Chapter Text
It’s edging toward five o’clock, on the last Friday of the month. The Magnus Institute is quiet, it's workers winding down for the day. Even the Head of the Institute is keeping one eye on the clock. All is quiet. Except, of course, in the Archives.
Martin applauds, and Sasha does a neat curtsey, flopping back into her seat. She sticks her tongue out at Tim. “You just got smoked, Stoker,” she crows. Martin doesn’t really understand why they’re so competitive, but he tries not to get in the middle of it all.
Tim narrows his eyes, tapping his novelty boxing kangaroo pen against his lips, deep in thought. “Well played, James. The Case of the Ghost Piñata is going to be,” He pauses. “Hard to beat.”
Sasha throws a Biro at Tim. It clatters onto Martin’s desk, and he tucks it into his pen-pot. Always nice to have new stationary.
“But,” Tim continues, “All is not lost. For we have one, final member of the Archival Assistants Guild, who has not yet submitted his entry in the prestigious Fake Statement of the Month Awards.” Martin’s stomach sinks. Shit, he didn’t think he needed to-
“Martin Blackwood,” Tim declares, pointing his kangaroo pen at Martin. “Show your entry.”
Martin looks at his desk. "Um.” He'd kind of assumed it would just be a Tim and Sasha thing, but- Where was that one he was reading on Wednesday? That could be good, that was- He pulls open the filing cabinet behind him, flicking through. “Here!” he pulls out the brown file he’d marked with a yellow paperclip. “Statement, uh, 9611213. It’s about a set of flats- Well, this lady thinks her flat is haunted, because she keeps hearing banging noises in the night.” Martin opens the file, almost spilling the flimsy sheets of handwritten cursive.
Sasha waggles her eyebrows, propping her chin up on her fists. “Let me guess, her neighbours are newlyweds?”
“Kind of,” Martin confirms. He closes the file again, hands it over. The details are coming back to him, and he smiles. “But, the good bit is, she says that it can’t be the neighbours, because they’re a pair of confirmed bachelors.”
Tim’s head shoots up. "Oh, nice!"
“Hell yeah," Sasha says, flipping the file open eagerly. She smiles to herself, scanning the statement. “961, you said?”
“Yeah, sixties.” Martin says, leaning back in his chair. “But they’d been living together since the war. Close friends, apparently,”
“Very close friends.” Tim says, bouncing in his seat. “Give that here once you’re done, I want to-”
Something crashes in Document Storage.
“Bags not going,” Tim says quickly, Sasha half a second behind.
Another crash. Tim and Sasha look at him expectantly. Martin stands up, squeezing out from behind his desk. “If I die, it’s your fault,” he tells Tim.
Tim screws up his face, points at Sasha. “It’s at least 60% her fault, c’mon.”
Martin gets the key to Document Storage, tuning out the argument. The rack’s right beside Jon’s office door, and Martin can hear Jon talking to himself, a comforting rumble of noise. He’s probably trying a new recording method. Sasha swears she’d seen him hunting for batteries for an honest-to-God tape recorder earlier. Martin smiles at the thought, shakes his head. Jon had been trying something on his phone, when Martin brought the tea in earlier. Black with two sugars, today. Maybe Jon would actually drink it this time. Hopefully. Martin walks back across the room, musing on milk-to-tea ratios. He pushes the key into the lock, opens the door, and-
Something’s off. Martin freezes, half a step into the room. Something- A sound, Martin realises. Faint, he almost can’t make it out, Tim and Sasha are still- But it sounds like breathing-panting. Something in the room is gasping for air, hyperventilating.
Martin reaches for the light switch, flicking it on. There’s nothing he can see, but the room is full of racks of shelves, long aisles running away from him. The door’s been locked, he’s been sitting in front of it all day. It’s climate controlled, there shouldn’t be any other way in or out.
He can still hear it.
“Hello?” Martin says, feeling ridiculous. “Anyone there?” Tim and Sasha shut up.
The breathing stops. Then it starts again faster, and there are noises, horrible sobs between the gasps and- It’s laughter, Martin thinks, and the skin on his arms prickles. Behind the shelf, someone’s laughing. It sounds- wrong. Something is wrong.
“Hello?” he calls, a bit louder. The laughter shuts off.
“Alright?” Tim says from the door, biceps crossed, leaning up against the frame.
Martin steps further into the room. The fluorescent lights hum gently, the rows of shelves of boxes of statements casting deep black shadows. The aisle of shelves across from the door is just- dozens of boxes with peeling sticky labels, piled on top of rickety metal shelving units. Silent.
Martin moves over to look down the next row. There’s a ceiling tile missing, about halfway along. “I thought I heard-”
There’s another crash, then a curse, harsh and breaking, fracturing into pained sobs, gasps. It’s coming from the aisle by the wall, the last one. Martin looks back at Tim, eyes wide.
Tim pushes off the frame, frowning. He walks past Martin, muscles coiled. “Hello?” he starts, voice firm, “Anyone down h-”, but he gets to the end of the aisle and lurches to a stop. “Boss?” he says, confused, and Martin rushes up behind him.
Jon’s there, perched on the edge of the narrow cot, shaking. A couple of upturned boxes of statements have fallen onto the cot, one on the floor, files spilling out. Jon looks- different. His hair is long enough to tie back, strands cascading down past his shoulders, hanging limply around his face. They sway slightly, in rhythm with his gasping breaths. His head is down, his hands curled loosely on his lap, and he’s hunched up, shoulders curled in. He’s thinner, way thinner, half-starved. He’s wearing a jumper, huge on him, but it’s stained with- is that blood?
“Jon,” Martin says. “Are you alright?”
Jon’s head lifts, turns toward the sound. He’s still shaking. His teeth are bared, a flash of white against his dark skin, but it’s not a smile. There’s something- His eyes, they don’t look right somehow-
His mouth opens, jaw trembling, and he says “Martin?” The bright overhead lights gleam off the blood pouring down his face. His eyes are black, empty sockets.
“Holy shit,” Tim breathes.
Martin pushes past him, hurries down the row. Jon needs- Jesus, his eyes, he needs a hospital, he needs- “Bandages,” Martin tells Tim, “Where’s the-”
Tim backs up, bumping into a shelf. “Sasha!” he yells. “First aid kit, where the fuck’s the-” He runs round the corner, back into the office.
“And- Call 999,” Martin says after him, but he’s already gone. Martin turns back to Jon, trying to get a look, figure out what’s going on. It looks even worse up close.
Blood is- everywhere. The fluid, the- whatever’s usually inside eyeballs, it’s spilling out of Jon’s, mixing with the blood, clumps of torn flesh- Martin swallows. He- They’d dissected a cow’s eye, once, GCSE Biology. He remembered how it had- popped, fluid spilling out around the scalpel. There hadn’t been this much blood. There- why was there this much blood? Jon’s breathing is shaking. His- everything is shaking.
Focus. Medical attention, what needs fixing, what- There are cuts. Around Jon’s eyes, the skin is inflamed and bloody but- there are cuts. Martin’s hands flutter in the air. He doesn’t want it to get infected, his hands aren’t clean, but- A clump of flesh slides over Jon’s cheekbone like a tear. Martin’s stomach turns over. He takes a deep breath, trying to centre himself. Jon’s head turns towards the sound. His eyelids are in tatters. Jesus, he must be in so much pain.
“It’s going to be OK,” Martin says on autopilot. He puts a hand on Jon’s shoulder. The jumper is damp, sodden with blood. Underneath, Jon’s shoulder is bony and brittle. He moves, suddenly, grabbing for Martin’s wrist.
Jon’s hand feels wrong, the texture of the skin too smooth. “Trap.” Jon gasps. “It was a trap, the statement. Magnus wrote it, it was-” His head isn’t quite angled towards Martin.
“A statement?” Martin looks down. There are papers scattered on the floor, fallen out of the boxes. “Jon, we’re going to get you some help. Tim’s gone to get-”
“Tim?” Jon repeats, incredulous. His forehead creases, like he was going to frown, and the muscles under his eyes contract, and he cries out, face crumbling into a blank mask of pain. Fresh blood seeps from the scratches across his eyelids.
“Fuck.” Sasha says from the end of the row. She’s holding a box, the first aid kit. She strides to them, her lips pinched. “Don’t touch anything.”
“What?” Martin asks.
“We don’t know- whatever did this to him, it could be- just, don’t touch anything.” Sasha says, shoving the box onto the cot. “What happened?” She reaches out for Jon’s chin, trying to pull his face into the light.
As soon as she touches him, Jon jerks backwards, pulling Martin’s wrist with him. “Who’s there?” he asks. “Martin?”
“It’s just me and Sasha.” Martin says, the words tripping off his tongue. “That was Sasha, though, who touched you.” Jon keeps- asking for him. Saying his name. Hell, Jon’s still got Martin’s wrist in a vice-grip, they’re practically holding hands. It’s- Jon glared at him for daring to bring tea this morning. What the hell is going on?
“Oh.” Jon says. “This isn’t real.” Then he starts laughing again. Martin winces at the sound.
Sasha purses her lips, grabbing Jon’s chin and holding it firmly. “Martin, did you see what happened? If there’s an artefact loose, or a Leitner, we need to know what it is.” She dabs at Jon’s eyes, and he hisses, flinching away. She follows his motion, clearing away more blood.
“No, I didn’t see- An artefact?” Martin echoes, his heart jumping into his throat. He looks around, but there aren’t any books, just- statements, scattered across the floor. Boxes. Normal things, things that he sees every day. “He said something about a statement,” Martin tells her.
Sasha nods. “Don’t read anything. Whatever it is made him claw his own fucking eyes out,” Sasha says, cool. “We need to contain it before it gets anyone else.”
“Claw his own…” Martin looks back at Jon. Now some of the blood is clearing, there’s a pattern in the cuts around Jon’s eyes. They’re in sets, the deepest running parallel to each other across Jon’s eyelids. Martin looks at Jon’s hand, limp against his wrist. His fingers are caked in gore. One of his fingernails is broken, and the others, there’s something dark and wet underneath. “Jesus Christ,” he says faintly. Jon’s lips purse. His shoulders are tense.
Sasha drops her blood-soaked wipe to the floor, reaches for two gauze pads. “Martin, get the papers off the floor. We’ll have to burn them,” she says.
Jon’s head snaps up at that. “No,” he protests, struggling against Sasha’s grip on his chin. “You can’t.”
“I thought we weren’t real?” Sasha reminds him sweetly.
Before Jon can answer, the door to Document Storage slams back open, cracking into a set of shelves.
Tim rounds the corner into the aisle, spitting mad. He’s pulling someone behind him, by a tight grip on their upper arm, and he shoves them forward, pulling them around, and- It’s Jon. Jon as Martin saw him this morning, short hair and scowling and in a dress shirt, pushing his half-moon glasses back onto his nose.
“There,” Tim snarls “you fucking wanker, there’s your fucking proof,” and he points aggressively at the Jon still perched on the edge of the cot.
There’s- two Jons. “Jesus Christ,” Martin says, again.
“Explain that,” Tim spits at the Jon still standing, his eyes like daggers.