it doesn't get broken? It's the Buried. He doesn't know what he'll find inside the coffin besides maybe some stairs, but tight passages are a safe bet. No, a rope would be nice, but it's impractical.

He stretches a hand out in front of him, the upper right one, where the chitin of the palm is faintly warped with what used to be a burn scar.

He's already covered in marks. What better anchor than a piece of himself?

Once the thought occurs to him, Jon takes it, packs it up, and puts it away. He tells himself very firmly that there is no point in dwelling on it further. He will not open the coffin.

Chapter Text

He's going to open the coffin.

Jon tries to convince himself not to. He really does. He (ironically) buries himself in Gertrude's notes. He finishes the rest of 2006 in a matter of days. Right at the end of that year's pages, he finds a mention of Agnes Montague's death and listens to the second tape he took from Elias' office. It's a strange statement, only partially made of fear that is uniquely tinged with smoke.

None of it can dislodge the thought of an anchor from his mind now that it's there. Despite his best efforts, he keeps mulling it over whenever his mind is idle, usually while he's trying to fall asleep.

Which part should he cut off? His first instinct is a finger, but his hands only have three each, counting the thumbs. Whichever one he chooses, that might impair its function a little too much. A piece of a wing, then? It's not like they've ever been big enough to let him fly, they're just cumbersome. But what if the parts of him he wasn't born with aren't enough to Know his way back? What if he ends up trapped, just because he was too conservative with his anchor? Breekon's statement said explicitly that nothing dies inside the coffin, but there's no difference on the outside. He'd be gone either way.

All this isn't even taking into account the fact that, assuming he can even reach her, he'll need to somehow communicate with Daisy, when he'd bet money on the inside of the coffin being dark. Does the eye contact he requires to transfer knowledge count in total darkness? It'd be easy to test if he had anyone willing to test it on, but Basira's still gone and he's not about to ask Melanie to be his eye magic guinea pig. He'll bring a torch along, obviously, but it could break.

Jon stares at the ceiling of his office. Laying on his back, his wings, isn't comfortable, but sometimes he just doesn't care.

All this thinking is getting him nowhere. It's been two weeks. He already knows he's going to do it. And if he has to traumatize Daisy with his weird bug hands, then so be it. At least then she can hate him in freedom.

His plan gets briefly derailed in the next afternoon, while he's trying to ignore his hunger— he hasn't gone outside the Institute since the coffin arrived. He's thinking about options for his anchor when Martin's location abruptly drops into his skull. Martin's heading out of the Institute right now.

Jon hesitates, for just a fraction of a second. Then he bolts for the Archive's brand new door. He shoves it open just as Martin's walking right by it. Martin, predictably, startles.

"Gah! Oh, Jon. Christ, don't do that!"

[Sorry,] he signs uselessly.

"How'd you even know I was here?"

Jon's mandibles click, at a loss for how to explain. He gestures vaguely above his head, then taps his forehead and shrugs.

"You... just know sometimes?"

He nods encouragingly.

"Right. Um..." Martin looks toward the exit. "Well, I was just on my way out, so..."

Impulsively, Jon reaches out and grabs Martin's hand. To his credit, Martin only flinches a little bit. He's... Wary? No, cautious.

"Jon? What are you doing?"

Jon signs, reminds himself yet again that it's pointless, goes to pull out his notepad, and realizes he forgot to grab it when he got out of bed earlier. He chitters in distress.

Some semblance of pity ghosts through Martin's face. "You didn't bring a notepad this time?"

Jon shakes his head. He holds up Martin's hand, palm facing down, almost like he's going to kiss it, and— Well. He would use the tip of his finger, but that'd only cut Martin's hand to ribbons with his claws. He curls the digit instead, and uses the bent joint to write on the back of Martin's hand, letter by letter.

'MISS U.'

Martin laughs, short and incredulous, but says nothing.

'UR MUM. SORRY.'

He looks down and away. "...Thanks. It's... It's better this way."

'TALK?'

"I can't."

Jon trills quietly. He doesn't know what else to say. Or rather, he does, and it's far too much for such a limited medium. He wants to talk about Daisy, and the coffin, and how he might be about to lose himself to a fate worse than death (arguably, he already has). He wants to ask why Martin is doing all this, working for Lukas, avoiding him at every turn. He wants to keep him here, beg him to stay, never let go, because Jon's barely been touched since his coma and Martin's hand is so impossibly warm and soft against his own hard chitin.

But he can't say it. So he just clings to Martin's hand, fully aware of how creepy it must be, until Martin awkwardly clears his throat and looks toward the exit again.

"Right, so. I really should get going."

Jon chitters weakly. Martin's expression is purposefully flat.

"Please stop finding me."

Jon stares. Then he nods. And he lets go. Martin lingers for just a fraction of a second longer, before he turns and leaves. The Institute's doors don't ominously close behind him. He just leaves, like a normal person leaving a normal job.

The knowledge of where Martin lives looms large in the back of Jon's mind, and he wants so very desperately to let it in. But no. He won't. He needs to trust Martin. Instead, he cradles his warmed palm to his chest, as though he might be able to keep Martin's stolen heat forever, and stares at the last place he saw him, until other Institute employees start to filter out past him. Ironically, and irrationally, Jon doesn't want to be gawked at, so he retreats back into the Archive.

Once inside, he looks at his hands. He flexes the fingers in and out, watching the overhead light reflect off the curved black chitin.

He's delayed it long enough. If he can't think of a better anchor, a finger will have to do. He already has two more than the average human, he really shouldn't be worrying so much. For a second, he wonders if he should grab the first aid kit, but that's still in the assistants' room, and he's not entirely sure where Melanie is at the moment. He probably won't need it, anyway.

Jon goes to the break room. He rummages around for the oldest dishrag he can find and lays it out on the counter. He combs through the cutlery drawer for a good knife, which ends up being the exact same one that Melanie first used on him; he'll never forget how it looked buried in his arm almost to the hilt. The limb twinges very faintly when he picks it up. He checks its sharpness, how well it fits in his hand, how much it weighs, but it's just stalling.

He swallows nervously. He splays out the chosen hand on the counter, his lower left. He studies it, mapping the contours of the chitin, looking for weak points, and settles on the narrow gap at the base of the pinky/ring finger. He wraps both upper hands around the knife and brings it into position, point down, right above the chosen spot. The tip of it quivers. He can't keep it steady. So he lowers it, carefully, until it just barely slips between the chitin of the palm and the finger. A single, minute point of cold filters through the skin underneath.

He swallows again. He breathes in deep, trying and failing to reassure himself. The motion makes the tip of the knife sting ever so slightly. He squeezes the handle. His one free hand grips the edge of the counter, claws scraping the granite like nails on a chalkboard. He counts one, two, three, four!

And his hand is engulfed in pain when the knife sinks in. A pitiful trill falls from his mandibles. He holds his breath, trying desperately to keep the knife steady as he angles it from one side to the other, but it slips out with a streak of black across the dishrag. The pain stops as soon as the knife is out. He even lifts the hand and moves the finer, and it's perfectly fine. He puts it back down and shifts his grip on the knife, holding it sideways and bracing the curved tip on the counter, like he's seen people do in cooking shows and the like.

The knife goes in again, deeper, wider. He cries out in what limited capacity his insectoid throat allows him. He tries to keep pushing it down, pressing his palm on the back of the blade, but it seems to catch on something and, again, he slips and the blade twists sideways, almost detaching the digit. For a second time, the pain fades less than a second after the knife is out.

He drops it on the counter. Jon crumples forward, upper elbows on the counter, lower hands on the edge of it. He'd bury his face in his upper hands if he could do so without directly touching his lidless eyes. Instead, he curls them together and presses the top of his head to his paired forearms. The irony is galling.

Until a voice makes him shoot up straight.

"What are you doing?"

He turns to find Melanie in the break room door, arms folded below a pair of sunglasses. His wings, which have reflexively flared open, slide shut behind him. He glances at the knife.

[Trying to save Flower?]

"What."

[D-A-I-S-Y.]

"Oh." She also looks down at the knife, and the small spots of ink on the dishrag. "Are you going to cut your way there with more bullshit surgery?"

His antennae fold back. [I'm sorry.]

"Oh, fuck off."

[I was trying to save your life.]

"I know! You made that very clear when you carved it into my brain. And you did! I think. But now I keep having nightmares of your stupid moth face chewing my leg open. I guess we'll call that a win!"

[I wish I could've asked first.]

"Yeah, well, so do I. But, if you had, I wouldn't have let you get away a second time. You were right. The only way to do it was to paralyze me and destroy any remaining sense of safety. So, yes. Thank you."

[... Would you rather we'd tried to do it in your sleep?]

Melanie sighs heavily and pinches the bridge of her nose. "No. That might've been worse. Waking up in the middle of it... At least with your way I knew what was going on. Even if I wanted to kill you for it the whole time. And then of course Basira had to go and hold me down afterward..."

Jon's mandibles click in discomfort. [I'm surprised you can stand to see either of us.]

"Who else is there?! We're all stuck in this place together, and I hate all of it. I can't look at her without my leg hurting. But what else am I going to do? I don't want to be on my own. So..."

Jon curls his hands together. If she's coming to him for company, things must be dire. He glances at the knife again.

[I'd offer to let you stay, but this might not be the best time.]

She scoffs. "Yeah, no kidding. What are you doing?"

[I need an anchor. Something I can Know my way back to, that I can use to find my way out of the coffin with Flower. I figured the strongest anchor would be... myself.]

"Okay? Why don't you just cut off a bit of your wing? I haven't seen you use them for anything."

[I'm afraid a part I wasn't born with might not be enough.]

"You weren't born with four arms either."

...

Jon suddenly feels very stupid. He sighs wearily and does his best approximation of a facepalm. He chitters in lieu of a mirthless laugh.

[All these statements, and I'm still lost. Not even the Boneturner could help me. I don't have ribs.]

Melanie stares.

"Hm. Maybe."

[What?]

"Come with me."

Chapter Text

Of all the things Jon thought Melanie could show him, the Distortion's door inside the tunnels below the Archives was very near the bottom. Yet, here he is, standing in front of that aggravatingly familiar threshold, trying not to look at the fractal wood grain too closely. He stares at Melanie instead, which is somehow enough to convey his skepticism.

"She's been helping us."

He chitters in disagreement and folds his arms.

Melanie sighs and knocks on the door. A second later, it creaks open, as it always does. Helen looks even more like a walking headache than the last time he saw it. That doesn't stop it from grinning at him.

"Hello, Archivist. I see you've got yourself a makeover. I think it suits you."

"Hi, Helen."

"Melanie," it nods.

Jon's antennae twitch in annoyance. [I've been told you can help.]

"I have been trying to. But the last time you were very rude to me."

[You're still wearing her face.]

"Not this again. I’m not wearing anything, Archivist. I am at least as much ‘Helen Richardson’ as you are the ‘Jonathan Sims’ that first joined this Institute. Maybe more, actually. You don't even have your own face anymore."

[Shut up!] His wings snap open.

Helen's smile turns crooked as she leans over to Melanie. "I think I hit a nerve."

Melanie, at least, doesn't focus on it. "Is he still in there?"

"Oh, yes. He’s not exactly something I can… digest. He’s a bit of an irritant, to be honest. If you’re looking to let him out, I could be persuaded."

Jon begrudgingly closes his wings. [He?]

"Your Boneturner, Archivist. I helped clean up at the end."

"After I, uh… Took care of things."

[And he's been there for, what? Three, four months now?]

"Give or take," Melanie says.

[Of course. Why didn't you kill him?]

"I stabbed him in three different hearts. Didn’t work. If you want to go hunting for a fourth, knock yourself out."

He chitters awkwardly and shakes his head.

"So. Do you think he can help?"

Jon stares past Helen, into the dizzying corridor stretching away through impossible space. It seems idiotic to even consider it, but he can't think of any other options, so...

[If anyone will know what to pull out of me that I won't miss, it's him. It's worth a try.]

"You don't know?"

[I've tried, believe me.]

"Great. What's the plan, then?"

[I go in. I offer freedom if he… helps. Then I hope he doesn’t kill me. If he tries anything…]

"I would suggest running," Helen offers. "Try to find a door."

He chitters grumpily, but waves for Helen to move aside. She does so with a slight bow. He grabs the doorknob, turns it, and steps through.

Something in the air of the crooked corridor makes his mane of tape tingle unpleasantly. His last foray through these halls was already disorienting, but now, with his range of vision expanded to every direction, the dizziness is immediate. He has to pull the back of his poncho up over his head like a hood to block his sight behind and to the sides. He keeps a hand on the wall as he walks. The wallpaper feels like oversized fingerprints. The floor changes from one step to the next.

Thankfully, he doesn't have to endure it for long.

The sound of shifting flesh and sinew precedes the arrival of the Boneturner. Jon turns to find a large, lumpy shape lumbering down the corridor toward him. He has to resist the urge to flee; his spindly limbs are feeling distinctly breakable at the moment. Partly because of that, he decides to use his powers to communicate instead of flailing his very grabbable arms around.

  Jared Hopworth?

Jared stops.

"Who said that?"

Despite his better judgment, Jon gives a very small wave. Jared stares at him.

"Who are you?"

  The Archivist.

There's a pause. Then a single, throaty breath of a chuckle.

"Don't look like much anymore, do you? But I suppose you never did."

Jared's gaze feels far too much like being appraised for cuts of meat. Jon tries not to squirm.

"I try to kill you. And you throw me in here. And now what? You just walk in?"

  That wasn't me.

"Your people. Your gaff."

  And you wanted to kill me , specifically?

"Still do."

Jared's whole body ripples, as though all the bones flex as easily as the muscles. Jon takes a step back.

  If you do, you're never getting out of here.

"...What do you want?"

  A favor.

"For letting me out?"

  Yes.

"Alright."

  Do you need to know what it is?

"Not much you could want, coming to me. Put something in. Take something out. Which is it?"

  Take something out. Something I won't miss. But I don't know what that would be. I'd ask for a rib if I still had any.

"I'll find something. Come here."

Jon swiftly backpedals away.

  How do I know you won't just reach in and kill me? What guarantees do I have?

"Guarantees? None. But I want to leave more than I want to kill you. Not like it was my idea in the first place."

Jon's antennae perk up. His eyes flicker, just a little.

  Why did you attack us, then?

"I was asked." He ripples again. "I'm not giving you a statement. I just want out."

  I could just pull the information out of you.

Jared smirks with too many teeth. Every joint pops.

"You could try."

Jon resists the urge to take another step back. His wings shift slightly while he thinks.

  How about something you might also be interested in? Could you tell me how my body works? What organs I still have?

"Why?"

  I'm just curious. If you're going to be poking around inside me anyway...

Jared hums like an idling engine. For the second time, he looks Jon up and down with that uncomfortable, flaying stare.

"Alright."

  Thank you. And, try to pull something from the torso, please, if you can find anything nonvital.

"Sure."

Jared looms closer. Jon holds up a hand to stop him, just long enough to tuck and roll his poncho and undershirt out of the way; bleeding isn't likely, but he'd rather avoid more things getting stained with ink. He takes a breath, squeezes his mandibles together, tries not to think about how easy it is to crush almost any bug in one's hand, and nods.

Jared's hand doesn't close around him, exactly. He's too narrow for that. Instead, it grabs him like a pincer, with just the tips of the meaty fingers and thumb. Jon braces his own hands on the bulky wrist, which feels more like a shifting bag of pebbles than a functional joint. Then, Jared's other hand touches him. It invades him, as easily as dipping his fingers into water, only the water can't feel pain when it parts and rejoins.

Jon very much can. His throat and mouth lock around a scream. His wings buzz reflexively, desperate to pull him away from the torture. His claws dig into Jared's wrist up to the knuckle, hot red blood oozing around them, but Jared doesn't seem to care. He just calmly combs through Jon's insided as requested.

"That's some weird flesh you got. More like rubber. Hm... There's your lungs. Book lungs, feels like. Heart there... Plus a few more down your back. Then your stomach..."

Jared's hand moves from his torso down to his tail abdomen.

"And some guts back here. ...Huh, no exit. Just opens into the meat. No glands or anything either."

The hand flows smoothly back up to Jon's midsection.

"Anything else you wanna know?"

Jon can't answer. He's shaking all over, barely holding onto consciousness. Jared doesn't bother to wait.

"What was it you said before? A rib?" He rubs a thumb down Jon's side. "Hm. I can do something like that."

His fingers pinch around a single piece of Jon's exoskeleton, a roughly triangular section that curves from where his spine would be toward his flank. It sits right below where the layers of tape end, at least until Jared pulls it out as easily as plucking a flower petal. Black ink dribbles from the exposed flesh. Two more hands push out from somewhere in Jared's bulk. One goes to the chitin plate immediately below to cover the area of the missing one, reshaping it like clay. The other dips back into Jon's body to reorganize the corresponding muscles.

Jon doesn't see the end result. He passes out.

When he wakes up, he's back in the tunnels, with that curved piece of chitin left tangled in his mane. Melanie and Helen are craned over him as he winces with every shallow breath. He chitters weakly.

Helen grins just a smidge wider. "All done, Archivist."

He chitters some more. He's almost afraid to move his arms on the left side, but they don't actually feel much different. It's twisting his torso while trying to stand that truly feels wrong. It's not even pain, not exactly. He could deal with pain. His bits are just put together in a way they shouldn't be, and his body somehow knows it. He starts taking so long to get up that Melanie actually helps him to his feet, though it's hard to miss the veiled twist of disgust in her face at his touch.

She's right for it, too. He was already a bit hungry before all this, and now he's borderline ravenous. Her touch brings a terrible urge to slap the sunglasses off her face, force her to tell him every gory detail of her life, every moment she was ever afraid down to the smallest fraction of a second.

He doesn't, of course. And, thankfully, his expressionless face keeps it hidden. He just takes a half-step back after she lets go.

Once he's vertical again, Jon tugs his shirt and poncho back into place. Another hand holds the piece of loose chitin. A third stays under his shirt, covering the area that was modified by Jared, as though pressure will ease the discomfort (it won't). And the last signs a quick 'thanks' to Helen.

"You are very welcome. I have decided that I support what you’re doing, and I’m happy to assist. I think we’ll all be much happier this way."

"Basira’s not going to be happy that you let him out," Melanie says.

[She's already not happy with me. Let's just get back to the Archives.]

"You’re going now?"

Jon trills in lieu of laughing, then winces again. He shakes his head.

[I need to lie down. I need to eat.]

"Right. Come on then."

They turn to leave. Helen flutters her fingers at him.

"Good luck, Archivist. Be seeing you."

Jon doesn't have the energy to respond. He just walks, slowly, trying not to move his torso too much. The actual climb up the ladder into the Archives is just as torturous as he expected. But, if nothing else, it's brief.

Once they're in the assistants' area, he heads straight through his office into document storage, pausing only long enough to drop the loose chitin on his desk. He grabs the first real statement he can find and stuffs it into his mouth. When that's not enough, he grabs a second. Even after that, he's tempted to go for a third, but decides against it.

Melanie's watching him from the door to his office. He says nothing when he walks past her to go sink into bed. Both of his right hands are now on the area that was...

Let's call it 'modified'.

He knows she was looking around while he was lost in the statements. He doesn't blame her, his office is far from tidy. His desk is covered in papers and a forgotten mug of tea, thankfully empty. The back wall already looks like a mad man's conspiracy board. His bed is taking up a significant portion of the space. One corner is full of sewing supplies; there's a half-assembled attempt at a modified pair of trousers hanging from a roll of fabric.

She's looking at him now. Is she... concerned? Signing while curled up on his side isn't ideal, but he tries anyway.

[What?]

"How often have you been eating statements?"

His antennae twitch while he counts. [It varies. Every other day?]

"That's... a lot more than it used to be."

He trills vaguely. She doesn't need to know what the alternative is. He offers no further clarification, so for a few seconds Melanie just stands there, clearly wanting to say more. Soon, she pulls out his desk chair and sits down. She squeezes her leg, right where he did the surgery. He can't help but stare at it.

[Do you want to talk about the bullet?]

"No," she snaps. Then, she rubs her face and sighs wearily. "Look, all you need to know is that it didn't stay in my leg because it was a spooky ghost bullet. It stayed because I wanted it to. Anger was all that kept me going long before I got shot. The bullet just took it and told me it was right. That it was me."

Jon doesn't know what to say. Even when he thinks he has something and moves to sign, Melanie holds up a hand.

"Just... I stabbed you almost the moment you set foot in here. Let's just call it even and never talk about it again, alright?"

[...Okay.]

They fall back into silence. Melanie idly stares at his transcriptions of Gertrude's journal on the wall. Jon tries not to wince with every breath; he mostly succeeds. Then, he remembers something. He carefully pushes himself sitting, which draws her attention back to him.

[Can you help me with something?]

"Like what?"

[I can talk with my powers. Telepathy, I suppose you could call it.]

"Really? Why have you been using sign, then?"

[Sunglasses,] he points at hers. [And it's uncomfortable. But it might be the only way I can talk to Flower in the coffin, and I'm not sure if it works without light.]

"Then bring a torch."

[It could break.]

"And you can't just know if it'd work?"

[No luck so far.]

"What does that have to do with me?"

[I could try it on you before going into the coffin. If you're okay with that.]

"Mm. Just talking? No compulsion, no forced knowledge?"

[I promise.]

She stares at him. He holds her gaze, though it's not like he has much of a choice. She lets out a breath.

"Fine."

She stands up, closes both doors, and goes to the lightswitch. She turns back to him, and flips it. His office is plunged into darkness. He can still see, of course, so Melanie taking off her sunglasses then announcing it is unnecessary.

"Alright. Go ahead."

  ...Can you hear me?

She makes a small pained noise. "Yep, alright, that is uncomfortable. Christ, you sound like a headache now. But yeah, I hear you."

  Thanks.

She puts the sunglasses back on and turns on the light. She also notices the clock on the wall.

"Oh, it's late. I didn't realize. I'm uh, I'm going to go get ready for bed. Will you be alright on your own?"

[Yes. I just need time to get used to it. Thanks for staying.]

"No problem. I'll... see you tomorrow, I suppose?"

[I suppose so. Have a good night.]

She scoffs, not unkindly. "Yeah, right."

Chapter Text

It takes a few nights of journal transcription before Jon stops cringing every time he moves.

The journal doesn't even give him anything particularly interesting, either. 2007 seems to have been a quiet year for Gertrude. The only vaguely intriguing thread he picks up is something to do with the panopticon of Millbank Prison. Gertrude seems to think it sunk into the land where the Institute is built? It's strange. But, not immediately relevant to his imminent departure into the Buried, so he simply pins it to the wall with the rest of her sparse Eye-related notes and moves on.

Soon, the day— or rather, night— comes when he can't put it off any longer. His back still feels off, but it always will. He has his anchor. He has Daisy's voice, held in the tape of her statement. It's time.

After Melanie falls asleep, Jon changes clothes. He leaves the poncho on his bed, and dons a shirt and skirt that are both already stained with some amount of ink. He writes a note apologizing to Melanie and Basira. He takes it, plus his chitin and Daisy's tape, into the spare room where the coffin sits. He leaves the first two on a dusty box of stationery off to the side. The tape gets shoved into the tangle of his mane to keep his hands free.

He turns to the coffin. Its compulsion curls around him like a crushing hug.

   No need for that. I'm willing.

It eases. He twists the key in the padlock. The chain slides off on its own. The lid creaks open.

Dry, dusty air spills out in a wave. Rough stone steps lead down, beyond the reach of his sight. There is, of course, no light. Jon takes one last deep breath, checks yet again that Daisy's tape is safe, and enters. The lid creaks shut as soon as his head clear the lip of the coffin.

He descends. His hands walk along the walls on either side. Slowly, so very slow he could be imagining it, they narrow. The ceiling grows close. The steps lose definition, so gradually that he's not sure when they go from a staircase to a cave floor. Soon, he's not even sure if the passage is still going down or if it's leveled off, because it all feels like moving deeper. Like being swallowed.

No, not even that. That'd imply he's being forced to continue. He very much isn't.

Deeper and deeper he goes. Time loses meaning. Walking becomes stooping becomes crawling. The tunnel closes in on all sides, forcing his wings to bend unpleasantly. He's very glad to have put the tape in his mane, because it would've long since been crushed or lost if it'd been sitting in a pocket by his hip.

The tunnel goes from a tight but passable gap, to a choking squeeze. Scales are scraped off his wings in layers, each one leaving another stinging pinprick to grind against the rock. When the scales run out, the earth starts taking pieces of the wings themselves. Multiple times, the ends get caught in the shifting stone and Jon has to literally tear off a chunk in his effort to keep moving. He can't tell if they're bleeding or not. It doesn't really matter. It just hurts.

Deeper. Always deeper, no matter which way he goes. He hears someone wheezing, begging for help, but he can't see them. He's not here for them. He can't save everyone. So he doesn't. He keeps moving, following the faintest tug in his mane from Daisy's tape, guiding him like the most fragile gossamer thread. Sometimes, he gets stuck. Sometimes, the earth sings and squeezes him tighter, but never tight enough to break. Sometimes, he actually moves.

It's during another session of melodious crushing that he hears her. Daisy's voice, muffled through several feet of dirt, groaning like the earth all around.

He calls out by reflex, but of course his chittering is far too low to be heard. He digs instead, scraping his already blunted claws through the packed soil, pulling with his hands as much as he pushes with his legs. It's slow, grueling progress, but soon the earth shifts just enough for him to catch a glimpse of overgrown hair, then a dirt-covered forehead, then a single barely-open eye.

   Daisy!

She winces. Then she tries to look around.

"Wh...? Who? W-what?"

   Daisy, it's me. It's Jon.

"What...? Jon? Wh— Why...? Why can I h-hear you in my head?"

   I'm... different. I'm a proper avatar now.

"Oh."

   I'm going to touch your hand. It'll probably feel weird.

"O-okay."

He turns and twists until he can free one of his cramped arms. He reaches out and wraps his hand around Daisy's; her nails are caked in blood and grit, broken down to the root. She squeezes his palm without hesitation.

"Oh. It d-does feel weird." She laughs, barely more than a few wheezing breaths. "You— You're real. You're real."

   Yes. I'm here, Daisy.

"Daisy. Yeah." She chuckles. "Daisy. That's me."

   Are you alright?

"No."

   Sorry. Obviously. I meant— You sound okay.

"Do I?"

   I thought you might've been... taken over. By the Hunt.

"What?"

   The Hunt. You're a Hunter.

"Yeah. I guess I was. But, not here."

   No.

She squeezes his chitinous hand. "You were t-taken over."

   I was. Am.

"What happened?"

   I died. And I made a choice.

"Oh." She laughs again, almost hysterically, if such a thing is possible with next to no air in one's lungs.

   Daisy?

"I was gonna kill you. You know that, right?"

   I definitely got that impression when you dragged me into the woods for an execution.

"No. Heh. After the mission. I was planning to kill you."

   I... did not know that.

"I realized... You were in my dreams. R-reliving... this. The coffin. You were there."

   Yes.

"That shirt you were wearing when you came back from the States. You had it in my dream. Made me realize you weren't h-human. Needed to die, as soon as it w-was safe. Nevermind Elias and his... insurance."

   ...Daisy, If I wasn't human then—

"You're less now. Yeah, I can feel it." She squeezes his hand one more time. "At the moment, I don't care."

   And when we get out?

"Can we?"

   I think so, yes. I have a plan.

"I-is this like all your other plans?"

   It's fine. I just need to find it.

"What?"

He goes silent. His antennae twitch, or at least try to in the cramped space. Static flickers in his eyes, unseen in the utter darkness.

The enormity of where they are threatens to overwhelm him. The weight of all of existence is pressing down, kept at bay only just enough to not completely obliterate them. It's maddening. But, underneath that unfathomable pressure, he finds it. Like the thread that brought him to Daisy, another thread, possibly even thinner, stretches back the way he came.

"Jon?"

   I've got it.

"A way out?"

   Yes.

"A-are you sure?"

   Yes. Come on.

"Jon, wait."

   What?

"I'm... I'm s-sorry."

Jon stops. He can't see much of her face, both caked and partially obscured by dirt as it is, but she looks so earnest it pains him.

   Let's just get out of here. Come on, don't let go.

"Yeah. Alright."

The way back is just as grueling as the initial descent. It'd be shorter, or so Jon suspects, if he didn't have to stop every now and then for Daisy to catch her breath. He doesn't begrudge her for it. He just waits, patiently, holding her hand, keeping her close through every leg of the journey, until the walls stop squeezing them. Just as gradually as they pressed in the first time, they begin to pull away. Daisy's first full breath almost makes her cry. Her limbs cramp and ache the more they move, but with Jon's help she keeps going, from crawling, to crouching, all the way to walking up those very same stone steps Jon first encountered.

He touches the underside of the lid. It doesn't move on its own this time. The creak of its hinges as he pushes it aside is somehow petulant.

The room beyond it is just as he remembers, with the sole exception that his written apology is gone. A good sign (probably). He helps Daisy up the last few steps. There's only a thin sliver of light coming in under the closed door, but to Daisy's eyes it's more than enough to look around in wonder.

"W-we're out! We're really out! I can't believe it!"

   Careful.

He guides her to step out of the coffin, then over to the wall.

   Do you want to sit?

"No."

   Okay. Just wait here.

She leans against the wall while he goes back to the coffin, shuts the lid, and diligently chains and locks it back up. He'll take it down to artifact storage later, but this will do for now.

   I'll go see if Melanie's awake. Do you mind being alone for a b—

"Yes."

   Alright. Come on.

He goes back to her side. They walk slowly, step by step, and for once Jon is glad to have four arms because it lets him hold her securely while still leaving at least one hand free. He uses it to grab his anchor on the way past, then to open the door slowly, so she has time to adjust to the light. Once they're out in the corridor, though, he slams it shut as loudly as he can.

"Why'd you do that?"

   Because I can't call out. Give it a minute.

They don't wait long. Another door, exactly the one he was hoping for, opens down the corridor, and Melanie pokes her head out of the assistants' room. Her sunglasses are crooked, like she put them on in a hurry, but he doesn't need to see her eyes to know that they widen.

"Jon! And Daisy!"

"H-hi, Melanie."

"Holy crap. It actually worked?"

Jon would sign and tell her she doesn't need to sound quite so surprised, but he has too many hands full for it.

Daisy just nods. "Yeah."

"Wow. Uh. Hi! I guess! Shit, I didn't— Basira said she's on her way back. I-I called her, when I found your note," she looks at Jon. "She should be here tomorrow, I think?"

"That's good."

[Date?] Jon signs awkwardly.

"It's uh... You went in there on the night of the 24th? Today's the 26th. Uh, early night or so, I had dinner like half an hour ago."

He was in the coffin for a little under two days. 48 hours, give or take. It felt far longer.

[Thanks.]

"Yeah, sure. But uh, what do we do now? I mean, I don't know how to rehabilitate someone from being buried for eight months. I suppose... What do you need, Daisy?"

"I want to feel clean again."

"Yeah, no problem. We've been taking sponge baths in the bathroom sometimes, I'll show you where the stuff is. Do you need help getting there?"

"Maybe. But I wanna try without first."

"Alright."

Gingerly, Daisy steps away from Jon to go lean on the wall instead of him. Her legs shake, but not unbearably so. She has to take a minute to just breathe and exist as someone who can stand under their own power. She leaves dirt-covered handprints on the wall as she walks, always slow, always careful. After only a few steps, she stops and looks back at him.

"Thank you."

   It was the least I could do.

"No. It really wasn't."

She almost laughs when she says that. Standing takes too much effort to allow it, though. She keeps walking, with Melanie following along ready to help, until they both vanish into the bathroom.

Jon is left standing in the corridor. He's just as filthy as Daisy, so he's reluctant to move around and spread more dirt everywhere. He'll wait until Daisy's done and go wash up himself. In the meantime, he takes stock of his condition.

Tired. Sore everywhere. Hungry. Thirsty somehow, even though he hadn't even thought that was possible until now. His wings are in tatters, mostly the bigger pair. The edges are frayed, torn, missing pieces, and they've been scraped completely bare of scales on the outside and on a good chunk of the inside as well. Having their membrane bare like this makes him feel irrationally exposed. Strangely, however, the eye spots are untouched. They're stripped of scales, just like everywhere else, but none of them are otherwise damaged. The biggest tear should, by all rights, have completely bisected one of them, but it clearly stopped short right at the edge of the bright green circle.

It's not surprising, exactly, but it doesn't comfort him.

Melanie steps out of the bathroom, ducks briefly into the assistants' area, and comes back out with an armful of clothes that she gives to Daisy through the door. She then bustles away again, only to return with a broom and dustpan. She waves at him.

"Come stand over here. I need to sweep up this mess."

He moves next to the bathroom door. Melanie sweeps, then leans the broom on the wall. She stares at him while they wait.

"You look like crap."

[Thank you,] he signs flatly.

"...How was it down there?"

[Bad. Cramped. Hard to breathe.]

"Right, of course. And uh..." Melanie looks at the bathroom door.

[She's about as okay as we could hope for, I think. And she'll probably want to eat and drink when she's done, but make sure to take it slow. Just water and bread or something, nothing too tough. Start small.]

"Noted. You're going to clean up too when she's done, right?"

[Yes. I'd appreciate it if you could get me something to wear out of my office.]

"Sure."

They wait. Eventually, Daisy comes back out wearing some of Melanie's borrowed clothes. As expected, she asks for food and water, so Melanie accompanies her to the break room while Jon slips into the bathroom. He throws out his soiled clothes without a second thought. A few minutes later, Melanie knocks on the door and, when he unlocks it, she sticks her arm through the gap and hands him a fresh set. He considers asking her to leave his anchor and Daisy's tape in his office for him, but decides against it. He puts them on top of the toilet tank instead to keep them dry.

He washes up, for the first time since he woke up as a moth; his new body just doesn't accumulate dirt like a human would. The feeling of wetness against his chitin is a bit strange, but not unpleasant. It makes him vaguely wonder what a proper bath would feel like.

After he's done cleaning himself, he pockets the anchor and the tape. He wants to clean the bathroom and finish sweeping the corridor, but Melanie insists on letting her do it. He goes to the break room instead to check on Daisy. She's sitting at the small table, taking tiny bites out of a slice of bread and holding a half-empty glass of water.

   Everything okay?

"Yeah. You?"

   Better now. Do you mind if I make some tea?

"Knock yourself out."

He does so. It's quiet. Peaceful. Daisy watches him, but he doesn't mind it. There's no judgment in her gaze. She's just familiarizing herself with something Melanie already knows. He sighs with the first taste of sweetness on his tongue.

His plan worked. A part of him is expecting something to go horribly wrong at any second. He tries not to dwell on it too much.

Melanie arrives right after he finishes his tea. Jon excuses himself to go to document storage to put away Daisy's tape and also eat a statement. Afterward, he stops by his office to drop his anchor off on his desk, but then he hesitates.

His bed calls to him. He is so very tired. But he can't sleep now. He's not going to force Daisy back into her nightmare literally right after pulling her out of it. He also doesn't entirely trust himself to not fall asleep if he stays in his office the whole night.

So he doesn't. After Melanie puts Daisy to bed in Basira's cot and goes to sleep herself, he goes out. He'll be back before they wake.

Chapter Text

The reunion between Daisy and Basira happens while Jon is asleep. He doesn't mind.

In the afternoon, he's surveying his transcripts pinned to the wall for no particular reason. He just hasn't stopped to look at them as a whole very often. Nothing new comes of it, and he doesn't expect it to. He's only now reaching the end of Gertrude's notes from 2007, after all, and if the notebook lasts all the way to her death, he still has eight years to go. Although, if he remembers right, 2008 was a rather busy year for his predecessor, so maybe he'll stumble on something important soon.

Not yet, however. There's a knock at his door. A moment after it happens, he Knows it's Basira. He can't very well tell her to come in, so he just gives a loud click with his mandibles. She pokes her head through.

"Hey. Are you— Woah. What is that?"

[G-T-D's notes. I've been transcribing them.]

"Wait, seriously? You can read them?"

[Eat them. Yes. It takes a while.]

"Why didn't you tell me?"

[I found out when you were taking care of M-L-N. Then the box arrived, and you left. There wasn't time.]

"Were you going to tell me?"

[If anything important came out of it. But nothing so far.]

"Hm."

[What were you going to say?]

"Right." She looks him up and down. Her eyes linger on the torn edges of his wings. "I... I just wanted to say thanks. And also tell you not to do that again."

[The coffin's already in artifact storage. I can't, even if I wanted to.]

"You know what I mean."

[Do I? My plan worked.]

"That doesn't mean it wasn't a stupid decision to make, especially without telling anyone."

He turns his head away— 'looking' away isn't really possible. [Fine. What about you? What were you off to?]

"None of your business."

[Did you at least find anything useful?]

"Again, none of your business."

If he could, Jon would narrow his eyes. [Alright. Gratitude and warning accepted. Is there anything else?]

"No, that was it. See you."

He waves her off.

Routine, or as close to it as can exist in the Archives, returns.  He finishes his attempt at a pair of trousers that fit around his tail abdomen, but they end up being far too uncomfortable to actually wear. Even if they weren't, they might just end up looking like they have a great big hole over his ass to any normal people that see him, so they were never worth the trouble. They were just something to pass the time. He considers knitting as a possible alternative.

Daisy takes to spending time with him. She can't always do it, especially not when he's asleep during most daylight hours, but she's there when she can be. She's a quiet presence most of the time, either standing or doing some light exercises in the corner, trying to regain the muscle she lost in the coffin. It's nice. And she never once wears sunglasses around him, even after he's done feeding her BSL knowledge.

He transcribes more of Gertrude's notes. By sheer coincidence, right at the end of 2007, he finds a mention of something called the 'Everchase'. When he pins it to the wall, he waves for Daisy to look at it.

"What is it?"

   This. Gertrude uses it as a name for a Hunt ritual, but...

"Okay?"

He doesn't reply. His eyes flicker with sudden knowledge.

   Give me a moment.

He heads into document storage. He finds a specific statement. He eats it like all the others, wishing he could share it with Daisy without having to put the knowledge in her head. To his surprise, when he surfaces from the memory he finds himself coughing up a brand new tape, in addition to the recycled pages that come out of his wings. Unlike the pristine, transparent cassette that Breekon gave him, the one he spits onto his palm is opaque gray, with a label yellowed to the exact same shade as the paper he ate. The writing on it is still his, however: Percy Fawcett, Hunt, 27/06/30. The fact that the first half of the year isn't specified annoys him, but it doesn't really matter.

He comes back to his office, digs the recorder out from one of the drawers, puts the tape in, and lets it play. They listen to his stolen voice, her standing, him sinking into his chair. When the tape stops, he pops it out and drops it in a random drawer with the recorder.

"You think that was part of this 'Everchase' you found?"

   Yes. But if it was a ritual, why did it fail? There was no outside interference, no other powers. Even the indigenous tribes who could theoretically have derailed it seemed to stay away. So why didn't it work?

"I don't... think it was about that."

Jon mulls it over. He looks at the name pinned to the wall. Somewhere in him, something understands.

   You don't think the Hunt would let it end. It's all in the pursuit. Everchase, the eternal ritual.

"I-I don't know. You're the expert."

   No, I like it. It's a good theory.

He stands up to pin it to the wall. He puts it separately from the ongoing sequence of Hunt-related transcripts, next to a different note about the End ritual; Gertrude confidently stated earlier in the journal that it doesn't exist, because everything dies eventually.

"Basira said you could just... know all this now, anyway."

   I can't really control it most of the time.

He returns to his desk and starts reaching for the next page of notes to chew through, but stops. The Hunt lingers in his mind. He looks at his hand, where the claws still haven't fully grown back from being worn down inside the coffin. He remembers them cutting through the rubbery skin of Breekon when he fled. He curls them into his palm.

"You're thinking about something."

Jon's head tilts toward Daisy. He's torn. But, she's been nothing but understanding. And they're alone, as far as he knows. Basira's off somewhere again, and Melanie's in the Institute, but not in the Archives. If there's ever been a time and person to tell this to, it's here.

Except she beats him to it.

"You've been hunting."

   ...Yes.

She doesn't sit, but she leans on the edge of his desk, right next to him. He keeps his head down. She doesn't ask him to face her. She doesn't raise her voice.

"How many?"

   Two. So far.

"Tell me about them."

   The first one was right after I got back. Melanie was still unstable— she had a Slaughter bullet in her. She stabbed me. I was in pain. I tried to heal it with a written statement, and it wasn't enough. I thought I just wanted to be away from her, but—
   It was a woman. I tried taking a shortcut through an alley and found her there. She was worried about something, I think, anxious. I felt it in her the moment I looked at her. Her statement. I tried to just walk by, not interact, but she stared at me every second that it took me to walk down that alley. She was afraid of me even before I pulled the statement out of her. I couldn't resist.

She says nothing. She just nods for him to continue.

   The other was... after I rescued you. The coffin, it— It cut me off from the Eye, I think. Not fully, but enough that I felt drained when we got out. I was too hurt for a written statement to solve. I was too tired to be in my office, I didn't want to sleep at the same time as you. So I left again, that very night.
   I told myself I wasn't going to. But then I ran into a drunk on the street. He almost walked right into me, I had to grab him to stop him knocking me over. The moment I touched him, I felt it again. His fear. His statement. Pulling it out was easier than breathing, I barely had to think about it. He started weeping maggots while the tape was coming out.

"Tape?"

He gives her a brief mental snapshot of Breekon bleeding tape. Then, for emphasis, he stands up and goes to the loose floorboard by the wall. From under it, he takes two transparent cassettes, each with a name, Fear, and date. He lays them out on his desk and, as an afterthought, takes Breekon's cassette from a drawer and sets it down next to them.

   There was almost a third between those two. A supermarket cleaner. I'd gone in for some shopping and he happened to walk by me. If we hadn't been in public, I might've done it. I even Knew where and when to ambush him on his way out from work, but I didn't. I came back here. I haven't been back to that market since.

"Do you want to do it again?"

   No. ...Yes.

He sighs and hangs his head in his arms.

   I don't know. It's not about wanting. I'm just afraid I can't exist without it. The paper statements, the fear in them, it feeds me, but—

He looks up at her.

   I start getting restless if they're all I have. Hungry, always, even after I eat one. And I didn't want to take another statement after getting you out, but I— He literally stumbled into me. It was just... so easy. Easier than falling.

"Are all the statements like Breekon's?"

  No. Humans can't resist like he could. Theirs just comes from the mouth. Doesn't hurt me, either. Breekon's tape was... difficult.

"Hm."

He's silent. She looks down at him without aggression, but it doesn't stop him leaning forward, hanging his head, wishing he couldn't both see and feel her eyes on him. But the first thing she says throws him off completely.

"What about me?"

  What?

"You said you don't know if you can survive without live statements, but you already needed the written ones before turning into this, right?"

  ...Yes?

"Am I going to die if I don't hunt?"

  I... I don't know.

"Can you try?"

He nods. His antennae twitch as his eyes flicker. After a few seconds, he shakes his head.

  No, I don't know. Too much of a hypothetical, I think.

"Thought so. And I'm okay with that. Whatever happens, happens. You?"

He has to resist the urge to hug himself.

  I don't want to die, Daisy. I already chose to become this instead.

"But you don't know that's going to happen."

  No, I don't.

"Then let's give it a try. We'll help each other. If you need to buy anything, I can get it for you or come with so you're not tempted. I'll keep you in check. And if you start to think you really can't go without live statements, we'll talk again."

  ...Okay. I can do that.

"Good."

She holds out a hand. He shakes it, hesitant at first, then with determination.

"We'll get through this."

  Yes. Thank you, Daisy.

"Of course."

She does end up accompanying him for a shopping trip. If he's going to be avoiding live statements, he'll need more things to distract himself with, so he buys knitting needles and several balls of yarn. The trip takes a while due to Daisy's continuing limitations, but he's actually glad for it. It gives him something to worry about besides being subconsciously on the lookout for potential statement givers.

He has vague ideas about maybe putting together a jumper that actually fits around his multiple extra appendages. Before that, however, he knits Daisy a pair of wrist warmers, each with an outline of her namesake flower on the back. They're far from perfect, but it communicates his gratitude well enough.

Chapter Text

Keeping his word becomes harder each day. His statement intake goes up to once every day, and he has to stop himself from eating more than that. He raids Elias' office again for tapes, hoping the variety will help. He's not sure if it does, but it's better than nothing but paper.

Daisy's presence helps when it's there, but Jon fears he won't be able to resist the urge to hunt during the night, when everyone is asleep but him. He finds the keys to the Archive's door and gives them to Daisy, tells her to lock it every night so he can't leave. She manages to make it into a habit without raising any suspicion from Basira. Jon is thankful, but it also means he has almost ten hours every night where he's alone, restless, hungry, with nothing but the dark halls of the Archive for company.

And Helen, he supposes. But actually, no, not even Helen, because when he tries to go down into the tunnels, he also finds the trapdoor to the tunnels locked. The Eye helpfully tells him that this was Basira's decision after she started helping Daisy keep the Archives locked at night; the tunnels do have other exits into the streets of London, after all. He tries very hard not to resent Basira for it.

All this means that Jon's only outlets at night are his hobbies, and Gertrude's journal. The former are nice, working with wool makes him think wistfully of Martin, but they're borderline meaningless. The latter does nothing to ease the low-level hunger that now constantly gnaws at his stomach, but it's also basically the only thing that makes him feel useful.

It's like he's waiting for something. He doesn't know what. And as much as he tries not to worry about it, he can't stand being idle for long.

Jon buries himself in transcribing the journal. The notes for 2008 are dense, longer than all the others he's chewed through. He has to pick through the cellulose fibers even more carefully to make sure he doesn't miss anything. His somewhat neat series of pinned notes balloons outward, covering twice as much height on the wall as the previous years.

There are preparations to disrupt the upcoming Flesh ritual in Istanbul, in a gnostic temple outside of town. Amusingly, there's a single note early in the year, about a Lonely ritual that was attempted by Peter Lukas himself, which was broken by nothing more than a tip off to The Guardian of all things. Other preparations speak of a Buried ritual Jon already knows about, centered on a small American town that was collectively ignoring a growing pit; Gertrude details her efforts to track down one Jan Kilbride, also a familiar name, and convince him to sacrifice himself for the 'greater good'.

Gertrude writes that she hoped his dismemberment would be a mercy. Jon doesn't think it was.

July 2008 brings him yet another note about a statement he already knows. On the third day of the month, Gertrude mentions a visit by Mary Keay, and a 'macabre gift' she received. This was an old statement, Jon listened to it before he even met Leitner. He remembers it well; Mary's calm brutality had made his skin crawl. He adds the relevant case number to his transcription, then pins it to the wall like all the others.

Afterward, Jon hits a sudden roadblock. When he goes to grab the next page of notes, he finds that he just... can't. His hand stops short. All of his hands do, no matter which one he tries to use. Even when he focuses all his willpower on moving one of them forward, millimeter by millimeter, and actually closes his fingers around the paper, he can't muster the strength to tear it out of the notebook.

Jon sinks back into his chair and stares at the journal. Hours later, when the others are awake and Daisy comes into his office, he doesn't even give her time to say hi.

  I need your help.

"Wh— Uh, okay? Good morning to you, I suppose."

  Sorry, good morning.

He gestures frantically at the journal, still lying open on his desk on that same page.

  I can't take the next page. It's not letting me.

"What do you mean? What's not letting you?"

  The Eye? The Web? I don't know.
  It doesn't make sense. I am an avatar of forbidden knowledge. What doesn't it want me to know?

"Hm. Okay. What do you need me to do?"

  Grab the page and feed it to me. Make sure I don't stop chewing.

"Alright."

Daisy steps around him and sets down her mug of tea. The sound of the page being torn out of the notebook's spine somehow makes Jon's stomach turn. When she holds it out to him, everything he is recoils at the thought of consuming it. He can't bring himself to lean forward and take it off her hand. The most he can do is hold his mandibles open and let her place it between them. Even then, she has to hold it there for an uncomfortably long time, until he can force himself to bite down on it.

As soon as the paper's in his mouth, he wants to throw up. His throat convulses painfully. He manages to keep hold of the page, however. It tastes just the same as all the others, dry paper and a faint hint of bitter ballpoint pen ink.

Chewing these pages has never been quick. He can easily spend half an hour working through each one. The latest ones from 2008 have taken a full hour, in some cases. This particular page, which makes him gag every minute it's in his mouth, is a special kind of slow. Jon has to marshal every scrap of focus and determination he still has that isn't tangled up in the Fears to work through it. He has to move each of his many mouthparts individually, grinding the paper into pulp piece by tiny piece, pausing periodically to write down what he's stubbornly extracting from it while also keeping it from just getting spat back out when he doesn't have 110% of his focus on it. Progress is glacial.

But, it is progress. Slow, painful, exhausting progress, but progress nonetheless.

Daisy stays in the room, watching him. She does what exercises she can that won't make her look away. When he inevitably starts drooling, she grabs the towel he keeps in his desk and spreads it out under his mouth. He can't even let himself be too thankful for it, if he gets distracted in any way he might never be able to finish it.

After what feels like hours, Basira comes in and they talk briefly, but Jon's too preoccupied to be able to listen. He just keeps chewing, grinding, mashing the paper, trying not to think about how much might be left, trying to focus on just keeping it up, reaching the end, absorbing and transcribing whatever the page holds, until—

It's over.

All at once, the paper runs out of knowledge to give him, and the intense nausea vanishes. He gasps so hard the watery pulp plops down onto the already soaked towel. His mandibles hang open, dripping with flecks of shredded paper. His whole body aches from holding tension for—

Almost four hours. It's nearly midday. There's a smell of food in the air that he becomes abruptly aware of.

"Jon?"

No, it doesn't matter. He picks up the towel and forces the papery mush back into his mouth, down his throat. He wipes his mandibles with the barely-dry corners of it, then tosses it away. He waits for the telltale tingle of the page coming out of his wing, before he takes it and returns it to the journal. Then, he picks up his transcription, where the words have been written so forcefully his pen nearly tore right through the page multiple times.

Eric Delano. He was bound to the Catalog of the Trapped Dead by Mary Keay. His page was what Gertrude received from her. And Gertrude summoned him, over two weeks after she received him, upon which he told her he'd quit the Archive. He told her how.

Jon reaches up and lays a hand over one of his large, lidless, multifaceted eyes.

"Jon."

He jumps. Then sighs. Right, Daisy's still there. She looks slightly concerned.

  I'm here.

"What did you learn?"

He clicks his mandibles. He learned that Gertrude recorded her conversation with Eric. That must be one of the tapes Elias was keeping to himself, right? All this time he's had access to them, and a way to leave the Archives was just sitting in that box, hidden in plain sight. Or so he hopes, anyway. If it's in Elias' safe, he can't get to it.

"Jon?"

  Yes. It's... A lot. But I think there's a tape that will help. I'll be back in a minute.

"Do you need help?"

  No.

He heads out into the Institute. People are going out for their lunch break. They stare. Of course they do, he must look like a mad man even without a moth's face leering at them, but he doesn't care, not this time. He barges into Rosie's office, making her jump, but he doesn't give her time to speak.

SILENCE

Her teeth clack shut. Her eyes are wide. Jon doesn't bother asking about Lukas, he just pulls the information out of her: Elsewhere. He nods to himself and walks past her, into Elias' office, where he goes straight for the box of tapes. He digs through it with all four hands, trying to pay attention to the tapes that don't call to him, the ones he never stopped to consider before. He'd feared that the knowledge would repel him again, but he already has it. He knows exactly which tape to grab.

On the way, he stares at Rosie again. A part of him wants to apologize, but he can't afford to risk it.

  If you tell anyone about me or the broken lock, I will know.

She nods stiffly.

He returns to the Archives. The three women are having lunch in the break room when he arrives.

"Found it?" Daisy asks.

[Yes. Come to my office when you're done.]

"Will do."

"Found what?" Basira asks.

He doesn't respond. Daisy can fill them in if she wants, they'll find out soon enough.

He grabs the recorder from his office and shuts himself in document storage to listen to the tape, just to make sure it's the right one. Afterward, he feverishly makes a fresh copy of his transcript, one that isn't quite so unintelligible. He splits it and pins it to the wall, like all the others, but that one piece of critical information is pinned separately from the rest, in an unassuming corner. Then he waits, sat at his desk, bouncing his leg, still sore all over but far too anxious to do anything else until the issue is resolved.

Basira, Daisy and Melanie join him shortly after.

[Sit,] he signs, despite only having one other chair across from him; Melanie takes it.

"Alright, what's going on?" Basira asks. "You're way too jittery for my tastes. Daisy said you found something in Gertrude's book."

[I did.]

He hits play on the recorder. He lets the start of it play out, the summoning of Eric Delano, the conversation with Gertrude, etcetera. He skips past the statement to the end, and the thing he actually needs them to know. Eric and Gertrude's voices switch back and forth. And then, just like that, the tape ends. The recorder stops rolling. The silence is deafening.

Until Melanie breaks it.

"...Fuck."

Jon nods. Tension bleeds out of him. He actually crumples forward onto his desk with a heavy exhale.

Melanie reaches out by reflex. "Woah, hey. Are you alright?"

He shakes his head.

[Getting this information was very tiring.]

"Yeah, no kidding. You've been going to sleep around this time, right?"

He nods.

"So, maybe you just do that, and we'll... think about this."

She looks around at the other two. Basira is deep in thought, but she nods. Daisy does the same, and also puts a hand on Jon's shoulder.

"Get some sleep."

He nods again. It's hard to even stand up, but he just about does it.

[Leave the tape here. I need to tell Martin later.]

"Sure."

He goes to bed and falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.

He wakes up much later, when the others have already gone to bed themselves. He drags himself upright with a groan. He only feels fully awake after he has a statement. Then, he stands by his desk and stares at the recorder, with its fateful tape still inside.

Is this more important than Martin's request that he stay away? It must be. Right? Jon can't leave anymore, he's too far gone, but Martin can. Martin could save himself. All of them could. But Martin asked him to stop finding him. He clearly considers whatever he's doing with Lukas important. Is Jon just looking for excuses to go see him again?

He tries to Know where Martin will be in the morning, which place he's been working at. For once, the Eye obliges.

He could just leave the tape in that room with a note for Martin to find. But what if he goes somewhere else tomorrow?

Jon mulls it over. Then he comes to a decision. He tugs a short length of tape out from his mane, chews both ends, and loops it around the recorder. He cradles it between two hands. With a burst of static, the tape fades into nonexistence. As an afterthought, he adds a second loop to the tape itself. The final touch is a sticky note with the message, 'Play it. Leave. I can't follow. -Jon'.

Except his plan is foiled by the door to the Archives being locked, per his own request. He turns the handle uselessly. He bangs his fist on it, just once. He almost wants to laugh.

He could pick the lock. The knowledge is there for him to take. But no, if he does then there's nothing stopping him from hunting at night.

Jon goes back to his office and removes both the sticky note and the radar threads from the recorder and tape. He knits, and transcribes, and does whatever he can to pass the time until Daisy wakes up and unlocks the Archives. He waits some more after that, until he's sure Martin will be busy working, and then he leaves to go find him.

Martin is typing at a computer when he enters the room.

"Who—? Oh, Jon. Hi."

  Hey.

Martin winces slightly. "Ow, wh— You could talk in his head this whole time?"

  Yes, but it hurts. I didn't—
  That's not important right now. I need to show you something.

"Um. Jon, I'm—"

   Listen.

He hits play. Like last time, he goes through Eric and Gertrude's initial conversation, skips past the statement, but ends it early after Gertrude's 'I don't think so'. He watches the realization dawn on Martin's face.

"...Fuck off."

He nods emphatically.

"Right. U-uh, right, um. H-have you told the others, or...?

  Yes. Daisy was there when I found out. I've been deciphering Gertrude's journal, it was in there. I just got the tape to make it easier to tell them. And you.

"Okay. Do they want to do it?"

  I don't know, I haven't asked. We just found out yesterday. They're still thinking about it.

"Alright. Wait, what about you? Can you...?"

  No, I can't leave. But you can, Martin. You should. You don't have to keep working for Lukas, you can just go.

Martin sighs before he's even done talking.

"No, Jon, I can't. Not without—" He cuts himself off and glances away. "A-and even if I could, I don't have anyone to help me afterward. I'm—"

  Lonely.

"...Yeah. Besides, Peter's finally letting me in on what he actually wants me to do, and it sounds pretty big. I don't think I can just leave it alone."

  Are you sure?

"Yeah. You're not even supposed to be here, y'know?"

  I know. I wanted to leave the tape for you here, but...
  I'm sorry. Just... Keep it in mind, okay? In case you need it.

"Sure."

Jon steps back. He lingers at the door, but Martin very pointedly keeps his eyes on the computer screen, so he leaves. After the door closes, he sighs, and retreats back to the Archives.

Chapter Text

A few days later, Melanie goes through with it.

Jon isn't there to see it. In fact, he very specifically leaves the Archives to let Daisy handle the call for the ambulance and so on. He doesn't want to risk Knowing what it feels like to gouge his eyes out with a book awl.

He watches Melanie get taken away by the paramedics from a shaded corner of the street. He's relieved, mostly. Something in him doesn't like the thought of losing assistants, but he can hardly call them that at this point. They're just prisoners under a different name.

Basira and Daisy are waiting for him at the door to the Archive. Once they spot him, Basira says something to Daisy and walks off toward the library. Daisy's face twists slightly behind the other.

  Everything alright?

"Fine."

  And Melanie?

"Says she'll call when she's able."

They head into the Archive. For lack of anywhere else better to exist together, they end up in the break room. Jon goes to put the kettle on, as has become his habit in late morning. He doesn't offer it to Daisy; she prefers coffee.

With a steaming mug cradled in his hands, he goes to sit at the small table across from her.

  So. It's just us three now.

"Mm."

  Is Basira going to do it?

"No. She thinks this is too big to walk away from. And I'm stuck here anyway."

Jon almost chokes on his tea.

  What? No you're not, you were never hired.

"Not by Elias. But I got into his office a couple weeks ago. Found an employment contract, filled it in, and signed it."

  Why?

"Didn't want you in my dreams anymore."

  But I haven't been! I sleep in the afternoon, you've seen it.

"Doesn't mean you're not there. You just... I dunno, you just don't get anything from it or something. You'd know better than me."

Jon leans back in his chair, stunned.

  So all this time, being awake at night was for nothing?

Daisy shrugs. "Looks like. I thought you knew?"

  No! If I'd known, I wouldn't have been doing it!

"Hm. Sorry to not have told you sooner, then."

  It— It's fine. It's just... I thought I'd found at least one way to stop hurting people, but apparently not.
  I don't even know why I'm surprised. That's all I can do now.

He sighs heavily. Daisy stares at him.

"You need to stop moping."

  Excuse me?

"You need to stop swanning around, being all sad."

  I’m not swanning around—!

" 'Boohoo, I'm so alone and a monster'."

  I am a monster. Look at me!

"If you're a monster, then so am I."

  Wh— No, you're—

"Human? Sure, but I was there, Jon. You might've crossed the point of no return, but I'm on it. When I killed that— thing that called itself Hope, all my blood was singing. I felt the fur that wanted to push out of my skin, the teeth that were trying to grow out. The only reason I didn't end up in the exact same place as you was because of that damned coffin. And ever since you pulled me out, I've been feeling them again, hearing the blood, and I know all it'd take is for me to listen to tip me over the knife's edge. So if you're a monster, then I am too, because the only difference between us is I'm still a chrysalis."

Jon stares. His mug of tea is all but forgotten.

  I... didn't realize you'd gotten so close.

"Yeah." She lets out a breath, then extends an arm across the table. "Give me your hand."

He hesitates, unsure of where she's going with this, but after a second he complies. She squeezes his chitinous palm, just like in the coffin.

"You're not hurting me now, see? So quit talking like your every waking moment is spent actively torturing people. You're a moth who eats fear. It sucks. I get it. Now get over yourself, and make the best of it anyway."

Daisy's grip is firm. Fearless. She hasn't once feared him since her rescue, or even worn sunglasses around him. She always matches his gaze, always tries to keep him in her sight so he can talk in her mind. And she's been helping him stay away from live statements. She hasn't even told Basira about it.

Jon is at a loss for words. So he squeezes her hand in return and, for once, doesn't try to be mindful of his claws. They poke the back of hers a little, but she doesn't care.

  Most people don't know it's not a cocoon.

Her determined look is broken by confusion.

"What?"

  You said you're a chrysalis.

"Oh. I read about moths after you got me out. Thought it might be useful."

  It might be.
  Thank you, Daisy.

"Don't mention it." They let go of each other when she stands up. "Now, how about we go find out if you can still get drunk or not?"

  Sure.
  Oh, actually, can you help me stay up til night? If I show up in people's nightmares anyway, I might as well get whatever benefit it's supposed to give me.

"Why do you think I'm inviting you for drinks?"

  Right, of course. Just give me a minute to make myself more presentable.

"Yeah."

For the first time since leaving the hospital, Jon leaves the Institute for something other than statement hunting or utilitarian shopping. They go out to a pub. A normal pub, with normal people that sometimes stare at him, so they take a corner booth. He tries to keep his second pair of arms folded under the poncho, as a reminder to himself not to use them. Daisy orders. They drink. Daisy's tolerance is far too high for her to get anything but the lightest buzz. For Jon, however, the answer to whether he can get drunk turns out to be a resounding yes, at a shockingly fast speed. He's lucky his own tolerance was never great, he's used to pacing himself, otherwise he might've gotten himself far too drunk for comfort by sheer accident.

Being drunk as a physics-defying moth is strange. He feels loose in a far more literal sense than normal, which isn't entirely pleasant. The haziness in his head, however, is. It lets him simply... exist.

They get back to the Archives a few hours later, with him having to literally cling to Daisy to avoid tripping on his own insectoid feet. She tries to keep him awake a while longer, but it seems he not only gets drunk extremely fast, but it also lasts far longer than it should. He ends up going to sleep; later than his recent habit, but earlier than he was hoping, somewhere around mid to late afternoon.

Jon wakes up a few hours before sunrise, still a bit buzzed. Shockingly, he's actually thirsty as well. It's such a human feeling it takes him a second to identify it. He crawls out of bed and goes straight to the break room for a glass of water. He wishes he could just drink it like a human, bring it to his mouth and tip it back. Maybe with a bottle? The smaller opening would probably help.

He's still sipping the water with his tongue, thoughts dwelling on drinking methods, when he comes back to his office. He glances over the papers strewn across his desk. He grabs his chair and is halfway through pulling it back, when he suddenly stops dead.

Something's off.

The disarray on his desk is different. He carefully sets the water down on the corner and brushes a hand over the mess. His hearts skip.

Gertrude's journal is gone.

No. No, this can't be! If anyone had come in, he would've felt it! Even in his sleep. Breekon made him wake up, he sometimes even wakes up with Basira's constant comings and goings! Who—?!

Wait. Unless... it was no one. Unless the person who did it could just not be there. Like a certain Lonely captain.

Jon grips the back of his desk chair so tight his claws puncture the faux leather. His eyes fill with static in a nanosecond. His antennae twitch. Not a moment later, he picks up something. A scent? No, more like... a memory. An impression of fog left in the air, impossible to detect unless one were to specifically look for it. His antennae bend toward it like dowsing rods.

He follows the trail. Past the sleeping forms of Daisy and Basira. Through the corridor of the Archives. Out into the central hall of the Institute. The more he follows, the more he's convinced of its destination, and he is proven completely right.

The memory of fog brings him to Elias', now Peter Lukas', office. More specifically, it brings him to Elias' safe. Jon's hands press against the sturdy metal as though he could just pull it apart. Gertrude's journal is just beyond it. His eyes continue to flicker as he stares at the combination lock, willing it to let him Know its password. He learns every detail of how such locks work, even how cracking one differs from the common depiction in movies, but no number sequence.

There's still hope. He can force it open. But he needs a stethoscope. Would he even be able to use one? His eyes are where his ears should be. Who even knows where his ears are?

Stop. Focus.

Safe. Need to crack it. Need to listen to what's inside to crack it. Listen with what?

On a whim, he curves his antennae down, presses them to the metal on either side of the dial, then turns it. Nothing comes of it. All it does is let him get a very close sniff of the surface of the safe, which unsurprisingly smells faintly metallic.

Is there a stethoscope anywhere in the Institute? Actually, yes! Right inside the Archives, their first aid kit has an old fashioned blood pressure cuff. He jumps to his feet and is about to run off, but stops.

What if it's gone when he gets back? What if Lukas is here, watching him, waiting for him to leave so he can get the notebook and move it elsewhere again?

Jon's eyes flicker with static again. He scans the entirety of the office and does find a second trail of fog memory, but it leads out, toward the entry doors of the Institute. Peter Lukas left.

He returns to the Archives. He finds the stethoscope— old, dusty, but hopefully still functional enough for what he needs. He also creeps over to Daisy's bed, hoping against all odds that what he's about to do is okay, and tries to very gently wake her.

She startles awake.

  Shh! It's okay, it's me!

Her rapid breaths trail into a sigh. "Jon? What time is it?"

  Before sunset. I'm sorry, but I need your help. I don't think it can wait.
  Lukas stole Gertrude's journal.

"What? You're sure?"

  Yes. I followed his trail, he put it in Elias' safe. I know how to crack it, but I can't use the stethoscope.

"Oh. Yeah, alright. Let's go."

He returns to his office, partially to let her get dressed, partially to finish his water and grab his notepad and pen. They head back up to Elias' office. Once there, he gives her the knowledge of how to crack open a safe, plus his notepad, then does little more than light the way with his phone while she figures it out. It's a slow, lengthy process, not at all helped by her newly-woken status and possible hangover. He waits anxiously, watching the clock constantly, wondering when Rosie comes in for work.

After almost an hour, there's a quiet click inside the safe door.

"Got it."

He nearly drops his phone. She pulls off the stethoscope and opens the safe. The inside is, frustratingly, barren except for the one thing they knew was going to be there. He honestly can't be too disappointed. He takes the notebook, flips through it to make sure all the detached pages he's already chewed through are still there, checks the back for any sign of missing pages, and gives Daisy a nod. She closes and locks it back up, making sure to leave the dial in the same position they found it in. She even wipes off her fingerprints.

They return to the Archives. Once there, he goes straight to his office, pulls his chair up to the back wall, and uses a long, thin, metal staple remover to scratch out the eyes on the Institute logo above his pinned transcripts. Daisy watches him from across the desk.

"You think Elias can see through pictures of eyes like that other guy?"

  James Wright. Yes. I've been to Gertrude's flat, she wouldn't have kept blinding all her books if she didn't have reason to suspect it.

"Hm. Think that includes our eyes?"

  Probably.

"Great. Why not do this before?"

  I already feel watched all the time. I didn't think it made a difference.

He climbs off his chair and puts the staple remover back on his desk.

  Thank you, Daisy, sincerely. Go back to bed. We'll tell Basira in the morning.

"Yeah. See you then."

She leaves through the door. He hears her change back into her sleep clothes and climb into bed. He rolls his chair back to his desk and finally sits down, though his heart rate is still high. One question keeps playing over and over in his mind.

Why?

Chapter Text

Basira rubs her face with a heavy sigh. They're in the break room, immediately after breakfast.

"So let me get this straight. Far as you can tell, our new boss came in here, took Gertrude's book, and locked it in Elias' safe, but you two were able to get it back."

[Yes,] Jon signs. [And I've put my radar threads across the Archive again.]

"What threads?" Daisy asks.

[Sorry, I never told you.] He reaches up and lets one of them become visible as it runs through his closed hand, just like he did with Basira. [These let me feel when people go through them. Or, most people, at least. I'll know where you two are in the Archive, and anyone else that comes in here.]

"Huh."

He lets the thread fade back into nonexistence.

Basira nods. "Probably for the best. I feel like I've been seeing way too many members of the People's Church lately."

[Really? When? Where?]

"Not immediately around the Institute, you wouldn't have seen them. But they've been lurking around out there, and my sources say they might be planning something. I just don't like the coincidence."

[With the journal being stolen?]

"Yeah. Any idea why Lukas did it?"

[The only thing that makes sense is that there's something in it someone doesn't want me to know. I already learned about how to quit the Archives from it. I just don't understand why L-K-S would care.]

"Hm. No, I don't think it mattered to him. You said he put it in Elias' safe?"

[Yeah? What, you think they're working together?]

"How else would he know the combination? He's Lonely, not Eye, he can't just pull it out of thin air."

Jon's about to argue Lukas could've reset the password, but he stops. He already knows that doing so requires an entirely different code unique to each safe, and he somehow doubts Elias would've kept something like that just lying around in his office.

[Okay. So they're working together somehow, even though E-L-S is in prison. What—]

"You've been talking to Elias," Daisy says suddenly.

Basira glances away again. Jon immediately Knows it's true.

[You what? That's your source?]

Basira immediately looks defensive. "So what if it is? His intel's good—"

"Until he needs you out of the way," Daisy interjects.

[I can't believe you'd trust him and not me.]

"I don't."

[But you'll let him send you off on wild goose chases without telling anyone about it.]

"You jumped into a coffin!"

Jon's wings shift slightly. [Case in point. We make bad decisions when we don't communicate.]

Basira looks away with a huff. Jon stares at her. Dairy's eyes bounce from one to the other, before she groans.

"We're getting sidetracked. Elias is working with Lukas, and they tried to steal that journal right before the Church is supposed to do something? That can't be a coincidence. It if was just about not letting Jon keep reading it, they could've stolen it at any time. Why now specifically?"

"Jon?"

He shakes his head. [I don't know. There's something in the journal specifically related to the Dark he doesn't want us to know? It's the only thing that seems plausible.]

"What'd that be? Did Gertrude stop a Dark ritual?"

[Maybe? I ate a statement a few days ago from one of the Church members; it was from about a year before G-T-D's death. She was essentially being told to give up because the Dark was about to win.]

"So she did stop it.?"

[Probably. Or maybe they're only doing it now? I don't know, the timeline of these rituals isn't consistent.]

"Can't you just Know?"

[No, the Dark's always been a bit of a blind spot.]

"And you don't know where in the journal that information might be?"

[No, B, if I did I'd already have the answers to several other questions I've had for a long time.]

"What if you skip to the end? You think she was writing in it until she died, right? Just eat the last page and see what it says."

[I... would prefer to keep things chronological. But you're right, I can at least check the last page.]

"Then go do it."

[Now?]

"Why not? Whatever the People's Church might be planning, I doubt they'll try anything an hour after sunrise."

[...Fair point. Come to my office in an hour, I should be done by then.]

"Sure."

On the way out, Jon hears Daisy asking Basira about possible locations for a Dark hideout. He leaves them to their detective discussion; if it's important, Daisy will tell him later. He goes to his desk, tears out the last page containing Gertrude's handwriting, and gets to work chewing and transcribing. As expected, the information begins in the middle of a thread of logic he doesn't recognize, but the contents start off familiar.

It talks about the Unknowing, of having a contingency plan ready 'just in case', which he assumes means the explosives they found with the journal. There are vague allusions to dates that, all told, seems to indicate most of the text was written in the first quarter of 2015. The solar eclipse that passed over Ny-Ålesund on March 20th of that year is mentioned, in a way that feels like a deadline of some kind. But the part that confuses him is right at the end. Gertrude talks about buying 'enough petrol for the job' and, strangest of all, hopes that finding the body of Jonah Magnus won't be too difficult.

That's the last thing Gertrude wrote. He stares at it when he pulls the page out of his wing. It only leaves him with more questions.

When Daisy and Basira join him a couple minutes later, he slides the transcribed text across his desk for them to read. Basira sits, and Daisy reads over her shoulder.

"Okay. We already dealt with the circus," Basira says. "And she was going to burn something?"

[Apparently. It must've been big, or she wouldn't have worried about having enough petrol.]

"Maybe it was the Institute."

[What? No, it can't be. She'd worked here for decades.]

"Maybe she had a guilty conscience."

[I don't believe it. If there's one thing I've learned about her, it's that she didn't do guilt.]

"Sure. And Magnus?"

[I'm even less sure about that. There can't still have been a body to exhume, it's been 200 years.]

"Could he have been embalmed?"

[It's possible, I suppose, but unlikely. Embalming was in its infancy back then, it wasn't much more than a morbid novelty. And if he had been embalmed, we'd know. The Institute wouldn't just lose the preserved corpse of its founder. Besides, why would she even want it?]

"Hm."

"Guys, focus." Daisy taps the paper in Basira's hand. "There was an eclipse over Ny-Ålesund. Did we know about this already?"

Basira nods. "Yeah. I looked it up a while back."

[It covered the whole island of Svalbard.]

"Wouldn't that be the perfect time for their ritual? We know they were using Ny-Ålesund for something. And we know Gertrude died in March. Do we know the exact date?" Daisy asks.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Something to do with the condition of the body. The coroner had some kind of trouble with it."

"But it could've been exactly on the 20th?"

"As far as I know."

[What are you getting at? Do you think they're connected? The eclipse and her murder?]

"Dunno. But I also don't like coincidences."

"Do you think the Church did their ritual on the eclipse?"

"Hard to say. If they did, it failed, so Gertrude's must've done something, even from here."

[She did disrupt a Lonely ritual without ever coming close to it. It was in early 2008.]

"Was it Lukas?" Basira asks.

[Yeah. A special apartment complex full of people he was going to lock down. She tipped off The Guardian.]

Basira chuckles. "That was a ritual? I thought it was just bad city planning."

[Apparently not.]

"Okay," Daisy says. "So she could break rituals from a distance. What does that mean?"

[She disrupted the Dark ritual from here somehow and got killed while it was happening? But why would E-L-S do that? Why then specifically?]

"Maybe she was using the ritual as cover for burning down the Institute," Basira offers.

[That can't be it.]

"Why not?"

[Because the Institute isn't evil!]

"Seriously? You watch the nightmares of everyone who's given you a statement, unless they sign up to work here. And if they do, they're stuck."

Jon chitters quietly and turns his head away. He wants to argue that they don't go out looking for people to terrify like some other Fear-worshiping cults, but... Well.

Daisy must sense the reason for his silence, because she places her hand on his desk between them.

"None of this matters right now. What matters is that we might be getting attacked again. What exactly did Elias say?"

"That he'd been having some weird blind spots all over London, and that he could see into some of Ny-Ålesund again, so the Church must've left it."

[That's it?]

"Yep. It's not like he could give me more, right? If the Dark's always hard to Know things about."

[I suppose.]

"Alright," Daisy says. "So they're in London, and Elias thinks it's to attack the Institute. We need a plan."

"I've been doing some research on them, but I could leave that to Jon and—"

[Wait. When did Elias tell you this?]

"I don't know. Maybe a week after you got Daisy back?"

[That was a month ago!]

"Yeah. And I was trying to make sure it was actually good intel, which it is. I was actually about to ask you if there might be anything useful in the journal, and suddenly the thing almost gets stolen."

Daisy grumbles under her breath. "I don't like it"

[Agreed.]

"Me neither. Anyway, I was going to say that I can leave the research to Jon while I go out to look for where the Church is hiding."

"By yourself?"

"You're definitely not going."

[What about me?]

"And let you loose in the streets to start taking statements from people?"

"Basira..."

Jon, again, turns away, though his mandibles click in frustration. Daisy moves her hand to Basira's shoulder.

"You can't go alone. What if you get grabbed?"

"What other options do we have?"

[You could trust me.]

"Not happening."

"Basira."

"What? He's a monster, Daisy."

[Stop it!]

Jon stands up so suddenly his chair rolls away.

[Would you just stop! No, B, I'm not human anymore, but could you stop treating me like, like a bomb that'll go off at any second?!]

"Wh— I'm not—"

[Do you want the truth, B? There is one more thing I've been hiding from you. I've already taken statements from people.]

"You what?"

[Let me finish. There were two of them. But once I did rescue her, I told her about it, and she's been helping me stick to the old statements ever since.] He counts on his fingers. [I'm shedding more scales every day. I'm hungry all the time, despite eating at least one statement a day, sometimes two. I haven't left the Institute by myself once since she's been here. Her locking the Archives at night? I asked her to do it. It was all so I wouldn't be tempted to hunt.]

Jon realizes he's leaning forward, looming over Basira in the chair with his wings flared out. He straightens himself with a mildly-calming exhale and slides them shut.

[So, yes, I've hurt people. I'm fully aware I'm capable of doing so again. But I'm tired of you treating me like a rabid animal instead of a person. I'm doing everything I can to resist. You can at least acknowledge that much.]

He pulls up his chair and sits back down; he's actually breathing a little harder from all the emphatic signing. Daisy looks... Impressed? Proud? Behind Basira, and maybe a little thankful. Basira is shocked.

"Uh. I don't..." She looks up at Daisy. "You never told me he took statements."

"Sorry. But he didn't need you berating him over it. He already knew it was bad. He needed help, not a lecture."

"I never gave you a lecture."

"Because you never saw it as a problem. But me and him? We're in the same sinking boat. I just... haven't drowned yet."

"...Oh," Basira says quietly.

They linger in that uncomfortable silence while Basira digests everything. Jon and Daisy exchange a look and a minute nod. Then, Basira sighs.

"Alright. Fine. You want some trust?" She tosses her sunglasses onto his desk. "There."

[Thank you.]

"Now do you actually want to come look for the People's Church?"

Jon sinks back into his chair. [Honestly, no. It's probably best I stay here with Daisy. If they show up, I can try to handle it. Keep her away from the violence.]

Daisy hums in equal parts acknowledgement, acceptance, and dislike.

[And... You could be monitored when you go out.]

"What do you mean?"

[My radar,] he gestures vaguely toward the door to his office, then mimes clasping a bracelet around his wrist. [I could put one of those threads on you. If anything happens to you, I'd know.]

Daisy nods. "I think you should take it."

Basira stares at Jon's mane of magnetic tape while touching her own wrist. "Will it tell you what I'm doing?"

[No, just your location and the presence of any servants of the Fears in direct contact with you.]

Basira mulls it over with a frown, but relents. "Fine. But as soon as the Church is dealt with, you're taking it off."

[Of course. I don't want you to keep it forever, either.]

She rolls up her sleeve and extends her arm. He tugs a short length of tape from his mane, chews both ends, and glues them together in a tight loop around Basira's wrist. He then covers it with two hands and, after a few seconds' worth of static in his eyes, the tracking bracelet is technically gone. She rubs her wrist again to confirm it.

"So that's it," Daisy says. "Basira tracks down where the People's Church have their hideout. I help Jon with the research."

"And the journal? Should he keep going through it backwards? What if whatever Elias doesn't want him to know is right at the end?

[It might also be at the beginning.]

"Yeah. We don't know either way. He might as well just keep going from where he stopped."

"Fine." Basira stands up. "Then let's get to work."

Chapter Text

There is one more thing Jon adds to their anti-Dark plan. He expands his radar beyond the Archives, in the form of a single thread stretched across the entrance to the Institute.

It's far from ideal. He never did it before because he always feared it'd be overwhelming, feeling every single person that goes in and out of the Institute on a daily basis. To an extent, he was right. At peak hours, in the morning, noon and evening, Jon has to stop whatever he's doing and just wait for the flow of people through the door to end. It's not completely maddening, but it's enough to thoroughly distract him.

The one upside to it is that he finally gets to find out what Martin feels like on his radar.

Martin still comes in and out of the Institute for work. He arrives early and leaves late, like so many other employees. Jon could almost fool himself that he's fine, he's just been transferred to a different department. Or at least, a department that isn't 'working directly under an embodiment of isolation'. Whenever Martin comes and goes, Jon feels it. He pings on the radar as warm and soft, like a candle flame gently cradled in one's hands. He's also muffled, just a little.

Martin's presence is ever-so-slightly fainter than all the other Institute employees, and it makes Jon deeply worried. He can't do anything about it, though. He just complained at Basira about trust, he's not going to break Martin's now.

So, life moves on. Over the next few days, Jon goes back to sleeping at night like he apparently should've been doing this whole time. His nightmares stop, because he can't have them when he's inhabiting those of others. He doesn't entirely stop shedding scales, but the rate at which they're falling lessens noticeably. He's still hungry, but it gets easier to ignore. And he has plenty to occupy himself with, the distraction from the Institute's door notwithstanding.

The first thing is a small, quick sewing project. He puts together a very simple book bag, so he can keep Gertrude's journal on his person at all times; he will not let it be stolen again.

Basira's always on his mind now, inevitably so. It's so much more invasive than Jon thought it'd be. But it does help put his mind at ease, and Daisy's as well. He feels her moving all over London and beyond, to the surrounding cities. Sometimes she stays in the same spot for hours. Sometimes she's moving so fast she can only be in a vehicle. Sometimes she even goes home.

It's only a matter of time before Jon considers doing the same thing for Martin. He could find out where Martin lives. He could go there, find the right window, slip inside and put the tracking bracelet on him when he's asleep. Martin would be none the wiser.

The idea fills him with equal parts disgust and longing. He resolutely decides against it.

Research with Daisy isn't as helpful as he'd like. They find plenty of statements about the Dark, enough to temporarily fill his daily requirement with nothing but the taste of stagnant brine. He makes sure to spit out a tape of every Dark statement he eats; Daisy could just read them, but Jon misses hearing his own voice sometimes. One such statement reveals that Maxwell Rayner, the former leader of the People's Church of the Divine Host, was once Edmund Halley, of Halley's Comet fame. Interesting, but not immediately useful.

In between all the Dark-related business, Jon continues his gradual transcription of Gertrude's journal. He finishes 2008 with the Flesh ritual she blew up outside Istanbul. Then, 2009 and 2010 start taking a lot less time to transcribe, because they turn their focus to the Great Twisting, the Spiral ritual that Jon already knows quite well; when he already has knowledge that's equal or adjacent to what's on the pages of the journal, extracting their knowledge becomes easier. It takes less chewing. Gertrude mentions building a map of the Distortion's halls by 'extracting' its pieces from various Spiral entities. She never specifies what this extraction entails.

The most noteworthy thing outside of the Spiral's business is at the end of 2009, when Gertrude theorizes that the Corruption has no dedicated ritual, but simply grows in the cracks and blossoms into a world of rot if it isn't stopped in time. It makes Jon uneasy, especially knowing about the circle of warped stone that exists in the tunnels below the Archives.

A part of him wants to go down and investigate. Hell, he could even stop to have a chat with Helen. But there's too much to worry about in the Archives. Maybe some other time.

As May transitions into June, the worry begins to ebb. The solstice is fast approaching. Nights are shrinking. And Basira is narrowing down the possibilities of where the People's Church might be hiding. Jon does feel her being touched by a Dark-aligned person at one point, but it ends quickly and, after Daisy calls, they learn that Basira did run into a Church member and had to kill them. She gets more careful about her investigation after that, which slows things down.

There's only so many Dark statements he and Daisy can comb through before it stops feeling worth the trouble. Jon goes back to knitting instead and, with Daisy's permission, starts putting together a normal jumper for her in preparation for the modified one he hopes to make for himself. He lets her pick the color. She chooses green and yellow, to match the wrist warmers he gave her. She also gets him to listen to The Archers while he knits. He hates it. It feels good to hate something that can't hurt him.

Eventually, the journal moves past 2010. At the very start of 2011, Gertrude brings Michael Shelley to Sannikov Land. She returns alone.

Jon touches the spot where the Distorted Michael once stabbed him. Just like with Jane's worms and Jude's burn, he still has that scar; a small spiral, like a fingerprint pressed into his chitin. He could follow its twisting grooves with his finger forever and never reach the end.

Michael is gone, in all ways that matter. Helen should be too. Yet, her self remains, bound and twisted into the impossible identity of a door that doesn't exist. It told him it wasn't supposed to be Helen, once. But it also wasn't supposed to be Michael, was it? It was never meant to be a who. Spiral's tricky like that.

He shakes the thought away. He pulls the journal page he just ate from his wing, returns it to its place, and goes to pin his transcripts to the wall. While he does, he looks up at the blinded Institute logo; the messy gouges he'd scratched into the wall are covered with duct tape. He wonders if Elias said anything to Basira about it. If he did, she hasn't mentioned it.

Maybe Elias can still see through Jon's own eyes. Maybe he never could, and he's just paranoid again. He'll probably never know for sure.

Jon returns to his desk. He checks his radar. Daisy's just outside his office, at the assistant desk Melanie was using. Basira's on the same spot she's been for the past few hours, maybe on a stakeout. Movement through the Institute doors is starting to increase. Checking the time shows him it's almost midday; people are going out for lunch. And it's the solstice. June 21st.

Jon tidies up his things, puts Gertrude's journal in the bag under his poncho, and sinks back into his chair to wait for the imminent noon crowd to stop pinging his radar. If he were capable of it, he'd close his eyes.

It's become a bit of a habit to try and identify people as they go in and out of the Institute. It's impossible, of course; there's too many people, and too few distinctive signatures among them. He's not entirely sure why the vast majority of the Institute staff just blends together in his radar. Maybe it's the emotional connection that makes Martin stand out? Or maybe it's only people who have been touched by the Fears. There's definitely one person who feels a little too rotten on his radar to not have run into the Corruption before. Were they here when—?

Dark.

Dark-aligned people, four, entering the Institute, with a fifth something that's so potently Dark it literally creates a point of black in Jon's vision as it passes through his radar thread. What—?

The Dark Star. The fulcrum of the People's Church ritual, brought here, to the seat of the Eye, to blind it.

For the briefest moment, Jon is paralyzed with indecision. Then he shoots out of his chair. He literally climbs over his desk, scattering papers everywhere, flowing smoothly down to the floor and then up to a standing position as he reaches the door to his office and yanks it open. Daisy's already looking at him.

"What's...?"

STAY

He runs past.

"Jon. Jon, what's happening?!"

Daisy shouts after him, but he doesn't respond. She can't follow. He barges out into the corridor, down its length, shoving the Archive door open so violently it bangs open; for once since becoming what he is, Jon wants as many people as possible to look at him. He runs as fast as his insectoid legs will carry him, talons squealing against the stone floors, then has to literally skid to a halt with a noise like nails on a chalkboard.

The entry hall is packed with people. Most going out to lunch, some talking. Among them, a group of four in dark clothes is standing at Rosie's desk, one apparently having just spoken to her, the other three bent down to a large, heavy box between them. The one at the front is a woman whose name leaps to the forefront of Jon's mind: Manuela. All eyes are on him, including the four Church members.

LEAVE

The Compulsion is so intense it makes his mane of tape ripple. All present immediately begin to filter out, even as they loudly question what they're doing, what is happening, what did Jon do? They're afraid. And it feels wonderful.

But the Church members resist. They start to move away from the box, but they grab on to each other, trying to slow each other down. Manuela specifically clings to Rosie's desk, legs shaking with the urge to pull her away from it. Jon doesn't wait, he lunges forward and grabs one of the handles on the box, tries to pull it back, but it's far too heavy to be moved by one person. He pulls and pulls, his wings even buzz uselessly, and the box doesn't budge. Manuela chuckles darkly above him.

"You're too late, beast of the Eye."

She shakes off the Compulsion. She falls on him, grabs at him, and as soon as she touches him, his vision goes dark for the first time since he woke up in the hospital. He trills in fear. He flails desperately, but without his sight he's lost. She shoves him down. He draws blood, but she pins his arms and sits on his stomach. Her breath is on his face, brackish and stagnant.

"You're going to die here, beast. You, and your Archivist, and everyone else who plies the sick trade of your loathsome voyeur."

The entry hall empties. The crowd that forms outside continues talking, wondering what's going on, warning others not to go in. Someone has the idea to close the Institute's doors, and some small part of Jon that isn't terrified is thankful for it. Behind Manuela's words, he hears the other Church members shuffling back, and the metallic snap and click of latches being undone.

"I would've thought she'd be here to protect you. But I guess you're only as good as our own slain beast."

Jon tries one last time to free himself. He tries to Compel Manuela, she must be staring straight at him with how close she is, but he can't see her. The darkness in his eyes isn't a mere absence of light.

The final latch is unlocked. All four Church members raise their voices in a discordant chant that rises into a wavering, teeth-aching crescendo, until it peaks with a cry of Ny-Ålesund! And the box falls open.

Jon feels the darkness that floods the space. It's not a wind, not a physical pressure, but a density that permeates the very fabric of reality. His gasp is drowned out by the agonized cries of the other three Church members. Even Manuela grunts with the impact, and yet he can almost feel her twisted smile. She shuffles to the side and forces him to sit up, even grabs the back of his head, and he sees it.

Somehow, he sees it. Even through the blindness, he sees that singularity of pure void, a point of truest black, darker than any darkness that ever was or ever will be. And suddenly, Jon isn't afraid anymore. Because he Knows how to end it.

He sees the Dark Star. Therefore, it can't exist. Darkness cannot be fully known, or it ceases to be.

"What are you doing?"

His mane whirrs, and his wings open despite Manuela's best efforts, and with a screech of rapidly-spooling tape the Dark Star ripples, shivers, and dissipates.

"NO!"

Vision abruptly returns to him as Manuela throws herself over the now empty box. The other three Church members are on the floor, covered in black-stained burns, completely still. Jon's hearts are racing. The entry hall of the Institute is deserted but for him, Manuela, and the corpses.

"No! What have you done?! You just destroyed years of work!"

Manuela tries to reach for him, but—

STOP

She falls short. Jon pulls himself to his feet and straightens his clothes. She has bleeding cuts on her face and arms from his claws. She's shaking from the effort of breaking his Compulsion, but he doesn't need it to hold much longer. He's not even that hungry, not anymore than the usual low-level ache he's gotten used to. But how could he refuse a guiltless meal?

Only, as he's reaching out to her, he remembers the security cameras. They're all over the Institute.

He hesitates just long enough for her to stumble to her feet and run out the door. Except, when it swings shut behind her, for a brief moment it looks different. Fractal wood grain greets him. A familiar Distorted face winks at him from the shrinking gap in the door before it closes, and the yellow tint fades away.

Jon sighs. He regrets not getting the statement more than her being caught by Helen. He stares down at the corpses on the floor and rubs the middle of his face. He's suddenly very glad that the police hate handling cases involving the Institute. Either way, he's not about to incriminate himself further. He leaves them on the floor and walks back to the Archives. As he does, he releases his Compulsion on all affected.

Daisy runs out of the Archives before he reaches it; right, he forgot she was Compelled too.

  Don't worry. It's over.

"Wh—"

He gives her the memory of what happened. She winces.

  Call Basira. We'll need her help to explain all of it.

"...Sure. Don't talk to me like that again."

  What?

"Like I'm a dog."

  Oh! No, Daisy, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. It was just... the shortest way I could think of to make you not follow me.

"Yeah. Just don't do it again."

  I won't.

They're interrupted by a scream coming from the entry hall. Daisy sighs in frustration and stomps past him to go deal with it.

"Stay in the Archives. I'll be back soon."

  Understood.

Chapter Text

It's only when Jon sits down in his office that he realizes he has a new scar. It didn't even hurt this time. Or if it did, he didn't notice.

The eyespots on his wings are different. Before, each one was a neat, bright green circle, with a much smaller black circle inside. Now, that inner circle has expanded, with tendrils of black reaching toward the edges of the green like a collapsed pupil. It doesn't seem to have affected his powers in any way, so he just files it away as a minor curiosity.

Dealing with the police has most of his attention for the next few days, anyway, but it isn't nearly as bad as it could be. Daisy and Basira vouching for him helps a lot, as does the camera footage that clearly shows him restrained both before and immediately after the darkness that overtakes the feed. No other Institute employees were harmed, something he's quietly proud of. In the end, the only real fallout are the brand new rumors that spread about him, but he was already avoiding the rest of the Institute anyway. It's not a huge loss.

Jon argues with himself over whether to take down the radar thread across the entrance to the Institute. Theoretically, they shouldn't need it anymore. But being able to keep track of Martin, even in this small way, wins out. Besides, even if Elias isn't raising the alarm about any other imminent dangers, it doesn't mean they're safe. He might as well be able to get an early warning in case any other Fears decide to come to his doorstep.

Something about it keeps nagging at him, however. Why attack the Institute? Why now? Why bring their most precious possession into the Eye's place of power and risk it being destroyed? He was going to get the answers out of Manuela, but then she fled. Helen has her now.

Helen...

He keeps thinking of Jared. Of going into those maddening halls to ask something of another Fear's avatar. Couldn't he do the same thing now? Assuming Manuela is still coherent enough for a statement.

Jon looks at the door to his office. It's late, Daisy and Basira are already asleep. He gets up from his desk and creeps to the door. He turns off the light, then listens for a few seconds before cracking it open. He tiptoes along the wall, around the furniture, to the corner where the trapdoor is. It swings open silently. But the ladder down isn't silent, so he lowers himself through the hole and climbs down the wall; his insectoid claws aren't just for show, he just hasn't had much reason to use them like this. He gently closes the trapdoor above him.

The tunnels are dark, but that's not an impediment. He follows the same path Melanie led him down when he needed to talk to Jared. He almost doesn't expect to find it, but Helen's door is there, on the exact same spot. He takes a breath and knocks. The door creaks open. Helen grins at him.

"Hello, Archivist. Long time no see. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

  Is Manuela still in there?

"Where else would she be?"

  Can I talk to her?

Helen's grin grows wider. "Looking for a snack, are we?"

   Answers. I want answers.

"Of course. Well, who am I to stand between a moth and its flame? Come right in."

It steps aside and sweeps its hand in a welcoming gesture. The ease with which it agrees makes him uncomfortable, but the Distortion has yet to betray him. He steps over the threshold. He pulls the back of his poncho up like a hood. He wanders, until he comes upon Manuela.

She barely seems to notice him. She's lying on the floor, hair tangled, clothes torn in places, eyes rolling wildly across the impossible walls. It actually makes it hard to even talk to her. So he doesn't. He crouches down in front of her and grabs her by the shoulders. When she locks eyes with him, he binds her there. His eyes flicker. His wings open wide, looming over her. Just like Breekon before her, Manuela gags around the bundle of tape that pours out of her mouth and into his mane.

He watches the ritual that took place four years ago. The slaying of the Still and Lightless Beast. The sacrifices bound in lightless terror. Maxwell Rayner, and all the other Church members, caught in rapturous fear as the eclipse passed over Ny-Ålesund. Then the failure. The blame. The scattering of those who remained. Manuela, left alone in their secret hiding place, watching over an all but useless Dark Star.

Then, an idea that, once it came to her, she couldn't let go of: Revenge. She'd never be able to see the next opportunity where they could try to bring about their holy apocalypse. The culmination of her work would likely not survive until then. So why not use it to strike back at the one who ruined it all?

She gathered what few disciples agreed with her. They hid, and waited for the moment that their foe would least expect them to strike. And they posed as concerned citizens, coming to the Institute with a brand new artifact.

But it failed.

The tape ends. The resulting cassette drops neatly into Jon's palm, and for a moment Jon is almost thankful he doesn't have a voice because otherwise he might moan out of sheer relief. He's not hungry anymore. He'd almost forgotten what it's like.

Manuela weeps. He moves to stand, but she grabs his wrist. Darkness tickles at the edges of his vision, but it can't blind him. She's too weak.

"Why? Why force me to feed your sick master? Is your Archivist so determined to torture us for everything we once had?"

He pulls his arm free and stands back.

  I am the Archivist. Gertrude is dead. And I needed answers.

She stares up at him. Then she laughs weakly.

"So stopping us took everything she had."

  No. She was just murdered.

"What?"

  We're done here.

He walks away. She calls after him, but her voice fades quickly in the impossible geometry of the twisting halls. Soon, he finds a yellow door waiting open for him. Helen's proud grin makes him sick.

  Thank you.

"Happy to help."

It starts to retreat back into its door, but he catches the edge of it.

  Wait.

"What is it, Archivist?"

  Why am I like this?

"Like what?"

  Don't play dumb. This.

He spreads his wings and gestures across the breadth of his buggy self. Helen tilts its head at him.

"Oh, come now. Surely by now you must know how this works. Why do you think you're like this?"

His first instinct is to say no, but... Maybe he does? He looks down at his hands. He clenches the clawed fingers. He thinks about the other avatars he's met, each with their own brand of monstrosity. Then he sighs.

  I feel monstrous, therefore I am?

"Pretty much. Rather dramatic, if you ask me."

  So, what? If I learn to love myself, I'll turn back?

"Oh, I very much doubt that. You also died, Archivist. That's not something that can be undone."

He trills quietly in lieu of a hum.

  What about Jude? She also died.

"Who?"

  Jude Perry. She burned my hand.

"Ah, the Desolation one. She was made out of wax, Archivist."

  Yes, but she looked human.

"She looked however she chose to. I believe she told you that herself."

  Yes. And Breekon... His fear depended on him passing as human.

"Exactly."

  Michael was a bird. A falcon, I think? Uh, Crew, not your Michael. And Oliver was... a yew tree? But he died at sea.

"And you died under falling rubble.  Hardly fitting for a bug, isn't it? The cause of death doesn't matter, Archivist. What matters is how you feel about it."

  Michael Crew didn't seem unhappy with what he was.

 "Then I suppose he must've been better at lying to himself. Besides, you spoke to him once, I think? Not exactly a lot of time to get into someone's deep personal issues."

  I suppose. Thank you, Helen, this was...

"Enlightening?"

  In a word.

"I'm glad you're starting to see it. Come back any time, Archivist."

  ...Yeah.

Helen vanishes into its door. Jon is left alone in the tunnels, mulling over everything, toying with the cassette in his hands.

What does Peter Lukas look like? No doubt something seafaring, assuming he's been transformed. But Jon's not going to find out by standing here in the dark. He pockets Manuela's tape and heads back toward the Archives. Along the way, he decides to detour to the circle of warped stone left behind by Prentiss. It looks exactly as he remembers it. The stone is solid when he lays a hand on it, even though the texture feels as though it should give way.

Rituals. Something about the rituals tickles at the back of his mind, but he can't quite catch it.

There's nothing new for him here. He returns to the surface, just as carefully as when he came down, tosses the tape into a random drawer, and goes to bed. In the morning, he shows Daisy and Basira the tape. Basira frowns when the tape recorder clicks off.

"What happened to not taking statements?"

[She literally tried to kill me, B. I'm sorry if I don't feel bad about getting what I could out her before Helen was done driving her mad. We needed information. I know you've been wondering about their ritual as much as me.]

"I told you not to look in my head."

[I didn't need to. It was obvious.]

"Whatever," Daisy says. "It's done. Now what does it tell us?"

"Not much. We already knew the ritual had to have failed, if they'd tried it. Which still doesn't tell us how Gertrude did it while still being here at the right time to get murdered."

[There has to be something in her journal. I've only just started 2011.]

Daisy hums. "Maybe it's what Elias doesn't want us to know."

[Could be. How is he, by the way?]

Basira shrugs. "Dunno. He's been refusing my visits ever since it happened."

[Really? Why?]

"No idea. And I don't have enough favors left to force it, so we'll just have to wait."

"I don't like it," Daisy says.

[Agreed. Leaving him alone can't lead to anything good. But I suppose there's little we can do. I'll keep working on the journal.]

The other two hum in agreement.

Over the next few weeks, Jon chews through the notes for 2011. Uneventful in terms of broader threats, so Gertrude's notes go back to an earlier thought regarding Millbank Prison and its panopticon. She notes peculiarities about its design that don't match Robert Smirke's other works. It's difficult to pin down exactly what she thinks is different, the journal has no pictures or blueprints, but she's certain of it. She also seems to wonder about the Eye and its ritual. She tries to find evidence of when the last one might have happened, with no success.

Elias does agree to see Basira, eventually, but the visit is useless. It makes Jon want to go out, find a way to see him in his cell or wherever he's being kept, figure out why Elias refuses contact with him, but he's not stupid enough to think he can break into a prison.

Weeks turn to months. Gertrude's journal enters 2012. Another quiet year, with continuing research into rituals as a whole. She seems to be having the same doubts Jon had, but her approach to the issue is from a different angle. Gertrude reasons that humanity in its modern form, with organized large-scale society, has existed for at least twelve thousand years, and yet no ritual has ever succeeded in all that time. She wonders if they're a modern invention, or if the Fears really are so competitive that every ritual throughout human history has been sabotaged by an outside agent. By the way she writes, it's not a theory she puts much stock in.

Amidst the notes for 2012, Gertrude also theorizes about what the Web's ritual might be. She apparently found no evidence of any such ritual being performed in the past.

As the months pass and Jon's radar thread across the Institute's entrance remains, Martin's presence through it grows just a bit less every day. The candle flame of his ping drifts further away. Jon inevitably worries. Keeping his promise to not interfere becomes an ordeal. Thankfully, the journal gets more interesting.

2013 is a year Jon already knows to have been busy. This is where Gertrude meets Gerry Keay. Jon finds himself chewing through the notes that detail the journey they took across the globe, which he had to piece together from scraps the year before. He almost starts skipping through the pages dealing with the Stranger and the Unknowing, all irrelevant now. He's glad he doesn't though, because that's where he finds the first mention of the Watcher's Crown.

It seems as though her and Gerry's globetrotting adventure had a second, secret purpose: researching Eye rituals.

Gertrude's first notes on it are vague. She doesn't specify where the name came from. Throughout the year, sprinkled in among the Stranger's business, she also pieces together either a different or the same Eye ritual that occurred almost exactly 200 years ago, using Millbank's panopticon as a focal point. It failed, obviously, and it seems to have caused the entire prison to sink deep below the earth, becoming ensconced in the twisting tunnels underneath the Institute.

Of course, the Institute stood elsewhere back then. Gertrude has no proof of it, but she is convinced that the Institute's relocation in 1867 was made specifically to occupy the then vacated plot of land left behind by the sinking of Millbank Prison.

Martin's presence in Jon's radar continues to fade as August wears on. Sometimes, Jon has to actively look for it during rush hours, or else he won't feel it at all. One day, he hides behind a door with a warped glass window, just to see Martin walk by in the morning. He looks no different. It doesn't lessen Jon's anxiety.

Halfway through the month, Jon reaches 2014 in the journal. The last year before Gertrude's murder.

She and Gerry are still traveling when the year begins. She learns of the Dark's ritual, set to go off only a year later. The knowledge seems to make her go back to the matter of failed rituals throughout human history. There are also concurrent notes about the Watcher's Crown, but none of it is solid. It's Gertrude's thought process put on paper, pieces slowly percolating until, right before Gerry's death, they finally form something coherent.

Gertrude writes that, perhaps, rituals can't succeed. That the Fears aren't separate entities, but merely aspects of, well, fear itself. That trying to bring only one such aspect into reality is impossible. Even in a world unbound from the laws of physics, she writes, down can only exist in relation to up. The Fears may oppose each other at times, but they depend on each other just as much.

By this logic, a ritual could only succeed if it sought to bring all of the Fears into the world together. It would have to include elements from all 14 aspects, despite their obvious contrasts. Gertrude dismisses this as an impossibility at first. Harmonizing symbology of both the Buried and the Vast, the Web and the Desolation, so on and so on, is patently impossible.

Only, it isn't. The Archive Gertrude works at every day has thousands of statements, each with its own little nugget of another Fear. In a way, by reading said statements, she also carries pieces of every Fear within her.

The Watcher's Crown is a ritual that would bring all Fears to the world, with the Eye as their master, and the Archivist as its conduit.

Jon swallows the page in his mouth numbly. He doesn't feel the tingle of it extruding from his wing. He doesn't even feel it slip out on its own and flutter to the ground. His hands are still around the transcription on his desk.

He is a ritual.

Unknowingly, Jon has been molded into a literal harbinger of the apocalypse. He can't even tell himself he somehow read it wrong. He didn't read it, he physically pulled the knowledge out of the paper with his insectoid mandibles. He Knows it's all true. Even if he didn't, what argument would he have? He's been marked by literally every F—

No. Not every Fear. He's had no contact with the Lonely. And it just so happens that the Institute is currently being run by an agent of the Lonely who is specifically targeting the person most dear to him.

He wants to laugh. He can't even do that much.

Should he tell Basira? Daisy? Yes, absolutely he should, but... What if Elias doesn't know that he knows yet? What if he can't see out of Jon's compound eyes? What if, when he tells the others, Elias finds out? What if he can keep this a secret?

Jon looks down at the half-finished transcript on his desk, then at the page lying on the floor. He bends down to pick up the second and return it to the journal. His pen hovers over the first. He finishes the transcript, without the information about the Watcher's Crown and his role in it. He cuts it and pins the pieces onto his wall. He looks up at the blinded Institute logo as he does.

Then his train of thought is thoroughly derailed by a pair of Hunters that step through the Institute's doors.

Chapter Text

Daisy's watching a movie on her laptop when Jon barges out of his office.

  Trevor and Julia are here.

He laces the words with knowledge, snapshots of his run-in with them back in America. She doesn't even wince. She just smacks the laptop shut and jumps to her feet.

"Why?"

He gives her more scraps of memory, of the Catalog of the Trapped Dead, Gerry's page, him taking and burning it. She makes a noise almost like a hiss.

"Alright. I'll talk to them, try and deescalate. Don't be seen."

  Be careful.

"Yeah."

She moves out into the corridor and closes the door behind her. He considers hiding in document storage with its thick airtight doors, but it'd also mean not being able to hear what's happening, so he stays next to the one she left through.

Not a minute later, the Hunters arrive at the entrance to the Archives. Jon feels Daisy stiffen through his radar. Trevor and Julia both stop at the threshold at first. They step inside slowly, closing and locking the door, even as Trevor chuckles.

"Looks like he's got himself a watchdog."

Julia hums. "More of a lapdog. Scrawny, isn't she?"

"What do you want," Daisy says.

Trevor ignores her. "Malnourished, I'd say. How long since you last tasted blood?"

"What. Do you want."

Julia goes, "Your little Archivist has something of ours."

"Someone."

"Took him right from under our noses."

"In our own house."

"I call that rude, don't you?"

"You're late," Daisy says. "He burned it."

There's a pause. Jon doesn't need to see Trevor's eyes narrow to know it's happening.

"Ain't that noble of him."

"Proper humanitarian."

"After everything we did for him. Where is he, anyway?"

"We oughta give him a piece of our mind."

Daisy's stance shifts infinitesimally.

"Leave."

Another pause, longer. Jon hears the noise of two long intakes of breath. Daisy tenses further. The exhales that follow are both laced with the faintest of growls.

"So that's it. You smell that, Julia? We've got a proper monster on our hands."

"I reckon we do, old man. You think you can take us both?"

The second part is said to Daisy, who chuckles in feigned bravado.

"I’d enjoy it. I’ll start with you, old bastard, he’s slower and doesn’t guard his neck. And you worry about him too much, don’t you? I go for him, you get sloppy. Predictable."

A third pause. Jon uses it to silently grab the doorknob in anticipation of a fight. Then Trevor chuckles, so quiet Jon almost doesn't hear it. Through his radar, he feels Trevor shaking his head.

"What a shame. Never thought I'd see one of us throw their lot in with them. But that just means more prey."

Several things happen very quickly.

Julia swings her arm up. Jon twists the doorknob. Two deafening gunshots ring out. Daisy grunts and crashes through the door as Jon opens it, then slams it shut and locks it. Daisy clutches her shoulder, blood oozing through her fingers, but not enough for it to have been a serious hit. They have seconds before the Hunters reach the door.

  What do we do?

Daisy's response is to grab his wrist and yank him away from the door as heavy footfalls stomp down the corridor.

"Promise me you'll tell Basira to kill me."

  What?!

Jon flinches as more shots tear through the door.

"Nowhere to run, little monsters!" Julia croons.

"We're coming, Jonny boy!" Trevor shouts.

Daisy squeezes his wrist far too tight; sharp nails dig into his chitin. Her eyes are bloodshot.

"Promise me!"

Jon's hearts are beating too fast, the air is too thin. He can't think. Until the door shakes under a boot and makes the decision for him.

  I promise.

"Thanks. Now run."

He does. He pauses just long enough to lock the padlock on the trapdoor to the tunnels, but even that brief detour is enough to let him see far more than he'd like.

The door shakes twice more. In that time, Daisy's body bulges outward Within seconds her flesh multiplies, clothes tearing around the expanding volume, the air filling with the snap and crunch of bone shattering, reforming, shattering again. Fur spreads across her skin like mold. Her face juts out into a bestial muzzle. What starts as a groan of equal parts pain and bloodlust becomes a deep, guttural growl, just as the door gives way and flies open.

"Shit."

Julia's curse is the last thing Jon sees before he shuts and locks the door to his office. More gunshots go off; one bullet passes clean through his door, dangerously close to his head. He ducks and runs into document storage. Closing its heavy door takes a painfully long second, during which he listens to the shouts of Trevor and Julia, the growls and roars of Daisy, yet more gunshots, until they're cut off by the door settling into its airtight frame.

Jon doesn't stay idle. He runs through the shelves of documents, all his focus on his radar and the shifting positions of the three Hunters. Julia moves away from the other two, either thrown or by jumping, while Daisy and Trevor are briefly locked together, then there's a microsecond pause that Jon thinks corresponds to what might be a heavily muffled gunshot, and Daisy moves to intercept Julia instead.

He shoulders the door to the corridor open just as Trevor gets to his feet and pulls out a knife. The movement draws his attention, which is exactly what Jon was hoping for. The moment Trevor's eyes lock on him, his wings snap open.

STOP

Trevor freezes. Daisy picks up on the opportunity immediately; her ears perk up. Jon stands his ground, holding Trevor's gaze, maintaining the Compulsion with every fiber of his warped being. He watches Daisy shove Julia away, even cutting herself on the knife Julia has buried in her side, and pivot to face the old man's back. Trevor starts to shake, trying with all his might to break free, run, breathe, do anything, but Jon doesn't relent. He forces Trevor to stay there as Daisy barrels down the corridor.

Jon gets to watch every literally gory detail when she pounces.

Her jaws crush Trevor's neck with a spray of arterial blood across the wall and floor. Her claws sink into his chest almost in a hug, forcing a brief, gurgling wheeze out of his already ruined windpipe. For the smallest moment, the length of a single heartbeat, all is still. Then Trevor Herbert, the vampire killer, is torn apart in a shower of cancerous lung and shredded heart. His legs and half his torso fall wetly to the left. The other half tumbles to the right. His head drops from Daisy's maw a second later and lands with a heavy thump.

"NO!"

Julia throws herself on Daisy's back with a yell and a vicious stab. Daisy yelps, but starts thrashing wildly, clawing over her shoulders while Julia clings to her and drives the knife in over and over. She gets greedy, however. She tries to reach forward, to stab or slice Daisy's throat, and that's when Daisy grabs her by the arm. Julia is thrown into the wall so hard it dents. She lands, arm dislocated, back broken, and stares into Daisy's throat as she bites down on her face. There's a thick, wet crunch, then a violent shaking, and by the end very little of Julia Montauk's skull is left attached to her neck. Daisy still sees fit to gut her open anyway and scatter bits of intestine across the floor.

All in all, the fight can't have taken more than five minutes, but it feels like an hour.

The corridor that runs through the Archives is unrecognizable. Half-broken guns lay where they were tossed, no doubt by Daisy. Blood paints the walls, the floor, even one of the overhead lights, casting the area in a red-tinted glow; Jon can smell nothing but blood and violence. Daisy is covered in blood, hers and the Hunters'.

Oh, Daisy...

She might be fully gone. 'Werewolf' would be a fitting name for what she's become, but it doesn't capture the wrongness of it; the shoulders are far too human. Everything about the beast toying with Julia's guts screams Daisy to Jon. The fur is the same color as her hair. The eyes are crimson, but the shape is the same. Even the teeth, as sharp and overgrown as they've become, are slightly crooked in the exact same way. This is Daisy.

Jon abruptly remembers that his wings are still open. He folds them shut.

The faintest whisper of them sliding past each other is enough to make Daisy's eyes snap to him. Fear spikes through him so powerfully he nearly runs. He's also acutely aware, however, that the chase is exactly what the Hunt craves. And even if he ran, where would he go? The Archives are locked. The tunnels are locked. The door to document storage next to him closed on its own, as it's built to do. For better or worse, he's trapped with Daisy.

Jon's knees are weak, but he holds steady as Daisy begins to stalk toward him, slowly, one clawed hand over the other. He holds up one of his own shaking palms.

  Daisy?

She grunts and shakes her head.

  Daisy, it's me. It's Jon.

Another shake, then a snarl that bares all her sharp teeth. Jon's legs shake with the urge to move back.

  Daisy, please. I'm your friend, right? Please remember.

Step by step, Daisy approaches. Heavy, growling breaths fill his ears. Blood red eyes stare into his soul, level with his own even though she's on all fours. There's nothing else he can say, so he just stands, and waits, and hopes. Daisy stops a few feet from him, but close enough that a faint warmth from her breath reaches his outstretched palm. She sniffs the air.. Her throat rumbles like a distant storm.

"Friend."

He sighs in intense relief.

  Yes. Yes, we're friends. I'm Jon. It's okay.

"Jon. Friend."

Her voice is deep and growling, barely recognizable anymore. She closes the gap between them and presses her nose to his hand; still-warm blood soaks into his chitin.

"Hurt."

  I know. I'm so sorry, Daisy. I'll take care of it, okay? I just need to call Basira first.

Her ears twitch at the name. "Basira... Where?"

  She's out. I'll make sure she gets here.

Daisy rumbles again, which might just be her new version of a throaty hum, and sits back. He keeps one hand on her nose while the others pull out his phone and type a few messages to Basira. He doesn't explain exactly what happened, that'd take far too long, but he tells her enough. Basira says she'll stop by the police station before coming to the Archives.

With that done, he turns his attention to Daisy. Her fur is very heavily soaked in red, making it impossible to discern wounds through anything but touch. A part of him doesn't feel right doing it, she was never a very touchy-feely kind of person, but the new Daisy doesn't protest. Jon inspects her body bit by bit, methodically combing through the fur for gunshots, slashes, stabs, anything the two Hunters might've done. Whenever he finds something, he opens up the fur as much as possible, pulls a handful of tape from his mane, chews it, and sticks it over the injury. It probably won't be pleasant coming off, but right now he just needs to keep Daisy occupied.

Even with his focus on Daisy, Jon is literally incapable of not seeing the carnage down the corridor. Ironically, one of the splashes of blood landed right next to the black stains from when Melanie attacked him. His clothes are quickly being ruined by stains again, but at least this time the blood (or ink) isn't his.

It takes a long time to patch up Daisy. She took a lot of abuse. Even then, it's not long enough for Basira to arrive, and Jon's hands are too bloody for him to grab his phone again to check. He's also reluctant to leave the corridor and tread more blood into the rest of the Archives. He ends up just sitting on the floor to wait, and after a while Daisy lays down next to him, head resting on her hands. A part of him wants to pet her. Another thinks it'd be insulting. A third argues that this might be the last friendly contact she ever has.

He pets her between the ears. She doesn't react much to it, but she also doesn't pull away. She's made no attempt to clean the blood off herself, so the fur under his fingers has a thick, unpleasant texture.

Eventually, Jon Knows that Basira's arrived. A moment later, she tries to open the door to the Archives, finds it locked, and knocks hard on it instead. Daisy's head shoots up and she growls, but Jon hurries to stand up.

  It's okay! It's okay, it's Basira.

He goes to the door, unlocks it, and peeks through.

"Jon! What happened, where—" Her face twists when the stench of blood hits her. "Ugh. Is she okay?"

  She's... alive. Just try not to make any sudden moves.

She doesn't even complain about him talking in her head. He lets her through the door, then re-locks it, just for safety. Several emotions flash through Basira's face. Shock. Horror. Pity. Resignation. Her jaw clenches as Daisy stands and sniffs the air.

"Basira..."

She looks at him. He nods encouragingly and gestures for her to move closer. Basira steps forward and holds out a hand. Daisy noses into it like before. Basira lets out a breath. Her eyes scan Daisy's new form, the half-dried blood, the inch-long claws, the black fibrous material sitting amidst the fur. She looks back at Jon.

"Show me what happened."

Over the course of a few seconds, Jon gives her his full recollection of everything, from when he first felt Julia and Trevor, to when they lay dead at Daisy's feet, past it to him mending her wounds, with one important exception. He gives Basira some time to process it before talking again (or as close to it as he can get).

  I'm sorry, Basira, but... She wanted you to kill her.

He adds the omitted piece to the words, Daisy's voice filtered through his memory. Basira's eyes go wide.

"What? No. No, that can't be right."

  Basira, I can't make my memories lie, not when they're this recent.

"But—" She looks at Daisy still standing there, listening, unnervingly tame despite her size. "Daisy. Daisy, are you in there? Is this true?"

Daisy's only reply is a tilt of the head.

Basira sighs and uses both hands to cradle her jaw. "Daisy, come on. We're partners. You've gotta work with me on this."

"Partner." Daisy's lips curl, like she can't quite fit them around the words. "Want... end. Do... bad." The constant growling undertone fades, just a little. "Basira. Please."

Basira's breath hitches. Her eyes squeeze shut. Daisy inches forward, just enough to touch her forehead to Basira's. Jon wishes he could look away, his presence suddenly feels distinctively intrusive. But they don't linger. Basira lets out a slow breath, and nods against Daisy.

"Okay."

They part. Basira reaches for her gun. Daisy turns to Jon.

"Friend."

  I'm sorry, Daisy, for everything. I'll miss you. And thank you, for protecting me. Now,

BE HAPPY
CLOSE YOUR EYES

A long, contented sigh drains out of Daisy. She almost seems to smile, if such a thing is possible with a bestial snout. She doesn't see the gun be brought level with her temple. She doesn't see Basira's finger hesitate before curling around the trigger. She doesn't see the muzzle flash, or the new spray of gore that hits the wall, or the deafening boom of the gunshot. Daisy simply drops to the floor, lifeless.

Basira exhales and lowers the gun. For a few seconds, both are silent. Then, Basira breathes in again.

"The police will be here as soon as they have some sectioned officers available. You can wash up if you want. I'm going outside."

She wipes the blood off her forehead with her sleeve and exits without further preamble. She takes the key to the Archive entrance with her, leaving Jon locked inside. He finds it very hard to care. His emotions don't seem to be entirely working right now. He goes to the bathroom, washes off what he can, leaves his stained clothes on the floor; the cops will probably want them, right? He returns to the corridor and tiptoes around the blood, until he can slip into document storage and, through it, back to his office for fresh clothes.

Something catches his eye on the back wall while he's getting dressed. The bullet that pierced through his office door somehow managed to hit the exact middle of one of his pinned papers. A closer look shows it to have been a transcript about the Everchase.

Chapter Text

When the police are done, Basira leaves with them. About an hour later, Jon shuts himself in document storage when the cleanup crew arrive; the doors here lock from the inside only. He eats a statement of the Corruption to try and feel something other than hollow numbness. Disgust isn't better, exactly, but it's different.

Eventually, the cleaners leave. The walls are still slightly stained, but a wide swath of the floorboards has been removed, leaving the concrete underneath bare. Patches of it are also stained. Jon stands on it, feeling the chill of the artificial rock creeping up his insect talons. He lays a hand on the dent in the wall made by Julia's not-yet-corpse. He looks up at the bare light bulb where the bloodied cover had to be thrown out. It should hurt his eyes. Maybe it actually does.

He's alone. For the first time since waking from his coma, Jon is completely alone in the Archives. And Basira left the door unlocked, he realizes. She must've forgotten she still had the key with her when she left. He could go out as well. Drown his sorrows in the fresh fear of someone else. But what'd be the point? He doesn't like the constant low-level hunger, but he's grown very used to it by now. Manuela's statement was a welcome, but ultimately unnecessary holiday from it, nothing more.

It's far, far too early to sleep, but he goes to bed anyway.

Daisy's nightmare is gone. Not just hollow, gone. There's no more rainy street to stand in, no dirty white van, no coffin beckoning him deeper. Before, it was because she was a fellow employee (prisoner) of the Magnus Institute. Now, the absence feels different. Like a faint stutter in the rhythm of his nightmare wanderings. The record skipping a lost song.

When he wakes up before sunrise, he leaves a note on the relevant person's desk requesting a partial renovation of the Archive.

Basira doesn't come back that day. Or the next. In fact, she seems determined to not come back to the Institute at all. Jon can't check, he doubts she wants him intruding on her grief with text messages. And she'll have to come back eventually anyway. Better to leave her be.

With nothing else to do and no one to distract him, Jon has little left but to cling to Martin's passage in and out of the Institute's door, however faint it's become. That's only available a few times throughout the day, however. The rest of the time, he occupies himself with the last pages of Gertrude's journal.

Gerry dies in late 2014. Gertrude wonders if she should've told him about his fatal brain tumor. It makes Jon angry. She returns to London and makes preparations for the upcoming Dark ritual, but not to disrupt it. She decides to let it run its course, convinced that it'll collapse on its own, meaning she can use it as a distraction. She also finds a statement regarding a failed Slaughter ritual from 1942. He finds the corresponding tape in Elias' office.

The builders come a little over a week after the incident. Jon tells them to replace his office door first, then locks himself behind it and plugs up the edges with fabric to keep the dust out. He doesn't tell them about the bullet hole in the back wall, now hidden behind a fresh copy of the transcript it shot through. He doesn't want them messing up what must by now be over a hundred scraps of paper, all diligently pinned and connected across the whole breadth of the wall, except for a narrow band on the right, which is soon filled in.

The last revelation the journal gives him is the fact that Jonah Magnus is still alive. His body lingers in the panopticon of Millbank, but his eyes carry his consciousness from host to host, letting him stay in charge of the Institute, much like Maxwell Rayner and whatever Dark entity he once was. Jonah's newest host, naturally, is Elias Bouchard.

Jon wonders if the original Elias can still be saved. He's been a host to Jonah Magnus for, what, twenty years now? More than that, even. It seems unlikely. But, more unlikely things have happened. Jon's still alive, after all.

He wonders if he should change that. He is a walking doomsday device. The longer he's here, the more likely it is that El— Jonah will be able to use him for his coveted apocalypse. But he can't stomach the thought of leaving Martin to be toyed with by Lukas. There's always a chance that, once he's gone, whatever trap Lukas is weaving for him with Martin as the bait just won't be needed anymore, but he can't be sure of it.

The journal ends. His transcription of it covers the wall of his office from end to end, with that one crucial omission near the right-hand side. It's hard to be proud of it, given everything he's learned.

Jon finds out he can cry, sort of. He can't make tears. He doesn't have a nose to sniffle through. But one day, late at night, when he's in the break room washing a mountain of used tea mugs he let accumulate for far too long, he feels himself getting choked up. His shoulders shake. He has to drop the wet mug in his hands back into the sink and just cling to the edge of it while his whole body is rocked by heaving sobs. His mandibles click and scrape with each gut-churning hiccup.

It's not the same, but it's close enough that, afterward, he feels a bit lighter.

Jon grows restless without the journal to occupy him. He returns to his hobbies of sewing and knitting. He replaces the bloodstained clothes he lost. He never finished Daisy's jumper, and now it'd be useless to try, so he dismantles it and starts one for himself. He spends hours on it every day, craving the softness of the wool and the gentle comfort of working with his hands to create something new. He works on it so much that he finishes it in only a few days, even with the handful of times he has to unravel and reknit certain sections.

The end result is a bottle green jumper with four sleeves and two holes on the upper back, which connect to slits that go all the way down to the hem, each with buttons for opening and closing. It's a little looser than he was hoping, but it actually fits him. The first time he puts it on, closes the back under his wings, and looks in the mirror, he almost feels like a person again. He starts a second one immediately, this time in a nice earthy brown.

Basira's still nowhere to be found. It's been over three weeks since Daisy's death. She must be coming back soon, right? Even Tim couldn't stay away for much more than that when he went to Malaysia. After some debate, Jon sends her a single text message. The reply comes almost an hour later.

Basira quit.

Jon almost can't believe the words on his phone. A second message arrives, clarifying that a nurse is on the other side, typing what Basira tells them. She's at the hospital. She should be getting discharged very soon.

He goes out to visit her. It's hard to convince the hospital staff to let him see her, but they eventually agree. Basira's sitting in bed, with a patch on the back of her hand from what must've been a recently-removed IV line, and a blindfold of bandages wrapped around her head. She turns toward the door when he steps in.

"Jon?"

He waits for the nurse to leave before he replies with a quiet trill. Basira chuckles.

"Guess you can't talk to me anymore, can you?"

He chitters, unsure of how to proceed. He moves up to her and touches the back of her other hand in a silent request for permission. She nods. He wraps her hand in both of his.

"Huh. I actually missed that. Funny how that works. ...I guess it's just you there now, isn't it?"

He squeezes her palm. She sighs.

"I couldn't stay there. Not without her. If that means you get to haunt more people's nightmares, then I'll just have to live with it."

He trills and shakes his head. With no other option, he holds up her hands and writes on the back of it with his curled finger, like he did with Martin so long ago.

'I WON'T. ONLY AVATARS.'

"Sure. Speaking of which, I forgot to leave the key to the door with you. It should be over there on the nightstand. In the drawer, I think."

He doesn't let go of her hand, but he does dip one arm into said drawer. He makes sure to let her hear the jingle of the key being transferred to his pocket.

'THANKS.'

"Yeah."

'U OKAY?'

"I'll be fine. I've got some arrangements. I'm mostly just worried about the rituals."

Jon hesitates for a second.

'DON'T. ALWAYS FAIL. GERT DIDN'T TOUCH DARK.'

"Oh. Really? Did you finish the journal?"

'YES.'

"That's... a big relief, honestly. Thanks."

He squeezes her hand again.

"I guess this is goodbye then. Will you be alright on your own?"

'YES,' he lies.

"Well, good luck anyway. You'll probably need it."

He squeezes her hand one last time. She returns it, then lets him go. He follows the nurse back out into the street. He walks back to the Institute almost in a daze. He even feels the pull of a statement from a random passerby, a woman with the faint smell of soil clinging to her, but he doesn't chase it.

Jon goes home. He returns to the Archives.

Chapter Text

The assistants' room is empty.

Jon should tidy it up. No one will use the cots anymore. And there are still some of Basira's clothes left behind. Will she send someone for them? Probably. So he shouldn't go poking around in them. Yes, better to leave it for now.

He does tidy up the other two cots, however. Melanie's been gone for far longer, but her cot remained as almost a replacement couch, another spot to sit that wasn't where they slept. Daisy's cot hasn't been touched since she died. He strips off the bed sheets, folds up both bed frames, and moves them to the corner, as out of the way as possible. He doesn't mess with Basira's stuff too much, but he does shove it into an opposite corner, so he can rearrange the assistant desks back into their original positions. In the process, he also clears them out of pretty much everything.

There are ghosts of Tim, Martin and Sasha on all three. It's nothing obvious, nothing that the new occupants of each desk would've given much thought. But on what used to be Tim's desk, on the left corner, there's a hairline crack where he used to prop up his feet multiple times a day. On Martin's desk there are faint stains, spots where a drop of tea slid unnoticed down the side of a mug and touched the old wood. On Sasha's, hidden in the far back corner of a rarely-used drawer, covered in old dusty cobwebs, is a fake picture of a fake boyfriend.

Right, the Not-Sasha. Jon had almost forgotten about her. She's still trapped below the Archives somewhere. He could find where, he supposes. But he couldn't get to her, not without the book that Leitner used, and he has no idea where that is. Even if he did, he doubts he'd be able to acquire it.

Would he be able to pull a statement from her? She's an actual monster, a splinter of the Stranger. She was never human. Can she feel afraid? The question intrigues him, but it ultimately doesn't really matter. She's trapped.

A few days later, Jon finishes his second jumper. He manages to make it a tighter fit than the first, which he's rather pleased with, and the transition between the two pairs of sleeves is neater. It almost looks professionally made in the mirror. Maybe for his next project he should try to figure out how to sew a shirt with the same modifications. Or maybe he could try his hand at shoemaking? His old shoes are far too uncomfortable around his insect feet, he's been going barefoot most of the time.

When he returns to his office, that all gets put aside. A statement and a tape are waiting for him on his desk.

He spent hours in the other room knitting, but he neither heard nor felt anyone come into the Archive. When he tries to feel for the same faint trail that was left by Lukas when he stole Gertrude's journal, he finds nothing, which can only mean it's been long enough that those signs have faded.

The tape is Martin's. Hearing his voice again fills Jon with warmth, but the contents are worrying. The Extinction. A new power that Lukas is convinced will be unlike all others. Maybe he's right, but Jon finds it hard to believe, especially given the statement left with the tape. Also by Adelard Dekker, like the one read by Martin, but contradicting it. Martin's is another piece of evidence for the emergence of the Extinction. The one left for Jon, of an Adelard on the verge of death by a deadly Corruption disease, is no longer certain of it.

Whether the Extinction is a real problem or not is irrelevant. Lukas is using it to bring Martin to the panopticon, and by extension, Jon himself. There's no other explanation that makes sense to him with everything he knows. He's just not sure when exactly. Lukas had said 'tomorrow'. Did that conversation happen yesterday? Are they going down there right now? He wants to think these were left by Martin, that maybe Martin is so deep in the Lonely that he too can pass unnoticed through Jon's radar if he wants to. It'd be worrying, but it's possible. He can't rule out the possibility that the Web did it, however.

His circling argument is interrupted by his phone buzzing in his pocket. A single voice message from Basira that says, "Elias got out of prison. No idea how. Be careful."

It makes the decision for him. If Elias is getting involved, then it must be happening now.

Jon drops everything and descends into the tunnels. As soon as he sets foot on the gray stone, he feels something new. A pull of sorts. A gravity that draws him forward, deeper, guiding him along a very specific path, down just the right passages, around just the right corners. It's a very similar pull to that of a potential statement giver. He follows it unquestioningly.

Until he finds his path blocked by the very same creature he was thinking about mere days ago.

The Not-Sasha grins far too wide. "Hello, Jon. Or should I say Archivist? I see you've got a makeover. Just like dear old Sasha!"

She twists and bends, but he honestly couldn't care less.

  Get out of my way.

"What's that? You don't even care about your fr—"

SHUT UP

Not-Sasha's mouth snaps shut. She seems momentarily surprised before lunging forward.

STOP

Her sharp fingers stop inches from his face. He steps past them, wings flaring open, all four hands coming up to grip her face and yank it down to his level.

  Let's see how much fear you're made of.

His eyes fill with static. His mane whirrs faster and louder than it ever has. The creature's whole body convulses as tape begins to pour from every orifice on its face, then from the edges of it, until the mockery of Sasha's visage falls off like a grotesque mask, leaving behind only a bundle of flowing tape almost as thick as Jon's torso. The creature tries to pull away, but it's wracked in too much pain to muster the strength.

He watches every stolen identity pass through him, a seemingly endless list of names and faces stretching back years, decades, centuries, millenia, all the way to the dawn of civilization itself, and all laced with terror that should be impossible. It's intoxicating. Just on the edge of too much, but not quite crossing over it.

His claws sink into whatever passes for its flesh, only to find it unraveling. The creature of the Stranger is literally coming undone, like pulling a loose thread that unwinds an entire sheet of fabric. The head between his hands grows less dense, the surface of the material losing cohesion, but the tape flows right up until the entire form simply dissipates with a distant warped scream.

Jon lets out a wavering breath. He's shaking, not from fear but adrenaline. He feels more full, more satisfied, than he ever has.

Then he doubles over. His gut twists painfully. He coughs and retches, barely able to stand by leaning against the wall. The thing coming up his throat feels far too big to ever make it out, but every agonizing spasm pushes it up another fraction of an inch. Ink drips from his mouth as sharp plastic corners claw up the inside of his neck. He collapses onto all fours (sixes), gagging for almost a full minute before the thing finally reaches his mouth and tumbles out.

The tape that clatters onto the tunnel floor, perfectly clean despite everything, isn't a tiny audio cassette but a full sized VHS. It'd be interesting, if Jon didn't feel like his neck was on fire. As it is, he just picks it up, shoves it into the biggest pocket he has, pulls himself to his feet, and keeps walking.

As the pain fades, he speeds up to a run; he's far too electrified to walk. He drops to a crawl to move swiftly down stairs. The pull that draws him never lets up, so following it is as easy as falling. He descends far, far deeper than he ever did in his many explorations of the tunnels until, all of a sudden, they change.

The featureless gray stone gives way to ancient brick. He goes from unnatural passages to long-forgotten prison halls. The air feels charged here, but he doesn't stop to investigate, not until he reaches the central area of Millbank Prison.

Jon emerges into the side of a vast cylinder. All around, cells line the curved walls, every single one separated from the empty air by nothing more than old, rusted bars. Ahead, a narrow walkway extends across the open space and connects to the top of the tower that rises through the center of the cylinder. Its sides are featureless, except for the windows that wrap around the entirety of the chamber at the very peak.

The Archivist draws in a steadying breath. All four hands clench into fists. He crosses the walkway to the heavy door waiting for him, already open. As he does, his antennae twitch around the memory of fog in the air. Lukas was here, and also Martin, there's a second trail of fog that's somehow ever-so-slightly denser than the first.

Inside the panopticon are three things. An old, ornate wooden chair, holding the decrepit body of Jonah Magnus. His current host, standing next to it with a smile. And a knife lying on the floor.

"Ah, Jon. I was—"

KNEEL

Elias' knees hit the floor with a crack and a half-formed yelp. Jon bends down as he walks to grab the knife.

"What? No, wait!" Elias catches his arm mid-swing. "What are you doing? You'll kill everyone in the Institute."

  You're lying.

He tries to pull away, but Elias holds on.

"Okay! Okay, maybe I am. But you need me to find Martin, he—"

  I don't.

He grabs Elias by the neck with another hand.

  I know exactly where he is. And I know all about your plan for me, your Watcher's Crown.
  That's why you tried to have Lukas take the journal, isn't it? You didn't want me to find out.
  But you underestimated me.

Elias wheezes. "If you kill me... You'll die."

  We're about to find out. Now,

LET GO

He shoves Elias away. Elias coughs.

"No, please!"

The knife sinks into Jonah's chest. Elias gasps, but Jon mirrors him at the same time. He feels the stab as keenly as if he'd driven the blade into his own heart. But luckily, he has more than one. Elias moans in agony, but he ignores it. He grips the chair for support, squeezes the handle of the knife, and stabs a second time, then a third, one for each assistant killed in the Archives.

That's all he can take. The knife falls from his hand. He clings to the chair, struggling to stay on his feet, as Elias writhes on the floor. Nothing but dust pours from the stab wounds and, soon, Jonah's body joins it, age catching up to it in fast forward as it falls apart into dry powder. The eyes in Elias' skull also dissolve, leaking out as clear sludge, then blood.

The pain spikes deep into Jon's chest. His hearts beat fast and discordant, ink stuttering in his veins. None of it escapes, however. He doesn't bleed and, when Elias goes still, it all abruptly stops. The breath caught in his throat comes out as a relieved gasp.

All is silent, but for his ragged breaths. Elias lies on the floor, bleeding slowly from empty eye sockets. Jon can't tell if he's alive, and right now he honestly doesn't care.

He straightens himself and feels for the impression of fog again. He finds it easily. He follows it to a point slightly behind him, a few steps from the chair. When he stands there, the memory of fog envelops him. His eyes flicker again. The static fills his vision, obscuring the panopticon, Elias' body, the dust-covered chair, everything, until he sees nothing else for a full second.

When it fades, he's standing on a fog covered beach. All is gray.

The Lonely welcomes him.

Chapter Text

Jon's talons sink into wet sand. His skirt ripples in the damp breeze. The rhythmic sound of gentle waves crashing on the shore washes over him. It reminds him of his childhood in Bournemouth. He used to hate the smell of the sea, especially when the beaches got clogged with rotten seaweed. Here, it just smells like salt and moisture. There's no life. He can't see far, not with the fog, but he Knows that he could swim in this gray ocean forever and never encounter even the smallest plankton.

It's achingly nostalgic, and yet unavoidably Lonely. Which is nothing he didn't expect.

His whole being tingles. Faint pinpricks needle across his chitin in waves, whenever a particularly dense patch of fog curls around him. His mane especially seems looser somehow, like the fog can just pass right through it unimpeded. He focuses on that feeling. He thinks about the radar threads across the Archive, and the tracking bracelet Basira wore for a time, and his own currently limited field of view.

His eyes flicker. The tape around his neck begins to pull outward, loops extending and dematerializing into thin wisps of smoke that blend in with the fog. If he can't see, then he'll just Know his surroundings.

Jon walks. Sand crunches underfoot with every step. The waves continue their slow rhythm on his right, spilling forth, then draining back, over and over, like the whole place is breathing around him. He only has a narrow band to move along. Too far on one side, and he'll be lost to the sea. Too far to the other, and the fog will take him.

He wants to call out for Martin, but of course he can't. His voice isn't his. He tries to anyway.

  Martin!

The mental shout seems to ripple out through the drifting loops of tape-turned-mist. He can talk here, as far as his threads can go.

Something brushes one of them. Not a presence, but the idea of one. The memory of companionship, however unwanted, because it's not Martin's voice that echoes to him in the wind.

"He doesn't want to see you."

Jon bristles. His fists clench again. He keeps walking.

  Martin!

Lukas brushes another thread, a different one, but it's hard to pin down exactly which.

"It’s odd, really. You each think you’re so focused on the other, but how much do you really know each other? How much time have you spent together when not working, or bickering, or fleeing from that latest thing that wants to kill you? So. What are you seeking? The image you’ve each created of the other? The people you think you love don’t exist. Not really. And that’s a very lonely place to be."

  Shut up! As if I don't know that already!

He stops and scans the fog. He pushes his threads further out into it like feelers.

  Is that the best you can do, Lukas? State the obvious in the hopes the boredom will somehow make me keel over dead?

No response. Jon shakes his head and keeps walking.

  Martin!

"He doesn't. Want. To see you."

  Then let me hear that from him. If you're so sure he belongs here, show me.

"Just go," Lukas says after a tiny pause.

   Make me.

No response. Jon would smile if he could.

  But you can't, can you? I'm made of fear just as much as this place is. And I'm already so very lonely. I belong here.
  So I think you're worried. You know I'll find him eventually, and you know I can find you.

Again, silence. Lukas is nowhere near his threads. He huffs.

  Thought so.

He walks. The waves crash, back and forth. Then, somewhere ahead, his threads find another ghost of a presence. They wrap around a slightly denser patch of fog that, when he approaches, resolves into the vague outline of—

  Martin!

Jon almost stumbles in his rush to get to Martin. All his threads bend forward, curling around the shape of him, begging it to condense further. He reaches out, tries to take Martin's hand, but his fingers only pass through the fog. It does draw Martin's attention, though. He turns his head, just a little.

"Jon?"

  Yes, I'm here! I came for you.

"Why?"

  I thought you might be lost.

The pale image of Martin's lips tugs a bit wider, closer to a mirthless smile.

"Are you real?"

  Yes! Yes, I am. Come on, we've got to get out of here.

He tries again to take Martin's hand, to no avail. The wind picks up. The fog of him grows slightly thinner instead.

"No. No, I don't think so."

  Why?

"This is where I should be. It feels right."

  Don't say that. It feels right for me too, but it isn't! This isn't us, this isn't you.

"It is, though." He laughs, a single airy exhale. "I really loved you, you know?"

  No! You still do, Martin, you must! You wouldn't be here if you—

The sea breeze carries him away, through the net of drifting threads.

  Dammit! Martin! Martin!

Jon stomps along the shore. The memory of Lukas' presence returns, still too loose to pin down.

"I tried to tell you. He's gone. He made his choice. And it wasn't you."

Jon stops. He breathes in the cold damp and salt. A wave tumbles further up the beach, lapping around his feet, making his talons sink into the sand. His skirt billows in the wind.

  It was for me, though. I'm the reason he...

He looks at his hand. Dew drops gather in the slight grooves of the burn scar. They cling to the scales of his wing and soak into his feather-like antennae, making him smell nothing but seawater. He closes his fingers around the wetness on his palm.

  I did this to him as much as you.

"Yes. I suppose you did."

Lukas is still there, shifting with the wind, but the longer Jon stands here, the more... cohesive the suggestion of him seems to become. Another wave laps around his ankles, pulling more sand out from under his feet. The tide seems to be slowly rising toward him.

"Where are your friends, Archivist?"

He chitters in lieu of a bitter chuckle. Mist pours out through his mouthparts.

  Gone. Tim and Sasha are dead.

"Yes?"

  Daisy's dead.

"Because. Of. You."

Lukas grows closer. More confident. Jon's threads start to focus on a specific area of density now circling him. He keeps his head down. The sea climbs higher, past his ankles.

  Georgie, Melanie and Basira have left me.

"And?"

  Martin's gone.

The fog coils around him. Through him. He doesn't resist.

"You're alone, Archivist. The last one standing. I did warn you. I did want you to leave, but... You said it yourself, didn't you? You belong here. Perhaps it would be better if you stayed a while. After all, you can't hurt anyone here."

His threads keep curving, probing, feeling for the ever-increasing presence of Lukas, even as the waves begin to soak into the hem of Jon's skirt. Fog fills his lungs. It laces every breath that comes out of his mouth. The tingling across his body turns to numbness.

  ...Yes.

"Yes," Lukas echoes.

Then he finds him. An impression of an ice-cold hand curls over Jon's shoulder. Lukas is directly behind him and to the left.

  Or perhaps you could give me what I want.

"What?"

All at once, his threads aren't mist anymore. With a sweep of his arms, the net closes around the suddenly-material Lukas, each thread leading into a thick bundle that passes through four chitinous hands, wraps around four spindly arms, and connects back into his mane. Jon looks him in the eye for the first time and finds him... Human. Unnaturally pale and cold as the fog all around, but human.

  I've got you now, Lukas.

His wings buzz, scattering the dew on them, banishing the fog around him. The waves recede. He's standing on solid ground again (or as solid as wet sand can be). Lukas tries to look as dignified as he can while tangled up in shiny black tape.

"Fine. It was just a thought. So leave."

  Not until I get some answers.

"That's not going to happen."

  Yes, it is. You don't even need to say much. I already know most of it.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

  Don't lie to me. I know you do. You wouldn't have agreed to steal the journal if you didn't.
  You knew about Jonah's plan. His ritual. You knew he couldn't pull it off without your help to mark me.
  But he's dead. He failed.

Jon takes the memory of Jonah dissolving into dust, of his eyes melting out of Elias' head, and drives it so deep into Lukas' mind he'll never be able to forget it. Lukas even grunts in pain. Then he gives a small, bitter laugh.

"Then I guess we both lost."

  What are you talking about? Why did you help him?

"He made me a wager. If I could convince one of his staff to willingly pledge themselves to the Lonely, it was all mine. He even let me pick the victim. He was so sure the price of the Institute, the panopticon and a willing vessel to use it would be just too much for me to resist. And… he was right. Just didn’t go quite as either of us hoped."

  And if he won...

"He got you."

  Quite. Now let Martin go.

"He already told you he wants to stay."

  I don't believe him.
  Let. Him. Go.

Lukas makes a noise of discomfort. "I can't do that when you've got me trapped, Archivist."

  Stop lying. I can feel you everywhere here. This is you, isn't it? So you know exactly where Martin is.
  Tell me, or I will rip it out of you.

The tape tightens around Lukas, sharp edges cutting into him; thin wisps of fog leak from the wounds. He shakes under the Compulsion pressing in on all sides.

"Fine! Fine. Take him and go."

The information slots neatly into Jon's brain. One last thread takes it and extends out into the fog, to wherever Martin is, connecting them like a lifeline. Jon lets out a breath. He's about to let Lukas go when a thought occurs to him.

  How many victims have you taken?

"Why do you care?"

  Answer the question.

"I— Rgh! I don't know! I don't keep count."

  Too many, then.

"Let me go!"

  I won't let you make anyone else suffer.

Jon's eyes flicker with growing static. His wings spread, the four green eyespots the only color amidst the gray. Lukas tries to flee, to melt away into the fog, but that only lets the tape sink deeper into his flesh.

"Let... go!"

   No.

His mane begins to whirr and, with it, the net of tape flows around Lukas, slicing deeper, flaying him even as he pulls harder and harder.

"Leave... me... alone!"

DIE

Lukas screams. Jon pulls. The tape cuts through the fog flesh with a high-pitched whine of rapid spooling and tearing meat, and then, the fog dissipates. Jon's tape falls limp upon the sand. The breath held in his throat flows out with a final wisp of white smoke.

He pulls out the spent tape at the root and leaves it piled on the beach. He stares at his hands.

Jonah was, arguably, self defense. This was... What? Revenge? Justice?

Jon shakes his head. He can dwell on it when he and Martin are safe. He turns and follows his last thread into the fog. On the other end, he finds the loose shape of Martin again, now with a loose loop of tape around his barely-material wrist.

  Martin. Martin, he's gone. We can leave.

"His only wish was to die alone."

Jon steps in front of him, so he can't look away.

  Tough. Now listen to me, Martin.

"Hello, Jon."

He reaches up and tries to cradle Martin's face. The surface of his skin is fragile, but present.

  Listen, I know you think you want to be here, I know you think it’s safer, and... Well, maybe it is. But—
  I need you.

"No, you don't. Not really. Everyone's alone, but we all survive."

  We don't have to! I don't want to.

"I'm sorry."

  Martin, look at me. Look at me and tell me what you see.

Martin blinks. His eyes are glassy, but they move. They focus on Jon.

"I see..."

They blink again. Some shine returns to them. His form condenses as his mouth pulls into a hesitant smile.

"I see you, Jon."

He chuckles once. Twice. Each time, the fog fades away a little more, until it's just him left. His skin is cold under Jon's palms. He brings his own hands up, also cold, to hold Jon's wrists.

"I see you."

  Martin.

A sob rocks Martin's shoulders. His eyes brim with tears. When they dribble down his face and under Jon's hands, they're shockingly hot.

"I... I was on my own. I was all on my own."

  Not anymore.

Martin cries. He crumples forward into Jon's arms. Despite the fog, and the gray, and the sea churning away in its own rhythm, they hold each other close. Martin squeezes Jon to his front, arms passing under his wings like they've done this a thousand times, and for the first time in a long time, Jon can almost feel at home in his own chitin. They linger with each other, and the longer they do the more the chill is pushed away. The hug becomes warm in more than the metaphorical way. The very reality around them seems to recoil from their presence.

Eventually, Martin's sobs trail into a wavering laugh.

"You're so thin. I feel like I might break you if I squeeze too hard."

They pull apart, just enough for Jon to be able to meet Martin's eyes to speak to him.

  I won't. I promise.

They let go, but Jon keeps hold of Martin's hand.

  Come on. Let's go home.

"How?"

  Don't worry. I know the way.

Chapter Text

The panopticon is the same as when Jon left it. A dusty old chair. A dead El—

Oh. No, Elias isn't dead after all.

When they fade back into reality, they find him sitting against the wall, hugging himself. To his right, the barred door to the walkway outside is partially open. A wide strip of fabric has been torn off the bottom of his dress shirt, likely with the help of the knife now laying next to him, and tied over his missing eyes. It's already soaked through with blood. Red is streaked down his face and smeared across his shirt and hands.

Martin sucks in a breath when he sees him. It makes Elias try to look up.

"H-hello? Is someone there? Uh, M-Martin? Jonathan?"

Before Martin can say anything, Jon puts a hand on his shoulder to draw his attention.

  It's okay. He's just Elias now. Jonah's dead.

"What?" Martin looks around and notices the now empty chair holding nothing but corpse dust. "Oh. So he is. Um. Hi, Elias."

The eyeless man gasps in relief. "H-hi. Martin, I— C-can I call you Martin?"

"...Sure."

"What's going on? I can't..." He pulls himself slowly to his feet; his legs shake. "I-I don't know how to get out of here... anymore. I was g-going to, but the— The walkway, it— No rails. I didn't want to fall. And it, it feels... bad. Out there. I don't know why, I— P-please. Can you help me?"

"Oh. Yeah, of course." Martin looks to Jon for confirmation, who gives him an encouraging nod. He crosses the room over to Elias. "Can you... walk? You don't look great."

"No. No, I probably don't. I'm..." Elias gestures vaguely at his face. "Blood loss. Probably. I feel faint. But, I think I can walk. I just... I-I just don't know the way out."

"Right. Well, I'm sure we can help with that. I'm uh. I'm going to grab your arm, if that's okay?"

"Yeah."

Martin wraps a hand above Elias' elbow. He leans heavily against him, even puts his other hand over Martin's. He's unsteady on his feet, pale, a little damp from cold sweat, but not on the verge of passing out as far as Martin can tell. He's no expert, though.

"Okay, there we go. We'll get you out of here. It's, uh. It's nice to meet the real Elias, I suppose."

Elias chuckles weakly. "I don't know who that is. I've... I haven't been me in so long."

"Yeah... Well, you can figure that out once we get you to a hospital. Jon, can you lead the way? You know the way out, right?"

When he looks, Jon is still standing in the exact same spot near Jonah's former throne, but there's something off about it.

"...Jon?"

"Sims is here?"

"Yeah, he's— Hold on." He lets Elias lean against the wall again. "Jon! What..."

Martin notices something else. There's no wind here in this underground space, the air is still and cold, but above Jon, as though caught by the faintest breeze, he sees the pale white shine of gossamer strands extending from Jon's every limb. He looks up just as the overhead light is obscured by a large multilegged shape, crawling on a thick layer of cobweb spread across the ceiling of the panopticon chamber.

It descends on a single drooping strand, twisting gently. Eight many-jointed limbs unfold from under the bulbous arachnid abdomen. At the front of it, a humanoid torso unfurls, joined to where a spider's face should be at the waist. The arms hang down, hands spread, long spindly fingers holding the ends of Jon's puppet strings. The neck folds back. Eight large black eyes stare into Martin's, on a face that still retains a disturbingly human mouth between large sharp chelicerae. On the side of the skull, an open hollow is filled in with more cobwebs.

Annabelle Cane grins.

"Hello, Martin," she says with a deep, warped voice. "It is so good to finally meet you."

Martin can only muster a shaky exhale at first. "It's you."

"What? W-what's happening? Who—?"

"Hush, Elias. You've played your part. You may leave."

Elias starts to argue, before the shimmer of silk strands flashes above him. He goes stiff, then simply walks along the wall, steps through the old rusted door of the panopticon, and moves down the long walkway. Martin takes the chance to bend down and grab the knife off the floor.

"Let him go. Now."

"I'm afraid I can't do that. He still has a very important part to play."

She lowers herself further, and pulls on the strings at the same time. Jon's back straightens unnaturally. His four arms raise, then lower in a smooth, undulating motion.

"He has been so very diligent, hasn't he? Allowing himself to be marked by the last remaining Power, even when he knew what it might lead to. All thanks to you, Martin."

"That wasn't me! That was Peter, and— And Elias! Or, Jonah, whatever!"

"Ah, yes. Jonah Magnus." She glances back at the chair covered in dust. "Such a shame he couldn't be here to be Crowned. But the Watcher's Crown was never meant for him."

"What are you even talking about? What's a Watcher's Crown?"

"What do you think?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking."

Annabelle chuckles. "I forgot how caught up in the Extinction you've been. Peter did his job well."

"I don't care. Either answer the question, or let him go."

She tilts her head at him. "How about I show you instead?"

Her fingers twitch. Jon turns on his heel and takes a single step toward Jonah's chair.

"No, wait! Wait. I— I-it's the Eye's ritual, right? Watcher's Crown?"

"Hm. Very good. Yes, it is."

"But what does that have to do with him? And why do you care about it? You're, what, helping with another Fear's ritual? Why?" 

Annabelle seems to mull over the question. Martin risks a step forward of his own, to try and bridge the gap between him and Jon; the room isn't big, there's maybe ten feet of space between them at most, but it feels so much wider than that. His mind is working furiously to figure out how to fix this, how to cut Jon free or kill Annabelle or whatever it'd take to make Jon safe, but how in the world is he supposed to fight something that can just control his actions whenever it wants to? Why hasn't she done so yet?

Annabelle, apparently, comes to a conclusion and pirouettes Jon back around to face Martin again.

"Perhaps our own ritual requires it."

She lowers herself even further, until she's talking almost directly into where Jon's ear should be. His strings are transferred to her arachnid legs held above him, letting her run a hand through the endless loops of tape around Jon's neck. Martin squeezes the handle of the knife.

"Perhaps your Archivist isn't entirely yours."

"What? This was your fault?!"

"Hah. No, we can't claim all the glory. We just made some... adjustments. Weaved a bit of ourselves into him. We have to admit, we were surprised by how much he managed to use it for his own ends. But a web is nothing if not flexible."

"Explain yourself."

"Hm. No, I don't think we will. Not yet. There's more you need to see before you're ready for that."

She turns away. Jon turns with her.

"Wh— Hey! Hey, get back here!"

Martin lunges forward, but he's stopped by a thick, hairy spider leg that slams down in front of him. He stabs the knife into it and it spasms, but doesn't budge. A second leg swoops down from above and shoves him onto the floor, pinning him almost by the throat, its two long claws framing his windpipe. Annabelle leans down, still suspended but far too close.

"Don't do anything rash, Martin. We'd hate to have to improvise again."

He grabs at the limb pinning him, but if he moves it he might just tear open his own neck. "Puppet me around then, because I'm not letting you make Jon into some... apocalypse avatar."

"Unfortunately, I can't." She tilts her head again. "It's such a shame. There was a time when I was certain you had what it takes to join us."

"Piss off. I don't even like spiders anymore."

"No, you don't. But you always managed to get what you wanted through smiles and shrugs and stammerings that weren’t nearly as awkward as they seemed."

He averts his eyes, partly to look down at Jon; he's still on the same spot, facing away, perfectly still under the half-visible threads of silk.

Or... Wait. Was that a twitch on his antenna?

Annabelle pulls back a little. "I suppose it doesn't matter now. You'll do what I want eventually. But first, we need to finish what we started. Do stay out of the way, Martin?"

Her abdomen bends down to let two spider legs pluck off-white globs from the end of it. Two other legs take Martin's arms and force his wrists onto the ground, where they get glued in place by the wads of cobweb. When she moves away, he pulls against them; they give slightly, but they don't let go.

"Jon! Jon, can you hear me?!"

Annabelle ignores him. Jon doesn't react. She guides him forward, step by step, to the chair at the center of what was once Millbank Prison. At a tug from the strings, his wings snap open, then buzz. The dust of Jonah Magnus gets blown off the chair and across the room.

Martin shoves at the floor with his feet, pushing and pulling until he can awkwardly sit up. The angle of the web twists his wrists painfully, but it gives him far more leverage. As the dust flies, he pulls on his right arm as hard as he can, and one by one, the sticky threads begin to give way. Before they snap completely, Jon's wings stop and fold back down.

"Jon! Wait! I'm... Rrrrgh!"

His right hand comes loose. He immediately grabs his left arm and starts pulling on it, but far, far too late. Jon is directed to spin on his heel, away from the chair, as Annabelle hangs above him like a grotesque shadow, fingers once again carrying the puppet strings.

"Jon, no! Please! Listen to me!"

"You should be honored, Martin. You're about to see everything change."

Like a conductor closing the final act of an orchestra, Annabelle lowers her arms.

And nothing happens. The strings go slack. Jon remains standing, poised over the chair, and Martin suddenly feels his gaze on him, finds his voice in his thoughts.

  I hear you.

Then, all at once, the shine of gossamer white shifts to magnetic black. The puppet strings become tethers. Jon reaches up, scoops what is now hanging tape into his hands, and pulls. Cobweb snaps overhead as Annabelle scrambles to hold on, loses her grip, and comes crashing down with a warped yell, then a pained heave as her bloated body hits the concrete floor, all eight legs curled in reflexively.

A moment later, Martin yanks his other arm free.

They close in together. Jon sweeps his hands above Annabelle's crumpled form, gathering her own, now visible, puppet strings into a single tight bundle. She tries to right herself, but the strings keep her legs from stretching out.

  Here!

"No!"

Martin pulls out the knife still embedded in her leg, reaches up and, in one swift motion, cuts her strings. Annabelle convulses with a broken, half-formed gasp, then falls still. Long-clotted blood begins to ooze through the webs that fill the gap in her skull.

For a moment, silence reigns supreme. Then the knife clatters onto the floor. They both breathe hard.

"Is... Is it over? Oh, Jon!"

Jon nearly collapses right into the chair, but Martin catches him.

"Don't sit there! I— Come on, just—"

  No, Martin, it's fine.This place can't do anything on its own. I need to sit, please. Everything hurts.

"Uh. Okay? If you're sure."

Martin lowers him into the ancient chair. He's shaking slightly. He also still has tape coming out of his joints; it cut right through his clothes.

"Should I...?" Martin gestures to the loose tape.

  Yes.

Martin plucks out one. A bit of black spills out with it.

"Wh— Are you bleeding? Wait, is that ink?"

  Yes. To both. It's fine, keep going.

Martin's face twists, but he pulls out each tape by the root. Jon's brand new jumper gets stained with black. He doesn't have the energy to lament it.

"There, I think that's all of them. Is that better?"

  Yes, thank you.

"Are you alright? What happened? I thought—"

  You thought I was gone.

"...Yeah."

Jon lets out a single breath of a laugh.

  I nearly was. She wove her webs very deep into me.
  But avatars can always resist each other's powers. They come from the same place.
  I just needed time, like with Lukas. I needed to make her think she'd won, to let her guard down.

They both look at Annabelle, lying motionless on the floor.

"And now she's dead?"

  Yes. She's nothing without the Web.

"Right. I..." He looks around, searching for the right words. "I still don't understand what she was trying to do. Why would she help the Eye?"

  She wasn't. She was helping herself.
  All this, the Watcher's Crown, it would've brought every Fear to our world, ruled by the Eye. And...

A faint static flickers in Jon's eyes. He buries a hand in his mane of tape.

  My voice. She took it. The tapes were all her. She's been using it to weave a web through the house on Hilltop Road, it's...

He gasps in disbelief.

"What? What is it?"

  The house, it— No, not the house. Under it, there's... There's a crack in reality on Hilltop Road.

"What? No, you mean like—"

  Other worlds. Other realities. She was going to use my voice to channel the Fears, let them escape into them.

"...Okay, but, but why? If they'd won here..."

  Not forever. A world made of fear would be a dead end.
  No new humans would be born, but for the End to exist, they must die.
  A world of nothing but fear would eventually eat itself into nothing. And the Web...
  God. The Web can think. It needs to plan to orchestrate its fear. It knew this. So it found a way out.

"I... That's..." Martin runs a hand through his hair with a heavy exhale. "Right, okay. That's... a lot. How do you even know all of it?"

Jon gestures widely around them. The gentle flickering in his eyes has been constant since he sat down.

  The panopticon. I can know anything from here. I can...

His voice fades. His hand clutches at the tape around his neck again.

  I can use this place. I can fix this.

"Fix what?"

   This!

He pulls on his mane, unspooling the loops of tape caught in his fingers.

  Her meddling, her— She took my voice. She took it. I want it back.
  I can become what I was always meant to be.

"That... doesn't sound good."

  I suppose it isn't. But it's mine.

"Jon, wait. You're making it sound like you want to just give up all of your humanity. That can't be good."

  No, it wouldn't be. But that's not what I'm doing.

"...Are you sure?"

  Yes.

He takes Martin's hand between two of his.

  Trust me. It's literally impossible for me to not know what I'm doing when I'm in this chair.

Martin doesn't seem entirely convinced, but he sighs. "Alright. Is there anything you need me to do?"

  Stand back, I suppose. It's... It's not going to be pleasant. But, I think staying outside might be worse.

Martin glances at the windows. "Yeah, probably." He steps back; his hand slips away. "Good luck, I guess?"

  Thanks.

Martin moves to the wall, as far away as he can be.

Jon sits back in the chair; the unmoving armrests force him to hold his wings wide open. He breathes in the cold, dry air. All around, through the windows of the panopticon, he sees the cells that line the outside of the cylindrical chamber. More importantly, he sees their contents.

Every cell here holds a different horror. Some are darker than the deepest cave. Some are packed to the brim with earth, or have walls so thick they barely leave enough room for a person to squeeze into. Some draw his gaze like a yawning precipice, or are filled with endless stars. Some are covered in crawling rot from floor to ceiling. Some burn with a lightless heat. Some are so full of cobwebs he can't see the end of them. Some stretch away into impossible geometry. Some reek with the smell of blood and mud and gunpowder leaking from a thousand bullet holes. Some hold faint silhouettes, barely visible but for their staring eyes.

A piece of every Fear is represented in these old, haunted confines. A piece of every Fear is also within him. Power sparks in his veins. He can feel the threshold of reality. He could reach out and open it with a single thought. But that's not what he's here for.

He breathes in again, long and deep. The modified chitin plate on his back, molded into shape by Jared months ago, stings slightly. Then, every scar across his body follows it, pinpricks needling at each place where a Fear has left its mark. His hand. The pockmarks across his body. His arm, and shoulder, and throat. The discomfort builds as he looks up at the mass of web across the ceiling of the panopticon. His hands grip the chair tight, the upper on the armrests, the lower on either side of the seat.

Jon tries to brace himself for it, but no amount of preparation can withstand what comes next.

The pain is beyond words. His back snaps forward. His mouth opens around a silent scream. Outside, wind begins to spiral around the tower. Thunder booms. Fire crackles. Gunshots fire. Every terror in every cell overflows into a deafening chaos that shakes the windows, and at the center, Jon is unmade piece by piece, molecule by molecule, then deeper still, down to the metaphysical level.

All the scales shed from his wings at once. Tape erupts from him in every direction with an ear-splitting screech. It piles around him, dozens upon dozens of feet, hundreds, even thousands of feet of unspooling tape, pulling him apart at so many seams that, for a long moment, Jon's form seems held together by nothing at all. Ink drenches the chair and pools outward, under the mounds of tape, until the flowing liquid goes from dark black to vivid red and the smell of blood fills the room.

The exposed flesh suddenly flushes crimson as it bubbles outward, filling every gap left behind. Muscle and bone and sinew are conjured from nothing, bent into shape like putty. Ribs close around a heart beating so fast it's a blur, guts coil together like snakes, lungs fill in spasms that don't correspond at all to what has gone from the screech of tape to a scream, Jon's scream, breathless and throat-tearingly loud and ceaseless in its intensity.

Skin folds over everything, then over itself, thickening and hardening into a simile of the shiny black chitin from before. Fresh scales spread over the wings in new colors, new patterns. Fur sprouts where there once was tape. Every disassembled part pulls back together in an entirely different way as the raging maelstrom outside crescendos so fiercely the whole tower seems to shake.

The cobwebs overhead burst into flames without warning, which marks the beginning of the end. Jon's scream fades. The storm rises above the tower and condenses into a single point that, for a full second, lets out nothing but a high pitched whine, until it detonates so violently the ceiling cracks. The windows shatter outward. The cells, every single one, crumble in unison, an avalanche of shattered brick and concrete filling the bottom of the ancient prison.

And then it's over. Dust rises through the air outside the panopticon. A few small, broken pebbles tumble around until they find their resting place. Martin takes his hands off his ears. And Jon begins to topple numbly out of the chair.

"Shit, Jon!"

Martin runs and just manages to catch Jon before he lands in the puddle of blood and ink; everything that soaked into his clothes already got pulled back into him. He half-drags, half-carries Jon away from the chair, then lays him down on the dusty floor.

"Jon? Jon! Are you— Dammit, I can't even tell if you're knocked out or not. Jon, come on, answer me!"

Martin shakes him (gently). It takes a few long, worrying seconds, but Jon does eventually react by wrapping a very loose hand around Martin's arm. Martin breathes out a sigh of relief.

"Oh, Jon. You scared me."

Jon wheezes. Coughs weakly. Tries to squeeze Martin's wrist, though his strength has clearly left him for the foreseeable future. Martin takes his hand and squeezes it for him.

"...Sorry," Jon rasps.

"Oh! You can talk!"

"Yes. Thanks for catching me, by the way."

"Of course. How are you feeling?"

"Like I died a second time."

"Yeah, it..." Martin glances at the chair soaked in ink and blood. "It didn't look... nice. But you look better?"

He looks down at Jon's prone form. Where before it was almost entirely black, now it's the exact same warm brown as the jumper he's wearing; only the compound eyes are still black. The wings are full of markings in beige and yellow and white, except for the eyespots. There's fourteen in total now, four on the upper wings, three on the lower, each with a different color.

Jon lets out a long sigh. "I feel better. Not counting the weakness. I finally feel like I'm put together right." The more he talks, the stronger his voice becomes.

"That's good. Can you walk?"

"In a bit. Can you help me get out of this room, at least? I don't want to be near her."

"Sure. Come on, give me your hand."

Martin heaves him upright. Jon has to cling to and lean heavily on Martin as they move out the barred door, and onto the walkway outside. He can't even make it very far before his shaking legs buckle.

"Woah, careful! Don't fall off."

They both lower themselves onto the now dusty floor; Jon doesn't let go of Martin's hand. The air smells of concrete dust.

"How are you?" Jon asks.

"I'm... alright, I suppose? It's..." He rubs his fingers together. "I don't know. I think I'm still a bit numb."

"It'll pass."

"I hope so."

"Is there anything you want to know?"

"Uh, sure? Why?"

"I want to talk. I miss talking. And I can know anything I want now."

"Really? Anything?"

"Yes. I'm— My powers with the Eye, they were tangled up with the Web. I couldn't channel them properly."

"Huh. Okay." Martin mulls it over for a second. "Well, I guess I'm still not entirely clear on how this whole Watcher's Crown ritual was supposed to work. Did it have to be you?"

"Yes. I was the ritual, in a sense." He looks down at his hand, where the burn is more visible now as a patch of discoloration in the brown. "A Mark from every power. I'm not just the Archivist, I'm an Archive of fear. Jonah would've used me to bring about..."

"The end of the world?"

"Essentially." He laughs bitterly. "I was chosen."

"Chosen? By Jonah?"

"By the Web. It's been following me since I was a kid. It..." He laughs again. "It was my first Mark."

"What happened?"

Jon looks down. "I'd rather not think about it. It was a Leitner. There's a statement, I can show you some other time if you want."

"...Sure."

They sit in silence for a time. Jon leans against Martin. Martin turns over their clasped hands to look at the back of Jon's.

"Um. You said you wanted to talk, so... I mean, how do you work? You don't have the uh, tail? Anymore? But you still look like a moth."

"Ironically, I'm actually more human now." He taps the hard outer shell of his arm. "This is keratin, not chitin."

"What's the difference?"

"Chitin is what bugs have. Keratin's in your hair and nails."

"Oh. So, what, you're made of... human stuff? But rearranged?"

"Pretty much. I have bones again. And a liver. All the usual organs where they should be. It's mostly the outside that's different. And the extra limbs." He spreads the wings opposite Martin for a look at the partial rainbow visible across the multiple eyespots. "I'm also kind of an avatar of every Fear now?"

"Wait, really? That can happen?"

"Apparently. This place, it was made to funnel all of them down to Earth. I just used that with a slightly different purpose. I guess it caused some uh, feedback?" He looks around at what used to be layers and layers of supernatural cells.

"Yeah, no kidding. It is still... functional?"

"No. It could be rebuilt, but no one else knows it's here. And I should be able to collapse the rest of it when we leave."

"That'd probably be good, yeah. Speaking of which, how are you feeling?"

"Tired. Hungry. But I am better. Help me up."

They get back on their feet. Jon has to take a moment to steady himself, but his legs don't shake. He nods.

"Okay. I think we can go. We shouldn't leave Elias alone for too long, he might pass out."

"Christ, yeah, I almost forgot. Will he be okay?"

"I can't know the future. But yes, I think so. Physically, at least."

They move down the narrow walkway.

"Damn, what about everyone else in the Institute? Are they okay?"

"Yes. I felt Jonah dying. So did they, but much less. There's... four with pre-existing heart problems that had to call an ambulance, but they should be fine."

"That's good. Jonah was just lying to us, after all."

"Mostly. He genuinely didn't know how bad the fallout would be."

"Hm. Doesn't make it better."

"No, it doesn't."

Martin stops. Consequently, so does Jon.

"What's going to happen to the Institute?"

"Honestly, I don't know. And right now I'm a little too tired to try and figure it out. Let's just get out of here."

"Yeah, that's fair. Come on then."

On the way out, Jon pauses to look at the vast cylindrical space behind them. His antennae twitch. The walls quake. Everything crushes inward. The walkway shatters. The path behind them is closed by a solid wall of stone. They're briefly plunged into darkness, until Jon holds out his burned hand and summons a flame around it to light the way. It singes the edge of his sleeve.

They leave the buried panopticon behind.