Chapter Text
As Jon half-walks half-jogs to Martin’s flat he, not for the first time, terribly misses the ever-present radio chatter that perfuses Night Vale. The moment Cecil is on air, all the radios tune themselves into his channel and then you always know all the notable and unusual events around town when you need them.
Jon is rather sure that if Cecil was here, he would have already heard all about the fact that Martin was gone, why it happened, how Martin was doing, and maybe also overheard how he made his tea. Martin sure makes great tea and Jon kind of wants to know the secret to it, so what, sue him (please don’t, the pay at the archives isn’t that good, go for Elias).
But no, London, like the rest of the boring world, it seems, has the same boring radio that really doesn’t say many substantial things unless you actually manage to find the news -and you have to find the channel yourself, how annoying- at which point you might learn something useful, but more than a few hours late. Even Desert Bluffs is better than that. Desert Bluffs .
Jon distracts himself with these thoughts as he walks because aimless rants about radio are much better than imagining the corpse of someone eaten by worms, spiders, or both.
He doesn’t even wonder about how he knows where to go without even checking his phone for directions, just leans more into whatever sixth sense guides him.
Soon enough he is standing before an apartment building, one that is perfectly unremarkable and blends into all the others around it. It’s boring, there is no other description for it, just bland and the perfect picture of a place where nothing would ever happen. Boring.
Jon knows better than to trust outside appearances of places, he steps through the door and heads to the stairwell.
With each step that he climbs, the air changes.
There is something there, something that permeates the apartment building with dread that Jon can only remember feeling when Cecil would gleefully announce over the radio that one of the interns would be sent out to investigate one matter or another.
It’s the anxiety of something deeply unpleasant lurking just around the corner, like everything is suddenly half a millimeter off and his brain is trying to catalog all the too-many little differences that suddenly put him in this strange situation.
It’s one part anticipation and one part worry and Jon has long since passed the third 'fear' part of that cocktail. You never survive internship if your first reaction to the unknown is fear.
Now that he’s thinking about it, maybe he can put that experience to good use.
If you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget. If you seek to see something, then you better have either a backup plan or a weapon.
Jon has none. Step one failed, damn.
A quick frisk of his pockets leaves him with a pen -very similar to one he had once had to drive through the eye of a shambling shadow horror that haunted the radio break room kitchen, so that's at least something- but nothing else, unless whatever he meets might be vulnerable to spare change and paperclips or would get a papercut from his notebook.
Maybe he should invest in a knife. Or an axe. Probably should start small, butterfly knives had some aesthetic to them, and Dana always-
Anyway , future purchases aside, Jon only has a pen, but something is better than nothing.
Now armed and just a tiny bit more dangerous, Jon takes a deep breath, straightens his spine, and marches on up the stairs.
At last, Jon is staring down the correct hall, down towards Martin’s apartment door. Nothing seems to be off, the hall empty and silent.
Jon doesn’t trust that fact one single bit. There’s the faintest sweet taste to the air, like fruit on the verge of rotting. A warning. In Jon, old habits scream for him to turn on his heel, go back to work, and pretend like nothing has happened, like he went on the most usual of walks -if him going on mid-day walks was an usual thing, at least- and met nothing strange at all.
But he is the head archivist, the Archivist, whatever that is, and Martin is one of his assistants and he is not getting a death toll on his hands quite so soon in his new position.
So, Jon starts to walk down the hall.
He really shouldn’t.
He continues.
He really should turn back, this is just a hall.
Something’s there, he Knows it.
There’s nothing to see.
But he does See.
It’s less of a transformation and more of a realization, not a shift in perspective as much as an image coming into focus. One moment there’s the impression of a hall he really should avoid for whatever reason, t he next the air smells of rot and there’s a decaying figure at Martin’s door and-
Jon staggers back with a yelp, leg instinctively kicking out to shake off whatever may have caused the sudden burst of pain in his calf.
The sudden motion is apparently enough to detach the small white worm that has just finished chewing through his pants and send it flying.
It disappears down the hall with barely a noise to signal it landing on the ground, quite a distance away, among its other brethren at Jane Prentiss’ feet.
"Oh good lord I'm so sorry."
Her rotting head turns towards him and Jon tries his best to offer an apologetic smile.
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Somewhere in his office, even as he restlessly paces while nearly pulling all his hair out, Elias Bouchard is really considering having a drink. Or two. Or a full bottle or ridiculously expensive wine.
That last option sounds best by a longshot.
It’s one thing to glance down at his Archivist and his assistants during the day to see something like Tim using institute materials to print out a life-size paper cutout of Elias to glue it together on a piece of cardboard and terrify his previous coworkers in research by hiding it in a storage closet.
It was another to see Jonathan, unarmed and unprepared, standing face-to-face with Jane Prentiss.
Elias is rather sure his swears could have been heard all the way down the hall as he scrambled for anything the Beholding might have to make sure his new Archivist didn’t get himself killed.
Hopefully, the Archivist would not be left with too many physical and mental scars from what was sure to go down.
Elias wasn’t about to lose another project that showed so much promise.
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"...what?" Jane Prentiss wheezes out the word more than she says it. Her enunciation is slow, as muscles struggle to move despite all the holes eaten through them by the wriggling shapes that slither in and out of her face. A worm drops to the floor as she speaks, and Jon suppresses a wince.
"I just didn't mean to kick it -them? uh- the worm, sorry, just got startled.” A pause. “Did- uh- Did it get hurt?"
The pool of worms at her feet stops moving in Jon’s direction, or at least wriggles quite a bit slower.
Jon will take what he can get. He does his best to keep himself from fidgeting under her gaze, just focuses on how he's holding himself to avoid following up on any of the more anxious thoughts that buzz around his head. One of them is a note on the fact that the worms seem to have very sharp teeth and how quickly they seem to bite through clothing, what to even say of flesh. The wound does sting quite a bit. A t least Martin's door is still standing and doesn’t quite look like swiss cheese, so maybe Jane's worms didn't like the taste of wood.
Speaking of Jane's worms, who are still drawing closer and closer-
“Just to clarify...” He honestly wasn’t quite sure how to best phrase the question, but it was better to be polite and just ask before he said something stupid. ”Ah, is this like an Erika situation?”
Now the worms do truly stop advancing as a unified twitching mass. They just aimlessly crawl around, some slowly making their way back to Jane. Jane herself just stares at Jon with an unreadable expression, though how much of that is true emotion and how much is due to paralyzed muscle and mutilated skin is hard to tell.
“Erika?”
Jon nods. “Angels, you know, the ones whose existence people are not allowed to legally acknowledge?”
Jane’s expression doesn’t much change, though some of the skin and muscle on her face do twitch as if attempting to move despite being consumed by the writhing things that live within. Somehow, Jon still knows that her confusion has only deepened. He’s good at recognizing expressions when he really tries, his primary school teacher was replaced for a while by a floating monolith of singing flesh.
“Just, um, nevermind. The point is - do you go by Jane Prentiss, or is it that all of you, as in all the worms, go by different Jane Prentiss’s?”
The worms now too somehow manage to look baffled as they slowly wiggle along on the carpeted hallway floor. Jane, for Jon is still rather sure that this was the correct way to address at least her as the hive, stands still and silent for a moment.
“The worms don’t have names.” She decides at last, the emotion behind the words quite unreadable.
That sounds quite sad to Jon. Names have a way of making things more important, and the worms already look so small. He just shrugs. “Very well. If they don’t want any, I won’t judge.”
A silence falls between them, broken only by the sound of worm on worm on hallway floor. It sounds a bit like moist spaghetti being moved around in a bowl. Jon makes sure to keep his eyes on Jane, as much as he hates eye contact, though he’s not sure it’s doing much since Jane doesn’t have that much left of her eyes in the first place.
He still has no clue how to get her away from Martin’s door, and apprehension slowly shifts to frustration, something which he quickly stamps down on. Not the time to lose his temper.
“You are not afraid…” Jane declares, it sounds almost like a question.
Only almost, but Jon would rather keep her talking while he figures out what to do. “No, I don’t think so.”
Was he supposed to be afraid? Yes, the wriggling and twitching of the worms is a bit disgusting, sure, but that’s probably because he doesn't interact much with worms and maggots in the first place. These aren't even sapient, unlike the tarantula community in Night Vale. These bugs were just bugs, Jane was a human host for those bugs, and all that was quite a stereotype for any zombie movie or maggot-ridden corpse shown in some horror flick. It was uncreative, to be honest, and uncreative things are seen again and again and so become banal and boring instead of terrifying.
Jon has previously called more objectively scary people and entities his neighbors; Jane hasn’t even tried to kill him yet - that one little worm doesn’t count - and so has quite a bit of catching up to do.
The stalemate of silence ends as Jane speaks again, “Do you like worms, archivist?”
“Uh, no.” Definitely not. Especially not these ones, with all the teeth. Oh, maybe the quick refusal is a bit insulting. “I mean- I do like things like moths and butterflies! The patterns on their wings are, uh, neat. Did you know that some actually are meant to mimic the eyes of owls?”
No info-dumping about butterflies and moths on the living hive of maggots, Jon.
Jane tilts her head to the side and Jon is rather sure that’s how people look with their necks broken. He quickly hurries to speak up before the hive can, because he may not be afraid of Pretiss or her worms, but small-talk is the bane of his existence.
“That out of the way, could you and the worms please vacate the premises? I really need to get to my assistant to make sure he’s okay.”
As polite as Jane is, keeping people trapped at home without any public safety motive or correctly-filed paperwork is quite rude, especially when those people have work to do. Sure, when it was Valentine’s day or you have to hide from the secret police or the doppelgangers attack, then it's perfectly fine to take some time off unannounced. However, this is none of those situations and so Martin has no reason to be kept away from work. Jon is rather sure there wouldn’t be too many consequences since there is no station management equivalent for the Archives and Elias just doesn't measure up to those vaguely eldritch abominations that sometimes assimilate, kill, or eat employees, but it's always better to be safe than sorry.
He really wants to get Martin back.
Jane doesn’t move, just twitches where the rot continues to burrow through her flesh.
Jon decides to try again. “Miss Prentiss, please. I respect that this might be something that you have to do, as I am quite sure Martin’s investigation must have upset you in some way, but all complaints should be directed to Elias Bouchard, he’s the head of the Magnus Institute here in London and if you wish I could give you precise directions to his office-”
She still doesn’t move, then flinches, as if a thought just hit her quite physically.
“You can have him back, Archivist.” Jane wheezes out at last.
“What? Oh, thank you.” What do you even say after that? “I’ll keep in touch?”
Not that, probably. Too late.
Jane doesn’t respond, just turns on her heel and walks away.
Jon watches her go, then shrugs to himself and goes to knock on Martin's door.