Chapter Text
The tape hisses in protest as he rewinds it again. Set. Play.
Click.
“ — would you know about it, Archivist?”
The word is spat, acrid and oozing. Even on the seventh rewind, Jon starts at the sheer revulsion, the tape popping with static as if some kind of potent curse is trying to reach through the audio.
Gertrude, as she has in each of the six previous iterations, sounds unfazed. If mildly disapproving.
“If we could keep up the pretense of civility for just a moment more, thank you. You are still in my Archive, after all. And well. I know inside is a formless place. Unknown and unknowing, as is a part of the branding, one might say, but altogether suspended as it...feeds. But I didn’t bring you here to answer your questions, I brought you here to answer mine.”
There’s a pause, one Jon knows well enough to count through as he studies the desk from behind his fingers.
“Well?”
“‘S impossible.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Is to whoever you want to throw in there. Surprised you’re askin’. Don’t seem like the type to get your hands dirty.”
“You can make whatever assumptions about me you wish, as long as you tell me the truth. Is it possible?”
Another, longer pause. Jon presses his eyes shut, straining to listen, still, still uncertain if that trace of static is anything more than his imagination. Still can’t tell, as the voice gravels out the answer he knows by heart.
“Sure, if you go in. The Eye’s got all sorts of nifty tricks, doesn’t it? See the way out, or whatever.”
“And the creature? Would it still exist as the first victim or switch to the new….host, for lack of a better word.”
“Dunno. Get switched out, most likely. Replacement’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
“So the first victim would be replaced with whomever entered. But what happens to the first one? Would they even be alive?”
Jon shivers at the dry chortle, the tape registering more feedback than any natural laugh.
“Maybe. Depends. What’s alive mean to you?”
“You’re starting to test my patience, Mr. Doe. Would they be alive, yes or no?”
“Mr. Doe” laughs again, worse now, long and loud and grating in a way that almost hurts. Jon doesn’t dare cover his ears, leaning in closer and letting the words fall.
“I see what this is. You wanna trade with it. What, it trap someone in there you need?"
“I don’t—”
“Nah, nah, now I get it. Heard about the Great Twisting, what you did. Can’t say it’s not a little gratifying, you up on your mighty horse, but you’re just as much a killer as the rest of us, aren’t you?”
“I hardly need to defend myself to you, Mr. Doe.” Gertrude’s retort is dry, inflectionless. Jon...can hear Michael’s voice he trusted her and she fed him to me—
“But I’ll tell you, just ‘cause I can’t wait to see who you toss up next. Hope it’s that Keay brat—”
“I think we’re done here—”
“Does he know you’d feed ‘im to that thing in a heartbeat, if you thought it’d give you a half leg up? That why— ”
“You can answer my question in simple terms or you can leave my Archive without a deal, Mr. Doe.” Even years and layers of static away, Jon can hear the ice in her voice. He holds his breath as a irritated huff cuts through the quiet.
“Fine. Stranger’s creatures gotta feed somehow, don’t they? A whole person, that’s a buffet—they could last years for something like that, depending on how greedy it is. Sure, whoever’s inside’s alive. Until they get eaten up bit by bit and then they’re dead. Then it picks a new one. Then it starts over. That simple enough for you?”
“I—”
Click.
Jon sighs, massaging his temple with the hand not weighing down the pause button, the one not itching to slide over and rewind the whole thing one more time. He needs to—he needs to be certain. To know, if— if this, this idea that’s sprouted behind his eyes is even—
The tape hisses. Set. Play.
Click.
“Sure, if you go in.” Jon stares at the recording, as if Gertrude will interrupt this time, ask the question he needs— he needs—to know the answer to. Somehow, the recording remains the same as the other six—now seven— times. “The Eye’s got all sorts of nifty tricks, doesn’t it? See the way out, or whatever.”
Hiss. Set. Play.
Click.
“A whole person, that’s a buffet—they could last years for something like that, depending on how greedy it is. Sure, whoever’s inside’s alive. Until they get eaten up bit by bit and then they’re dead.”
Click.
Jon rubs his eyes, exhaling. The room blurs for a fraction of a second, his too-bright office lamp piercing and spiteful. The door is closed. It’s been closed, and despite the fact it’s nearing midnight and the Archives are empty, despite the delicate balance struck as they all scrape up whatever composure they can in the face of the literal end of the world, he can still feel a degree of pressure leaking in through from the open office area. He can’t be sure the exact cause, not when there’s all so...much. If it’s Tim’s resentment, Melanie’s rancor, Basira and Daisy’s unconcealed wariness, Martin’s...presence.
Sasha’s absence.
Maybe it’s just his imagination. Or maybe just the inexorable — and at this point, irritating—sensation of eyes on his back.
“Right.” He clears his throat, grabbing a pen and notebook from his desk drawer. He switches the pen from hand to burned hand. Then back. He stares at the blank page for a moment.
Shouldn’t this be the easy part?
With another sigh, he tosses both pen and notebook back in the drawer and reaches for a tape recorder he doesn’t remember grabbing from the shelf.
“Right.”
He sets it in front of himself, but before he can even reach for the button—
Click.
He contemplates the recorder for a second. Then three, then six. He exhales.
Every second counts.
“Statement of Jonathan Sims, regarding...an opportunity.”