Work Text:
John is bustling around the archives filing away some papers, giving himself a bit of time to pretend he has a normal job in between the steadily increasing number of incidents making it abundantly clear that he absolutely does not, when suddenly he finds himself being propelled by the elbow and almost overbalances before starting to jog to keep up with—with Sasha, who is excitedly babbling at him much faster than the mortal ear can comprehend. John, who often finds himself traversing beyond the bounds of mortal perception these days, makes out something about "hacking" a "list serve", but the eldritch essence of fear that decided he would be a great vessel of its power declines to explain any of what that might mean, and none of his stammering attempts to ask Sasha for clarification manage to penetrate her enthusiastic chatter.
Eventually, she reaches her desk, parks him to the side of her chair, then sits down and grabs him again, pulling him to lean over to see what, presumably, she brought him over to see. It's... incomprehensible. Perhaps a chain of messages? Some of the formatting seems familiar from Elias's interminable memos "Regarding Upcoming Internal Review" or "In Response To The Latest Intelligence On The Nature Of The Unknowing" (he doesn't even use title case right, not to mention how irritating it is to get back from being kidnapped to already find a smug bureaucratic summary of the story he managed to drag out of someone who was actively trying to kill him). But much as it resembles them, none of the writing is in—in anything he can even recognize, much less English. "What is this?" he asks.
"Oh my god, I told you, I found the intra-organization email server that Nikola Orsinov is using to plan the Unknowing. This is a goldmine!"
John blinks. "Nikola Orsinov uses email?"
"I dunno," Sasha shrugs. "A lady of the changing times has gotta keep up! Not that you'd know," and she elbows him.
"For the last time, I am three years younger than you, can we please leave that joke behind us?"
"When you stop putting air quotes around half the things I say because you don't know what a server is, I'll stop making fun of you for it. Maybe!"
Jon sighs. "Well. Thank you for finding this, I suppose." He returns to squinting at the runes laid out on the screen. Maybe... Hm. He picks out a line, concentrates on it, concentrates beyond concentration. He reaches, tries to bend the dreadful knowledges he's been chosen by to help him know. The end of the world is coming. He must stop it. Sasha has gotten this for them, at what cost he does not know, but if he can help turn it to useful information—well. He must.
The shapes defy his efforts. They remain mysterious as he becomes more and more intent—until—"[email protected]!", he shouts, then has to lean on Sasha's desk, wheezing to catch his breath.
"What?"
"[email protected]," he repeats. "That's Nikola's email. I don't know if I can get more—that was. Draining."
Sasha stares at him. "You... just... you just tried to use your freaky eye powers to read these emails?"
"I—yes? I appreciate the effort you went to in order to retrieve these, but they're hardly much use to us if we can't read them. I know that they're not exactly 'ethical', but I do feel that stopping the Unknowing is an important enough cause—" He cuts himself off. Sasha has started laughing. "I'm sorry, what is so funny?"
Sasha starts trying to explain, but keeps interrupting herself with her own laughter. "You—no, oh my god, oh wow—you were just trying to tell me you were a hip youth like me—oh wow." She shakes her head and turns to the computer, a look of focus trying (and failing) to replace her delighted grin.
"What? What does that mean?" John demands petulantly.
"No, I'll just show you," Sasha shoots over her shoulder without looking away from the emails, which are now all highlighted in a nice light green. She moves to another, briefly blank, window—Word?—and pastes the runes in, before highlighting them again, moving the mouse to the font selector, and picking out "Times New Roman" with a showy click!
Suddenly, all of the text is in English. It's readable. John peers closer. It does seem to be the plans for the Unknowing. "This is incredible!" He turns to look at Sasha. "How did you do this?"
Sasha looks both gleeful and gobsmacked. "John... It was in Wingdings. It was written in English, in Wingdings. I just changed the font. You did not have to try to bend your 'evil majjycks' to your mortal will to figure this one out! Man, Tim is going to lose it when I tell him about this."