Archive of Our Own

Martin would not have considered himself knowledgeable about finances in any sense of the word.

Using his well-honed skills of reading through piles of ancient legal documents, however, he had come to the conclusion that whatever money was keeping the lights on at the Institute, it certainly was not coming through any legal streams.

This nightmare had stemmed from Martin’s latest source of problems: Peter Lukas. December meant budget approval sessions for the Institute, something Martin had vaguely been aware of from email chains and overheard complaints during years past. None of this had been his concern until last week, when he had officially become Peter’s assistant and been conferred the grand task of completing whatever administrative duties Peter couldn’t be bothered with.

Namely, compiling and editing departmental budgets.

Peter hadn’t even had the decency to dump this on him in person. On Monday morning, Martin had been greeted at his new desk by a pile of spreadsheets and a note requesting he ‘see if they couldn’t cut down a bit for next year’s budget’. It was now Friday, and if anything, he knew less than when he’d started.

The spreadsheets Peter had generously provided meant nothing to him, and his efforts to simply copy a budget from a few years back were thwarted by the discovery that their legal documents were even more of a mess than the Archives.

It was a miracle HMRC hadn’t come to investigate them already. No, scratch that – it was a miracle that any of them had ever been paid in the first place. Martin was still stumbling upon bank accounts that hadn’t been listed anywhere else, and even knowing the Institute’s real purpose, he was starting to wonder if they weren’t laundering money on the side.

As it was, he was just tired.

There was no good reason to make Martin do this. The Magnus Institute had financial advisors, as he had become all too aware of, and the Lukas family had more than enough capital to cover any expenses created in trying to prevent the next apocalypse. Even if this was some nefarious plot, all Peter was managing to do was make Martin want to rip his hair out.

That, and give Martin a nasty cold. Leaning back in the new, non-creaking chair his promotion had landed him, he reached for another tissue from the rapidly depleting box on the table. He’d thought the heating in the Archives was weak, but his new third-floor office was absolutely freezing.

He blew his nose and tossed the soiled tissue to join its comrades in the bin. Maybe he could just give everyone a big enough end-of-year bonus to sink the whole place into financial ruin. For all he knew, bankrupting the Institute would kill them all, but at least they could afford a nice holiday beforehand.

(Not that Martin would go through with it, not without… not alone.)

Rubbing his eyes, he tried to return his attention to last year’s Research budget, which he’d found shoved between partially scorched bank records he suspected had survived the Blitz. He knew it was a lost cause by his fifth time reading through the first row. His head was pounding, he could barely breathe, but more than anything he was exhausted.

He set the paper down and stood up. “Peter, I’m going to clock out early,” he announced to the empty room, feeling only slightly foolish. “If you want me to stay, you’re going to have to come in here and tell me yourself. Otherwise, I’m going to go eat canned soup in my flat, alright?”

Either the room was for once as empty as it appeared, or Peter was fine with it. Martin wasn’t sure which one he hoped it was, but if he could avoid a conversation with Peter, he was happy.

Not even bothering to tidy up the paperwork scattered across the floor, he slid his laptop into his work bag and zipped up his well-loved winter coat. Tiptoeing across the room, he closed the door behind him and escaped out the back stairwell into the chilly afternoon air.

His commute was automatic, his legs carrying him past blurs of faces he would likely never see again. Once in the train car, he snagged a seat and settled in for half an hour of staring at his shoes, too tired to do anything else.

He was five stops away from the Institute when he realized that he’d forgotten to lock his office door. There was a time he would have worried over that, spent the evening panicking over the scolding he might get the next morning, that maybe this would be the slip-up that made them all realize he was more than just forgetful. Looking back, it was almost pathetic.

In any case, nobody was likely to notice. His bizarre rise from ‘least popular member of the least popular department’ to ‘sole confidant of the new, potentially murderous Head’ made conversations awkward enough, but couple that with the fact that everyone he cared about was recently deceased, and you had a recipe for being avoided like the plague.

Besides, what harm could leaving his door unlocked do? If anyone wanted to break in and snoop, they were welcome to report the Institute for tax fraud.

One transfer and ten minutes later, his train shuddered to a stop at his station. Shoving his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat, he exited the car, shivering against the cold as he reached the street level. Even at midday, the air had a bite to it, gusts of wind throwing his curls back into his face. He lowered his head and quickened his steps.

The stairwell to his flat was not much warmer than outside, but as the door swung shut behind him, he was glad for the lack of wind. He climbed the stairs to his second-floor flat. With all the grace of a one-year-old trying to force a square block into a round hole, his numb hands shoved the key into the lock and opened the door.

He dropped his work bag by the door, his empty thermos of tea clunking loudly against the wall. Shedding his coat and tossing it onto the sofa, he pulled off his work shoes and headed for the thermostat by the kitchen.

With a beep, the heater fired to life. The display informed him it was currently a jaunty 16 degrees in the room. Turning off the heating when he was gone hadn’t been a strict necessity in years, but old habits died hard. He was committed to suffering through a freezing cold flat every time he came back until the day he died.

His cold had, unsurprisingly, not disappeared. His throat scratched horribly now, and the headache he’d been nursing all day was worse than ever, but he didn’t have the energy to care. Even the canned soup he’d planned to eat didn’t seem appetizing when faced with the possibility of sleeping.

Martin was always too busy to sleep.

Now, though, he had time. It was Friday. He might have gone in tomorrow to look through statements or complete whatever new responsibility of Peter’s had been shoved on him, but this time, he didn’t think he would. Someone would have to come and physically drag him out of bed, and nobody cared about him that much.

So Martin went to his bedroom, drew the curtains, and huddled up under the duvet. Then, he slept.

When he awoke, he was drenched in sweat. It was dark outside, judging by the fact that no light was peaking its way under the blinds. He hadn’t dreamed of anything, which was rare these days. Though, given the heat racing under his skin, it was equally likely he’d forgotten it all in a fit of feverish delusion. He couldn’t say he minded.

His throat was even worse than it had been yesterday (or was it still today?) and his stomach was twisted in knots, though whether that was from nausea or hunger, he couldn’t tell. And, of course, his headache remained his steadfast companion.

He might have gone back to sleep, but some genius had decided that now was the perfect time to start drilling away out in the street. Martin rolled over and pretended not to hear it, but after a few minutes he dropped the act. Who was he even trying to fool? He shoved his glasses, which had separated from his face sometime in the night, onto his nose and staggered out of bed.

Martin’s phone was still in his pocket from earlier. He pulled it out to check the time, squinting against the brightness of the screen before the display eventually resolved into something resembling a quarter to seven on Saturday.

It ought to have been not a surprise, maybe, but at least concerning that he’d slept for close to fifteen hours straight. He tried to muster up the worry that was a requirement for being Martin Blackwood and came up empty.

He simply did not care.

With the lovely soundtrack of drilling and workers shouting outside, he headed into the kitchen and flicked on the lights. Out of it as he was, he had the sense to go through his standard down-with-a-cold routine. A can of chicken noodle soup was opened and put on the stove to heat up. Various pills were grabbed from his table and swallowed dry.

He hit a brick wall at step three, putting the kettle on, when he turned on the kitchen tap and nothing came out. Synapses did not so much fire in his brain as struggle to light before sputtering out like a damp match. He’d come back to this problem eventually, but he needed his tea first.

This setback didn’t stall him for long, though, as he remembered the flats of water bottles sitting in one of his closets. After he moved out of the Archives, he’d used up as much of his spending money as he could afford stocking up on any supplies he’d need in case he was attacked again: food, water, batteries, medical supplies, and enough corkscrews, hammers, and other potential weapons to keep him as safe as he could be.

Now they were coming in handy under very different circumstances. Tugging one bottle out of the packaging, he brought it over to the counter and dumped it into the electric kettle. Soon enough, he was pouring boiling water into a mug and spooning honey into it.

Ideally, his honey and lemon tea would have lemon in it, but he didn’t have any, so he’d have to do without. His soup was hot enough to be considered edible, too, so he took the saucepan off the stove and set it down on his table on top of a battered hot pad.

The tea burned his tongue, but he sipped it between bites of soup anyway. The vague nausea he’d felt upon waking hadn’t left him, but he didn’t feel likely to cough up his breakfast, so he shoveled the food down his mouth with as much enthusiasm as he could muster for lukewarm chicken soup eaten straight from the pot.

By the time he was done, he felt marginally more alive. The sun was presumably rising outside his kitchen window, though it was hidden by the endless sprawl of clouds and fog that was London weather.

It did give just enough light for his eyes to land on the piece of paper on the floor by the door. Walking over to pick it up, he was greeted with the logo of the local water company. Apparently, they needed to conduct emergency maintenance – hence the drilling at seven in the morning – and the water would be off until sometime this afternoon.

This put something of a kaput on his plans to shower and change out of his sweaty work clothes. Temporarily defeated, he shoved his coat to the far side of the sofa and sat down.

In the past, he would have thrown himself a classic pity party. These were some of the best circumstances he was likely to see for months. Sick, lonely, swamped with work. Unable to even take a shower! He ought to be getting himself drunk off of shitty beer and bemoaning the state of his life, maybe going on Instagram for the first time in months to see how much happier his old coworkers were.

He couldn’t work himself up to it, though.

There was an art to pity parties, of course, one he knew infinitely well. You start by obsessing over some minor wrongdoing, like being snippy with a barista that morning, and from there, work your way up until you’re sure that you are a uniquely horrible person and should be ashamed of every action you’ve ever taken, or failed to take, or idly considered taking.

However, there wasn’t anything to get the ball rolling. Even the ol’ reliable (feeling guilty about not calling his mum for the past few weeks, getting bounced to voicemail like usual, then feeling guilty that he was relieved) was of no use. The guilt of not being sad enough about her death might have been equally effective once, but as time passed even that was losing its edge.

He was just numb. Not numb like acceptance, like a wound scabbed over, but numb like the cold, numb like the December chill had settled in his bones and wouldn’t let him forget, but wouldn’t give him the release of proper grief.

Maybe it would be easier if he had a definitive answer. A body to bury in the ground, not one still hooked up to IVs and heart monitors, teasing him with the faintest glimmer of hope. If not sadness, he might have mustered up anger. After everything Martin had done for the man, how dare he deny him this one comfort?

That wasn’t right, either. Neither of them had chosen this, and thinking of him lying there, so small in his hospital gown, made any anger Martin held die on his lips.

He spent the rest of the day doing nothing. His headache would get better, then worsen as the pipe repair people started on some new, equally noisy pipe repair task. Watching his favorite old rom-com entertained him for a while, but the characters’ saccharine confessions of true love seemed to mock him, and he turned it off partway through.

At the very least, he was something close to grateful that he was used to taking care of himself. His world may have crumbled to pieces around him, but as long as he had himself, he knew he could get by. He was okay with the isolation. He’d made his choice.

And if that was a lie, who was there to know?

After dozing most of the afternoon, he awoke to find the tap in the kitchen running. Groggily, he turned it off, noting that it seemed to be running clear. He then proceeded to throw up in the sink.

There was not much in his stomach to cough up, but that didn’t stop his body from trying. Spitting out the last of the bile from his mouth, he turned the water back on and watched the partially digested remains of this morning’s soup flow into the drain and out of sight.

His cupped hands brought ice-cold water to his mouth, which he swished around halfheartedly and then spit out. On a scale of “clean” to “absolutely disgusting”, his teeth were still somewhere in the “nasty” range, but that ceased to matter with the prospect that he could now take a shower. The luxury!

In the end, it wasn’t the heavenly experience he’d dreamed of – the hot water wasn’t working, and a sudden dizzy spell forced him to sit down on the floor after a few minutes – but he was clean. He finally changed out of his work clothes, now certifiably gross, into joggers and a t-shirt, and returned to the sofa to down half a dozen more pills and nibble on stale saltines.

It was once again fully dark outside. The drilling was over, luckily, but it wasn’t long before the faint sound of music came filtering down from the ceiling.

Martin took a bite of his cracker, letting it dissolve to mush in his mouth. A life spent moving from flat to flat had accustomed him to the dreaded upstairs neighbor, a creature whose sole mission in life was to throw large parties on weekday nights, engage in sporadic home repair projects, and otherwise be as much of a bother as humanly possible.

It struck him that he’d never remembered these neighbors being a bother, though. Or had he just not been around to be bothered by them? Even after he’d moved out of the Archives, he worked enough late nights and weekends that he hardly did more than sleep in his flat, if that.

A steady stream of what he assumed were party guests were now coming up the stairwell, their echoed conversations audible through Martin’s front door. It was all so normal, it hurt.

They didn’t know how close the world had come to ending.

The thought had come to him a few times over the past months, but it had never sunk in until now. To these people, the sixth of August had been like any other day. Martin’s life had been shredded to pieces, the course of history changed, and these people were utterly oblivious to it all. His neighbors, the people he passed on the street, even the other employees at the Institute – they were living in a separate reality from him.

Even as the music grew louder, the untz untz of the beat shockingly clear, it didn’t occur to him to go upstairs and ask them to turn it down.

In the past, he’d never complained out of the desire to avoid confrontation with a group of drunk strangers. Now, it simply seemed impossible. There was a wall between him and them, him and the world, and it would never let his words get through to them.

He had started shivering now, the itchy throw blanket he had wrapped around himself doing little to stop the chills that rolled over him. The cracker mush in his mouth tasted like nothing, but he forced himself to swallow the lump anyway. The music never changed in its volume, but still his flat seemed to grow quieter, till his ears barely recognized the noise.

The world narrowed to this moment: him, the blanket around him, and the cold. Then, the blanket was gone, and he was alone with the cold, the numbing cold swirling around and through him, embracing him as he drifted into unconsciousness.

He awoke the next morning to the pale winter light shining on his face. His blanket had been exiled to the floor at some point in the night, though he was unsure if that was before or after he fell asleep, if sleeping was indeed what he had done.

Either way, he must have been lying oddly the whole night, because his limbs had all fallen asleep. Besides that, he felt much better. Suspiciously better. He’d never had a stuffy nose clear up this fast.

This was something that warranted further examination, but he decided could wait until after breakfast. Even if he didn’t feel hungry at the moment, he needed the energy.

Standing up was odd. He couldn’t feel his legs, but they weren’t as heavy as they should have been, and when he moved them, he found he had no difficulties walking to the kitchen. The rest of his body was the same. It responded as he expected it to, but he felt nothing, not even pins and needles as blood flowed into the dead limbs.

He did a fine job of ignoring how disconcerting this was as he made a cup of tea and toasted the end piece of a loaf of bread. As he got over the initial shock, he realized there was one thing he could feel.

The cold.

Everything around him was cold. His bread, fresh from the toaster oven, felt no warmer than when he’d put it in. His mug of steaming hot tea was cold to the touch, too. Experimentally, he raised the cup to his mouth and took a sip, then recoiled.

The tea was cold, so cold he thought his lips would freeze to the mug, but it still managed to burn him, and it hurt. He hated burns normally, but in the absence of all other sensations, the pain was even sharper.

This did not stop him from drinking the rest of the cup, though he gave up on the toast. So what if he couldn’t taste it? He’d had his share of supernatural nonsense these past few weeks, and there were some things he refused to give up.

He was faced with two choices: continue to pretend this was normal in hopes it would go away, or do something. And, as appealing as option one was, his newfound temperature dysregulation showed no signs of disappearing. This was a capital-W Weird phenomenon, which meant one thing.

Time to head to the Archives.

With all his work clothes in his laundry hamper or lying on the floor of his bathroom, he hardly looked the picture of professionalism as he exited the Tube station to the streets of Chelsea. He’d thrown a stained old jumper over his shirt, but hadn’t bothered with anything warmer when he realized the cold was just the same.

He didn’t mind the winter air as he stepped out into it. The cold was no worse than inside, and it wasn’t actually uncomfortable. Not to say it was comforting, either, but neutral.

He could accept neutral. Very few things were neutral these days.

The Institute doors were locked when he arrived. There used to be people in Research who’d hang around every weekend to take statements from the nine-to-fivers who couldn’t make it during the week. He wasn’t sure when that had stopped, after Jane Prentiss or Leitner’s murder or Peter took over, but the building was silent as he unlocked the main doors and stepped inside.

His feet led him past the front desk, through the main corridor on the first floor and down the stairs to the Archives.

He gripped the doorknob with numb fingers, but did not turn it. Were Melanie and Basira still using the cots in the storage room? He had no idea. After the attack last week, he’d been avoiding them.

It was in everyone’s best interest, of course! Peter had promised to keep them safe as long as Martin went along with his plans, which predictably meant isolating himself. Not talking to them today might keep them alive tomorrow. Besides, he doubted they wanted to see him after who he’d throw his lot in with.

That’s why it was best not just for him, but for all of them, really, that they both be out now. Grabbing breakfast, maybe. A nice breakfast at a quaint cafe, where they could chat about people that weren’t him.

With half a mind to bolt up the stairs and retreat to his new office, he turned the knob.

It was pitch black on the other side, and he fumbled with his phone for lighting. The screen refused to respond to his attempts to unlock it, so he settled for holding it out with his lock screen on, shining a faint light into the darkness.

From what little he could see of it, the Archives were better than the last time he’d been in here, bookshelves toppled and blood soaking into the carpet. Though some file boxes were still stacked on the floor, and there was an empty space directly to his right where one shelf had been destroyed in the attack, he could almost imagine it was 2016 and he’d woken up in the night to use the bathroom.

He stood very still, closing the door behind him as quietly as possible. Advancing further into the room, all of the assistants’ desks were vacant. The leg of his old desk was dented where something had hit it but looked otherwise unharmed.

No lights were on in the break room or the office, which left only the storage room to check. Creeping between the stacks, he made his way to the storage room. Pressing his phone directly against the window in the door, he was just able to make out two empty cots on the floor.

Oh, thank God.

Martin flicked on the light switch outside the door to storage, watching as row after row of fluorescent lights came on above him. If he wanted to avoid a confrontation, he’d need to be quick. There was no knowing when the two of them would come back, and the only thing worse than running into them at breakfast would be getting caught sneaking around while they were out.

He turned to the nearest shelf, packed full of unlabeled, suspiciously stained statement papers, and felt a wave of despair wash over him.

What was he even thinking? There was no possible way he could find any information on his own, not without a month to sort through their massive catalog of unresearched statements. And that was assuming someone else had caught whatever heebie-jeebies flu he had and kindly written up a statement for him, which his rotten luck would never allow.

He set off down one of the rows of shelves, just to give his body something to do. With the lights on, it was uncanny how normal the Archives felt. The decades worth of boxes, labeled in a dozen different hands under dozens more filing systems, reached out from the shelves, waiting for Martin to snag his sleeve on one and send it toppling to the floor.

None of the statements called out to him, though he expected as much. Reaching the back wall, he turned left, then left again down another row of shelves.

Being here didn’t feel pleasant, of course. The faint sense of being watched, a gaze trained on him from behind, had always seemed stronger when he was on his own. Maybe it was an eldritch god thing, or maybe it was easier to write it off when somebody else was around, but whatever the case, it set the hairs on the back of his neck standing.

Still, something about the Archives also felt like home. It sounded bad, but he’d called plenty of shit places home before. Why not this terrible job? At least here, he could make sense of who he was. There were no walls between him and the Archives; his reality blended seamlessly into the space around him.

He’d come out by the assistants’ desks again. His feet pulled him to the right, and he followed them, finding himself face-to-face with the office door.

His office door.

Martin didn’t want to open it. No, that was a lie – he wished he didn’t want to open it. It had been over four months at this point. There were more important things to be doing than clinging to whatever childish fantasy he still had. Magic powers or no, the man’s heart wasn’t even beating. He wasn’t coming back.

The door was unlocked. Martin entered.

While the rest of the Archives had been tidied up in the week and a half since the attack, clearly nobody had gotten around to the office. Pens and pencils were scattered across the desk, with shredded papers littering the floor. The filing cabinet in the back lay knocked over on its side, a hole punched straight through the metal. Both office chairs had been removed (and burned, hopefully), but there did not appear to be any bloodstains left.

The only part of the room left untouched was a lone tape recorder sat on the corner of the desk.

He crossed the room and picked the recorder up. It was covered in a thin layer of dust, and it was empty. He felt a twinge of pity for the thing, abandoned in the wreckage, and then felt very stupid for it. Tape recorders did not need his sympathy.

Having come this far, he gave in to the impulse that had brought him into the room in the first place. Stepping over the wrecked filing cabinet, he pulled open the bottom desk drawer and took out an unlabeled cassette tape. Wisps of dust clung to his fingertips as he opened the slot and popped the cassette into place.

He pressed the play button once, just to be safe, only to receive no response from the recorder. It was out of batteries. That should have made sense – no one had recorded statements for months – but he couldn’t remember the recorders ever running out of batteries.

Undeterred, he left the office and crossed the Archives to his old desk. His hoard of batteries was exactly where he’d left it in the top left drawer, every single pack unopened. He pulled off the back of the recorder, tore open the relevant pack of batteries, and swapped them out.

When he was done, he slipped the back into place and pressed play. The recorder hummed to life, playing him a silent tape.

Rewinding the tape to the start, he sat down on the floor, resting his back against the desk. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and pressed record.

“Hello, Jon.”

He braced himself for something – the recorder to explode, Peter to appear, anything that would stop him – but nothing came. The feeling of being watched didn’t even grow stronger. Slowly, he opened his eyes, forcing his shoulders to relax.

“I don’t– I’m not sure what to say. You probably won’t get this, anyways. The statement tapes, the ones that you somehow always find – this isn’t what they feel like. But who knows! Maybe you can know the contents of any tape now. Though I, heh, I hope that isn’t the case. That’d be a bit embarrassing for me.”

Now that his mouth was open, the words were coming easier.

“Still, if I’m going to monologue to a tape recorder, I should do it properly, yeah? Statement of Martin Blackwood, regarding some personal feelings, I suppose. Statement given direct on... whatever the date is today. Sunday. Let’s go with that. Statement begins.

“I’m sorry I haven’t gone to visit you since my– for the past while. I mean, I know you’re in a coma, so I doubt you really mind? It’s not like we could really have a conversation or anything, but still. You’re supposed to visit people when they’re in hospital.

“It’s just, well, when I see your body there, it’s hard to believe you’re really in there. Whatever they have hooked up to those machines, it’s not not you, but it’s not the Jon I know. There’s no warmth to it, and if you don’t– when you finally– if the worst happens, I don’t want my last memories of you to be crowded out by all the hours I spent talking to a cold, empty body in a hospital bed.”

Tears had welled up in the corners of his eyes, and he wiped them away with his hand, laughing.

“Christ, I am awful at leaving these messages. Can I get a do-over? I won’t talk about you dying anymore, I promise.”

He could imagine the weary look Jon would give him.

“Oh, shush,” he said to this imaginary Jon. “Here, I’ll say something nice. I miss you. It’s been a tough couple of months, and if you were still around, I wouldn’t be crying on the floor of the Archives on a Sunday morning. Or, knowing this job, I would still be crying, but it would be out of terror instead of loneliness, so that’s marginally better?”

He leaned further back, staring up at the ceiling. “For an archival assistant, I could be doing worse, though. I got a promotion! I know you wouldn’t approve of it – nobody likes Peter, not even me – but it’s not like I’m rich for choice here. It’s best for everyone, really. I’d only get in the way if I stayed in the Archives.”

That’s what he kept telling himself, but repetition didn’t make it true. He was doing this because he wanted an out, plain and simple, not that Jon needed to hear that. Was that so bad?

Realizing he’d been silent for far too long, he returned his gaze to the tape recorder and spoke, scrambling for the first thing on his mind. “I keep expecting you to be here. And the thing is, I shouldn’t. Even before this, with the murder investigation and the trips and the– the kidnappings, it wasn’t like you were around. There’s no reason the Archives should feel so wrong without you, but they do.”

He shivered as his body was wracked by a sudden chill. That could mean any number of things, but it seemed like a more normal sensation than he’d experienced since he woke up, so he decided to keep at this train of thought.

“Even now, I feel like if I needed to find you, you should be in the library stacks, muttering to yourself about some book you’d misplaced, or in the break room glowering at your sandwich, but you aren’t, and it’s not right. You’re a foundational part of the Archives.

“Or, I don’t know, maybe the Archives are you. And I don’t mean that in a creepy way! Though, I guess doors can be people, so it’s not the most outrageous idea.”

His teeth were starting to chatter whenever he paused, and God, why hadn’t he put on his coat? His hand holding the recorder kept shaking, despite his efforts to steady it.

This was getting him somewhere.

“When I’m here, I can feel you here with me, too. I know this isn’t a real statement, that there’s no way anyone is hearing this, but when I speak into the recorder here, I feel like you’ll always be on the other end. We’re connected.

“Again, I know you wouldn’t like how creepy it sounds, but I like it. At least, I think I do. I’d rather your mind be resting here with me, as messed up as this place is, than in that hospital bed. That’s probably selfish, but it’s like my thoughts can change anything, right?”

The waterworks were steadily flowing at this point. His nose was running, too, though whether from the tears or the cold, he couldn’t say. He curled his legs up close to his body, maybe for warmth, maybe to comfort himself.

“I should, um, wrap this up.” With a lot of effort, he could keep his voice from wavering. “I don’t want to waste any more of your time, I’m sure you’re very busy being in a coma. But if I don’t have a chance to talk to you again, before you’re gone, or I’m gone, or the world ends, or whatever happens next… if I don’t see you again, I just wanted to say something.”

An honest smile graced his face for the first time in months.

“I love you, Jon. S-Statement ends.”

He found the stop button by touch rather than sight. His breath was coming out in heaving bursts, fogging up his tear-covered glasses. He thought his hands might fall off they were so cold, but his blood was on fire within his veins.

It was everything he had been afraid of. The careful walls he’d built around the events of the past two years were crumbling to pieces around him, and it was all he could do to keep himself from drowning as the emotions washed over him.

He clutched the tape recorder to his chest like a lifebuoy. It was a pitiful thing, abandoned and alone. Left to rot without a purpose. They were kindred spirits like that.

More than anything, it hurt.

Oh, it hurt. The numbness seemed a marvelous sanctuary compared to the mess of tears and half-formed thoughts that came sputtering out of his mouth. It would be so much easier to retreat into that daze and stop dealing with all these feelings.

But a thought nagged at him. When had he last felt this alive?

Behind him, the door to the Archives creaked open.

He barely heard it over his own gasps, but he knew the sound anywhere. Flattening himself against his desk, he forced himself to take deep breaths. Peter was supposed to be keeping them safe, but maybe he’d changed his mind. Maybe he’d decided Martin wasn’t worth the bother. Maybe–

Two sets of footsteps were coming towards him, accompanied by the distinct rustling of plastic bags.

Martin laughed. His poor body had run out of emotional responses, and all that was left was laughter. He’d been accused of jumping at his own shadow before, and here he was, preparing his last words over Melanie and Basira returning with groceries. What an idiot.

The bags hit the floor. “Who’s there?” Basira called out. “We’re armed!”

...Or maybe he should go back to those last words.

There was more rustling – pulling out weapons? – as the footsteps slowly advanced towards him. He rubbed his jumper sleeve against his damp face, which did little but get specks of dirt on his cheek. So much for composure.

“’S okay, it’s just me.” Popping the tape out of the recorder and shoving it deep into his pocket, he stood up with his hands above his head. “Sorry for the scare, it’s just me!”

Melanie and Basira were only a couple yards away, holding a pocket knife and gun respectively. When they spotted him, their postures relaxed, though only slightly. Half a dozen plastic bags lay abandoned by the door.

“Martin,” Basira said, lowering her gun. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“No, yeah, sorry, I was looking for a statement and was having trouble finding it, you know, and then...” he said, trailing off. He didn’t know how the tape recorder fit into this story. Hastily placing it on his old desk, he lamely finished, “I’m just on my way out.”

Basira glared at him. “No, you’re not.” She slipped her gun back into its holster, hiding it beneath her coat. “It’s been over a week. Where the hell have you been?”

“Oh,” he said, his breath catching dangerously in his throat. “Did he not– did he not talk to you? He was supposed to send you an email.”

“I’ve received no emails.”

“No emails. Right.” Martin leaned against the desk in the faint hope that it would steady him. It was not working. All he could focus on was Melanie, standing behind Basira, her knife still grasped in her hand.

He had seen what that knife could do. He was not keen to be on the other end of it.

Taking one more shaky breath, he forced the words out of his mouth. “I might have been promoted to Peter’s personal assistant.”

“You what?”

“How could you!”

Melanie stepped forward, closing in on Martin with alarming speed. He tried to back up, but immediately bumped into his old wooden desk chair.

“I know, I know, but hear me out, it’s not as bad as it sounds, really–”

“It’s exactly as bad as it sounds,” Melanie shouted, far too loud in the silent building. “After everything we’ve been through, I can’t believe you’d stab us in the back like this. He’s a monster, just like Elias, and you should damn well know it.”

Martin stepped around his chair, retreating towards the shelves. “No, no, no, I mean, yes, but if you’d just let me explain–”

“I’m sick of excuses!” She was now at Martin’s old desk and still gaining on him. “Tell him you’re transferring back to Archives right now.”

His back hit a bookshelf. Shit. “I can’t do that! It’s not safe, you don’t–”

“I said now!”

Martin flinched, raising his arms in front of his face like that would do anything. The glint of Melanie’s knife was visible through the gap between his arms, hanging in the air in front of him like a guillotine.

“Melanie, that’s enough,” Basira said. The knife went very still, then disappeared from view.

Fixing his expression to something more dignified than “abject terror”, Martin slowly lowered his arms. Basira had her hand wrapped tightly around Melanie’s wrist. The two women were staring at each other, the knife clutched between them. Now that it wasn’t being pointed at him, it seemed a lot smaller.

After another moment, Basira let go of Melanie’s wrist and stepped back.

Melanie did not come after him. Instead, she folded her knife up with trembling hands and slipped it into her pocket. “I’ll go put the supplies away,” she said, her voice as small as the knife. “Please don’t try to talk to me.”

Averting her eyes, she turned and headed back towards the door. The plastic bags rustled once more, growing closer and then disappearing in the direction of the break room.

Tension leaked out of Martin’s body like air from a punctured balloon. He sagged forward and squeezed his hands into fists, hoping to get sensation back into them.

“So. You’re really working for Lukas now?” Basira asked.

Apparently, they were not going to talk about Melanie trying to attack him with a knife. Alright then.

“I mean, technically, we all work for him,” Martin replied. “But, yes, I’m his assistant. He’d offered the position to me a while back. Last week, we talked it over again, and I accepted.”

“Hm.” Basira’s face was perfectly neutral, but a lifetime of experience told him when he was being judged. “Why? What good could possibly come from teaming up with Peter Lukas?”

No good at all, of course. Good wasn’t the point.

This was not the correct answer, of course, so he didn’t say it. Instead, he fell back on the same lies he’d been telling himself.

“He promised to keep us safe from any more attacks.”

Basira arched an eyebrow. “And you trust him?”

“I guess? I know that’s not the most confidence-inspiring statement ever, but I don’t think he’s lying.” He forced a small smile to his face, though he doubted he was succeeding. “He’s not that awful of a person, once you talk to him.”

“Once you talk to him,” Basira repeated. She sighed, folding her arms over her chest. “Martin, listen to yourself. We’ve both read the statements. He’s already killed multiple people at the Institute. Lukas is not on our side.”

“Michael– The Distortion– Whatever you want to call it killed plenty of people, attacked Jon, and let me and Tim run around in its hallways, but when Helen showed up, you and Melanie still took her help, right? Peter’s like that. Anyways, now that I’m cooperating, he promised he’d stop all of the disappearing.”

“And I don’t suppose he’d like to tell me that in person, would he?”

There was nothing Martin could say to that.

Basira’s expression softened, as much as that was a thing her face did. “Look, I’m just concerned. Lukas has been isolating the whole Institute already, and now he’s got his attention on you. He’s planning something, and whatever it is, it won’t end well for you.”

“I know, okay? I’m not stupid.” He sniffled and realized he must be crying again, though he felt no tears on his cheeks. “But it’s safer this way, for us and– and for Jon. You have to believe me when I say you can trust him. You have to.”

The only sounds in the Archives were Martin’s uneven hiccups as he fought to get his body back in control. Basira did not move to comfort him, which he appreciated, but he did wish she wouldn’t stare.

Finally, when all that was left of his brief breakdown was the fog of his breath on his glasses, Basira said, “Go get some rest or… whatever it was you were trying to run away to.”

“Thank you. Sorry,” Martin said, voice quavering long after the emotions had left his body. Double checking the tape was in his pocket, he once again failed to wipe his cheeks dry with his jumper sleeve. “Please, trust him.”

“If he wants my trust, Lukas can drop me an email or vanish me.”

Martin sighed. “See you around, then.”

“Yeah.”

With his gaze trained on his floor, Martin brushed past Basira towards the door and climbed the stairs to the main lobby. He didn’t want to go back to his flat. Going back meant taking public transport, which meant seeing the public, and Martin was not ready for that yet.

What he needed was some busy work.

He set off down one of the Institute’s halls. Under Peter’s management, the building had grown emptier during the workday, remote work becoming the norm. Even then, it was never as deserted as it was now.

The emptiness usually unnerved him, but now he took solace in the way his footsteps didn’t echo and the old wooden doors remained silent as he entered the back stairwell. He felt nothing as he turned the handle to his office.

He was greeted by the same piles of paperwork he’d left scattered on the floor. It was astonishing how much he’d managed to dig out. Where had he found the energy to care?

Sitting down at his desk, he shifted piles around until he’d uncovered the original spreadsheets he’d received. A five percent cut across the board wouldn’t hurt too badly, would it? He had no clue. Hopefully it would be fine. It wasn’t like Peter couldn’t cover them if they went over.

Ten minutes later, Martin and his phone calculator had completed next year’s budget. In the end, he didn’t cut Archives or Artifacts, since that seemed like a good way to cause an apocalypse. Every other department was left with exactly 95% of what they’d asked for.

A shrill whistle, almost like a kettle boiling, sounded from behind him. Martin jumped and slammed his hands over his ears.

When the noise faded, he sighed, slumping forward on his desk. “Peter, I’d appreciate it if you would stop startling me like that.”

“I am sure you would,” said Peter Lukas. “Forgive me if I don’t stop, though.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

Peter stepped around Martin’s desk. A pile of miscellaneous documents three feet high was currently occupying the chair opposite it. Peter smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Hard at work, I see.”

“You could have warned me about the absolute mess our financial records are,” Martin said.

“Oh, I could have, but then you would have missed out on this valuable admin experience. Knowing how to comb through the paperwork is an important skill.”

“Right.”

Lacking a chair to sit on, Peter leaned against Martin’s desk. “How are you feeling, Martin? I was concerned to learn you left early on Friday,” he said, his voice a poor imitation of sympathy.

“What do you think, Peter?” Martin surprised even himself with the venom in his tone, though he didn’t hold it back. “I spent yesterday alone in my flat shivering and throwing up, and when I woke up my sense of touch was gone. I feel bad.”

“I see. And your touching reunion with – what were their names again? Your Archives friends – did that make it any better?” When Martin didn’t respond, Peter whispered in false conspiracy, “I can tell you’ve been crying.”

“No. No, it didn’t help. I don’t think I want to see them again.”

Peter’s smile widened, and he pulled away from Martin. “Excellent. I knew I made a good choice. This whole experience has proved you’re quite the natural.”

Martin was not in the mood for deciphering cryptic bullshit, but he set his addled brain to work as best he could. “A natural… My cold, that’s got something to do with the Lonely?”

“Exactly. Consider it your body’s first step in acclimating to true isolation. I’ll admit, I was worried your development would be too slow for our purposes. But you’ve taken to this quicker than I’d imagined, even with your Archivist still on the periphery.”

“Don’t bring him into this,” Martin snapped.

“Of course,” Peter said without a hint of remorse. “In any case, just know that I’m proud of you for what you’ve started here. You’re going to do great things, Martin.”

People did not often say they were proud of Martin. It would have been a touching moment, if it were anyone but Peter. As it was, with those empty eyes staring back at him, Martin knew this was not a genuine connection forming between them. This was a pantomime of companionship, and that made everything easier.

“I have your budget,” Martin announced, deftly changing the topic. He gathered up the finalized sheets and held them out to Peter.

“Thank you, Martin.” As Peter took the papers from him, their fingertips brushed. Peter’s hands were the same ice cold as his. “I do appreciate you doing this for me.”

“It is my job.”

“Yes, but I’m still grateful. I find budgets to be dreadfully boring.”

Martin had guessed that much.

Peter folded the papers into quarters and slid them into his coat. “Sadly, I do need to be on my way. Family business. You understand.”

“Wh– Can’t you stay to help put the files back? You’re the reason I had to get them all out.” Martin asked, gesturing to the disaster that was his office floor. He was being petulant, he knew, but he felt he had earned it.

“Sorry, but it’s really quite urgent.” Peter gave Martin a curt nod, which he supposed he was meant to take as a sign of approval. “Keep up the good work.”

The whistle came again, this time with a burst of fog. When the fog cleared, the room was empty, as it always had been.

Martin laid his head down on his desk and closed his eyes. Hopefully, magic fog did not share any of the properties of regular fog. He did not trust some of these papers to deal well with moisture.

Peter was not fun to be around. He hadn’t been lying to Basira – compared to Elias, Peter was infinitely less loathsome – but the man still drained Martin’s energy like nothing else. Martin could say whatever he wanted, and it would have no real impact on Peter. The cause-and-effect chains of human relationships were a concept long past him.

Martin pulled out the tape he’d stashed in his pocket. Turning it over in cold hands, he was relieved that Peter hadn’t asked about it. Maybe he didn’t even know the tape existed. After months of sneaking around behind Elias’s back, Peter’s limited knowledge was refreshing.

A part of him wanted to smash the tape to pieces. It wouldn’t get rid of the thoughts recorded on it, but it would be close enough, and it would be clean, and it would be easy. A cutting of ties. A mercy. He could finally get out of Jon’s way and let the man rest.

But another part of him, tired but nevertheless present, wanted to keep it forever. It was embarrassingly earnest, and he knew it would reach no one but himself, but still the thought of destroying it pained him. Here it was, physical proof that he cared for someone, that someone had affected him. A connection.

Jon would probably never wake up. Martin was not prepared for the day when even his brain activity would cease, but he had accepted it would eventually come. He was not naïve. He knew there was no hope.

Still, he tucked the cassette gently into the corner of one of his drawers with hands that stung of pins and needles.

If it wouldn’t change anything, he might as well hold onto it for a little while longer. Right?