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Tim really hates worms.
Back before this whole thing with Jane Prentiss, he really didn't have anything against them. He has since revised his opinion, obviously, and as he sprays indiscriminately around these weird fuck-ass tunnels, he thinks if he never saw one of these things again it would still be too soon.
At least I'm not alone, he thinks as he loosens his grip on the trigger of the fire extinguisher so that he can try to gasp for breath in the stale air. Behind him, Sasha sprays at the worms his temporary break is letting through, covering for him while he tries to get his wits about him again.
Everything is sort of fuzzy, honestly, and it has been for the past... hour? Feels like an hour. Maybe. Still, he has a job to do, and as soon as he feels like he can breathe again he goes back to spraying.
They lost Jon and Martin, somewhere, splitting off at some point when the walls fucking disintegrated- honestly, he's lucky that Sasha managed to spot him flailing around before he went and got himself killed. Sasha's the best, not letting him get murdered by evil spooky worms, and as the thought occurs to him he turns and makes sure to tell her that.
"Don't let it get to your head," Sasha replies, and Tim's not quite sure if she means the fact that she came to his rescue or the gas that's making him so lightheaded. Maybe both? Probably both. He's letting both of them get to his head, so it's not like what she just said makes any difference anyway.
"You're so great," He repeats, dopily, with a massive grin on his face that Sasha can't even see. She's looking away from him, after all, but he can still hear her snort just above the hissing of the canisters and the squishing of the worms.
"That's just the CO2 talking." She scoffs, and Tim suddenly needs to convince her that it's true, that he thinks it all the time, CO2 or worms or not.
"The CO2 is hissing. I'm using my words. There's a difference. Are you getting high on this stuff?" Tim asks, nonsensically, narrowing his eyes at Sasha in suspicion. He knows, of course, but also is she getting lightheaded, too? Does she need a break? She's been at this for a while, and this weird place isn't the most ventilated- does she need to stop? He can cover for her!
"I'd rather be high than full of worms," Sasha replies, and Tim figures she's probably got a point. He would also rather be high than full of worms, personally, but he also gets high recreationally so he's also sort of biased. Not on CO2- he doesn't get high on CO2, or anything other than weed, and that's only sometimes- but again: biased. Probably. He likes weed better than this stuff.
"Okay, but like, you know I think you're great, right? You're so cool. The cooliest. And- and you're my best friend ever, and I know you said you didn't want the sex thing to be repeated but it was fun and it doesn't have to be weird or- or a thing if you don't want it but things are weird between us and I don't- " Tim starts talking, veering off-topic almost as soon as he manages to get back to his original point, and Sasha puts her hand over his mouth to shut him up. Impressive, because she isn't even facing him and also he thought she needed both hands for the fire extinguisher.
"We can have this conversation later," Sasha starts, and Tim starts nodding vigorously in agreement because they already had a Conversation (capital C, very important) right after The Hookup (capital letters, also very important), and things were laid out pretty plainly and then things were sort of fine but really awkward and it's still awkward and it has been bugging the hell out of him- he snorts at his own mental pun. Bugging.
"Gross," Sasha comments as she pulls her hand away. "Don't snort on me." He can feel her moving her arm up and down- wiping her hand on her shirt, probably, which is rude considering the much nastier things all around them both at the moment- and then the spray of the fire extinguisher starting up again.
Well- not really starting up again, he'd like to amend, more intensifying- like she's pulling the trigger harder, which isn't really possible since that's not how fire extinguishers work, but at this point he's mincing words and getting distracted by the little things when he needs to focus on making sure the worms don't crawl on him or Sasha. That's practically a full-time job at this point, since the little fuckers are just swarming them more and more the further they walk.
"They're coming in waves. Like Plants vs Zombies. You think this is about the last one?" Tim asks as he notices the pattern- he hopes this is the last wave, since it's definitely the most intense one so far and his canister is running a bit low.
"I really hope so," Sasha replies. "Your extinguisher won't hold up much longer," She says exactly what he's thinking, and it genuinely takes him a second to remember that she's not holding it, so she can't feel how much lighter it's gotten since he picked it up initially. She's probably running off of how long he's been spraying this thing, and christ he needs a few good breaths of air. This much CO2 inhalation in such an enclosed space can't be good, right?
The worms keep shriveling and dying, which is good, at least. He can know he's making a dent in them even though they're racing against the limited capacity of fire extinguishers for the amount of fire extinguisher they can actually hold.
"Unless we're just coming closer to Jane- except, she was talking earlier, wasn't she?" Tim continues, in a similar vein, now wondering if he's running out of a weapon just as he's about to need it most- or else if Jane just set up reinforcements and they keep wandering into them. Maybe Jane is elsewhere, though, but closer to the exit or deeper in the maze is yet another question, and the answers are just about indistinguishable- for that matter, where are they? There's not much in the way of light, just whatever's trailing off of the Archives they can still see, distantly, in the opposite direction of where they're going, and soon Tim's going to have to pull out his phone flashlight.
"She still is, way over there. That's why we're heading away from her?" Sasha asks, pointedly, and Tim sighs a little to himself. Things are going way too fast for his poor oxygen-deprived brain.
"I just figured we were running from the worms. I didn't really see her or hear her all that well- what's she saying?" Tim doesn't take it too personally, instead focusing on what he can learn about the situation- what kind of spooky bullshit is Jane on about? Is it like a vengeful ghost sort of thing, or more along the zombie type of line?
"Something about music. I'm more concerned with not being eaten, personally." Sasha relays some part of Jane's chosen flavor of crazy, not that it's much to work with in terms of what genre today would be sorted into, and Tim nods along. Not that she can see it.
"Fair enough," He concedes, and sprays at the last of his side of the wave. "How are your worms treating you?"
"Badly, thanks for asking. I've got it covered, though, so you can keep your own fire extinguisher on your own worms," Sasha replies, punctuated by a few aggressive sprays from her fire extinguisher, presumably aimed at the worms that are treating her badly.
"Good. If you need any help, though- " Tim starts to offer, but he abruptly stops talking when he feels Sasha stumble against him.
He turns, to try and help her out, and as he's turning he hears a plasticky snap- and then she falls sideways into a waiting swarm of worms. He frantically sprays the last of his CO2 at the worms as he tries to, at the same time, reach out a hand to help her up- he sees the culprit, a broken-off high heel, wedged into the unfinished floor of whatever place this is- and ends up failing at both. He misses her hand twice as he grabs for it, and he drops his fire extinguisher for good measure.
At least the third time is still the charm, as he finally manages to grab Sasha by the hand and hoist her upright with all of his strength- good thing he dropped the fire extinguisher, then, because he would've dropped it anyway- and she trips again, backwards this time, and her back connects with his chest. He's still supporting her, though, so it's more just an awkward positioning than anything scary.
She's still holding her fire extinguisher, though, so once he pulls them both back and away from the remaining swarm, she sprays the hell out of them and then some- as they deserve. He's still pulling the both of them backwards, heedless of the rapidly receding shimmer of light from the Archives and the encroaching darkness of the unfinished, mysterious, underground tunnel system that's apparently been under their place of work for the past... several years.
Once they're suitably far away- an arbitrary distance that's mostly decided by how out of breath Tim is and how difficult it is to see without a flashlight than any real measurement- Tim starts blindly directing them both towards where he thinks the wall should be. The tunnels at least obey the laws of physics, which means they haven't gone full nightmare or horror novel (of indeterminate quality, because sometimes reality-bending serves the horror and sometimes it just makes it feel like the author forgot the rules of their own established reality. It all depends on context, really) and the wall is exactly where he estimated it would be.
His back hits the stone- or brick? Concrete? He's not quite sure what it is, all he knows is that it's solid- wall, and he starts sliding down it, with Sasha still being held in his arms, with the back of her head just by his chin (not because that's how tall she is compared to him, but because of their awkward positioning). His heart stops pounding so loudly in his ears, just enough for him to catch the steady stream of cursing coming from Sasha that he assumes must've been going since the moment her heel broke. She sits up, he feels it more than he sees it, and that reminds him that he should probably dig his phone out of his pocket.
He shuffles around a bit, while Sasha does some of her own shuffling (he'll figure out what she's doing in a moment, he's sure), and he fishes his phone out of his back pocket. He presses the power button, and the screen illuminates several cracks in the screen that weren't there when he was playing on it at lunch. He's got more important things to worry about than a few cracks in his screen, though- that's just about as much of a "later problem" as it can get- and he opens up the flashlight anyway.
The bright light makes him squint, and he can see through the small crack in his eyelids that Sasha's doing the same. He blinks a few times, and sees some of the damage that Sasha's badly-timed broken heel did.
She's got a scrape on her cheekbone on the side of her face that hit the floor, and another one just above her eyebrow, but all in all, her face doesn't seem too bad off. Her neck seems pretty unscathed, too, but it's only once he gets down to her arms and torso that he starts seeing the problem.
The shoulder that hit the ground is pretty scraped up, with blood seeping through the thin fabric of what appears to be the lightest cardigan known to humankind, and further down that same arm are more spots of blood, accompanied by holes in the fabric of her sleeve. Accompanying these holes are damningly wriggling lumps beneath her flesh, lumps that she's desperately pushing corkscrews into and pulling worms out of.
Her shirt has a few holes in it as well, right around her abdomen, but those don't seem bloody- though, given Sasha's red shirt, it's difficult to tell- and, besides, she's more focused on her arm, so those holes must be from where her shirt got caught in the unfinished flooring.
Her skirt's got a hole or two, just under her hip, but those lead to long scrapes like those on her shoulder, not worm-holes, so he figures that one's fine, too. Her calf does have a few sores that look like worm-holes, accompanied by a few lumps that are slowly but surely wriggling their way upwards.
"Shit, let me- " He starts, then stops, as his focus goes more towards digging into his pockets for a corkscrew- he knows he keeps them on him, he knows they're somewhere, he just doesn't remember where. Sasha at least understands him, with only three barely-sensical words, because she shoves her leg in his direction while she keeps digging worms from her arm.
Finally, he finds a small bundle of them in his rarely-used front shirt pocket (no shit that's why they're in that pocket, he doesn't use it for anything else), and gets to work. She jolts slightly with each stab of his corkscrew, and he mutters frantic apologies as he digs worms out of her leg. He winds up reusing them a few times, two stabs and two worms per corkscrew instead of only one, because it becomes apparent soon enough that he doesn't have enough corkscrews to keep it as sanitary as he wants to.
Finally, finally, he doesn't see any more lumps. Sasha's not tearing at her arm, either, so he can only imagine that she's done with that, too. He leans back against the wall, breathing hard, and eventually Sasha decides that she doesn't want to move off of him, and leans forward, pressing her forehead against his sternum. He can feel her breathing against him, he can feel the way she's trembling just a little, and he can also feel her frizzy hair in his mouth.
This last point is what damns him, because he makes several obnoxious "pffth" noises as he tries to spit her hair away, and she sits up pretty quickly once he starts. Damn.
The flashlight, now on the floor and casting unfocused light on the both of them, illuminates Sasha's mild glare at him. Her curly hair is more out of its usually-neat bun than in it, and a good bit of it is stuck to her sweaty face. He's possessed by the inane urge to brush some of it away from her eyes, and, well, it's a life-or-death situation, right? He may as well try.
Unfortunately, Sasha is not receptive to the casual intimacy (which, if he may add, would have been a perfectly acceptable level of intimacy before The Hookup, and even though they said things wouldn't be weird they are still definitely weird) and she smacks his hand away from her face, before pushing her hair out of her face herself.
"Don't start," She snaps at him as she tries to adjust her hair without a hairbrush or a mirror. It's not a particularly productive-seeming endeavor, but Tim also doesn't have long hair, so he can't accurately judge.
"I'm not starting anything," He tries to argue, though it mostly comes out as a childish whine. He can't imagine that it sounds very convincing, because even he's not convinced.
"You're doing that thing, the one they always do in the action movies before they go in for some big, cinematic kiss, and I am not your damned love interest. We talked about this," Sasha's very firm, and it's not that he's trying to make her some kind of 'love interest' against her will, or anything, even though if she suddenly decided that she does want a relationship with him then he would be so onboard, but he'd like to at least go back to how things used to be before he went and told her that. He can't even fault her for keeping him at arm's length, not really, because he knows how pushy people can be and he knows that there are plenty of people who will take anything as an invitation.
... He also can't honestly say that he was absolutely, one-hundred-percent not trying anything. He grimaces as he acknowledges her argument.
"Yeah, yeah, I... if it helps, I know you said you don't want a relationship, but- "
"No! No buts! This isn't the time or place for this conversation, first off, but even if it were then I'm still not going to magically decide that I'm into romance!" Sasha interrupts him, and the worst part of this whole argument is that Sasha is right and justified in all of what she's saying, and Tim just keeps feeling like more and more of an ass.
... Wait.
"Wait- wait, hang on. Is it because you don't like romance, like in general, or because you don't like romance with me specifically? Because I thought it was a me problem but if it's a romance in general problem then- "
"Then what? It's suddenly valid, or are you going to try and say you can fix me, because I've had plenty of men try it- "
"Then we can just not make it a romance thing? We can do a... a not-romance thing. I don't- whatever you want it to be, I can make it be that, no problem, I just- I don't like the weird distance we've got now and we don't have to be together like that but I don't like being apart."
They talk over each other, a little bit, and Sasha finally starts missing the mark a little with her righteous anger because Tim isn't going to suddenly say that her reasons are only valid because it's a sexuality thing, or something, and he's definitely not the type of person to try and fix anybody else like that- which, also, Sasha saying other people have tried that on her makes him feel all kinds of angry on her behalf- the point is that Tim wouldn't do that.
Also, he really doesn't have to have it be in a classical 'relationship' kind of way. He'll do whatever she wants, and he won't do whatever she doesn't want, and they can figure out what they want out of whatever it is he's proposing but the awkward distance is just horrible to keep on going through.
After a tense silence that feels like it takes an hour but is probably closer to about a minute, Sasha lets out a long sigh. She doesn't look at him, instead stares at the ceiling- just as unfinished as the floor, probably- and takes a few long breaths. Then, she blinks, and looks back down at Tim.
"This still isn't the time or place for this conversation," She starts, and Tim nods in agreement. It's not the best time, it's just when it happened to come to a head, and he probably should've kept his hands and his thoughts to himself for a better version of this talk.
"And I resent the vaguely manipulative way that this feels like it came about," She continues, and Tim opens his mouth to argue but she puts a finger over his lips before he can say anything. He obediently closes his mouth and listens.
"I know you did not mean to be manipulative. However, it definitely felt that way and we'll be revisiting it at a better time," She clarifies, a bit, and Tim feels guilt and shame burning his face. He's not sure if she can see it, given the poor lighting provided by the flashlight, but she sighs and pulls her hand away from his face.
"I'm not saying no. I'm also not saying yes, because that's a proposition that requires a whole long talk with tea and snacks or something, not in a creepy evil tunnel system while we're being chased down by flesh-eating worms," She finishes, and Tim grins up at her.
"Yeah, we can do that. I have some chocolate biscuits at my place, once everything's settled, we can... we can talk about it? We can be actual, proper friends again?" He feels like a dog begging for scraps at her feet, but hey, it came out to something, didn't it? A promise that they'll talk about it, with a different, better capital-C Coversation when they're out of this nightmare of a day.
"You just want to do it at yours because your couch is more comfortable than mine," Her accusation could be angry, but she's smirking down at him as she says it, so probably not.
"Maybe so," He replies, because that's absolutely why he suggested his place.
"Alright, well, we're going to have to get out of here before we can have any kind of talk about any kind of arrangement of whatever this is going to be. If my mental map of the Institute is right... " She trails off as she stands up, though she's a bit wobbly, and he reaches out to steady her; she doesn't smack him away this time, though that might just be because she's occupied with taking her shoes off. He doesn't say anything to interrupt her train of thought, because she's worked in more departments than he has, so her mental map is probably pretty good, especially when it comes to the lower levels of the place.
"You're leaning against the Institute, and we're either underneath that alleyway that you and Jon both pretend you don't smoke in, or we're just barely underneath the Institute walls that border it. If we keep going in the direction we were heading, there's going to be a big right turn, and at that point, we're going to hit Artifact Storage, which has a couple of maintenance access areas- which I'm sure also lead to here. The only issue is making certain we don't go somewhere with an evil artifact instead of a maintenance area with pipes or something, but I remember Artifact Storage well enough that I don't think it'll be a problem? Most of the areas that we would store evil things in wouldn't open up to somewhere that could have outside access," She stands up as she speaks, abandoning her shoes on the floor nearby. Tim gets up shortly after her, a little afraid that she'll be unsteady on her injured leg, but she starts limping along fine, if a bit slowly.
He walks along near her, consciously not walking ahead, and shines his phone flashlight at the strange tunnel ahead. There don't seem to be many worms in the area, and the few that are here seem to have gotten caught in the gaps of the unfinished flooring. There are still a few worms that are mobile- as Tim finds out unpleasantly, when one of them starts digging into his calf- but on the whole, they seem to be mostly out of the woods on that front.
"I'll keep my eyes peeled for spooky vibes," Tim offers, helpfully, and Sasha shrugs.
"If you think one of the doors near Artifact Storage feels evil, feel free to let me know. I have no idea which doors would be maintenance from this side of the building." She at least lets him feel like being a dowsing rod for 'spooky vibes' would be at all useful.
They lapse into silence after that, with both of them probably more focused on not being bitten by more worms than on making witty conversation, and they make a good bit of headway into the tunnels before either of them speaks again.
"I wish you'd said it wasn't a me problem initially," Tim says, and he's sure that he's probably reopening something that he shouldn't be reopening right now, but it's also the only topic he's dwelling on at the moment and he's always been the sort of person that needs to fill silence with something.
"I did," Sasha says, shortly, and Tim belatedly remembers that she had said something- just, not in the same way she said it today.
"Everyone says the 'it's not you, it's me' line, though. Usually when it is the other person," Tim argues, and Sasha huffs in something that's probably frustration.
"Okay, well, it really wasn't you, I do like you as a person, it's just... the whole roses-and-candlelit-dinners thing isn't anywhere near what I'd like to do with my life," She clarifies, and that seems to be the end of that.
They walk in silence for a little longer, up until the tunnel comes up on a branch in the path. There's a large right turn, and there's a stairwell leading down to what appears to be a lower floor directly ahead.
"We're definitely exploring this place more thoroughly once this whole thing is over with," Sasha says, and Tim nods vigorously.
"Absolutely," He agrees out loud, and with that, they both turn right. Since that's the direction that Sasha predicted would lead to Artifact Storage, after all, plus he can't imagine that going further underground would get them any closer to getting out to an exit at ground level.
They're walking normally, towards where Sasha said Artifact Storage would be, and Tim honestly doesn't notice anything wrong- the floors seem more finished, the worms are fewer and further between, and by all accounts, they're home free. There's no visible reason for anything else to stop them, except Sasha slows to a stop anyway.
He notices her footsteps stumble a little, and he turns his flashlight towards her as she stops completely. He takes a breath, to ask her what's wrong, when he realizes that she's going down.
He practically leaps over to catch her as she passes out in a dead faint. She doesn't hit the ground, at least, but now there's no visible or easily blamed reason for it- maybe the blood loss, from the worms in her arm and leg? Looking down, her wounds are still bleeding sluggishly, so it might've been that.
He debates with himself, for a moment, on whether or not he should wait for her to wake up or if he should start dragging her; in the interest of getting out of there as quickly as possible, he gets her into a more comfortable position (for him- she's sort of unconscious, so can't really give her opinion on how comfortable her position is) and starts moving the both of them towards where she said Artifact Storage should be.
His powerwalk-powered-drag of her is actually a faster mode of transport than just walking along with her, though that's only really true in spurts; he keeps having to pause to either readjust or catch his breath, but at least he's making progress. He passes by a door- he's not sure where in the Institute it comes from, for sure, but he can make an educated guess that it's Artifact Storage- and he pauses to contemplate the spookiness of it, as he said he would earlier.
Mostly, he makes the decision not based on vibes but based on pragmatism: he can't exactly haul her up the stairs without positioning her into a bridal carry or something, and even then it won't be as quick or easy as he'd like it to be; if it becomes apparent that she's not going to wake up from her blood-loss-induced (?) faint, then he'll do it with the next doorway, but if she wakes up, he'll just climb around-slash-navigate behind her.
So, onto the next doorway they go, and Tim's patience is rewarded by Sasha making groggy waking-up noises once the doorway is nearly out of sight.
"Good morning, sleepyhead," He greets her as he pauses in his dragging, and then belatedly thinks that she might not be in a very comfortable position; he starts sitting down, so that she's not being held up by his arms around her chest, and so that she can sort of start to re-orient herself.
"Hi," She slowly responds, pulling her way off of him and generally seeming to wake up without much issue. That's good, at least; he's happy that the worms don't seem to have done that much lasting damage.
"You passed out," Tim explains, when she starts looking over at him in confusion. "I think it was from blood loss."
Sasha nods, and slowly blinks her way towards more cognitive function.
"Did you keep walking with me?" She asks, probably because the tunnels are visibly- if minutely- different here than they were over there.
"Yeah. We passed by a door. It seemed too spooky, so I made the executive decision to pass it," Tim only sort of lies, but Sasha nods sagely at his excuse anyway. They sit there for another few moments as Sasha gets her bearings, and then she starts standing up. Tim stands up, too, with his arms out to catch her if necessary, but she doesn't seem to be in danger of passing out again.
Sasha coughs, a few times, but doesn't say anything else along their long and arduous journey to Find an Exit. Tim is starting to think that maybe Jane Prentiss wasn't the most dangerous thing that they've encountered today- these stupid tunnels don't seem to be ready to let them out anytime soon.
"Are you sure you only passed by one door?" Sasha asks, between coughs- they're getting worse, and Tim would wonder about the air quality down here if he wasn't breathing perfectly fine, but as it stands he's mostly just worried about her- and he nods.
"Yeah. Just the one. Are you- I don't know- okay?" He asks, in the middle of what seems to be a coughing fit, only for Sasha to wave him off.
"I'm fine. The air down here just sucks. I'd expect you to be coughing more, since you've been a smoker the whole time I've known you," She complains, and Tim sighs.
"Maybe you've just got weak little baby lungs," He tries to tease back, but his heart's not really in it. He's mostly just hoping they find another door soon, and partially regretting passing by that first door.
"Maybe yours are just too used to breathing shitty air- " She can't even finish her attempt at a rebuttal before being taken aback by a long series of coughs. Tim stops walking, and shines the flashlight over at her while she doubles over from the force of it. He takes half a step towards her before the sound of coughing is replaced by the sound of retching.
Whatever it is she coughs up, it doesn't look normal. It takes Tim- it takes them both- a moment of staring and processing to realize what it is.
It's a lot of pink, surrounded by a lot of red. After a second or two of looking at it, Tim realizes he can see movement coming from it- wriggling, coming from the pile of bloody stuff that just came out of Sasha.
They both look up at each other at the same time, with blood dripping sloppily from Sasha's lip, as Tim realizes that the holes in Sasha's shirt weren't from getting caught in the unfinished flooring after all. Sasha must be thinking something similar, as her hand drifts down towards the general vicinity of where the holes in her shirt are, and presses it to her abdomen. After a moment, she pulls her hand away, and Tim doesn't miss the small streaks of blood that are visible on the palm of her hand.
"No," Tim gasps it like he's just been punched, like just saying no can undo what he just saw, can bring them back to two minutes ago when Sasha was just suffering from the injuries of the worms and they weren't-
"Oh, fuck," Sasha's voice cracks, and it wobbles, and it goes a little high at the end like she's about to cry, and Tim has never seen Sasha cry and he wasn't entirely certain that was a thing she even did, and he would really like to go back to a time when that was still something he had kind of considered to be impossible, thanks, if he could wake up now that would be appreciated-
"We need to go," His mouth says without his permission, and Sasha nods to what it says, and she goes forward about two feet before stopping and coughing again and doubling over and retching again- but this time, at least, it's just blood, no chunks and no worms, and he's not sure if that's even better than before or if not coughing up worms means they're still in there, still eating her from the inside, still-
He steps towards her and throws her over his shoulder, uncaring of the blood or the spit or the mucous or the dirt or the worms or any of the other things on her, uncaring of how heavy she is (and he doesn't know if it's his imagination or the adrenaline but she feels lighter than before), just knowing he needs to get them both out.
He runs, doesn't give a damn about the loose flooring or the occasional worm or unreliable the swinging flashlight is or how out of breath he feels, he runs until something in the wall looks sort of like a door and even then he doesn't slow down, just crashes blindly into the door-shaped spot and fumbles for something that could be a handle until the door falls open and he shoves his way past what looks to be a fusebox and a bunch of wiring and a bunch more boxes on the walls and some pipes up above for good measure, takes the narrow stairs two or three at a time (he doesn't know which, he isn't paying attention) until he's made his way past a bunch of empty desks and shelves with glass cases with giant keyholes on them, and he's pretty sure this is the main area of Artifact Storage.
He knows where he is now, at least.
He doesn't really stop to appreciate this fact, just runs towards the door he knows leads out to the lobby, and doesn't slow down or stop running so much as he transitions into a skater's sort of method of moving, sliding on the CO2 foam set out by the sprinklers, trying desperately to make his way out the doors where surely, surely there will be an ambulance or a paramedic or someone out there who can make it all okay again-
There is, there are, there are tents and police and ambulances and someone pulls Sasha off of him and brings her over to somewhere, and he tries to follow but someone else is pulling him in the opposite direction, and someone is screaming, he thinks, and he's fighting and kicking and clawing at whoever is trying to pull him away from Sasha because they don't understand, he's fine, he has to make sure they fix it, and he sees, in a series of blinks and flashes that he is later informed is the passage of seven hours of time:
He sees the inside of a decontamination tent, and his clothes are taken somewhere, and he's checked all over for worms he missed, and he's given some pale blue scrubs to wear instead of his own clothes, and then-
There's the inside of the ambulance, and Sasha's unconscious again, and there's a tube in her throat now and a bunch of white gas in a mask surrounding her face, and then-
What he is told is the ICU, and how he got from the ambulance to the sixth floor he hasn't the foggiest idea, and he's later told that there's documentation and eyewitnesses and medical personnel that contradict him but he swears they skipped the Emergency floor entirely, and then-
A bunch of people moving very quickly, and at some point between arriving at the ICU and the moving-very-quickly Jon has arrived, in all his wet-cat pathetic glory, and if he said anything Tim doesn't remember it, and then-
Someone doing chest compressions on Sasha. Time very suddenly holds still, swims in slow motion, as an eternity extends between each thrust of the heels of someone's hands against Sasha's chest. The line is flat for a thousand years before each tiny, intervening jolt that isn't Sasha, just the man who's shoving oxygen into her heart.
Then there's more moving. More working. More machines and more tubes until everybody suddenly decides, suddenly and unanimously, to walk away.
Sasha's line is still flat. He stares at it, then he looks at Sasha, drowning in the tubes and the useless medical interventions, and then he stares around at the room that is empty except for her and except for him and except for Jon who is clearly doing his very best to cry as quietly and as stiffly as he possibly can.
Someone is still screaming.