Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Jon broke the last promise he made to Martin. The plan they agonized over and finally agreed on made about as much sense as everything else in the new world. There were parts of it he didn’t like and parts of it he hated, but what he would not accept was its requirement that he stand and watch while others risked their lives to fix his mistakes. These were his actions to answer for, he knew that, but they wouldn’t hear it. They refused to acknowledge the much simpler path that fate laid out for him. So, when their backs were turned, he once again threw himself into the guillotine, willing the blade to dull on his neck.

Martin awoke much later to the Knowledge that he was up there and he intended to kill Jonah Magnus. He intended to leave himself behind. And it shattered Martin, shattered him beyond repair, but he did not break the last promise he made to Jon. He did not run to the Panopticon and beg him to live, or to follow their plan. The numbness of being left had already begun its slow conquest of him. He did tell the others what Jon had done, his voice solemn, destroyed, and far away. They comforted him while they cursed Jon, and they mourned the loss of the hope that they would be okay. After that, they were all just left there, in that world.

Jon did have a plan that went beyond the physical action of becoming the Archive. He stored it so deep within the little humanity he had left, in the emotions that barely made noise, let alone words, and wrapped his soul around it in a thousand, thousand layers. When the Beholding swallowed him, it took that pill with it. It looked out at the universe so intently as it blinked for the last time, and that blip of awareness right before the cosmic flood of information was just enough to slip that poison into its throat unnoticed.

Jon broke his last promise to the Beholding. When he became its undying servant, he lied to it. The knowledge came to it that there was another way to free it from its old prison of unreality, one that did not bring with it the Hidden, the Uncanny, or the Unknown. One that did not bring with it an End. It was promised a perfect universe of ceaseless watching, where every corner was illuminated and nothing was truly out of its sight. With this new knowledge, it created a domain so divine and whole that the years and the events leading up to it fell into it. Like unknitting a sweater, when it was done, what was left were a few loose threads, a thought, and the 29th of July, 2016.

What stretched between the events of Jonathan Sims’s rebirth and the second occurrence of 29th July, 2016 was moments for some, lifetimes for others. Martin spent almost a year sitting up in the Panopticon, talking to him, talking to nobody until his loneliness guided him back to his domain. He wandered empty plains and rocky hills for so long, hearing nothing but his own thoughts, knowing nothing but the suffering of those around him, and then not even that.

As he again wandered thoughtlessly through his barren land, a routine so worn he stopped perceiving it, he found no foothills or grasses there. Before him was a large, pillared building on a wide street, with engraved symbols above it that echoed something so familiar to him. It was a strange sensation, but gone so fast that he assumed it never happened. He entered the building.

Another thought washed over him. It wasn’t raining here. The little thoughts that were previously drowned out by its thrumming were left naked without their cover. This feeling lingered longer, long enough for his body to start him on a path down into the halls, but he didn’t bother to turn around. 

He entered a section of the building full of shelves and papers. They had more symbols on them— it was writing. Yes, written words, names and places and stories, he could almost make sense of them if he carefully thought through the sounds of every letter. The lighting above hummed something grainy, and when he paused, the fixture called to him. It wasn’t gray like the sky outside, but a pale, rustic yellow. When he finally tore his gaze away, his vision was stamped with the negative, rectangular impression of it. He blinked it away, and there before him stood a shadow. 

“Martin,” it said.

It looked like a stagnant pond of matte ink, with eyes settled on top of it like lilypads. Its eyes were everywhere. It was a figure a good bit shorter than him, with long hands and these wavy strands of darkness that protruded from its head and flowed down, shadowing scraggly hair. Its voice was coated in layers of static, almost similar to the humming in the ceiling. When he stared at the figure, something else happened inside him.

“Martin,” it repeated, more intensely this time.

And he understood that it was talking to him. He was Martin, and he was in the Magnus Institute. He belonged to a new domain now, and they were going to do things differently than before. The figure was walking towards him, and his name was…

“Jon, can you walk?” Martin asked, gentle concern cushioning his anxiety.

“No, I can limp,” he said shortly.

Voices rang out from somewhere beyond them. The yellow lights were gone and it was dark again, save for a distant tear of it in the wall where three figures were standing. The figure in front of him, Jon– a different one– was still staring at him, but began to retreat further into the tunnels. When Martin saw his eyes, new thoughts implanted themselves in his head, certainly not his but processed by his own brain. He had to go to artefact storage. Sasha was going to be there very soon, and she would need his help. A mist that lined the bottom of the tunnels began to rise when he turned, and he disappeared completely from view.

To Martin, all of the voices and figures around him bled into fog, and it blinded him for a moment before it gave way to something much quieter and grayer. He saw nothing or nobody as he slipped back into the archive and waded through the shelves. He sighed a careful relief to himself at the silence. There were feelings in this place, though, ones that scratched at him. Yes, yes, he used to work here. He used to work here, and… nothing. This place was more than an old job, but he couldn’t place it, couldn’t even wager a guess. It didn’t matter, anyway.

He continued towards the back of the archive, where he knew, well, Jon knew, a back entrance into artefact research was, which led directly into storage. When he made it, he willed himself just barely back into reality, enough to hear Sasha’s voice and know where she was. He blinked against the vivid browns and yellows of the scene. 

Sasha was someone he knew, probably? Or maybe a friend of Jon’s. Both? She was talking and headed towards the back wall, and something followed her. Some manifestation of the Stranger loomed just beyond her sight, looking for new terror to feed on. Faded colours and textures stretched over its dull, hideous frame. He walked around and stood between them, Sasha and the beast, but neither of them saw him.

“Um, it’s getting foggier here? It’s not… I don’t think it’s the CO2 system. At least, it’d be really weird if they installed it into the floor,” she said into some chunk of plastic.

Oh, it was a tape recorder. That realization in particular tugged at him, for some reason. He thought he maybe used to keep one in his backpack, but that’s been gone for who knows how long now. Maybe he used them for work? That would make sense.

Suddenly, Sasha stepped towards him and he recoiled at the sudden acknowledgement.

“Oh, hey. I’ve found… I’ve found the table you were talking about. Don’t really see what all the fuss is about. Just a…”

Martin was close enough to clearly look at her eyes, which were entranced by the table behind him, and he remembered why he had come here. The spindly beast had just started to stalk closer when he grabbed its cage. The fog enveloped them both, and for a moment they were standing in a shattered version of the Magnus Institute, so dead and quiet that it seemed to extend on forever. Cobwebs lined barren, cracked shelves along the peeling walls. The creature screamed and struck at Martin, but it simply phased through him. He heard the last echoes of its cry dampen as he shifted back towards the actual Institute, the one where Sasha now stood frozen at the strangest thing she just saw, and the horrible noise she heard. Cautiously, she began speaking into the recorder again.

“Okay, Jon, I hope the tape picked up that sound and I didn’t just scream at nothing. The fog, like, ate the table? And it screamed? The table is… it’s gone. I think I’m going to leave artefact storage now.”

Martin watched her leave but didn’t follow. Jon wanted him to meet everyone back down in the tunnels afterwards. He had told him to leave Prentiss alone, to distract Elias. Hm, ‘Elias.’ That name had weight to it. Sasha had mentioned him, so maybe he was her friend? Or Prentiss’s friend if she was going to distract him. Who is Prentiss?

The Archivist let his sight follow Martin the best it could as he slipped into the office and past the archives, but the Lonely was largely hidden to the Eye. Once those three had stopped fighting over the tape recorder, he concealed himself in shadow and quietly followed from behind. His younger self was limping heavily, Tim was supporting most of his weight while holding up his phone’s torch, and Martin reluctantly walked ahead of them both while gripping a fire extinguisher. Jon clutched the tape recorder like dropping it would kill them all. They hobbled through the tunnels at an unfortunately slow pace.

“I can barely see a meter in front of me,” Martin said.

Tim held the light higher. It didn’t help.

“Sorry, I’m trying, but I think whatever spookiness they store in these tunnels is making the light dimmer.”

Jon sighed.

“If none of us were ever told about them, then they probably weren’t meant to be traversed without already knowing your way. It makes sense that they were designed to absorb light,” he said.

Tim looked down at him.

“And the fog, Mr. Logical Explanations?”

“I don’t know,” he huffed, “they’re haunted or something.”

They would’ve teased him for that, but they were interrupted by the shushing spray of a fire extinguisher. Martin pointed the nozzle at something that glinted off the torchlight beneath the dissipating fog. More worms.

“They really are faster down here,” Martin said.

They continued down the twisting corridors. For minutes at a time, the occasional burst of the extinguisher was the only sound among their footsteps. Once, Jon hissed curses at his leg, and then at Tim when he offered to carry him. They took a short break at the first fork on the path. 

The Archivist followed closely behind, silently suggesting the right direction to them before they tried straying from his carefully set route. Strange that he could see the tunnels so clearly, since Elias always had trouble. He was having trouble now, waiting near the manual CO2 release lever and tutting when his mind brought him nothing but static. His eyes may be in here, but the Archivist’s were underneath him, in the version of it that rose out from the ground when the mass ritual was completed two years from now. It funneled its vision through him while he stood high in that place, enraptured by the domain he had created. Interesting, but unimportant at the moment. He followed them for several more minutes, making suggestions when he needed to. 

Their minds were all prickling with fear, and while he soaked it in all the same, he took a much greater interest in what was underneath it. His younger self was doing his best to ignore the pain in his leg and thoughts of mortality. Tim was letting the elation of oxygen deprivation clot his anxiety, though the light-headedness was starting to cloud his thinking. Through it, he repeated phrases of protection and responsibility to himself. Martin emanated fear the strongest, but also held the most beneath it. Defiance, jealousy, adoration, and stinging softness coursed through him, made sharper by his fear. The Archivist narrowed some of his eyes at it. The emotions seemed to conflict directly with one another, but then he noticed who they were all directed at. The Eye offered him this scrap of knowledge like any other, and he took it like any other: Martin was deeply in love with him. Interesting, but unimportant at the moment.

The three of them were now starting to approach the dead end they had been led to. Multiple times, one of them thought they ought to stop and wait where they were, but either a distant squirming or some implanted reasonings encouraged them to continue. The Archivist inched closer, but remained out of sight. They stopped to kill more worms and Jon sighed an uncomfortable breath.

“Hey, Martin?” he said, seeming confused at his own words.

He met his face innocently.

“Yeah?”

“Remember when I said… it felt like someone was watching me, with the tapes? Like, I chose not to believe statements because it was as if someone else was listening to them and waiting for me to say something wrong?”

Martin tilted his head in concern.

“Uh, yeah?”

Jon flicked his gaze in several directions. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it.

“That’s not just… um, you guys feel that too, right?” he asked.

Tim shifted. He held Jon a bit more upright than before.

“I thought it was just the CO2,” he said.

“Well, if you don’t want someone listening, you could just turn the recorder off,” Martin pointed, “I won’t tell you to not use it, no mysteries and all that, but maybe wait until something happens?”

Jon looked down and startled slightly.

“Oh, I thought I just turned it off. Sorry.”

A click echoed out amongst their voices as the light on the side of the recorder turned off. The Archivist slowly stepped out from the shadows, noting Jon’s slightest hesitation when he pressed it. They startled again when the recorder flicked back on.

“Jon,” Tim said, annoyed.

“I-I didn’t do that,” he insisted.

“What, it just turned itself on?” Martin said, stepping closer.

“I don’t know, I guess!”

Tim angled his phone’s torch towards the recorder. Jon flicked it off, and, after a few seconds, it clicked itself back on. They stared at it for some time. Martin moved first.

“We should keep going,” was all he said.

By now, the Archivist had moved to the middle of the corridor, only remaining unnoticed due to their focus on the recorder. When he spoke, his voice crackled with layers of static and compression.

“It’s a dead end,” he said.

Three screams erupted through the corridors, followed by the spray of Martin’s fire extinguisher. The Archivist felt the cold blast of CO2 and nitrogen against his form, but didn’t move. Tim had thrown Jon over his shoulder, who dropped the tape recorder in turn, and their footsteps audibly pattered out when they rounded the corner and saw nothing but wall. When it became clear that it wasn’t going to react to being sprayed, Martin ran after them, and now he and Tim glanced at each other wildly. Jon stopped swearing when he realized it was the only sound in the tunnels. The Archivist decided to let them come to him.

There was a long standstill, long enough for Jon to escape Tim’s grasp and stand again, now leaning against the corner of the wall. They were all out of breath.

“What the hell was that?” Tim asked first.

“I- I dunno, I sprayed it with gas,” Martin answered.

From where they were standing, it almost seemed that they were alone. Jon put up the only defense he knew.

“Uh, collective hallucination, maybe? I mean, there’s a lot of CO2 here,” he offered.

Tim gave him an incredulous look. Martin sighed, more pitying than anything else.

“You said you weren’t going to do the skeptic thing anymore,” he frowned.

“I didn’t say that, I just said it wasn’t the best response. What else am I supposed to do, fight it?” he shot back, perhaps a bit sharper than he intended.

A deep sigh answered his question. Next to them, Tim had finished rolling up his sleeves. He offered Martin the light in exchange for the fire extinguisher.

“Tim, that’s not a good idea,” Martin said, eyes wide.

“Better than nothing,” he said simply.

He tried to take the extinguisher, but it was raised up out of his reach. Tim insisted.

“I’m not gonna let you get yourself killed! None of us are in any shape for that, anyway,” Martin said, shakily pushing him away.

Tim huffed, but retracted his offer of the torch. Martin lowered the extinguisher.

“We’re not… being eaten alive right now, so, maybe we scared it off,” he offered weakly.

The Archivist saw the light carefully inspect the wall across from them, then retract to the floor. Martin did end up giving Tim the extinguisher, and in turn took Jon, preparing them both to hobble as fast as they could manage. Carefully, from around the corner, Tim poked his head out and saw nothing. Good start. Then, carefully, he brought his torch in front of him. At the limits of the light’s reach, he saw a shaded figure standing. The light glinted on its eyes, of which there were many, and it stared at him. Tim almost dropped his phone.

“Still there, still there,” he said hurriedly, slinking back towards the rest of them.

“Why has it not attacked us?” Martin whispered.

“I don’t know!” Tim whispered back. 

A pause. The Archivist recognized the particularly desperate flavor of fear of a trapped animal.

“You’re sure you’re not hallucinating?” Jon said eventually.

Tim glared at him.

“Jon, we don’t have the fucking time for this.” 

“Just— let me take a look.”

Martin held him a bit tighter to silently protest his suggestion, but Jon struggled against it. He really didn’t care to see it again, but the intensity in Jon’s face told him he’d look with or without him. They carefully rounded the corner together. Indeed, the figure was still there, still a deep shadow, still covered in eyes. Martin retreated them both and Jon sighed, but it was more out of defeat than anything else.

“Okay, yeah, that’s a monster,” he said quietly, mostly to himself.

The Archivist was getting bored. Slowly, he began inching himself towards them. Martin cringed at what he was about to say.

“Well, we still haven’t been attacked, so… maybe it… doesn’t want to hurt us?” he said, his pitch rising as he spoke.

Tim huffed something like a laugh, his expression unreadable.

“Or it knows it has us trapped, and it’s waiting for the right moment to strike.”

“Not quite,” a voice behind them said, jarring and low quality.

They screamed again. Martin shielded Jon with his body, and Tim shielded them both with his. More CO2 coated the shadow, which didn’t move it at all. The figure stood maybe five feet from them. It was a little shorter than it seemed before.

“Get back!” Tim barked.

That one had a surprising amount of fight in him. He only faltered a little bit when the last mists of CO2 sputtered out, leaving him with nothing but a semi-effective bludgeoning tool. If the Archivist couldn’t see how terrified he was, and how much he hesitated to strike at him, he may consider him something of an actual obstacle. Still, if they’re going to get anything done, they’d need to establish intent. He took a step backwards.

“I can help you, if you will listen to me,” he said.

His voice sounded stitched together, like multiple different recordings spliced into each other and then unified with an additional layer of static. On some words, it seemed to glitch, skipping over or holding onto a particular consonant for too long. 

“What do you want? Are– are you going to kill us?”

Even in certain death, Jon’s voice had an academic quality to it. Martin held him closer, to his contempt. A few of the Archivist’s eyes narrowed at him.

“You are being dramatic. I have only asked for your time,” he said.

Martin finally found his courage. It bubbled to the forefront when he thought about Jon.

“I-if you just want to speak to us, speak. Just don’t come any closer,” he said, straining a bit.

“Then listen.”

At least one of them was reasonable. Reluctantly, the three of them picked an eye on his form and met it. 

“Archivist, Wanderer, Martyr, this place is not as it seems,” he began.

The Archivist saw Tim resisting the urge to scoff and act surprised, as if he had no idea until right now. What stopped him was the odd way he addressed them. Obviously Jon was ‘Archivist,’ but he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be ‘Wanderer’ or ‘Martyr.’ The Archivist decided not to elaborate.

“You are unknowing participants in a grand ritual, one made to plunge the world into all its fears. But I have found another way,” he continued.

Jon waved a hand to stop him.

“Wait, where’s the tape recorder? We need evidence of this,” he pleaded.

Martin and Tim both sighed.

“Jon, really? Now?”

Tim started going off on him, but they were interrupted by a sickening squelch noise. He instinctively raised the fire extinguisher. There was no threat, however, and the creature before them had raised up an inky limb and stuck it deep into his mouth. At least, where its mouth would be if it had one. Jon gagged. Whatever shadow goo it was made of leaked out of its face and onto the floor, and its arm was in nearly to the elbow. When it started pulling back out, a wet snapping noise startled them. Out of its mouth, it held a tape recorder. It was dripping the same stuff on the floor. He offered it to Jon with spindly fingers. 

“It’s already running,” he said.

Jarringly, his voice was coming from the recorder, not his throat. Tim just barely decided against hitting him as hard as he could with the extinguisher and fleeing. Jon suddenly looked very pale. When he shrunk away from it at a second offer, the Archivist swallowed it again. Well, ‘swallowed.’ It continued.

Elias idled at the back of the small maintenance closet, facing the concrete walls as he threw his vision around the institute. Jon and the others still seemed to be in the tunnels, and Prentiss had taken to knocking over shelves and breaking things in the archive. Wonderful. Most of the other staff had evacuated at this point, and the emergency services were about ten minutes away. He tapped his foot impatiently.

Besides that, Sasha had run into artefact storage after their separation, right into the NotThem’s hunting grounds. Feeding Jon’s paranoia-fueled skepticism would make him even more insufferable, but if it got him marked by the Stranger, it could prove ultimately helpful. Based on the way it was already stalking her, though, it didn’t seem it was his decision to make. No matter, the NotThem is typically passive until directly provoked, and… is not known for producing fog. A Lonely presence was there with them.

Elias instinctively threw himself into Peter’s mind, but he did not see Sasha or the NotThem. He was aboard the Tundra, in that stupid little office covered in framed photos of ships and vessels like his own, listening to an analogue radio. Confused, he blinked until he saw the dull flooring again. The Eye told him that there were seven non-worm lifeforms currently in the Institute, including himself, Jane Prentiss, Sasha James, Martin Blackwood, and three unevacuated library staff. Wait, Martin? But he was down in the tunnels, with Jon. A quick attempt into his mind brought him a pulsing static, and unless he either walked through a yellow door somewhere or suddenly became very well acquainted with the Eye, he was still down there.

He attempted to pinpoint the figure from Sasha’s vision. The thick fog obscured all behind it, but she did manage to catch the shortest glimpse of most of a face. It had a rounded jaw, short hair, and large glasses, which didn’t line up with any Lonely avatars he knew. Whatever it was, it stole the table into the Forsaken and took the NotThem with it. Nobody of that caliber would owe Sasha any favors, meaning something was spying on Institute affairs and chose this moment to act. When he gathered what he could from that brief sight of it, the information had become too cloudy to make sense of. Concerning, but it was the nature of the Lonely. If he could still see through Sasha’s vision, it at least meant his power wasn’t being tampered with. Jon would’ve at least needed a map for that, anyway. Perhaps whoever this is took Martin first and now the NotThem, and that’s how he was technically in the Institute. A fine trade, Elias thought. 

He could refocus on that in a second, but now Sasha was looking for the maintenance closet again and he hadn’t pulled the manual release. She probably wouldn’t question it if he faked being injured, but she would just pull the handle herself, so it made no difference. He could kill her and blame the worms, but halving the archive team for one mark would be wildly inefficient, assuming Martin was trapped in the Forsaken. Not to mention he’d need to find a new backup archivist. He couldn’t see any immediate way to jam the handle or the door, either. Physically holding the door shut may work, but only for as long as he didn’t need to release the CO2. Not marking Jon with the Corruption now would be a setback, a very annoying one, but not impossible to reattempt. 

Frustrated, he checked the archives one last time before turning the manual release, which hissed as it opened. Sasha threw open the door. There was no relief in her face when she locked eyes with him.

“Sasha,” he said, hiding his disdain behind a polite smile, “I got here just before you did.”

She ran to the release handle anyway and inspected it. A shaky sigh escaped her.

“Okay, that’s good. The worms will die before it hurts them, so they should be able to make it out, right?”

Elias had already tuned her out in favor of wondering how many insect attacks the Institute could face before the library staff quit. He made a small noise when he noticed her staring at him.

“Uh, yes, ideally,” he said, then headed for the door.

“Are you hurt? Did any of them get you? I think I’m clean but I’m not sure,” she asked before he opened it.

He knew immediately that none of them had infected her but pretended to give her a once over anyway.

“I think we’re fine. We should go.”

There weren’t many worms outside of the archives, but it seemed they were already feeling the effects of the release. When they started walking up the base of the stairs up to ground level, a horrible, shrill cry rang out from far off behind them. It sounded like it had been layered onto itself a thousand, thousand times. Sasha froze and shot him a wild, concerned look.

“Worms, I’d guess,” he said evenly, “I’d doubt it was a human.”

At least the library itself seemed mostly undamaged. They both welcomed the chattering street ambiance replacing the grating alarm inside, though it never fully drowned out. It was warm and cloudy. Most of the employees had gathered across the street, concerned or casual conversation filling the air as passersby looked at them curiously. Elias stopped just a few paces beyond the Institute and Sasha reluctantly paused beside him. She peered out into the crowd.

“...I don’t see them. Can you see them?” she asked.

Elias faced the general direction of the street, but his gaze was in the archive. Prentiss was dead, and the worms that weren’t also dead were directionless. There was no sign of his archivist. He attempted seeing through him once again, but saw only dark static, and trying to see through the other two yielded the same results. The idle crowd faded back into view, and Sasha was looking at him helplessly.

“No, I do not.”

She started to pace at the front of the building, and he didn’t need to look into her to guess what she was thinking. The tunnels sprawled out quite far and certainly had multiple points where air could get through, but had no formal ventilation system that he knew of. It was very unlikely, but if they were far enough from the archives to hear Prentiss’s death and close enough for CO2 to spread, they could be nearly dead already. Archival assistants were chosen for their expendability, however, and while a dead, Web-marked archivist would be a loss, there was simply no way he could get through the other 11 marks if the Corruption gave him such trouble.

There was an alternative explanation, that being that his little team had met with the… guest that’s been staying in the tunnels for over a decade, and was treating Jon either as a friend of his or a friend of Gertrude’s. If it was the former, well, his archivist has certainly never been in a fight before, so that would be that. The latter, and Elias could either recover with a proper show of authority, or, depending on what exactly they were told, he could make up a fun little story about them all going missing and start completely over. It was a worst case scenario, but there was nothing he could do about it. No use dwelling on it.

From the street corner, a block of neon yellow with dark green checkermarks broke through the dull gray of the day. The shrill wail of an ambulance and blare of a firetruck warned the street cars to move over. The crowd across the street watched it pull in front of the Institute, and the EMTs and firefighters didn’t waste a single second. Elias began to warn some of the firefighters that they would not find any fire in the building, but Sasha interrupted him with cries of people trapped in the basement, three of them. They were already rushing in, but one of them briefly turned back with a nod of acknowledgement before he went.

“When the ritual was completed, the Ceaseless Watcher feasted on all the knowledge available to it. But this knowledge was not perfect nor infinite, as it shared its universe with the hidden and the unknowable. From what it consumed, it learned that there existed a ritual that could bring it through alone, where it could truly see all.”

“Wait, ‘when it was completed?’ I thought you said the ritual hasn’t happened yet,” Martin interjected.

He wasn’t actually sure about half of what this thing was saying, what with its voice sounding like a VHS tape of a VHS tape. From what he gathered, someone tied to the Institute is using them in some capacity for a ritual that’s supposed to make something bad happen. And this monster had… something to do with it?

“When the Ceaseless Watcher learned it could rule alone, it began to undo the ritual that brought them all through, starting with a single point that would expand into the universe, until it became reality,” it explained.

It seemed like Jon and Tim’s reactions mirrored Martin’s own. When he got this job, he had prepared for the idea that he may one day encounter something truly supernatural, and, honestly, compared to some of the statements they got, a monster in a dark tunnel that speaks in riddles doesn’t seem all that bad. This was just a few too many steps removed from reality. A monster in the tunnels? Sure. A time-travelling one? No.

“And you’re the Ceaseless Watcher,” Jon concluded, “are you the reason it feels like we’re always being watched in this place?”

“No.”

Jon huffed like he was disappointed that they weren’t talking to the concept of being watched. Martin would’ve found it amusing if it weren’t for everything else. 

“I am Jonathan Sims, the Archive, vessel of the Eye,” it said.

That was met with silence. Three wide stares bore into the figure for several seconds. The spell broke when Jon suddenly wavered in Martin’s grasp and went limp, drowning out his shock with care and concern. He held him up a bit closer than he needed and shot a warning glare at the creature, as if he held any sort of power over it. The sharp look softened when he glanced back down and saw Jon regaining consciousness. Tim’s laugh was coated with shock and disbelief.

“You… You’re saying you’re Jon from the future?” he said, smiling but certainly not happy.

“I am what he will become if the mass ritual is allowed to take place. I am attempting to prevent that.”

The lightning strike of shock that coursed through him had fried his anxiety response, instead converting the excess cortisol into dopamine. His head swam with a newfound levity, and he dared to take the creature’s words on their plainest face. If he compared his Jon with this alleged one, there weren’t no parallels to be drawn.

“I thought, um, I did think he sounded kinda like y—”

“Shut up, Martin.”

Jon, having been conscious for thirty seconds at most, pushed Martin away and attempted to stand on his own. He begrudgingly leaned back onto him when that somehow didn’t work.

“Why should we believe you? About any of this?” 

He managed a somewhat even stare at the shadow claiming to be him. Tim reared up to yell at him, but Martin overlapped him with a tone that was sweet and paternalistic. He must be the most shaken of any of them, especially if he’s digging his heels in this hard into disbelief, Martin thought.

“Jon—!”

“Jon, look. A monster is literally standing in front of us, okay? Just drop the act already, we know you don’t really mean it,” he said patiently.

“I’m not denying that monsters are real,” he retorted, “I’m just saying this thing is making increasingly substantial claims and hasn’t got anything to show for it. Obviously it wants us to trust it, but how do we know it’s not lying? What if it’s just making things up?”

His voice naturally had an incredulous quality to it, something Martin got used to awhile ago. Underneath it, however, there was this bone-deep trembling that he hadn’t really heard from him before. It broke his heart. He couldn’t blame him, it’s not like this thing was claiming to be himself or Tim. All he could do was hold him steady, keeping the humor he found in the whole situation to himself.

“I will provide evidence,” the alleged Jon said, “but we should start walking. I have much to show you.”

It took a few steps backwards and turned around. Unfortunately for the three of them, it had just as many eyes on its back. Martin hesitated, but relented when he felt Jon pulling them forward. He supposed if anyone got a say here, it was him. As he attempted to let the flood of information settle in his mind, he startled at a sudden hand on his shoulder. Tim was staring at him with intensity.

“Stay. Close,” he whispered.

He nodded, avoiding the eyes that bore into them as they walked. Martin admitted to himself that maybe he was too willing to accept that the figure in front of them was Jon, but after spending two weeks being personally terrorized by a worm woman, it wasn’t that big of a stretch to him that people who work at the place dedicated to studying monsters could also turn into monsters. The time travel was probably the most far-fetched, but if there was any circumstance that it would seem most possible it would be after the fear-pocalypse or whatever he was talking about. His increased openness might also have something to do with the fact that he’s literally been cornered in a tunnel by someone who could most definitely kill him if he got a bit too insistent. Of course Jon would stand up to him, though. It’ll do him good to resurface soon, he looked awful.

They continued down back the way they came, though Martin could’ve sworn they had originally taken a different turn at that last crossroads. They were harsh on Jon about it, but it did help to remind himself a few times that if this thing was who he claimed, then he wouldn’t want to hurt them. The shadow stopped suddenly when they had been walking down the same corridor for a few solid minutes. The same fog that obscured the ground was there again, even thicker and higher, and the other Jon beckoned it forward with a nod. It funneled towards the ceiling, and out from the resulting column stepped a man. He was… oh, that was him. That was Martin.

“I didn’t return alone,” shadow Jon said.

And Martin cursed his stupid heart, because his first thought wasn’t about how awful he looked, or what happened to him, or if this was proof enough to trust him from now on. No, his first thought was if them coming out of their world together meant they were in a relationship. Leaving the apocalypse behind in order to go back in time certainly seemed like something you wouldn’t do with just your archival assistant. At the very least they had to be friends, right? 

“The resemblance should be easier to parse.”

Shadow Jon’s last comment took him out of that thought. The man standing before him was indeed uncomfortably himself. Same height and build, same glasses, though they were cracked, and clothes that he knew were currently sitting in a storage unit he rented. The similarities were the least of his attention, though.

This Martin was noticeably paler, and looked almost translucent. His hair had grown out considerably, as well as his beard, and they both were blueish white from the roots, fading into blond at the tips. There was nothing in his face, nothing he could readily define. The fog in his glasses completely obscured his eyes, and the rest of it was perfectly neutral. His stance only indicated apprehension. 

When Jon’s grip tightened around his arm, Martin looked down at him. He hoped he could find some quiet comfort in meeting his eyes, but they looked at the other him. They were fearful, and panicked, and they held pity. Martin pitied him too. His breathing quickened, but when he looked at this version of himself, he couldn’t tell if he was breathing at all. 

“What the hell happened ?” Tim said, and it sounded vaguely like a threat. 

“Every—”

The other Martin’s voice was thickly hoarse and cracked on the second syllable. It brought out a coughing fit that clearly hurt. Martin winced.

“Sorry, haven’t spoken in awhile.”

The man’s voice would almost sound like his own if he had been deathly ill. It had no body to it, essentially a whisper but crackling with scratchy attempts to put volume behind it. It was still only half as hard to make out as shadow Jon’s voice.

“The apocalypse got everyone. Everything was fear, and everyone is afraid of something,” he strained.

The concept of apocalypse heaved a new weight on him. He couldn’t imagine doing well in a setting like that, even one where the only threat was zombies or something. Clearly, he was right. The other him seemed so empty standing there, and he could presume the swatches used to create such a sight, some mix of exhaustion, isolation, and desperation, again and again. The thought that this was what lay beneath his will and dignity, it made his stomach drop.

Then he dared a glance over at other Jon, the inky figure that dared not get closer than two paces to anyone else. It was difficult to even think of him as a ‘him,’ and not an ‘it.’ But, if the end of the world had truly taken everything but their lives, then of course he would be unrecognizable. But the man in front him was Martin, and the man beside him was Jon. That little shadow covered in eyes is Jon. The feeling of there always being at least one eye watching him at all times still prickled uncomfortably at him, but Martin found it ebbing away against a new wash of sympathy. He looked back at himself.

“What got you?” he asked himself.

‘Loneliness,’ he said, and Martin understood what his expression was. He looked alone. The thought of it took the colour from his face, and he glanced at Jon and Tim, just to make sure they were still there. He focused on the bony hands holding onto his arm.

“I had been taken by it before, but after Jon died—”

“I didn’t die, Martin, I became part of the Eye. I became the Archive,” Jon interrupted before the word ‘died’ could settle in the air.

Suddenly, this Martin looked much smaller. Not physically, but it was in the way that he shrunk into himself at Jon’s words. They were harsh, even, matter-of-fact.

“...Well, you died to me,” he said so quietly that it didn’t even echo.

The remaining fear left Martin’s face, replaced entirely by pity.

“That’s a matter of perspective, then. Speaking objectively, I’m alive. Just leave the explanations to me,” he suggested.

There’s that same cruel detachment. The other Martin’s face did not waver at them, but the rest of his body did. It blurred around the edges and the fog curled around him like a blanket until the colour had been completely washed away. When all that remained was a grey, cloudy column of fog, it fell back to the floor, leaving nothing in its place. His Jon didn’t even react to it. 

“Some avatars greatly change in physical appearance when taken by a patron, and some do not. My appearance does not make me any less Jonathan Sims than his appearance makes him less Martin Blackwood. We are the same,” he said analytically.

Martin felt his hands begin to shake. Jon was definitely treating him like an assistant. Was that his fate, to just follow his boss around until time ended?

“Uh, how did he…?” he began to say, knowing he didn’t have an end to his sentence.

It wasn’t the question he wanted to ask, but he didn’t want to hear the answer to anything else.

“Disappearing is a trait of the Lonely. The Lonely values isolation, as the Eye values knowledge. Becoming an avatar means carrying out the will of your patron by any means necessary, even if it is supernatural,” he explained. 

Tim scoffed. There was something resembling a smile on his face, but his eyes were bewildered.

“So you guys are, what, spooky warlocks?”

Jon started walking again. They followed. Tim kept brushing arms with Martin as they went, which went unacknowledged but still appreciated.

“I wish it were that simple,” he said, then added, “or voluntary.”

Each tunnel looked identical to the one that led to it. Martin couldn’t tell how long they had been walking, but didn’t think they were backtracking anymore. Occasionally, he’d make out what he thought might be a landmark feature of a specific tunnel, only to find it again in the next, and the next, and so on. Jon was starting to put a little more pressure on his leg, but he knew it couldn’t have felt any better than when they first descended.

“If it’s not voluntary, how do you stop it?” Jon said, like he had been holding onto those words for several minutes.

Martin and Tim looked at him curiously, but the other Jon didn’t even slow down.

“I mean, you were talking about gods, right?” he clarified.

For a second, they weren’t sure if the other Jon had even heard them. It still continued walking.

“I did not mean to say that it was strictly in voluntary. Will is a… fickle thing. I am as close to the Eye as anyone will ever be, and now I would describe my will as mostly my own. But there were times before this, when I wasn’t as close to it, that I would swear I was being controlled. I cannot know which of my actions that led me to this point were mine. There is no way to define it.”

Martin realized there was a faint static constantly emanating from him when it died down right before he started speaking. Somehow, his voice sounded higher fidelity, more like a person. The static rose again when it was done. Jon focused on the floor after that, but at least stopped trying to put so much weight on his leg. Tim must’ve seen his expression fall.

“You didn’t answer either of his questions,” he commented.

His eyes did temporarily refocus on Tim, who refused to falter under their scrutiny.

“I am replacing the mass ritual with one dedicated to the Ceaseless Watcher. It and the others like it do not have formal names. Gods, fears, entities, it does not matter what you call them.”

It could have been the clarity in his last answer, but this one took Martin several seconds to decipher. A grainy, pulsing static coated every syllable, like the original words had been chronologically transferred between every major recording device of the last century. Tim clearly had more to say, but bit it back.

At some point, the passages got a bit narrower, and from the edges of the torchlight, there were doors. They were old, wooden things, meeting the dustier, duller, more cracked concrete of these halls. He was curious to know what may have been behind them, but Jon– either of them– likely wouldn’t appreciate the detour, and Tim certainly wouldn’t appreciate the risk. The shadow promptly stopped in front of one of them, and the remaining three of them uncomfortably bunched up together to avoid touching him. 

“You wished for proof that you were serving a purpose greater than your current understanding,” he said, “it is in here.”

Though clearly tired, Jon attempted reaching for the door handle, but Tim pushed his hand away. He stood defensively in front of them both.

“Hold on. Why don’t you open it?” he interrogated.

The shadow did not waver. Instead, he pulled a spindly limb from his form and twisted the handle, then pushed it open. Inside, glinting in the light, sat the corpse of an old woman. She had light, grayed hair and a thin frame. They stood there for a long time. Jon shifted against Martin’s grasp and pulled himself up with the doorframe, never taking his eyes off her.

“That’s Gertrude Robinson, isn’t it?” he said, distant.

“Correct,” his own corrupted voice replied.

Martin wasn’t keen on getting any closer to the stiff corpse, but he stayed close behind Jon as he limped against the walls and stray cardboard boxes of the small room. Tim stayed close behind him in turn, but always kept an eye on the other Jon, who never moved. When the light Martin held moved with him, it became clear that the dark splotches on her torso were not tricks of the light, but very old, dark bloodstains.

The room itself felt like a snapshot in time. Given her condition, there were surprisingly few signs of decay, and the small areas where the fabric frayed evidenced bullet holes. Three entry points, it seemed. Her expression was locked and fearful, as if she was still looking down the barrel of what shot her. Surrounding her were dozens of tapes and thousands of papers, some on her desk but mostly in open boxes that were splayed across the floor. The papers he could see sat with that grimy weight that the real statements back at the archives had. The desk was old, wooden, and cumbersome, and an empty list came up in Martin’s head when he tried to think of people in the institute who could move it to such a place without question. The same thing happened when he tried to think of people there who could access a gun. 

None of it made sense. Sat there at that desk was one mystery surrounded by mysteries, by tapes and papers and tunnels and an institution. It was all one giant mystery.

While Jon was straining to look at some of the statements on her desk, Martin dared a look back at the shadow. He still hadn’t moved.

“What, um, who killed her?” he asked.

“Jonah Magnus,” he said simply.

Martin scrunched his face at the answer, and it seems he had the most mild reaction. Beneath Tim’s sputtering insistence for clarification, he heard a rustle of papers and boxes, and caught Jon right before he had a chance to trip onto the stained desk. His breathing had gotten shallower. They ought to get him to a doctor as soon as possible, Martin thought.

“Jonah Magnus, founder of the Magnus Institute,” was all he clarified with.

“No, no, no,” Tim said sharply, as if scolding a poorly-behaved animal, “he’s dead. He’s been dead. Whatever about everything else, but I’m pretty sure someone would notice if a fucking 200 year old man was walking around here with a shotgun.”

He was rearing up at the shadow, gripping the CO2 canister like the blunt force weapon it had become. Martin couldn’t see it, but could guess at his expression. 

“It was a rifle,” the shadow corrected, and Tim snorted something humorless, “and I understand that receiving this much information in a short period is overwhelming, especially since none of you are yet aligned closely enough with the Eye. You will be with time, so my suggestion is that you get used to it.”

Tim took a small step back, obscuring Martin’s view of the other Jon.

“Well, excuse me for expecting to find a basement in the institute’s basement, and not—, not whatever the hell this is,” he spat.

The shadow blinked at him, a disgusting thing to witness. The static emanating from it wavered slightly.

“Martyr, I understand you’ve searched through much of the unknown yourself. Every question you ask has an answer, but goes much further than the research of one human.”

If he really squinted at it, Martin could hear a sense of something like comfort in other Jon’s voice. Tim’s silhouette shrunk noticeably. He stuttered at the shadow, and a dozen or so sentences died in the air at the very first syllable. Martin shuffled towards him.

“How did he kill her? How is he still alive?”

They startled at Jon’s sudden question, and Martin cringed when he heard how strained his voice was, carried only by desperation. The shadow flicked its piercing gaze at the two of them. 

“Jonah Magnus spent his life with access to infinite knowledge and a great fear of death. When he attempted the ritual of the Watcher’s Crown, he did not bring the Eye into his reality, but found a solution to his great problem. For as long as he stands in the Panopticon, he can see anything, and as long as he has a vessel, his consciousness may continue existing,” he explained.

Martin felt as though he’d been given about 6 pieces from a 2000 piece puzzle, and he couldn’t even wager a guess as to what the picture was supposed to be. Jonah Magnus was apparently a ghost. Cool. Alright.

“The Panopticon, from the Millbank prison,” Jon said, and he sounded like he was in a trance, “These are the tunnels of Millbank prison, and the panopticon is still at its center.”

“Correct,” the shadow confirmed. 

Martin awkwardly attempted to fit the few puzzle pieces he had together. To his surprise and concern, two of them snapped together quite nicely.

“Uh, I know we’re here with you, and all that,” he awkwardly gestured towards the other Jon, “but if that’s all true, then shouldn’t we be worried that there’s a murderer in the tunnels?”

That seemed to bring Tim back into the situation at hand. Shaking some of the fear off himself, he stood a little taller. Somehow, the idea that one of the threats facing them here is actually tangible– tangible enough to wield a physical weapon– was something of a comfort.

“The part of him that killed the last Archivist is not in the tunnels. Regardless, taking violence against those serving his own patron would be idiotic, if not to his own detriment.”

There must be something in the pamphlet they give you when you become a monster that teaches you the importance of being vague and ominous. Martin took the extra puzzle piece with some annoyance, its edges jagged and nonsensical.

“Well, where is he?” is all he could think to ask. 

“He is in the archives, with the other assistant,” he said.

Tim jolted. He grabbed Martin by the arm and pulled them back out into the main corridor.

“Sasha! We have to go,” he said hurriedly.

“He will not harm her,” the other Jon said, unmoving.

The only person who hesitated at his word was Jon. Martin was attempting to pull him in closer so they could move quicker, but he pushed him away. He weakly met Tim’s intense glare.

“Tim, this information could be—”

“It doesn’t matter, Jon! It doesn’t matter,” he interrupted.

He tugged on Martin’s arm again, but he wouldn’t leave without Jon, and Jon wouldn’t leave without answers. The other Jon approached them uncomfortably close.

“She has not been harmed, and will not be harmed,” he said firmly.

Like a parasite, an image squeezed into Martin’s mind. Sasha was sitting at Tim’s desk in the archives and Elias was standing next to her, evenly staring into the office. They were surrounded by worm carcasses, though Jane Prentiss’s body had been taken by emergency services. He offered her distant platitudes while tears hit the desk.

“They are simply waiting for your return.”

He blinked the image away, and he was indeed still in the tunnels. He shuddered.

“Stop doing that,” Tim hissed, and confirmed that Martin wasn’t just having strange hallucinations, “and I don’t believe you. I’m going.”

Though he clearly resisted it, there was something pleading beneath the fiery determination in Tim’s face when he looked back at them. Jon glanced at the room one more time, his face creased with shame. He met his eyes a bit more evenly.

“Yes, we should go.”

He let Martin pull him into a better walking position, but still refused to be carried. As they got moving again, shadow Jon trailed behind them. 

“I know a shorter way,” he called, “if it's so important to you.”

Tim didn’t stop moving, and Martin followed his lead. He could only ignore him until they had reached their first fork.

“Left,” shadow Jon said simply.

The look Tim shot at him burned white hot, daring him to prove his malicious intent. The other Jon simply idled behind them. The glare eventually softened into consideration, and he reluctantly followed the instruction. For the next two turns, he did not look back, and neither did Martin, they just followed his directions as he called them out. Within ten minutes, he saw cracks of light seeping from the edges of a trapdoor above them.

Not fifteen minutes had passed before the firefighters gave the clear, though a few personnel still passed in and around the building. All the while, Sasha split her attention between the front doors and the crowd across the street. By the time the clear had been given, the cold consideration that she may not just be missing them started to weigh in her chest. One of the firefighters approached her shortly after the announcement with a paternal firmness in his voice.

“We found one person in the basement, a woman. Medical is doing everything they can,” he said.

Sasha’s expression shifted about four times throughout the sentence. ‘Oh, Prentiss? She’s the bioterrorist behind this whole mess,’ she stopped herself from saying. What she did say was much softer, quieter.

“No one else?”

He shook his head.

“The area beneath it, the sub-basement? We’re searching the area the best we can, but we can’t find a formal layout of it. Would you know where something like that is?”

“Ah, the Millbank prison tunnels,” Elias stepped into the conversation, “don’t bother. They’ve never been mapped, but it’s known that they stretch out quite a ways beneath the institute, and they were purposefully fashioned to be a maze. Robert Smirke was the… eccentric type.”

The firefighter blinked at him. Sasha felt something begin to break inside her.

“Is that, are you…?”

“Head of the Magnus Institute. My apologies, I usually wouldn't be so harsh, but in my experience they are very easy to get lost in, to the point of being unsafe. They were sealed for a good reason. I would imagine that however far you’ve searched is far enough. There’d be no reason to wander around.”

The firefighter took a step back and gestured for him to follow.

“You should probably let the search team know. Do you have any proof that they were never mapped?”

They began to head back inside and Sasha followed. They didn’t stop her. Surely the others would know not to travel too far into the tunnels, and surely they would be found and rescued before it was called off. As she listened to the passive way Elias discussed the tunnels, a trembling anxiety began to creep up her arms and chest. She rubbed her hands together to ease their shaking, repeating mantras of trust and assurance in her head.

The archives smelled terrible. They probably stunk before the worms died, but the quiet brought it to the forefront of her senses. Their carcasses were scattered all over the floor, many of them flattened with the faint indentations of boots, and in a particularly large pile of them, there was the outline of a body. Some of them still slithered around, now completely solitary and mindless.

She stared blankly into Jon’s office as the search team filed in and out of the dark hole in the wall. Elias was discussing something with one of them. In her head, she saw Tim, Martin, and Jon, hopelessly walking around the tunnels, calling for help, and being answered only with the wet sound of wriggling worms threatening to overpower them. They were scared, and in pain. She felt something catch in her throat.

A firm hand on her shoulder startled her out of it, an EMT looking at her with concern and intention.

“Miss, are you hurt? Do you feel ill?” he asked evenly.

“Uh…”

The pain resurfaced with the acknowledgement, and her leg twitched with a deep ache. After Martin had removed the worms from her, she had just let her skirt fall back over the wounds, and after that her priority was with Tim, then the CO2 system.

“I-In my leg, I think,” she said awkwardly.

She pulled up her skirt to the knee. Blood had run down from the punctures in her calf down to her socks and into her flats. They didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore, but were still glistening in the wound itself. She grimaced at it, but the responder only directed her to sit down.

Time passed, but not enough. Sasha was treated quickly and efficiently, then checked over for additional wounds, and Elias was reluctantly checked as well. The search team documented where they had looked and where they decided to stop, then slowly retreated out of the tunnels. Nobody came out with them. When they left up the stairs, one of them lagged behind to gently explain the situation to the both of them, but she barely heard it over the hot rush of blood in her ears. Each breath threatened a tipping point. After some more detached exchanges with Elias, the last of them headed out of the building, and all that was left was the painful, painful quiet. All of the other departments had already gone home early. With a horrible strike of grief, she realized she was sitting at Tim’s desk.

“You should go home,” Elias told her after a minute or so of dreadful silence.

He was probably right. This wasn’t normal, this wasn’t something that just happened, and she would need time to process it. She knew that intellectually, but she stayed where she was.

“I can’t, Elias. I… When they come back, I need to be here. I need to see them,” she said.

She expected more of a fight, but he nodded in response. His own expression was unreadable. 

“I understand. My office is open if you’d rather get away from the worms,” he said.

His voice sounded strange with sympathy in it. She forced a smile at the offer, but just shook her head, and he didn’t press it. Instead, he let his polite expression fall as he turned away, and he stared at the office for a long time. Images of the three of them wouldn’t escape her head, afraid and hurt and lost, but they didn’t break her. What did was the sight of Elias Bouchard, professional smartass and always giving the impression he knew more than he let on, seeming to truly have no tricks or aces left. She heaved a sharp breath, which caught in her throat, and tears started welling up in her eyes. She covered her face with her arm as she cried.

“I’m sure they’re alive,” he said, “the tunnels have multiple exits. If they’re lost, the chances are they’ll just resurface on a street corner somewhere.”

He slightly wavered with an awkwardness that sounded so alien coming from him. Sasha nodded in acknowledgement. He was still standing there, unmoving, when she finally got a handle on herself again. She considered going home, but couldn’t make herself do it. 

“Don’t, uh… don’t let me hold you here,” she said eventually.

He didn’t react to that for a few seconds then turned around sharply, like he didn’t hear her initially.

“Oh, no. You’re not,” he assured her.

Some more time passed. Another wave of grief washed over her, but stayed only a minute or two. When she looked at her hands, they were beginning to feel less like her own. It was like she was hovering somewhere just above herself.

“It would be really stupid to go down and look for them, right?” she said against the silence, mostly to herself.

His answer this time had a bit more of its regular detachment, but was still low, more intentional.

“I’m considering it myself. But, yes, yes it would be.”

That answer twisted a bit inside her. What did Elias know about them, beyond anything that could be found on an offer letter? Was he truly just that empathetic of a human being, that he would risk his own safety for their sakes? Perhaps he just hates the paperwork. Though, when she thought about it, paperwork was about the only thing she could comfortably imagine him doing. From what she knew, none of them had even seen Elias in anything but those weird little suits he wears to work. Beyond her own interactions with him, all she knew of him were Tim’s stories about how much of a pretentious dork he was. She laughed quietly when she remembered one of his better jokes, and Elias tilted his head at her.

“Oh, sorry, uh…” she paused briefly, “I was just thinking about Tim. He always has a joke saved for any situation he finds himself in, no matter what it is. He’s probably down there, talking about… I don’t know, I’m not as clever.”

Elias hummed in acknowledgement. 

“Quite,” was all he had to say.

Memories of the three of them kept her out of her present situation for a few precious minutes. Tim showing her the best way to be snarky in corporate emails, making her laugh with his stories about flirting his way into private documents. Martin checking in with everyone after lunch with tea made just how they like it, bonding over the strangeness of the job as they teased him about his work crush. And Jon, ever the skeptic, always chiming in with a quip or comment on the way to his office. He was downright mean to Martin sometimes, but she was so sure it was all a ruse. Now she may never know. She may never know.

Another wave hit her, harder than the last ones. It had been about two hours since she pulled the alarm now, and there was no sign of them. Her cries turned to sobs, though she still didn’t voice them, heaving shaky breaths into the sleeves of her sweater. Between tears, she heard Elias very quietly mumbling to himself. She only caught the words ‘Jon’ and ‘here.’ She glanced at him, but he was looking at the office.

So he was grieving too, in his own way. It was nice to confirm she wasn’t the only one in the room with emotions. She was almost amused at that, but the thought came with a quick stab of guilt that took out any humor in it. Of course Elias had emotions, of course he cared for them, even if she couldn’t see it. He’s probably just trying to be professional, and lord knows he’s not the only one in the Institute obsessed with professionalism. He might’ve considered them friends. If he’s half as aloof outside of work as he is inside, he probably didn’t have many other options. That thought came with another stab of guilt.

Sasha realized upon closer inspection that most of what she knew of him came from a really weird interview and a lot of shit–talking from Tim and Jon. Martin never had much to say about him, but Sasha never heard him speak ill of anyone. From neutral sources or Elias himself, though, she really didn’t know much about him. With this, the strangest thought came to her head. What if he was normal? What if he was just a regular guy, perhaps with some strange social quirks and a habit of leaving unfortunately poor first impressions? What if he felt the same grief? What if he was dealing with the same thing she was, completely alone? The silence suddenly felt much heavier, but she pressed against it.

“Y’know, you and Jon are a lot alike, in some ways,” she said, then at his puzzled glance, added “in a good way, I mean.”

Now there was an expression she didn’t see on him often. Confusion. It lasted only a second before it morphed into something like amusement. 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said with a slight smile.

She stumbled over an attempt or two at comparing them. She at least managed to avoid the words ‘snobbish’ and ‘uptight.’ 

“Just… Pragmatic. Professional to almost a fault. I mean, how long have you been standing? You know you can sit down,” she dared to laugh slightly.

Elias did glance down at his feet as if he had just noticed it himself, but it was so fast she couldn’t comment on it. 

“I prefer to stand. And… Thank you,” he said finally.

Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. There was a twinge of awkwardness left in the air, and Sasha was daring to reminisce again, but what broke it this time was the sudden rise of a very muffled, very familiar voice. 

“It doesn’t—, oh, there’s a latch,” it said.

Immediately, she was up on her feet. From a corner of the archives, somewhere behind the shelves, she heard a loud creak, and the crack of wood hitting wood. 

“It’s the archive! It leads to the archive!” Tim called.

Sasha nearly toppled Elias over while running towards his voice. He kindly let her go ahead of him. As soon as Tim’s other foot touched the floor of their workspace, Sasha nearly pushed him back into the tunnels with the force of her hug. Tim returned it without thinking.

“Oh my god, Tim,” she cried into his shoulder.

The last wave of emotion hit her, relief and mourning and exhaustion, all hitching her breath and cascading tears down her face. She let herself sob openly this time.

“I’m sorry we kept you waiting, Sash. We just loved the tunnels so much, we had to stay a while,” he smiled.

Just as she had predicted, she thought, a joke for everything. When she finally let go of him, Martin was standing at the trapdoor entrance, hands hovering over Jon, who was leaning on one of the shelves. She went for Martin next, and he accepted the hug graciously. Even still, Jon dared to look surprised when she hugged him too, though much gentler given how awful he looked. Not that any of them appeared particularly well. As they shuffled out of the rows of shelves and back into the larger communal area, Elias nodded at them, professional as ever. She definitely caught something genuine in his polite smile, though. 

“Glad to see you’re all back,” he said, though he was only looking at Jon, “I was truly beginning to worry.”

Jon and Martin kept glancing back at the shelves, though Jon was much more obvious about it. Strangely, a prickling sensation ran down Sasha’s spine.

“Yeah, we had a… bit of a run in,” Jon said.

“More worms?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” he replied, cringing a bit.

She followed his gaze back towards the shelves. With a startle, it seemed like a shadow shifted from behind them. Sasha’s heart lurched when it kept going, all at once taking in what stood so plainly before her. It was a dark figure, and it was covered in eyes. She screamed.