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#(except elias or i guess maybe rosie)
bananonbinary · 3 years
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Time for a Salty Meta Post about Martin!
people who’ve followed this blog for a bit know that spending six hours combing through text for some goddamn sources is my specialty, so i compiled every time jon ever talked about martin’s work in season 1. which for the record, he stopped complaining about all the way back in episode 26, where he was angry that martin of all people got hurt.
things jon gets mad at martin for:
not being able to find records that don’t exist
not being able to find someone based only on a first name
the Dog
not wearing trousers in his off-hours
being the one that got caught up in the jane prentiss thing
mag 004 and mag 012 both have jon taking potshots at martin over research that was proven accurate by outside sources
things jon has never once complained about:
martin not understanding the filing system and just putting stuff away at random
martin being clumsy, constantly ruining things, spilling tea everywhere everyday, etc
martin turning in incompetent, poorly-edited, or badly formatted reports
martin not understanding the terminology used, skills expected, etc., and generally being extremely new to the field
please for the love of god stop making martin the silly bumbling idiot who can’t do anything right just because he doesn’t have a formal education. there’s zero evidence for it in the text, and it’s really weird to act like a 4 year degree would outweigh the *10 years* of job experience he has, not just in academia, but in the institute itself by season one. my boy has worked there longer than ANY of the rest of the main cast. screw you guys.
tl;dr: martin is never once shown to be bad at his job, jon pretty much only ever gets mad at him for the really stupid first impression and also not finding stuff that no one else was able to find either. after martin got hurt, jon talks about his research basically the same way he talks about tim’s or sasha’s work.
fucking proof under the cut:
(i didnt include the s1 finale or martin’s statement bc that’s just...two entire episodes of them talking to each other, but there isn’t really any notable Martin Complaints in either of them imo)
I swear, if he’s brought another dog in here, I’m going to peel him.
[pre-launch trailer]
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Well, technically three, but I don’t count Martin as he’s unlikely to contribute anything but delays.
[...] Alongside this Tim, Sasha and, yes, I suppose, Martin will be doing some supplementary investigation to see what details may be missing from what we have.
[MAG001 Anglerfish]
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Martin couldn’t find any records of Ex Altiora as a title in existent catalogues of esoteric or similar literature, so I assigned Sasha to double-check. Still nothing.
[MAG004 Pageturner]
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I had Martin conduct a follow-up interview with Mr. Woodward last week, but it was unenlightening. Apparently there have been no further bags at number 93 and in the intervening years he has largely discounted many of the stranger aspects of his experience. I wasn’t expecting much, as time generally makes people inclined to forget what they would rather not believe, but at least it got Martin out of the Institute for an afternoon, which is always a welcome relief.
[MAG005 Thrown Away]
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Martin was unable to find the exact date the original house was built but the earliest records he could find list it as being bought by Walter Fielding in 1891.
[...]
We cannot prove any connection, but Martin unearthed a report on an Agnes Montague, who was found dead in her Sheffield flat on the evening of November 23rd 2006, the same day Mr. Lensik claims to have uprooted the tree.
[MAG008 Burned Out]
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According to Martin, who was here when they took this statement, it was at this point in writing that Mr. Herbert announced he needed some sleep before continuing. He was shown to the break room where he went to sleep on the couch. He did not awaken; unfortunately succumbing to the lung cancer right there. Martin says the staff had been aware of how serious Mr. Herbert’s condition was, and had advised him to seek medical aid prior to giving his statement, but were told rather bluntly by the old man that he would not wait another second to state his case. I can’t decide whether this lends more or less credibility to his tale.
[MAG010 Vampire Killer]
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“Veepalach” might also be a mishearing of the Polish word “wypalać”, according to Martin, which means to cauterize or brand. Admittedly, if Martin speaks Polish in the same way he “speaks Latin,” then he might be talking nonsense again, but I’ve looked it up and it appears to check out.
[MAG012 First Aid]
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I sent Martin to look into this ‘Angela’ character - not that I want him to get chopped up, of course, but someone had to. Apparently, he spent three days looking into every woman named Angela in Bexley over the age of 50. He could not find anyone that matches the admittedly vague description given here, though he informs me that he had some very pleasant chats about jigsaws. Useless ass.
[MAG014 Piecemeal]
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Martin declined to help with this investigation as he’s “a bit claustrophobic”
[MAG015 Lost John’s Cave]
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There simply aren’t enough details given in this statement to actually investigate, short of Martin confirming that Mr. Vittery did indeed live at the addresses he provided.
[MAG016 Arachnophobia]
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Oh, he’s off sick this week. Stomach problems, I think.
Blessed relief if you ask me.
[...]
I asked Martin to try and hunt down Mr. Adekoya himself for a follow-up, but have been informed that he passed away in 2006. 
[MAG017 The Boneturner’s Tale]
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MARTIN
Well, I need to tell someone what happened, and you can vouch for the soundness of my mind, can’t you?
ARCHIVIST
That is beside the point.
[MAG022 Colony]
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Martin! Good lord man, if you’re going to be staying in the Archives, at least have the decency to put some trousers on!
[MAG023 Schwartzwald]
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Martin found one other thing while combing through police reports for the Hither Green area. About a month after this statement was given, on May 15th, 2015, police were called out to once again investigate the chapel.
[MAG025 Growing Dark]
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I know, but it would have to have been Martin, wouldn’t it? I mean, anything goes wrong around here, it always seems to happen to him. Anyway, we’re getting off topic. Why didn’t you report this?
[MAG026 A Distortion]
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Martin made contact with the son, Marcus McKenzie, but he declined to talk to us, saying that he’d “already made his statement.”
[MAG027 A Sturdy Lock]
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Tim and Martin had a bit more luck investigating Tom Haan, though only really enough to confirm that he seems to have completely vanished following his departure from Aver Meats on the 12th of July.
[MAG030 Killing Floor]
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Martin’s research would seem to indicate the place employed a reasonable number of international staff they preferred to keep off the books
[...]
TIM
Ah well, that’s actually what he was asking, huh! Um, apparently Martin, uh, took delivery of a couple of items last week addressed to you. Did he not mention it?
ARCHIVIST
No, he… Oh, yes, actually. I completely forgot. He said he put it in my desk drawer, hold on.
[MAG036 Taken Ill]
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How to Successfully Attempt Murder
starring, Elias Bouchard as the murder victim.
A/N: So even though this technically isn’t a reader insert, its still in second person because- uh- because I’m currently stuck writing in second person? Like, okay, I’m having fun, alright? Lemme be.
But hey. For everyone who has repressed feelings of anger towards one Jonah Magnus, this one’s for you.
-
"Hey Mel- oh. Are you... going somewhere?"
Melanie startles, almost dropping the cup of coffee she has clutched in one hand. You stop just shy of the kitchenette doorway, feeling awkward for have accidentally snuck up on her.
"Jesus- I didn't hear you coming at all."
"Yeah... sorry. What're you doing?"
"I'm-" her expression goes through a series of stages, each somehow more interpretive than the last, "I- I went out to get coffee, that's all. And I thought I'd bring some for Elias..."
You squint at her, suspicious, "Elias?"
You don't know how, but Melanie's expression remains completely smooth beside the slight twitch of her eye, "Yes."
"Riiiight." You know that she can probably tell you don’t believe her. Still, you gesture at the cup, "You're going up to deliver that to him, then?"
Melanie glances down at the beverage, "Ah- yeah." She pauses, seemingly thoughtful, before her eyes settle on you again, "D'you wanna come up with me?"
Frankly, Melanie is acting very suspiciously right now. You know for a fact that this isn't just her 'having' gotten Elias a coffee while she was out. But you don't quite know what she's actually up to, and you have a feeling that something is about to happen.
"Alright, I'll come with."
-
You're standing beside the door to Elias's office, falling just outside his line of sight. Melanie told you to wait out here as she delivered her 'coffee' but left the door ajar just so that the conversation inside can be easily overheard.
"-I assume you don't believe me, then? That murdering me would also kill you?"
You can only imagine what kind of look must be on Melanie's face, right about now, "I-I-I don't know what you're..."
Despite the topic of conversation, Elias sounds unnervingly calm. You're not even the one who’s tried to kill him and yet you still feel a twinge of annoyance, "Coffee is not as good for disguising tastes as you might think. And it's even worse at disguising texture. Dissolved pills always leave such a- hm- chalky residue."
Melanie bristles, "Look, Elias, I never-"
"I assume this is your first time attempting to poison someone." You silently shake your head. Poor Melanie, Elias doesn't even sound fazed, talking about an attempt on his life like he's just scolding her for coming into work late, "Do you actually know how many painkillers it takes to kill someone, or were you just hoping I'd take enough to get sick, and you could finish the job... manually?"
Melanie takes a deep breath, but even from here you can hear the fine tremor underneath it, "Why...? Why bother asking then? Why bother if you know everything?"
Elias chuckles, unperturbed, "I don't know everything, Melanie. Do you know how exhausting that would be?
"I'll tell you one thing I don't know," he continues, "and that's how to convince you that I'm trying to help. Honestly, you're one of the lucky ones. But not if we're all dead thanks to an... overzealous-" you wince, "-attempt at independence."
Melanie sounds like she's gearing up for a fight, like a toy with its key turned too many times, "I don't need you to-"
Elias interrupts, speaking with an infuriating condescendence, like he's just turning down Melanie's request for a promotion the third time this month, "Let's have no more clumsy assassination attempts, alright? And we'll say no more about it. Consider this your first warning." His voice swoops lower, quieter, dangerous, "Next time I shall have to escalate matters, and that won't be a pleasant process for anybody."
A pause for dramatics. "Understood?"
Melanie grits out her own assent, "Yes."
Melanie seems now to be a problem neatly taken care of and filed away, never to be considered again except maybe for his own occasional amusement. There's an audible smile in Elias's voice, "Good."
Next thing you know, Melanie storms out of the office and straight past you, looking too angry to have remembered that she left you standing there. You blankly watch her go, mind spinning in lazy circles while considering the conversation you overheard.
"Will you close the door before you leave, Alex?"
You don't bother to stop long enough in his office for a chat of your own.
-
It’s curious, really.
He said, 'I don't know everything. Do you know how exhausting that would be?'
He's some form of omniscient, that's for sure. Maybe like a maid working in a Victorian household, always on top of the gossip. Whether that be creating the gossip himself, or simply being the agent who spreads it, that depended on the time of day.
But he can't know everything, all the time. Because that would be too much.
Which means there are loopholes.
"Hey Rosie."
Little nosy Rosie looks up, smiling politely as you stop by to say hello. It's not a very comfortable smile, because anyone who's anyone knows to stay well away from the Archives and their staff. Not Rosie though, little Rosie has quite the fine palette for juicy bits of gossip, reason why she bothers talking to the lot of you, "Hello Alex. Everything well in the Archives?"
You wave your hand dismissively, "We're getting along, I suppose. Lot of excitement with all that murder business, you know how it is."
There's that gleam in her eyes now, that 'oh, what's this?' gleam of curiosity, "Not quite, no. Listen, did I hear it straight that Jon's back? Even after being accused of murder?”
You shift, getting yourself comfortable leaning against Rosie's desk, "Well, they dropped the charges, right? Turns out they had it all wrong, Jon wasn't the one who took a pipe to some old man's head. I mean, look at him? D'you think he'd do it?"
Rosie squirms under your gaze, looking distinctly guilty, "I suppose not. He's a bit of an arse sometimes but- maybe not murder."
"Oh, it's all right Rosie, if my body ever turns up dead you know where to look." You wink. Her lips quirk up in a smile. It's just a spot of joking you two are doing here, really. You turn your head then, just slightly, pretending to look around a bit when you spy a tea kettle boiling away in the corner. "Having a cuppa?"
"What?" She follows your gaze and startles, "Oh! No, no, that's for Mr. Bouchard. He takes his tea this time of day."
You make a low noise in the back of your throat, casually interested but not obviously, "That so. You deliver his tea all times of the day, then?"
Rosie gives you a bemused look, as if she suspects you're trying to turn your nose up on the fact that part of her job is to bring tea to her boss. "It's only twice a day. He's never broken from schedule, doesn't bother me for it otherwise."
You hum an empty agreement, "Seems like the kind of man to keep on schedule."
"I should get to that actually," She pushes away from her desk and starts to her feet, "The water's probably done."
"Yeah, alright." You push off of her desk, giving her nod as you wander over to the door of her office, "Nice chatting with you Rosie. You should come down to visit the Archives sometime."
The last thing you see is her indulgent smile, the kind you give someone when you're only putting up with them until they're gone. In this case specifically, it's a -I don’t want to get caught up in whatever goes down there in the Archives, no thank you- kind of smile.
Oh well. You got what you came for anyways.
It's rather easy after that.
A month of seeing neither hide nor hair of him, Jon comes back. He looks remarkably harried, and you don't think you'd have even noticed him coming into work had you not been in the reception area during that time. As such, you watch him rush straight past you and for the stairs, and you can make a guess for where he's headed with a single-minded focus like that. It seems like Elias has a lot to do with the nonsense that occurs down in the Archives, and people can't be happier having someone to blame.
You pop down in the Archives and tell Martin that Jon's back. He sighs in relief. Even before becoming scarce at his own workplace, it was always Martin that Jon kept the most contacts with, only to completely drop off the grid these last few weeks. Somewhere in the midst of your conversation Melanie comes marching in, a crazed look in her eye, and you know what she's planning too.
I mean, what better time than when the boss-bossman is distracted, eh?
An uncomfortable few seconds of watching Melanie stomp about before she leaves, the door closing behind her with a bang. Martin sighs tiredly and you know that he wishes she would just stop with all of this. These days, he’s more and more like a tired father of two toddler who has accepted his horrible lot in life, and yet still his children continue to insist on making it worse.
You give him a comforting little pat on the back. As far as you’re concerned, it's their loss if they insist on putting their heads in the lion's mouth.
Heading upstairs, you find Rosie's office empty. It must be if she’s settling the little dispute going on up in research. The kettle is however turned on, because Mr. Bouchard has always been a man of schedule.
It's easy, to slip in something into the water.
-
Elias can't know everything, all the time.
He knows he needs to keep an eye on his Archivist's development. The brunt of his gaze has always rested on Jon and it’s obvious that none of you Assistants can ever hope to stand in the same regard, not really.
Elias keeps an eye on Melanie. Melanie is unstable. She doesn't like her actions being controlled; she doesn't like being trapped here in this place. Never mind that she agreed to join the Institute on her own violation, it's her free will that matters to her now, or at least the illusion of it. Melanie is the kind of person who isn't afraid to fight for what she wants.
Elias keeps an eye on Tim too, though he pretends he doesn’t. It just makes sense. Tim is almost like Melanie, but he's been beaten down too much too soon, and won't take it out on Elias. His target is instead Jon, who seems to be at the center of most of his problems and is a much easiertarget. As long as that continues to be true, Tim is content on simply being indirectly snide towards Elias.
Elias doesn't really keep an eye on Martin. Oh, he knows that Martin is just as angry with him as any of others, but Martin has never been the kind of person to do anything about it.
Elias doesn't really keep an eye on you. You know what people think of you. That you're kind of an airhead. Always lost in your head, can't be bothered with the world outside it half the time. You're the kind of person that likes keeping their head down and quietly working away at your desk, and that hasn't much changed since... well, everything.
Nah. The murder thing isn't even on the top of your list. You'd just like some peace and quiet down here, for once. And, well, Elias seems to be the root of everyone's problems, including yours...
Still, there's no point in doing anything without at least enjoying the results. You researched extensively on what kind of poison to buy, taking into mind Elias’ oh-so-kind lecture to Melanie about picking your poison. It wouldn’t have done for him to taste something off about his tea the moment he took the first sip.
So, after exactly the time it would take for his tea to kick into effect, if you compensate for the time he would take to drink enough of it, you check in on Elias.
The first thing you see is the man collapsed onto his desk, eyes wide open and mouth frothing. The second you see is Jon, staring at the now dead body in front of him with surprise.
"Oh. It worked."
Jon's eyes snap toward you, "Wh- Alex? Did you do this?!"
You rub at your ears at the pitch of Jon's voice, an octave or two higher with hysteria, "I didn't know it'd work, you know?"
"You killed him!"
You shrug, slipping inside the room. "Sure." You can't be bothered to close the door behind you as cross over to the desk. Jon scampers out of his own seat, edging warily to the other side of the room. He can do whatever he wants as long as he doesn't call the cops immediately.
You check for a pulse on the body and find it missing.
From the furthest corner of the room, Jon stutters, "Y-you're insane."
You can't be bothered with an answer.
Fascinatingly enough though, Elias's eyes are still moving. They rove around wildly in his sockets, almost like they're the only way he can convey his surprise at being got. It's still unnatural though, and you have the strangest surety that it's an important detail.
Jon by this point has left the office, and you should really clean up here before someone comes in. Still, it almost feels like things aren't finished here. You have the strangest sense when it’s obvious that a story hasn't reached its conclusion.
You cast about the room and stop at the pen stand, holding fancy fountain pens that look like they cost more than your entire salary. You grab onto one, sliding the cap off by neatly jamming your thumb nail into the line where the cap meets the body of the pen, and look down contemplatively at the eyes that have stopped pinballing wildly, fixed on you. They almost look scared.
Well. This is going to get messy. At least you know that Melanie will be willing to help you clean up the body.
Tip of the pen poised; you get to work.
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inklingofadream · 3 years
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“take a guess” for TMA. maybe jonpeter if you write that? perhaps an AU with researcher!Jon. they could've easily met.
“Excuse me, do you work here?”
Jon started a bit at the unexpected, unfamiliar voice, and glared up at its owner, a large man who seemed for some reason to be dressed like a cartoon sea captain. Hardly the first to assess the Institute’s reputation with the general public and decide a Halloween costume was appropriate attire. They never had anything relevant, or even particularly interesting, to contribute, just the same prank statements that passed through Research by the bushel. He gestured to his cubicle and the books and papers strewn around it. “Take a guess.”
The man smiled genially, either not noticing or deliberately ignoring Jon’s caustic air. “Oh, good. Do you think you could direct me toward Elias Bouchard’s office? I seem to have gotten a bit lost.”
This was what he got for being so close to the research department’s entrance. He stood so he could gesture over the walls of the cubicle. “Rosie should be able to help you, she’s right over-”
Rosie’s desk in the foyer was visible from Research when the door was open, and she was always there. He didn’t know how this man could have missed her. Except Rosie’s desk was uncharacteristically empty.
The man peered in the direction of Jon’s gaze, hands clasped behind his back. “Seems she’s out.”
Jon glanced over at Sasha’s desk, across the aisle from his own. She was much better with people, hopefully he could foist their annoying visitor onto her. But Sasha’s desk was empty as well.
Just his luck.
“It’s just back the way you came and up the stairs. You can’t miss it. If you’d gone to Rosie to begin with you wouldn’t have ended up back here in the first place,” Jon snapped, dropping back into his chair and turning back to his work as obviously as he could.
“Are you sure? I’d really prefer it if you could show me the way.”
Jon clenched his teeth, shoulders rising as he slammed the book he’d just picked up back to his deck and whirled around. “Look. I am very busy and the route to Elias’ office is very simple. I’m sure even an idiot who thought that was appropriate attire for a visit to an academic institution can manage it alone. Though I can’t imagine what business he’d have with the likes of you.”
He could feel the man’s eyes on the back of his neck. “Are you busy this evening?”
He turned, glaring and a bit bewildered at the non sequitur. Before he could respond, Elias seemed to appear from thin air directly behind the man, putting a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Ah, Peter, there you are. You don’t usually bother to acquaint yourself with the Institute’s general staff, how did you end up down here?” His eyes flicked to Jon, who had managed to smooth some but not all of the annoyance from his expression at the appearance of his boss. “Ah! This is Jonathan Sims, he’s one of our most promising researchers. Jon, this is Peter Lukas. His family is one of the Institute’s most important donors.”
Jon felt as though all the blood rushed out of him, leaving his skin and his vision tinged gray. “Oh.” One of the Institute’s most important donors and he’d…
Peter continued to smile brightly at him, though Jon thought that now he could detect a hungry edge in the other man’s eyes. “Just a moment, Elias, I’d like to finish my conversation with… Jon, here.” He leaned in conspiratorially, though Elias was still clearly present and capable of hearing everything he said. “So, tonight?”
“I- er- I-” What was he supposed to say? Was he more likely to be fired if he accepted or declined?
“It’s a date!” Peter beamed as though Jon had answered. Jon couldn’t help but interpret it as a bit smug, perfectly aware of the way he’d trapped Jon between his boss and his own lack of social graces. “My meeting with Elias should finish right about the time you get off work. I’ll see you then.” He clapped Jon on the shoulder, and his palm seemed to leave behind a cold patch, as though he had no body heat at all. He strode off with Elias, leaving Jon gaping after them.
Eventually, he came to his senses and turned to Sasha’s desk, hoping she had returned and would help him process what had just happen. Still empty. He peered over the wall of his cube into Tim’s next door, but found it unoccupied as well. Odd.
He found himself staring at the ceiling, shivering a bit as the air conditioning seemed to turn on with a vengeance despite it being early fall, and wondering what he was supposed to on his… date.
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eldritchteaparty · 3 years
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Chapters: 4/? Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Rosie Zampano, Oliver Banks Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Scars, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, I'll add characters and tags as they come up, Reference to injuries and blood, Character Death In Dream, Nudity (not sexual or graphic), Nightmares
General summary: Following the events of MAG 200, Jon and Martin find themselves in a dimension very much like the one they came from--with second chances and more time.
Chapter summary:  Jon and Martin head back to the Magnus Institute, where Martin goes on an interview outing with Tim and Jon starts to catch up with Sasha’s “statements.”
Chapter 4 of my post-canon fix-it is up! Read above at AO3 or here below.
Tumblr master post with links to earlier chapters
***
Shortly after Martin’s phone flickered to life, he found a lot of messages waiting for him—and they were almost all from the same person.
     Are you ok?
     Message soon please.
     Do you need anything?
     Answer when you can.
     Still worried…
He glanced at Jon, sitting on the other side of the bed and looking through his own phone.
“Sasha been messaging you too?” Martin asked him.
“Yes. And I’ve got one from Tim.”
Martin had that one also. “Telling you to answer Sasha?”
“Yes—and calling me something I won’t repeat.”
Ok, so he didn’t have exactly that one.
“All right,” Martin said a few minutes later. “Let’s do this, then. I’ll message Sasha back.”
“Wait—what are we doing? What’s the plan?”
He typed out a simple message to Sasha telling her they were ok and he was sorry for not answering sooner. “We lie to them.”
“Hm.” Jon seemed uneasy.
“Did you… want to tell them the truth?”
“Well…” Jon thought. “Obviously, we can’t. I’m just concerned that—”
“Exactly. And even if we did tell it to them, they wouldn’t believe it.”
Jon still looked doubtful. “Martin, I’m not sure if I—”
“Look, sometimes there are good reasons to lie. We just need to keep it simple, make sure it doesn’t get out of hand.” He read the message one more time and hit send. “Anyway, don’t act like you don’t know how. You’re actually quite good at it when you want to be.”
He didn’t mean to add that last part; it just came out, and it came out bitter. He looked at Jon again and regretted it immediately. He had come to realize he much preferred Jon’s anger to his sadness, especially when he was the cause. He opened his mouth to apologize, but as he did his phone began to buzz. They stared at each other.
“Jon, I didn’t mean that. I’m—I’m sorry—forget it, ok? I have to—hang on.”
He answered Sasha’s call on speaker, turning away to concentrate.
“Hey, Sasha.”
“Martin? Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t answer you sooner. It’s been—”
“How is Jon, do you know?”
“Yes, he’s—he’s with me. We’re both ok.”
“Oh, thank god.” Her relief was clear, even over the speaker, and Martin felt a pang of something in his gut. He hadn’t had a moment to consider how much he’d missed Sasha, how unfair it had all been, and how much it felt like she’d somehow come back. It would have been so easy to think that way—except their Sasha was still dead, and he may very well have been responsible for the death of the person she thought she was talking to.
“You do sound better,” she continued. “Look, I really didn’t want to tell you what to do, but—tell me you went to a doctor or something?”
Martin cleared his throat, aware Jon was listening to the conversation. “We did, actually. We did end up going to the hospital. I think we were maybe in a bit of shock after all.”
“No kidding. What happened? What did they say?”
“Physically, we’re—we’re all right.” He thought about all the blood again, and decided he should add a little more. “I mean, we were very dehydrated. They put us on a drip for a bit. And—and antibiotics, just in case. But they said we’re healing well, I guess?”
“That—that’s good. What else? What about—not physically?”
“Well, they did a lot of tests. The kind where they asked a bunch of questions. They didn’t want to call it amnesia, exactly, but we’ve—we’ve got some memory loss.” Experience told him the less specific the lie, the better. “Neither of us really remembers what happened. And it’s possible… we might have forgotten some stuff from before, too. We don’t really know how bad it is yet.”
“Oh. That’s terrible.”
Martin looked over his shoulder at Jon, who had crept closer to hear better. He nodded, and Martin turned back.
“It’s not great, but the good news is they don’t think there are any deeper issues. I mean, they’ve got us signed up for all kinds of therapy, but they don’t think there’s any—how did they say it—no lasting cognitive impairment.” Cognitive impairment was a phrase that maybe came to him too easily after caring for his mother; he felt like he was maybe pushing it a little.
“Well, that part’s good. How are you feeling, though?” Sasha asked.
“A lot better.”
“Did they feed you? Do you need anything? Can I bring you something?”
“No, that’s all right. We’re—actually, Sasha, we were wondering if we could… maybe come back. To work.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end, and Martin cringed and held his breath through it; he didn’t look at Jon. He might have gone for it too soon.
“You want to come back? Already?”
He exhaled quietly, away from the phone so Sasha couldn’t hear it. “They said the more we could normalize things, it might—help? I mean, I know there might be some issues rehiring us—but maybe if Elias hasn’t replaced us yet—"
“No, I mean—you know Elias, he hasn’t even taken you off payroll. It just seems… fast. Are you sure you want to?”
“Well, if you’re worried, we don’t have to come back right away.” Jon grabbed his arm and Martin frowned at him, shrugging him off. Wait, he mouthed. “I know we might not be up to our usual workload, and we’re going to have to take some time off for therapy and all… I’m really only bringing it up because they thought it would help, but it’s completely fair if you don’t want to take—”
“No! No, I don’t mind.” She sounded upset, and he felt bad. “That’s not it at all. And we could use your help, honestly, but I really don’t want to put pressure on you while you’re recovering. Do you promise you’ll let me know if it’s too much?”
“Yes,” Martin answered. “Yes, of course. Jon too.”
“Well…” said Sasha, “When are you thinking about coming in?”
Um… hang on.” He muted himself and turned to Jon.
“What do you think?” Then, before Jon answered, he added, “And do not say today. It’s already after 2 pm and that would just be weird.”
“Fine. Tomorrow, then.” Of course. He sighed.
“Sasha?” He said, unmuting the phone. “Jon says—Jon says tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Really?”
“Yeah. Yeah, actually. If you’re all right with it.”
There was more silence.
“And I mean Sasha, I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t mind being around people. It would be nice.” That wasn’t even a lie.
“Ok. Sure, Martin.” It had done the trick. “Take your time getting in though, ok? And get some sleep tonight.”
“Will do. Thanks, Sasha.” He hung up, and turned his head slightly in Jon’s direction. “Happy?”
“Thank you,” Jon answered, putting an arm around Martin to press his mouth briefly to his cheek. Martin couldn’t help but smile.
“Yeah, all right. Just don’t exhaust yourself. Remember, you’ve got to eat real food and sleep real sleep now.”
“Mm.” Jon was already headed out to the sitting room where his desk was.
“What did I say, Jon?” he shouted.
“Eat and sleep,” Jon shouted back.
Martin grumbled to himself.
The rest of the day was spent washing the one set of clothes that he had, and going through the phone to learn what he could about his current situation. His passwords and fingerprints opened all the apps, but that didn’t faze him anymore. He was able to figure out from email and voicemails that the apartment building where this world’s Martin had been living had indeed kicked him out, but thankfully his belongings were being held in storage. He could pay two months of back rent and a late fee if he wanted to reclaim them, although it wouldn’t be until the following week.
Fortunately, Sasha had been correct that they hadn’t been taken off payroll—not only had they not been taken off, but Martin had been paid his full salary for the last two months. If he hadn’t already been convinced that Jonah Magnus was not running the institute, that certainly did it.
***
Although he didn’t successfully get Jon off the computer for it, he did manage to get him to eat most of a meal that evening at his desk. And while Jon didn’t get in bed at the same time he did, Martin was still up to hear him come in.
“Hey.”
“Sorry,” Jon said softly. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“No, that’s all right. You didn’t. I actually—something’s been bothering me. I wanted to apologize for what I said right before Sasha called today. About… you. Lying. I mean, we need to talk about it—what happened—but not like that.”
“Martin…” Jon shifted under the covers. “I want to talk about it. I do. You deserve that. I’m just…”
“You’re not ready yet.”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll—I’ll try not to push,” Martin answered, closing his eyes again. “I want to do this right. Or at least better than we’ve been doing things. Just… you try too, ok?”
There was a moment of quiet before Jon answered. “Ok.”
***
Going back to the Magnus Institute in the morning already felt much easier than it had the first time. It didn’t hold the same sense of discontinuity—it felt less like déjà vu and more like returning to a place he had genuinely spent a lot of time. Rosie was away from her desk when they arrived; Sasha and Tim were in Sasha’s office with the door closed, and they could hear muffled conversation through the door. Jon sat at his desk, but Martin decided he’d wait for Sasha before he even pretended to do something, and sat on the sofa instead.
“So,” he asked Jon, “how are you feeling, now that you’re here?”
“Good, I suppose,” he answered. “Well, not bad, anyway. I’ll feel better once I can start looking through some of Sasha’s statements.”
“They’re not statements, Jon. I expect you’re going to be disappointed if—”
“I just meant that I’ll feel better once I have some understanding of…” He trailed off. “Why do I need a pin?”
“Hm?”
“My laptop. I need a pin.”
“Wait, didn’t you have one before?”
“No. Sasha kept telling me to set one, but…” Jon sighed. “This would be a lot easier if we could remember things about this place when we wanted to.”
A thought occurred to Martin, something they hadn’t talked about yet. “Are you going to be all right, Jon? With Sasha being the archivist here?”
“She’s not the Archivist. There is no Archivist here. Not even me, right now.” Martin could hear him typing, trying different combinations of numbers, and could also hear his frustration growing.
“Hang on, let me try a couple things before you go getting all worked up.” He got up and went to join Jon at his desk. “And no, you’re right, of course—I just meant, are you ok with her being the head archivist here? At the Institute?”
“I don’t care.” Jon leaned back from his desk so Martin could reach the number keys. “Wait—is that the sofa that Tim brought in when—”
“Yes, it is. And it was a good idea.” The pin would have to be something Jon would easily remember, and knowing Jon, probably also too easy for someone else to guess. He tried Jon’s birthday; it didn’t work. He tried the street number of Jon’s flat, and that didn’t work either. “Hmm…”
“Well, I suppose professionalism isn’t as important when your entire area of research is—”
“Jon, hush.” Last four of Jon’s phone number?... Nope. He stared down at the keys and a wild thought entered his head. No reason he couldn’t try it, though. He typed the four-digit combination and was surprised to find that it worked.
“Oh.” Jon leaned forward. “What did you type?”
“I don’t know,” Martin lied. “I was just trying things. I don’t remember what I did.”
“Well, how am I supposed to get back in next time?”
“You’re going to have to change it.”
“I don’t want to change it.”
“Sasha’s going to make you change it.”
“How is Sasha going to know that—”
“Because I just saw Martin type it in for you,” Sasha said from the door of her office, smiling.
“Hey, Sasha.” Martin let himself smile in return—it was easy, if he forgot the last four years of his life. “Thanks again for letting us come in today.”
“Honestly, I’m already wondering if it was a mistake. I told you to take your time and really, it’s first thing in the morning.”
“Well, Jon just couldn’t wait to get back,” he said, reflexively rubbing the back of his neck. “He—hang on.”
He snatched the mouse away from Jon and clicked through to the screen where he could change his pin, while Jon did his best to appear extremely inconvenienced. “Oh, stop. Type the new one, I’m not looking.”
Jon grudgingly did as Martin instructed.
“So why were you so eager to come back, Jon?” Sasha asked.
“Oh.” Jon cleared his throat. “I, um…”
Martin interceded. “He’s actually been very concerned about—about the things you said have been happening here since we were gone.”
“I wondered if that was it. I’ve been thinking about that myself,” Sasha said. “I know you don’t remember anything, but the timing was just so… Jon, I know you’ve always been a skeptic—”
“And I still am. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for everything.” Martin thought maybe Jon would catch on after all. “But it would be quite the coincidence if it were unrelated. I was actually wondering if I might review some of the notes you took during your—interviews.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Sasha replied. “To be honest, I haven’t the slightest idea what to do with them. They aren’t exactly typical archive material. Maybe you can help me—”
“Morning, everyone.” Tim cheerfully disrupted the conversation as he slipped into the room behind Sasha. “How are we all feeling?”
“All right,” Martin answered, when no one else did.
“Great. Especially coming from you, Martin, because we are going on an adventure today.” Tim made his way to his desk and picked through a few papers.
“Oh?” Martin looked at Sasha.
“What Tim means is that if you are up for it, there were a few people who contacted us but couldn’t come in, and we haven’t had a chance to get back to them. I haven’t felt comfortable sending Tim to interview people alone, and well—it’s not really our job, and I’ve got more than enough actual work to take care of since—well, we’ve gotten a bit backed up.”
“What do you think, Martin?” Tim asked, waving the papers toward him. “Up for it?”
“Oh, well, I—I guess I could, yeah.” He glanced at Jon, who was suddenly sitting up very straight in his chair.
“Martin, I—are you sure?”
“I think so,” Martin replied.
“I’m just thinking that if something were to happen…”
“What—what sort of thing?”
“Yeah Jon, what sort of thing?” Tim echoed. They both turned to look at him and found him with a curious look on his face. “Oh look, if you two need to consult about this, please go ahead. Don’t mind me.”
“Yes, thank you, Tim.” Jon spoke through gritted teeth, indicating the sarcasm hadn’t escaped him. “Martin, just—come talk to me.” He stood up and took Martin by the arm, leading him out into the reception area and closing the door—but not before Martin saw Tim bite back a grin.
“Jon, what—”
“Martin, we have no idea what’s going on, or who or what could be out there, or—”
“Do you want Tim to go by himself?”
“Well—no, but—”
“Look.” He took Jon by the arm now. “I know we haven’t been apart since—well, not for a long time. And I know every time we have been apart, it’s been bad. But things are different now. This is different. You’ll be all right here with Sasha, and I’ll be with Tim and—”
“And with anything else that’s shown up since we got here. And if something happened, I—” Jon stopped and looked toward the floor. “I wouldn’t know about it.”
“Yeah, well, welcome back to being a normal person.” He squeezed Jon’s arm. “Look, if you’re really worried, I’ll come up with some excuse. But Jon, we’ve got to—we’ve got to try and be functional here. Plus, if you really want to figure out where things are—if you’re here going through the interviews, doesn’t it help for me to be out there? Talking to people? You know—like I used to do for you by myself all the time?”
Jon pressed a hand to his own mouth, thinking.
“Jon, I’ve got my phone.”
“Technically you had your phone when you went to look for Jane Prentiss.”
“Ok, I see why that’s not that reassuring, but do you realize how long it took for Jane Prentiss to—become what she was? And I will be with Tim, and—”
“Yes, you’ll be with Tim. Great.”
“Jon.” Martin sighed. “He’s just concerned. Ok, what if I—what if I look through the contact forms before I leave? Make sure I don’t recognize any names on them? Like—no bad names?”
“We don’t even know if it works like that.” Jon thought for another minute, but Martin could see his resistance starting to come down. “Look, I don’t want to… maybe I am being overprotective.”
“You think?” It didn’t really bother him to hear Jon say it; in fact, he got a bit soft knowing Jon felt that way, but it wasn’t going to help the situation to admit it.
Jon finally gave in. “All right. Do look at the names though—and if anything happens—”
“I’ll let you know right away. I won’t do anything dumb.”
“I know. Martin, I—” Jon looked up at him again. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” He leaned down for a quick kiss, which Jon returned. “I’ll be fine, ok?”
Jon nodded, reluctant.
***
Despite another look from Tim, Martin did check the names as promised; there were only three for that day, and he didn’t recognize any of them. By the time they left, the thought of spending time alone with Tim made him more nervous than their actual task. He imagined that as soon as they were out the door, Tim would start peppering him with questions about where he and Jon had been, what had happened between them, or both.
As it turned out, though, their time together was quite enjoyable. Martin had forgotten how easy it was to be around Tim—that he had that thing he could do that just made everyone comfortable when he wanted to. They took the tube out to a suburb, and on the way, they talked about the weather a little bit. They talked about a new café that had moved in down the street a few weeks ago; Tim said it was all right for an occasional something different, but nothing special. They talked about what Tim had been up to in his free time. As it turned out, his brother Danny was getting married soon to a girl Tim absolutely adored. Martin suddenly remembered when Danny had come into town and visited Tim at work one day a few years ago, and he’d been amazed by how similar the two of them had been when they stood side by side.
I’ve met Danny Stoker. The urge to smile hitting alongside that awful catch in his throat was becoming a strangely familiar feeling.
Their first interview was with an older woman in her home. She had gotten in touch with the Institute after receiving their information through a friend of a friend, who’d heard a story from yet another friend. Martin really thought there wasn’t anything to it. Well, he supposed it was possible there was a ghost living in her television set that just happened to have moved in after her daughter had tried to help her set up a new voice assistant—but in all fairness, it seemed unlikely. The second interview was equally unimpressive.
Once they finished up, Tim made a phone call to their third interview subject, and announced they were headed back to central London. The man didn’t want to meet at home, but he was willing to meet them somewhere public; Tim arranged to meet him at a deli not far from the Institute. The ride back was pleasant enough, if a bit quieter.
“It’s getting late,” Tim said, after glancing at his phone. “We have time to eat first, if you’re up for it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Martin was pretty hungry again by the time they sat down with their food. He supposed he’d missed being able to enjoy food, but having to eat multiple times a day was sort of annoying when it came down to it. He was just wondering if he should send Jon a reminder to eat, when he realized Tim was staring at him; he hadn’t touched his sandwich yet.
“Everything ok?” he asked.
“What happened?” Tim asked. “To you and Jon.”
“Oh, I—” Martin swallowed the bite in his mouth. “I assumed Sasha told you. We don’t—”
“Don’t remember.” Tim cut him off. “Really, though? Like—nothing?”
Well, here goes. “Really. Nothing.”
Tim regarded him thoughtfully. “We looked for you. Me and Sasha, we looked everywhere, for weeks. Well, everywhere we could think of.”
“Tim, I’m—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” That was the truth. In fact, he was sorrier than he was going to be able to explain.
“Sasha took it really hard, you know?” Tim said. “I mean, you were at work when it happened. She felt responsible. Like it was her fault.”
That sounded familiar.
“It wasn’t,” Martin replied. “It wasn’t her fault. It had nothing to do with her.”
“I told her that. Every day. I don’t think it made any difference, though. And I’m sure it hasn’t really sunk in yet that you’re back.” Tim picked a small piece of crust from his sandwich bread and chewed it carefully before swallowing. “I mean, it almost seems impossible, doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were gone for two months, you left no sign of what had happened or where you were—and then you just show up again one day, making out on the landscape, covered in your own blood.”
“We were not making out,” Martin snapped.
“You were too,” Tim answered. “What’s that about, anyway?”
Martin didn’t answer him.
“Look, I have no idea what happened, but… I’ll admit, I’ve always wondered if you maybe had a thing for him. I mean, the man’s always been a bit of a wreck, and I’ve watched you defend him and try to take care of him ever since we all started working together. And it’s not like you got along that well, but I know you and it just seems like the kind of thing you’d go for. But I never thought—”
“You really don’t like Jon, do you?”
“What? No, I like him just fine. You know that. But I like him for who he is, and this just seems like… it seems like a lot after two months.”
“Tim, it’s complicated, and I don’t know how to explain it. You don’t—you don’t know what we’ve been through. What he’s been through, or what he’s—”
“I thought you didn’t either.”
Martin’s heart skipped, and then beat double to make up for it. “I just meant—look, I don’t know what happened, but I—I feel things I can’t explain. And I can say that it feels like it’s been a lot longer than two months since—since we disappeared.”
“Is that so?” Tim asked. “Just tell me. Do you not remember, or do you actually not remember?”
“I—I really don’t remember.”
“Why did it sound like there were quotes around that?”
“There weren’t.”
“Right.” Tim said. “Well in that case, I ‘believe you’”—he paused to make large air quotes— “and I ‘definitely won’t keep asking.’”
“Tim—”
“It’s fine,” Tim said as he finally took a large bite of his sandwich, then continued with his mouth full. “Whatever happened, I am glad you’re back—and whenever you’re ready to talk about it, I’m here.”
As hungry as he was when he’d sat down, Martin couldn’t touch the rest of his sandwich. He kind of resented the way Tim was able to keep eating. Tim had always been that way though, hadn’t he? Able to say what he thought without worrying about the consequences. It had taken on a different flavor after he’d found himself trapped at the Institute, of course, but even then, he’d stood up to Elias without any fear of what might happen. Even when he’d died, he’d gone out the way he’d wanted too—no regrets.
Martin wanted so badly to tell him the truth in that moment. Instead, he sat in silence and watched him eat.
A short time later, Tim grabbed a napkin to wipe his mouth. “I think that’s him. Our interview. Yellow shirt, black jacket.” He raised a hand toward someone coming through the door behind Martin.
“What was the name again?” Martin asked as he turned around.
“Hang on—” Tim pulled out one of the contact forms. “Here we go. Antonio Blake.”
Wait. Wait, there was something familiar about that name—shit. He’d thought about it too quickly that morning. He’d completely forgotten about the alias.
Jon is going to lose it when I have to tell him this.
“You’re—you’re Oliver Banks,” he said to the man now standing directly in front of him.
Oliver looked suspiciously from him to Tim and back again. “I didn’t—how did you know that?”
“I—don’t know. It just came to me.” Given what Oliver had to be going through, maybe there was half a chance he would find that plausible.
Tim gave him a look. “You know him?”
“Not—not really. Please, sit.”
Oliver continued to hesitate. “I’m not sure I want to.”
“Look—I am sorry, I didn’t mean to—I’m Martin Blackwood, from the Magnus Institute. This is Tim Stoker.”
Tim stood up and offered his hand in that easy, open manner he had, and Oliver tenuously accepted it.
“Please,” Martin said. “Whatever you have to say—we’d like to hear it. It might be important. Maybe we could… help.”
He didn’t feel great about himself for adding that last part.
Oliver slowly pulled out the third chair at the table and sat down. Martin didn’t know what he’d expected him to be like, but somehow this wasn’t it. He felt sad for this man. He looked so tired, but at the same time so ready to run. He reminded Martin a bit of Jon, actually, during the year after Jane Prentiss had come to the institute and before they’d realized that Sasha had been murdered. He supposed that made a lot of sense, the more he thought about it.
Tim spoke again. “You didn’t leave a lot of detail in your message, so—do you want to just walk us through what happened to you?”
“Well…” Oliver looked from one to the other of them again. “I’m really not sure you’ll believe me. To tell the truth, I’m not sure anymore that I’m not going crazy. I’ve—I’ve not been sleeping much, and it’s…” he trailed off.
“You don’t want to sleep because you’re afraid you’ll dream again.”
Oliver re-focused on Martin. “How do you keep—”
“It’s all right.” Martin said. “I just want you to know that I’ll believe you. If you want to tell us.”
They sat in silence for several minutes. Martin didn’t want to say anything that might send Oliver back out the door, and Tim followed his lead. Finally, Oliver spoke, quietly enough that it took some effort to hear him.
“It was a dream. Or it started with a dream. The first time, I dreamed that I was walking near Canary Wharf—I used to have a job there years ago, and—well, I don’t need to get into that, do I… The point is, I know the area. There were people around me, people I don’t actually know, like happens in a dream, but they all had these—I don’t know—tendrils.” He paused and made a motion with his hands, like he was holding something heavy. “I don’t really have another word for it. Like snakes, almost, but not alive like snakes. Just tendrils, everywhere, and they went through these people—like their hearts, or their heads, or around them somewhere. I really didn’t like it, you know, but also I think I knew I was dreaming. Everything was sort of pulsing and—and I was trying to ignore all of it, but when I headed home in the dream… Well, it was my landlady. She had lots of them, like black veins, running into her chest, or her lungs, really, somehow I knew it was her lungs. I woke up not long after that.”
Martin tried to keep his expression neutral. This was so much like the statement Oliver had made years ago in their world, to Gertrude, but it was also so different. Most obviously, it wasn’t a statement at all, it was just Oliver talking. That made sense. There was no Archivist here, either with them or in general, which Jon had so intently pointed out that morning. The words weren’t just pulled out like Martin was used to, thank god. And certainly, the people Oliver had first dreamed of in their world would have passed years earlier. The basic story, though, was the same.
“OK.” Tim nodded, scratching down some notes. “But I assume there’s more?”
“Well, the thing is—not even two weeks later, she—she died. Lung cancer. It was sudden. Undiagnosed. I’d almost forgotten about the dream, to be honest, but that… it shook me.”
“Understandable.” Tim nodded again. “So you think your dream was a—a warning?”
“Well, I mean—of course I was sort of struck by it, that day, but after a little time, it didn’t seem like such a big thing. She smoked her whole life. I know sometimes people know things they aren’t really conscious of, and maybe I just—knew she was sick. But then… it happened again. A man at the bakery near the shop where I work now. I barely knew him. It was his heart. And I—I dreamed it again. The whole thing. A week before it happened. And I just started wondering if—if every person I see in that dream…”
Tim frowned and looked toward Martin, which prompted Oliver to do the same.
“What do I do?” Oliver asked, and Martin swore a shiver ran through him—maybe it was from nerves or too much coffee or not enough sleep, or maybe all three. “I thought maybe you would—know something about this. Maybe you’ve heard of it before. Do you think—do you think I could help them? If I found them, if I talked to them—”
“No,” Martin answered. “I mean, I have heard of it before, and… no. You can’t help them. I’m—I’m sorry.”
Oliver worried at his lip. “I’m not—I’m not causing it somehow, am I? I was thinking that maybe—if I keep trying to stay awake—”
“No.” Martin shook his head. “No, you’re not causing it.  You—you should know it’s not your fault. And if you sleep, or if you don’t sleep—they’ll still… they’ll still die.”
Oliver nodded his head, digesting the information. “So I can’t do anything. I just get to know they’re going to die, and I can’t do anything about it.”
“I’m sorry.” Martin wondered what he would have said if he’d had time to think about it. Would it have been any different? Would he have thought of something better to say, something that didn’t fall so flat the moment it left his mouth, something that could have actually helped?
Would Jon have said something better?
“All right,” Oliver replied softly, bringing Martin back from his thoughts as he stood up from his chair. “Thank you for listening. I—I think I’m going to go.”
“If you need anything—if we can help—you know where to find us.”
Martin wasn’t sure if Oliver even heard him.
“What the hell was that?” Tim asked loudly, once Oliver was out of sight.
“Nothing,” Martin answered.
“That wasn’t nothing. You knew that man. You knew what he was going to say.” Tim pointed at the door, waving his finger for emphasis. “And then you…”
“Tim, I can’t explain it right now.”
He turned his finger on Martin. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like this.”
“I’m sorry. I wish—” His phone, which he had set on the table, buzzed at him. It was a message from Jon, asking if everything was ok. “Let’s go back now, all right?”
Tim shook his head in disbelief. They didn’t speak on the walk back.
***
Jon jerked up from his desk when they walked in, which was now covered in numerous hand-written notes and manilla folders. Martin suspected he’d maybe been taking an unintentional nap. “How did it go?”
“Fine,” Martin answered. “Did you eat?”
“Not—not yet.”
“Here,” Martin said, tossing the rest of his sandwich onto Jon’s desk. “I didn’t finish it.”
“Oh.” Jon peeked under the wrapper. “You barely ate this at all. Are you sure you don’t—”
“Yes.”
“All right, well—thank you.” Jon took a quick bite and set it aside as he resumed reading.
“Well?” Tim said.
Martin ignored him.
“Are you going to tell him about your friend?”
“What friend?” Jon asked, eyes still on the paper in front of him.
“I didn’t catch his name, actually,” Tim replied. “But I do know it wasn’t”—he pulled out the now-crumpled contact form— “Antonio Blake.”
“What?” Jon immediately stopped what he was doing.
“Jon—”
“You saw Oliver Banks.”
“Oliver Banks.” Tim deliberately overpronounced the name. “That’s right. Thank you, Jon.”
“Tim—”
“How could you miss that?” Jon stood up.
“It was fine! Nothing happened. I would have—”
Jon didn’t even need to speak to cut him off; the look in his eyes was enough. “We need to talk.”
“Please,” Tim cut in. “One of you talk, at least.”
“In private. Come on,” Jon said, once again taking Martin by the arm. Rosie was back at her desk now, but Sasha had temporarily stepped out, and they spoke in her office with hushed voices, without bothering to turn the light on.
“Jon, it really was fine, I—”
“Stop.” Jon reached up to take Martin’s face in his hands. “It’s ok. I just want to know what happened.”
“Nothing, really. He—he’s had a couple dreams, that’s all. He wanted to talk about it. He wanted to know if there was anything he could do to—to help them. I told him he couldn’t. I felt bad for him.”
Jon closed his eyes and breathed out, then opened them to look at Martin again.
“Jon, I don’t see what the big deal is. I mean, what does he even do? He sees people’s deaths, and wakes up other people’s”—he paused— “Archivists.”
“It’s not funny. Or that simple.” Jon let go and turned to face the wall. “Martin what if—what if he had seen your death?”
“Well then—at least I’d know? I guess?”
“Or what if he’d seen Tim’s? Or—or mine?”
Martin could sort of see Jon’s point then—but only sort of. “Ok, but—I still think we weren’t really in any danger. Yes, I messed up, and I should have caught that, but—”
“It’s too dangerous,” Jon interrupted. “You can’t do this again without me. And—and neither can Tim.”
“Oh really,” Martin responded. “And why do you—”
“It’s not just Oliver,” Jon broke in again. “I found some things in the—in the interviews Sasha did. Do you remember the thing we called the Anglerfish?”
“Yes?”
“And do you remember Laura Popham?”
“Um—”
“She went caving with her sister and—”
“Oh, right. Lost John’s Cave.”
“They’ve… they were in there, in the interviews. Already. In just two months.”
Martin was starting to understand Jon’s reaction.
“And I was hoping it was just those sorts of things,” Jon continued, “and no… avatars, but if Oliver Banks is already connected to the End—”
“I see.” Martin stepped closer to Jon to put an arm over his shoulder. “All right, I get it. Things are happening fast.”
“Well… most things.” Jon sounded a little offput.
“Wait.” Martin almost laughed, but not because he found it funny. “Wait, are you upset because you aren’t connected to the Eye yet?”
“Upset isn’t the right—”
“Now who’s jealous of Oliver Banks?”
“Technically that would be envy, not jealousy—”
“Technically yes, but that isn’t the—”
“—and I’m not,” Jon finished. “I just—I feel like I know it’s coming, and I’d like to get it over with.”
“Right.” Martin rolled his eyes, but only because Jon couldn’t see it in the dim office. “So what do we do now?”
“First, if there are more interviews to be done, they could be important, but… we do them together. You and me.”
“There are. And… if Sasha is ok with it.”
“And then I keep going through Sasha’s notes. And then I go back before that, just to—”
“Jon, you’re going to exhaust yourself.”
“Then I do.”
“No. It doesn’t do anyone any good if you—”
They were interrupted by Sasha’s voice.
“Jon? Martin?”
“Yes,” Jon answered. “Sorry, I needed to speak with Martin, so we borrowed your office.”
“That’s fine, but you didn’t need to do it in the dark,” she said, switching on the light. “So I was just talking to Tim, and it sounds like today was… eventful?”
“That’s not exactly what I said, but I suppose that’s the polite version.” Tim followed her into the office.
“Well, I have something to report, too.” Sasha sat down behind her desk. “I know I said I was going to get back on regular archive things today, but… well, let’s just say I got curious, and may have found a back door on the web to access certain matters of official police business.”
“Really?” Tim’s grin was back. “That almost sounds like someone’s misbehaving.”
“I’d feel bad about it, but let’s also say I wasn’t too pleased with the way a certain missing persons case was handled.”
“Good for you.”
“Thank you, Tim.” Sasha did seem very pleased with herself. “But that brings me to my next point. Tim, I know you have some… contacts at some of the local police stations who might be able to—supplement the information I’m getting? I could use your help with that.”
“Sure, boss,” Tim said. “And that should work perfectly, actually, because I believe Jon was just getting ready to forbid Martin from going on any more interviews with me.”
“That is not—” Jon started over. “I would like to go with Martin on any further interviews, if that’s agreeable.”
“I mean—that’s fine, and I certainly don’t want anyone going out alone,” Sasha answered, “but what about catching up with everything here? It seemed like you felt that was pretty important.”
“I’d like to keep doing that too. I might need to put in a few extra hours.”
Sasha sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that. Maybe? Let’s see how you’re doing next week.”
“Sasha, I’m—”
“—already worn out, and a very bad judge of your own health.” Martin nodded in agreement, and shrugged without sympathy when Jon glared at him. “For the rest of this week, if you come in, you’ll both stay here. Jon, you can keep going through my notes, and Martin—would you mind helping me catch up on some of the filing and patron requests? I don’t even want to think about how far behind we are. Those other interviews have waited this long, they’ll wait a few more days. Especially if Tim is able to help follow up with the police angle.”
“Of course,” Martin answered. Even if Jon didn’t think he needed to take it a little bit easy, Martin was more than willing to acknowledge his own limitations—and sometimes Jon’s, even if it wasn’t appreciated. “Oh, and Sasha—we’ve got therapy tomorrow morning, so we’ll probably be a little bit late.”
“Good,” Sasha replied. “And for now, don’t take any of those notes home, Jon.”
Jon stared daggers at Martin, but he didn’t regret it—especially not after Jon fell asleep on him on the couch during dinner a few hours later.
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case #0091104 - almost dead
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trigger warnings: mentions of death, drowning, suicide, cutting, explosions, fire, depression
jon finds a tape in the archives that looks familiar...what will he learn about the archive’s resident teenager?
tagging @astralshipper @shippin-in-the-rain @grimms-heart @ghostlyvenus​ cause i’m super proud of this! 
this takes place during season two, but there’s not any major spoilers. just jon being paranoid, plus mentions of michael becoming the distortion.
Recorder clicks on
Jon: Found this tape under a box in the archives. It’s, uh, it looks like one of Gertrude’s tapes, but the handwriting....that’s Charlie’s I think. I guess I knew sh- they were here before I was, but…
Jon: Could they have killed Gertrude? I suppose it's possible. They would’ve been, what? Thirteen, fourteen?
Jon: I found this about a week ago, and I’ve been watching them. They spend a lot of time in the archives. I don’t think they go home. Come to think of it, I don’t even know where they live. I tried asking Elias - I couldn’t find the information in any of our records - but apparently they don’t work at the Institute. Which is, uh, alarming, to say the least.
Long exhale
Jon: God, I…
Recorder clicks off
Tape player clicks on
A low voice with an American accent. Probably 16-25, female?
Voice: Uh, hello? This is Charlie Finn. I uh...well I guess I’m kind of an archival assistant? Not officially though. Over my dead body, Elias.
Exhale, snort of laughter
Charlie: I’m uh, I’m making a statement, I guess? I think I’m already in more of these than Ger- uh - Gerard, but uh, I’ve never actually made one so…
Rustling of papers
Charlie: Statement of Charlie Finn, regarding...um, their life, almost-death, and subsequent paranormal existence.
Deep inhale
Charlie: So, uh, I uh, I tried to kill myself when I was eleven. Jumped into the Thames tied to a cinder block. Guess I should’ve tied the rope tighter, or maybe skipped swim team, cause the knot came undone. It was cold. Late February. When you’re drowning, you go into a panic - but there’s this point, at the end, where it’s so peaceful...you can almost see it - the end. I don’t remember not dying. I had almost reached that point, where I just...wouldn’t be. And then I was breaking the surface of the water. I - I tried again. Tied the rope tighter. But my hands were shaking so much. I couldn’t tie it fast enough, and dawn was coming. People had started to wake up - I guess one of them saw me jump in this time.
They take a shaky breath
Charlie: I could barely see - the edges of my vision were going - but I fought against his hands. He was an EMT, going in for the early shift. White guy, college age. When he pulled me to the bank of the river, I realized he’d - uh - (humorously) he’d pulled the cinderblock up with him. Couldn’t get the knot undone, I guess, so he just pulled me out, and the block came with it. I think he gave me CPR - not sure, I was kinda out of it. There was a crowd around me when I came to - of course there was, but, uh, they looked so concerned - (huff of laughter) - the ambulance arrived, and they asked all the questions - finally it came to the one I was dreading - my parents.
Charlie: I guess I should back up a bit. Some background info. That’s how these usually start. Um, so my parents are both teachers - we had moved to London when I was maybe ten? Not long before this happened. I hated changing schools, but my parents got really good jobs at some schools - my mom was offered the principal position at a private school - and my dad was offered a position as a child psychologist at some elementary schools. My sister was too young to really get it, but I hated my new school. All the kids were rich - and honestly, I preferred American homophobia. Anyway, this school was maybe five blocks from the Magnus Institute. Or, is. (humorously) It’s not like it’s just gone and disappeared, now is it.
Charlie: Peter Lukas doesn’t like me that much.
Charlie: So, um, yeah. My relationship with my parents has never been great. My mom’s downright emotionally abusive, and my dad...well he just… he doesn’t really have a backbone. My mom’s always been high strung, and I know she wants the best for me, but...the best to her isn’t something I can do. My dad tried his best to defend me against my mom’s criticism, but, I mean, he had his own critique for me.
Charlie: I’ve uh….I’ve never been the skinniest of people. And I’ve got narcolepsy - which means I sleep a lot. My dad - he’s one of those people who, just, well. He doesn’t understand disabilities. Like, I mean, he understands them, obviously, but he doesn’t really get that sometimes, I just can’t do stuff. So he pressured me a lot into exercising and not eating a ton.
They take a shaky breath
Charlie: So, I um, I was depressed, obviously. And therapy in central London isn’t exactly easy to come by. I was cutting, but that was - that wasn’t because I wanted to die. It was more for control. I could control that. (inhale) I um, I made the decision when my friend, um - I had a crush on him. His name was Nathaniel. He um, he stopped talking to me, just after my birthday. He just...never texted me back.
Charlie: I somehow got it into my mind that he - um, that I’d like, done something? To make him leave me. Which, I mean, I think that’s dumb. Sometimes people just leave, but my brain decided it must be my fault. So I, um. I jumped into the Thames.
Charlie: So yeah. Um, the ambulance people asked for my parents phone number and I just - I couldn’t deal with that right now. I just - (humorless laugh) - I told them my parents were dead. They didn’t know how to respond for a second, but they asked if I had someone else to contact. At this point, I’d visited the Institute a few times and met Gertrude. I was doing a school project on, like, local businesses, and I thought it would be cool to do the Institute. Gertrude had helped with a bit of the project - she was head Archivist after all. Looking back on it, I think she probably did it cause she has this sixth-sense about people who’ve been marked. I probably walked in that first day marked up to the wazoo for the End, and she took an interest in me.
Charlie: Whatever it was, I knew she would at least cover for me. So I told the ambulance staff to call the Institute, ask Rosie for Gertrude Robinson. They looked alarmed, but maybe half an hour later, I was sitting in a hospital room, Gertrude Robinson acting like she was my grandma.
(laugh)
Charlie: She’s rather convincing, when she needs to be - had a whole act about being a kind old lady. She was all (imitating an old woman) ‘my sweet little Charlie’ (laugh) Knowing what she’s done now, I’m not sure if I should’ve been impressed or afraid…
Charlie: Probably afraid.
Charlie: Anyway, she got me out of there real quick. Since we were in Chelsea - and my parents lived and worked in central London - I wasn’t much afraid of them finding out. It wasn’t in the news - (sarcastically) lucky me - and as far as I know, they never found out. Gertrude walked me home, which was...nice? I don’t know why she did it. Maybe she was actually worried for me. Probably not though.
Charlie: I stopped really going home after that. Or to school. I told my parents I’d got a job, and I was living with a friend. Both sort of true. I emailed my teachers, told them I was in a ward and I would pick up the work I needed to do at the beginning of the week and drop it off on Fridays. People aren’t exactly keen to pry into that sort of stuff, and as long as I got the work in, no one really cared. So I effectively moved into the attic of the Magnus Institute. Elias said it was fine, as long as I wasn’t disruptive. I became a sort of assistant - I took statements, filed them - I was one of the only ones who could understand Gertrude’s system - and looked into some cases for Gertrude. But my real job was in artefact storage.
Charlie: I know people don’t love it there, but I’ve always been interested in them. Gerard says it’s stupid teenage curiosity, but...he’s not my mom. Even if he was, I wouldn’t listen to him. Anyways, my job was to look into the objects that really messed people up. Not gonna go into super specific detail, cause the really bad ones are technically, like, classified or something, but lets just say there’s a reason I hate bugs.
Charlie: This was all fine, and I kind of fell into a routine for a few months. But I started to notice something. When people came in to give statements, I could, kind of, feel something about them. Like they were still going somewhere. The statements I took were always unfinished somehow.
Charlie: It got to a point where Mikey had to stop an interview because I wouldn't stop asking the woman if she was sure that was everything. I didn’t know what was going on, until one day I was walking home from the store - there’s no real food in the Institute fridge so I lived off of microwaved meals mostly - and I felt this pull. It wasn’t, like a literal pull. More like - (sigh) - you know when you’re walking back to bed in the dark and you feel like something’s about to get you, so you, like, throw yourself into bed and pull your covers up. Yeah, well, it felt kinda like that, except...except I was the thing in the dark. I don’t know how long I walked for, but it was after midnight by the time I came to an apartment complex.
Charlie: The women before, who I had been interviewing. She said there was something wrong with her gas pipes, but whenever she asked the landlord to check it out, they said there was nothing wrong. But she kept smelling gas. I could certainly smell it, as I walked up the stairs in a daze. I came to a door, 407. The door was locked, and when I put my hand on it, it burned. But I didn’t flinch - instead I turned the nob and I could hear the lock snap.
Charlie: Inside the apartment looked normal. I walked into a side room and the woman was asleep in her bed. She looked terrified. She asked me why I was here, was I going to kill her?
Charlie: I shook my head. No. I wasn’t going to kill her. But she was going to die. And -
Charlie: And the building, it exploded.
Charlie: I don’t know why I didn’t die, but she certainly did.
Charlie: (laugh) Jude was pretty pissed about that. Said I ‘took’ her sacrifice. Like everything doesn’t already belong to death.
Charlie: It doesn’t happen a lot, anymore, but I could tell when it would happen. I don’t know why the deaths are important. It didn’t happen when (shaky) when Gertrude left Mikey. Though I suppose he’s not really dead...is he.
Charlie: I don’t know. There’s a couple statements that mention me, but I don’t like to read them. It makes me feel guilty. I guess it’s not really my fault - they would’ve died anyway, but…
Charlie: Yeah, so. Um. Statement ends.
Tape player clicks off.
Recorder clicks on
Long, shaky exhale
Jon: Well, that’s, enlightening. I’m going to be honest though, I have more questions than answe -
Door opening
Charlie: Jon! Hey, I’ve got a question about this case, I think you might’ve misfiled it cause Martin said - 
Jon: Um, actually I was -
Charlie: Oh, are you recording right now, sorry! What’s this statement about?
Footsteps, sounds of shuffling papers. Charlie’s voice is much closer to the recorder now.
Charlie: Is that a tape? One of Gertrude’s? I thought the police had taken them all?
Jon: (fumbling) No, um, it’s -
Charlie: Wait, is...is that my tape Jon?
Jon: I mean - well - yes - but I - oh god - I just, I didn’t think -
Charlie: (cruelly) No, you didn’t think, did you Jon. (voice breaking) I hope you’re happy, now you know. I defended you, you know. Tim’s been so pissy and I - (voice cracks) I wanted to believe you weren’t that type of person but…
Jon: Charlie--
Charlie: No. I’m… don’t talk to me Jon. I don’t want to hear it.
Loud footsteps, door slams
Jon: Shit.
Recorder clicks off.
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smallmediumproblems · 4 years
Link
The first sign that Jon’s plan was working was the sunlight. It was thin, cloudy, London sunlight, but it was the second-most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life. He let it wash over him along with the sounds of the city. The passing cars and babble of tourists and, god, just the sound of people being happy. The second sign was that he had no idea what day it was. He reached for the information from something beyond himself, but it was like trying to flex wings that he didn’t have. He was blissfully alone in his head. The Eye was gone. As he glanced down at himself, he found that the rest of the fear had gone with it. The scar on his hand rested stubbornly on the surface of his skin and went no deeper. The rest were the same.
The third sign was that he was able to hail a cab from Hilltop Road to Millbank. He didn’t think he could handle being underground just yet, and it gave him an excuse to have a conversation. Any conversation. Yes, he did live in London. From Kilbride, is that so? He’d spent his honeymoon up North (sort of), lovely place. Spectacular cows. He was here on business, actually, since he supposed he didn’t work where he was going anymore. Damned glad to be free of the place. Why, yes, Jon thought so too- a job was really all about the people. The people had always been good.
The Magnus Institute was as squat and imposing as he remembered it. Perhaps it was Jon’s imagination, but it looked smaller than when he’d last seen it. The shadows clung a little closer, shying away from his flimsy sunlight. He could almost hear Tim and Sasha arguing inside, could picture the way they smiled and laughed at each other. Martin would be…
No. No, he couldn’t think about that, that was a sacrifice he had already decided to make. It’s not like Martin would know, anyway.
“Sir?” Rosie’s voice stopped him from heading straight down to the Archives. He pulled to a halt, taking a second to bask in the normalcy of it. “Can I help you?”
“Err, yes,” he stammered, “Hello. I’m- I’m here to see the Archivist?”
“He’s got a visitor right now, but...” Rosie informed him. She glanced down towards the stairwell, and returned her attention to Jon with a sympathetic half-smile. “You’re here for a statement? Why don’t you wait downstairs. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”
It had been too much to hope that Gertrude was still alive. Apparently, it had been too much to hope for Sasha to be her successor, either. Tim, maybe? He’d been marked by the Stranger, something Elias would surely have noticed and took advantage of. He thanked Rosie, and as he made his way downstairs, a very different argument than what he’d been expecting drifted up through the walls.
“...got time for this. I don’t know how to make that any more clear. I don’t care.”
“That’s just what I love about our conversations.”
The doors were closed. All except for his own at the end of the hall. Tentatively, Jon knocked on Tim’s office door. No answer. Then Sasha. Then Martin. Nothing. Even the break room was silent.
“Look, even if I didn’t think you were a waste of my time, I’m already spoken for. What you’re talking about just isn’t possible. Not after what happened.”
“Can you really know that?”
Jon rounded the corner to see Martin sitting at his desk, just in time to hear him let out a laugh that was far too sharp and far too dark.
“Knowing’s what I do,” said Martin Blackwood, the Archivist. “That, and babysitting, since you’re still-”
Martin’s eyes lit up very abruptly, and he leaned around Peter Lukas to look at Jon. “Jonathan! Come in, we were just finishing up.”
There was a moment of vertigo as Jon realized that Martin didn’t actually recognize him. He just Knew him. He felt an uncomfortable pressure at the back of his neck, as though something had grabbed hold of him to keep him from struggling.
Martin’s attention flickered briefly back to Peter, the stark annoyance returning to his voice. “Leave. I’d tell you to come back later, but honestly, don’t.”
“Same time tomorrow, then,” said Peter. He nodded cheerfully at Jon on his way out, and Martin rounded the desk to greet him.
“Here for a statement?” Martin asked eagerly. “Please, sit down, I’ll get you some tea.”
Jon nodded and collapsed faintly into the guest chair. Martin had apparently moved the entire tea station into his office, and opened a storage cabinet in the corner to reveal an electric kettle next to a mismatched selection of boxes and loose paper packets. Without so much as a look backwards, he began making a cup exactly the way Jon liked it, as well as one for himself. He even used Jon's favorite cat mug. Jon wondered if Martin Knew he liked it specifically because it was the one Martin always used to bring him.
“Sorry you had to see that,” Martin said idly. “Office politics, you know. Doesn’t even work here, and he thinks he can waltz right in and give me more stuff to do.”
“I can imagine,” said Jon. “Isn’t there anyone else to help you?”
Martin laughed again, that light little chirp that he reserved for when something was wrong and he didn’t want to talk about it. “Just me. I’ve got some assistants, somewhere, but they’re kept nice and busy.”
He turned to face Jon as he spoke, and the effect was perhaps less reassuring than he’d intended. For the first time in years, Jon was reminded that Martin's demeanor was the only thing stopping him from being intimidating as well as just very big. He looked older than he should have been. Jon had never seen him loom before, but he was proving to be quite good at it. There was a scar across his left jaw, two parallel lines that could have been from claws. His smile was, inexplicably, the same as ever, which almost made the whole picture worse. It was still more beautiful than the sunlight outside. His eyes went startlingly glassy for a moment, and he looked surprised at something.
“Wow. You’ve got quite a story, haven’t you?” he commented.
“I’m much more interested in yours,” said Jon. Martin sighed.
“Of course you are,” he said. “What is it this time... You know, I can't get a clear look at you, that's funny. Are you from the Spiral? You don’t reeeeally strike me as the spidery type.”
“No, I’m- I’m human,” said Jon. “I’m not here for the Archivist, Martin. I came to find you.”
Martin’s smile withered away into an almost childish dissatisfaction. He didn't tense up, or seem particularly more ready to deal with any impending danger. It was with an uneasy sinking feeling that Jon understood this was because his guard had been raised the whole time. Jon had been a threat from the moment he walked in the door. Martin was just sure he could deal with whatever that threat was.
“Cool," he said tersely, "Love it when strangers know who I am. Let's start from the top. Who exactly are you?"
"I'm Jon. Jonathan Sims," Jon answered, his whole being laid out precisely by the question. He could not help but feel a little thrill of joy at not being anything else. "I suppose I’m not anybody. I’m from a different world, one that I, ah… Kind of mucked up. I came here because I thought it would be better off without me."
Martin frowned.
He smiled.
He laughed, and it was as cold and terrible as before.
"Alright," he said. "That’s, um. Total nonsense. First things first-"
Martin turned to retrieve the tea and slid Jon's cup across the table to him. He even gave him a coaster.
"We're going to play a game," Martin said pleasantly. "Here's how it goes: I'm going to pop your head open like an advent calendar, and if I don't like what I find, I get to eat all the little chocolates inside. Now might be a good time to leave if that doesn't sound like a fun game to you."
"And abandon my tea?" Jon said, aghast. Martin lifted his cup, and they clinked glasses. From the look in Martin's eyes, they might as well have been crossing swords.
"Alright then!" said Martin. "Let's have that statement, Mr Jonathan Sims who isn’t anybody. The very first one. About how you worked here."
And with that, the whole world fell away, an excruciating practice in focus and captivity. Jon had expected it to feel like being in a spotlight. Perhaps like performing to a massive, leering audience. This was more personal. This was an exam that he'd spent his whole life studying for and not absorbed a single piece of worthwhile information towards. An essay prompt that he was brimming with words to answer, but could never have enough time to do it justice.
"Well, I was the Archivist," he started, taking a sip of his tea. "I was good at it. Not at first, of course. I wasn't a good anything, at first. I had some assistants who tolerated me. There was Sasha. And Tim. And you. I managed to ruin everything almost immediately, for everyone. I let Sasha die. Didn't even notice when it happened. Then, I brought Tim with me on a dangerous mission, knowing he would die too, which he did. I made your life hell, and the moment things started to change for the better, I left you.
"All while I was ruining people's lives, I continued to be a good Archivist. And an Archivist is only good for one thing. I brought ruin to everything around me one final time. An irrevocable ruin. So deep and terrible that reality shifted in the image of my abject failure. Then, when I could no longer stand to live in that world, I left you one last time. I removed myself - and my failure - from reality. And now, I'm here."
There was a heavy creak as Martin leaned back against his tea cabinet. He had looked calm, almost comfortable until that moment, and Jon remembered the way that statements tended to bottle up your emotions until they were finished if you weren't careful. Martin’s face had gone pale. At what in particular, Jon couldn't begin to guess. He could feel very keenly what Martin had seen - the litany of horrors that Jon had committed against the world, culminating in one final terror that never ceased and had no bounds. He couldn’t know what it meant to Martin, though. There was a haze growing around his memories of the apocalypse, like a nightmare his body was trying to wash away.
"You came back," Martin finished for him.
"I suppose I did," said Jon. "Martin, what happened to everyone?"
"Gone," Martin said faintly. He removed himself from the cabinet and came forward to lean on his chair instead. "They're all… dead, Jon, why did… it's just me. It's been me for so long."
That couldn’t be right. Jon was the reason they died, they should have been just fine without him.
"What about Melanie? Daisy, or Basira?" he insisted, "Or Helen, is Helen still here?"
"Helen’s gone," said Martin, "Died in the accident with Sasha. Michael left after that, too. I wasn’t supposed to be the Archivist, you know? Everyone knew that. Sasha’s the one who took over for Gertrude. After Tim got replaced by that… thing, she just… She didn't come back from the circus. I think she knew better. When Elias offered me the job, I thought- I couldn't stop thinking, if I say no, if he gets someone else, am I going to have to watch them die, too?"
"Martin, I'm so sorry," was all Jon could think to say. "I thought I could save them. If I'd just left well enough alone, if I hadn't been there, I thought that would be enough. This was my fault, all of it was meant to go away without me. I was just trying to fix what I’d done."
“And what did you do to me, huh?” asked Martin. “You said you killed everyone else.”
“I don’t want to-”
“Tell me what you did,” asked the Archivist.
“I loved you,” said Jon.
Again, he was unraveled for examination. It spared him the messy process of having to examine his feelings, but it meant that Martin was forced to go through it instead. Martin took a deep breath in and out, as though struggling to press back some reaction. Whatever he’d been through in Jon’s absence, it let him keep his expressions startlingly neutral.
“And what do you mean to do now?” he pressed.
“I suppose I’ll still love you,” said Jon. “And hope that that’s enough.”
Martin got very quiet. He started to say something, and stopped short. Thought of something better to say, then decided against that one as well. Jon momentarily wished that he could get inside his head one last time.
“What else do you do?” he finally asked.
“Mostly, I make extremely reckless decisions,” Jon admitted.
Martin considered this.
“I can work with that,” he decided, “You’re kind of from the future, right?”
“That’s not-”
“What can you tell me about the Fears?” Martin cut him off. There was a gleam in his eye that Jon recognized as the first inkling of a plan. It made Jon’s heart melt.
“Um, right. So, you’ve got Smirke’s fourteen, that’s obvious.”
“Obviously.”
“Did you talk to Leitner?”
Martin rolled his eyes. “Ugh. I haven’t seen him since he cleared out that Hunter last year. He still won’t come out of the tunnels, he’s convinced Elias is going to lop his head off.”
“He’s alive?” Jon exclaimed.
“I mean, I guess,” said Martin, not sounding too worried. “Seemed like he had things sorted.”
“He wasn’t far off the mark about Elias,” Jon said nervously.
“Yeeeah, I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Martin. “I keep him locked in a storage closet.”
This was so far outside the realm of Jon’s imagination that he actually took a moment to picture it. It was a pleasant moment.
“...and that works?” he asked.
“Sort of,” Martin shrugged. “I throw him an evil artifact once and a while to keep him busy. Took him ages to get out of that haunted coffin thing.”
“God, you’re amazing,” Jon muttered under his breath, “Err, what about Gerry?”
“How d’you think I got this?” said Martin, tracing a knuckle over the claw mark that tugged at his smug little half-smile.
Jon got the distinct feeling that they were competing at something. More importantly, Martin seemed to be winning. The tea was abandoned, pouring the last of its warmth uselessly into the air. There was a tension between them that Jon hadn’t felt since the first time they’d met. The rules for that interaction were impersonal, neutral and only tenuously agreed-upon, full of boundaries that needed pushing and limits to test. Technically speaking, they were meeting for the first time again, which meant that the same rules applied here. That memory forced a realization into Jon’s head with all the grace and delicacy of a burning freight train.
Martin wasn’t trying to beat him at anything. He was trying to impress him.
“C’mon, future guy,” said Martin, with an impatience that was clearly feigned. “Give me something useful.”
“You never mentioned what happened to Melanie,” Jon shot back.
“Melanie King,” Martin mulled over, “She came in with a statement, then she dragged Sasha off to India looking for ghosts. Sasha came back with a bullet hole in her back. Melanie joined a podcast.”
“Thank god,” Jon breathed a sigh of relief.
“Um, no?” said Martin, eyes wide. “Sasha got shot.”
“No, but- But Melanie’s fine,” Jon explained. “Honestly, I’ll take what I can get, at this point.”
Martin smirked. “Keep going.”
“Daisy and Basira.”
“They are a pair of law officers,” Martin said contemplatively, drawing the information from thin air. Jon noticed that he tilted his head up slightly whenever he Beheld something, craning his neck to get a better look. He wondered if he’d had any sort of tells like that. Martin could probably tell him. “One of whom just got probation for murdering someone. Again. Is that supposed to mean something?”
“I suppose not,” said Jon, “And you know about the rituals?”
“No, Jon, I don’t know about the rituals I’ve lost most of my friends to trying to stop in the past year,” said Martin.
“Do you know they don’t work?”
This gave Martin pause.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked suspiciously.
“I mean, they don’t work,” Jon repeated. “The rituals are doomed to fail. It’s impossible to bring any one fear into the world on its own.”
“Which means that… I haven’t lost everyone trying to stop the end of the world.” Martin’s voice had started to shake. “I’ve lost everyone for… absolutely nothing.”
“There’s something else,” Jon said sharply. This was a crisis that did need dealing with, but not here or now. “One of them does work, one that you’re in a uniquely good position to stop. Your own.”
Martin pulled out the meaning of this remarkably quickly. That, or he just pulled the answer from Jon’s head. “The Archivist is a ritual,” he proposed.
“Exactly,” said Jon. “Your role is to collect the fears. All of them. They can’t be brought in one at a time, but all at once is a different matter.”
“So, no Archivist, no ritual?” Martin said quietly.
“No!” Jon cried, “That’s what I tried to do. Didn’t exactly work out. I think there’s always an Archivist. All we can do is postpone it. Gertrude did the best she could, but she didn’t tell anyone who could have carried on for her.”
“And then she died,” said Martin.
“Yes, but she also lived,” said Jon. “Right now, I think that’s the best possible thing you can do.”
“Let’s- Let me just unpack this, so you know how insane this sounds,” said Martin. “This guy I’ve never met before - who apparently loves me literally more than sunlight, don’t think I didn’t catch that - waltzes in and tells me that the solution to all my problems is just living my best life.”
Jon smiled, finally breaking the tension to take a sip of tea. “In all fairness, the sun does rather pale in comparison to you.”
Martin laughed again. This time it had just a hint of the warmth that Jon longed to see in him.
“Well. You promised you’d find me when you came back,” said Martin. “How’s that working out for you?”
Jon nearly choked on his drink. He had in fact been trying not to think about the last time he’d seen the other Martin - his Martin, who stood through the end of the world with him. He’d been trying to think of everything except the last words they’d said to each other, the last time they’d touched, the last time they would see each other again.
“You remember?” he spluttered.
“I know,” Martin corrected him, although he seemed unsure himself. “That’s different from remembering. It didn’t happen to me. It happened to someone else, who was me, who… And, and I don’t… I mean, I could. Couldn’t I?”
“Martin, I can’t read minds anymore,” Jon reminded him.
“I don’t love you,” Martin insisted. This seemed to distress him more than anything he’d pulled from Jon’s mind. “Not like he did. I don’t know how. You came all this way, and I’ve got no idea how to be the person you came looking for.”
“I know,” Jon said warmly. “I didn’t come here expecting you to. I came back to keep my promise. And I came back to help however I could.”
Martin nodded. “D’you think we could start with that whole ‘living’ thing?”
“I can’t say I’m the best at it,” said Jon, “But for you, I’ll try.”
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Burnt Offering
Case: 0090608
Name: Jason North Subject: The Discovery of an alleged ritual site found near Loch Glass in Scotland Date: August 6th, 2009 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London
[Archivist (John): Tell me again.
Martin: Again?
Archivist: I want it on tape.
Martin: What? Why?
Archivist: I just want a record. To make sure I have something I can check.
Martin: Okay, fine. There were two delivery men. They were big, and they spoke with cockney accents that might have been fake, and they delivered a package for you. I don’t remember anything else about what they looked like.
Archivist: Nothing at all?
Martin: [Exasperated] They looked normal. Like you’d expect. They looked like two, huge, cockney delivery men. I don’t know what else you want?
Archivist: What about the table?
Martin: I didn’t see the table. I guess Rosie must have signed for it. I mean, it’s her office on the way to Artefact Storage, that makes sense.
Archivist: She says the same as you. Two men, doesn’t know how they got in, too intimidated to ask, looked “exactly like you’d expect”. Useless...
Martin: Sorry... Look, John, I do think we should destroy the table, though. I mean, if it’s the one from Amy Patel’s statement. Just in case.
Archivist: Elias told me the same thing. Luckily he phrased it as advice rather than an instruction, so for now I’m more inclined to keep studying it. We’re not in the business of destroying knowledge.
Martin: I suppose. Can I go now?
Archivist: Yes, go on.
Martin: Thank you.
[DOOR OPENS]
Look, you need to get some sleep.
...
I’ll see you later.
[DOOR CLOSES]
Archivist: Waste of tape, really. He’s right. Might as well get some use out of it. Statement of Jason North, regarding the discovery of an alleged ritual site found near Loch Glass in Scotland. Original statement given August 6th 2009. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.]
I just need to know if you can save my son. I’ve asked and asked and your people only ever tell me to write my statement. Put it down on paper for investigation. Is that going to help? No. Of course it isn’t. Even if you had the power to do something, would you? Or would you rather watch my son burn so you can take notes.
I’ve been drinking. You can probably tell from the stains. Well, I don’t plan to apologise for ruining your precious paper, and I don’t plan to stop. Only way to keep the fear from settling in. If I’m scared I’m going to lose Ethan like I lost everything else, then I’ll curl into a ball and never get up. I won’t be able to do anything to stop it. I won’t let my son burn, even if you cowards don’t have the guts to step up and do something.
I’m sorry. I know. There’s no-one to blame by my own stupid self. Blundering in where I had no right to go. But yes, I know, you want the whole goddamn story, don’t you? So you can look over it in ten years and go “Hmm, interesting” long after Ethan and me are dead. Well, fine. There’s not much to it, really. For everything it’s done to me, I didn’t really do anything at all. Just messed around in the wrong clearing.
I’m an ecologist. Was an ecologist. Working for the Forestry Commission up in Scotland. It was a great job. For me, at least. I suppose if you don’t like hiking or being alone you’d have a hard time with it, but for me it was a great fit. Now, up in the north of Scotland, the bit without all the people, there are plantations of evergreen trees. Huge ones. And their job is the same as pretty much any other tree – to get cut down for wood. Trouble is, a lot of animals make their homes in and around those trees. Badgers, red squirrels, even pine martens. Do you know what a pine marten is? It’s a wee bear. An adorable wee bear that needs to be protected. Because the pine marten, like a lot of other species that live in those areas, is protected by conservation laws; can’t be legally killed without the sort of special permissions logging companies rarely have. So it was my job to walk through all these plantations with a clipboard and note down what animals had made their homes where.
You don’t need me to tell you that the job can me a long way from civilisation at times. Some of these plantations are... off the beaten track. Everyone gets so caught up on how small Scotland is compared to other countries, but it’s still huge compared to a single idiot wandering through the forests. And there aren’t so many people, so you have large areas all but devoid of human life. It wasn’t uncommon for me to find myself an hour or more away from a town or main road or any other human life at all. I didn’t mind being alone, though, because I knew I had my little boy Ethan waiting for me back at home. Four years old and already sharp as anything. And my wife Lucy. She used to be waiting for me as well.
You see... plenty of strange things out here. That far from anywhere, a lot of folks use it as their own personal dumping grounds. Fridges, microwaves, barbed wire, all sorts. Occasionally strewn throughout the forests and over the hills. I even found a corpse once. Not as exciting as it sounds – they were far too decomposed for me to tell anything about the death. Could have been a mafia hit or could have been a hiker having a heart attack. Result was the same for me: radio it in and then lose two hours of light babysitting a dead guy while I wait for someone to get up and take charge of it.
So when I saw the clearing in the trees near Loch Glass I wasn’t worried. I figured I’d seen everything messed up the forest had to offer. Heck, I even saw a friend of mine get impaled on a falling tree once. I reckoned there was nothing left to shock me. It didn’t matter that the hairs on my arm began to stand up, or that I started sweating through my coat in the middle of February, or that that dry acrid taste at the back of my throat made me want to gag. I still headed on over to investigate this odd-looking clearing. 
It wasn’t man made, or at least nobody had cut trees down to make it. It looked as though the trees had been deliberately planted in a circle. If that was the case, judging by their growth they must have been planted like that almost fifty years ago. In the centre was a large piece of stone, crudely hacked into what looked like a small seat or... maybe an altar. As I stood there on the edge, I realised the trees around me were completely silent, and after a few seconds of examination saw that it didn’t look like there were any animals at all around this clearing. It was... unsettling, sure, but it also meant that I had all the information I needed for my survey of that area. I could tick the boxes and move on. I didn’t need to enter the clearing. But I did. 
The moment I crossed that threshold I knew I had made a mistake. It was like an electric shock rushing through my body, and my already warm skin began to prickle and burn. I stripped off my jacket with sweat dripping from my fingers, and reached for my water to try and get rid of that foul taste in my throat. I pulled the cap off and took a long swig... half a second before I realised the water was boiling hot. I screamed; well, it was more a gurgle, really, and fell to the floor in agony.
I lay there for almost half an hour, collecting myself and just breathing in the cold winter air of the Highlands, waiting for the pain to die down. Eventually, I managed to compose myself and stagger to my feet. The strange sensations were still there, but I was able to mostly choke them down, at least until I had a proper look around the clearing. The altar was the focus of the whole thing, but in many ways it was the least interesting part. Clean, smooth stone. No markings of any sort, nothing on top. Just... a rock. Around it, though, on the ground were scorch marks. They didn’t seem to radiate out from any one angle, they just covered areas of the forest floor. There was no ash, though, or debris, or anything that might have meant a fire, just the burn marks.
It was following these scorches that led me to the really messed up stuff, because what I saw around the edges of the clearing put them to shame. See, it looked like there were animals in that place once, but now each one lay just beyond the edge. On all of them, the fur or feathers had been burned away, and all that was left was their skin, scalded a vivid, angry red, like they’d been badly sunburned. They were dead, every one of them, though none seemed to have decayed any more than their compatriots. Either they had all died together, or something in that place was keeping them fresh. Neither option sounded grand to me.
Finally, I looked at the trees. There was nothing wrong with the trees themselves, not exactly. Driven into the trunk of each one was a heavy-looking iron nail. I didn’t count how many there were in total, maybe a couple dozen. Each suspended a worn and dirt-caked glass milk bottle that had clearly seen better days. My eyes fell on the string used to suspend them, and I couldn’t help but notice it seemed far cleaner and newer than the bottles or their contents.
What was inside each one seemed to vary, some had pine needles and twigs, some were full of dirt, and one or two even held what appeared to be rainwater, though looking closer I could see that it bubbled very gently inside those bottles in an endless simmer. In each I could also see a small photograph, half-buried in dirt or almost boiled clean. They all looked to be the same photograph, though it was hard to tell for sure. An old woman, probably in her fifties or sixties, wearing reading glasses and grey hair curled into a tight bun. She stared out disapprovingly from every bottle.
Weirdest of all, on the bottom of each was tied a lock of hair. It was long and grey, in poor condition, and I reckon it must have belonged to the woman in the photograph. It was tied up with the same new string as held the bottles, except for the fact that it was burned, ever so slightly at the ends.
I was still in quite a lot of pain from the water earlier, but I’ve always been too curious for my own stupid good. I took a few pictures on my phone, but I wanted some clear shots of the photograph inside to show my friends. God knows I should have just left; it’s not like there weren’t plenty of warning signs. I just chose not to pay attention. I picked up one of jars filled with twigs and took it off the nail, trying to angle it in my hand to get a better shot of the contents. 
Then my fingers slipped and I dropped it. I watched it plummet towards the hard winter ground, willing it not to shatter, not to break. It was falling so slowly, but I was even slower. It exploded into a thousand glass shards and instantly I knew that I had meddled with something I should have left alone. I turned tail and ran, stopping only to reach down and pick up the photograph. I don’t know why, I suppose it felt so weird all of a sudden that I didn’t think I could get any more cursed. And I wanted a copy of that picture just to prove to myself that what I had found was real. It was real. You can have the damn thing now, though. I’ll leave it with my statement. I know in my heart getting rid of it will make no difference but I have to try.
Because from that moment on, everything I love and value has burned or been destroyed. My car overheated on the way back to the Forestry Commission, and I barely got out before the engine caught fire. My house was a smouldering heap of blackened rubble before the end of the week. Electrical failure. I don’t want to talk about what happened to Lucy. I don’t want to think about her face at the end.
Now there’s only one thing I have left that I value. That I love. And I cannot lose him. I can’t lose Ethan. I shouldn’t be in this mess. It’s absurd. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just dropped a bottle. That’s all! I don’t deserve this. I don’t.
I asked about who might have gone to the area, but aside from some middle-aged businessmen on a hiking trip no-one’s been anywhere near that clearing for years. There is no reason this is happening, but I’m still going to lose everything. I am so scared.
Archivist Notes:
He didn’t, in the end. Lose Ethan, that is. Ethan North is currently a healthy eleven-year-old boy living with a loving foster family in Inverness. They declined to give an interview. I can’t say I blame them. The rest is a standard muddle – Tim couldn’t find evidence of the clearing, Sasha established all the accidents that befell Mr. North and his loved ones appeared mundane in nature. The set-up of the clearing matches rituals or spells in both voodoo and Wicca but nothing definitive and there is no hard evidence of anything supernatural occurring. 
There’s no reason to believe that when Jason North doused himself in petrol on August the 10th 2009, then lit himself on fire, he was doing anything other than acting out the delusions of a paranoid alcoholic. Paramedics took him to Raigmore Hospital, where he died three days later. He never regained consciousness.
I suppose there is one piece of evidence. Mr. North did include with his statement the picture he found in the bottle. It is a photograph of Gertrude Robinson, my predecessor at the Magnus Institute, circa 2002 as best I can tell. I have no idea what this means. I have no idea what any of this means. I’m very tired.
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visions-skam · 6 years
Text
CHAPTER 6
monday, october 30 sweet-brockhampton
The Green Leaf Teahouse was a small, homey cafe in downtown Beacon Hills. It was a hotspot for people of all ages. Sana, Yousef, and Elias had been going there for years because of the delicious food and drinks and friendly service. Most importantly, Yousef’s mother owned the cafe, so everything was free for them. A bell jingled cheerily overhead as Sana entered the establishment. Elias and Yousef were already seated at a booth. Yousef spotted her and waved her over enthusiastically. She shot him a brilliant smile, but it was dimmed by a mirage. Sana stood in the doorway of the teahouse as she had a hundred times before. It looked the same as it always did, with one exception. Everything was covered in blood. The walls, tables, and counters were bathed in crimson. People all around her were crying out and clutching rosy wounds. Necks and stomachs gushed repulsively. Claret burbled in their mouths. Out of the anguished mass, Sana recognized only two faces: her brother, Elias, and the wolf-man from Friday night . . . “Sana, are you alright?”, a voice asked in a worried tone. Yousef’s eldest sister, Farha, was standing directly in front of Sana. She lightly placed one hand on Sana’s shoulder and clutched a steaming coffee pot with the other. Sana cleared her throat and then her head. “Oh, um . . . yeah, Farha, I’m fine.” She shot the young woman a half-hearted smile. Farha didn’t look convinced, but she smiled anyway and went to work behind the front counter. When Sana made her way to the table where her brother and friend were sitting, they were engaged in a spirited conversation about something stupid that a new kid in their economics class had done. Sana rolled her eyes and slid into a booth alongside Yousef. “So, Elias,” Sana asked, getting straight to the point, “what was so important that we had to leave home and meet up here?” Elias raised his eyebrows. “Damn, no ‘hi, how are you?’” “I didn’t come here to chit-chat, Elias. I have an essay due tomorrow. Can you make this quick?” Elias swept his gaze across the room. “You know how that . . . thing happened Friday night?” he asked in a low voice. “And that wolf-thing bit me?” Sana and Yousef nodded. “Well, I saw him,” Elias said. He paused expectantly. Sana and Yousef exchanged looks. “You don’t mean . . .” Yousef trailed off. “I saw him. I saw the wolf," Elias said. "Or, the man that the wolf turned into," he amended. Sana gasped involuntarily. Her surprise attracted glances from nearby customers, but they quickly lost interest. “So,” Yousef asked. “What are you going to do?” Sana scoffed and turned to her brother. “You’re not going to do anything! He’s . . . he almost killed you, for crying out loud!” “What do you mean I’m not going to do anything?” Elias shot back. “I have to confront him! I have to ask him how he . . . changed like that and how the wound from the bite just disappeared like that! Most importantly, I need to figure out where I know him from!” .“Elias, keep your voice down,” Sana whispered. “People are going to hear us!” _
A few tables over, a young woman sat alone, stirring a steaming mug of tea. She had never liked tea; she had another purpose for frequenting the Green Leaf Teahouse. She had been engrossed in a social media post on her cell phone when dialogue from another booth caught her attention. “He bit me and the bruise just went away, Sana! How do you explain that?” The woman turned her phone off and began to listen intently. “And then he just turned into a human!” someone insisted. “A human that I know I saw at practice today!” “Describe him again,” another male voice inquired. “You all saw him. He was tall, blonde, blue eyes, wavy hair. Really pale,” said the original boy. “I know that I know him from somewhere.” Two other voices murmured in confirmation. That son of a bitch, the woman thought. He really did it. He really bit some poor kid. She stifled a giggle. Mr. Nice Guy finally gave in. He finally turned someone. The woman downed her tea in a single gulp and rose from the table. God, he's got no idea what he's gotten himself-and that kid-into. I almost feel sorry for him. She approached the counter, waited in line, and then came face-to-face with the reason she had come to the tea house. “What would you like?” the man asked. He was organizing money in the register. The woman was silent until he looked up. When he recognized her, his jaw tensed. “Adhama,” he addressed her tersely, “what are you still doing here?” The woman pursed her lips. “What do you mean?” she asked in a cloying tone. “I love tea. I’d like a refill, please. Earl Grey. Large.” He glowered. “You hate tea. Why can’t you just leave me alone?” Adhama dropped the act. “You know I can’t do that, baby. I can’t let you forget what you owe me.” Her seductive, lilting accent grated on his eardrums. He scanned the room and landed on a table, a booth in the back. There sat three teenagers. They were immersed in heated conversation. He couldn’t hear them, yet he knew exactly what they were talking about. He leaned in toward Adhama. “I took care of it,” he said through gritted teeth. “Now leave me alone.” Adhama grinned. She liked the feeling of knowing what he had done. She loved knowing how much shame he felt because of it. She took his face in her hand and turned his head so her mouth was millimeters away from his ear. “I just feel sorry for the poor son of a bitch you turned,” she whispered ominously. “He’s got no idea what’s coming his way. And don’t relax yet. You’re not off the hook.” The man perceived the threat behind her words. When she was sure her message was clear, she straightened her back and cleared her throat. “Now,” she spoke at a normal volume, “get my order, will you?”
_
Yousef and Elias were debating how best to handle the wolf situation. They didn’t seem to notice that Sana wasn’t saying anything. She allowed her mind to wander while stirring her drink. Another vision. This can’t be good. At this rate, I’ll never get any sleep again. “Sana,” Yousef asked, interrupting her thoughts, “what do you like we should do?” She took a slow sip of coffee. “Maybe. . .” she paused. “Maybe nothing even happened at all.” The two boys stared at her in disbelief. “Maybe it was some kind of. . . I don’t know. A shared hallucination or something,” she murmured. Elias’ eyebrows shot up. “Do you really believe that?” Sana lowered her eyes. “No,” she replied quietly. All three of them were silent. “Look,” Sana said. “I think we should just pretend it didn’t happen. I mean, there’s no logical way to explain it, so . . .” she couldn’t find the words to finish her statement. “Bullshit,” Elias shot back. Yousef and Sana were surprised at his little outburst. He often teased his sister jokingly but was almost never harsh toward her. “Listen, this happened to me,” Elias said. “I’m not just going to sit around and do nothing and wait for something else to happen, okay?” He didn’t wait for a response. “We have to do something.” After another stretch of silence, Yousef was the first to speak. “Listen, like Sana said, that . . . that wolf guy tried to kill you, right? So why don’t we go to the police?” Sana scoffed. “And tell them what, that a wolf bit Elias, didn’t leave a scar, and turned into a man? I don’t think so.” Elias nodded. “Besides, I don’t think we should be trying to lock up the only person who can give us any information about what-and how-that happened.” “Back to the drawing board then, I guess.” “I still think we should just forget it,” Sana asserted. “Whether we like it or not, there’s nothing we can do about it now except wait.” Yousef nodded reluctantly, but Elias’ concentration was elsewhere. His sight was trained on a point beyond them. He looked as if he was in a daze. “What?” Yousef asked. “What is it?” “That’s-that’s him,” Elias stuttered. “That’s the guy who bit me. That’s the guy I saw today. This is where I recognize him from.” Yousef and Sana followed Elias’ line of sight, craning their necks to see what had captured his attention. Yousef’s mother was talking to a young man behind the counter. He was tall and slender and had an apron tied around his waist. A yellowed name tag was pinned to his shirt. In the center was a four-letter name. If they squinted, they could read it. EVEN.
notes:  First, sorry for not updating this story in a while! I don't know if many people keep up with it, but I've been really busy with exams and projects in school for the last two weeks. However, I'm on a three-week break now so updates will hopefully be more frequent and consistent. Second of all, THAT ENDING!!!! AAAHH!! Please comment, reblog, and like if you enjoyed this chapter! Thank you for reading!
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