Chapter Text
What it all means is not for us to know.
It is for history to decide.
All we can do is play the parts as written.
All we can know is ourselves.
― Legion, Chapter 27, FX
In the hazy murk of a dream that didn't feel quite like a dream, he was walking down a dirt road, deep in unknown woods. The light scarcely filtering in through the tree cover was dim and diffuse, barely enough to see the contrast between the road and the weeds that marked the edge of the tree line. He could feel the road more than see it, the rough gravel crunching under dress shoes that were poorly suited to the unpaved surface. The dark shapes of trees arched above as if trying to choke the sky.
Trench knew he did not belong here. He was a city creature, and this was not a place for city creatures.
A flicker of light flashed in the near distance. Headlights? No, there had been no sound of a car, no sound anywhere, just a choking blanket of dark and undergrowth and... something he couldn't quite identify. Something that felt like being watched. Or, maybe being anticipated. A strange, absurd feeling, like this unknown place had been laid out just for him.
He kept walking, uneasy but not tired, and nothing happened. The gravel crunched under his shoes as the wall of trees closed in, tall and heavy and creaking. Time passed, one way or another. He felt something, above and behind him, like a thundercloud the moment before the break of a storm, and heard only the rustle of wind.
There was a pressure against his mind, an idea from without, like a worm coiling under his skin, a foreign vein, but he didn't know what it was, or would be. The feeling dissipated like mist when he focused on it, and something about it made him think of a warning. He stopped, trying to chase the feeling. He felt the cold on his skin and the rough road under his shoes but nothing but the unease actually felt real.
(You think you are a city creature. You are a creature of a cage. You are a thing that takes pride in the shape it was made to take.)
He was walking in an underground cistern, emptied of water so it was left as a forest of concrete pillars. He knew he’d seen this before, but couldn’t remember where. The lingering puddles seeped into his shoes, made his socks squish uncomfortably with every step, and somehow he knew that walking was pointless. Every direction was the same.
If only he could see where he was going...
(You’ve already taken the path away from home.)
---
The remnants of the odd dream followed Trench to work, clinging to his mood like damp from the rain, nearly unobtrusive but not quite possible to ignore.
He’d heard others describe their time in the Oldest House as a sort of dissociation from their personal lives, the reality of one dulling in the presence of the other. For better or worse, that had never been his experience. To him, the House had always made everything else feel more real, even his memories outside of it. He still remembered visiting for the first time, that first interview, seeing the hallways twist and realizing their directions should have been impossible. He’d felt suddenly, seeing that impossibility, like he’d remembered something very important, about life, about himself, that had been buried until that moment. Like an old memory suddenly crystallizing to clarity, and deep in his mind, some old and buried disquiet finally felt like it had found an answer.
If he hadn't been accepted for the job, he wasn’t sure what he would have done. Could that sort of feeling go back to being buried?
Yet somehow, most days, this felt more like an office job than anything else. That initial edge of wonder and belonging and home had quickly faded into routine and deadlines. It was just what happened, he supposed.
He wondered what that young Zachariah Trench would think to see him today, hunched over in a corner of an archival room, trying to hear himself think over the babbling of various PhDs, containment personnel, and whoever else was currently trying to make sense of this disaster of a filing system. Staring at words on a page, and hoping he was wrong.
Most likely, he was being paranoid. He’d been accused of such more than once. Northmoor himself had once expressed frustration that he had so little faith in their system that he felt the need to double check everything himself. Which was true enough, Trench couldn’t stand to be the weak link in the chain, the one that failed others. Couldn’t stand to fail anyone’s standards but his own. People died when they got things wrong, and their loved ones might not ever find out why.
It was probably proof that he was letting the long days get to him, that when Darling yanked the file from his hands, Trench could only muster up an annoyed sigh.
“The Road Atlas, huh? Were you on the retrieval team for that one?”
“Why do you even bother coming to briefings?” Trench asked, making a futile grab for the folder as Darling rolled his chair just out of range, summarizing the file as he did.
“Looks like a normal commercially available atlas of the state of New York, except it doesn’t quite match any particular brand or year, and the pictures are slightly out of alignment… Found in the belongings of a teen reported missing… likely obtained from the belongings of a missing older woman… evidence pointing to last known locations in rural areas in upstate New York. Investigation also gave evidence of it moving in and out of estate sales and evidence lockers, and god knows where else.” He made a contemplative noise, pointedly moving further away as Trench started to get up. “A map that gets you lost? That’s a little on the nose.”
“It might not always be that literal,” Trench sighed, resigning himself to leaning against the table and waiting for Darling to get bored. “The investigation also suggested it, or at least a very similar sounding book, in the possession of a man whose mother had recently died of cancer, though that was harder to confirm. Being lost seems to be the throughline, though the exact meaning of lost might have some room for interpretation. Could be related to being lost to someone else, rather than just in the general sense.”
“If a person goes missing and no one notices, does it even make the papers? The observer’s interpretation of loss affecting the outcome?” Darling asked, rifling through ideas out loud the way he liked to, and not giving anyone else space to get a word in. “Is that your conclusion?”
“Hm?”
“That the effect is related to human loss perceived by someone. The report only mentions being lost in the general sense.”
Trench considered, trying to turn over in his memory where he’d gotten the idea. Was he letting his presence in that investigation bias his assumption? But it still seemed too simple, otherwise. After all, stories about a lost person with emotion attached usually came from those who were left behind. Anything else was a statistic.
“A suspicion, I guess,” he said, then frowned at Darling's expression. “What?”
“Nothing, nothing. Unless you’re willing to-”
“No.”
Darling shrugged. They’d had this conversation before, about how Darling had become suspicious of how well Trench tended to assess Altered Items and other paranaturally affected things. He wanted to run Trench through his barrage of tests, see if he had any measurable paranatural affinity. Trench couldn’t see a possible result that would make him glad he’d taken the tests.
(You are a creature of a cage.)
Trench brought his hand to rub his eyes as a spike of pain lanced his temple. Not the first time he’d gotten a headache from work, and it wouldn’t be the last.
He checked the time. It was almost an hour before he needed to pick up Susanna, which meant he needed to start moving to handle the inevitable distractions on the way to the door and still be on time (though with Darling already here, that was one less to worry about). Kate had a long shift at the hospital today, and if they needed to call her sister at the last minute one more time after he’d promised, Trench wouldn’t need to wait for an Altered Item to kill him.
---
Zachariah made a simple dinner of spaghetti with sauce from a jar, with some sliced cucumbers on the side, because getting Susanna to eat a real salad was still a work in progress. He debated making one for himself, but what spinach remained had a distinct sliminess to it, so he decided cucumbers and ranch would be good enough for them both tonight.
Susanna was getting settled in at the kitchen table behind him, her small workbook page of homework already mostly filled out. Her teacher let them get started during class, right? He remembered Kate approving, thinking Susanna was still a little young for homework to eat up much of the evening. Bad enough that it was a rare weeknight when both of her parents were home.
“How was your day?” he asked, as the red sauce sputtered over the cooktop, and he quickly dug through the drawer to find the wooden spoon to stir it. He caught the end of a shrug from the corner of his eye.
“Did you and-” What was her friend's name? “Jackie play cards again?”
“Yeah.”
The girls had been teaching each other, and themselves, card games for the last few weeks, and Susie had been excited to report their progress after school each day. Zachariah had been digging through his own memory of (child friendly) games to help out. And today, a monosyllable answer?
Monosyllable? Damn it, he’d been spending too much time around Darling.
Zachariah shook off thoughts of work, noticed the distant, tired eyes of his daughter, and kicked himself for not noticing earlier. Hadn’t Kate mentioned she’d looked tired yesterday? “Everything okay sweetie? Are you feeling alright?” The plates clattered as he pulled them from the cabinet. Big plates for pasta, little for cucumbers.
Susanna shrugged again. “Tired.”
He set her dinner down on the table, hoping maybe she just needed some food. He slid the plates in front of her slowly, giving her time to move her homework, which she slowly slid into a colorful folder and tucked next to her backpack. She looked at her dinner a little blankly until Zachariah gently handed her a fork.
The two of them ate in silence for a while. Susanna was eating, at least, if a little slowly, so Zachariah didn’t want to distract her. He was considering buying extra ground beef and freezing it next time, so he wouldn’t forget again and not be able to make meat sauce, when Susanna quietly spoke up, something in her voice strained.
“Dad, do you ever have scary dreams?”
Trench startled a little, and tried to hide it behind a sip of water. It was a perfectly normal question, but the timing of it sent a chill down his spine all the same.
“Everyone does sometimes, I think,” he answered, honestly enough. He tried to be honest with her, when he could. “Did you have a scary dream?”
There was a long silence, heavier than the one before, followed by a small shrug. Susanna went back to twirling her fork around a few strands of pasta, watching them slip loose of the tines and twist over the plate. Gently, he held the back of his hand up, leaving it near her head as a question. Susanna stared at him blankly for a moment, before turning her head to him, letting him rest his fingers on her forehead and feel for a fever.
None. She was a little cool, if anything.
“Are you sure you’re feeling alright, sweetie?” he asked again. “Have you been sleeping okay?”
Another shrug, another small bite of pasta. “I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
A pause, her eyes still loosely fixed on her plate. “How do you know if you’re sleeping okay?”
“Well,” Zachariah said slowly, trying to think of the right way to approach this with a kid. “If I wake up during the night, or feel tired in the morning, that usually means I didn’t get enough sleep, or that I didn’t sleep as deeply as usual. Have you been feeling that way?”
Another pause. “If you don’t sleep okay, does that mean something’s wrong?”
“It uh, can just mean something is keeping you awake. Or sometimes I don’t sleep well when I’m sick, or worried about something.”
“Or having bad dreams?”
The weight in his stomach felt a little heavier. “Have you been having bad dreams, Susie?”
It was a small movement, but Zachariah noticed how she wrapped her arms around herself, as if to try and make herself smaller. “I think I’m going places in my dreams. Places I don’t know.” She looked at him. “Can you wake up in the wrong place after a dream?”
Zachariah almost assured her that dreams didn’t move you, they were in your head, but something about the look in his daughter’s eyes stopped him.
“I keep being somewhere else in dreams,” she continued. “Somewhere dark, and I’m scared. If I wake up there, how will I find my way home? It's too dark to see anything.”
“You’re safe in your room when you sleep, you know that, right?”
Something in her eyes seemed to shutter. It almost reminded him of…
FBC interviews, where the subject’s experiences had been disbelieved so many times, they weren’t expecting anything else. Damn it.
“But if you did go somewhere, you know I’d find you, right?” he amended, unable to stand that look on his daughter’s face.
Something in Susanna’s expression perked up. “You would?”
“Of course,” he said. “Whatever I needed to do. I wouldn’t let you stay lost.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
---
It was already late when the quiet open and close of the front door announced Kate’s return. Zachariah stood to greet her from the armchair where he’d been trying to read whatever detective story he’d picked up months ago, but got little more than a wave before she vanished into the bathroom. He heard the shower snap on a moment later. Knowing that usually meant she’d been working around infectious patients, he gladly left her to it, and went back to trying to convince the words of the book to form something interesting.
Hadn’t he liked this author, once? Tonight he could barely keep his eyes on the page.
Less than an hour later Zachariah was trying to fall asleep, Kate already out like a light at his back. He hadn’t mentioned the moment with Susanna to her, and questioning that decision, among other things, was keeping sleep at bay. She would want to know, he was sure, but she was alway so tired after these shifts.
Kids had bad dreams all the time, right? He knew he’d had his share at her age. He’d check on Susanna in the morning, leave a note to Kate if anything seemed off, if she wasn’t up before he left. It was fine. The lingering worry was just that same protectiveness he’d always felt for his little girl. It would all be fine.
---
It felt like Zachariah had barely closed his eyes when he opened them again, his mind tense with a directionless unease.
He rolled over to see the clock read 1:44, far too early to even think about getting up. Yet a restlessness crawled down his legs, and the idea of staying in bed any longer seemed intolerable. He quietly slid out of bed. They usually left their bedroom door open a crack, in case Susanna needed something, so it was relatively easy to slip out of the room quietly. With little else to do, he headed down the short hallway to the bathroom, hoping to wash his face, or something, anything, to try and knock the feeling loose.
The sight of Susanna’s door stopped him.
It was partially closed, as usual. The door was angled to show a good eight or so inches of darkness. Solid darkness.
That wasn’t right. Susanna didn’t like the dark very much. She had a soft nightlight in the shape of some cartoon character, a digital clock with a soft green glow, and the lights from the street below always filtered in, dull yellow on the white blinds, where it snuck around the soft curtains that were never entirely closed. Zachariah knew that mix of light in the dark hallway well, had used it countless times to find his way through the hall on early mornings and restless nights. Glancing in, to remind himself that their daughter was safe.
Tonight, it was dark in the hall. No light even from the blinds.
It took all of Zachariah’s willpower not to charge through that door, but the trained FBC field agent was, at least for the moment, able to shake some sanity into the mind of the scared father.
Not taking his eyes off the door, Trench carefully stepped back, and reached for the yardstick they kept hanging by a small nail in the frame of the hall door, convenient for height marking. It was thin, flimsy aluminum, and wasn’t worth much of anything as a weapon, but that wasn’t what he needed it for. He slid the yardstick forward in his grip and carefully pushed it through the door of Susanna’s room.
It slipped out of view, as if sinking into dark water.
He pulled it back, and nothing seemed to have changed. Carefully, he slid his fingers over the section that had been through the door. It was whole, but cold, so cold that after a moment a dull ache seemed to sink from it into his fingertips.
He reached forward with his hand, and the moment his fingers touched the black surface he felt… nothing. Nothing different than the air just in front of it. He pushed them forward a little more, until the first joint of his pointer finger was gone from sight, then pulled it back, running his thumb over it to test for a lack of feeling. Nothing. He could almost convince himself it was a trick of the light.
Time for the bad decision. He could hear Marshall’s disapproval already. Hopefully he lived to hear it in person.
Only allowing himself a moment to brace, he stepped into the room. Then, he was in his daughter’s bedroom, and it almost felt like a power outage. Light from the street below slanted through the blinds, but it was dull, almost murky, like the windows were dirty. The bed was cloaked in shadow, no nightlight, no clock. The lumped shape under the blankets was barely distinguishable from any other shadow.
“Susie?” Trench asked the dark, his voice thin and wispy to his own ears.
There was a sound in response, quiet and faint, as if far away.
Trench moved closer, his hand feeling for the pull cord on the small lamp on the bedside table.
Then he stopped. Because all of a sudden, he felt, with utter certainty, that something was in the corner at his back. Just opposite the door. He couldn’t hear it, couldn’t see it. He could barely see anything. Just the faint shape of the bed in the murky yellow slices of light, the shape of a lamp. The darkness that filled the rest of the room.
Pressure behind him, building. Building because it was closer? Or bigger?
Movement on the bed, that strangely distant sound again, but he was able to make out something like a fearful whimper. His daughter was scared, probably in danger. That was the part that was important.
He took a step forward towards his daughter. The pressure in the room seemed to go taut as his fingers found the thin beaded metal that made up the lamp's pull cord.
He pulled once, and there was a soft click. Nothing happened.
He pulled it again. Click. Nothing. Was it broken? The light from the window had grown dimmer, but also more yellow, and somehow inconsistent, as if a thick fog was rolling in. Or as if distant somethings were moving between them and the light source.
He pulled it again-
The soft white light clicked on. And there was a glowing green clock just below it, a friendly, colorful nightlight on the far side of the bed.
His daughter’s face, eyes wide with terror and wet with tears, her knuckles white where they gripped the sheets pulled up to her chin.
“Dad?” she asked, voice frightened, and so very quiet. But she was here.
Zachariah gently reached out to her, trying to make sure she was real, that nothing else had gone strange. As soon as he brushed her hand, she reached out and grabbed his arm with both hands, wrapping around it fiercely like someone drowning on a lifeline. Zachariah, out of any patience for caution, wrapped his other arm around her as well, bundling her up like he had when she was small. She was still so very small.
He angled himself just enough to see that far corner, now empty in the soft light of the lamp. But there was still some remnant of that strange pressure. It felt like something waiting.
---
Kate had woken up shortly after, and the three of them had stayed up together for a while, sitting out on the couch. Officially, Kate didn’t know anything more about the paranatural than any other civilian, but she’d always been perceptive. Late nights in hospitals held their own hauntings, she’d said once. There had been a look in her eyes, when she’d stepped into Susanna’s room. A sort of growing unease as she’d looked around, as Zachariah slowly coaxed their daughter out from under the blankets so they could go somewhere else. Maybe she’d just seen the look on Zachariah’s face. Maybe she’d seen something else.
None of them got much sleep that night.
The next morning, as the first glow of dawn started to overtake the street lights, Susanna was still laying on the couch, ostensibly trying to get some rest. Zachariah didn’t think she was asleep, saw how often and restlessly she stirred, the way her eyes slid open when she thought they weren’t looking.
His mind kept drifting back to the FBC archives, the file of that Atlas. The connection was tenuous at best, but something was nagging at him. But how the hell could it have become attached to Susanna? He’d been the one to pick it up in the field, sure, in the handful of minutes it had taken to get from the ground, to the evidence bag, to the secured lockbox in the back of the van.
It was still in the Bureau, he’d checked. But they didn’t actually know how it worked, did they? Only that it was found in the possession of people after someone close to them had died…
Shit. Shit shit shit.
He wanted to do something dramatic, yell or break something or some other adolescent, stupid reaction to realizing something terrible was happening. It was probably his fault, and he didn’t know how to stop it. Didn’t really even understand what it was. Instead, he poured a cup of coffee, and made himself look around the kitchen to find something to eat.
“You’re going in to work?” Kate had followed him into the kitchen when he hadn’t been looking, the question asked in a low voice, not to be heard by Susanna in the next room.
“I have to,” he said. “It might… there’s something I need to look into.”
Kate frowned, her gaze turning in the direction of the couch, even though the view was blocked by a wall. “I know a good pediatric specialist,” she said slowly. “I can talk him into seeing Susie on short notice.”
That wasn’t a good idea. “I don’t-” He cut himself off, because he didn’t know how the hell to explain why that wasn’t a good idea without breaking more than a few rules, and potentially putting them both in more danger.
“She hasn’t been sleeping,” Kate said, her expression a controlled mask. “You noticed?”
“Yesterday, she mentioned she’d been having bad dreams,” he said. “I was planning to check on her in the morning, leave you a note…”
She nodded. It wasn’t a nod of agreement. Acknowledgement, at best. “When will you be home?”
He had vacation saved up. He also had a meeting that Northmoor would immolate him for missing. Probably not literally. “As soon as I can get away, I promise.”
“I’ll cancel my shift tomorrow,” she said, no room for question in her voice. “I’ll keep an eye on her, and see if I can get her an appointment.”
“Wait until I’m back to take her?”
“If I can.”
The memory of that heavy, waiting darkness weighed in his mind. The winding blackness of his own dream. A dark forest, dark water in a cavern made of concrete. The itching feeling in his mind like he was missing something.
“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” he said again, begging her to wait for him without saying the words. They both knew she understood. That he understood her intentions as well. Understanding each other was rarely the problem for them.
Within twenty minutes, Trench was out the door.
---
The Atlas was clearly in the frame of the closed circuit camera. Trench had even walked up to look at the cell himself, to leave no doubt the damn thing was actually there. Darling had followed him into the observation room, and was eyeing him. He seemed to be trying to look professional, not uneasy and curious all at once, but Darling had never been very good at lying.
“Can I ask what makes you so sure it's this object?”
Trench sighed. Less at the question and more because he wished he had an answer. “It just… feels like it makes sense. It was the last field assignment I was on before… and the idea of being lost seems to fit.” And if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t know where to start looking, and that prospect seemed even more terrifying.
He didn’t mention that he’d been having dreams of his own, only describing Susanna’s to Darling’s barrage of questions. He knew it was important, but the risk of having his access restricted at best, potentially facing some level of containment at worst, wasn’t something he was willing to chance at the moment. If this thing had gotten to Susanna through him, then whatever it had done to him would have to wait.
Trench noticed Darling seemed to be studying him, and turned to give the man his attention.
“You said Susanna was having dreams,” he asked, his voice thoughtful, “and that you saw something in her room?”
“More like felt something,” he said, resisting the urge to pace. No use making a scene and attracting more attention from the other research staff. “Something, I don’t know. Something waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
He shook his head. Waiting for him? If it had only wanted Susanna, it could have gotten her while he was asleep. But why would it want him, if its influence had somehow followed him from the Bureau to begin with? Did it want something from him?
Trench looked back at the camera footage, the yellowing pages of the Atlas sitting innocently on the reflective metal table. Something about this didn’t feel right, and not just in the paranatural way. He was missing something.
“Do you think you could help her?” Trench heard the fear slipping under the professionalism in his own voice.
Darling seemed to hear it too, judging by the way he froze mid-answer, confidence sliding through something like concern, maybe even unease. His shoulders drooped, a little.
“I know what I want to tell you, Zach.” Darling’s voice was uncharacteristically subdued. “I want to tell you that me and my team can figure anything out, fix whatever may be wrong with her and send her back to a normal life. I really, really want to tell you that.” He took a breath. “We’ll try. If you bring her here, I’ll do absolutely everything in my power to help her. I can promise you that. I’ll even get Dr. Collier to help with the access forms, try and keep Northmoor’s nose as far out of things as we can manage.”
Darling seemed to pick up a little momentum as he spoke. “If it is the Atlas, as you think, I can set up the equipment to start monitoring it now. At the very least we’ll have some baselines, and at best maybe we’ll be able to pick up a pattern of behavior. Maybe we can figure out a way to change the focus, the effect, enough to get it to leave your girl alone.”
“The focus?”
“It’s an idea we’ve been building on. Well, I say we, there haven’t been a lot of takers. But I have some confidence in it. We’ve seen the effect of objects become sort of fixated on an individual. Someone who had some interaction with it, whether by being near the center of an AWE or just by pure random chance. Usually, the effect has to run its course, or-”
He cut himself off. Trench knew as well as he did that affected people often died. Hell, he’d seen more of the bodies than Darling had.
“But maybe,” Darling continued, “there’s a way to interrupt that focus. Move the focal point of the effect off that person. The symbolic scapegoat comes to mind, but unfocusing the effect would be preferable. Or at least, focusing it on something not alive. I don’t know how the approval process for goats would go anyway.”
Darling kept going, the topic drifting further and further into theories, and further away from Trench’s current concern.
Why him? Why her? That was the question he really couldn’t shake. There had been six agents on the mission that had retrieved the Atlas, and several researchers and containment specialists that had come in at the end, and had probably had closer contact with the Item than any of the rest of them. Had the others also started having strange dreams, and like him weren’t jumping to report them? But his name was the only one on the logs, surely someone else would have checked?
What was he missing?
---
Northmoor had dragged the meeting about potential technology upgrades in the House out longer than ideal, but Trench had still managed to get off a little early, pleading personal time, and anxiously checking the clock on the way out the door. He got home to find Kate talking on the phone, her voice steady and professional. Zachariah slipped into the kitchen to give her some privacy, setting down his briefcase. Susanna hadn’t been on the couch, had she been able to go back to her room? Had anything changed?
“Zach?” Kate called, and he stepped back out to see her hanging up the phone. “Susanna has an appointment at 8am tomorrow.”
He nodded slowly in acknowledgement. Was there any chance a civilian doctor could help? Years of field experience told him it was a terrible idea. But how the hell could he say that to Kate while sounding sane? Without sounding like a complete ass?
How could he dismiss it, if there was a chance in hell it could work?
So he just nodded again, this time in ascent. When he finally looked back at Kate, he noticed that she seemed to be studying him.
“Do you know what’s happening to Susanna?”
“I…” Did he? “I think… it might have something to do with my work.” He didn’t say that he was terrified that it was his fault. By the look on her face, somewhere between resentment and concern and the careful calculation that she always used to face problems, that wasn’t entirely a surprise to her. “I was hoping I could find a way to fix it, there. But the closer I looked at what I thought was going on, the less it matched up. I don’t know.” He sighed. Fuck protocol, their daughter was in danger. “I’m in a position to know things so little of the population could reasonably suspect, much less confirm, and maybe I don’t actually know a damn thing. Still, maybe I could take her there. See if the researchers can figure out something I can’t.”
Kate crossed her arms, her expression inscrutable. “You know, for years, I’ve felt like there’s been another man haunting this apartment.”
Zachariah looked up in confusion.
“After particularly long days, he’d come back from the office in your clothes, say the things you’d say, almost, and almost be able to fool me. Then the longer before the next work day came, he’d fade more and more back into the man I married. At first it would only take an hour or two, and I could say it was like any job. Then it was mostly on the weekends that I started to recognize who you’d been before, and I told myself that’s just how life is. That time and work and stress changes people. Then…”
She sighed. “Maybe it is just time, and maybe it’s changed me too, but I’ve had this feeling that job has its claws in you, Zach. I walked by that building one day, and for some reason I could barely keep my eyes on it. Like the damn thing knew I didn’t belong there. And you’re suggesting taking Susie there?”
Zachariah didn’t say anything. Kate shook her head.
“If she’s going to step foot in that building, I need to know what you can promise. Can I see her? Will she come back out alive? Will she come back out at all? What are you willing to put your word on?”
He started to try and say something, not even entirely sure what was going to come out of his mouth, but she cut him off.
“And if there’s no good answer, then we’re going to take her to the doctor tomorrow.”
She paused, then walked into the other room, presumably to check on Susanna. Trench felt the silence of the room weigh on him, and tried to come up with a good answer, but everything in his head sounded like it had come off a disinformation sheet. The kind of things they gave to the loved ones of those lost in AWEs, to keep them from asking risky questions.
There was a feeling nagging at him, that the solution he’d seen was the simple one. The Atlas, a dangerous Altered Item. A horrible, simple explanation. There was another, deeper feeling, that reminded him of surviving those AWEs himself, of time with family, of all the little moments in life that defied easy explanation.
In that deep part of himself, he felt like he was in a trap, and the door was slamming shut.
---
He was on the street. It was New York, but not the New York he’d lived in. This was the shadow New York, of books and Hollywood and the flickering dreams of people who’d only seen the city through others’ eyes.
He wasn’t lost here, because this wasn’t the sort of place he was going to get lost.
After all, the Oldest House loomed before him. Its concrete walls as imposing and inhuman as a cliff face, and yet the familiarity of it resonated to some deep part of him. It was as familiar as the rain on the streets, even as their directions wound strange and dark as a labyrinth, following paths no city planner or civil engineer ever penned.
In the sky above, something loomed, darker still than the rain-dark sky. A shape above the heavy clouds.
It almost looked like a pyramid. A black, inverted pyramid, though the reality of its shape felt looser than it should, like this story of a city. It seemed to cling to the building, in a way that defied the realities of physical space. For a strange moment, the two pieces of geometry almost reminded him of a body and a tick, a tree and a deep tangle of kudzu. An idea, and a lie wrapped around it.
(You let yourself live to fulfill a purpose. Have you questioned what that purpose might be?)
---
The sound of a choked wail startled Zachariah wide awake, on his feet before his brain caught up. Kate was already moving next to him.
He froze outside their bedroom as the sound came again, not from the couch, where Susanna had insisted on staying, but from Susanna’s bedroom. Kate didn’t hesitate, already moving towards the door to Susanna’s room, and Zachariah hurried to follow. He saw Kate’s movement hitch in something like a stagger at the door before hurtling in, and dread filled his gut.
He heard the thudding sound just before the room was in view, and saw Susanna, thrashing on the floor. Kate was already crouched next to her, and it took Zachariah a moment to realize she was carefully moving Susanna to lay on her side, but not trying to restrain the thrashing.
The word hit him a moment later. Seizure.
“Call an ambulance.” Kate's voice was a snap, but not a shout. She was the professional here. Zachariah turned to go.
But froze when he realized the other feeling that had been looming in his mind when he woke up, like a pressure. Like the presence he’d felt before. Looming and watching. In the dark places of this room? No, it was beyond just that. Not something of the shadows but…
What?
He turned around, facing the room and looking up, seeing nothing and feeling something. It wasn’t something that was physically here but…
Something familiar, a tip-of-his-tongue recognition he couldn’t place. It was almost like-
Something pressed against his mind, like a bright light, a loud noise. Stimulus/threat display/warning/knowing-
It faded as quickly as he’d felt it. On the floor, Susanna’s thrashing had started to calm.
“What are you waiting for?” There was an edge to Kate’s voice now. Nothing more to do here, not at all sure what it was he’d done at all, Zachariah left to grab the phone.
---
There were two contexts in which he had encountered hospital rooms, and for each he had different opinions.
Agent Trench had been in his share, whether for himself, checking on colleagues, or performing interviews in the course of investigations. In that case, the cold professionalism had felt fitting. Another part of the job, no more impersonal than the FBC offices, no more strange than even the most mundane parts of the Oldest House.
Zachariah had been in a hospital for his grandfather, then his father, then his mother. He’d been in one when he’d broken his ankle as a boy, and when Kate had given birth to Susanna. He’d decided they were a terrible place to feel fear, to wait on news for a loved one while smelling antiseptic, sitting on chairs so uncomfortable they may as well have been in an airport. Everything cold function over human comfort.
Today he sat in a waiting room while the specialist Kate had found looked over their daughter, and knew they wouldn’t be able to help her here. He could still feel the presence, like the pressure of a storm cloud. It wasn’t like any Altered Item he’d ever encountered before. He’d admit, though maybe not to Darling, that there had been moments when he’d felt stubborn impressions, lingering strands of ideas, that usually served him well in the field. Tracking down the Atlas in the first place had been much the same, a nagging thought that had driven him to check the records on an evidence locker, a lingering disquiet that hadn’t faded until the worn old book was safely locked away.
The more he thought about it, and there was nothing else to do in this damn waiting room than think, the more he was sure that he’d missed something, and that this was more than the Atlas. This might not have anything to do with it at all, and the way it had stuck in his mind was just wishful thinking on his end.
Maybe the pressure was something else.
“Thank you.” Kate’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. She was looking at her hands, not at him. “I know you thought your work could do more. Thank you for not taking her.”
He wasn’t sure how to respond, and just nodded.
An hour, or several, later, they were listening to the doctor tell them he had no idea what was wrong with Susanna, but she wasn’t in good shape. They were considering sedating her, but something in the echocardiogram had them worried.
They hadn’t said yet that her life was in danger, but Zachariah didn’t think it was his paranoia making him feel it in the air.
A half hour later, and he’d slipped outside, a cigarette he’d found in his pocket playing between his fingers. He’d been trying to quit. For Kate, and for Susie. He wasn’t sure that was going to matter much longer.
He startled, a little, to see none other than Helen Marshall walk up to him, her sharp eyes assessing him wordlessly. After a moment, she extended a lighter. He took it.
“The news?” she asked.
“Nothing good.” He flicked the lighter and watched the flame for a moment. Opened, closed. Opened, lit the cigarette, and slowly took a drag. He handed the lighter back to Marshall, who wordlessly took it. “Did you get approval to take time off?”
“I'll handle it.” She paused, her calculating gaze focused on him for a long moment. “Do you think Darling stands a chance at helping?”
If Kate even let him. No, that wasn’t what Marshall was asking. “I think he wants to believe he does. I… I don’t know.”
He sighed, looking up at the steely clouds for lack of anything better, and against his better judgment kept talking. “Was it selfish, trying to have a family with this job?
“Not sure selfish is the right word for trying to be human. Not sure it was smart though.”
“Right. Limited humanity only in our line of work.”
“Hazards of making your life your job, when the job is like ours.” If there was regret in Marshall's voice, Trench didn't hear it. But he’d never been very good at reading her. If there was someone who was good at reading Helen Marshall, Trench was pretty sure he hadn't met them.
But whatever had happened, whatever was making Susanna sick, it had gotten to her because of him. Maybe the hazard of making your life about your job managing eldritch horror was that you let some of that horror into yourself. He thought of the eerie gleam in Northmoor’s eyes at times, the uncomfortable warmth of standing too close to him in a heated (ha) meeting.
Did being a good FBC agent make him a risk to people outside the Bureau? They quarantined people who got too close to AWEs, after all, and Darling was fond of calling the House an ongoing AWE.
He’d chosen this life, but Susanna and Kate hadn't. Kate had chosen him before he’d even gotten this job. It was him that had changed. Become the horror in their lives.
There was an idea building in his head, and he hated it. But it had the right kind of feel for an answer to a paranatural problem.
He sighed. “I think I've got a bad idea.”
Marshall raised an eyebrow at him.
“Some encouragement would be nice. Or discouragement.”
“Do you have any better options?”
“None that I'm smart enough to see.”
“Then that’s all you’ve got.” Marshall’s usual cold field response logic that he found almost comforting when it was about anyone else. “Are you able to do it?”
Fuck, no. Or, no, he could. But he didn’t fucking want to. “I think so.” He considered. “Could you do me a favor? Have Darling meet me back at the House?”
Her eyebrow arched again, but she kept the comment to herself. “Probably. Assuming he isn’t in one of his hidden labs.”
“Thanks,” he sighed, mentally bracing himself. “I’ll be along soon.”
---
Kate was slumped in the uncomfortable hospital chair, apparently dozing. He’d envied her ability to sleep most anywhere for years. Susanna was still in the hospital bed, her head on the pillow but her eyes open and facing the ceiling. She looked so pale, and there was an unsettling hollowness to her cheeks that he knew hadn’t been there the day before. What if he was wrong? What if there was a medical condition that explained how suddenly this had all come on? The nightmares and the sleep deprivation? He’d been wrong before.
He didn’t believe that in the slightest, of course. Maybe he wished he did.
“Susie?” he asked quietly. For a moment she didn’t respond, but her eyes slowly turned to him, even while the rest of her face stayed an emotionless mask. “How are you doing?”
Again, she didn’t respond immediately. It didn’t feel so much like she was looking at him as through him. Finally, she muttered, “Tired.”
He gently reached up to stroke her hair, and her eyes drooped, almost slid closed, but not quite.
“Daddy. Can you make it go away?”
A chill settled over him. “What’s that, sweet girl?”
“The… the thing. The thing that’s watching. Above. The thing that isn’t letting me… that’ll trap me in the dark if I sleep. Can you make it go away? You said you’d… said I’d be safe.”
“I… maybe. I might be able to.”
Her eyes slid open, just a little. Her voice was still soft, fragile like a porcelain figure, already cracked. “Really?”
“I think so. But you have to help me.”
She just blinked at him, and gave no argument.
“You have to come with me somewhere, okay?”
“And you’ll make it stop?”
“I think so.”
Another pause, and Zachariah couldn’t tell if she was thinking, or just drifting again.
“Okay.” Her voice was so very soft, and it broke his heart. “Okay, I’ll come.”
He considered, for one more moment, if he really wanted to do this. But there was nothing else to do. Like Marshall said, what he had was all he had.
“Okay,” he said, and started taking off the leads for the monitor, turning it off so the alarm wouldn’t sound. Then he took her in his arms, and stood. God, she was so light.
As he left, he cast one final look at Kate, and felt a pit of regret in the core of him. He’d loved her for so many years. Sharp and practical, funny when she wanted to be and relentless when she was doing what she thought was best to protect someone. After this, she’d never trust him again.
But if this worked, their daughter would live. And that was so much more important than anything to do with him.
Checking to make sure he wouldn’t attract the attention of any hospital staff, he ducked out of the room, out of the life that he should have allowed to mean more to him, and headed towards the House. As it happened, it wasn’t that far a walk from the hospital. A coincidence, of course.
No one on the street gave a second glance to the man in the wrinkled suit carrying the sleeping girl in a hospital gown in his arms. Maybe it was the House, or maybe it was just New York. Maybe it was him. Or maybe it was all the same churn.
As he approached the House, saw the concrete tower looming ahead, he focused on the image of it. He felt the weight of his unconscious daughter in his arms, the thin warmth of her body that was fainter than it should have been, and he focused a thought at that monolith before them, and everything it represented. If he were someone else, he might have even called it a prayer.
Whatever you want from me you can have. But if she dies, I will walk out of the House and never come back. Understand? I'll walk into traffic before I step foot in your building again. But if she lives, I'll do whatever you want. I’ll be whatever you want.
Just please, help her.
---
Darling met him in the lobby. That was good, it would make it easier to get the rest of this over with. Trench watched the greeting stutter and fail on Darling’s face as he saw what, who, Trench was carrying.
“Is she…?” He carefully lifted a hand toward Susanna, not quite touching her forehead, apparently waiting for Trench’s permission.
“I brought her from the hospital,” he said. “Is there anything you can do that they couldn’t?”
Darling hesitated. “I don’t know if… I’ll see what I can do. Let’s get her to my lab. Or maybe my office would be more private-”
Behind them, the door to the FBC lobby slammed open to the New York street. Trench knew who it would be before he turned, but still took the time to carefully set Susanna’s sleeping form down in a chair.
“Keep an eye on her for a moment,” he asked a concerned-looking Darling, and turned to face his wife.
Kate looked like she was about to shove her way past the security guard currently moving to intercept her, and Trench waved his hand to call the man off. The guard, Jamison, if Trench remembered correctly, frowned, but stood aside, keeping a close eye regardless. Kate’s eyes fixed on Trench, furious and cold.
“I heard you leaving the room,” she said, eyes boring into Trench. “It took me a minute to realize what you’d done. Where you must have taken her.”
“She wasn’t going to get better there,” he said simply.
“So you took her wellbeing into your own hands?”
It wasn’t really a question, so he didn’t bother answering. Kate’s expression went flat, whatever emotion was behind her eyes had been stifled, was no longer any of his business. “I’m taking her back.”
“We don’t know if the scientists here can help her. The doctors were just watching while she…”
A flicker of anger slid into her eyes. “This place is the reason anything’s wrong with her. Or, do you deny that?”
No. No he didn’t.
The guard whose name might be Jamison was looking between them uneasily. Trench gestured to the door, and started moving towards it, indicating they should take this argument where they’d have less of an audience. Kate started to protest, her eyes jumping to where Susanna was still in the chair, where Darling was gently holding her wrist to check her pulse. She shot Trench a look that said if anything else happened to their daughter, her patience would run out entirely, and tensely followed him onto the street.
As the door shut, Trench sighed. “You’re right. Susanna is sick because of me, because of the FBC. I’m not even entirely sure what it is, but…”
“So how does bringing her here help anything?”
He tried to keep the anger out of his voice. It wasn’t really directed at her, after all. “What else is there to do? You heard the doctors. Outside of her vitals, the results were coming back as normal. They don’t know what’s wrong. And she’s getting worse.”
“If someone gets radiation poisoning you don’t bring them back to the contaminated location.”
“That’s not-” He took a breath. “It isn’t that simple.”
She crossed her arms. “And I assume you don’t want to explain it to me.”
“I can… explain some of it. If you want.”
She arched an eyebrow, skepticism obvious. Whatever trust he’d had on the topic, he’d lost it by sneaking Susanna here.
Kate silently regarded him for a long moment, something in her expression almost desperate, eyes flickering over his face as if she was searching for something. Then her expression hardened, as if coming to a conclusion. “I’m taking her back to the hospital.”
She moved to push past him, and he grabbed her shoulder. “Let Darling look over her first-”
She yanked her arm loose of him, and in a movement that was almost instinct, and yet entirely planned intention, he dropped his hand to his hip, where his firearm was holstered. Facing the street, of course. No need to get fired over this.
Kate froze. Alarm and disbelief flaring in her widening eyes. Then that resolve he’d seen a moment ago settled into something colder, and he felt something snap, like twine under tension. Somehow, he knew that was exactly what he was waiting for. The point of no return.
Trench had just barely had time to pull his hand away from the threat when Darling burst through the door, startling them both.
“She’s awake!”
Kate hesitated a moment longer, giving Trench a look he’d seen from her before, but never directed at him. A look he’d seen directed at a drunk trucker at a rest stop, a black bear they’d seen out hiking. More assessment than fear, but something that would never be trust again. Then she slipped through the door Darling was still holding open, and went to check on Susanna.