Chapter Text
0.
It’s over.
Neon colours are flashing and clashing, searing into Martin’s retinas. The tower is shaking, falling, and his shoulder is slowly seeping blood where the rubble had caught him. Below him, holding him, is Jon, fear and hope and sadness and love mingled in his face, and Martin wants to hate him, even as he knows he can’t, even as his hands shake, already slippery with blood.
“Are you sure about this?” he asks, voice breaking.
“No,” Jon says, “but I love you.”
Martin would laugh, if he could breathe without feeling like his lungs are on fire, at the echo of a long-gone conversation. Instead he says, “I love you, too.”
Jon, hand on Martin’s face, leans up, pulls him down, and their lips meet in what Martin knows is their final kiss. His breath catches as they part, and he steadies his grip on the knife.
He’s sure that the sound Jon makes will haunt his nightmares, presuming he lives long enough to have nightmares again.
He pulls back with a shaking sob as the tapes around them unspool and the world shakes and there’s a strange pulsing force through his brain, like electromagnetism, like radiation, like his thoughts being turned 360 in his head, and then–
T̶̫̩̆h̷̤͓̎͆e̶͕̓̄ ̵̺̻͗t̵̬̿ẹ̴̳͐ţ̷̟̑h̵̬̘̑e̷̹̟̾r̵͈̒̈́ ̵̞́î̶̭s̵̡̄͐ ̵͕̮͠͝ŝ̷̜̤̔e̷͙͖͂v̴̛̭̇è̷̦̼r̷̙̣͂͐e̷̙͋͝d̵̪.̶̬̮̃͐
T̴̻̐ḣ̸̫̀ͅė̵̪ ̴̜͓̻̓̏t̸̗̆ą̸̣͖̆͋̚p̷̡̍̽ĕ̸̼̬̤̚s̵̫̜̓ ̴̡̻̪̈͐͠u̷̧̜̝͐n̸͉̯͐̓w̸̢͉̣͐̈́ǐ̶͎̯̅̍n̸̮͇̈́̾͠ͅḍ̸̓͝.̵͔̟̓
R̶͙̰̪͔̉̇̋̈ ẽ̵͍̬̙̯̫̋͑͋ â̴̘̠̙̺͍̋ l̵͔̍̈ i̸̘ t̵̠̕ y̵̛̞̑̽ ̴̺͍̬͚̪̾f̷̛̤̩̳̭̿̔͆͊ o̷̱̭̝̓̿ l̴̡̮̾̅̕͝ d̶͖̟̬̪̣̈́̓̉͆ s̶͙̝̖͕̰̄̀ ̸̭̲̘̄͋̃ĩ̴̧͕̟̤̔͊̅̉ n̵̜͎̘̳̈ ̸̇̑̋̈́͝ͅo̴̡̯̥͗̇ n̸͇̫͒͋̄̕ ̶̱͍̻̃ i̷̭͆̇̈̋͒ t̶̨̝̅̏ s̸̼͔̖͇̾̎ e̶̮̍͒̀ l̶͙̱̯̟͑̚͜ f̸̰͚̗̠̽͗̇̂.̸̪͉͐̀͛̑͠
A̶̮̭̭̦̙̎̈́ ñ̸̨͎̩̈́̓̒ d̴̘͉͉̈́̄͊̏͝,̶̡̧̛̘͎̩̰̣̝͙̯̞̣̊͐̄͑́͋͋̔͘ ̷̧̱̲͔̳̰̼̳̞̌ i̸̬͚͉̳̯͎͉̰͗͂́̂̄̎̑̈́̃̕͠ n̸̢̢̻͎͙͍͍̟̝̱̜̺̟̗̩̗̊̈́͆̈́͒͒͂̃͋͑̏̔͊͠ ̸̨̼̼̜̖̼̿̎̀̋͗̎̂̈̈̎͛̍̚̕͠ t̶̥̬̮̫̤́͆̍͋͛̂̄̈̈́̓̌̕ h̸̰̫̥̳̹͚̬͓̻̥̼̠͑̎̔̇̉͘͜ͅ e̸̡͖̲̗̮̐͛̔͑ ̴͕̫͋̈́̉͠ļ̷̟͙́̊̎͌̀͊̓ ă̷̡̢̢͉͈̲̙̪̞̞̙̳̠̎͌̍ š̸̤͈͕̗͍̠͖̹̲̜̘̰̻̪̰͋̋̃͗̉͐̊̕ ẗ̸̡̲̭̲̦̳̤́̏̀̏ ̸̡̛̳͚̯̻͍̪̣̱̰̘̑̈̈͑͆̃̆͛́͝͠͝ͅḩ̸̹̒̾͊̌̈́̅̈́͂͐̏ ȇ̵̡̯̈́̽̃͌̅̔̎͊̚ a̷̢̟̓̊̎͛͗̾ r̵̤̼̘͕̆̀̀́̔͑͒̋̀͒͊̄̂͋̕͝ͅ ţ̶̜̹̬̬̜̝̣̬̼̲͕̥͑̄̔̏̿̅̋̏̈́̇̌̕͝ͅ b̶̧̞̘̬̳͗̇ ȩ̵̧̛̛̮͔͈̜̳̪͚̩̐̈́̈́͂̒͐̎̏͋͌͗͋ͅ â̴̡̢̢̘̩͇͖͔͖͙͇͕ t̵̜͖̥͕̦̳̠͓̋͋̈̓͐̑͋͂͌̇͒̚͝͝ ̷̠̘̩̬̱̝̦̙̼͇͍̦͕͔̱͋̍̄̎̊ͅơ̶̲̝̘͔͇͙̭̞̰̤̲͕̞̣̑̉̇̋͋̃͋̔̉̽̊̿̎ f̵̧̳͕̹̝̙̖͚͎̰̫̳̘̜̞̳̾̓̇̅̄̾̈́̃́̓̇̅͛̒͠͠ ̷̢͚͇̬̬̩͎̫̞̤̫͍̮͉̠̋̆͛̑̕͜ ạ̸̧̭̻̬̣̣̗̖̥̽̽̔͂̒ ̷̛̣͇̎̾͛̐͋̂̀̂ļ̵̢̨̲͇̞̪̹̟̹͖̀̄͌͊̄̃͊̉̈́̂̈́͒͆͆̕̕͜ i̴̩̪͖̾͊̌̉̅̆̃̔͂̓̆ f̷̡̢̛̮̖͔͚̻̱̯͎̪̳̣̏͆͊͑͌̈́̈́̓̒̉̒̂̃͜ͅ è̴̱̩̜̙̃̂̈̂͑ ,̸̧͍̺̝̘̤͓̱͕̭͓̌̃̾͛̾́̇͂ ̸̢̡̝̦͖̪̘̤͉͉̖̘̳̩̅̌̄̏̓͂̒̉s̵̛̮͚̙̞͔̜̯͍̤̜͂̅ ǫ̷̢̡̙͍̰̗̼̖̭̩̠̗͈̦̭̉͂̒͛̈̕ m̷̧͙̼̼̼̰̘̼̳̰͗͊͂̈̈́͋̚͝ͅ e̶̡̨̦͇̖̗̬̳̯͗̓̊̊͆̊́͜ t̸̛̙͈̼͒͂͂͆̕ ĥ̵͚̹̹͇̿͑͜͠͝ i̷̛̤̭͇̮͑̄̉ n̸͙̪̬̤̙̮̝̝͍͓̘̘͈̖̊̃̇̈́͐̉͜ g̷̤̺̥͎̭̝̭͓̥̜̏̈͛̂̓̿̓͆̃͋͘̕͜͝͠ ̷͚̱͚̅̀g̶̢̡̛̖̣̩̘͔̝̖̙̰͍̒̏̀͂̄̈́̐͘̚͝ ơ̵̡̜̩̼̗̘̥͈͇̘̲͉͋͛̈́͊͛͒̐͐ e̴̡͖͍̞̹͎̥̫̲̫̭͐͛ s̴͍͕̃̒̔̿̈́͒͛̎͗̽̊̈̉̑͘͝ ̷̧̧̳̣͍̤͍͇̗̮̦̼̻̜̎̽̏̊̎͐̔́͌̕͝͠ w̵̜̜̠͓͈̞͍̥̯̜͕͖͈̩̙̝͂̓̂͑̔̀̾͒͑͂͗̇̕̚͝ ř̷̜̻͎͒͗͠ õ̸̬̐̓ ņ̴̡̢̜̤͓̯̺̦͈͓̯͓̂̉̐̇̆͗̽̉̈̽̕͝͝ ģ̷̡̨̡̧̡̯̺̠̯͔̲̜͎͈̲͗͌̃̆̒̾̉̃̐̓̄͆͘͘̚.̸̛̗͉͈̺̬̯̤̬̖͚̖̭͈̍͗͛̑͊̈͊̽̍̊̏͘
i.
Martin is late for work.
He’s breathing hard and heavy by the time he flies down the steps to the Institute’s basement and swings through the Archive doors, cheeks flushed red and clothes clinging uncomfortably to him with sweat. Tim and Sasha, both already at their desks, look up, Sasha a little startled, Tim smirking.
“Did I miss the meeting?” Martin wheezes.
“No, you’re all good,” Sasha tells him, and Martin deflates with relief.
“Yeah, Jon saw you weren’t here and decided to delay it an hour,” Tim adds, and Martin’s relief turns into deep regret. He staggers over to his desk and sinks down into his chair with a groan, burying his face in his arms. Sasha leans over and gives his arm a sympathetic pat.
“I’m never going to live this down,” he groans.
“Nah, this isn’t that bad,” Tim attempts to comfort, in his distinctly un-comforting way. “I mean, it can’t be worse than the time you tried to explain what flamingos were to him.”
Another groan. “Just leave me to die,” Martin mumbles into his jumper sleeves.
“Can I have your dog-cil case when you die?” Tim asks.
“You can have whatever you want,” Martin says, “as long as you leave me alone.”
With a snicker, Tim turns back to his work, and Sasha does too. Martin stays like that for several more minutes, mourning his professional competence in the eyes of his boss (which had never been great, really, after the whole dog situation and– well, what if this is the last straw? He really can’t afford to lose this job.) for as long as he feels he can get away with before sighing and getting on with it.
About fifteen minutes later, exactly an hour from their usual start time and the time that the meeting was scheduled for, the door to Jon’s office creaks open and his head pokes out, glancing around to check that they’re all there. His eyes go cold and hard when they land on Martin, and Martin swallows.
“Right, now that we’re all here, if you wouldn’t mind coming into my office,” Jon calls, and Tim and Sasha immediately begin to stand, shuffling papers and closing down laptops. Martin takes a moment to steady himself before following with the deliberate somberness of a man attending his own funeral.
Jon, much to Martin’s surprise, doesn’t mention his lateness, which Martin is relieved about until he realises that means he’s probably going to get held behind after the meeting, and the dread settles in. After all, there’s only so much Jon can say to Martin in the presence of Tim and Sasha– but alone? Just the two of them? Martin is so screwed. He’s definitely fired. He can barely focus on the meeting, head swimming as he tries to keep a lid on his mounting anxiety. What’s the point in paying attention, anyway, if he’s going to be kicked out the moment this conversation is over?
In his panic and distraction his gaze drifts and he sees– something. Like a heat shimmer, a strange ripple in the air behind Jon. He feels himself frown, trying to figure out what it is– some kind of optical illusion? It’s really not that warm in this room– when a deep groan echoes through the building, cutting Jon off mid-spiel. The four of them fall silent, having just enough time to look around– Sasha and Tim share a confused glance, Jon looks up, and Martin keeps his eyes on the ripple for as long as he can– before the room tilts to the side and they’re all knocked into free-fall.
Martin cries out, attempting to grab onto Jon’s desk, but the desk is falling too, almost crushing Sasha before the building tilts again, in the other direction, and they’re all falling back the way they just fell. Martin loses count of how many times the direction reverses, but eventually the rocking subsides, and they find themselves crumpled on the floor. Something pulses through his brain, nauseatingly painful, and behind his eyes, something shifts. The air feels different when he sucks in a pained breath through his teeth. He groans, pushing himself up and plucking his glasses off the floor, blinking to focus his gaze. He feels a foot digging into his ribs and looks over to see Tim, also blearily picking himself up from where he’s half-collapsed over Sasha’s legs. Sasha, having landed on her back, is staring up above them, eyes blown wide.
“Uh,” she whispers, voice shaking, “Guys?”
Martin follows her gaze, and freezes in place. Floating in the air where his desk once was, arms outstretched, is Jon. He seems frozen, face impassive, but his eyes– his eyes are terrified .
“Jon?” he calls, moving as if to reach out, but before he can pull himself up enough to close the distance, Jon’s body is torn in half– slowly, agonisingly– by some unseen force. Tim gasps. Sasha screams. Martin feels all the breath leave his lungs, can’t remember how to replace it, doesn’t know if he’ll ever breathe again, but it doesn’t matter, because Jon has been cleaved in twain . He waits for the splatter of hot blood against his face, for his organs to fall out onto the floor, but there’s none of that; just globules of matter, like beads of mercury suspended in the air.
“What the fuck ,” he hears Tim whisper behind him, “what the fuck what the fuck what the–”
As they watch, Jon’s limbs begin to disintegrate, the dust falling down and coating them in a thin layer of something Martin does not want to think about, and for a moment, all that’s left of him is eyes, and as Martin looks into them he knows , with a sick curdle of his stomach, that Jon is still fully aware of what is happening, he is feeling all of it, he is in agony and he is so, so afraid.
And then he is gone, his terror tingling on the back of Martin’s tongue like bile, and it takes all that Martin has in him not to throw up.
“What the fuck,” Tim whispers into the empty room, and that’s when the lights go out.
ii.
Sasha is the first one to regain control of her faculties, fumbling with her phone to turn on the torch, before she realises that her phone is suddenly dead. Frustrated, she lets it drop, shuffling to pull herself out from under Tim. She can feel him shaking still, feel herself shaking, and clenches her fists in an attempt to quell the trembling.
“Tim?” she breathes. “Martin?”
“Sasha,” Tim whispers back, fear thick in his voice.
“What…” Martin’s voice is choked. “What just happened? ”
“I don’t know,” Sasha says.
“He just– he just died,” Tim says, a little hysterical. “He’s– Jon’s dead!”
Sasha swallows. “Yeah,” she breathes. “He is. And we have no idea what’s going on here, so we need to keep our cool and get out of here before we end up dead as well.” Silence. Neither of them argue with her. Her eyes are beginning to adjust to the darkness, and she can see their vague outlines, but nothing enough to judge how they’re feeling from their faces. She takes a deep breath and swallows. “Do either of you have a working phone on you?”
She hears them shuffle, fishing their phones out of their pockets. “Dead,” Tim says.
“Mine too.” Martin begins to crawl across the floor, towards where Jon’s desk landed.
“Martin?” Tim hisses, alarmed.
“I think Jon has a lighter,” Martin says, beginning to shuffle through the assorted clutter. Sasha can barely see him now, just the vague notions a leg and shoulder poking out from behind the desk. It takes several minutes of clunking noises, and Sasha moves back to sit beside Tim, who grabs her hand and grips it tightly. Under more normal circumstances, Sasha would pull her hand back, but– well. For what it’s worth, she just clings on.
Behind the desk, Martin makes a triumphant noise, and a light flickers on across the room. The tiny flame doesn’t do much, but as Martin crawls back over to the two of them, they can at least see each other’s faces.
Tim is pale, paler than Sasha has ever seen him, eyes blown wide. Martin’s face is flushed and tear-stained, though he doesn’t seem to be currently crying, face set in grim determination, emphasis on grim . Sasha can’t imagine she looks much better.
“Right,” she says. “Right. Next moves.”
“Get out of this room,” Tim says.
“It’s all twisted,” Martin says with a grimace. “I think the door might be stuck. I didn’t try it while I was over there, but…”
“We should try it anyway,” Sasha says. “And if it doesn’t… Well, we’ll start figuring out a way to break it down.”
In a tight-huddled unit, the three of them make their way over to the door: Martin holding up the light, Tim holding on to Sasha, and Sasha holding on to Tim. Martin tries the door handle, and sure enough, it’s stuck– the floor has been pulled up, the roof pulled down, and the door is crumpled between them. “Right,” Sasha breathes. The door is made of thick, heavy wood, but… “Reckon we can break the glass?”
“Let me try,” Tim says, grabbing Jon’s desk lamp from where it’s fallen on the floor, pulling off the lampshade and hefting it in one hand. With a single, smooth movement, he thrusts it through the window, the glass shattering loudly.
“Are you alright?” Martin asks immediately, staring at Tim’s hand and making a motion to grab at it before realising that he’s still holding an open flame. Sasha reaches out instead, taking Tim by the wrist and pulling him over so they can get a good look at the gash along the side of his hand.
“I’m fine,” Tim says through gritted teeth.
“It looks shallow,” Sasha says, inspecting it. She reaches up and pulls the scrunchie out of her hair, taking a moment to detangle it from her curls and pick off any stray hairs before using it to staunch the blood flow. “That’ll have to do for now until we can get to the first aid kit. Martin, do you know where the nearest one is?”
Martin nods. “There’s one in the breakroom.”
“Okay,” Sasha says. “Get past the door, get to the breakroom, figure out what’s going on.” It’s not a good plan, but that they have any semblance of a plan in a situation as bizarre as this is an achievement in itself. The others seem to agree, because they don’t argue as Sasha steps forward to the window and pries out the last few shards of glass. The window is tall, but narrow, and as she pulls herself up and through it, side-saddle in order to fit, the wood presses against her chest and back, and for a moment she feels stuck, as if she can’t breathe, before she’s able to ease past and out the other end.
She falls, more than climbs, down, but comes up relatively unharmed, so it’s all good. Tim climbs through next, having to hunch to get his torso through without taking his head off, and tumbles out the other side. Sasha catches him before he can land on the floor, and he shoots her a shaky grin. Martin reaches through a hand and passes Tim the lighter, and then attempts to pull himself through.
And that’s when they reach a problem: Martin isn’t exactly a small guy. To his credit, he’s very good at making himself look small, hunching in on himself and taking up little space, and speaking softly– he’s got a small personality, Sasha thinks. Often she finds herself startled standing next to him, because she forgot Martin was just that tall, that broad. So she hadn’t considered that Martin, out of all of them, wouldn’t be able to fit through the window.
But he can’t, and Sasha can see the panic in his eyes as he realises that he’s in too far to pull himself out or push himself too. He’s stuck.
“Um, guys,” he says, breathing a little more harshly than he was moments before.
“Fuck,” Tim breathes. “Uh, um, maybe there’s something we can break the door with?”
There isn’t, Sasha knows. Not in the archives. And not that they can use without hurting Martin.
Tim moves away, searching through the toppled shelves and fallen statements for something he won’t find, while Sasha finds herself staring at the door. If only there was something she could do, to make the hole larger, or Martin smaller, or– maybe they could grease the gap, make it easier to slide through?
And then Sasha Remembers, with a confusion that she had ever forgotten, that she could just… do that.
“Oh,” she breathes, “right.”
She heads over to her desk and fumbles for her bag in the dark, slinging it over her shoulder and heading back to the window. It’s dark, now, with Tim’s light somewhere in the stacks, but she slips her hand into the satchel and easily fishes out what she needs: pork crackling, which she tells herself was part of her lunch but that she knows wasn’t. She didn’t even put it there, she doesn’t think. Except, she did, because she might need it to do this.
She doesn’t even know what this is until she snaps the rind between her fingers and whispers words in a language she never learned and feels the spell pour forward from her and into and over Martin and the window.
And, just like that, Martin falls forward onto the floor before her with a heavy thump that sends Tim running.
“What happened?” he gasps. “Are– Martin. You’re out.”
“Yup,” Martin wheezes, winded. “And… wet?”
“Sorry about that,” Sasha says, genuinely apologetic. Both Tim and Martin are staring at her now.
“What did you do?” Tim asks.
“Magic, I think,” Sasha replies.
“I’m sorry, what?”
Sasha shrugs.
“Since when could you do magic?” Martin asks, pulling himself up from the floor and almost slipping over, grabbing onto Tim’s shoulder to keep himself steady.
“I don’t… know.” Sasha frowns. She’s pretty sure she hadn’t known when she came into work this morning, but also… “I feel like I learned it a long time ago. Like something I did a wikipedia deep dive into at 2AM in university and then completely forgot about until it was relevant right now.” She shakes her head. “But I don’t know if that’s right.” When she tries to think back on her life before this morning, or anything outside of the archives, her head feels like it’s filled with static. So she pushes the thoughts out of mind instead, focusing on the moment.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says firmly. “Come on. Breakroom, and we figure out what’s going on.”
Martin still looks confused, and Tim practically stressed with his desire to ask questions, but neither of them push it, and together the three of them trek across the archives to the breakroom.
And that’s where they come across their second issue: the breakroom door is open, and spilling out from it is… gold coins? A veritable mountain of them, with the colourful glint of what Sasha’s pretty sure are gemstones studded amongst them. She almost laughs at the sight. It’s like something out of a children’s story. What was that old Disney movie– The Rescuers? Or Smaug’s horde in The Hobbit .
Martin seemed to be on the same wavelength as her, as he whispered, “Ha, reckon there’s a dragon inside?”
And as the words leave his mouth, a red-scaled claw descends from somewhere just out of view, and the three of them freeze as it rakes through the pile, dislodging coins and stones and uncovering… something Sasha can’t quite make out in the dim light. God, but isn’t she sick of not being able to see. If only she could–
Oh. Right. She reaches up to her ear and unhooks the live glowworm she wears as an earring. Weird. Sasha didn’t think she was the type to keep live animals as jewellery; it seemed just a little inhumane, didn’t it? Then again, it was a worm. Sasha gets the sense she wasn’t a huge fan of worms. Why was that again? There had been some kind of infestation, she thinks. A real bad one. Where? The Archives? No, that wasn’t right. Was it?
She was tangenting. Right. She weaves the worm between her fingers, breathing another word in that strange language, and above them four green glowing orbs flicker to life. Tim and Martin pull their eyes away from the dragon to stare at her again, and Sasha huffs in frustration even as she feels her cheeks grow warm.
“Not the time,” she hisses at them. With a wave of her hand, she bats one of the lights over toward the horde, drawing their attentions away from her again. The claw has retreated back into the impenetrable darkness within the breakroom– though, something about the draft coming from there makes her think that whatever is beyond the doorframe, it isn’t exactly the breakroom anymore.
It turns out what the claw had dislodged was a pile of weapons. At least, from what she can tell– there’s the silver gleam of a blade, definitely, and a delicately carved handle. Tim’s eyes light up.
“Great,” he whispers. He’s already clicked off the lighter, presumably slipping it into his pocket. “You guys get ready to make a run for it.”
“Tim?” Martin and Sasha hiss in unison, voices high with stress and low with warning respectively, but Tim doesn’t hesitate as he darted forward towards the pile. Sasha attempts to follow, but Martin grabs her by the arm and pulls her back, and they stumble into a nearby shelf and watch as Tim grabs stuff from the pile before pulling back, and the three of them leg it as fast as they can to the other side of the room.
The breakroom is silent. The claw doesn’t make a reappearance.
“ Christ , Tim,” Sasha breathes. “Don’t do that.”
“Hey,” Tim says, smile crooked and voice shaky, “we can defend ourselves now!”
He turns to Martin and hands him a knife– no, a dagger. The blade is made of curved silver metal, a carved pattern running down it that reminds Sasha weirdly of spider legs, and the hilt is a see-through crystal with wisps of grey running through it. Martin hesitantly takes it in hand, like he isn’t sure what to do with it, but the moment he’s holding it, realisation crosses his face as it slips into a proper grip, like Martin’s been handling daggers for years and can do it second-nature.
Hey, maybe he does. Sasha doesn’t know what he does in his free time. But something about the look in his eyes when he looks down at it makes her think that isn’t the case.
She’s distracted from psychoanalysing Martin by Tim handing her something: a glossy, carved stick of wood several inches taller than her. A quarterstaff , she realises, and suddenly she knows just how to grip it and hold it and even, she thinks, should it come to it, how to swing it. There are little engravings in the wood, music notes and theatre masks, and a stone situated on top– cat’s eye, she thinks, looking at the way it gleams in the orb-light. Weird choice, but it feels right , somehow.
“Right,” Tim says, hefting a battle-axe with flame-like blades over his shoulder. “I reckon we should get out of here.”
“Yeah,” Sasha agrees. “Lead the way.”
He does, and the three of them head on through the archives in silence. Even with the orbs, it’s still very dark in here, and the archives are eerie in the dark. The silence presses in, and Sasha swallows down the urge to hum or ramble or scream to fill the silence.
It’s fine. She’s fine.
They reach the archive doors and Tim stops dead. Sasha’s about to ask why when she catches sight of the water bubbling through from under the doors, and the glimpse of what appears to be a ship’s porthole beyond the windows.
The three of them stand there in silence for a long, long time, watching the boat scrape past. Porthole after porthole and then a name in faded, scratched paint on the metal hull: The Tundra.
“Fire exit?” Martin suggests.
“Fire exit,” Sasha agrees.
They turn and head back the way they came.
The fire exit is on the whole other side of the Archives, which are a lot larger than you’d expect. Or maybe exactly as large as you’d expect, depending. They’re quiet as they skirt past the breakroom, but the dragon inside doesn’t stir, and soon enough they find themselves at the fire exit accosted.
They all hold their breaths as Tim tries the door, and Sasha knows that on some level, they’re all expecting to get swept away by a tidal wave of water, but nothing comes. It’s just the old stone stairs, as expected. Sasha lets herself sag a little in relief as she follows the two of them up and out into the Institute proper.
The rest of the building, much like the Archives, is crumpled, dark, and largely deserted. They skirt around broken desks and toppled filing cabinets, and Sasha tries to stave of her mounting dread and increasing urge to scream by counting her footsteps. It actually doesn’t help at all.
And then, in the silence, a voice calls out, “H-hello?”
The three of them stop, and Sasha spins around and spots someone crouching beneath a desk, poking their head out. “Rosie?” she hisses.
“Sasha?” Rosie whispers back. “Is that you? Oh, thank goodness, I thought I was the only one left– I thought–” Sasha expects Rosie’s voice to crack, but it doesn’t, instead hardening. “We need to get out of here.”
“Right,” Sasha says, trying for comforting and instead ending up somewhere between patronising and terrified. “We’ll get out of here and figure out what’s going on–”
Rosie shakes her head. “It’s the end of the world, Sasha,” she says. “That’s what’s going on.”
Sasha wants to laugh. It’s just– it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? The end of the world . But what other explanation is there?
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Martin says from behind her. “The world already ended.”
Tim frowns. “What?”
“What?”
“When did the world already end?”
“Did I say that?” Martin seems surprised. “I don’t– I don’t know. I have no idea what that means.”
Right . Sasha elects to ignore that. “Come on,” she says, offering a hand to Rosie to help her up. “We’re getting out of here.”
Rosie nods, staggering to her feet. “We need to be quiet,” she whispers. “So they don’t come for us.”
“They?” Sasha asks, uneasy.
Rosie nods. “They came for everyone else. Dragged them away. I managed to hide, but if we’re moving around and talking, I don’t know how much longer it’ll take for them to find us…”
She trails off, eyes going wide as they hear something like the scuttling of legs and skin against sandpaper echo around the room. Before her, Rosie has frozen, and Sasha can feel Tim hefting his axe and Martin gripping his dagger behind her. Then, she realises where the noises were coming from: above them.
Not wanting to, but feeling as if she has to, Sasha looks up. Where the ceiling once was is now a tunnel, dark and purple and wet and rippling like the taut skin of the caterpillar, and crawling around in it is– Jon. Or, Jons? Several of them, of him, but different, twisted, wrong , heads wrenched backwards and walking crab-like across the walls of the tunnel with jittery, inhuman movements.
The nearest Jon, it’s eyes blank and white and empty, reaches down with arms far, far too long and snatches Rosie by her hair. Rosie screams, and Sasha lunges forward to grab her, and Tim and Martin surge forward, but it’s too late. Rosie is gone. Sasha gets the sense that she was lost to them the moment the Jon-thing laid his eyes on her.
She turns and starts to run. She hears the boys running after her, feet pounding and breathing hard, and eventually they burst through the doors of the institute and out onto the steps. The first thing that hits her is the cold, the harsh wind buffeting her– it was summer this morning when she came into work. The next thing she notices is the voice in the wind, whispering into her ear, hauntingly familiar and yet something she can’t quite place:
“Find – me – waiting – clocktower –”
The third thing she notices is that her eyes are screwed shut. She opens them, and immediately wishes she hadn’t, as that same, pulsing radiation pushes through her brain, and she’s turned inside-out and spat back out again.
iii.
Martin is standing on the steps of The Magnus Institute, London.
Martin is standing on some steps, somewhere, because he’s looking at is not London. Or maybe it is. Was, once. That stretch of muddy, dark water could have once been the Thames, long since swelled its banks, and those dark, rotted, corpse-like tendrils in the distance could be vegetation grown over crumbling skyscrapers, and the hollow shell behind him could have once been the Institute, but whatever they once were, they’re long gone, now.
He’s not quite sure why he’s thinking about the landscape, honestly. They have much more pressing matters right now.
Like the monster towering above them.
Monster? Monstrosity? Martin gets the sense that whatever words he uses to describe this thing, they will never come close to the truth. It’s a many-eyed, humanoid but distinctly inhuman thing , hunched over its own twisted limbs. It has wings, made of gossamer and magnetic tape and light and liquid cornea, and its whole form is draped in dark, rotten, shimmering tendrils, dripping static.
Martin can’t breathe. He can’t think. Looking at it is paralysing, and devastating, and he Knows three things as he stares, enraptured:
- This thing is the Harbinger of the End of the World.
- This thing could crush him without even moving, just by turning one of its many, many gazes on him.
- He loves this thing. Or maybe this thing loves him. He’s not sure if there’s any difference, really, between loving and being loved by something like this.
And then, before he can come to terms with the earthshaking brutality of that realisation, the thing is gone. As if it were never even there. He blinks hard to rid himself of the afterimage, but even once it’s faded, his ears are still ringing.
“What the fuck was that,” Tim gasps.
“No idea,” Sasha replies, breathless. “Just be glad it’s gone.”
Martin, for reasons beyond him, feels a crushing disappointment. He swallows it down, feels the static buzz in his throat. “What do we do?” he asks. Tim and Sasha are silent, staring out at the flooded marshland around them.
“I heard a voice,” Sasha says, after a long moment. “Just before– well. You know. Said to find them at the clocktower.”
“Clocktower?” Martin echoes.
“Big Ben?” Tim suggests. When the two of them turn to look at him, he shrugs. “It’s the nearest clock-related landmark. And it’s just down the road.” He gestures vaguely in the direction Big Ben would be, if this were indeed London.
“It’s worth a try,” Sasha says. “If we can get there.” She glances around at the watery wasteland surrounding them.
“Reckon we can find a boat?” Martin says. He’s not hopeful, even as he says it.
“I wish,” Tim sighs. “I used to go kayaking all the time, a boat would be ideal.”
Martin nods. “I like rowing,” he agrees.
“Yeah? I bet you’re good at it, with those arms,” Tim says. Martin shoots him a small, genuine smile.
Sasha rolls her eyes and descends the steps, squinting at the water. “I think,” she says, “we can probably just wade through it.”
“Sash,” Tim says, affronted, “these jeans are brand new.”
“Tim,” Sasha says, mocking his tone, “the world literally ended.”
Tim shrugs. “That’s fair,” he says, and heads down to join her. Martin sighs, looking down at his battered trainers– the only pair of shoes he currently owns without holes in them. If they have shoe shops in the post-apocalyptic wastes, he’s going to have to pick up some new ones.
...They definitely don’t have shoe shops in the post-apocalyptic wastes.
He follows Tim and Sasha into the water anyway, and being up to his waist in black water so murky he couldn’t see the bottom was about as pleasant as he’d expected. Worse, actually– there’s something viscous to its texture, and he tries not too think about it too hard. Or the things that brush past his legs as he walks. It’s just seaweed, he tells himself. Just plants.
...It is absolutely not plants. Don’t think about it. Think about nice things instead! Like puppies (probably extinct now) or poetry (the apocalypse isn’t his usual fare, but he could probably spin something out of it) or tea (is there tea in the post-apocalypse? Will they have to make it with filthy goopy water? He’d rather not, thanks) or Jon (dead, torn apart, twisted into something strange and alien and dead, dead, dead–) .
On second thought, don’t think about anything.
“Wait,” Tim says, breaking the silence. “Do you see that?”
Martin turns to look in the direction he’s pointing just in time for something to stand up and lunge at them out of the water.
Sasha screams as it grabs at her, and Martin catches a glimpse of it for the first time– it’s a twisted and wrong humanoid form, covered in dripping wet tendrils that smell like death, and it’s face–
It has Sasha’s face.
No, Martin thinks numbly, gaze flicking from it to Sasha, caught in its grip; it has a face like Sasha’s face, but so wholly opposite, too. Nose snub where Sasha’s is large, skin pale where hers is dark, hair shorn short where hers is long. But something in him Knows that this is Sasha. The one in his memories. Not-Sasha? But that’s–
An axe buries itself in the Not-Sasha-Thing’s spine, and it screams, dropping Sasha into the water. She falls below the waves, and Martin panics, screaming, “Sasha!” as he lunges for her.
The static that had settled in his throat bursts forward out of him, and the Not-Sasha screams in pain, as if Martin’s shout had somehow hurt it. Martin doesn’t let himself think about it, instead floundering through the water for Sasha, and– there. Hands grasping at his. He pulls her up, and she breaches the surface, gasping and dirt-streaked and dripping. There’s blood welling up from wounds in her shoulders, and they are definitely going to get infected, but– she’s alive. Thank god.
Behind them, Tim and the Not-Sasha-Thing are clashing; its claws score a bloody line across Tim’s face, cutting his features in half; an axe comes down on its wrist, and a limp hand drops down into the water as blood spurts from the wound. Martin feels the static bubble up in his throat again, and suddenly realises what he can do.
(Sasha was right. It’s like he learned this a long time ago, even though he’s sure he never did. This is new. And yet it feels so natural, so right, as if he’s done it a million times before.)
“ And in this ritual I search for signs / Of memories that are no longer mine / Oh, her face you stole from me / Give it back, I beg of thee ,” he recites from unbidden memory, a poem he never penned yet knows for sure is his own, and the Thing roars in pain once again, head snapping to the side with a painful crack before righting itself upside-down. It bears its teeth at Martin and Sasha in an awful facilime of a smile, but Sasha just huffs.
“That’s quite enough of that,” she says, stretching out a hand and snarling some word in a language that Martin doesn’t know. A bolt of flame fires out from her hand and into the face of the Not-Sasha-Thing, and it gives one last, agonised scream as its face is burned and melted into a puddle, and it collapses, a barely-held-together bundle of bones, into the water, and is washed away by the gentle current.
They stand in silent for a long moment, breathing hard, staring at the blood in the water below them.
“Fuck,” Sasha breathes.
“Yeah,” Tim croaks. “We should, um, keep moving.”
“Yeah,” Sasha says. “Are you okay, your face–”
“It’s fine,” Tim brushes her off. “I mean, even if people are turned off by the scar, I’m sure I can still win them over with my dazzling personality.”
Sasha huffs out a laugh. “Dazzling, hm, sure, that’s definitely the word I’d use,” she teases.
“What about you?” Tim asks. “Your shoulders?”
Sasha shrugs, wincing. “I’ll be fine. Let’s just get out of here.”
“Hang on,” Martin calls, something crackling in his veins, tingling in his fingertips. “Come here.”
The two of them exchange a look, and then wade over towards him. Martin reaches out, placing one hand on Sasha’s shoulder, and the other on Tim’s cheek, and breathes out.
“ In the past I find / Forgotten traces of hope and light ,” he whispers, another unwritten, once-written, to-be-written verse, and warmth flows out of one hand into Sasha. She gasps as the skin on her shoulders knits itself closed. “ And in stealing him from this place / So have you stolen any dreams of grace .” The blood on Tim’s face begins to retreat, leaving only stains behind as the wound reseals itself. There’s a scar there, still, but it’s faint, faded, like the injury is years old instead of brand-new.
“Shit,” Tim says. “Didn’t know you could do that.”
Martin feels dizzy and light-headed and strangely drained. “Don’t think I can do it again,” he breathes.
“Well,” Sasha says, “Let’s just try and avoid getting hurt.”
It’s unlikely that they can do that, but none of them voice that thought. Instead they turn back in the direction they were heading and wade through the dark water, towards their destination.
Martin is beginning to think they aren’t in London after all, when he sees it: the rotting, root-covered tower before them, stinking and crumbling, the clockface uncovered and dyed with sunlight. The hands on it, now old and rusted, one bent entirely in half with one end swinging below the other, are still ticking slowly, slowly round, stuttering and out of time. One second, two seconds, one second, two seconds, one second, three seconds, one second. An irregular heartbeat for a dying world.
They pick up the pace without saying a word, and as they walk, the vegetation around them grows thicker, skeletal trees and snaking, blackened vines pushing out of the water like bony fingers. Chunks of brick rise up like jagged teeth, and Martin is careful to skirt as far from them as he can.
It’s as he’s rounding one of these rocks that he catches sight of it– a flash of green and white, unremarkable if not for the shape. He jolts to a stop, turning to see a person slip between the trees and just out of sight. A person so painfully familiar it makes his heart stutter in his chest. Could it be?
“Jon!” he calls, taking off after it without a second thought. “Jon, wait!”
“Martin!” Sasha calls after him, alarmed. He hears Tim call, too, but ignores both of them, pushing beyond the vegetation just in time to see long, dark hair– much darker than Jon’s, much more liberally streaked with grey, but still, nonetheless, his – and panics, grabbing for it, for Jon, to pull him out of the water and save him and–
Jon is gone. There’s nothing here. Just a strange, yellow-green liquid staining the water around Martin, diluting the darkness with something somehow even more viscous and foul-smelling.
Sasha and Tim crash through the treeline.
“Martin!” Tim cries. “What are you doing?”
“I thought…” Martin trails off, running his hands through the yellow liquid. It feels like jam between his fingers. “I thought I saw Jon.”
“Martin.” Sasha’s voice is soft and sad and sympathetic and Martin hates it.
“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I know. Come on. Let’s go.”
It’s less than two minutes to the clocktower’s front doors, which are weirdly unlocked. Even weirder, the water doesn’t all spill inside the moment they open the door; it’s like there’s some kind of invisible barrier. They make their way in, dripping and filthy and glad to be out of the water, and Martin pulls the door shut behind them.
It’s dark inside, but Sasha whispers something and those glowing green orbs reappear, lighting the space. The room is empty, save for the staircase, a table, and–
“Is that a computer?” Tim asks, confused.
It is: a desktop monitor, seemingly not plugged into a tower or keyboard or even a power source. Martin’s about to comment on the weirdness of it all when something even weirder happens, and the screen flickers to life, playing what seems to be… a YouTube video.
“Hi everyone!” a voice that’s vaguely familiar calls from the screen. Martin squints, and sees– red hair. Strained smile. Vaguely familiar face.
“Did she give a statement once?” he asks.
Sasha nods. “Melanie King, the YouTuber,” she says.
Sure enough, onscreen, Melanie follows up with, “I’m Melanie, and you’re watching Ghost Hunt UK! On today’s episode: the apocalypse. Or, well, the post-apocalypse. That you’re all trapped in. Right? Sasha, Tim, Martin– you guys can hear me, right?”
The three of them flinch at the sound of their own names. “Is this… pre-recorded?” Tim asks, hesitant.
Melanie shrugs. “Does it matter? None of us know when or where we are, really. The world just ended. But it ended before, didn’t it? And it will end later. And, if you really think about it, it’s ending right now.”
Sasha pulls at her hair, frizzy and sodden. “None of this makes sense!” she moans.
“It makes sense,” Melanie says, “if you know the rules.”
“Dream logic,” Martin says, not entirely knowing why.
“Right!” Melanie says, beaming. “This is a nightmare, and you’re all trapped in it.”
“And how do we get out of it?” Martin asks. He gets the sense that his life has been one long unending nightmare for a while now, and he’d really like that to not be the case anymore.
“You wake up,” Tim says. Then, “How?”
Melanie shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m stuck here, same as you. I’m sure you all can figure it out, though.” Then, her breath catches in her throat, and she goes rigid, her arms stretching out to the sides of her, even as her eyes grow wide and terrified, and Martin realises with sick dread what’s happening to her.
No. Not again.
He wants to do something, but what, she’s on the other side of a screen, and then her eyes are rolled back in her head and blood is spilling from them, red-hot tears that splash down her cheeks with rust-coloured stains, and her body turns transparents and begins to glow so brightly that it makes Martin’s eyes water.
“There’s no time,” a voice says, haunting and powerful and strange. “The tower awaits. If you don’t make haste, the words can never be unspoken. Only you.”
And then the light is blinding, and there is nothing but warmth, and Martin feels suddenly like he can breathe, like this entire time he’s been drowning and only now has been allowed to draw a breath. Like he has been limping, and now he can run. Like before he was dead, and now he is reborn.
The light fades. Melanie, still crucified on screen, calls out to them, her voice echoing strangely in the space. “Good luck. Go.”
The monitor stutters and dies. Above them, a bell begins to toll, and Martin feels electromagnetic radiation pulse through his brain and tear his thoughts asunder.
iv.
Tim swallows back bile and decides he is really sick of having his brain turned into silly putty by strange apocalyptic forces.
He’s rather sick of the apocalypse too, actually. And of wading through a flooded London. Not that that will be an issue anymore, he realises grimly, as his eyes adjust to what he’s looking at.
There’s nothing. Just wasteland. A dry, scorched desert where London used to be, the Thames a barren crater. A scar in the landscape.
The only sign that there has ever been anything here is the building towering before them. He recognises it instantly. “The old Millbank Prison,” he says.
Beside him, Sasha looks grim, tightening her grip on her staff. Martin’s hand hovers near where he’d slipped his dagger into his belt. Tim hefts his axe. They’re all feeling the same thing, he can tell: the whisper of violence on the breeze, beckoning them inside.
He’s not ready for what’s in there. He doesn’t want to see it. But he has had a hell of a day, and if this is what it takes to wake up, he’ll do anything.
And then something hits them all: understanding. A connection . A revelation that strikes Tim breathless. It’s like an uncanny kind of deja vu. Suddenly he just Knows that they’ve been here before. Or maybe not here. Somewhere like here. Together . The three of them have adventured before, and they’ll do it again. They’ve lived a thousand lives before this together, they’ll live a thousand lives after this. They’re living a thousand lives right now in other worlds. He can feel them, his heart beating in time with a thousand fractal versions of himself, preparing for a battle beyond words, the steady weight of Sasha and Martin at his sides. The three of them are linked, and have been, throughout eternity.
He lets out a long, shaky breath. Looking over at Martin, at Sasha, he sees himself reflected in their eyes: awe and determination and love . And he Knows, with a raw certainty stronger than anything he’s ever felt before, enough to strip him bare, that they can do this.
They don’t say anything. They don’t need to. In time, they step forward, and face the nightmare before them.
The prison is dark, and damp, and smells of rot and mildew. Sasha sends up her lights, and they dance in the air above them as they creep down the row of cells. Each of them is small and square, maybe five metres squared, with thick iron bars cutting them off from freedom. In each of them is a person, and with a dull, sinking horror, Tim realises that they’re all Jon.
Some are curled up and rocking, hands twisted in their hair; others are lying splayed out, limbs twitching and twisting with agony. Some are muttering frantically, others moaning, or sobbing, or wailing, and some are just screaming with a pain so raw that it steals the breath from Tim’s lungs. Can any one person be in that much pain? Is it even possible? Tim’s been in pain before– he’s broken bones, flirted with fire, crashed and cracked and crumpled, hell, he had watched a clown skin his brother alive – but even the agony of that pales in comparison to the cacophony of misery that surrounds him now.
Martin is crying openly, one hand pressed to his mouth to stifle the sobs. Sasha’s eyes are wet, and she’s breathing very heavily, whispering something under breath. Tim, for his part, turns and plants his fist into a nearby concrete column, the pain of split knuckles letting the tide in him quell.
He’s already dead, you bastard , he thinks, to whatever cruel god is dreaming this up. Leave him alone!
He takes a deep breath. Two. Three. Turns back to his coworkers. (Teammates? Party members? Friends?) “Let’s head on,” he says, and it comes out more vicious than he’d intended, teeth bared and axe hefted. Sasha nods determinedly. Martin wipes his eyes and sniffs harshly, meeting Tim’s gaze, something solid and fierce in his eyes.
They move on, past the rows of tortured inmates (tortured Jons ) and reach the centre of the prison: the Panopticon. The creation of Smirke, fascination of Foucalt, and thought experiment of sociology classes everywhere. The tower.
There, standing above them, is an eyeless, emaciated corpse that Tim Knows to be Jonah Magnus. He’s staring down at them, and his gaze feels oddly familiar in a way Tim can’t place. (Nevermind that he shouldn’t be able to See them without eyes– he can, and his bloody sockets pierce into Tim’s soul, flay him open, Know him in a way he has never been known and does not want to be known, frayed edges all on display. Tim wants him dead.)
They stand for an endless moment, caught in the fragility of time, and then the second-hand turns and a yellow-green light like radiation ripples through the building, disintegrating the bars to the cells. As one, like a tide, the inmates start to crawl out, moving towards the three of them in their wave of misery.
The battle has begun. This is their last stand. Tim holds his axe ready and grits his teeth.
“You two deal with the Jons,” Sasha says. “Magnus is mine.”
Tim doesn’t argue. Martin opens his mouth like he’s planning on it, but then seemingly changes his mind, nodding instead, eyes dark. And then Sasha is gone, running up the old metal stairs with no safety rails, and Tim is swinging his axe, and Martin has a dagger in one hand and is reciting poetry under his breath, the words lancing and powerful in a way Tim can’t quantify. They fall into the heat of battle, the thready hum of violence singing in their bones, and what happens next is like second nature.
A Jon with a bleeding gash in this throat lunges for Tim, mouth stretched open to bite, and Tim lops his head clean off; another Jon, this one with weeping, bleeding eye sockets, attempts to wrestle his axe from his hand, and Tim kicks him in the face so hard his nose breaks, and then again, and again, and again, until he feels his skull crack and body go still. Another Jon gets an elbow to the throat. Another still takes an axe to the chest. All of them sob and scream and wail and Tim bites back the bile in his throat, bites back the I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry that wants to spill from his lips, bites back any empathy and sympathy he feels.
These things aren’t his boss. Aren’t his friend . They’re twisted, shattered echoes of a man Tim once knew, and Tim is putting them out of their misery.
From somewhere up above, they hear an agonised scream, and then someone is falling, falling, and Jonah Magnus’ broken body falls at Tim’s feet. The inmates all scream in agony and fall to the ground, each of them twisted in the exact same way, every bone shattered at the same angle. The prison is silent and still. Tim twists his head up to look at Sasha, leaning over the platform from the top of the Panopticon, her face flushed, eyes wild, and teeth gritted in a triumphant not-quite-smile. Tim tries to return it. He feels exhausted, drained, the energy leaving him all at once.
He collapses to the floor like a puppet with his strings cut. He’s covered in blood, he realises now. Some of it is his own, oozing from scratches on his arms and legs and abdomen; most of it is not. His hands shake, and he drops the axe. Beside him, Martin flops down, white-faced and trembling, staring at the sea of corpses before them.
It’s hard to feel victorious, given the circumstances.
The wind is echoing through the prison now, growing louder and louder, and Tim feels a now-familiar pulsing beginning to echo in his head. It’s different, now, though, and as his eyelids flutter closed against the agony, he knows that he is being pushed forward, to a different time, far from here.
The static rises and rises and rises and rings out like a horn calling for battle and Tim knows nothing more.