Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.”

Chapter Text

Martin is unsurprised when the door to the Archives is still locked by the time he arrives— he’s generally the first to really arrive, and even when Jon stays late, he generally keeps the door locked. Even Martin used to attribute it to more paranoia but now...no telling if the Circus could be kept out with a deadbolt, but he feels better leaving Jon alone in the Archives knowing it's there. 

He eases the door open as quietly as he can, taking note of the lights, turned off. The room’s cold, he’ll have to fiddle with the thermostat again— 

There’s a scrape. Martin freezes. 

“Hello?” 

Martin waits for a response, before carefully pulling the water bottle from his bag—a huge steel thing purchased from a discount shop that’s conveniently marked with ounces and might as well function as an impromptu blunt weapon. Other than Jon, no one should really be down here at this hour. 

“Jon?” He calls, voice swallowed by the shadowy corners of the Archive. “Jon, that better be you and not some monster clown. Thing.” 

Still glaring at the dark, he reaches for the lightswitch. 

“Jon, I’m turning the lights on, don’t….” Click. The lights flicker on with a lazy incandescent buzz. The room is empty. “...freak out. Right.” 

He sighs, setting his bag at his desk and rubbing his arms. 

“Ok, Martin, time to walk around the cold, spooky Archive,” he mutters to himself, heading down the hall. “Like a bad horror movie, just because Jon can’t be bothered to go home for once, and—” 

He stops at the doorway to the document storage room. The empty document storage room. Oh...that can't be good. 

“Jon?”

He peeks his head inside anyway, as if Jon could be hiding behind the door, or one of the shelving units. Yeah, no, that was never going to be it. 

He paces the hall, calling Jon's name periodically and peeking into more and more unlikely places on his way to Jon’s office—might as well cross them off the list, right? — and by the time he’s checked the broom closet next to his office without even a scuffle from anywhere else in the Archives, he’s wondering if he should be a bit panicked. Jon would have come out by now to investigate, if nothing else. 

Martin holds up his fist to knock, and has a brief, insane impression that he absolutely should not. Which makes...no sense. It's a closed door, normal people knock at closed doors. But Martin also likes being alive, and such a strong instinct had to have come from somewhere, hadn’t it? And considering the things that could kill them at this point—worms, tables, clowns, to name a few—he’s going to listen to his subconscious on this one. 

“Jon,” he calls to the door. “Jon, you in here?” 

No response. He reaches for the handle. 

“Jon?” The door eases open, the room dark. “Jon, are you…” 

He opens the door all the way, light spilling into the empty office. 

“Here.” Martin purses his lips. “Right. Hm. Not...not great." 

“Martin?” 

He whirls, a great breath escaping him as he catches sight of Basira’s serious face. 

“Basira,” he says, exhaling again and fighting down the sudden pounding in his chest. “I— christ, this place is—” 

“Not fun to hang around alone,” she says, nodding. She peers past him, and Martin fights the urge to turn and look where she’s looking. “Jon not here?” 

“He’s— I guess not?” Martin tries for legitimate ignorance, as if he hadn’t been wandering around calling for Jon since he arrived. “I thought I heard some—something? But must have just been the pipes, erm. Maybe?”

She raises a single eyebrow. 

“Right, right, when has anything ever just been the pipes,” he concedes, sighing as he follows her back to the main office space. “Well he’s definitely not anywhere in the Archives. I could call? Him? In case he’s gone home, or to Georgie’s, since I don’t know if his flat is still—”

Basira frowns over her shoulder, already headed for Jon’s office. Martin trails behind her, not about to point out he’s already checked. He wasn’t a constable after all, and from what he’s seen from Basira she’s the type who needs to see stuff with her own eyes. 

She pauses at the office door, a frown creasing her brow. 

“No way he went to Georgie’s. Melanie said she was staying the night there. Can’t really see that going over well.” 

“How do you—” keep up to date on office gossip of an office you were essentially blackmailed into joining, in the middle of preparing for an apocalypse is what he does not say, but she’s already through the door.

“I like keeping track of the people around me,” she says, surveying the room. “Especially when — what the hell?” 

For a moment Martin doesn’t understand what caught her attention. Granted, he’s just grateful the office desk isn’t covered in blood, or worms, or something equally horrifying, but something in her tone ratchets up the feeling in his chest that still hasn’t settled since he first realized the Archives were truly empty. 

But as Basira walks straight to the shelf, the obvious becomes, well obvious. Where there used to be rows of neatly ordered cassette tapes there’s — there isn’t . The shelves are completely empty. 

“Were these the finished ones? Or empty tapes?” Basira asks, after several seconds of examining the bare shelving. “Martin?” 

“Bo—both,” he says, a bit startled out of staring around the suddenly far more menacing-feeling room. No tapes. No Jon. If he were less accustomed to the sensation of eyes, and general, unsettling atmospheres, he might shiver. “He keeps the unused ones on the bottom, and the finished ones up top. He usually can’t even—“ 

Martin blinks, something dancing at the edge of his vision. He stares at the spider, trundling its way up the side of the shelf. 

“Can’t even what?” Basira’s eyes are on him, and Martin shakes his head, feeling a bit...strange. He’d been about to say...Jon can’t what, reach them? But that’s not right, Jon’s...as tall as him. “Martin, what is it?” 

“I—” He tears his eyes from the spider, remembering what he was about to say. “He can’t even get the heavier boxes down. He’s...tall but he’s not, well, built to lug around huge boxes of ancient recorders, so Tim and I and— well, Tim and I usually get them.” 

Martin bites his tongue, hoping his discomfort isn’t evident. He’s not an idiot, the spider doesn’t bode well on a supernatural front but he’s not about to freak out and kill it like….

Like. 

Hm. 

Martin rubs his eyes. He’s aware he might have gotten the recommended hours of sleep, if the dead ends his brain keeps meeting is anything to go by. 

“...right.” Basira looks at him for a moment longer, but Martin really does have his fill of people and things looking at him at this point in his life, so he does what’s logical to escape the situation. 

“What if I put on some tea while we wait for the others?” 

The others trickle in slowly, and in Daisy’s case, not at all.

“Busy,” is the terse explanation he gets from Basira, and he’s not fool enough to push it. 

It’s a competition in resentment between Melanie and Tim that Melanie wins, shuffling in about ten minutes after Tim had sauntered in with only a long sigh once he spotted them gathered there. 

“What’s this then?” Melanie asks bluntly, gesturing with her styrofoam cup at the three of them. “Intervention?” 

Tim waves a hand around, shrugging. 

“Considering Jon’s not here yet, I’d guess it’s for him.” 

Melanie snorts, collapsing into her chair. 

“Good. Are we doing the ominous parting comments or the microwaving his tea when Martin’s not around?” 

“Really? Those are the two issues you think need addressing?” Tim leans forward, expression incredulous as Martin turns his eyes on her, uncertain if she’s joking. “That’s the squeaky wheel needs fixing with him?” 

Melanie just shrugs. 

“What? Not like we can tell him to stop being an asshole, I’m pretty sure that’s his natural state.” 

“We don’t know where he is,” Basira says in lieu of a response, before Martin can open his mouth. “Martin got here first, unlocked it, and searched the place. He’s not answering his phone. We haven’t checked the tunnels, but the trapdoor is locked and the key is where it’s supposed to be.” 

“Kidnapped again?” Melanie asks, straightening in her chair. “Bet Elias knows, I’m happy to beat it out of him if we need to, or if that doesn’t work—” 

“It’s not just Jon,” Martin interrupts, before Melanie can get too far in her admittedly creative description of what she’d like to do to Elias. He’s had that breakroom chat before, and doesn’t really need to hear it again. “Tapes are gone. A lot of tapes.” 

There’s a pause. Tim sighs, picking at his shirt. 

“Alright, I’ll bite,” he says. “Why do we care about the tapes, if none of us even want to work here anymore? Shouldn’t it be good riddance?”

“You’re missing the point,” Basira says flatly. “Jon’s gone, tapes are gone, and the Archive was locked when Martin got in from all entrances. Which means Jon walked out with them, someone else walked out with both of them, or he and the tapes vanished into thin air.”

Tim shrugs.

“I repeat, shouldn’t it be good—” 

“Can you not be a prick about this for one bloody second?” Martin snaps, setting down his tea. “Last time he went missing it was the Circus, remember? Or don’t you care about them? Hm?” 

Tim stiffens, mouth snapping shut, but something ugly shifts in his expression. Martin looks away. 

“So... do we think he was kidnapped, or….?” Martin doesn’t like the look in Melanie’s eye, nor the way her hand is twitching towards a pair of scissors stuffed into the pencil holder on the desk. 

“Honestly?” Basira taps her foot. “No. This is...clean. Organized. I’d expect at least some kind of a struggle.” 

“He could have left and got himself snatched,” Melanie points out. “Locked up the place, left it all neat and bam, taken on the walk out.” 

“But what about the tapes,” Martin reminds her. “Can you picture him? Carrying all those tapes, what, in a bag? That’s way too many for one person to lug around.” 

Melanie starts to open her mouth, but her eyebrows do a funny thing, and she just leans back crossing her arms.

“I just….” Martin shifts his weight from foot to foot. “You don’t think he’s gone to follow up a lead alone, do you?” 

Basira frowns, but Tim laughs harshly, throwing his legs onto his desk and leaning back. 

“Oh, come on. Now? With everything that’s out to get him? You said it yourself, the Circus is still out there. I'm sure not even Jon’s that stupid.” 

There’s a pause, and they all stare at each other for a moment. It’s Melanie that breaks the silence, pulling a face.

“...Are we sure about that?” 

“Nah, he’s probably gone off to be a creep in the tunnels, or— “ Tim waves a hand. “Stalk Elias, or something. Which, honestly, the man deserves it, kind of narrative irony there—” 

“I don’t know.” Martin bites his lip, glancing towards Jon’s empty office, those neat, empty spaces where tapes should line the shelves. “This doesn’t feel like...I— we all know Jon can do things without, you know. Thinking? I’m just worried he might’ve….I don’t know, done just that?” 

“Martin, look at you!” It’s something about Tim’s voice using that...awful slicing tone— the same voice that used to tease only lightly, the voice that had said take care of yourself Martin that just...freezes something over in Martin. “Here I’d thought you’d be the first to defend our resident monster. Good for you!” 

“I’m not saying he’s being stupid for, for stupid reasons, Tim—” he snaps, and immediately drawing back because of course, he can’t ever get to say what he means when he needs to be— “I mean, Jon’s not going to do something without a reason he thinks could help us.” 

“What would help us is him being around to prepare for the Unknowing,” Basira says. “None of the rest of us went on an apocalypse education field trip, and none of us can Know precisely when to pull the trigger to stop it. Plus, why would he take the tapes? Something’s not right.” 

“Not that I— fine, I guess I do care, at this point, if the end of the world is— well, going to happen.” Melanie fidgets, gesturing around at the empty boxes. “But we are sure he wasn’t just kidnapped again?” 

Tim makes a noise that Martin refuses to acknowledge as a snort of laughter—if he does Martin might just skip past telling him off and dump his tea on him—and Basira taps her foot, frowning. 

“Not likely,” she says. “Even if it wasn’t this...clean. The Archives is the Eye’s stronghold. Can you picture him being snatched right under Elias’ nose? Not likely.” 

“Unless Elias planned it,” Martin says darkly. Basira eye’s land on him, measuring. 

“Maybe he stepped out for a smoke, got snatched,” Tim offers. “You know, like the time he decided a smokebreak was worth more than stopping our other spooky monster boss from brutally murdering an octogenarian in our place of work?”  

“Step out for a smoke and take the whole of the archives with him?” Martin says with a huff. “Whatever Jon’s done—” or had done to him, he doesn’t say, stomach twisting  “—I don’t think it was just him. There has to be someone, or, or something else involved. We need to talk to Elias. If anyone knows something, it’s him.” 

“Oh, that’s true.” Tim grins nastily. “Elias could be two for two on murdering Archivists, though I wonder—” 

“Tim, shut up,” Basira says, without heat. She turns to Martin who is trying very hard to fight the instinct to throw something at Tim. “Right. We can’t just stand around wondering. You and Tim are going to search the tunnels, long as you can, but be careful. Melanie, keep in touch with Georgie, and stay here in case he comes back. Do whatever Unknowing research while you’re here, we can’t let this slow us down too much.”

All three of them protest simultaneously, but she speaks over them, eyes focused on something far away as she studies some detailed, unknowable map in her head. It’s a bit like how Jon looks when he’s recording statements, and Martin really doesn’t want to examine the similarities just now. 

“What about you?” 

“I’m going to call Daisy.” She exhales, a crack in her expression leaking exhaustion. “She might know something.” 

“What about—” 

“And then,” she says, and the steel mask seals over as if the crack were never there. “I’m going to talk to Elias.” 

Chapter Text

Daisy doesn’t answer. It’s not surprising, but it’s not comforting either. Basira leaves her a short call me back and promptly stows everything else she’s thinking in the back of her mind. She has another job to do.

Elias, it turns out, is in a meeting. Basira frankly doesn’t care, but she pauses right before his door and immediately holds her breath as words drift through the wood. 

“...won’t interfere,” Elias is saying. “I am..let's say interested to see how it turns out.” 

The other voice is too muffled to understand, and Basira risks edging closer. Not that she doubts Elias knows exactly where she is.

“...worried about your precious Archivist?” is what she catches, the voice unfamiliar, sardonic. 

There’s a long pause.

“You’d do well to remember that I set the terms of your place here,” Elias says, and there’s a cold ring to his voice she hasn’t heard since he confessed to murder. “It’s still my Institute.”  

And then the door swings open, a man glancing over his shoulder with an unreadable expression on his face. 

“I’ll keep that in mind, Elias.” 

For a fraction of a second, Basira just blinks. Then blinks again. She reaches out, grabbing the shoulder of the man as he passes, tugging him back until he turns familiar— familiar? — eyes on her. 

“Jon?” 

The man smiles quizzically at her, hands raised in surrender. 

“Basira?” He mimics her shocked tone, dropping his arms. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” 

His voice is— grating. Familiar, of course she’s heard it through his office door making statements dozens of times, heard him ask questions and make awful jokes. He’s still peering at her, concern evident. 

“Basira?”

“We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she scowls, releasing his arm. “Tapes missing, you missing— that is not okay, Jon. Where have you been?” 

“What on earth are you talking about?” he asks, looking completely bemused. “I’ve been in a meeting up here all morning, and— you know there’s an agenda, on my desk? That I don’t report to you, in any case?” 

“Jon, you know that these aren’t normal circumstances. You can’t just— ”

For a moment he just stares at her, and she—it’s a weird moment, her hesitation as if she’s—waiting? Because she knows, she’s thought to herself more than once that it sometimes seems like half of Jon’s vocabulary is made up of apologies, but at the same time...in that moment she can’t recall a single time she’s heard the words I’m sorry pass his lips. 

She’s still staring when he just raises his eyebrows at her, steering past her. 

“Well I guess I better go tell everyone I was just doing my job, since none of you would assume that.” 

With that, he slides past her, and she watches him head down the hall until he vanishes from sight. Something turns over in her mind, something...she turns back to the office. Later. 

Elias is waiting at his desk. 

“What’d you do with the tapes,” she asks, not bothering to greet him. He just smiles, the expression stopping right below his eyes. 

“Good morning to you, too. Getting comfortable in the Archives, are we?” 

“Don’t play dumb,” she says, glaring. “You know everything that goes on in here. Maybe you like watching us run around like chickens with our heads cut off when you decide to withhold information, but if you want us to stop the Unknowing so bad then we need to know what’s happening.” 

“You truly do overestimate my abilities if you think I can know every tiny thing that happens,” Elias says, writing something on a paper before him. He looks up, fixing her with a pointed look. “As for the missing tapes, I genuinely have no clue where they are. I was only made aware they were missing just now, when Jon mentioned it, but I can’t see them anywhere in the Institute.” 

“And you expect me to believe you?” Basira meets his gaze, even as an uncomfortable chill runs through her veins. “I think there’s something on those tapes you don’t want us to hear.”

Elias stares at her for a moment longer, before heaving a long-suffering sigh. 

“You really would benefit from trusting me—” 

“You killed two people, framed Jon for murder, and trapped me into a job I can’t quit.” She squares her feet. “Should I get started on what you’re doing with Daisy?”  

“Trusting me when I say that our interests align, ” Elias emphasizes, rolling his eyes. “I recognize mutual goodwill is not a realistic expectation at this point. But I didn’t hide the tapes, and I don’t know where they are. Considering I do have an interest in Institute property as well, I would like to see them found.” He pauses, meeting her eyes. “Detective.”  

Basira crosses her arms. 

“Not a detective.” 

Elias sighs again, taking up a pen and reaching for a file. He looks over it idly, and she swears he’s circling things at random. 

“Is there something else you’d like to accuse me of?” He asks finally, scribbling something. 

“Depends. Is there anything else you’d like to pretend you know nothing about?” 

Elias pauses and looks up at her, smiling. 

“Not a thing, at the moment. Now I’d appreciate it if you got back to work.” 

Basira manages not to slam the door behind her. But only just.  

She catches up with Jon on the stairs. He doesn’t pause, just keeps descending, skipping a step every landing or so. She’s not sure what it is about that motion that puts the frown in her voice as she calls out. 

“Jon.”

He glances up, hand on the rail. 

“Basira,” he smiles. “Good morning.” 

“What were you talking to Elias about?” 

Jon’s smile falters for only a second, but it’s enough. She reaches his level, glaring up at him. 

“Don’t lie.” 

He runs his hand through light, short cropped hair. 

“It was….well, he was telling me I shouldn’t go to the Unknowing. I—” 

“What?” Oh, Basira’s going to strangle  that slimy piece of bureaucratic shit. Not a thing, at the moment. Ass. 

“I know, I know, I argued with him— that’s sort of the whole point, isn’t it? Me being there to Know the right moment? But he was saying the Archivist being there might, I don’t know, lend fuel to the Unknowing if it succeeds?” Jon shakes his head. “Went on about death of something connected to It-Knows-You would strengthen the Stranger, how it’s his Institute, and I have to go along with it.” 

“What about that thing he said, about not interfering?” She watches him closely. Jon’s a terrible— well no. Actually. That’s not right. Jon’s lied well before, she’s sure. She’s...yeah she’s sure. 

Jon just shrugs, breaking her train of thought.

“He was saying he doesn’t care how whoever goes, goes about disrupting it, and he won’t interfere even if he doesn’t approve. Not news, if you ask me.” 

She taps her foot, glaring up the stairwell. She has half a mind to go back up there for round two, but Elias is probably expecting that. Better to do what he won’t think they will. 

“Are we done with the interrogation, or…?” 

“No,” she says, and just then there's a sharp ring from her pocket. She holds up a finger, ignoring Jon rolling his eyes as she raises the phone to her ear. “Daisy.” 

“What’s going on?”

She eyes Jon as he leans casually against the railing. Something about him glancing around idly, looking largely unfazed is not quite...Basira doesn't like the lack of urgency even though, well, he's always been like that. She turns away, frowning into the phone. 

“Few things. Some tapes are missing from the Archives, for one. Know anything?” 

Daisy hums. 

“Can’t say I do. Which tapes?” 

“Which tapes were they?” she asks Jon. If Elias was lying about Jon and the tapes earlier, then — well, she doesn’t immediately know what that means, but it’s another strike to fortify her mistrust, at least. 

“All of them,” he answers easily. “All of the ones I checked for, at least. My office and a few of the storage shelves in the main office.” 

“Jon says all of them,” she repeats, not bothering to qualify, and Daisy hums. “My guess is they’re either looking to hit the Archives by taking as much as they can, or—” 

“ —or they want to disguise which tapes they really wanted by taking all of ‘em,” Daisy finishes. “Hm. Smart.” 

“Will you be back today?” Basira asks, tone measured. She doesn’t even know where Daisy is. “We might investigate the tunnels.” 

“Give me two hours. Let me talk to Sims.” 

She hands the phone to him without a word. He takes it, looking a bit bemused. 

“Daisy,” he greets. “Yes. The ones in my office, even the empty ones.” 

Basira studies the stairs as they exchange words— Daisy’ll want her own read on the situation, want to gather her own facts. Meanwhile she hasn’t even told her about Elias’ new “concern” about Jon going to the Unknowing. 

Later. They’ll deal with it. And if Daisy’s less than two hours away, that’s...that’s good.

“No?” Jon is saying, and Basira looks up at the barely-there hint of hardness beneath the word. “Why do you ask?” 

Basira tenses, but there’s no tell-tale static tick of compulsion behind the question. Good and bad. If he can control it more not to use it, good. If he can control it more and therefore is turning into someone— something—that can control powers like that, bad.

She stows the thought as Jon hands the phone back. 

“Well?” 

“I’ll be there soon. Don’t let anyone go into the tunnels without me.” 

Basira’s about to object, explain Tim and Martin are already down there, but Daisy’s already hung up. 

Jon raises his eyebrows at her as she scowls at the phone. 

“Everything—” 

“Shut up, Jon.”

He...laughs, looking delighted. Something about the uneven noise sets her teeth on edge as they continue the descent down into the Archives. But that’s just how Jon is. It's how he's always been. 

Chapter Text

There is a man. He...he’s standing. Standing somewhere he doesn’t know—somewhere. Somewhere Unknown.  

The man hears….something. He looks down. He doesn’t know what’s in his hand, but it’s...whirring. It’s familiar. Familiar. The man stares at the thing in his hand, willing his eyes to name even one part of the loud, blocky object. 

The man remembers he is supposed to be remembering something, something...He presses his eyes closed. Think, a voice says. Think. Remember. Know.

There is a man standing somewhere he does not Know, but the thing in his hand is Known, it’s—he looks down again. Sees. 

It’s a tape recorder.  

Honestly? Melanie could not care less about finding the tapes. 

Depending on whoever had taken them, she might have even given them a hand, since the closest she can get to rattling the bars of her current supernatural-bureaucratic cage is shredding every important-looking contract she comes across. Disposing of a few tapes that were largely the result of the work of Jonathan Sims? Sounds almost cathartic. 

Basira probably knew all that though, which is why she’s stuck in the office thinking about her missed breakfast and reading about a man who woke up without a face, rather than exploring the tunnels. 

Not that she wants to be privy to Tim’s unpredictable attitude or Martin’s handwringing, but still. Better than learning about how Mr. No-Face slowly starved to death without a mouth until he figured out he could steal somebody else ’s face. Which he describes the process of in very vivid detail. 

Melanie flips the file closed with a long sigh. At least she’s not hungry anymore. This place is good for stomach-turning nausea. 

She’s considering shredding all of the Non-Disclosure Agreement papers attached to the file when the Archive door creaks open, voices breaking the silence.

“ — can’t say what he’ll do to make sure you don’t come.” Basira pauses for a fraction of a second in the doorway, surveying the room and nodding at Melanie. Melanie’s about to mouth who? as she points to the source of the voice...it’s not unfamiliar, she just can’t place it— 

But before she can, the source steps out of the doorway and into the room. And Melanie turns back to her file with a glare, because it’s like she’s forgotten how much she hates Jon’s voice until just now. 

“And I’m sure he’ll threaten and bluster all he wants,” Jon is saying in his brittle, uneven voice, “but he can’t really stop me short of breaking my legs, and if the whole point is to protect the Archivist, that would be fairly counterintuitive to—” 

“And what about the rest of us?” Basira interrupts, crossing her arms. “He might not hurt you, but the rest of us aren’t Archivists. We accept the terms and adapt, Jon. Unless we can prove Elias wrong, we can’t justify risking a worse Unknowing on top of whatever Elias might do.” 

Jon’s expression twists. 

“As fun as this conversation sounds,” Melanie calls, swinging to her feet and depositing the NDAs in the recycling bin. “Last time I checked, you were missing. Don’t mind us, wasting time wondering about you while we’re trying to stop an apocalypse.” 

Jon raises an eyebrow. 

“So sorry, Mel,” he says, mouth quirking. “Didn’t know you cared.”

“Shut up, ” Melanie grounds out, something scalding writhing through her chest as her hands twitch towards her desk. If she throws something at him, he’ll probably have time to duck. If he doesn’t, well.  “You think you can just—“

“He was with Elias,” Basira says, though she’s frowning at Jon. “Meeting, apparently.” 

“Apparently?” says Jon sharply, and Melanie is for some reason taken aback at the contempt in his glare. Jon’s a glarer and has a world-class bad attitude, and Melanie knows this, he always has been, and she really shouldn’t be surprised at this point. “You nearly barged into it, you think I was lying?” 

“I didn’t say that,” Basira returns evenly. 

Jon just examines her, expression going suspiciously calm then sliding into a fake smile. Ugh. 

“Fine. Well, if we’re done wasting my time as well, I can just…” Jon makes to head for his office, but Basira holds up a hand. 

“No, we need to discuss—” 

“You fucking prick,” a voice cuts through the room. 

Tim is leaning against the stacks, fire extinguisher dangling from one hand and a torch in the other. Martin is just behind him, coming around the corner from where the trapdoor is. There’s a twinge of satisfaction in Melanie’s chest as Jon’s lofty expression falters because Tim’s face is absolutely venomous . 

“Very funny, ha-fucking-ha, waste our time with more mystery bullshit, let Martin and I get lost in the haunted monster tunnels while you plot with Elias like some cheap thriller villain. Bravo, what a great office prank .” 

“Tim, nothing really happened, ” Martin says, sounding very tired.  He’s holding a torch and a crowbar he’d fished out of some storage closet or another— not that Melanie had been paying close attention when they’d been preparing for their tunnel adventure, or whatever—and for just a moment as he nods at Jon, his eyebrows come together in confusion. “Jon, you—you’re here. Great.” 

Even Martin doesn’t sound enthused. 

“I am,” Jon agrees, crossing his arms as Tim paces out towards his desk. “Because apparently none of you could be bothered to check my agenda. You know, the one for the job you still work at?”  

Tim advances on him with a sneer, eye-level. Melanie leans against her desk, catching Martin and Basira exchange a tense look. Melanie isn’t going to be the one to stop them, though in all honesty she can’t really remember a fight between the two of them getting out of hand. Jon usually—well, he wasn’t….Melanie frowns, reaching for her long-cold coffee and sips it as she shrugs away the crashing train of thought.  

“Yeah, I do know,” Tim is saying, tone climbing. He brandishes the fire extinguisher. “And maybe I’d still give a shit about it if I weren’t trapped in it, or if you weren’t such an asshole!” 

“I’m not going to apologize for your mistakes, Tim,” Jon snaps. “You decided to work at the Institute, and you’re the one who decided to run off into the tunnels instead of thinking.” 

“Actually, that was Bas—” Melanie starts to interject, but is silenced from a look by literally everyone in the room. Fine, everyone can run with the wrong information for the sake of a row, no skin off her back. 

“Well, guess it was a good thing I did, because now we know there's some fresh new horror down there!” Tim says with an awful, fake buoyancy. “Great stuff, as always! Can’t wait for you to let us get eaten by a fucking banshee next time you decide to to be even more of a prick than usual!” 

“Hang on. Tim, what do you mean?” Basira interjects, stepping forward. “Something down there?” 

“Oh, yeah!” Tim says, still glaring daggers at Jon. Jon, for his part, has his arms crossed tightly, lanky frame pulled taut and furious with an ugly smirk on his face. “Yeah, some new screaming down there, lots of fun, can’t wait to be eviscerated because you did a shit job of protecting us” 

“Um. Screaming? Are you for real?” Melanie puts in, setting down her coffee. "As in—"

“As far as I’m concerned I don’t have an obligation to be your babysitter, nor your protector, Tim,” Jon snaps, though he’s still half-smiling in a hostile sort of way which is...Melanie doesn’t think she’s ever used the word hostile to describe Jon before, but there’s also a first time for everything. “So I suggest you rid yourself of that notion, because if I have no desire to be either.” 

Martin’s face is torn with something but Tim— Tim looks decisive. 

“Good, then,” he says, matching Jon’s vicious smile. “At least if I get disemboweled by worms, I won’t have to deal with you anymore.”

“God forbid,” Jon says in a fake, simpering tone. “Get over yourself, Tim, as if anyone would notice.” 

Melanie’s hand covers her mouth— Jesus, Jon—as Tim’s face contorts, and as if by some invisible signal, they both turn away from each other and march in opposite directions—Tim back to the trapdoor and Jon to his office. 

The office shakes with the force of the door slamming. The trapdoor doesn’t even make a noise. 

“Well,” Martin says thickly after a long, long moment. He places the crowbar on his desk, the metal clinking against a mug already there. “That was—well.” 

“Charmers,” Melanie comments, sliding back into her chair. “The both of them. Can’t remember the last time they had a row that bad, but...” She shrugs, uncertain of where the thought was going. She hasn't been around this nightmare job long enough, maybe, to know. 

“And we still don’t know where the tapes are,” Basira says, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Fantastic.” 

“If Tim doesn’t die in the tunnels, maybe he’ll stumble upon them,” Melanie mumbles, reaching for another statement and ripping off the NDA. “The screaming’s probably from listening to them.” 

“Was it really screaming? Martin?” Basira prompts. Martin’s sunk into his seat, scrubbing his face. 

“Yes?” he says finally. “Sort of? It sounded more like….echoes. But I guess all echoes have a source. Dunno if I’d say it was like—like Jane Prentiss screaming but—” At their blank faces he sighs. “It wasn’t like the scream to end all screams, no, it was just...sounded like pain. A lot.” His voice is somber as he shifts in his chair. “A lot of pain.” He glances over towards where the trapdoor is. “I don’t know if I should let Tim be down there by himself. That was...”  

“Agonized screaming in the spooky murder tunnels, check,” Melanie says, ticking off a finger. “Mysteriously missing tapes, check. Antagonistic asshole boss-es, check.” She glances at Basira, who looks unamused. “All we need is blood raining from the ceiling, I reckon this could be a great, D-list horror movie.” 

“As if it’s not already,” Martin mutters, sliding the crowbar to the edge of his desk. He glances towards Jon’s door, expression folding further. “That was...Christ, I don’t think I’ve ever heard Jon get that...cruel. Or, or maybe I have, I just—christ.” 

“He’s never been nice,” Melanie offers—helpfully, in her opinion. She’s vaguely aware of Martin’s crush on the man—god knows why, he’s a menace—even if the impression is a bit fuzzy, like something she learned third-hand. Or maybe she’s just imagining it. “Plus, Tim was dishing it out himself.” 

“Office politics aside, we need to find those tapes. Elias said he couldn’t see them in the Institute, so if Tim comes back up, we need to talk to him. They could be down there.” Basira instructs. “I don’t like missing information this close to the Unknowing.” 

“I’ll check with other departments,” Martin offers, eyes alighting only briefly on Jon’s door. Poor sap. “Elias could always have been lying.” 

“Point,” Melanie says, nodding in agreement. “Either that or they were destroyed. They’re all pretty much junk, it can’t take much to wreck one.” 

Basira pauses at that.

“You’re right,” she says finally, and Melanie can catch the unsaid shit in her tone. “One last thing. Elias apparently told Jon he shouldn’t go to the Unknowing.“ 

“What?” Martin and Melanie say simultaneously.

“Shouldn’t,” Martin asks, standing. “Or couldn't?” 

Basira shakes her head. 

“Not sure. The way Jon tells it, it’s riskier for him to be there if the Unknowing succeeds. But Elias wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information.” 

“Fuck,” Melanie says emphatically. “Well. If that isn’t a ginormous red flag of suspicion…” 

“I don’t disagree, but what’s it suspicious for?” Martin says. He shifts from foot to foot, eyes still flickering to Jon’s office door. “What could Elias benefit from lying?” 

“I don’t know.” Basira doesn’t look happy about the fact. “But whatever it is, it can’t be good. And I’ve got a feeling that there’s something about it on those tapes.” 

The man is standing somewhere he does not Know, but he Knows what—a hall. A long, unvarying, unfamiliar hall. 

The man reviews what he knows. He is standing. He is in a hall. He is holding a tape recorder. He is supposed to remember more, and frankly, he is annoyed by the fact that he can't. He's forgotten too much, and whatever he Knew but has Unknown is important, he's sure of it. 

The man grips the thing in his hand—tape recorder, he reminds himself—tighter. He begins to walk.

Chapter Text

It’s just past noon, and already Melanie is about to lose her mind. 

Martin’s alternating between ducking his head down into the trapdoor to call for Tim, and rifling through the stacks for the missing tapes is honestly far less obnoxious than Jon dodging in and out of his office, hovering over files, chatting in that tone that always gives her the impression he’s making fun of her. 

Basira’s been buried in a book since Daisy called, saying she was close but she keeps glancing around with a line folded between her brows. 

And Melanie had thought she’d gotten used to it. She really, really had. But there’s more of an I’m-being-watched itch than ever, and it’s honestly kind of getting to her. Like something is lurking at the very corner of her vision—something big and bad and dangerous—but the second she turns her head it’s gone. 

She eyes the crowbar still on Martin’s desk.

If whatever took the tapes is still around, hopefully she can be the first to take a crack at it. Nothing in any of the other departments, nothing in any of the dumpsters outside...Tim honestly has the best shot finding them in the tunnels, if he doesn’t get eaten by whatever he heard screaming down there while he's sulking and angsting.    

“ —grab lunch to bring in,” Jon is saying, voice somehow even more grating than usual as he hands a paper back to Martin and nods at Basira. “No sense in wasting time, if we have to figure out what went missing that the Stranger doesn’t want us to know.” Jon’s already got his coat on, a long, clean-lined thing that Melanie frowns at, a stray thought just out of reach. Before she can figure out what it is, the Archive door swings open. 

Daisy stops in the doorway, surveying the room before she takes another step. It’s a habit, Melanie guesses, though if it's from playing cop or fighting monsters, who knows. Just before her eyes fall on Basira, though, they land on Jon. 

And stay. 

“Daisy,” Basira says, setting down her book. 

“Brought you lunch,” Daisy says in greeting, gesturing a sack lunch at Basira, though her eyes still haven’t left Jon. Melanie wonders vaguely if she’s calculating whether she should have brought lunch for all of them, if only to keep Jon where she can see him rather than let him run out. It would have been nice, all Melanie’s got is a box of leftovers from Georgie’s fridge. And it’s not like Jon was going to offer. 

“I’ll be sure to steer clear of any shops with mannequins in them,” Jon is saying to Martin, who’d been muttering about kidnapping. He laughs, heading for the door. “Can’t imagine the Stranger would want to cause the apocalypse at a department store, anyway.” 

Daisy watches him approach, a kind of unerring focus in her eyes. 

“Daisy,” Jon greets, with the kind of winning smile that’s never sat right with Melanie. “See you, then.” 

Daisy just nods at him without a word and watches him until he vanishes through the Archive door. 

Melanie slides a random paper to the edge of her desk until it glides into the bin below, and slumps back into her chair. Martin’s standing back at his desk fiddling with something, that same creased expression on his face he’s been wearing since Tim had vanished into the tunnels. 

“Alright, give it up,” Daisy speaks at last, blowing out a breath. Melanie glances up as she steps fully into the room. “Who’s the stringy fellow and why’re we letting him in on the apocalypse.” 

The room goes still. 

There is...there is someone. Someone. Or maybe no one. No one standing in a hall. No one standing. No one. 

The air is getting heavier. It’s getting harder to think beneath the weight of it. 

No one, he...he closes his eyes. It’s different. Open eyes, hall, closed eyes, no hall. Two things, two...states. 

This is a thing I Know, No one thinks. Is, and isn’t.

No one watches the hall that spins. He’s never seen this hall. He’s never seen...anything. 

Where is he, again?

No one, he—he is somewhere. He is. And if he is, he must be...someone. He’s someone. He is someone and he is standing in a hall he’s never seen. 

Someone closes his eyes, and the air is warm, but less heavy, and he opens them, and he remembers—he remembers—there is Someone Else. Someone Else. He is Someone, and there is Someone Else, and he is supposed to find them. 

These are only theories, a crisp, unknown voice says in his head. You don’t know if you’re Someone. Find it out. He somehow knows how the accent would feel, rolling off his tongue. 

“I,” the unknown voice says, louder, shakier, and Someone feels his own mouth move. “I am...Someone. I am still, Someone. I...” 

The air presses down, thick and teeming with something he can’t quite see. 

Someone pays no mind to the object in his hand as he closes his eyes once more. The unfamiliar hall stretches into oblivion around him, and he has the sudden, dire inkling that he might not be anyone at all. Perhaps he used to be. 

The question is who.

“Well?” Daisy asks tiredly. “Who is he?” 

Basira frowns. Martin makes a choked sort of noise of confusion. Melanie just cocks an eyebrow, tapping her pen against the table and trying not to give into the impulse to get up and walk out.

Daisy looks around at each of their faces, looking more exasperated than anything. 

“I wasn’t going to say anything while he was here, I’m not stupid. But I’m not keen on new allies if I don’t know them.”

“What the fuck?” Melanie decides to take the lead after several silent seconds, because Basira is staring at Daisy like she’s trying to drill a hole through her head with her gaze alone and Martin’s got a death grip on the chair in front of him. “Are you talking about Jon?” 

Daisy tears her eyes from her and Basira’s staring contest and land on Melanie, frowning. 

“That his name?” Daisy huffs. “Gonna get confusing. I’ll stick to surnames.” 

“What are—” Martin starts faintly, but Melanie interrupts, sitting up.  

“What the hell are you talking about?” she says, steadfastly ignoring a very distant sense and nauseating of deja vu. “You’re talking about— that was— that was Jon. Jonathan Sims?” 

“No, good lord, I’m talking about— “ she waves a hand towards the Archive door. “Him? Tall bloke who just left? Don’t try to tell me I imagined him, you all were talking to him.”

“Daisy,” Basira says, very, very carefully. “That was Jonathan Sims.” 

“Sure,” Daisy snorts. “And I’m the bloody Queen.”

A now-familiar line appears between Basira’s eyebrows. Martin and Melanie exchange a look as she steps forward, almost cautious. 

“Daisy, we’re not joking. That’s Jonathan Sims.” She looks back at the other, and Melanie nods, Martin copying her in her periphery. 

Daisy stares back, then and something in the air sharpens, like a line being drawn taut. 

“Basira.” Her voice is unyielding. “That is not Jon.” 

The line breaks.

“What do you—” 

“Daisy, what—” 

“Shut up,” Melanie cuts across Martin and Basira, rising to her feet as something swells in her chest, burning and piercing all at once. This can’t— this isn’t happening again, why do people always try to—  “Shut up. I know this place is screwy, and it does all sorts to your head but you— that’s Jonathan Sims, I’ve known him for, for way longer than I ever wanted to, but you can’t just—” 

“Melanie, calm down. Daisy’s not trying to gaslight you,” Basira says, moving closer to Daisy. The words calm down make her want to tear something in half, but something about the way Basira doesn’t spare her a glance actually...helps. Melanie grips the table, aware that Daisy is assessing her. She glares pointedly at the table to avoid her gaze, the air suddenly stifling. “Daisy.” Basira’s voice says. “What do you mean?” 

“What do I— Basira.” Daisy throws her hands up, gesturing at the door. “That? That man who just walked out with the posh coat and the creepy grin? I’ve got no clue who he is, but it’s not Jonathan bloody Sims.” 

“Daisy, you better be fucking—” Melanie snarls, but another voice interjects, sharp and loud enough that they all turn to see Martin leaning over his desk, one hand pressed to his temple in a fist.

“Not them,” Martin says again, voice tight. He looks up at them, eyes torn behind his glasses. “Oh. Oh god, this can’t be— christ, it’s—the tapes. Dammit, the tapes, of course and, and the— Elias, that piece of, of— ” 

“Martin, spit it out,” Basira says, even as Melanie tenses further at Elias’ name. “Not who?” 

Martin hisses out a furious exhale, scrubbing his face as he sinks into his chair. Melanie taps the desk impatiently, shooting a glare at Daisy who scowls right back. 

“Martin,” Basira repeats. 

Martin sighs into his hands, a rough noise. He looks up, expression dark, and a little agonized. 

“We need to talk to Elias.” 

Chapter Text

There is a man. There is a man standing. There is a man standing in a hall. He is Someone. He is looking for Someone else. 

“Hello?” 

It hurts. Something...hurts. Something tugging at his skin, like the very air is pulling at him. He remembers a scream. 

The man, the Someone, closes his eyes. 

He hurts. He is...hurt. He….is. He is...

“Jon,” a voice says. Torn, like something pulled apart and left in stringy fragments. The man startles, spinning in the hall but there’s no one. No one. What a lovely concept. 

What was he saying? What was he even….he. He….was. He is.

“Jon,” the voice says again, a whisper this time. He doesn’t startle this time, just presses his eyes closed, hugs his arms around himself. His arms. Because he has arms, and a body, and… there’s something in his hand.

It’s a tape recorder. Had he known that? 

Wait. It’s a tape recorder. 

“Oh,” Jon says, and his voice is just as torn as before. He spins, he spins, because he knows he is Someone, and he knows that someone is Jonathan Sims.

Jon is standing in a hall. It’s not a hall he knows, but that’s….that’s probably the point. Another realization trickles into his brain. Something he knows. 

I know inside is a formless place. Unknown and Unknowing, as is a part of the branding, one might say…

He does not know whose voice said those words, but he at least understands what it’s saying. 

And in one odd rushing sensation he Knows where he is. 

“Fuck,” he says under his breath, even as the carpet undulates with an awful identicality he’s only ever seen in cheap hotels. It’s mesmerizing, and alien, and for a moment he isn’t Jon again. He isn’t anyone. 

There is a man standing in a hallway. Not quite a hallway—a formless place. Somebody said that, once. Unknown and Unknowing and—  

The man grits his teeth, clenching his fists and scrabbling for purchase along the edges of what he knows is a self . 

He raises his hands to his face, nose bumping against something—a tape recorder. A tape recorder clutched in an awful, warped-looking hand. Circular scars dot up the arms, vanishing beneath a wrinkled sleeve. Scars he knows. 

 “Statement of,” the man says, the words dropping from his lips. Familiar. Good, good, he….familiar is good. “Statement of Jon. Jonathan, Jonathan…” He presses his eyes closed for a brief second, taking a deep breath. “Jonathan Sims.” 

Jonathan Sims frowns. There’s more, there’s...

“Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute.” He clears his throat, a bit pleased with himself. That he has a self, again. “Statement regarding…” 

He takes a step, making a point not to look down at the aggressively beige carpeting. 

“Regarding himself,” he says, the words swallowed in the strangely thick air. “And a...a friend. Statement begins.” 

The man— Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute — slowly, begins to move forward. 

“I don’t actually have a lot to say,” he admits to the empty hallway. “Never really been...comfortable, talking about myself. But if it keeps me from Unknowing who I am entirely in a...territory, of the Stranger, then I suppose I can get over it.” 

He swallows more waxy air, a bit glad that at least, there are no doors in this place. The walls are a bland, unplaceable color, and as unsettling as the endless unfamiliarity is, it’s at least not as headache-inducing as Mich— Helen ’s hallways. 

Jon continues, focusing on the hiss of the unspooling tape from his hand.

“I don’t actually remember...waking up, here,” he says, eyes roving over the strangely disant end of the hall. “I remember— I remember the plan. And that I had a plan. And I remember it hurt. But I don’t...I suppose I can be sure I went somewhere, considering I’m here. But I do believe it's the right place. Something about it feels...parasitic. Something pulling at me, like my brain just wants to Unknow everything I see as soon as I put a label on it.” 

He blinks and he’s at the end of a hall he’s never seen. Well. 

“If the Not-Them isn't in here with me, I suspect I’ve already been replaced in the...the real world. I left enough evidence, the tapes and the polaroids, along with my explanation, so hopefully the others will stay safe until...until I’m back. I...I don’t know, and I can’t help but worry that...that well, something’s already gone wrong.” He huffs a bitter laugh, turning a completely nondescript corner. “I don’t exactly have a great track record, when it comes to this kind of thing.”  

The tape, hissing in the out-of-tune quiet, seems to agree that that’s a kind way of saying an axe and a half-baked theory nearly getting him killed. 

“Which I suppose is sort of the reason I’m….” He trails off, grip loosening on the recorder as he spots a glimmer at the end of the hall. “....here in the first place.”  

Jon approaches, noticing for the first time just how silent his footsteps are on the carpet— it makes sense, the idea of him as a person not even existing enough to make a noise. He clears his throat, holding up the recorder as his head swims. 

“Hopefully Gertrude’s interview with “Mr. Doe”, though slightly incomprehensible to me as to why and how it happened, is as truthful as I hope. If it’s possible for an Archivist—myself—to find my way out of this place, that’s all very well and good. But…” 

The the approaching glimmer on the wall taking shape. He quickens his pace, even as the hall seems to lengthen. 

“But that’s not the point,” Jon says,  hesitating as he finally makes out the shape across the unbroken wall ahead. It’s...a mirror. “The point is, I—the point is I’m fixing my mistake. The point is I’ve no clue if by coming here, the switch between me and her has already occurred, or if—” 

The mirror is a step away. It’ll be a relief, to catch his own eye, to see himself, his self —

“NO!” A voice shrieks and before he can even turn he’s being tackled to the ground. There’s a mad flurry of motion over him— all he can really do is cover his head before it slams into the ground, struggle wildly as something grabs his shirt and drags him away from the mirror. 

He starts to yell, but before he can even catch his breath, the Something releases him. 

“I—stay back, I,” Jon scrambles back until his back hits the wall, reaching for the recorder almost instinctively and clutching it to his chest. He looks up, half-expecting the elongated terror from the tunnels, it's hideous grin, and— Jon blinks. His lungs seem to deflate. “—oh good lord.” 

Jon stares. The woman stares back. 

The tape hisses between them

“I remember you,” Jon breathes at last. “I—” 

“You,” says Sasha James, and Jon’s heart leaps in his chest. Her eyes are wide and faded, hair loose and lighter than he remembers. But the point is— the point is he remembers. “I...who—who—”

“Sasha,” he says, taking in every detail of her face, mind spinning as suddenly two versions of every memory of her run through it side by side. “Sasha, I—I remember you.” 

“Sasha,” she repeats, frozen. "Sasha." 

"Sasha, it's me," he raises his hands, even as her eyes dart across him. "I—Sasha, you're—" 

"Sasha," she says again, and something twitches in her expression, like watching a camera lens bring something into focus. Slowly, slowly, Sasha she sinks to her knees until she’s level with him, just out of reach. Her voice is light, if breathless, and he knows it. “Sasha. I. I'm. I—I’d forgotten. That’s— ” She looks up at him, expression a little desperate, a little fearful. “That’s— that is me, right? I’m—” 

“Sasha James,” he says, softer, but unable to keep his mouth from rising into a smile. “You are Sasha James, and you are alive, and I remember you.” 

Something unnameable crosses her face.

“I—” Her voice is thick. “I’m— Sasha. I’m Sasha James. I am. ” 

Jon waits for a moment, as she takes one deep breath, then another, her lips mouthing the name. Then she looks up at him. 

“I don’t—” she presses her eyes shut, mouths Sasha James again before opening them. “I’m sorry, I don’t— I don’t know you. I feel like I might? But I—I only just remembered me, and everything's still...so you—” 

“That’s—that’s perfectly understandable,” he says, still grinning a little dazedly. “Sasha, I—I can’t tell you how relieved I am to—you’re alive , and, and I—I don’t even—” Struck with a sudden giddiness, he sticks out his unburned hand. “Jonathan Sims. Jon. I was—I am , your—I’m a friend. And I’m here to get you out of this place.” 

No telling if getting out will fix everything, but right now—right now Jon wants to believe, for once, that things have gone right. 

“I—“ Sasha’s face twists, as she takes the hand. It’s an expression he’s seen, one he knows , one he’s seen on her as she’s hunched over the computer, trying to work out a puzzle around a missing piece. It’s unequivocally, fantastically, gloriously familiar. “I know that name. And you look—it’s like looking at someone you knew a long time ago, but you can’t be sure, and I— I just—I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t—don’t apologize, he says firmly, leaning forward from the wall. “It’s my fault you’ve even here, and—and you don’t—“ He exhales, climbing to his feet with the tape recorder held fast in his grip. She copies him, standing in a way that’s so familiar — “You’ve been here too long, and now we’re leaving.” 

“You can’t,” she says at once, glancing towards the mirror that still hangs placidly along the wall. “I’ve tried—I’ve tried everything. Even if I don’t remember, I know I have. It’s all the same, and it’s all—I don’t even know how long I’ve been here, or how—I’ve never even seen another person.”

“Sasha, I—I can get us out. I have….” She’s looking at him skeptically as he trails off, and suddenly it seems like a much worse idea to say ‘developing inhuman powers apparently gifted to me by the patron entity of the Institute that was the location of and reason for you being sucked into this Strange prison’ than, for example, a map. Jon grips the tape recorder tighter, gesturing at the mirror. “What, what about the mirror? Self-recognition, shouldn’t that—” 

“No,” Sasha says immediately. “No, the mirrors here...make it worse. Whatever this place is, or does, it’s like...a slow drip, of forgetting. Of unknowing things. I remember that I’m forgetting things, and I remember that it’s gone, but...I don’t know.” 

She glances towards the mirror again, and Jon follows her gaze. It’s magnetic. Like how certain statements call to him, the mirror…

“If wandering around is a steady drip, looking into the mirror is like yanking out the stopper,” Sasha says, voice hard, and his attention pulls back to her. “It's—I think it's what it wants. Whatever it is, I—I used to know. But I know I want to see myself to remember that I...that I know who I am, but every time I do...”

She shakes her head. 

“I’ve forgotten a lot of what I used to know, what I thought this place is,” she says, then firmly, “But I remember enough to know not to look in the mirror.” 

Jon nearly smiles. He should have known Sasha wouldn't have consigned herself to this place's tricks. That she'd try—as much as possible—to think it through, to learn, to know. 

“What—what else do you remember?” he asks, a slight metallic prickle to the words. “I’m sorry, don’t—” 

“Not much,” she answers, then frowns. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Look, Sasha, I—” Jon rubs his temple. This...this is already more complicated than he had thought. He doesn't even know what he had thought would happen, though whether that’s the Not-Them feeding, or his own stupidity...Jon pushes the thoughts away. He found Sasha, he can figure this out. “I might...I might be able to help you to remember. Things. I think the knowledge is still there, this place feels…” 

The air—he takes in a deep breathe, pressing his eyes closed. There’s still a taste like wax to it, swarming and heavy and full of things that were once Known, not not. He’s not sure what’s changed, but he can almost see it, being drawn out of his own skin like water evaporating. Stealing from them.  

“I think...This place is...a feeding stock, for lack of a better word, for the thing that brought us here. It feeds on the person here, but I can still...I think some of what you've Unknown might still be here,” he explains. Sasha still looks skeptical, but he presses forward. “If I ask you, maybe it— maybe it will be enough for you to reach it.” 

“I really don’t know if just asking will—” 

Jon takes a deep breath. 

“Who am I?”

“Jonathan Sims, my b—” Her eyes go wide. “My boss,” she breathes. “My boss from— from the Magnus Institute, where I— Jon, I—how did you do that?” 

Jon grins fiercely, choking back the metal feedback crawling up his throat. 

“That’s a very long story. But I think—I think it can help, if you’ll let me.” 

He lets the not-a-question sit in the weighted air. Then Sasha nods. 

“Yes, I—Jon, I want to know.” 

He opens his mouth to ask, static curdling in his chest, when he's hit with a sudden apprehension— he doesn't know how he got here, but he knows there was pain. The terror, even knowing full well what he was doing. The Sasha before him doesn't seem to know any of that at all. 

“Oh yes, it will hurt.” The Not-Sasha had said. “It hurt Sasha.”

“Are—it may not be—that includes knowing the bad,” Jon stammers. “A-and, and how you got here, and—” 

“Jon,” Sasha says, eyes focused. He swears they’re a touch less faded than before. “I want my self back. I need to know.” 

“I—right.” He shakes his head. “Right. Of course. Alright.” 

He takes another deep breath, heavy with wax and static, all things Known and Unknown. 

“Who are you?” he asks, and for a moment he can’t breathe for the taste of iron vapor. He inhales deeply, trying not to cough as he looks into Sasha’s familiar, familiar eyes. “What have you forgotten?”

There's a great, horrible hissing, a scraping across his brain, and Jon swears for a moment he can See the air as it condenses.

Sasha James opens her mouth, and begins to speak. 

Chapter Text

“You can’t possibly believe I would let him get killed— ” 

“You let him get kidnapped by the Circus—” 

“And he was perfectly fine—” 

“Yeah, right, after the Distortion rescued him,” Martin snaps, and Basira is going to have to keep an eye on him too—she’d done a double take when he’d grabbed a stapler on the way up, and as he gestures it at Elias she can’t be sure if its a genuine threat or if he just wanted something for show. Either way, her estimation of him is starting to adjust. “After a month of you telling us nothing!” 

Elias sighs, hands still raised. 

“That is...fair. And I appreciate you keeping Melanie out of this, ah, interrogation. I am concerned about her instability—” 

“Stop,” Daisy growls. “Don’t try to turn things around on us. I want a reason why you let this happen.” 

“I didn’t let—fine,” Elias sighs again, eyeing Daisy as she steps forward. 

Basira knows as well as she does that they can’t do anything— Elias must know it as well. Anything he does to comply is just humoring them.

It makes her sick. 

“I’m sure if you remembered the real Jon, you’d know he was prone to...impulsive decision-making, let’s call it.” Elias smooths his lapel a bit, apparently waiting until Daisy nods in assent. “I didn’t let the original Jonathan Sims do anything. He chose this. In fact, had I been here when he undertook what he did, I would have advised against it.”

 “I don’t believe you,” Martin and Basira speak simultaneously, and he shifts back a bit, gesturing at her. She nods. “You say you remember the real one. But all the statements say it’s just one person who doesn’t forget. How’s that work.” 

“The Eye,” Elias says simply. “It grants me the ability to, let’s say, See past little details that the Stranger conjures up.” 

“You knew about Sasha, too,” Martin accuses quietly. “The whole time.” 

Elias shrugs, not in disagreement, and Basira jumps in before he can open his mouth and say something that really makes her want to hit him. 

“You were talking with that thing this morning,” she says. Not a question, the snippets she remembers fall into place far too easily. “You weren’t going to tell us, either. Just watch as that thing walked around with us none the wiser. You were just going to see how things played out.“ 

“That’s only because I thought Jon would have found his way back by now,” Elias replies, voice sharper. “The Archivist’s powers—the Eye’s focus—is antithetical to that of I-Do-Not-Know-You, and I do believe Jon is strong enough at this point to cut through the Not-Them’s defenses.” 

“You believe ?” Martin sounds outraged. “What about the Unknowing, hm? If he gets killed before it, how are we supposed to know when to stop if this—this is what, some kind of test for him?” 

“In so many words, yes,” Elias says, sounding impatient. “Not one I assigned, mind you. Jonathan weighed the cost and benefits himself, and came away with choosing to pursue his chance with the Not-Them. You can’t blame me for everything, you know.” 

“Benefits,” Basira says, stepping in front of Martin. “What benefits?” 

“Ah,” Elias smooths his lapel again, and for the first time Basira catches a twitch of annoyance on his face. “Well. I don’t know as much as I’d like—” 

“Bullshit,” Daisy interjects tiredly, but Elias ignores her. 

“ — however, I do have reason to believe, that Jon believed that by entering the domain of the Not-Them, the most recent former victim would be released.” 

Basira frowns

“Former vic—” 

“Sasha’s dead.” Martin’s voice cuts through the room, and from where she’s standing Basira can see his fists clenched tight enough that a single staple drops to the ground. “You— Jon said that thing killed her ages ago, he— Jurgen Leitner said the same, on the recording—” 

“You heard that, did you,” Elias says with a distasteful air. “I don’t suppose—” 

“I heard you beat him to death with a pipe right after, yeah, I did,” Martin says, scowling. “And no, I’m not telling you where the tape of it is.” 

Elias stares back with a knowing, half-contemptuous gaze. 

“So?” Basira interjects. Elias looks like he’s about to start monologuing, and that hasn’t ended well for any of them before. “James. She alive, or was Jon wrong?” 

“I honestly have no idea,” Elias says, still glaring at Martin with more than a touch of smug malice in his eyes. “I strongly believe that Ms. James is long dead, but as I said, the power of the Eye is opposed to that of the Stranger. It’s true I have some advantage, but I can’t See into its domain anymore than any of you could.” 

“Useless,” Daisy mutters, but Basira taps her foot. 

“But Jon thought so,” she points out. “He—you said the real Jon, he’s impulsive. But do you really think he’d have thrown himself into its prison— or whatever—without being sure James was still alive in there?” 

Elias’ mouth twitches a bit. 

“Detective Tonner?” He nods at Daisy. “Thoughts?” 

“Wouldn’t put it past him,” she says darkly, and Basira nearly swears. 

“So what about—” Martin scrubs his face, sighing. “What about the real Jon? You're saying he might find his way back, so he's, he's alive, even if Sasha isn’t? Because he’s, he’s all Archival?” 

“Yes, Jon’s alive.” Elias hesitates. “In a manner of speaking.” 

“In a manner of—”  

“Which is it,” Daisy cuts off Martin's shrill. “One or the other.” 

“Good lord, you three really are quite convinced I’d prefer Jon dead.” Elias sounds exasperated. “I do want to prevent the end of the world, you know. You’d think that would give me some credit with you people.” 

“If you don’t explain, yeah, wanting Jon dead is pretty much the impression you’re giving,” Basira says flatly. “Tell us what you know and maybe we won’t think as much.” 

Elias rolls his eyes, putting on a long-suffering sigh before addressing them.

“You may have noticed a few moments of….uncertainty around the I-Do-Not-Know-You’s creature.” He catches each of their eyes. “Moments where you thought you were going to say something else? The impression that it was going to do a certain thing, and didn’t?” He lifts an eyebrow, tone nauseatingly teasing. “Funny feelings?”

Basira remembers the stairwell, just how odd it had struck her to see Jon leaning so casually and unconcerned against the railing. She shudders. 

“Just get to the point,” Daisy huffs. 

“This is the point,” Elias says neatly. “Martin. You don’t wonder why you care so much about Jon’s well-being in all this, when the Jon you currently have memories of now is quite unlikeable, if I may speak frankly.” Martin’s mouth opens and snaps shut, eyes hard. Elias just keeps smiling pleasantly, turning to Basira. “Or why you didn’t even recognize the new Jon when you first saw him, when for all intents and purposes, your memories had already been replaced? Don’t think I didn’t notice.” 

“You’re, you’re just stating facts,” Martin points out in a defiant tone. “You’re not explaining anything.” 

“Oh, but I am,” Elias smiles. “The Not-Them needs to feed, just like everything belonging to one of the dread powers. It consumes, for lack of a better word, the known existence of a person, making them a Stranger to their own lives, as well as the fear of those who remember the real person. But it needs a person to wear as a stranger for that, and right now, that person is Jon. And I daresay that Jon isn’t quite as….let’s say, digestible, as its other victims. Errors are bound to occur.” 

“How do we stop it, then,” Daisy asks through gritted teeth. “How do we get rid of it?” 

“You don’t.” Elias waves an air hand. Daisy’s posture twitches but he continues. “Jon’s stuck in the metaphysical cells of the Not-Them—as I said, I believe he has enough power from the Eye to See the path out, and though I can’t See him where he is, I truly expect for him to prevail. But those moments are proof he’s still alive at least, perhaps even that the Not-Them is weakening. It’s a good sign, really.” 

“So it’ll die on its own?” Basira asks. “Just, what. Wait for the real Jon to figure it out?”

Elias hesitates, and this time it's Martin that Basira warns with a look as he clenches the stapler tighter. Another staple glimmers to the floor. 

“To be perfectly honest, I’ve never heard of anyone escaping the Not-Them,” Elias says slowly. “It’s a fairly powerful manifestation of the Stranger. I certainly don’t recommend any sort of confrontation trying to get rid of it, particularly before Jon finds a way back. I can’t say I know what would happen if it were to die with him still trapped.”

“You’re saying we just let it walk around,” Daisy says, and Basira can see the tightening of her shoulders. “Let a monster play pretend until it gets bored and kills one of us.” 

Elias' expression is back to pleasant disinterest, and Basira is fairly certain her mental health would benefit from chucking Martin’s stapler at him. 

“It is a bit amusing it chose you to act as the Recollect,” he comments. “It's aware I know about it, of course, but I can't say what it would do if it found its choice aware enough to be...less interesting. Still, whether or not it knew you would immediately tell everyone, marking the Hunt as prey is a bit foolhardy.”

Daisy’s expression darkens. 

“Glad you think so.” 

“How long until Jon escapes?” Basira interjects, watching Daisy watch Elias. “We can’t wait around forever, not if that thing figures out we’re onto it.” 

Elias pauses, seeming to mull over the question. In the silence, Basira hears the very quiet metallic creak of a stapler hinge. 

“As I said, it’s unprecedented,” he states finally, as smooth as if he were talking about some particularly nice weather. “But Jon isn’t your garden variety victim of the Stranger. I'd imagine it won't take too long. He has the Eye, and hopefully enough of its power to Know the way.” 

“And if he doesn't?” Martin asks the question on the tip of Basira’s tongue. 

Elias bridges his hands together. His eyes glide over Martin, and fall on Basira. 

“Then I suppose,” he says. “There will be an opening in our staff for a new Head Archivist.” 

Martin’s face does something complex before he spins and storms from the room, the door yawning behind him. Daisy offers Elias one last glare, before following. Basira taps her foot, studying him for a beat before turning to go. 

Right before the door, Basira stops as something strikes her. Elias had been watching them leave, cold-eyed and smirking. 

“The Not-Them,” she says, half-turning. “It replaced Jon. Not the Archivist.” 

“Very good catch,” Elias nods approvingly, still wearing an expression that makes her want to throw something at him. “The Archivist’s role is unique, and can’t be...stolen, shall we say, by a mimic of the Stranger. Particularly considering that Jon isn’t dead.” His mouth twitches, like he wants to say yet.

She glares at him for several beats. 

It’s barely comforting, to know that Not-Jon can’t ask them questions they have to answer, or Know things about them.

"And you think it coming to the Unknowing..." 

"Would not be in anyone's interest, save the Stranger's." Elias confirms. "As I said, no matter what you believe about me, I would like to prevent the world from ending."

Basira glares for a moment more. He smiles blandly, until finally, she turns back to the door. 

She can feel Elias' eyes on her all the way down to the Archives. 

Chapter Text

This. This can’t have happened again. It shouldn’t have, and it can’t have, and it has. 

Sasha had been calm, and smart, and unassuming, and Martin has absolutely no clue if that had been Sasha at all. Now Jon— 

“So can they change events?” Basira asks, crossing her arms. She’s leaning against the desk, staring at a photo of Jon on Daisy’s phone from the Magnus Institute website. “If he’s a whole different person, wouldn’t it makes sense for him to have behaved differently than the person we knew?” 

“That can’t be right.” Daisy is shaking her head. “Can't be strong enough to change history. Don't care what Bouchard says.”

Not behaved different for the person you remember, for some reason, Martin doesn’t say with a touch of bitterness, because they have no proof it’s not random. What had Elias called her? The Recollect? It doesn't—it doesn't really matter, and Martin supposes that he should be grateful he wasn't marked as "prey", or whatever, but...but. 

But something about it makes him frown across the room. 

“Do we know that?” Melanie asks, picking at a paper on her desk and glaring at it as if it were the one lying, manipulating, and pretending to be one of them. “If it’s got the power to change whole memories, I don’t see why it would care about little details like, like bending reality.” 

“But I remember you talking about Jon—the real one.” Daisy shrugs. “That was reality, ‘sfar as I can tell.” 

“The statement of Lucy Cooper—the, um, abusive mother who got replaced with a nicer one—could, I mean,” Martin clears his throat. “From what it sounded like her real mother wasn’t anything like the fake one. So she wouldn’t have, have done the same things, if that makes sense? Like, if the real her would have said mean things to the father, but he remembered her saying mean things, it wouldn't fit with the fake one being nice, would it? So it must change what the person does in the memory too, or the fake wouldn't seem...real. Right?" 

“This makes my head hurt,” Melanie grumbles, her forehead meeting the desk. “How are we supposed to know what the real Jon would have even done or not done? All I can remember is that—that thing. I don't like him much, but. Well, I know him."

Basira crosses her arms, lips drawn tight. 

"No, you don't," she says, almost harshly. "We only think we did.”   

“Well, what—what do we know about the real Jon? Daisy?” Martin asks, hoping his voice isn’t as strained to their ears as it is to his. “If the...not-Jon is weakening, or whatever, and we're supposed to notice discrepancies, maybe if we, I don’t know, compare? Memories?”

Funny feelings?  Elias had asked. Martin had remembered just that morning, standing in front of Jon’s office door. The overwhelming impression he shouldn’t knock. Whatever that means about the real Jon, he isn't sure, but...He shivers. A memory of someone who doesn't exist. 

"Fine," Basira says at last. "Daisy?" 

Daisy nods, and Melanie taps the table, dragging her head up. 

“I’ll start. He’s a creep. Always smiles too much, makes you feel like he’s laughing at you. Bit like Elias.” 

Martin can’t help but watch Daisy’s eyebrows rise with every word, his own stomach sinking in proportional degrees. Because no matter what the look on Daisy's face says, Melanie….Melanie’s right. He thinks back, to just yesterday, and it’s a distinct memory of Jon’s condescending smile as Martin left for the night.

But he— Martin knows, that can’t be right. He hadn’t—he doesn’t care for condescension and guile, he wouldn’t….it can’t be right. And the more Martin reaches for that long-standing something in his chest that he knows—he knows, he's written about—is there, it….

It’s getting harder to find. Martin scrubs his face, hoping the others aren’t watching his expression too closely.    

“Lies a lot, about stupid things,” Basira is adding thoughtfully. “Shit sense of humor.”

Daisy looks at her until Basira uncrosses her arms. 

“What?” 

“Nothing, I mean—” Daisy shakes her head, shrugging. “You always said you thought he was funny.” 

Something shifts in Basira’s expression. Martin’s stomach twists. 

“I don’t—” 

“Yeah. Real dry.” Daisy juts her chin towards Melanie. “Didn’t get along with you much. Dunno why. Two of you are pretty similar.” 

“That’s not exactly—oh god. ” Melanie blanches, hand going to her mouth. “I haven’t told Georgie.” 

“Don’t,” Basira instructs. “The more people who know, the higher the chance it’ll realize something’s up. We play it normal.” 

Normal, right. Martin scrubs his eyes. Monster eats your boss and pretends to be him, because your other boss wanted to see what would happen. Martin doesn't particularly care what Elias claims—Sasha dead, or not dead, real Jon dead, or alive in a manner of speaking, whatever, whatever, it's all—normal! Just another day at the office, right? And whatever happens, Elias is just going to watch it all happen like some twisted, off-beat daytime television program. 

Martin glares at his empty mug. Play it normal. 

“Fine,” Daisy is saying, crossing her arms and leaning back with a stony expression. “But I don’t like it. We can’t just let something like that run around in the Archives. ‘Specially one who acts like another Bouchard.” 

“Wait. So Jon’s not actually that slimy?” Melanie asks, sounding genuinely intrigued.

Daisy snorts. 

“Won’t say he’s a charmer, but no. Can’t even lie to save his life. Don't trust him, but I'd take him over Bouchard any day.” 

There’s a drawn silence. 

“Christ, I— I hate this. I really hate this,” Martin bursts out finally. “I mean, it’s one thing to know who the enemy is, with the Circus and the creepy music, but this whole—” he waves a hand. “Mind tricks, thing? I hated it before, but knowing it's going on, as it's happening?” 

“Don’t like the idea of them messing in my head,” Basira agrees, scowling at the official Magnus Institute photo of Not-Jon pulled up on Daisy’s phone. She passes it to Martin abruptly, turning to Daisy. “If we—" 

Martin studies the photo, turning up the brightness to glare at it. 

And Martin hates it too, but it’s….more than that. Martin knows, knows, that he— he did have feelings. For Jon. Does? Already, examining the memories, he's looking back and wondering how he ever had been in—

Martin doesn’t complete the train of thought. 

Even if the feeling itself is shrinking, the memory of a feeling is there, the memory of lying in a cot in the unsettled quiet of the Archives and being painfully aware of the walls between him and Jon working late into the night. 

Of once, stumbling into him in the tiny breakroom kitchen. He can’t recall the words exchanged, but he remembers they’d somehow ended up sitting across from each other at the break room table, steaming cups of tea before each of them. Not talking, just— just sitting. Sitting until the dislocated silence of the empty Archive had somehow drifted into something resembling a peaceful hush.

Martin remembers— he’s certain he remembers something lighting up in his chest when Jon had finally stood, quietly thanked him with a hesitant, barely-there flick of his mouth, and taken the empty cups to the sink without another word. 

Martin remembers that. He remembers putting the words down to paper, a vanished suggestion of a smile/soft as grief/already undone/before I finish looking and fine, maybe he’s a sap, but at least he’s a sap with clues. 

He envisions Jon smiling now, in the memory, and it’s only that lingering, masked, oily smile and thanking him in that uneven, condescending tone, and it’s not— it’s not right .

Martin isn’t sure of the logistics of—of caring for the memory of a person that doesn’t exist anymore. He—he knows, they were there. He knows it. And he is sure that those feelings aren’t for the thing currently calling itself Jonathan Sims.

A memory of a feeling. Martin huffs. Great job of it Blackwood, that's all you have to go on.  

Martin at least knows himself well enough that whatever Jon was— is, he’s not dead , Martin— like, he wasn’t anything like Not-Jon. And trying to summon the emotions now it’s — it’s like looking at a photograph so old you can’t even recognize yourself. He reaches for the feeling in his chest, the words he remembers writing from it. 

Like a second heart/heavier than my own/if I bore it in my hands/the weight would be worth the strain

All he feels is cold. 

It’s not the real him, he thinks fiercely, staring at the photo of Not-Jon. That thing stole him, just like it stole Sasha, and it’s stealing your— it’s stealing everything along with it. 

He tears his eyes from the photo, passing the phone back to Basira. 

“How do we kill it?” he asks aloud. There’s a pause, and he feels his cheeks warm as everyone turns to stare at him. “What? It’s a part of the Stranger, it’s not our friend, and I—I know what Elias said about killing it, but I also know that Elias is a liar half the time. If we kill it, wouldn’t it make more sense we’d get the real Jon back? If he’s having trouble Seeing the way out of the Not-Them’s prison, or whatever, couldn’t we just sort of, you know.” He mimes a flat hand across his neck, shrugging.  “Get rid of the warden? So to speak?” 

There’s another pause, that Melanie breaks with a loud snort. 

“Sure, Martin,” she says, not a little enthusiastically. “ No clue if that makes sense, but if I can’t kill Elias, well….monster impersonating one of us is next best thing.” 

“But we don’t know for sure if Elias was lying,” Basira says, tapping her foot. “If killing it traps Jon into wherever he is for good, then that doesn’t exactly solve the entire problem.” 

“No, but—” Daisy cuts herself off at the sound of footsteps from the stairwell. Martin takes in a breath and they all freeze.

The Archive door opens. The figure in the doorway pauses, watching them with grey eyes. 

Basira breaks the silence. 

“Jon.” 

The Archive door snaps closed. 

“Plotting, are we?” it asks easily, mouth twitching up as it ambles into the room. Its eyes fall on Daisy. “Something I should know about?” 

Oh god, it knows. It knows. It has to know, right? Or maybe it doesn’t? Martin doesn’t know what it will do if it realizes the jig is up. He remembers the elongated Sasha creature, the chorded echoes of Joooon beneath all the panic of the moment—is that what had happened when Jon had found out? It turned on him immediately, given up the façade? 

They don’t even know how to kill it. If it turns on them, they’re already doomed. And then so is the real Jon. So is the memory Martin has of ever caring.  

“Daisy told us,” he starts, and three furious pairs of eyes land on him, along with one, lazy grey gaze. “That she thinks Elias is behind the missing tapes. Apparently he kept dropping weird hints, or, or something?” He shrugs, meeting Daisy’s eyes with a look he can only hope conveys play along. “Was being all vague about it, wouldn't be surprised if it's some clue he doesn't want us knowing. You know how Elias is.” 

“That I do,” the thing replies after a second, looking amused. “Daisy, what else did he say? Want to share with the class?”

Daisy’s jaw visibly tightens. The thing’s eyes don’t stray. 

“Just that some monsters can’t be killed,” she says finally. "And I shouldn't even try." 

“That’s all?” the thing asks mildly. “Nothing else you think we all ought to know?” 

The way it tilts its chin is familiar, the worm scars are familiar, the healed slice across it's neck, the grey-bright eyes, the way its voice sounds like there’s something sharp buried in its throat is familiar, it’s all familiar and it’s all wrong and even if it doesn’t believe them Martin thinks he might be sick. 

Daisy crosses her arms. 

“Yep.” 

The thing hums.

“How terrifying,” it comments, sounding extremely calm. Then it smiles, and something goes still in Martin’s chest. “Do let me know if Elias says anything else. About the tapes, that is.” 

Then it’s gone, the office door of the Head Archivist shutting behind it and the room exhales. 

“Fuuuuck, I hate it,” Melanie hisses into her hands. “I—hate it, I hate it. I hate all of this.”

Martin stares at the door, silently agreeing. He thinks it might have bought it, but….he shifts the crowbar on his desk a bit closer. 

“We have to kill it,” Daisy says at the same time Basira says, “We can’t kill it yet.” They look at each other.

“Basira—” 

“We don’t know what will happen if we do,” Basira insists in a low voice. “Or even how, or what will happen to the real Jon. Daisy, we can’t just attack it with no plan.” 

“Fine.” Daisy stands, glaring at the office door. “You find out about getting Sims out, and I’ll worry about finding a way to kill it. But I want that thing gone.” 

And with that, she strides away, back out of the Archives. Basira watches her go, lips drawn in a thin line. 

There’s a faint scuff from somewhere in the Archives. 

“So we’re just pretending everything is normal?” Melanie complains, slouching up from her desk. She gestures at the door. “Let that thing play Head Archivist until real, not-slimy Jon figures out how to use his spooky powers and escape its monster jail?” 

“We have to,” Basira says firmly, though her eyes are glued to the office door with the same look Martin’s seen leveled at Elias. “There’s too much we don’t know. It’s too dangerous to confront.” 

“I—Basira,” Martin says suddenly, looking around. There’s a faint shuffling, a low swear in a voice he recognizes. “Um. Yes, sure, we can wait, and this is all, completely awful, and, and everything. But another thing.” 

She tosses him a questioning look. 

“We haven’t told Tim.” 

Basira opens her mouth, just as the faint scrapes turn into footsteps.

“Shit.” 

Chapter Text

 “And then.” Her voice catches in her throat. “And then, it....” 

Sasha— Sasha James, remember— doesn’t know for how long she’s been speaking. It feels like ages, like she and Jon— Jonathan Sims, she knows that—have been taking steady paces down this unending, unfamiliar hall since the beginning of time, feels like Jon’s the only person she’s ever seen, feels like her own voice is the only sound she’s ever known. 

Which is stupid—extremely stupid, because even as they turn another, strange, bland corner, she can feel more of her self settle back into her. 

More of what that... thing stole from her, become hers again. 

“And then,” she says, breathing through the memory as it condenses and crystallizes in her brain with more than a twinge of discomfort. “I knew it saw me too. I...I screamed, it—I hoped someone would hear me, for a second, but then it just hurt so much —”

Sasha presses a hand to her mouth, conscious of Jon’s eyes on her as she pulls to a stop. Oh, yes, she remembers now. She knows. She can’t stop knowing. 

“I thought I was dying, I think. It... felt , like what I’d imagine dying to feel like.” She chuckles weakly, hoping Jon can’t hear just how choked she’s getting—it’s a memory, it’s stupid, it’s not like it had just happened. “I thought…” 

“Sasha…” Jon’s hand is raised next to her arm, face twisted in something pained. It hovers just a second there, the warped skin shiny in the slanted waiting-room light. 

“I thought.” The air presses in, heavier. Squeezing. Scalding. Knowing filters through her veins, and it isn’t gentle. Her throat goes thick, clotted. “I thought I was dead.” 

“You’re not.” She feels the hand land on her arm, light, but steadying. There’s an exhale. “You’re alive, Sasha, I, I swear, and we’re going to get out. If it, it, helps, may I, ah…” 

She grabs him before he can back out—she knows Jon, can revel in the fact that she knows he’s prickly in a good mood, she knows this person who knows her— and draws him into a tight hug, trying not to hyperventilate as she presses her forehead down to the top of his shoulder. Images of the creature, stretched and hungry, are flashing behind her eyes as the air tightens in her lungs. 

I see you, it’s voice had cut. Warped. Stinging. A razored throat, a gaping mouth that had stretched and her own words had been stolen from her windpipe— I see you. 

Jon’s arms rise to embrace her. 

“You are alive, Sasha,” he says, muffled, weighted. It’s a tone she’s never heard before, from him. She knows enough to know that, now, but she doesn’t know what it means. “I’m sorry this happened to you, I...you didn’t deserve this. None of it. I'm sorry.”

Sasha breathes the soupy air for a moment more, the sensation of her skin stretching to fit around the old-new memories sending chills through her. Slightly hunching into the hug, she notices Jon’s hair pressing against her cheek. 

Sasha breathes, for just a moment more. Something clicks in her brain. 

She pulls away, staring at him. Seeing— I see you — She wills the memory away, focusing. Something’s not...

“You—your—” His hair is longer, almost to his chin. Scars, she doesn’t recognize, a weariness that can’t be just from walking this place. “Jon,” she says, taking a steady breath. The air has finally thinned a bit, the memory of pain adjusting inside of her. “Jon, how long...how long have I been here?” 

Sasha...her stomach drops as he meets her eye with a look she knows she’s never seen before. 

“Prentiss attacked in July, of...last year,” he says carefully. “It’s near ending of July, now. So it’s been, been just about a year.” 

 “A year,” she repeats. “You—”

“I’m sorry, Sasha, I—” 

“Please stop apologizing,” she says, pressing her hands over her eyes. “I—god, my, my mum. She—a year?” 

Jon grimaces. She watches the barely-healed mark on his neck bob, trying to absorb the word. A year. A year of her life. Spent wandering. Spent forgetting. 

“Well, technically you’ve only been...missing, for, for, since February. The, ah, creature that this place belongs to, it...replaces people, if you remember the statement of...it doesn't matter. We…” 

Jon’s face does something complicated, eyes shuttering. 

“We didn’t know. It takes,” Jon sighs, shaking his head. “It takes everyone’s memories, changes them as it, it...eats the person’s life. It replaced you and we...That’s what this place is.” 

“You said a feeding stock,” Sasha says weakly. “And I’m the main course.”

“Well, I am now,” Jon says, mouth flicking up at one edge for a fraction of a second. “And I—I...”

Jon’s face drains of all blood from one blink to the next, dark skin gone ashen as he meets her eyes. She grabs his arm, looking around frantically. The air doesn’t change, but Jon, he— 

“What? What is—?” she asks, pulling the both of them to the side of the hallway. “Jon? Jon, tell me what’s—” 

“I...the tape. The, the interview, I…You shouldn’t still be here, it was...” Jon inhales several times, staring up and down the hall. He looks up at her, scarred hand drifting to his mouth. “It was supposed to let you go.” 

“Let me go,” Sasha repeats, furrowing her brow. “I don’t—Jon, I don’t understand.”

But she...she might. Jon’s face is different. Less of a chronic mask, closer to those glimpses she’d caught when he’d first seen the mark Michael left on her, when they’d been trapped and bleeding as worms writhed just outside the door. When he’d said the words “You, are Sasha James, and you are alive and I remember you.” 

Sasha stares. 

“Jon, why would it have let me go,” she asks, unable to stop the edge entering her voice. “Jon?” 

“I—the tape I heard said I would be able to take your place here,” he says in a rush, a familiar, brusque note in his voice. “Whether the information was faulty, or—stupid, why don't I ever—”  

 “Take my place?”  Sasha says, pulling away from him. “Jon, that’s not—you can’t think I’d want to just let you get eaten in my stead, I wouldn't want anyone to— no one deserves this.”  

“You’re right,” Jon says, something hard in his eyes. “No one deserves this, and least of all you. I don’t know how long it would have taken you to lose yourself entirely, but I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to get you out. It’s my fault you’re even here, Sasha.” 

“Jon, you—”  she shakes her head, a year bouncing around her skull with take your place here , grating against the words I see you scraping along the inside of her skin. “And now what? We’re both stuck here? That's not better, Jon!” 

“I can find the way out,” he says, finger tapping the recorder in his hand. “I’m supposed to be able to—I should be able to see the way out.”  

She furrows her brow again at the way he stresses the word see. 

“The same way you asked what I remembered?” she says, matching the stress on ask. Jon’s eyebrows go up, along with the edge of his mouth again. He opens and closes it, shaking his head with a small huff. 

“What?” 

“Nothing, I just—I’d forgotten. You….” 

His eyebrows come together, expression fond and sad and unfamiliar on his face, and all at once it strikes Sasha it’s been a year. She knows Jon, sure, but doesn’t know what’s happened in the last year. The scars are jarring. The new, tentative expressiveness is...unexpected. But not unwelcome. 

“I daresay there was no way for the thing pretending to be you to match with your hacking, to say the least,” Jon is saying. “But yes, it’s...a side effect. Apparently being the Head Archivist has a few more, ah, employment clauses than listed on the contract. There’s a lot to explain, but I should be able to see—” again, that stress “—a path out of this place. It’s fairly….inexact.” 

Sasha nods, worrying her lip as she glances down the unchanging hall.

“And would I be able to follow you? If we didn’t switch places—which I still think was stupid of you, for the record—then I can still...get out, right? ” 

“I’m not leaving you behind,” Jon responds flatly. She opens her mouth, but, what if, there’s the possibility, but he must see something in her face. “Whatever happens, now I know you’re here, and not dead. I’m not going to just give up on you.” 

Her mouth snaps shut with a click, arguments stillborn. 

“The others, too, they—” Jon doesn’t seem to notice the tears suddenly making her vision even blurrier—the creature apparently hadn’t thought to materialize glasses for her in this place— and Sasha presses her eyes closed, cursing them away. Not the time, James, you’ve reached your big emotional breakdown quota for now. She focuses on Jon, who’s waving a hand. “They’ll help, Martin, and Tim, and there’s—you’ll get to meet Basira and Daisy, but Melanie will help too.” 

“Tim, and—” A year. She’d been too afraid to ask. The last time she’d seen Tim Stoker, there’d been murderous worms surrounding them. The last time she’d seen Martin Blackwood, he’d been shouting at her not to leave the storage room. “They're alright then, that’s, that’s good. And—wait, Melanie King? ” 

Jon huffs a weak laugh.  

“Yes, she...it’s a long story. Once we get out there’s...there’s a lot you need to know. But for now, I’m going to...try to see, I suppose. But Sasha.” 

Jon meets her eyes again, and Sasha wonders if there’s something else to the little stress on see , another employee clause he hasn’t mentioned, because his gaze is like a scalpel. I see you, echoes in her brain unbidden. 

“If this doesn’t work, I promise, we’ll try everything.” 

“I—okay.” She nods, standing straighter. “Okay. And if it works? What then? Are we just...in the Archives, then?”

“Not sure, actually,” he exhales. “I read the Leitner in the tunnels—oh, you don’t know, there’s—there are tunnels hidden beneath the Institute, the Leitner can move them and trap things—but I can’t imagine— ” 

“Sorry, secret tunnels aside, you read a Leitner?” Sasha says, a little disbelieving. “Is that how you got here?” 

“I...no,” Jon says, tone suddenly very careful. “The creature was trapped in the Leitner by—good lord, that’s another long story. The creature was trapped and I sort of…”

“You let it out,” Sasha says, not sure whether to laugh or cry or check that this really is the Jonathan Sims she knows. Using a Leitner to let out a monster in the hidden tunnels beneath the Institute, and then it must have— “Jon, you—you let it…” 

“As I said, I was led to believe if it was….focused on stealing my, ah, self, then you would be released,” Jon says, sounding actually embarrassed. “Clearly I was misinformed, but I hardly see the point in dwelling. It was my mistake, but I do believe you should be able to follow me out, still.” 

Sasha rubs her eyes. 

“Fine. But like I said, it….hurt.” She peers at him. I see you. “When it happened to me.” 

He hesitates, then nods. 

“Yes.” 

There’s a pause. The air feels heavier again. 

Sasha might be able to revel in the fact that he knows her, that she knows him…. but not enough that she knows what to say.  

“Regardless,” Jon clears his throat. “I can’t say I know exactly where we’ll resurface, so to speak. But it’s a creature of the Strang—it’s a creature rooted in things unknown. Knowing the way out should hypothetically unravel it.” 

“Like letting yourself get eaten by a monster hypothetically should have freed me?” She raises her eyebrows at him. He grimaces. “Is there a back up plan?” 

“I have it on somewhat good authority that it’s unlikely for us to be able to destroy that thing,” he grouses. “Though he also was the one to tell me you were most likely dead, so I'm inclined to disregard him. Still, I suppose we could...trap it. The same way, using the book.” 

“Reading a Leitner?” Sasha chews her lip. “What about destroying the table? I remember, it…that’s where it was, wasn’t it?” 

Jon actually snorts at that, though the sound is bitter. 

“That’s...another long story. Not one I'm particularly proud of, either. But no, as much as I hate to say it, I think the Leitner is our only chance. I read enough to get it out, I should be able to trap it.” He pauses. “Hypothetically.” 

Sasha exhales a laugh, rubbing her eyes. A year. Lots of long stories, she reckons. 

“Okay,” she says at last. “I’ll take your hypotheticals over this hallway any longer. Go ahead and do—is that—?” She grabs at Jon’s hand, pulling his whole arm up. The light on the recorder blinks at her. “Jon, is that running? Have you been recording this whole time?” 

Jon’s eyes go wide as he fumbles with it, the plastic clicking as he shuts it off.  

“I—I was earlier, just of myself, and I suppose it never—I wasn’t trying to, to record anything private, I can throw out the tape if—” 

She shakes her head, frowning at it.  

“It’s...normally I guess I’d have an issue, but if….if it’s a record, of us, if we start to...forget, again. We can listen. We’ll know.” 

“Yes, I...I suppose we will.” Jon stares at the thing for a second, finger tapping the rewind button. He clears his throat, straightening a bit and meeting her eye. The shadows beneath them are deeper than she remembers, the angles of his face more severe. She finds herself wondering what she looks like—the only available mirror was almost literally cursed to suck out her soul. “Now. Ms. James, how would you like to try to, ah, escape an infernal cage designed by a monster?” 

Sasha swallows past the lump in her throat. A year. There’s so…..

A year. 

“Mr. Sims, I’d like that very much.”  

Chapter Text

Tim makes it out of the tunnels, and Basira and Martin are waiting for him. Great. 

“What?” Tim looks between the two of them, not quite able to summon the energy to sound annoyed.  “Got something in my teeth?” 

“Tim,” Martin says, and oh god, oh god there’s only two things Tim’s ever heard that tone of voice used for. One was and that was the last time you ever saw you brother? and the other was Sasha, she— and whatever Martin’s about to say next is going to make Tim either want to break something, or twist the knife that’s lived in his stomach since, since Danny . “Tim, we—” 

“Stop.” 

Martin opens his mouth, but Tim shakes his head, holding up a hand. 

“Whatever you’re about to say, whatever new stakes Elias is threatening us with—” He forces a smile onto his face. “I don’t want to know! I don’t care what he, or Jon, or the bloodthirsty rent-a-cop has to say, I’m coming to the Unknowing and whatever’s happened doesn’t— ”

“Might want to hear this one,” Basira puts in, and Tim really doesn’t know her well enough to get a read, but there’s something in her eyes he refuses to interpret as sympathy. She taps her foot, gesturing to the breakroom. “Let’s go in there.” 

“What?” He lets a sneer crawl onto his face, even as his stomach twists.  Yeah, there’s the knife. “Worried I’ll make a scene where dear old Jon might—” 

“I—Tim, will you just listen?!” Martin snaps. His eyes are blazing, jaw clenched and as furious as Tim’s ever seen him. He meets Tim’s gaze for but a second, before shifting it away, shoulders drooping and loosening all at once. 

Tim deflates. 

“Fine.” He waves the way. “Lead on.” 

They exchange a significant look. He can’t find it in himself to care. 

In the breakroom, Martin, to Tim’s surprise, doesn’t immediately begin making tea— Tim’s pretty sure it’s some sort of coping mechanism at this point, and it’s a little more worrying when he just hunches next to the wall, plucking at his sleeve.  

Basira just leans against the counter, eyeing him in a way that makes him feel like he’s being quantified. Counted. 

The knife twists in his gut. This isn’t going to be good. 

“Tim,” Martin says, no longer heated. Different tone. Stronger. Still too kind. “There’s...something you need to know. About Jon.” 

“Color me surprised,” Tim replies, fanning his hands with all the fake bravado he can muster. “Let me guess. He’s secretly the triple boss pulling all the strings, and now we have to stop him from causing the super apocalypse.” 

Basira’s mouth twitches, but Martin just looks tired. 

“You asked me to keep you in the loop,” he says, an edge to his voice. “And believe it or not, this is actually hard for me to tell you, so it’d be great if you could just, just. Not.” 

Tim closes his eyes for a single inhale-exhale, a thing that’s never worked for him, but the knife only twists a little when he opens his eyes to see Martin’s stormy expression. 

“Go on then,” he prompts, trying and failing to dull the razor in his tone. It seems like it sharpens itself these days. “Rip off the bandaid. Be stupid to say things can’t get worse, but hey.”

Martin’s quiet for a moment. Twist. 

“I can say it,” Basira offers. Martin shakes his head, taking a deep breath and meeting Tim’s eye. 

“Jon’s been replaced.” The knife in his stomach doesn’t spin further— it turns into an icicle. Martin’s gaze is unrelenting. “By the Not-Them.” 

Tim blinks. 

For a single, dizzying moment, he wants to laugh. 

“Okay.”

“Oka—um.” Martin shoots a look at Basira. “Tim? I said—” 

“Jon’s been replaced by the Not-Them,” Tim nods, bouncing a little on his heels. The ice creeps further into him, radiating from his stomach and searing out through his veins. “As in the thing that murdered Sasha, made it so we wouldn’t notice her death because it pretended to be her, tried to kill us, and is now pretending to be—” He raps on the table, thumbing towards Jon’s office. “Spooky Archivist bossman. Which also none of us noticed happen.” 

“...right. Right, Tim you—” Martin eyes him, something sharp flickering there. “You’re just—” 

“It killed Jon too, I’m guessing,” he says, peering out through the breakroom window towards Jon’s closed door. “When, is the real question. Because I—” he laughs hollowly, turning to face a staring Martin and a wary-looking Basira. His whole body is blazing with cold. “Can’t even tell the difference!” 

“Wait, Tim, we don’t think he’s—Elias said—” 

But Tim’s already out the door. There’s a clatter behind him, Martin and Basira’s voices and moving feet, but it might as well be white noise beneath the rushing in his ears. 

Tim can’t really feel his hands, as suddenly frozen as they are, as he neatly plucks the crowbar conveniently stationed on Martin’s desk. He doesn’t tell his feet where to go. He doesn’t linger on the sensation of ice singing through every capillary in his body, something past dread, something he thinks might make him sick if he doesn’t do something now. 

He’d been frozen into stillness, at Grimmauldi’s performance. Frozen, when he’d caught sight of Jane, until Sasha—the real Sasha—had tackled him. At least this time, he’s finally learned to fucking move.   

“Tim, what are you—” 

A hand lands on his arm, the surprisingly strong grip pulling him back and he whirls to meet Basira’s even gaze. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” 

“I’m going to kill it,” he hisses furiously, struggling against her hand that’s like a vice on his arm. His wrenches his eyes to the door, the shiny little plaque, Head Archivist Jonathan Sims. Jon, who’s dead. Killed like Sasha, like Danny, like every poor bastard who never lived to make a statement about it. “Let me go , let go!” 

“Tim, no,” Martin blocks the path, arms out and eyes fierce. “Tim, just think for one second, you can’t just—”  

“Oh, I’m thinking,” he retorts, voice dropping. He tugs his arm free from Basira’s grip, pointing at the plaque with the crowbar. “I’m the only one thinking, and I’m thinking that that thing —” 

“Tim, please, there’s more to this,” Martin breaks in. He drops his voice to a whisper, darting a look at the closed office. “You need to listen , not, not go off without a plan, or—we need to act like we don’t know, so we can— ” 

“It killed Sasha!” Tim’s voice breaks. “It killed Jon ! I’m not going to— to sit around playing dumb, as if it’s— I can’t do it, Martin!” 

“Tim, Tim, listen, I know— I know.” Martin says, voice short and solemn. “I know. I want to kill it too, I really, really do. But there are good reasons we can’t, because there’s a chance we can—we can work this out.”  

“Martin, you can not be serious,” Tim laughs, trying to press down the nausea, the cold, the twist in his gut because no matter how hard he thinks, he can’t picture anyone but the Jon he knows, going as far back as Research. “Of all people, you don’t want—“ his stomach clenches further as something awful occurs to him. He grabs Martin’s shoulder, a little desperately. “Martin, I know you think— listen, the thing that you remember is just messing with your feelings. You never even—it’s not Jon, and we have no clue what he was really like, he’s not who you think he is, and you can’t—”  

“That’s not how it works,” Martin snaps, not budging even as faint patches of red bloom on his cheeks. “If you’d come listen, I can explain it to you instead of you thinking you know what you’re talking about!” 

Tim grips the crowbar tighter, the metal clammy. He’s cold, all over. The Archivist’s plaque winks at him mockingly. 

“We don’t know how to kill it. But we don’t think he’s dead, Tim.” Basira’s voice makes him turn. She’s watching him carefully. “The real one. Let us explain it.” 

“Tim,” says Martin. “Please.” 

Tim opens his mouth. Even he doesn’t know what he’s about to say. 

There’s a rattle of a doorknob, a creak of a hinge. 

“What’s going on out here?” 

They all freeze as a thing that isn’t Jon steps free of the office, eyes roving over each of them. They land on Tim. Grey, shiny. Nauseatingly familiar. He knows this man. He doesn’t. 

“I thought I heard shouting.” 

There’s a long silence. Martin starts to speak, but Tim gestures with the crowbar.

“Oh, you know,” Tim dredges up a fake laugh, one he’s sure doesn’t match whatever expression he’s wearing. He can’t stop looking at the scars. It has them too, dotted up its neck and arms, clustered just above his temple. It’s faking scars, because he remembers scars. “Just. Showing the new recruit how to defend herself against worm women.” He smiles back a scream as the thing lifts its chin, something he’s seen it do a thousand times when considering something. Only, he hasn’t. “The trick is, that you can’t.” 

The creature stares between them for a long moment. Martin’s eyes are cast to the side, hard and unhappy. 

“No luck on the tapes, then?” the thing finally asks loftily. “You’re all just wasting time? Prentiss isn’t coming back. Martin gave me her ashes himself, remember?” 

Martin makes a noise like a cough, but nods. Tim feels his hand around the crowbar twitch without his consent. 

“No luck yet,” Basira puts in, expressionless. “We still think Elias is behind it, somehow. Still dunno why.” 

The thing nods, mouth twitching. 

“He does have the tendency to be involved in these sorts of things. Let me know, I guess.” 

It meets Tim’s eyes one last time, something humorous there, before shutting the door. 

Tim exhales, heart still pounding glacial blood through his veins. He barely feels Martin snatch the crowbar from his hand, but watches Martin spin it expertly and tuck it between the desks. 

Sasha. Jon. Maybe Martin will be next, and then you’ll be the last who remembers when the Archives was just—just people.  

“C’mon,” Basira says, eyes on the closed door. “We need to talk.” 

They end up in the library. It’s not like it’s “secure”, not like the monster can’t hunt them up here, but at least they have a vantage point of the door. 

“Melanie will distract him if he asks,” Basira had said, and Tim hadn’t had it in him to voice that a distraction of a monster by Melanie was undoubtedly going to end badly, one way or another. He says nothing as Martin places himself next to a shelf, unassuming, and Basira squares her shoulders, foot tapping as she considers him. 

“We can’t kill it yet.” 

“So you’ve said,” Tim says in a tight voice. “You’re really fine with tall, blonde, and monstrous hanging out in the Archives while real Jon’s body probably isn’t even cold yet.” 

“Don’t,” Martin snaps suddenly, expression shifting from concern to sharpness in the blink of an eye. “You do not get to be a prick about this, you of all people giving him such a hard time about not—” he cuts himself off, one breath to the next. 

“Another one?” Basira asks. 

“Y, yeah,” Martin exhales, rubbing his temple. “I think it was about…god, it’s already gone.” 

“Hm. We should be keeping track of these.” 

“Okay,” Tim relents, feeling suddenly exhausted. “What the hell.” 

The apparent long and short of it: 

Jon’s been replaced by a monster they don’t know how to kill. 

Jon may or may not be dead, and that's evident by weird half-memories, but in the meantime they have to deal with the monster. 

They can’t even try to kill the monster, or else Jon might never come back.

And Tim apparently can’t be sure if all the iced-over resentment bundled up in his chest is towards fake Jon is because of its awful personality, or because he can’t even picture Real Jon’s face. Real Jon, who trapped them in the Archives with a monster. 

Maybe it’s both. 

“So how do we figure we have to wait around?” he asks, arms crossed tightly over his chest. “You read a book on supernatural identity theft?” 

Basira looks unimpressed. 

“Elias, actually.” She tosses her head towards the door. “Bastard knew from the start apparently, wasn’t going to tell us.” 

Tim bites his tongue. 

“That so? What a shock!” He glances towards the door. “He also tell you why Jon would do something so monumentally stupid in the first place?” 

 Martin’s mouth opens and shuts. 

“Yeah, actually,” Basira says, not catching Martin shooting her some kind of look. “Elias said Jon thought Sasha James was still alive. Don’t know why he thought letting himself get taken would let her out, but—what.”

Twist. Twist. Twist. He’s never actually been stabbed with a knife before, but there’s no way it hurts less than this. 

“Sasha’s alive?” The words weren't’ supposed to come out that strangled, that small. 

Basira furrows her brow at him. Martin still looks like trying to speak, and failing. 

“...No, sorry, Elias said she's dead—Tim, Jesus, what are you—” 

“Tim!” Martin’s strained voice catches him. “Tim, hold on— “

Tim doesn’t hold on. The cold is telling him to move move move before you freeze completely and it propels him out of the library. Up the stairs. Past rows of searching eyes, creepy portraits that Tim doesn’t even look at all the way to the door reading Elias Bouchard, Head of the Magnus Institute. 

He swings the door open, and Sasha James isn’t standing in the office. But Elias Bouchard is sitting at the desk. 

He doesn’t look up. 

“Hello, Mr. Stoker.” 

“Is she alive,” he pants out, the door slamming shut behind him. Elias smooths his lapel, not taking his eyes from his paperwork, and Tim clenches his teeth. “Is Sasha alive.” 

“I’m afraid I don’t— ” 

“Shut up.” 

Tim advances until he’s leaning over the desk. Elias meets his gaze. 

“I don’t care if killing you kills me,” Tim says, very softly. “I really, really don’t. I don’t care what you do to me. I don’t care. I don’t care. But if you lie to me right now, I will make you regret it. Is. Sasha. Alive.” 

There’s no fear in Elias’ eyes, not that Tim can tell. No anything, really. But Elias must come to some calculation. 

“Yes.” 

Twist. His whole body goes even more numb, if that's possible. Don’t, don’t freeze up now, Stoker. 

“Did you know .” 

“Honestly? No.” Elias bridges his hands together, surveying Tim. “I imagine you don’t have a reason to believe me, but my powers do have limits. I had no reason to think the Not-Them hadn’t consumed her completely until Jon—”  

There’s a rush of the door opening behind him, and Basira stops short at the threshold, Martin halting behind her. 

“Tim,” Martin warns, but Tim’s already leaning back from the desk, still glaring at Elias. 

“Sasha’s alive, Martin,” he grits out. “He fucking lied, and she’s alive .” 

Martin’s eyes go wide, landing on Elias with more anger than Tim’s ever seen in his face before. Basira, next to him, just crosses her arms.  

“How do we help them get out?” Tim asks, voice strung tight. “There’s got to be a way.” 

Elias passes his gaze over the three of them, and if Tim weren’t already leaking icewater through his veins he might shiver. 

“I wasn’t lying when I told you that truly depends on Jon,” he says plainly. “He should be able to use the Eye’s gifts to find the way out. But I’m guessing the nature of wherever he is isn’t conducive to a clear mind or self. I can’t say I know the condition of Ms. James—it’s the truth, Mr. Stoker—but unless you can somehow establish a metaphysical homing beacon for Jon to prevent his known identity being consumed while he’s trapped, there truly is nothing you can do but wait.” 

Elias picks his pen back up, clearly ignoring the looks they’re all trading. 

“So we just have to...remember them?” Martin asks uneasily. “Just like that?” 

“Isn’t the whole point that, that we can’t?” Tim adds, scowling. He turns over the words in his brain, mind racing. “You’re lying again.” 

Elias sighs, signing something. 

“And you see why I didn’t tell you this before. It’s an exercise in futility, and would only serve to frustrate you, and likely direct that frustration at me. Which I don’t have time for.” 

“You did lie, though,” Basira says, tapping her foot. “James being alive. Real question is why. You don’t benefit from it.” 

“Considering this is the third time you’ve burst into my office with an interruption on this matter, I think I do benefit from not giving you all false hope,” Elias says crisply, gathering up a few pages and tucking them into a file. “Even alive, she’s been trapped there for a year. I can’t say I know what’s left of Sasha James, and I don’t intend to bear the blame for the Not-Them’s actions. Now, I’ve answered your questions.” 

“But how—” Martin starts, but Elias stands. 

“I’ve answered your questions,” he repeats patiently, but there’s something white-hot running beneath the words. Something that suddenly makes Tim think of sitting in a theater, watching a clown on a stage. “I advise you all to get back to work.” 

Tim goes first. He doesn’t look at whatever is written on Basira and Martin’s faces, doesn’t pause to rub his arms to chase away the icy, creeping terror making its home in him. 

He’s still cold by the time he reaches the Archives.

“What—oh.” Melanie says, stopping in the mouth of the hall, arms full of files. She glances at Jon— not -Jon’s— office door, lowering her voice. “Did, um. Did you hear the news?”

“Yeah,” he responds. He sounds tired to his own ears. “Yeah, I heard.” 

He grabs his wallet from his jacket pocket, thumbing through it until he finds what he’s looking for. He stares at it for a second. 

“So, what?” Melanie hovers at the edge of his vision, voice biting. “You look like shit. I could call Georgie, she’d meet us for Happy Hour. Get out of this god-forsaken episode.”

Tim barks a coarse laugh at that, a noise that makes Melanie’s eyebrows shoot up. 

“Yeah,” he says, stowing it in his pocket and reaching for the torch on his desk.  “Hate when they switch actors part-way through the season. Act like we won’t notice.”

Her mouth tilts up a bit uncertainly.

“Not wrong, Stoker. I, um, don’t think the original was my favorite, but the new guy’s a million times worse.” 

“Not to mention when they reuse plotlines,” Tim agrees, snatching up the crowbar tucked by Martin’s desks and heading easily for the stacks. “Can’t stand when they try the same thing twice.” 

“Tim?” Melanie says, heaving the files onto a desk and following him until he stands before the trapdoor. The humor’s dropped from her voice. “God, are you doing something stupid again?” 

He takes a moment to really feel the coldness, like still-born panic. The pain, radiating out from his stomach. Now he thinks of it, maybe he should get himself checked for an ulcer. 

No way that thing had time to destroy all the tapes. He has proof that Sasha existed, and there’s proof—somewhere, out there—that Jon did too. Something to prevent a known identity from being consumed. Tim doesn't know much about metaphysical homing beacons, because what the hell even is that, but he knows a bit about being trapped in your own head with only yourself to consider. A bit about the difference between looking at yourself in the mirror, versus the feeling of someone else recognizing you.    

"Tim?" 

He crouches, and lifts. From across the Archives, there’s a creak-scrape of the Archive door, Martin and Basira’s voices. 

“Maybe!” Tim says with a torn grin, and Melanie rolling her eyes is last thing he sees before lowering himself into the dark. 

Chapter Text

There is...a man in a hall. He’s walking. He’s walking. He’s— 

“Jon?” 

The man startles, turning. There’s someone—someone else. Someone not him. He’s pretty sure it’s not him. His eyes are tilted up so they must be taller, but the man can’t be sure if the Someone Else looks different from him for only the reason he isn’t sure what he looks like. 

“You still “concentrating”?” The Someone Else makes a crooking gesture with their fingers around the words. There’s a pause, as the man tries to figure out this new...person. “Jon?” 

“Who...are you?” The words are slow, heavy, his tongue thick with the air. The Someone Else’s face changes. 

“Shit.” 

“I...beg your pardon?” That doesn't seem like a name. Though it’s not like he knows better. 

The Someone Else pulls them to a halt, face changing again in a strange, urgent way. 

“Jon, it’s—you’re Jonathan Sims, remember?” The Someone Else prods him. “Head Archivist? Remember?” 

“I…” The man—Jonathan Sims, allegedly—lets his gaze drift to the walls he’s never seen. “I’m sorry, I...don’t know.” 

“Okay, um.” The Someone Else has eyes, he notices, and they’re wider than before. “Okay. You’re Jon, okay? I’m Sasha, Sasha James, we...I...I don’t know why you’ve forgotten, again, but see the thing in your hand?”

He stares at her for a long second, suddenly aware of the sensation of the weighted air tugging at his skin. He opens his mouth. 

“What’s a hand?” 

“Sasha, Sasha James” makes a noise. 

“What is the point of your weird Archivist employee side effects if they don’t help you—here, Jon.” She reaches for him, and he doesn’t have enough time to pull away before there’s something in front of his face. Oh. That’s a hand. He’d known that. 

And in it—in it there’s—there’s a—  

“Press that, Jon.” He holds the piece of the object she indicates, which hisses. After a moment she says, “That should be far back enough. Okay, press that.” 

He does, and the little object begins to speak. The Someone Else is watching him carefully. 

“ —ment of Jon. Jonathan, Jonathan.” There’s a raspy, static breath. Something stirs in the man’s brain. “Jonathan Sims. Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute.” The tape chuffs, and the man feels a stab of pain behind his eyes. Someone Else’s gaze is still on him. “Regarding, regarding. Regarding himself. And a...a friend. Statement be—”

“Aaahokayokay christ —” Jon hisses, eyes watering as he slams the pause button. He rubs his temple, new-old memories cramming their way back into his brain as the air suddenly turns almost crushing, then rips itself away into lightness. “I remember, I—Christ , it wasn’t like that before.”   

“You back?” Sasha’s watching him, with an expression he can now identify as nervousness. “Jon?” 

“Yes, yes,” he responds, squeezing his eyes shut. Oscillating between not knowing you have a self to having one stuffed into your skin is starting to give him a migraine. 

“That was...really fast, Jon.” Sasha looks worried. “We were only walking for...well, time’s hard to manage here. But it can’t have been long. I don’t think I ever forgot things that quickly. I can’t have, if I’ve been here for as long as you say.” 

“Well.” Jon rubs his eyes, still unwilling to look away from the tape recorder. “The Not-Them always was eager to kill me. I suppose it can choose how much power to exert, here, and I doubt it’s playing the same long game it played with you. If it's replaced me, that's certainly another explanation. Eat one meal at a time.” 

“Sure.” Sasha’s still frowning. “What about your...seeing thing?” 

“My ‘seeing thing’ has the habit of never being helpful when I need it to,” Jon responds dryly, still rubbing his temple. Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist, here for Sasha James, he recites to himself, like an airport reception. He thought he had been reciting that, though it’s a blurry moment of when he’d forgotten his name and just started watching the walls take on new shapes ahead. 

“Yet you still thought you’d be able to find your way out of here, on the slim chance I was still alive?” 

He bites his tongue, a bit stung, but when he looks over at Sasha there’s nothing critical or unkind about her expression. She smiles. 

“Always knew you were a softy at heart, Jon, just didn’t think that extended to leaping into the stomach of some monster for one of us.” She prods his shoulder again, something he’s remembered she always used to do with a cheer up, or a come on, we’ve work to do, and it’s an inexpressible relief to be able to remember that in her real voice. “Now it doesn’t look like wandering and concentrating worked. What about staying still?” 

“I...I actually might have a theory.” Jon stares at the tape recorder, tapping the plastic with his index finger. “You’re right. You were here for a year and change, but you’re still...you, you just needed reminding. There might be a few things you’ve forgotten, but it’s hard to tell what’s missing if you don’t know you’re missing it.” 

“Okay, don’t like that, but it makes sense,” Sasha nods, chewing her lip. “And I reminded you, just now, otherwise you might have been gone completely. So it’s all...reminders, nudges to make you think.” 

“The Stranger—the, the category that this creature belongs to, it’s all about the unknown.” Jon taps the recorder again, focusing very hard on not looking past it to the whirling floor. “But for something to be unknown, there has to be a, a, a subject, the unknower. I know you . I’m the subject, who knows you, the direct object. Which means….” 

He trails off. Taps the recorder. I know you. Subject. Object. Knower. Known.

“Should’ve known you’d bring grammar into this,” Sasha mutters, but shakes her head. “Alright, that makes sense, then. I-know-you. But then why do the reminders matter? Why can’t—” 

She stills. Jon meets her eyes, which have gone wide. 

“ I know you,” she repeats. 

“...yes, that’s what I said? I’m just not sure how— ” 

“I,” Sasha enunciates, looking right at him. “Know you.”

“I—Oh. Oh. ” Jon feels his eyes widen to match hers. “ I-know-you .” 

“Recognition,” Sasha agrees, with that look on her face he—incredibly—recognizes from her cracking a particularly difficult database. “The point of something being known is that someone knows it. The object only matters because the subject does the knowing. ‘I am known, because someone knows me’.” Sasha’s lips twitch. “That’s so…” 

“First year university philosophy class?” Jon offers. 

Sasha huffs, elbowing him. 

“I was going to say sweet. But you’re not wrong.” 

“I suppose it is, ah... sweet.” Sasha smirks at him as he grimaces through the word. “But it also makes sense. The logic of these things is very...human, in a lot of ways."

He pauses, thinking. 

“‘I am known because someone knows me’. So the knowing requires...context, I suppose. The Not-Them’s feeding depends partly on the fear of the person who realizes they don’t know the imposter. Meanwhile the person replaced suffers from not being known at all.” 

It’s...elegantly twisted, almost efficient in an awful way. The subject suffers from not knowing. The direct object suffers from not being known. The Not-Them feasts on them both. 

“Then what’s with the tape recorder, if it reminded you? That’s not a person, it….” Sasha looks wary. “Is it? That’s not, not like the table, right? There’s nothing...trapped inside it?” 

“I…” Jon hesitates. “That’s honestly an excellent question,” he admits. “They just sort of….appear? I don’t remember bringing this one here, but they’ve never been dangerous. Just inconvenient, at worst.” 

“Another Head Archivist employee benefit?” 

Jon just shrugs. He hasn’t wondered about the tapes in a long time. The worst thing they’ve done to him is antagonize the people around him, and he’s had bigger things to worry about than a couple of omnipresent, maybe-sentient tape recorders. 

“Well.” She eyes the recorder, which had at some point clicked back on to record. “It’s not another person, but it still reminded you of, well, you.” 

“Self-recognition? Maybe?” he guesses. “I’m not sure how effective it would be in the long-term. Before, I think it helped to focus on you, on finding out if you were here.  I was more acting as the knower to find the unknown, in a way. Maybe that makes a difference?” 

Sasha chews her lip. 

“But that won’t work on finding the way out. Because now we’re both the unknown.” 

“It...seems that way,” Jon admits. Leading them back to square one, where he still has no clue beyond ‘use the Eye’. Useless. “I’m...sorry, Sasha.” 

She shakes her head at him. 

“You keep saying that like you’re the one who did this to me. I was there, Jon.” Her gaze is fiercer than he expected, though her expression still strained with a likely long-worn fear. “If anything I should be apologizing for being stupid enough to look at that table. I knew better, from Artefact Storage, and now you’re stuck here trying to get me out.”

“That’s not—” Jon exhales. “Sasha, it’s not your fault for literally getting eaten by a monster. If anything, it’s Elias’s. I’m sure he knew how dangerous that table was.” 

“Then it’s not yours, either,” Sasha says, looking down at him with a fixed glare. “Or Elias’s, for that matter. How would he have known?” 

Jon cringes. 

“Ah. Um. Right, you don’t…hm.” He taps the recorder, glancing down the still unchanging hall. “It turns out that Elias is sort of...evil.” 

Sasha goggles at him. 

“He’s a tory?” 

“Not—well, probably.” Jon rubs his eyes. “I mean...properly evil. He ki—you know I, uh, I don’t think I should explain now. There’s—we’re still— ”

“Lost in a monster prison, right.” Sasha looks like she desperately wants to ask more, but bites her lip. “But you owe me an explanation, for later.” 

“I’m sure I owe you many,” he sighs. “A lot...a lot’s happened. Um. Been unearthed, more like.” 

Sasha doesn’t even know she can’t quit the Institute, yet, not even after losing a year of her life to it. Jon rubs his eyes again, shaking off the heavy air. That’s a problem for when they escape. Because they are going to escape. 

“I’ll hold you to that,” Sasha’s saying, crossing her arms and frowning down the hall. “And look.” 

He follows her gaze, catching the faint glimmer on the wall, a sudden tug at his mind. 

“The same mirror, do you think?” he says, forcing himself to stay put, but it’s not a guess. This isn’t the sort of place that walking in one direction would mean moving forward, just like Hel—the Distortion’s halls aren’t supposed to make sense. The mirrors there, too, weren’t right. 

“Self-recognition,” Sasha repeats, almost to herself. “I’ve tried to smash the mirror before. I...I must have.” 

“What happened?” Jon grips the tape recorder tighter, but he’s unable to tear his eyes from the shape down the hall. Just a quick look. He shakes his head, forcing his eyes closed. “Did it work?” 

“I…” He opens his eyes, and Someone El—Sasha is facing him. “I don’t know. I remember wanting to, and then...and then standing next to it, I was going to swing my elbow into it, you know, without standing in front of it. But…” 

“But you don’t remember actually doing it.” Jon exhales. “I suppose I could...ask?” 

Sasha nods, turning her back to the mirror. He clears his throat, focusing on her face and not the metal rectangle winking at him from down the hall. 

“Did you break the mirror?” 

“I don’t know,” Sasha says immediately. She frowns. “Can that happen?” 

Jon shrugs helplessly. 

“I don’t see why not, if it’s the truth. If this place truly has, well, eaten some of your memories, the knowledge really could be gone forever.” 

Which is a sobering thought, considering the longer they’re there, the more time the Not-Them has to pick and choose what it wants to eat.

 What parts of them it wants to well and truly take.

 Jon shivers. The mirror, down the hall, shimmers mockingly. 

“But if it doesn’t want me to know, then it means we’re onto something,” Sasha counters, though she’s chewing her lip again. “I’m...I don’t want it to…” She looks at him, and there’s something complex written on her face. A bit like fear, but shakier. “What if it’s like before? When, when it….happened.” 

Jon swallows, understanding. He can remember now, exactly, the last moments before nothing. When Sasha had said it felt like what I’d imagine dying to feel like, she hadn’t been exaggerating. 

There’s been the feeling of the soft-backed Leitner, slipping from his hands. 

The rising shadow of something long and hateful unwinding itself to its full height in his shaking torchlight.

A rough, chorded voice electrifying his every cell with fear he hadn’t thought himself capable of, gut-ripping terror equal to the moment Daisy had held a knife to his throat and pressed. 

“So   yo u   fin a ll y   d ec i d ed   to   l et  me   ou t,   J on?” 

An unhinged jaw, then...then the pain. Pain he doesn’t want to put into words. 

Then...hallways. Uncomfortable, irregular, unfamiliar hallways. 

 The mirror winks, out of the corner of his eye. 

“I don’t think we should risk it,” Jon says at last, mouth dry. “Not unless we’re out of options.” 

“Aren’t we?” Sasha says weakly, and he knows the look in her eye is reflected in his. “Do we really have other options?”

“You said you tried it before,” he says. “I don’t know if my presence is going to change that.”

Sasha looks a little relieved at that, and Jon feels something loosen in his chest. 

“We’ll find another way,” he says, and it’s not a promise, but it’s as close to one as he can manage. “We just have to think through it. And even if it’s not cooperating, the Eye—my, my seeing thing, it should give us some advantage. We just have to figure out how to use it.” 

Since Elias had never been forthcoming with any kind of instruction manual on how exactly being tied to the Eye worked, but just a read this, Jon, look for answers by yourself, Jon, I can’t help you, Jon— meanwhile Jon hadn’t even thought of it before, but he must know if the Not-Them had replaced him. 

The thought makes him nauseous. Elias hadn’t told when he’d been with Na—Nicole—with the Circus. He doubts them potentially being in danger would change that. 

It doesn’t matter, he assures himself. You left them everything they need to know. They have the information, and they’re smart enough to use it to their advantage. Trust them. 

But what if— 

“The...recognition, thing. Direct object,” a voice says, breaking his spiralling thoughts. He looks over at the woman, whose brow is furrowed. Something tugs at his skin, and he tugs back, staring at her until Sasha falls back into place in his mind. He tries not to dwell on it, focusing on her voice. “That’s how it...feeds, right? It replaces you—or me, with itself, the unknown. And it eats…” 

“The fear of the person as they lose themself to being forgotten,” Jon says somberly. “The fear of the people who know something’s wrong, but can’t know what. The fear of whomever remembers the person lost, but can’t know why. The very life of the known, consumed by the unknown.” 

Sasha stares at him for a second.

Jon fidgets, suddenly hearing Martin’s voice, something about being ominous.

“I, er—” 

“So you’ve not gotten any cheerier, good to know,” Sasha says at last with a strained smile, shaking her head. “But that actually sort of helps. One person remembers? So we have one subject who is doing the knowing of the object, still? Could that help us?”  

“But that hasn’t made a difference before,” Jon says, shrugging off the embarrassment. “I don’t know how it chooses, but, um. Someo—Melanie, Melanie was actually the one to remember you. Her knowing didn’t seem to, to harm it. If anything, it likely got stronger as it fed off her fear. In the statements about it, it never made a difference either.” 

“But we agree that now we’re both the direct object. We’re both the unknown,” Sasha points out. “So if someone knows us, we’re not known, and we can’t be here.” 

“But not knowing us is rather the whole point,” Jon says, exasperated. “Martin and Tim and all of them, they can’t know us, not really. I left as much as I could as, as evidence, polaroids and there are more than enough recordings of my voice—” 

“Jon.” 

He pauses at the look on her face, only briefly jarring himself to remember Jon is him. 

“Jon, they—” Sasha takes in a breath. “They know you’re here, right? You—this, this was planned, wasn’t it? By all of you?”

Jon opens his mouth. Closes it. Sasha’s eyes widen, expression hardening. 

“Jon?” 

“I wasn’t sure how much longer you’d—” he swallows waxy air. “The tape...Sasha, it’s...it’s bad. Out there. There’s—there’s a lot you don’t know, a lot we’ve learned since...since Jane.” 

“Then tell me ,” Sasha says, waving her hands insistently. “You keep on saying you’ll tell me when we get out, but it’s looking less and less like we can. If I know more, I can help more, Jon.” 

He scrubs his face, cursing himself. She’s right. She’s right. But how do you start explaining something like the Fears? How do you tell someone that everything— everything on the tapes is real, that there are powerful, otherworldly entities eating the fear they generate? Jane had sent him into a tailspin, and even if the Not-Them had helped with that, that horror still hasn’t left him. 

The, the woman— Sasha , he reminds himself fiercely. Sasha is staring at him—Sasha, who’s been stuck here in the Stranger’s prison, who isn’t going to not believe him, but—but— 

“I—fine.” He exhales. “Fine. But first, the reason I didn’t, didn’t wait for the others. These things, things like the Not-Them, they don’t care if you were almost in time, they don’t care if you were close. They get you, or they don’t, and I didn’t have time to consider a better choice.” 

“That’s— I understand that, Jon. I'm not—” Sasha shakes her head, lips pursed in what might be upset, or anger. “I understand, and I’m not going to blame you for helping me. But you couldn’t have called someone first? Taken five minutes?” 

“It—it was late?” he offers weakly. 

“Oh my god.” 

“I left plenty of documentation,” he says, feeling as though he should defend at least that. “Polaroids, like I said, and even if the Not-Them somehow made it out of the tunnels before the others arrived to see them, there are dozens of tapes with my real voice, plus the explanation I left. Analogue holds the real identity, somehow, like the statements.”

“So they—they can know you,” Sasha says, “They know the real you, you’re not unknown because they know you with the evidence, shouldn’t that be it?” 

“I...don’t think so.” Jon taps the— the tape recorder, turning in the hall, wanting to pace but knowing that more likely they’ll be conveniently and inexplicably separated. “Looking at a photo of someone you don’t know—it’s still a stranger, just a stranger you have pictures of.” 

“But it’s something,” the woman insists. “It’s still the real you, being seen and heard by someone else.” 

“Then why doesn’t it work?” Jon says, throwing his hands up, and shoving down the panic as the woman’s name slips further from his grasp. “The bloody Eye isn’t helping anything, and I’ve—I’m not Knowing anything more, I can't feel any sort of, sort of guidance for where I should be going, and—” 

His shoulders sag. The air bears down on them.

“I’m sorry, I don’t—” he exhales, voice dropping. “I’ve, ah, forgotten your name.” 

The woman stills. 

“Sasha,” she says carefully, a tremor in her voice. “I’m Sasha. Do you know yo—you’re Jon.” 

Jon nods in thanks, exhaling again, as if expelling the hungry air will make a difference. 

Sasha watches him for a second, he can feel it even as he studies the tape recorder. She clears her throat. 

“Jon, I...I still want to know what's happened that's so important. But I think we have to...reconsider our last option.” 

Jon nods with a final exhale. It's always going to be the worst option, the option that hurts the most. That's how it's been—go through the door, shake the hand, ask the question. No reason for that to change now.

They both turn to peer down the hallway. 

The mirror seems to smile in the dull light. 

Chapter Text

—though she was eventually diagnosed with the Capgras syndrome, Banner never rescinded her claim that her brother had been— 

Basira feels the monster draws up next to her. She ignores it, turning a page.

In her periphery, Martin doesn't look up either, but visibly tightens his grip on his stapler. 

The monster clears its throat, a noise she’s heard dozens of times before. A noise she’s never heard in her life. She tightens her jaw, glaring at the page. 

“Help you?” 

“Daisy’s been gone a while, yeah?” She lets her eyes slide up to meet his. He smiles. It’s the same smile from the first time she’d met him. It's not.

“She’s busy. Elias gave her some lead to follow.” She returns her gaze to the page. The monster doesn’t move. 

—that her brother had been replaced. Two years after Banner made her claim, she vanished—  

A warped hand taps the top of her book, and she lowers it with a scowl. 

“I don’t know when she’ll be back, Jon,” she says, forcing herself to meet his eyes again. “Call her yourself, if you like.” 

He huffs at that. 

“You think she’d answer my calls? The woman tried to kill me, if you remember.” 

“You’ve worked with her since then,” Martin puts in, and that’s the second time Basira’s made a mental note to herself about him, because he sounds unerringly calm, almost casual. Like he’s just overheard his regular boss say something to a regular coworker, and he wanted to add to the regular, regular conversation. 

“Yes, well, tracking down and interrogating whatever is calling itself Sarah Baldwin isn’t exactly a daytrip for a couple of friends, Martin,” the thing says, rolling its eyes, though the smile never drops. “I'll be looking for clowns in the fileroom, if she shows up." 

Basira tries not to watch it as it crosses the Archive. As it nods at Melanie, who just grips her pen tighter and stares at her desk like it had spat on her. She tries not to watch, but she listens to the sound of the end fileroom creaking open. 

They all wait with bated breath until the door squeaks closed. 

“Okay, I cannot,” Melanie slams her pen down, leaning over with a hiss. “Do this!”

“Melanie’s right,” Martin says, looking pained. He fiddles with the stapler, darting a look down the hall. “How long can we just, just pretend? We have no clue when the real Jon could be back, and this—I don’t like it.” 

“We have to,” Basira says, because that’s all she can say. They don’t have a plan beyond that, they don’t have any way to know what the real Jon’s even doing, they don’t even have Daisy . “I don’t like it either. But you heard Elias. We don’t have another option right now.” 

“It replaced my friends, Basira,” Martin says, leaning in.  “I get it, I don't think we should just, just kill it, but it might still kill Jon, and I—” 

“That’s just it!” Melanie says, rolling her chair towards them. “'Elias said this', 'Elias thinks that'— fuck Elias! He’s already got Tim running around in the tunnels you heard screaming in—” she jabs a finger at Martin. “Why should we just do as he says, keep our heads down when there’s a literal monster around?” 

“How would he benefit from lying?” Basira argues. “I’ve thought about it. He wants Jo—he wants the Not-Them out of here just as much as us. I can’t see him being thrilled it’s got hold of his precious Archivist, but it's a part of the Stranger, the thing we’re trying to stop, right? If it already happened, makes sense he’d want the real Jon to weaken it as much as he can.” 

“But why not tell us?” Martin says unhappily, tapping the stapler. “Why let us walk around all morning not knowing?”  

Basira shrugs. 

“Maybe he didn’t want us to know he screwed up, letting the real Jon go after it. Maybe he’s just a lying piece of shit who thought it was funny to let us sit in the dark.” 

“Definitely the latter,” Melanie growls, glaring over her shoulder. “I’m trying, Basira, I really am. But Martin’s right, that thing's killed plenty, according to the statements. If he lied, why not get it before it gets us?"

“Because we can’t know if he was lying about everything,” Basira says. She taps her foot against the desk, setting down her book. “His ‘metaphysical homing beacon’ sounded like straight bullshit, but the not killing it thing does make sense. Like an internal collapse.” 

Martin sighs, putting his elbows on the desk and scrubbing his face. 

“You’re right. I know you’re right, I just—I hate pretending everything’s normal, when the real Jon is…” 

“Yeah.” Basira nods in sympathy. Whatever that thing had done, Martin’s fussing isn’t gone, at least, which she counts as a tally for the real Jon actually being still alive. She can’t really imagine a world where Martin would actually like the man she knows as Jon, and the dissonance is weird—she remembers his borderline iciness, an extremely obligatory-feeling offer of tea and the sense that she was intruding on—on what, Jon’s unpleasant smile? She shakes her head, the uncertainty sitting poorly in her stomach. “I think there’s another—” 

There’s a creak-scrape, and they all turn to see Daisy in the Archive doorway. 

“Where is it?” she demands. Basira stands.

“Fileroom.” She nods at the duffel bag in Daisy’s arms, not breaking eye contact. “What’s that?” 

Martin mutters something, but she pays no mind. 

“Supplies,” Daisy says evenly, looking around. “Got one of those recorders?” 

“Yeah, um—” Basira turns, half-expecting one to be on her desk. “There’s…there are a million of them, I swear.” 

“I might have one,” Martin says, opening his desk drawers. “They’re...oh. Guess not. Melanie, what about—”

Melanie shakes her head, sweeping a hand at her empty desk.  

Basira exchanges a look with Daisy. 

“Just another one of Jon’s monster powers,” Daisy sighs, turning for the office. “Shoulda guessed.” 

Basira follows her, glancing over her shoulder towards the hall. Daisy doesn’t wait. 

“Daisy. What are you planning, you can’t—” Daisy plunks the bag on Jon’s desk, sending papers scattering to the floor. “What are you doing.” 

“I’m doing my job, Basira,” she says, not looking at her. “There’s a monster, and it needs killing. I know you have a whole theory or whatever about what happens to Jon, but that thing is dangerous. It needs to go.” 

“Daisy,” Basira says tiredly. “We have to think about this.” 

“Oh, I have,” Daisy says, unzipping the bag. Metal glints from inside. “Thought about it a lot, actually.” 

“You know what I mean.” 

“So are we booby-trapping his office, or what?” 

Basira glances over to see Melanie leaning through the doorway, Martin squeezing in behind her. 

“Or what,” Daisy says, extricating a hunting knife from the duffel. Beneath it, Basira spots another knife, a rifle, and what looks like— 

“Jesus, Daisy.” Basira almost sighs. “Is that a bear trap?” 

“What the hell?” Melanie sounds gleeful, but Martin steps forward, eyes going wide at the duffel bag armory. 

“No, no, you— you can’t just, just murder your way out of a problem with no consequences!” he spits. “That’s not—it’s not just the monster, you’d be killing the real Jon too!”

“Yeah, well, it’s it or us. I’m sure Jon wouldn’t mind, if he knew it was about to kill us all. ”

“You aren’t— you aren’t friends! You tried to kill him!” Martin says hotly, stepping towards Daisy. “How would you know what Jon does or doesn't mind?“

Daisy’s head snaps to him. 

“How would you?” 

Martin’s mouth clicks shut. 

There’s a frigid silence. Melanie whistles low, widening her eyes at the ground. Daisy’s gaze is boring into Martin, but he doesn’t so much as blink.

When neither of them speak, Basira steps between them. 

“Daisy, I get it,” she says, and Daisy’s already pulling back but she presses forward. “You know I get it. But we can’t just keep having the same conversation. We’ve got no clue what happens if we kill that thing.” 

“Basira,” Daisy says, and Basira knows that tone from the forest, from her standing with a knife to Jon’s throat. The memory is unclean, the face above the blade a touch too calm. “It’s not safe. It’s going to walk around til it gets bored and picks another victim, just like every other monster.” 

“Not every other monster killing means killing an innocent,” she says, crossing her arms as Daisy scoffs on the word innocent. “There’s more at stake here with the Unknowing, remember? We need Jon for that, at least.” 

Daisy pauses. 

“And he’s, you know, a person, and you shouldn’t try to find excuses to kill people,” Martin says acidly from behind her. “Never mind that, though.” 

Melanie either snickers or hushes him, Basira can’t tell which over the sound of Daisy sighing and zipping back up the bag. 

“Fine.” Daisy grabs a recorder from the desk, turning it over in her hands. Basira watches avidly as she presses the red button, then tucks it beneath the desk, out of sight. She straightens, meeting Basira’s eyes. It’s not anger, its...Basira doesn't know. “I’ve not changed my mind. But fine.” 

Basira doesn’t trust herself to speak, just nodding in return and watching carefully as Daisy’s eyes soften just a touch. Which means she catches when they sharpen, locking just past Basira’s head.

Basira knows her well enough to whirl on the spot, tensing. 

“What?” 

“Dunno.” She moves past them soundlessly. “There’s…” 

The Archives are open, peaceful, dusty as ever. Daisy stands stock still in the middle of them, staring down the hall. 

“Thought you said it was in the fileroom,” she tosses over her shoulder. 

“He—it, it was,” Martin says, looking to Basira. 

“One at the end of the hall, I think, but—”  

“None of you thought to keep a lookout,” Daisy mutters, and Martin and Melanie exchange equally long-suffering looks. 

“Sorry,” Melanie says unapologetically. “Not really in the habit of thinking about surveillance tactics. Don’t worry, we’ll get there at the rate we’re going.” 

“Check the stacks,” Daisy instructs, before disappearing down the hall. Basira nods at Martin, and ducks into the breakroom, then the bathroom. Both empty. 

Daisy returns just as Martin emerges from the last line of shelving. Basira shakes her head. Daisy scowls. 

“It’s gone.” 

“Maybe it left?” Melanie offers, gesturing at the Archive door. “Went to bother Elias or something?” 

Daisy shakes her head sharply. 

“I would have heard it.” 

“Did you check Document Storage? The door sticks.” Melanie says, already heading back towards the hall. 

“He—it didn’t just vanish,” Martin insists, watching Melanie go.

“No,” Basira says. She's sure they all know the monster isn’t just hiding out in Document Storage. That Daisy didn't miss a sticky door. Her eyes slide towards the aisle where the trap door is hidden. “No, it didn’t.” 

“I—Tim,” Martin says weakly. “You don’t think—” 

“Yeah, I do think,” Daisy says harshly. “See why I wanted to kill it? Now your other friend’s dead too. Happy?” 

“Daisy, don’t,” Basira says, as Martin opens and closes his mouth soundlessly. “We don’t know he’s dead. We need a plan— ” 

She’s interrupted by a familiar creak-scrape. All three of them fall silent, turning towards the door. Wonderful. Just what they need.

Basira steps forward, as Daisy glares. 

“You’re not allowed to be down here,” she says firmly. “We’re not taking statements at this time. Sorry.” 

“You can talk to Rosie at the front desk,” Martin pipes up, voice flipping from dread into pleasantry on a dime. Basira makes a third mental note. “You can leave your details with her, and, and we’ll get back to you, um. Sometime.” 

“I—I don’t,” the woman stammers, turning as Basira herds her back out of the door. She jerks away, just as Basira catches sight of bloody scratches up her arm, pieces of glass glittering amid her mane of dark hair. “Wait, wait— stop. ”   

Basira puts her hands up, keeping her face neutral. She’s yet to have an aggressive statement-giver, but if it was going to happen, it’d be today.  

“I—” The woman’s gaze jumps from face to face, eyes twitchy. “I, I need to talk to, I need to, to—oh my god. Martin?” 

“I’m. Um.” Martin laughs nervously, as both Basira and Daisy’s eyes zero in on him at once. His hand is on the stapler. “Sorry? I don’t—” 

“Shit,” the woman says simply, still staring at him. “It—it didn’t—shit. Okay.”   

“Are you here for a statement?” Basira asks, eyeing the woman critically. Aside from the tiny lacerations littering her arms and face, the bits of glass that keep raining from her hair, she’s dressed a bit like someone Basira might run into entering the Institute. “Or from Research?” 

“I—what? God, no I’m—” The woman rubs hers eyes, smearing blood onto her cheek that she doesn’t seem to notice. “I need to—I need talk to someone about, about Jonathan Sims.” 

Daisy rolls her eyes, and Martin sags a bit in his chair. 

“Right.” Basira forces herself not to sound as exhausted as she feels. “Well. He’s sort of...indisposed right now, so if it’s not urgent, we really have some things—”   

“Alright, so bad news is, it’s probably murdering Tim in the tunnels, but that’s—” Melanie’s voice cuts off with a strangled noise, and Basira turns sharply. She’s stock-still at the mouth of the hall, staring across the room. 

“What?” the woman says, suddenly urgent. “Tim? He’s—oh god. I need—Martin, listen, I know, I know you don’t—” 

“You know Timothy Stoker?” Basira interrupts, examining the woman closer. “And Martin?” 

“I know—” the woman huffs out a half-hysterical laugh “Yes, I know them, thank god, but that’s not the point, I—” 

“What the hell does—” 

“That bastard,” Melanie’s voice rings through the room. She’s still frozen, staring at the woman. She points, a little uselessly. “You’re—that’s—that’s Sasha James.” 

Chapter Text

“Ready?”

“Ready.” 

Sasha is absolutely not ready. Judging by the expression on Jon’s face, he is equally absolutely not ready, but he pops the tape from the deck and hands her the recorder, nodding nervously.

“I suppose we can add smashing cursed mirrors to the list of uses for these things,” he says, tucking the tape into his pocket. They’d figured it would be better to have it intact, even with nothing to play it on. “Assuming this works.” 

Sasha laughs shakily, taking the recorder and holding it gingerly in her hands. Her back is to the wall next to the mirror, the thing damn near singing from beside her. The urge to look into it— just a quick look, just to know— is wildly distracting. 

Sasha grits her teeth, gripping the recorder.

“Ready,” she says again, and if she doesn’t mean ready to maybe die painfully  she does mean ready to get out of here. She swallows, pressing her back further into the wall and positioning her arm so she can swing the recorder. “Okay, okay. Ready.” 

“I’ll just...stand back then?” Jon shrugs helplessly. “Erm. Watch? Are you sure—I mean I know we said—” 

She shoots him a tight smile.

“Jon, no offense, but if one of us is strong enough to break this mirror I think it’s going to be me.” 

He just shrugs again with what looks like a sheepish attempt at a smile, pressing his hands together and taking another step back. She takes a deep breath. Pulls back her arm and— 

“Wait! Wait, we should—”

“Jon,” she says, clutching her chest as heart lurches back into place. “Jesus, don’t do that.” 

“Sorry, I just—” he waves his hands, eyes drifting past her. “I think. I think I should...look.” 

She adjusts her grip on the recorder. It’s getting hard to hold in her sweating palms. 

“Jon, I told you—” 

“I’ll forget faster looking into it, right, right,” he nods, eyes still not quite focused on her. A chill runs down her spine. “And I believe you, I do, I’m not saying—I just. I need to see.” 

“Jon, that’s what it wants, ” she says, hoping the edge of hysteria in her voice isn’t too evident. “It wants you to want to look, it wants to take everything from you, it—I’m not going to stand here and let you get eaten by a mirror!”

“I—” Jon’s gaze finally lands on her, and there’s recognition, thankfully, but there’s something...else. “We have to consider, we might get a different result if I can—I can try to, to, I don’t know, see something? ”

Sasha hesitates.   

“Plus you’re here, you can remind me, pull me back,” Jon says in a rush. “If I don’t see anything, then we’ll break it. But there’s nowhere else we can really look. And what if I figure something out? If I can see the way back?” 

“And if something unexpected happens? If you look into it and, and—” and you’re just gone and I’m alone in this place until I forget Sasha James ever was?  She clears her throat. “If something goes wrong…”

“I think it’s safe to say things have already gone wrong, Sasha,” Jon says tiredly, face creasing. “None of our choices are going to be good ones.” 

She sags against the wall, suddenly exhausted. As exhausted as you can get, here. She misses sleeping. She misses eating. She misses being a person outside of a fading memory. 

“Fine.” She shakes her head, stepping aside. “But if you start getting weird, I will drag you away from it.” 

“I’d rather think you’d tackle me again,” Jon says dryly, and there’s that odd, unfamiliar-but-not-unwelcome note of genuine fondness in his voice. Jonathan Sims, it seems, has learned how to express positive emotion in the last year. “It seems to be your go-to.” 

“Played rugby as a kid,” she says off-handedly, then stops. “God, I’m happy I can remember that about myself. Do you think I’ll remember more, if we get out?” 

“When you get out,” Jon says firmly, already looking past her. “Alright. I guess I’ll just…” 

Sasha lets him pass, hand tense and ready over his arm as he exhales. He steps before the mirror. 

Jon stares. 

“Do, do you see anything?” she asks, inching closer and forcing herself not to look even as the shine of glass worries at her periphery. “Jon, I swear—” 

“I’m fine,” he says faintly. He hasn’t blinked. “I see...there’s a figure.” 

It takes everything in Sasha not to turn and look. 

“You don’t see yourself?” she presses, hand still hovering over his arm. “I remember that, at least. It looked...wrong, but it was me. I think it was me.” 

“It’s….” Jon drifts forward, and Sasha gives up pretense, grabbing his wrist before he presses a hand to the glass. He stops, and it’s hard to ignore the glimmer at this angle. “It’s fine, it’s just...” 

“Jon,” she warns, chest pounding. 

“I’m fine, I’m...not forgetting,” he says, brow furrowing. “I think I would, well, know . Which I know sounds—” His eyes go wide. The arm beneath her grip twists, his hand seizing her forearm in return. “Sasha, it—it’s coming closer.” 

“Can you tell who it is?” Sasha asks. A part of her is saying something very different, like, how about we back away from the cursed forgetting mirror and if you don’t see a way out we need to smash it before it steals our memories, but both of those fall quiet behind the overwhelming need to know what the hell is going on. 

Jon shakes his head slowly, eyes glued to the glass. Sasha takes a deep breath, and chances a look. 

The mirror is...empty. No Jon, no figure, just unchanging, unfamiliar wall. She moves a little, enough it should catch part of her own reflection but the image doesn’t change. 

“Do you see it?” Jon asks in a strange, distant tone. She tears her gaze from it, tugging a bit at his arm. “It’s…it’s...I see...”

“Jon,” Sasha says again, steadying her voice. “There’s nothing there. I don’t think we should…” 

Jon gasps, and she can’t help but turn back. 

The mirror is empty. It’s empty. And then Sasha blinks and her reflection blurs into existence, smiling, benign. 

Someone says something sharp. Panicked. Sasha can’t look away. 

Then she feels it—a tugging. A tearing. A scraping. She makes a noise, blinking again, and her eyes transform into hungry, gaping things, flat and fake as a doll’s.

She makes another choked noise, air going thick around her as the face-she-does-not-know smiles even wider. And begins to stretch. 

Someone’s speaking, shouting even, but it sounds like it’s coming from underwater, and she can’t take her eyes from the elongated, grinning face in the mirror. It cranes forward, bottom jaw unhooking and lowering. 

And lowering. 

And lowering, until she can’t see past its sucking maw and it feels like she’s a fish with a hook in its mouth as something inside her starts to rip free— 

“No!” a voice pierces the thickening air, and something—someone? is grabbing something from her hand. There’s movement. More shouting, but Sash—Sarah? Sandr— Someone needs to get away from the mirror, that’s it, get away, stay away from the mirror she remembers that, she knows — 

Glass shatters. Another shout. A layered, inhumanely musical laugh. She watches the long, grinning something snap to the side in the fragments of the mirror, the emptiness behind the metal.

“It—there! Go!”  

She doesn’t have time to jerk away before something shoves her straight into the open mouth of the broken mirror and the dark is swallowing her and— 

And she falls. 

And falls. 

And falls. 

And— 

Sasha James sucks in an enormous ragged breath and sits bolt upright. 

“What, what,” she wheezes, patting herself down. Her heart is pounding hard enough to make her vision swim, her surroundings a blur. Every inch of her is covered in ice-cold sweat. Hall, mirror, face, falling— “Shit, what the—where—what—” 

She heaves in breath after breath, ducking her head between her knees. The floor is wood, dark and unswept. 

“Oh, okay,” she pants, staring at eddies of dust that move with every breath. A few bits of glass twinkle at her, and she shuts her eyes. “I,I’m, I’m Sasha J,James, I’m...I’m Sasha James, I’m Sa,Sasha James, I’m Sasha, I’m…” 

Minutes pass, and finally she manages to shake the feeling of veins being pulled from her body like string. She peeks at the room, body aching as she loosens enough to look around.

 It’s...empty. No halls. No mirrors. Nothing but walls lined with shelves, bulky shapes tucked into every corner. The air is dry and thin and quiet. It’s familiar. 

It’s familiar.

Sasha unfolds her whole body, staring around.

“Bloody hell.” 

She’s in Artefact Storage. 

The door wasn’t locked. 

Sloppy , a very distant scolding voice says, one that sounds very much like the dour-eyed woman who trained her when Sasha worked in Artefact Storage. The woman whose name she can’t remember, but who definitely taught her to keep the door locked from the outside when there was no one around. 

Locking it on this side? Sasha had said. Seems a bit...

It’s to keep things from getting out, the woman had responded, and Sasha hadn’t really believed her. Not then. 

Sasha can’t remember what happened to that woman.

But then, it seems like Sasha can’t remember a lot of things right now, and she’s fighting the urge to panic about it because if there’s one thing she does remember, it’s that she isn’t supposed to have gotten out alone. 

Where the hell is Jon?

Sasha peers down the hall, nonsensically self-conscious of how she might look stumbling from Artefact Storage like a ghost freed from its grave. And isn’t that a fitting metaphor, she thinks dizzily, glancing back at the empty desk where Lo—Lau—where someone she knew used to sit. 

She’s missing pieces of herself. It’s a horrible, chilling thought, but she can feel it—gaps where she knows there’s supposed to be something, like running her tongue over a missing tooth. Names. Faces. Dates. 

But the air here isn’t swimming with stolen memories. There’s no Jon to ask her anything. 

Sasha takes a deep breath, and slips down the hall. 

The path to the Archives is reassuringly familiar, and even more reassuringly free of worms and filth. Her face and arms are stinging by the time she stops in front of the door, and she only has a second to pause and wonder if she should do something about a few shards of glass embedded into her forearms, the slowly-leaking cuts she hadn’t even noticed. 

“ —now your other friend’s dead too. Happy?” A burred voice, muffled through the door. 

Sasha goes still. 

“Daisy, don’t. We don’t know he’s dead. We need a plan—” 

Sasha grabs the handle and yanks open the door. 

For a moment she just stares. The Archives lay before her like something from a dream—the same open space crowded with papers, the shade of the stacks, the yellow light bleeding all over every angle. She half expected it to be different somehow. She half expected not to remember it. 

“You’re not allowed to be down here.” 

A woman with serious eyes and a headscarf steps towards her, and Sasha is jarred back to the present. 

“We’re not taking statements at this time,” she says in a flat, practiced tone. “Sorry.” 

Sasha opens and closes her mouth, completely taken aback at the words, at the ferocity of a second, glaring woman standing nearly as tall as Sasha herself behind the first one. 

“You can talk to Rosie at the front desk,” a man standing behind a desk says, voice friendlier than the woman’s, but expression no less tense. “You can leave your details with her, and we’ll get back to you. Um.” He glances at the second woman nervously as something shifts in Sasha’s brain, like a tectonic plate moving into place. “Sometime.” 

“I—I don’t,” she starts to say, tearing her eyes from the man—she knows him. She knows him. But the first woman is already opening the door for her, basically sweeping her out, and she doesn’t— she can’t— “Wait, wait— stop.” 

The first woman puts her hands up placatingly, though the taller woman takes a sudden, threatening step forward. Sasha shakes her head, focusing on what she knows—she knows the Archives, she knows she’s Sasha James, she knows—   

“I, I, I need to talk to, to—” to someone in charge? To Tim? To Martin? To— “Oh my god,” she says, eyes landing back on the man at the desk. Eyes she knows behind glasses she knows on a face she knows and she nearly sags in relief. “Martin?” 

“I’m. Um.” The man— Martin looks a bit alarmed, while the two women stare at him accusatorially. He shifts from foot to foot, and something awful dawns on Sasha. “Sorry? I don’t—” 

“Shit,” she says, almost awed. All of that, the mirror, the pain. Of course it couldn’t have been so simple. Of course, she’d been stupid to think it would, and now she has to figure out a way to get them to believe her quickly enough to figure out where Jon is, to figure out where the monster is, to figure out if there’s a way to...not be forgotten, anymore. She doesn’t say that though, can't move her mouth quickly enough to form anything past, “It—it didn’t—shit. Okay.”  

“Are you here for a statement?” The first woman asks abruptly, voice somehow even flatter than before. Sasha feels her eyes take in her appearance, the scratches up her arms. “Or from Research?” 

“I—what?” Sasha almost laughs. She rubs her eyes. “God no, I’m— I need to—I need to talk to someone about—” 

About a monster? She’s got no clue what they do and don’t know, no idea what would get their attention. Would they believe her if she started raving about being the person who had been replaced, about hungry mirrors and strange hallways and air choked with things unknown? She catches Martin’s eye. 

Does it matter? 

“About Jonathan Sims,” she settles on. 

The reaction is immediate. Martin’s expression goes tight and unhappy, and the taller woman rolls her eyes. The first woman just purses her lips. 

“Right. Well. He’s sort of….” The woman casts her eyes to the ceiling for a second. “Indisposed right now, so if it’s not urgent, we really have some things—” 

“Aright so bad news, it’s probably murdering Tim in the tunnels right now,” a new voice cuts through the room, and Sasha’s brain labels the woman Melanie King before the rest of her thoughts catch up. “But that’s—” 

“What?” Sasha says, heart seizing. The woman’s frozen across the room, staring at her. “Tim? He’s— oh god. I need—” A plan. An ally. Some glasses, preferably, because even though there hadn’t been any real need to make out details in an endless infernal hallway, being a real person again comes with things like eyestrain. Sasha shakes her head, focusing.  

“Martin, listen. I know, I know you don’t—

“You know Timothy Stoker,” the first woman interrupts. “And Martin?” 

“I know—” she doesn’t mean to laugh, but the noise escapes her. “Yes, I know them, thank god, but that’s not the point, I—” 

The tall woman crosses her arms. 

“What the hell does— ” 

“That bastard.” Melanie is still staring at her, and Sasha doesn’t have time for this, if no one here knows her, and Tim is being murdered, and she still doesn’t know where Jon— 

“You’re—” Melanie points at her, and Sasha freezes, accused. “That’s— that’s Sasha James.” 

Sasha takes in a sharp breath. The name— the recognition— collides with her ribcage, and she takes a physical step back. 

“I—” she manages. I am known because someone knows me, a hysterical part of her recites. “I—”  

Martin is gaping. The two women exchange a practiced look, while Melanie approaches with wide eyes.

“The not dead one?” The taller woman speaks first, eyeing Sasha. “You seem...intact.” 

Sasha doesn’t think she wants to know what that means.

“Elias,” Melanie hisses, still pointing. “Of course he’d lie—that—that—” 

“Sasha?” Martin says, stepping around the desk towards her. “I—I don’t— Sasha?” 

Sasha barely nods, fighting back tears. Martin looks like he might be doing the same. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, searching her face. “I’m sorry, I still don’t—” 

“It’s okay,” she says weakly, and Martin half raises his arms. She drags him into a hug— Martin gives the best hugs, Sash, I swear— and breathes. 

He doesn’t know her. He doesn’t know her, but Melanie does. Someone does. She knows the Archives. She knows her name. For a fraction of a second, it’s close enough to being fixed to breathe. 

“Not to interrupt,” the first woman interrupts, looking unmoved. “But maybe save the hugging for whenever we sort out what the hell is going on.” 

“And maybe don’t hug people that might not be people,” the taller woman says frostily. “This could just be another trick.”  

“It’s not,” Martin says fiercely, and the woman rolls her eyes. 

“Melanie.” Sasha clears her throat, drawing back from Martin but keeping a hand on his arm. “You know me?” 

Melanie’s mouth flaps open and closed for a moment, eyes darting to the side. 

“I mean. Yeah, um. You, eh, we had a conversation?” Melanie tugs at an earlobe, cheeks darkening. She looks to the two other women. “She looks the same. And sounds the same. As the one before the fake one, at least.” 

“Doesn’t mean much,” the taller woman dismisses “If it’s messing with memories, how do we know it hasn’t just replaced hers with a new one?” 

“Hang on, I still remember the fake one,” Martin says, sounding annoyed. “Why would it bother with two fake memories? That makes no sense.” 

“Why would it let her go?” the woman snaps back. “These things aren’t just nice, doing good things for no reason. If that’s really her—” 

“It’s definitely the one I remember, but—” 

“Can we all just—” 

“Look,” Sasha raises her voice. “I don’t—I don’t know who you two are, but Jon said he left something for Martin and Tim, and I really—you all clearly know he’s been replaced, right? I think he still needs our help.” 

For a moment they’re all silent. Sasha resists the urge to fidget with glasses that aren’t there. 

“‘Jo—Jon said’?” Martin says finally, fumbling the name. “You, you talked to him? When? Where?”

“Describe him,” the tall woman orders immediately. 

“I don’t—It doesn’t matter if I do, does it? You won’t know either way,” Sasha counters, not sure why she’s feeling defensive towards this sharp-eyed woman. “Melanie remembers me, and there’s—look, we don’t have time for this, she said Tim might be—” 

“If you’re a monster trying to trick us into going down there, we absolutely do,” the first woman says, arms still crossed. “Describe him.” 

“But it won’t matter, you don’t—” 

“Daisy remembers him,” Martin explains, gesturing at the taller woman and not hiding his disgruntlement. “The thing that replaced you—if actually, sorry. I don’t know how much you know what happened to you?” 

Sasha grimaces, swiping a bit of blood from her arm. 

“I...remember what happened to me. Jon told me most of it from what happened out here, if you need me to tell you that.” 

“Convenient,” the taller woman—Daisy—says coldly. “Go on. What’s Jon like?” 

“Short,” Sasha answers, suddenly irrationally nervous that she doesn’t remember. “Um. Dark skin, I’m think he told me he’s part Pakistani, once, um. Dark hair, he’s—it was longer than I remember from before. He looks…” Sasha frowns. “Really different, actually, than he used to, before I, um. Yeah, now he’s got...” She gestures at her face, cringing. “Scars. Little dots, mostly. A big cut on his neck, too. Oh, his hand too, it’s…messed up.” 

“Forget about the scars,” the first woman says, expression unreadable. “The fake one has them too.” 

“Oh.” Sasha scrambles, half-panicked, half-infuriated. “Brown eyes? Did I say that? He’s kind of scrawny, I guess, but—”  

“It’s fine.” Daisy’s tone is abrupt. She nods at the first woman. “That’s him.” 

Martin and Melanie are staring at Sasha like she’d been describing an imaginary person. Which, well, isn’t too far off.

“Wait, wait, that’s what the real Jon looks like?” Melanie puts in, sounding outraged. “How short? Is he shorter than me, in real life? Did the Not-Them just decide to be a prick and be a bloody giant like everyone else in this place?” 

“Melanie. Not the time.” The first woman still looks unimpressed, though something in her jaw jumps as she taps her foot. “So we have a description of a person we can’t remember, and a monster still on the loose. My question is how you’re here. We were told Jon tried to switch places with you, but it didn’t work. In fact, we were told there might not be that much left of you since you’ve been...wherever you were for so long. We were also told you wouldn’t be able to find a way out without Jon, and I don’t see Jon anywhere. So if you want to explain that, be my guest.” 

“Told by Elias,” Melanie hisses. The woman doesn’t blink. 

“Basira, does it matter?” Martin puts in, darting a look at Sasha. “She’s here, and she, she knows the real Jon, and Melanie knows it’s her, so can we save the interrogations for later? Tim’s still down in the tunnels, and J— Not -Jon probably is too.”  

Sasha watches Martin, the fire in his tone unlike anything she’d heard from him. A year, she reminds herself. It’s been a year. 

She can’t help but wonder what Tim is like now. 

“It does matter,” the first woman, Basira, says firmly. “We can’t make a plan if we don’t know what we’re heading into.” 

“Basira,” Daisy says, in a tone Sasha can’t read. Basira meets Daisy’s eyes, something passing between them that is completely intinterpretable. “You know I’ll be fine.” 

“It’s not about that.” 

“Then what is it about?” Sasha says, rubbing her eyes. “I’m sorry you don’t trust me, I can’t help that you don’t know me. But I didn't escape a monster's stomach to let two of my friends get eaten by the same thing.” 

“Then explain,” Basira repeats, glaring. “Give us something, so we don’t all get eaten running around in the dark .”

“Fine. Fine.” Sasha brushes more mirror-glass from her hair, casting around. “Jon said he left tapes and polaroids, an explanation. If you’ve listened to that, you know his side.” 

There’s a drawn silence, all four of them exchanging questioning looks. Martin stills from where he’s been surreptitiously extracting bandages from his desk. 

“All of the tapes in the Archives are missing,” Basira says at last. “If the real Jon left an explanation, we haven’t seen it.” 

“All of them?” 

Basira shrugs. 

“We figured the Not-Them didn’t want us to hear the real Jon’s voice. Could've been destroyed. Could be it just dumped them somewhere.” 

“I checked the dumpsters,” Daisy puts in. “My guess is the tunnels.” 

“All the more reason to stop wasting time and go down there,” Martin says, an edge to his voice even as he very gently offers a wet paper towel to Sasha, tweezers and bandages in his other hand. “For the cuts. Um. May I?”

She nods, holding out her arm, and numbly watching him work a tiny bead of glass from her arm. 

“So the real Jon didn’t mean to completely screw us over with a stupid plan that put an actual monster in the Archives?” Melanie grumbles. “That just happened on accident?” 

“From what I know, when Jon got replaced, he got sent to the same place I was, this….hall sort of thing, where everything was—where you couldn’t recognize anything, because everything was the same.” Sasha wipes more blood from her forearms, wincing as a piece of glass is brushed free with less care than Martin had done. “There was a mirror, it...it stole your memories. The whole place did but there was... something in it.” 

She shudders, taking a proffered bandage. 

“I’m not sure what exactly...Jon was going to look in the mirror and use his...weird seeing powers?” She glances at the others for recognition, satisfied when they nod in understanding. Something she wants to come back to, but now isn’t the time. “But something went wrong. The reflection was—it wasn’t—it hurt.” She swallows. “I think Jon broke the mirror, I wasn’t—I think he pushed me through it? And then I was in Artefact Storage.”  

Martin gives her a sympathetic look as she fights off another shudder. 

“Did he tell you where the Not-Them was, before it got him?” Daisy asks, stepping forward with a glint in her eye. “It can’t have been hanging around all this time.”  

Sasha considers the blur of memories that make up the hallways—most of it is a blur, really, but she’s glad they’re at least there. Everything from her statement to Jon is in much sharper focus. 

“I think he said he, he read a Leitner to let it out?” 

“The Not-Them is from a Leitner?” Basira taps her foot. “Think we can burn the book, kill the monster? Any idea which one?” 

“Actually,” Martin pipes up, and Sasha sucks in a breath as he plucks a piece of glass from her wrist. “Sorry, um, Sasha. But actually, I remember it from the Leitner tape, the one where Elias, ah...” He glances at Sasha, a strange caught-out look on his face. “So you might not, um, know, but Elias—” 

“Is evil, I know,” she reassures him, and only feels slightly insane saying the words aloud. The most menacing thing she's seen the man do was show up and steal cake from a party, evil seems like a bit of an exagger—

“The one where he killed Leitner with the pipe,” Martin continues, and doesn’t seem to notice Sasha’s eyes bug. “The Not-Them isn’t from the book, it was trapped in the book. I think it, it was called ‘Seven Lamps of Architecture’?” 

“Well, I’m guessing the book isn’t just conveniently laying around for us to use,” Melanie says sardonically. “So still no plan. Great.” 

“If Sasha came back to Artefact Storage, it’d make sense for Jon to show up wherever he got taken,” Basira points out. She taps her foot, looking towards the stacks. Sasha follows her gaze carefully. “Maybe he’s in the tunnels. Maybe it’s like Elias said. He found his way out if he couldn't be digested, or whatever, no homing beacon required.” 

“That wouldn’t necessarily kill the monster,” Daisy says impatiently. “Basira, we can’t just—” 

“You know what I’m—”

“But what about—” 

“Okay!” Sasha stands, brushing out her hair so more glass twinkles to the ground. Martin backs off, setting aside the bloody towel, and she gives him a weak smile she knows he doesn’t recognize. The thought only slightly turns her stomach. “You all can sit here and strategize, it’s, it’s fine. Really.” She shakes her head as Melanie starts to speak. “Really, I get it, and I don’t blame you. You don't...you don't really know me." She sighs, squaring her shoulders. "But Jon fed himself to a monster to get me out, and if there’s a chance he’s down there, I’m just going to go get him myself.” 

She doesn’t wait for the others to react, instead pacing straight towards the aisle she saw Basira looking towards, and ducking between the shelving until she follows it to where the yellow light gives way to blue, dusty shadows. Sure enough, there’s an empty, pitch-black square in the floor, surrounded by papers and propped open with a meter stick. 

It looks hungry. 

Sasha shudders. 

“Here.” Sasha turns, half-expecting someone to be grabbing her and pulling her away from the trapdoor. But it’s just Martin, holding out a heavy-duty torch in one hand and two enormous  lethal-looking hunting knives in the other. He smiles hesitantly, and all Sasha can think is it’s been a year because in no universe can she imagine Martin Blackwood wielding anything more deadly than a corkscrew, but he hands one to her with steady hands. 

“I’ve got my own torch, too— here, you can tuck the torch in your belt like this, while we go down the ladder, and there’s—” 

Sasha takes a deep breath as Martin rattles off more too-practiced instructions, suddenly and excruciatingly aware that she just escaped one nightmare, and is jumping headfirst into another. She doesn't dwell on the fact that she might be out of her mind, the fact that she should be calling a hospital, or maybe going home, or finding out if she still has a home. 

The open trapdoor tugs at her vision. 

Tim and Jon are down here. Her best friend she hasn’t seen in a year, and the person who offered up his mind and memories to save her. And maybe the monster who caused all this.

She takes another breath. Trades a look with Martin. 

They descend. 

Chapter Text

The tunnels are black and stifling and endless, the faint draught that sings through them almost too weak to be noticeable. If Tim takes in a deep, deep breath, he can almost imagine the smell of worms. 

He keeps his breathing shallow. 

“Are you serious,” he mutters, as the clean circle of his torchbeam alights—ha—on another dead end. “Fantastic.” 

Turns out wandering around literal haunted tunnels, looking for something completely and unhelpfully undefined isn’t a piece of cake. He’s fairly certain he hasn’t gone in a circle, thanks to the still-conspicuous line of crispy worm remains he’d passed a while back, but he does get the impression he’s gone deeper into the earth. Which isn’t comforting. 

At least he hasn't seen any doors. 

He turns, beaming out the torch towards the way he came. He’d passed a turnoff somewhere, he’s sure, but….

Despite his best efforts, he inhales a too-deep whiff of tunnel air, the heavy, chilly kind that cuts right to his already-shivering core. 

But—hang on. 

He takes another breath, trailing forward. 

A sharp, caustic smell is wafting along with the cold. He adjusts the crowbar in his grip, holding it aloft as he steps forward. 

The draught from the passage to the right is much thicker, the unmistakable scent of petrol weighing down the air. 

His beam falls on the container first, the uncorked red nozzle nearly glowing as the light cuts through it.

And then, just behind it, a hulking mountain of black plastic and chrome.

“Oh,” Tim says, a ferocious grin gripping his face as he approaches. “Sloppy work, fake Jon.” 

The tapes are stacked haphazard, like an unlit pyre glittering with unspooling magnetic tape that drips and curls to the stone floor below. Tim prods one of the loose recorders with his foot, the familiar click of plastic just a hollow echo in the tunnels. 

“Right…” Tim glances behind him, thinking. “So….” 

He’s found what he was looking for, the closest thing to it. Finding Jon or Sasha would have been better, but for all he knows they’re….he shivers. 

“Goddammit,” he sighs, crouching. He sets the crowbar in reach, fighting the urge to glance over his shoulder. The Not-Them isn’t exactly subtle, if the last time he met the real monster is anything to go by. He shakes off a fresh chill, plucking the nearest intact tape, and shoving it into a recorder. 

Tim toys with it for just a few seconds, tapping the play button lightly. You’re freezing up, a malicious voice says. Just like with Danny just like alw— 

Click.  

A moment of thin, scratching, silence, the air laden with petrol and Tim’s own uneven breathing. Then: 

 “Statement of Leanne Denikin, regarding an antique calliope organ she possessed briefly in August, 2004. Original statement given January 17th, 2005. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist—” 

Tim stares. He stares as the — the voice who is Jonathan Sims sighs through the audio with a breath of static, as the tape seems to slow in its revolutions for Tim’s brain to catch up. 

“—of the Magnus Institute. Statement begi—” 

Click. 

Tim’s heart is loud in his ears, his thumb still depressing the stop button. His stomach is twisted, ragged, bleeding. Numbly, he pops the tape from the deck, and reaches for another one. 

Click. 

“Statement of Laura Popham,” the voice says. Flat, businesslike. Unfamiliar. Same as the first. “Regarding her experience exploring the Three Counties System of caves with her sister Alena Sanderson. Original statement given November the 9th, 2014. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, Lon—”

Click.

He fumbles the next one, scrambling across the pile to reach one with its tape still intact.

Click. 

“— Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.”

Click. 

Click. 

“— Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist—” 

Click. 

Click. 

“— recording by Jonathan Sims—” 

Click. 

They’re all the same. They’re all the same kind of wrong. And Tim knew that—Tim had known that, but it’s one thing to look a monster in the eye and it’s another to hear the voice of the person it had replaced. 

The person you’re supposed to know. 

He doesn’t reach for the polaroid in his pocket. 

“Christ.” He rubs his face, trying not to shiver. Trying to ignore what’s probably, he’s decided, definitely an ulcer he should get looked at. “Okay.” 

He’s just about to straighten up—he can’t carry all of them, but if he leaves markers he can come down with a box or something—when movement catches his eye. The crowbar’s too far, and he fumbles for the torch, casting it over the haphazard pile. Tim freezes. 

There’s a spider perched on a half-buried tape, the only visible part of it the clear label at the bottom.

FOR ARCHIVAL ASSISTANTS. URGENT.  

“Oh, fuck no.” 

The spider seems to blink at him—because of course it does—before it scurries away into the crevices of the pile.   

Tim hesitates. 

“No way,” he says aloud. “Not, not doing that. No thanks.” 

He looks away, ready to absolutely and utterly ignore whatever spider-monster is trying to tell him something. He has a plan, he can lug the tapes up to the Archive, have proof of the real Jon existing outside of the murder-cop’s memory. That should be enough of a reminder of identity, or whatever, right? Something tangible, a stand-in for a self. And then maybe, maybe if Jon comes back...

“I can’t say I know what’s left of Sasha James.” 

Elias lies. Elias lies. It’s an inarguable fact, but Tim’s really fucking sick of being too frozen up to do something for once. 

He grits his teeth. Looks back. At the tape, the narrow, shakily-penned FOR ARCHIVAL ASSISTANTS. URGENT.  Handwriting he doesn’t recognize, but that doesn’t mean anything. 

“Christ, fine.” He snatches it up, closing it into the recorder and glaring at it as he smashes the play button. “You win.” 

Click.

The tape rolls silently for a moment, and Tim nearly gives up until out of the darkness, the same, unknown voice echoes to life. 

“Statement of Jonathan Sims," the voice says, slow and careful. "Regarding...an opportunity. Statement recorded by subject, 21st of July, 2017. Statement begins.” 

Tim doesn’t breathe. 

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen, or how long this will take, so I first want to make something clear. Elias lied. Or, or was wrong. I don’t actually know which it is, and it might matter later, but the point is that the Unknowing won’t happen. I found— I learned what Gertrude knew. What was true all along, and that's that the rituals will never succeed. They can’t, it’s….too much to explain now, but I’m certain of this, just as I’m certain that if left alone, the Unknowing will never be able to come to fruition. I know you don’t— I know most of you don’t trust me, but trust...trust that I don’t want to end the world. I wouldn’t lie. Not about this. And I'm not trying to, to leave you before we face it. But that's...it's true. Even if I don't come back in time. N— ” 

Click. 

Tim pauses the tape abruptly. He has to, there’s— right, the apocalypse they’ve been working to prevent for months isn’t going to happen, and his sort-of-former friend/boss is still speaking to him in the wrong voice and he really has no clue if the pain in his stomach is directed at the wrongness, or the monster, or the real Jon himself. No clue what he even thinks of this person he’s supposed to know. 

Tim leans against the wall, sliding to the ground before he presses play. 

Click.

“ —ow, the, ah, other thing. If you’re listening to this, I….I’m sorry, first of all, if it doesn’t work. I expect it to work, and I don’t really expect anyone to listen to this tape, but if you are….this may be taking longer than I anticipated. And I’m...sorry. I figured out what I needed and there was….no reason not to make an immediate attempt. I suspect Basira and Daisy are too suspicious of me to have let me interact with any extra supernatural artefacts, and that’s not time I could waste. Melanie likely wouldn't have cared, in all honesty, though I do recall she...remembered the original Sasha, and… Well. As for Tim, I was concerned he might have wanted to go himself, or not believed me when I said it was impossible for anyone without my connection to the Eye.” 

Jon laughs humorlessly, the sound flat and sanded.

“The perks of sliding down the scale towards monstrosity, I guess.” 

Tim pauses the tape again with another click, a whole tangle of emotions pulling at each other in his chest that crystallize into a right okay time to stop moping Stoker, don’t freeze up, this isn’t just a pity party for you, everyone needs to be involved not because it’ll be easier to listen to maybe-dead sort-of-former friend/boss make his maybe-final musings but as he climbs to his feet decisively his thumb shifts over the buttons and— 

Click. 

“And Martin…” There’s a short, thready exhale. Tim can’t seem to press pause. “I hope Martin never hears this tape, as I expect he won’t be pleased, by any of it. If he does, well...I’m sorry, Martin. And, and everyone. This is...important, and time-sensitive, and I am truly sorry if it doesn’t work. But even without me, the Institute is in good hands with you all, and well, rest assured that the literal apocalypse isn’t quite as nigh as we all thought.” 

“Christ,” Tim passes a hand over his face. He’s a brave man— he’s put up with killer worm women and doors fashioned from insanity and stalker bosses and skin-stealing nightmare creatures. But facing Martin with his current attitude, compiled with whatever expression he’ll wear when he hears this—Tim can’t face that. 

He leans back against the wall, listening. Jon’s voice is picking up, a note of near-excitement adding steam to his words. 

“I’ve discovered more about what took Sasha, and what’s more— how to get her back. The details don’t matter here, and I know every second counts for her, so I don’t want to waste more time. But the point is, I think she’s trapped, she’s alive, and I’m going to get her back. But to do so, I think I have to switch places with her, which means whoever you meet when you listen to this is not me. This, this is me, this is Jon, this is my real voice. I’ve left polaroid photos from an office party that should help, and you already know how the Not-Them works— while I’m gone, keep out of it’s way, and you should all be okay until I get—” 

Click.

Tim clicks the tape to a pause, biting down on one knuckle and staring numbly into the dark. After a second he jolts into action, shining his torch over the scattered tapes. 

“Polaroids, polaroids,” he mutters, hand gliding over the unspooling ribbons—a detached part of him is thinking about getting these all back to the Archives, the hassle of respooling and shelving them. “That thing better not— ha.” He snatches up two flimsy little plastic squares, pointedly ignoring that fact that his hand is shaking. 

The glare fades as he lowers his torch. 

Tim’s breath catches. He...remembers this day.

There’s him, laughing and waving a fork in the air, he’d been telling some joke about...candles? There’s Martin, grinning sheepishly with a plate of cake in his hands. There’s Elias, of all people, off to the side with grey eyes fixed on his own plate. 

There’s...a man he doesn’t know. Sitting up at the desk, a half-empty plate before him. Dark eyes cast up, something long-suffering on his face that’s offset by the smile tugging at his mouth. Another one of the same man, hands frozen midair as if he were explaining something. Martin biting his lip, the smile clear, while Tim is sitting hunched on the desk, clutching his stomach like he’s wheezing in laughter. The man doesn’t seem to mind.

Tim doesn’t know him. Tim knows him. 

For barely a heartbeat Tim wonders who took the photos. Then the knife in his stomach twists, and he stuffs the photos in his pocket with the one already there before he can wonder anything else, and he doesn’t watch his hands shake as he slams the play button. 

Click.

—back,” Jon’s voice continues. “Once I do, I should be able to trap it, either in its own cage, or in the Leitner, or maybe even...unravel, with the power of the Eye. Don’t try to fight or antagonize it, just act normal. Just until I return. Sasha, hopefully, will be back before me so...say hello, for me? The real me. I have...I’ll need to read the Leitner to get the Not-Them out of where it’s been trapped, which is its own risk, but—” 

“You fucking idiot,” Tim says aloud to the dark, speaking over real Jon, who Tim might not know, but he’s talking about using a Leitner to hopefully go forward with it and no wonder he hadn’t waited to talk to any of them about it, because this is a bad plan. 

“Right.” Jon clears his throat, the sound going fuzzy for a second. “Right. I….right.” 

There’s a pause and it feels like the knife in Tim’s stomach has given up twisting. Now it’s carved a hollow there, a divot for an awful, icy pit of anticipation to sit, because he doesn’t know what’s hiding at the end of this tape. There had been screaming in the tunnels earlier, he’s sure of it— and he’s sure that had also been hours after whatever happened….happened. 

Had that been Jon, struggling to escape the monster? 

Sasha? 

Tim’s finger hovers over the pause—there’s not enough curiosity in him to outweigh the fact that he doesn’t want to listen to a man die on tape. 

Jon clears his throat again. When he speaks, his stammer is more pronounced than before, and really, Tim doesn’t know what kind of emotion must live in the chest of someone who’s about to go feed themselves to a monster. 

Probably the kind you only feel once. 

“That, that, that’s all. No time like the present. I hope...I hope this works, and....and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry f,for, for ever letting Sasha be taken in the first place. I’m sorry, Tim, for ever bringing you down to the Archives. A,and I’m sorry Martin, for, for e,everything else. I’m—I’m sorry.” 

There’s a long pause.  

“Statement….statement ends, I suppose.” Jon sighs out a laugh. Tim closes his eyes, trying to superimpose the sound onto the dark-skinned man from the polaroid. The half-smile. The person he doesn’t know. “End recording.” 

Click.

Tim opens his mouth— it feels like some kind of words are called for, if only four letter ones to mark the occasion. It snaps shut when his torch catches on something just to his left. 

It moves. Something snickers. 

“Did you know,” the thing that isn’t Jon says pleasantly as it steps free of the dark. Tim springs away from the wall, sending tapes scattering.  “That these tunnels have the most incredible acoustics?”

Tim opens his mouth again. 

“Fuck.” 

“You can hear so much, from so far away in these passages,” the Not-Them continues, and its voice is so much more grating than the one on the recording, full of something warped and sharp and fuck, Tim’s going to die here with all traces of the real Jonathan Sims’ existence and the Circus and the Stranger will go on and on dancing and carving up little brothers and best friends and sort-of-friend/bosses and Tim won’t be able to do shit about it because he’ll be dead in a tunnel. At work. 

He really hates that this isn’t the first time he’s encountered this exact situation. 

“You understand me, Tim?” Another step. God, that thing’s smile is creepy— it always has been, according to his fake memories, but something about the dark makes him think of the Michael creature. Even as he watches, it seems to stretch past its skin. “Clear as a bell. Every word.”

“Stay back, I...” Tim trains the torch on it, unwilling to look away. The crowbar, the stupid crowbar, is sitting on the other side of the stack of tapes, out of reach. Tim waves the tape recorder at it instead, viciously aware it's not in the least bit threatening. “Stay back, I swear to god.” 

The thing snorts. Another step. 

“Why, Tim? It’s me. It’s Jon.” Its eyes go wide, face rearranging into something open and hurt. “Don’t you know me? We worked together in research, remember? I know things have been hard, recently.” It shakes its head sadly, and Tim grits his teeth. “But I still consider you my friend, Tim. Think of all the memories we have together.” 

“Shut up.” 

It grins, eyes going empty. 

“I do admit, I didn’t think you’d care enough to come down here. Even the...leftovers from the Archivist can’t be exactly warm and fuzzy memories for you, from what I’ve tasted.” 

“Where is he.” Tim doesn’t let his torch shake, doesn’t let his voice catch. The smell of petrol is nauseating. “The real one, I know he's alive. And where’s Sasha?” 

The thing laughs brightly. Another step. Tim swears it wasn't that tall before.

“Sasha!” It says, seeming to relish the name. “She was quite the role to wear, you know. I do love a long game, and I’ve never had an Archivist to play with before. Didn’t even know I could drive somebody mad like that!” 

“Where.” Tim can barely breathe, but he forces the words out. “Are. They.” 

“Gone.” Tim very distantly feels his blood go even colder, but he doesn’t move, just stares as the thing lifts its chin with a pleased little smirk. “Oh, they screamed, in the end. Even put up a bit of a fight, but no. They're both gone. And you can't even remember them, can you?”

“You’re lying.” 

Another step forward, and this time Tim stumbles back, reaching for the wall with the hand still clutching the recorder

“All you have left is your funny little story,” it says, voice like a pianowire. “From a funny, dead little man.”

Something twists in Tim’s stomach, the knife reaching his spine through it. 

“Shut. Up.” 

It snickers. There’s an odd, detectable shift in the air, accompanied by a swooping in Tim’s stomach. Like a change in the draught. 

The thing that isn’t Jon takes a step closer, looming more than should be possible. 

“They know,” Tim says, and yeah, he’s proud of the acid conviction in his voice even as he falters back, sending more tapes skittering across the stone. He reaches back blindly, still feeling for the wall. “Everyone knows. Even if you kill me, they’ll still kill you.” 

“As if they’d know how,” the thing simpers, the skin of its face pulling longer like caramel from a candy bar. “Still. Good of you to tell me, Tim. I guess I can quit playing with my food then.” 

Tim’s stomach drops further, but he can’t take back the words. The thing smiles, eyes familiar and flat and completely wrong. 

"Shall I wear you, next?" 

"I—" 

Tim reaches back more, his hands still not connecting with the wall. The wall where it should be, what, did it move— ?

“Oh,” Tim says. He makes eye contact just once more with the thing, then turns tail and sprints into the new passage. For a moment it's just him, his breathing, his own heart pounding in his ears.

Then the world seems to erupt. Warped and screaming laughter tears itself free from the walls themselves, layered and raucous, and Tim almost screams back at it. He doesn't, though. He doesn't, because he's busy not letting go of his torch and the tape, he's busy trying to fucking breathe as the laughter chases him deeper, and deeper, and deeper, into the hungry earth. 

Chapter Text

“So…” 

Martin is fairly certain he’s making Sasha uncomfortable, but he guesses she’s just the kind of person who’s excellent at hiding it. Not that he’d know, but he just can’t stop glancing at her, half trying to memorize, half trying to superimpose this woman’s face onto everything he knows. 

Frankly, it’s exhausting, so now he’s working up the courage to angle for something different while they’re walking through these endless spooky tunnels. Might as well. Better than thinking about worms. 

“Want to, um. Tell me about yourself?” 

Sasha stops short, turning to shine the torch at his feet so her face is lit from the bottom. There are still cuts scattered across her cheek, but her eyes are wide and clear. 

“I—” she says, and to Martin’s horror there’s something thick in her voice. “Martin, that’s—” 

“I mean! I just, I don’t—I’m sorry, I know this, this is awful, that was insensitive, I shouldn’t—” 

“No, no! It’s, it’s fine.” She gives him a watery smile, vastly different from the pinched determination from the Archives. “Just. I can’t remember? Some of it? It’s…”

“Oh,” says Martin. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, fighting the reflex to overcorrect. “Oh, that’s...I’m sorry, um, Sasha. That’s awful.” 

Sasha prods his shoulder, turning back to the tunnel. 

“Not your fault,” she says, level. “I do remember plenty, it’s just...not something I want to...think about, right now.” 

“Fair.” He sighs. “Still. I wish…” 

I wish I could remember you , is what he wants to say, but he’s got enough tact to know that would probably be the worst option of how to go about comforting someone who can’t remember things. He’s sure she wishes the same.

“What’s...” he starts, the question bitter on his tongue. Excuses me, could you please tell me all about the other person I’m supposed to know, yes, the one I’m also supposed to care about and not forget one day to the next, thanks, because I don’t have a bloody clue. Not completely true—he has some clue, with the infrequent flashes of oh better see if Jon’s eaten and Jon would throw this statement in the trash if he read it that each time left him glaring at the Archivist’s door with an unhappy mix of uncertainty and anger. At least now, they’re doing something, since Martin doesn’t think he could take another day of ‘playing it normal.’

He clears his throat. 

“What’s, what’s Jon, like, then?” 

Sasha actually snorts. 

“The same,” she says, but it sounds fond. “Well, no. Different in weird ways, actually. Never thought he’d....I guess I missed a bit of character development, didn’t I? With...whatever’s happened in the last year.” 

Martin manages a strained laugh, even as his insides twist. 

“No offense, that’s...not really helpful. I mean, I’m asking because I literally don’t know.” 

“Oh!” It’s Sasha’s turn to look stricken, and she stops again, turning to him “Oh, I—I didn’t even think, I just—God, I hate this.”

“Right there with you.” Martin smiles weakly. “It’s fine, I just...curious, that’s all. Keep getting...impressions of the real thing, I guess? Elias said it’s because he’s the Archivist, but—oh god!” 

Martin gasps, kicking out at whatever his foot had landed on recklessly and stumbling backwards. 

“It’s—Christ, it’s—thought it was a worm, or something.” He breathes out, loosening the deathgrip on Daisy’s knife and wiping his face on his sleeve. “Hang on. Is that—?” 

“It’s….” Sasha’s already creeping forward, torch trained on the dusty book. It’s binding gleams gold, but Martin’s eyes are focused on the dark stain on its cover that he’s ninety percent sure isn’t ink. “Seven Lamps of— Martin, it’s the Leitner!”  

“So this is where—don’t pick it up! ”

Sasha’s already tucked the knife back into her belt, lifting the book and tracing a dark stain on the cover with a frown. 

“Is that, that—” Martin takes a few short breaths, trying to get his stupid heart to calm the hell down. It doesn’t work. “That’s blood.” 

“I think it’s old? ” Sasha answers doubtfully. “I mean. It’s a Leitner. It could be anyone’s, it might not be….Jon.” 

“That’s still not—” Martin sighs, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. “So this is where, where it—where he, um, let it out. And then it....”  

Sasha nods, chewing her lip. 

“I guess I thought…” She shakes her head, speaking slowly as she flips over the book. “I thought if I showed up where I got taken, he would too, right? So…what's that?”

A tiny sheaf of paper flutters down, in and out of Martin’s beam of light. Sasha crouches to prod it. 

“It’s..instructions? For something.” She gingerly picks it up, squinting. “I—god I can barely read this. Not the time, anyway.”

She tucks it in the book. 

“So...he could still be somewhere around, couldn’t he?” Martin twitches the torch up and down the tunnel, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “We just need to, to look for him. It’s not like he had a torch, he could be anywhere down here, I bet—” 

Martin falls silent, Sasha going still next to him. They share a look, uncertain. 

“Did you….” 

“Hear something, yeah.” 

Martin softens his breathing, straining his ears and hoping that Basira and Daisy and Melanie had changed their minds about staying back to make a plan. Maybe the plan is ‘safety in numbers’. 

Then, like debris rising from deep water, a grating, familiar voice warbles through the dark. 

“Sasha! ” it says, and Sasha’s breath catches. Martin half-steps forward, aiming his torch. 

“It—is that—” 

“She was quite the role to wear, you know,” the voice bounces, taking on a strange, rippling quality. Sasha makes a noise, and Martin edges closer to her, not certain enough to put a hand on her arm. 

“We—it’s—we have to do something,” Sasha hisses, as more indistinct words float through the dark. She waves gestures with her torch.  “We—c’mon!” 

He can’t make out the next few words, but the bright, hard edge to the next is clear. “Didn’t even know I could drive somebody mad like that!” 

They creep along the passage, Martin trying and failing to get Sasha’s attention as the echoes get louder. Her eyes are fixed ahead, torch trained only a little unsteadily, but the tunnel seems to swallow the very light.

“Oh, they screamed, in the end.” There’s a smile in its voice, one Martin recognizes. He shudders. “Even put up a bit of a fight, but no.”

“You’re lying.” 

They both stop at the second voice. 

“Tim,” Sasha breathes, looking to Martin wildly. “That’s—that’s Tim. Isn’t it?” 

He nods, unable to move. Every cell in his body is telling him to run. 

“We—we have to do something,” Sasha pants.  “It’s, it’s going to—” 

“Sasha, we can’t just charge in there,” Martin whispers back desperately. “It—we can’t fight it, we don’t even know where—” 

But Sasha’s already tucking her torch between her chin and her shoulder, flipping through the Leitner. 

“Sasha!” he hisses. 

“Jon—he said it can move passages, there’s— of course. ” She studies the little sheet of loose paper that had fallen earlier, holding it nearly to her nose. Martin keeps his feet rooted, listening even as his heartbeat ratchets up in speed til there’s a drumbeat sounding through his ears. 

“Um, Sasha….” Martin says, as she flips frantically through the pages. “Sasha…” 

“All you have left is your funny little story.” The voice has taken on a shifting, musical echo, a dozen strings being pulled tight at once. “From a funny, dead little man.”

Sasha holds the book to her nose, torch shaking, and starts to mutter. 

“Shut.” Tim’s echo is pained. “Up.” 

The air begins to rumble. 

“...when their lines truly follow the structure of the original masses,” Sasha says in a rapid and trembling whisper. Martin edges closer to her, trying not to imagine walls closing in on them. “Have an interest like that of the fibrous framework of leaves from which the substance has been dissolved, but which are usually distorted as well as emaciated—”  

There’s a low, dull sigh of earth. Martin can’t hear the voices anymore, but Sasha keeps reading, darting a look at the little instruction sheet every few seconds. 

“...and remain but the sickly phantoms and mockeries of things that were; they are to true architecture what the Greek ghost was to the armed and living frame.” 

Something settles around them, a slow hush of stone from somewhere indefinable.  

Sasha exhales shakily, closing the book and tucking the sheet between the pages. 

Martin flashes his torch all around at the low scrape of rock, half expecting an Indiana Jones-style boulder to be rolling towards them from somewhere. But where the mouth of the tunnel had stretched behind him, there are two diverging passages, one veering away, the other almost curving down. 

“Sasha? What—what did—how—” 

The Sasha Martin knows is reserved. Cautious. Doesn’t like to make a fuss of things, or over people, and definitely doesn’t jump at the chance to read a Leitner to fight the spooky monster. Of course, the Sasha Martin thinks he knows is literally said monster, and this woman he’s trying to figure out and label as the real Sasha is, so far, only monstrously determined to give Martin a coronary. 

“What the hell! How did you know that would work? ” 

“I—I moved it? I don't— I couldn’t just do nothing, I—” 

Martin’s just about decided it’s an okay time for him to lose his shit, just the smallest bit, when another sound claws its way from the passages now behind them. 

It’s laughter. Ripping, curling laughter, a noise that immediately accelerates Martin’s losing-his-shit decision and makes Sasha suck in a sharp breath.

“That’s! That’s farther away, right?” Martin asks, not bothering to keep the pitch of his voice from climbing. “So, so we should go forward, still?“

“I—should I read it again?” Sasha starts to flip through the book. “The, the instructions say it can get unstable, I don’t want—but what about Tim? Where did he end up?”  

Martin smothers a hysterical noise, spinning around as the laughter pitches through the shadows from all sides. 

“I don’t know, you moved them!” 

“I just wanted to distract it!” 

There’s a lull in the noise, and they stare at each other wide-eyed. Martin’s too young for a heart attack, but he’s pretty sure that won’t matter pretty soon. 

“Tiiiiim,” something calls with too many vocal chords. “Tiiiiim! Come on, I’ve played this game before, it’s just no fun after a while.”  

“We—we—it’s not after us,” Martin whispers, drawing closer to Sasha and staring as far as his light will reach. “We—if we can just find Tim, we can get back upstairs and figure, figure out Jon, and—” 

“What—” Sasha turns to face him, torch flashing. A bubble of laughter swirls around them, sending ice-cold bolts down his spine. “What if he is down here? If he escaped too, we— we can’t leave him.”

Martin barely hesitates, sighing harshly. A spark. An impression of conviction, a memory that makes the next words easy. 

“No, we can’t," he agrees. "But we can’t run around in the dark, or, or, confront it! We can’t fight it!” 

“You brought the knives!”

“I didn’t think we’d actually use them!” 

“Martin, we—” Sasha gestures wildly. “Listen to that thing!” 

“Yeah, Sasha, hard not to, thanks!”  

“We can’t just stand around, that’s—it’s going to eat us, Martin!” 

And Martin turns to face her, because for the first time he can actually hear the raw, abject fear in her voice. Sasha’s clutching the torch in one hand, the Leitner in the other, tiny cuts still dotting her face. Her hands are shaking. 

And Martin wants to smack himself in the forehead, because Sasha—this, risk-taking, tunnel-exploring, Leitner-reading Sasha lost a year of her life to this thing, lost memories and self— of course, it’s not just fantastic courage, Martin, who wouldn’t be going at full-tilt, driven by that kind of terror? 

“We’ll.” Martin forces his whisper into something steady. He can’t hear the Not-Them anymore, and it’s almost worse. “Okay, we, you’re right, so let’s, let’s pick a direction, right? A,a,a,and then we—we’ll keep walking, and—if we see it again, there’s two of us, right? We can—we’ll find Tim, and then go from there.” 

Sasha chews her lip viciously for a second, but nods. 

“Okay. Okay, I—okay.” She shakes her head. “Okay. Let’s…” 

Her eyes widen, and Martin clutches the knife tighter, turning.

“Did you—” 

“I heard it,” he whispers, though he can barely hear himself over his frantic drumbeat heart in his ears. “I don’t—”

Sasha shushes him, aiming her torch down the downward-curving tunnel, stepping forward. Martin truly doesn’t have it in him to protest. He strains to hear anything over his own pounding pulse, but even the monster’s gone completely silent. 

“I thought…” Sasha gasps, retreating to stand next to him, though her beam is still trained down the tunnel. “Listen, I think—” 

There’s a man. There’s a man in a hallway. He’s running. 

He swings around a corner, mind grappling with the unfamiliar walls even as something in the back of his head is screaming — run run keep running — but it’s getting harder to fight through the thickening air and the man is tired, and he’s missing something, he knows— 

“Sasha,” he pants, tripping to a halt and whirling around. “Sa, Sasha?” 

The hall is empty. The hall is…

The man swallows, his lungs gummy with congealing air. His teeth are coated in something heavy and dull. 

Something missing. Someone...he is Someone. He was looking for someone else, but—no, that’s not right. He, he was...someone else was looking for him. No, that’s, that’s—  

He presses his eyes closed for an instant, bracing a hand against the wall. 

“Wha— ow, ” he hisses, snatching his hand back immediately.  He studies his palm, focusing on the shape, the braided lines, the blood pooling in the center. It takes several seconds for his eyes to focus on the fact that the blood is pooling around something, something that glints merrily out of the broken skin. 

Fascinated, Someone reaches for it, noting that this other hand looks nothing like the first. He’s lost for a moment, comparing the smooth, bleeding hand to the one that looks like it was molded into the idea of what the first hand might be. 

Maybe he just doesn’t know what a hand looks like. 

Then his smooth hand(?) twinges again, and he dips quickly-bloodied fingers and slowly, slowly tugs out the shiny thing embedded in his palm. For a moment he just stares at the long, blood-edged sliver of glass, pain pulsing in his hand as his vision flickers. 

The jagged cut is shapes like a half-moon, no, it’s a circle, no it’s not, it’s—the glass is a wriggling worm, no it’s not it’s—someone freed it from his skin, Someone, someone— Sasha—   

“Ow, ” Jon says emphatically, staring at the leaking cut. 

He stares at the glass for seconds more. Maybe-seconds. Time here isn’t right, but that’s not the point. 

The point is: glass. 

Mirrorglass. 

The face-he-did-not-know, the one that had leaned out over Sasha and begun to sip her memories out through the air right in front of him, all because he wanted to look in the bloody mirror. 

They should have smashed it first thing, just like Sasha wanted. Why did he have to stop and look? Why does he always have to fucking look? 

He wipes his bleeding hand on his sleeve, grimacing. At least he’s getting a clearer picture, now, of this place. Of what Sasha had likely tried all those times before. Look in the mirror, the monster smiles and takes a sip. Try to shatter the mirror, the monster smiles, freezes you in place and takes a gulp, and you forget you ever tried. It’s a miracle she’d kept away from it for so long. 

Actually shatter the mirror— 

He’d seen it. He rolls the glass shard between his fingers, not pressing hard enough to cut. That brief, flickering moment. Sasha staring horror-struck as the thing leaned out of the mirror, craning over her. Sasha hadn’t even moved when he’d shouted at her. 

He hadn’t been thinking when he’d ripped the tape recorder from her grasp, when he’d slammed it into the mirror. It’s terrifyingly lucky he had been strong enough to break it, in the end. 

Because there, in the empty hole left behind the cascade of glass, he’d Seen it. The path out. A cavern of familiar air. 

It had taken just a single shove, Sasha thankfully already staggering and off-balance. Lucky, again. 

Wherever Sasha had gone, he’d had one brief, breathless moment to follow her. And then the thing’s eyes had turned on him in a thousand mirrored shards and  he’d only managed to think oh shit before it lunged and he’d run for his life. 

She got out, he repeats to himself, pressing his eyes closed and taking in a deep, humid inhale. You did what you came here to do, she got out she must have she must have gotten out— 

And now…

The hall stretches on. He doesn’t try to make out the end, aware that he’s barely holding onto the thoughts in his head, that the cut on his hand is only going to help him focus for so long. 

No tape recorder, he’d dropped it when he’d run for it. No Sasha, she got out that's what matters she got out you got her out — 

Jon clenches his fist, the torn skin tearing further beneath his nails. Something old, something thick-toothed and wanting and tireless is worrying at the fringes of his mind. 

Reminders, he needs...reminders. No one here knows him. No one out there knows him—well, they should according to Sasha, but for some reason the tapes and polaroids aren’t working as pieces of being known. 

Self-recognition, he thinks desperately, pressing a thumb to his stinging palm. 

“Statement of,” he starts, but with a single venomous hiss air floods down his throat and he chokes on the words. It swarms into his lungs, picking at the flimsy tissue, calling everything he is and everything he Knows into itself until it sits in his chest like two waxen suns, ravenous and burning and— 

He exhales weighted air. Something in his mind loosens and slips away. 

A man clenches his fist, though he is not certain why. There’s a feeling when he does so, something...sharp. A glittering thing falls to the floor. Makes him think of mirrors. 

The mirror. He has to go….back to the mirror. Wasn’t that it? Get Sa—someone—his friend. His friend. His friend...went through the mirror. She needs help. That’s it, she’s trapped in the tab—in the mirror, and he needs to find it.  

There’s something else else he’s supposed to know, something else—  

Someone presses his palms to his eyes, and pulls them away with a startled noise as something wet smears over his left cheek. 

Dark and unhappy red coats his hand. He glares at it, the slick of blood in the not-light. There’s something he is supposed to Know.

Someone paces through the halls. He doesn't know these halls, but it doesn't matter. He’s supposed to find the mirror. Find the mirror and see. And See. 

Someone watches his feet move. Watches the carpet curl strangely beneath them until he tears his eyes away to watch the hall instead. It changes, bit by bit, the sense of movement like through a dream, new angles appearing, corners turning from nowhere at all. 

All he can do is cling to find and see find and see as he watches reality warp around him into wild, countless, infinite unfamiliarity.

Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck  Tim chants in his head as the laughter peaks, ringing around him like some demented out-of-tune sitcom track. The tunnel twists from side to side, and he scrambles around sudden curves and turns he’s certain weren’t there before. But whatever, because apparently the cursed part of the cursed tunnels sort of saved his life.

“Shall I wear you, next?” 

Tim stumbles to a halt, panting and nearly choking on the raging pain in his stomach that’s piled beneath cramps from running. No idea how long he's been going for. No idea how far he is from the Institute. 

“Shall I wear you, next?” 

Bile rises up his throat, and Tim scrabbles a hand along the wall for purchase, willing away the image of a clown whipping Danny’s skin from a body like a magician pulling ribbon from his sleeve. 

“Shall I?” Grimaldi grins, mischievous voice bubbling out of the thing-that-isn’t-Jon’s face. “Shall I wear you, next?” 

Tim wretches. Nearly drops the recorder still clutched in his hand, the one that carries the voice of the last person Tim knows who’d gotten worn. Like a fucking t-shirt. 

Danny, and Sasha, and Jon, and now Tim. It’s almost funny, he’s been in such close proximity all this time, and now it’s his turn. 

“There was never any hope for me,” he’d told Martin, told the tape. Right now, it feels the same. “This was how it was always going to go.” 

“Tiiiim,” something sings from the dark, yanking him back to reality. He doesn’t dare look back, just gathers his breath and staggers into a run again, the voice chasing after him. “Tiiiiim! Come on, I’ve played this game before, it’s just no fun after a while.”  

He runs blindly, the torch offering wild, strobing images of the rock around him. If it gets him, he can’t get it , and that’s pretty much the only thing keeping him from sagging against the wall until it catches up. 

Either Elias is lying about them being alive, or the Not-Them is lying about them being dead, and honestly Tim can’t parse which is more likely. He can’t even keep track of which tunnels he’s taken, let alone which of his monster bosses is the more actively malicious of the two. 

After seconds, minutes, hours, whatever, he slows again, his own harsh breathing and the scuff of his feet the only sounds he can hear anymore. 

The only sounds in the world, it seems like. 

He turns, panting. The torch illuminates the same thing it’s been showing him this whole time—bare gray rock, more or less hewn into sloping walls and gentle turns. After a single curse, he switches it off. 

No laughter. No voice. No light. Nothing at all. 

Tim shivers, and grips the tape tighter. It’d be fantastically stupid to play it, but some freezing part of him almost wants to, just to hear another person’s voice that isn’t a bloody monster trying to kill him. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, still panting. Listening. 

Far worse than hearing the monster in the dark, Tim thinks, is not being able to hear the monster in the dark. 

But after several more indeterminable units of time, enough for his breathing to have slowed, if not for his heart to have stopped feeling like a particularly overwrought stress ball, still no sound comes from the darkness. 

Maybe he could just wait it out. It can’t roam here forever, if he just stays still, and quiet, and keeps track of time enough for it to have left…

Tentatively, he switches on his flashlight. 

No face jumps out from the dark. No bizarre, stretching flesh, no elongated features of somebody he’s “known” for years. 

Just a bright yellow door, embedded in the wall. 

“Oh fuck off.” 

Does he have to do this every few months? Is this his life now? Get chased by a scary, stretched-out version of his coworker, then get eaten by a door to insanity for a couple of days? In that order? Is that just how it’s going to go? 

The door smiles as much as a door can smile. Tim aims his torch away from it, but it seems to generate its own odd sort of light, like a spotlight with no source. 

“Nope.” Tim shakes his head, turning away immediately. So much for staying put. “Absolutely not.” 

The door burns at his back as he hikes forwards through the passage. Martin had given him a long and confused second-hand explanation from Jon, about apparently the Michael creature had died, but he hadn’t, just wasn’t Michael anymore, or something —Tim had honestly tuned most of it out, and it doesn’t really matter anyway because Michael or no, Tim is not staying anywhere near that door. 

The passage slopes upwards, and if he had the capability to spare a thought for Robert Smirke he might be thinking something about angles and balance. He’s more focused on things like not breaking his ankle as the incline increases, and straining to hear what sounds like running water. 

Wait. Wait. Not water. 

Whispers. Those were whispers, human whispers. 

Tim switches off his light. He fees along the wall, trying to control his breathing as he listens. It’d be just his luck to escape the Not-Them and get murdered by Elias. A deranged part of his brain is picturing some sort of company motto, Escape one monster boss, get shot by the other — that’s the Magnus Institute! 

He catches a glimmer of light. 

“I thought…” a voice murmurs. He can’t make out much of the tone, but at least it’s not smug enough to be Elias.

“Listen, I think—” 

He takes a few more steps forward, and is immediately blinded.

“Tim?” 

He throws his hand up instinctively, the recorder casting straight angles that he squints past. There are two figures—human, tall but not stretched tall, and he minutely relaxes as the light flashes downwards. 

“Martin?”  

“Sor—sorry!” The torchlight lowers, and Tim blinks away spots, eyes watering.  “I—thank god, we thought—we thought it might have got you, I don't— ”   

“Christ, Martin.” 

Even in the low light Martin looks awful, skin ashen and eyes huge behind his glasses. There’s an enormous fuckoff knife in one hand, and Tim catches sight of the woman standing next to him, wielding a book and another torch like twin bludgeons with her own murder-looking knife tucked into her belt. 

"Tim," Martin says again, sounding exhausted. "We thought you were— "

“What are you doing down here, I thought—” Tim's throat closes. He can’t move. Couldn’t if his life depended on it, because the woman is staring at him, and—  

The woman. Tall. A mass of dark hair. Dark eyes. Furrowed brow. Tim swallows, blood frozen.

“W-wait. Wait, I—“ The knife in his stomach gives a single futile twist. “Wait, you—” 

The woman blinks at him. 

“Tim?” 

His voice is a weak and breathless thing. 

“Sasha?”  

Chapter Text

“You.” Sasha’s breath is loud in her ears. “You know me?” 

Tim stares at her, so different and so very the same, and if she doesn’t recognize the scars clustered along his temple she knows the way his arms half-rise, half-fall, an uncertain little motion like he wants to gesture but— 

“No, I—” Tim’s voice catches, and Sasha sucks in a breath. “I don’t. I—” 

“But you recognized her,” Martin urges, the words very far away. Tim is still staring at her like he’s never going to stop, and Sasha’s caught between he doesn’t know you and I know you. “Tim, you, you, recognize her, doesn’t that—” 

“It’s.” Tim shakes his head, finally tearing his eyes from Sasha’s. He digs in his back pocket, stepping forward and holding out a tiny square that glints in the torchlight. “I—I found this. A while back.”  

She takes it. A polaroid, the face in it half-blurred with motion but undeniably her. She’s standing in a doorway, a bag across her shoulder and glasses propped up on her head as she waves at the camera. 

“Say cheese!” 

“Tim, I will absolutely leave you if you don’t hurry up.” 

“It’s for posterity! Don’t you want to remember our first Friday in the Archives?” 

“I thought the plan for the bar was so we wouldn’t.” 

“Exactly, which is why we need photographic evidence.”

Sasha reaches for the rest of the memory, but it’s like grasping at vapor. 

“It—it really is you.” 

Sasha isn’t sure if it’s a question or a statement, but she nods, unable to speak. Tim’s lip goes up and down, drawing in tight until he storms forward and they’re wrapped in each others arms. 

“I’m sorry,” Tim whispers. The sound is choked, and she squeezes tighter. “I’m so fucking sorry, I didn’t even know, I wish I—I’m sorry, Sasha, please, you don’t have to forgive me, I should have known— ” 

“None of that.” She’s sure he can’t breathe, face buried in her hair, arms banded around his chest, but she doesn't have it in her to let go. “I'm back." 

They breathe each other in, Sasha fighting to think past the horrible knowledge that no, he doesn't actually know her. No, she's still a stranger. No, she's still forgotten. She presses her eyes shut, and just. Just breathes. 

“Um.” She nearly laughs at Martin’s awkward little cough, and finally draws back. Tim is swiping at his face, still staring at her. 

“Sorry, Martin, I just—” 

“No, no, it’s just.” Martin is aiming his torch into the path that curves left, eyes stretched wider than before. “I, I think I heard some, something?” 

“Oh god.” Tim says lowly, tensing. “Oh god, that thing, it’s down here. It—the tapes, I think it was trying to—wait. Sasha, how are you— how are you here?”

“Jon.” She points her torch into the passage, clutching the Leitner to her chest. “There was—there was a hallway, and, and a mirror, and I—he might be down here too. You haven’t seen him?” 

Tim shakes his head, lips going tight.

“Just the fake one. Speaking of which, we need to get the hell out of here. C’mon, I think I feel a draught from that way— ”

Sasha pulls back, trading a look with Martin. Tim makes it two steps before he seems to realize they haven’t moved. 

“What?” he says, gesturing panickedly. “It was right behind me for a bit, no clue how much time we have.” 

“I said, I think Jon might be down here,” Sasha repeats, keeping her voice low. “The real one, we—we were trying to escape, he could have gotten through too.”  

Tim’s face does something complex. Something unfamiliar. Sasha can’t know if she’s never seen it before, or something she just doesn’t remember. 

“He—look, we don’t have any way to protect ourselves,” he says firmly. “We can come back and look when it’s not on a rampage.” 

Sasha nearly takes a step back. Tim says it so simply, without any real hesitation. 

“You—Tim, we’re not leaving him down here.” She struggles to keep her voice low. “Especially if it’s ‘on a rampage’, jesus.”

“You said he might be down here,” Tim responds, gesturing towards the draughty passage again. “That’s a maybe, and there’s no point in us all getting killed over a maybe.” 

“So now you’ve got Sasha back you don’t care?” Martin says, and she swivels her head to gawk at him, now. “Oh, sorry real Jon, we looked really hard for five minutes, but I've got my priorities sorted, good luck with the monster." 

“That’s not—” Tim’s glare makes Sasha’s mouth drop open. “I’m saying, we’re all going to get killed if we don’t get the hell out of here.” 

“And I’m saying you can’t just, just, just pick who you think is worth trying to help,” Martin whispers harshly. “Jon’s down here, the real Jon. You're fine with just walking away?” 

“Might be, she said—” 

“I said I’m not leaving him down here,” she says, voice strung tight. She should have known. She should have known, it’s been a year, and there’s more than one way to stop recognizing someone. Tim is looking at her in something almost frustration, and Martin is glaring at Tim, and Sasha— 

“What happened to you?” Now isn’t the time. She’s excruciatingly aware of that, that there’s a monster somewhere, and maybe Jon wandering the dark, but she can’t stand not asking. Can't stand the foreign expression on Tim's face, the blatant unhappiness in Martin's voice. 

They both stare at her, twin light beams aimed at her feet. 

“You died.” Tim says flatly, after several ticking seconds. Sasha steps back.  “Jane happened, and you died, and got replaced with that thing, and we didn’t even—we didn’t even notice. And then Jon lost his fucking mind, and then Martin and I got lost in some insanity hell maze, and then Elias turned out to be a psychic murderer who’s turning Jon into a literal monster, and then we thought the Circus was going to cause the apocalypse, and you—you’ve been gone.“

Tim’s voice is strained when he finally inhales, the sound a thick wheeze like his throat is full of tears. His eyes are dark and inscrutable. Martin is staring at the ground, face pinched.  

“You’ve been gone,” Tim says again, the words hoarse. “And I didn’t even know, and I still—I still don’t even know what I remember about you is true. ” 

Sasha exhales. 

“I’m.” She thinks it’s her imagination, the tunnels growing darker around them. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s not your fault,” Martin says quietly.

Sasha bites her lip. 

“That’s what Jon said,” she replies, looking at Tim. She swallows back an unnameable emotion, one she isn't strong enough to deal with right now. “He also said I didn’t deserve what happened to me, didn’t deserve to be...wherever we were. I’m...sorry, for what happened to you. But he doesn’t deserve it either.”

He's silent. Looking at her with another expression she can’t quite place that she thinks might be plain, unadorned sorrow. 

“We have to find him, Tim,” she says, hating how small her voice sounds in the engulfing dark. Hating that Tim isn’t...isn’t the same. Hating that she’d expected him to be. “Even if he’s not down here, he’s...lost. Like I was.”

Tim exhales, long and strained. 

“You’re not like I remember,” he says at last, holding out a tape recorder. His smile is small, and tired, and sad, and old. Sasha doesn’t say neither are you. “But that’s a good thing, I guess.” 

They retreat — Martin swears up and down he’d heard something, and Sasha is reasonably sure he’s a cautious personality? He’d survived worms attacking his flat, that much she can remember, so they hurry through the dark, straining to listen and shining their torches at every uncertain shadow.

“...so I thought that, you know, weird spooky monster logic doesn’t actually have to be logical,” Tim is murmuring, still gripping the tape recorder. “Elias went on about him—you too, I guess, being stuck somewhere without a ‘clear mind or self’, where—god, Sasha, you’re going to hate him, I think, literally all he does is evil monologues—” 

Martin snorts and Sasha almost smiles. 

“—but something about a known self, and I think...” Tim stops, gazing down at the tape recorder. Sasha squints, leaning in close to make out tall, rickety lettering on the tape through the clear plastic window. 

FOR ARCHIVAL ASSISTANTS. URGENT. 

“Jo—that thing was going to destroy all the tapes, and that makes me think I was on the right track. Evidence, you know? But not just for us, for...the real one.” 

“Reminders,” Sasha nods, frowning. “Recognition.” 

 Something is dancing at the edges of her mind, something stupidly obvious, something… 

I-know-you. The point of something—someone being known, is that someone knows them.

I-know-you.  

“Hang on.” Sasha draws up short, Martin nearly bumping into her. “So the tapes with Jon’s real voice and everything have been down here the whole time? ”

“They’ve been missing since this morning,” Martin supplies, glancing nervously into the dark just past her. “We’re...I’m pretty sure that’s how long he’s been replaced, too.” 

“Not like we’d know,” mutters Tim. 

“Any one of us could have noticed a different voice on the tapes,” Martin argues. “It, it makes sense for it to have happened at the same time. It had to have hid the evidence then, so we’d never know the difference.” 

“Fine, fine, I just—” 

“I don’t think it’s just about hiding evidence,” Sasha interrupts. She chews her lip for a moment, tapping the Leitner gingerly. “Jon and I, we figured, it’s...contextual. The unknowing, the forgetting. If no one knows who someone is, then they’re unknown.”

“Well, yeah.” Martin shrugs tensely. He’s still peering around in a way that makes Sasha acquiesce when Tim gestures to start walking again. “Isn’t, isn’t that the point? That we don’t, um, don’t know him?”  

A bit of skin from Sasha’s lip tears away as she gnaws at it, trying to arrange facts that should make sense into something tenable. 

“You...don’t know him.” Fact. “But there’s evidence of him that we can know.” Fact. “And you haven’t listened to it, so—” she stops again, shining her torch directly at Tim’s face, which he shies away from, squinting. She aims away, still wide-eyed. “You haven’t listened to it? Or seen the polaroids?” 

“Polaroids?” Martin says, whirling. Tim gives an unhappy one-shouldered shrug, digging in his back pocket again and offering two glinting squares that Martin takes with a sort of anxious reverence. 

“But that could mean—he said he thought they just weren’t working, that he couldn't see, or whatever he does,” Sasha says, trying to temper her mounting hope. “Maybe—maybe it’s because nobody heard them, or saw the polaroids. Nobody knew them, so nobody heard them.”  

“But I did listen to it,” Tim says sourly. He nods at Martin, who’s frowning at the polaroids with lips pulled thin. “I still—I still don’t recognize him. I still just remember that thing.”

Sasha frowns deeply. That's...

“Looking at a photo of someone you don’t know,” Jon had said. “It’s still a stranger, just a stranger you have pictures of.” 

“But what if you do know them,” Sasha murmurs to herself. She feels her eyes stretch, the words clicking into place. Tim doesn't know him. Fact. But she does. “Martin, give me the po—” 

Something shuffles in the dark. 

All three of them freeze. Sasha’s torchlight swivels to a passage on the right. 

“Tiiiiiim,” a voice calls, like a lullabye. If the lullabye wanted to eat you. “Tim, I can hear you. You and your friends. Or should I say my friends, once I find you.” 

All the blood is gone from Tim’s face, and Sasha can feel every inch of her body break out in cold sweat. 

“Lights,” Martin whispers. “Lights, we—” 

“Of course,” it laughs, braking, bladed. Sasha cannot move. She cannot move, hand frozen around the book and the torch even as Tim and Martin switch off their lights. “I’ll have to kill them. Or maybe, I’ll leave them alive? They say trauma can confuse memories. If one of them starts claiming you ever looked different, Tim, well that’s just the trauma of the other one being ripped to shreds in front of them, isn’t it?” 

“Sasha,” Martin hisses, gesturing frantically in the corner of her vision. But she can’t even twitch her hand. Can’t even move her eyes away from the circle of light, trained down the passage. Tunnel vision, a hysterical part of her laughs, because everything beyond her torchlight has gone a bit blurry, a bit muted.

“Tiiiim,” it croons. Someone else is speaking, whispering rapidly next to her. Sasha can’t hear past the nauseating ripple of its voice. “Tiiim, come on. It’s just me. It’s just Jon.” 

A hand touches Sasha’s wrist.

“Sash, we need to go,” Tim pants, coming into focus and looking right into her eyes. They’re wide and glossy with the glancing light of the torch. “There are rooms down here, we can—” 

“Alright, I lied,” the voice says. It’s definitely closer, and Sasha forces herself to take one step, another, matching Tim’s stride as he presses a hand to her elbow. “He's not fully dead. Sasha might be, good riddance. But the Archivist? Alive and unwell, and frankly quite distasteful. Do you want him back?” 

Martin makes a muted noise, half-pulling back, but Tim is still towing them both along, glancing over his shoulder wildly. 

“It’s lying, ” he spits. “That’s all it does.” 

“But what if it’s not,” Martin hisses back, pointing over his shoulder with the knife. “What if—” 

“All you have to do,” it crows in a chorded voice. “Is look me in the eye. That’s not so hard, is it? Trust me, I want him gone as much as you want him back, he is really not a very polite meal.” 

Sasha wants to reluctantly agree, you’re right, it’s absolutely lying in order to eat us but her mouth still isn’t quite working, still filled with ice. 

It’s not until Tim pulls the two of them to a gaping break in the wall, illuminated by Sasha’s shaking torchlight, that her muscles finally work again. 

Her hand twitches on the torch. Everything goes dark. 

“Tim, what about your memories?” The voice is soft now. Close. Sasha can hear her breathing, and nothing more.  “Don’t you want to remember the real Sasha? I can give them back, you know. Well, most of them. Can’t be blamed for eating to keep myself alive, now can I? What do you say, Tim?” 

There is a whisper of movement. A displacement of air, just outside the room Tim had pulled them into. Rough and ravenous breathing, and Sasha can just see the jaw lowering, and lowering, and lowering—

“What do you say,” the voice asks again. Close. Close. Far, far too close. Sasha is desperately grateful for the impenetrable dark. Every hair on her neck is on end as the voice calls from not steps away. “Don’t you want to remember dear old Sasha?” 

Every thought in Sasha’s brain is funneled down into keep still don’t breathe keep still don't make a noise. She couldn’t speak if she tried. A Leitner in her hands and a knife in her belt and if it figured out where they were, she wouldn’t be able to do shit to stop it. 

“I know you’re somewhere,” the voice grates. “Come out, come out, wherever you— nnhg.” 

Sasha's breath catches at the noise, a half-plucked choke like the breaking of a violin. 

“Oh, no you don’t,” the voice mutters in a seething tone after several raspy breaths. “Where—” 

It moves away, a shuffling beneath the heavy exhales that fades with distance. 

Sasha feels herself begin to breathe again, her heart slowly working its way back down her throat as she thaws. Two other quiet exhales break the silence, a quiet christ from where she estimates Martin is standing. 

But beneath her own breathing and her own perilous heartbeat, she hears something else. She doesn’t dare turn her torch back on, just listens. Strains to hear it, the flat, familiar timbre, statement begins—

Very faintly, speaking through the dark and threaded with the hush of a recorder, drifts the unmistakable voice of Jonathan Sims. 

I know you, Sasha squeezes her eyes shut. Maybe it’s enough. Please, please be enough.  I-know-you.

There is a Someone in a hallway. Someone is looking for a mirror. The air is heavy, and Someone wants...Someone needs to...

Someone has found the mirror—no, the mirror found Someone. All Someone has to do is step before it. All Someone has to do is look. 

Someone is stopped in the hallway, watching the mirror glint. Someone thinks it might have looked different, at some point. Less...whole. Someone can’t be sure. 

Just a quick look, Someone thinks—no, Someone has the thought, but Someone didn’t think it. The mirror is closer, though Someone can’t remember moving.  

Someone breathes. The air is impossibly heavy, and Someone might just collapse beneath it. Like Someone is moving through something congealed. Like tipping candlewax down Someone’s lungs. 

Just a quick look, the thought insists. Closer. Look. Look. Know. 

Unknow. 

Someone stops. That thought is...wrong. Somehow. A squirming thing behind Someone’s eyes protests the idea, protests the very word. 

But the mirror calls, and the air is so, so heavy. 

One more step. One more—

Jonathan Sims gasps, eyes burning, lungs squeezed tight as it feels like a spotlight shines on him. He staggers back from the mirror, clutching his head, but the feeling doesn’t lessen, the awful forced scrape of memories and identity and icecream preferences shoved into his brain like stuffing of a doll.

“Gck,” he chokes eloquently, looking all around. He knows this feeling, he knows — 

Someone is watching me someone is watching me someone is—

Not watching, he realizes after several burning seconds. Not seeing, even. 

Someone is knowing me, he thinks dizzily, struggling for breath. He hears the words in the voice of Sasha James. Someone knows me. And I am known.

Chapter Text

“Good to go?” 

Daisy shrugs tightly, focused on inspecting the torch mounted to the rifle across her chest and squinting in the dim light of Basira’s torch. 

“Be better if that bastard hadn’t taken my hunting knives, but yeah.” She locks the cartridge, switching on the mounted torch. “Let’s go.” 

Basira grips her own handgun tighter, grazing her torch up and down the echoing passage. There’s a distinct crunch underfoot, and she pointedly doesn't look down. She remembers what the tunnels had looked like, just after the worms. Melanie scowls, throwing a hand up and squinting as the light falls on her. The kitchen knife in her hand glints. 

“Can you not?” 

Basira doesn’t respond, pointedly not thinking about why she’s picking her next words. Why she trusts the answer, and knows it’s right. 

“Which way, Daisy?” 

Daisy scans the tunnel, each mouth stretching beyond what their torches illuminate.

“Left.” 

“How do you—” Melanie starts to protest, but Basira’s already shouldering past, taking the spot behind Daisy as she starts forward. 

“Let’s go.” 

It’s nothing like Maxwell Rayner’s dark. Here, the torches cut through it with faded edges, gray shadows illuminating rocks not caught directly in the beams. Here, the dread is of an entirely different flavor. 

“We should’ve just come down together,” Melanie hisses as they creep through the dark. “We’re never going to find them.”

“Martin should have just waited,” Basira retorts. “Bit convenient that the real Sasha James shows up out of nowhere in the middle of all this and tells us to come down here, where we know the Not-Them is. I don’t like this.” 

“That was the real Sasha,” Melanie snaps, striding to pull even with her. “I’m sure of it. ”

“Yeah. Like you were sure you knew Jon.” 

Melanie’s expression pulls back into a sneer, harsh in the glancing torchlight. Basira opens her mouth to apologize—that was a bit cold, she admits—just as Daisy halts before them with an upheld fist. 

“Listen.” Her head turns back and forth, a familiar motion. Basira holds her breath, shooting a look at Melanie. “Is that…” 

Basira strains to listen, turning to aim her light into the passage behind them. Nothing moves. Nothing calls from the shadows. 

“I don’t hear anything,” Melanie grumbles quietly. Basira eyes Daisy, still motionless except for the smooth scanning motions of her head. She turns, meeting Basira’s gaze. 

“Whispers,” she says. “Sure of it.” 

“Which way.” 

Daisy shrugs, pulling up the rifle and bearing it aloft, aimed ahead. Her hand makes a fist for a moment, and then a single flat-palmed jerk forward. 

“That pig-speak for ‘follow me’?” Melanie asks sardonically, and Basira can hear her rolling her eyes. “Chrissake, it's not a bloody Bond film.” 

Daisy doesn’t respond, still gazing down the barrel of her rifle as they advance. 

Time is funny in the tunnels. Funny, well. Irritatingly inconsistent. Basira keeps checking her watch, glaring at it when only seconds have passed for what feels like minutes. 

Finally, Daisy leads them to a sharp turn—the other way a sudden dead end, it looks—and they’re hit with a sudden overpowering smell. 

“Petrol.” Daisy’s voice is clipped. She lowers the rifle a touch, slinking forward with just the light trained through the shadows. “Here.” 

Basira almost jumps as they turn the corner, the sudden flash of reflected light doing no favors for her tight-strung heart. She breathes, passing her light over glinting chrome and stacks of cascading plastic. Tapes. 

“Well shit,” Melanie says, stepping around Daisy and approaching the pile. “This—this is all of them, isn’t it?” 

“There,” Daisy says suddenly. Basira follows her trained beam of light at their feet, and sucks in a breath. “Stoker’s, right?” 

Basira prods the crowbar with her toe, pursing her lips. That’s three victims in the Archives alone. Two of them on—well, not on her watch, but while she was there. When she could have done something.  

“Yeah, he had it with him. Shit,” Melanie says. She crouches, turning it over in her hands. “Maybe he—” 

“Maybe he nothing.” Daisy’s voice is hard. “Things like that don’t leave survivors. I should have put it down when I had the chance.”

“He could still be down here, Daisy,” Basira says evenly. She kneels down next to Melanie, taking up one of the tapes and flipping it over. “And in the meantime? Looks like we found Jonathan Sims. Give that here.” 

Melanie hands her a recorder, the plastic cracked but still holding. Basira purses her lips, squinting at the label of the tape.

#9961505 BREEKON

She doesn’t recognize the narrow script. That’s enough to clue her in.  

“Are you sure we should be—I mean.” Melanie watches her avidly as holsters her gun and slots the tape in, propping her torch to catch a gleam of plastic from the abused casing. “It’s...loud, right? Should we be being quiet?” 

“It’s fine.” Basira eyes Daisy. She’s skulking around the pile of tapes, a flicker of awareness at the edge of Basira’s vision that’s simultaneously calming and pricking up her nerves like a live wire. 

She turns her attention back to the tape. Breathes. 

Click.

For a moment there’s just a low hiss, and in that moment she catches Daisy’s eyes, focused and urgent. She goes still.

Something's—

“I know you’re somewhere,” a hideous voice bubbles faintly through the passage, and all three of them freeze. The tape is still running. “Come out, come out where—” 

“Statement of Alfred Breekon.” Basira grips the recorder to keep from dropping it, the flat, tired voice speaking over the sudden echo of a choke, far off in the tunnels. “Regarding a new pair of workers at his delivery company.” 

In the blink of an eye three of them are tense and in motion, Melanie swearing and snatching up her knife, Daisy’s rifle scanning back and forth urgently. Basira considers for barely a fraction of a second before leaving the recorder on the ground and unholstering her gun. 

“Daisy?” 

“That’s him,” Daisy grits out quietly, just as the voice reads out audio recording by  Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, statement—   “Real one.” 

“Turn it off ,” Melanie whisper-yells, aiming a kick at the recorder that sends it skittering into the container of petrol Basira eyes with interest. “Turn it—” 

“No. Keep it on.” Daisy is preternaturally still, rifle, torch, and gaze all fixed down one hungry-looking passage. “Whatever, or whoever is down here, we can draw them in. Melanie, stay back. Basira.” 

“We still don’t know if we can kill it, Daisy.” Basira positions herself at Daisy’s back—chances are Daisy is facing exactly where she needs to be, but that’s not the point. “Daisy.” 

“Trust me, Basira.” 

Basira exhales, steadying her gun. Fine. fine. 

“Um. That’s all well and good, but I didn’t sign up to be supernatural bait,” Melanie puts in. “I’m just here to get the three humans out so I can sleep at night, okay? So how about—” 

“Quiet. Listen.” 

Melanie does fall silent, with some low muttering. 

They wait there, listening to Jonathan Sims tell the story about a shipping company with a name that’s uncomfortably familiar. Meanwhile the voice, the “Jonathan Sims” is anything but. 

Basira presses her eyes closed for just a moment, focusing hard on the shape of the words, trying to latch onto anything even close to what might sound like someone she knows. She and Martin had been comparing what they’d called lapses, earlier, before Tim had shown up and then later, before “Sasha James”  had set foot into the Archive. 

“It was early evening,” the voice says. He sounds posh. Sounds tired. Sounds anxious, but that just might be Alfred Breekon speaking through him. She knows how statements are. “And the sun wasn’t shining through the window, but still their shadows fell across my desk, thick and dark as they loomed over me in the half-light.” 

Think. Think. 

Fine, she can’t remember him, but she can remember herself. 

You always said you thought he was funny, Daisy had said, and something in Basira goes still and furious at the idea it’s literally gone into her brain to change things. But that’s still a clue, because if she can’t remember actually thinking that, can’t remember telling Daisy that, but oddly enough she can remember fragments of a conversation, Daisy’s reply — Sure, if it turns out he’s not a cold-blooded murderer maybe you can invite him out to drinks with us, trade some spooky stories— 

She remembers that. She knows that. 

Basira tries to make a list in her brain of other knowns, gritting her teeth as the half-memories seem to slip from her grasp like the thoughts themselves are oiled. Think .

“I don’t know why this shook me so much,” Jon is saying on tape. The echo must be drifting past just their corner of the tunnels. “But it stopped me right in my tracks.” 

“So we’re really going to just sit here listening to creepy statements until the monster comes to eat us?” Melanie hisses after several more minutes. Jon’s voice is talking about strange-eyed delivery men saying strange things, about sunny June days and chilled, unnatural skin. “That’s the great plan that’s so much better than Sasha and Martin’s?” 

“Shh.” 

“Don’t shh me, it’s a legitimate question, we could have gone with th—” 

“I’m thinking.” 

Several more seconds pass. Probably seconds, Basira doesn’t dare lower her gun and check her watch. Daisy, at her back, is utterly silent. 

Then: 

“Now whose voice is that?” a jagged voice ripples out of the darkness, and Basira whirls so she’s shoulder to shoulder with Daisy. Melanie curses, readying the knife. “Not one I recognize, that’s for certain.” 

Daisy will wait, Basira knows. She’ll wait until she can see the thing’s eyes, until she can know its in her sights. 

“Is that you, Tim?” the voice echoes, underlined by even rhythm of the tape. “No, no, that can’t be right. You don’t know him.” It turns into a snarl. “You—you can’t, you pathetic little—hgksssst o p i t. ” 

The voice snarls, devolving into dissonant muttering. It’s closer than before. 

Daisy shoots a quick, low-browed look at Basira, who nods in understanding.

“Way we came,” Daisy says curtly, tossing her head. “New idea. Grab the petrol.” 

“Melanie, will you—” 

“Got it.” Melanie heaves it up, wrinkling her nose as drops of it spatter to the ground through a crack in the nozzle. 

“Stay close,” Basira orders, holstering her gun and snatching up the running tape. “Daisy?” 

“Got us covered.” 

They back up into the tunnel, Melanie cursing quietly at the trail of droplets of petrol and Basira wishing she’d brought a bag or something. She doesn’t like not having some sort of weapon in hand, and she doesn’t particularly want to have to defend herself with a torch and a tape recorder. 

“I couldn’t accept that something like this could just turn up, and casually destroy me without cause.” Jon says quietly as the skirt through the dark. Basira keeps her torch steady, noting the same little notch in the wall she’d spotted coming in. “If there was a reason why they picked me, I have never found out. I have asked—” 

Basira stops short, same time as Melanie. Daisy doesn’t quite bump into her, but backs up until their shoulders touch. 

“Did...um.” Melanie points her knife around. “Did you hear that?” 

“Could be the other two,” Daisy says. “Doesn’t matter, keep going. It’s still behind us, and I don’t know what it’s doing.” 

Melanie huffs, but Basira starts ahead, torch still trained up ahead. 

Which means her light is already in place when three figures swing around the corner. 

“Ah!” 

Melanie jumps back as Tim and Martin yelp in unison, swinging her knife wildly until Basira throws her arm out. 

“Christ, don’t do that,” Tim pants, bending in half to put his hands on his knees. “Sasha”, just next to him, puts a hand on his shoulder, wide eyes grazing over them until they fall on the recorder in Basira’s hand. 

“I don’t go home anymore,” Jon says between them. “I’m afraid of what might happen if—” 

“That’s it,” she breathes, almost too quiet for Basira to catch. “That’s—” 

“You came to help?” Martin says in a hopeful voice. “Because we—well Sasha thinks she has an idea.” 

“We came to kill the monster,” Daisy snarls, shoving past Melanie to jab a finger at the three of them. “ You three are in the way, and if you hadn’t run off like a bunch of toddlers, we— ” 

“Daisy,” Basira says. Daisy breaks off with a huff, though each of the three have expressions ranging from taken aback to outrage. “Right. It’s still down here, and we’re thinking we can burn it.” 

“Hang on. You know that’ll work, or I’m just carrying this around on a guess?” Melanie puts in, gesturing at the container. “I thought the whole issue was we didn’t know how to kill it.” 

“We can’t kill it.” “Sasha” steps forward, eyes still on the tape murmuring in Jon’s voice. “We—Jon’s still trapped, I don’t know—” 

“You don’t know what that will do to him, yeah, we get it,” Daisy breaks in, voice like steel. “Basira’s right. It’s awfully convenient you show up out of nowhere claiming to be James, and now you don’t want us to kill it. Who are you? What are you?” 

Tim stiffens, straightening. Sasha’s mouth goes thin, and Basira’s eyes, almost unconsciously, zero in on the book clutched in her hand. 

“Who—I’m Sasha fucking James, who the hell are you?” she snaps, a little too loud. “I just spent a year wandering around a bloody nightmare dimension trying to remember, so I’m pretty sure I know.”  

Basira almost steps between the two—that’s a Leitner, she’s sure of it, and Daisy has never been interested in de-escalation with people she thinks of as a threat. Tim, too, has an expression on his face that makes her think he’s going to do something stupid if Daisy takes another step forward. 

“Yeah?” Daisy sneers. “Well how do you explain—” 

“Guys, not to—well yes, to interrupt,” Martin breaks in before Basira can, voice high. “But is this really the best place to be having this conversation?” 

“Yeah, seconded?” Melanie says, already moving forward. “Let’s wait until we’re out of the monster tunnels to make unhelpful accusations, thank you.” 

Daisy and Sasha are still glaring at each other. Basira nudges Daisy, nodding at her rifle. 

“Take point. I’ll cover the back.” 

“Ha—hang on.” Sasha rounds on Basira now, Tim and Martin hovering behind her with twin unhappy expressions. “We’re not leaving.” 

“We are if we don’t all want to die,” she responds evenly. “That thing’s behind us somewhere. It sounds injured.  I think it’s moving slow, but we shouldn’t push our luck.”

Sasha’s eyes flick to the recorder, torch beam glancing off the plastic. 

“I am not sure how long this might continue for.” Jon’s is intoning somberly. “ Maybe years. Maybe forever. Whatever fight was in me at the beginning is gone. Occasionally—“

“Injured?” Sasha says carefully. “How—look, I have an idea of how to help him.” 

“Let me guess, it involves us somehow throwing ourselves at the mercy of the monster.” Daisy’s resetting the torch mount on her rifle, the upward beam casting unnerving angles across her face. “Save it. Blackwood’s right. We’ll escort you all out of here, then we’ll handle it.” 

“It’s—you’re the one who remembers him, aren’t you?” Sasha takes a visible breath, swinging her flashlight to face Daisy again. “It’s us. He’s unknown right now, because nobody knows him.”

The words tick against something in Basira’s brain. 

“Well. Yeah, that’s what unknown….means.” Melanie frowns, adjusting the petrol in her grip. “Isn’t that the point? Sasha?”

“She’s saying that if we do know him, he becomes known again.” Martin looks to Sasha. “Or. Sort of. Right?” 

“It’s—Daisy, right? You and I remember the real him.” 

Daisy’s lips purse as she shoulders her rifle. 

“Sure. And?” 

“And that means you're one of the two people on the planet who can actually do something to help right now,” Tim says shortly. “Then you can go murder the monster to your heart’s content. No due process required, since you like that sort of thing.” 

Daisy opens her mouth with an ugly expression, but Sasha cuts in. 

“Please. I—he—that place." she says, shuddering. "It’s not—it was eating him right in front of me. I don’t know how much longer he’ll last but if we—if the people who know him, if we have what parts of him that are known…”

She gestures at the tape.  

“I don’t know what was inside." The voice—Jon's voice—is steady. "I don’t know what is inside. It won’t be right.“ 

"We can focus on that," Sasha continues. "The parts that we know. The fact that we know them."

“So we just what, close our eyes and click our heels and wish real hard that Jon comes back?” Daisy laughs harshly, the sound echoing and Sasha’s expression goes icy. “We’ve wasted enough time. C’mon, let’s—”

“Daisy,” Basira interrupts, sending her torchbeam out behind them. "Wait. I think..." 

'Clarity of mind and self', Elias had mentioned. Not that she puts much stock into anything that comes out of his mouth but...but something there clicks. Basira doesn't know Jon. Jon is unknown to her. Sasha knows Jon. Jon is known to her. 

Basira knows the voice on the tape is Jon, but she doesn't know him. Sasha knows the voice is Jon, and she knows him. She knows him, and he is known. It's...weird logic, but it's logical. 

“The knowing, the unknown, it...actually makes a lot of sense," she says, catching Daisy's eyes. "Especially with what Elias said.” 

“Basira,” Daisy says impatiently. “We can’t just—” 

“Everybody shut up,” Melanie barks suddenly, shoving between them. She’s staring where Basira’s torch is grazing a sudden turn, just to the left. “I think I heard something.” 

The silence is jarring. 

Basira wordlessly motions them back as Daisy raises her rifle once more. She trades a look with her, nodding. First things first, get the civilians out. 

“Trapdoor’s that way,” she says, crouching to set the running tape against the wall. “Stay quiet, stay together, don’t look back. I’m right behind you, let’s go.” 

They all just look at her for a moment. Sasha’s eyebrow is twitching, and Basira almost sighs. 

“I’m not asking.” 

“We can’t— we’re not leaving,” Martin protests. His hands are visibly shaking around the torch and Daisy’s knife, but to his credit his voice is steady. ”We haven’t got Jon back yet, Sasha said she and Daisy need to—” 

“C om e ou t, co me o u t wh er ev e r y ou a re.” 

Melanie and Tim curse in unison, and every hair on Basira’s body stands on end. The voice is—it’s shredded into pieces, a thousand torn fragments piled on top of each other and grown teeth. 

“GO,” Basira shouts, shoving Sasha and Tim forward into Martin and Melanie, herding them until they all break into a run. She doesn’t look back. Doesn't imagine Daisy standing taut in the mouth of the tunnel, a monster barreling towards her. She'll be fine. She'll be fine. 

“T h e re y o u ar e! I see y— ” 

BANG.

Chapter Text

The gun had gone off with a deafening ricochet of sound because shocker, firing a gun in an enclosed tunnel leaves a bit of a ring in your ears. Martin tries to slow, tries to look back, but Basira is behind him with a face like stone and a surprisingly steely hand that pushes him forward. 

For a moment there’s just their panting, the scuff of feet, the echo of the bullet around them. 

“Did,” Melanie pants, skidding to a stop and ducking beneath Basira. The petrol container sloshes, the scent overpowering so near. “Did she get it?” 

“Doesn’t matter,” Basira says shortly. “We’re almost there. We—” 

That’s when the laughter starts. 

Martin’s heard his fair share of...frankly nightmarish noises in the past year or so. He’s certain he could identify the sound of worms squirming with no trouble, and Jane’s scream still comes to him in his nightmares sometimes. He even knows what it sounds like to hear a man get his skull caved in with a pipe, courtesy of Elias. 

But the laughter. But the laughter. 

It’s like someone took all the strings of a harp and twisted . Like its vocal chords are long, stringy, pieces of half-torn meat pulled too tight, and then made to sing. 

It vibrates the air, and next to him Sasha gives a full-body flinch. Tim looks like he’s going to be sick. 

BANG. 

BANG. 

“ N i ce tr y H un t er,” the voice warbles gleefully. “ Ar e yo u sc a r ed y e t? ” 

“Daisy,” Basira says helplessly, with more emotion in her voice than Martin’s ever heard. 

There’s a shout of fury, then Basira’s turned and is shoving them forward once more, face set. 

“Go. Trapdoor. Now.”  

“Basira, it’s not—” Melanie starts, eyes huge. “We can’t just—” 

“Go.” 

“But what about—” 

“GO.”

They go. 

The laughter follows them, underlaid by all of their panicked breathing as they stumble by the light of their torches. 

Finally, they turn a corner, and light is raining from a square in a ceiling. 

Tim reaches the ladder first, skidding to a stop and grabbing the bar to slow. His torch flashes wildly, and Martin has to squint  before he runs straight into Sasha. 

“Everybody up th—oh goddammit.”  

Martin spins, half-preparing to see something with too-long limbs emerging from the dark from behind Basira. But that’s just it. He doesn’t see Basira at all. 

“She—she must have gone back for Daisy, I—she doesn’t—” He half-steps back into the dark, but Tim grabs him. 

“They’ll be fine,” he says, though his face is bloodless. “We need to get out of here. Melanie, go, I’ll hand you the petrol.” 

Melanie scrambles up the ladder without complaint, and Tim waits til her hands are reaching down to place his torch and recorder on the floor and toss up the petrol. 

“Okay, now—” 

“Basira, get—” 

BANG. 

“Daisy, the torch!” 

A scream of laughter. A flurry of shouts. 

“Oh christ— ” Tim seizes Martin’s sleeve, gesturing wildly.  “Come on.”

Martin pulls back, trades a look with Sasha. 

“We can’t leave.” Her voice is low and shaking. “It can’t—it still has Jon.”

“Sasha I don’t—” Tim buries his face in his hands, scraping them down his face before meeting their eyes with a pleading expression. “We can’t help him if we’re dead!” 

“Are you coming or not! ” Melanie calls. There’s a scuffle from the top of the ladder. “Jesus, don’t—I’m getting the axe.” 

“Look, Tim, you—if you want to go, go!” Sasha says, shoving the Leitner at Martin and snatching up the tape recorder. She fiddles with it for a second, hands shaking. 

“Sash, I’m not saying—” 

Martin holds the Leitner away from his body, trying desperately to juggle the knife and torch without stabbing himself or touching too much of the book. 

“Um.” He eyes the gleaming spine. Sasha is muttering, finger pressed on the rewind. The tunnel has gone awfully, chillingly quiet. “Can we….can we just use this again? To, to trap it, like, like Leitner did?” 

Sasha doesn’t respond. The tape is hissing. 

“Sasha?” His voice is a lot higher than he’d like, but in all fairness he’s pretty sure they’re literally about to get eaten by a monster. “Not that I’m against what— whatever you’re doing, but there’s sort of, um—“ 

Click. 

It knows he knows. Well, maybe the better way to phrase that would be it knows he's known. 

That's the only real explanation Jon has—whether this place itself is alive, or whether whatever extension of the Not-Them controls it, it's aware he's Known. And it knows exactly what he plans to do with that information, because the mirror is gone. 

He can't be sure how long he paces back and forth the section of wall it had been calling him from, but he brushes away the air as it tries to settle over him. There's a thread, somewhere, running through him and keeping everything he Knows well-bound beneath his skin. 

He doesn't want to think about what might happen if the thread breaks. Doesn't want to think about what might happen if he can never find his way to the mirror. 

Jon walks, and is Known, and hopes that will be enough. 

“ —may be taking longer than I anticipated.” Sasha makes a triumphant noise. 

Martin goes still, heart pounding. 

 “And I’m...sorry.” The voice is gut-wrenchingly earnest. For a fraction of a second, it’s even familiar, but that's — that’s just because Basira’s tape earlier had been speaking in the same, tired voice. “But I figured out what I needed and there was….no reason not to make an immediate attempt.”

“Sasha what the hell are you doing,” Tim hisses, storming forward. “It’s going to hear—” 

“Ss t op it,” a hideously bladed voice vibrates the still air. “Sto p i t !” 

“Oh god,” Martin can’t help but squeak, backing up til his shoulder hits the ladder. It’s close. Way, way too close, and god, Basira, and even Daisy — 

“Sasha—”

“I see you.” Sasha is staring into the tunnel, tape recorder spinning in her grip. A tall shadow shifts at the very edge of her shaking torchlight. An unwound shape, shrouded in gray-scale. A low, chorded snarl. 

Tim looks frozen, arm half-outstretched. All Martin can do is watch as the shape skulks around the very edge of the light. A suggestion of a body. Something flickers near the top of the stringy shape, like a glint of metal. Or teeth. 

“I see you,” Sasha repeats, voice shaking. “I, I— know you.”  

“...and that’s not time I could waste.” Jon is saying. “Melanie likely wouldn't have cared, in all honesty, though I do recall she...remembered the original Sasha, and… Well. As for Tim, I was concerned he might have wanted to go himself, or not believed me when I said it was impossible for anyone without my connection to the Eye.” The laugh is quiet, barely there. Soft as grief. Martin's chest seizes. “The perks of sliding down the scale towards monstrosity, I guess.”

This isn’t a statement, Martin realizes in some very numb, distant part of his brain. This isn’t even a follow-up, or, or a random personal note. The towering shadow shifts closer, and Martin— 

“And Martin…”  

And Martin— 

“I know you,” Sasha says again. Her voice is thready, but it doesn’t fail. “I—” 

The Not-Them steps fully into the light and every thought flees his mind. Its body is long and gray as dust, spindly and knobby in all the wrong places, every joint moving on its own in a way that makes Martin want to puke.  

It stutters one step forward, impossible legs jerking. Then stops. It’s head, barely humanoid, swings from side to side, and that’s when Martin glimpses its eyes. 

They’re twin, empty, mirrors. 

“ I hope Martin never hears this tape,” Jon’s voice says in the silence of this strange, breathless standoff. “As I expect he won’t be pleased, by any of it.” 

Got that one right, Jon, Martin wants to laugh, though he expects it would come out hysterical. The creature has gone still, eyes reflecting Sasha’s torch. Martin doesn’t even dare breathe. Very faintly, he’s aware of movement behind him, hissing whispers, a soft percussive noise like something falling. 

“If he does, well...I’m sorry, Martin.”

The words reverberate in Martin’s skull, gaining an odd echo. A familiar twinge. 

I’m sorry Martin, we haven’t— I know we haven’t talked much since Sasha—

Jon turns a corner, his frustration growing with every step. If he can't find it, he can't—

The air shifts. Subtle, but noticeable, lurching away from him, and Jon pauses. 

He's not sure what inside of him tells him to turn and glance back the way he came. Whatever is keeping himself inside his own skin. But when he does, glaring from the far wall, he Sees the mirror. 

Martin gasps. The Not-Them flinches. 

Its mirror-eyes turn on him. 

“Um.” 

There’s an awful crack, a split along its face as its mouth begins to open. 

“Stay back, I—” he drops the Leitner in an attempt to wave the knife at it, glances at Sasha, who’s still pointing her torch as the thing’s jaw creaks wider. Her eyes are glued to it, wide but focused, but she’s not bloody moving. “Stay back!” 

“Oi!” There’s a sharp cry, a flurry of movement, and in the harsh torchlight Martin just glimpses Tim’s shirt, brilliant in the darkness, and a flash of metal— 

The thing screeches as the axe connects with its body. 

“TIM!” Martin and Sasha shout in unison, as he stumbles backward with empty hands. The axe head is embedded in its. Um. Torso? Chest? And it curls in on itself with a nauseating musical wheeze, long arm winding around the handle. 

It yanks the axe out and casts it to the ground. 

Tim spins, eyes dark with fear. 

“Go,” he breathes, then it turns into a shout. “Go go go go —” 

“Yo u c a n t ki ll me lik e tha t,” the thing is cackling, and Martin feels his arm being dragged backwards and he lets it because some instincts you just can’t fight. 

Sasha and Tim are nose to nose at the bottom of the ladder, shouting. 

“Ladder! Sasha! Go!” 

“We can’t—” 

“Please, just— Sasha go! ” Tim shouts, and Sasha’s expression is caught between fury and terror, but she goes. Martin goes next, scrambling up and over and oh god, this is that movie cliche where Tim’s the last one up and it grabs his leg at the last second— 

“Close it!” Tim shrieks as he scrambles out, and Melanie kicks down the door with a conclusive bang. 

They all stare at the door, flush with the wood around it.  

“But the point is,” Jon’s quiet voice is the only sound above their harsh breathing.  “I think she’s trapped, she’s alive, and I’m going to get her— ” 

“Okay,” Tim pants, turning. “So what—” 

The trapdoor begins to rise. 

Somewhere else, Jonathan Sims braces himself next to a mirror. 

“Okay,” he breathes to himself, wishing he had something, anything in his hands. Even a tape recorder would feel like a weapon. “Okay, okay, just…”

He steps before the mirror. He Looks. 

“Tim!” Sasha yelps, throwing herself on the rising door. Martin follows suit, bracing both knees on the edge of it as rapid pounding gives way to an inhuman laugh. 

“What the hell do we do?” Martin shrills, as the door buckles again. “We can’t—Basira and Daisy are still down there, we, we, we can’t just lock it.” 

“Here’s what we do,” Melanie says grimly, and heaves up the container of petrol.  “Open the door, we dump this on it.” 

“But—”

“Works for me.” Tim casts around, eyes wild. “Where—does anyone have a lighter?” 

“Jon has one.” Martin says automatically, and Tim whirls on him. 

“Oh really?” he bites. “Jon who’s trapped in fucking nightmare prison, or Jon the slenderman knock-off who’s trying to eat us? Which one?” 

“Fine, fine, sorry, jeez! Um. We don’t keep…” 

“Sources of ignition in the Archives,” Tim finishes with a growl, scrubbing his face. “God.” 

The trapdoor thunders a few more times, and Sasha swears. 

“Well we can’t just sit here forever,” Melanie argues, petrol sloshing. “You’re saying there’s not a single bloody matchbook in the building?” 

“We can’t kill it,” Sasha says firmly, eyes darting to the tape. It’s still speaking steadily, and Martin would hold it to his ear if he weren’t trying to keep all his weight on the seams of the door. 

“Sasha, hopefully, will be back before me, so...say hello, for me? The real me. ” 

“For the love of— please just shut that thing off,” Tim says, scrubbing his face. “Sasha, it’s literally going to kill us!” 

“Plus we don’t know he won’t be okay,” Melanie says carefully. 

“We don’t know he will,” Martin counters through gritted teeth. “I don’t—I don’t want—look, what if we trap it in the Leitner again, just until we figure something out?”   

“Do you have the Leitner?” Melanie asks. 

Martin very much wants to slap himself. Everyone’s looking at him. 

“Dropped it,” he admits, and everyone lets out sharp sighs. “Sorry, okay! I was a little preoccupied with the monster trying to eat us.“

“So we figure something else.” Sasha sets her jaw. “But killing it is out of the question. Not while Jon might die with it.”  

There’s an enormous concussive crack, and Martin shouts as the door beneath them buckles again. 

“We have to do something,” Tim barks. “Now!” 

“We can’t kill—” 

“Listen— why do you even give a damn?” Tim yells over the now-deafening pounding of the trapdoor. “You shouldn’t—you don’t know what he’s done! You don’t know what he’s become! He’s halfway to being a monster himself, he’s— he’s the reason we’re trapped here, he’s the reason—he got you killed!” 

“I’m not dead, Tim!” Sasha shouts back. 

Martin and Melanie make eye contact as the silence rings between them. The door’s gone quiet, one second to the next.

“No time like the present,” the tape is saying. Jon, is saying. “I hope...I hope this works, and....and I’m sorry. I’m so—” 

“He didn’t—he didn’t leave me in that place,” Sasha says, quiet, firm. She shifts her position on the trapdoor, but doesn’t break her gaze from Tim’s. “I’m not leaving him.” 

Jon’s voice murmurs out more apologies, and Martin can’t, he—

“Sasha, you were—you were doing something. To it,” he says desperately. There’s a noise beneath the trap door, something hideous and venomous muffled by wood. “It definitely—well, it didn’t like it. But it was like you said before, about—about you knowing the real Jon? If we know him, he’s known, and all that?”  

“I—” Sasha tears her eyes from Tim. “It’s—right. Right. Right, I—but it wasn’t enough, was it? The other—Daisy and I, we both heard his real voice, and we know him, and it didn’t do a thi—” 

There’s another pound on the trapdoor again, followed by scratching, and Martin curses, grabbing a box of files and dragging it to sit between him and Sasha. 

“So we have nothing.” Melanie shakes the petrol container again. “Martin, you said it earlier. If we kill the monster, maybe he’ll be set free anyway, and also we don’t die, so there’s that.” 

“And maybe—” 

“The polaroids.” Tim says suddenly. “Martin, the polaroids.” His voice, subdued, just overlaps with Jon’s soft, “End recording.” Martin just stops himself from reaching for the tape, instead reaching in his pocket and retrieving the pictures. 

Sasha snatches them with one hand, the other still braced on the door with her knee. She frowns down at them. Martin watches her mouth the words I know you, and something in his chest clenches. 

The trapdoor goes still. 

Jon Looks. He Looks. He Sees...there’s a flicker of something. Not movement, it’s...

It’s his own reflection. Not a hungry one, not a false one, just...him. 

Self-recognition , he thinks. Reminders, Sasha’s voice says.  

“I..know you,” he speaks to the mirror. To himself, almost. He catches his own eye, and for a moment the dark brown almost seems to expand inwards. The taste of metal steals over his tongue. “I know you. I know you.” 

He raises his bleeding hand, making a fist. His mirror image copies him, and he’s so focused on where he’ll bring it down on the glass that he doesn’t notice the grey, willowy silhouette standing behind his reflection until it cranes itself from the mirror and opens its mouth and— 

And stops. Jon stares at it. He Stares. The air is pulling at him, but it’s weak, now. Something too tightly bound inside of him resists, his veins securely threaded beneath his skin with whatever eyes or Eyes have him in their sights. 

It's obvious, what comes next. 

“Martin,” Sasha says suddenly. “Don’t think, just answer. How does Jon take his tea?” 

“Three su…” Something slips away, but Martin holds his breath. Black, that’s the answer, but aloud he’d heard himself start to say something else.

Sasha is staring at him. 

“Three sugars?” she prompts. 

“I...I guess,” he says faintly. “Do—wait, how did that—how did that work? Ask me another.” 

“Favorite icecream?” 

“Rum—” Tim answers flatly, cutting himself off at the sound of another scratch at the trapdoor and furrowing his brow. “Wait. No, it’s...” 

“Rum raisin,” Sasha nods, biting her lip. “That’s—it’s there, the knowing, I think—he must be trying on his end, right? Things can’t be known without knowing them.”

“Uh, sure.” Melanie scuffs the edge of the door. “So what, the monster’s leaking random personal details? Does that actually help us?” 

“It was sort of like this before, little lapses,” Martin says. He hesitates for just a second before clicking the rewind on the tape.  “Elias said it’s because he’s the Archivist, but they went away for a bit, but I don’t…there’s just—it feels like it’s buried, you know? 

There’s a long, hideous scrape at the trapdoor. Martin shifts, reaching for that heaviness in his chest, for that recollection of a smile that doesn’t exist anymore.

Soft as grief. A memory of a feeling.  

“This is—I don't know, Sasha,” Martin squeezes his eyes shut. “There are a million more things I feel like I should know that I just—I just—” 

“Don’t—don’t focus on the unfamiliarities,” Sasha says a little desperately. “There’s too many. There's always going to be too much you don't know, just—it’s Jon, think of what you know—” 

“Statement of the creature known as the Not-Them.” Jon begins through gritted teeth, as the mirror-eyes reflect his own. "Regarding the suffering and pain it has caused far, far, too many people."

 Now the air is recoiling from him, a frantic rush away, the face-he-does-not-know makes a noise like a smashed piano and Jon tastes steel as he lets the words cut through the fleeing weight of stolen Knowns and hungry Unknown. 

“Statement begins.” 

They hang in the air for a single heartbeat, hissing and alive. 

Then the mirror cracks. 

And the world cracks with it. 

Chapter Text

It’s like a blow to the skull. 

For a moment Tim just reels, the sound of shattering glass resonating somewhere deeper than the muffled-but-unmistakable echo through the trapdoor. 

Something cracks, and something else swarms in. 

He stumbles back, catching himself on the shelving. Distantly he perceives Melanie dropping the petrol with a splash and, Martin and Sasha clutching their heads. 

For a moment, Tim can’t breathe for the weight of the air, whatever is spilling in through the fracture in the back of his skull. And then— 

Sasha catches his eye. Sasha catches his eyes. 

“Sasha,” he says, lips numb. Something cold and sharp, buried deep in his stomach, loosens. Thaws. “Sasha.” 

“You—” Her mouth moves soundlessly, but Tim knows what she’s asking. 

“Yeah,” he chokes, sinking down to where she’s still braced over the trapdoor. It’s gone silent, but honestly, even if the monster were actively climbing out of it he wouldn’t be able to tear his eyes from the face he can’t believe he’d ever forgotten. “Yeah, I do, I— god, I missed you.”  

She gapes at him, grabbing one of his shoulders and staring between the three of them. 

“Did—do all of you—”  

He catches Martin’s hand flying to his mouth, Melanie frowning down at the trapdoor with a furrowed brow. 

“Sasha,” Martin says, voice high and muffled. “Oh god, I—you, you—I remember—”    

Sasha beams, eyes bright and watery and so goddamned familiar Tim kind of wants to cry. 

“Hang on,” Melanie cuts in. “Just like that? Does that mean it’s dead?”

Four pairs of eyes fall on the trapdoor. It’s conspicuously silent. 

“I heard something ,” Sasha says intently. “But I don’t—would remembering have killed it? Or was it the other way around?” 

She’s still gripping Tim’s shoulder. It’s a single point of contact, but it’s like her hand has cut a hole through him, a place where the cold finally has a place to escape. Very, very carefully—he’s never been careful like this before, it’s always casual and familiar with them, he knows that—he reaches up and places his hand on hers. 

Her skin is dappled with bandages and caked with streaks of blood. But it’s warm. It’s warm, he knows, because Sasha always runs warm. Always has.

“But, but, but how would that even work? We didn’t do anything, we can’t have just killed it with,” Martin waves a hand wildly, though he’s still staring at Sasha with wide eyes. “I mean—”

“Unless we didn’t kill it,” Tim says thickly, trying to force his brain to work despite the cloying, breathless relief that’s settling over him. God, he’s tired. “Murdercop’s still down there, I reckon she…” 

He trails off, throat closing up at the little x-shaped furrow between Sasha’s eyes he never thought he’d see again. Or at least, the one he didn’t know he might not never see again. 

They’re all silent for a beat. The trapdoor makes no motion to interrupt. 

“We’ll, we can’t just sit here,” Melanie says, prodding the file box on the door with her toe. “I still vote we pour petrol down the hatch. If it’s dead, worse thing that happens is we burn its body.” 

“Still no lighter,” Tim says absently, though he climbs to his feet, helping Sasha to hers and barely stopping himself from catching her hand as they stand. He needn’t have worried, though, because she grabs his, and well, if he breaks a finger from Sasha James’ holding his hand, it was a worthy cause. “It could just be waiting for us down there. And after all this I’m not dealing with Jon throwing a hissy fit when we end up accidentally burning down the Archives.” 

“Would burning it down really be so bad?” Melanie grumbles. “Not like anyone but him or Elias would even—” 

Martin makes a choked noise at the same time Tim realizes what he’s said. Melanie’s eyebrows shoot up, dropping her foot from the file box. 

“Wait,” Sasha says breathlessly, “Wait, do you—you remember Jon?” 

Tim scrambles for the polaroids. Martin is babbling something, but Tim pays no mind, staring at the photos.

Jon is...an asshole. And a shitty boss. And he hates spiders, and used to pretend to dislike Tim’s jokes, and is over-particular about filing, and pedantic about the most ridiculous things, and so agonizingly contrite sometimes it makes Tim nauseous— 

The face in the photo is one he knows. 

“ —down there, isn’t he?” Martin is insisting, voice high. Tim can’t take his eyes from the photo. His brain feels slow. “He can’t—we, we, remember him, he can’t be—if, if it’s dead, what if— ” 

“We don’t know anything for sure,” Melanie says, but her expression is uneasy. “Maybe he’s just in the tunnels, or something.” 

“Then we still have to check!”  

Melanie’s expression is thin and frustrated. 

“Tim’s right though, it could just be waiting for us.” 

“Melanie,” Sasha says. “Please. We have to at least see.”

Melanie’s frown deepens, but she throws up her hands. 

“Fine! Jesus, fine. Hand me that knife.” 

Martin passes her the hunting knife, the only weapon they have left aside from flickering torches and loose papers. 

“Martin,” Sasha says, and Martin nods, starting to move. Tim holds his breath as Martin shifts himself completely off the door, but it stays flat. 

“We’re really doing this?” Tim asks, but there’s no fight left in his tone. Sasha’s hand is still clutching his, and now he can...actually believe she isn’t dead. Resurrection in name isn’t the same as resurrection in memory, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Jon is dead. If he never even got a chance to thank him. 

“Fine,” he says, nodding at Melanie. “I’ll lift it quick. Ready?” 

He rips open the door at the same time Melanie draws back her arm, at the same time Sasha and Martin lean forward over the gap. 

Tim lets out a breath. 

There’s no monster. No reaching grey limbs, no torn-open mouth. Just an empty ladder and an emptier drop down to the stone floor that they all peer into with equal trepidation. 

“Oh, god.” 

Tim can’t be sure which one of them said it. It might have even been him. But probably not because his throat is suddenly constricting. Sasha’s hand jerks in his, and he prays she doesn’t let go because she’s the only thing keeping the ice from stealing through his veins. 

There’s a body at the bottom of the ladder. 

“Alright?” 

“Yeah.” 

Basira is limping, still, and the part of her that’s ashamed at the fact is at war with the part of her that’s ferociously proud that the limp comes from stopping that thing taking Daisy’s arm off. 

“That was stupid,” Daisy mutters after a minute. “You could have died.” 

“Yeah,” Basira agrees. “But I didn’t. Neither did you.”

Daisy snorts, adjusting Basira’s arm around her shoulder and looking down at her with eyes that glint in their flickering torchlight.

“No. Guess we didn’t.”

An understood thanks hangs in the air. It doesn’t need to be said. Never does. 

They hobble in silence for a minute, quiet as can be. Her leg hurts like hell— not a break, but probably a huge bone-deep bruise from where it’d struck out at her. She got off easy, really. 

“Think it’s still down here?” Basira murmurs, as they pause at a corner. “Earlier, that sounded like—”

“It’s not.” Daisy’s voice is calm as ever. She’s telling the truth, empirically as she knows it. Basira does not argue. 

“I felt something,” she says instead. “With the noise. Thought it was a headrush, but it felt...” 

Daisy turns her eyes on her again, expression sparking with sudden intensity. 

“It hurt?” 

“No.” Basira considers. “No, it didn’t. It felt...I dunno.” 

Daisy eyes her, but says nothing else. 

“How far out are we?” Basira asks after several more minutes of pained quiet. She hadn’t particularly liked the dark before Rayner. She likes it less now, even with Daisy at her side. “Felt like we were closer than this.” 

Daisy makes a face in the corner of her vision that means she wants to shrug, but doesn’t. Basira is grateful, her arm already sore from being slung around her shoulders. 

“Time moves different down here,” she responds, as they round the corner. “Running makes it worse.” 

“Damned space time continuum, I guess.” 

Daisy snorts again, softer. They continue. Basira strains to listen. 

After a moment, she asks, “Do you think Jon’s dead.” It comes out flat, divorced from the sudden catch in her chest. Daisy thinks Jon is a monster, Basira knows.  Thinks he’s just on the verge of something not even Basira can talk her out of killing. She might not even be wrong. But Basira can’t help but like someone so...like herself. And she had seen him, in the forest, and there’s nothing more human than that kind of abject terror that had been in his eyes when— 

She pulls to a halt, and Daisy obliges immediately.

“Basira?” 

“I think...” she says wonderingly. Combs through her brain, reviewing every interaction, every passed word between them.  “I remember him. The real Jon. I..yeah, yeah I do.” 

“Just like that?” Daisy sounds skeptical. 

“I guess.” Basira furrows her brow, glancing up and down the tunnel. “Matches your description. I don’t...huh. It’s like I never even forgot. Can’t even remember what the fake Jon looked like. ”

“I...neither can I.” 

She can feel Daisy looking at her, can feel the wariness radiating off of her.

“It’s fine,” Basira says, jostling to make them move again. “I’m fine. Let’s just...get back to the Archives. Whatever happened we’ll figure it out. I think I hear them.” 

Daisy makes no reply. But her grip around Basira tightens, and Basira pulls herself closer in turn. 

They continue on through the dark, towards the growing sound of echoing voices. 

There’s glass in Jon’s hair. 

It’s a bit weird, maybe to fixate on that—little sparkling edges that shift in the yellow light pouring down on him, harmless and oddly beautiful. 

Not anything like the huge, ugly shards sticking out of his knuckles and palm, the beads nested up his forearm speckled with blood. 

“J—Jon?” Martin’s voice comes out as a whisper, then a shout as he takes in the familiar form. “Jon!”

Jon, crumpled face down, doesn’t move. Mirror shards are scattered in an estimation of a circle surrounding him. Like a glass meteor had hit, refuse scattering, and left him in its crater.

Martin can’t breathe. He remembers—he remembers everything, the cot, the quiet, the steady murmur through the walls, the way the steam had curled up from the mug Jon held in his hands, he remembers, but what’s the point of remembering if Jon isn’t— 

“Screw this,” Sasha says furiously, shoving past him and crouching to the ladder. She pauses there, hair casting a haloed shadow below as she shouts down. “Jon, you bastard, you had better not be dead after all thi—”  

Jon stirs. 

“Well, would you look at that,” Melanie says, but there’s no bite to it. Martin ignores her, scrambling down the ladder after Sasha. 

By the time Martin’s feet hit the tunnel floor, Jon is turning on his side, glass-riddled hair obscuring his face. Martin and Sasha freeze simultaneously, trading a look of quiet, helpless uncertainty as they stand at the edge of the ring of broken mirror.

  Do you really know it’s him?  

Then Jon’s hand lands on a protruding piece of glass and he jolts upright with a sharp hiss. 

“Ow.” 

Martin laughs, bright and loud and just a touch hysterical, and Jon freezes. He lifts his hand against the light, bloodied and littered with cuts. Dark eyes squint at them, and though Martin’s stomach clenches at the sight of blood swathed across half his face, the gaze is wide and aware. Glass trickles from his hair. 

“Is—w,what, I— Martin?” 

“Jon,” he says helplessly, sending glass scattering as he hurries over. He crouches, hands hovering over him and trying not to look at the glass embedded in his arms or the blood pouring freely from his palm. “You’re—christ, you absolute—” He ends up grabbing his shoulders, the only place mostly free of glass. “Never do that again!” 

“Right, I—of course,” Jon says, sounding bewildered. His eyes dart around past him, squinting into the tunnel until his eyes focus just over his shoulder and go wide. “I— Sasha.”  

“Hi Jon,” Sasha says with a weak laugh, crouching on his other side. “Didn’t think you’d get rid of me that easily, did you?” 

“It, it worked,” he breathes, and begins to struggle up. Martin and Sasha move at the same time, each carefully grabbing an arm and pulling him to his feet. He staggers a bit into Martin, and well, if near-existential-death isn’t a good reason for securing a maybe-more-than-just-supporting arm around Jon’s shoulders, Jon doesn’t protest it. 

“Is,” Jon pants, glancing up at Martin. There is a lot of blood on his face, mostly half-dried, like he’d smeared it with his dripping hand. Martin shoves down any automatic panic at the sight to focus on Jon’s voice, his real voice. “Everyone’s okay? Where’s—” 

“Thought I heard something shatter.” Melanie drops down next to the ladder, kicking at some of the glass and fixing Jon with a hard gaze. “So you’re him, then?” 

Jon looks like he’s been struck. Sasha sucks in a sharp breath, and Martin gapes at Melanie. 

“You don’t—you don’t remember—” 

“Kidding, Jesus,” Melanie says quickly, throwing her hands up. “Sorry, that—bad taste. Honestly can’t believe I ever forgot what a—” 

“Welcome back, boss.” 

Tim steps off the ladder just behind Melanie. Martin eyes him critically for a moment, feeling Jon go still. But Tim just sounds...extraordinarily tired. 

“Tim, you’re—good. Good, everyone... ” Jon purses his lips, eyes darting between them.  “Where’s Basira? A,a,and Daisy?” 

“We...” Tim hesitates, and Martin’s stomach turns over. He doesn’t even try to peer into the darkness surrounding them, doesn’t want to think about what might be there, now. “We don’t know.” 

There’s a beat of echoing silence, where Martin imagines he can hear a soft burr of voices from the dark. Then Melanie pipes up. 

“We could look? If we’re sure it’s dead.” She prods a larger piece of glass with her boot. “This...it is dead, right?” 

“Yes, it’s...des—it’s dead,” Jon says, staring at the glass with furrowed brow.  “Destroyed.”

There’s a short beat. Jon doesn’t elaborate, just grimaces at his hand, the deep and ugly gash there that sets off  hospital-hospital-hospital bells in Martin's brain. 

“How?” Sasha asks, and how she’s not too tired for curiosity at this point, Martin has no clue. Enough with the questions, he just wants to go home knowing his memories are his own. He subtly tries to tug Jon towards the ladder without jostling him too much. Sasha continues. “We all felt, well, something. It just...broke? Just like that?” 

“I don’t think a thing like that is supposed to be...known, not really,” Jon says slowly. Martin pauses at the words, a little uncertain. Jon is staring off into the dark, now, and the faint yellow light from the Archive is casting the blood-scraped hollows of his eyes in curving shadow. “I tried to take its statement. It...I don’t think it was capable of giving one, it, it couldn’t handle the scrutiny. So it...cracked.” 

Another beat. Tim’s expression is doing something Martin doesn’t want to quantify. Sasha is frowning, questions written on her face. 

Melanie, however, just snorts. 

“Yeah, if I had to give you another statement I’d probably shatter myself into a million pieces too,” she says, kicking at one of the glass shards with a vengeance. “Proper reaction, if you ask me.” 

Jon seems to shake himself at that, and offers her a very weak smile.

“Yes, well.. At, at, least it can’t hurt us, anymore.”

“Well in any case, tunnels should be clear to send out a, a, search party,” Martin says quickly, hoping to head off interrogations or insinuations from Tim about whatever, whatever that means about Jon. As far as Martin is concerned, the monster is dead and that’s a good thing—he is not about to be spooked by Jon, let alone Jon who's barely standing on his own two feet, if how heavily he's leaning into Martin is anything to go by. “I mean. We can’t exactly call the police for Daisy, but we could get some torches, or…” 

“No need.” 

All five of them jump at the voice, punctuated by the flicker of a torch that flares and dies as Daisy and Basira hobble out of the dark. 

“Sorry,” Basira grunts, limping to a stop. Daisy surveys them all, and Martin glares back—yes, he can be happy she’s not dead and still dislike her and the way she looks at all of them, like she’s figuring out how to best to kill them. Basira at least looks relieved.  “Didn’t mean to startle—Jon? ” 

“Basira,” Jon says with a sigh. “Daisy. You’re okay.” 

“Yeah,” Basira nods, taking in the tableau of them standing around in a ring of shattered glass. “Yeah, looks like we are. What happened?” 

“Jon talked the monster to death,” Melanie says easily, gesturing at the glass. “You...alright?” 

“Fine.” Basira nods, though “So, none of us are dead.”

“Except the Not-Them.” 

“Yeah Jon, obviously except the Not-Them.” Basira says, and Martin swears her mouth twitches up at the edge. “But we’re all...everyone’s okay, and none of our memories are being messed with.” 

“Looks that way,” Tim says tiredly. His gaze keeps flicking to Sasha. Sasha's catches on Tim in the moments he isn't looking.  “Not to break up our happy tunnel reunion, but what now?” 

There's a long pause, and Martin is about to say well how about we first get out of the creepy death-scene of the monster that tried to kill us, but Jon beats him to it with a sigh. 

“It’s been a...very long day” Jon says, and Melanie and Sasha snort simultaneously. Even Tim's mouth quirks up. Every movement Jon makes he puts a touch more of his weight into Martin's arm, and something in Martin's chest—something he recognizes, and knows, and knows—is growing light as a balloon. “And there’s still— there’s a lot, I need to tell you all. But not...I think now, we all very much deserve to go home and sleep. Preferably for a very, very long time.”

And that is...possibly the most wonderful sentence Martin has ever heard leave Jon's mouth. He doesn't say that, though, doesn't pay mind to the murmurings around them, fragmented conversations, assurances, questions. Just nods back at Sasha when she makes to let go of Jon, just ignores the crunch of glass underfoot as he helps Jon stagger to the ladder. The yellow light from above is still pouring down on them, dusty and warm as Martin squints up at it.

Jon finally breaks from his arm when he reaches the ladder, tossing one look back at them. It's a familiar expression, the line between his brows, eyes clearly counting each one of them before he offers Martin a barely-there flick of his mouth. Something in Martin hurts and calms in equal measure. And then Jon turns, glimmers of jagged gold still nested in his dark hair, and climbs upwards toward the tired, leaking light of Archives.

Martin takes one deep breath, and follows. 

Chapter Text

They don’t go home. Of course they don’t, not immediately. Jon knows that the idea he could have just swanned out of the Archives and made it to his new flat and his comfortable bed was a pipe dream, at best.

As it is, almost the second they’ve all clambered into the main office, there’s a quiet creak and the scrape of wood.

Elias stands in the doorway to the Archives. 

“Knock knock,” he says pleasantly. “Hope I’m not interrupting.” 

There’s a muffled chorus of sighs and muttering. Jon tries his level best not to completely sag into Martin, who’s miraculously and wordlessly replaced the arm behind him once he’d gotten up the ladder and nearly tripped into a shelf. He’s too tired for this, after everything. 

“What do you want, Elias,” Jon sighs, storing away the remarkably creative obscenity Melanie had just muttered for later use. 

“Jon.” Elias nods, a polite smile pasted on his face. “And Ms. James. Welcome back.” 

“Get out,” Tim snaps. He’s white-faced and shaking, and Jon catches Sasha’s eyes stretch. “Get. Out.” 

“Mr. Stoker,” Elias says mildly. “Need I remind you I own the building, and can go where I like. Now. Jon, I was going to ask you to come up to my office before you leave, if you will. I’d like to discuss—” 

“Shut up!” Tim yells, and Jon starts, nearly elbowing Martin. “You don’t get to discuss anything after everything you lied about, you—” 

“That’s quite enough, Tim,” Elias says loudly, eyes falling on Sasha. “Surely you wouldn’t want Sasha to get a false impression of the kind of person you’ve become in her absence.” 

Tim’s mouth clicks shut. 

“In any case,” Elias continues, looking unperturbed. “Jon, I’ll see you in my office before you go, but the rest of you—” 

Elias moves quicker than Jon would expect, and the door pulls shut just as the torch collides with it and clatters to the floor. 

“And stay out,” Melanie mutters, dusting her hands off. She turns back to them, expression grim. She reaches for her bag, shouldering it. “Should have thrown a knife, honestly.”  

Jon can’t quite disagree. After everything he’d learned about the failure of the rituals, the first thing he’d wanted to do was march up to Elias’s office and wring the truth out of him—if he’d known this whole time — 

Jon is startled by Martin taking his hand. For a moment he just stares dumbly, registering the fact that yes, he’s lifting it, holding it as carefully as...Jon can’t think of a proper metaphor, but he’s about to open his mouth just to see what comes out when Martin squints at it. 

“I...don’t think this needs stitches?” he says finally, and Jon’s lungs deflate completely because right it’s bleeding from the nightmare mirror. It’s honestly a far more plausible reason than any he could think up at this point, and he just nods mutely, weirdly disappointed. “Here, sit down.” 

Jon sits, as the others begin to move around them. Sasha still looks shaken, watching Tim as he scrubs his face and vanishes down the hall to the washroom. Melanie is texting—god, he doesn’t even know what time it is—and Basira and Daisy are having a murmured conversation, drifting closer and closer to the door. 

“I’ll be right, right back,” Martin promises, eyes darting all over Jon’s blood-streaked forearms. Jon himself has been trying to avoid looking at them, the stomach-turning sight of glass literally embedded in him a bit too much to bear right now. He just numbly watches Martin hurry towards the breakroom. 

Sasha sits down next to him, pulling her chair close. 

“This is weird,” she says without preamble. “I—I knew it had been a year. But this—it’s not like I thought it would be.” 

Jon picks through all the possible things he could say to her. All of the explanations he could give. She’s curious, he knows, ravenously curious to know how and why they arrived...here. He could start explaining it all right now. The Fears. The avatars. Himself, his own...Becoming. He could make it a damn statement. 

Jon opens his mouth. Somewhere in the room, a tape clicks to life. 

“I’m sorry, Sasha.” 

She glances at him, and Jon finds himself wondering just how blurry he is. She’d worn glasses, he knows, but he didn’t exactly know her prescription. 

“Stop apologizing,” she says blandly, picking at some of the bandages lining her own arms. “I’m here, aren’t I? Your plan worked. Even if it was a bit...” 

He narrows his eyes at her, daring her to pick an adjective. 

“Impulsive,” she settles on, grinning at his expression. “Come on, not judging here. Like I said, it worked, didn’t it?” 

“Barely,” he mutters. His hand is still sluggishly bleeding, and he sort of wishes he’d picked a different jumper to ruin. He wipes his palm mournfully on the front. When he looks up, Basira is standing before him. Melanie and Daisy are lurking at the door, exchanging words he can't make out.  “Heading out?” 

“Yeah.” Basira’s eyes tick over them, and she nods to herself. “We’ll figure things out...later. Whatever you wanted to tell us. Take care of yourself, Jon.” She considers, glancing towards the breakroom. “Or just sit there looking beat up for five more seconds, I’m sure someone will be along.” 

“I—What?” 

Basira doesn’t answer, just smirks and turns for the door. Daisy nods briefly, before following her, duffel in hand. Melanie salutes sarcastically.

“Don’t get eaten by any more monsters, Jon,” she calls over her shoulder. “Georgie’ll be pissed.”  

With a creak and scrape, they’re gone. 

It’s not lost on Jon, that it’s just the four of them in the Archives, now. The Head Archivist and his assistants. The beginning of it all. Before it all went wrong. 

After several seconds of tired silence, Sasha leans her head on his shoulder. It cannot be comfortable, considering how tall she is, but she doesn’t mention it. 

“I’m going to have to find a new flat, aren’t I,” she says. He can’t quite identify her tone—mournful, or teasing, or pensive. “I liked my flat.” 

He hums in sympathy, eyes on the breakroom. Martin is still clattering around inside. 

“Can’t believe Elias is evil.” 

He snorts, wiping his eyes with his burned hand instead of his bloody one. 

“Yes, that was...a rather uncomfortable discovery.” 

“Martin mentioned a pipe?” 

“Ah. hm. Yes.” Jon sighs. And a gun, he thinks, but he doesn’t think he’s up for that explanation. “Don’t...go to any secluded locations with him.” 

“No graveyards?” 

Jon almost smiles. God, that was when things had been simple. 

“No graveyards.” 

They sit there in silence, Jon’s eyes still on the breakroom. There’s water hissing from the tap.  

“Tim is….different. He seems...” Sasha’s voice goes quiet. Not a tone he’s used to hearing from her. It’s a relief to know that he’s used to anything at all. “He’s not okay, is he?” 

I’m sorry, Jon almost says. He swallows the words back.

“No.” He idly prods the leaking flesh of his palm, holding back a hiss. “No, he’s not.” 

He lets his gaze wander to the hall to the washroom. If he were a braver man he might go talk to Tim, go make sure he’s alright. If he were a stronger man, he might have done that long, long, before...before this. 

But Jon’s a coward, and the cuts are really starting to hurt, and he doesn’t want to think about whatever Tim has to say to him that he immediately bolted from the room. 

“Alright, got, got everything we should need,” Martin’s voice is a welcome distraction. He hustles across the room, carrying a remarkably sized first-aid kit and plopping it on the desk. “Sasha, I didn’t miss any glass for you, did I?” 

“Think you got all of them earlier,” she says, sitting up. “No corkscrew necessary for these.” 

Martin’s smile is brief, but genuine. Jon’s chest clenches for no definable reason. 

“I still have it, you know,” Martin says, pulling up a chair next to Jon. “Well. I have a few, but that one is still in my desk. I know she’s dead, but—” 

“Jane?” Sasha asks. “Gone for good, then?” 

There’s a pause, Martin stilling with the tweezers as they both realize she’d never even heard the end of the worm attack.  

“Quite,” Jon says, clearing his throat. “Her ashes are in my desk, if you’d care for proof.” 

“Yeah, you’re welcome for that,” Martin chuckles, taking Jon’s wrist. “God, we’re going to have to tell her about the evil clowns, too, aren’t we? Oh, god, and the Eye, and the Unknowing— ” 

“Please, not—” Jon interrupts abruptly. He dislikes the waver in his tone, but can do nothing to fix it. “Martin, can we— can we please just...not, do this now? It’s just, just one moment, to— ”

“Oh—okay, okay, alright, sure, don’t fret it,” Martin assures in a hurried rush, drawing back to meet Jon’s eyes. “Sorry.”

“It’s, it’s fine, just…” he shakes his head, offering his hand back. “It’s fine.”

Just one moment to maybe hope Elias will let Sasha quit, and not need to know everything that’s happened. It’s a slim hope, but it’s still there.

Sasha is studying them, expression inscrutable. 

“When you said things were bad...” she says cautiously. 

Jon closes his eyes. Somewhere, upstairs, Elias is waiting for him. Lying in wait, it feels like. 

“Tomorrow,” he says. “We can talk about it...tomorrow. I just need to talk to Elias.” 

“You’re actually going to go? ” Martin asks. Jon keeps his eyes closed as he starts to work a piece of glass from the meat of his palm, biting his tongue. It hurts less than he’d expect. Martin is being...extremely careful.

“I have to.” 

“You don’t.” 

Jon just peels his eyes open to look at him. Martin makes a fine, fine, whatever expression, and Jon feels his mouth twitch up despite himself. 

“So,” Martin says after a short pause. Jon is straining to listen for Tim, but refocuses. “Sasha. I, um, don’t think your flat’s still...an option? I think Tim might’ve gotten some of your stuff but it’s not…” 

“You mentioned your mother,” Jon offers, clearing his throat. “If you don’t think she’d be too alarmed at you having been...resurrected, in a way, you could use my  phone—” 

“She...we’re not actually close,” Sasha says with a pained smile. “She doesn’t even live here, I just...a year’s a long time, you know?” 

“Right.” Jon hisses as another piece of glass comes free from his forearm. “Well. Hm. I’m not eager to have you spend a night in the Archives, but—” 

“She can stay at mine.” Jon starts at the voice, almost swearing as the tweezers jab into his arm. Tim is in the mouth of the hall. 

“I mean,” Tim says, scrubbing a hand through his hair. His face arranges itself into  what like a pale attempt at what his smiles used to look like, falling just short. “I mean, Sasha, if you want—if you wanted, yeah? You know the guest bedroom’s always yours. It’s got a wine stain on the carpet I specifically remember appearing mysteriously after you spent a night.” 

The tone is just like the smile. Trying to be teasing, just a bit too strained to be realistic. 

Jon meets Martin’s eyes, unsure of the sudden shift in Sasha’s posture. 

“I…” her gaze darts over Jon and Martin, then back to Tim. She looks at him for a long time, and Tim visibly squirms under her attention. “I don’t think I….” 

“Course,” he says after several seconds of silence, voice hoarse. “‘Course you don’t have to, just, y’know. Thought I’d offer.” 

“It’s not that.” Sasha rubs her eyes. “I...God. I don’t remember spilling that wine.” 

Tim’s mouth makes an O. Something heavy settles in Jon’s stomach. 

“Sor, sorry,” Martin says, letting go of Jon’s arm. “Like—but we killed it? Or, or Jon killed it, so shouldn’t the memories all be…” 

“Unless in the year she was there, the Not-Them did...feed.” Jon grimaces. “I’m s—” 

“Don’t,” Sasha warns, rubbing her eyes again. ”Just....just don’t, Jon. You don’t have anything to be sorry for. None of you do, it was...it happened, and I’m alive now, and it’s dead and that’s it.”

“How much do you,” Tim swallows. “How much do you forget?” 

“It’s…” Sasha hesitates, and Martin takes up Jon’s hand again with a shaky nod. Most of the glass is out, and he’s materialized a damp paper towel that’s quickly stained pink. “It’s bits and pieces. Some small things, like that, some...it’s hard to know, isn’t it?” 

Her eyes turn on Martin. 

“How.” She chews her lip. “How do I take my tea?” 

Martin pauses. His mouth turns down

“I, um. I don’t…” 

That’s it then, Jon thinks morosely. Whole...whole parts of her, just gone. He had never hoped this endeavor would be perfect, costless. Of course ideally, the cost would have only been the pile of bloodied glass shards glinting merrily from Martin’s desk. 

But a part of him isn’t surprised. Something had to be lost. That seems to be how the fears work, just taking, and taking, and taking. He wonders if there are pieces gone from himself. If there are fragments of memories he doesn’t even know he’s missing. 

“Right.” Sasha nods, standing and smoothing a bandage on her arm. “I...that’s that. So a monster ate some of my memories. Or some of my existence, whatever. Alright.”

“Sasha...” Tim’s face is pinched, but Sasha just shakes her head. 

“I think,” she says, a cramped smile on her face. “I’ll take that offer, Tim. I think I’ll have my existential crisis after I catch a few hours, if that’s okay.” 

“Course,” Tim says, voice faltering. “I—yeah, of course. I’ll call a cab, I…” 

He makes a stutter-step, eyes falling on Jon and Martin as he pulls to a halt. 

Jon...would be lying, if he said he hadn’t hoped saving Sasha would fix... something between them. If not back to being actual friends, then...then less open hostility. Less of the impression that Tim thinks he’s actively evil. 

“Jon. You’re...” Tim’s eyes make his skin prickle uncomfortably, the preamble to a fight he can never be sure is coming. “Look, I’m. I’m glad we got you back.” 

Jon doesn’t have a response ready. Martin is studiously silent. Sasha, watching, frowning. 

“I just—look, I can’t—I can’t forgive you, for some of it.” Tim stares at the floor with hard eyes. “And I still—I just can’t.”

“I understand, Tim,” Jon says. He winces. That sounded awfully magnanimous. “I, I mean, I’m—you don’t have to Tim, I was—I’m not proud of, of some of my actions. I’m s—” 

Tim chuckles. Jon cuts himself off, wary. 

“Sasha’s right,” Tim says, and for a moment his grin is actually...just a grin. “If you say you’re sorry one more time, I think I’m literally going to lose my mind.”

“S—ah.” Jon clears his throat. “Right.” 

Martin, unrolling a pack of gauze, looks like he’s suppressing a smile. 

“I just wanted to say.” Tim glances back at the floor, then to Sasha. “Thank you. I—thank you.”  

Jon makes the choice not to speak. Just nods. Watches Tim collect his minimal belongings still in the Archives, watches them orbit around each other in a foreign and a familiar way. Sasha gives him one last awkward hug, before catching up with Tim. 

Watching them leave is like watching two ghosts vanish through the door. 

And then it’s just Martin, whom he hadn’t noticed finish wrapping his palm in gauze. 

“Right. You’ll need to clean these with alcohol wipes or, or something,” he says apologetically. “Don’t know what happened to the ones here, but I really hope Melanie didn’t try to, to, I don’t know, somehow poison Elias with them.” 

“With...the alcohol wipes?” 

Martin rolls his eyes. Jon feels his mouth twitch, despite the lump in his throat. 

“Okay! So you’re fine, then.” 

“Sorry, I was just—” he clears his throat. “I’m...glad you’re alright, Martin. All, all of you. I wasn’t sure—it was made clear to me that some parts of this endeavor were not...perfectly planned out.” 

“You mean like the part where you didn’t wait for, for literally any of us before you made a decision and put yourself in danger?” 

Jon swallows, dropping his eyes to the gauze. Martin’s still being careful, even as his tone gains an edge Jon doesn’t think he’s ever heard before. Unless he’s just...forgotten. 

Before he can open his mouth though, Martin sighs. 

“Sorry, I— sorry. Don’t listen to me. I’m not, I’m going to be upset at you for saving Sasha, Jon. I just wish…” Martin fastens the bandage, meeting his eye. “I’m glad you’re okay, and that. It was weird, forgetting you. I didn’t like it.” 

“It was... weird being forgotten,” Jon offers. “And I can’t say I liked it either. But I’m back, and no one was hurt.” 

Martin’s eyebrow twitches, and he looks pointedly at the pile of bloody rags and broken glass. 

“No one was seriously hurt,” Jon amends, standing with a heavy exhale. “And I’m...for what it’s worth, I’m. Very grateful that you...I’m glad you’re okay.” 

He almost cringes—he’s repeating himself at this point, he needs sleep to be able to deal with these kinds of conversations—but Martin just smiles. It takes Jon a moment to perceive that he hasn’t let go of his hand. Martin seems to notice at the same time, stuttering an apology and moving to clear the trash into the bin while Jon flexes his burned palm and tries not to consider that he’ll probably have a scar on both hands, now. 

“Well.” He nods towards the door. “I suppose I should see what Elias wants, then.” 

Martin nods. 

“Yeah, I guess. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

“I—what? Martin, you don’t—” 

“No, no, it’s—just hear whatever Elias has to say, and I can at least make sure you don’t sneak down to sleep down here in the Archives, or whatever.” 

“I can assure you I won’t be doing that,” Jon says, oddly amused. “But really, Martin, I can’t ask you to—” 

“I’ll meet you in the lobby,” Martin repeats stoutly. Jon just huffs, throwing his hands up and wondering—just, just wondering.  

The Archive door scrapes shut behind them. 

“Did you know?” 

“For christ's sake, sit down, Jon. You look like you’re about to keel over.” 

Jon glares, but sits. He’s self-aware enough to know that Elias is right, and tries not to seem like he’s collapsing into the chair. He watches Elias with as much focus as he can spare, exhaustion dragging at his mind like a gloved hand clawing at his brain. He forces his thoughts away from Martin waiting outside, from his soft bed and quiet flat, back into the trenches of what his life’s apparently become—fear gods and monsters and the impression that there’s something he doesn’t know.  

“I only wanted to speak to you for a moment about the Not-Them, as well as Ms. James,” Elias is saying, unconcerned. “In regards to her role here. Then you can be on your way. I know it’s quite late.” 

“Did you know ?” 

Elias just rolls his eyes, scribbling something on a page before him. 

“Even if that worked on me, you’d have to be more specific.” 

“The rituals,” Jon grits out. “They, they—the Unknowing, all of it, it— did you know it’s going to fail?” 

Elias goes still. 

“Well?” 

He sets his pen down, eyes finally rising to meet Jon’s. He doesn’t blink. 

“What do you mean by that?” 

It’s possibly the first time Jon’s ever heard genuine confusion in Elias’s voice. 

“The, the rituals,” he waves his bandaged hand. “I found—I found a tape. Gertrude, she was calling it, a, a, failsafe, a recording for just in case. But the rituals, they can’t succeed, which is why they never have. It was a short recording, I think it was supposed to be a part of another set, but I couldn’t find…” 

Jon trails off at the look in Elias’s eyes. He’s overcome with the sudden and vivid awareness that the person on the other side of the desk had beaten one man until he was dead with just a pipe, had shot a woman—his predecessor— three times. 

“Uh…”

“That’s...quite fascinating.” Elias says finally, eyes falling back to his desk. Jon tries and fails to shake off the inexplicable dread. “Though I can’t say I’m comfortable just taking her word for it, when the outcome of inaction would be the Stranger quite literally remaking reality. It’s not particularly a gamble I would like to take. Did she have evidence?” 

“She said that the Dark’s ritual had failed, or she would have...known, sorry, you’re just…you didn’t know.” 

Elias smiles with the muscles around his mouth. 

“I’ve told you before, Jon, I am not all-knowing. Had I known this , in fact, it would have saved me a considerable amount of time and resources. It’s...” 

Elias’s face does something minute and complicated.

“...good news,” he finishes. There’s something Jon isn’t equipped to identify in his voice, but his expression has categorically settled into his baseline of ‘disinterested politeness’ with a touch of ‘professional concern’. “A bit of a tragedy, in many cases, since Gertrude sacrificed so much to stopping rituals. But it certainly means we don’t have to worry about apocalypses anymore. Instead we can focus on other matters.” 

Jon stares, unable to muster any emotion stronger than exasperation. 

“Other matters? 

“Surely you know that rituals aren’t the only major threat out there?” Elias raises an eyebrow. “Think, Jon. The fact that we know this information won’t stop other attempts at rituals, no matter the outcome. Which means servants of other fears will still be amassing their forces, and causing a great deal of damage in the process.” 

“And why do you care?” Jon challenges, exasperation transforming into something more fiery. “You don’t just want to, to watch it all happen? Like you did with Sasha from the beginning? Like you did all the times I got kidnapped ? Like you do with, with everything else?”  

Elias just looks at him. Jon sets his jaw, refusing to look away. 

“If you’re quite done,” Elias says at last, folding his hands. “Perhaps this isn’t the best time to talk about the future. I’m aware you’ve been through quite the ordeal.” 

Jon snorts, rubbing his bandaged hand across his face. Elias’s expression doesn’t falter. 

“Which means I’m happy to afford you and the assistants affected by this event leave for the rest of the week,” he says crisply. “Ms. James will certainly need some time, but I did want to inform you that she’ll be reinstated under her contract.” 

“So you’re still trapping her here, after everything,” Jon says, not caring about the bite in his voice. “I’m fairly certain that Sasha is going to need more than a week to regather her entire life. If you forgot, she was there for a year .” 

Elias taps the table with his pen.

“Fair point. We’ll mark her down as...on leave until further notice.” 

“How generous.” 

Something in Elias’s jaw twitches. 

“In any case,” he says. “The Not-Them is dead, I gathered?” 

“What, you couldn’t see it?” 

“Jon.” That something twitches again, but his tone is even when he speaks. “What happened to it?” 

Jon hesitates for just a second. Elias is watching him very carefully. He fights the urge to shudder. 

“I...I killed it. I think.” He frowns, tracing the bandage on his hand, the plasters on his arms. “I tried to take its statement, and it didn’t quite...it destroyed it. The compulsion.” 

“That’s..good,” Elias says. Jon doesn’t very much like the look in his eye.  “ Very good, in fact. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone to come away from an encounter with the Not-Them unscathed.” 

“Unscathed,” Jon laughs bitterly, savoring the venom in his own voice, the irritated twitch in Elias’s jaw. “Since Sasha was only forgotten and tormented in those hallways for a year .” 

“If you’re just going to sit here being disagreeable,” Elias says, and maybe it’s immature of Jon to feel a spark of satisfaction at the blatant annoyance in his tone, but frankly he’s too tired to care. “Then you’re free to go. But I’ll be in touch, Jon.” 

Jon rises without further prompting, focusing on setting one foot in front of the other and appreciating the fact that the carpet doesn’t send his mind spinning in eight different directions away from himself. 

“Jon.” 

Jon stops, but doesn’t turn. He can feel Elias’ eyes on his back, heavy as waxen air. 

“Facing the Not-Them, being….lost in its domain. Being replaced.“ Elias’s voice is neutral once more, borderline...sympathetic. Jon spares him a half-turn, contempt warring with curiosity. Elias meets his gaze, still unblinking. “It must have been...quite terrifying.” 

Jon swallows, thumb brushing the bandage across his palm. He opens his mouth to answer and blinks and — 

—  the office isn’t an office but a tunnel and a grey figure is coiling over him with a face like ripped tissue paper and his mind is shot blank with the sunken horror of the newly-dead and then — 

And then he blinks again and the office is just an office and Elias is still watching him with no expression at all. 

Jon exhales shakily. He needs sleep. 

“It...was.” 

Elias’s features don’t change. Jon doesn’t wait for them to. He just turns, leaves the office, and lets the door swing shut behind him. 

It’s dark outside. Jon had glimpsed it, in the single window of Elias’s office, but the cool night air still catches him off guard.

“You alright?” Martin asks for the third time as they step outside. 

“I’m—yes. Just tired. You didn’t have to wait,” he replies, as they reach the bottom of the steps. The building, long-vacated, stands staring and haunted-looking behind them. “Really, Martin, I’m hardly about to collapse between the building and a taxi.” 

Martin gives an awkward little chuckle. 

“It’s less about that, and more about I wanted to go to bed tonight knowing Elias didn’t—well, didn’t murder you in his office after all this. He’s sort of got a precedent.” 

Jon snorts, watching Martin extract his phone and tap for a taxi service.  

“I hardly think he’d kill me after all the energy he wasted Seeing through the Not-Them.”  

Martin lowers his phone. 

“What?” 

Jon waves a hand, thumbing the gauze distractedly. 

“In the...stomach, I suppose. I could feel Eyes, they helped...well, I imagine he didn’t want me to die quite yet.”

Martin still hasn’t moved, and Jon turns to face him fully. 

“Yeah, no, Elias didn’t do a thing,” Martin says, and Jon’s surprised by the venom in his voice. “Told us you’d work it out yourself, or, or, or else he’d just find a new—well, he wasn’t about to lift a finger to help you.”

“That’s…” Jon thinks back, frowning. “Well something was certainly...Knowing me. The, the real me, at least. I suppose I just assumed, with his powers.” 

“Mhm,” Martin says in a very pitchy hum. “Well. Sasha, Sasha remembered you, and we were listening to the tapes, and there was— there were polaroids, so that, that was probably it. She said something about um, theories you two came up with.” 

“Knowing someone to make them known,” Jon nods. He waves an abstract hand.  “All quite saccharine, in a way. Existing in the eyes of each other, the context of another person, of, of recognition as a form of, well. Existence , I suppose. You know, the...” He looks up. Martin’s gaze is resting against his, wide and a little searching and Jon can’t for the life of him remember what he was about to say. “I...I-know-you.” 

The air stretches thin between them. 

“Jon, I…um.”  Martin’s mouth opens and closes. Jon waits, grazing a thumb across his gauze-wrapped palm and trying not to wonder if there is anything forgotten between them. Anything that’s just….gone. 

The thought is...uncomfortable. 

Eventually Martin’s eyes break from his, darting desperately down to his phone. He holds it up with a sheepish smile. “I, um, I’ll call the taxi. Your stop first, you’re closer.”

Jon just nods mutely, turning over the faint impression that he’d missed something, before discarding it. Tomorrow. He’ll deal with it all...tomorrow. 

They stand in the shadow of the Institute, Jon painfully aware of and ignoring the watched feeling emanating from it. It’s far from comfortable, but it’s nothing like the hunger of the Stranger. 

He inhales dry summer air, and chances a glance at Martin. I-know-you. He think he’d like to say the words again, but they stop short in his windpipe. Martin’s already looking at him, studying him like he’s trying to memorize every scar. He might be, but Jon can’t feel embarrassed, because he’s doing the same. Just in case he’s forgotten something. I-know-you. I know you.