Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?”
Sasha was honestly still freaked out by the interview, it wasn’t the sort of question she’d prepared for, ‘what makes you a good fit for this job?’ ‘tell me about yourself,’ she’d already scripted answers for those questions, the perfect blend between mundane and stereotypical, just interesting enough to set her apart from anyone else trying to compete for the position, though now that she did actually have the job, she had a feeling she’d been the only one to even apply. Lena hadn’t even bothered asking anything else, it had been weird enough to ask about “the worst thing she’d seen,” but she just glanced at her resume after, then told her she didn’t want this job, seeming defeated when Sasha insisted that yes she did, and Lena told her she started on Monday.

Sasha dressed nice for her first day of course, though once she actually got into the office she guessed the dress code wasn’t exactly formal. One of the women looked up from her old computer screen, (one of the requirements was experience with older softwares, but Sasha wasn’t expecting this) if there was any dress code beyond ‘don’t show up naked’, she didn’t follow it, with her ripped tights and cropped shirt, a few tattoos and piercings. Ah, so Sasha didn’t need to bother taking hers out, noted.

The woman’s face lit up in a smirk that felt familiar after far too many hours spent with Tim. This woman would be a menace, but an entertaining one hopefully. “Looky here, it’s the new hire Sam! Here to replace our family IT man? Let’s hope you don’t go crazy like he did,” she said in a teasing voice, and the tall Indian guy looked up as he heard his name, snapped out whatever he was focused on before.

Lena came out of her office as she heard the sudden (and admittedly loud) conversation, cutting off any reply Sasha may have been about to say.

“I’d like everyone to meet Sasha James, our temporary IT manager while Colin’s away…” Lena went on, though she must be pretty fond of bureaucratic cookie cutter type introductions considering how no one (including Sasha to be perfectly honest) was really listening, tuning out the same script anyone who’d ever worked in an office had heard a hundred times. After Lena vaguely mentioned something about a user manual in Colin’s old office, she went right back to her own, leaving Sasha to get acquainted.

“I’m Alice,” the woman who’d talked before, turned around in her seat and sat on her knees to lean against the back, despite it being an office chair she could just spin around in, and offered her hand. Sasha shook it politely. “Over there’s Sam,” he gave a small wave, “jolly old Gwendolyn Bouchard,” she said in an over the top posh accent, and an unnecessary flourish like she was announcing royalty, which did nearly topple her off the chair, considering the mixture of bad balance and dramatics.

Sam laughed at her gently, rolling his eyes a bit, “it’s nice to meet you Sasha. You’ll have to meet Celia too, she’s just running a bit late tonight.”

“Oh is she? And here I thought she’d wised up and decided to skip town, get out of here before the worms finished eating her brain,” Alice offered sarcastically, apparently recovered from her near mishap, and not ready to accept sitting in her chair normally was a good idea.

“Way to make the new girl feel at home,” Gwen said flatly, her sarcasm much more subtle than Alice’s, though the intention was clear. She hadn’t so much as looked up from her screen to face Sasha after Lena left, her eyes scanning the file pulled up.

Honestly Sasha didn’t quite know how to respond for a few seconds, leaving an awkward gap of silence. Things seemed to be pretty close quarters here, and even if they didn’t all like each other, they still seemed to have their set dynamics and roles, something Sasha was frankly self conscious about possibly messing up. She wasn’t going to be here more than a few months likely, being just the temp while the last IT guy was away, messing up the equilibrium wasn’t her top priority. So there were a few beats of uncomfortable quiet, if anything the fact it wasn’t silent made the lack of words louder, like the computer fans and sound of Gwen’s keyboard really wanted her to be nervous.

“So! Nice to meet you all,” she said politely to break the spell, “anyone mind giving me a quick overview of the computer system…?”

Why did Sasha take this job. Not even a week in and this system already was the most confusing software she’d ever tried to deal with. And of course that “user’s manual” Lena had mentioned in Colin’s office (now her’s for now) was heavily notated, marking everything the book had wrong, (basically all of it) and after testing a few things to make sure it wasn’t at all useful, gave up and threw it in the drawer. She had to deal with this nonexistent .jmj error about a dozen times a day on the various monitors, and then there was these text to speech voices, which was just another thing for her to try and make sense of. Great. God she could use a Timothy Stoker certified hug right now. The worst part of this whole job really was just that their schedules didn’t line up anymore, but it was only temporary of course, and having this job would be worth it if she found what she was looking for, even if that meant sacrificing her nights of sleepy cuddles with her boyfriend.

She was getting along with the team though, which did feel nice. It didn’t take long for Alice to figure out Sasha was trans, at which point she came out as well, and started making jokes about it, which did make Sasha feel quite welcome. Her sense of humor was certainly not what Sasha was used to, (the product of a teenager who spent too much time on tumblr Sasha suspected) but the whole demeanor of only really joking about things, was the majority of Sasha’s daily interactions with Tim, so she had the energy to follow along and joke back a bit. Sam and Celia both didn’t talk to her much yet, but were nice, and despite Alice constantly poking fun at her, Sasha did like Gwen. She could definitely understand how Alice’s jokes would make someone annoyed if they didn’t have the endurance to handle it.

The statements were weird, Office of Incident Assessment and Response wasn’t really the sort of thing you heard and immediately thought of the supernatural. Tim had been right though, about it not being normal data entry, it would have been frustrating if Sasha got the job and then realized it wouldn’t have the right information. She did manage to listen in on a lot of the talkers, trying her best to ignore the simple issue of why the hell the computer actually read them, and found she was able to access already scored files from her own monitor, and took to idly scanning them to see if anything caught her eye.

So the job had been boring so far, frustrating too, but mainly boring. Too the point Sasha was currently debating the likelihood of being caught taking a quick nap, and what the punishment for that would entail, when she heard a bleep come from the computer, and sighed in frustration. Not another damn error— no, that wasn’t the petulant error sound, this was a simple notification. A little red dot showed up on the email icon to show she had a notification, and she clicked on it.

Immediately this raised some red flags. The subject line was gibberish as far as she could tell, and the actual email itself…

Most of it was blacked out, as if it was redacted information, areas with certain unblocked sentences badly pasted together, like a crappy version of a serial killer’s letter written in cut out magazine letters. The sentences that were legible didn’t really make sense, and she read the first lines over a few times, as it felt familiar. Ah— one of the files today, the computer had read it out, and Sasha had idly listened from her office, as the voice Alice had dubbed Chester droned on about some guy’s doppelgänger. It seemed like all these sentences were from that statement, copy and pasted to hopefully give some sort of meaning.

‘Help me get home
Turns out your world and mine are pretty similar
It took a while for someone to answer
She was waiting for me to suddenly turn on her
The last time I’d seen people look at me like that was after the fight and I hated it
She was afraid, maybe even terrified… I assumed she was just weirded out and tried to get to know her, talk to her
Anything to stop that feeling that I was somehow falling through the cracks
That is not a good feeling
All at once this deep throbbing pain
I don’t really know what happened then
I figured at this point what’s the harm?’

So that was unsettling. Even aside from the unnecessary digital collage of a statement. So… whoever sent this email wanted to talk about pain, and someone that was afraid of them? She checked the email address, it looked to be internal, so… that’s not good. Maybe it was a bit of hazing, Alice or Sam playing a trick on her. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck, and she suddenly felt self conscious, like someone was judging her, watching, waiting to see what she’d do. It was just her imagination, she told herself initially, but… she’d always considered herself a fairly down to earth sort of person. She didn’t spook easily, something was wrong here. But… she was also tired, and panicking over a weird email that could still be from one of her coworkers didn’t seem like a smart idea at 4 am. So she’d deal with it later, at the beginning of her next shift, when she had more time and was more rested, see if she could get to the bottom of this.

Chapter Text

Sasha couldn’t sleep. Not well at least, she was tired enough she conked out once she was in bed cuddling next to Tim, ignoring the glow through the curtains of dawn before the sun comes up. After just a few hours he had to get up for his own job though, that warmth was gone, and even though he was careful not to jostle her, the slight movement of him swinging his legs over the bed was enough to make her crack her eyes open.

She didn’t let on she was awake though, not wanting to make him feel guilty, and just silently admired as the beautiful man got dressed. How he got away with wearing shirts that would act as camouflage against an arcade carpet, was beyond her. She was under the impression the publishing house he worked for was high end, but they hired him in the first place, so that was already debatable. She hid the smile that little joke caused her, wishing dearly she’d be able to tease him right now. But by now he’d quietly left their apartment, and so she was alone.

Turns out that was not a good thing, because her mind went straight back to that email, and then she felt judged, despite being alone in her own home. Hello sudden and extreme self consciousness. Go away please. She tried to go back to sleep, but the bed didn’t feel right and she still wasn’t used to not having Tim next to her, so she just laid there, taking melatonin after a few minutes, and managing to drift in and out of sleep. It wasn’t actually very restful, so she felt just about as tired as when she went down in the first place.

When she woke up it was nearly seven in the afternoon, which was kinda miserable that Sasha’s life was just sleeping through the whole day now, not even with Tim by her side for most of it. She scolded herself for being clingy, and just got up and made coffee. It was foul stuff, but they always had some on hand since Tim liked it, and she was quickly learning whether it tasted good or not, it was going to be a requirement for her night job, as long as she didn’t want to spend a small fortune on sugary energy drinks.

So coffee. She fussed for a bit, doing a few chores, feeling like she was really just waiting until she could head off to work. She decided to just head off, and get to work early. Maybe she could get a head start on seeing what the email was, before anyone else was in the office to bother her. Maybe Lena would even let her go home early today.

Sure enough she was the first one in, and went straight to her office to read through the email again. It was… it still didn’t make sense. She hoped it was just Alice hazing her, but this place was weird enough already, it probably wasn’t smart to just write it off as that. She was snapped out of her thoughts after a while, by the sound of someone else coming in. She heard them pause, and then call out since the lights were on. “Hello? Anyone here?”

She popped her head out, “hey Sam, why you in so early?”

He looked vaguely annoyed, and took off his coat and scarf as he spoke, “could ask you the same. My roommate wanted me out,” he shrugged, “he has a date over, I didn’t have the energy to argue about it.”

“That’s fair,” she said understandingly, and fully came out from her office, plopping down in someone’s office chair so they weren’t so far away. “Couldn’t sleep much and was bored,” she rubbed her temple, “figured I’d get an early start.”

“Wait, actually, do you know if Alice was planning to haze me or something? A prank? She tells you everything, doesn’t she?”

Sam raised his eyebrows a little as he sat down as well, “Not that I know of…? Honestly if she was planning something I don’t think she would have been able to hold it in, what, did something happen? Sit down to a whoopie cushion?” He chuckled gently.

“Um… no. Actually, I got a weird email last night? Well- this morning I guess. It was… a bit spooky to say the least.”

“An email?” Sam seemed to perk up a bit at that actually, “what’s it say?”

“It was like a collage really, one of the statements yesterday, Chester read it out, it’s lines from that. Most of it is blacked out then just rearranged to say something with the words that are left,” she shuddered just slightly.

“That’s… weird,” he said slowly, and then fumbled for his phone, and pulled something up. “Was it from someone named Jon? I got this email a while back, it was just some guy’s address,” he showed her his phone screen which had the email pulled up. Sure enough, it was an internal email, the only thing there was an address, simply signed ‘Jon.’

“I think… yeah, that actually looks like the same email, come here,” she led him into her office, where the email was already pulled up. He scanned over it, also looking confused with the strange message. Comparing the two emails, it was indeed the same, and she let out a little triumphant humph.

“Did you go to the address,” she asked eagerly

“Yeah, but it was just some guy named Gerry and his grandma. They were nice, but it wasn’t really productive. Couldn’t tell us anything,” he shrugged.

“Us? Who’d you go with? What’d you ask about?” She felt bad for the constant fire of questions, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Me and Celia,” he answered simply, not seeming to notice her eagerness, “we asked about the Magnus Institute.”

“That’s… the institute that burned down like 20 years ago, right? Some of the statements are from there?” He nodded, “Right.. and you didn’t ask why someone would tell you to go to their apartment? Ask if they knew a Jon?”

He paused for a moment, then kinda sheepishly, he let out a “no… honestly I wasn’t too worried about that.”

She let the silence hang for a minute, staring at him with a look that said ‘you’re not fucking serious, are you?’

“It was a weird day!” He protested before she could say anything, squirming a bit under her stare. “I kinda forgot that was an issue—“

“How is that not an issue? Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m mad at you, but I just can’t believe… you’re not very intuitive, are you? That should be the main line of questioning, why someone told you to contact them.”

“You’re… not gonna go visit them, are you?”

“I don’t see why not. I could find out something useful, work technically doesn’t start for almost two hours, think I’ll have time?”

The rap on the heavy wooden door was loud, and Sasha waiting patiently for a minute, listening to someone move towards the door to unlock it. She heard the slide of chains, and latches, the sort you’d have on your door if you lived in a bad area in the city, but as far as she knew this section was relatively safe. It finally opened to show an old woman, wrapped tight in a cardigan, stinking of cigarettes, with her hair pulled into a tight bun. She eyed Sasha suspiciously, “who are you? We’re not buying anything,” she snapped.

“Hi, I’m here to ask a few questions? A couple colleagues of mine came by a few months ago, asking some questions? Well apparently they left out a lot of information, and I’d just like to ask you and your grandson about it.” She said politely, “oh and uh, my name’s Sasha James,” she extended her hand for a handshake.

The woman’s face stayed on that static, wary expression, though there was a small flicker of… surprise maybe, when she told the woman her name. “Nice to meet you, I’m Gertrude Robinson,” she took it, her grip firm, staring at her intently. “Come inside, I suppose we can spare a few minutes,” she sighed, and walked further in, just letting the door swing open for Sasha behind her, which she made sure to latch once she walked in herself.

The apartment was clean, tidy, everything clearly with its own little spot, and Sasha sat down on the couch. It was pink and floral, the exact sort of couch she expected to see going into an old lady’s home, but it just seemed… so fundamentally opposite to this woman, Sasha could tell that already. Gertrude stayed standing.

“Gerrard! Come in here please,” she ordered, and a lanky man, maybe in his forties, with blotchy died black hair that reminded her of a calico cat came in. He was in an oversized sweater and loose skirt, one that went down to the floor and looked actually quite soft, which actually had pockets. (She needed to find out where he got his clothes.) his cheap costume jewelry looked like it came straight from hot topic, rings around fingers that had tattooed eyes on the knuckles, and one on his throat. He gave her a soft smile, “who’s this GG?”

“Her name is Sasha James,” she said a little pointedly, and Gerry’s eyebrow quirked just a bit, though his smile stayed the same, and Gertrude continued, “Sasha I’ll let you ask your questions, but as I said before to your other coworkers, we don’t know anything about the Magnus Institute.”

Sasha nodded dismissively, and launched into it, “Do either of you know a Jon? Sam didn’t really tell you how he found your address, which was sent to him in an email, from a Jon.”

Gerry straightened up a little, and his eyes flickered to Gertrude briefly, as if he was asking if he was allowed to do something, to which she just returned a black stare. Whether it was actually blank or they could just read each other that well, Sasha didn’t know.

“Well, yes actually,” he said after a moment, looking quite confused. “Know is a strong word, met is more accurate. Jonathan Sims? Is that who you’re referring to..?”

“Possibly,” she said simply, “why would he send your address to anyone? Let alone someone he doesn’t know. And it was an internal email, I can’t find any record of a Jon working at the OIAR.”

“I’m wondering the same thing too,” Gertrude narrowed her eyes at Sasha, which felt like suspicion, but she was pretty sure it was just the woman trying to figure this out. She looked to Gerry, “That’s…?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit,” Gertrude pinched the bridge of her nose, moving her glasses aside, and Sasha continued to sit there pretending like she didn’t feel like she was intruding on their conversation.

“Is there any other information?” Gertrude asked her after a moment, looking exasperated.

“Yes… there was one other email, unsigned, but from the same address, which was written using lines from one of the files that came through,” she pulled the email up on her phone, and handed it to them to read.

There was a minute of silence as they both scanned the email. Gerry looked shaken, Gertrude’s expression was unchanged. “Sorry, we can’t help you,” she said firmly, pressing the phone back into her palm.

“But—“ Gerry started, and the woman shushed him, and led Sasha out. ‘Led’ doesn’t fell like the right word, it was much closer to glaring so many daggers if felt like the mouth of a shark. Like she might lash out if Sasha didn’t leave.

Gerry hurried over to see her off, and lock the door behind her, quickly grabbing her arm before she was able to walk down the hall outside the door, and wrote his number on her forearm in pen that was already smudging. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he whispered “call me,” before shutting the door, and she just stood there for a moment, listening to the locks and latches being reset.

That night’s work was grueling. Mainly for the fact she couldn’t focus on anything, but Lena was mad at her for being late since the whole thing went longer than expected, so that didn’t help matters. She poured through Colin’s marked up user manual, trying to see if there was some sort of back door into the email system so she could track where the email was sent from, but no luck.

So she started drafting an email back. She could see the address, there was no reason she couldn’t send something back. But whether a simple ‘hello’ was needed or a more comprehensive list of questions right away… she wasn’t sure what the best way to approach this was yet. So she stared at the little blinking text line for about two hours, getting up once to deal with an error on Gwen’s computer, but over just going through a few iterations of ‘who are you’ and ‘what’s going on’, finally just giving up and saving it as a draft.

She got up, and came back with fresh coffee, setting it down on the old drink rings on the wood. There was another email notification. She nearly choked on her sip, wiping off what dripped down her chin with the back of her hand, and opened it. It was the email again, in… response to hers. The one she never sent.

UNKNOWN: Do either of you know a Jon? Sam didn't really tell you how he found your address, which was sent to him in an email, from a Jon.

GERRY KEAY: Well, yes actually. Know is a strong word, met is more accurate. Jonathan Sims? Is that who you're referring to..?

UNKNOWN: Possibly, why would he send your address to anyone? Let alone someone he doesn't know. And it was an internal email, I can't find any record of a Jon working at the OlAR.

GERTRUDE ROBINSON: I'm wondering the same thing too. That's..?

GERRY KEAY: Yeah.

GERTRUDE ROBINSON: Shit.

Identify yourself

Shit. Shit. That was her conversation earlier, why did this person have a transcript? Why were they even sending it to her in the first place? And they knew Gerrard and Gertrude? So that confirms that the address wasn’t wrong, was their house tapped? Are they behind these emails? She realized her hand was shaking between her caffeine consumption and the adrenaline rush that was pumping under her skin. She didn’t even send the email, is this in response to that? In which case there is a serious security issue in the system, or it just happened for the timing to look like that, but that didn’t make it much any better. Well then, a test.

She opened a new draft for an email, and simply typed in her name. Whoever this was, they had good enough spy skills to record them, they’d be able to find her name sooner or later anyway, might as well tell them for the sake of an experiment. And she just saved it again. If there didn’t seem to be any response, then it was just a coincidence.

There was another .jmj error. God these damn things, and then she heard the same sound from outside her office, from the other computers, one by one, in rapid succession. Alice swore, and swung the door open to her office, “Sasha can you fix these damn things? They’ve just all up and quit, damn things are gonna give me a headache.”

Sasha looked up at her after a moment, and she must have… looked something. Scared, or confused, because Alice’s face slowly grew worried, “What’s wrong? What’s going—“

And then the microphone crackled to life on the computer in front of her, the sound had a squeal behind it, and a click in the beginning, like an old cassette tape.

Chapter Text

A woman’s voice crackled on, and… Chester’s voice answered her, but it was a real recording, clearly not text to speech.

“—them talking upstairs. You know this obsession even better than I do. I just wanted to make my statement…”

“In case you get murdered by ghosts.”

“Yes.”

“I understand. Thank you, Melanie.”

“Sure. Where’s Sasha, by the way? I wanted to say goodbye.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Sasha. Your assistant. I haven’t seen her in a while.
You didn’t fire her, did you?”

“I’m not sure I understand, she brought you down here.”

“Oh… No, is that another Sasha? Are you collecting them?”

“No, no, there’s just… there’s just Sasha.”

“You know who I mean. Tall, long hair, glasses… She was here when I first came in. Back last April? We had a long conversation about haunted pubs.”

“No, I… I remember. But that is Sasha.”

“Right, okay, um… are you trying to gaslight me or something?”

“What? No!”

“Is this a joke to you?”

“No! No… I… I…”

“Because I am not crazy. And that is not the same woman I met before!”

“Yes it is! I mean… What?”

“There is something very wrong with you.”

“No… what?”

Another sound of a tape stopping, then starting again.

“I… um… I haven’t followed up on Melanie’s statement. I just keep thinking about what she said about Sasha. She was so certain. I mean, it’s Sasha. Obviously it’s Sasha. But… something… There’s more than one thing in the files that can trick you. I can’t just ignore it. So many stories about things that aren’t as they appear to be. Why Melanie, though? If… Why…
It doesn’t matter. I need to do more research. When Melanie came in, I was looking through the box of tapes Basira gave me, trying to decide where to start. Now I think… I think I have an idea.
End supplemental.”

The tape stopped. By now Sam, Celia, and Gwen were in here too, standing near the doorway, listening as Sasha stared at the screen of her computer, that error code still there.

“Fuck, Sasha was that about you?!” Alice looked genuinely concerned, a foreign expression on her face.

“That… sounded like someone I um- know,” Celia started, she looked shaken, but less surprised than the others. More… sure of herself for some reason. “Melanie, she a… friend of Georgie, who watches Ja—“

The computer started again, another tape click.

“I found this tape while rifling through the boxes Basira provided me. It was labelled “Changeling / Imposter,” and given Melanie’s outburst last week, I thought it a prudent place to start listening. It is, uh…
The tapes that went missing after the Prentiss attack all had Sasha’s voice on them. I hadn’t put it together until listening to this. I don’t know what this… I know exactly what this means. But I don’t know what to do about it. I can’t tell the others. Even if I could get them to believe me, they’d find out about Gertrude’s tapes. I can’t risk that. I need to deal with this myself. And that means I need more information on this thing. How it works. How it k…
I need to know how to stop it. I’m going to start by tracking down the statement by this “Adelard Dekker”. I… I think the statements from the Nineties are marginally more organised now. If it’s here, if Sasha… I’m going to find out how to kill it.”

The man’s voice stopped again, and everyone was silent, Sasha could feel herself shaking as another recording started after a full thirty seconds.

“I found this in the folder marked 9910602, where Gertrude’s tape had indicated I would find the statement of Dekker himself. There is nothing else in there, but I think it tells me what I need to know. This thing, this “Not Sasha”, it’s tied to the table. It…
I found the tapes.”

Another click indicated another tape was starting as this was being recorded, and Sasha’s own voice came on. “I thought it was pronounced “Kah-lee-o-pee?”

“They were in her desk. Well hidden, but… If I’d been a bit more thorough, if I…”

“It’s just a scratch, Jon. I’ll be fine. Can we begin?”

“Was there anything I could have done? Could I have…”

“Hello? I see you. Show yourself.”

“Hello?”

“I see you.”

“I see you.”

“And now I see you.”

The error went away for a moment, before the screen went all glitchy, and it flickered a few times. The team was snapped out of their trance as there was a pop and something in the computer fried, spitting a small cloud of smoke and sparks, and they could hear the computers in the other room go off as it tripped a breaker.

“Shit,” Sasha yanked the cord out to prevent it from getting worse, a reflex despite the system being off now. Quickly undoing a few small screws, she yanked the plastic case off, bending what screws she missed, glancing at the damage to make sure the whole thing wasn’t ruined, and sighed when she saw it was only a replaceable part that had melted.

She just took off her glasses and scrubbed a hand down her face. When she looked all four of her coworkers were staring at her in varying levels of horror and confusion.

“Sasha what the fuck is going on?” Alice burst out looking about ready to bolt.

“That was the computer voice, you knew one of the text to speech guys?” Gwen interjected.

“What— no, I don’t, I don’t know what the fuck is happening right now!” Sasha told herself her voice wasn’t shaking as bad as it felt. She took a deep breath, and sorted out her thoughts. This… answered some things, but gave her a million other questions.

“That’s Jon,” Sam blurted out, stunned. “You said ‘Jon, I’ll be fine.’ I thought you said you didn’t know a Jon—“

“I don’t! Everyone please listen, I have never heard these recordings, I have never spoken to Jon, or this guy, or said any one of those things in the recordings to my knowledge. First thing’s first—”

“Who’s Jon?” Gwen interrupted.

“I… got an email from him a while back, it was nothing but an address, really weird. We think Sasha got another email from him too,” Sam said softly.

“Right, yes. I got an email from the same address though it wasn’t signed, and asked Sam about it this morning, and I went to the address from his email before work. Which was actually somewhat useful. I learned that Jon’s full name is Jonathan Sims, as long as this is the same guy, and I got Gerry’s number, I think he wants to tell me more. But in the… recording, Jon referred to Gertrude’s tapes, that’s Gerry’s grandmother. So even if she didn’t know him personally, he still knew of her, she’s connected to this.”

“We need to ask her about what tapes he could be talking about,” Sam offered, “and Celia, if you could ask Melanie if she ever gave a statement to a Jon or—“

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Celia said calmly, then pressed her lips together in a way that made it clear she instantly regretted saying it.

Sasha gave the silence a moment to hang in the air, “why?”

“Just… don’t wanna bother her,” she said carefully.

“We found a recording where she… what, found someone pretending to be Sasha?! If she has any idea what’s going on she needs to tell us,” Alice protested.

“Fine, but I doubt she’ll know anything though. It’s not like she’s secretive, if something weird like that had happened I think it would have made it back to me.”

“Still,” Sasha sighed, “we need to figure out what this is. If everyone will stop interrupting me, we can go over it and see what we can figure out. So. I got my email last night, 24 hours ago give or take. It was like a digital collage with one of yesterday’s files? One of the talkers, Chester- well, Jon I guess, read it out. It was the doppelgänger one, most of it was blacked out, what wasn’t was rearranged to make a message, it was something about being in pain, and scaring someone, I don’t know. The file was using she/her, but it was all just rearranged, so we can’t be sure whoever this… Jon was scaring was a woman.

“I told Sam, and went to Gerry and Gertrude’s and they were acting really weird, it felt almost like Gertrude recognized me, or knew of me. And Gerry definitely has met Jon before, I don’t think Gertrude wants him to tell me, but he seems willing—“

“They were super cagey about the Institute too, and the file from yesterday was an old statement from there,” Sam interrupted.

“That true… that might be a connection. But it gets weirder. About half an hour ago I was trying to write an email back, but gave up and just saved it. I got another email as soon as I did that, and this one was a transcript from my conversation with Gerry and his Gertrude, their lines were labeled but mine weren’t and they asked me to tell them my name. So I decided to test it. The timing was really suspicious, so I typed my name into a draft and saved it without sending, and then… it started the recording.”

“So… they didn’t know who you were before you told them? So they know Gertrude and they know Gerry, but they didn’t know you. So why would they send a recording where they did know you?! It doesn’t make any sense,” Gwen puzzled, less worried about the fact Sasha was recorded, and more about just figuring out what was going on. “Right, give me a moment,” she said coolly, striding out of the room, and towards Lena office, who apparently hadn’t noticed they weren’t working.

Sasha had to strain her ears, but she could make out their conversation.

“Is there an external named Jonathan Sims?” Gwen demanded, foregoing a hello.

There was a beat of silence, Lena sounded annoyed at the interruption, “In a sense, what, have you gotten a file about him?” she asked calmly.

“Not exactly. Who is he?”

“An external. I’m afraid I don’t really have any information of the specifics of his character.”

“Not good enough. What does he do?”

“I’m afraid you’re not at the level required to have that informa—“

“Fucking tell me Lena. What do you know about Jonathan Sims.”

Lena’s voice changed, it was clipped, angry but restrained, as the words forced their way out. “He’s trapped. I don’t know the specifics but our system can’t run without him. I believe some refer to him as ‘The Archivist.’”

“That’s all?”

“Gwen get the hell out of my office.”

Chapter Text

Tim had off work today. That was something she had been looking forward to, because despite the fact they lived together, Sasha hadn’t actually had more than a full hour with him without interruption for nearly a week. It had been awful, but not the end of the world. The important thing though, was that they wouldn’t have time to relax and enjoy each other’s company, because she was going to tell him about what was going on.

It was premeditated, scripted, she had a whole little speech written in her mind, so she could keep her head on straight and hit all the important points. And when she climbed in bed next to him at 6 am, she took a moment to just appreciate the peace that was about to be broken once Tim got up.

Alice had told her not to tell him. She’d made the case that it would be better to keep him out of this, that ignorance was bliss, especially in their line of work. And Sasha agreed to an extent. Tim would be happier being left to think she was safe at her new job. Clearly miserable and frustrated, but safe. It was an office job, she took it so she would be safe. But she wasn’t, and he was no stranger to this sort of stuff. He deserved to know, and Sasha pushed down the small bit of offense she got when Alice suggested she leave him out of it.

She couldn’t sleep again, if they continued at this rate she’d be dead on her feet. Alice’s suggestion of blackout curtains was always an option, and while Tim said it was fine, there was no way he would even manage to get out of bed without the sun’s blaring light.

And so lying there in the dim light, Tim softly snoring beside her, she slowly began to wrap her head around this.

The fact that this… other-her had been replaced wasn’t even what was really bothering her. It was clear the reasons behind the recordings ever being made—and the other-her knowing Jon—weren’t questions they were going to find answers to right now. At least while they had no real clue where to start, making herself go insane over trying to find answers wasn’t going to help. Not right now. 

What bothered her was what Jon was trying to convey. Sure, this whole thing was spooky, but what were they actually trying to accomplish? If they were trying to scare her they were shit at it. The recordings… they felt like an explanation. Not about what had actually happened to the other-her, but why Jon didn’t recognize her. They were trying to reach out, communicate, the whole thing last night almost felt like an apology for not recognizing her. She was just hoping it didn’t all end up being a hoax, and that Jon’s just a creep.

Why couldn’t they just write though? Send back a proper email if their intentions were genuine? Lena said they were trapped, and while Sasha didn’t really know what that meant in this situation… they had to help, right? If this was Jon trying to claw their way to communication any way they could, she needed to help. And in the collage email… if he really was in pain…

Sasha sighed, rubbing a hand down her face. What the fuck was going on? The whole thing made her head hurt.

Tim shifted beside her, groaning as he opened his eyes, sleepily pushing himself out of bed. Sasha glanced at the clock, flashing 7:30.

“Hey,” she said softly, rolling over to face him. He was shirtless, hair messy, but in less of a ‘I woke up this sexy’ way and more of a ‘dear god why is it morning again’ sort of way.

“You’re still up?” he croaked, rubbing his eyes.

“Yeah. Why are you getting up? Last I checked you’re a terror before 10,” she teased.

“I am not, I’m always a delight,” he smirked. “Besides, I needed a piss. You alright?”

She hesitated, “I think so. Are you awake enough to talk once you’re done?”

“‘Course Sash,” his face softened, and he affectionately ran his fingers through her hair as he went by, padding towards the bathroom.

She could tell he rushed a bit, eager to hear what she wanted to say. If Sasha ever said they ‘needed to talk’ he’d learned it wasn’t necessarily bad, just important. It had been an issue when they first got together, based on previous experience he’d assumed the term meant a breakup, or bad news, and had such a hard time taking it seriously and not just trying to deflect the whole situation with jokes. Now he made a point of forcing himself to be genuine, and just listen. Once he was done he sat down on the foot of their bed, facing her, as she sat up and put on her glasses.

“Talk to me,” he nodded.

She sighed, “Work has been weird the last few days— actually no, understatement of the century, work is spooky as shit, and I need to tell you what’s going on so you’re not in the dark.”

“Well we knew it was a bit spooky in the first place, that was the whole point, wasn’t it?”

“No- yes, but not to this level. The files that come through are ominous, sure, but there’s some actually concerning stuff happening directly to us. Me and another coworker, Sam, we’ve both gotten emails from this one address, an internal email, we’re pretty sure the sender is named Jonathan Sims. There’s a lot to explain, but the gist is that they seem to be trapped somewhere, and is struggling to actually communicate, they’ve been sending really cryptic messages. Sam’s email was an address, my first one was lines from one of the files rearranged, my second was after visiting the address, it was a transcript of my conversation—“

“You’re what?” Tim interrupted. “This person was spying on you Sasha?”

“Well- yes, I think so, but that’s not what’s important—“

“How is that not important?! We need to call the police if someone is stalking-“

“Tim, will you please just listen? I don’t think this is something we can go to the police for, I don’t even know what we could tell them.”

He clamped his lips shut, even though he was clearly unhappy about this.

“In the transcript, the lines were labeled with names. Gerry and Gertrude, they are who I visited yesterday, and they were both labeled in the email, but I wasn’t and they asked me to identify myself to complete the transcript.”

“So you did?”

“Tim.”

“Sorry, continue,” he gritted out.

“Yes, I told them my name. But I didn’t send the email, they were able to see it just by me saving the draft. It started playing a recording then, I think it was originally on cassette tape, of Jonathan. Now because of this recording we know Jon is one of the voices that reads out files occasionally. But they were talking to a woman, about me.

“Now before you freak out again, I don’t think it was properly me, it wasn’t spying, it was something else, they were talking like they knew the other Sasha personally. And while listening to a few of these recordings we found out that other Sasha had been replaced, and only one person could tell. I don’t know what to make of it, but I think Jon was trying to communicate. Trying to explain that he did know me-or a version of me-despite not being able to put a name to the voice.”

“Sasha I’m really waiting for this to get better…” his tone was warning.

“I know Tim, it’s definitely not okay, but I’ve thought about it, and I think this whole thing is this person trying to find help, it’s creepy, but it seems like the only way they can get through. I need to help them if I can.”

Tim just looked at her for a few moments, then sighed. “Damn you and your moral compass… you understand fucking with this thing is gonna get you screwed, right?”

“Yes.”

“Of course you do- what about a plan? What’s that genius Sasha brain of yours come up with? I need to know you have a plan,” he sounded a bit desperate. He needed to know she could keep safe, and know when to quit. They’d come this far together, he couldn’t lose her now.

“I think so,” she sighed, shoving down the guilt. He could tell her no, to leave it alone, and she’d trust him, listen to him. But he was letting her make her own choices even though he was scared for her. What did she do to deserve him?

“Gerry said he’d met Jon, but Gertrude didn’t want him talking about it. So he gave me his number, I think he wants to help. So first course of action is that.”

“Is he safe?”

“What?”

“Sasha I need to know you didn’t just go waltzing into a stranger’s home without considering they could be a bad person. Did he seem like an axe murderer type? Was he staring at you weird? Making you feel uncomfortable?”

“No, no, and no. He was really sweet, I don’t think he’s dangerous,” she chose not to mention how menacing Gertrude was though.

He sighed again, and tipped his head up towards the ceiling. He looked tired, god they probably both looked exhausted, stress tended to do that to a person. He looked straight at her again, “I’m coming with you Sash. Whenever, wherever you meet him to talk, I wanna be here. I get that the OIAR isn’t going to let me in the building, but I can still be a part of this as much as I can outside of it.”

Sasha just nodded.

Chapter Text

They had waited a while to leave, relaxing for a few hours, finally enjoying the fact they actually had a bit of time together. It was drizzling when they left the house hours later, dreary, cold, and grey. Sasha had to practically order Tim into actually wearing his heavier coat so he’d be warm enough, instead of saying it was ‘nice enough out,’ and then secretly being miserable as soon as they had actually been out of the apartment for more than ten minutes.

It was quite a trip down to the coffee shop Gerry had chosen, close to his own apartment. Sasha had half been expecting him to pick one closer to her, or more in between them, and then remembered that he luckily didn’t have her address, and then got the creeping worry that he could’ve, and that the way things were looking right now, random people having her address should probably be a worry. She had looked up the place he’d chosen online, and it looked like a charming little place, lgbtq+ friendly, the sort of place that was a bit overpriced (even for London coffee) but guaranteed ethically sourced beans. She didn’t have enough places like that near their actual apartment.

The tube was crowded and grimy, stinking of piss in the usual London fashion. Tim got his wallet stolen while pushing through the crowd. That was the first unlucky thing to happen for the day, not that Sasha normally kept count. It didn’t have any cash in it and they were able to call the credit card company and get his cards cancelled, but it was still bad luck, and put them both in a bit of a snappy mood. Once they were finally out of the station it was properly pouring now, but Sasha’s umbrella had broken last week, so they ran for it, pushing through the brightly painted door into the little coffee shop.

It was bright, warm, and artsy, a few college students working on various projects at the little tables. It smelled like scones in here, and Tim wasted no time ordering coffee and a couple muffins for them, using the twenty pound note Sasha was lucky enough to have in her pocket. If he was gonna be unhappy and overprotective of her for this whole meeting, he might as well get a snack out of it.

They waited two hours. Sure, they had arrived a bit late themselves, but two hours with no word was simply rude. That was the second unlucky thing to happen. She’d texted Gerry about a dozen times, and had no responses, until finally he got the brains to text back.

‘I got held up, sorry I couldn’t make it.’

“Fucker,” Tim scoffed, reading the text over Sasha’s shoulder.

“Let’s just go home,” Sasha heard herself snap, and took a deep breath, in order to calm herself down. “I’m sorry this was a waste of time. I really thought he’d show,” she sighed, leaning back in her chair, and rubbing her eyes.

Tim’s expression softened a bit, “Not your fault Sash, it’s him who didn’t bother to follow through.” He stood up, and pulled his coat back on, it was still raining out, and the wind had picked up substantially, “come on then, no use sitting here for no reason,” he grumbled. “Next time you see that guy I’m getting a punch in,” he grumbled.

That did make Sasha chuckle, “oh yeah? I won’t stop you then, I’m flattered you’d defend my honor like that,” she teased, trying to brighten the mood a bit.

He smirked and ruffled her hair, messing it up as the left the cafe and went back out to brave the rain, “of course I would, what else would I be here for?”

“Chauffeuring me around to random coffee shops? Most of the time you’re a nuisance though, not worth the trouble,” her smirk grew, trying to get a little rise out of him.

“Naaah, you love me,” he pulled her closer.

Sasha allowed herself to just be glad she could cheer things up, make Tim forget his anger towards Gerry for a moment, “fine, I do,” she said like it made her disappointed.

The walk was comfortable, both of them having calmed down a good bit, though the fact Sash’s shoes were soaked through wasn’t helping.

“Could we actually stop at that tea shop we saw on the way down?” She asked.

“Really? You barely drink the stuff anymore.”

“Yeah but I still like it better than coffee, and it was such a cute place! I’d love to find some new teas.” They were nearing the said store now.

“Yeah yeah, I might just run over to that shop over there, while you’re doing that?”

“The tourist one?” She quirked a brow.

“I’ve been meaning to send a postcard to Danny,” he shrugged.

“Alright then,” she leaned up to give him a quick peck on the cheek, before beelining for that little tea shop. She stepped up the rickety steps, and turned around for a quick wave to him. Then she opened the little yellow door of the tea shop, and stepped inside.

This was not a tea shop.

Chapter Text

Sasha didn’t understand. This was not the tea shop. She had been able to see through the front windows to the inside, it was nothing like this. Whatever… this was.

It took about a full thirty seconds to get her bearings, as much as she could. Was it… some sort of joke? Optical illusion? Because what was in front of her wasn’t floral pink wall paper and fragrant teas, it was… a hallway. The wall paper was purple, or— no, it wasn’t how could she see that as purple? Her eyes just seemed to slid off it, like iridescent oil.

A deep breath. You’re okay Sasha, you’re okay. Why was her heart beating so hard? She had no reason to be afraid yet, she could just turn around and go back out of the door. There, hand on the handle, that’s it. When it turned she let out a relieved breath, why did she expect it to be locked? Turning and turning… how far did she need to turn this door knob? But it fell off into her hand, gold and hard and cold, hearing up faster than it should in her hand, she watched it until it burned her, heated up as if it’s been held to a flame. It made a thud on the carpet, and she looked back at the door, that had never truly been there. Now it was only that wallpaper that made her vision swirl.

She spun around so she didn’t have to look at it, and shut her eyes, trying to remember how to think in ways that made sense. It was clear this was wrong. That was the one thing coherent in her thoughts, that this was wrong and dangerous, that… she would likely die here. She knew that for certain.

But Sasha wasn’t one to give into her instincts. Instead of letting her heart run wild like a frightened animal, she held two fingers to her pulse point, feeling her pulse, and forcing herself into slow deep breaths, just like she had with any other panic attack, until her heart slowed down enough to think properly. She felt almost like she was drunk, or high maybe, but keeping calm seemed to help a little.

The door was gone, her way out gone, that was clear, whatever this was, it had to have another exit. It had to. Sasha also reminded herself that a bit of optimistic lying to herself was okay right now.

She opened her eyes. The wallpaper still didn’t make sense, so she kept her eyes to the carpet, which seemed to have a slightly more static existence, and started walking. There was only one way for now, so she just followed the carpet, glancing up once in a while to check if there was anymore doors. She didn’t know how long she’d been walking, and even just the carpet gave her a headache, but she knew if she sat down to take a nap and rest her eyes, this place might not let her wake up.

So she kept on.

It felt like this place was breathing almost, with the way colors and patterns shifted, sometimes she could hear a creak, as the walls started bowing outwards slightly, sometimes inward. The weight of things shifted on her too, her feet would feel too heavy and her head too light, but she was able to ignore most of it, taking just a few moments to reorient herself again it changed. At one of these points her phone suddenly felt like rocks in her pocket, but it reminded her that she still had it. The likelihood of actually having service was below zero, but at least she’d be able to keep track of time. Her phone screen was just the hallways again, but thank her lucky stars— there was still the little digital clock in the top right corner.

1:28 am. She was late for work, but at least she knew she’d been in here for… maybe eight hours?

She checked it again after a little while. 7:12, had she really been walking for nearly six hours since she last checked.

Again. 11:55 pm. Right. She sighed, the stupid thing was tricking her, wasn’t it? Time may not work right in here, but she knew there wasn’t any way it had been over 12 hours in what felt like a few minutes. She considered just throwing the damn thing away, but no. She couldn’t afford to be buying new phones left and right when she got out, could she? Because she would get out. Being stuck in here wasn’t an option.

The first time she saw a mirror, there was a brief lurch of excitement that there was something different, though upon closer inspection, it was small, and broken, showing her thousands of shattered pieces of herself, but she shook it off. If there was a metaphor there, she didn’t want to know what it was.

More and more things started to show up, little wall gas lamps, sort of victorian in style, with green glass shades. There were mirrors, of all different sizes, some like fun house mirrors, warping her reflection. Others showed her, but just a bit different, different hair cuts or scars, sometimes she looked worn down and tired, and a few she didn’t look… human in anymore. One just showed a completely different woman, a short clean bob, her skin was slightly lighter, she was thinner, and had a wicked smile that made Sasha incredibly uncomfortable with the fact she felt familiar, and uncanny is a way she couldn’t name, and so Sasha continued on.

Mirrors transitioned into mostly paintings, after what was likely a few hours, almost all of which were actually just paintings of the same hallway, though it was refreshing to see the colors in the fames stayed almost the same, though it differed from painting to painting. There were some portraits dotted around, most of them normal looking people. A father, and presumably his son, a man whose arms were covered in pen drawings of spirals, a black woman in a fancy suit like a real estate agent. They all looked terrified though, and Sasha got the sense that whoever they were, they had ended up here just like she did.

This place was starting to make sense— well, as much as it could. Meaning, it couldn’t make sense, and expecting it to follow normal rules would only confuse and frustrate her more, so accepting that there wasn’t really logic in this, was important. It was lying to her, trying to deceive her and confuse her, make her scatter brained so it could eat her. But Sasha was nothing if not stubborn, and so she soldiered on, forcing down confusion until there was only the certainty of putting one foot in front of the other, until she was out, it couldn’t take that away. Sure, it tried, but when she blinked and the hallway moved on her, trying to point her in a different direction, she just used the slight left curve of the walls to reorient.

Her feet ached by now, but this place wasn’t meant for rest. Sitting down on the floor wouldn’t stop the throbbing, it might even get worse, with how backwards this place was. She was struggling to recognize herself now, not that she seemed to look any different, but in the way words cease to have meaning if you say them too many times. There were so many mirrors, and a girl stared back at her. Dark skin, curly hair tied back in a bun, glasses with beaded chains, her heavier frame wrapped in a sweater. It was nice, a pretty patterns full of pinks, but Sasha didn’t recognize it. She knew that girl staring back was her, but it sure didn’t feel like her right now.

There was a sound. Not the creak of walls and floors, or the sound of shattered glass when Sasha decided smashing a few mirrors would make her feel more like herself, more sane. It was someone else, another person in this place, his voice was familiar too, his footsteps echoing as if there was two.

No, no, there was two. That was someone Sasha knew, and it felt like whatever metaphorical baker was reaching by into her head and kneading her mind like dough, had taken a break. Whose voice was that? She sped up, trying to figure out where they were. Ahead? One of the other hallways? It seemed to be coming from everywhere, she couldn’t place it—

A door to her right cracked open, the frame splintering near the handle as someone body slammed it and broke the lock, and… yes, Gerry broke through. He froze, tilted his head slightly in confusion, “Sasha?”

He stumbled forward when someone plowed into him from behind, a shorter man, curly blond hair tied back out of his face. “What are you— oh dear,” he laid eyes on Sasha, and once Gerry had regained his balance and gotten out of the doorway, the stranger rushed over to her, helping to hold her up and smoothing down her hair, doting on her despite not knowing her.

“I can stand on my own,” she protested, god her voice sounded so cracked and dry, and she willed herself to keeping standing when this place decided to play yet another cruel prank and make her knees go weak.

“Shit, um… okay,” Gerry peered down the corridor they had just come through, it looked like the walls had collapsed in on themselves, blocking the way, the red thread Gerry held in his hand trapped beneath the wood. Wait—

“Why do you have—“ she cleared her throat, there, that was a little better, “why do you have thread?”

“This place is a maze, I’m sure you’ve noticed. Think of it as the yarn Theseus used to get out of the Labyrinth. Except this place is the maze and the Minotaur… so we should probably get out of here.”

“The way is blocked though? We can’t follow it back,” the other man brought up.

“We might be able to find another way, if we can find another section of the string somewhere else, we should be fine,” he said confidently, and started walking down the hallway Sasha had been treading for who knows how long.

The blond guy pulled her along, keeping a hand on her elbow to keep her upright, asking Gerry to slow down a few times for her.

They walked in silence, just opening whatever doors they came across, smashing them open when they were locked. It was strange, it felt like Sasha had been walking grooves in this floor, too afraid of losing the self imposed path to actually go into another hallway, convinced that if she just kept pushing forward she would eventually reach the center of the spiral, it had to be a spiral, because the left wall would just curve in more and more. Following a new path, even if Gerry was the one choosing it, was refreshing.

“God I remember why I always used to dress for practicality,” Gerry mumbled to himself under his breath, after his sweater sleeves got caught on another door handle. He wasn’t wearing a skirt like when Sasha had met him… the other day? Didn’t matter when, just when she had met him, but he was still in comfy and cushy clothes, jewelry and all, and god the platform boots wouldn’t be pleasant to walk this much in.

“What are you even doing here?” Sasha finally asked, now that she wasn’t the one breaking the silence.

“Saving this guy,” he motioned over his shoulder towards the blond man, without actually looking back. Sasha got the sense Gerry didn’t like him.

“You know my name,” he protested softly, “I’m Michael Shelley, by the way,” he offered to her.

“Sasha. How did you two end up in here?”

“Same way anyone does, just through the wrong door,” Gerry grumbled.

“The tea shop?”

“No, if we went back to wherever that is now, it would probably just be a normal old shop. The doors to the distortion aren’t stationary, they move around, disappear, reappear. The only consistent thing is that it’s yellow, though it could probably change the color if it wanted, but even monsters like gimmicks.”

“The distortion… it’s alive, isn’t it, this place? You called it a monster, ‘the maze and the Minotaur’. I could feel it breathing before, sort of.”

“Yeah, it’s alive—“

“And it wants to eat us.”

“…you’re not wrong. We’ll get out of this though.”

“How long have you been in here?” Michael asked.

“I can’t tell, I don’t think this place works like that.”

“Oh…”

They were silent again for a while, Sasha just watching the paintings and mirrors as they came up, having nothing to do but follow Gerry with Michael. Gerry had to break down another door, slamming it with his shoulder. She looked around the walls at the paintings, and saw another one of those people, immortalized in these halls for no discernible reason. But she knew this one, of course she did, who… who were they? The curve of their face seemed so familiar, she just couldn’t place them, but she was dragged away once Gerry got the door down.

“Fuck, I see the string!”

Michael made sure she snapped out of it, and started following Gerry, as he followed the line, but Sasha heard a crack behind her.

She glanced behind, and saw the walls bowing in on themselves, creaking and starting to splinter, closing the other direction off, the collapse following them, and she heard Gerry yell at them to run.

She was struggling to keep up, but she saw… a door. They all did. Not leading into another path, sunlight shining through the place where it wouldn’t close, being propped open.

“Open the door!” Gerry yelled, running full pelt towards it, and the door started to be pried open, someone on the outside using what looked like the head of an axe to hold it, and now lever it open. It looked difficult, like it was trying to pull itself closed, but despite the distortion’s best efforts, when Gerry shoulder slammed into this one, it was just enough force to fling it open, and Michael pushed Sasha ahead. She managed to get out, exhaustion and hunger hitting her all at once like a freight train, and she managed to catch herself on the opposite wall of the small alley they seemed to be in now. Looking back, she saw Gertrude holding the door open with an axe, but before Sasha could question it, Michael tripped on the threshold, pitching forward forward onto the brick pavement.

He was so close. If he hadn’t fallen he would have been clear of the door once Gertrude’s axe slipped and it snapped itself shut. But of course they couldn’t all be so lucky, and the door slammed shut before poor Michael’s leg was fully out.

The mixed sound of tearing flesh and bone with the slamming of a door isn’t something you’d think would mix into something worse. But it twisted together in Sasha’s mind, imprinting itself on her grey matter, followed by Michael Shelley’s earsplitting scream.

Chapter Text

The next 24 hours were a blur. Sasha remembered the scream, wood slamming shut, and briefly wondering why Gertrude was holding an axe before all she could think about was how rough the bricks were on her face, and how it stung as if the ground had come up to smack her. In reality she had collapsed of course, but hadn’t really felt the fall, only the impact.

Her next bit of consciousness was Tim’s voice, yelling to see her. She couldn’t remember where she was, but there was a metallic taste in her mouth that made her want to wretch, and she tried to open her eyes, but just flinched when she found that it hurt to do so, her eyelids like sandpaper against her pupils. She wanted Tim. She didn’t know what was happening but she knew whatever it was Tim could make it better, could help her. And then it was dark again.

When she finally regained full consciousness, it was a strange feeling. Like she was weightless and suddenly dropped back into her body, the weight of everything pinning her to the bed. Was air always so heavy? Blankets? She felt so dizzy, even before opening her eyes, and reached out to steady herself, though as far as she could tell she was lying down. Grasping a plastic guardrail of the bed, she pulled herself up, panic strangling her for a brief moment as she felt the world tilt, but cracking her eyes open revealed she was sitting straight up. Probably. It was hard to tell with the way the room was spinning, but she thought she was okay.

Tim’s hands were on her face, holding her up. No— just touching her face, she was sitting up on her own. He looked so worried, and it was an incredibly strange sensation to struggle to recognize his face. It was as if she was looking through fogged up glass at Picasso like features, his face rearranging itself to resemble familiarity. It was Tim. It was Tim, she had to remind herself. He was saying something, but all the words spiraled together into one big knot, and so after a moment of her thoughts tripping over one another, she simply brought her hand up, gesturing to him that she needed a moment.

He snapped his mouth shut, and the world started fading in. What had been a high pitched whine became the steady beep of a machine next to her. No she wasn’t suffocating, that only a tube running down her nose. Which was uncomfortable, and unexpected, but she wasn’t choking. The room smelled sterile and metallic, but trying to take in the visual details right now were tricky, her head was still spinning, and being able to think straight was strangely disorienting. She never thought you could describe something as having the thoughts in your head being untwisted and untied from their knots, like wired being straightened out but still full of annoying kinks.

God wasn’t that strange, thinking clearly. She had no clue how long she was in those hallways, but it must have been a while if having a clear adjacent head felt so alien.

“What… happened?” She asked hesitantly, her voice cracking. God if it didn’t sound awful before it did now.

Tim looked like he wasn’t sure whether to yell at her, or hug her, and had bags under his eyes, his hair a mess from running his fingers through it. “I don’t fucking know Sash, I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that.”

“Um, well there was a door.”

“A door?”

“Yeah, a door. And hallways, that um,” her head hurt just trying to remember. “They were bad, I was there for a long time. How long…?”

“According to the clocks, three hours. According to your level of malnourishment and dehydration, two weeks, no one even knows how you’re still alive,” he fell down into the chair next to her bed, and ran his fingers through his hair to push it out of his face. “Please tell me this isn’t supernatural,” he sighed, resigned acceptance in his voice.

“Nope, definitely supernatural,” Sasha sighed, leaning back on her bed. “Two weeks? Really?”

“Apparently an ambulance was called and you were there on death’s door, halfway across the city from where I lost you.”

“Oh. Oh fuck. Michael, the other guy, tall, blonde, did he come in?”

“Trying to replace me already?” He tried to joke, but couldn’t quite force the smile, so he really only looked confused.

“No, no, Tim I need to know if he’s okay, I think he was hurt, I don’t know it, it’s a blur,” she pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to stave off the headache that bloomed when she tried to remember.

“Really? Do you know him?”

“Yeah, he was..” where was he? Right—there was another sharp pain but she managed to remembered, “he was in the hallways too. Michael, I think.”

“Oh. Okay, um.. I’ll check with the nurses and be right back, alright?” He gave a slightly more successful forced smile, filled with worry when he looked at her, and gave her hand a gentle squeeze before striding into the hall looking for a nurse.

She sat there for a few minutes alone, just trying to stay focused on her surroundings so her head didn’t start twisting up again. She didn’t like hospitals, but this place was steady, rhythmic, predictable. It was consistent, and honestly that was the thing she needed right now. It helped. The headache felt farther away, it was easier to remember things, all of it coming back into focus a bit. She ached like hell, was exhausted, but she was safe, and remained unconsumed by evil hallways. Of all the things she thought would happen to her, that was no where near being on the list.

It took a while actually, for Tim to come back. They both expected it to be a quick easy thing, just asking where someone’s room was, but nothing really went how you wanted in hospitals. He came back with a juice box though, handing it to her as he plopped back down in his chair.

“So I found him, whatever happened they had to amputate his leg, he’s not doing great. There was a guy in there, some goth dude, he asked about you. I think he’s gonna come visit at some point, they’re just the floor above.”

“Okay,” Sasha sighed in relief. A more worried response probably would have been more appropriate, but frankly an amputation sounded very much preferable to that place. “Gerry? He was there too, so he’s okay? Does he not have any issues like me?”

“Actually, no, not that I could tell. And Micah looks rough, but doesn’t look starved like you,” he puzzled.

“Michael,” she corrected.

“Right.”

She spent a moment struggling with the wrapper of her straw before Tim just did it for her, and she sipped on her juice as she went over it. “Okay, so it’s getting a bit clearer, there was definitely some fucked up time stuff in there. Maybe they were technically in there for less time than me? I don’t know how that’d be possible though, considering they would have presumably gone in just a bit before me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well we were supposed to meet Gerry earlier, remember?”

“Wait he’s that Gerry?”

“I think that’s why couldn’t come, he got held up trying to get Michael out.”

“Well that’s… okay now I feel a kind of bad for being pissed at him. How’d he text you though, I’m assuming that place didn’t have great WiFi?”

That made her laugh, “no Tim, the WiFi was shit, I don’t know how he texted, we’ll have to ask him. And we can finally get our answers about Jon, and maybe about whatever was going on with the distortion, he seemed to know about it.”

“That’s what he called it?”

“Yeah. He knew what he was doing, makes me think he’s not exactly the innocent artist I thought he was.”

Tim stayed silent for a moment, raising his eyebrows slightly.

“You are not allowed to tell me you told to me so.”

“Fine, fine, I just find it ironic…”

She spent a while describing what she went through, which he was more puzzled than anything as she was describing what the place looked like, all the mirrors and paintings and door, until she started talking about how she walked for hours and hours without resting, how it would eat her if she stopped, how she’d been so acutely, inescapably aware of that. Then it was just horror on his face, which was honestly a very reasonable reaction. Sasha never actually thought something terrible, or supernatural would happen to her, it was amazing how quickly the human mind could numb itself to the idea.

After their talk she just slept for a while, the exhaustion came in waves. She didn’t like it. It felt good to get rest, but… the there wasn’t consistency to when she woke up, and it felt like the way the clock on her phone didn’t work before. It’d be one thing to wake up every two hours, but when she slept for half an hour and then her next bit of lucidity was four hours later, it was disorienting.

Gerry did come to visit, Sasha wasn’t sure what she expected, but she was surprised by it. He was standing there when she woke up, next to Tim’s chair, looking more stressed than anything, his hair tied back in a bun that seemed to be falling out.

“Gerry,” she said simply, sitting up, and glancing at the clock. 10 pm, and Tim was asleep in his chair.

“…Sara,” he responded quietly.

“It’s Sasha,” she corrected a bit bluntly, not really in the forgiving mood. “How’s Michael?”

“I’m sure he told you they had to amputate,” he nodded to Tim. “His leg got trapped in the door when it shut. I wish I could say it was a clean break, but it wasn’t.”

“You think it was hungry? The distortion?”

“Yeah, I do think that,” he sighed. “It’s always hungry of course, but I’ve never heard of it ever being so desperate not to let something go. Usually it at least toys with victims first.”

She nodded, trying to wrap her head around what that meant. “What is it? I know you call it the distortion, but that doesn’t really mean much, does it?”

“It’s…” he sat on the foot of her bed, and she pulled her knees closer to her chest to make room. “It doesn’t quite work like that. You can call it a monster, but really that just simplifies the issue too much. It’s alive in a sense, and it tricks people into getting trapped there, as you of course know. That’s what it is. What worries me the most is that it’s not… complete maybe? It always used to have a person, maybe he was the distortion itself, or just the mouthpiece, but he’s not part of it now. And I don’t know what that means.”

“So… it worries you, but is that necessarily bad? Maybe it’s concerning as to why it’s not complete, but maybe it’s less powerful that way, less dangerous.”

“Could be. But it didn’t seem to be less dangerous. And if he was indeed the brain of the thing, wouldn’t it lashing out because it doesn’t know what to do be worse?”

“That’s… fair. But we got out of there, didn’t we? You and Michael weren’t even in there for that long.”

“But not for lack of trying. Both you and Michael would have been eaten if I wasn’t there.”

Sasha felt a small burst of anger, it felt almost like Gerry was belittling her, implying he was the only one who did anything. “From what I remember it was your weird maze string that saved us, not you,” she glared. “You simply kept walking. Where the hell did you get that thing anyway? It’s clearly magic.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said defensively, “and referring to any of this sort of stuff as magic implies a factor of fantasy this simply isn’t there. This sort of stuff is always bad, you don’t use it without knowing what you’re doing.”

She just rolled her eyes to that, “Right, what about Jon?”

“Fuck, you wanted to know about him, didn’t you?” He sighed in frustration, clearly having forgotten.

“Still do,” she said firmly. “Don’t tell me you’re not willing to spill now.”

“No, no, I am,” he stopped bunching the bridge of his nose, taking a few deep breaths so they weren’t so heated. “I just thought I was properly out of all this shit. Giving you information was one thing when I was still just an observer, but now I’m roped back into this again,” he scrubbed a hand down his face, “I just hate it.”

“I understand that, but I do need to know who that is.”

He let out a small sigh before starting. “Jonathan Sims was the head archivist of the Magnus Institute. I don’t know much about him, except that he was becoming less and less human, and at the time of speaking to me, trying to find a way to stop the world from ending. I wasn’t much help, except for explaining the fears to him.”

“The fears?”

”God not the bloody monster manual again,” he grumbled under his breath, and stood up. “I’ve been awake for the last 30 hours, and am not in the mood to explain this. Maybe I can write them all down in a letter sometime, or you can ask Michael, but if I have to explain them to another person right now I am going to jump out of a window,” he said bluntly.

Sasha pressed her lips into a thin line to prevent herself from demanding he explain it anyway. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Yeah, I am. I’ve got things to do Sasha, I can’t stay at the hospital for several days for two people I barely know.”

“Tim’s going to want to have a word with you when he’s done with his nap,” she glared.

“I… know. And I’m not particularly keen on being here for that. Good luck Sasha,” he said, as he strode out of the room, not giving her a moment to reply before he was gone. She considered running after him, but with the IVs and feeding tube hooked up, she wasn’t sure she could without tripping on a thousand tubes.

Chapter Text

Hi guys, I don’t know if anyone is still following this fic closely, but just wanted to let you know I’m officially putting it on hiatus for now. I know it’s been a few months since the last chapter, and I have the next one partially written, but I keep burning myself out and I just really need to take a break from everything for now.

I’m gonna give an estimate of 6 months, I’ll probably be feeling better sooner than that, but I have a bad habit of constantly jumping back into stuff once I start feeling semi better again, and I’m gonna try to avoid that this time, because that’s why I always just get burnt out again right away. Especially with the results of the election, (I’m in the USA) seasonal depression starting to kick up, and general exhaustion, I just can’t handle much of anything right now. It sucks, but I’m taking a break from much art too.

I will say I do genuinely plan to come back to this story, I really am enjoying it, it’s just gonna be a while. Hopefully not more than 6 months, but if it is, then it is

In the meanwhile take care of yourselves, and the people around you, stick together folks