Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jon was lying slumped over his desk, stewing in his own misery, when he heard a door creak open.

Something wasn’t right about the sound of it.

Sure enough, when he managed to raise his head and look at his office door, it was still closed.

Dammit. What did she want from him?

“What,” he said in a tone that had been intended to be a scathing deadpan but came out far too rough and broken to achieve that effect.

“Huh,” said a voice that definitely didn’t belong to Helen but was nonetheless oddly familiar. “You weren’t kidding.”

“The others should be here in a moment.” That was Helen.

Others? What—

A gust of wind rushed through the office, and two figures appeared in the middle of what space there was. One was a woman Jon knew he recognized but couldn’t quite place—on the tall side, white, heavyset, with dark brown hair secured in two French braids and a cheerful expression. She was an avatar, Jon could feel it— when did that happen? —and, unsurprisingly given that fact, she had a statement. Which knowledge Jon immediately and vehemently forced himself to ignore.

The other was... Mike Fairchild?

What the hell?

“Hey, Harriet,” said the familiar voice from behind Jon. “You showed up after all.”

For some reason, the Eye only then bothered to tell Jon that this was Harriet Fairchild, the Vast avatar and longtime member of the Fairchild family who’d shown up at the end of Jon’s encounter with Mike to fend off Daisy. The one who’d called Mike her brother.

It still wasn’t saying anything about the identity of the other party to this conversation.

Harriet smiled slightly. “Yeah, well, between you and my annoying little brother here—”

Mike elbowed her in the ribs, though there was clearly no malice behind it.

“—I was successfully persuaded.” Harriet elbowed Mike back, more of an affectionate gesture than anything.

“Glad to hear it,” that strangely familiar voice continued. “Looks like we’re gonna need all the help we can get.” The tone carried a sort of amused incredulity that Jon was sure beyond a doubt was directed at him.

Jon pushed down his indignation at... whatever this was, and focused on placing the voice, which might help him determine what the hell was happening here and would at least give him something to do other than worry about it.

The voice sounded male, as far as Jon could tell. It belonged to an avatar—even without seeing him, Jon could sense that much—and his inability to identify it was starting to really bother him. He’d heard it before, he knew he had...

Helen and the mystery man walked around the desk to place themselves in Jon’s line of sight, and Jon was briefly even more confused. The man was tall, Black, with bright white locs tied back behind his head. His eyes had a chronically tired sort of set to them, and his expression of mild unconcern suggested he’d seen far too much for whatever was happening at the moment to remotely faze him—which, given that he seemed to have arrived here via Helen’s corridors, was really quite impressive.

More relevantly, Jon didn’t recognize him at all. He didn’t even look familiar.

Wait—

Jon could think of one person currently alive (for a given definition of the word) whose voice he’d heard but whom he’d never seen.

A quick mental cross-reference of statements gave Jon enough confidence to verbalize his guess.

“Oliver Banks?” he asked.

The man—Oliver—smiled. “So you do remember me. I’m not sure if I was hoping you would or wouldn’t, honestly. Either way, I’m glad my statement helped—”

“I have a question about that, actually,” said Jon before he could stop himself.

Mike smirked. “Still got some self-preservation.”

Jon thought that was a bit rich, coming from someone who’d spent years of his life seeking out and experimenting with Leitners and then jumped off a tower, but elected not to say anything to that effect.

“Go right ahead,” said Oliver, ignoring Mike’s interjection.

“How did you get back from Point Nemo?” asked Jon, feeling the compulsion roll out even as he halfheartedly tried to hold it back. “I mean, even if you came back to life instantly, most people don’t seem to move very far from where their bodies were, and you were as far from land as it’s possible to be. Even with”—Jon swallowed—“our abilities... How long would it take to swim that far? Is it even possible?”

Oliver looked over at Harriet with an exasperated but fond expression and gestured towards her. “This one brought me back to shore.” He laughed. “Took her own sweet time about it, but—”

“Oh, c’mon,” said Harriet with an answering smile. “It’s not every day someone ends up facing that sort of distance without even needing any help getting there.”

“Oh, I get it, I do. But three days?” Oliver’s voice had the warmth of well-worn banter that had long since evolved into an inside joke.

“You’re lucky I didn’t fish you out and then put you back,” Harriet replied lightly. “Psychology of hope’s a funny thing. I could’ve gotten quite a bit more out of you—”

“And I appreciate it, but three days was still more than enough.” Oliver turned back to Jon. “As for the rest of your questions, I don’t know how long it would take to swim that far, but I’m fairly certain that even most of our kind would give up and either die for good or just... drift... well before they managed it. I certainly would’ve.”

Jon tried not to let the relief washing over him at the answered question and mini-statement become too obvious. It was barely anything—scraps, really—but he was desperate enough that even the slightest hint of satiation felt ridiculously good.

Meanwhile, Oliver had shifted his upper body to look at Helen. “So, we’re still waiting on Karolina?”

“Presumably.” Helen moved in a way that might’ve been intended to be a shrug.

“Karolina Górka?” Jon frowned. He’d taken her statement ages ago, and, thinking back on it, he was fairly certain she’d been an avatar of the Buried at the time but hadn’t known it yet. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on here?”

He took care not to direct the question. He didn’t know if it was safe to compel anyone else. Even in his own Archives, his own space, he was badly outnumbered and seriously underfed. If the avatars surrounding him decided he was a threat... even if they hadn’t initially been intending to harm him, it might not matter.

“Patience, Archivist,” Helen chided in a truly obnoxious singsong. “We’ll tell you when everyone’s here.”

Karolina, apparently, took that as her cue to emerge from the floor like a swimmer breaking the surface of water. She stopped when the floor was approximately at her waist level. “Hi. Sorry I’m late, there’s construction work going on under some of the roads near here. Could someone give me a hand up?”

Harriet, who was the closest, grabbed Karolina’s raised hand and pulled her up until her feet had cleared the floor. A layer of dust instantly coated the area around her, and Jon silently lamented the cleaning he’d have to do once she left to keep his coworkers from knowing anyone had been here. That wouldn’t go well for anyone, he was sure.

Not that whatever the five avatars currently standing in a semicircle in front of his desk were up to was likely to go particularly well for him, either.

“It’s funny being back here,” Karolina mused, looking around the office. “Last time—” She broke off as her eye fell on Jon. “Oh, shit,” she muttered, sounding grimly impressed. “Helen was right. You look awful.”

What Jon felt at that wasn’t exactly betrayal. Betrayal required trust, and Jon had never trusted Helen, not really.

Still, he couldn’t deny the flash of hurt that shot through him at the words. “Are you just here to—to make fun of me, then?”

Helen smiled faintly. “Would you believe me if I said we were here to help you?”

Jon blinked. That made even less sense than the idea that they were treating him as some sort of zoo animal. “Probably not,” he finally managed. “Are you?”

Helen tilted her head to the side, seeming to consider her reply. “That depends on you.”

Jon took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “Will someone without a constitutional allergy to straight answers please just tell me what’s going on?”

As the compulsion burst out of him, Jon found his gaze settling on Oliver. He wasn’t entirely sure why—maybe because Oliver had helped him before, and unlike Helen the essence of his being didn’t prohibit him from actually explaining himself—but it didn’t matter.

The result was the same.

“Helen showed up at my flat four days ago,” Oliver said in the cadence that meant the arrangement of the words wasn’t entirely his own. “She asked me if I remembered you. When I told her I did, she said you were being badly mistreated by some humans who worked in your Archive. She said you still thought of yourself as one of them, and felt some obligation to protect them, even though they were treating you like some kind of wild animal—keeping you trapped in your office, starving you, trying to convince you the hunger was some kind of addiction, that it would go away if you ignored it long enough.” Oliver scoffed, shaking his head. “Threatening to kill you if you stepped out of line even once. And then she asked me if I would help her convince you to leave. I agreed. Reached out to a few friends, asked if they’d help. Most of them thought it was a ridiculous idea, but Karolina was glad to help if she could—said you were pretty decent to her when she came in to give her statement a couple weeks after her change—and Harriet remembered that you and Mike had met and said she’d ask him about it. Two days after that, Harriet told me she’d gotten Mike on board, and that he’d asked her if she’d help as well—thought it might come in handy to have someone you hadn’t taken a statement from, in case you worried you were somehow mind-controlling us or something. Or in case you were, no judgment here.” Oliver shrugged. “Karolina and I talked to Harriet then, too. Told her we’d all appreciate it if she’d help out with this. She asked why, and I said...” He looked away, seemingly lost in memory.

Jon didn’t pray to the Eye. It wasn’t a god, and he wasn’t going to give it anything more than he had to.

Right now, that fact wasn’t stopping him from silently pleading with his entire being that Oliver would give him a statement, or something like one at any rate.

Please, just a little. Enough to make it bearable. Please.

Oliver took a deep breath, and Jon could have cried from relief as he sensed that he was getting his wish. “Right after I changed, when Harriet got me back on land, she asked me if I had somewhere to go, if I knew what I needed to do. I didn’t understand, at that point, why she was acting the way she was. Why she suddenly seemed concerned about me, after everything. I didn’t trust it, so I told her I was fine. She gave me a phone number, said to call if I needed help and she’d see what she could do. And then I... drifted. For a year and a half. I figured out how to feed pretty quickly, but other than that I didn’t have much contact with anyone. Until this past February.” Oliver smiled faintly. “For months before that I’d been dreaming about you. Seeing you half-alive and half-dead, unable to move in either direction. It felt like a splinter in my mind. Some faint but perceptible wrongness, ignorable during the day, but always there. I tried to leave it be. Wasn’t my business. But eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I found you, and I fed you, and I told you what I knew. I left before you woke up, but... talking to someone again, even if they couldn’t talk back, reminded me how much I honestly missed it. I thought about Harriet, those conversations we’d had in the middle of the South Pacific, her offer of help once she’d brought me to shore. I wished I could tell her I appreciated it, that I understood now why she’d acted the way she had. And then... I realized I could. I found the scrap of paper with her number, got my hands on a mobile phone, and called her later that day. And from then on, I wasn’t alone. Harriet introduced me to others like us—her family, her friends, some others she didn’t know well but thought I might get on with. That’s how I met Karolina—she was still pretty new, and Harriet thought it might be good for both of us to talk to someone else who was still learning the ropes. Harriet went out of her way to help me, and I’m incredibly grateful to her—and I probably never would’ve reached out to her in the first place if I hadn’t gone in to talk to you.” His smile widened. “I know you didn’t do it on purpose, but you turned my life around. This is me returning the favor.”

“Thank you,” Jon said quietly, trying to convince himself it was for Oliver’s attempt to repay what he apparently saw as a debt and not for the way his story had dampened Jon’s hunger to the point where he could think. “And… I’m sorry.”

Oliver frowned. “For what?”

“Compelling you.”

Oliver shrugged. “No problem. Really, I would’ve been shocked if you hadn’t compelled any of us. No one here expects you to hold back when you’re this hungry. Even if you physically could, that wouldn’t be fair.”

Jon wanted so badly to believe him. He felt the familiar excuses coming back to the surface of his mind—he needed it, he’d die without it and it wasn’t fair to ask him to stay in his office and die a slow, painful death. Paper statements were only prolonging his suffering. He hadn’t asked to be this way, hadn’t wanted to be reliant on the misery of others, but the fact remained that he was, and he couldn’t be blamed for following an instinct as basic and powerful as the need to survive, could he? (He absolutely could.) Even aside from that, he couldn’t do his job if he didn’t keep his strength up, couldn’t protect his people (and fuck, when did he start thinking of them as his?) or save the world if and when he needed to (because the world apparently needed saving a lot) or anything else, really. Without taking live statements, he was useless.

It was all excuses, of course. Basira had made it clear that she thought Daisy was pretty useless without the Hunt, after all, but that was still better than giving in to it. If Jon had a choice between his own life and the safety of innocent people, it was obvious what he ought to do. Just because he didn’t want it to be true didn’t mean it wasn’t.

That didn’t make it any easier.

Oliver was talking again, and Jon found his attention pulled back to the words.

“—some point earlier today,” Oliver was saying, “I’m not really sure when, but anyway, Helen showed up at my flat again and told me she’d bring me to your office if I didn’t mind a somewhat roundabout journey.” He shot Helen a mildly annoyed look, then turned back to Jon. “And now here I am.”

“So…” Jon was still struggling to process everything he’d been told, although his clearer mind from Oliver’s ‘statement’ definitely helped. “What is this, some kind of… intervention?”

“If you like,” said Helen.

Jon glared at her. He’d had more than enough of ‘interventions’ lately. Really, he just wanted to be left to make his own decisions for five minutes—although he understood, at least, why his coworkers didn’t feel they could let him. This was just insulting. “And if I don’t?”

He’d been looking at Helen, but it was Oliver who answered.

“Then we’ll leave,” he said casually. “It’s your life, and your right to make your own bad decisions. If you listen to everything we have to say, if you ask all your questions, give us all your objections and let us counter them, and you still want to stay, we’ll leave. But as the person who helped bring you back from limbo, I am asking you as a personal favor to hear us out.”

Really, Jon couldn’t argue with that, especially without revealing how horribly tempting he found their offer. How uncertain his resolve had become, how afraid he was that, if he let himself genuinely consider the possibility, he’d give in.

How doubtful he was that his gut reaction to that notion was actually fear.

He did have one instant and major objection, though. One that would almost certainly shut the whole thing down before it began. “Even if I wanted to go with you, I can’t leave the Archives for very long. I’m tied to this place; it’s a part of me, and I’m a part of it.”

Helen grinned, mouth spreading out just a little too wide. “You think this is the only Archive in the world, Jon?”

“You…” Jon blinked. “Are you saying I could… transfer?”

“You could,” said Harriet with a shrug. “I’m sure somewhere has a vacancy, and language wouldn’t be a problem. But really, what’s to stop you from starting your own?”

“What?” Jon stared at her like… actually, he might’ve stared less incredulously if she’d grown another head. “You’re saying… You think I could build my own Archives. From the ground up.”

“It’s been done before,” said Harriet. “Every Archive that exists now had to start somewhere.” She shrugged. “Might be good for you, honestly. Even aside from getting you out of here. Think of it as… fledging. Breaking ties with the Archive that made you, striking out on your own.”

“I’ve been on my own plenty,” Jon muttered sharply.

“We know,” said Karolina from where she’d been standing, mostly silent, at the end of the semicircle. “But you don’t have to be. Do you know what everyone in this room has in common?”

Jon frowned. He’d taken a statement from Karolina, Mike, and Oliver, but not Harriet. The previous... the previous humanoid form of the Distortion and Helen Richardson had both given him a statement, but Helen hadn’t in her current form, which meant... something. Jon shook his head; that wasn’t it. “Um... You’re all avatars, but that’s pretty obvious... You all agreed to participate in this intervention, whatever it is... What else?”

Karolina smiled. “We all think you could be someone interesting if you were allowed to be. Worth having around, worth getting to know, maybe worth befriending.” She laughed, probably at his dubious expression. “Serving a Power doesn’t rule out having friends.” She gestured around at the group. “We all want to find out who Jon the Archivist could be if he wasn’t brainwashed into thinking you have to be human to be a person. We all think the way you’re being treated is unfair. And we all care about you—not just who you could be, either. You, here, now. Like it or not, you’re one of us, and a lot of us in this room have been pretty close to where you are.” She giggled faintly. “Although I don’t think anyone else here ever let it get this bad.”

Jon glared weakly at her, but couldn’t bring himself to argue.

“Anyway. We’ve talked about it, and we’ve agreed to help you get set up wherever you decide to put down roots. We’ll do what we can to make things go more smoothly for you until you’re on your feet, and anyone who wants to can keep hanging out with you even past that.” Karolina looked Jon directly in the eye, which Jon knew was something of an accomplishment for most people. “Jon. Wouldn’t it be nice to have friends again? To know there are people who genuinely want you around, who see you as a person and not as a threat to be managed or contained?”

Jon closed his eyes for a moment, before looking back up at Karolina, then around at all the others.

For a moment, he imagined letting his power, aching from its cramped position inside him, explode out of his mouth. He imagined shaping the words, flinging them at each visitor in turn— why should I trust you? Are you telling the truth? What do you really want from me?

That would be a terrible idea. 

Jon deliberately looked down at his desk and took a deep breath. “I need to know if you’re telling the truth,” he said. “I’d like to ask. Using the Eye. So I know you mean whatever you say.”

“Fair enough,” said Harriet, then turned so she was addressing the group. “Who’s gonna take one for the team?”

“Not it,” Helen chimed immediately.

“Hey, I already took my turn,” said Oliver.

“I’ll do it.” That was Mike. “I didn’t mind it, actually. Last time. It was... it was kind of fun. All those words just... showing up.” He looked over at Jon and smiled. “Ask away.”

The words were out almost before Jon was aware of forming them. “Why did you come here?”

Mike was still smiling when the compulsion took effect.

“You know,” he said, “the first time we met, I thought you were being incredibly rude. I mean, asking all those prying questions the first time you meet someone? Who does that?” He shook his head. “It’s part of why I dropped you—figured you kinda deserved it, and as a bonus, it might teach you some manners. Wasn’t entirely for me, either—I wouldn’t have said much for your chances if you’d run into someone worse than me and started behaving like that. You may have been rude, but you at least seemed sincere, and you were new to the whole idea of Powers, and clearly in over your head, and I guess I felt a bit sorry for you. Mostly it was just fun, though.”

Well, at least Jon could be fairly certain the compulsion was working.

“But I was thinking about it, and I realized I wasn’t being fair. You’re an Archivist, asking prying questions is just what you do. Might as well ask a bird not to fly.”

Jon did his best to completely ignore any and all information the Eye saw fit to give him about the over sixty currently existing species of flightless bird.

“More than that, you never had anyone teach you how to behave around your own kind. That on its own would be fine—most of us learn to navigate our new lives on our own. It’s tradition, and it helps make sure no one pushes people new to their Power too far in one direction or another before they have a chance to figure out for themselves what draws them. But... from what I’ve heard about the Magnus Institute, I have a feeling you got the worst of both worlds.”

You could say that, Jon would’ve interjected if he’d been physically capable of interrupting Mike’s story.

As it was, he just listened as Mike went on.

“When Harriet told me what Helen told her about what’s been going on with you, she pretty much confirmed that,” he was saying. “This whole time, you’re stuck with a prickhead boss who won’t tell you anything but still manages to get you so twisted up in knots you barely know your own mind anymore. Then your change goes wrong and you get stuck halfway for six months. Prickhead boss goes to prison—good on you if you had a hand in that, by the way—you wake up, things should’ve gotten better. Instead you end up surrounded by humans who hate you and everything you are, and you’re still trying to act like one of them. Still trying to protect them.” Mike made a wry face. “It’s pathetic, but it’s also genuinely kind of sad. I guess I’m here because I know what it’s like to be alone. I haven’t been for a while, not since I became a Fairchild, but I remember how it felt, and if I can help someone else out of a situation like that, I’m gonna try. And it’s like Karolina said—I want to meet the person you could be. I think we might get along.” He laughed. “You might not have noticed, but given the opportunity, I am a colossal nerd. Ask my sister if you don’t believe me.”

Harriet nodded emphatically.

“And hey,” Mike continued. “I get it. When you’ve spent years believing you’re the only person you can count on, the idea of letting yourself trust or rely on anyone else seems...” He laughed. “Well, it seems flat-out stupid. So I don’t expect you to believe me, not right away. But for what it’s worth, I am absolutely certain that if I wasn’t a Fairchild, if I hadn’t made the choice to let those people in, I wouldn’t be here right now. Not sure which time would’ve done it, but they’ve gotten me out of more tight spots than I can count.” He looked over at Harriet with that same faint smile. “It’s not so bad, having people in your corner.”

Harriet rolled her eyes, but couldn’t entirely conceal the smile flickering at the corners of her mouth. “Sap.”

“You can’t hold that against me,” said Mike in a faux indignant tone. “I’m not in control of my words right now.” He paused and tilted his head slightly to the side, as though considering. “Actually, now I am. So, that’s a wrap on the oversharing.” He turned to Jon. “Does that answer your question?”

“Yes,” said Jon, still trying to sort out everything he’d just heard. “Yes, it does. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Mike was once again smiling lightly. “Anything else?”

“No,” said Jon quietly. “I believe you, I—I think you’re genuinely trying to help me. But that doesn’t mean I can just... it doesn’t mean I should...” He broke off with a frustrated cry and pressed his hands to his face, rubbing at his temples.

“Oh, Jon,” Helen chimed in. “Be honest with yourself. If you keep up this ridiculous charade, what do you think is going to happen?” She shook her head and spoke in a pointed tone. “Do you really think you can hold out forever?”

Jon looked away. He didn’t want to admit it, but... he knew the answer. “No.”

“Then why do you insist on torturing yourself like this, when you know that in the end it won’t matter?” Helen’s voice was about as close to gentle as Jon suspected it was capable of going.

Jon took a deep breath, unnecessary though it was. “I can’t hold out forever,” he said quietly. “But maybe, if I hold out long enough... I can die before I hurt anyone else.” He shuddered. “If it’s actually fatal. Not feeding. Honestly, I—” He swallowed hard. “I’m kind of hoping it is.”

No one said anything in response to that.

Finally, Karolina walked over to Jon’s desk and came around to stand beside his chair.

“Would you like a hug?” she asked gently. “I give really good hugs.”

Jon forced a smile. “I would imagine. But I don’t—”

“Do you not like hugs?” Karolina asked. “If you genuinely don’t like them, that’s fine, just tell me so. But if you somehow think you don’t deserve anything good, or some such bullshit—”

Jon clenched his hands into fists. Screw it.

“I can’t trust how I feel,” he said, barely above a whisper. “These days, anything that feels good, anything I want, I assume it’s the Eye yanking my chain and I don’t trust it. I know most avatars—most people like us—come to enjoy feeding our patrons, so... I figure if I’m miserable, at least I know I’m doing something right.”

Karolina shook her head. “No. Get up.” She grasped Jon’s arm, gently but firmly, and pulled until he took the hint and got to his feet.

“You see why I want to eat them all?” said Helen as Jon swayed on his feet, kept from collapsing by Karolina’s sturdy grip. “I wouldn’t recommend it, this one”—she gestured to Jon—“thinks they’re part of his sphere, might hold a grudge. Personally, though? I hope he changes his mind.”

Alarm surged through Jon at the thought of Helen changing her mind about not harming his coworkers, regardless of his wishes—or, for that matter, anyone else in this room doing the same.

“It’s not… they’re doing their best,” he protested. “Melanie had a cursed bullet embedded in her leg for over a year, that was really messing with her head for a while, and she's still recovering. Basira thought Daisy was dead the whole time I was in a coma, and… once I woke up, I think her grief sort of… settled… on the fact that I’d made it out and Daisy hadn’t. Daisy, she spent eight months in a fear domain that wasn’t hers, and now she’s hungrier than I am—she hasn’t been feeding the Hunt at all. I… can’t imagine. Martin…” Jon laughed once, humorlessly. “I’m pretty sure he’s actually working on saving the world, so I can’t complain there.” He shook his head. “Can’t complain anywhere, really. They’re all just… trying to do what they think is right.”

Karolina once again looked directly into Jon’s eyes, raising one eyebrow as she did so. “You done?”

Jon nodded, and Karolina promptly pulled him into a firm embrace.

She was right. She gave very good hugs.

Slowly, Jon raised his arms to return the hug, tentatively at first, then squeezing like his life depended on it.

“All that patience and understanding you were just applying to your archival staff,” Karolina said softly, clearly mindful of her mouth’s proximity to his ear. “What makes you think you don’t deserve to apply it to yourself as well?”

“I’m not...” Jon struggled to put his immediate feeling of animosity towards that suggestion into words that made sense. “The others aren’t... they’re not actively hurting people.”

“They’re hurting you,” Karolina replied. “You count as a person. So that’s not true.”

“Maybe, but... hurting me isn’t the point. They just want to protect the people I’d feed on if I was allowed.”

Karolina sighed in exasperation and pulled back to an arms’ length, keeping her hands on his upper arms. It should’ve been strange at best, condescending at worst.

Instead, Jon was surprised at how grounding it was.

“Hurting people isn’t the point for you, either, is it?” Karolina said. “You do what you do because you need it to live. I don’t care what bullshit ideas about addiction they planted in your head, everyone here can vouch for the fact that feeding is an actual, immutable, physical necessity for people like us. And wouldn’t—” She broke off, apparently deciding to try a different tack. “But you know that, I think. You said Daisy hasn’t been feeding her Power at all? How’s she doing?” Her expression made it clear she already knew.

Jon answered her anyway.

“She’s so thin,” he whispered. “God, she’s so thin. And... quiet. Placid, almost. Sometimes it seems like there’s barely anything left of her. Like she’s being... eaten away from the inside out.” He shuddered. “She’s made up her mind that she’d rather die than let the Hunt back in. I respect that. But...” He looked down and away, shame at his own weakness heating his face. “I don’t want that to happen to me. I know it’s—it’s what I should do but—”

Karolina shook her head, a sympathetic half-smile painting itself across her face. “No, that’s good. It’s not wrong to want to live, Jon. You’ve as much right to exist as anyone.”

Jon shook his head. “But if my existence comes at the cost of tens, or—or hundreds of people’s—”

Karolina looked like she was about to say something else, but she never got the chance.

“Leave it,” Helen interjected. “He can do this all day. You’ll never convince him that way.”

Karolina squeezed Jon’s arms, then stepped back to join the others.

Helen came closer to Jon’s desk until they were standing on opposite sides, face to face, about as close as they could get without leaning forward, given the desk between them.

“Jon,” she said. “You know what your options are here. And you know you’re not going to let yourself die.”

“How can you know that?” Jon knew he sounded defensive, but, honestly, he felt a bit defensive as well.

“Because if that was really what you wanted, you’d’ve offed yourself already.”

Jon felt another wild, bitter laugh escape his throat. “How? I can’t even cut my own finger off without it healing.”

From the expressions of some of the others present in the room, the fact that he’d tried that was news to them.

Helen made that shrug-like motion Jon had seen a few times. “You could’ve asked me to kill you. I probably would’ve said no, but—”

“Probably?”

Helen smirked. “The point is, it was an option. One you would’ve thought of if you’d been actually trying.”

Jon wanted to argue the point, but knew perfectly well he couldn’t.

She was right, dammit.

From her smug expression—Helen’s expressions could be difficult to read, but Jon was familiar enough with them to know smug when he saw it—she clearly knew she was winning.

A moment later, the smug had partially faded out, replaced by irritation.

She turned back to the others. “Could someone spell out for our dear Archivist exactly what his options are right now? Or later?”

Jon put his face in his hands. He could see, vaguely, what Helen was implying.

He wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge it to himself.

After a moment of silence, Harriet spoke up.

“I’m aware I don’t know you,” said Harriet. “But I’m coming up on thirty years since my change, and I’ve seen a lot of young avatars—that’s the word you use?”

Jon looked up and nodded.

“I’ve seen a lot of young avatars try to fight what they are.” Harriet’s face softened. “Look. I know you don’t want to hear this. But it’s not a fight anyone wins.”

Jon looked back down at his desk.

“Right now, I think you have two options, and they’re not the ones you’ve been assuming. Option one, you come with us right now. The misery ends here. We help you get set up, and you start learning what your new life can be—seven months late, sure, but better late than never.”

Jon pressed his fingertips into his temples. “And option two?”

Harriet made a face, one Jon didn’t know her well enough to interpret, but that definitely wasn’t good. “Option two, you keep going the way you’re going until you hit your breaking point. Which you will. Everyone has one. So you suffer a bit longer, and then you go back to feeding all the same—but probably without enough control to make sure you don’t end up feeding on your coworkers. The ones you’re so anxious to protect?” Harriet shrugged. “They’re the closest meal. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

Jon winced violently, which was probably answer enough.

“It’s like Helen said. Now or later. And it’ll be much, much more pleasant if you make the choice while you still can.”

Jon squeezed his eyes shut.

Took a deep breath. In. Out.

The last he’d ever take as the person he’d been.

But that wasn’t right, was it. The person he’d been had taken his last breath over a year ago. The person he was now... breathing was only habit, really.

What he was now had a different set of basic needs, and it was time to stop pretending he was strong enough to deny them.

One more breath, for old times’ sake.

In. Out.

“Fine.”

He didn’t look up, didn’t listen for acknowledgement. Just allowed the weight of his decision to settle over him.

Somehow, it felt more like a burden he’d been carrying for ages had finally slipped from his shoulders.

He opened his eyes, kept them looking down.

There was dirt on his clothes from Karolina’s hug. They’d been disgusting enough already that it really didn’t matter.

He looked up.

Everyone in the room was smiling at him.

No one spoke, and Jon realized they were waiting for him to initiate whatever came next.

“What now?” Appropriate, maybe, to begin with a question.

Helen looked over at the others. “What time is it?”

“Two thirty-seven,” said Mike as he checked his phone, then smiled sideways. “P.M.”

Helen turned back to Jon and grinned, wider than he’d ever seen.

It didn’t bother him, somehow. Improbable shapes and odd textures, sharp hands and echoing laughter, capricious doors and shifting corridors, nebulous words and meandering conversations... it was just how she was. Just Helen.

Maybe someday, everything he was, everything he’d tried so hard not to be could be just Jon.

Maybe to her, it already was.

“In that case,” said Helen lightly as she walked towards a door that hadn’t been in the wall a moment ago and pulled it open to reveal the currently green—no, the currently purple—whatever. To reveal the corridors beyond. “Come along, Archivist. We’re taking you out to lunch.”

Chapter Text

The corridors had been mauve for a while, Jon thought, although it was difficult to be sure.

It was a funny color, a sort of indeterminate pink-purple-gray that somehow made him feel like his vision had gone blurry, though when he focused on any one spot in particular he couldn’t detect any blurriness at all. Or maybe it was the subtle marbled pattern on the walls doing that.

Probably the color, though. Puce, maybe. Jon had gotten into an argument once about what color the word “puce” actually referred to, which Google had definitively settled in favor of a particularly unappealing pinkish-gray. The name was from the French word for “flea,” apparently, and it was originally intended to signify the color of the stain left on a bedsheet by squashing a flea that had recently filled itself with blood, presumably the squasher’s, then washing the sheet in question. Jon had found the etymology fascinating, but he seemed to remember being the only one. It wasn’t really possible to say, though, as he didn’t quite remember at the moment who he’d been arguing with.

The walls definitely looked like a washed-out bloodstain.

Wait. Was that the same as the color he’d been thinking of as mauve earlier, or had that been more purple?

Jon forced himself not to think about it.

Or, rather, he tried.

After very quickly realizing that trying to make himself not think about the color of the corridors was about as likely to succeed as not thinking of a pink elephant (or a puce elephant, Jon thought with what was probably an excessive amount of amusement), he instead endeavored to distract himself by striking up a conversation with Oliver, who was traversing the corridors with him. As the only two out of the group which had recently assembled in Jon’s office—Jon’s former office, he supposed, and wasn’t that a disorienting thought—who were unable to use either their Entities or themselves as shortcuts through space, Oliver and Jon required assistance if they were to get to a new location as quickly as the others could. And since Karolina had left due to a prior engagement and neither Jon nor Oliver was particularly keen on travel by Vast, they’d both ended up going through Helen’s corridors.

(Karolina had mentioned that her prior engagement was with someone named Laura—she’d said she would hang out with her today, apparently. The Eye had promptly informed Jon that yes, she was talking about Laura Popham, and carried right on to show him, in great detail, exactly what had befallen Laura’s sister. Jon had elected not to share this information with Karolina, although he suspected she wouldn’t much care either way.)

Jon had been trying to think of a way to initiate a conversation for several minutes, without much success, when Oliver beat him to it.

“So... have you figured out yet how you like to do this? Before you got put on lockdown, I mean?”

Jon had looked at Oliver by reflex when he’d started talking, and now he forced himself not to look away. He’d made his choice, he reminded himself. He wasn’t going to be ashamed of doing what he had to do anymore.

“You mean feeding?” Jon asked, stumbling a bit over the word. Clearly, letting go of the shame was going to take time.

“Yeah. Did you have time to get a sense of what works best for you?”

Jon took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself—apparently, that habit was going to stick around for a while.

He could talk about this. It was fine. Oliver understood, he wasn’t going to judge him. He was asking out of sincere curiosity, and... concern?

That, more than anything about the impossible geometry surrounding them or the walls which were now somehow the color of blood swirled into water—not a white background, or blue, or gray, or even mirrored, the exact color of water— made Jon feel like the world was upside down.

“I can sense when someone’s been touched by one of the Fears,” Jon finally managed. “I—I go up to them, and I ask them what happened. And the story just... spills out of them. Perfectly coherent, solid narrative structure, all the right details included, anything irrelevant left out. Usually takes around fifteen minutes. After that... apparently, it’s like it happened all over again. They’re terrified while it’s happening, of course, but it’s worse than that. Any progress they’ve made towards recovery is erased. They get terrible nightmares, reliving the event every time they fall asleep, and... I’m there. As in, I can see them, and they can see me. I can never interfere—I tried, believe me, I tried to help at first, tried to get to them, but—”

The walls had been painted in violent zebra stripes for a few seconds. They were now a truly shocking chartreuse.

The lights flared.

“All right,” Jon shouted into the air, “point taken.”

The walls were a sedate sage green, exactly as if they always had been.

“You know what, that was on me,” said Oliver as they continued walking. “I should’ve been clearer. I mean, it’s good that you at least know how it works, but what I meant was closer to if you know how you hunt.”

Jon didn’t answer for a moment, trying to think of how to reply in a way that didn’t make him seem even more pathetic than he was sure he was already coming off.

“Like... I like hospitals,” Oliver said encouragingly, apparently hoping he could clarify by providing an example. “Lots of dying people, lots of people afraid they’re going to die... everywhere you turn there’s someone really contending with their own mortality for the first time. And a sudden death here and there won’t raise any red flags, as long as you’re careful about who you pick and make sure to mix it up and not hit the same place too often. But that’s just me—everyone’s got their own preferences, it’s surprisingly individual, really. And I don’t know what the equivalent of a hospital would be for you, or even if there is one. So... what do you know so far about how you prefer to hunt?”

Jon tried for a vague, sheepish smile. It came out as more of a grimace. “I, ah...” He shook his head in an effort to clear it. Just tell him. “I haven’t... this’ll be the first time I...” Jon took another deep, unnecessary breath. Who cared if it was a bit ridiculous, it worked. “The times I’ve fed before I didn’t set out to do it, at least not consciously. Usually I was out for some other reason, and... it only happened...” Jon scoffed. “No, that’s not right, is it? I only did it when, when for one reason or another I was... when I wasn’t strong enough to resist. Usually I was hurt, or—or something else had happened that took a lot out of me—”

“Jon.” Oliver was staring at him, incredulous. “How often have you been feeding? Back when you could, I mean?”

“Ah...” Jon closed his eyes and reminded himself again that Oliver was worried about him, not his victims. “Five total. The last one was in mid-July, so... about one a month? Maybe a bit less?”

“Holy shit,” muttered Oliver, laughing quietly in clear disbelief. “You said July?”

“Yes.”

“It’s September.”

“I’m aware of that, thank you.” It came out a bit snappish, Jon could tell, but Oliver didn’t seem to mind.

Oliver shook his head. “How are you even coherent right now?”

“It’s not like I haven’t had anything,” Jon said, a bit embarrassed by Oliver’s misinterpretation and anxious to correct it, lest he mistakenly assume that Jon’s current, tenuous control was more impressive than it was. “Paper statements help a bit, and they’ve been letting me have those. Some, anyway. And I got a bit from you and Mike, just now, if we’re talking about this exact moment.” He frowned. “Is it that bad?”

“Okay,” said Oliver, in the sort of tone that suggested he’d concluded that pursuing this conversation further would most likely be unhelpful and was making the conscious decision to move on. “So you know literally nothing about your own feeding preferences because you’ve been holding off as long as you possibly can and then taking whatever you can get. That’s fine, you can figure it out starting now.” He grinned. “Welcome to your first deliberate hunt, by the way.”

Jon tried to ignore the way his heart beat faster at the mere idea. The sharp longing that filled him, the excitement sparking to life just under the surface of his mind.

Then, he stopped trying to ignore it.

It was fine. He could enjoy this. He was allowed. It was okay.

Jon smiled, a real smile, for the first time in... he didn’t know how long.

It felt so foreign, so difficult to believe, that Jon reached up and touched his face just to confirm that it was there.

It was, which discovery only made the smile wider.

There was a door at the end of the corridor ahead. (Jon was fairly certain the corridor hadn’t ended there, before. But then, he’d been distracted.)

Oliver looked at Jon. “She didn’t say where she was taking us, did she?”

“Nope.” Jon felt a nervous laugh escape him, verging on genuine amusement. “But right now... maybe it’s better if I don’t have to make that decision.”

“Fair enough,” said Oliver. He gestured at the door as they approached it. “It’s your day. Lead the way.”

Jon grasped the doorknob, feeling the unnatural warmth under his hand, and squeezed gently. “Thanks, Helen,” he said as he pulled it open.

“You’re welcome,” Helen said from where she was standing practically in the doorframe.

Jon jumped slightly, but managed to mostly keep his reaction under control.

He was starting to get a vague sense of the way this group of avatars, at least, interacted with each other, and realizing just how badly he wanted to belong with them.

It wasn’t surprising. It had been...

Jon didn’t know how long it had been since he’d belonged anywhere, but he knew for absolute certain that it had been too damn long.

A few of the conventions, at least, were easy to pick up. Expect and don’t take too seriously a bit of casual, impersonal nastiness, minimize any visible reaction to the same, say what you think, and joke about everything.

He could do that.

He smirked at Helen as he and Oliver stepped out into what looked like a city square. “Puce, Helen? Really?” He shook his head. “You’re better than that.”

She smiled, eyes lighting up, and rested a heavy, oddly shaped hand on his shoulder for a moment. “I don’t recall consulting you about my design choices,” she said lightly, “but I’ll take it under consideration.”

From her expression, Jon suspected that, next time he traveled through her corridors, the walls would be varying shades of puce the entire time.

Honestly, he was looking forward to finding out.

“Hungry?” Helen’s tone was casual, but she clearly knew the answer.

He could answer honestly. He could admit it, he could do something about it and no one here was going to hate him for it.

He laughed again, vaguely hysterical. Months of pent-up frustration and pain seeking any form of escape.

“Starving.” He sounded desperate, even to his own ears, and was delighted to realize that he genuinely did not care.

“Perfect.” Helen gestured out at the sea of people, and yes, there were people in the crowd with statements, he could feel them… “You know what to do.”

A woman sitting on the sidewalk, playing a guitar… no, a few people were watching her, they might notice.

A man waiting in line for coffee, constantly looking around and over his shoulder… yes, you’ll do.

Really, he was too hungry to keep looking.

Jon made his way over as fast as he could without technically running and stopped beside the man, who started violently at his sudden appearance.

“Hello, Adrian Shaw,” said Jon, watching the panic spread over the man’s face, drinking it in, reveling in that wonderful feeling of relief. Of power. “I—” He laughed. “I do not work at the Magnus Institute. And you’re coming with me.”

…

“The seconds it took me to unlock the door were some of the longest of my life. My hands were shaking so badly I missed the keyhole a few times, and the whole time, I could hear those awful footsteps coming closer and closer... By the time I managed it, the rhythm had shifted, and I knew my pursuer was climbing the steps to the porch where I stood. Finally, I got the door open. I rushed inside, slammed the door behind me as fast as I could, and engaged the lock and the deadbolt. For a moment, I stood frozen by the door, just... waiting. Terrified of what might happen if that feeble defense wasn’t enough.”

He was terrified now. Jon could taste it, could feel that hopeless fear settling into the cavernous hollow in his gut, quieting the gnawing itch in his mind, easing the incessant, driving hunger that had plagued him for so long. He could have laughed, or sobbed, from how good it felt. Might have, if he could’ve done it silently.

But he didn’t want to miss a single word.

“Once I realized the door wasn’t going to be breached any time in the immediate future, I stood there a moment longer, perfectly still, listening with all my might. I expected to hear it trying to get in, I think. Some... pounding at the door, or tapping at the windows, or scratching at the walls... but no. Except for the quiet humming of the appliances and my own poorly stifled harsh breathing, I couldn’t hear a thing. Once I could move again, I checked every door and window in my house. They were all closed and locked, so I sat down on the couch and just sort of… tried to pretend nothing had happened.”

Jon leaned forward, hand on the back of the bench where they both sat, and could almost feel the weathered wood shift into upholstery. Could taste the frantic terror as it faded into desperate denial.

“I think I slept fine that night, odd as it might seem. By the time I had to leave for work the next morning, I’d almost managed to convince myself that there was some perfectly reasonable explanation. I’d been under a lot of pressure, after all, and that can do funny things to people. I left my house in pretty much the same way I always had, if with a bit more trepidation. I got about halfway down the block with no signs of anything unusual, and I was just starting to really believe that the previous day’s experience had been some sort of strange one-off occurrence when I heard it again. Those same heavy, dragging footsteps.”

You still hear them, don’t you? Jon didn’t voice the question—both instinct and experience told him such questions were unnecessary and potentially counterproductive—but he savored the feel of it all the same.

“That was two weeks ago, and since then… they’ve followed me everywhere. Not inside my house, or in my office, but anywhere else I go I hear them. I never see anything, of course, no matter how many times I look. And they never seem to catch up. But I’m quite certain by now that every time I leave my house, they’re following just a bit closer.”

Jon could sense that the statement was finished, but gave it a moment to settle before intoning “statement ends.”

Adrian stared at him in horrified confusion. “Who— how— what are you?”

Jon smiled a bit. “Not what’s been following you, if that’s what you’re wondering. I’d get your affairs in order, if I were you. I hope your luck improves, but from the way it’s gone so far...” Jon shrugged. “I doubt it.”

Adrian continued to sit there, eyes wide, seemingly unable to register that he could leave now.

Finally, Jon waved a hand to dismiss him. “You’re free to go.”

He leapt up and took off at a sprint through the crowd, many of whom turned to gawk at him as Jon quietly vanished in the other direction.

He didn’t know where the others had gone, and a casual glance around the area didn’t turn them up, but that didn’t matter.

Trying to Know specific things had rarely worked out for him. But maybe...

Carefully, with a great deal of trepidation, Jon opened his mind to whatever the Eye wanted to show him.

It didn’t take long.

The others were sitting on the edge of a fountain in a nearby park block, passing around a bag of popcorn they’d purchased from a local vendor (who was watching their antics in an attempt to distract himself from his anxiety about an upcoming knee surgery—the doctor had misdiagnosed his problem, and the surgery would likely only make things worse) and tossing the contents to a truly impressive flock of pigeons they’d no doubt attracted by that very action (the pigeons were feral, not wild; the species was domesticated approximately ten thousand years ago, and most city pigeons were descendants of homing pigeons who failed to make their way home and interbred with wild rock doves, and that pigeon in particular, with the white blotches on her wings, had recently swallowed a rubber band, which...)

“Okay, that’s enough,” Jon said aloud.

“Hey, Jon!” called Oliver. “You found us. Good job.”

“Feeling better?” asked Helen.

“Yes,” Jon said quietly. “Much.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Harriet, holding out the mostly-empty paper bag from which the smell of fake butter (which used to be made of diacetyl, before inhaling diacetyl in large quantities was linked to a severe lung disease that sickened dozens of workers at microwave popcorn factories) wafted. “Want some?”

“Harriet,” said Mike with a distinct eyeroll, “no one with good taste wants popcorn.”

Harriet happily popped a kernel into her mouth, grinning at Mike the whole time.

“What’s the matter with popcorn?” asked Jon.

Mike thought for a moment, then smiled. “Ask me like you mean it.”

Jon still felt like the world was upside down, but feeding had put him in a sufficiently optimistic mood that he was beginning to let go of his concern that this was all too good to be true.

What the hell. “Mike, what don’t you like about popcorn?”

“It has the consistency of Styrofoam,” Mike neatly enunciated, “that dissolves into slime upon contact with saliva. And that’s only the edible part. It also contains sharp, indigestible fragments of hull that drive themselves into the gums and the spaces between the teeth of anyone foolish enough to consume it. It is the third worst texture I have ever experienced.”

Jon blinked as the Eye informed him that Mike had found the sensation of unintentionally grabbing the rapidly decaying limb of one of his parents as he crawled out of the wreckage of what had once been his house to be worse than popcorn, but still not as bad as cornstarch. “All right.”

Mike grinned. “Hey, thanks. I’ve been trying to put that into words for a while.”

“Heads up!” called Harriet, tossing a kernel in an arc towards Mike, who, seemingly by reflex, caught it in his mouth.

He then made a truly revolted face, spat it into his hand, and tossed it back at Harriet, who laughed and batted it away onto the ground to join its fellows.

Mike was still making extremely displeased sounds and facial expressions, and Harriet was still laughing, when Oliver cleared his throat.

“May I remind everyone that we still need a plan?” he said in a longsuffering tone.

“It’s up to Jon, isn’t it?” Helen looked at Jon, head tilted. “Do you have any ideas where you might like to go?”

“I, ah... I’m afraid not, I haven’t—”

He broke off as a memory from before...

Before the Unknowing, before his coma, before the first time he drew a statement from an unwilling mouth.

Before.

Jon broke off as a memory from before struck him.

“I don’t,” he said slowly. “At least, not at the moment. But I know someone who might be able to help.”

...

Approximately five minutes of planning and ten minutes of puce later, Jon and Oliver emerged from Helen’s corridors to find themselves directly in front of Oliver’s flat.

Harriet and Mike were already there, waiting by the front door.

It had been a mildly awkward negotiation, but a fairly simple one. If anyone would know where a displaced Archivist might be able to find a home, another Archivist—one who hadn’t been deliberately kept ignorant of as much relevant information as possible—was probably the best candidate. The Pu Songling Research Center in Beijing, where the only other Archivist (or the Mandarin equivalent of the title, at any rate) Jon so much as knew of by more than implication was located, was eight hours ahead of London time, which meant it was already the middle of the night there, or at least late enough that the Center would definitely be closed to the public.

Jon didn’t know for sure that Xiaoling would be willing to help him—not even the Eye could predict the future, and it wasn’t giving him anything useful on the likelihood of her approving of his plan, let alone agreeing to participate in it. But he thought there was a reasonable chance. She’d seemed to have a favorable opinion of his progress when they met before, and, although she’d also seemed to know and respect Elias... she might not be aware of everything he’d done, some of which Jon thought was likely pretty horrible even by avatar standards. Maybe if Jon put just the right spin on what he knew of Elias’s crimes, a combination of surprise and Archivist camaraderie would encourage her to take his side.

To maximize the odds of that happening, Jon wanted to go about requesting her assistance with his relocation as politely as possible. Which meant going through official channels wherever he could, and definitely meant arriving during business hours.

Therefore, before he could take what they all knew was the next step in this process, Jon needed somewhere to stay for the night.

Oliver had volunteered to let Jon stay with him, whereupon Mike and Harriet had informed Oliver that they were coming over as well. Oliver had taken out his phone to text Karolina the plan, and Helen had agreed to provide Oliver and Jon with transportation, both to Oliver’s flat and to Beijing in the morning. The others met Jon’s confusion with assurances that they were all finding this process quite enjoyable, that it was nice to see him beginning to come into his own, and that if they wanted to stop being part of this or take a break, they’d leave.

(That... actually helped quite a lot.)

So now, they were in Oliver’s flat, discussing plans for the afternoon.

Once they were all in the living room, Harriet looked at Oliver. “Twilight Zone?”

“Jon’s gonna like that,” said Mike, smiling.

“That’s what I was thinking.” Harriet turned to Jon. “Have you heard of The Twilight Zone? American television show from the sixties?”

“Fifty-nine,” Mike muttered.

“Thank you. Yes. Mostly from the sixties. It started in nineteen fifty-nine and ran for five seasons.”

Jon frowned. “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t think I’ve ever watched any. I’m not much of a television person in general.”

“Well, you’re going to like this. It’s basically statements in television format.” Harriet grinned. “And if you want to know what I mean, you’re going to have to watch with us.”

Jon made a rude gesture in her general direction.

Harriet’s grin did not abate in the slightest.

“Right, you wanna do this from the beginning?” said Oliver. “Or should we skip to the best ones? In season one, at least?”

“Best ones first, I think,” said Harriet. “Show him our favorites, then let him watch the others if he decides he wants to.”

“I think—” Mike began, then broke off suddenly, as though the words had been stopped in his throat.

When he continued, it took Jon a moment to realize that his mouth was still closed—he was signing—and that the odd echo he was picking up was Harriet interpreting. Which was a bit disorienting, seeing as Harriet and the Eye were making slightly different translation choices.

Jon did his best to ignore Harriet and focus on watching Mike.

“I think we should watch 6-12 today, those are all really good,” Mike was saying. “Oliver likes episode 6. Harriet likes 9. I like 9 same as her but I don’t want to share a favorite, so my favorite is 12. Karolina likes 10, I know she’s not here but it’s good either way. 7, 8, 11 are really good, too.”

“It’s me again,” Harriet clarified once Mike’s hands had stopped moving and she’d finished translating his final sentence. “Harriet. Mike’s right, those are all really good episodes.”

Which was approximately when Jon belatedly realized something else.

“Hang on,” he said. “Is that… American Sign Language?”

“You understand?” Mike asked, in what Jon was now certain was, in fact, American Sign Language.

“Yes, I do. I can understand, and produce, any language, or code, or—really any formal method of communication in existence. If it has rules, I can understand it. It’s...” Jon gave a sheepish half-smile. “It’s an Archivist thing.”

Mike grinned, then shook his head faintly. “You’re worried because you can do something awesome? Quit it.”

Jon smiled back, more of a real smile this time. “Thank you. I—I’m glad someone thinks that.” The smile faded as curiosity reasserted itself. “But why—”

“All the Fairchilds know at least a bit of ASL,” Harriet replied. “We’re not only based in one country, you know. We have most conversations relevant to the whole family in English because that’s how we started and what most of us know best, but it’s not a requirement that that be your main language to join—so, a primary signer who can read and write in English is fine. As it happens, the Fairchilds currently have one Deaf member, and he’s American. We all learn at least a bit of new members’ primary languages, if they’re not primarily English speakers—family cohesion sort of thing. If we get a Deaf Brit we’ll learn some BSL, too.”

“Harriet learned a lot more than basics when Jordan joined,” Mike added, “because she thinks he’s hot.”

Harriet swatted him. “Well, it certainly worked out well for all involved, didn’t it?”

“Too well,” Mike shot back with a roll of his eyes.

Jon frowned. “I thought Fairchilds—”

Harriet shook her head. “There’s a lot of ways to be family. Biology, adoption, marriage... and that’s just the official ways. The Fairchilds are all a family, and we all decide for ourselves on a case-by-case basis what that looks like with other members.”

Jon nodded. “That’s... that’s nice.”

“It is.” Harriet smiled and looked over at Mike. “Besides, it worked out for you, too.”

Jon turned to Mike. “Do you... may I ask?”

“Asking is absolutely fine,” Mike replied, then added in English, “please do.”

Jon took a deep breath and let the compulsion flow out. “Why do you use sign language?”

“Do you know about membrane desalination?” Mike began, once again in English. “Most of the water on earth is in the ocean. Over ninety-five percent of it, in fact. And humans can’t drink salt water. So scientists have spent years trying to find ways to get salt out of water, turn it into something they can use, and one of the tricks they’ve tried is pushing the water through a membrane with pores just big enough to let water through, but small enough to keep dissolved salt molecules out. I assume you’re familiar with osmosis, so you can see the problem there—the more concentrated the salt water on the pre-treatment side gets, the harder it is to get more fresh water out of it, because the fresh water on the other side is trying to get back through, to balance out all that salt. So they compensate by putting the salt water under pressure. A lot of pressure. As in, fifty to eighty times the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere. For a bit of context on that number, the pressure in the ocean increases by around one atmosphere for every ten meters down you go. The deepest into the ocean any human diver without protection against the pressure has ever gone is around three hundred thirty-two meters, and that was after years of preparation. It took him fifteen minutes to swim that far down, and over thirteen and a half hours to come up, just so the decompression wouldn’t kill him. That’s at thirty-four atmospheres. And desalinating water with a membrane takes double that.”

Jon was promptly informed of the diver’s name (Ahmed Gabr) and precisely what it feels like to develop decompression sickness (sufficiently horrible that it was all Jon could do to keep his reaction to the secondhand pain from showing on his face), but no more. The Eye wanted him to keep listening, after all.

And Mike had more to say.

 “For me, for as long as I can remember, talking has felt like that. Like I have the entire ocean in my head, and I’m trying to force it to come out in a form other people can process, and it takes... so much pressure. If I can plan in advance what I’m going to say, it’s fine, those thoughts have been desalinated already. But if I have to find words on the spot...” Mike shook his head. “Especially if I’m trying to communicate something I haven’t before, or deal with a new situation, as likely as not the words just aren’t going to happen. It used to be worse—if I remember correctly, when I got struck by lightning, I’d only started talking at all within the last few years. It gets worse if I’m uncomfortable, or if I’m trying to talk to someone I don’t really know, or in an unfamiliar context—admittedly, for me, if the latter is the case the former generally is as well, although sometimes it’s easier if Harriet’s with me.”

Mike winced, like he hadn’t meant to say that, and Jon felt his embarrassment and fear of being judged for what he saw as childishness. Naturally, though, he continued speaking without any auditory indications of distress.

“Often I can work around it—I’m very good at memorizing things, and I’ve found ways to avoid talking altogether when I can—but one of the things I learned when Jordan became a Fairchild twelve years ago and the rest of us started learning ASL was that sometimes, if I can’t get something across with my voice, it’s easier if I sign it instead. I don’t really know why, but if I had to guess... words belong on pages, to me. They don’t have any substance to them. Trying to make thoughts that shift and move fit into them is close to impossible. Whereas signs have dimensions, physicality. They take up space. And my thoughts are more like that, so... I think signing is easier because I don’t have to change them quite as much. So I learned as much as I could, and now—”

Harriet abruptly turned, walked across the room to where Helen had created a door in a nearby wall and was clearly in the process of making her exit, and put a hand on her shoulder.

Jon doubted any force in the world could keep Helen somewhere she didn’t want to be. But for now, it seemed, she was allowing Harriet to delay her departure.

Mike, of course, was still talking.

“It hasn’t fixed everything. Some things, at some times, in some circumstances, I will never be able to say in real time no matter what I do or what language I use. But it helps, and trust me, when you’ve spent your entire life trying to force the ocean in your head through a membrane it doesn’t want to go through, anything that helps you get even a little more water past that barrier is incredibly welcome.”

Mike stopped talking, done with his quasi-statement, and the room lapsed into a brief silence.

Once it was clear to everyone who wasn’t Mike or Jon that Mike was done talking, Harriet turned to Helen with a raised eyebrow.

“And where do you think you're going?” she asked.

Helen turned back toward the group and rolled her eyes, an action rather uncomfortable to watch. “Do you really want an answer to that?”

“I want you to stay for a bit,” Harriet replied.

 Jon frowned. “I don’t want you to feel obligated—”

He didn’t get any further before Harriet cut him off. “I do. A little.”

“Between us,” Mike said to her in ASL (Harriet didn’t interpret, so that was probably Mike’s way of saying he didn’t want her to), “I don’t want Helen to stay.”

Looking at what was actually being said instead of relying solely on the automatic understanding the Eye gave him, Jon noticed that Mike had chosen to fingerspell H-E-L-E-N instead of pointing to her—most likely to avoid Helen, or anyone else save Harriet and (probably unintentionally) Jon, knowing who he was talking about.

Knowing what he did of Mike’s history, both the sentiment and the care he was taking to keep it quiet made perfect sense.

Harriet subtly turned away from Jon before answering, and Mike moved to a position where he could see her while still remaining as far from Helen as possible.

Unfortunately, Harriet had forgotten to account for the fact that, at Jon’s angle, he could just barely see her reflection in the darkened screen of the television.

He didn’t mean to snoop. He would have looked away. But he was curious about her reply, and... well, deliberately cutting himself off from knowledge wasn’t something he was particularly good at, these days.

“I understand,” Harriet replied. “If you want to leave, it’s fine. Truly. But Jon knows Helen better than he knows us. He’ll feel more comfortable if she stays.”

With considerable surprise, Jon realized that was true.

Mike made a sour face, but nodded.

Harriet turned back to Helen without missing a beat. “If you’re gonna ask us to do stuff for you, and we’re all going to be working together, you can hang out with us for a bit.” She smiled at Helen. “C'mon, I think you'll really like this show. There’s an episode called ‘And When the Sky Was Opened’—I know it sounds more like my kinda thing, from the title, but I really think—” She turned to Mike. “What number is it?”

Mike flashed an “11” back to her.

“Eleven. Sweet,” said Harriet, smiling. “I totally think it’ll be up your alley—episode eleven especially, but really the whole thing. Each episode is half an hour counting ads, and we can watch them without, so factoring in breaks and time to pause the show and talk, that’s about three and a half hours, four if we’re particularly chatty. It’s”—she checked the diver’s watch on her wrist—“around 3:45 right now, so this should work really well. Sound good to everyone?”

There was a general murmur of agreement from everyone except Helen, who looked... conflicted?

“I can't... sit and watch television with you,” Helen finally said, almost a snap. “It won’t work.” She gestured at herself, head to feet. “This isn't even a real body. It's more of a... concept.”

“Well,” said Harriet mildly. “Sit the concept of your butt down and let us introduce you to The Twilight Zone.”

Helen was quiet for a moment.

“I can try,” she finally said. “But I can’t promise I’ll stay.”

“Fair enough,” said Harriet as Oliver grabbed the remote and began pulling up the first of the intended episodes.

“This one’s my favorite of the early episodes,” he said as he selected episode six, “Escape Clause,” and pressed play. “I promise, no matter how badly you fucked up your change or its immediate aftermath, you didn’t fuck it up as bad as this guy.”

...

“Really, Walter?” Oliver scoffed. “You couldn’t even survive forty-eight hours as an immortal?”

“Loser,” Mike piped up from his perch on the armrest of Oliver’s sofa, where he’d settled for the moment into a position that looked both precarious and uncomfortable but seemed to suit him just fine.

“He did an impressively terrible job with that, didn’t he,” Jon agreed, leaning forward in the chair he’d pulled up beside the other end of the sofa—the end closest to Helen, who was currently sprawled over the armrest Mike wasn’t occupying in an equally odd configuration of limbs (there would have been plenty of room for Jon between Helen and Oliver—in fact, they’d seemed at various points to be actively trying to make room—had he been comfortable with that arrangement, but for the time being at least he decidedly wasn’t, so... chair it was).

“Isn’t it nice to know it could’ve gone worse?” Harriet grinned at Oliver from her spot between Oliver and the armrest Mike had claimed.

Oliver flipped her off, then turned his face away from her—toward Jon—and mouthed yes.

“He says yes,” Helen said over Oliver’s shoulder, in Harriet’s general direction.

Oliver flipped her off, too.

...

When the closing narration of episode six had announced the title of the next episode—“The Lonely”—and Jon had finished choking on spit, he looked over at the occupants of the sofa. “Is there something I should know about Rod Serling?”

“Believe me, I’ve wondered the same thing,” Harriet replied. “That is... definitely not the only thing that had me leaning in that direction. I’ve looked into it, though, and I’m pretty sure he was only a human.”

“Hmm.” Jon turned back to the television, then abruptly back to Harriet as something occurred to him. “Wait, pause it.”

She did. “What is it?”

“Just... something I’ve noticed. About the way avatars... the way people like us tend to talk about the Entities.” Jon gestured to the screen. “Names like that—the Lonely, the Eye, the Vast, et cetera—the ones Robert Smirke came up with, the ones I learned. When I’ve heard people talking about their Entities”—he turned back to the occupants of the sofa—“including some of you, actually... those names don’t tend to come up. But more than that... there’s very little consistency in general. Even from the same person, within the same statement, the same Entity will go by different names, or even go unnamed entirely. So...” Jon chose his words carefully. “I’m wondering what that’s about. If it means anything in particular.”

“Well,” Harriet replied. “I can only speak to the Fairchilds. But for us...” She took a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling as she tried to find the words. “It’s kind of a respect thing, I think. Not putting a single word on our Power is a way of... not trying to contain something uncontainable. Not shoving it into the limits of human language, or human ideas of what things are.” She smiled. “And yes, I know we’re not technically humans, but in the face of the incomprehensible scale of the universe, that distinction is... more or less irrelevant.”

Jon nodded. “That... that makes sense, for you. And probably some of the others.” He smiled. “For the Cult of the Lightless Flame, I think it’s probably more that they can’t agree on anything in general...”

A burst of laughter rose from the others present.

Oliver turned to Jon. “For the record, I think trying to neatly categorize and put single consistent words on all the Powers is... pretty much just a your-people thing.”

Jon sighed. “All right. Good to know.”

...

“Okay, I know Serling was probably just a human, but"—Harriet gestured at the television—"she’s gotta be one of us, right?”

Oliver frowned at the screen, where the words “Based on a Short Story by Lynn Venable” were floating over the final shot of what Jon personally thought had been a rather depressing episode. “Lynn Venable?”

Harriet nodded. “Yeah. I mean, writing a story that sticks in your head like that... you’re potentially giving that fear to hundreds, maybe thousands of people, depending on where it’s published. With an adaptation this popular? I’m sure it’s reached millions by now.” She smiled. “Might not be the worst idea, actually.”

“I’m looking her up right now,” said Oliver, looking at his phone. “Okay, Wikipedia says her full first name is Marilyn... Born in 1927, in New Jersey... There’s a list here of some other stories she—”

Abruptly, Oliver broke off in a burst of near-silent but convulsive laughter.

“What is it?” asked Harriet.

“Here, Jon,” Oliver wheezed once he’d recovered somewhat. “Read this out. You can do it better than I can.”

He passed the phone to Helen, who passed it to Jon.

Jon forcefully ignored the tightness in his chest and the lump rising in his throat at his abrupt realization that what these people had said earlier was true. He’d known they weren’t lying, of course, but...

They genuinely wanted him around. Not despite who and what he was, because of it.

He hadn’t really gotten that until just now.

Jon started reading before he could do anything so embarrassing as crying about it.

“Lynn Venable, writer,” he read. “Marilyn ‘Lynn’ Venable, born June nineteen twenty-seven, is an American writer. Early life: Lynn Venable is from New Jersey. Career:—”

“That’s all it says about her early life?” Harriet interjected while Jon continued to read the page, which was now discussing Lynn Venable’s authorship of the short story “Time Enough at Last” and the Twilight Zone episode it had inspired. “That she’s from New Jersey?”

“Yep,” Oliver replied. “Now hush.”

“—discussed by scholars, who note that it was published in the same year as Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and includes similar themes about reading and books,” Jon went on.

“That’s vague,” Oliver grumbled.

Harriet shushed him.

After a list of other publications, which Jon duly read out, the section that had so amused Oliver arrived.

“‘Someone once asked me, ‘Why do you write these things? Why do you like to scare yourself?’” Jon read, as the page quoted what were apparently Lynn Venable’s words to a reporter in 2012. “I said, ‘I don't scare myself. I scare other people.’”

The sofa erupted into laughter.

Jon elected not to expand the section on ‘Personal Life’ and handed Oliver’s phone back to him.

“That, that sounds... yeah, that sounds about right,” Mike said once the laughter had died down.

Fortunately, Jon had been sufficiently distracted by the flow of reading that any potentially embarrassing emotional reactions to being liked were no longer a danger. “If we’ve established that she’s one of us,” he said instead, the words one of us delightfully strange on his tongue. “That leaves one very important question.”

“Oh?” Helen did something with her face that might have been... probably was intended to be raising her eyebrows. “And what would that be?”

Jon smiled. “We know one of the Powers can claim Lynn Venable to its credit... but which one?”

...

Jon gasped in shock as his chair dropped away from underneath him and a violent gust of wind buffeted his face.

Once he’d somewhat adjusted to the fact that, apparently, the genuinely impressive camera work representing a rollercoaster on the screen had been translated into something he could feel, Jon forced his eyes open and glanced over at the sofa.

Helen was still sprawled over the nearer armrest, to all appearances completely unbothered.

Oliver’s eyes were tightly closed, and he looked distinctly unwell.

Jon looked past them, to the side of the sofa occupied by the Fairchilds.

Harriet was laughing, face radiating sheer delight.

Mike’s face was set in a devious smirk.

Taking full advantage of the fact that he no longer needed to be able to take a decent breath to speak, Jon shouted “what the fuck, Mike?”

Mike’s smirk turned to a grin. “Enhancing the experience,” he remarked innocently.

Jon found it mildly amusing that he was now the only one present to have gotten this far into the evening without Oliver flipping him off.

...

“Well?” Harriet asked in Helen’s general direction as the closing narration of “And When the Sky Was Opened” wrapped up. “Thoughts?”

“Many,” Helen replied.

Harriet tilted her head. “Any you feel like sharing?”

“Now where would be the fun in that?” Helen, who Jon was fairly certain had been draped over the armrest of the sofa the previous instant, now stood by a door set in a section of wall that had (probably) never before seen one. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

With that, she was gone.

“I think she liked it,” Jon said.

“Good enough for me,” Harriet said. “You know her better than anyone else here.”

Jon scoffed. “I don’t think anyone knows Helen very well. I don’t think anyone could.”

“I know one thing,” Harriet replied. “She really likes you.”

Jon frowned. “What?”

Harriet paused the television as the next episode started to play. “I look after a lot of young avatars. Help them figure things out, find their friends. I didn’t have to take on that task, but someone has to do it, and I’ve decided it’s something I want to do. But the sorts of things I do for them, that Helen did for you… it’s not common. She decided, all on her own, that you were worth…” She gestured around at the others in the room. “This. I don’t know if you know this, but for someone like her… that means something.”

Jon frowned again, the queasiness he’d felt at Mike’s unsolicited special effects suddenly back in force. “You don’t think…”

“Oh!” Harriet smiled and shook her head. “No, you’re right, I could have phrased that better. That’s not what I meant. I’m just saying… she cares about you. And I wanted to make sure you knew that.”

Jon nodded, the queasiness replacing itself with a calm warmth. “Thank you.”

Mike tapped Harriet’s shoulder. “Can we keep watching now?”

Harriet laughed and reached for the remote. “Sure thing.”

…

In the end, it took approximately five hours to get through the episodes they’d planned, and a while longer to wrap up conversations, finalize plans, and say goodbyes.

By around 9:15, the others had left, leaving Jon and Oliver sitting in a silence that couldn’t quite decide if it wanted to be awkward or companionable.

“Thank you for letting me stay here,” Jon said quietly.

Whichever way the silence was leaning, Jon had decided to break it by expressing his gratitude—both because he was genuinely grateful, and to hopefully initiate the process of him getting some sleep.

“You’re welcome,” Oliver replied. “Toilet’s down the hall, first door on your right. There should be a spare toothbrush in the cabinet next to the sink. You can shower if you want, towels are in the same cabinet, next shelf down. You don’t have any clean clothes with you, I take it?”

Jon silently shook his head.

“If you’d like, you can put the clothes you’ve got on in the washer, and I’ll let you borrow some for tonight—I know they’re not likely to fit particularly well, but, hey, at least they’re too big rather than too small?”

“That would be... yes. Thank you.” Jon winced slightly at his own awkwardness.

Oliver didn’t seem to notice or care. “The washer’s pretty fast, especially if you use the quick wash setting, so if you put them in soon and move them to the dryer before you turn in, they’ll be ready by morning and you won’t have to stay up too long.” As he spoke, Oliver got up, walked a little ways into the hall, opened what appeared to be some kind of closet, and retrieved a few blankets. “I don’t have a spare room, but the sofa’s all yours.” He returned to the sofa and set the blankets down on the end. “You can set that up how you like.”

Jon laughed, the sound oddly distant to his own ears.

Oliver looked at him with mild bemusement. “What?”

“It’s just...” Jon struggled to phrase his thoughts in a way that wouldn’t be rude. “This is all so... normal.”

Oliver raised his eyebrows. “What did you expect?”

Jon shrugged. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

He’d been struck by the feeling while they talked by the fountain in the city, and it had only grown while they’d been watching television. Despite the various avatar traits on display, the whole thing had felt... jarringly ordinary. Just a group of friends having fun together.

And now—on the run from his previous employment situation, having purposely driven some poor soul into an agony of terror earlier that day just to devour it like some kind of trauma vampire (like the kind of trauma vampire he was, he supposed), disoriented and disbelieving, giddy and overwhelmed and confused and frightened—Jon was being treated like an ordinary houseguest.

Like an ordinary person.

Apparently, Oliver could guess the direction Jon’s thoughts were taking, because he smiled faintly and shook his head. “It feels normal because it is. For us, anyway.” He shrugged. “Turns out you can die and come back and the world doesn’t stop. People like us still need somewhere to sleep and stash whatever stuff we have. Feeding on terror might help with grocery bills, but it doesn’t do shit for the rent.”

Jon laughed, startling himself a bit.

“So a lot of us still have jobs, if we don’t happen to have gotten connected with someone who’s wealthy the way immoral immortals tend to be after a while.” Oliver smiled, seemingly at his own joke. “I mean, no one’s really immortal, but you get my point. A lot of us have legal problems trying to hide the fact that we don’t age while maintaining our government records from before so we can do things like work, or drive without being arrested for driving without a license in places where that’s more common, or buy alcohol. We have friends, even if they’re not the same ones we had as humans. Some of us fall in love. We hold dumb grudges for way too long, and we laugh at cat videos on the internet, and we wonder about our place in the world, and we form our own opinions on that topic and argue with each other about them.” He laughed faintly, a single, quick sound. “Actually, some of us spend way too much time on that last one.”

Jon swallowed hard and nodded. “All right. I... I get the picture.”

Oliver smiled again. “Good. Have everything you need?”

“Yes. You’re being... very generous. Thank you.”

Oliver gave a single nod of acknowledgment, before a barely-there smirk crept onto his face. “Sweet dreams, Jon.”

Jon laughed once, soft and surprised.

Then, he returned Oliver’s sideways smile.

“Yeah,” he said. “You too.”

Chapter Text

Jon awoke in the process of jolting upright, a cry escaping his mouth as adrenaline surged through his body.

It took him a moment to connect his current state of panic to the phantom sensation of something very sharp digging into his face.

Sure enough, a glance upward revealed Helen grinning down at him, wiggling her fingers and cackling.

“Good morning to you too,” Jon grumbled once he’d calmed down enough to speak.

“Oh, hey, Jon!” called Oliver from another room. “Back with us?”

“How long was I out?” Jon blearily asked.

“Well, I’m pretty sure you conked out around ten last night,” Oliver replied as he came into the living room. “And I told Helen we could wake you up if you were still asleep at nine—”

Jon was abruptly informed that the current time was 09:00:17. Helen had taken Oliver’s instruction very literally.

“—so, eleven hours, give or take. I’m pretty sure you could’ve slept longer if we’d let you, but it’s four P.M. in Beijing, so I figured we’d better get going.”

“Thank you,” Jon said as he began the process of extricating himself from the blankets and emerging from the nest he’d made of the sofa.

“You’re welcome. Karolina’s here, too, by the way.”

“Good morning,” Karolina called from what sounded like the same room Oliver had recently occupied, then walked into the living room as Jon managed to get up, a mug clutched in her hands. “How’d you sleep?”

“Ah... quite well, thank you.” Jon was finding it a bit surreal to be face to face with a smiling, cheerful, apparently unbothered Karolina so soon after watching her be crushed by a collapsing train car—then, she hadn’t seemed especially bothered by that, either, so perhaps it wasn’t so surprising.

“Glad to hear it.” Karolina took a sip from the mug she was holding. “I have a proposal.”

Jon began folding the blankets he’d been sleeping in, keeping his face toward Karolina. “Yes?”

“If you’re all right with it, I thought I could go with you to Beijing.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Jon protested. “You’ve done so much for me already, I—”

“I don’t mind at all,” said Karolina brightly. “I’ve never been to China, and I’m sure there’ll be a lot of waiting involved, so plenty of chances to explore the city. I don’t have anywhere I have to be for the next few days—I work from home, and it generally doesn’t matter precisely when I do my work as long as I make deadlines—and someone ought to go with you. It’s probably going to take some time for the Archivist there to find a place for you, and someone needs to keep the others in the loop and keep you company.” Karolina’s smile softened. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

“I’m still happy to take you, if you’d rather not have dirt all over your clothes when you get there,” Helen interjected. “And I’ll check in to see how things are going.”

“Thank you.” Jon gave Karolina an apologetic look. “I think arriving in clean clothes would be wise.”

Karolina nodded. “That’s probably a good idea.”

“If Karolina’s with you, are you good if I stay here?” Oliver asked.

“Of course,” Jon replied. “Thank you for letting me crash on your sofa. Especially since I... can’t really do anything in return except invade your nightmares.”

Oliver smiled faintly. “I’m used to it. It’s… kind of a nice change, actually. Mostly I’m just a bit embarrassed you’re stuck watching me hijack a ship over and over.” He shook his head. “Not my finest hour.”

Jon shrugged. “We all have bad days.”

Oliver snorted. “Yeah. I guess we do.”

“Now go get dressed,” Karolina told Jon. “We can leave as soon as you’re ready.”

...

Jon stood in the waiting room of the Pu Songling Research Center, fervently hoping he was right about Xiaoling’s potential allegiance—and about his plan to increase his odds of securing it.

Oh well. Only one way to find out.

He approached the front desk, where the receptionist, a fairly young man, was engrossed in something he was doing on the desktop computer.

“Excuse me,” Jon said in Mandarin as the receptionist looked up. “The librarian here, Zhang Xiaoling? Is she available?”

The receptionist looked startled, possibly at the easy fluency in the language from someone who obviously wasn’t ethnically Chinese, but quickly recovered. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe she has any available appointments today.”

“I understand,” Jon replied. “When it’s possible, could you tell her the Archivist from the Magnus Institute in London is here and would like to see her, when she has a moment?” He used the word Xiaoling had used for “Archivist”—something like “architect,” if he was remembering it correctly. “I think she’d like to know.”

The receptionist frowned, but nodded. “I’ll pass on the message.”

“Thank you.” Jon sat down in one of the chairs scattered around the room—the one next to Karolina, who had taken a seat as soon as they’d come in—and settled in to wait.

He didn’t have to wait long.

A few minutes after the receptionist had repeated Jon’s message into the phone on his desk, Xiaoling came into the room, smiling when her eyes settled on Jon. “Welcome back,” she said in English. “How may I help you this time?”

“It’s a long story,” Jon replied in Mandarin, “and I’d like to tell it properly, if that’s all right with you.”

Jon hoped he wasn’t being too vague, that Xiaoling would understand what he was offering. He didn’t yet know much about exactly how avatar society worked, but he was fairly certain that, if he intended to ask someone for relatively involved help they had no obligation to give him, offering some form of compensation couldn’t hurt.

Almost instantly, Jon realized he needn’t have worried.

Xiaoling smiled, eyes brightening. “Follow me.”

...

Some twenty minutes later, Jon sat in a chair on the opposite side of Xiaoling’s desk from where she sat, reeling from two years of revisited emotion.

“That...” He laughed softly. “I hadn’t done that before. Not from this side, anyway. It’s... it’s a lot.”

He’d known it would be—of course he had—but knowing it and feeling it were two different things.

Xiaoling nodded, the satisfaction of feeding mingling in her expression with concern, disbelief, and, unless Jon was mistaken, traces of well-concealed anger. “Take all the time you need.”

“I’m all right.”

Xiaoling exhaled slowly. “I never thought Elias would do such a thing. Gertrude seemed to be doing so well, I assumed..." She shook her head. "Gertrude was his responsibility. You were his responsibility. He should have been... guiding you, teaching you, protecting you. That was his duty. To have murdered his own Archivist, and brought you to so much harm...” Her jaw set. “You’ve made excellent progress even without proper guidance, but... it shouldn’t have been in spite of your mentor. And leaving a Lukas in charge of his Institute?” She shook her head. “I respected Elias, before I heard all this. But now... those things should never have happened to you. I’m glad he’s in prison. And I’ll help you however I can.”

“Thank you,” Jon said quietly, something odd but not entirely unpleasant churning in the pit of his stomach.

Xiaoling thought he’d been badly wronged. She was angry on his behalf.

That was more than he’d even dared to hope for.

“What do you need?” Xiaoling asked.

“I was hoping you might know if there’s a way I could... transfer. Find a different Archive to attach myself to, or even build one, if I could find an institution willing to support that project. And, if it’s possible, I thought you’d be the most likely person to know of any vacancies.”

Xiaoling nodded. “I should warn you, it won’t be a pleasant process. Severing ties with your library of origin... even if you do it by finding a new one, our patron won’t like it. This doesn’t happen very often, but... I’ve heard enough to know you’ll almost certainly be punished.”

“I can accept that,” Jon replied. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how much, or for how long?” Just so I know, he didn’t need to add. Xiaoling would understand.

“For an estimate... a week of bad flu, but most likely with some other symptoms specific to the Watcher.”

“Understood,” Jon said instead of voicing any of the dismayed sarcasm floating around in his brain.

“You’re certain you want to go through with this?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” Xiaoling retrieved a laptop from a drawer in her desk, set it in front of her, and opened it. “I don’t immediately know of any openings, but I’ll make some inquiries. It may take a few days for my contacts to reply, but I should be able to find somewhere suitable.” She handed Jon her phone. “Put your number in. I’ll text you as soon as I find something.”

Jon did as instructed, then handed Xiaoling’s phone back to her.

“Ah... one more thing,” Jon said.

“Yes?”

“Do you know of anywhere close by where my friend and I could stay? It... may be relevant that she’s of the Buried—Too-Close-I-Cannot-Breathe?—and tends to leave... substantial amounts of dust in her wake.”

“I understand perfectly. There’s a hotel nearby whose staff have worked with the Center before, I’m sure they’ll be accommodating. And tell your friend not to worry about the dust while she’s here, either. As long as she doesn’t come into any rooms where we store documents, it’s perfectly alright. Nothing that won’t wash.”

“Thank you,” Jon said, trying to convey through tone exactly how deeply he meant it.

Xiaoling smiled. “You’re welcome, Jon.”

...

The afternoon, and most of the next day, passed in a blur of jet lag and nerves.

Jon and Karolina had spent what should have been a lovely day exploring Beijing, and in many ways it was, but the suspense was powerful enough that Jon, at least, couldn’t enjoy it as fully as he might have wished to.

They were back in their hotel room at 11:00 at night when the text came in.

<I heard back about a potential vacancy. Susan Wu from the California Historical Society in San Francisco on the West Coast of the United States says she’d be happy to take you on. Be back at the Center at 9AM tomorrow for a phone call. -Xiaoling>

It took Jon a moment to realize the text was in Mandarin, and a moment longer to process the full import of the words.

“Karolina?” he said.

Karolina looked up from where she’d been sitting on her bed, doing something on her phone. “Yes?”

“Xiaoling might have found a place for me.”

Karolina grinned. “That’s wonderful! Where is it?”

“United States. California Historical Society. I... might have a phone interview at nine tomorrow morning.”

“Congratulations!” Karolina turned back to her phone and tapped the screen a few more times. “Do you have everyone’s numbers?”

“I don’t think Helen has a phone, but otherwise, yes.”

“You should tell them now. It’ll be the middle of the night in London when the interview happens.” Karolina wiggled her way under the covers she’d been sitting on and lay down. “Tell them to wish you luck.”

“Alright,” said Jon, grabbing his phone to do just that.

“I’ll see you in the morning, but anyway, good luck.”

“Thank you.”

Karolina turned off her bedside lamp and rolled to face away from Jon, who promptly turned off his own lamp and texted Harriet, Mike, and Oliver a brief summary of the situation and potential new job.

Mike was the first to reply. <CHS is in San Francisco?>

<Yes.>

Mike's next text was an emoji that appeared to be an image of the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in fog, followed by three question marks.

Jon smiled. <I take that to mean you’re in favor of this idea?>

<YES> Mike replied, followed immediately by <You better ace your interview>

<I’ll do my best.>

Meanwhile, texts had come in from Oliver (<That’s great! Good luck tomorrow!>) and Harriet (<Good luck! That’s near the Golden Gate Bridge, isn’t it?>)

Jon choked back laughter so as not to disturb Karolina. <That’s correct. Mike was quite enthusiastic about that, too.>

<Having another friend who lives near the Golden Gate would be amazing!> Harriet commented. <Now get some sleep.>

<Okay> Jon put his phone down and rested his head on the pillow, a faint smile refusing to leave his face even as he tried to relax.

Friend.

...

When the Pu Songling Research Center opened its doors to the public at 8:30 the next morning, Jon and Karolina were already standing outside. (Jon had told Karolina she didn’t have to come with him—they were both seriously jet-lagged, and neither had gotten much sleep—but she’d insisted on being there to provide moral support, and Jon hadn’t felt especially inclined to argue.)

They made their way in, Karolina sat down in the same chair she’d occupied two days earlier, and Jon went up to the front desk and once again told the receptionist that he was here to see Zhang Xiaoling.

This time, the receptionist immediately nodded and picked up his desk phone to notify Xiaoling of Jon’s arrival.

Within a minute, she was standing in the entrance to the hallway that led back towards her office, smiling at Jon. “Come on back.”

As they walked along the hall, Xiaoling continued speaking. “I’ve only just begun corresponding with Susan—the time difference is fifteen hours, which makes things somewhat complicated, and before this I only knew her through some mutual contacts—but I’ve been doing research since she got back to me last night, and she seems like a trustworthy and accomplished librarian. You ought to get on with her—she has the same affiliation as your friend.”

Jon blinked. “Not ours?”

Xiaoling laughed softly. “No. She just really likes her job.” She opened the door to her office and gestured for Jon to sit, then sat in her own chair and began typing on her phone. “I’ll see if she’d like to call a little early.”

Jon swallowed, a tangled mass of anxiety settling in his gut.

Xiaoling looked up and nodded. “She’ll call in a minute.”

Jon took deep, careful breaths in an attempt to calm his nerves until the phone rang.

Xiaoling answered, then put the phone on speaker. “Hello,” she said. “Zhang Xiaoling here. We spoke over email.”

“Yes,” said the woman on the other end—Susan Wu. “The Archivist in need of a transfer.”

“I have him with me,” Xiaoling replied. “You’re on speaker mode.”

“Lovely,” said Susan (Ms. Wu? Jon needed to ask). “Jonathan, you wanted to talk to me about potentially setting up an Archive at the California Historical Society?”

“That’s correct,” Jon said. “Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me. And... most people call me Jon.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Jon. I’m Susan Wu. You can call me Susan.”

“Thank you, Susan. I, ah...” Jon broke off, frantically trying to find the words, then decided it was probably best to just be honest. “I’m afraid I’m not entirely certain where to start.”

“That’s all right. How about I can tell you some of my ideas about how this could work, we can find and discuss any places where we disagree, and then you can ask me any questions you have?”

“That sounds excellent,” Jon said, trying to keep the relief out of his voice. “Thank you.”

“No problem. To give you a bit of background, the California Historical Society exists to preserve and promote access to information on the history of the state of California. Part of that mission is our library and collections department, which is a space for the preservation of documents and artifacts of all kinds that contribute to an understanding of California history. I’ve spoken with some of my colleagues, and we agree that a collection of oral histories relating to folklore would fall under our scope quite nicely. If you were interested in launching such a project, we could support you in integrating it into our existing collections library, provide you with an office, assist you in finding a living space, and, of course, officially bring you on as a full staff member. How does that sound?”

Jon smiled. “Lovely.”

“You’ll need some training in our standard operating procedures, of course, and we’ll find ways for you to help out with other aspects of managing the department once that’s completed, but from what Xiaoling told me, the priority is getting you established and working as soon as possible. It’s the end of the day here, but I can get your employment paperwork drawn up tomorrow, if that would be helpful. If you arrive on Friday—Pacific time, time zones are strange, I know—it should be ready for you to sign, which will formalize your transfer. I understand you’re likely to have a difficult adjustment period, so I won’t expect you to do any work right away—you can start properly working on the seventeenth, if that’s agreeable to you, which should give you time to recover and get set up before the project launches. Does all that sound good?”

“Yes,” said Jon quietly. He felt a bit overwhelmed, but not in a bad way. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Any further questions?”

Jon spoke carefully, keeping any compulsion out of his voice. “Does it matter for your system if I never officially quit my last job, if it was due to... metaphysical inability?”

“I, ah... I’ve never run into that problem before, so I can’t say for certain, but it shouldn’t. The system doesn’t ask about your previous employment unless you’re running a credentials check, and Xiaoling vouched for you—and sent me some evidence of your work history—so that’s good enough for me.”

“Right,” Jon replied, wondering with a touch of familiar unease exactly what “evidence” Xiaoling had gotten her hands on. “Is there somewhere I can stay until a more permanent living arrangement can be worked out? Especially given the... difficult adjustment period I’m anticipating?”

Xiaoling jumped as a door opposite her office door swung open.

“I can help you find somewhere to live,” Helen declared as Xiaoling swore under her breath and Jon repeatedly apologized.

“I’m sorry, she’s a friend, she’s just... like this,” Jon told Xiaoling before turning to Helen. “Are you talking about ‘Helen Richardson’s real estate contacts’ kind of help, or ‘devour the current occupants’ kind of help?”

Helen smiled. “Whichever is necessary.”

Jon sighed. “No, thank you.”

“What’s going on over there?” asked Susan, voice rising from where the phone on the desk had been briefly forgotten.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Xiaoling, who had by now recovered herself, told Helen politely but firmly. “This area is not open to anyone without permission.”

Helen turned to Jon expectantly.

“She’s helping me,” Jon said after a moment, gesturing at Xiaoling. “So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t upset her.”

“Fine,” Helen grumbled before vanishing into the wall.

“I’m sorry about that,” Jon said once she was gone. “Helen’s grasp of boundaries is... not the clearest.”

“It’s all right,” said Xiaoling. “Thank you for talking to her. Susan, I believe Jon was asking you about short-term accommodations?”

“Yes. I’m afraid I can’t help with that on such short notice, but there are a number of hotels in the area—the ones close by are quite expensive, but there are some more affordable ones if you go further out, which should work just fine seeing as you won’t need to come in to work for a week or so anyway. Or I hear you have some friends who are helping you with this process—they might know someone in the area you could stay with.”

“All right,” said Jon. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll see you on Friday?” Susan’s tone made it a question.

“I’ll see you then,” Jon confirmed.

“Wonderful. It was nice talking to you, Jon.”

“It was nice talking to you, too. I... thank you so much for being willing to take me on with so little notice.”

“You’re welcome. I quite understand. Xiaoling didn’t share everything about your situation, but... she told me enough.”

Jon nodded. “Still, thank you. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

Susan hung up.

Xiaoling took her phone back, then smiled. “Congratulations on your new position, Archivist.”

Jon smiled back. “Thank you. I... really appreciate your help.”

“I’m glad I could help you. Even aside from the ways Elias mistreated you, the Forsaken is pernicious. If a Lukas is running the Magnus Institute...” Xiaoling shook her head. “It’s a good thing you got out when you did.”

Jon stifled a wince as a memory of the last time he’d spoken to Martin sprang up in his mind unbidden.

He forced himself to push it away. He couldn’t make Martin’s decisions for him. Besides, he was trying to start over. He couldn’t keep hanging onto the Magnus Institute, or anyone affiliated with it. Not when he was about to cut the last tie connecting him to that place and those people.

Martin’s fate would be decided by Martin, Peter Lukas, and the whims of circumstance. Jon no longer played any role in it.

Even if part of him wished he did.

“Yes,” Jon replied. “I’m sure it is.”

...

When Jon got back out to the waiting room, Harriet was sitting in the chair next to Karolina, typing something on her phone.

“Hey Jon!” she said as he came closer, without looking up. “Helen told Karolina you needed a place to stay in San Francisco, and she texted me, and there are some Fairchilds living there already, so I’m texting them and seeing if they have time to meet, and if they do—” She broke off, smiling. “Mari got back to me. She says Jenny’s out right now, but she’ll ask as soon as she gets—oh, she also says there’s a new planetarium at The Works museum in Ohio. It opened in June, apparently. She’s asking me if—come on, Mari, we can’t all go.” Harriet resumed typing.

“Thank you,” Jon said.

Harriet didn’t appear to hear him.

Karolina waved her hand between Harriet’s phone and her face.

“Real live person?” she said when Harriet finally looked up at her, annoyed. “Twelve feet in front of you?”

She was, the Eye informed Jon, spot on about the distance.

“I’m talking to a real live person right now,” Harriet replied, deliberately turning her gaze back to her phone. “People don’t get less real because you’re not looking at them. This isn’t quantum mechanics.”

Karolina looked at Jon and grinned. “And yet, somehow, I’m the Millenial and she is—technically—a Baby Boomer.”

Harriet groaned. “By one year, fuck off!”

Karolina laughed, then looked back up at Jon. “I’m pretty good with computers, actually. I just have some very definite opinions about their proper place.”

“Fair enough.” Jon traversed the necessary twelve feet to sit down in the unoccupied chair next to Harriet. “Let me know when you learn anything else relevant.”

“Will do,” Harriet replied.

...

As it happened, over an hour passed before they learned anything further.

Fifteen minutes in, Jon had asked Harriet, who had been getting increasingly fidgety, if she’d like to accompany him on a walk.

They’d been navigating the city streets for nearly an hour when Harriet’s phone chimed.

She retrieved it from her pocket almost excessively fast and looked at the screen. “Jenny’s home. She and Mari would be happy to have me drop by, and they’re interested to hear what I felt like cashing in a favor for.”

“Must be a pretty big favor,” Jon remarked.

“More like a lot of medium-sized ones.” She grinned. “I’ve got a bit of a reputation. Nearly every Fairchild owes me a favor at some point. I don’t usually call them in—I’m happy to help my family, I don’t do it to get paid back—but don’t tell them that, because it’s come in really handy a few times.”

“Well, in this instance, I’m certainly not complaining.” Jon turned and started to make his way back to the Center, where Karolina was (presumably) still seated. “We should tell Karolina where we’re going, see if she wants to come along.”

Harriet’s grin turned wicked. “Does that mean you’re traveling with me this time?”

Jon took a moment to consider the relative merits of travel by Vast, travel by Buried, and travel by potentially miffed Helen.

“Yes,” he said with a deep sigh. “It does.”

…

Despite Jon not enjoying travel by Vast any more than he’d anticipated, the trip to San Francisco was largely without incident, and soon he and Harriet were standing in front of an exceptionally nice house, which was, as Jon ascertained via a quick look around, directly beside the bay.

“There are many benefits to being a Fairchild,” Harriet said smugly when she saw Jon’s expression.

“Holy shit,” said a voice from roughly the level of Jon’s and Harriet’s knees.

“Hey Karolina,” Harriet said with a slight smirk. “Glad you found us.”

Karolina, still half buried in pavement, stared at the house, eyes wide. “You people really are loaded.”

Harriet laughed. “Come on.”

Karolina held a hand up, and Harriet sighed.

“What do you do when you’re by yourself?” she asked as she grabbed Karolina’s hand and pulled her up.

“You ever try getting out of a pool when the water level is just a little too far below the rim?” Karolina retorted, starting to dust herself off before shaking her head and abandoning the effort. “Of course I can get out of the ground on my own. It’s just a much more dignified process if someone gives me a hand.”

Harriet was starting to reply when the door of the house swung open.

A smiling woman with light brown skin and wavy black hair gathered into a ponytail, wearing jeans and a dark blue polo shirt, ran out and swept Harriet into a tight hug, which Harriet enthusiastically returned.

“Harriet!” the woman said, pulling back to arm’s length. “It’s been too long. How’ve you been?”

“Good, good!” Harriet replied brightly, then turned. “This is Mariana Fairchild,” she said. “Yes, like the trench. Mari, these are my friends Jon and Karolina.” She gestured at them in turn.

Mari smiled at them. “Lovely to meet you!” She turned back to Harriet. “How’s the perpetual motion machine?”

“No signs of slowing down yet,” Harriet replied. “He might stop by in a bit, once he’s ready for more interaction—you know how it is with introverts.” She shook her head fondly, as though ‘introverts’ were a class of being she appreciated but didn’t quite understand. “Have you told Jordan about the planetarium?”

Mari rolled her eyes. “Of course I’ve told Jordan about the planetarium, it’s a planetarium.” She smiled wryly. “Although I also suspect it may be trying to steal my girl.”

Harriet sighed dramatically. “Hard to compete with outer space, isn’t it?”

Mari laughed. “Tell me about it.”

“What are you telling the guests about me?” called the second woman to emerge from the house, her long reddish hair blowing unfettered in the slight breeze and into her pale, slightly sunburnt face as she rushed down the steps to hug Harriet in turn.

When she pulled back, she shot Mari a mildly indignant look, then turned back to Harriet. “I’m not being stupid, I’ll have you know. I’ve only fed there once.”

“And yet you’ve gone back basically every week since,” said Mari with a smirk.

“I really like the shows, okay?” Jenny replied in a tone of playful defensiveness. “They’re legitimately good!”

Mari laughed. “You’re adorable.”

Harriet looked at Jenny and grinned. “Aside from having an affair with a planetarium, how are you?”

“Good! I’ve been—” Jenny broke off and looked over at Mari. “Can you explain what’s been going on at work?”

“Sure.” Mari turned to Jon and Karolina. “So, for a bit of background, I’m a marine biologist. I work at a nonprofit called Golden Gate Cetacean Research, which is exactly what it sounds like—we monitor and study the whales, dolphins, and porpoises that make their home in the San Francisco Bay and the surrounding area. So far, it’s been great—we’ve got, like, four full-time staff members apart from the administrator, and one of us is human.” She giggled. “He’s a great coworker, really, and we’re not actually going to try to get an upgrade by dropping him off the bridge, even if we sometimes joke about it.”

Jon glanced at Harriet as he felt a surge of nervous discomfort from her.

It wasn’t at Mari’s words, per se, or at least Jon didn’t think it was. But his Archivist senses told him beyond a doubt that something about what Mari had just said had caused Harriet to experience a moment of specifically Eye-related fear.

Most likely, Mari’s comment had made Harriet worry she’d say something else. Something Harriet didn’t want her to say.

Something that would make Jon and Karolina aware of something Harriet didn’t want them to know.

Jon forced himself to look away from Harriet and back at Mari. Whatever Harriet was afraid of, it wasn’t the most important thing right now.

“—point is, we’ve got a system,” Mari was saying as she continued her explanation. “We’ve been working together for years at this point, we’re a great team, and we all understand when stuff comes up—even if it’s of a sort that most human coworkers, or bosses for that matter, probably wouldn’t get. The big news is, our administrator is thinking about merging GGCR into the Marine Mammal Center, start a branch focused on field research. Which, on one hand, would be great—they’ve got a lot more connections and resources than we do, plus public recognition—but on the other would mean the potential for a major reshuffle of our team, a bunch of new human coworkers who haven’t the foggiest idea what we are, a whole new management system, and being made to fit into a new, larger company culture—one we currently know nothing about.”

“Which is where I come in,” Jenny piped up. “MMC lets people volunteer in all sorts of ways—they’re focused on rescue and rehabilitation more than research, so there’s animal care and rescue team opportunities, but there’s also education and administrative stuff. I’ve been taking a bunch of shifts in both the animal care and administrative roles—the animal care side’s kinda fun, actually, if you don’t mind washing dishes—and using them to scope the place out. Get a feel for the inner workings—the main staff, the way things work in the back office, the organizational structure, the way the people in charge tend to handle unexpected situations—then report back to Mari, who passes my intel on to the rest of her team.”

“So far, it looks promising,” Mari said with a smile. “Enough so that talks about eating the administrator have been put on pause.” She turned back to Harriet. “Enough delays. What was it you wanted to talk about?”

Harriet gestured to Jon. “The short version is, my friend here needs a place to stay for a while, and I’d consider it a favor if you’d let him crash with you.” She smiled ruefully. “If you want the long version, we’d better go inside.”

Chapter Text

Sitting in a comfortable chair in Mari and Jenny’s living room (which had a surprising amount of seating, for a house inhabited by two people—or what would have been a surprising amount had the occupants not been Fairchilds), Jon wrapped up his story and waited for the response.

“Oof,” Jenny said after a brief silence. “That’s awful. I don’t see any reason you can’t stay with us—Mari?”

“Of course,” Mari replied, then turned to Jon. “You’re welcome to the downstairs guest room, if you like. There’s clean sheets on the bed already.” She looked over at Harriet. “Will you be staying with us for a while, or would you rather come and go?”

“Depends,” Harriet replied. “It’s almost the new moon, isn’t it? I’d like to join you for that, if you don’t mind. Otherwise I’ll probably be in and out, but some other friends might stop by to help out while Jon’s down—”

Jon tried to protest, but Karolina cut him off.

“Stop arguing with people every time they try to help you,” she said. “I’m going to leave now, but text me if you need me.”

Jon nodded. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Karolina said before sinking through the living room floor.

“Thank you,” Jon repeated, this time addressing it to the whole room.

“Sure thing.” Jenny replied, then turned to address Harriet. “Of course you can come with us for new moon.” She looked over at Mari. “I was thinking… it might be nice to show Jon. And he’s going to be out of commission on the ninth and tenth, so… maybe we could do it tonight?”

“You don’t think the sliver moon is gonna spoil the effect?” Mari asked Jenny, from the sound of it genuinely seeking her opinion.

“I mean, it’s not ideal, but it should work just fine.” Jenny’s face took on a bit of a devious grin. “Especially since Jon’s never seen it before.” 

“You’re the expert,” said Mari, smiling back at her.

Harriet turned to Jon. “How would you feel about not getting much sleep tonight?”

Jon laughed quietly. “In the past few days, I’ve gone from London to Beijing to San Francisco. It was nine A.M. for me about an hour ago. I suspect that somewhere in there, whatever was left of my circadian rhythm just… entirely gave up the ghost.”

“Fair enough,” Harriet said.

“Besides, the only thing I have to do tomorrow is sign my employment papers, and after that I’ll probably be stuck in bed anyway.” Jon shrugged. Going along with whatever a roomful of Vast avatars were planning was probably a terrible idea, but they were doing so much to help him… they probably didn’t intend to harm him, or at least not in any severe or permanent fashion. And within those parameters... if they were planning to feed on him, allowing it might honestly be the least he could do. “Might as well.”

“That’s settled, then,” Harriet declared before turning to Mari and Jenny. “Mind if I invite Mike as well?”

“Go for it,” Mari replied. “Andromeda can take five.”

“Cool.” Harriet hit something on her phone, then looked up at Jon as she raised it to her ear. “I think you might really like this, actually. It’s—” She broke off and spoke into the phone. “Hey, Mike. Yes, I know it’s three in the morning where you are, but Mari and Jenny are doing new moon tonight and bringing Jon along.” She smiled. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. See you soon.” Harriet hung up and returned her attention to the people in the room with her. “Mike’s on his way.”

“It’s plankton season, too,” said Mari, smiling at Jon. “You got here at a great time.”

Jon wasn’t entirely certain what was so exciting about plankton, but Mari was a biologist, and a remarkable amount of enthusiasm for aspects of their area of study that most people wouldn’t think twice about sort of came with the territory.

“Is everybody ready?” asked Jenny. “As soon as Mike gets here, we can—”

She was interrupted by a rush of wind and Mike’s appearance in the living room.

Unsurprisingly given the interval between the phone call and his arrival, Mike’s cheerful expression was tempered by a slight bleariness, his hair was squished into a flat plane on one side, and he was still in the process of buttoning his shirt.

“Hey!” Mari and Jenny both called, waving at him—though they didn’t hug him the way they had Harriet.

Mike smiled. “Hey.”

“Okay, now come on!” Jenny said, getting up and walking towards the door. “It’s almost sunset.” When she got to the door, she emptied her pockets, leaving her phone on a small table which seemed to be there specifically for that purpose, given the lack of anything else on it.

Everyone else present followed suit.

“No, take yours with you,” said Harriet as Jon started to follow suit. “If anyone’s tracking it, that’s fine—you’ve spent the past few days popping in and out of existence and showing up in random places around the world, so you shouldn’t have any trouble if the last they hear is your phone going dead in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But if it stays in San Francisco for a while... I don’t know for sure that anyone’s tracking you, but if they are, you could have problems. We can help you get a new one tomorrow.”

Jon nodded, mildly embarrassed he hadn’t thought of that.

“It’s fine,” said Harriet, seemingly reading his mind. “You’ve had a lot going on. Now come on. You need to see this.”

…

Soon, Jon was standing beside Harriet and Mike on a dock, watching Mari and Jenny climb into a small speedboat with Andromeda painted onto the side.

Mari took a place at the front of the boat as Jenny sat near the back. Once they were both situated, Mari turned and gave a thumbs up, and Harriet and Mike hopped in as well.

Jon paused for a moment before climbing in and taking a seat across from them.

“I want to just... say in advance that I do know this is a bad idea,” he said. Under other circumstances, he might have worried about the others taking offense at that, but from what he’d been able to discern so far of avatar social conventions, he was fairly certain that they wouldn’t be offended at his suspicion, and might actually respect him for it. “I’m not completely clueless. I’m just making the decision to do it anyway.” He smiled faintly. “I am practicing informed stupidity.”

Mike laughed at that, and the others all smiled, looking distinctly amused.

“We’re not gonna hurt you,” said Harriet. “At least, not much. That’s not the point.” She looked over at Mari. “We ready to go?”

“Sun’s still up,” Mari replied from her seat by the helm. “But I was thinking we could get out into the bay first, see if we can spot some of the porpoises.” She flipped a switch on the dash, started the engine, and began to guide them out into the open water, moving slowly enough that they left minimal disturbance in the water—and that the engine didn’t make much noise. “It’s actually a really interesting story, with the porpoises. Historically, they’d always lived here, but around World War Two, they just... vanished. There are a bunch of theories as to why—anti-submarine nets, gillnetting, water pollution, et cetera—but the point is, they stayed gone for over sixty years. Then in two thousand nine, they started showing up again. No one knows why that happened, either. The Clean Water Act of nineteen seventy-two probably had something to do with it—water quality in the bay’s gone up dramatically since then—and the ban on gillnetting in the nineteen eighties probably helped as well, but that doesn’t explain why it took them so long. Best guess is that enough generations of porpoises had been avoiding the area that it took them a while to find it again and realize they could live there. But they did, and now the population’s thriving.” She sounded almost proud. “Next year it’ll be a decade since they came home. I’m hoping GGCR, or whatever we’re calling ourselves by then, can put on some sort of celebratory fundraiser event to mark the occasion.”

“She’s already started planning,” Jenny commented.

“What if I have?” said Mari. “It’s a big deal!”

Jenny laughed. “I love you so much.”

“Oh!” Mari yelped excitedly, pointing out across the water. “Look!”

Sure enough, the smooth gray backs of what appeared to be a small pod of porpoises were breaking the surface in an undulating rhythm, dorsal fins catching the slanted rays of remaining sunlight.

“Can you tell which pod that is?” asked Jenny.

“Sorry, not from here,” Mari replied. “I’d need to get a better look at the markings of some individual members.”

“You can identify the individual porpoises?” asked Jon.

“Yep,” Mari replied. “Most of them, anyway. Some are shyer than others.”

Harriet smiled. “Do you have a favorite?”

“I don’t play favorites,” said Mari, at the same time as Jenny said, “Columba.”

Harriet and Mike burst out laughing as Mari began vehemently protesting, and Jon found himself chuckling along. Mari’s indignation was quite funny, and the amusement of the others was surprisingly contagious.

“I mean,” Mari said once the laughter had died down, “Columba is pretty great. But they all are, really, in their own ways. I mean, Orion’s kind of an ass, and Aquila’s a bit of a bully, but...”

By the time Mari was done expounding on the various bay porpoises and the habits and personalities thereof, the sun was setting in earnest.

The streaks of orange and pink flaring across the sky, shifting and changing as the sun dipped lower, were reflected in the water of the bay, light bouncing off the ripples in a vibrant, shimmering dance.

“It’s beautiful,” Jon said quietly as Mari brought the boat to a stop.

“Isn’t it?” Harriet whispered back. “And this is only the beginning. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

They stayed there, in silence punctuated by the occasional whispered comment or appreciative sound, until the sun had fully vanished below the horizon and the last of the bright colors had faded away. In their place, a band of lighter blue stretched over the horizon, fading into darker and darker shades higher up to where the night’s first visible stars glittered against a deep blue backdrop.

Finally, Mari broke the silence.

“Best time for plankton is about two hours after sunset,” she said. “We can start looking as soon as it’s properly dark, though.”

Jon frowned. “Is this some kind of... glow-in-the-dark plankton?”

Mari laughed. “Oh yeah. I guess you wouldn’t have it that far north. But down here where the water’s warmer, bioluminescent dinoflagellates are all over the place. They’re hard to predict, but late summer’s the best time for them, and there are some spots they tend to show up more often than anywhere else, if they’re gonna. Once it’s dark enough, we can start checking a few of the usual suspects.”

“Will light pollution be a problem?” asked Jon, gesturing away from the glow of the last vestiges of sunlight toward the glow of the city.

“Not if we get far enough away from the major sources,” Mari replied. “Andi’s got a few tricks up her sleeve.” She affectionately patted the steering column of the boat.

“And she accuses me of having an affair with an inanimate object,” Jenny remarked mildly.

Mari mimed a swat at her. “I’m not having an affair! Andi is part of this relationship.”

“I’m in a polyamorous relationship with a speedboat,” Jenny said with exaggerated cheer. “Love my life.”

“You do,” said Mari, grinning.

Jenny smiled back. “I do.”

“Hey,” Harriet interjected. “While we’re waiting, can we play Zoom?”

“Yeah!” Mike enthusiastically agreed. “We can teach Jon.” He looked over at Jon and smiled. “You’ll like it. It’s a lot of words.”

“Jenny, you wanna start?” asked Harriet. “That way Jon can have a chance to see how it works before his turn rolls around.” She looked over at Jon. “You can join in whenever you feel like it.”

Jenny nodded, then turned to Harriet, the closest person to her in the direction that led away from Jon. “Where’s the electron?” she asked.

“It’s in the atom,” Harriet replied, in a faintly singsong rhythm.

“Where’s the electron? It’s in the atom,” chanted Harriet, Mike, Jenny, and Mari in unison, clapping along to a rhythm clearly familiar to all of them. “Zoom!”

Harriet turned to Mike, who was sitting on the other side of her from Jenny. “Where is the atom?”

“It’s in the water molecule,” Mike replied. Now that Jon knew what was going on, it was easy to hear the chant-like rhythm in the words.

The entire boat, save Jon, resumed chanting and clapping in unison. “Where’s the electron? It’s in the atom. Where is the atom? It’s in the water molecule. Zoom!” Based on the ease with which all the syllables from everyone’s voices fell into a perfectly synchronized rhythm, it was obvious they’d all played this game, whatever it was, many times before.

Mike turned to Mari, sitting nearest to him in the direction the game was moving at the head of the boat.

“Where’s the water molecule?” he asked her in that same bouncing rhythm.

“It’s in the raindrop,” Mari replied.

After another round of clapping and chanting the sequence so far, Mari turned to Jon. “Where is the raindrop?” she asked, helpfully pointing over the side of the boat.

“It’s in the bay,” said Jon, trying to emulate the rhythm he’d heard so far. He had no idea if that was what he was supposed to say, but... it worked. And if his conjecture about the point of this game was correct, it was probably best to say something that could easily fit into a larger whole—such as the ocean.

This time, feeling a bit ridiculous— it’s not childish to them, it only feels that way to me because of cultural differences— Jon clapped along and joined the chant.

“Where’s the electron? It’s in the atom. Where is the atom? It’s in the water molecule. Where’s the water molecule? It’s in the raindrop. Where is the raindrop? It’s in the bay. Zoom!”

As the game went on—moving from the bay to the ocean, to the Earth, to the solar system, to the Orion Arm, to the Milky Way, to the Local Group, to the Virgo Supercluster, to the Laniakea Supercluster, to the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex (the chant started abbreviating when it got to the superclusters, but whoever introduced a new term into the game would say the full name the first time it came up, which Jon suspected was primarily for his benefit)—Jon’s feeling of awkward outsider-ness dissolved into the rhythm of the chant and the clapping, into an odd but deep sense of... connection? Something along those lines, at any rate.

Whatever it was, it was wonderful, and Jon was, to his own surprise, genuinely having fun. Not to mention learning some new astronomy terms.

Until his turn came back around, bringing the rhythm to a screeching halt.

“Where’s the Pisces-Cetus?” asked Mari brightly.

Jon couldn’t see her face, but he suspected she was smirking.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Is there anything bigger than the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex?”

He really should have known better than to phrase that as a question.

Some unknown span of time later, Jon slowly regained enough awareness of the world around him to figure out who he was (Jon Sims), what he was (unfortunately for him, an avatar of the Power that oversaw brain-breaking knowledge), where he was (on the floor of a speedboat in San Francisco Bay), and, finally, why he was there.

“Fuck,” he whispered as the gut-level awareness of the sheer scale of the Cosmic Web that had just been forced into his head threatened to send him once again spinning off into panicked insensibility.

“I didn’t do that,” Mari’s voice said from what sounded like both very far away and incredibly close. “In case anyone’s wondering.”

It took Jon a moment to get his thoughts into a semblance of order sufficient to reply. When he did, his voice was a bit rough, but hopefully audible. “No, I—I think our patrons are just getting along... very well tonight.”

“Oh, did it show you the universe?” Harriet asked, disconcertingly casually.

“Um... I think so?” Jon replied, trying to sit up and not having much luck.

Harriet got down onto the floor of the boat. “We’ve all been there,” she said, with equal parts sympathy and amusement. “I’m not gonna say you get used to it, because you don’t, and honestly it would be a tragedy if anyone ever did, but there is a certain amount of... adjusting that happens. It won’t always knock you down, at least.” Carefully, she helped him get up and back on the bench where he’d been sitting. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Jon told her.

He took a deep breath to steady himself, then turned to Mari. “It’s in the Cosmic Web,” he flatly declared.

“We can call it good on the game, if you want,” Mari replied gently.

Jon took another breath, then shook his head. “No, I want to—I want to see how you end it.” He turned to Jenny. “Where is the Cosmic Web?”

“It’s in the universe,” Jenny replied without missing a beat.

Just like that, the clapping and chanting started up again, and Jon smiled as he felt some of that easy camaraderie return.

“Where’s the electron? It’s in the atom. Where is the atom? It’s in the water molecule. Where’s the water molecule? It’s in the raindrop. Where is the raindrop? It’s in the bay. Where is the bay? It’s in the ocean. Where is the ocean? It’s on planet Earth. Where’s planet Earth? It’s in the solar system. Where is the solar system? It’s in the Orion Arm. Where’s the Orion Arm? It’s in the Milky Way. Where is the Milky Way? It’s in the Local Group. Where is the Local Group? It’s in the Virgo Supercluster. Where is the Virgo? It’s in the Laniakea. Where’s the Laniakea? It’s in the Pisces-Cetus. Where’s the Pisces-Cetus? It’s in the Cosmic Web. Where is the Cosmic Web? It’s in the universe.”

Jon expected Jenny to ask Harriet where the universe was, but instead, the chant continued with everyone except Jon adding their voices.

“Where is the universe?” they half-shouted. “NOBODY KNOWS! ZOOM!”

With that, the rhythmic clapping dissolved into applause, the chant into cheers and laughter.

“That was... that was quite nice, actually. I had fun,” Jon said once the celebratory sounds had faded into quiet.

Harriet grinned. “I’m glad. And I’m glad you still feel that way even though you got a bit more out of it than you probably bargained for.”

“A bit?” Jon replied incredulously, but with his face turned towards Harriet so she could see that he was smiling.

Which was approximately when Jon realized it was almost too dark to see any such thing.

“Plankton time?” Jenny asked.

“We could get started,” Mari replied, then turned to face the steering wheel. “Come on, Andi. That’s a good girl,” she whispered as she started the engine. “Ready to show ‘em what you can do?”

“Hang onto something,” Mike advised Jon, who promptly grabbed the edge of the boat.

It was a good thing he’d followed Mike’s instructions as quickly as he had.

Jon’s eyes told him they were speeding through the water—at an incredible rate, to be sure, far faster than any speedboat should be able to go, though somehow without leaving much of a wake.

The rest of his body told him the boat was falling.

It was so much. The feeling was as intense as if they’d driven the boat over a waterfall, and it wasn’t stopping.

Jon held on as tightly as he could, hearing the joyous whoops and gleeful laughter and giddy shrieks and contented hums and sighs of the four Vast avatars surrounding him.

Then, just as quickly as it had begun, it was over.

Once he’d recovered a bit, Jon looked out into the water and laughed in astonishment.

The wake of the boat was glowing a vibrant blue-green.

“Eyyy!” called Mari as she cut the engine. “Got it in one!”

“Nice!” Jenny called back as the boat slowed to a stop.

Jenny turned to Jon. “She’s the best at finding this stuff.”

With no warning or preamble, Mari rose from her seat at the wheel and jumped overboard, lighting up the water with a giant, shimmering splash.

Jenny, Harriet, and Mike quickly followed, shriek-laughing and splashing each other, every movement creating another wave of that otherworldly light.

“C’mon in!” Harriet shouted at Jon after a minute or so. “Water’s fine.”

From the temperature of the few drops from the crossfire of this bioluminescent water fight that had actually hit him, Jon was of a different opinion.

“I’m not sure about your definition of ‘fine,’” he replied.

“Oh, come on,” said Mike, flinging a handful of water at him. “Live a little.”

“What the hell,” muttered Jon, and jumped in.

The water was every bit as cold as he’d expected, and then some. The shock hit like the feeling of falling had a few minutes ago, an overwhelming too-much that drove away all thought and filled every corner of Jon’s being with its intensity.

After riding it out for a moment, though, Jon felt the cold settle into something closer to exhilarating.

Jon watched the light flare up around his limbs as he treaded water, raised one hand to send a shower of greenish-blue sparks flying through the air with a slap of the water’s surface, wiggled his fingers to watch the space around them shimmer, laughed as the others splashed him, splashed them back and heard their laughter in return.

Eventually, Jenny spoke up.

“Ready to move on?” she asked, from the sound of it directing her question at everyone present.

After a general chorus of agreement, they all climbed back into the boat, aided by some metal rungs on the side that served quite nicely as a ladder.

“Maybe somewhere a little warmer?” said Harriet, probably in response to Jon’s chattering teeth.

“Sounds good to me,” Mari replied, then started the engine again.

This time, Jon grabbed the side of the boat without being told.

A moment later, they were falling again.

When they stopped this time, Jon gasped.

It wasn’t like he’d never seen a proper night sky. Bournemouth had its fair share of light, but it was definitely no London. And he’d passed through some fairly dark places (literally, although the metaphorical sense of the phrase would also be accurate) during his trip to America shortly before his change.

Nothing Jon had ever seen came close to this.

Every bit of visible night sky was saturated with stars. The Milky Way stood out, a glowing band of radiance against the deep darkness, which was itself visible only in tiny gaps between the innumerable points of light. The stars had color, blue and yellow and pink and green and white, shimmering like the facets of a diamond.

“Wow,” he whispered.

Mari laughed. “Oh, this is just the beginning. Jenny, would you like to do the honors?”

“Gladly,” Jenny replied.

Jon nearly fell over for the second time that night as the sky exploded.

The field of stars, so impressive before, now had depth. He could look out into it and feel the distances between them, sense which stars were closer and which were farther away. He could see galaxies, nebulae, clouds of space dust and stellar nurseries, through to the structural filaments of the universe itself.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Harriet whispered from next to Jon, reminding him that he existed as a being and was sitting on a boat, on a planet.

“Yes,” he whispered back. “Yes, it is.”

“All right, love,” said Jenny. “Your turn.”

Jon was briefly confused. What could possibly make this more impressive?

Then, the ocean shifted.

The ripples and disturbances in the surface of the water slowly smoothed out, creating a glossy surface spreading out in a circle from the boat—a surface that perfectly reflected the glorious night sky above.

As the reflection moved out past Jon’s line of sight, he gasped again in startled awe.

With nothing to interrupt the reflection of the sky—no movement of the water, not enough light to make out the horizon—it was impossible to tell where the sky ended and the ocean began.

Their little boat, with its five passengers, was suspended in an infinite expanse of stars.

Looking out into it, in any direction, was so disorienting and dizzying that Jon could barely keep his connection to his body, to this little boat that held him and four others. They were so tiny, so insignificant in all this vastness, that they might as well not exist at all.

It felt like missing your footing on a precarious climb. Like tipping backward, like the moment of realizing it’s too late to catch yourself and you are going to fall. Like that first instant of falling, the mix of panic and calm clarity that overtakes a mind completely unable to process what’s happening.

Jon glanced around and felt the awestruck terror turn to the more immediate kind.

Other than him, the boat was empty.

He was alone. Completely alone in the endless expanse that surrounded him.

He was going to drift here forever, with no up or down or rhyme or reason, nothing to anchor him to his own personhood.

He would be lost.

No.

Through the building panic, Jon forced himself to take a deep breath.

The others—Harriet especially—wouldn’t just abandon him. They wouldn’t leave him here forever. They were helping him. He was... he was their friend.

What they might do was put him through some sort of test before fully accepting him into their group.

Okay. This was a test.

That meant there was something he could do. Something he had to do. Something that would get him out of here.

Jon shivered as a breeze came through, chilling him through his wet clothes.

...oh.

There was only one place to go from here.

Out.

Into that.

He was going to have to jump.

Jon climbed up onto the side of the boat, one foot staying planted on the bench below the edge, the other waiting to push him out into the formless abyss.

Maybe if he closed his eyes?

Nope. That was worse.

Okay. It was just an illusion. There was water out there. It would catch him. He would stay on the surface. The idea that jumping would mean the boat would disappear and leave him stranded in the directionless chaos for eternity with no identifiable landmarks whatsoever was completely baseless. And also completely unhelpful. Stupid overactive imagination.

He could do this. He could.

It really was beautiful.

Okay. Just do it.

Three… two… one…

Jon jumped.

A loud splash, a jarring impact, a wave of cold, a moment of further disorientation, and a sputtering return to the surface (apparently, not needing to breathe did not make you exempt from the unpleasantness of water in your sinuses) later, Jon was greeted by applause, hands on his shoulders, and various other congratulatory sounds and gestures.

“Dang, that was fast,” Mike declared. “Nice job!”

“Seriously,” said Jenny, sounding impressed. “That was really good. Especially for how scared you were.”

Jon winced, turning his head away. He’d almost managed to forget that these people could feel his Vast-related fear. They knew exactly how scared he’d been.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” Jenny asked. “You did great.”

“It’s a human thing,” Harriet interjected. “A lot of them seem to think just being afraid, or even having something awful happen to you at all, is something to be ashamed of.”

“Why?” asked Mari, sounding genuinely baffled. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I never said it did,” Harriet replied. “But humans are weird, and Jon’s still shaking a lot of the weirdness, so just… be patient.” She turned to Jon. “In case no one’s taught you this: you’re supposed to be afraid when frightening things happen. Means you’re sane. And handling it as well as you just did is something to be proud of, even if—no, especially if—you’re scared half out of your mind.”

“So... I take it that means I pass?” asked Jon in a shaky rush. The terror was still draining out of him, leaving exhaustion in its wake.

“With flying colors,” Harriet replied, nonchalantly resting a hand on his upper arm. “You all right?”

Her tone was casual, but... if Jon wasn’t mistaken, she was genuinely checking in. She wanted to make sure he was okay.

She cared if he was okay.

There were multiple people who cared if he was okay.

“Yeah,” Jon replied. “Actually, I’m... more than all right.”

Harriet smiled. “Good,” she said, then looked around. “What do you all say we start heading home now, but take the long way for a while?”

A general murmur of agreement followed, to which Jon added a “sounds good to me.”

“Right then,” said Mari as she began to climb back into the boat. “Home it is.”

...

Jon woke the next morning to the very familiar creaking of a door.

“Are you awake yet?” Helen asked, at normal tone and volume.

“I am now,” grumbled Jon, who did not feel at all prepared to deal with Helen while neither fully awake nor wearing a shirt.

Then, the import of the fact that she was here at all struck him. “How did—” He broke off, aware that he wasn’t quite in possession of all his faculties yet, and made very sure the question came out with no trace of compulsion. “How did you even know where I am?”

Helen smirked. “I always know where you are.”

Jon was definitely not prepared to deal with that right now. “Would you mind holding off on this conversation until I’m dressed and caffeinated?” He didn’t ask her to leave—for one thing, he doubted she would, and for another, he wasn’t sure if she was still feeling hurt from their conversation in Beijing. Or if she ever really had been, for that matter—as always, it was hard to tell with Helen. But given how much she’d helped him recently, he didn’t want to risk driving her off.

And, it had to be said... quite apart from the potential effects on him, Jon was starting to genuinely think of Helen as a friend.

He didn’t want to hurt her.

Either way, perhaps unsurprisingly, Helen immediately rendered Jon’s mental debate pointless. “I’ll be in the kitchen,” she said, before closing her door behind her humanoid form and vanishing from view.

Jon got up, got dressed in a set of clothes from the duffel bag Karolina had retrieved from his office (along with some other items that had definitely not been in the duffel to begin with, and which Jon was not going to think too hard about how much digging around in his office she must’ve done to find), and headed out into the rest of the house.

When he turned the corner into the kitchen, Jon stopped short.

A woman he didn’t know, with tan, weather-worn skin and salt-and-pepper hair braided down her back, stood leaning against the counter. She wore black leggings and a black tank top, which framed a tattoo of a sea star on her left shoulder, and appeared completely unbothered by Helen standing nearby and drumming her fingers on the countertop, making an incongruous clacking sound. Beside her was a backpack in a blue ripple pattern, with straps that buckled across the waist and chest, that appeared relatively full.

The unknown woman smiled. “Jon, is it?”

“Yes,” Jon replied. “Ah… who are you?”

“My name’s Lynette Fairchild. As for who I am…” Lynette’s smile faded into something softer. “I was a doctor once. Can’t really call myself a doctor anymore—there’s that pesky Hippocratic oath to contend with—but even our kind need a medic sometimes, and, at the moment, that’s me.”

“Did Harriet call you?” Jon asked.

Lynette laughed. “Clearly you’re getting the hang of how things work around here. Yes, Harriet told me you’re transferring away from the Magnus Institute—which I’m sure is a very good decision—and that your Power is likely to come down pretty hard on you for it. I told her I can check in on you a few times during the week, and give my recommendations for how to control the symptoms and keep you as comfortable as can be managed while you wait it out. Sound good to you?”

Jon nodded. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Excellent.” Lynette tilted her head. “I don’t have much experience with Watcher people, and even aside from that, the change can affect people in different ways even within the same Power. Which means I’m going to need to ask you some questions to get a sense of your normal, and some of them might be pretty personal.” She turned to Helen. “I may not be strictly bound by medical ethics anymore, but I do remember the rules, and some of them are there for a reason. Get out of here. And no eavesdropping.”

Helen made a sour face, but nodded and left through the wall.

“May I request that this conversation be postponed until I have a cup of tea?” Jon asked.

Lynette smiled. “Yes, you may.”

...

“Right,” said Lynette, snapping shut the bright yellow notebook she’d been taking notes in and putting it back in her bag. “That should be everything I need. You did a great job, by the way. You’re a good historian.”

Jon laughed quietly at that. “I should hope so.”

Lynette gave him a smile in return. “Trust me, most people do not have anywhere near that solid a grasp of the timeline around their transformation.”

“I think it helps that... well, to put it mildly, a lot of things happened in that time,” Jon said. “If I can remember where in the process I was for a particular event, and when that event happened, it’s simple.”

“That makes sense,” said Lynette. “I’ll be back this afternoon to check on you, see how you’re doing right out of the gate. I should be able to work out some ways to make the process easier from there.”

“Thank you.” Wait. “Lynette?”

“Yes?”

Jon swallowed hard. “May I ask for some advice? It’s not for me.”

Lynette frowned. “Who is it for, then?”

“What do you know about hunters?”

Lynette’s frown deepened. “I know some of them are the most horrendously self-righteous people you’ll ever meet. Going after their own kind and thinking they’re doing the world a favor.” She shook her head. “They’re not all like that, of course, but it is... fairly common.”

“Well, I have a friend—” Jon cut himself off as he remembered that he’d severed ties with everyone affiliated with the Magnus Institute. “Well, had, I suppose. She’s not dead, as far as I know, just...” He trailed off again. “Anyway, I had a friend who used to be... all that and probably worse. Grew up with the Hunt, never knew what life was like without it. But then, she got stuck in the domain of the Buried for eight months. After I got her out—”

“I’m sorry, after you what?” Lynette interrupted.

“Not the point,” Jon replied firmly. “The point is, while she was down there, the Hunt couldn’t get to her, and... for the first time, she got to find out who she was without it. And she realized she didn’t like who she’d been under its influence. So, after I got her out, she made up her mind that she wasn’t going to let it back in.” He winced. “That was in April. And... to the best of my knowledge, she still hasn’t.”

Lynette shook her head. “Do the water taps at the Magnus Institute just run straight-up pigheaded determination?”

Jon smiled ruefully. “Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised. But anyway... you can imagine the state she’s in.” He turned his head away slightly. “I spent seven months after my change trying to fight my patron. I wasn’t anywhere near as successful as she’s been, but all the same, it was hell. And... I want to respect her autonomy. She made a decision and she’s sticking with it, and I admire that. I don’t want to take that choice away. But... I also don’t want her to keep suffering like she’s been. So... if we assume that her feeding the Hunt is off the table... is there anything that can be done for her?” Jon looked down at the floor. “Even if it’s just to make her more comfortable until...”

He broke off, as though not finishing the sentence could somehow change the way it ended.

When he looked back at Lynette—avoiding direct eye contact out of courtesy—she looked genuinely sympathetic.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s a tough one. If you want the short answer, probably not, at least not that would make much difference. The slightly longer answer is that there are probably some workarounds that could ease the symptoms and buy her some time—I’m sure you’ve figured that out yourself. But in a situation like this, where her goal is to avoid giving her Power a foothold at all, even if it means her life... that might not be especially helpful.”

Jon grimaced. “Might just draw things out, you mean?”

“Yes. And... if she’s been starving herself for this long...” Lynette winced. “Any workaround would necessarily involve letting her Power have some sway, and at this point, it’s unlikely she could manage that without it taking over completely. Especially with that one, there’s a... not insignificant risk of complete ferality.”

“That... doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not.” Lynette shook her head again. “Of course, that’s a risk anyway if she keeps going the way she is.” Her face softened. “If your friend was the one here talking to me, I might tell her that within those parameters, some form of assisted suicide was her best option. Since she’s not...”

“I understand,” said Jon quietly. “Thank you anyway.”

“This won’t change the prognosis,” said Lynette, “so I don’t want to get your hopes up, but... to the best of your knowledge, did your friend ever go through a proper change?”

“Did she die, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I... I don’t believe so, no.”

Lynette nodded. “That makes sense. To have held out this long, and still be alive... it was very unlikely she had. The reason I didn’t ask earlier, and why it doesn’t change my assessment of the situation, is that if a Power gets to someone that young, it often makes little difference. But little isn’t none.” She looked at Jon—not directly in the eye, but close to it. “You’re the one who got stuck in a coma, right?”

Jon cringed. “Is that common knowledge?”

“Not really. I just heard about you from Harriet after Oliver Banks got back in touch with her, and I thought it was a fascinating case. I have a theory about why it might have happened, but I’d need more data to confirm. You died in an explosion, yes?”

Jon took a deep breath and reminded himself that Lynette was trying to help, and that he was the last person who ought to judge her for getting sidetracked by her own curiosity. “Yes, but there’s more relevant information. That explosion was deliberately orchestrated and set off by a team from the Magnus Institute, myself included, to prevent the Stranger—ah, the Uncanny, I-Do-Not-Know-You—from completing a ritual to... bring about the end of the world as we know it.”

Lynette’s eyes gleamed with suppressed excitement. “Completing, you said? So the ritual was underway at the time of your death?”

“...yes?”

“Thank you. That lends... significant credence to my theory.” She suddenly winced, as though belatedly remembering that manners existed and that there was a purpose to this conversation which was not being remotely served by its current topic. “Oh, and... thank you for not letting the skin people end the world. That would have been very unpleasant for the rest of us, I suspect.”

Jon felt his mouth open and close a few times in a manner that probably resembled a dying fish.

“Gladly,” he finally managed.

“Right. What was I saying? Before we got—oh! Yes.” Lynette made almost-eye-contact with Jon again. “I was going to tell you that if you were comparing yourself to your friend in terms of ability to out-stubborn an extra-dimensional consolidation of the concept of terror, you can cut that out, because your situations were completely different. Which isn’t to downplay your friend’s struggle—she grew up intertwined with her Power, and it is genuinely shocking that she’s made a decision to fight it at all, let alone kept to her resolution this far—but undergoing a proper change is a different thing altogether.”

“How?” asked Jon, careful to keep the compulsion back even as frustration at how much he didn’t know that everyone else seemed to threatened to send it spilling out.

Lynette nodded, seemingly to herself.

Then, she stepped forward and put her hands on Jon’s shoulders.

“Jon, listen to me,” she said, voice low and intense. “You died. According to the laws of the known universe, you should not be alive right now. And from what you’ve told me, since then you’ve gone through things that should’ve killed you several times over. Your Power brought you back to life, and since then it has been the only thing keeping you that way. The Watcher is holding you together at the seams. It’s healing you, feeding you, literally maintaining your existence from moment to moment. Of course you can’t just force yourself not to do what it wants.” She scoffed. “Might as well try to stop your own heartbeat with sheer willpower.”

Jon turned away, reeling with the mix of emotions Lynette’s words had brought up.

On one hand, that odd sensation of grieving for himself—or at least the person he’d been—was back in force, and his uncertainty about how much his thoughts and decisions were really his own was mixing with his worry about to what extent he even existed as a person apart from the Eye anymore in bizarre and uncomfortable ways.

On the other... it was kind of nice to hear someone confirming something some part of him had known for a long time.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Lynette said. “You’re still a person. Whether you’re the same person you were before or not is up for debate, but you’re absolutely a person. And you do have some free will—probably about as much as anyone, given the number of things that can interfere with a person’s decision-making that most people don’t even think about. Sometimes your Power will want something from you, but most of the time... why would it bother making you a puppet? Much more efficient to let you manage your own life when it doesn’t need you to be doing anything specific.” She smiled. “You know Toy Story?”

Jon blinked. “Haven’t seen it, but I am... familiar with the general concept, yes.”

“Think of it like that. We all have our own personalities, opinions, likes and dislikes. We form relationships, we argue, we have fun, we do the sort of dumb shit you can only get away with when you’re basically indestructible. And sometimes the kid we belong to wants to play with us for a while, but we’re all in the same boat on that—it’s the reason we're alive, after all.”

Not for the first time in this conversation, Jon took a deep breath.

“Well,” he finally said, “right now I suspect the kid’s about to come at me with scissors, and possibly a Sharpie.”

Lynette laughed. “It’s like that sometimes. Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Jon smiled faintly. “For everything.”

“No problem.” Lynette picked up her backpack and put it on. “I’ll let you get going. And I wish you all the best with your new position.”

With that, she was gone.

Jon went out to the living room to find Harriet sitting on a couch.

“Hey Jon,” said Harriet. “How’d it go?”

Jon considered for a moment. “Quite well, I think.”

“Good,” said Harriet. “Lynette can be a lot, but... honestly, I thought the two of you might get along. And when it comes to avatar medicine, there’s really no one better.” She stood and started towards the door—the normal front door of the house, Jon was fairly certain, although he thought it was entirely reasonable that he’d felt the need to check. “Karolina’s outside. Didn’t want Mari and Jenny having to vacuum again so soon. If you’re cool with it, I thought we could take you to get some basics fixed up before you go to sign the employment contract? New phone, maybe some actually comfortable clothes... anything you’d like to have squared away before you come down with It-Knows-You flu?”

Jon smiled faintly as he followed Harriet out the door. “That would be lovely.”

“Hey, Jon!” called Karolina. “Since it’s generally a bad idea to just appear out of thin air or crawl out of the ground in populated areas, and everywhere we need to go is reasonably close anyway, I was thinking we could take the streetcar?” Her tone was eminently practical, but her expression was just a bit too chipper.

Harriet shuddered. “Unfortunately, she’s right.”

“Hey,” said Karolina, sounding a bit offended. “What’s wrong with good old-fashioned public transit?”

Harriet shook her head. “The fact that you of all people are asking that question...”

Karolina huffed. “Apart from things that happen very rarely, could happen almost anywhere, and are definitely not happening on Jon’s first day at his new job.” A smile crept back in around the edges of her mouth. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Harriet shook her head. “Hopefully that won’t be necessary.”

Karolina grinned. “Let’s go.”

...

A couple hours later—Jon hadn’t realized setting up a new phone when you had no access to the old one and wanted a different number would be so complicated—Jon stood beside Harriet and Karolina on the sidewalk just outside the California Historical Society.

“We can wait outside, if you like,” said Harriet. “You got this.”

He must’ve looked nervous.

He felt nervous.

It hadn’t really sunk in until now. This was permanent, there was no guarantee the transfer would even take, he might end up without an Archive at all, what was he doing here, this wasn’t his place, he shouldn’t be here—

It took Jon a moment to realize what was happening.

Once he did, the feeling didn’t lessen, exactly, but it was less upsetting.

He understood it. He could remind himself that the feeling of wrongness didn’t mean anything was actually wrong, it was just Beholding throwing a tantrum.

It was going to be so much worse once he signed the contract, he couldn’t do this—

Jon took a deep breath. “Um... I think I...” He broke off. “This may be more difficult than I had anticipated.”

“I might be able to help with that,” Helen declared from the doorway she’d just created next to the more official front door. “I can’t turn off the noise, but I might be able to turn down the volume a bit.”

Jon smiled. “That would be... very helpful. Thank you.”

Helen stepped out and gestured towards the open door.

It wasn’t far. A few steps, that was all.

Every step seemed to stretch out as the weight of the Eye on him grew heavier and heavier.

It knew exactly where he was and what he was doing. It was going to hurt him for it.

He couldn’t hide anywhere. Not even with Helen. Especially not with Helen, she was only trying to get him to let his guard down so she could enjoy his confusion and denial as they turned to panic and betrayal when she finally decided to finish it—

Jon scowled and forced that thought out of his mind.

“Why are you so upset about this?” he whispered to the presence overloading his mind as he forced himself to take another step forward. “I’m letting you have me. This is—this is me letting you win.”

A few more steps.

The sickening sense of not supposed to be here, in so much trouble, shouldn’t be doing this just kept building. It made him feel like a child again, snapping out of a haze of focus on whatever had caught his attention this time to realize he’d once again wandered off without telling anyone where he was going, and his grandmother was going to be furious, she might’ve called the police already, he’d get suspended from school if he left recess one more time, or was this time the last straw?

Jon shook his head, trying to clear it. Shut up, shut up—

“Hey,” said a quiet voice near his ear. “It’s okay. You can do it.”

Harriet. She had an arm around his shoulders and was pushing him forward, gently but firmly.

One more step. One more.

The relief as he crossed the threshold into the corridors and the door disappeared behind him was tangible.

He could still feel the Eye, and its disapproving glare, but it had receded to a level he could stand.

That wouldn’t last, but—one thing at a time.

There was a door just up ahead.

Jon laughed aloud. Helen never, ever let him go that quickly.

When he opened the door, a woman—perhaps in her forties as far as physiological age was concerned, with beige skin and long black hair lightly streaked with gray, wearing a dark brown pantsuit and holding a clipboard with some papers attached—stood on the other side.

“You must be Jon,” she said warmly, extending her hand. “I’m Susan. It’s nice to meet you properly.”

“Nice to meet you too,” said Jon, returning the handshake but carefully not stepping over the threshold. “Once again, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I’ve spoken with Erica—she’s the Archivist at the Usher Foundation in DC—and she was very pleased to hear you’re starting an Archive on the West Coast. Said I could give you her contact information if you liked, and she’d be happy to get acquainted and give you some advice, if you needed it. I’m happy to do that, but I suspect you’d prefer to hold off on anything but signing the contract at the moment?”

“Yes, please,” Jon said firmly.

Even as awful as he felt, Jon was careful to read the whole thing closely.

It was quite straightforward, no doubt by design, and left quite a bit of room for negotiation. Nothing in it seemed untoward or potentially dangerous, and the few things about it that might be considered out of the ordinary were only so in ways that made sense, under the circumstances.

“Ready?” asked Susan when Jon looked up.

“Yes,” he replied, almost in a whisper.

Susan uncapped a ballpoint pen and handed it to Jon.

His hands were shaking so badly it was difficult to avoid dropping the pen, and his signature was a scribble that looked nothing at all like it usually did, but it was enough.

Clearly it was enough, since Jon felt it like a punch to the gut the moment he lifted the pen from the paper.

He managed to stay upright, leaning hard on the doorframe for support. If this is what it feels like with Helen’s shielding...

He could think about that later. Right now—

“It worked,” he said, in as close to his normal voice as he could manage.

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Susan. “Go home. Get some rest. You’ll most likely start work properly on the seventeenth, but you can come in whenever you feel up to it to start getting set up and completing the necessary training.”

“Sounds good,” said Jon.

“Congratulations, Archivist,” said Susan, smiling. “And welcome home.”

Chapter Text

Jon strongly suspected that he was the first person in history to both have the ability to leave the Distortion’s corridors anytime he wanted and be extremely reluctant to do so.

He’d been walking through the corridors for... well, he didn’t really know how long. Time was always tricky in here, and even aside from that, Jon was in no state to be keeping track at the moment.

Not long enough.

In the time he’d been moving through here since leaving his new workplace, he’d been feeling the Eye’s displeasure, waiting to come down on him like a sledgehammer the moment he left the protection afforded by a Spiral domain, with its Eye-repellent qualities.

Despite the irony inherent in the fact that a Spiral domain was currently protecting him, he really didn’t want to do that.

To distract himself from the fact that he would have to in probably very short order, Jon tried thinking about something else.

Like the odd things he’d been noticing apart from the metaphysical glare his patron was currently directing at him. Admittedly, everything in this place was odd—that was sort of the point of it—and the basic nature of a Spiral domain made it anywhere from difficult to downright foolish to trust perceptions in general, but Jon didn’t think it was all his imagination.

The carpet seemed a bit thicker than usual, a bit softer under his feet. The walls had almost an opalescence to them—white on casual inspection, but with a multicolored shimmer that shifted as you looked at it from different angles—and, more relevantly, had been that way the entire time. The images of the corridors on the walls were as disorienting as ever, but whenever he passed a mirror, Jon noticed that his reflection didn’t look as weak and frightened as he felt.

Most tellingly, the few times Jon had stumbled badly enough to actually fall, he’d found himself leaning against a wall, the geometry around him completely different from what he remembered it being a moment ago. Even when he knew with about as much certainty as it was possible to know anything in here that he’d been nowhere near the wall when he’d tripped.

It was hard to be sure of anything with Helen, but Jon had a feeling she was trying to look out for him, in the little ways she could.

It didn’t make him any more inclined to leave.

However, there was a door up ahead, and if Helen had decided it was time for him to go...

Well. Overstaying his welcome would be a very bad idea.

Jon gripped the smooth warmth of the doorknob, squeezing tightly, and opened the door.

He was in the guest room of Mari and Jenny’s house, the one they’d agreed to let him stay in.

Or he would be, once he took a step.

Okay. Here goes.

Jon took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold.

It hit him like a freight train.

Flu wasn’t so far off. He was freezing cold, his muscles ached, his head throbbed with a sharp, stabbing sensation, he felt weak and dizzy enough that it was all he could do to stay even semi-upright, and his stomach churned with nausea.

More intense than any of that was the feeling of being a bug pinned under a dissecting microscope.

It was only a few steps to the bed, but Jon barely got there before collapsing onto it.

Somehow, he managed to pull back the covers, kick off his shoes, and crawl in.

Jon pulled the blankets tightly around himself, closed his eyes, and curled up in a ball.

It was going to be a long week.

...

The cold of the empty auditorium bit through to Jon’s bones.

No. Not empty. A presence waited just outside the reach of the spotlight. Watching his suffering, judging his weakness.

The hard surface of the stage pressed into his bent limbs, defying his attempts to find a comfortable position.

(It wasn’t real. He was in a bed, in San Francisco—)

(That was wrong, he shouldn’t be in San Francisco. He’d been found out, caught running away, and now he was being punished—)

The darkness outside the glare of the spotlight had texture and weight, pressing in with the stares of the audience it concealed.

From out in the audience, far away, someone called his name.

What was his name?

And who—

She’s standing at the edge of the crowded room, worrying the fabric of the sparkly blue dress she found last week at a thrift store between her fingers, trying to steel herself to go in.

No matter how much she wishes she could skip the company New Years party, she was told in no uncertain terms that she would be attending, and she can’t afford to do anything that might jeopardize her new position. She can’t have been the most qualified candidate, and she would be very easy to replace. Of which fact her direct supervisor has no qualms about reminding her on a fairly regular basis.

She just hopes she doesn’t run into him tonight. Apparently he’s known for being more obnoxious than usual when he’s had a few drinks, and... she doesn’t like the way he looks at her sometimes. Or the way he keeps leaning into her space when looking at something she’s doing on the computer. Or the way he puts his hand on her shoulder when he’s giving her another backhanded compliment.

The evening passes pleasantly enough. She has nice conversations with a few of her coworkers, one or two of which are actually interesting. Circulates, makes a bit of meaningless small talk. Snags a few bite-sized desserts from the refreshments table—they’re actually quite good. Avoids the punch. Tugs at her dress. Examines the decorations in probably more detail than is warranted.

There. Now she has witnesses who can say she was here if asked, and no one’s going to notice if she isn’t here at midnight precisely. She can leave before the explosion of noise and potentially glitter she’ll still be finding in her hair next week, and no one will be any the wiser.

She’s turning to go when a hand lands on her arm.

Dammit, it’s him. Now she’s stuck here until he decides the conversation is over, which from past experience could be anywhere from less than a minute to over an hour.

“Karolina,” he says as she forces a smile. “Glad you could make it. Would’ve been a shame if we’d had to miss out on that dress. It looks very nice on you. Where did you get it?”

The way he’s looking at her makes her feel like she’s the display in a store window.

“I don’t remember,” she lies. “I’ve had it a while, I think.”

The conversation moves on after that, thankfully, and she tries to memorize the bits and pieces of information about himself he reveals, in case she can use any of it later. Tonight, not much of it is new—he’s asking if she knows how a coworker’s project is going, complimenting the decor, complaining about his wife again.

She’s still there, nodding and smiling while silently screaming at him to just stop talking so she can go home, when the projection of the time on the wall starts counting down the final minute of the year.

He turns his head to see what the fuss is about, and she starts to slip away, but he grabs her arm and holds her in place.

Fifty-five.

Fifty-four.

“Come on,” he says. “You can’t miss the best part.”

She tries to pull away far enough to get her arm back, making it clear she’s not leaving, but... no luck.

Forty-nine.

Forty-eight.

Forty-seven.

“What are you going to wish for?” he asks. “For the new year.”

Forty-one.

She smiles. Evades. “If I tell anyone, it won’t come true.”

He laughs. “Ah, you got me there. Sharp.”

That same fake smile stays plastered across her face.

She nods. Says nothing.

Thirty-five.

Thirty-four.

Thirty-three.

“Really, though, you should think of something if you haven’t.”

She keeps her eyes fixed on the numbers counting down. Counting down the seconds she’s stuck in this stuffy room with this slimy man who is gripping her arm so hard it hurts.

Twenty-nine.

Twenty-eight.

“I’ll do that.”

“Good.”

Twenty-four.

“It’s a new start, you know.” She’s not looking at him, but for the first time in this conversation he sounds almost sincere. “Those don’t come along very often.”

Eighteen.

Seventeen.

“No,” she agrees. “They don’t.”

At ten seconds, the room’s occupants start shouting out the numbers in time. It’s loud, too loud. Almost painful.

She joins in, if only to avoid seeming out of place.

This is almost over. After midnight, it’ll only be a few socially mandated goodbyes, and then she can go home.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

“HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

The hand still gripping her arm tugs, hard, and before she can really process what’s happening she’s being spun into a forceful, sloppy kiss.

For a moment, her mind blanks out from the simple shock of it. She knew he was a creep, sure, but she didn’t expect—

The room is a hubbub of cheers and shouting and clinking glasses and shuffling bodies.

She should do something, shouldn’t she? She’s not sure what, she needs him on her side to keep her job, but this is—

The stretchy, glitter-gritty fabric of her dress between her frantically twisting fingers. The only part of her it seems she can move.

From somewhere outside, the pop and crackle of fireworks.

Jon arrived back in his own body with a violent jolt, as though he’d fallen into it.

He was in a bed, in the guest room of Mari and Jenny Fairchild’s house, in San Francisco.

Standing across the room, holding a glass of water, was Karolina.

(So that was who he’d been. The Karolina of several years ago.)

Karolina, who in the present was looking intensely disoriented and holding a glass of water which was sloshing and spilling over her hand, as though she’d stumbled but managed to catch herself at the last second.

Jon felt his stomach sink. She’d been trying to help him. Bringing him water. And in return, he’d grossly violated her privacy.

“I—I didn’t mean to—” Jon cut off the useless explanation he’d started to give. It didn’t matter. “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t enough, but... it was what he could say.

Karolina looked genuinely confused. “What are you sorry about?”

Jon frowned. “What do you mean?”

Karolina’s look of confusion briefly increased, before suddenly vanishing into a look of realization. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I’m getting the impression that what I just saw and whatever you just saw were not the same thing.”

Jon blinked. “Ah... most likely not.”

“I take it you got one of my memories, then?” Karolina didn’t look particularly concerned about the possibility. Then again, Karolina seldom looked particularly concerned in general.

“Does that mean you got one of mine?” Jon had a bad feeling about that. He had quite a few memories he wouldn’t wish on anyone, especially not someone who’d done and was doing so much to help him. Not to mention a non-identical but heavily overlapping set of memories he was distinctly uncomfortable with the possibility of someone else knowing about, let alone experiencing.

Which, he supposed, was probably the point.

“Think so, yeah,” Karolina replied. “I’m... kind of assuming you’d like to know what it was?”

Jon winced. She was right, of course. “If you don’t mind.”

“Of course.” Karolina tilted her head for a moment, possibly unsure where to start. “Um... you were talking to Elias. You’d just escaped from... someone, maybe a circus? Whoever it was, they’d been keeping you captive for a month, and Elias knew about it, but he hadn’t told any of your coworkers, and... you were, understandably, not happy about that. You were talking about... the un-knowing, I think he called it? Sounded like some kind of end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it sort of deal. You were trying to stop it. A lot of other stuff came up too, um... Elias bashed Jurgen Leitner’s head in with a pipe because he was trying to tell you something, and... Elias wanted you to figure it out on your own, or something like that?” Karolina shook her head. “It’s like trying to describe the plot of a really weird nightmare.”

Jon sighed. “Welcome to my life.”

Karolina smiled. “Literally.”

Jon laughed a bit at that. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“At one point I think your Power told you something, and you didn’t know what was happening, not then, but Elias obviously did, and he seemed... way too happy about it.” Karolina made a face that Jon probably would’ve read a bit differently a few hours ago. “And then someone else who worked with you, Melanie, I think her name was, showed up with a knife to try to kill Elias, and he told you to talk her out of it. And it worked, and she left, and Elias thanked you in this... incredibly smug voice.” Her nose wrinkled in disgust for a moment before she emerged from the memory and turned her attention back to Jon. “That’s all I saw.”

“I remember that conversation,” Jon muttered. “Ah... do you want to know what I saw, or would you rather not?”

Karolina actually took a moment to consider, which Jon hadn’t been expecting but found he appreciated. “Yeah. Tell me.”

Jon nodded. “It was... I’m pretty sure it was the reason you celebrate New Years a week after most people do.”

Karolina winced. “That one.”

“That one,” Jon confirmed.

Karolina nodded. “It worked out, in the end. Started looking for another job that night, and it turned out to be a way better situation overall, even if it didn’t pay quite as well.” She shrugged. “And eventually I got to kill him, so...” She made a vague dismissive gesture. “We’re good.”

Jon smiled. “Good for you.”

Suddenly, Karolina burst out laughing.

Jon looked at her, puzzled. “What is it?”

“It’s just...” She paused to catch her breath. “I mean, I did come in here to feed you. Had a statement ready and everything, but... you’re sick, I knew it might not go that smoothly—”

Oh, God. “You came in here... expecting me to hurt you?” Jon’s guts twisted with the sort of familiar shame he’d theoretically left behind. “To... feed on you?”

This was different. This was a friend.

Karolina’s face softened. “You’re sick,” she repeated. “You can’t hunt for yourself right now, and you need your strength. It doesn’t happen often—takes a lot to knock one of us on our arse for that long—but when it does... friends do this for each other, especially friends with different affiliations. Think of it like... me bringing you soup.”

Jon winced. “Except, instead of soup, it’s trauma.”

“Exactly.” Karolina shrugged. “Trust me, I’d much rather do this for you than for, say, Harriet—”

“I would imagine.”

“—but I’d do it for her, too, if she needed it.” Karolina looked at Jon with that disconcerting directness he’d noticed she was capable of. “It’s not wrong to feed on your friends. I mean, ideally you’d have their permission, and you shouldn’t hurt them more than you have to, but... we all understand that sometimes it needs to happen.” She smiled wryly. “If it helps, I got something out of that, too. Seriously, I have fed on people who felt less trapped than you did in that memory.”

Jon returned the expression. “That... actually does help.”

Karolina nodded. “I’m glad. Anyway, I was telling you what I thought was funny?”

“Yes. Which was...”

“So, like I was saying, I came in here to feed you, and I wasn’t sure how it would go, and I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but... accidentally trading shitty boss memories was definitely not it.”

Jon chuckled quietly. “Well, it... does seem to have worked.”

Karolina smiled, warm and genuine. “Good! I thought it might have, you look much better.”

“I feel much better.” It was true—Jon still felt weak and shaky and cold, and he was still in substantial pain, but all that had receded to a much more tolerable level, and he was no longer so disoriented. Just knowing where he was and what was happening was a massive relief.

Karolina smiled. “I’m glad.”

“So am I.” Still... “I would appreciate that glass of water, though.”

Karolina glanced at the water in her hand with mild surprise, as though she’d completely forgotten about it. “Oh! Of course.”

She handed the glass to Jon, who took it and began to drink. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he’d been.

“Thank you,” he said when he’d finished.

“You’re welcome.” Karolina accepted the empty glass and started to leave, then turned as she apparently remembered something. “I’ll save my statement, then, in case you need it later. Is it okay if I tell the others what happened, so they know what might happen if they come in?”

Jon nodded. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” said Karolina firmly. “It happens. Now get some rest.”

With that, she left the room, and Jon settled in to take her advice.

...

She’s standing at the apex of the bridge, looking out over the water.

It’s a beautiful view. Even if, assuming all goes according to plan, it’s about to claim her life.

If this is the last thing she sees... not bad. There are far worse notes to go out on.

She’s a doctor. She knows the statistics—women are more likely than men to attempt suicide, but men are more likely to succeed, because the methods women tend to use (pill overdose, incompetent wrist-slitting) are less likely to actually kill you than methods (like guns, hanging, or jumping from a height) more often selected by men.

It’s the reason she chose this method in particular, actually. Being a doctor means she knows better than most how to successfully bring about the early termination of her existence, but she doesn’t want to take any chances. While there’s definitely room for error in some of the more effective methods, the only way to jump off a bridge incompetently is not to do it. Or not to jump from high enough, she supposes, but looking out at that view again... that’s not going to be a problem.

Good. She can’t afford to fail.

She doesn’t know what’s happening to her. Doesn’t know why she keeps getting that odd feeling of untetheredness, like she’s about to fall upward off the Earth and into the infinite sky, or why the thought brings with it as much breathless delight as fear. Doesn’t know why she thought it was so funny when Alyssa from the front desk had to climb a ladder to fix the flickering exit sign before it gave someone a seizure and barely managed it without completely freaking out. Doesn’t know what happened two weeks ago, when that asshole surgeon physically pushed her out of his perfectly routine and non-emergent way only to end up curled on the floor, then got up slowly, as though debilitatingly dizzy, and angrily asked her what she’d done to him.

Doesn’t know why it felt so good, when that happened. Doesn’t know why, whatever she did, she so badly wants to do it again.

All that would be bad enough, especially since it’s definitely been getting worse over time. But it’s not why she’s here, or not the main reason, at any rate.

The last straw was when she did it to a patient.

It couldn’t even be charitably interpreted as self-defense this time. He didn’t touch her at all. He was just mildly annoying, taking far too long and too many detours to give his medical history.

He ended up falling off his chair all the same, and she’d had to fake a coughing fit to hide her reaction to the flood of relief that somehow resulted. She hadn’t realized how awful she’d felt until she suddenly didn’t.

He didn’t seem to attribute it to her—brushed it off with a comment about doctors’ offices making him nervous—but when she asked if he had a history of sudden bouts of vertigo, he replied in the negative (perhaps the only good thing about the situation was that she was too busy inwardly freaking out to care that he took five minutes to do it).

That was earlier today. Once she was off work, she went home and spent the rest of the evening getting her affairs in order.

And now she’s here.

The sun is setting, and she tries not to think of it as symbolic. Better to focus on how beautiful it is, the bright colors reflecting off the water below in shimmering motion.

There’s no one else on the bridge. The sun will be down soon.

It’s time.

No backing out. No excuses. She’s a doctor, and if her choices are to die as a doctor or to live by doing harm to others and relish it—

Not giving herself any time to think about it, she climbs over the rail and lets herself fall.

Jon found himself back in the guest room with Lynette standing beside the bed, looking at him with a slight but perceptible expression of sympathy.

“I’m guessing you just jumped off a bridge?” she asked calmly.

“That’s quite a sentence,” Jon remarked.

Lynette smiled. “I suppose it is.”

“And yes.” Jon sighed faintly. “So you got...”

He’d tried, once. Not long after his first time feeding on someone by force. Instead, he’d discovered both how difficult it was for almost anything or anyone to do him serious or lasting injury, and how little that affected how much the attempt hurt.

“Yeah,” said Lynette, this time in a tone that was clearly sympathetic. “I remember what it’s like to have a rough adjustment period.” She smiled a bit. “As I’m sure you just found out. That, ah...” She shook her head, laughing slightly. “In terms of interrupting the process, it went about as well as you would imagine.”

“Oof,” said Jon as he dragged himself up to a sitting position.

“Yeah,” she said, as though they were sharing a joke. “But anyway. I talked to Karolina, and I’m here to talk to you as well—find out more about how you’re feeling, and then see if I can give you and your friends some suggestions for how to make this process a little less unpleasant. Sound good?”

“Sounds lovely,” Jon replied. “I’ve been feeling... ah, pretty sick. Flu’s a good analogy, actually—chills, headache, body aches, nausea, fatigue, weakness, malaise, et cetera. I’ve also been having some intermittent disorientation, almost delirium, but that seems to abate when I... when I trade memories with someone.”

“Do the other symptoms improve as well, when that happens?”

“Yes.”

Lynette nodded. “That’s good—means your Power is at least responsive enough to let up when you feed it. As long as memory swaps are enough, that’s great, but if at any point they’re not, tell someone, okay? Don’t try to hide it.” She looked at him with a stern expression that was remarkably effective, considering she couldn’t actually look him in the eye.

“All right,” Jon agreed. “I won’t.”

“Good. May I take your pulse?”

Jon nodded, and Lynette placed two fingers on his wrist and looked at her watch.

“One-oh-eight,” she said after thirty seconds of silence. “High, but not worryingly so—”

Jon smiled. “I mean, I did just jump off a bridge.”

Lynette smiled back. “True. Do you have a watch with a second hand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Monitor your pulse every so often.” Lynette retrieved a Ziplock bag containing an ear thermometer from her backpack, removed the thermometer, and gestured toward Jon’s ear. “May I?”

Jon nodded.

Lynette placed the thermometer, then waited the two seconds it took for it to beep. “And your temperature, which right now is—you prefer Celsius?”

“Yes.”

“Thirty-eight-point-three. Again, elevated, but not bad.” She drew back the thermometer, then placed it on the bedside table next to Jon’s phone, which someone at some point must have removed from his pocket and plugged in. “If your heart rate gets above one-twenty, or your temperature above thirty-nine, text whoever’s on duty. Or anyone, if you can’t remember.” She put the Ziplock that had held the thermometer back in her backpack and zipped it up. “The rest is fairly basic—rest and fluids, mostly. The main difference between this and treating a human flu is that you’ll want to stay away from medications like NSAIDs or acetaminophen—they might help for a bit, but if your Power is trying to make you feel a certain way and you introduce something that counteracts it, sometimes it’ll work harder to achieve the same effect and leave you feeling even worse when the meds wear off.”

Jon nodded. “Got it.”

“Excellent. And please. Keep your friends informed of how it’s going and if you need more Watcher fuel.” She picked up the backpack. “I’ll be back in a few days to check in again, or sooner if things get worse.”

“Thank you,” said Jon.

“You’re welcome,” said Lynette on her way out of the room.

She was almost to the door when Jon was struck by a sudden curiosity.

“Wait,” he called.

Lynette turned. “What is it?”

“Um...” Jon focused on not compelling her. “I was wondering, if injuries and illnesses among our kind tend to heal so quickly... what do you do, mostly?”

Lynette smiled. “Let’s just say I wish I’d paid a lot more attention in my psych rotation.”

Jon smiled back. “Fair enough.”

Lynette left the room, and Jon lay back down and resumed resting.

...

He’s sitting on the floor in his room, near the crumbled remains of his desk, gloved hands fumbling with Post-Its as he covers up another passage he’s discovered has effects he’d prefer not to deal with a second time.

The gloves were an early discovery, and he’s grateful for that. The festering sores on his hands haven’t yet begun to heal, but at least they haven’t gotten any worse.

It’s been nearly a week since he found the magic book, and he still has so much more to learn.

If he has time.

The same systemic disorder and collapse the Black Death brought to Europe, or that Yersinia pestis brings to a human body, seems to emanate from this book into everything around it—its reader, the structures it’s placed on, the house it resides in. He’s tried various methods of containing it—right now it’s sitting in a pile of particularly itchy or otherwise noxious clothes his parents picked out for him and he hasn’t managed to grow out of—but nothing he’s tried so far has been terribly effective.

The book is dangerous, of course. Very dangerous. He worked that out within an hour of picking it up. But that danger comes from power, the power he feels thrumming through it when he reads a passage or turns a page, the power he sees in the crumbling, rot-streaked walls around him and smells heavy in the air.

If he can learn how it works, he can learn how to direct it. And if he can direct it, he can use it as a weapon.

With a weapon this powerful, maybe he could finally defeat the nightmare thing that haunts his every step.

His entire life, books have been his refuge, his escape. Fitting, if they become his escape in a far more literal sense.

He’s intrigued by the bookplate inside the front cover. The one that marks the book as “From the Library of Jurgen Leitner.” Whoever Jurgen Leitner is, to have a book like this in his library, he must know how to direct its power, at least enough to contain it. Maybe he could help someone else learn to do the same.

He’s tried to find this Jurgen Leitner in phone books, in various directories, by asking around in libraries and bookstores (he won’t bring the book itself, obviously, but he’s written the name of the mystery librarian on a piece of paper, in case his guess at how to pronounce it is further off than he thinks). So far, no luck, unless you count that one creepy old lady in charge of the rare bookstore who clearly knew something but refused flat-out to give him any information whatsoever, then seemed way too curious about why he was asking, to the point that he simply got up and left mid-conversation. He was a little worried, on his way out, that she was going to try to stop him, but—

A loud crack interrupts his thoughts.

The air is different now. It’s thicker, more oppressive, and the sickly smell of rot and suppuration is so strong he’s choking on it.

The cracking sound continues, getting louder and more frequent, joined now by the twisting of splintered wood and the grinding roughness of crumbling concrete. Flies are pouring from the cracks in the walls, filling the room with their droning buzz and swarming bodies.

Okay. Okay. Time to go.

He’s thought it through, over the past few days, hidden away in his room while specialist after specialist comes through to look at the damage and pronounce themselves baffled. If the house goes down, his fastest way out from his bedroom is through the window. He’s on the second floor, but there’s a collapsible escape ladder right underneath the sill. He might fall, if the integrity of the windowsill gives out before he can get to the ground, but he’ll live.

He’s up and over to the window in a flash, grabbing the book and throwing it out the window into the yard below. Pieces of the ceiling are falling around him as he attaches the ladder to the windowsill and—

The floor underneath him gives way.

It happens so fast, but he feels every instant. The caving of the material under his feet, the fall, the hard landing, the pain, the pressure.

Pieces of rubble are digging into him from all directions. His left ankle hurts badly—broken or sprained he can’t tell, but definitely injured. Somehow, he seems to have escaped any worse injury, and he’s definitely alive.

Right now, however, he’s more concerned with the fact that he can’t move.

The crumbled remains of the roof are pressing down on him, so close and heavy he can barely breathe. His limbs are varying degrees of stuck, and his panicked thrashing doesn’t seem to be having any effect.

He’s stuck here. Oh God, he’s stuck here and this house is crumbling and dissolving into the ground and it’s going to take him with it.

No.

He won’t die. Not here, not pinned by the wreckage of his own house, away from air and light and freedom, flies periodically hitting his face, the shallow breaths he can take poisoned by the stench of rot. Not now, not when he’s found a reason to hope after the years he spent certain he was doomed to spend the rest of his no doubt very short life hunted by the living equivalent of the scar burned into his skin.

Not like this.

Of all his limbs, his left leg, the one with the injured ankle, seems to have the most freedom of movement. If he can pull it forward a bit, then over to the right and kick backwards, he might be able to free one of the pieces of rubble trapping his right leg, and with both legs free, he might have enough leverage to shift some of the rest just by pushing forward with enough force.

Right. This is gonna hurt.

He bites back a scream as he yanks his leg forward, wrenching his ankle even more, and tries not to whimper at the thought of how much worse it’s going to get.

He shifts his leg over, then kicks.

This time, he can’t hold back the scream.

But it worked. His legs have room to move. And so he does.

—pain and panic, the desperate, frantic need to get out get out get OUT—

—shoving forward, wrenching and scrabbling—

—grateful for the gloves, otherwise he’d be tearing his hands to pieces, the sores are screaming as is but the explosive, violent terror is screaming louder—

—he can’t do it, he’s going to die in here—

—NO—

Grabbing for a handhold to pull himself forward, his hand closes on something slimy and spongy, roughly cylindrical, with enough give that his fingers sink right through to the firmer, though still spongy, core.

It takes him a moment to realize what it is.

When he does, he’s nearly sick, but he swallows hard and fights it down.

His parents are dead and the power in that book has claimed them. If he stops, if he slows down, it’ll claim him too.

The relief as he finally breaks free of the rotting tomb his childhood has become is as wonderful a feeling as the breeze on his face.

Once he’s fully out, he crawls away into the yard some distance and looks back at the place where his house used to be.

That was a mistake.

He’s still staring in shock at the utter destruction of everything his life has been up to this point when two things happen at once: a light rain starts up, and the sound of sirens becomes faintly audible in the distance.

Right. He needs to leave. Now. If he stops to think about the import of what just happened, he’ll still be here when the police arrive, and that would be a very bad idea.

It only takes him a few seconds to find the book. He can’t leave it here—he doesn’t know exactly what might happen if someone linked the book to both him and the destruction of the house, but he doubts he’d like it.

Still. He’ll get rid of it far enough away to make sure no one links it to the house or him, but he won’t hold onto it any longer than he has to.

He can’t forget how wrong it felt. Trapped in the ruins, or even before, while the book slowly rotted everything around it.

Besides, how could lightning rot? How could it be made sick?

This one was never going to work. But if there’s one book with that kind of power... there have to be others. Maybe one of them would be better for his purpose.

The rain gets stronger as he limps away, biting his lip to keep from crying out with every step.

He can’t afford to think about his obliterated past or uncertain future. Not when there’s so much he needs to do in the present if he’s to have a future at all. He can’t afford to cry.

But for one fanciful moment, as the raindrops land on his face, it feels like the sky is crying for him.

Jon blinked as he found himself back in the guest room of Mari and Jenny’s house, which as far as he knew was entirely structurally sound... well, aside from some minor damage to the foundation incurred in an earthquake several years ago, which could easily worsen in another serious earthquake, the Eye promptly informed him.

Okay. He’d tell Mari and Jenny about that later; it was highly unlikely to be a problem in the immediate future.

Right now, he was more interested in the fact that Mike was laughing— genuine, side-clutching, breathless laughter.

So far, the Eye was making Jon and whoever came close exchange memories that were in some way analogous. Given what he’d just experienced, Jon could think of a few possibilities for what Mike could have gotten, and absolutely none of them were likely to induce that reaction.

“What are you laughing about?” Jon asked, compulsion crackling through the air. He didn’t even bother trying to hold it back this time—he knew Mike didn’t mind, and sometimes actually appreciated it. “What did you see?”

“I saw that bastard who used to beat you up when you were a kid stealing your book.” Mike grinned. “Too bad for him it was a Leitner. That was some excellent poetic justice right there. Thanks for sharing.”

Jon wasn’t sure what facial expression corresponded to the feeling of having a large and clunky spanner wrench thrown into your understanding of the world, but it must’ve been pretty notable, because Mike’s grin immediately shifted to a puzzled frown.

“I mean, I’m sorry you had to deal with that so young,” Mike said. “But I’m... I’m impressed that you’re even still here, actually.”

“It was dumb luck,” Jon said quietly, shaking his head.

“Hey, dumb luck counts!” Mike declared. “And... you did really well, for someone that little.”

Screw it. As long as Mike didn’t mind... he seemed to have an easier time explaining things when Jon compelled him, and Jon needed to know what the hell he was talking about.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “I didn’t do anything, I just... stood there. And then ran away.”

“Exactly,” Mike replied, a bit of impatience bleeding through the steady rhythm of the Eye. “Even with someone else to take the brunt of it, the fact that you’d read that whole thing and you could still shake it off fast enough to get out of there before it decided it wanted you as well?”

Mr. Spider wants more.

Mike was still talking, ignoring Jon’s involuntary shudder. “To be able to do that, with your first Leitner, at eight years old?” He shook his head and made a small sound of impressed disbelief. “Damn.”

“It’s not...” It’s not something to be proud of.

Mike’s look of impressed disbelief shifted to simple incredulity. “Okay. Really hope I’m wrong. But I’m starting to get the impression you feel bad about this for some reason?”

Jon sighed. “He saved my life, and I couldn’t—”

“Yeah. You couldn’t do anything. That is kind of the Spider’s whole deal.” Mike shook his head again. “To recap:” He extended his right hand, palm up. “Spider Leitner.” He repeated the gesture with his left. “Literal small child.” He smiled. “Just the fact that you didn’t get eaten is a substantial accomplishment. Also, Whatsisname didn’t save your life, he accidentally stole your death. Different thing. And great news for the rest of us, because you’re cool and he was a dick.”

“I don’t understand.” Jon was so thoroughly thrown for a loop by Mike’s interpretation of events that he couldn’t even come up with a question. Where would he start?

“Okay,” said Mike. “Give me a minute.”

Jon nodded, then smiled faintly, despite feeling as though Mike had once again sent him into a mental freefall. “I, ah... I might need several to get over the fact that someone thinks I’m cool.”

Mike smiled and gave him a thumbs-up, then apparently resumed his task of getting words in order.

Finally, he spoke.

“By most definitions, I am a monster,” Mike said calmly. “I have no problem with that. It’s true. In some ways, I’m probably closer to the thing that was in that house than I am to a human being. I routinely kill people and/or subject them to fates worse than death, and I love it. And even I don’t hurt kids. Ever.” Mike took a slow, deep breath. “Ask me why?”

“Not a question I thought I’d have to ask anyone,” muttered Jon, before letting all the power bubbling up inside him pour out in the words “why don’t you hurt kids?”

“Because what happened to us shouldn’t happen to anyone,” Mike said matter-of-factly. “Adults are fair game. They’re... settled. They’ve already become themselves, and it’s usually pretty easy for the Powers to find the ones they want, either as avatars or as prey. The right people get to the right places at the right times, and... it all works out. But kids are... kids are still in progress. They’re still learning who they are, they’re still, still building who they are. And going after a child, whether it’s arbitrarily cutting short a life that hasn’t even had a chance to experience its own fully realized form—because it is arbitrary at that stage, I mean, some children lean to one Power or another in affinity or susceptibility or both, but you can’t really tell yet if that’s their truest expression or just a childhood phase—or what’s maybe worse, trying to force them into a mold they don’t fit, to constrain their development to suit your own purposes, it’s...” Mike shook his head. “It’s disgusting. The right ones will come to you, but that’s not your decision to make, it’s not anyone’s decision to make. People are what they are, and trying to change that, to interfere with the process...” He sighed. “Your Power tells you which ones it wants as food, doesn’t it?”

Jon nodded.

“And... one way or another, it wanted you in an entirely different capacity. It chose you. It called to you, and you heard it, and you followed. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” Apparently noticing Jon’s flinch, Mike hurriedly continued. “And that’s good.” He smiled. “We’re the lucky ones, you know. We get to see and touch and be part of things beyond human comprehension. We get to be conduits, be... filled with things most people only experience if they’ve been chosen as prey. That happened for you because something in you was meant for it. And that something, that affinity that draws people to one Power or another, that draws the Powers to particular people... that’s something deeper than we can ever understand, something fundamental to how the world works.” He smiled faintly, before it was quickly replaced by a disdainful snarl. “And interfering with it is... I think the closest word is sacrilege.” Mike scoffed. “This is also why I hate the Lukases, by the way.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“Everyone hates the Lukases.” Mike smiled. “Even the Lukases.”

Jon chuckled faintly, then slowly nodded.

For a moment, they just sat in the quiet.

“This is kinda nice,” Mike finally said. “Talking about stuff like this. I can’t, usually, because... it’s not words. It’s just something I feel.” He smiled. “Also, the word you use for us... avatars?”

“Yes,” said Jon. “I mean... technically my ex-girlfriend came up with it, but apparently she wasn’t the first, and...” He sighed. “Yes, the point is, that is what I call us.”

“That’s a good word,” said Mike. “I might use that.”

Jon smiled. “I have entirely too many words. You’re welcome to as many as you want.”

Mike laughed. “Sweet.” He made a wry face. “And, most likely, every so often I’ll accidentally admit to something like the fact that I kind of use my sister as a security blanket when I have to talk to new people, so... I think this could be a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

Jon nodded. “I think it could.”

“But, ah, I think we got sidetracked.”

“Right. You were saying?”

“I was saying, hurting a child is a dickmove even by monster standards. And this guy? An adult, if a young one—definitely old enough to know better—and from what I saw, totally human. There was absolutely no reason he needed to be hurting anyone at all. He deliberately went after a quiet, shy, small, young kid, one he knew didn’t have any friends and wouldn’t tell anyone. And he made your life miserable for years just because he could.” Mike shook his head. “People like that just get worse over time. Trust me. The world is way better off without him in it.”

Jon decided to file that mental debate away for later. Right now...

“That’s... that’s why I started working for the Magnus Institute in the first place, you know,” Jon said. “I didn’t want what had happened to me to happen to anyone else. I had no idea how any of it worked, of course, but... I thought maybe if I could find out, if I could just learn enough, I could... maybe I could stop it, or at least make a difference.” He shook his head. “I know better now, but... dammit, it would’ve been nice.”

When he looked back at Mike, Jon was immediately returned to his state of utter confusion.

Mike was laughing softly, eyes wide, mouth slightly open and set in an incredulous grin.

Jon frowned. “What is it?”

“You’re telling me that you...” Mike threw his hands forward and out in a ‘what the hell’ kind of gesture. “You barely survived a Leitner when you were a little kid, and then as an adult you deliberately took a job that you knew would probably bring you into contact with more of them, just because you didn’t want some future kid you didn’t even know going through what you did?” He shook his head. “That is... Jon, that is insanely brave.”

Jon shook his own head in confusion. “I mean... if we’re talking about the intersection of brave and insane, you’ve pulled at least as much as I have.”

Mike laughed. “Everyone thinks that. But what I did... it wasn’t either of those things. Not really.”

Jon frowned. “Why not?”

“Have you heard of the rabies condition?”

The question was rhetorical. Jon didn’t answer.

Mike went on. “Most vaccines, like any other medical treatment, have contraindications. Don’t get this vaccine if you’ve had a particular neurological condition, or if you’re allergic to any of the ingredients, et cetera, et cetera. But there is no contraindication for the rabies vaccine. Even if you’re deathly allergic to one of the ingredients, if you get bitten by a rabid animal, they give it to you anyway, treat the anaphylaxis and hope for the best. Because if you don’t get the vaccine, rabies is one hundred percent fatal, or close enough to as makes almost no difference. And once you start showing symptoms, it’s already too late.” He sighed. “When the alternative is certain death, literally anything is better. Things that would be absolutely crazy risks in any other circumstance are suddenly the least dangerous thing you can do. And when you’ve spent years of your life being hunted by something that you know will kill you if you don’t find a way to stop it...” He laughed. “You end up with a story that people think is somewhere between ballsy and reckless, when really, it’s... it’s just that it was your best chance.”

Jon nodded. “Fair enough.”

“But you? You didn’t have to come near that side of the world ever again if you didn’t want to. I mean, most likely your Power would’ve found another way to reach out to you, but as far as you knew, you could’ve lived an ordinary life and just... done your best to pretend it never happened. But you didn’t. You came to your Power in the particular way you did because you chose to go back, because you thought if you could stop some other kid from going through something like that it would be worth it.” Mike smiled. “Now that is brave.”

Jon took a deep breath.

Then another.

Nope. Not working. The world was still tilting on its axis.

“Mike, you’re not by any chance feeding on me right now, are you?” Jon asked, only half joking.

Mike looked baffled. “What? No... I mean, I don’t think so?” He closed his eyes for a moment, a look of intense concentration on his face, then abruptly opened them and shook his head. “Definitely not. But, um... I probably could be?” He scoffed. “If you’re seriously that disoriented from me telling you you’re brave...” He laughed incredulously. “Who fucked you up this bad?”

“Long list,” Jon muttered.

Mike nodded. “Well, if there’s anyone in particular you’d like removed from the face of the earth, let me know.” He smirked. “Or let any of us know, really. I’m sure we’d all be happy to pitch in.”

“I don’t—” Jon started to say.

Then, he stopped.

He wasn’t human anymore. And the parallel society he’d been pulled into didn’t operate on human rules.

Until embarrassingly recently, Jon had assumed that most avatars were completely amoral. His thoughts on why had evolved with time and experience—no matter how much she’d hurt him and his people, recalling the way he’d once talked and thought about Jane Prentiss made him wince—but he’d held to the belief that they were right up until a group of them had rescued him from his prison of a workplace and gone to substantial effort to help him find and get established in a better one for what, despite his initial suspicions to the contrary, he was by now fairly certain were genuinely altruistic reasons. Since then, they’d demonstrated over and over that their morality wasn’t nonexistent—it was just nonhuman.

Jon was still learning exactly how avatar morality worked, but he was fairly certain that giving current friends whatever information on former tormentors they needed in order to avenge your past self was both acceptable and encouraged.

He took a moment to think about it.

A substantial percentage of the people who’d seriously harmed him—both those he bore genuine ill will towards and those he didn’t—were already dead. Another substantial portion (cough, cough, Elias) were already dealt with in another way—in prison, or simply out of his life so thoroughly that Jon had no particular interest in their fate one way or another (moving to the other side of the world definitely helped with that). Still another subsection—including most of the population of his former Archive—were people who, for one reason or another, Jon didn’t really blame for how they’d treated him.

Everyone Jon could think of still on the list was an avatar, and Jon had no interest in starting a fight with whatever allies they had without a substantially better reason.

“I, ah...” Jon laughed. “I don’t think there’s anyone in particular right now, but... I’ll keep that in mind.”

Mike smiled. “Grand. Just say the word. No promises if they’re one of us, but pretty much any human.”

Jon nodded, then sighed. “I’m going to need... approximately three to five business days to process this conversation, so... just give me a moment on this one.”

“Of course.” Mike’s smile went sideways. “I mean, you’re gonna be stuck here for at least that long, so it’s a good thing you’ll have something to think about.”

“I suppose,” said Jon quietly. “Oh, and can you tell Mari and Jenny that they’ve got some minor damage to the foundation around the back, in the southeast corner?”

Mike blinked. “How minor, exactly?”

“Very. Not dangerous unless we get a major earthquake, but... I wanted to let them know.”

“Cool,” said Mike, with clear if reasonably well concealed relief. “Yeah, I’ll tell them.”

“Thank you.” Jon smiled. “For everything.”

Mike nodded, smiling back. “Anytime.”

...

The door clicks shut behind her, and in a single, awful moment of panic and despair, she realizes where she is.

She turns, hoping there’s still a way out, hoping it’s not too late, but all she finds is another horrible mirror.

It makes sense, in a cruel sort of way. She’s read about studies done with rats placed in tubs of water with no way to climb out, forced to swim until they surrender to hopeless exhaustion and begin to drown. If such a rat, on the brink of drowning, is taken out of the tub and given a moment to rest, then put back, it will swim almost twice as long as it did before, because now it has a reason to hope.

She’s not a rat, though. She’s intelligent enough to understand what a move like that means.

She’s completely helpless, at the mercy of this place, this monster, that has none.

It was never going to let her—

—“Let her go!”

“No?”

“Get her back here!”

The Archivist is shouting. He rises from his chair, charges, as if he could accomplish anything by it. He has no weapons, not that any would be effective. He is barely what he is—he isn’t, not yet—and he doesn’t understand what there is of what he will be. What rushes clumsily around the desk and toward the intruder in his domain is little more than a fragile human body.

The sound that body makes when pierced is—

—She throws herself yet again towards the mirror that holds her distorted image, crying out in pain and frustration and terror and grief each time her shoulder strikes the unyielding glass.

She knows it won’t help. This place and the creature who controls it won’t let her escape again. But she can’t simply accept her own death.

Can’t accept the twisted image that mirror holds.

Her, but not her. Limbs too crooked, arms too thin, hands too large, with too-long fingers coming to sharp points.

Any specific part of the image she focuses on looks perfectly normal, but the glimpses of her mutilated self she sees in her peripheral vision are enough for her to grasp this manifestation of the mirror’s determination to mock her.

She looks like the thing she saw last time, at the very end. The thing that was coming to kill her.

The thing that will kill her.

Even as she fights, even as she flings herself into the mirror with enough force to make her shoulder light up with pain, even as she abandons herself to a frenzy of rushing around corner after corner, trying with no success to break mirrors and tear up carpet and rip pictures off walls, she understands that it’s pointless.

This place has claimed her. She’s—

—“He’s mine now, and you can’t have him back!”

He can’t speak. She took away his only advantage, his only defense. Now she’s talking over him, talking through him, like he’s not even there. Like he’s a nonentity, important only when and in whatever ways she decides he is.

He can’t speak, can’t move, can barely breathe. But he still does what he can to make himself heard, especially when she tells him to be quiet.

She may not be willing to acknowledge his existence as a person with thoughts and opinions of his own, but he won’t let her forget it. She may not be listening, but she’ll still have to hear.

Even if she treats him like an object, even if she kills him, if he can make himself as much of an annoyance as possible, maybe—

—Fine. She’s going to die here. But she’s going to be as annoying as possible while she does it.

Maybe then, the thing that’s killing her will at the very least have to think about her. Maybe her death will at least have some meaning, if only managing to inconvenience her murderer.

Pursuant to that goal, she’s been singing ‘Drops of Jupiter’ by Train on repeat for... time is tricky in here, but probably at least the last six hours.

She tried a few songs, but settled on this one for now. It’s catchy enough to be obnoxious when repeated endlessly, but interesting enough that she’s not getting horribly sick of it herself, and she likes it well enough that... well, she could definitely do worse for the soundtrack to the last few days of her existence.

“Now that she’s back in the atmosphere, with drops of Jupiter in her ha-a-ai-a-air...”

The corridors don’t like it. They’re not nearly as opposed as they were to ‘Lights’ by Ellie Goulding, which resulted in a rather literalistic objection in the form of the lights along the walls strobing violently, but the lights are still pulsing in a slow rhythm just off enough from the rhythm of the song to make keeping in tempo quite difficult. So far, closing her eyes has only resulted in tripping over mysterious obstacles that turn out not to be there when she looks or running into walls that shouldn’t be where they are, but nothing yet has been intense enough to make her stop.

“Since the return of her stay on the moon, she listens like spring and she talks like June, he-e-e-ey...”

She’s dead anyway. What happens in the next few days won’t change that. All she has left is her last wish to be a thorn in the... in the wall of her captor.

“But tell me, did you sail across the sun?”

Honestly, it’s making her feel better. Her voice is still her voice, even if she’s a little confused about how it hasn’t given out yet and the acoustics in here are downright bizarre. She may not know what any of this means or what will be around the next corner or when the monster is going to get tired of playing and just eat her, but she still knows the words to an old favorite song.

“Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights all faded, and that heaven is overrated?”

She’s dancing a bit as she walks, gesturing with the rhythm, rolling the scribble-covered piece of paper still clutched in her hand into a makeshift baton to conduct nonexistent violins, swaying her upper body and nodding her head. There’s no one around to see. No one whose opinion she gives a damn about, anyway.

She sings with everything she has. Everything she is.

“And tell me, did you fall for a shooting star? One without a permanent scar, and did”—

—“Did you miss me?”

He starts violently at the sudden noise, then shudders at the implications of its presence. He was so caught up in trying to identify the waxworks (which he’s aware is probably an exercise in futility, but he needs something to do while he’s stuck here or he’s going to lose his mind) that he didn’t even hear her come in. Or Breekon and Hope, who are apparently here as well.

Dammit. He needs to be more alert if he’s going to get out of here.

“I’ve brought you some lotion,” she declares, setting down a distressingly large shopping bag. “Well, technically these two picked it up.” She gestures at Breekon and Hope. “I find it difficult to go shopping myself without things getting more complicated than they need to be.”

If she thinks she needs that much lotion... she must be planning to keep him here a while before she kills him.

That’s a good thing, isn’t it? More chances to escape, or for someone to find him.

Someone will find him. Someone has to.

“Right, I’ve got cucumber melon, rainwater... Does rainwater have a smell? I can’t smell at all, I wouldn’t know. Does the lotion smell anything like it?” She opens the top and holds the bottle under his nose.

It doesn’t smell at all like rainwater.

“Mmm, well, we’ll start with that one anyway.” She turns to Breekon and Hope. “Untie him, take his clothes off, and hold him still.”

He struggles, of course, but given that there are three of them (all with superhuman strength) and only one of him (already exhausted and injured), it’s mostly for the sake of knowing he—

—Awareness of the fact comes slowly, delayed by her inability to keep track of time in any tangible fashion (insofar as the concept of rate, dependent as it is on that same notion of neatly subdivided time, has any meaning in here at all), but eventually the suspicion building in the back of her mind can be ignored no longer.

She isn’t hungry, or thirsty, or tired. Her feet don’t hurt, and she feels no need to relieve herself. It’s hard to say how long she’s been in here, but it’s been long enough that at least some of those things should have become issues by now. It must have.

There are some more troubling indications, too. Her shoulder isn’t sore where she was slamming it into the glass, her makeup isn’t smudged from crying when she looks in the mirror, and her fingernails are the same neatly manicured length they’d just begun to grow back to, even though she’s almost certain she’s fallen back into her bad habit of biting them down to the quick.

To test her theory, she rubs the back of her hand over her mouth, deliberately smearing her lipstick all over it.

At first, nothing happens. She’s stuck with a reddish smear around her mouth and a lipstick-coated hand, exactly like she would expect.

Until she gets distracted, thinking of other things for a while, and happens to glance at her hand to see it clean and unstained. A light touch of fingers to lips and a look in one of the mirrors confirms that her lipstick is once again undisturbed.

It wasn’t like this last time. She wasn’t stuck in some impossible stasis, kept in the same moment...

A horrible thought occurs to her.

If she doesn’t get hungry or thirsty... If she doesn’t change, and so presumably doesn’t age... she might never die.

She might be stuck here for eternity, wandering the corridors like some restless ghost, unable to find any escape, not even the cessation of her existence.

That thought, even more than the thought of dying, fills her with an anguished despair that cuts through to her soul.

She tries halfheartedly to search the pictures on the walls and the reflections in the mirrors for anything useful, but it’s mostly for the sake of knowing she tried.

She sits down with her back to the wall and melts into a sobbing—

—It’s been... probably around a week?... since he was taken (it disturbs him that he’s already lost track, but there are no windows down here, only a constant low light the source of which he can never identify), and he’s finally given in to the urge to break down into a sobbing wreck.

He’s spent the time since his kidnapping naked (they didn’t put his clothes back on after they stripped him, which makes sense for lotioning purposes, he supposes, but making sense doesn’t make it more bearable), cold (it’s freezing down here, which makes sense for a wax museum, but... see above), hungry (they feed him, but not nearly enough, and he can’t tell whether they’re deliberately starving him to keep him compliant or if they simply don’t know how much food human bodies need, seeing as he doubts any of them ever had one), and tied to an uncomfortable chair in an uncomfortably revealing position (he’s not sure if her goal is to humiliate him, to entertain herself, or simply to restrain him as efficiently as possible with no thought given to him whatsoever, and he’s not sure which of those options is the worst).

The gag that’s kept in his mouth almost constantly is soaked in saliva, forcing his jaw into a position that by now is making it ache badly, and means he always feels a bit like he’s choking, to say nothing of its primary effect of silencing him. That was what got him his first punishment, trying to talk when the gag was taken out to feed him and give him water. She had some caustic substance in a spray bottle, squirted it into his nostrils until his nasal passages and eventually sinuses were in bright, searing agony, until he could barely breathe through the blood and watery snot filling his nose and dripping down the back of his throat.

He’s been good, since then. He’s been careful. There are plenty of ways to hurt someone that don’t damage their skin, after all, and he knows better than to underestimate her capacity for creative cruelty.

He can’t do that again.

Over the past... however long he’s been here, he’s realized a few things.

He can’t escape on his own. If anyone else was going to get him out of here quickly, it would have happened by now. And if things go according to her plan, he won’t be killed for probably quite some time.

One way or another, he’s going to be here a while, and he needs to start acting accordingly.

If he’s going to be rescued, he needs to survive until then, preferably with his sanity mostly intact.

If not, it doesn’t matter what he does. No one whose opinion he cares about will ever know. Might as well cooperate enough to make the end of his life as bearable as possible.

He’s probably going to die here, and he can’t even be certain anyone will ever know or care what happened to him.

He wishes—

—It’s selfish, she knows. Better not to hurt anyone by her unexplained disappearance from the face of the earth. But she wishes she’d had more friends, or better friends at any rate. Just... someone outside this place who she could be certain would miss her. Someone to mourn her loss, to hold her place in the world outside with their memories of what she meant to them.

She gave up her chance at deepening most of her friendships to focus on her career, and look where that got her. Now all she has are coworkers who like her fine, but don’t really know her beyond her professional mask. No one who could keep her alive in the echo of love cut short.

She tries to do what she always does, put it in a box, tell herself she can grieve later.

She has forever, and there is no later. This is all there’s ever going to be.

This is all there’s ever going to be.

A tear falls onto the scribbled attempt at a map that’s still clutched in her hand.

She’s still holding the map. She thought she put it down at some point.

Now that she thinks about it, actually... she can’t be sure, but she seems to remember putting the map down multiple times.

Did she tear it up, at one point, just to vent her feelings? Did she crumple it into a ball and throw it at one of those hateful mirrors?

The paper is smooth, lying flat (did she roll it up?), without crease or crinkle—not even where she’s been holding onto it. The tear she’s almost certain landed on it has already disappeared, without so much as a spot of moisture to mark where it fell.

...Wait.

She remembers the map being lines on lines, overlapping and intertwining in a way that simply didn’t make any sense.

It still is, but now some of the lines seem bolder than the others.

She looks closely, trying to make out the pattern, then looks up at the hallway in front of her.

Then back at the map.

Then up at the hallway.

She has to repeat the checking five or six times before she’s reasonably confident her eyes aren’t playing tricks on her, any more than usual at least.

The bolded section of the map in her hand lines up precisely with the corridor ahead. Right now, she can see five hallways branching off to the right, and there are five hallways branching off to the right on her bolded section of map.

The third one out from her position is bolder than the others.

This is a horrible idea. It’s probably a trap of some kind...

She’s already trapped, possibly for eternity. It can already do whatever it wants to her. Whatever following the map does, it’s not likely to make her situation any worse.

And if she doesn’t... she’s stuck in here forever. She can’t spend all that time wondering what would have happened if—

—The waxworks surrounding him are... well, he still hasn’t managed to figure out what exactly is so unsettling about them, though he’s spent a long time trying.

But for some reason, he keeps thinking of the scene from The Magician’s Nephew (one of the two Narnia books he’s read) with the statues and the bell that, if rung, makes them come to life.

The fact that that’s his gut reaction to the waxworks would be concerning, if he had the capacity to be more concerned than he already is.

He doesn’t know when it’s going to happen. When she’s going to peel the skin off his still-living body and use it to break the world. But he knows she will.

It’s been too long. Either he’s hidden so well that no one’s ever going to be able to find him, or no one’s even looking.

He’s going to endure however much more of this nightmare she decides he is, and then he’s going to be tortured to death and his remains turned into a weapon against everything and everyone not a part of the Stranger’s sick little collective.

But thinking about that hurts too much to bear, and he’s already in so much pain, and thinking about it won’t change it, so he’s trying not to.

Instead, his mind is wandering to the poem in that scene, carved into both the bell-stand and his mind: “make your choice, adventurous stranger/strike the bell and bide the danger/or wonder, till it drives you mad/what would have followed if you had.”

Maybe it’s only the word ‘stranger,’ which in the original text he’s fairly certain is capitalized, that keeps bringing that rhyme into his head.

Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s spent the past year striking bell after bell, wherever it—

—She’s been following the map for what feels like forever, with no idea where it’s leading her.

Now, she might finally have arrived.

This place isn’t like the rest of the maze. It isn’t a corridor or hallway, although it has several of those branching off of it.

It’s a roughly circular room, with a column in the middle that she initially thought was mirrored. It still might be. Still is, in a sense.

It’s more than that.

She’s seen them a few times now. Other victims, in the moments before and the days after they’re lured through one of those awful doors.

None of the others seem to be frozen in time like she is. They all go down eventually.

The first time she saw what the monster did to them, she ran from this room in a horrified rush, not wanting to witness any more. She’s since established that no matter what direction she goes in, no matter which turns she takes, sooner or later she ends up back here.

But it feels better to be walking than just sitting around while forever passes, waiting for whatever horrific thing she’s going to see next, so she does.

It’s become a rhythm. Walking into one of the corridors that branches out from the room, seeing how far it will take her before she’s back beside that column of cursed mirror, then picking a direction once again and repeating the process.

She talks to herself as she walks, not caring if the monster or even the corridors themselves can hear her. She tries to hold onto her memories of the world outside, describing the vibrant blue of a summer sky and the cool softness of mist; the bright green explosion of leaves in springtime and the scent of flowers, the clever design of cathedrals that lets them grow to awe-inspiring heights, the golden glitter of a city at night, the camaraderie of sharing an unusual experience with strangers and turning to each other to exclaim about it. And, as in the beginning, sometimes she sings.

It’s not out of spite, not anymore. She doesn’t need the monster to care. She just wants to keep her memories of music as long as she can.

“Oh simple thing, where have you gone? I’m getting old and I need something to rely on...”

‘Somewhere Only We Know’ is another longtime favorite. During her life, she only really listened to music on the radio, in her car, when she had to drive somewhere for work or go shopping. She wishes she’d listened to more of it, but oh well. Nothing she can do about it now.

“So tell me when you’re gonna let me in, I’m getting tired and I need somewhere to begin...”

There’s the room up ahead.

“If you have a minute, why don’t we go... talk about it somewhere only we know...”

From the look of it, there’s another victim on the column.

She hates it, but she knows she’ll watch, if only for some variety in her existence.

“This could be”—

—He’s about to die, and he can’t bring himself to be anything other than relieved.

(Well, once he got over his exasperation at the fact that the only person who was both able to find him and sufficiently interested in doing so to go to the trouble only wanted to kill him.)

He wishes he could pretend it’s altruism. If he’s killed by someone else, he can’t be used to start an apocalypse. He can die knowing his end won’t mean the end of everything.

But really, it’s probably just that the death the Circus has planned for him would be absolutely unendurable. And honestly, he’s well past the end of his rope already.

He’s about to die, and all he feels is grateful that it’s almost over.

But he wants to die a person, not a broken toy. And besides, after so long kept in the metaphorical and literal dark, with little food and less information, he’s craving answers so badly his teeth ache.

So when Michael offers him a statement—

—The Archivist is stronger than he was, stronger than he should be, given the state of him. Then again, maybe it’s just that he’s starving.

The words of Michael Shelley, however twisted, have a strange effect when the Archivist draws them out.

The feelings of Michael Shelley are back, and so loud. Drowning bitter resentment at frustrated purpose in terror and grief and hurt and the fragile, frantic hope of an end that has—

—It takes her a moment to recognize the figure in the mirror.

The first things she registers are what a horrible position he’s clearly in. He’s naked, tied to a chair with fairly soft cloth bindings, which makes her think maybe he was fighting earlier restraints hard enough to risk dangerous blood loss or infection. He’s skinny (not emaciated, but she can see the outline of his ribs), and his hair is hanging in his face, as if he normally wears it fairly short but hasn’t been able to cut it for some time.

Most of his face is still visible, though, and between his features and the oddly familiar polka-dot scars, she places him fairly quickly.

It would be hard to forget the last—

—“Is there anything I can do to stop you from killing me?”

There isn’t. Even if there was, it would probably just leave him in a worse position than he would be if he didn’t bother. He knows that. But he had to ask, if only because whatever of his stubbornness is still with him rebels against just giving up without exhausting every other option.

“If you scream loud enough the Circus may take notice of me, but… I promise you will die far more pleasantly with me than with them,” Michael says in between echoing giggles.

Oh God, Michael is going to be the last face he’ll ever see.

(Don’t think about that.)

It’s raining outside. If he tries hard enough, he can almost remember the smell of rain. Real rain, not that awful rainwater-scented lotion.

There’s still an outside, even if he’ll never experience it again.

That can be the deal. He agrees to this, accepts complicity in his own death. In return, he gets to escape this nightmare before it reaches its most horrific pitch, and the rest of the world gets to keep rain.

He takes a deep breath—

—It’s breaking her heart to see him like this.

He was kind to her, patient with her frantic ramblings. He didn’t think she was crazy. He believed her.

He believed her, and him telling her so was the last outside sound she ever heard.

Back then, he still had the dotted scars, but he otherwise looked quite ordinary. Now... he looks like the photos she’s seen of prisoners of war. Right down to his expression.

Hopeless. Broken. Defeated.

As she watches, he seems to come to some kind of decision, and the defeated look only increases.

She watches long, sharp fingers slice through his bonds and help him up.

Michael didn’t do this, she’s almost certain of it. If he’s going to keep someone prisoner, he can do it in here.

Which means someone else did this to him, and Michael showed up to take advantage.

The idea fills her with an almost protective fury.

The only person out there who might know what happened to her, who believed her, and now Michael is going to take him too.

Given how long it looks like he’s been kept in that creepy basement, and the fact that no one else has found him... now she might be the only one who knows what’s happened to him.

He’s stumbling towards a door, and she suddenly realizes that if anyone is going to help him, it’s going to have to be her.

She’s never been able to see the doors before. And the image is strange, almost wavy, like...

Like the mirror is somehow thinner than usual.

She feels certain, suddenly, that she could break it. She feels equally certain that if she does that, it will be the last act of her life.

If she doesn’t, she’ll be here for eternity, knowing she could have helped and didn’t.

His hand is almost on the handle. They’re both out of time.

(No. Not him. Not today.)

She throws herself at the mirror.

The last thing Helen Richardson knows is breaking glass.

Jon was still drowning in residual panic that was only partly his when he felt something soft impact his side.

It was unexpected enough to make him jolt upright and look towards the probable source. When he did, Helen was standing by the side of the bed, holding a pillow that, from a quick glance around, she appeared to have taken off the side of the bed Jon wasn’t occupying.

She didn’t look too well herself, Jon noticed. Her face was less human-looking than usual, and she almost seemed to be rippling, like the air over a heat source.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Are you?”

Rather than answering, Jon gestured to the pillow in her hand. “Interesting strategy.”

“Effective, though.”

“Seems to have been,” Jon admitted.

The memories he’d traded with the others so far had been fairly straightforward—a single event in the life of the other person. Not the fragmented jumble he’d just been immersed in, and certainly not with any of his own memories in the mix.

It made... well, sense was perhaps not the word.

It wasn’t surprising that it was different with Helen. She seemed to experience memory in general in a convoluted and nonlinear way, of course that would come through in someone else’s experience of her memories.

It was the inclusion of his own that Jon was finding confusing.

Jon shook his head and decided to think about it as little as possible, which was generally his strategy when it came to anything related to the month he’d spent as a captive of the Circus.

Helen held up the pillow, which now bore a series of gashes, exposing the fill. “Ah… if anyone asks, you don’t have any idea what happened to this, do you?”

Jon smiled. “None whatsoever.”

Helen smiled back, then crossed to the wall, still holding the mutilated pillow, and opened her door.

“Helen?” Jon called.

She looked back at him, hand on the knob, and raised an eyebrow higher than a human would’ve found possible. “Yes?”

After struggling for a moment to find something, anything, to say in response to what he’d just seen, Jon settled on “thank you.” He hoped she understood how much and how many things he meant by it.

Helen didn’t answer in words, but she gave him a smile and a near-imperceptible nod before closing the door, which promptly vanished, leaving behind no evidence that it had ever been there at all.

Chapter Text

Jon stood on the sidewalk in front of the California Historical Society, briefly overwhelmed.

He’d escaped the Magnus Institute. The transfer had been successful, and the Eye had relented from its attempts to punish him.

He worked here now. He belonged here now. This was home.

When Jon had awoken that morning, the Wednesday after he’d signed the employment contract, he’d immediately known the worst was over. He still felt a bit weak and shaky, true, but that was to be expected after five days spent mostly in bed. A shower, a change of clothes, a cup of tea, and the movement necessary to make those things happen had gone a long way towards making him feel less like a formless blob of misery and more like a person.

As such, he’d gotten on the streetcar and headed in to work.

Unlike the last time he’d stood frozen by the entrance to this building, the Eye wasn’t trying to stop him. Nothing prevented him from simply walking up to the front door and going inside to begin his new life as this place’s Archivist.

He was the Archivist of a place that had never had one before. He’d broken away from the Archives that made him, and now he was going to create a new one from nothing but a non-paranormal library and collections department and the blueprint in his mind, formed from a combination of experience and instinct, of what an Archive should be.

It was... a lot to take in.

Okay. He’d dawdled long enough.

Jon opened the door and stepped through.

He found himself in what appeared to be some sort of gift shop, with hardwood flooring and floor-to-ceiling windows giving the place an open, airy feel that contrasted sharply with what he’d seen when Helen had taken him further in to sign the contract. Which made sense, he supposed—Susan could allow her patron’s influence to permeate the staff-only areas, but allowing it in spaces open to the public was probably bad for business.

To Jon’s left, a carpeted staircase led up to another floor. Past that was the entrance to a hallway with a sign indicating that the toilets were to be found by turning right. The majority of the shop lay to Jon’s right, with various shelves of books and trinkets arranged in islands and lining the walls. A few visitors were milling about, examining the offerings.

Behind the cashier’s counter sat a middle-aged man with light skin and brown hair, who looked up at Jon, smiled, and motioned him over.

“Welcome in!” the man said once Jon had crossed the room to stand beside the counter. “You must be Jon?”

“That’s right,” Jon replied.

“Wonderful. I’ll let Susan know you’re here.” The man retrieved his phone and typed a few words in, then once again looked at Jon. “Just head up that staircase and take a right. She’ll tell you where to go from there.”

Jon nodded. “Thank you.”

“No problem. It’s good to meet you.”

“You too.” Jon smiled and headed over to the staircase.

When he reached the top, Susan was waiting.

“Feeling better?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jon replied. “Much better.”

“Glad to hear it.” Susan motioned for him to accompany her, then began walking away from the stairs, further into the building. “Your office is this way. I wasn’t sure what sort of setup you’d prefer, and your friends didn’t know either, so feel free to rearrange the furniture however you’d like. I thought you might like a window with a good view—with blinds you can close if it’s too distracting or if the sun’s in your eyes, of course—so I put you on the second floor. It was that or the basement, which you’ll be spending some time in because it’s where we keep the collections, but I don’t think you’d like spending too much time down there.”

Jon’s momentary confusion over the American meaning of ‘second floor’ was quickly overshadowed by his gratitude. 

“I’ve spent the past two years working in a basement, but a change of pace will be...” Jon swallowed. “Very nice.”

“I’m glad,” Susan went on. “Your friend Karolina came by with a box of your stuff, said she’d left it on your desk. I submitted the petition letter for your immigration case, and Karolina and Harriet have been expediting that process in a variety of ways I haven’t asked too many questions about, but you’ll have to fill out the visa application yourself. You can do that today—in fact, I recommend you get that done as soon as possible. Karolina also told me your friend Oliver’s been working on getting your money transferred to an American account—I don’t know how he got access, but again, I didn’t ask.” 

Jon’s head was spinning with overwhelmed gratitude at everything his new friends were willing to do for him, a relative stranger, when Susan abruptly stopped walking and gestured to a door.

“Here we are,” she said.

Jon placed his hand on the handle and slowly opened the door.

Inside was a perfectly ordinary-looking office. It was clearly unoccupied, true—the empty bookshelf against one wall and the (banged up and dirty, but intact) cardboard box sitting on the desk, as well as the complete absence of any form of decoration, indicated that quite strongly. Still, it just as clearly had the potential to be a pleasant place to spend time. The window Susan had mentioned was large and nicely positioned to give a good view of the street below, and the floor was covered by a large, patterned rug, which Jon found oddly comforting.

He wasn’t sure why he found the rug in particular so reassuring until he recalled the treated hardwood floor of his previous office, and how easy it had been to clean on the distressingly frequent occasions when it had been decorated with significant quantities of blood. If Susan had placed or left a rug in here, it meant she wasn’t expecting that to be a problem.

The fact that Jon’s employer not expecting his office to be a site of routine and substantial bloodshed was a fact worthy of note went a long way towards wiping out the last of his doubt that he’d made the right decision.

Jon turned back to Susan. “Thank you so much. It’s perfect.”

“I’m glad you like it.” Susan gestured to the desk. “Your work computer is in the top right-hand drawer, along with a list of information you’ll need to get started. It’s got all the phone numbers you’ll need, including mine, and what they’re for, plus the username and temporary password to your work email, the address of the staff portal, how to get to the visa application, and the name and password of the building wi-fi. I’ll leave you to set that up and get started. Let me know if you have any questions.”

“I have one, actually,” said Jon. “Is it all right for me to start work today, since... I don’t technically have permission to be in the country yet? I mean... I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“What the U.S. Government doesn’t know won’t hurt it,” Susan said nonchalantly. “And whatever individual officials do know, they can usually be persuaded to keep quiet about, if you have enough friends in high—and low—places.” She smirked. 

Recalling what Susan had said earlier about Harriet and Karolina working together to ‘expedite the process,’ Jon blinked. “Was that a pun?”

“Yes,” Susan replied serenely, a flicker of deviousness just visible around the edges of her expression.

Very deliberately, Jon rolled his eyes. “That was terrible.”

Susan’s smirk returned. “Thank you.”

Jon took a slow, deep breath. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Susan. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Jon smiled. “So am I.”

...

Jon spent the rest of the day in a flurry of activity.

He filled out and submitted his visa application (occasionally relying on the Eye to help him remember some of the information required, good Lord they were thorough). He set up his work email inbox, created his employee portal account, and poked around on the California Historical Society website until he had a solid idea of where a notice of the ‘oral history project’ he was to be running could be placed to both fit in with the rest of the website and attract attention. He asked Susan what she’d like him to do with his recordings from said project, and she told him that she and the rest of the staff were genuinely interested in what surfaced, paranormal or not, and would like it added to their collection. He unpacked the box Karolina had helpfully labeled “shit that was in Jon’s desk for some reason” and texted her a photo of the words on said box with the caption “do you actually want to know?” He learned his way around the claustrophobic maze Susan had made of most staff-only regions of the building, including the locations of the fire extinguishers, defibrillator, first aid kit, cleaning supplies (particularly the disinfectant, the carpet sweeper, and the stain remover—Susan might not be expecting Jon to be routinely or severely injured, but that might change once his presence here became better known, and anyway it never hurt to be prepared), and stock of tissues (he’d learned very early in his tenure at the Magnus Institute that he needed to keep a box of tissues on his desk at all times if he didn’t want to deal with distressed statement-givers wiping their noses on their sleeves, which he very much did not). He introduced himself to the rest of his new coworkers, all of whom were apparently well aware of the existence of avatars and had been since Susan had been claimed by the Buried several years prior and refused to let a little thing like dying and coming back as an involuntary agent of a fear god induce her to quit her job. Upon meeting the public relations and outreach coordinator, he specifically apologized for the PR disaster his presence and feeding habits were more than likely about to bring down on her head. He repositioned a bookshelf, sent Mike a text asking if his skills at locating rare books could be applied to the acquisition of specific non-cursed items, and tracked down and appropriated a reasonably comfortable and not-in-use chair with a low enough back that it could live on the other side of his desk without obstructing his view of the rest of the room.

By the time he was done with all that, he’d gotten replies from Karolina (<Yes. Is that a human rib? And is that jar full of cremains? Whose???>) and Mike (<Maybe. No promises.>). The building had gone quiet in the way that meant there were few other people present (it was 6:34 PM, the building had been closed to the public since 5:00 PM, and most of the employees had already gone home, with the exception of Susan, who liked to be the last one out of the building and was wondering how much longer Jon was planning to stay, and if she should check on him and find out, continue doing odd tasks until he left, or just go home).

Jon winced at the sudden Knowledge that he’d been an inconvenience, then logged out of his computer, put it back in its drawer, stood, and made his way out of the building, careful to make sufficient noise that Susan would hear him leaving.

Once he was outside, Jon typed out a reply to Karolina. <The cremains are from an avatar of the Corruption named Jane Prentiss. She died while attacking the Magnus Institute and trying to kill me. Does it make it better or worse if I tell you the rib was mine?>

He was switching conversations to reply to Mike when the phone rang.

“Worse,” Karolina’s voice declared as soon as he picked up. “That definitely makes it worse.”

“I can explain,” Jon grumbled. “It was for a good reason.”

Karolina snorted. “I’d be interested to hear that.”

Jon looked around. It was still daylight, and the street was still full of people.

“I just left work,” he said. “How about I tell you when I get home?” 

...

The next morning, Jon had settled down at his desk and was logging in to his work email account when a bright “good morning” rose from his office floor.

“Good morning,” Jon replied once he’d gotten over the mild start Karolina’s sudden appearance had given him. “What is it?”

“Remember how I said I’m pretty good with computers?”

Jon got up and walked around his desk so he could actually see Karolina while she was talking to him. “Yes, why?”

“Well, that... may have been a slight understatement,” Karolina replied. “I’m a freelance web developer—only in the non-paranormal sense, and yes, I’ve heard the joke a million times, so don’t bother.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Cool.” Karolina held out a hand. “Little help?”

“Sure.” Jon took Karolina’s hand and pulled until she was on her feet, then frowned as she brushed the worst of the dirt off her hands. “Hold on. This isn’t a ground floor office. How did you—”

“Jon, I’m literally teleporting via pocket dimension,” Karolina said. “Stop expecting it to make sense.”

Jon sighed. “Fair point. You were saying you work as a web developer?”

“Yes, and I was thinking I could help you create a page on the CHS website for your Archive. Maybe include a brief description of the project, we can work together to come up with wording that’ll draw the right people without making the rest think someone on staff at the CHS lost their marbles—”

Jon gave a short, sharp laugh. “I mean...”

Karolina smiled. “You know what I mean. Anyway, description of the project, criteria for the sort of stories you’re interested in, a link to a system for people to make appointments... that sort of thing.”

“You don’t have to do that,” said Jon. “I can figure it out, and… don’t you have your own work to do?”

“Yes,” said Karolina lightly. “But it’s a slow week, and I work very fast.”

“Thank you,” said Jon after a moment. “That would be lovely.”

“You’re welcome.” Karolina grabbed the chair from the other side of the desk and brought it around to sit next to Jon. “How would you like to space out appointments? And how do you feel about walk-in hours?”

Jon tried to think about the questions Karolina had asked, rather than the fact that they were calmly discussing the setup of internet-based appointment booking software to allow potential victims to schedule convenient times to be fed on without having the faintest idea what they were getting into. 

“The trouble with figuring out how to space appointments is that, if my last job is any indication, maybe one in ten statements I’ll get will actually have something real to it,” he replied, “and I can’t control which slots those people sign up for. Ideally I’d prefer no more than one in any given day, real or not—makes the numbering system easier, and more than that could get overwhelming, not to mention unnecessary—but if I have appointments five days a week, and one in ten statements is real, that’s an average of one every two weeks, with the potential for longer stretches without if the distribution works out that way, and without any preexisting paper statements to work with—”

“Okay,” said Karolina. “First, in terms of feeding, you don’t have to stick to what you get through your work. You’ve got plenty of friends, including me, who’d be happy to take you hunting somewhere else if you didn’t want to risk being recognized, and even if someone did recognize you, what could they do? Anyone they could complain to either already knows or wouldn’t believe it.” Abruptly, she grinned. “Besides, can you imagine if you fed on someone, and they heard about the project and came in to tell someone what happened, and then there you were, just acting totally normal?” She laughed. “That would be fucking hilarious.”

“That’s more Helen’s game than mine,” Jon replied. (Which didn’t change the fact that Karolina’s scenario was pretty funny, but he wasn’t quite ready to admit that.)

“Okay, but the rest of the point stands. And second, who says you have to keep the numbering system you had before? Sounds like a pretty lousy system if it can’t handle two statements in one day.”

“Pretty sure that was on purpose,” Jon muttered.

“Your purpose, or someone else’s?”

Jon figured his silence was probably answer enough.

“Hey,” said Karolina gently. “From what you told me last night, you figured out a way to walk into a place that is also the actual, physical manifestation of the concept of being trapped, and not only get yourself out but find and extricate a specific other person who’d been in there for months. You can definitely come up with a filing system for statements that accounts for the possibility of getting two in one day.”

“I... don’t really follow what the one has to do with the other,” said Jon, “but thank you for the vote of confidence.”

“You’re welcome. Besides, the CHS people might have a way they want you to label statements that’s different from what you’re used to.” Karolina indicated Jon’s laptop. “Show me the website?”

Jon took a deep breath. “First... may I ask you a question?”

“Normal question or question-question?”

“Normal question—at least, that’s the plan.”

“Go for it.”

Jon forced the anxiety churning in his stomach to settle down and not spill out as compulsion. “If I told you I was planning to do something fairly stupid,” he said slowly, “and asked you to help me avoid getting caught... would you?”

Karolina visibly considered her answer.

“It depends on what sort of stupid thing you were planning to do,” she finally replied. “But, seeing as I almost certainly couldn’t stop you... most likely yes.”

Jon nodded. “If I wanted to send someone an email and make sure no one could use it to find me... how secure could I make that, if you helped?”

A sad sort of half-smile crept over Karolina’s face. “Homesick?”

“Absolutely not.” Jon shuddered. “It’s just...” He sighed. “There’s one person in particular, someone I don’t want to just... disappear on. Him at least, I... I think I owe at least... some sort of attempt at an explanation.”

Karolina nodded. “I can definitely help with that. Do you already have a VPN?”

...

Jon spent Thursday morning working with Karolina to get his section of the California Historical Society website up and running. He spent a solid chunk of Thursday afternoon in a staff meeting in which they discussed how the statements Jon took would be integrated into the Society’s collection and the Online Archive of California (Karolina had been correct about them having a different system), how to handle various problems that might come up in the building and maintenance of an Archive, and how to minimize for the rest of the employees any side effects that might result from the Eye seeping into the building. The rest of Thursday afternoon was dedicated to filling the gaps in Jon’s knowledge of non-supernatural archive management, metadata labeling, item preservation and handling, and filing procedures (at a certain point, he’d had to admit that Georgie had been entirely correct that his understanding of how to operate a normal archive was severely lacking, and they’d agreed to pick up the next day to continue the task of fixing that).

Thursday evening found Jon back at his desk, repeatedly trying and failing to find the words to tell Martin what had become of him in a way that was reasonably honest, didn’t give away too much in case the email found its way to someone who might mean him harm, and didn’t make his gut twist in shame to type out.

That last goal was proving the most challenging to achieve.

He’d made the right decision. The situation at his former Archive had been utterly untenable. He’d been backed into a corner, and accepting what he’d become had been the only way he could stay alive(-ish) and have any kind of existence worth continuing. If he’d stayed, if he’d kept trying to fight what he was, he would have been an active danger not only to himself, but to his coworkers—maybe even Martin. Staying had no longer been a viable option.

When he was with his new friends, his own kind, that was easy to accept.

But when he tried to find the words to explain it to Martin—touched by a Power, pretty much drowning in it by now, but still, as far as Jon could tell, human—they all sounded hollow.

The fact of the matter was, he hadn’t been strong enough. He’d given in to the Eye, to the monstrous side of himself he’d tried so hard to pretend wasn’t really him, because resisting hurt so much and cooperating felt so good and he’d decided he’d rather fall into that fierce joy at the cost of other people’s misery than continue to be so miserable himself, simply because he couldn’t bear it any longer. He’d wanted to stop hurting, wanted to live, so badly that he’d traded away his humanity for it.

There was no way to explain that in a way that didn’t make it clear that he was a coward.

Jon took a deep, slow, deliberate breath. He’d made his choice. He’d only be more of a coward if he wouldn’t own up to it.

Dear Martin, he typed and erased for the fifth time. (He still hadn’t gotten any further.)

He needed to just start writing. The backspace key was there for a reason. He could always use it if necessary.

Dear Martin,

It’s Jon. I’m sorry if I shouldn’t be writing to you. I know you’re working with the Lonely like this for a reason, and I may not know what that reason is—

(Martin had agreed to work with Peter Lukas following Jon’s apparent death and the death of his mother in exchange for protection for the other employees, with the intention of dying for a good cause in lieu of a more active and pointless form of suicide. For a while, he’d been motivated by a belief that the Extinction presented an imminent threat to the world at large, but now he was aware that it probably didn’t, and that Peter was deliberately misleading him. From Jon’s return to life through his departure, Martin had allowed this, because as long as Peter was focused on Martin, he wasn’t focused on Jon. Protection for the other Institute staff was an added benefit, but Jon had been his primary motivation. Since Jon’s departure, Martin had been hoping to prevent Peter in his role as acting head of the Magnus Institute from tracking Jon down to punish or retrieve him. Peter had no intention of doing this, but was enjoying the fact that Martin didn’t know that, and using the threat of harm to Jon to keep him in line. Martin hadn’t yet bound himself irrevocably to the Lonely, but he was very close—)

“Stop,” Jon choked out, pressing the heels of his hands against his closed eyes until swirls of pain and color burst behind the lids, hoping to shut off the flow of Knowledge.

The worst part was, when it finally stopped, he almost wanted it back. Much as it hurt, it was his only link to—

This was a bad idea. He’d meant to cut ties with the Institute and everyone involved with it altogether. Writing to Martin was just making that more difficult, dragging him back into his previous unhelpful ways of thinking.

It didn’t matter. He’d get this done, then go hang out with one or more of his new friends until the human thoughts faded back out of his mind.

After everything, especially with Martin as deep in the Lonely as he was... he owed it to him not to just vanish without a word.

Besides. The thought of Martin never knowing what happened to him... it wasn’t right. It made his chest ache, for some reason.

Okay. Starting over.

Dear Martin,

This is Jon. I’m sorry if I shouldn’t be writing to you. I don’t want to get you in trouble, but I thought you deserved to know what happened to me. First off, I’m okay. I’m... better than okay, actually. Some other avatars helped me get out, and we found a loophole that let me cut my ties with the Magnus Institute and attach myself to another Archive. Please don’t try to find out where. Just know that so far it’s been a good place to be, and that my coworkers (human and otherwise) know what I am and what I do, and they don’t mind.

Which... about that. Yes. I suppose I’m properly a monster now. I’m not resisting the Eye anymore, not how it wants me to feel or what it wants me to do or who it wants me to hurt. I know you thought I could fight it, and I’m sorry I couldn’t. But also... it’s such a relief. Now that I’m not fighting myself every second—well, I may not be technically alive anymore, but I feel alive again. I’m pretty sure I’m actually happy.

And. If you hate me for the preceding paragraph, I understand. But if you’re at a point where you’re wondering if it would be worth it to stop resisting the Power that’s trying to claim you yourself, I want to tell you something. Yes, it’s something the Eye told me, so make of it what you will, but it’s true. It’s not too late for you. I was past the point of no return—I think I had been for a long time, at least since I woke up from that coma. Daisy’s past it, and she’ll never escape the Hunt no matter how hard she tries. But Melanie wasn’t past that point when Basira and I got the bullet out of her leg, and you’re not past it—not yet. You could still turn around. But you don’t have much time left. If you want to go back, if you want to cut the Lonely out of you, you need to do it soon.

I’m not telling you this because I’d blame you if you gave in. I may be a hypocrite about some things, but I’m not that much of a hypocrite. I’m telling you this because the Lonely sounds like a particularly terrible Power to be bound to—especially for someone like you, someone who cares about people too much for your own damn good. You have too much love in you to be alone. The other avatars who got me out of the Institute have, for one reason or another, let me into their friend group, and I can tell you that having friends is really nice. I highly recommend it. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but just know this: you could leave. The magic that bound us all to that place isn’t stronger than my friends and I put together, and I don’t know if it would even apply to you anymore. So... this may be a burner email, but I’ll still check it regularly, and if you want to leave and can’t do it on your own, just ask. I’ll find a way to help you get out of there.

I understand if you can’t reply. I don’t want to make anything worse for you, and I’m sorry if I did. But I just wanted to tell you that I’m okay and happy and about as safe as I can be. You don’t need to worry about me anymore.

Sincerely,

Jon

After taking several deep breaths, wiping the tears off his face with a tissue from the box that now lived on his desk, and doing a final read-through to check for errors despite knowing there wouldn’t be any, Jon finally worked up the nerve to press send.

He was starting to think he’d made a terrible mistake when he heard the knock.

“Yes?” he called, before realizing that the sound was coming from the direction opposite his office door.

No sooner had he realized that than a door that wasn’t typically there swung open and Helen stepped into the room.

“Hello, Jon,” she said. “Having a nice evening?”

“Did you just knock on yourself?” Jon asked, smiling faintly.

“And what if I did?”

Jon’s smile widened as the familiar off-kilter feeling of being around Helen shut down his mental rumination as naturally as the sound of her door swinging open always drew his attention. “My evening’s going well so far,” he replied, answering her earlier question rather than the rhetorical one. “Yours?”

“I’ve been engaged in some… interesting business,” she replied. “Would you like to come look at some apartments with me?”

Dammit, it was so easy. Easy to return her sly smile with one of his own. Easy to rise from his chair, log out of his computer, and put it away.

“Are you planning to eat my potential landlord?” he asked in a dry tone, eyebrow raised.

When Helen replied, “better. I’m planning to get you a discount,” the laughter was easy too.

It was so natural, slipping back out of humanity. So effortless.

“I’d like that,” he said as he made his way across the room. “So, where are we going first?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there,” she replied, closing the door behind him.

...

The next morning, when Jon made his way into the section of the building that housed his office, Susan met him in the hallway.

“Good morning,” she said. “How’d apartment hunting go?”

Jon winced. “I’m sorry about keeping you late.” The text he’d gotten at seven-thirty PM the night before asking if he’d left the building and whether it was acceptable to lock up for the night, and the accompanying realization that he’d been an inconvenience again, had definitely put a damper on what had otherwise been a very pleasant evening.

“It’s quite alright,” Susan reassured him. “There’s always a learning curve when people start working together. In this case, I thought it might be helpful to give you this.” She held out a small, silvery key. “I’ll leave when I want to leave, and lock up behind me in case you decide to leave the building by some means other than the door. If you do leave after I do and elect to take the usual route, you can lock up again after yourself. Sound good?”

“That sounds excellent.” Jon accepted the key. “And, ah, about apartment hunting...” He smiled. “I signed a lease last night.”

Susan smiled back. “Congratulations! When do you move in?”

“Sunday.”

“This Sunday?” Susan asked incredulously. “The day after tomorrow?”

“There are some definite advantages to having a former real estate agent turned agent of chaos on your side when trying to negotiate the renting of a property.” Jon smiled sideways. “I got an excellent rate, too.”

Susan laughed. “I bet. Oh, and the Usher Foundation Archivist, Erica, she got back to me. She says she can do a video meeting with you at noon her time today, so, nine o’clock ours. Does that sound good?”

It was 8:27, Jon didn’t need to confirm. “That sounds lovely.”

“Wonderful. I’ll tell her you’re in. Just be at your desk with your computer open, she’ll call you.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Head down to the basement when you’re off the call, we’ll keep working on your mundane archival skills.”

“Got it. I’ll be there.”

“See you then.” Susan headed down the stairs and, presumably, into the basement.

Jon made his way to his office, closed the door, and logged in to the burner email he’d used to contact Martin.

His stomach dropped when he saw that he’d gotten a message from an address that must’ve been Martin’s personal email.

The subject line was “thank you,” all lowercase.

The body of the email was two words.

Good luck.

“Yeah,” Jon whispered to the screen. “You too.”

...

By the time Jon’s laptop indicated an incoming video call from Erica Jones, Usher Foundation, Washington, DC, he’d been doing vaguely work-related things (mostly checking his work email and entering into his online calendar the two statement appointments that had somehow already been made) for long enough that he felt capable of giving the conversation his full attention.

He clicked to pick up, and Erica—an alert-looking woman with deep brown skin, short natural hair, a stylized eye pendant around her neck, and a sharp, intense gaze Jon recognized from both talking to Xiaoling and looking in the mirror—appeared on the screen.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully. “Jon?”

“Yes. Erica?”

“That would be me.” She smiled. “Welcome to the United States—and the District of Columbia. I’m glad you’re here. How are you liking California so far?”

Jon returned the smile. “Very nice plankton.”

“What—” She drew back slightly, her smile flickering before settling back into place as she recovered. “Oh, lovely! You’re friends with some Fairchilds, then?”

“Not sure how that happened, but yes.”

“Good to know.” Her expression faded into a look of concern. “I heard the head of the Magnus Institute was arrested last year?”

Jon nodded, grateful she’d gotten to the point so quickly. “Yes, and it was partially my idea that made that happen, although the planning was a group effort and the credit goes to some of my coworkers at the time for actually pulling it off. He, ah...” Having so recently given Xiaoling a statement about it and then explained the situation in detail to Mari and Jenny, Jon had no interest in rehashing the entire story yet again if it wasn’t necessary, so he cut down to the crucial details. “He murdered my predecessor—”

“Gertrude Robinson?” Erica sounded genuinely shocked. “Elias killed her?”

“Yes,” Jon said simply. “Around two and a half years ago.”

“How did I not know that?” Erica shook her head. “Regardless. That’s too bad. I only met Gertrude once, but I knew her by reputation, and I definitely respected her.” She frowned. “Had she already changed? How’d he stop her coming back?”

Jon sighed. “She hadn’t changed. And as far as I know, he didn’t need to stop her coming back. She just... chose not to. Which I think he knew she would.”

Erica raised her eyebrows. “Okay. What else—” She drew back slightly, eyes widening. “Oh. Who’s—” She broke off with a startled rush of air. “What was Jurgen Leitner doing in your office?” Her look of surprise quickly shifted to simple incredulity. “And who keeps a metal pipe just lying around?”

“I don’t know what Jurgen Leitner was doing in my office,” Jon grumbled, “because Elias killed him to prevent him from telling me. And then let me take the blame, of course.” Quickly trying to avoid letting his bitterness derail the conversation, Jon shrugged. “As for the metal pipe question... Elias, apparently.”

“Fair enough.” Erica visibly reined in her curiosity. “We don’t need to talk about that any more, if you’d prefer to move on. How’ve you been doing as far as getting settled in goes?”

Jon smiled. “Signed a lease last night. I move in on Sunday.”

“Congratulations!” Erica looked genuinely delighted. “And congratulations on getting it done so quickly.” Her slightly devious expression suggested that she was harboring some entertaining but most likely incorrect ideas about how he might have accomplished that.

“I can’t take all the credit for that,” said Jon. “I had some help from a friend.”

Erica only looked disappointed for an instant. “I’m glad to hear it,” she said as she fiddled with her necklace.

(That necklace had been given to her by the former Archivist and current Director of the Usher Foundation on the occasion of their simultaneous promotion, and so far it had saved her life three times, most recently from an attack on her workplace by agents of the Dark. She was grateful for it, of course, especially since a death like that might not be something she could come back from, but also mildly annoyed that she hadn’t yet fully come into her power for the simple reason that she hadn’t yet died.)

When Jon regained focus on the here and now—or, more accurately, the 3,923 kilometers away and three hours ahead—Erica was looking at him with even sharper focus, head tilted.

“What did you get?” she asked.

“Some information on your necklace.” Jon took a deep breath. “Is it... is it usual for new Archivists to be told what exactly they’re signing up for?”

Erica looked horrified. “You weren’t?”

“I had no idea.”

Erica winced. “To be fair, our Power wants who it wants. You work in the Archives long enough, either the process starts or it doesn’t. But where I work, no one transfers in without at least a basic understanding of what might happen and what it would entail, and even then you can usually turn the promotion down.” She gestured at herself. “I was an Archival assistant for six years before it picked me, and my predecessor Richard told me as soon as he noticed. He was happy about it, too. The Director before him was ready to step down, and Richard was ready to move on to a different role. And I was happy to move up.”

“Gertrude didn’t have any assistants when Elias killed her,” Jon said quietly. “My assistants and I were all transferred from elsewhere in the Institute, outside the Archives, at the same time. None of us had any idea what was going on.”

Erica frowned. “When I was hired at the Usher Foundation—not even in the Archives, mind, I had a position in the library first—the Archivist at the time sat me down and just... dumped it all into my head. All the information he had on the Powers, how they work, the function of organizations like ours dedicated to the Eye, it was just... there. All at once.” Her eyes had lost some of their sharpness, a distant look creeping in. “I didn’t faint, though that’s a common response, and I’ll admit it was a near thing. But the Archivist got me some water, and answered my most pressing questions, and let me stay sitting in that chair for as long as I needed to.” She smiled, chuckling faintly. “Then the Archival assistants took me out for ice cream and answered the rest of my questions. Which took a few hours. I don’t think I got any actual work done that day, but then, no one expected me to. As far as I know, that’s been the protocol for every new hire for as long as the Foundation’s been around.”

“Well, that’s one thing our initial organizations have in common,” Jon said dully. “Consistency. From what I’ve been able to piece together, Gertrude had to figure everything out for herself, too.”

“That’s bizarre,” Erica said under her breath, before speaking up. “Like I said. Everyone working for the Usher Foundation knows the basics from the day we sign our contracts. And when the Archivist before me saw that I’d been chosen, he explained it to me in as much detail as I could have asked for—what was happening, and what to expect, and that it was an honor to be chosen as a bearer of stories from all the Powers. That the voices of all sorts of people would become part of me, and that I’d learn to hear and give voice to what they weren’t saying. That I’d be given the ability to look right into the souls of everyone around me, ordinary humans and the Power-touched alike, and see them as they truly were—all their secrets, all their flaws, all the contradictions and rough edges they keep hidden.” She smiled faintly. “And that, if I worked at it and was both patient and lucky, I’d learn to love some of them anyway, in a way my human self could never have imagined.”

Jon fought back the lump in his throat until he could be certain his voice would come out unmarred by emotion. “I knew when I joined the Institute that the paranormal existed in some capacity. Anything beyond that, I had to figure out myself.”

Erica’s brow furrowed. “That... it’s not just unfair to you and a terrible management practice in general, it doesn’t make any sense. Why would you run a temple to the Eye that way? Why wouldn’t you make all your employees aware—I mean, how can they feed Beholding properly if they don’t know for certain they’re being watched? What’s the point keeping them ignorant of the extent of what’s out there? Fear of the unknown, that doesn’t... that’s the opposite of what we’re going for.” She hissed out a breath. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“I...” Jon frowned. “I can’t say I’ve ever thought about that, but you’re right.”

Erica put a hand to her temple, like she was thinking hard. “I think I’ll let you go, if that’s alright. I have some things I need to look into.” She winced. “I’m not as worried about this whole business with the Magnus Institute as I probably should be, given how out of the ordinary everything you’ve just told me is and the fact that I’d never heard any of it until now, and... that worries me.” She turned her focus back on Jon. “Do you understand?”

Jon bit his lip. “Yes, actually, I... I think I do.”

“Alright. I’ll let you know if I find anything relevant.” She smiled. “Best of luck with your new position.”

Jon smiled back. “Thank you. And thank you for looking into this. I’ll do the same, although... I confess I’m not sure where to start.”

Erica shook her head. “You focus on settling in. It might be nothing important, and if I find something I’ll tell you as soon as I can.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Good luck, Jon, and goodbye for now.”

“Goodbye.” Jon hung up, then took several deep breaths, forcibly put what he’d just learned out of his mind for the time being, and went downstairs to resume his belated but quite enjoyable education on the topic of small-a archival practices.

...

Following a day of assimilating his new workplace’s organization system thoroughly enough to at least avoid screwing it up, an evening of walking around the city with Mari and Jenny and alternately allowing them to point out features of interest and returning the favor whenever the Eye deigned to give him something worth sharing, and much of a night of helping Mari and Jenny finish a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle they’d been stuck on (and, once that was mostly accomplished, locating the missing pieces), Jon awoke late on Saturday morning to the now-familiar, oddly hollow sound of Helen knocking on her own door.

“Good morning,” Jon called, voice sounding to his own ears entirely too clear and confident for how sleepy he felt. Which shouldn’t have been as sleepy as it was, given that the Eye quickly informed him that the time was 11:02 AM (in Jon’s defense, the puzzle had kept them all up until past two, and... he had a lot of sleep to catch up on). “Come in.”

The door swung open with its usual loud creak, and Jon briefly wondered whether she made that noise on purpose or whether there was some sort of mechanical issue, and whether it was uncomfortable if the latter was the case, which naturally led to wondering if applying WD-40 to your friend’s squeaky hinges could be considered first aid. Maybe it was like washing out a cut?

He thought about asking, but quickly decided against it. He didn’t want to cause offense if the sound was a deliberate aesthetic choice, and if it was a problem, odds were it couldn’t be fixed by anything so mundane, or Helen would’ve taken care of it already.

(The fact that the thought of never hearing that sound again sent a pang of immediate protest through Jon’s chest had nothing to do with it. Probably. And was also probably best not examined too closely.)

“Hello, Jon,” said Helen. “How are we feeling this morning?”

“What are you doing in my bedroom?” Jon asked as he sat up, got out of bed, and began gathering his clothes.

Helen’s face twisted into an expression Jon thought might be halfway between baffled and offended. “I knocked.”

Jon took a slow, deep breath and nodded. Helen was doing her best with concepts (like boundaries, and privacy, and routines) that inherently didn’t make sense to her; he had to remember that.

“Thank you,” he said as he sat down on the bed and began dressing, not bothering to turn away when he took off his nightshirt and replaced it with an undershirt and one of his usual long-sleeved button-ups. It felt more important to keep looking at Helen, and besides... she’d definitely seen him in far worse states of undress, both physical and psychological. He didn’t have much left to hide from her, at this point. “I appreciate that. And, if there’s a specific reason you’re here, I’d still like to know about it.”

“Harriet and Karolina have been working on your permanent resident application,” Helen replied. “Part of the process is that a specific doctor has to see you, and they managed to get you an appointment today. They’ll just check for a few specific problems and get your health history, which shouldn’t be a problem unless you tell the truth.” She frowned. “Can you even lie?”

“Yes, I can lie,” Jon snapped as he finished tugging his trousers on, trying to ignore the sinking dread in his gut at the thought of a physical exam, even a cursory one. “When’s the appointment?”

“Noon.”

Jon winced, dread quickly evolving into something uncomfortably close to panic.

It was fine. He could do this. It was a necessary step in the process of escaping something far worse. He didn’t have another choice.

(He didn’t have another choice.)

Jon was doing his best to appear unbothered, but apparently it wasn’t working, because Helen was looking at him with something that he’d once read as mild disdain but now knew was almost certainly concern.

To her credit, she didn’t ask if he was all right.

“I’ll stay with you the whole time,” she said calmly. “The doctor probably won’t let anyone else come back with you, but he doesn’t have to know I’m there. I can be in the walls, and if he tries anything I’ll stab him.” She tilted her head. “Does that help?”

That idea probably should have been uncomfortable at best, but Jon couldn’t bring himself to find it anything other than oddly reassuring. Maybe Helen not understanding the concept of privacy had occasional perks. “Strangely enough, yes.”

She smiled—not her smug smirk or her gleeful grin or any of the other expressions she made more often. This one seemed like it might actually be intended to comfort. “Let’s go.”

The moment the door closed behind Jon with that familiar creak, Helen was standing beside him.

That was strange. He’d never seen her Helen Richardson form in the corridors before. He hadn’t even known she could appear that way.

Apparently, it wasn’t easy. Her image was wavering, her face set in a look of fierce concentration. But she was there.

“You don’t have an appointment today,” she said immediately.

Jon blinked. “What?”

“I mean, most of it was true. Was true. You had an appointment at noon on Tuesday. Harriet and Karolina thought it was too risky to push the doctor to falsify the record, too high a chance he’d tip someone off once they were gone, make a mess that’d take forever to clean up, and put your case in danger.” She frowned. “You had an appointment. Past tense. I’m telling them to find another way. They’re not making you do that if that’s how you feel about it.”

Jon sighed. “I’ll be fine.”

“You can convince yourself you’re fine in just about any situation this side of disembowelment,” Helen shot back. “What you can’t seem to do is get it through your head that you don’t always have to. You shouldn’t. ”

Jon took a slow, deep breath.

“Thanks,” he said, knowing she didn’t need any more to understand his meaning, and probably didn’t want it, either. “Ah... if the appointment wasn’t today, why did you say it was?”

“Because your friends have a surprise for you,” Helen replied, “and I wanted to get you in here so I could bring you over without your patron spoiling it.”

“What sort of surprise?” Jon asked without thinking, though fortunately also without compulsion. “I mean—you don’t have to tell me.”

Helen smiled. “I won’t tell you that, but I will tell you it’s the sort of surprise where you get to keep all your clothes on.”

Jon wasn’t sure if the startled laugh that escaped him was escaping tension or merely a reaction to Helen’s earnest if unorthodox attempts at comfort.

Either way, it served its purpose.

“Definitely the superior variety,” he said when he could speak clearly again, only to realize he’d said it to empty air. Or to the corridor itself.

Which was perfectly reasonable, actually. Helen was still there. She just wasn’t forcing herself into an uncomfortable shape to talk to him anymore.

Before he opened the door that had already appeared nearby, Jon turned to face the wall. Slowly, he placed his hand flat against it, the way someone might press their hand to a window, mirroring a loved one on the other side. The burn scar on his palm, with the nerve damage that had never quite healed, felt strange when flush with a surface like this, but enough sensation remained that he could tell that the wall was both smoother than it looked and notably warm.

Slowly, gently, Jon pressed his hand into the wall. Not a shove, or even a push, really. Just pressure, smoothly increased, then removed.

Helen had been trying so hard, for so long, to speak a language Jon could understand, even when it ran directly contrary to everything she was.

The least he could do was try to return the favor.

Jon opened the door, stepped out onto a sidewalk, and saw Mike and Harriet standing nearby.

“Turn around,” Harriet said with a grin.

Jon did as she’d suggested and promptly found himself face to face with a door that read “TRUHLSEN-MARMOR MUSEUM OF THE EYE.”

After a moment of incredulous and annoyingly appropriate staring, Jon turned back around.

“You people are ridiculous,” he groaned, with a vigorous roll of his physical eyes.

“Like it?” asked Harriet cheerfully.

Jon laughed. “I had no idea this even existed.”

“Neither did I,” said Harriet. “Jenny told me about it, actually. Oh, and Karolina told me to tell you she’d have liked to be here, but she didn’t want to get us kicked out for leaving a dust trail, and she’s got other stuff she’s doing today.”

“Well, make sure you describe my expression to her in detail,” said Jon, before gesturing at the door (the Museum of the Eye door—Helen’s had, of course, vanished). “What is it?” He paused. “I mean. Besides the obvious.”

“The world’s only free, public museum dedicated to the fascinating science of sight,” Mike declared (he was quoting the museum’s website, which, like the museum itself, was run by the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the non-physical Eye chimed in).

Jon smiled. “Is it actually interesting, or did you just bring me here for the sake of the pun?”

“Mostly the pun,” Mike said. “Lots of other museums here, though. Today, if you want. When we’re done here. Exploratorium, California Academy of Sciences, USS Hornet—”

“Lots of art and cultural museums, too,” Harriet added. “Whatever you want, really. There’s even a few Helen might like. Museum of 3D Illusions, Gregangelo—you might both like those, actually.”

Jon wasn’t surprised when the door creaked open behind him, but he was glad.

...

That night, after a long but delightful day of exploring various San Francisco museums, Jon found himself seated on the floor in what had formerly been the dining room of Mari and Jenny’s home but had been converted to a game room when they’d bought the house, in a circle consisting of himself, Jenny, Mari, Mike, Harriet, and Helen, playing Apples to Apples.

It was Jon’s last night staying at Mari and Jenny’s house before moving into his own apartment, and, after Jon had thanked them profusely and they’d told him to get in touch anytime he wanted, they’d decided to have a game night to mark the occasion. It had taken some convincing from Jon and Harriet, but Helen had agreed to stay and play Apples to Apples with them (which had necessitated some convincing by Harriet for Mike to stay as well, but she’d been successful, and so far they didn’t seem to be having any issues). Once the game had begun, it had quickly become apparent that Helen had an unfortunate tendency to shred the cards in her hand when a particularly animated discussion broke out (the deck was now down “gall bladder,” “Beanie Babies,” and “ninjas,” while “Flipper” and “ticks” were being held together with clear tape), but that issue had been resolved by everyone agreeing to lay their cards face-up in front of themselves (which had the added bonus of allowing all the players to know everyone else’s cards, instead of just Jon) and Helen being very careful when transferring her chosen card for a given round into the center, and so far all was going well.

In the previous round, Mari had ruled that “driving off a cliff” (submitted by Mike) was more “exciting” than “waterfalls” (Harriet’s suggestion), “first man on the moon” (Jenny’s), “spontaneous combustion” (Helen’s), or “buying a house” (Jon’s, which Helen had rolled her eyes at, probably for multiple reasons).

This round, Jon was judging, and the group were having an enthusiastic debate about which of their cards was the most “creepy” when the conversation was interrupted by a knock at the front door.

“I’ll get it,” said Jenny, popping up and making her way over.

“May we come in?” said Karolina as soon as the door opened.

“Of course!” Jenny replied, and Karolina and Oliver made their way in and sat down in the circle, Harriet and Jon scooting over to accommodate them.

“We’ve just started playing,” Harriet said. “It’s only been two rounds so far, so you’re fine to just join in. We’re on round three right now. Jon’s the judge.” She turned to Jon. “Are you okay if I give them some cards and let them add their picks to your options?”

“Of course,” Jon replied.

“Just a second,” said Karolina. “I have something for Jon first.” She uncurled her hand, which had been formed into a loose fist, and held it out, palm up.

Jon didn’t need the Eye to tell him what the quarter-sized chip of plastic sitting in Karolina’s palm was. Not when its off-white translucency and the precise shape of the most jagged edge were so immediately, viscerally familiar.

Jon tore his eyes off the thing and looked at Karolina. “Is that...”

“You said you keep the jar of Jane Prentiss’s ashes because you like having a concrete reminder that she’s gone and can’t come back,” Karolina replied. “Which is good. Keeping trophies of dead enemies is a normal, healthy coping mechanism—”

Jon blinked. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell. Are you being sarcastic?”

Karolina tilted her head. “Not at all. Anyway, I thought I should encourage it, and that it might help you to have this, too.”

Suddenly, Jon realized something and frowned. “How did you know about... that?”

“Helen told me.”

Jon’s stomach sank. He didn’t think Helen would have shared the more unfortunate details, but it was hard to tell with her, she might not have even understood that he’d find that—

“What exactly did she tell you?” Jon asked Karolina, power crackling through his voice.

“She told me that the Circus of the Other, led by a living mannequin named Nikola, kidnapped you and kept you prisoner for a month in a plot to bring their Power into the world, that they tortured you and had planned to kill you horribly, that she got you out, and that you managed to stop the Circus from achieving their goal, but you got blown up in the process, and that’s how you ended up in that coma you got stuck in before your change,” said Karolina instantly. “She also told me where the site of the ritual was, and that I should check to be sure Nikola was really dead. Which, in case you were wondering: yes, I checked. Nikola is very, very dead. And I thought... since you’re starting to build your new Archive on Monday, it might be nice to have one more piece of proof that the shit you went through at your last one is over.”

“I appreciate that.” Jon winced. “And I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” said Karolina. “No big deal. I would’ve been happy to tell you anyway.” She frowned. “Are you hungry?”

Jon winced.

Honestly, he hadn’t noticed. Maybe he’d just been trying to ignore it out of habit. But now that he thought about it... he’d been fed by his friends’ memories, to some extent, but he’d needed most of that just to get through his illness, and the last proper statement he’d taken had been when he’d left the Magnus Institute... wow, was that really two weeks ago? It felt like both much less time and much more.

Point was, the last proper statement he’d taken had been two weeks ago. Yes, he was absolutely hungry.

But he’d been much hungrier than this before, without even the benefit of an end in sight or the knowledge that he could hunt if he needed or wanted to.

“I have a statement appointment on Monday,” Jon said, in lieu of an actual answer. “I’ll be fine until then.”

“You sure?” Karolina asked calmly. “We could take you hunting tomorrow, if you wanted. Or tonight.”

Jon took a deep breath and smiled faintly.

“I’m sure,” he said. “I have a feeling Monday’s statement is real, but if it’s not, I’ll hunt on Monday after work.”

Well. That was a sentence that had just left his mouth. And, somehow, he’d arrived at a point in his life where the people around him thought it was a perfectly normal thing to say.

“Thank you, though.” Jon gestured to the chip of plastic in Karolina’s hand. “And... thank you for that, as well.” He wasn’t sure why the gesture was so comforting, but... it really, really was. “Could you take this to my office? We won’t start playing again until you’re back.”

“Of course,” Karolina replied. “Want me to put it with the jar of ashes?”

“Please do.”

Less than thirty seconds after she’d disappeared into the floor, Karolina was back, and Harriet began dealing red apple cards to her and Oliver.

“The word is ‘creepy,’” Jon said. “‘Frightening, slithering, scary.”

Oliver raised an eyebrow. “‘Slithering?’”

“I’m just reading what’s on the card,” Jon replied. “So far, we’ve got ‘leeches’ from Mike, ‘crawl space’ from Harriet, ‘supermodels’ from Mari—she didn’t have a great hand, but she’s making a solid case—’a cheap motel’ from Jenny, and ‘carnival workers’ from Helen, which I think she just put in because she knows me. What’ve you got?”

Oliver and Karolina each picked up and looked at their cards, and Oliver promptly burst out laughing.

“You first,” he told Karolina with a smirk.

Karolina smiled and added ‘morticians’ to the pile, then put her remaining cards on the floor in front of her like the others and drew another red apple card to fill out her hand.

Oliver grinned at Jon and plunked down “my dreams.”

“I don’t know if we’re playing where ‘my’ means the judge or where ‘my’ means the person who played the card,” Oliver said, “but I think I win this round either way.”

“Yeah,” said Jon, shaking his head and passing the green apple card with ‘creepy’ on it over to Oliver. “We hadn’t decided yet, but... regardless, you win.”

...

When Sunday morning arrived, Jon was drinking a cup of tea in the kitchen and thinking about when it would be best to go over to his new apartment (the landlord, understandably given the circumstances under which the rent agreement had been negotiated, wanted as little contact with him as possible—which, to be honest, was probably a good idea at the moment) when the sound of a car horn honking very close to the front of the house jarred him out of his thoughts.

He went outside to see Harriet at the wheel of a minivan, with Oliver in the passenger’s seat, both of them smiling brightly.

“What’s that for?” Jon called as he made his way over.

“We’re taking you to IKEA!” Harriet replied enthusiastically. “You need to get stuff for your new apartment. I thought maybe some of us could help you with that, and Oliver’s the sort of nerd who actually likes putting together IKEA furniture, so I got him and now we’re here to get you. You can’t transport furniture through the void—” (She’d tried, the Eye informed Jon, and she’d had to replace the floor) “—and besides, road trips are an essential part of American culture, so we’re taking the long way. This trip’s only half an hour each way, but... for now, it’ll do. I’ll take you on a proper one later. Right now, IKEA. You coming?”

Jon smiled at Harriet’s cheerful motormouthing, then turned as something occurred to him. “Just a moment.”

“Sure thing!” Harriet called back.

Jon went back inside, knocked on a wall, and said, “Helen?”

A few moments later, the door in front of Jon swung open. “What is it?”

“Harriet and Oliver are going to take me to get some furniture for my apartment, and since IKEA is basically a Spiral domain anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to come along.”

Helen tilted her head. “Do you want me to?”

“Yes.” Jon was briefly struck by how fast and certain his response was, and how a month ago he could never have predicted he’d someday feel that way, and how very much things had changed since then.

Helen smiled. “Alright.” She swung her door open further. “Come along.”

“Ah... Harriet wanted to drive me. Says it’s ‘an essential part of American culture.’”

Helen nodded, and, just for a moment, something flashed across her face that Jon couldn’t identify. “I’ll meet you there,” she said, and started to step back.

“Would you like to come with us?” Jon asked on impulse. “I mean... in the car? Is that something you could do?”

Helen stopped in the process of shutting her door and looked at Jon incredulously.

“You don’t have to,” Jon quickly added. “I just... thought I’d offer.”

“I don’t know,” said Helen quietly. “It might work. It might not.” She stepped out into the living room, closing her door behind her humanoid form. “But... I think I’d like to try.”

Jon smiled at her, then walked back to the open front door of the house. “Is it alright if Helen comes with us?” he asked.

“Of course!” Harriet replied. “Get in!”

Helen looked doubtfully at the handle of the van door.

Jon casually opened it, then went around to the other side and got in as Helen did the same.

Once he was seated, Jon automatically buckled his seatbelt, only to realize he was the only one wearing one when Harriet giggled at the sound of the click.

“Just because I could survive being thrown through the windshield doesn’t mean I would enjoy it,” he grumbled.

“If it helps, the front seat would probably stop you,” Oliver commented. “Although it wouldn’t be fun either way.”

Harriet looked playfully offended. “Do you both have that little confidence in my driving?”

“Do I really need to answer that?” Oliver replied.

Harriet reached out and shoved him.

“Might actually be a decent idea to put them on, though,” said Oliver. “Entertaining as it could be if someone stopped us, we don’t need the interruption. Or the potential witnesses.”

“Fair enough,” said Harriet, putting on her seatbelt as Oliver put on his. “Helen, you’re exempt. They won’t see you in the backseat anyway. Does anyone have an issue with eighties pop?”

When no one did, Harriet queued up what appeared to be a Spotify station, and the opening instrumentation of  “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” filled the car, to Harriet’s obvious delight.

They were driving away by the time the first verse started, Harriet and Oliver both enthusiastically singing along.

Halfway through the verse, Jon realized he could just barely hear Helen humming the tune, wiggling from side to side in what could almost have been a dance.

As he watched her, Jon found himself thinking of the memories he’d experienced from Helen Richardson’s time as a prisoner of the corridors, the ones where she’d been singing her heart out in a desperate attempt to hold onto a bit of herself, to a faint memory of the world outside the maze.

He wanted to hear her sing like that again. Wanted to know if the new Helen’s voice would sound the same or if her singing voice would be more like her laughter than her speech. If it was different, Jon realized, he had no idea what her singing sounded like now, and a sudden, sharp certainty filled him that that could not be allowed to stand.

Jon leaned in towards Helen. “You can sing along, you know,” he said under his breath.

She looked at him and smirked. “I’ll sing along if you will.”

Jon took a deep breath and nodded.

When the chorus kicked in, they both absolutely went for it.

“OHHHH, I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY!”

The van swerved slightly as Harriet jolted in surprise, then looked into the rearview mirror, grinning.

Helen’s voice wasn’t so far off from what human Helen Richardson’s voice had been, but there was some indescribable quality to it that meant it could never be said to sound the same. A slight echo, maybe? The smooth, effortless pitch spike on “I wanna feel the heat with somebody” that her human voice would almost certainly not have been capable of?

Whatever the exact specifications, Helen had a very nice voice, even when she was belting along to a pop song in the car.

“YEAHHHH, I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY!”

Everyone in this car was belting along, and Jon did his best to ignore his embarrassment and melt into the music. Gradually, his self-consciousness fell away, leaving only the song and the new, glorious feeling of belonging.

“WITH SOMEBODY WHO LOVES ME!”

It was so, so good.

...

As the group walked through the sliding doors of the Emeryville IKEA and into the brightly lit, white-walled space, Jon was immediately struck by the presence of so many people.

He’d been in crowds since his change, of course. He’d spent several months in London, stayed a few days in Beijing, and now lived in San Francisco. But since he’d abandoned his efforts to fight off the onslaught of Knowledge always pressing in at the edges of his mind, he’d noticed some patterns in what made the influx more or less overwhelming, and one of them was that crowds were substantially more difficult to deal with if they were indoors. It was almost like the Eye treated buildings as a unit, giving him information on everyone within the parameters of the space rather than simply those he could directly look at.

Dammit, he should have known an IKEA run would be a disaster. Especially when—

“Alright,” said Harriet, jarring Jon out of his thoughts. “What do you need?”

Seventeen people in this building had statements.

“Are you okay?”

He could see three of them right now.

“Jon?” Harriet sounded legitimately concerned.

“What?” He shook his head forcefully, trying to clear it. “Yes, fine.”

Harriet frowned. “I meant ‘what do you need’ in terms of furniture, but if you need to feed before you can focus on that it’s totally fine. Oliver and I can just wait for you.”

Oliver nodded agreement.

Jon vaguely expected Helen to nag him about it, but he noticed as he looked at the others that she was nowhere to be found. He wasn’t surprised, honestly. The layout of most IKEAs was confusing enough to rival Helen’s own. She’d probably have a great time here.

Jon shook his head again. “Like I said. I’ll be fine until tomorrow.”

“You sure?” asked Oliver. “Even if you could wait until tomorrow—which, we know you could, you’ve already proved how stubborn you are, okay? You don’t have to prove anything else—if you’re hungry now, which you clearly are, you should eat. There’s no reason to be uncomfortable when you don’t have to be just because you said you would.”

Jon took a deep breath. “Maybe on the way out. If I do it first, there’s a... not insignificant risk they’ll get security.”

“Alright, fair enough.” Harriet made a face. “Letting your victims go on with their lives sounds complicated.”

“Oh, it is,” said Jon flatly. “Especially when you make the mistake of telling them where you work and they try to file an HR complaint.”

(It was fine. He could tell them about this. He could joke about this. At least on this topic, these people were unequivocally on his side.)

(He didn’t know how long it was going to take before he could talk about feeding without having to forcefully remind himself of that every time, but he’d get there, and... some practice couldn’t hurt.)

Harriet choked on an outburst of incredulous laughter. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Why?” asked Oliver.

“Why did I tell her where I worked, or why do I let them go on with their lives?”

“The first one,” said Oliver, “but I’d like to hear both.”

Jon nodded. “For the second question, I don’t kill them because I don’t need to.” He gestured at Oliver. “For you, killing your victims is part of the process—it wouldn’t work if you didn’t, at least not nearly as well. And I get that, I do. But for me, killing a victim—or sending them to a pocket dimension, or something like that—would be completely superfluous, and possibly counterproductive. My Power’s happiest if they have to live with the consequences, and... I’m happiest if I’m not being unnecessarily cruel. Maybe I have to feed on people, but, as it happens, I don’t have to kill them, so I won’t. At least not without a better reason than convenience.” He took a steadying breath. “Does that make sense?”

Oliver tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Yeah, it does.”

“Totally,” said Harriet.

“As for the first question...” Jon took a moment to consider how to explain this in a way that wouldn’t make Helen feel inclined to break out the Zebra Stripes of Disapproval if she heard it. “Um... this was back when I didn’t really understand what I was doing or why. I think I told them where I worked because it... made it feel more official? To me, at least. More like I was doing my job in a somewhat unorthodox setting, less like I was just being a creep.” Jon hissed a breath in through his teeth. “I was kind of hoping it would have that effect for the victims, as well.”

“Did that work?” asked Oliver, one eyebrow raised.

Jon sighed. “Based on the contents of that attempted complaint, it very much did not.”

Harriet, who had mostly emerged from her fit of the giggles, immediately fell into another round of them. “I’m sorry, it’s just...” She wheezed. “Filing an HR complaint at the Magnus Institute?” She shook her head. “How’d that go?”

“Ah...” Jon winced. “It was after Elias was arrested, and... obviously we didn’t actually have an HR department, and she got Martin, who is the single most patient person I’ve ever met, so... I actually think it went fine for her.” He looked down slightly. “For me, not so much.”

Instantly, the grin vanished from Harriet’s face. “If you’d ever like someone to go murder your former assistants, I’d be happy to oblige.”

“Seconded,” Oliver declared, then smiled. “We might just have to roll a six-sided die or something, because I’m pretty sure we’d all be delighted to get rid of them for you.”

“Or we could all go,” Harriet mused. “Let them six-sided die.”

Oliver rolled his eyes into another dimension. “Harriet, that was terrible.”

Jon tried to ignore the twisting in his gut at the thought of what his new friends could do to his... to his former assistants. Shit, Daisy had spent months in the domain of the Buried, and Martin had always been claustrophobic. If Karolina went after them…

“Please don’t unless I ask you to,” he said, instead of trying to defend them. He figured his friends were more likely to listen that way.

“All right,” said Harriet. “We won’t.”

“It’s your business,” Oliver agreed. “Let us know if you change your mind, but we won’t bother them if you don’t want us to.”

“Thank you.” Jon took another deep breath. “Could we go look at some furniture now?”

Harriet smiled. “Absolutely.”

...

The few hours Jon spent with Oliver and Harriet in the depths of the IKEA were, for the most part, very pleasant.

They’d begun by clarifying exactly what furniture Jon would need—not a kitchen table, for instance, or cookware of any sort, aside from what was necessary to make tea and be prepared in case of pre-change visitors. Jon had briefly argued with Harriet about which of them would pay for the furniture, which argument Harriet had won by insisting that Jon was doing her a favor by giving her an excuse to spend Simon Fairchild’s money. Taking that under due consideration, they’d spent a considerable amount of time looking at and discussing the relative merits of various coffee tables, bedside tables, lamps, shelving units, sofas, armchairs, desks, desk chairs, dressers, glassware sets, teakettles, bedding, pillows, wall clocks, bulletin boards, extension cords, shower curtains, window curtains, wastebaskets, laundry baskets, kitchen towels, hand towels, bath towels, bath mats, throw pillows, and the like, attempting to navigate the maze of ‘shortcuts’ and strangely organized rooms without getting too badly turned around (Jon had tried to do this without requesting guidance from the Eye, mostly to prove he could, but quickly given up). Decisions made, they’d located the warehouse, then located an aisle they could have to themselves, sat on the large rolling pallet they’d brought in to bring the furniture out, and let Harriet send them rocketing past the towering shelves of cardboard boxes, all giggling madly. After that, and after taking a moment to appreciate the ‘Big-Ass Fans’ (yes, that was the actual brand name, written on them clear as day—and they were, indeed, some big-ass fans) on the ceiling, they’d actually set about tracking down the items he’d selected and loading the ones that came in reasonably portable form onto the pallet, then made their way back towards the checkout.

They were nearly there when Helen declared, from very close to Jon’s ear, “I have a present for you.”

Jon started slightly, then settled down as he placed the voice and turned to look.

Helen stood beside him, looking particularly smug and pleased with herself, if also a bit... apprehensive, maybe? Nervous was too strong a word.

“What sort of present?” Jon asked, only to realize that Helen was gone. He hadn’t seen her leave, or even seen her vanish, and he didn’t think he’d taken his eyes off her, she just... wasn’t there.

At the same moment, a ragged cry came from the other side of the room.

Jon looked up to see a panicked-looking woman, with streaks of mascara running down her face and the Spiral rolling off her in waves, stumbling out of a shortcut passage Jon was fairly certain hadn’t been there before, and wasn’t there again as soon as she moved away.

Ah. That sort of present.

(Her name was Gretchen Peyerwold, she was twenty-six years old, she’d just moved out of her boyfriend’s place following a bad breakup and was trying to start over, her job was mostly remote with occasional visits to the office and meant she was often isolated, she’d struggled with mental illness as a teenager, she—)

“Go,” Harriet whispered, giving Jon a little push toward Gretchen from an angle that made sure she couldn’t see. “We’ll check out and meet you at your new place, okay? You can get a ride back with Helen?”

(—had an uncle with schizophrenia and often worried about developing it herself, she knew she was in the right age range for it—)

“Yeah,” Jon whispered, unable to spare the attention he would have needed to give Harriet more of an answer. She’d written down everything he’d picked out in the notes on her phone, she could handle it.

Gretchen was looking around frantically, taking in the plausibly arranged room and the real-looking people in it with guarded hope that the immediate nightmare was over, mixed with horrified despair at what this meant for her life and future.

Right now, it was Spiral fear, probably with some Desolation mixed in. There wasn’t really any Beholding in the mix at all.

Oh well. Jon could change that.

“Excuse me,” Jon said, realizing as he did so that he was standing right beside Gretchen. He must’ve walked over, then. It didn’t matter. “Are you all right?”

“No,” Gretchen breathed. “I think I must be losing my mind, I don’t know what just happened, it was like—like some sort of fucking Alice in Wonderland shit, it can’t have been real, can it?” Her face assumed an even more intense expression of horror. “Oh God, are you real?”

That wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t be afraid of being known by someone who wasn’t really there.

“See for yourself.” Jon held out his forearm.

Gingerly, Gretchen reached out and poked him.

“What do you think?” asked Jon. “Solid enough?”

Gretchen took a shuddering breath. “Just let me check one more thing.” She took out her phone and held it up, aiming it first at Jon and then around the room—looking through the camera, checking to see if what she saw through the viewfinder matched what she saw with only her eyes. Smart. 

“Okay, yeah, you’re real.” Gretchen laughed humorlessly. “Fuck. That means you actually heard all that.”

There, that was better. “It’s all right. I don’t mind at all.”

“God, I just... I have a family history of schizophrenia, and if this is that manifesting I don’t know what I’m going to do—” She broke off with a wince. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

Jon smiled gently. “I tend to have that effect on people.”

Gretchen’s face shifted into a puzzled frown. “Who are you?”

“I’m Jon,” Jon replied. “But more relevantly, I’m someone who knows something about what might have happened to you just now.”

Gretchen’s frown deepened, her brow furrowing. “You think something actually happened? Not just my brain playing tricks on me?”

“I think it’s certainly possible,” Jon replied. “Actually, ah... studying paranormal occurrences is sort of my job.”

Gretchen looked incredulous. “Like a ghost hunter?”

“No,” Jon instantly replied. “Most of that stuff is fake. Most reports I get, too. But some of them aren’t, and I’ve been collecting people’s stories long enough to have a knack for spotting the real ones.” He gestured to the wall where Gretchen had emerged a few minutes previously. “It also helps that the doorway you came through isn’t there anymore.”

Gretchen turned to look, and her eyes went wide. “No. There was... there was a doorway there, it was just there, it can’t—”

“I know there was,” Jon said quietly. “I saw it too. You’re not crazy.”

Gretchen looked up, almost meeting Jon’s eyes. “Really?”

“Really. Something similar to what you’re describing happened to a good friend of mine, a while back. That’s not the only time I’ve personally known someone who had something unexplainable happen, either.” Jon paused, pretending to consider. “If you like, we could go sit down and you could tell me about it, so I’ll be able to tell you if the details of your experience fit with anything I’ve heard before. That way I could tell you with more confidence if what you experienced was a psychotic episode or a genuine paranormal encounter.”

Maybe Jon was a coward, wanting to feed on this young woman’s terror without letting her connect it to him. Maybe it was cruel, letting her believe he was trying to help.

But he couldn’t forget Helen Richardson’s face when he’d told her he believed her. Or the fact that he knew exactly how powerful and lasting an impression it had made.

He couldn’t help Gretchen, not really. But he could at least give her that.

“Thank you,” Gretchen was saying. “Um... may I ask you something?”

Jon bit back a burst of thoroughly inappropriate laughter. “Of course.”

“Your friend,” Gretchen said under her breath, “who had that happen. Are they okay?”

Jon took a deep breath.

“It took a while for her to get there,” he said as he began leading Gretchen to the restaurant area. “And... she’s not the same as she was. But yes.” He smiled. “Yes, she is.”

...

Jon was sitting across from Gretchen at a table in the IKEA restaurant, trying not to let it become too obvious how good it felt to feast on her fear.

(He always forgot, when it had been too long since his last victim. Not how wonderful it was to feed—the Eye wouldn’t let him forget that— but how wonderful it was not to be hungry.)

Gretchen was crying, dabbing at her eyes with one of the napkins Jon had grabbed before they sat down, along with the bottle of water she was now sipping from.

“So?” she was asking, and oh, right, Jon had said he’d tell her if she was imagining things or not. “Was it real?”

Jon nodded. “That story very much lines up with other paranormal experiences I’ve heard of. I’d say the odds are in favor of it being real, or... as real as things outside our plane of reality ever are.”

Gretchen smiled weakly. “Thank you.” She gestured at her tear- and mascara-stained face. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s gotten into me, I’m not normally like this, I—I didn’t mean to tell you that much, even, I...”

Jon cut her off. “Like I said, I have that effect on people,” he said quietly. “And getting emotional when recounting something like this is a very common reaction. Not your fault at all.”

Across the room, behind Gretchen, a flicker of motion that didn’t seem to fit with the rest caught Jon’s eye.

As subtly as possible, he looked up, to see Helen waving.

“Hey, I have to go now,” said Jon quietly. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Gretchen replied. “I’m good.”

She obviously wasn’t—she probably couldn’t be right now. Still... he’d been hungry, this time, intensely so, but not so ravenous he felt half possessed with the need to just get the story as fast as he could. He’d been able to take his time, with this one—get her tissues and water, give her a reason to tell her story that would let her make sense of the compulsion. She was still frightened enough to feed him, of course—even if she had a reason to tell him the basics, having no control over the amount of detail you shared with a stranger was still distressing—but he hadn’t hurt her any more than strictly necessary to get what he needed. That was... that was good.

Notwithstanding that, Jon leaving would likely improve the situation if anything. There was no further point to his being here, for either of them.

Besides, Helen was calling.

Jon gestured to the bottle of water Gretchen was sipping from. “You should probably drink the rest of that before you try to drive home,” he advised.

“Okay. I will.”

Jon got up and quickly walked over to where Helen was attempting to summon him.

“Better?” she asked, a bit smugly.

Rather than restate the obvious, Jon scoffed. “You don’t need to drop victims in front of me like some... eldritch cat leaving half-dead mice at my feet. I can hunt for myself, thank you.”

Helen gave him a dubious look as she opened her door and he stepped inside. “Can’t or won’t, the result is the same.”

The door was gone, and Helen stood beside him—not quite the Helen Richardson form he knew. Not not her, exactly, but... her features wavered and shifted as he looked at them, and her hands were visibly bloated with long, sharp fingers, and her limbs were longer and spindlier than those belonging to her human form were. Overall, the general impression produced was less coherent. Less human.

Jon did his best to keep his expression level and not visibly react. Helen was trusting him not to freak out at her visibly monstrous self, letting more of her inhuman nature through to be more comfortable because she felt safe enough with Jon to let him witness it. He couldn’t screw that up.

“Okay,” he grumbled. “ Maybe I let it go too long.”

Helen hummed faintly, perhaps in an I-told-you-so sort of agreement. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “I’ll let you hunt for yourself as long as you actually do it. But if you refuse to feed yourself for longer than, say, a week, I will do it for you.”

“A week?” Jon sputtered.

Helen just looked at him with what was probably an expression of deep annoyance.

Okay. Thinking about how he’d felt during the times when he’d been trying so hard not to feed at all, a week was probably a reasonable limit if he was trying to keep himself decently fed. “All right,” he said. “Deal accepted.”

“Good.” Helen’s expression... yes, Jon was fairly certain that was a smile. “And I suppose we have an answer for Oliver.”

Jon frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Your hospitals.”

“What?”

Helen sighed. “You specifically took this one to the restaurant. The last one was in line for coffee. Coffee shop, grocery store... see the pattern here?”

“I...” Jon sputtered. “How did you notice that before I did?”

“Because I haven’t been specifically not thinking about it.”

“Okay, fair enough.” Jon sighed. “Is that... is that weird? That I... tend to feed in food places?” He swallowed. “For us, I mean?”

Helen laughed. “Jon. Stop worrying about it. Whatever you want is fine.”

Jon turned his head away from her—from her mostly-humanoid form, anyway—and stared at the wall.

A moment later, the import of what he was seeing hit, and he burst out laughing. “Yellow wallpaper, Helen? Really?”

“Made you laugh,” she said quietly.

Jon sighed. “Not worrying is going to take some practice.”

“That’s all right,” Helen said. “You’ve got time.”

...

When Jon let Helen’s door swing open into his new living room, he was greeted by a scene of abject chaos.

Pieces of furniture were scattered across the floor and on every available surface. Oliver and Karolina were working on what appeared to be a dresser, and seemed to be arguing over how to interpret one of the diagrams in the instructions. Mike was sitting on the couch Jon had picked out, a bedside table with three legs sticking up into the air beside him as he worked to attach the fourth, while Harriet perched precariously atop a shelving unit, hanging the curtains over the windows.

At the sound of the door creaking open, everyone looked up in unison.

“Hi Jon!” Harriet called. “Come on in! And go look in the kitchen. We’ve got a surprise for you.”

“Also I got you a vacuum cleaner,” said Karolina. “It seemed only polite, since I’m probably most of the reason you’ll need one.”

Jon stepped out into the living room and turned to see Helen standing in her doorway.

“See you soon,” she said.

“Sure you don’t want to stay?” asked Jon quietly.

Helen smirked. “Believe me, you do not want me around if you’re trying to assemble furniture you’ll actually want to use.”

Jon smiled. “Fair point. See you soon, then.”

With a nod and a smile, she closed her door and was gone.

Jon picked his way around the furniture components currently decorating most of his living room floor and made his way into the kitchen.

When he saw what was laid out on the counter, he grinned.

Five mugs sat in a neat row. The first was decorated to resemble a starry night sky, white specks on a black background, with the words “good friends are like stars: you can’t always see them, but you know they’re always there” emblazoned on the side. The second was light blue with a pale green lip, with the look of having been crafted and glazed by a skilled potter rather than machine-made. The third was printed with a version of the faces/vase illusion, black and white fading into gray, then repeating the pattern in the opposite colors on the other side. The fourth bore a stylized image of a steam train, with the words “choo choo” visible above the smokestack. The fifth was pale sea-foam green, with two sprigs of rosemary imprinted into the clay and the impressions painted to resemble the original plant.

“Thank you!” Jon called to the living room, still grinning.

“Do you like them?” asked Karolina. “We each picked one out for you, so we’ll have enough when we all come over. You can get one for yourself if you like, or Helen said you could use hers, she doesn’t drink tea anyway.”

“Helen said—” Jon broke off. “How long have you been planning this?”

“Since yesterday,” Oliver replied. “We wanted it to be a surprise, so we were trying to make sure you didn’t suspect we were up to anything and get curious.”

“Well, it worked,” Jon declared, impressed. “This is... this is wonderful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Harriet replied. “We just... we know you came here with nothing, so we wanted to give you something that would make this place feel like a home.”

“Your new Archive launches tomorrow,” said Karolina into the silence created by Jon being too overwhelmed with gratitude to think of anything to say. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” said Jon with a certainty surprising even to himself. “I am.”

Chapter Text

When Jon arrived at work on Friday morning, he immediately checked his CHS email, already aware of what he’d find.

He’d known since last night. Early in the afternoon on Tuesday, the Eye had begun providing him with notifications of the paranormal variety to accompany the more mundane notifications that got sent to his work email whenever someone made a statement appointment. The exact reason for Emily Liu’s fascinating decision to book an appointment for nine o’clock this morning at 11:46 last night remained to be seen, but there was a box on the form to input a brief summary of the event under discussion (character-limited, as per Karolina’s advice), and Emily’s difficulty was, in her words, “Notes of unknown origin I keep finding in my apartment.”

Jon had a good feeling about it. Whatever the specifics, the timeframe meant the odds were that something had happened last night that Emily had felt she needed to tell someone about as soon as reasonably possible—but the fact that she was here, instead of, say, at a police station or a hospital or a newsroom or even a library, meant she probably didn’t expect to be believed.

Jon told his mind to ease up on the pointless speculation. She’d get here soon enough.

...

Four minutes past nine, Jon was standing at the bottom of the staircase (he’d learned it was better to meet statement givers at the door than to risk them getting completely lost on the way to his office) and reminding himself that people were slightly late to things all the time, no big deal, when the door swung open and Emily Liu walked in.

She was on the small side, both short and slim, and maybe in her mid-thirties (thirty-eight, the Eye chimed in). Her chin-length black hair was cut into neat bangs across her forehead, and she carried a small black purse. Her short-sleeved, button-up blouse was tucked in at the waist, but Jon was fairly certain from the appearance of her collar that she’d put the buttons in the wrong buttonholes. Oddly for the clear, sunny day, the shoes just visible under the cuffs of her lightly flared jeans appeared to be rain boots. Her beige skin was flushed red over her cheekbones, and she was breathing a bit heavily, but if she’d been running to get here, her expression gave no sign of it. Mostly, she looked like she felt a little sick—not uncommon for people coming in to give statements, even before Jon got them talking.

More relevantly than any of that, she didn’t have any trace of a Power on her at all.

Jon swallowed back his disappointment. He’d gotten a real statement on Monday, and (courtesy Helen) the day before that as well. He wasn’t even hungry yet, not really. Even if there were no Powers involved, something had happened to make Emily book that appointment, and it would still be interesting to hear what it was.

“Emily Liu?” Jon asked, to be polite.

“That’s me,” she said, after a few beats of silence. “Emily. Are you Jonathan Sims?”

Jon smiled. “That’s correct. You can call me Jon, if you like. You’re here to tell me about some unexplained notes you’ve been finding around your apartment?”

“Yes,” Emily said. “It’s... it’s more than that, though.”

“Of that I have no doubt,” said Jon in a level tone. “The topic box is just to give us an idea. There’s always far more to the story than what can fit in a hundred and fifty characters.”

Emily smiled faintly. “Why not a hundred forty?”

Something about her smile made Jon vaguely uneasy. Not uneasy in a ‘she’s about to peel off her skin and try to kill you’ kind of way, more that it looked like she’d had to concentrate to do it, or like it was an effort to move her face that much. In conjunction with the slightly slurred speech that Jon didn’t think was just a consequence of her American accent, the rapid association from character limits to Twitter and the fact that she’d immediately voiced that thought out loud, the slight delay before she answered non-Eye-powered questions, and the oddities of her attire, it suggested to Jon that Emily had been badly sleep-deprived for quite some time.

“Because I refuse to have anything in common with Twitter,” Jon said in his best deadpan. “My office is upstairs. It’s a good space for recording. Is that alright?”

Emily gave the stairs a look of distaste, and Jon remembered his own experiences with severe sleep deprivation as a human, how clumsy it had sometimes made him.

“Would you rather take the elevator?” Jon asked.

Emily thought for a moment.

“Yeah,” she finally said. “That’d be nice.”

...

Once Emily was sitting across from Jon at his desk, a tape recorder and Jon’s laptop (turned so neither of them could see the screen) both ready to go, Jon activated the recording devices and began speaking.

“An account follows from Emily Liu regarding a series of notes of unknown origin found in her apartment. This interview was conducted on September twenty-first, two thousand and eighteen, by Jonathan Sims, at the California Historical Society in San Francisco.”

Jon waited just long enough to provide an appropriate pause, then looked directly into Emily’s eyes. “All right, Emily. What happened to bring you here?”

Emily took a deep breath as the compulsion took effect. “It started about two weeks ago,” she began. “I’d just gotten home from work. I was in my room, about to change out of my work clothes, when a flash of color caught my eye. I looked over to see what it was, and I noticed a Post-It note stuck to the edge of my desk, with some sort of writing on it. Here, I kept it. I have it here.”

Emily reached into her purse, dug around for a moment, and retrieved a small planner, from which she removed a yellow sticky note and placed it on the desk, oriented so Jon saw the messy scrawl on it right-side up.

In blue ink, it said “pick up dry cleaning.”

“The Post-It the note was written on came from my desk, and the note itself was written with one of my pens,” Emily continued. “But I didn’t remember leaving that sort of note, and the handwriting”—she tapped the note with her forefinger—“isn’t mine. Here’s the thing, though: I did have some dry cleaning to pick up that day, and I hadn’t told anyone else about it. I live alone, and no one except me and my landlord has a key to my apartment. I thought it through at the time, and the only thing I could come up with was that I might’ve written it in my sleep, and the different handwriting might’ve just been that my unconscious handwriting isn’t quite the same as my usual. That didn’t quite make sense—I’ve never been a sleepwalker, to the best of my knowledge, and I’ve certainly never done anything like that—but it was plausible enough that I might’ve just brushed the whole thing off. I did, actually. Until a few days later, when it happened again.”

Emily once again opened her planner, removed a sticky note, and affixed it to the desk in front of Jon. This one was green, and read “remember: save your documents” in the same spiky handwriting as the other.

“This time, the note was on the back of my desk chair,” Emily went on. “Once I could’ve ignored. Twice spooked me. I searched my apartment top to bottom, but I couldn’t find anything else out of the ordinary. Nothing missing, nothing out of place, no open windows or anything like that. There aren’t many windows in my apartment anyway—it’s not fire code compliant at all, but I get enough hush money in the form of a rent discount that I’m willing to put up with it. In the end I just set up a webcam focused on my desk and set it to record to my laptop if it detected movement. For about a week after that, nothing. Until this past Monday.” She took a slow, deep breath. “When I woke up that morning, my laptop was open, and there was a note stuck to the screen.”

Another note was retrieved from the planner and added to the lineup.

On a pink background, in handwriting similar to the other two (though perhaps even messier), were the words “our landlord isn't letting me talk to you, but it's important we do.”

Emily shuddered. “Of course, when I saw that, my first idea—once I’d calmed down enough to think it through at all—was to check the webcam feed. So I looked in the folder on my laptop where the video would have been saved if the webcam had detected any movement, and found a video feed of myself, sitting in my desk chair. I’ll admit that freaked me out for a moment, before I remembered that the motion of me sitting at my desk would have triggered the webcam to record, so of course I was seeing the live feed of myself. I... I think I got distracted, for a moment, then. I was sitting at my desk, watching myself sitting at my desk watching myself... and so on. It was a funny thought, if one that made my head spin. But as I sat there, watching myself on that screen, I got this... creepy feeling, and suddenly a vivid thought flashed into my mind that, if I kept watching, I would see something sneaking up behind me on the video screen, and that would be the only warning I got before whoever or whatever it was slashed me open.”

Jon leaned in, struck by the particulars of Emily’s worry. She had a very clear notion of what would be done to her—“slashed open” was an interesting choice of words, and certainly painted a vivid picture—but seemingly no idea at all who or what would do the slashing. Jon wasn’t certain what that meant in this context, but filed it away as an interesting and potentially relevant tidbit all the same.

“The thought was so sudden and strong that I clicked out of the live feed and whirled around to look almost before I could think about it. There was nothing there, of course, so after a moment I turned back to the computer and went into the video files, looking for anything from the night before. What I found... at first, it didn’t make any sense. There was nothing recorded between the previous afternoon, when I knew the note hadn’t been there, and the video being taken right then. The camera was set to record if it detected any movement, and there was no way anyone could’ve opened my laptop, written that note, and stuck it on the screen without tripping the motion detector. I checked the trash on my laptop, though, just trying to be thorough, and... it was empty. I hadn’t emptied it myself for a while, I knew I hadn’t, so whoever had been in my room and written that note must have noticed the camera, gotten into my laptop, and deleted the footage, then emptied the trash to make sure I couldn’t find it. Thing is... my laptop is password-protected. I haven’t told anyone the password, and it’s not written down anywhere.”

Jon frowned.

Emily must have noticed, because she burst into frantic appeals. “I know, I know it sounds crazy, or, or like I’m faking this for attention, but I swear, I didn’t write those notes, and I have no idea who did. I don’t know who could’ve gotten into my laptop, but... someone must’ve. My landlord has the only other key to my apartment, but I’ve always tried to be a model tenant, and”—she gave a short, bitter laugh, just shy of frantic—“I don’t complain when he screws us over, so I don’t know why he would be trying to get rid of me, which is the only reason I can think of that might make even a tiny bit of sense. And that note mentioning ‘our landlord’...” She looked close to tears. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

On that point, Jon had to agree. He couldn’t sense the Spiral—the obvious candidate for this sort of experience—on this woman, or any other Entity for that matter. Her statement wasn’t behaving quite like a statement concerning a genuine supernatural experience usually would, but it also wasn’t behaving like most statements people gave that were either exaggerated for effect or misremembered due to trauma, and certainly not like the ones that were whole-cloth made up as a prank.

“And that was before last night.” Emily sniffed and grabbed a tissue, blowing her nose and dabbing at her eyes. “I got home after work around six thirty PM. I was exhausted, and I had a bad headache, so I went to lie down for a bit before dinner. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but next thing I knew I was blinking awake to full darkness and the clock telling me it was nine. I was hungry, but the headache was still there and I had no interest in cooking at that point, so I ordered pizza delivery. When the app told me it was almost there, I got up and went to go meet the delivery driver at the door. I didn’t get any further than opening the front door to my apartment when I stopped short.” She shuddered violently. “Every door I could see, all the way down the hall in both directions—including, when I checked, my own—had a blank Post-It note stuck to the outside.”

Emily poked around on her phone for a minute, frowning at the screen, before showing Jon a picture of a hallway with several doors leading off it, each decorated as Emily had described with a blank sticky note.

Jon examined all the doors in the photograph closely, but none of them looked especially familiar.

“I didn’t want to go out. I wanted to slam the door and run back to my room and hide under the covers. But... whatever this was, it had started in my room, so... I knew I wasn’t any safer there. And besides, I couldn’t keep the pizza guy waiting.” Emily laughed ruefully. “I got my pizza, but instead of eating it, I spent the evening doing as much research as I could. I was ready to accept just about any explanation at that point, if it meant something could be done about it. I didn’t find much in the way of potential explanations, but I did find your project on the CHS website, and I thought... I thought maybe if I told someone who heard about all sorts of unexplained phenomena, you’d be able to help me. I’ll move if I have to, I just... I can’t live like this anymore. So I called in from work this morning, and... here I am.”

After an appropriate pause, Jon declared, “here ends the account.”

After another, he looked at Emily with genuine sympathy. “I’m afraid I don’t know off the top of my head what might be behind a phenomenon like the one you’re describing,” he said gently, “but I’ll look into it, and I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

Jon hadn’t been intending to make research into statements part of his new job, since his new organization was explicitly a historical collection rather than a research institution. Still, his assurance, in this instance at least, was sincere. Emily had specifically come to him asking for help, and besides, her story had intrigued him enough that the thought of just letting it go, leaving it unexplained, didn’t sit right. The Eye wasn’t giving him any useful information on this one—

“Um... would you like me to leave my contact information?”

Jon snapped his head up from where he’d been absentmindedly entering Emily’s number into his phone and quickly deleted the new contact. Apparently the Eye had given him something useful—he now Knew Emily’s phone number, address, personal and family history of mental illness (other than an aunt who’d suffered from postpartum depression, nonexistent), social habits (no drugs, mild to moderate alcohol use, but she hadn’t been drinking much lately), and a variety of other pertinent information—but nothing that seemed to shed any light on a possible cause of her experience. Maybe it just wanted him to figure it out on his own?

(Maybe this was too much to ask of an extradimensional fear entity, but... if his Power could stop acting so much like his shitty ex-boss, that would be great.)

Emily cleared her throat.

Jon abruptly turned his focus back to the world around him and the real, live person sitting on the other side of his desk. “Yes, that would be lovely.”

Emily set a business card bearing her phone number, her email, her job title (paralegal), and the name and address of the firm where she worked down on his desk. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Jon, ignoring how odd it felt for one of his meals to thank him. How odd it felt now that he knew, at any rate. “I’ll see you out, if you like. It’s a bit of a maze in here.”

Emily nodded. “That would be... that would be good.”

…

Once Emily had left, Jon returned to his office.

On his first day here, he’d moved the bookshelf to create a blank stretch of wall large enough to make sure Helen could come in without hitting an obstacle. Jon was well aware that Helen was unlikely to be hindered by such mundane things as physical objects, but it still seemed polite to make space for her, and he suspected from the fact that she’d availed herself of that space more than once by now that she at least appreciated the gesture.

Now, Jon walked over to that space and calmly rapped his knuckles against the wall. “Helen?”

He wasn’t sure whether knocking on walls actually summoned Helen in some way or if it merely alerted her that he wanted to talk, or whether she could always hear it or if it was only effective if she was paying attention already, or really anything at all about how it worked.

Or really anything about how any aspect of Helen worked, for that matter.

Still, it had worked before, and Jon had made an executive decision in the interests of both of their welfare not to think about it too hard.

Thirty seconds after he’d knocked, the wall remained as blank and featureless as ever.

Jon knocked again, a little louder this time. “Helen, it’s Jon.”

A minute later, still nothing.

Once he was fairly certain Helen wasn’t coming, Jon spoke.

“Hi Helen,” he said, in a tone rather like leaving a voicemail. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can and you just don’t want to come to my office right now for whatever reason, or if you’re busy, I just... thought I’d tell you what’s going on. I was hoping to talk to you because someone just came in to give a statement, and I couldn’t sense any Entities on her, so I thought at first that it couldn’t be paranormal, but the statement itself was classic Spiral. I mean, classic. I’m honestly not sure what else it could be, but like I said, I couldn’t feel the Spiral on her, so... I’m wondering if you know of anyone who could hide their involvement from me like that, or maybe if it was your work. I mean, I don’t know that you could do that, but honestly I would not put it past you, so...” Jon broke off. “Victim’s name is Emily Liu. For the past couple weeks, she’s been finding Post-Its, some with creepy notes written on them, in and around her apartment. Lives alone, no personal or family history of mental illness, no drug use except reasonable quantities of alcohol. Just... get back to me if you know anything? If you would? Or even if you don’t. Um... have a nice day, wherever you are.”

Jon cringed. Wow, that was terrible.

Oh well. He was fairly certain Helen wouldn’t mind.

Jon was heading back to his desk when his phone buzzed.

The text was from Mike. It included a picture of an old book, battered and worn to such an extent that the title was indecipherable, but with just enough left of the author’s name to make clear that it was one of those written by Robert Smirke. A second picture showed the inside of the front cover, revealing both the title page and the distinct absence of a Leitner bookplate.

The caption read, <Got it.>

<That was fast> Jon texted back. He’d only asked Mike if he could try to locate this specific book—the first in which Smirke had laid out his classification of the Powers—this past Saturday.

The three dots that indicated that Mike was typing appeared quickly.

A minute or so later, the reply arrived. <I can teleport. And the Internet is a marvelous invention.>

Jon smiled. <Well, when you have a minute, teleport over here.>

Less than a minute later, Mike landed in Jon’s office, clutching a canvas messenger bag against his chest and grinning.

“Thank you,” said Jon as Mike opened the bag and retrieved the book.

“No problem.” Mike cheerfully deposited the book on Jon’s desk. “That was fun. Nice challenge.” He smiled and gestured at the book. “We’ve met. Was wondering where it got to.”

Jon started as the memory of a statement, read by some long-ago person he’d once been, surfaced with no warning and a great deal of force.

“I, ah… that reminds me,” he said once he’d recovered somewhat. “I have some information I… think you might be interested to hear.”

Mike tilted his head. “Oh?”

“I know what happened to Ex Altiora .”

If Mike had been intrigued before, he was positively riveted now. “What?”

“Well, I should preface this by saying I have no idea where it was for about…” Jon paused to do some mental math. “Fifteen and a half years after your change.”

Mike was leaning in, eyes fixed on Jon’s mouth, as though reading his lips could get him the information any faster.

Jon was trying not to be a dick about this, he really was. Just because it was a very nice change to be in possession of a story that someone else badly wanted didn’t mean he should draw it out excessively—not when the person was a friend.

He wasn’t. Not on purpose, anyway. If he was speaking just a bit more slowly than usual… well, a bit of drama was more or less included in his position description, and they’d get there soon enough. “But in November of two thousand twelve,” Jon said, “it came into the possession of one Dominic Swain.”

Whatever Mike had been expecting Jon to say, that was definitely not it. His mouth opened and closed a few times, small sounds escaping as he tried and failed to turn his immediate reaction into words.

“What…” he finally managed. “Is he…” Mike cut himself off and took a deep breath. “What happened?”

“To Dominic? As far as I know, he’s fine,” Jon said immediately. Maybe he was enjoying this a bit too much, but it seemed like very basic courtesy to get that out of the way quickly. “At least, when he came in to give a statement several months later, he didn’t report any lasting ill effects.”

Subtly, almost imperceptibly, the tension in Mike’s shoulders eased. “How…”

“How was he unaffected?”

Mike shook his head.

Jon waited while Mike got the rest of his words in order.

It took longer than it usually would—probably just because he’d been genuinely rattled by the news—but he got there. “How did you know I knew him?”

“Because he mentioned you,” Jon said gently. “In his statement. Apparently, when you trapped the thing that was following you…” Jon tried for a moment to think of a polite way to put this before quickly realizing there wasn’t one. “While the book was in his possession, Dominic periodically smelled ozone mixed with burning flesh. He made the connection fairly quickly.”

Mike smiled, shaking his head faintly. “Smart. Like always.” The smile was promptly replaced by a puzzled frown. “But yeah. How was he unaffected? What...” He trailed off. “November of two thousand twelve?”

“Yes,” said Jon slowly, uncertain where Mike was going with this.

Mike took another deep breath. “Did he burn it?”

Jon felt his eyebrows move involuntarily towards the ceiling. “No, but someone else did.” On observing Mike’s expression, Jon added “the person who burned it is dead now. Of unrelated causes.”

Mike nodded. “Probably the only reason Dominic isn’t.”

“Probably,” Jon agreed. “Did you… did it affect you? When Ex Altiora burned?”

“Do me a favor?”

Jon blinked. “What sort?”

“Ask me,” said Mike, at the same time as he signed “true” or “really” (or, in this context, maybe “properly”). “When Harriet gets here.”

Jon nodded. “Okay. Do you want to text her, or—”

Mike held up his phone and nodded, then began typing as Jon fell silent.

A moment later, Harriet arrived in the room and silently leaned against a wall.

Mike sat down in the statement givers’ chair and, in ASL, told Jon “go ahead.”

“Mike,” Jon said, letting his curiosity build into power and spill out in his voice, “how were you affected by the burning of Ex Altiora?”

Immediately, Mike began to speak.

“It was a Monday,” he said. “November twelfth, around four in the morning. But when I was wrenched out of sleep by an incredible pain consuming my entire body, I couldn’t have told you any of that. All I knew was that I was on fire.” Mike smiled ruefully. “I’ve been struck by lightning. I’ve walked for miles on an ankle that turned out to be broken, then set it myself and gotten through the recovery with nothing stronger than paracetamol. I’ve bent and twisted my own body into incomprehensible shapes, reached through my innards to rearrange them and rip pieces out. I’ve experienced rapid deceleration, which is a nice way of saying that half the bones in your body all break at once as your skull splits open and the shear forces rip your organs apart. You only feel it for an instant, of course, but it’s a hell of an instant.” The faint smile returned. “So, hopefully, when I tell you that the pain I woke up to that morning was as bad as anything I’ve ever felt, you’ll understand exactly what that means.”

Jon didn’t reply—he knew Mike wouldn’t be able to stop talking long enough to allow it, and the thought of interrupting a statement in progress felt viscerally wrong anyway—but he nodded slightly to indicate that yes, he understood.

Mike wasn’t looking at Jon—his eyes were fixed on the wall—but he probably caught it in his peripheral vision anyway.

Either way, inexorably, he went on. “I wasn’t thinking, then, about what might have caused it. I wasn’t thinking much at all. Everything I did while that pain lasted, I did on instinct. And my first instinct, the closest thing to a thought that could get through the screaming in my head, was to get away. So I fell.” Mike shrugged. “I don’t recall any conscious decision, but if I’d been able to make one I probably would’ve done the same thing. My Power had saved me before, maybe it could save me from this. Surely nothing that meant me harm could follow me there. Surely no fire could survive with nothing but emptiness to sustain it. But after a moment, dimly, in the hazy way I could understand anything at all, I realized that I was falling through my Power’s domain, and I was still burning. Next thing I knew, I was in a bed again—on one, anyway. But this time, over the sound of my own screams, I could hear someone else.” He smiled faintly. “I don’t know exactly how I ended up in Harriet’s room—like I said, I wasn’t really making conscious decisions. But whatever the specifics of my subconscious mind’s process, whether some part of me actually thought she could help or whether I was just terrified and running to the one person whose presence at a time like that might have been a comfort rather than simply an insult added to injury... my second instinct, after seeking refuge with my Power failed, was to get to her.”

Both Mike and Harriet, Jon noted, had chosen positions in the room that wouldn’t allow the other to get a good look at their expressions.

“Things get... even fuzzier, after that,” Mike continued. “We were in the ocean. I don’t remember getting there, but Harriet must’ve transported us both. I just remember… bits and pieces. It should’ve been cold, it should’ve been helping, but it wasn’t. Harriet was holding me, and... saying something, but I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t think, couldn’t form anything remotely resembling a coherent idea, but somehow, I knew, I knew down to my soul that I was dying.” He took a deep breath. “And then it stopped.” He grimaced slightly. “It felt like forever, but in retrospect, I think the whole ordeal probably lasted less than two minutes. Still, when the pain went away... I wasn’t on fire anymore, but I still felt wrong. It felt like someone had reached into my chest and ripped out something vital, but... less how that actually feels and more the way you’d expect it would.”

Jon was briefly amused by the fact that Mike, one of the very few people in the world for whom that distinction meant anything, had used that comparison while giving a statement to him, a fellow member of that very small group. Was the Eye doing that on purpose?

Mike went on before that thought could go any further.

“It took me a minute to even begin to make sense of what had just happened,” he said. “After that, I pulled back a bit and looked at Harriet, hoping maybe she knew something, anything, about what had just happened to me, and... something wasn’t right. It took me another minute to understand what I was seeing. Her arms, her upper chest, the side of her neck, and her chin were all covered in blistered, angry burns. They were already fading away as our Power healed her, and over the next minute they vanished entirely. But for them to have still been there at all... they must’ve been really bad. And she was still holding onto me.”

Jon’s gaze flicked over to Harriet. He wasn’t sure, but he thought her expression might’ve been pride.

“She could’ve let go. Should’ve let go. We were in the ocean of all places; she’d brought me there because water is so good at absorbing and distributing heat. She could’ve moved just a few feet away and been fine. But she didn’t. I was burning up, obviously in horrible pain, quite possibly dying for all she knew, and she wouldn’t let me face it alone even if the alternative was burning with me.” Mike took another deep, slow breath. “At that point, I already trusted Harriet more than I’d ever trusted anyone. It had been over a dozen years since I’d met her, and she’d earned it over and over. We’d been calling each other siblings for years. We cared about each other, and enjoyed each other’s company, and I knew all that. But what she did that night, that one act of stupid, stubborn love...” He shook his head.

Harriet was breathing slowly and deeply, blinking hard in a valiant effort not to cry.

“When I was a kid, I would read books about siblings, or friends, or sometimes couples if they were books about adults, who loved each other in that... story kind of way. The way where the love is too big and overwhelming to fit in the person. And for a while, I thought Dominic and I were like that. It might’ve just been that he was the first other person who noticed that I could think”—Mike’s tone was bitterly sarcastic—“but he also seemed to actually enjoy hanging out with me. We could always find games to play that didn’t need any words, and he helped me when I was figuring out how to talk. And I wasn’t sure, but I thought I loved him. Sometimes so much it felt like it was trying to burst out of me. He was... weird, for a while, after the lightning, but within a year or so we were as close as we ever were.”

Well, that answered the question of whether Mike remembered that he’d wanted to go in and Dominic had vetoed it. And also the question of whether Dominic had told Mike that that was what had happened.

“Back when everyone else thought I was a girl and I thought I was going to be human for the rest of my life, I kind of... assumed I was going to marry him?” Mike scoffed. “I didn’t want to, but... I thought everyone had to get married, and probably most of the people who saw me as a person at all thought we were dating, whatever that meant. Even if the idea of marriage in general sounded awful, I thought it might not be so bad if it was with him. We could just... live in the same house and be best friends.” He sighed. “It all went wrong, of course. By the time I was sixteen, living under constant threat from both a Spiral creature and my parents’ comments about institutions whenever I was being difficult had predictably made me both terrified of being thought mad, and... actually rather paranoid in general. As you might imagine, that wasn’t a good combination. Dominic meant well, when he told me he was worried about me, and that he thought I needed help.”

(Dominic had done a few weeks of research, including interviewing a psychologist about mental illness in teenagers under the guise of a school project, before broaching the subject as delicately as he could. When Mike’s house had crumbled to rotting bits, the Section 31 officers called to the scene had set it on fire to prevent the rot from spreading, and the neighborhood assumed it had burned down. Dominic had wondered at the time if Mike had had something to do with it, but kept quiet about his suspicion on the grounds that, if he had, it hadn’t been his fault. He’d just been ill. Even now, decades later, he wondered sometimes if he could have stopped it.)

(It took less than a second for all that information to arrive in Jon’s head. It took the entire remainder of Mike’s three-second pause for breath for Jon to absorb it, recover, and silently implore the Eye to let Mike wrap up this tangent at some point in the near future. Delicious as the discomfort radiating off him was, he’d been made to share quite enough.)

“He said other things, of course, and in retrospect he probably meant medication or something like that, but all I heard was that he thought I was mad and wanted me put away. I reacted... badly, and that was it for our friendship.” Mike shrugged. “Probably for the best, really. I wouldn’t have wanted him mixed up in all that, although from the sound of it he got at least a little mixed up in it anyway. But regardless, it very nicely demonstrated that the kind of love I’d read about was purely fictional. If Dominic would walk away as soon as I screwed up badly enough, anyone would.”

Based on Harriet’s expression, she’d previously heard none of this, and was having a variety of conflicting feelings about both that fact and the information itself.

Based on Mike’s expression, he was acutely aware of that.

“The whole time I’d been a Fairchild, I’d been operating on the assumption that being a family when you’d all chosen it was strictly a practical arrangement,” Mike went on. “You agree to help the others when you can in exchange for help when you need it. You all share resources, and whatever an individual member puts in, in money or influence or expertise, they get back another way. The social aspects were nice, but mostly because it was convenient, and easier to make the mutual aid aspects work once you’d established a basic level of trust. Harriet and I were closer with each other than with most of the others, sure—in my case, closer than with any of the others, by a long shot—but we made a good team, and we liked being around each other, so it made sense. Sure, she’d stayed when I would’ve expected her to leave before, but... this was something different. No matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t think of any sensible reason for her to do what she did. I mean, taking me out into the ocean, I got. That was a good idea, and in another circumstance it might’ve saved my life. But it hadn’t, and she’d held on all the same.” He shook his head. “She had to have known that, if I lived, she’d’ve completely fulfilled her obligations to me by getting us into the water and moving a few feet away. And if I’d actually been dying, it wouldn’t have mattered—I would’ve been dead anyway, I couldn’t have done anything for her ever again.”

Harriet once again looked like she wanted to cry, but this time settled for vigorously rolling her eyes.

“Eventually, I realized that the only way it made sense was if it hadn’t been rational. If she hadn’t been able to let go, because the prospect of losing me had somehow hurt more than large-area second-degree burns.” Mike huffed out an incredulous laugh. “And as I was working all this through, as the sun was rising in the middle of the South Atlantic, and the cold I hadn’t been able to feel before was helping bring my heart rate back down, and Harriet was asking me something in words I couldn’t quite process yet but a tone that was clearly concern, I very abruptly realized that Harriet loved me. Which shouldn’t have been such a shock. Even then, she told me all the time. But that was the first time I understood how she meant it. And it was the first time I realized that... I loved her, too.” He cringed, clearly not having intended to say that, but quickly recovered.

“Screw it,” Harriet whispered as a tear finally escaped the confines of her lower lashes and made its way down her face.

“It’s funny, you know,” said Mike calmly, either oblivious to Harriet’s struggle or deliberately ignoring it. “I hadn’t seen Ex Altiora since a little after my change. I left it on the roof of an office building, hoping that someone like me, up there trying to get a bit closer to something unreachable, might find it and pick it up.” He smirked. “Or that someone else might find it and fall off. Either way, I had no further use for it, so I set it free to go where it would. It had changed my life completely and permanently, and I fully expected it to leave my life the same way. But these things never go quite the way you expect them to, do they? If you could predict them, they wouldn’t be frightening, and that wouldn’t do at all.”

(Personally, Jon strongly disagreed, but the fact that Mike saw it that way was both interesting in its own right and went some way towards explaining how their first interaction had gone. But Mike was still talking, and once again, Jon was drawn back into the flow of the statement before he could take that thought any further.)

“My family and I investigated, of course, but we never found out why it happened. At the time, we were convinced the incident had something to do with the Lightless Flame—I’d gotten into it with a few of them before, so it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption—but I suppose I’m not surprised to learn Ex Altiora was behind it. It’s a different kind of love, with something that can’t love you back, but there’s a mutuality to it all the same. That book and I were intertwined from the moment I first laid eyes on it. My change only bound us more tightly, and I don’t in the least regret it, even if the parting gift it gave me came at a high price.” Mike was smiling. “Change always hurts. Maybe love always hurts. But sometimes it’s so, so worth it.”

In the moment of silence that followed, Jon considered saying “statement ends,” but given that Mike’s reaction to the compulsion letting up was to slump forward, bury his face in his hands, and groan in obvious distress, he felt it was probably unnecessary.

Instead, he cringed and said, “sorry.”

With his face still down and his left hand still firmly over it, Mike raised his right hand and said “no, you’re OK, I asked you to ask me” in one-handed ASL.

For a moment, the room was still and silent.

Then, Mike sat up, eyes still closed, and continued with both hands. “Giving you a statement is inherently uncomfortable, I understand that. It was, maybe, worse than I expected, but it wasn’t a mistake. I want Harriet to know. I’m not sorry.”

Harriet, who had managed to stop crying but was still clearly experiencing some feelings, smiled at Mike even though he couldn’t see her. “Thanks.”

“Welcome,” Mike replied. “I’m leaving now.”

With that, he vanished in a rush of storm-scented air.

Harriet nodded. “Fair enough.”

Jon snorted. “Right.”

He hoped (and suspected, thankfully) that Mike’s discomfort in the aftermath of the statement had been more at being made to talk about his feelings than at being outed. Jon certainly hadn’t meant to force Mike to come out to him, but it couldn’t be helped now, and at the very least he was fairly certain from Harriet’s complete lack of even momentary surprise or confusion in response to that information that she’d already been aware.

“Well, if you’ll excuse me,” Jon finally said in an attempt to break the mildly awkward silence that had settled over him and Harriet since Mike’s abrupt departure, “I need to go ask Susan about how best to store and handle an old book that I might need to refer to on a semi-regular basis.”

Harriet grinned. “You really don’t know much about actual archiving, do you.”

“In my defense,” Jon grumbled, “when I took the promotion, the Archives at the Magnus Institute were in a state of absolute chaos. I think Gertrude left them that way on purpose, probably to minimize—”

Harriet brought a full and premature halt to Jon’s sentence by sputtering for a moment in apparent shock, then bursting into laughter.

“What?” asked Jon—carefully not compelling, since Harriet was laughing too hard to reply. Jon had never before tried to compel someone who should’ve been physically unable to speak, and he certainly didn’t intend to try it for the first time on a friend.

Harriet held up one finger to indicate give me a minute.

“Of course,” Jon replied.

Once the laughter had settled down enough for Harriet to speak, she shook her head in disbelief. “It’s just... I know you took over her position—you might’ve even met her, and either way I’m sure you learned about her in a... very mundane sort of way. Dealing with her messy workspace and all that. But it’s still really funny to hear you just casually firstname Gertrude Fucking Robinson of all people.”

“I... can’t say I’ve ever thought about that, but from what I know about her... yes, I suppose that makes sense,” Jon said quietly.

Harriet took a deep breath. “Actually, that reminds me. I owe you an apology.”

Jon frowned. “What for?”

Harriet paused, then began speaking in a slow, measured tone. “If you know anything at all about Gertrude Robinson,” she said, “you probably know that she was the thing things like us told each other horror stories about. For a solid fifty years, any avatar who had even a bit of common sense gave her, the Magnus Institute, and anyone affiliated with either as wide a berth as they could manage. Of course, there have always been plenty of us who don’t have the common sense of a chicken, so you’d hear sometimes about what she’d done to some poor idiot who’d been reckless or overconfident enough to cross her, or even just ambitious or unlucky enough to attract her attention, but by the time I changed basically everyone knew to steer clear. So, when word got around that she was dead... none of us really knew what to expect from her replacement, but most of us didn’t care to find out, and I’m sorry to say I was among them. I heard rumors, of course, and some of them were the sort that would’ve made me want to reach out if you’d been anywhere else, or... in the vacancy left by any one else. But others, stories about how strong you were already, what sorts of things you could do, were just alarming enough that I stayed back.” She winced. “There’s always some risk involved, when you reach out to a new avatar. Usually they’ve got no idea what they can do or how to control it, often they’re hungry or even starving, and almost always they’re confused and frightened. So yeah. I knew you were dangerous. But in any other circumstance that wouldn’t have stopped me, and in your case it shouldn’t have stopped me. I shouldn’t have let your predecessor’s shadow obscure the fact that you weren’t her, and you needed help.”

Jon swallowed hard. “I, ah... you’re not the only one who’s made unfair assumptions about people.” He laughed ruefully. “I understand. But all the same, thank you. For everything.” He smiled at Harriet, faint but sincere. “Better late than never.”

Harriet smiled back. “Definitely.”

…

Jon spent the rest of the day continuing to settle into the rhythm he was quickly developing for life at the California Historical Society.

He asked Susan about how best to store the Robert Smirke tome Mike had acquired for him, and accepted the resulting lesson on the proper storage of antique reference materials in general. He fielded a disgruntled phone call from Monday’s statement giver, who had called to complain about the recurring nightmare he’d been having and Jon’s presence in it (first angry phone call in a new position—it felt like a milestone, of sorts. Jon had politely but firmly stated that he had no influence over the version of himself that had recently developed a tendency to appear in the man’s nightmares; that he was very sorry to hear that the man was having this issue, but he didn’t see what he could do about it; and that if it was troubling him Jon would strongly recommend that he see a counselor; then hung up before the irate statement giver had had a chance to resume his protestations). He fielded a much more polite if still disgruntled phone call from the Public Relations and Outreach Coordinator, who at least seemed to think of him as a somewhat difficult ally with whom she needed to negotiate rather than an enemy (which attitude honestly meant the world to Jon—basic courtesy or no, he wasn’t used to it). He entered the statement appointments that had been made for next week into his calendar, checked his work email, checked his Martin email (nothing, but he’d been expecting that), Googled and then texted Karolina about a question he had about the operation of his section of the CHS website, and helped with some filing.

All in all, it was a good day. A fairly normal one, even, for whatever value of normal applied.

Still.

Through it all, something about the statement of Emily Liu and the encounter he’d had with its giver kept gnawing at the back of his mind. So, that afternoon, Jon stood for the second time that day in front of the portion of his office wall he’d cleared for Helen’s use and knocked.

“Helen?” he called. “If you have a minute, could you come talk to me?”

Even alone in his office, Jon winced at how needy that sounded, but eventually the itch in the back of his mind overcame the embarrassment far enough that he went on. “I’m sorry to bother you. It’s just... that statement I took this morning? The one I told you about?” He frowned, trying to think how best to phrase his difficulty. “Something’s bothering me about it. It just... it doesn’t make sense.” Instantly, Jon winced again as the irony hit. “Which I know is kind of the Spiral’s thing in general, but usually if the Spiral had touched someone like that I’d be able to feel it. So either there’s something not related to a Power that could cause an experience like that—which I’m certain is possible, although I’m not at all certain what it might be—or there’s an affiliate of the Spiral who can completely hide their presence from the Eye. Which, again, is possible, and I would respect that, especially if it’s you, but—” He took a deep breath. “I just need to know if that’s what’s going on so I can stop wondering about it, because right now, something just... doesn’t feel right about the whole thing, and I can’t put my finger on what it is or why. And again, I know that’s probably the point, but just in case, I thought I’d ask. So, um... if you could get back to me, it would be very helpful. Thank you.”

Jon sighed. He wanted to respect Helen’s affiliation and the needs that came with it, of course, but he also wanted to respect his own, at least far enough that he wouldn’t be miserable. Helen wanted that for him, too—that much, at least, she’d made abundantly clear—but when Jon’s need to know clashed with her need to be unknowable, as it was sometimes wont to do... well, it had the potential to make things complicated.

Jon turned away from the wall and started across the room towards his desk, only to jolt back in sudden horror.

In the center of the rug, in a pool of blood, sat a human head.

The horror didn’t last long before several details—the absence of that telltale blood smell, the presence of a smell that reminded Jon of the dentist for some reason, the color and length of the hair obscuring the face, and, perhaps most tellingly, the dirt mingled with the deep red stain on the carpet—turned it to amused indignation.

“That better be washable,” Jon grumbled as Karolina opened her eyes and giggled.

“Oh, it is,” she replied, raising her hand above the level of the floor, and with it a gallon jug of fake blood in what the Eye promptly and unhelpfully informed Jon was supposed to be Zesty Mint flavor. “Little soap and water and it should come right out.”

“Does it actually taste like ‘Zesty Mint?’” Jon asked, aware he was getting sidetracked but too curious to care.

Karolina frowned. “I don’t know. I didn’t taste it.”

Jon had encountered edible fake blood in his theater days, but he’d never had a role that required him to actually taste any, and back then his curiosity about the flavor had been overridden by his desire not to appear deranged. But a great many things had changed between his university career and the present time, and the relative influence of curiosity and the fear of appearing deranged on his behavior was most definitely one of them. 

Jon reached down, took the container from Karolina’s raised hand, unscrewed the cap, dipped his finger in the deep red goo clinging to the jug’s mouth, and stuck it in his own.

He made a face, then forcibly overrode his immediate reaction enough to actually contemplate the flavor.

“Well,” he finally declared. “I’m not entirely certain what ‘Zesty Mint’ is supposed to taste like, but I’m fairly certain that is not it.”

Karolina smiled. “Good to know.”

(On average, a severed human head remained conscious for a full thirty seconds following decapitation before passing out and dying from lack of oxygen.)

Jon considered it progress that that particular tidbit didn’t cause him any distress. It made sense, he supposed. Tissue death from hypoxia wasn’t instantaneous, and even with rapid and complete blood loss—

Jon looked again at the deep red stain on the floor of his office, just behind where Emily had been sitting that morning.

He’d assumed she’d been wearing makeup, that her red lips and cheeks were an aesthetic choice on her part. That her confusion, clumsiness, and slow, slightly stuttering speech were a product of sleep deprivation. That she’d been out of breath from running on the way to the appointment in an attempt to avoid being late.

Tissue death from hypoxia wasn’t instantaneous. And the mental effects of prolonged oxygen deprivation could include bizarre behavior, anxiety, hallucinations, and memory loss.

A Spiral experience, with no actual Spiral involvement.

She’d complained of a bad headache.

“Shit,” Jon whispered, screwing the cap back on the fake blood and dropping it on the floor as he rushed over to his desk, grabbing his phone and dialing Emily’s number.

“Pick up,” he whispered as the phone continued to ring. “Pick up, pick up...”

Finally, after four rings, Jon heard the quiet click of the call connecting.

“Hello?” slurred the voice on the other end.

Jon winced. She sounded far worse than she had this morning.

“Hello, Emily,” he said in the most reassuring tone he could muster. “This is Jon from the CHS. Are you at home right now?”

“Yeah...” Emily sounded baffled. “Why?”

Jon didn’t waste time. “I looked into your case, and I think your problem is carbon monoxide poisoning. Which means you need to leave your building right now.”

“Carba... wha?”

“It doesn’t matter. I just need you to get out of your building, okay? Can you do that?”

“Uh... yeah.” Emily groaned, a scuffling sound overlapping her words. “Head hurts.”

“You’ll feel better once you’re outside.” Jon tried to project calm and confidence. “You just need to get there.”

“O-kay.” More scuffling sounds, and a rhythm of unsteady footsteps started up.

“You’re doing great,” Jon said, hoping it came off as encouraging rather than patronizing. “I’m gonna stay on the phone until you’re outside, okay?”

Emily started to reply, but cut herself off with a whimper.

“What is it?” asked Jon, quietly in the hopes of not startling her.

“Something moved,” Emily replied in a terrified, half-audible whisper. “In my house.”

“Just keep moving,” Jon said. “Just get outside and you’ll be all right.”

“Okay,” Emily continued, so quietly and indistinctly that Jon wasn’t sure he’d have been able to understand her without the Eye providing the paranormal equivalent of subtitles. “I’m almost at—”

Emily cut off with a sudden, despairing, horrified cry.

“What is it?” asked Jon, to no reply except what sounded like sobbing.

Jon took a breath. “Emily, talk to me. What’s going on?”

“My front door,” Emily whimpered. “There’s two of them. They look the same.”

Well. That certainly explained why Helen hadn’t been answering Jon’s wall-calls.

“Okay,” Jon said, infusing his voice with all the reassurance he could muster. “Emily, you’re going to be okay, but I need you to listen to me very carefully and do exactly what I say. Can you do that?”

Emily gave a faint “mm-hmm.”

Jon figured that was the best he was likely to get. “All right. I want you to walk over to the door on the left. Do not touch it until I tell you to. Tell me when you’re standing directly in front of it.”

Through the panicked whines and sobs, Jon heard more unsteady footsteps, until Emily said, “done.”

“Okay. Reach out with the back of your hand—the back of your hand—and feel the doorknob.”

“S’warm,” Emily muttered.

“Okay. Good. Now go to the door on the right and do the same thing. Touch the doorknob with the back of your hand and tell me what it feels like.”

“Um... cool. It’s cool. Not warm.”

Jon took a deep breath, hoping he was right about this. “Good. That door, the one with the cool doorknob, are you still standing in front of it?”

“Yeah.” Emily yawned. “What—”

“Open it.”

Jon listened as hard as he could to the sound of the door swinging open on the other end of the phone. It didn’t sound like Helen, but...

“Okay, I’m in the hallway.” Emily’s speech was still slurred, but she sounded a bit less panicked. Certainly not like she’d sound if she’d just found herself in Helen’s hallways. Not that she’d have phone reception if that were the case.

Jon smiled. “Good. Now go outside.”

“I’m going.”

“Good,” said Jon as he listened to the sounds of Emily making her way outside. “You’re doing very well.”

“Thanks,” Emily said fuzzily. “I’m out.”

“Good,” Jon repeated. “Now. When I hang up the phone, call the paramedics. Tell them your address and that you suspect carbon monoxide poisoning. CO, see-oh, can you remember that?”

“C-3PO?” Emily giggled.

Jon sighed. “You know what, if that helps you remember, sure. Ready?”

“Yeah.”

“All right. Bye, Emily.” With that, Jon hung up.

He’d barely set his phone down when a sharp knock drew his attention to the door set in the cleared portion of the wall.

“Come in,” he snapped as he turned to look.

Helen’s door swung open, the face of her humanoid form bearing an impossibly wide grin. “Well done, Jon! I was wondering if you’d figure it out.”

Jon frowned. “What?”

“That was clever, with the doorknobs. I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s certainly effective. I’ll have to see if I can affect the temperature, if we’re going to play again. It’s no fun if you already know the answer.”

Jon sputtered. “Did you poison that woman to play a game with me?”

Helen laughed. “Oh, no. She managed that all on her own. The extent of my involvement was adding a bit of a challenge to your little rescue operation. Well, and hiding the CO monitor, but she’d bought that ages ago and it was still in the box, so I doubt it made much difference.” She shrugged. “It was a delightful game, though. I was planning to take her at some point, before she went to see you, but once she had it was more fun to make it a little competition, and you won fair and square. Go ahead and keep her for your… dream-wandering, or whatever it is you do. You’ve earned it.”

Jon felt sick. “I didn’t… win her. She’s not… people aren’t things.”

“Of course we are.” Helen had the air of someone patiently explaining something unbearably obvious to a small child. “Some things are alive, and some aren’t, and plenty are in between. Some things can think, or feel, or both, to varying degrees. Some things, like us, are even aware of our own existence. What difference does it make?”

“It matters that she’s a person,” Jon spat.

“What does that mean?” Helen laughed again, echoing through the room. “All your categories, your sharp dividing lines… you know they don’t actually exist, don’t you? Everything blends into everything else, and the idea of a person is no different.”

“That’s not—”

“Pigs can think, you know,” Helen interrupted with a smirk. “Not the way humans do, but humans don’t all think the same way either. They can feel pain, and fear. You or I wouldn’t get much if we tried to feed on one, but Karolina or Oliver probably could. It’s different from what humans feel, but again, humans feel things differently from each other as well. There’s no real reason to call, say, a baby human a person, and deny the same to a pig. Yet most humans think it’s perfectly all right for them to kill and eat pigs. And why not? Everything that lives needs to feed itself somehow.”

“I know that,” Jon hissed. “You won that argument. I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t.”

“So what’s the problem?” Helen’s tone was infuriatingly casual.

“The problem is that most humans who eat pigs don’t have to hear directly from the pigs how they feel about being eaten.” It sounded pathetic as soon as it was out of his mouth—the feelings were still there, of course, why should it matter if he heard them or not—but that really was the crux of it. For better or worse, Jon’s method of feeding created a bond between him and his victims, and, even notwithstanding the Eye’s desire to keep them around as literal nightmare fuel, he took a certain amount of unavoidable interest in their welfare.

Helen’s face softened. “Still a food guarder, hmm?”

(‘Food guarder’ was a term used by animal shelters to describe dogs who become territorial over their food, won’t let other dogs or humans near it, and defend it with violence, often as a result of a history of food insecurity. In most shelters, this behavior was considered grounds for immediate euthanasia.)

Jon blinked. “What?”

“It’s all right,” Helen said. “I’d be shocked if you didn’t have issues, after what you’ve been through.”

(She’d seen the state Jon had been in when she got him out of the Circus’s basement, knew what had been done to him and what had been planned. She’d watched him try and fail to stop himself from hunting, and she’d watched him try and fail to hide it. She’d been there when he’d traded away one of his own ribs for a statement. Every bad decision, all the defensiveness and desperation that had driven him from the moment he woke from that coma until he’d agreed to leave the Magnus Institute behind... she was intimately familiar with all of it.)

Much as Jon might have wished to pretend otherwise, the Eye didn’t elaborate. It merely laid out the facts.

The sick certainty that with everything she knew, everything she’d seen, she couldn’t possibly respect him or consider him an equal was nothing more or less than his own experience.

Jon sputtered, face heating up and throat tightening as stinging tears threatened to spill from his eyes.

Of course. It made so much more sense now. All this time, Helen had been thinking of him as her project. A starving, beaten dog to take home from the shelter and nurse back to health. Whatever affection she felt for him might well be genuine, but it wasn’t the affection between equals. The others were probably the same.

God, he’d been so stupid to think it might have been otherwise.

“Jon?” Helen sounded concerned. She was, no doubt, but as... as an owner, not a friend. “Are you all right?”

(Helen knew something about the Magnus Institute that was currently putting Martin in serious and immediate danger. She wasn’t telling Jon because she didn’t trust him to make his own decisions.)

Jon stumbled back as the information hit, ears ringing almost too loudly for him to hear Helen asking what was wrong.

(He’d left the Magnus Institute and now Martin was in danger, and he could help if he knew what was wrong, but he didn’t, because Helen wasn’t telling him.)

“Helen,” Jon said slowly. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Helen looked genuinely baffled. (How many secrets was she keeping from him?) “There are plenty of things I haven’t told you, Archivist.”

“Something specific. About the Magnus Institute. About Martin.”

Helen rolled her eyes. Actually rolled her eyes. “That place isn’t your concern anymore.”

“It’s my concern if I damn well say it is!”

“Why? Why do you insist on—”

“What do you know about the situation with Martin?”

Helen sighed in a put-upon sort of way. (She knew what had happened to him. She knew what he’d done. She’d seen him at his weakest and worst.) “If I told you, you’d just go charging right back into that mess.” (Her opinion of him would never be separable from all that.)

Jon felt static rising in his throat, boiling up from the fear and fury and humiliation and pain and grief filling his gut. “Is Martin in danger?”

“He’s working for Peter Lukas, of course he is.” Helen froze. “Jon, don’t.”

It felt good to push. Good to see her afraid. “Is the danger to Martin immediate?”

“Probably. Peter wants to take him to—into the maze—” Helen cut off with a horrible choking noise. “Jon, don’t do this.”

The crackling filled Jon’s mind, leaving no space to feel anything except the rage of betrayal and the sweetness of Helen’s fear and the rush of power and the frantic need to know. “Helen, tell me—”

Jon’s question cut off with a sharp pain in his throat, a horrible crushing sensation in his windpipe, and the sudden presence of Helen directly in front of him, jamming her hand into his neck.

“Fine.” Helen’s eyes were locked on his. “If that’s how you want to play, so be it. Perhaps here, now”—her unoccupied hand gestured around at his office—“you’re powerful enough to learn what you want from me.” Her voice was low and calm and very, very dangerous. “But if you try, I promise you I will resist. And only one of us is going to survive the attempt.”

Helen drew her hand back, maintaining eye contact as she did so.

For a moment, time seemed to stop.

Jon could feel the hot, wet tickle of blood running down his neck, and the screaming of static in his chest, and the dizzy discomfort of looking Helen in the eye, and the heavy silence of a room where no one moved or breathed, and the weight of a decision hanging in the still, dead air.

When he finally broke the silence, he took immense care not to let any of the static escape.

“Helen,” he said, slow and measured. “I think you should leave my office before either one of us does something we’d both regret.”

A sharp nod, a heavy slam, and she was gone.

Jon collapsed into his chair, slumped forward, and put his head down on his desk with enough force that his human self would probably have been left with a goose egg where his forehead impacted the cool wood.

He took a deep breath in and out, feeling the wounds on his neck sting with the movement.

They were still bleeding. Of course they were.

Another deep breath in, and the confused swirl of emotions Jon couldn’t so much as begin to process at the moment found voice in the only way they could.

“Fuck.”

Chapter Text

Jon was still slumped over his desk with his head down when he felt a telltale rush of air.

Harriet, most likely. Jon kind of wanted to ignore her, but he forced himself to sit up, keeping the tissues he’d blindly, halfheartedly grabbed to keep the blood from staining his desk too much pressed to the wounds on his throat.

Instead of Harriet, Lynette Fairchild stood in the center of the room, unbuckling the straps of her backpack and setting it on the floor in front of her.

“Hey, Jon,” she said casually as she retrieved a sealed plastic bag of exam gloves, another bag containing various types and sizes of bandages, and a small bottle of hand sanitizer. “I heard you might need a medic.”

“I, ah…” Jon winced at the rough sound of his voice. “I might.”

Lynette frowned. “Are you trying not to cry right now?”

Jon didn’t answer. Honestly, he wasn’t sure.

“Jon, I need to know if your voice is hoarse because you’re upset or if it’s hoarse because you have damage to your larynx.”

(Jon’s larynx was slightly bruised, but it would heal on its own without medical intervention. Helen’s fingers hadn’t damaged the platysma muscle at the front of his neck, so the injury was classed as superficial. The hoarse quality of his voice was due to physiological changes associated with emotion, rather than injury.)

“It’s fine,” Jon said. “Ah... the Eye just told me.”

Lynette tilted her head with a dubious expression—which, okay, fair enough. “What exactly did it tell you?”

“The cuts are superficial. There’s some slight bruising on my larynx, but nothing that won’t heal with a bit of time.” Jon cringed. “And... apparently I am trying not to cry.”

Lynette nodded. “It’s all right, you know. This sort of thing is actually really common among friends with different affiliations, especially when they’re as incompatible as Beholding and Twisting.”

Jon flinched. “How did you know about that?”

“Helen told me.” Lynette smiled sympathetically, setting the gloves down on Jon’s desk and applying the sanitizer to her hands. “I’m not sure how she found me, but—”

“Yeah, she does that,” whispered Jon, through the lump in his throat he could no longer blame on injury.

“She said the two of you had gotten into a fight, and she’d hurt you, but wasn’t sure how badly. Asked me to check on you.” Lynette waved her hands in the air to dry them, then retrieved a pair of gloves from the bag and began putting them on. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No.” He grimaced. “Well, I might’ve hurt my head when I slammed it down on my desk, but that healed like usual.”

“But the neck injury hasn’t, huh. That makes sense.” Once her gloves were on, Lynette gestured to Jon’s neck. “May I see?”

Jon lowered the tissues, allowing Lynette to inspect the damage.

“Thank you,” said Lynette as she peered at the wounds. “Can you summarize how it happened?”

Under other circumstances, Jon might have made a joke about how, given what he’d seen in her memories about her feelings on patients rambling, he’d better keep it to a summary.

As it was, though, he didn’t feel much like going into detail anyway. “We were arguing,” he said quietly. “I was angry. I tried to compel her. She stopped me.”

Lynette nodded once, a quick, birdlike motion, then opened the bag of bandages. “Helen just used her hand to do that? Nothing else?”

“She’s plenty sharp on her own,” Jon muttered.

“Of course.” Lynette was rifling through the bag of bandages, retrieving a fairly large gauze pad, medical tape, and a small tub of Vaseline. “Since the injuries were directly inflicted by an affiliate of a Power directly opposed to yours, they’ll most likely heal at about the rate they would on a human. Infection shouldn’t be a concern, but there will most likely be some scarring from the cuts. For the external injuries, if it’s all right with you, I’ve got some wipes designed for cleaning superficial wounds, just a very mild antiseptic, that I’ll use to get those bits of Kleenex out of there—or you can do that yourself, if you’d prefer. Then I’ll apply a bit of Vaseline to protect the exposed tissue and discourage the bandage from sticking, cover it with gauze and tape it in place to keep particulates out and your coworkers’ questions to a minimum, and give you supplies and instructions for changing the bandage on a daily basis until it heals. Does that all sound okay?”

“Yes.”

“For the laryngeal bruising, if your Power says it’ll heal on its own that’s a good sign,” Lynette went on, “but I’d still like you to pay attention to how your throat is feeling, especially when you speak or swallow. If anything gets worse, or if you feel like there’s swelling or tightness in your throat, or if the pain doesn’t fade within a few days, or if your voice doesn’t sound right, tell someone, okay? I’m not working tonight into the next few days, but I’ll leave instructions with Harriet on which medications to grab from my stash. There are things we can do to minimize the chances of lasting damage.” She paused. “You have my number?”

Jon sighed. “I have everyone’s number.”

“Wonderful. Speaking of which, the only other thing is to make sure you’re feeding enough. Just because your Power can’t fix this for you doesn’t mean it can’t help, or at the very least keep you from developing any unfortunate complications. For most people I wouldn’t worry about that quite so much, but for you...” She chuffed out a quiet laugh. “Tell you what. I’ve got plenty of stories. After we get your neck sorted, you can take your pick.”

At this point, Jon knew better than to argue. Instead, he let himself reach out, curiosity about the sorts of things Lynette had witnessed and experienced as an avatar medic sharpening his mind into a lancet.

“You met Jane Prentiss,” he said slowly. “You and Harriet. Just after she changed. You tried to help her.”

“Who’s—”

“Tell me about it.”

Dammit. He hadn’t meant to ask yet. She’d offered to give him a statement after she’d patched him up. He’d just been—he was —so intrigued...

(All right, and sinking into someone else’s past distress sounded far better than staying in the present and marinating in his own.)

Lynette, for her part, seemed completely unbothered.

“When I got the call from Harriet, I knew right away that I was in for an interesting night,” she said as she opened a packet containing a gauze pad and began attaching medical tape to the edges, making sure not to touch the sticky side of the tape to anything else—an impressive achievement, considering that she was making direct eye contact with Jon the whole time and was most likely unable to see what she was doing. “Over half of my patients come to me through Harriet’s network. There’s plenty of Fairchilds who only really interact with other Fairchilds, and even the ones who have friends outside the family usually only have one, or a few at most. In fairness, I suppose even Harriet only has a handful of friends outside the family. But she’s on friendly terms with more people than anyone else I’ve ever met, and her network of acquaintances covers just about every region, Power, and skill set you could name.”

Once the bandage was prepared and set down on the desk with the sticky side facing up, Lynette swung a leg back, hooked her foot into the strap of her backpack, and pulled it up alongside herself without the slightest waver of eye contact. “If anyone in her extensive social sphere needs help, she almost always knows someone else who can help them, and as one of only a few medics for the Power-touched specifically, and the one who happens to be a member of her family, I’m one of her most frequently deployed resources. So when I picked up, and Harriet told me she’d heard from one of her people about, quote, 'a commotion' at the Whittington Hospital emergency department, I knew to be ready for anything. And when I met her just outside the hospital, in the late February twilight broken by the bright blue and red strobing of police lights and split with screaming and sobbing from the humans in the building, I wasn’t at all surprised when she gestured to the trail of squirming grubs and bloodstains dropped like breadcrumbs on the pavement. I simply followed.”

While she’d been talking, Lynette had been digging around in her bag by touch, and had finally produced a small plastic zipper bag containing a package of wipes. Once she’d retrieved a wipe from the bag, she held it up and signed “ok?” with her other hand, still without interrupting her statement.

“Yes. Sorry,” Jon replied by the same means.

Ignoring his apology completely, Lynette transferred the wipe to her other hand, cleaned the cuts, and gently removed the smears of blood that had dried on the unbroken skin.

Instead of the sting or the pressure or the vulnerability or the way anyone touching his neck right now made his gut churn, Jon focused on the words Lynette was still steadily forming.

“I’d not previously had a flesh hive patient, but I’d been around enough at that point to know what that wriggling trail signified, and I was glad of the opportunity,” she said. “All the time we were tracking whoever had been the source of the chaos we’d seen and heard, I was thinking about what difficulties they might be facing, and what they might need. A bit of calm reassurance was a given—everyone needs that right after their change—but the specifics are far more variable, and if the grubs were reshaping their host’s flesh as much as I imagined they would, there were all sorts of complications that might arise. I’d previously provided speech therapy for a young man recently claimed by the Weaver who’d been having trouble enunciating around his chelicerae, and I was quite certain I’d be able to transfer those skills to helping someone learn to speak again with a mouth reshaped by an infestation. In the meantime, I could help them find suitable AAC strategies. I was wondering how effectively they’d be able to operate a touchscreen when Harriet and I caught up enough to see who we’d been following.”

Once she’d finished cleaning Jon’s injuries, Lynette used the tip of her little finger to smear a thin layer of Vaseline over them, then lifted the prepared bandage—keeping her greasy fingertip well away from the tape’s sticky side—and raised her eyebrows.

Jon nodded, and Lynette quickly and smoothly applied the bandage to his throat. She then removed her gloves, put all her supplies back in her bag, zipped it up, and returned her full attention to Jon—not that it had really ever left.

“From what I could tell from a distance and from the back,” Lynette went on, “my potential patient appeared to be a young woman in a stained red party dress, with a tangled mess of long, dark hair hanging down her back. Rivulets of blood from the trails the grubs had left in her flesh meandered down her bare arms, dripping off her fingertips and onto the asphalt. Every now and then, a grub would lose its grip and fall to the pavement in a similar fashion. The pain must have been incredible, but you wouldn’t have known it from the way she moved. Her gait was smooth, slow, almost trancelike. I knew better than to assume she wasn’t a threat—if she was as out of it as she appeared, she might be even more likely to lash out in response to any attempt to initiate contact, and based on what little I’d seen and heard at the hospital, whatever form her ‘lashing out’ took was likely to be very dangerous indeed. Still, I’m used to treating patients who, out of pain or fear or hunger or confusion or some combination of the above, bite the hand that reaches out to help them. I knew to be cautious, but the danger wasn’t going to stop me.”

Through the usual emotional effects of a feeding—the echo of long-ago Lynette’s apprehension, the warm satisfaction of the Eye’s approval and the satiation of his own hunger, the sharp curiosity carrying him along—Jon felt those words as a pang of some complicated, nameless grief.

“At that point, I was even more confident that the main challenge she would be facing was adjusting to and caring for a radically altered body, and as Harriet and I made our slow, cautious approach, I kept brainstorming. She could probably benefit from advice on dealing with chronic pain. Maybe Harriet could help her find some social support for the adjustment period. I might try to get her connected with some Stranger people, I was thinking—if she was having trouble keeping her grubs reined in, at least in the early stages, it might help to have friends who weren’t made of anything they could easily chew through. On a more prosaic level, if her limbs weren’t holding together as well as she’d like, fishnet tights might provide some structural support without disturbing her inhabitants, and they’d go nicely with her dress.”

It almost hurt more, knowing that the kind of compassion and care Lynette had offered to Jane existed. That Jon’s experience in the wake of his change hadn’t been inevitable.

It almost hurt more, knowing that Jane had been offered that kindness and hadn’t accepted it.

Perhaps fortunately, the statement pulled Jon back in before he could start thinking too much about what might have been different had she done so.

“We were maybe ten meters away from the woman—you said her name was Jane?” Lynette was saying. “Anyway, we were maybe ten meters away from her when Harriet decided to announce our presence. She called out to her—I think she just said ‘excuse me?’ or something like that, but Jane clearly heard. Her head snapped around faster than you would’ve thought possible, from watching her move earlier, and she looked right at us. Her face was as chewed up as the rest of her, but her eyes seemed to be mostly intact, and she could certainly hear us. So I called out again, telling her it was all right, that we were there to help. She seemed to react badly to that, flinching back and making a sort of wet hissing sound, so I told her I wasn’t going to harm her or her friends, that they were beautiful, and that I just wanted to help her learn her way around her new life. I’m not sure how much of it she could really process, at that point. But apparently it wasn’t enough to calm her down, because the next moment I saw an unbelievably quick movement out of the corner of my eye and felt a sharp pain in my arm. I looked down, and saw two things that alarmed me: first, one of Jane’s grubs appeared to be in the process of chewing through the skin of my forearm, and second, all the grubs that had fallen on the pavement—including some that were quite close to where Harriet and I were standing—were rapidly moving towards us. I looked up, and more of them were emerging from the burrows they’d made in Jane’s body, dropping to the pavement and joining the wriggling army making its way across the asphalt towards what Jane, and, by extension, the grubs, must have perceived as a threat.”

Lynette was afraid, of course—as afraid as she had been when the events she was describing had taken place. Still, from Jon’s own firsthand experiences with that ‘wriggling army,’ she wasn’t, and hadn’t been, nearly as afraid as Jon thought the situation ought to have merited.

“Once it became clear that staying would have been an unreasonable risk, not to mention unwelcome, I grabbed Harriet’s hand and took us out of there. While we were in transit, I tried to flick any grubs that hadn’t gotten a hold yet off of us, but my main focus was landing us quickly. We didn’t have any time to discuss it, so I just took us both back to the kitchen of my flat—I obviously don’t use it as a kitchen, so I’ve converted it into my exam room and, occasionally, surgical suite.”

Ah, yes. Worm stampedes were probably far less frightening when you had the ability to teleport.

“As soon as we landed, I asked Harriet if any of them had gotten her, and she told me they hadn’t. She grabbed a pair of forceps from a drawer—Harriet had spent enough time in that room by then that she knew where most of the basic tools could be found—and I was able to get the grub out of my arm with very little trouble. I dropped it to the floor and stepped on it—perhaps not the neatest method of disposal, but I didn’t have any better methods immediately to hand—and was preparing to put a bandage on the injury and clean up when I heard Harriet swear. Turned out she had two of them on board—one trying to tunnel into her abdomen, the other near her collarbone. I don’t believe for a second that she actually didn’t know they were there earlier, but Harriet’s always been sneaky about getting me to secure my own oxygen mask before helping others, and I’ve long since given up on calling her on it, except by doing it to her in return, so I didn’t say anything to that effect. I was able to get them out of her no problem, anyway.”

Jon mentally tucked that information about Harriet away for future reference. It fit quite well with everything else he’d learned.

“We agreed, after that, to give it at least a month before we tried again. Once she’d had some time to settle down, we were hoping she might be a bit more receptive to offers of friendship.” Lynette sighed. “We tried twice more. The second and third attempts didn’t go any better than the first, and after that... if she didn’t want our help, that was her business. Besides, she had more grubs every time, to the point that any further attempts to reach out would have been not only unwelcome but unwise. So we stopped trying, and, other than a patient or two who’d run afoul of her in the meantime, that was the last I heard of her until it started going around that someone had been stupid enough to attack the Magnus Institute again and died in the process, and once the rumors got a little more detail to them, I was pretty sure it was her. I felt bad for her, but... it happens sometimes. I don’t know exactly why some people adjust and some never seem to, but the diversity even within human minds is astonishing, and I suppose it’s only to be expected that we all react differently to an upheaval like that. Still. I don’t think I could have done anything differently, but... I wish I could have helped her.”

Jon waited long enough to let the words die away, then nodded. “Statement ends.”

“How are you feeling?” asked Lynette after another moment of quiet.

Jon gave a rueful half-laugh. “From the statement, or in general?”

“Let’s hear both.”

“From the statement? Better. Thank you.” Jon winced. “In general...” After a brief struggle to put words to the misery weighing him down, he gave up. “Bad.”

Lynette nodded sympathetically. “It really is quite common, you know. Friends whose Powers don’t get along, especially early on in the—”

“She’s not my friend.” Jon barely got the words out, but he managed.

Lynette looked like she was about to protest, but abruptly cut herself off. “Why do you say that?”

“I—I think I’m just a charity case.” Jon winced. “She doesn’t actually respect me, it’s just— pity.”

Lynette gave Jon a sharp look. “Okay, first of all, Helen isn’t the sort of being to be concerned with charity. If she didn’t want to hang out with you, for her own sake, she wouldn’t. And second, why on Earth or anywhere else would you think she doesn’t respect you?”

Jon looked away. “With everything she knows about me, I doubt anyone could.”

A look of understanding came over Lynette’s face. “That thing you just said?” She raised an eyebrow. “Say it again, slowly, and listen.”

Jon glared at her, but obliged. “With everything she knows about me...” He stopped short. “Oh.”

Lynette nodded. “Like I said, it’s really common, if two people’s patrons don’t get along and they try to be friends, that the Powers involved will try to interfere in the relationship. I’m not at all surprised that yours would get you thinking that way, especially if the insecurity was already there. And, for what it’s worth? I’ve talked to Helen, and she doesn’t just respect you, she admires you.”

Jon’s dubiousness must have been visible in his expression, because Lynette smiled gently and made an inviting gesture. “If you don’t believe me, ask.”

Jon took a deep breath. “To the best of your knowledge, what does Helen think of me?”

“She thinks you’re a stubborn fool who doesn’t know when to quit,” Lynette instantly, easily replied. “That you get up every time you’re knocked down, and that once you make up your mind about something you won’t be swayed by anything short of a miracle. That you repeatedly stare down the impossible, fully understand the impossibility of it, and then make it happen anyway. That you’re impossible. And... I’m not sure exactly what love means for someone like her, or how it manifests. And she hasn’t told me this directly. But regardless, I’m quite certain she loves you for that.”

By this point, Jon should probably have been more accustomed than he was to the sensation of having one’s entire understanding of a situation upended, but then again, it was probably the sort of thing you never really got used to.

Maybe it would be a tragedy if anyone ever did.

Jon took a deep, shaky breath in an attempt to calm himself. It wasn’t terribly successful.

“You know what I hate, really hate, about belonging to a Power?” he said in a voice still half-choked with suppressed tears. “I mean... a while ago I would have said I hated everything about it, whether I meant it or not. But now, even now that I’ve accepted some aspects, even now that I’ve embraced a few...” He broke off and swallowed hard. “I really, really hate the way I can never tell if what I’m thinking or feeling comes from me, or if it’s just the Eye messing with my head.”

Lynette’s face acquired a faint, sympathetic half-smile. “I’m not gonna lie,” she said. “That part’s really hard. And I don’t have an easy answer. But there are some ways you can pick up on the rhythm of when and how your Power is most likely to influence you, which at least some of the time can help you recognize when that’s what’s happening. And once you know where a specific thought or feeling is coming from, you can decide what to do with it—whether to treat it as your own, or accept it as a command, or acknowledge it but consider it a suggestion and respectfully decline.”

Jon sighed. “That... that makes sense.”

Lynette smiled gently. “The friendships I’ve been mentioning, between people whose patrons don’t want them to be friends? I’ve seen them fail, yes, but I’ve also seen them work. The Eye may eventually give up on trying to get you away from Helen, or it may never stop. And even aside from the direct opposition, you two have fundamentally incompatible worldviews. Of course you’re going to brush up against each other’s sharp edges sometimes—” Lynette winced as she seemed to abruptly realize what she’d just said. “Figuratively or otherwise. But you absolutely can work around all that—if you both decide your friendship is worth working for.” She smiled gently. “I’d give it at least a day for you both to cool off and think things over. After that, it’s up to the two of you.”

After a brief silence, Jon nodded. “I’ll take that under consideration.”

...

Once Lynette had left his office, Jon logged in to his Martin email.

It was 5:47 PM in San Francisco, which meant it was nearly 2AM in London. Any sort of instantaneous communication would be useless until London’s morning, not to mention the considerable risk of Martin refusing to engage.

(Of course, there was no guarantee of Martin reading an email either, or of him taking its contents seriously, or of him heeding Jon’s advice even if he did. But for now, at least, sending one was the best Jon could do.)

Dear Martin, he wrote.

(Jon didn’t usually pray to the Eye, but he was praying to it now. Praying for the right words, words that would hit home hard enough to convince Martin that Jon understood, that he could be trusted. Words that could get him to turn around.)

I’m sorry to contact you again out of the blue like this, but I recently learned something you need to know. Whatever Peter Lukas is planning, it’s in its final stages now, and it puts you at substantial and immediate risk. I wish I knew more, but all I heard was that he wants to “take you into the maze.” I’m not sure what that means, but if I had to guess, it’s something about the tunnels. Perhaps you know what that might signify, or perhaps you knew that already, but I hope you understand, I had to warn you. I had to at least try.

Whatever he’s planning, it’s not the only way. You don’t have to throw your life away for whatever he’s got you convinced you’re doing. If the Extinction isn’t as much of a threat as you thought, this is all pointless, and if it is, I have contacts now who can figure out a way to stop it that doesn’t entail you sacrificing yourself.

You’re not an acceptable sacrifice, Martin. I understand feeling that way, because not so long ago, I felt that way about myself. And I know you don’t think anyone would miss you. But I didn’t think anyone would miss me, once, and then you proved me wrong. You risked everything to help me find my way out of the Buried, because even though you couldn’t talk to me, even though you weren’t supposed to give a damn about anyone at all, you would have missed me if I was gone. And, even at this remove, I would miss you. Terribly. If you could miss me, even in the service of a Power that should have made that impossible... please believe that.

If you need any help—with getting away from the Institute, or from Peter Lukas, or anything else—let me know, and I’ll do whatever I can. Otherwise... good luck.

All the best,

Jon

After a quick once-over, Jon hit Send.

Dammit. Last time he’d been sitting here immediately after sending an emotionally raw email to Martin, Helen had shown up just as the anxiety was starting to run away with him and taken him on an extremely distracting errand that had ended up getting him a place to live.

This time, he was on his own.

After signing out of his email and his computer and putting his workspace back in order, Jon got up from his desk (stepping around the large fake bloodstain on the rug, which he simply did not have the capacity to deal with right now) and went home.

...

When Jon got home and checked his phone, he saw that he’d missed a text message.

The message was from Karolina. <Everything OK?>

Right. Karolina had been there, when he’d made the connection about Emily’s statement and carbon monoxide—in fact, she and her little prank had indirectly inspired it. In everything that followed, Jon must’ve forgotten, and at some point she’d probably taken the hint and left.

Jon stared at her message for a solid minute before replying. <It’s complicated.>

Within seconds, Jon’s phone was ringing.

He picked up. “Hey.”

“Hey, Jon,” said Karolina on the other end. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Jon took a deep breath. “Relatively speaking.”

“Shit.” Karolina sounded legitimately worried—which, admittedly, given his history, was probably fair. “What happened?”

“Um...” Jon wasn’t sure where to start, nor did he feel equal to the task of figuring it out.

“Are you still in your office?”

That question, at least, he could answer. “No, I went home.”

“May I come over?” Karolina’s voice was kind, in that straightforward way of hers. “You can talk or not, whatever you need. Unless you’d rather be alone.”

Jon laughed. “Ah... some company actually sounds rather nice right now.”

“All right. One minute.” The phone beeped as the call disconnected.

Less than a minute later, Karolina popped up through Jon’s living room floor.

Without needing to be cued, Jon went over and gave her a hand up.

Karolina looked with obvious concern at the bandages on Jon’s neck, but, true to her word, she didn’t immediately say anything about them. “Would you like some tea?”

“I can make it,” Jon said. “You’re the guest.”

“And you’re the one with the bleeding neck,” Karolina retorted. “Sit down.”

“I don’t think it’s still bleeding,” Jon mumbled, but decided not to argue any further.

Without further ado, Karolina went into the kitchen and began busying herself with the preparation of tea, opening and closing cabinets with what Jon thought was probably a bit more energy than necessary. “What kind?”

“Um...”

“Right now, I’m gonna recommend the herbal blend.” The sounds of Karolina opening a cabinet and rummaging around floated into the living room.

Jon sighed faintly. He wasn’t sure who had purchased that blend (it was Karolina, the Eye chimed in; Jon told it to shut up)—intended to be relaxing—but had to admit that, as passive-aggressive self-care-encouraging gestures went, it was at the very least warranted. Besides, he’d tried it a few times, and it was actually pretty good. “That sounds lovely.”

The clink of something being set down on the counter. “Would you like honey in it?”

“Yes, please. Just a tad.”

After the electric kettle had beeped, Karolina made a few more cabinet noises, then came back into the living room, carrying two mugs, and sat next to Jon on the sofa. Under other circumstances, Jon might have chalked the abnormally heavy sound of her footsteps up to her affiliation with the Buried, but between the excessive racket she was making in other ways and the situation, Jon had a feeling she was trying to provide some reassurance of her presence without making Jon feel like he had to engage in conversation.

Somehow, that was what gave Jon the strength to speak.

“Helen and I had a fight,” he said, dully but loudly enough that Karolina could hear. “I scared her. Quite badly, I think. And she...” He laughed bitterly and gestured to his neck. “Well, you can see.”

“Helen hurt you?” Karolina set the mugs down on the coasters Jon had moved into place.

 The question hadn’t sounded judgmental, just concerned, but Jon felt the need to establish his own distinct lack of innocence in this situation all the same. “In fairness, I was trying to compel her, and she’d asked me to stop multiple times.” He made a wry face. “It might’ve been the only way she could think of to make me stop talking fast enough, and if that’s the case, I really don’t blame her.” He shrugged. “Also, for what it’s worth, after she left, she found Lynette and asked her to check on me.”

“...okay, that’s kind of adorable, but still.” Karolina frowned, then looked Jon directly in the eye. It wasn’t any less unsettling than it was the first time she’d done it. “What happened?”

Jon shook his head. “Honestly, I... I don’t entirely know.” He looked away. “Some of it was the Eye messing with me—it doesn’t like me being friends with Helen, and it’s not shy about letting me know—but I don’t think that was all of it.”

Jon stared at the mugs on the table. The mug Karolina had placed in front of Jon was her own, with the train design. She’d selected Oliver’s rosemary mug for herself.

Jon remembered Karolina telling him that Helen had said he could use her mug, and was briefly overwhelmed by sadness at the fact that he wasn’t. Then, he thought about actually drinking from the mug Helen had given him right now, and realized that Karolina’s judgment call had been entirely correct.

Karolina echoed Jon’s head shake. “What is going on with you two?” She winced. “That came out wrong. I don’t mean in a... derogatory way, or anything. It seems... mostly, it seems good, whatever it is. Complicated, definitely, but...” She trailed off. “It’s a genuine question.”

“I have no idea,” Jon said with a sigh, “and I have a feeling Helen doesn’t, either.”

“Fair enough,” Karolina replied, picking up her mug and blowing across the top. “Have you fed in the past few days? If you’re hurt, you should—”

“Yeah, um, Lynette gave me a statement,” Jon said before she could get the rest of the sentence out.

“Good.” Karolina took a slow, small sip of her tea. “Do you want to talk about it, or do you want to think about something else right now?”

“Ah...” Jon picked up his own mug and took a cautious sip, careful to mix some air in with the tea so it wouldn’t burn him. A tea-induced mouth burn wouldn’t last, but it would still hurt. “A break from thinking about it might be nice.”

“Distraction it is.” Karolina smiled. “What do you want to do? We could watch a movie, do a puzzle, play a game, build a blanket fort—”

“What?”

“Blanket fort? You know, move the furniture around to make a frame, drape blankets over it, put pillows inside, instant secret hideout?” Karolina’s grin softened. “You didn’t get invited to slumber parties as a kid either, huh.”

“Very much not.”

“Well, building a blanket fort is one of those things that’s still fun no matter how old you are. We can do that later.” Her smile brightened again. “Have you ever made rock candy? It’s just sugar, it won’t make you sick.”

“Ah... yes, actually, I have.” His grandmother hadn’t been happy about the mess he’d made in the kitchen, and the candy itself had grown mold instead of crystals, but he’d enjoyed the process. “Well, I’ve tried, anyway.”

“Care to try again? We can do it in a mug in the microwave, if you don’t have any pots or pans.”

Jon laughed. “You know what, sure. Why not.”

...

Jon sits where he always does on the dirty, eerily silent train, across from Karolina in her burgundy dress, waiting.

The train is slowing down, almost at a standstill, and Karolina sighs as she gets up from her seat. She knows where this is going, they both do. They’ve lived it a hundred times.

She doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to once again feel the metal crush her fragile human body. Intellectually, she’s accepted it, but Jon can feel the dread settling in her gut. Right now, he’s the reason for it. She came to him hoping to finally leave that night behind, and instead he trapped her in it.

As she makes her way to the door to the next car, she still smiles at him.

Jon woke slowly, unsure for a moment of where he was.

The surface underneath him felt soft but irregular, and there was something heavy and warm draped over his side. It seemed to be connected to the warm, solid something that was pressed against his back—

Whatever it was squirmed and made a soft noise, and Jon briefly started to panic before recalling the blanket fort he’d built with Karolina the previous night after they’d finished cleaning the residue of an unfortunate sugar-syrup explosion out of the microwave, and the completely nonchalant way she’d asked him if he’d be all right with her staying.

“Morning,” Karolina yawned.

“Morning,” Jon echoed.

 “How’d you sleep?” Karolina’s voice was still a bit bleary, but she was clearly waking up.

“Quite well, actually.” Jon hadn’t slept beside another person in... wow. Since Georgie. A solid decade, then. He’d forgotten how nice it could be.

“Good.” Karolina removed her arm from Jon’s side and stretched, hands pushing back the blanket at their heads. “You were comfortable, then?”

Jon smiled. “You did insist on my taking all the pillows.”

“I told you, I like sleeping on the floor. I find the pressure...” The grin in Karolina’s voice was audible. “Grounding.”

Upon realizing she couldn’t see his face, Jon converted his eye roll to a vocal expression of disdain.

Karolina sat up and lifted the blanket, letting daylight into the soft darkness of the fort. “Hey, uh, thanks for the vote of confidence, by the way. I know we haven’t really known each other very long, and I’m pretty sure letting anyone get close, in any sense, is a big deal for you—”

(For a period of one year, two months, and twenty-six days before, during, and after her time working for the man who kissed her at the New Year’s party, the only physical contact Karolina had with another person was the unwanted advances of her boss.)

Jon sat up as well, hoping his reaction to the sudden Knowledge hadn’t been visible.

Karolina frowned. “What did you get?”

No such luck, apparently. “Ah... it told me how long you went without anyone except your creepy boss touching you.”

“Oh?” Karolina sounded more curious than anything. “How long?”

“A year, two months, and twenty-six days.”

Karolina gave a single, incredulous laugh. “Wow. That’s longer than I thought.” She sighed. “You’ve figured this out by now, I’m sure, but I adapt to things very easily. Sometimes that’s a good thing—it definitely helped me deal with a change that came out of nowhere, for one. I mean, admittedly, I didn’t deal with it very well, but once I ran out of denial and figured out what was going on I was pretty much fine.”

(Karolina had spent slightly over a month after her change trying to convince herself that nothing was wrong. She’d hoped telling someone about the incident would help her move on and finally put it behind her, which was why she’d gone to the Magnus Institute, but it had only worsened the nightmares. On February eighteenth, two thousand and seventeen, Tamara Simpkin had been trying to locate a missing sweater in the back of her closet when Karolina had been gripped by a sudden urge to shut the door, which she had done. Tamara, a lifelong claustrophobe subsequent to a childhood incident of being trapped in a closet for several hours by her older brother, had sobbed and begged to be let out as the already tiny space became progressively smaller. Karolina had been standing just outside for seventeen minutes, relishing Tamara’s terror and the way it eased the misery that had plagued her since that night on the Victoria Line, when she got a text from another friend about the surprise party they’d been planning for Tamara’s birthday, February twenty-third. The reminder of Tamara’s importance to her had snapped her out of the feeding state, and her joy and relief had abruptly turned to horror. By the time the closet had returned to its normal proportions and Tamara had realized she could once again open the door, Karolina was gone, having literally sunk through the floor in shame. Karolina had never seen or spoken to any of her human friends again.)

Back in the present, Karolina laughed, and Jon snapped back to attention, electing not to think too much more about what he’d just learned unless Karolina herself brought it up.

“But other times,” Karolina was saying, “it’s like when I ran out of toothpaste and brushed my teeth with water for a month until Tamara outright asked me if I wanted her to buy me more while she was out. I paid her back, and I was glad to have it, but it just... hadn’t occurred to me to buy more on my own, because the fact that I didn’t have any hadn’t registered as a problem.” She took a deep breath, seeming to consider. “After the party, I kept telling myself it wasn’t that bad. That I was overreacting. It was just a kiss. The last straw, maybe—definitely rotten behavior, and, when taken as an escalation of an existing pattern, reason enough to seek alternative employment—but no reason to be as upset as I was. No reason for the smell of champagne to make me feel sick, or to flinch every time I heard something that sounded like a firework.”

Jon winced slightly in sympathy.

“But it wasn’t just a kiss, was it? That pattern I was talking about. The months I spent never knowing when he was going to be in my space, always looking over my shoulder, never letting my guard down. Even on the weekends, he’d sometimes text me and tell me to come in. I didn’t have any time that was actually mine. I could never relax, never feel safe, and I’d just... adapted to that. Like I do.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten drunk that night and crossed that line so suddenly. And then I stop wondering, because I’d rather not think about it, but... the truth is, I already know.”

Jon nodded. He could imagine well enough—really, he didn’t have to.

“Fortunately, that’s not what happened,” Karolina said. “I got out of there, and I found a new job, and my life got much better. But the habit I’d gotten into of keeping my head down and trying to attract as little notice as possible stayed with me. I’ve never been shy, but my people skills aren’t the best, and sometimes my strategy for not making a negative impression is to avoid making much of an impression at all. When my lease ran out, I moved into more affordable accommodations, which involved sharing space with Tamara, who at the time was a stranger. I made an effort to stay out of her way, and she assumed that was my preference, so... I never really had a conversation with anyone outside of work, let alone any physical contact. And, of course, I adapted. After a while, that was just my normal.” She scoffed, then smiled. “Honestly, I’m not certain how long that would’ve gone on if Leanne hadn’t gotten married and invited me to the wedding. I’d fallen out of touch with my uni friends in the intervening years, but Leanne still thought of me fondly enough to want me there, and I was able to reconnect with most of that group. We started hanging out again—Leanne too, once she and Mark were back from their honeymoon—and it must’ve gotten me back into a more social mindset. After a month, I asked Tamara if she wanted to cook dinner together sometime, as a way to get to know each other better. It worked, and from then on we were dear friends.” Her expression was almost wistful.

Jon wondered exactly how rare it was for an avatar to stay connected with a human they’d known before their change, then told himself to stop wondering that. It wasn’t relevant.

“My point is,” Karolina continued, “I understand being guarded. I’ve been doing my best to make it abundantly clear that I’m interested in being friends with you, but I know it takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable with anyone after what you’ve experienced, and... I’m honored that you’re willing to trust me.” A sly smile stole across her face. “Statement ends. How’s your neck feeling?”

Jon sputtered in half-feigned indignation. “You sneak.”

“Well?” Karolina giggled, then tilted her head. “I know it’s not an actual statement, but hopefully there was enough embarrassing personal information in there to do something.”

“Ah, yes, there was.” Jon winced. “About my neck, Lynette said it should heal at the same rate as a human injury, so it’s still there, but...” He put a hand to the bandage on his neck, which was slightly loose from having been slept in. “I think it’s better, yes.”

“I’m glad.” Karolina crawled out of the blanket fort, holding up the blanket for Jon to follow. “I can put the furniture back if you wanna go shower.”

“I appreciate the thought,” Jon said as he made his slow way out of the fort, brushing the dirt off his clothing as he stood, “but if you’re amenable, I’d like to ask if you would take me in to work for a few minutes, and if we’re going to do that, the shower should probably wait until after we’re back.”

Karolina frowned. “Happy to, but are you sure you’d like me to take you there directly? You have a key, right?”

“I’m sure.” Jon smiled faintly. “It seems the least I can do.”

Karolina smiled back. “Close your eyes, cover your ears, and hold your breath.” Her smile took on a playfully sharp edge. “And normally this would go without saying, but since it’s you: keep your mouth shut.”

Jon glared at her, then did as she’d said.

An arm wrapped around his waist, another came up to plug his nose, and then they were sinking into the ground.

Jon wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Karolina seemed to move through dirt like water, so maybe he’d assumed it would feel like that. But the earth pressing in on Jon from all sides felt like earth —packed earth, as heavy and dense as if he were truly buried in it, but somehow parting as Karolina made a way through.

It was everywhere, all around him. If Karolina let him go he’d never move again, not even a millimeter. He’d never breathe again, no air could reach through the forever deep to where they traveled, impossibly, through what might as well have been solid rock. He wanted to cling to the arms he could vaguely feel encircling him, take his hands off his ears and hold on to his one assurance of eventual freedom, but when he tried, he found he couldn’t move of his own accord. The ground would only part for Karolina. It allowed him passage only because she wanted it to.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t think—

The pressure on Jon’s upper body abruptly let up in a burst of air and light.

Reflexively, he opened his eyes, only to slam them closed again as crumbles of dirt got in and scratched at the delicate surfaces, but his legs still wouldn’t move, he was still trapped—

“It’s okay. Just a second.”

He could hear Karolina struggling, and then she was pulling him up until he collapsed in a heap on the rug.

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay. Breathe.” Something cool and firm and cube-shaped—tissue box—was being pressed into his hand. “Wipe your eyes before you try to open them,” said Karolina.

Jon did as she’d instructed, then opened his eyes again, blinking hard to clear out the dirt.

He took a few deep breaths, a reassurance to himself that he could, before abruptly realizing the ridiculousness of that concern.

“I don’t think I actually need to do that,” he managed. “Breathe, I mean.”

“You did not remember that twenty seconds ago.” Karolina smiled sympathetically. “Good?”

“Yeah.” Jon looked down at the rug, then almost laughed as his eye fell on the fake blood.

“Lynette didn’t say anything about that,” he said, tapping the stain before getting up from the floor.

Karolina shrugged. “I’m sure she could smell that it was fake. With the state you were in, it probably just didn’t seem important.”

“Fair enough.” Jon went around to sit in his desk chair, retrieved his computer, and opened his Martin email.

He had one new message. A reply to the email he’d sent the previous night.

Jon took a deep breath and clicked on it.

I know what I’m doing, it said. I need you to trust me.

That was all.

“What did he say?” asked Karolina gently.

Jon sighed. “Part of my fight with Helen was...” He swallowed hard. “The Eye told me Martin’s in danger and she knows something about it that she won’t tell me. I asked her to tell me whatever it was, and she refused, so... I tried to force her, and she reacted like this.” He gestured at his neck. “I got a bit, though, before she did that. So I told Martin. Said my friends and I could help him, if he needed it.” He spun the laptop around so Karolina could see the screen.

Karolina’s brow furrowed for a moment.

Then, she gave Jon a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, but if you’ve made your case and he doesn’t want help, you can’t make that choice for him.”

Jon took a few more calming breaths. “I know.”

He logged out of the email, closed his laptop, and put it back in its drawer. “All right. I’m ready to go home.”

...

Jon spent the remainder of that morning, and afternoon, doing his best to keep himself distracted.

He changed the bandage on his neck, and did not think about the hands that had made those cuts reaching out as if to help him off the ground before abruptly thinking better of it in Ny-Ålesund. He made himself a cup of tea, and did not think about all the times Martin had made it for him, or how it always tasted better than anything Jon could make for himself. He went for a walk in a nearby park, appreciating the beginnings of fall colors in the leaves of the trees, and did not think about the colors of Helen’s corridors, or how she sometimes changed them to make a point or just to make him laugh. He made his way to the local library (relishing the fact that not depending on written statements meant he might actually have the mental energy to read books again), found a book that looked interesting, checked the inside front cover (all clear), sat down in a comfortable chair in a corner, and managed to lose himself for long enough that an employee had to shake his shoulder to tell him that it was six PM and the library was closing. He apologized, and went home, and did not think about when Martin used to jar him out of that focused state to tell him he should go home, or eat some food, or whatever else. Once he’d done it with a literal jar, slamming it and its squirming contents down on Jon’s desk and demanding to be heard, and it had been like Jon was seeing him for the first time. A jar. When it’s ajar. When is a door not a door? Fuck.

Jon was doing his best to keep himself distracted. Right now, apparently, his best was frankly terrible.

Okay. It had been a full twenty-four hours; it was time.

Jon swallowed the anxiety clumping in his chest and rising up his throat, walked over to a blank section of wall, and knocked lightly.

“Helen?” he said, hearing his voice catch but going on anyway. “I, um... I understand that you might not want to talk to me right now, and that’s all right, you can take more time if you need it, just...” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I compelled you, and that I didn’t listen when you told me to stop, and I’m sorry I assumed the worst about you—”

“I’m sorry I stabbed you,” said Helen, from where she stood directly in front of Jon, door open.

Jon kept his expression deliberately nonchalant even as he wanted to laugh, or cry, with relief. She was here, and they didn’t hate each other. He could work with that.

He shrugged. “I’ve been stabbed worse.”

“I’ve stabbed you worse.”

Jon blinked. “I suppose.” He smiled faintly. “For a given value of me and you.”

Helen might have been smiling a bit as well.

Jon stepped back. “Would you like to come in?”

Helen was on the sofa, legs arranged in a position that made absolutely no sense if one assumed a typical number of knees.

Jon went over and sat down next to her.

For an uncomfortably long time, the room was silent.

Jon wanted to say something, anything, but he kept quiet. He would let Helen say her piece first.

Finally, she did.

“I’m not good at words,” she said. “I don’t see the point, really. The world as it is doesn’t answer to names. Dividing things up into boxes, categories, this or that, no in between, doesn’t capture anything important. It just destroys.” She hummed out an odd noise that might’ve been a sigh. “But that’s what you do. Words, categories, definitions, cramming a life into fifteen minutes of plot and structure and nothing out of place. It’s how you are, it’s what you are, and I know you can’t be any different. But words are so far from how things are to me that I’m not very good at using them, and you don’t seem to understand anything else.”

She fell silent, looking at Jon expectantly.

What Helen had said... it made sense, in a way. Jon was fairly certain he’d understood at least part of the message she’d been trying to get across. In some ways, her word trouble was similar to Mike’s, though in her case it was due to an innate philosophical aversion to language itself, so compelling wouldn’t help and would—did—make things worse. But he was also fairly certain he was missing something.

“Have you been trying to tell me something?” Jon asked cautiously. “Not with words?”

It was hard to tell, but he thought the look on Helen’s face was sadness.

Then, he had an idea.

“When you got me out of the Magnus Institute,” he said, grabbing his phone from his pocket, “and you asked the others to help you convince me, that wasn’t just because I didn’t trust you, was it? I didn’t trust the others either, but they were able to make a case in a way that made sense to me.” Jon held up his phone. “Harriet, in particular, she was able to tell me what you were trying to say. She’s good at people in general, and besides that, I think if there’s a sort of... middle ground between our Powers, it’s hers. The knowledge of incomprehensibility, or something like that.” He looked at Helen, carefully not making eye contact. “Would you like me to ask her to come over here and... interpret?”

After a moment, Helen nodded—or, at least, Jon assumed that was how she was moving her head. “Yes.”

“All right.”

Jon typed out a text to Harriet—<Helen and I had a fight yesterday. We’re talking things out now, but we’ve got enough fundamental conflict between our Powers and worldviews that it’s hard for us to understand each other. Would you be willing to come to my place and help us figure it out?>—and waited.

After a minute, a return text came through. <There in 15>

“She’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” Jon said.

The sixteen minutes and thirty-five seconds it took for Harriet to arrive were spent with Jon and Helen sitting on the sofa in a companionable sort of quiet, and this time, Jon felt no particular urge to break it.

They would talk when Harriet got there. Until then, they could just be in each other’s presence.

Finally, Harriet landed in the middle of the living room, a gust of wind announcing her presence an instant before she dropped into view.

“Hey,” she said. “So, what’s up?” Her eye fell on Jon’s neck, and she sighed. “Dammit, I was hoping by ‘fight’ you just meant ‘argument.’”

“No such luck, I’m afraid,” said Helen.

“All right,” said Harriet, taking a seat on a chair with a good view of the sofa. “I’m going to ask each of you in turn what happened, and I want you to tell me—and the other—your side of the story.” She looked at Jon, almost if not quite making eye contact. “Jon. Tell me about your fight with Helen yesterday.”

Jon took a moment to figure out where to start, then began.

“Yesterday morning,” he said, “a woman named Emily Liu came in to give a statement. I thought at first that it couldn’t be related to the Powers, because I couldn’t feel any of them on her, but the statement itself was classically Spiral. It confused me, so once Emily was gone I knocked on the wall and called for Helen. I was hoping to ask her about it, if she knew of anyone affiliated with her Power who could cover their tracks like that, or if she herself had been involved somehow. She didn’t answer, but that didn’t bother me. I honestly have no idea how the wall-knocking thing even works, and”—Jon looked over at Helen—“I have a feeling she doesn’t want me to. Which is fine. So I sort of... left a voicemail? I don’t know if she heard it, but either way, I put it out of my mind and went on with my day.” He winced. “Or I tried to, anyway. It kept bothering me. Something about it just... didn’t feel right. So that afternoon, I tried to contact Helen again. She still didn’t answer, and as I was turning to go back to my desk, I saw a human head on the rug.” He smiled. “Well, a nonhuman head, technically. It was Karolina, of course. Pranking me. Fake blood and everything. The Eye gave me some information about how long it takes the average severed head to die from lack of oxygen, and I was thinking about that, and about Emily’s statement, and I realized that Emily’s experience, along with some symptoms I’d observed while she was in my office, were consistent with chronic carbon monoxide poisoning. I called Emily right away, of course, and told her to get out of her building immediately. But when she got to the front door of her apartment, there were two of them.”

“Two front doors?” Harriet clarified.

“Yes,” Jon replied. “They looked the same, apparently. At that point, I knew it was Helen, but Emily had come to me for help. She was counting on me, she trusted me, and I couldn’t... I couldn’t just let her die. So I told her to feel the doorknobs, and open the door that didn’t feel warm. I got her out safely, and told her to call the paramedics, and hung up. And as soon as I did, Helen showed up in my office, congratulating me on... on winning some sort of game I hadn’t even known I was playing. She was talking about Emily like she was some sort of trophy, just some... prize for winning the game. So I tried to tell her that Emily was a person, not a thing, and that she couldn’t just talk about people like... like property. She told me that people are things, that there isn’t a clear divide between person and non-person, and we started arguing about that, and then...” He looked away from Harriet for a moment and took a deep breath. “My patron doesn’t want me to be friends with a Spiral being. I know that, it’s not surprising, although really it ought to give her more credit for encouraging me to stop fighting it all the time. But when she phrased some things in a way that was perhaps unfortunate—” He winced. “She called me a food guarder. The Eye told me that that’s a phrase animal shelters use to describe dogs who get aggressive if anyone gets near their food, and that dogs like that are usually put down immediately. And when it started reminding me of all the...” He swallowed hard, forcing the words out. “All the humiliating things she’s seen me go through, and... and do, and... hinting that she didn’t really see me as a person because of it, that I was just a sort of, of project...” He took another deep, shaky breath. “Unfortunately, that fear was familiar enough that I believed it.”

“So, you’ve worried about that before?” Harriet looked at Jon sympathetically. “About people thinking less of you because of your history?”

Jon winced. “Yes.”

“And Helen knows more of it than anyone else, so that fear tends to focus on her?”

Jon glanced over at Helen, but he couldn’t read her expression, so he looked back at Harriet. “Yes.”

“All right,” Harriet said. “Carry on. How did you react to thinking Helen thought that way about you?”

“I was angry,” Jon replied in a slow, measured tone. “I felt... betrayed. More than that, I felt like an idiot. I’d been starting to trust her, to... to believe that we were friends, and in that moment I thought I’d been stupid to believe that anyone could see me as an actual friend instead of some... pathetic, starved rescue project. Now I realize the Eye was just running me around, but right then I believed it one hundred percent. So when it told me that Martin was in danger and Helen knew something about it that she wasn’t telling me, I reacted... badly.”

“Badly how?”

“Well, it wasn’t that bad at first,” Jon said. “At first, I just asked her, no compulsion, if there was something she wasn’t telling me, which... in retrospect was kind of a stupid question. But when I narrowed it down to specifically something about the Magnus Institute that was putting Martin in danger, and she told me it was none of my business, and then that she wouldn’t tell me because I’d just put myself right back in that situation if I knew, which, of course, set off all my worries about her not actually thinking of me as an equal... that’s when things really went bad.”

Jon looked down, guilt aching in his chest. He didn’t particularly want to talk about this part, but... he’d done it, and he needed to own up to it.

Harriet nodded encouragingly, and Jon went on.

“I compelled her to tell me if Martin was in danger,” he said. “She said of course he was, then told me to stop. I compelled her again. She was scared, she was resisting. She told me to stop again, and again, I ignored her. The third time I tried, she jammed her hand into my neck before I could get the words out. She told me I could try if I liked, and I might succeed, but that she’d resist, and... and that if I did try to compel her, only one of us would survive it. And then she took her hand away.” He sighed. “I told her she should leave before either of us did something we’d regret, and she did. Apparently, she went and got Lynette, who patched me up and fed me and helped me realize that my Power had been screwing with me again.” He turned to Helen. “I am so sorry.”

Helen’s mouth twisted a bit in what might have been a faint smile. “Just so you know,” she said, “if anyone wants to put you down, they’re going to have to get through me. And I’m very difficult to get through.”

Jon swallowed the lump in his throat. “Thanks,” he managed. “That’s, ah... that’s nice to know.”

“All right,” said Harriet. “Helen, your turn. Tell me about your fight with Jon yesterday.”

For a long moment, Helen said nothing.

“I’d been watching Emily for a while,” she finally began. “The carbon monoxide had been building for weeks, and she was responding beautifully. At some point I hid her CO detector, but as I told Jon, it was still in its box, so it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. I figured I’d let her stew for a bit, get properly paranoid, then snap her up once she was too out of it to notice if her front door wasn’t quite where she’d left it. But right as she was getting there, she made an appointment to talk to Jon.” Her arms moved in a sort of crossing-uncrossing pattern that reminded Jon of one of the pages in a book of optical illusions he’d found as a child. “I wasn’t expecting her to do that, but I certainly didn’t mind. I thought it might be a nice challenge for him, and a fun little game for us to play together. So I let her be a little longer, and when she went in to give her statement, I listened in.”

Jon was briefly somewhat annoyed that Helen had been eavesdropping on a statement appointment without his knowledge, but quickly realized he had exactly zero ground to stand on in that regard.

“At first it seemed to be going well,” Helen was saying. “Jon asked me if I had any information about Emily’s experience, which was rather sweet, but I didn’t answer. I wanted to see if he could figure it out on his own. As soon as he did, he called Emily and told her to get outside, so I added another challenge. I gave Emily two identical front doors to choose from—one led outside, the other into my halls. Jon figured out a way to help her tell which was which, of course. He used the temperature of the doorknobs. I was proud of him, both for solving that puzzle and for figuring out what was going on in the first place, so I went to his office to congratulate him, and... he snapped at me. He didn’t like that I’d used Emily in our game, for some reason. Started going on about people not being things, or some such nonsense.” Helen’s voice had as sharp an edge to it as her fingers.

Harriet nodded. “Do you know why that upset you so much?”

“He used to think like that,” Helen said. “Dividing the world into people and things. A bright line. He would never admit it was as imaginary as anything I could come up with.”

Harriet tilted her head. “You were on the wrong side of it?” 

“And he seemed set on keeping me there,” Helen agreed. “He’d go all bristly and sharp if I so much as implied we had anything in common. Never mind that he was going through more or less the same thing Helen had been struggling with just a few months earlier.” She sighed, a rush of air with a faint stridor to it. “I thought he knew better by now.”

Jon’s stomach sank.

She was right, of course. Jon had spent months clinging to the delusion that he was still human, and in his effort to maintain it had forcibly pushed away any and all evidence to the contrary. Including Helen.

She’d told him he was like her, that he’d be happier if he embraced what he’d become instead of fighting to preserve a version of himself that no longer existed.

On some level, he’d known she was right the whole time, even as she told him what he least wanted to hear. He’d known she was right, and he’d hated her for it.

Dammit, he’d been so stupid.

“Jon?” Harriet said.

“Yes?”

“Do you think Helen is a person now?”

Jon turned to Helen. “Of course I do,” he said. “Humans are people, but... they’re not the only people, I know that now. I... I didn’t think about how that might sound to you, but... I should have.” He sighed. “Again, I’m sorry. For that, and for... how I treated you before.”

Harriet nodded. “Helen, you were saying?”

“I tried to explain why that distinction doesn’t mean anything,” Helen said, “but the more I said the bristlier he got. At one point, I asked him what the issue was, and he said something about having to hear from his victims how they feel about being fed on. I thought maybe that was why he was acting so strange, that he was just being territorial about his food—it must be difficult to get to know your victims as personally as he has to, and besides, he’s always been protective of his meals. It’s actually kind of sweet, sometimes.”

Jon abruptly realized that Helen was probably talking about herself, then quickly decided not to think about that too much.

“All right,” said Harriet. “When you called Jon a food guarder, what did you mean by that?”

“Not an insult,” Helen replied. “I certainly didn’t mean he should be put down, or anything horrible like that. It’s a perfectly normal response to what his coworkers”—if her voice had been sharp earlier, now it was positively dripping venom—“did to him, and some of it is just his personality. I was trying to tell him it was fine to be reacting the way he was.” Her expression might’ve been confusion, or sorrow. “But then... he got quiet, and his face twisted up. I asked him what was wrong, and... he asked if there was something I wasn’t telling him.” She frowned. “I probably should have figured his patron was playing games with his head. But it was such a silly question. I said of course there was, and he specified that he was talking about the Magnus Institute, and Martin in particular.”

The amount of bitterness Helen attached to Martin’s name wasn’t quite as extreme as the amount with which she’d said his coworkers, but it was enough to make Jon feel sick.

He fought back the urge to get defensive, though. That was what had gotten them into this mess in the first place.

“Helen?” said Harriet. “Without saying what it is, do you know something relevant about the Magnus Institute and Martin that Jon might want to know?”

“Yes.”

“And—no judgment—why weren’t, or aren’t, you willing to tell him?”

Helen huffed. “I hate that he’s willing to throw his life away for people who would’ve gladly killed him.”

“Martin wasn’t involved in that,” Jon interjected before he could stop himself.

“He ratted you out to the people who were,” Helen snapped.

“He wanted them to help me,” Jon snapped back. “He didn’t know how they would react.”

“You didn’t need help, you were only doing what you—”

“He didn’t know that either!”

“Okay, guys?” Harriet held out her hands in a placating gesture. “Let’s try that again. Helen, you were saying you don’t like that Jon is willing to sacrifice himself for people who want him dead, which is fair. But from what I’m hearing, Jon’s not particularly concerned about the others at this point.” She turned to Jon. “Is it fair to say that, as of right now, most if not all of your concern is focused on Martin, specifically?”

Jon gritted his teeth. “Yes.”

“Is there a reason for that?” Harriet frowned. “Beyond him not having actively threatened to kill you?”

Jon took a deep breath and willed his voice to come out level. Archivist abilities had to be good for something other than acquiring useless information and prying into other people’s business.

“A few days before I died,” he finally said, aware that most avatars wouldn’t phrase it that way but also that his experience of his change had been nothing like that of most other avatars, “we were getting ready for the Unknowing, and... I had this awful feeling. I mean, of course I did, the Stranger would take over the world if we failed, and all of us who were going knew we might not make it out even if we succeeded, but it wasn’t just that. It was more a sense that, however things turned out, I wouldn’t be coming back. That, whether or not we stopped the Unknowing, the person I had been wasn’t going to survive the experience.” He laughed softly. “Maybe that was my Power giving me a heads-up; my instincts aren’t usually that accurate. But even beyond that... I’d escaped an attempt by the Circus of the Other to use my skin to bring on their apocalypse, and I knew perfectly well that Elias was using me to stop it. I was allowing that, because I didn’t want the Stranger to win either, but it really wasn’t helping with the feeling of being a convenient object for everyone around me to use for their own purposes, whatever they were. Anyway, what I wanted more than anything right then was just... something normal. One more chance to feel like an ordinary person instead of a weapon. And sometime in the early afternoon, on the last vaguely normal day of my human life, I asked Martin if he wanted to get lunch with me.” He took a deep breath. “I didn’t tell him what I was thinking, but he must’ve known, somehow. For that one precious hour, we talked about”—he laughed softly—“must’ve been at least a dozen different things, and we didn’t mention the apocalypse once. I asked him how he made his tea turn out so good, and he asked me about that curry I used to bring for lunch sometimes that apparently made the break room smell really nice, and we talked about Shakespeare plays and what sort of weather we each preferred and whether cats or dogs were the superior domestic animal, and it was...” He shook his head. “Spectacularly human. And Martin, he’s just... like that. He’s incredibly perceptive, and he cares so much. He’s stuck with Peter Lukas right now because he’s trying to protect the rest of the Institute staff. And he’s brave, and resilient—Helen, you remember, he survived two weeks wandering around in the corridors, and another two weeks under siege in his flat—and clever and curious and too damn loyal for his own good, and—”

Jon abruptly realized that he should probably have stopped talking approximately five adjectives ago.

“You love him, huh.” Harriet smiled a bit sadly. “Still?”

Jon’s face was hot enough that he briefly wondered if Helen could feel it from her spot on the couch next to him. “Perhaps unfortunately, yes.”

“Oof. Sorry. That’s rough.” Harriet’s face was genuinely sympathetic for a moment, before she abruptly returned to a smile. “Okay, now that Jon’s crush has thoroughly derailed the conversation, let’s get back on track.”

Jon glared halfheartedly at her, but said nothing.

“So, Helen,” Harriet went on. “Jon asked you, without compulsion, to tell him something you knew about the Magnus Institute and Martin, and you refused, on the grounds that you didn’t want him to put himself in danger for the sake of people who, in your opinion, didn’t deserve his consideration. What happened then?”

“He got all... crackly,” Helen said. “Loud. I don’t remember very well, but I know I told him to stop and he didn’t.” A ripple of vibration ran through her, and Jon realized with a guilty start that she was shuddering. “I didn’t want to hurt him, but it was the only way I could make him stop, and... if he hadn’t, at least one of us would have been hurt far worse. I thought... I thought maybe he’d forgotten how our Powers interacted, so I... I tried to warn him. I knew at that point that it had to be something, his patron interfering or some sort of curse or... or something. Jon wouldn’t just try to kill me, I know him better than that.”

Jon frowned, confusion warring with a horrible suspicion just under the surface of his mind. “Try to kill you?” he asked Helen. “I didn’t—what?”

Helen looked taken aback, maybe confused, maybe angry, until Harriet broke in.

“Helen, I don’t think he knows,” she said slowly.

Helen looked distinctly upset, but Jon couldn’t identify her expression with any more specificity. “That’s—how could he not?”

“What do I not know?” asked Jon, frustrated curiosity bubbling over even as he refused to let it grow into compulsion.

Harriet took a breath in and out. “You know how Helen could actually hurt you, when most people couldn’t, because her Power and yours are directly opposed? It works both ways. Being Seen, being forced to cram themselves into too many direct, linear facts so they can be spoken aloud in response to a question... it’s not just uncomfortable for someone like Helen, it’s dangerous.”

“So... if I used compulsion to ask Helen the wrong question, or put too much force behind it... I could... damage her?” Jon felt sick.

“You could kill her,” said Harriet bluntly. “This version of her, at least. And I don’t think you could actually destroy the Distortion—I’m not sure anything could do that—but you could probably do some serious damage it would be hard pressed to fix.”

Jon shook his head. “That can’t be right, I...” He turned to Helen. “You’re so much stronger than me, how could I...” He swallowed hard, choking on guilt and horror. “Could I really have killed you?”

“You hadn’t even changed yet when you killed Michael,” she said flatly.

“When I...” Jon hadn’t killed Michael, he couldn’t have, he’d barely been alive when—

He’d felt, in Helen’s memories, the way Michael Shelley had been dragged back to the surface by the statement, how the long-suppressed emotions of a dead man had destabilized what he’d become. He’d seen the thinning of the barrier between Helen Richardson and the world outside, how she’d crashed through that thin boundary into being something new. He’d heard what the new Helen had said, in her first moments, about the Distortion letting emotions that shouldn’t have been his overwhelm her. About losing her way.

Oh, God.

“Oh, God,” Jon whispered aloud. “Helen, I— I’m sorry, I should’ve known, I didn’t—” He broke off as horror at what he might have done threatened to choke him. “I am so, so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Helen replied. “I thought you knew.” She paused, tilting her head to the side. “I think I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Hang on. When you said I might be able to take the information from you, but only one of us would survive it.” Jon briefly looked Helen in the eye by reflex, then quickly looked away. “You just said. It wasn’t a threat. You were just warning me that you’d defend yourself if I made you, because you didn’t want to die but you didn’t want to kill me, either.” He shook his head. “You thought I’d tried to compel you while knowing full well that it could kill you, and you still came back to talk to me?”

Helen smiled. “Apparently you thought I stabbed you and threatened to kill you just because I didn’t want to tell you something, and you still wanted to talk to me.” Her expression returned to something vaguely resembling its neutral. “I know you wouldn’t do that on purpose without a very good reason. So it had to be something.”

Jon took a deep breath. “I appreciate your faith in me. Even if I haven’t given you much cause for it.”

“You’ve demonstrated a remarkable talent for achieving the impossible,” Helen replied. “I don’t see why being friends with a natural enemy should be any different.”

Jon smiled at her, and she returned the smile in her own comfortingly unsettling fashion.

“Well, I’m very glad you cleared that up,” Harriet interjected. “May I give you both some advice?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Jon, and Helen made a sound vaguely reminiscent of a distant swarm of bees that Jon assumed was a hum of agreement.

“Jon, you first.” Harriet turned to him as she continued speaking. “I assume this goes without saying, but I think you should commit to never intentionally using any of your Beholding-related abilities on Helen ever again. She is putting a monumental amount of trust in you by letting you get so close, so make sure you don’t give her cause to regret it. Beyond that, watch your mouth when you talk about ‘monster-y’”—she put the word in air quotes—“stuff. I know you’re still dealing with a lot of the crap about us you had drilled into your head for ages, but remember that the rest of us can hear you. Especially Helen. She’s dealt with enough of you taking your self-esteem issues out on her.” She breathed out slowly. “You’re still having some issues with hunting, aren’t you.”

Jon didn’t reply, which was probably answer enough.

“Did Mari tell you about the work she did with orca populations in Alaska before Jenny joined the family?”

“Um... no, I don’t believe she did.” Jon had a feeling he knew where this was going, but he let Harriet keep going uninterrupted—partially to be polite, but also because he wanted to see if he was right.

Besides, even if it was what he thought, it might help anyway, just to hear her say it.

“One of the pods she was tracking specialized in hunting porpoises,” Harriet was saying. “Harbor porpoises, primarily—the same species she’s mainly studying now. You heard her talk about those porpoises. She used to talk about the orcas the same way. They’re individuals, and they relate to each other in a whole variety of complicated ways, and they hunt in groups, which involves planning and cooperating and having a grand time doing it. Frankly, I’d be comfortable calling any dolphin a person. Plenty of other nonhuman species as well. Humans matter, but they’re not special. And once you get rid of the idea that humans are the only people, you realize that people hunt other people all the time. That’s just how the world works. We all have our place on the food chain, and ours happens to involve feeding on humans.” She shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with that, any more than there’s anything wrong with orcas feeding on porpoises. And you don’t have to get rid of the idea that humans are people, with thoughts and feelings and agency and plans for the future and friends and family who will be hurt by their deaths, to have that be true.” She looked at Jon’s face, making eye contact for a second before focusing somewhere in the neighborhood of his forehead. “I don’t think the issue was that Helen didn’t consider Emily a person. I think she just has a different idea than you’re used to of what that means.”

Helen gestured vaguely at Harriet. “That.”

“Does that help?” asked Harriet.

Jon had, in fact, been roughly correct about what Harriet was going to say. It still somehow hit much harder than he’d expected. “I—I actually think it might, yes.”

“Good,” Harriet said with a smile. “All right, Helen, your turn. I know Jon is still having trouble letting go of human morality, and I know that’s frustrating at best and makes you worried he still hates you at worst. And he absolutely needs to work on that, and on being mindful of the ways it affects the people around him. But you know Jon. He’s stubborn as all get-out, and one effect of that is that it’s really hard for anyone to change his mind—even him. And he only started trying like three weeks ago. Give him some time.”

Helen nodded.

“Also, like you said, Jon can be territorial about his meals. Probably the best way to deal with that is to let him have it. For the foreseeable future, at least, I recommend that you consider Jon’s victims off-limits. You’ve got plenty of options, and I think it would help you both avoid unnecessary conflict. Sound okay?”

Helen smirked at Jon. “I assume that doesn’t apply if they’re trying to kill you?”

“You assume correctly,” Jon replied, thinking about Manuela Dominguez and his own past self’s obliviousness to friendly overtures, especially when they took the form of devouring his enemies.

“Good clarification,” said Harriet, sounding utterly serious. “Are you two good from here?”

Jon looked back at her. “You’ve done this a lot, haven’t you?”

Harriet laughed. “Spending a quarter century as one of the very few people in a family of over three hundred with solid emotional intelligence and who actually likes mediating conflict will do that.”

“Fair enough,” Jon replied. “I think we’re all right. Helen?”

“I’d say so,” she replied.

“Awesome,” said Harriet. “See you soon.” Without further ado, she fell out of the room.

For a few quiet, peaceable minutes, Jon and Helen sat on the couch and said nothing.

“I could tell you,” Helen finally said into the silence. “If you wanted. As long as you didn’t make me, it wouldn’t hurt me. And I suppose that place is still part of your life. It made you. So... if you still want to know, I’ll tell you.”

Jon took a deep breath in, held it for several seconds, then slowly let it out.

Of course he still wanted to know. Badly. Martin was in danger, and Jon might be able to help if he knew something he currently didn’t but could. That combined with his lingering curiosity about the Magnus Institute in general and exactly what had been going on there combined to form a screaming chorus of yes, yes, tell me that Jon had to bite his tongue hard enough to make it bleed to keep back.

After a moment, though, he was able to force the feeling down far enough to risk opening his mouth.

“I do want to know,” he said at last, “but I don’t want you to tell me.” He took another breath. In, hold, out. “I sent an email to Martin. I told him what I knew, which wasn’t very much—just that he was in danger and that the tunnels might have something to do with it. He wrote me back, and he just said, ‘I know what I’m doing. I need you to trust me.’” In, hold, out. “I do trust Martin. And I trust you.” He sighed. “Certainly more than I trust myself. So if you say I’m going to go charging back into that situation if I hear whatever this is, I don’t want to hear it. Martin’s made his decision, and I’ve made mine, and right now the best thing I can do for both of us is to let those decisions stand.”

If Jon wasn’t mistaken, Helen looked impressed.

“I think you just made a very mature and responsible decision,” she said, in a tone that made Jon suspect that wasn’t the end of the sentence.

When no more was forthcoming after a moment, Jon slowly nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I did.”

“It’s the worst, isn’t it?” said Helen sympathetically.

Jon laughed. “It’s awful!”

Helen grinned at him, the smile spilling over the sides of her face. “If it would make you feel better, I can tell you something else?”

Jon’s head snapped towards her at a genuinely embarrassing rate. “Yes?”

Helen’s grin somehow got wider. “All right, settle down.”

Jon did his best, though he doubted he could reasonably be said to have ‘settled down.’”

“I dropped Jared Hopworth off a cliff,” Helen announced without any sort of lead-up whatsoever.

Jon wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it definitely had not been that.

“I thought that was more Mike and Harriet’s department,” he managed after a moment of struggling to think of anything to say.

“Don’t put me in a box,” Helen said, her playful expression still firmly in place. “It wasn’t really a cliff, I suppose. The door I let him out through just happened to open very high above a very big and fast-moving river. And I got your rib back.” Her shoulders moved in what Jon had come to recognize as a shrug. “I didn’t do it for food, anyway.”

Jon frowned, hoping his suspicion was correct but unwilling to verbalize it. “Why, then?”

“Do you have any idea what someone like him could have done to you with something like that? I wasn’t going to let him keep it.” Helen sounded genuinely distressed by the idea. “The way he got it was rotten, too. You were starving. He knew you wouldn’t be able to say no. Did you really think I was going to let him leave after he took advantage of you like that?”

Jon fought back the shame rising through his gut, the impulse to curl up in a prickly ball with all his many weaknesses on the inside, leaving nothing but spines for anyone to touch.

Helen had seen that. She’d watched him trade away part of his body for food, and her response, apparently, had been to inflict violent revenge on the person who had put him in that position in the first place and to respect him not a bit less.

“I’m not sorry,” he finally said in a near whisper. “If I hadn’t taken that deal, I don’t think I would have gotten out of that coffin. I wouldn’t’ve been strong enough, and then... Daisy and I would’ve been trapped there forever.” He forced himself to take yet another calming breath. In, hold, out. “I’m not sorry I went in there, either. Daisy... this way, when she dies, at least she’ll be free. No matter what she’d done, she didn’t deserve to rot in there forever. No one could possibly deserve that. So I’m not sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Helen replied. “You’ve got a remarkable talent for achieving the impossible. Don’t ever apologize for that. Don’t ever apologize for surviving, either.” She tilted her head. “Although, with you, those overlap quite frequently.”

Jon smiled wryly. “You have a point, there.”

“I’m glad you somehow managed to keep yourself alive until I found a way to get you to see reason,” said Helen. “Should’ve tried that sooner, I suppose. I was trying to let you make your own bad decisions.”

“Well, you did an excellent job of that,” said Jon ruefully. “Although, in fairness, I was making it quite easy.”

“Actually, you were making it extraordinarily difficult,” Helen shot back.

Jon sighed. “All right, fair.”

“I still have your rib,” said Helen, once again giving Jon a serious case of conversational whiplash. “It’s a bit busted up from the fall, and I wasn’t able to get it out as cleanly as I might have liked, but it’s all there. You can have it back, if you want.”

Jon shook his head. “Honestly, it’s probably safer with you than anywhere else.”

“I won’t always be me.”

Jon leaned back into the couch.

Helen, the Helen he knew, was a probably-ancient Spiral creature, and everyone that creature had ever been, and the real estate agent Jon hadn’t been able to save who was the source of her current face and name, and an entirely new person who’d come into existence in the wax museum basement where she and Jon had killed her previous self together.

Someday, this Helen would be gone and a new Distortion would once have been her. Jon had no way of knowing how that new Distortion would feel about him.

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” he said, then winced. “Besides, with everything you know about me, if the next you wanted to hurt me, I really don’t think the rib is my biggest problem.” He sighed. “Helen?”

“Yes?”

“Could you do me a favor and outlive me?”

Helen laughed.

It was a wonderful laugh, echoing and spinning around a space that didn’t exist, high and warm and utterly delightful, and soon Jon was laughing too, at himself and at Helen’s laughter and at the sheer improbability of them being themselves, here, now, laughing together.

He couldn’t believe he’d ever hated that sound.

“I’ll do my best,” Helen replied once the laughter had died down.

“How do you feel about hugs?” Jon blurted out on impulse.

Helen appeared to consider for a moment, then tilted her head to the side. “For you? Sure.”

(Giant anteaters, Myrmecophaga tridactyla, rear up on their hind legs and display their formidable front claws to intimidate potential threats. They have been reported to wrap their front limbs around other animals, including humans, in a manner resembling a hug, and kill them by using their claws to puncture the lungs, although human deaths from giant anteater claws are generally the result of exsanguination via damage to major arteries. For this reason, the expression ‘an anteater’s hug’ is a synonym for betrayal in Brazilian Portuguese.)

Nope, Jon told the Eye as forcefully as he could within the confines of his own head as he scooted closer to Helen on the couch and wrapped his arms around her as she did the same to him. Don’t care. She’s my friend. Fuck off.

Jon could feel Helen’s fingers twisted against his back, carefully angled to avoid the sharp edges touching him. The feeling of her body against his was all kinds of bizarre, but somehow that wrongness, that not-as-it-should-be, felt incredibly right.

Neither of them were what they’d once been, or perhaps, by some measures, what they ought to be. But they were here, and themselves (whatever that meant), and happy.

After a few moments, Helen began to disengage, and Jon scooted back to give her space.

“Archivist,” she said from across the room, “would you like to dance with me?”

Jon stared at the closed door where Helen had been a moment ago—where she still was.

Her phrasing had turned something in his stomach, but he silently reminded himself that, whatever she meant, it was nothing like what the word ‘dance’ had meant to him in the past.

She wouldn’t hurt him. Except in self-defense, she had never hurt him. Not as herself, anyway.

Jon put a hand on the smooth, warm doorknob and turned it.

The door clicked shut behind him, and he gasped in astonished delight.

The walls of the corridor were awash in vibrant, ever-shifting color, moving in a swirling pattern that seemed to be calling him further in.

Not a compulsion. He could resist, he knew. When he glanced over his shoulder, simply out of curiosity, the door was still there. He could turn around and open it and Helen would let him leave.

That was probably part of the reason he had absolutely no desire to do that.

The lights on the wall rose and fell in a wave, just slow enough for him to keep pace with, if he broke into a run. He did so, running alongside the flaring light, grinning and trailing one hand along the wall as the colors changed and rippled out in the wake of his fingertips.

He was falling towards the wall as the direction of gravity shifted. He landed on what looked like the same carpet he’d just left behind, but felt like a trampoline, normal-looking floor distorting in odd ways under his weight. He jumped, higher and higher, until the bounce slowly left the floor and the lights began flaring again, and he raced to follow.

Time was blurry, after that. Shape and color and light were formless suggestions of themselves, and they didn’t need to be anything else. Nothing had a name, and everything was alive, and it was absolutely, utterly glorious.

They danced together for some endless while, Jon fully aware in thoughts without words or direction that Helen was right there with him, even with her humanoid form nowhere in sight.

Some time later, exhausted but happy, Jon lay on the soft, pillowy ceiling. He nestled into the yielding surface, comfortable and held, watching in wonder as Helen’s colors swirled around him.

It was the best thing he’d ever seen.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered.

It took him a moment to realize what had changed.

The walls were once again covered in pictures, and they were all of Jon.

Walking through a puce corridor with Oliver, lightly touching the smile on his face in clear disbelief. Sitting across from Gretchen in IKEA, face set in a look of intent focus. Sitting at his desk, staring straight ahead, eyes glowing. Laughing at yellow wallpaper as Helen’s vaguely humanoid form stood beside him. Emerging from the Buried, filthy and bruised and exhausted but alive and victorious. Pressing a hand to the wall of the corridors, a faint smile stealing across his face. Slamming his hands down on Elias’s desk, wearing the clothes Helen had found for him after she’d gotten him out of the Circus’s basement, all determination and righteous fury even as he was sure he’d shattered beyond repair. Running through a rainbow revelry, bouncing, falling, laughing.

In all of the pictures, no matter how he’d felt at the time, he looked bright and alive and himself.

Somehow, he looked beautiful.

“Is that really how I look to you?” he asked in quiet wonder.

The lights flared, then faded back to their baseline. A slower, smoother change then when Helen was using the lights as a sharp rebuke, but a similar feeling of chiding him for his self-deprecation.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

He didn’t need words, not here, not now.

He got the message loud and clear.

Chapter Text

The call came in at seven-thirty on Monday morning, because of course it did.

Jon was sitting on his sofa with a mug of tea, preparing to head in to work, when his phone rang. Caller ID said it was Oliver, which Jon Knew before he looked at the screen, but he checked anyway, mostly out of habit.

He picked up. “Hello?”

“Hey Jon,” said Oliver.

Something in his tone made Jon’s heart sink. “What is it?”

“Um... something I saw last night. In the dreams. And... I just thought you needed to know, if you don’t already.”

The growing dread in the pit of Jon’s stomach made Oliver’s mercifully short pause feel much longer than it was.

“I went past the Magnus Institute,” Oliver continued. “Not sure why, I just... had a feeling. And...” He took an audible breath, as if mentally debating how best to phrase something. “Something really bad is going to happen there. Soon.”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘really bad’?” Jon asked, compulsion bursting out in a moment of frantic need to know.

“At least ten dead,” Oliver immediately replied. “I couldn’t tell exactly how many, because the building wasn’t there anymore. It was just a pile of rubble, with the vines weaving in and out. I couldn’t see any of the victims. I think they must all have been trapped inside.” He sighed. “Not being able to see the people made it harder to tell, but... I’d say it’ll happen within the next few days.”

Jon swallowed hard to clear the tightness from his throat. “Thank you for telling me,” he said in a forced monotone.

“You’re welcome,” said Oliver. “Are you—”

Jon hung up and called Martin.

After two rings of Jon frantically thinking pick up, pick up, pick up , the telltale click of the call connecting was replaced by Martin’s voice—hollow, distant, dull, but unmistakable.

“Who is this?”

“Martin, it’s Jon,” Jon said. “You need to get out of the building now. It’s going to collapse soon, within a few days but could be anytime now. At least ten fatalities.”

For a long, painful moment, there was silence on the other end of the line.

Then, without a word, Martin hung up.

For a moment, Jon sat perfectly still, tears welling up in his eyes as helplessness and grief overwhelmed him.

Finally, he crumpled in on himself, buried his face in the back of the sofa, and cried.

He was so lost in misery that he almost missed the sound of Helen’s door creaking open.

“Jon?” she called from across the room. “Are you all right? What’s the matter?”

Jon couldn’t answer.

A moment later, Jon felt something soft settling over his shoulders.

Slowly, he looked up, to see Helen sitting next to him with the blanket from the back of the sofa—the same blanket he’d just been crying into—held carefully between her fingers, draping it over him with what Jon suspected was a look of intense concentration.

Jon didn’t stop to think about it. He just clutched the blanket around himself, turned towards Helen and her stilted, inexperienced, painfully earnest attempt to comfort him, and, slowly enough that she could move away if she wanted, leaned against her side.

Helen didn’t move away.

After a moment, she wrapped an arm around him, pulling him closer with fingers twisted and splayed to keep the sharp edges away from his body.

Much as Jon wanted to cling to Helen while he grieved for a thousand things that had been and had never been and could have been and would never, ever be, her humanoid body was a remarkably uncomfortable surface to nestle against, and after a few moments of Jon trying and failing to find a comfortable position, Helen grabbed a pillow from the side of the sofa and placed it between them.

Jon leaned into it gratefully and continued crying his heart out.

Eventually, the tears slowed and finally dried up into a dull, miserable ache.

Jon took a deep, shuddering breath. “Oliver called,” he said. “The Magnus Institute is going to collapse—as in, literally, the building. Sometime in the next few days. Unclear how many deaths, but at least ten.” Another breath. “I called Martin and told him. He didn’t say a word. Just hung up.”

For a long moment, there was nothing but silence and the odd, almost rubbery pressure of Helen’s embrace.

A few more tears slid down Jon’s face, and he didn’t bother wiping them away.

“I’m sorry about your Martin,” Helen said gently.

Martin was not Jon’s. Martin would never be Jon’s. Jon would never be Martin’s, either.

Maybe, if Jon had gotten his act together earlier, things could have been different. Maybe they could have had a little time, at least. To be friends, if not partners. At the very least, maybe Jon wouldn’t have done Martin so much harm. Maybe he could have brought him more happiness than pain.

As the matter stood, Jon had caused Martin very little happiness and a great deal of pain. When he’d left the Magnus Institute and the pretense of humanity behind him, Jon had known it was highly unlikely that he’d ever be able to change that. That not hurting Martin any more was probably the best he could do, on that front.

It was still a different thing to know that, as likely as not, Martin’s story was ending. That thirty-one short, lonely years with a miserable final chapter were all he would ever get, and that Jon’s place as one of many antagonists in that story would soon be utterly unchangeable, no matter how much he might wish it otherwise.

Jon collapsed back into the pillow. “There’s got to be something I can do,” he said. “It would... it would be a bad idea to kidnap him, wouldn’t it?”

Helen did not dignify that with a response.

“I know,” Jon muttered. “I just...”

Helen’s arm squeezed in, pulling Jon even more tightly against her.

For a moment, Jon just melted into the odd-textured embrace.

“You don’t have to tell me whatever it is you didn’t want me to know,” he finally said. “But do you have any idea what might cause the Institute, the physical building, to collapse like that?”

Helen took a moment to consider her answer.

“Perhaps,” she finally said. “I could probably make an educated guess.”

“If your guess is correct,” Jon said slowly, “is there anything, anything at all, I could do to help Martin without completely overriding his agency?”

“Not that you haven’t already done,” Helen replied after another long moment. “But it may be some comfort to know that, if I’m right, there’s a good chance Martin caused the collapse. Will cause it, anyway. Most likely deliberately.”

Jon took a deep breath.

If Martin thought the Magnus Institute needed to be razed to the ground, badly enough that he was willing to risk the lives of everyone inside... he was probably right. And whatever he hoped to accomplish by the Institute’s destruction, if he was willing to give his life for it, that was his decision to make.

Still.

“Is this what it was like for you?” Jon asked Helen, nestling still closer into the pillow that was currently standing in for her.

He didn’t need to specify what he meant. Helen had spent months doing her best to get through to Jon as he slowly destroyed himself, knowing she could help if he’d let her, knowing he wouldn’t. Giving him an out that he could take at any time and watching him reject it time and time again, even as she could tell how bad things were getting.

Now, apparently, history had seen fit to repeat itself with Jon on the other side.

Helen hummed and tightened her grip around his shoulders.

Jon sighed. “Turnabout is fair play, I suppose.”

...

Eventually, of course, Jon had to go to work.

If the Eye had let him, he might have called out. Knowing you were waiting for the destruction of the place that had made you into your current self, with which you had once been intimately connected, and quite possibly for the horrible, painful, terrifying death of someone you loved seemed to Jon like an excellent reason to take time off, especially when you knew it would happen soon but had no further idea of the timeframe.

Apparently, however, the Eye was not of the same opinion, because Jon had only been cuddling with Helen on the sofa for twenty minutes when the tug in the back of his mind telling him he needed to be in his office now became too strong to ignore.

When Jon told Helen, she immediately offered to bring him there herself, and Jon gladly accepted. He didn’t know if the Magnus Institute going down would have any noticeable effects on him, but if it did, he really did not want to be dealing with that on public transportation.

Almost as soon as Jon had sat down at his desk and opened his work computer, a call came in from Erica.

Jon forced his face into his best approximation of a pleasant smile and clicked to pick up.

When he registered Erica’s expression, the smile quickly faded.

“Hi, Jon,” Erica said, then immediately jumped in. “I was looking into the history of the Magnus Institute, like I told you I would. At first, I was mostly just poking around, but the deeper I went the more things didn’t add up. Richard encourages me to go down research rabbit holes that catch my interest whenever I like, as long as it doesn’t interfere with feeding our patron, so I’ve had full access to Usher Foundation resources, including the skills and work hours of my assistants. I got Ella on the financials, and Josh and I paid a visit to the Magnus Institute in person, and I went to have a chat with your former boss—”

“You talked to Elias?”

Erica sighed. “I talked to the man you know as Elias.”

Jon froze. “What do you mean?”

“I’m fairly certain your former boss is actually Jonah Magnus. The same Jonah Magnus who founded the Institute in eighteen eighteen, the same Jonah Magnus who attempted a ritual to bring the Eye into our plane of existence that same year, and the same Jonah Magnus who, I believe, has been running the Institute ever since. You’re familiar with bodyhoppers?”

Jon took a breath. He could freak out later. Right now, he needed to be fully present with Erica while she shared what she’d learned and, hopefully, while they figured out what to do about it. “Like Maxwell Rayner? Or Simon Fairchild?”

“Yes. Some would say it’s an unfair prejudice, and maybe it is, but in general I don’t trust bodyhoppers as far as I can throw them—or, in the case of Simon Fairchild, as far as they can throw me.” Erica smiled wryly. “Unfair or not, I find that most people born into human bodies who insist on living longer even than what a Power can grant to a single mortal form are... well, it’s a chicken-or-egg sort of question, in a way. Maybe the people who go to such lengths for more time are also the sorts of people who tend to grasp too hard at extending their own or their Power’s influence in other ways, or maybe living that long with a Power whispering in your ear just does unhealthy things to a person in general, or—my guess—it’s both effects building on each other.”

“A positive feedback loop of greed,” said Jon quietly.

“Exactly,” said Erica. “And one consequence is that, if someone wasn’t already trying to start an apocalypse, within a few hundred years they probably will be.”

Jon shuddered. “If Jonah Magnus attempted a ritual the year he founded the Institute—”

“—it’s been exactly two hundred years since then,” Erica confirmed. “Most likely he’s already poised to try again. And if he isn’t, he will be soon.” She laughed grimly. “That certainly explains the radio silence I’ve been getting from our Power on this topic.”

Jon, who had already been feeling quite sick, felt a compounding surge of nausea hit as he realized something else. “Elias—Jonah—killed Gertrude in two thousand fifteen,” he said. “She’d been his Archivist for at least fifty years, and defying him and the Eye however she could for most of that time, but until then he’d allowed it. Whatever Jonah was planning... maybe she’d either found out about it and had a plan to stop it, or he just thought the odds that she would were too high.”

Erica nodded. “I think it’s likely.”

“Okay,” Jon said slowly. “Don’t get me wrong, I am alarmed by this. But if Jonah’s in prison...”

“You have seen what he’s capable of, haven’t you?” Erica grimaced. “The weakest link of any security system is the humans who operate it. If he’s stayed in prison this long, it’s because he wants to be there.”

Jon sighed bitterly. “Well, there’s a lovely thought.”

“If it’s any consolation, I think I have an idea why that is.”

“Whether it’s any consolation will depend very much on the content of the idea,” Jon grumbled.

“This one actually might help,” said Erica with a faint smile. “I think—” She broke off with a sudden frown. “I’m sorry, I have to go. I’ll call you back later today, okay?”

“Okay,” said Jon. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Bye.” With that, Erica hung up.

There was a sharp knock at Jon’s office door.

“Come in,” he called absently.

The door swung open, and Jon’s blood froze.

Elias (Jonah, Jon corrected himself, although it certainly didn’t make him any less terrified) strode into the room, mouth set in a smug smile.

“Good morning, Jon,” he said brightly. “Lovely to see you in person again. It’s been quite some time, hasn’t it?”

Jon didn’t reply. Instead, he firmly, deliberately rapped his knuckles on his desk three times in quick succession.

“What are you doing?” asked Jonah, tilting his head with a single raised eyebrow. No sooner had he asked the question than he shook his head and laughed. “You think the Distortion is going to help you? It’s not your friend, Jon. It’s not capable of friendship. It lies—”

“And you don’t?” Jon snapped.

Jonah didn’t respond to the barb, opting instead to smile even wider. “Exile agrees with you. You’re looking well. I’ll admit, I don’t understand why you kept up that pointless charade of humanity for so long, but ah well. I suppose we can let bygones be bygones.”

“Why are you here?” Jon asked, putting as much power into the words as he could. He knew it likely wouldn’t accomplish much—Jon was the prey in this interaction, not the predator, which meant their shared patron would be very much on Jonah’s side—but it might occupy Jonah’s attention enough to buy a little time.

He’d sent out his distress call. Helen would show up to help him, just like she had so many times before. Jon just had to stay alive, in this room, and preferably mostly unharmed and in command of his actions until then.

Jonah smiled. “I’m here to take you home,” he said. “I don’t begrudge you this little excursion. I’m really quite impressed with your development, so clearly it’s served a purpose. But you’ve been neglecting your true responsibilities—”

“What do you want from me?” Jon interrupted, letting his dread of whatever unknown horrors Jonah had in store power the question.

Jonah was still smiling, but Jon’s question shifted it into more of a pained grimace.

Finally, in an almost reverent whisper, he answered. “Everything.”

Jon couldn’t hide the shudder that ran through him.

Jonah smirked, but didn’t comment. “But not quite yet,” he said instead. “For now, I want you to help me win a bet.”

Despite how rapidly and comprehensively everything in Jon’s recently reclaimed life had veered off the rails over the course of the past hour, that still managed to come as a surprise.

“What?” Jon finally sputtered out.

Jonah smiled. “Peter and I have a little wager running on whether he can get one of my Institute employees to willingly serve the Lonely,” he said. “He’s been working on Martin since before you rejoined us in the land of the living, and, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, he’s very nearly there. Which won’t do at all, so I’ve decided to, as they say, ‘bring out the big guns’—in this case, you.”

Jon took a slow, deep breath, willing himself not to let the fury and panic he felt do the talking for him. “So, what you’re saying is that you intend to take advantage of Martin’s feelings for me, or whatever is left of them at any rate, to discourage him from fully embracing the Lonely, because if he did you would lose a bet?” Despite his resolution to remain calm, Jon didn’t bother keeping the vicious sarcasm out of his voice at those words. “What happens to him if you succeed, and he refuses? I don’t suppose Peter would just let him go.”

“Mmm, probably not,” Jonah replied with a shrug. “Peter’s not likely to kill him outright, though. That’s not usually his style. More likely he’ll try to send Martin into the domain of his patron. You might be able to protect him, if you’re present, but I very much doubt it.”

Jonah smiled, that same cruel, amused expression Jon had seen so many times, but so much worse now that Jon knew he was using someone else’s face to do it.

Jon silently apologized to the real Elias Bouchard, whoever he was or had been, for every time he’d ignorantly cursed the wrong name.

“Of course, if we fail, Martin falls to the Lonely anyway,” Jonah went on. “Which, as you so astutely observed, he’d likely find quite miserable.”

Jon grimaced. Of fucking course Jonah had read his emails. But that wasn’t the point right now.

“At least he’d be safe,” he said quietly.

Jonah’s face—the face animated by Jonah, anyway—was still set in its attitude of predatory delight, but at Jon’s words it somehow softened a bit.

“Oh, Jon,” he said. “No one is ever safe. You of all people should know that.”

Jon forced himself to break eye contact and look away.

“You ought to ask me what else happens to Martin if Peter succeeds,” said Jonah in a poisonous whisper.

Jon continued staring at the wall. 

He’d made his decision. Trust Martin, and stay away from the Magnus Institute. And now that Jonah Magnus himself was back in the picture, staying clear of his and his Institute’s influence was more important than ever.

Whatever scheme of villainy Jonah was up to, Jon refused to be part of it. And if Jonah took him back, he might not have a choice.

Jonah had underestimated Jon—and Helen—once. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

“I won’t go with you,” Jon said quietly.

Jonah smiled. “You will.”

It had been a full minute since Jon had knocked on his desk. Helen should have been here by now. She’d arrived at the warehouse in Ny-Ålesund less than a minute after Jon had destroyed the dark star obscuring her awareness of the area, and that time he hadn’t even called. Usually, when Jon called for her, she was there almost immediately.

Except when she wasn’t coming.

If Eye avatars, specifically, were dangerous to Spiral creatures like Helen... Jonah was far more powerful than Jon had ever been. He was older, and had more practice, and had put much more effort into honing his abilities. If Jon was a threat to Helen, it made perfect sense that going against Jonah—in a way that required her to be directly in his presence, no less—was a risk she simply couldn’t afford to take.

Jon couldn’t blame Helen for not answering him this time. She had a right to protect herself. It didn’t mean she loved him any less, and it didn’t even necessarily mean that she wouldn’t find some other way to help him, when and if an opportunity arose.

None of that softened the gut-punch of understanding that Helen wasn’t going to get him out of this. No one was. No one could.

He was on his own.

Jon took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Jonah almost certainly had all sorts of ways he could force Jon to cooperate, but if it was cooperation he wanted, he was going to have to use them. “Not willingly,” he said. “I won’t make it easy for you.”

Jonah chuckled, and Jon felt his eyes snap open and lock onto Jonah’s against his will. 

“I’ve always enjoyed that spirit of yours,” Jonah said smugly. “Ordinarily, I might be inclined to let you resist. However, much as I hate to say it, we are on a rather tight schedule here.” He smiled. “Come along, Jon.”

Jon was familiar with the Eye’s manipulations, of course. He’d experienced the driving strength of impulses that weren’t strictly his own, wondered if he was even choosing his own actions anymore. He’d experienced the pain and struggle of resisting, forcing himself to do things the Eye didn’t want him to do, trying—with mixed success—to hold himself back from doing things it did. He knew how deeply it could get into his head, had nearly lost Helen because of thoughts and feelings that arose so naturally he didn’t even think to question their source. He’d spent months fighting against nearly every thought and feeling he experienced, on the grounds that if something felt right it was probably his Power trying to influence him.

He still wasn’t prepared for the wave of deep, intense longing that hit him as Jonah stared him down.

Jon stood up almost before he was conscious of why. Once he realized that he wanted to cross the room and follow Jonah as badly as he’d ever wanted anything in his life—and (dimly) that that was wrong, it wasn’t him, he couldn’t listen to it—he forced himself to grip the edges of his desk and stay in place.

He couldn’t look away from Jonah’s eyes, sparkling with delight as they watched him struggle.

Why was he struggling? If he went with Jonah, maybe he could help Martin.

Besides, it was pointless. Jonah was stronger than him. He’d win this fight eventually, and no one else was going to interrupt. The only thing Jon could hope to accomplish was a brief delay, and that just wasn’t worth putting himself through this for.

Why was he even trying? He wanted to help Martin, didn’t he? He wanted to go with Jonah, wanted to go home, back to the Magnus Institute where he belonged, where he’d always belonged...

Jon remembered, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he’d wanted to fight, but right now he couldn’t for the life of him remember why.

It hurt, making himself keep still like this, and Jon had no idea why he was bothering. It didn’t make sense. Of course he should go with Jonah.

Jon had let go of the desk and was starting to cross the room when a blur of motion flew across his field of vision.

The body curled on the carpet, screaming and writhing in the rapidly widening pool of blood that flowed from the parallel slashes carved diagonally into the torso and opening it up from shoulder to hip, was not Jonah’s.

Neither was the voice that called Jon’s name from the edge of the room, and that was enough, right then, for Jon to turn and run towards it.

Helen’s door slammed shut behind him, and the spell broke.

Jon didn’t stop, didn’t speak, didn’t think.

He just ran.

...

Jon ran for a long time.

He wasn’t certain how long. At some point, mindless flight gave way to an overwhelmed, overwhelming need to escape everything that had just happened, everything that had almost happened and still might happen and had happened long ago and been brought screaming back by the rest.

Eventually, Jon realized that neither Helen’s geometry nor his own aerobic capacity was going to make him stop running, which meant that at some point he was going to have to make a conscious decision to stop on his own. That felt a little out of reach right now, but he really ought to stop running and actually think about the situation and what to do about it at some point, and that probably wasn’t going to get any easier anytime soon, so Jon compromised.

He steered himself slightly to the right and ran directly into the wall.

Helen, bless her, seemed to understand exactly what he was doing. The surface he collided with at full speed was soft and cushioned, as was the floor he landed on when he fell.

When Jon managed to sit up, Helen—some version of her, at any rate—was crouched on the floor beside him, licking the blood off her long, sharp fingers. At least, he assumed that was what she was doing. He wasn’t sure what that would be, other than a tongue.

It was probably a bit ridiculous how safe the sight made him feel.

Well. Safe wasn’t the word.

A better word—and a less absurd reaction to the situation—might be defended.

After a moment of just existing with that knowledge, Jon managed to speak. “Hey.”

Helen was back in her human-ish form—close to it, anyway, although her hand was still bloated and bladelike, not to mention bloody—and looking at Jon with what he thought was a mixture of concern and compassion, which turned to a faint smile at the sound of his voice. “Hey yourself,” she replied.

Jon managed a small smile back at her, then realized that something needed immediate clarification. “Did—did you kill him?” he asked. “Jonah?” He doubted it, but the Eye-Spiral attack magnifier went both ways, so maybe…

“No,” Helen replied. “I killed his body, but he’s most likely found a new one by now.”

“Great,” Jon muttered.

“He won’t find you in here,” Helen said gently. “I can’t do that again—it only worked once because I was able to take him completely by surprise. But as long as you’re with me, he won’t be able to sense you, or use your Power to influence you.”

Jon winced.

Helen almost certainly noticed, but she didn’t comment. “I’ll get your friends,” she said instead. “We can figure out what to do next together.” She looked at Jon more directly than she had yet in this conversation. “Ready?”

“No,” Jon replied honestly. “But whatever Jonah’s planning, he’s already way ahead of us, so… we’d better start catching up.” He took a deep breath. “Can you get a message to Susan?”

“Sure,” Helen said. “What would you like to tell her?”

 Jon sighed. “Tell her that there’s a corpse in my office, and make sure she understands that I didn’t put it there. Also that she might need to be on the lookout for either a missing employee or one who’s acting strangely and whose eyes don’t look right, and that if one of her employees fits that description she should absolutely not confront them or let them get her alone. Say I’ll be back to work as soon as I can, but I might be out for a little while, and that...” He stared at the opposite wall, which was psychologically helpful even if practically a bit pointless. “That if I’m not coming back, someone will let her know, and that I’m grateful for everything she’s done for me.”

“I’ll pass that on,” said Helen. “Except the last bit.”

Jon looked back towards Helen’s humanoid form, smiling faintly. “Fair enough.”

“And I’ll have the others here soon.” Helen smirked. “Most of the others, anyway.”

Before Jon could say anything about how Mike’s reluctance to go anywhere near Helen’s doors was entirely reasonable given his history, the humanoid figure Helen had been using to interact was gone.

Jon leaned back against the wall and settled in to wait.

…

Jon couldn’t have said how much time had passed when Helen’s most humanlike form showed up on the floor next to him, or when Harriet, Oliver, and Karolina all emerged from different corridors a minute or so later, but it couldn’t have been too long.

Still. They’d clearly had at least a bit of warning before heading into the maze that was Helen, because Karolina was wearing a backpack that, once she sat down near Jon and opened it, turned out to contain a large thermos full of tea, a box of sugar cubes, four mugs carefully wrapped in cloth, and four spoons in a resealable plastic bag.

Once everyone had their mug of tea fixed up the way they liked it, Karolina retrieved a notebook and pen from her pack and wrote something at the top of one of the pages.

“All right,” she said. “Just to get everyone on the same page: we’re here to figure out what Jonah Magnus is doing and form a strategy for dealing with him. Preferably quickly, both to get ahead of whatever his plan is and because Jon can’t leave until we do. I’ll take notes in here”—she gestured to her notebook—“and transcribe them once I’m outside and my computer works again. Everyone good with that plan?”

Nods all around.

“Cool,” Karolina said. “Jon? Want to catch us up? What happened today?”

Jon breathed slowly in and out. “Earlier this morning, I got a call from Oliver,” he said, then turned to address Oliver directly. “I mention this even though it’s not obviously directly related, because too many things connected to the Magnus Institute have gone haywire essentially all at once for me to believe it’s a coincidence.” He once again addressed the group as a whole. “If at any point anyone knows something I don’t, by the way, feel free to jump in. Anyway, I got a call from Oliver, who told me the Magnus Institute—as in, the building itself—is going to collapse sometime in the next few days, killing several of the people inside. I tried to warn Martin—I mean, I did warn Martin, I said the words and I’m quite sure he heard them, but...” He winced. “He just hung up on me. I might’ve stayed home, but my patron was very insistent about my going to work, so I did. Not too long after I arrived, I got a call from Erica Jones, the other United States Archivist. She’d been doing some digging into the Magnus Institute, and learned that Jonah Magnus has been cycling through bodies to remain the head of his Institute without attracting attention for two hundred years, and that the man I knew as Elias was just another stolen identity. She also learned that Jonah attempted a ritual the same year as he founded the Institute, which means sometime around this year the Eye is going to be ready for another ritual attempt. She told me Jonah’s almost certainly working on that ritual already, and was starting to tell me why she thought he’d been biding his time in prison when he almost certainly could have left at any time, when she abruptly said she had to go and left the call. After that, Jonah came into my office—”

Harriet looked horrified. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I’m getting to that,” said Jon. “He gloated for a bit, then tried to persuade me to go with him of my own accord. When that failed...” He looked away from the assembled group and shuddered. “He tried to mind-control me into following him back to that awful place. Would’ve succeeded, if Helen hadn’t shown up and killed his current body.” He smiled weakly at her, before his face abruptly returned to serious. “Jonah said he has a bet running with Peter Lukas, that Peter is trying to get Martin to willingly serve the Lonely. And, um”—Jon looked back at Helen—“I am so sorry”—back to the larger group—“but Helen said something about Peter wanting to take Martin into the maze, which I’m assuming means the tunnels underneath the Magnus Institute that seem to function as a sort of… blind spot for the Eye.” He sighed. “Helen, I know I said I didn’t want you to tell me whatever you didn’t want to say, but… if all this is somehow connected, it’s not about me anymore.”

Helen tilted her head in acknowledgement. “I’d rather assumed that would be the case. The tunnels contain a…” She grimaced, obviously struggling. “A focal point. For Watching. Jonah’s body, his first body, is in there, and…” She broke off with a cry of frustration.

“Take your time,” Jon said.

Helen nodded. “Um… the body. The device. The Institute. It’s all the same. All connected. They all… pull on each other. Like bricks in a tower.”

“So… if you take one away, the others all come crashing down? Is that what you’re saying?”

Helen sighed. “I’m not sure. I’m never sure. But I think so.”

“Good enough for me,” Jon said, deliberately looking away from her humanoid form and instead scooting closer, leaning against her side and the wall.

“All right,” Karolina said, still scrawling frantically in her notebook. “Jon, is that everything you want to say right now?”

Jon thought for a moment before saying “yes.”

“From what Erica told Jon, we can assume Jonah’s ultimate goal is to bring his patron into our plane of existence,” Karolina went on. “What we still need to know is exactly how he plans to do that and how Jon factors in. If Jonah killed his Archivist three years before he could have attempted a ritual, clearly he’s been planning ahead, so we should probably assume he’s either ready for the attempt or close to it. Between that and the inherently all-consuming nature of preparing to start an apocalypse, it seems likely that any major actions Jonah is taking right now are related to his ritual plan, whatever it is. And, as Jon said, too much has happened in a very short time for it not to be connected. So what do we know?” She drew a vertical line in her notebook. “One: Jonah made a bet with Peter Lukas sometime during Jon’s coma over whether Peter could convince a Magnus Institute employee to willingly serve the Forsaken. Peter chose to target Martin. Two: Jonah’s original body is in some sort of device in the middle of a series of tunnels underneath his Institute. Three: Peter intends to take Martin into those same tunnels for an unspecified reason. Four: Jonah came to Jon this morning and tried to bring him back to the Magnus Institute, with the stated intention of preventing Peter from winning their bet.” She sighed and made a small, curved mark in her notebook. “I probably should’ve reversed two and three. But the point is the same. Does anyone know if someone like Jonah can be killed by damaging their original body?”

Harriet frowned. “You think Peter’s trying to use Martin to kill Jonah?”

“If that’s his plan, why can’t he do it himself?” Oliver shook his head. “And even if he needs someone else to do it because there’s some sort of direct fallout, why would he make a bet with someone he’s trying to kill? If Peter wins the bet by getting Martin to kill Jonah, Jonah can’t pay him, and Peter could probably take whatever of Jonah’s he wanted anyway.” He frowned. “Unless that was the bet. ‘If you win, you get to kill me.’ Peter might’ve gone for that.”

“What could Jonah possibly have wanted that badly?” asked Harriet. “I mean. For his ritual to work, obviously. But what does Peter have to do with it?”

“He might not,” Karolina said. “There’s strength in numbers. If Jonah was worried about his employees banding together against him, I’m not sure he could’ve found a better way to keep you all isolated.”

“Hold on,” Harriet interjected. “Jon, how well do the rest of the Magnus Institute archival staff get along?”

Jon frowned. “Um... mostly all right, I think?”

Harriet leaned forward. “Did you ever notice Peter trying to change that?”

“Ah... not really?” Jon said. “I mean, I didn’t usually notice Peter doing anything at all, but... at least after I’d woken up, I think he was pretty focused on Martin.”

“Peter went after Martin specifically,” Harriet said. “The one person who might’ve treated you decently if he’d been able to interact with you at all. Jonah probably knew who Peter would pick for a wager like that.”

Jon winced. “Are you saying Jonah wanted to isolate me, specifically, badly enough that he risked his life for it?”

“If he did, it worked,” Helen observed.

Jon sighed. “Can’t argue with that.”

“In that case, there are two possibilities.” Karolina began writing in her notebook even faster. “Either way, the evidence suggests that Jonah thinks Jon is a credible threat to the success of his ritual. What’s still unclear is whether he’s just concerned about Jon interfering, or whether he specifically needs Jon for the ritual itself to work.”

Jon felt sick.

“I asked him,” he said in a near whisper. “Jonah. When he was in my office, I compelled him to tell me what he wanted from me. He said, ‘everything.’” He stared at the wall, trying not to look at anyone’s face. “What if he meant that literally? What if he wants me to hand the world over to the Eye, and… and to him by extension?”

Karolina reached out and took Jon’s hand. “Then we’ll find a way to stop him,” she said. “You’re not alone anymore. And Jonah doesn’t get to use you as a weapon against your will.”

“I’m gonna go talk to Mike,” said Harriet. “He needs to be part of this. Jon, did Gertrude Robinson keep any notes?”

“She had a notebook, but it’s all in some sort of code,” Jon replied. “I couldn’t make any sense of it. Admittedly, that was before my change, and I don’t think I ever tried to read it after, but I sort of doubt I could even now. Gertrude had a lot of skills, and baffling the Eye was one of her best.”

Harriet nodded. “Do you know where it is?”

“My former office, under the floorboard with the fingernail scratches in it. Her laptop is in there too.” Jon frowned. “She also sometimes left notes at the end of statements she recorded. They’re generally vague and cryptic, but from what I’ve been able to tell so was everything she ever did, so they might be as much help as anything if you can find the right ones. The box with those tapes is in El—in Jonah’s former office, Peter’s office now.”

“Cool. I’ll see if Mike wants to take a crack at it. I don’t think he’s ever met a code he couldn’t break.” Harriet smiled proudly.

“I can start working on the tapes,” said Karolina. “Listen to the commentary on as many of them as I can find, get all that information in one place.”

“Awesome.” Harriet turned from Karolina back to Jon. “If we can look at Gertrude’s notes, and the notes from this meeting, and if I can come in here to ask you questions as necessary, I think Mike might be able to reverse-engineer Jonah’s ritual. It’ll be a lot easier to stop it from succeeding if we know exactly what we’re trying to stop.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Jon. “Tell him thank you from me.”

“Will do,” said Harriet. “Oliver, would you be willing to go talk to the other Archivist who was investigating the Magnus Institute and get the rest of what she found?”

“Sure thing,” Oliver replied.

“I’ve got a few other people in mind who might know something useful, so I’ll go talk to them and see if anything comes of it,” Harriet went on. “I want to check in with Mike first, though. Make sure we’re all on the same page.” She turned to Karolina. “Can I see your notes?”

Karolina smiled sheepishly and showed Harriet the page.

Harriet shook her head incredulously. “What is that?”

“Pitman shorthand,” Karolina replied cheerfully. “I can type it up in a form people who didn’t spend their teenage years obsessed with the original Dracula can read when I get somewhere my computer will work.”

“Cool,” said Harriet, then turned to Helen. “Can you get us all where we need to go?”

Helen nodded sharply. “Come along.”

...

A minute or so after the others had all disappeared from view, Jon once again found one of Helen’s humanoid forms sitting beside him, this one much less humanlike than the one she’d used for the team meeting. It was uncomfortable to look directly at her in this shape, but it was probably best that he didn’t anyway.

Jon smiled slightly. Helen trusted him enough to appear in this form around him without fear that he would react badly, and... he wasn’t. It was fine. It was her.

“Well,” said Helen with a faint echo in the tone, “you probably don’t need to worry about the fake blood stain on the rug in your office anymore.”

Jon snorted. “I suppose not.”

Carefully, ready to abandon the idea if it didn’t work, Jon scooted closer to Helen’s humanoid body, leaned in, and rested his head on the closest thing she had to a shoulder.

It felt like leaning on a waterfall that was somehow holding him up even though it really shouldn’t be, and it put his neck at an awkward angle, but it worked well enough, and it was nice to be close to her.

For a while, they just existed there, together in the overwhelmed quiet.

“It might not be so bad, you know,” Helen finally said.

Jon raised his head and turned to look down the corridor past the version of Helen seated next to him, letting his peripheral vision pick up her face. “What?”

“For you. If Jonah brought the Eye through. You might even like it, in time.”

Jon winced violently.

“We’ll all do everything we can to help you stop it, of course,” Helen hurriedly added. “It’s certainly better for me if your Power doesn’t win. Just… if we fail, you’ll be all right.”

“You won’t be,” Jon replied in a choked whisper. “The entire rest of the world won’t be.”

Helen’s mouth twisted in what might have been a smile. “I’ll live,” she said. “Some places aren’t so easy to find.”

“The tunnels?”

Helen pressed a finger to her lips.

“Sorry,” Jon muttered.

Helen’s smile grew wider.

Jon frowned. “Would you be able to find enough food?”

“I’d figure something out.”

Jon felt his jaw set. “Obviously, I really, really hope this all stays hypothetical,” he said. “But I’d bring you victims, if it came to that.”

Helen hummed.

It was uncomfortably easy to imagine. Promising some terrified stranger a respite from the nightmare of total exposure the world had become, concealing the cost until it was too late. He wouldn’t even have to lie, only be selective about the truths he told.

Jon sighed and leaned his head back against the wall.

“What do you need?” Helen asked.

Jon sat up in mild surprise. That wasn’t a question he’d expected to hear from her.

Once he’d thought about it for a moment, Jon realized it wasn’t a question he had an immediate answer to, either.

“I hate this,” he said instead. “Just... being stuck here while... while so much is happening, and everyone else has something they’re doing to help, but I’m just...” He breathed out harshly. “It’s my problem more than it’s any of yours, and I’m useless.”

“If Jonah needs you to complete his ritual, keeping yourself away from him is the most useful thing you could be doing,” Helen pointed out.

Jon sighed. “I suppose. I’m just... bad at doing nothing.”

“I had gotten that impression,” Helen remarked mildly.

Jon smiled faintly. “I’m sure.”

For another long moment, they sat in the quiet.

Once again, it was Helen who spoke first. “Would you like me to stay for a while?”

“Please,” Jon replied without thinking. “I mean... if that’s all right. Don’t make yourself uncomfortable on my account, or anything.”

“I’m not,” Helen said. “Not in this form, anyway.” She made a sound like a rush of wind, and Jon realized it was her version of a single, dry laugh. “I don’t usually use it for anything except hunting.” She laughed again, more recognizable this time. “It’s certainly never cuddled anyone before.”

Jon smiled. “I’m honored.”

“I have no idea what I’m doing.” Helen made a sound that Jon was pretty sure was a sigh. “I never really know what I’m doing, but this especially, this is... this is all very new. It’s been... a long time since I tried to have a friend, I think. Certainly since I befriended someone as”—she thought for a moment—“concrete as you.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Helen wasn’t very good at it, either.”

Jon laughed. “Well, I liked her just fine.” He leaned into Helen a bit more strongly, pressing against her in a sideways nudge, before returning to his previous position. Treating Helen a bit like a cat when it came to showing affection hadn’t steered him wrong so far. “I like you better, though.”

“Mmm?” The noise Helen made in response to that sounded curious, and a bit surprised.

Well, no wonder. “I’m... so sorry it took me so long on that.”

Helen’s shoulders undulated in what took Jon a moment to recognize by touch as her shrug. “Lots of people hate me. As well they should. I’m meant to be a living nightmare, and to most, I am.” She hummed quietly. “For someone to change their mind, that’s far less common.”

Jon leaned harder against Helen’s humanoid body again. “Well, most people haven’t had you save their lives...” Ridiculous though he felt doing it, Jon took a moment to actually count on his fingers. “At least four times by now. Five, if you count whatever Jared Hopworth might’ve done with my rib.”

Helen laughed. “That they have not.”

“Why me?”

Jon hadn’t meant to ask the question. There had been no compulsion behind it, thank goodness, but the curiosity had formed itself into words and escaped his lips before he was even aware it was happening.

Still, now that he’d asked, he found he truly did want to know. “What’s different about me? I mean, I can understand if you saved my life because human Helen liked me and you were interested to see where it would go, and maybe if you came to talk to me that first time because you didn’t have anyone else you could talk to, but after I treated you like that...” Jon shook his head. “Why did you stay at the Institute—”

“I wasn’t only at the Institute,” Helen interjected.

“All right, but you were there. Even if you were in other places as well.” Jon scoffed. “Why did you keep Jared Hopworth prisoner when, when you said it was uncomfortable? Why did you bother hunting him down and getting my rib back after—yes, I know, you told me,” he said in response to the beginning of what sounded like an objection. “But that’s not what I’m asking. Why did you come find me in Ny-Ålesund and... give me a ride home? Even just... being around all that time, talking to me like... like an equal, giving me advice even when I wouldn’t take it, and then... asking for help to convince me to leave, when I know that can’t have been easy?” He shook his head. “Why?”

Helen didn’t say anything for a moment.

“I mean, if you can safely tell me,” Jon amended.

“That’s not it,” Helen said. “I’m just... trying to decide where to begin. It’s not... it’s not an easy thing to explain, even to myself. Nothing about me is. And if it has to be spoken, if it has to be linear...” She huffed in frustration as the lights flared.

“Take your time,” said Jon. “And don’t tell me if it’s going to hurt you.”

“I won’t.” Helen lapsed back into silence.

Now that he’d stopped by turns fighting and ignoring all his Eye-related instincts and had a month of experience actually listening to them, Jon understood them well enough to recognize the impulse to take Helen’s statement for what it was and forcefully push it down. She would tell him this her way or not at all.

Finally, she began.

“I’d almost given up on you,” Helen said quietly. “If bringing in other avatars to talk to you hadn’t worked, I would have. I almost did, before I thought to try that.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Jon replied, voice low but the intensity of the feeling nearly bursting from the words.

“So am I,” Helen said. “I don’t think either of us would’ve liked being enemies.”

Jon shuddered. “No, I don’t suppose we would have.”

“And I’d grown quite fond of you,” Helen went on. “You kept pulling off impossible feats, one after another, without even the advantage of being naturally impossible yourself. I wanted to see what you could become if you let yourself embrace your full potential.” She smiled. “And I wanted to see what you would do next.”

Jon returned the smile.

“I could sympathize with your difficulty, of course,” Helen said. “You were unconscious when I was in the midst of mine, but... I was more like you than you knew. The part of me that was Helen, she tried so hard to be anything other than what I am. But no matter how she fought against it, in the end the hunger always became too strong to resist.” She shrugged. “It didn’t change anything. She’s still me. I still hunt. I’ve accepted what I am, and she’s happy now. And by the time you woke up, I was through all that. So to watch you going through the same thing, knowing as I did how it ended... I was hoping to spare you some of that pain. I didn’t account for you being as much of a stubborn bastard as you are.” She grinned. “Although, in retrospect, I really should have.”

Jon smiled wryly. “Guilty as charged.”

“And even if I hadn’t wanted to help you—which I did—” Helen broke off, seemingly trying to figure out how to say something. “I don’t know that I could have just left you alone completely.”

Jon frowned. “Why not?”

Another long silence.

“When I became me,” Helen finally said, “you and I were both... in pieces. And when we were rebuilding ourselves, I think some of the pieces must have gotten mixed up.”

Jon sat up until he was no longer leaning on Helen’s shoulder, although he was still leaning on the wall. “What do you m—” He cut himself off and rephrased. “What does that entail?”

“We’re connected,” said Helen calmly. “I can almost always sense where you are, and often roughly how you’re feeling.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon muttered, unable to think of anything else to say.

“More than that, though...” Helen’s face did something Jon couldn’t quite figure out. “Helen’s last act as herself, breaking through that mirror in the heart of me, was motivated in large part by her desire to help you. If I were to guess... I’d say the fact that that act was the catalyst for my reconstruction meant some of that intention influenced my development.”

Jon looked down, trying not to feel hurt at the idea that Helen only cared about him because she was made that way. Even if that was true, it wasn’t her fault.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Helen knew him too well for him to get away with that.

“That’s not the only reason I like you,” she said. “It’s not even the main one. I doubt I could leave you alone, but... the connection could go either way. My Power hates you. It would be easy enough for that to override any baked-in sympathy. It would, if I let it.” She laughed quietly. “Luckily, I find your flavor of insanity rather endearing.”

Jon’s laughter joined hers. “I suppose that’s fair.” He leaned back into Helen’s side, and felt the waterfall flare out, pressing back against him—an echo of his earlier affectionate gesture.

He returned the nudge, and for some time they sat in companionable quiet.

Until something occurred to Jon, and he spoke up.

“Helen,” he said slowly. “Are you saying you... imprinted on me?”

“My dear Archivist,” Helen replied with great dignity, “I am not a baby duck.”

Whereupon Jon absolutely lost it, breaking down into a fit of laughter which Helen soon joined.

When they’d both settled down, Jon shook his head solemnly. “I was thinking more along the lines of a large and aggressive wild goose.”

Helen smiled, the split in her face wrapping around her head. “I’ll take that.”

...

Eventually, of course, Jon and Helen both got tired of sitting against the wall.

When that happened, Helen went off to do whatever it was that Helen did, and Jon got up and started walking.

He’d been wandering for what was probably a few hours—having an endless maze for a friend could be quite helpful when you needed to burn off some nervous energy—when he ran into Harriet.

“Hey Jon,” she said calmly. “I assume you’d like a progress report?”

“Yes, please,” Jon replied.

“Cool. First off: we found Jonah. He’s currently occupying the body of Edward Ryle.”

Jon looked down. Ed was the person who’d greeted him when he’d walked into the California Historical Society lobby for the first time. From what Jon had gathered, he was married with two grown children, and he seemed to be one of those rare people who genuinely enjoyed customer service. He took pride in having a ready answer for just about any question a visitor was likely to ask, and several they weren’t likely to ask but occasionally did anyway.

Jon forcibly returned his attention to Harriet. It wouldn’t help Ed if the world ended.

“Jonah got on a direct flight to London from the San Francisco airport around eleven thirty, which means he’ll arrive in London around six AM local time, ten PM Pacific. It’s well past closing time at the Magnus Institute right now, so I’m assuming if Peter was going to make his move today he'd have done it already. Oliver said the building’s going down ‘within the next few days’ based on something he saw Sunday night into this morning, and Oliver’s never wrong—” Harriet cut herself off. “Well. He’s never wrong about this. He’s very wrong about vanilla-scented anything.” She wrinkled her nose.

Jon elected not to ask.

“But anyway. Based on that timeframe, if it isn’t tomorrow, it’s gonna be the day after. Maybe Thursday morning at the outside, but… from the way everything seems to be in motion already, I really doubt it.”

Jon winced. “So, tomorrow, probably?”

“Probably.” Harriet took a deep breath. “So, the question now is what, if anything, we do about it.”

Jon frowned. “What do you mean, ‘if anything?’”

“I mean—” Harriet cut herself off with a faint sigh. “Jonah having been in a room with you after Oliver told you the Institute is going down means he definitely knows. With that in mind, best I can figure, there’s three options for what happens tomorrow. One option is that Peter and Martin succeed at killing Jonah by destroying his original body, and his death triggers the collapse of the building. Another option is that Peter and Martin do not kill Jonah, either because they failed or because we were wrong and they weren’t actually trying. In that case, the building collapses for some other reason—quite possibly Jonah destroying his own Institute to satisfy the conditions of Oliver’s vision without dying himself.” Her face twisted in a rueful frown. “I mean. It’s what I would do.”

“And the third option?” asked Jon.

“Oh! The third option is just that what happens is something we haven’t thought of yet. But that’s always a possibility, so it barely counts.”

Jon found Harriet’s logic there a bit dubious, but let it pass. “I believe you were explaining why you think it might be best to do nothing about the situation for the time being?”

“Yes,” said Harriet, as though she’d just remembered. “We don’t know for certain that Peter and Martin are going to try to kill Jonah, but the information we have means it’s likely. If they’ve been planning that for a while—or, at least, if Peter has—they’ve probably got a plan. Peter’s had all the time and information and resources he could want to figure out how best to kill Jonah. We haven’t. So if he’s going to try, I say let him try. If he manages it, that’s most of the problem taken care of right there, and if he doesn’t, we’re pretty much back where we started—if Jonah needs you to make his ritual work, which I think it’s almost certain he does, then him on the loose and you in here out of his reach means a stalemate, and that means time. Which I know is... not ideal.” She gave a wry laugh. “Believe me, I am the last person who wants to keep someone trapped in an enclosed space—”

“You’re not keeping me trapped in here,” said Jon. “Jonah is. And I don’t mind.” He smiled. “Helen’s keeping me company.”

Harriet nodded. “So, if you’re on board with it, here’s the plan: you stay in here. The rest of us keep working on figuring out Jonah’s ritual, both in case he doesn’t die and in case it could still succeed after his death. Once the Institute goes down, we assess the situation and go from there. Sound okay?”

Jon sighed. It was a good plan. Definitely the most sensible thing they could do, probably the course of action with the best chance of averting the end of the world.

The fact that it also stood an entirely reasonable chance of driving Jon utterly insane—for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with spending an extended period of time in the realm of the Spiral—was beside the point.

He took a deep breath and nodded. “I’m in.”

Harriet smiled. “Awesome. I’ll keep going with the progress report, then?”

“Sounds good.”

“We found Gertrude Robinson’s journal right where you said it would be, so thank you for that,” Harriet began. “Mike’s working on it right now. I called his name a few times and he didn’t look up, so I’m assuming that’s going well. Karolina’s transcribing the archivist’s notes at the end of the statement recordings and organizing them into a sort of concept map, which is taking a while just because there are so many of them, but she seems to be making good progress. Oliver talked to Erica Jones and took a bunch of notes on what her research turned up, then wrote them up for readability. I have that here.” She handed over a sheet of what appeared to be printer paper, covered on both sides with small, neat writing arranged in boxes and bullet points. “Most of it is just more details on what Erica already told you, but there are a few points she wasn’t able to address, and there’s always a chance you’ll spot something significant that none of the rest of us had the context to understand. Would you mind looking it over and just... seeing if anything jumps out at you?”

“Not at all,” Jon said, and began scanning through the information on the sheet.

Most of it was a combination of things Erica had already told him, a detailed financial record, background on the past operations of the Institute, and a variety of information about Jonah’s behavior, habits, and connections that might have been interesting in another context, and could certainly have some deeper meaning that Jon wasn’t immediately picking up on, but didn’t have any immediately obvious significance. Erica had theorized that Jonah stayed in prison for so long to avoid seeming like an immediate threat once Jon’s powers had developed to the point that he might present a threat to Jonah if he felt the need to try, which was flattering but not terribly helpful.

“Sorry,” Jon said. “Nothing’s standing out to me right now.”

“That’s all right,” said Harriet. “You can keep that to look over in more detail later, if you want.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Harriet replied. “As for me, I’ve been doing my best to piece together the last few months of your predecessor’s life. I figure Jonah must’ve had a reason to kill her when he did, so if I can get clear on the last things she was working on, I might be able to work out what exactly she was doing that threatened Jonah’s plans, which might give us a clue as to what those plans are. It’s a long shot, I know, but it’s what we’ve got, and besides.” She grinned. “I’m good at those.”

“It’s a good idea,” Jon said. “Have you found anything promising so far?”

“Potentially,” said Harriet. “I have a few leads. I’m not sure right now if any of them are going to pan out, and I’d rather not say more until I have something more tangible, but so far I’d say the investigation’s going pretty well.” Her smile turned to an exaggerated grimace. “I’m gonna talk to Simon next. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck.” Jon smiled faintly. “Do all the other Fairchilds hate Simon, or is it just you?”

“I don’t hate Simon,” Harriet instantly replied. “He’s the reason I have a family, and I love him for that. Always will.” She made a face. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like him.”

Jon decided he could follow up on that after the world didn’t end. “Fair enough. I hope it goes well.”

“Thank you,” said Harriet. “I’ll be back when there’s more to report.”

“Is there anything else I can do to help?” asked Jon, a bit desperately.

“Well, keep looking that over, for one thing.” Harriet gestured to Oliver’s notes, still clutched in Jon’s hand, then tilted her head, considering. “Once Mike and Karolina have more of Gertrude’s notes sorted, you can take a look at those, see if anything makes sense to you. But mostly... I know it sucks, but the most helpful thing you can do is just keep yourself out of Jonah’s reach. Which is not what you want to hear, I know.” As Jon watched, her sympathetic smile turned to an amused grin.

Jon frowned. “What?”

“Someday, Mike is gonna tell you about the first time he pissed off the Cult of the Lightless Flame,” Harriet said, almost fondly. “I’m not gonna tell you right now, both because it’s not my story to tell and because I don’t want to spoil the statement if you ever need it, but, um...” She sighed. “Let’s just say that some people never got past the school-bully phase when it comes to anything different, and that Mike does not react well to being seen as an easy target.”

Jon winced as several pieces of a puzzle he hadn’t realized he’d been working on abruptly clicked into place. “Ah.”

“Yeah.” Harriet’s face softened. “But I thought of that just now for a reason. When your experience has been that if you don’t help you, no one will, the transition to being part of a team of any sort is... well, it’s always a process. Especially the first few times you have to let other people handle something you see as your problem. But the people most directly involved in a situation and the people best equipped to deal with it aren’t always the same people, and part of belonging to any sort of collective is learning to accept that and step back when someone else is better equipped to handle your problem than you are.” She looked Jon directly in the eye—probably easier in a Spiral domain, he realized. “You are very far from the first person to struggle with that. And, if any of us have anything to say about it? You’ll be very far from the last.”

“Thank you,” Jon said, after a moment of trying and failing to come up with anything else to say.

Harriet smiled at him. “You’re welcome. I’m gonna go get you a few bottles of water. Want anything else?” She shrugged. “A book of crosswords, or something?”

Jon started to explain the problem with Eye avatars and crossword puzzles, then stopped short. “Actually, I don’t think my patron can force all the answers into my head when I’m in here, so... yes. That would be lovely.”

“Got it. I’ll be back soon with water and crosswords. Do you use pencil or pen?”

“Pen, if you don’t mind.”

Harriet gave him a thumbs-up, then walked away and disappeared around a corner.

As soon as she was out of sight, Jon slumped against the wall, slid to the floor, and resumed poring over Oliver’s report.

It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

...

Jon hadn’t been certain how many hours had elapsed between Harriet’s brief visit to provide water and a means of distraction and her reappearance with another update, but when she told him that it was a little after eight PM in San Francisco or four in the morning London time—which meant, among other things (two hours before Jonah’s plane was scheduled to land, five hours before the Institute opened to the public) , that Jon had been in the corridors for nearly twelve hours—he wasn’t remotely surprised.

In that time, he’d completed three crossword puzzles, given up on four more, and confirmed his suspicion that asking the Distortion to help you with a crossword puzzle was a terrible idea. He’d made the mistake of checking his analog watch, which had somehow informed him that it was the Ides of March (he still couldn’t remember how it had done that). He’d finished one of the bottles of water Harriet had brought, which had eventually led to a minor crisis about relieving himself in here when Helen literally couldn’t not be watching him, which had led to Helen unhelpfully pointing out that people urinating on her carpet was far from a novel occurrence, which had led to Jon telling her to fuck off, which she fortunately had not taken personally (and also to Jon appreciating Harriet’s foresight in having chosen disposable plastic bottles). He’d had a less minor crisis about Martin, Jonah, and his own potential complicity in the Eye taking over the world, slumped into a despairing heap against the wall, and ultimately been jarred out of his nascent breakdown by a loud hissing sound and close-up view of a spiky maw. He’d learned, to his somewhat grudging gratitude, that it was difficult to marinate in existential dread while running from a large and aggressive goose.

In short, it had definitely been a while.

“How’re you holding up?” Harriet was now asking, in a tone of polite but genuine concern.

“I, ah... I think I’m doing all right,” said Jon. “How about you? How’s it going out there?”

“It’s going pretty well,” Harriet replied. “Oliver went home a while ago to get some sleep, said he’d leave his phone on in case anything happens. Karolina’s got a lot of the statement notes transcribed—the statements as well, where they seem potentially relevant—and she and Mike have been looking for connections. Mike’s been making progress with Gertrude Robinson’s notebook. Apparently, he’s figured out the system she was using for the parts that are actually in a translatable code, but it seems like what she relied on more often was using single words or symbols or snippets of phrases, or sometimes even rough drawings, to stand in for entire ideas. She could write down what she’d figured out of connections between people and places and events she already knew about, and just rely on those little hints to jog her memory so she could reconstruct the whole thing in her head. Between the decoding that’s possible and Karolina’s notes, Mike’s been able to figure out a few of her ideas, but... you were right. A lot of the information contained in that book died with her.”

Jon nodded. “That’s probably what she wanted.”

“Probably. But the information that survived is very interesting.” Harriet’s whole countenance brightened. “She was looking at patterns in what, specifically, had successfully averted the different Powers’ rituals.”

“Did she find any?” asked Jon.

“It’s not clear yet, but it seems like she thinks some of them might’ve just failed on their own? Without any outside interference, I mean. She seemed to think that was important. Not sure what she thought it meant, other than the people who designed the rituals fucking it up, but Karolina says she might be able to provide more context once she’s gotten through the rest of the tapes. It’s a lead, at least.”

“That it is,” said Jon. “How about you?”

“I’m making progress as well,” Harriet said. “I was able to confirm an odd change Erica noticed in Jonah’s behavior in the years leading up to Gertrude’s death. Before that he’d mostly kept to himself, aside from some dealings with Peter Lukas—which is basically the same thing, really—but around twenty ten, he started initiating contact with other avatars. Most of them were in positions of some power over others of their affiliation, but by no means all. From what Simon and a few of my other contacts told me, he didn’t seem to want anything specific. If I had to guess, he was courting potential alliances, but I couldn’t find a clear reason why, or what he might have wanted. Other than that, I confirmed that Jonah and Peter Lukas have made bets of this sort on multiple prior occasions, that if anyone knows what went wrong with the Dark ritual attempted by the People’s Church of the Divine Host they’re being extremely close-lipped about it, that—oh! I was going to tell you, Simon talked to Martin a couple months ago.”

Despite everything, Jon smiled. “Yes, I—I heard. Listened to the tape.”

“Oh? How’d it go?”

“He acquitted himself very well, I thought,” Jon replied. “You know those stories where a human ends up talking to one of the fae, or, or a dragon, or something like that, and they have to be so careful what they say because it’ll all be used against them, but sometimes, if they’re really clever, they can slip out of whatever traps are being set for them and come out ahead?” He shook his head slightly, trying to force down the ache in his chest. “That was what it reminded me of.”

Harriet blinked. “Martin won a conversation with Simon?”

“More or less, yes.”

“Damn.” Harriet whistled. “I don’t know much about Martin, but just from that, I can see why you like him.”

Jon turned his head away, trying unsuccessfully not to let Harriet see the pain on his face.

“You’re still doing all right?” she asked gently. “Need anything else?”

“Ah... no, thank you, I’m quite all right.”

“Good,” said Harriet. “I’ll be back when there’s more to report.”

“Thank you,” Jon said.

“You’re welcome.”

Once again, Harriet walked away and out of Jon’s line of sight.

...

Despite Helen’s best efforts to keep him out of despair or at least distracted from it, the anguished monotony of frustration and dread had built to an almost intolerable fever pitch by the time it was shattered by a psychic blow powerful enough to take Jon off his feet.

He didn’t know, at first, what it was. Only that something fundamental to his being had been violently ripped away. A cornerstone of his foundation had been wrested from its place, and the whole structure of him was crumbling in on itself.

Slowly, he came to understand that it wasn’t him crumbling.

(The Magnus Institute had fallen.)

(The Archive was no more.)

Once he’d grasped what was happening, more prosaic knowledge started creeping in.

He was lying on something soft and yielding. Helen’s floor. He’d fallen, and, in her way, she’d caught him.

Something, or someone, had destroyed the Institute. Either an attack on the physical building, or—

(Jonah Magnus was dead.)

Upon the arrival of that information, Jon scrambled to sit up, assisted by the wall appearing behind his back when he started to fall back down.

“Helen?” he called.

“Right here,” she said, a moment before he could see her vaguely humanoid form.

“The Magnus Institute,” Jon managed, struggling to get his thoughts in order past the raw, bleeding wound in his mind. “It’s gone. Jonah’s dead.”

“Are you sure?” Helen asked slowly.

Jon heard what she wasn’t saying just fine. The Eye doesn’t need lies to deceive you. It’s tricked you before and will trick you again. Are you sure this isn’t a trap?

“He is dead.” Jon took a deep breath. “Truly dead, gone for good, all that. That much, I’m sure of.” He pressed his back against the wall, taking comfort in the feeling of warmth and solidity. “I don’t know how it happened, and I don’t know if it’s part of some—some master plan or anything like that, but I can’t worry about that right now. If Martin killed Jonah, he might still be trapped in the tunnels, or worse. And everyone else in that building who didn’t escape is either dead or trapped in the rubble.”

“What do you want to do?” asked Helen calmly.

Jon took another deep breath. In, out. “I’m going to need help,” he said, while slowly getting to his feet, leaning on the wall for support. “Karolina at least, hopefully Oliver as well. Maybe Harriet if she’s willing to run interference. It’ll be chaos once the first responders arrive, and once the news gets out it’ll only get worse. And that’s assuming I don’t run into any of my former coworkers, which, it’s... probably best to assume I will.” In, out. “Are Mike and Karolina working in the same place?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” said Jon, now fully upright and beginning to walk with Helen down the corridor. “If you could take me to them, I can text Harriet and Oliver, tell everyone what’s going on, ask Karolina to stop by Oliver’s place to pick him up if he’s willing to help, see if Harriet wants to wrangle the bystanders, and ask how Mike would like to be involved if at all. We can meet outside—”

There wasn’t an ‘outside the front entrance’ anymore. The Magnus Institute, as an inevitable consequence of no longer existing, no longer had a front entrance.

“—outside where the Institute was,” Jon concluded. “If you could help me get there as well, that would be great.”

“Gladly,” said Helen. “And... I’ll be there if you need a door.”

Jon smiled faintly as he put his hand on the knob of the door now embedded in the wall. “I appreciate that.”

With that, he twisted the knob, then stepped over Helen’s threshold.

Whereupon he promptly tripped, fell, and somehow kept falling.

Some brief but endless while later, Jon abruptly, belatedly, and painfully collided with the carpet.

It took him a further few seconds to shake off enough of the disorientation to figure out what had happened.

He was lying on the floor of a room he didn’t recognize. To one side of him was a startled-looking Mike, likewise on the floor but sitting up, next to Gertrude’s notebook, another notebook he appeared to have been writing in, and several index cards. To the other was Karolina, also on the floor, lying on her stomach with headphones around her neck and a tape player and her laptop in front of her, surrounded by several index cards of the same sort as those around Mike, which she looked to have been in the process of rearranging.

Standing in her doorway, set in the wall Karolina was lying closest to, was Helen.

Once Jon had examined the distances and angles, it was fairly clear what had gone wrong. Jon had stepped into the room and immediately tripped over Karolina, then landed partially on top of Mike, who had briefly panicked and launched him into the Vast by reflex.

After a moment of startled silence, Helen and Karolina both burst out laughing.

Jon looked over at Mike, who didn’t seem any more amused than he was. “Sorry about that.”

“Likewise,” Mike replied, before turning back to Gertrude’s notebook.

“Wait,” Jon said before Mike could once again get too absorbed. “I need to tell you something.”

“I assume it’s to do with why you’re out in the real world again?” asked Karolina.

“Yes,” Jon said. “Jonah’s dead. The Institute’s gone.” He looked at Karolina, who, as she often did, unflinchingly met his eyes. “If there are survivors trapped in the rubble, I’m hoping you can help me get them out.”

Karolina nodded solemnly. “Of course.” She grabbed her phone. “Want me to text Oliver, see if he can help with the recovery side of things?”

“If you would.” Jon turned to Mike, but knew better than to expect him to look back. “Mike, would you please text Harriet and see if she’d be willing to help? I’m assuming you don’t want to be directly involved in this, but let me know if I’m wrong.”

Mike shook his head as he retrieved his phone. “Jonah’s dead,” he said, gesturing to Gertrude’s notebook. “I’ll stay in case his plan isn’t.” He began typing a message, presumably to Harriet.

“That’s probably wise,” said Jon. Mike was right—even if Jonah was dead, there was an entirely reasonable chance his ritual could still be a threat.

Karolina’s phone dinged. “Oliver’s happy to help,” she said after checking her screen, then looked up at Jon. “I’ll go get him and we’ll meet you there?”

“Would you be willing to come back here first?” asked Jon. “I’d like to get everyone on the same page.”

Karolina gave him a thumbs-up, put her laptop in its case, and sank through the floor.

“Harriet’s on her way,” said Mike after a minute.

A moment later, Harriet arrived, followed shortly by Karolina and Oliver.

Jon didn’t waste any time. “If everyone’s all right with it, here’s the plan: we’ll meet by where the front entrance to the Magnus Institute would have been. Harriet, you can help manage the humans. Tell the first responders what we’re doing and where the victims are going to start showing up—you can work that out with Karolina when we get there—and don’t let anyone get in our way.” He took a deep breath. “If I run into any of my former coworkers, I will request that you don’t kill them, but feel free to incapacitate them however you think best if it’s necessary to keep them from interfering. Karolina, once you and Harriet have established a location with the first responders, you can start bringing victims up. Do you know how to do triage?”

Karolina nodded. “Yes. Got it.”

Jon took another deep breath. “Once you’ve got all the live people out, you can start recovering bodies. Oliver, if you can help her with that, that would be great.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Oliver.

“And Mike, you’re going to stay here and keep working?”

Mike was starting to reply in the affirmative when Harriet cut him off. “You’ve been working almost non-stop for sixteen hours. Take a break and get some sleep.”

“I can sleep when I’m dead,” Mike grumbled.

Harriet glared at him. “Mike. You are dead. Sleep.”

“He’s not dead, he has died,” Oliver pointed out. “There’s a difference.”

“You’re not helping,” Harriet shot back, then turned back to Mike. “Whatever. You can make your own bad decisions. Just... remember that article I sent you about how sleeping on a problem can sometimes help you find a solution?”

“Fine,” Mike huffed.

Harriet turned back to Jon. “All right. Let’s do this.”

With that, she disappeared.

“Ready?” Karolina asked Oliver, who closed his eyes and covered his ears by way of response.

Karolina wrapped her arm around Oliver’s waist and reached up to pinch his nose shut, and they promptly sank out of sight.

Jon took a deep breath and stood up, walking back over to Helen’s door, which at some point had closed.

“Good luck,” called Mike.

“Thank you,” Jon replied. “You too.”

“Thanks.”

Jon paused for a second with his hand on the doorknob.

He wasn’t facing this alone. He had friends now, friends who could and would support and defend him however they needed to. With their help... this would hurt, but he could do it. For Martin, and for everyone else in that building who had simply made a poor choice of workplace and neither needed nor deserved to die for it.

Jon grasped the knob of Helen’s door, turned it, and stepped through.

Chapter Text

Jon stepped out of Helen’s corridors and into the road near his friends at roughly the same time as the first emergency vehicles started showing up.

Beyond a dim awareness of a nearby crowd of terrified-looking Institute employees bathed in red and blue flashing lights and sirens so loud they sent bolts of pain through his skull, though, he didn’t really have the capacity to think about that.

In front of him lay the ruins of the Magnus Institute.

He hadn’t known how he would feel, seeing this place that had once been his prison so utterly destroyed. He’d thought about it, in Helen’s corridors on the way over, but hadn’t come to any firm conclusions. He’d hoped he might feel relief, or vindictive satisfaction, or even a sense of triumph over outliving this place that had stolen his life in so many ways.

It would have been nice if he had.

Mostly, what he felt was a sick, gut-punch unease.

He hadn’t expected it to feel so wrong, seeing his former workplace and de facto home reduced to rubble.

It wasn’t surprising, he supposed—much as he’d hated the place and everything about it by the end of his time there, that building had been the center of his life for years. However he’d felt about it at any given time, it had been there, a constant if often odious presence. His process of Becoming had taken place entirely within the context of that building and the role he’d played for the institution it housed, even when he himself had temporarily been located outside its walls, and his avatar self had grown into the shape of the container that place had kept him in. Even after he’d left and done his best to cut ties, the structural foundation of his new self had remained.

Coming back here, to this place he’d seen thousands of times, and witnessing the obliteration of the place and institution that had made him—

“Jon,” Helen said, bringing his attention back to the task at hand.

Jon shook his head violently in an effort to clear it. He couldn’t afford to think about all that right now. He had more important things to be doing.

“Karolina?” he called.

She turned to him. “Yes?”

“How many are still alive down there?”

Karolina closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating hard. “Too many for an accurate number without actually counting, but I’d say around thirty.”

“At least a few major bleeders,” Oliver chimed in.

Karolina nodded. “I’ll bring the first few right to the paramedics,” she said. “Harriet, go sort that out.”

“On it,” said Harriet, dashing over to the ambulances as Karolina sank into the ground.

Jon, Helen, and Oliver followed close behind.

“Who are you people?” asked one of the paramedics, their tone and expression making it clear they were in a foul mood. The ambulance crews had probably been warned about the Magnus Institute, then. If they weren’t part of some Section 31-type situation already.

“Right now, we’re here to help,” Harriet replied, looking around at every paramedic in sight. “And some of your patients don’t have much time, so don’t waste it on us, okay? One of my friends is working on getting the survivors out of that”—she gestured at the wreckage—“and up here to where you can treat them. The first few are gonna be hemorrhages, crush injuries, impalements, skull fractures, that sort of thing. They’re gonna come right to you, so clear a work space on the ground, if you can. After that, she’s gonna start putting the less urgent cases over there.” Harriet gestured to a stretch of road the police had already cordoned off. “We’ll talk to the police and the fire brigade, get them—oh, here’s one.”

Karolina’s upper body had just emerged from the pavement, cradling a near-unconscious woman who was bleeding heavily from a wound on her leg (compound fracture, the jagged edge of her broken femur had nicked her femoral artery on its way through her skin). She set the woman down on the pavement, then vanished back under the ground.

To their credit, the paramedics didn’t balk at the odd circumstances of the patient’s arrival before jumping into action, just immediately began treating her as another ambulance team cleared the space around her in preparation for more casualties.

“I’ve got it here,” Oliver said to the other three. “You guys keep moving.”

Harriet nodded and started to dash off towards the police when Jon caught her arm.

“One moment,” he said.

 Jon reached out for Knowledge, slumping a bit in gratitude when it quickly arrived. “That officer there?” he said, pointing to a man whose lined face and whitish-gray hair made him look much older than he actually was. “He worked with Daisy and Basira. If you tell him they’re in there and convince him we’re here to help, he’ll gladly stay out of our way, and if you get him on our side he’ll take care of the others.”

Harriet nodded and gave Jon a thumbs-up before running over and starting to talk to the man Jon had indicated.

Jon was staring at the ruins, doing his best to tune out the sirens and the screams and the shouting and clamoring of the quickly assembling crowd while he tried to figure out how best to go about finding Martin if he’d been in the tunnels where the Eye couldn’t see, when Helen spoke up from beside him.

“What’s this like for you?” she asked, in a tone of genuine curiosity. “Seeing it destroyed?”

Jon took a deep breath. “Strange,” he finally said. “Unsettling. Feels like I should be... happy, or sad, or relieved, or worried, or something, but mostly I just feel...” He sighed. “Wrong. Disoriented. Off-balance.” He laughed humorlessly as a thought struck him. “Lost, I suppose you could say.”

Helen hummed.

Jon looked over at her. “Is this how you feel all the time?”

Helen shrugged, a motion that appeared disconcertingly normal until Jon realized the reason—they were in public. Surrounded by humans, none of whom she was planning to feed on at the moment and any of whom could ask another to verify what they’d just seen, it was in Helen’s best interests to pass for a human as far as possible, leaving people with an impression of something off and perhaps uncertain if they’d truly caught a glimpse of a distorted reflection but willing to brush it off as their eyes playing tricks on them rather than trying to investigate further.

It made Jon a bit sad to think that none of these people would ever know what a lovely, dangerous creature they’d come so close to. That if anyone remembered her, they’d remember an ordinary human, not the beautiful, sharp paradox that could and would have destroyed them had they met under different circumstances. He enjoyed the thought of Helen feigning humanity for a hunt, letting it drop at an opportune moment and leaving the victim rethinking everything they’d just experienced, but her having to do that in a crowd, just to avoid making a scene or drawing unwanted and possibly violent attention... it didn’t sit right in Jon’s mind. The packed-tight people surrounding them, some pressing in through the police line and quickly being escorted out (none of the responders were bothering Jon or any of his friends, most likely due to Harriet’s intervention), ought to be awestruck and terrified, not brushing past her as if she were of no consequence.

That was as far as Jon got into that train of thought before realizing that his patron and his friendship with Helen had apparently found a new way to interfere with each other.

Jon hated the thought of being completely misinterpreted by everyone around him, but Helen thrived on it. It was her business how she wanted to be perceived, and if she preferred to fly under the radar, Jon needed to respect that.

He could appreciate Helen on behalf of all of these people, Jon decided. He had a lot of lost time to catch up on in that regard.

Which thought abruptly brought his attention back to the matter at hand.

“Helen?”

“Yes?”

“If there was someone alive in the tunnels, would you be able to find them?”

“Mmm... maybe,” Helen said. “It depends. For most people, in most circumstances... I think so.”

Jon hesitated, reluctant to even voice his next question, but finally spoke. “What if someone was dead?”

“It would be substantially more difficult, but given time, perhaps.” Helen tilted her head. “Would you like me to go look for him?”

Jon frowned at her wording. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“Not particularly,” said Helen.

Jon took a deep, steadying breath and reminded himself that he trusted Helen. There were all sorts of reasons she might not want him—and, by extension and perhaps more relevantly, his Power—around when she was pushing her own Power in what even (and perhaps especially) for Helen were probably some truly bizarre directions. “All right. I’ll stay here and...” In, out. “And see if I can find out what happened to the others.”

Helen’s mouth twisted in a way Jon suspected was an indication of disapproval, but if it was, she didn’t voice it. “If I find your Martin, I’ll bring him back here.”

“Thank you.” Jon tried to put enough weight into the words to convey how deeply he meant them without making Helen uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure if he’d struck the right balance, but, from the way Helen smiled at him as she opened a door in the middle of the road and vanished along with it, he suspected he’d gotten close enough.

He hoped so, anyway.

Right. Helen was looking for Martin. Daisy, Basira, and Melanie—

“Jon?”

Georgie’s voice jarred Jon out of his thoughts.

He spun around, quickly locating her on the other side of the police line.

Jon wasn’t sure why seeing her here, now, made his chest tighten up and his hands shake. He wasn’t sure why he felt frozen to the spot, or why the paralysis was warring with the impulse to run and hide.

He wanted to disappear. Wanted to turn around and pretend he hadn’t seen her, extremely unconvincing though that would be.

But he had seen her, and she’d seen him, and he didn’t want to make her think he was deliberately avoiding her, and he did kind of want to know what she’d have to say. He’d spent long enough clinging to willful ignorance and denial, as if he could keep himself safe from unpleasant truths by simply not acknowledging them. It had never worked, of course, but that had simply been one more inconvenient piece of information to avoid.

Jon took a slow, deep breath.

The fear of being judged or gossiped about behind your back fell under the Eye’s purview. Some avatar he’d be if he wouldn’t go talk to his ex.

Another steadying breath, and Jon made his way over.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Georgie asked.

“A friend of mine saw the collapse,” Jon replied, choosing his words carefully. “I’m here to help. We’re all here to help.”

“Who—” Georgie broke off with a huff. “Never mind. Do you know where Melanie—”

She’s in the break room when the shaking starts.

At first, it’s subtle. A shift in the room, almost as though the floor dropped a bit. If it wasn’t for the ripples in the mug of tea she’s drinking, she’d think she imagined it.

Then the rumbling begins. Something low and deep that lives somewhere in the gulf between sound and sensation.

She’s never experienced an earthquake, at least not one strong enough to feel, but she knows what they are and what to do, in theory at least. She half-slides, half-collapses out of her chair and onto the floor, crawls under the table she was sitting at, grabs one of the table legs, curls up in a ball, and holds on tight.

It’s not truly frightening until pieces of the ceiling start to fall.

It’s loud, so loud, the sounds of the building falling apart and crashing down around her. Every jarring bang of a piece of ceiling striking the top of her table shelter makes her flinch.

For a moment, she wonders if she ought to try to evacuate. But the Archives are in the basement, a full floor down from the nearest exit, and if the building is going to collapse, she’s highly unlikely to get out in time. Her odds are probably better if she stays here, with at least the meager shelter of the table to protect her from being crushed, than—

That’s when the pain hits.

She might be screaming. It’s hard to tell, and impossible to care. There’s nothing left in the world except the blinding, truly blinding, pain exploding through her awareness.

Then everything is louder, dark and dust and chaos and tilting and pain.

She curls up tight and waits for it to end. One way or another.

It’s so quiet.

Jon blinked as he abruptly found himself back in reality, with his mind full of Knowledge of Melanie’s current state and location and Georgie staring at him with an expression he couldn’t quite place.

“Yes,” he said simply. “She’s scared, and hurt, but… she’ll be okay. She was in the breakroom when the building collapsed, sheltered under a table when it started.” He took a deep breath. “I think she’s been blinded.”

“What?” Georgie’s expression had been sliding into relief at the news that Melanie was alive, but quickly shifted back to worry and anger.

“She was bound to the Archives,” Jon tried to explain. “The Powers don’t let go easily.”

“Fucking hell,” Georgie muttered, glaring daggers at Jon.

“I’ll go ask Karolina how her rescue efforts are going,” Jon continued despite the awkwardness, gesturing to the row of wounded rescuees on the ground by the ambulances. “If she’s gotten all the most urgent cases—”

“Who’s Karolina?”

Jon winced. “Um... friend of mine. Avatar of the Buried. She’s here because I asked her to help with the rescue efforts, and that’s exactly what she’s doing. I can—I can tell her where Melanie is, ask her to bring her up next.”

Georgie looked doubtful, but eventually gave Jon a sharp nod. “Yeah. Do that.”

Jon nodded back and darted over to the side of the casualty zone where Karolina was laying out more survivors (they were well concealed enough behind fire trucks and ambulances that her dirt-diving activities were at least mostly hidden from the human crowd—not counting the ones she’d rescued, but that couldn’t be helped). “Karolina?” he called as soon as she surfaced.

“Yeah?” she replied once she’d deposited the sobbing victim in her arms onto the ground.

“Where are you in the triage process?”

“I’ve gotten everyone in immediate danger, except the ones Oliver says don’t have a chance,” she said promptly, gesturing to where Oliver was pointing at the ruins while talking to someone who appeared to be fire crew. “The ones I’m working on now are pretty badly injured, but stable.”

Jon nodded. “Might I ask you to retrieve a specific victim within that category next time you go in?”

Karolina frowned, but nodded. “Who?”

“Melanie King. She’s in the basement in what used to be a break room, under a table. Probably missing her eyes. Wiry sort of build, curly brown hair with the ends dyed—”

“I can get a sense of shape, but details or colors don’t help me,” Karolina interjected.

Jon gritted his teeth. “Here, just—” He mentally grasped the Knowledge of exactly where Melanie was located and shoved it in Karolina’s direction.

Karolina—or at least her upper body—jolted back as though she’d been struck by a projectile, but quickly recovered and smiled in a way that made Jon suspect she was proud of him. “Got it,” she said, before vanishing under the ground yet again.

Less than a minute later, Karolina was back above ground with a fiercely thrashing Melanie in her arms, setting her down on the pavement before once again sinking into it to retrieve someone else.

Looking at what remained of Melanie’s eyes made Jon feel a bit sick, but he took a deep breath and forced his voice to come out calm.

“Melanie, it’s all right,” Jon said as he crouched down beside her. “It’s all right. You’re out. You’re gonna be okay.”

Melanie, curled in a harshly breathing ball of obvious agony, slowly raised her head to face him before apparently remembering that that wouldn’t do her any good and putting it back down on the pavement. “Jon?”

“It’s me, yeah.”

Melanie looked like she wanted to ask him something, but, to Jon’s relief, she quickly thought better of it. “What happened?” she managed to get out.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Jon replied. “But I do know that Elias is dead and the Institute is gone.”

Melanie was still shaking with pained almost-sobs, but at those words she actually managed a smile. “I—I guess that’s—that’s what matters.”

Just then, a woman with short dark hair and a paramedic’s uniform arrived and sank to the ground beside Melanie. “Hey, my name’s Isobel,” she said. “I’m a paramedic. May I help you?”

“Yeah,” Melanie replied in a harsh breath.

As Isobel began treating Melanie, asking her if she was allergic to any medications (no) and if there was any chance she was pregnant (Melanie burst into wild laughter that sounded about half a shade off from sobbing), Jon went back to the edge of the police line where Georgie was standing.

“Melanie’s out,” he said. “She’s being treated now. Her eyes are—well, it’s bad. But she’s lucid, and she’s in good hands.”

“Thank God,” muttered Georgie, then looked up at Jon. “Does she have her phone on her? Is it working?”

“Should be,” Jon replied. “Can’t guarantee she’ll be able to pick up, but—”

Georgie was already pulling out her phone and tapping the screen until the faint sound of ringing stepped into the awkward space between them.

She’d been right, in a way. Now that Jon understood that losing his humanity didn’t mean losing his personhood, he could admit that the Jon Georgie had once loved wasn’t the same person as the Jon standing before her now. That man no longer existed, and it was probably kindest to let her grieve him in peace.

There was nothing more to say here, no purpose to be served by lingering. “Goodbye, Georgie.” Jon tried not to let the pain in his chest come through in his voice. “Say goodbye to the Admiral for me, too, will you?”

Georgie swallowed, then nodded. “Goodbye, Jon.” She smiled a bit. “And yeah, I will.”

As the call connected and Georgie began a burst of frantic reassurances, Jon turned away and made his way back to a space near—but not too near—the paramedics’ work area, then finally let himself sink into his curiosity about what became of the others.

Basira first.

She’s almost out, she thinks. She hopes.

It’s hard to think. The pain is too much, too loud, drowning out nearly all other possible thoughts.

But she needs to get out. She knows that much. She can’t see anymore, but she can hear and feel the building crumbling around her. This building is falling down. If she’s still inside when it falls, it will probably kill her. She doesn’t want to die.

So she needs to get out.

She was in the library when the shaking started, a floor up from the Archives. Her first thought, after you need to get out, was Daisy. But Daisy was in the Archives, and it wouldn’t help anyone to go further in and get herself killed looking for someone who might’ve already gotten out on her own. She’d have to trust Daisy to make her own way out and meet her outside.

Just as well she made that decision. She couldn’t look for anyone right now.

She’s almost out.

She’s almost out, and then the rumbling is louder and something hits her head and hurts enough to notice even through the pain of her eyes dissolving and she’s out of time.

She drops to the floor, curls up in a ball, and puts her arms over her head as the solid structure around her crumbles to chunks of concrete and packs itself in around her.

There’s nothing now. Nothing but dust and pain and she can’t move, can’t breathe, hurts...

There’s nothing to do but pray, and hope against hope that only the true God hears her.

(Karolina was bringing Basira up now. In addition to her missing eyes, she had a mild concussion, severe bruising, and a badly sprained knee, but nothing life-threatening.)

Jon looked over at the casualty zone to confirm. Within a minute, Karolina had Basira up out of the ground, and one of the ambulance crew was helping her.

Jon’s immediate relief was followed by a surge of apprehension. With Melanie and Basira safe above ground, and Martin outside Jon’s line of Sight with Helen searching for him... the only Archival assistant left was the one whose fate Jon had been dreading.

Really, considering how badly Jon wanted to know what had happened to Daisy and how terrified he was of the answer, it was amazing the Eye had held off on showing him this long.

Oh well. No longer.

Fuck it all, she should’ve known better than to think she could just die.

It’s what she was hoping for, when she felt the shaking and realized the building was going to collapse. When she used the rocking of the giant shelving unit to pull it down on top of her, she’d hoped that its weight plus the weight of the entire building above her would kill her outright. Hoped it would free her from the unbearable hunger that’s long since crowded out anything else she could possibly feel, and from the constant murmur in her ears of how easy it would be to appease it if she’d only give up on pretending to be something she’d never been. Failing that, she’d hoped it would at least keep her contained like the wild animal she’d been and could so easily slip back into being, the one she’d rather die than once again unleash.

The Hunt was never going to let her go that easily.

Somehow, this is even worse than the Buried. Several of her ribs are broken, lighting up with pain every time she takes a breath or tries to move or the rubble on top of her shifts even a tiny bit. Her right hand hurts incredibly, probably at least partially crushed. Her entire body hurts, really, so much she can’t even begin to catalog it all. Worst of all are her eyes, which despite her long familiarity with pain hurt more than she’d ever imagined anything could.

Through it all, the Hunt is there, whispering that it could make all this go away. It could heal her, stop the pain, give her the strength to claw her way out of here and back into the world. It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t been feeding it, it says. It could heal and strengthen and nourish her now, as a kind of loan, if she would just let it back in. She could pay it back when she got to the surface.

She knows, as surely as it knows, that she would. She would pay the Hunt back, because she would want to.

She already kind of wants to. She knows exactly how good it would feel, how much joy it could bring her. More relevantly, she knows that she’ll be stuck here, trapped in the dark and the dust and the heavy brick, weak and starving and grievously wounded but unable to die, until she agrees to the Hunt’s terms. True, she’s sure it would let her die if it thought she was never going to feed it again, but it’s always known her better than she knows herself, and they both know she can’t fight it for that long. It’s holding her hostage with her own body, her own feelings, like it has this whole time. She can’t win.

But she has one chance.

Whenever a building like the Magnus Institute collapses, there are people looking for survivors. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll find her. Maybe she can get out of this hell and find Basira and ask her to hold her hand while she—or someone else, whoever can do it properly—kills her.

It could take days for a rescue crew to get to her. Maybe she can hold out that long. Maybe she can’t. Either way, the thought fills her with sick, bone-deep dread.

She still has to try.

Jon returned to himself with a claustrophobic shudder, blinking hard against the tears welling up in his eyes.

The next time Karolina surfaced with a rescuee in her arms, Jon called out to her.

“What is it?” she asked once she’d deposited her charge, concerned expression making it clear she knew something was up.

“I…” Jon was nearly choked by the effort of forcing the words out. “Could you…”

He broke off and swallowed the tightness in his throat.

Daisy needed him. He couldn’t falter.

When Jon spoke again, his voice was Archivist steady.

“I need you to do me a favor.”

Pain. Pressure. Trapped. Dark.

The thrumming whisper that rises and falls in time with the throbbing of her wounds, promising to free her from all of it. The stubborn insistence in the back of her mind that she mustn’t listen to it, even if it’s hard to remember why.

There’s nothing else here.

Something is touching her hand.

An instinctive surge of fear runs through her, before she remembers that there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore. Whatever happens, it’s unlikely to make her situation worse.

The touch resolves into another hand, alive and searching. The unknown person’s hand finds her left hand, the uninjured one, and grasps it firmly.

She doesn’t particularly care who the hand is attached to, or how they came to be in this corner of the rubble with her when she’s quite certain there was no one else there before.

There’s someone else here, and they’re holding her hand.

She’s not alone.

The hand in hers gives a reassuring squeeze, and she squeezes back.

She barely has time to feel another hand settle on the back of her head before her skull caves in.

“Jon?”

Oliver’s voice dragged Jon out of a stunned stupor, back to the crowded street full of screaming and sirens and flashing lights and the smell of brick dust and blood.

Gradually, he realized there were tears on his face.

“I’m sorry,” Oliver was saying, tone making it clear he meant it.

“Thanks,” Jon forced out.

“If it helps at all,” Oliver said tentatively, “Karolina did it right. The Hunt won’t drag her back. She’s gone.”

“That, ah...” Jon swallowed hard against a sob. “That actually does help, a bit.”

Oliver gave him a sympathetic look. “Want a hug?”

Jon just nodded.

Oliver stepped forward and gently wrapped his arms around him.

It took Jon a minute to unfreeze enough to reciprocate, but Oliver didn’t seem to mind. He just kept holding Jon until enough of the tension had melted out of his body for him to bring his arms up, slump into the embrace, and allow himself to be comforted.

They stayed like that until Jon’s tears had dried up into a dull, hollow sort of calm.

He pulled back slightly, and Oliver immediately let go.

“I should’ve listened to Helen sooner,” Jon finally said in a pained whisper. “If I’d known what I know now, if I’d—if I’d been willing to think through the possibilities before things with Daisy got so bad that she couldn’t risk letting the Hunt back in at all because it probably would’ve—probably would’ve just erased her, maybe—”

“Hey,” Oliver interjected. “No maybes. You can’t know what would have happened if you’d done something differently. That’s not how time works. You’re gonna drive yourself crazy if you keep wondering about it.” He smiled slightly. “And I’m pretty sure that’s Helen’s job.”

Jon sighed. “I’m pretty good at driving her crazy,” he said, then laughed slightly. “And she is remarkably good at confronting me with truths I don’t want to hear.”

Oliver’s smile went a bit sideways. “I have no idea what you two have going on, but whatever it is, hold onto it.”

“That’s the plan,” Jon instantly replied. “And, ah... I’m not sure either.” He smiled a bit. “Even if I was, I doubt I could explain it, and it would probably be disrespectful of me to try.”

Oliver seemed about to reply when a door that shouldn’t have been there swung open in the side of a nearby fire truck.

Even after Helen’s humanoid form had fully left the corridors, Jon watched the door for a moment, everything in him reaching toward the threshold in the hope of seeing Martin step out, confused and frightened but alive and free.

The door vanished, and Martin still hadn’t emerged.

Jon swallowed a pang of bitter disappointment, then did his best to focus on Helen and her news.

“I didn’t find Martin,” she said immediately. “I did find Jonah’s last host, wandering the tunnels in a very tasty panic. He certainly wasn’t Jonah anymore, and Jonah’s eyes looked to be quite thoroughly destroyed. I think it’s fairly safe to say that Jonah is properly dead this time.”

“Sounds like it,” Jon said quietly. “Where is he now? Ed—Jonah’s former host?”

“I got him back to Susan,” Helen replied. “She was calling for help when I left.”

“Thank you,” said Jon, then took a deep breath. “Do you have any idea what might have happened to Martin?”

Martin shouldn’t be able to see down here.

The tunnels they passed through on the way here were pitch-dark, except where the dim, faded yellow glow from Peter’s torch illuminated them—it’s still the only light source Martin can identify, but that doesn’t seem to matter. In this center of the Eye’s power, he can see everything.

Including...

Oh, God. “Where are his eyes?”

The sound of stone scraping against stone as a new tunnel opens in a solid wall promises an answer to that question, at least.

“Exactly where they’ve always been, Martin.”

Somehow, despite the empty eye sockets of the withered corpse seated in the chair under the dome of the tower Peter’s brought them to and the disturbingly familiar eyes currently occupying the unknown face of the man who just spoke, it takes a moment for the full reality of the situation to click.

When it does, Martin shudders violently.

The man—Elias—Jonah smirks. “Watching over my institute.”

Even in a different voice, the smug, possessive way Jonah says “my” sounds entirely too much like the tone he used to take sometimes when Jon came up in conversation.

“What are you doing here?” Peter asks, a distinct bite in his voice.

“It appears the Distortion thinks it’s staked a claim to my project,” Jonah snaps, with more genuine anger than he probably intended to reveal leaching into the words.

My project. Jon. He’s talking about Jon.

“I’ll admit, it caught me by surprise. Fortunately, this”—Jonah gestures at his new body—“was nearby.” He grins, shifting his stolen body as though showing off a new outfit. “Edward Ryle. Quite suitable, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Well, Edward, you’re too late.” Peter’s grin now mirrors Jonah’s.

“Oh, I know,” Jonah replies, stolen voice disturbingly casual. “I couldn’t stop you if I wanted to. I just wanted to be here at the end. Can a man not watch his own death?”

Martin grits his teeth.

Peter obviously wants him to kill Jonah, for reasons almost certainly unrelated to the Extinction. Going along with a plan Peter’s been working on for months with no idea of the aim or potential consequences is a remarkably terrible idea, perhaps especially since it seems more likely to be a power grab of some sort than anything else.

But Jonah knows where Jon is, and was only prevented from taking him back by force (no matter what he is now, Jon wouldn’t go with Jonah willingly, not if there’s anything left of him at all) because the Distortion attacked him (Martin will worry about the import of that later) and damaged his previous host body badly enough to force him to move to a new one. And, whatever else he may be, Jonah is definitely not a quitter. Jon will never be free as long as Jonah lives.

So Jonah needs to die.

Martin needs to stall for time. Maybe, if he can get Jonah talking, either Jonah will reveal something useful or he’ll be able to think of a plan that won’t either let Jonah leave or give Peter what he wants.

Okay. Jonah loves feeling superior. If Martin acts more confused than he actually is...

“What, wh- what? What?” Martin stammers out. “How are you even here?” It’s obvious, really—it would be easy enough for someone who can pull anyone’s darkest secrets out of thin air to blackmail his way out of prison—but, if he’s lucky, it might lead to a bragging monologue.

“Don’t let him distract you,” Peter says—dammit, he’s not going to let Jonah get on a roll. Not when he’s got— something to accomplish, and potentially limited time in which to do it.

“Peter,” Jonah sneers.

“Edward,” Peter sneers back.

“Both of you, just—just shut up!” It’s a genuine cry of frustration, but it quickly becomes a strategy. They know Martin knows he’s making a major decision, even if their awareness of his knowledge and motivations is somewhat fuzzy. He can use that. “Just give me a second to think.”

“Of course,” Peter says smugly. “You can take all the time in the world.”

All right. Think. What exactly does Peter want?

“Come now, Martin,” Jonah says. “I would have thought you’d jump at the chance to kill me.”

Peter wants Martin to kill Jonah and take his place in this... whatever it is. Panopticon.

“That’s not…”

Jonah doesn’t seem bothered by the threat of imminent death. He seems almost like... like he’s goading Martin to do it.

Come on, keep him talking. “Why wouldn’t you help against the Extinction?”

Jonah doesn’t want to die. He wouldn’t have gone to such trouble to survive this long if he did. So either Jonah doesn’t think there’s much of a chance that Martin will actually kill him—very possible—or there’s something about getting Martin into the Watcher’s chair that he wants more than he wants to live.

Okay. Peter and Jonah both want Martin in that device, which seems like a good reason to avoid going in at all costs.

(It’s also possible that Jonah thinks he could survive the destruction of his original body, probably via his eyes, which means any plan to kill him will have to include destroying his eyes as well. Sorry, Edward.)

“Because I’m a busy man,” Jonah says. “It has never been my top priority.”

Sadly, Martin believes it.

“I don’t believe you,” he lies, hoping Jonah will try to defend his own lie with some relevant truths.

“That really doesn’t matter, I’m afraid,” Jonah oozes. “It’s the only answer you’re going to get.”

Oh well. It was a long shot anyway.

Try another angle. If Martin kills Jonah and leaves that seat empty, will he be pulled in himself? What happens if the seat isn’t filled?

“If I…” How to phrase the question without tipping Peter or Jonah off to what he’s doing... “If I do kill you, will the others survive?”

Peter frowns at Jonah. “Well?”

“Come now, Peter, it’s a valid question,” Jonah says. “And you should have addressed it yourself, really.” He scoffs at Peter, then turns. “The short answer is, I don’t know, Martin. I guarantee it won’t be pleasant for them, but I honestly don’t know if their ties to the Institute are quite as strong as I may have implied. You, at least, should be insulated from the fallout by your new allegiance—”

Lonely and Watching. That’s what the Panopticon needs, someone tied to both.

“Jon’s bound himself to another Archive, so he’ll be all right. So that leaves Melanie, Basira, and Daisy. And the rest of the Institute, of course, and you can’t tell me you care about them.”

“Wh—” Martin sputters. “Of course I do!” If the fallout of killing Jonah would destroy the whole Institute, or at least threaten all the people in it—

This place is evil. Just like Jonah, it needs to die. Maybe you can’t have one without the other. If Martin can keep himself from being pulled in once Jonah is dead, leave the chair empty... maybe this whole twisted apparatus will die, too.

“Do you, though?” asks Jonah with an infuriating smirk. “Do you really care about any of them? Or is that worrying just simply an old reflex?”

Martin doesn’t answer, or let himself think too hard about the question. He’s too busy planning.

Lonely and Watching. He’s bound up with both, now. He can’t undo everything they’ve done to him, but maybe he can somehow cut the ties—

“Goodness,” Jonah says gleefully. “Peter has done his work well, hasn’t he? No, the only choice I think that matters is whether you want to kill me or not.”

Cut the ties.

Peter brought a knife.

“I do.” Martin laughs. “I really, really do.”

This is an insane plan, but it’s what he’s got, and what does he have to lose by trying?

“Then do it, Martin,” Peter says. “We’re the same, you and I. We don’t need anyone else.”

He has no idea if this will work, but... it feels like it should, and hopefully that means it will. Maybe that conversation with Simon was good for something after all.

 Peter’s still talking. “Watching from a distance,” he says. “That's always who you’ve been. Haven’t you enjoyed it these last few months, drifting through the Archives unseen, unjudged?”

Martin keeps his expression distant, with maybe a bit of longing, as he takes a casual, seemingly random step forward and to the right, moving into Peter’s space just enough to force him back, closer to Jonah’s first body.

He gets one shot at this. He has to line it up exactly right. And pray he doesn’t hit a rib.

“You’ll like it in there,” Peter says, almost gently. “I promise.”

“Yeah,” Martin says, a deliberately dreamy edge to his voice as he continues to drift towards Peter. “Yeah, I think I would.”

“Then do it,” Peter says as he takes the final step into place. “Kill him and help me save the world.”

Martin smiles a bit as he lifts the knife. “Should I cut you as well?”

As he’d hoped, Peter is utterly taken aback by the question.

“What? No, of course n—”

The knife glides through the air, slicing through the front of Peter’s shirt and the skin of his torso before burying itself in the side of the mummified corpse in the Panopticon seat.

The body of Jonah Magnus crumbles to dust.

The body that most recently housed Jonah Magnus screams, and only gets louder when the knife is driven into his eyes. One after the other, fast and thorough.

The knife clatters to the ground, and the last host of Jonah Magnus flees, screaming and sobbing, into the darkness.

There’s nothing left of the man who ruined all their lives. Nothing left but a knife sitting in a pile of dust, and the fury that drove the knife home, and the love that drove the fury.

The fallout hits a moment later, a rumble and a wrenching and an overwhelming feeling of loss as the structure around them starts to crumble.

“What—what did you do?” Peter shouts, staring at the blood soaking into his shirt from the wound underneath.

“You wanted me to serve the Lonely,” Martin says. “I didn’t just disobey you, I made you share in the death of someone you knew. And I didn’t kill Jonah for the Lonely, or for you. I did it for Jon.”

Peter sputters. “But you said—”

“Honestly, I mostly just said what I thought you wanted to hear.” Martin smiles. “And now that thing”—he gestures at the crumbling structure of the Panopticon—“can’t touch me.” Laughter bubbles from his chest, ringing with the giddy freedom of the condemned.

Martin has nothing more to lose, and he’s won all the same.

And if the look on Peter’s face right before they both start to fade is the last real thing he ever sees... well, he could’ve done much worse.

“—Jon?”

“Jon!”

When Jon finally faded back into reality, the first thing he heard—the first sound in his conscious awareness, beyond the background screams of the sirens and sobs of the wounded and murmurs of the crowd—was voices calling his name.

The first thing he saw was Helen and Oliver looking at him with mingled curiosity and concern, the latter of which quickly melted into relief as Jon visibly regained awareness of his surroundings.

“Back with us?” asked Oliver.

Jon nodded perfunctorily, then blurted out, “I know what happened to Martin.”

“Oh?” Helen raised an eyebrow.

“I thought you couldn’t See into the tunnels,” said Oliver with a slight frown.

“I can’t,” Jon replied in a rush. “He wasn’t in the tunnels. He was in the Panopticon—ah, a kind of... supernatural watchtower. Lets you see quite literally everything. It’s in the middle of the tunnels, and the tunnels do block the Eye, but the Panopticon itself concentrates it. Martin was near the very center, so—” He broke off. “Anyway. We were right. Jonah was in the Watcher’s seat, and Peter brought Martin down there to kill him and take his place.” Despite the dire circumstances, Jon smiled a tiny bit as he recalled Martin’s cleverness and courage. “Martin outsmarted him. Managed to kill Jonah properly without being claimed for the Panopticon in his place, and cut his ties to the Lonely at the same time.” The smile vanished into a wince. “Unfortunately, as might be expected, Peter didn’t appreciate that.”

Oliver’s face softened in a look of clear sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

Jon took a deep breath. “I’m going in after him.”

“Wh—” Oliver sputtered for a moment. “You can’t seriously mean into the domain of the Lonely.”

Helen’s facial expression was the visual equivalent of a heavy sigh. “I’m fairly certain that is exactly what he means.”

Jon gave her what he hoped was an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I know this is pretty much exactly what you were worried about, but—”

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?” Oliver interjected. “No one will think any less of you if you walk away.”

“He got sent there for me,” Jon said, a bit hoarsely. “Partially, I mean. Martin killed Jonah to rid the world of him and of the Institute, yes, but also because he knew Jonah was after me and that I’d never be free of him while he was alive.” He took a shaky breath, focused on fighting back the terror creeping up through his abdomen and filling his chest long enough to finish explaining himself. “I know no one else will think any less of me. But right now the trail’s still warm enough that I could follow it, and if I don’t, if I let that opportunity slip away, if have to spend the rest of my life knowing that Martin more or less got himself thrown into hell to keep me and the rest of the world safe from Jonah and that, not only did I not help him when I had the chance, I didn’t even try?” He swallowed hard. “I would think less of me. Besides, I just...” Another breath. In, out. “I want him to be okay. I can’t stand the thought of him suffering forever, I just... I can’t.”

Helen reached out and wrapped her hand around Jon’s, carefully arranging her fingers so as not to cut him. “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

Jon adjusted slightly, so he was about as close to holding her hand as they could get. Even accounting for their positioning, Helen’s hand didn’t feel as sharp as usual—more of a leathery texture, the sharpness held inside.

She was being so careful with him, so gentle, and it made something in Jon’s chest ache.

Still, he knew the answer to her question. “Yes. Absolutely.”

“All right,” Helen said. “If this is really what you want, I’ll support it.” She smiled—a bit sadly, perhaps, but still playful. “I am here to encourage your insanity.”

“Thanks,” Jon said quietly.

“I’ll go get Harriet and Karolina,” Oliver said. “Don’t go anywhere until we’re all here.”

Jon nodded.

He could feel Martin getting further away with every passing moment. He wanted to protest, wanted to go now, but... dammit, he also wanted to say goodbye to his friends.

He hadn’t been lying. He did want to do this. But that didn’t make him any less afraid, and he was quickly realizing how much harder this was going to be now that he had something to lose.

When Helen pulled him into a hug, that realization hit so strongly that tears welled up in his eyes.

“I hate it when you go places I can’t feel you,” she whispered, a kind of resigned grief in her voice.

Jon didn’t have to do this. He had a life now, friends he loved and who loved him, a job that wasn’t trying to kill him, a place to live and a place to work that weren’t the same place, and the freedom to go wherever he wanted. Martin had made his choice willingly, knowing what it would cost him, and maybe the best way to respect that was to continue enjoying his life and the freedom from the constant threat of having it all taken away that Martin had bought for him at such a high price. Maybe going into the Lonely to try to get him back, knowing the odds were against being able to get either of them out again, would be an insult to that sacrifice.

Or maybe Jon had accomplished the impossible before and could do it again. Maybe Martin had called him back from the Buried not only with recordings of his own voice but with the love that had inspired him to put them there. Maybe Jon was stronger now than he’d been back then, properly fed and no longer constantly struggling against his own Power, and maybe there were more people who loved him now than there had ever been before, and even more people who knew him more distantly but liked him and would be saddened to hear that he wasn’t coming back. Maybe he could do this (he knew he could do this). Either way, it would go against everything in him not to try.

After a long moment of nestling into Helen’s gravel-sack embrace, Jon pulled back a bit, looking into her face as close to her eyes as he thought he could without hurting her.

“I will come back,” he said, quietly but with deep conviction.

“You’d better,” Helen replied, audibly forcing herself to sound more unbothered than she was. “The world would be far less interesting without you in it.”

Jon smiled faintly through the tightness in his chest and throat. “I’ll take that under consideration.”

“Jon!”

Jon turned his head and torso to see Harriet and Oliver running towards him, at around the same time as another voice called his name from roughly ground level.

He turned back to give Karolina a hand up as Oliver and Harriet took their places beside him.

As soon as Karolina was fully above ground and on her feet, she looked Jon directly in the eye. “Please tell me you’re not actually planning to physically go into the Lonely.”

Jon winced at her expression. “Sorry.”

“Jon, you don’t have to do this,” said Harriet.

“I already told him that,” Oliver grumbled.

Harriet smiled at Jon, but it was the sort of smile that was clearly intended as a reassurance rather than as an actual expression of the bearer’s feelings.

“Don’t forget your wings are made of wax,” she said quietly.

“I haven’t.” Jon breathed in, then out. “If it helps, I’m fairly certain I can get back if all of you help me.”

“How?” Harriet asked.

“Anchoring,” Jon replied, looking around at his assembled friends in turn to make it clear he was addressing all of them. “When I was in the Buried, I couldn’t find my way back until Martin started a bunch of tape recorders playing back my voice and piled them onto the lid of the coffin. I don’t know exactly why that worked, if I could recognize my own voice and follow it or if it somehow... invoked me, or if it was someone outside thinking about me and trying to bring me home that did the trick, or something else entirely, but at the very least it gives us something to work with. My rib’s in my office, in case that actually did help at all, and my office feels more like my space than my apartment does at this point anyway, so it’s probably best to set up there. Maybe just... take it in shifts, have someone there all the time, two people if you can manage it. I don’t think we have any recordings of just my voice anymore, so... just being there and wanting me to come back will probably help as much as anything. If something else feels like it might work, go ahead and give it a try. Ask Mike, he might have some good ideas.” He swallowed. “If I’m not back in three days, you can probably assume—”

Karolina cut him off with a tight, near-frantic hug.

It was almost too tight, the pressure near painful on the space where his lowest ribs should have been, but right now Jon welcomed it. He needed this to be too much, his last memory of friendship and connection before walking into a realm that would try to take it all from him. He needed to feel how much he was held and loved and anchored. She wouldn’t let him drift away.

Harriet’s arms wrapped around both Jon and Karolina, and Jon almost laughed at the giddy rush of knowing he belonged with these people. He was one of them, they wanted him to come back, and they could and would call him home, no matter how far away he’d wandered.

Oliver joined the hug, and Jon closed his eyes and rested his head on Harriet’s shoulder. Whatever happened would happen. Even the Lonely didn’t go on forever, even if it seemed that way. Nothing did, nothing could.

Jon tried with all his being to soak in this moment, to commit to memory the warmth and pressure and swaying and awkward limbs of the people around him. The feeling of being loved.

He wanted to stay here. But the awareness of Martin was still fading, and he wanted to go after him more than he wasn’t ready for the world to move on.

He would have this again. He would be back. But for now, Jon pulled back slightly, and the hug quickly dissolved.

“Thank you,” he said again, hoping they all understood how much he meant it.

“Wait, Jon,” said Oliver. “What’s one thing you want to do when this is over?”

Jon frowned. “What?”

“When you’re back from the Lonely, and the whole situation with the Institute and Jonah’s ritual and Martin has settled out, one way or another. You’ve made it back, and the world as we know it is still around, and you’ve gotten some sleep and done whatever processing you need to do to at least start moving on. What’s one thing you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” muttered Jon. “I—I really can’t think about the future right now.”

“That’s the point,” Oliver said gently. “It’s always hard to think about the future when the present is blowing up in your face. But I’ve found that sometimes, reminding yourself that there’s a world outside the crisis and there’ll be a time beyond it can really help, in terms of just... keeping you from collapsing into a heap of despair. Physically or mentally. And I have a feeling you’ll need that where you’re going.”

Jon nodded, looking away.

“Doesn’t have to be a big thing,” Oliver clarified. “Anything works, as long as you can look forward to it.”

“I’d like to go shopping for my own mug,” Jon said, surprising himself. “I’ve been using Helen’s, mostly, and that works out fine, but having those five mugs in the cupboard and not a specific one that really feels like mine...” He smiled a bit. “I think it’ll be nice to pick out a mug on my own and put it with the others.”

“I think that’s a great idea,” Harriet said warmly. “Good luck, Jon.”

Jon smiled weakly, doing his best to fight back tears and terror at the thought that this might be the last time he’d ever have this. That he might be alone forever, or at any rate for the entire remainder of his existence .

“Ready?” Helen asked.

Jon took a deep breath. “As I’ll ever be.”

“Sometimes that’s what you’ve got,” Oliver said gently.

“If anyone can do this, you can,” said Karolina.

Jon gave them all one more smile, then looked up into the overcast sky, far enough that he couldn’t see any of the people standing around him.

Instead, he reached out for Martin, for the Knowledge of where he was and how to reach him, for the path into the forever alone that had claimed him.

He didn’t notice the clouds coming down to meet him until they were—

All Jon can see is gray.

It’s fog, but denser than any fog there’s ever been out in the world where sun and wind and hope exist.

No. Hope exists here. It must, because he brought it with him.

The gray, foggy air has a stillness to it that feels almost inevitable, as if making any sound would be a violation of some unbreakable law of the universe.

And yet, through the impenetrable, unvarying wall of mist he’s traversing, he can feel the trail he followed into this place.

It’s faint, so faint Jon almost thinks he’s imagining it, but it’s there. It must be.

It’s only a trick of this place that’s making him feel like he’s chasing a shadow because he wants it to be real.

Martin is here.

It takes several tries to fight past the block in his mind and mouth, but eventually—

“Martin?”

He’s trying to shout, but the word comes out so quiet.

He tries again.

“MARTIN!”

It’s making him sick, fighting against this place. He’s not meant to do that, call attention to himself, make his presence known. He’s not meant to seek out another person. He’s—

“MARTIN!”

He has to keep going.

Even here, in the domain of another Power, he can feel his patron’s presence. He imagines the Eye as a searchlight, cutting through the fog, burning away the cocoon of anonymity that would hide anyone here from his awareness and hide him from theirs. Tries to shine it out far enough to reach—

“MARTIN!”

“He doesn’t want to see you.”

Jon startles slightly as something only just recognizable as Peter Lukas’s voice echoes eerily through the fog.

“Where are you?”

“I’m not here, Archivist. No one is. It’s only you.”

The echo somehow emphasizes the “no one” part of the sentence, and an amusingly appropriate image of the Cyclops from an illustrated translation of The Odyssey Jon read as a child appears in his mind.

“Fine,” he snaps back. “Then maybe no one can answer some questions.”

He looks around frantically, both physically and with his Beholding senses, trying with all his strength to See through the fog, to see Martin or Peter or anything, really. Instead, the fog presses in against his eyes, leaving him uncertain if there’s truly nothing to see or if he just can’t see it. If it even matters.

No.

Jon wraps his arms around himself and squeezes his upper arms until it hurts, trying to feel the knowledge that he won’t drift away unnoticed. His anchors are in the world outside, waiting for him to find Martin and bring him home.

The thread leading him to Martin is fading, barely within perception. Maybe it’s already gone and he’s just hoping he can still feel it.

“You’ve still got time, Archivist,” Peter says in that distant, echoing voice. “Turn around and leave. You’ve played your part. Now go.”

Even through the encroaching despair, something about that strikes Jon as strange. It’s a faint feeling, one that barely registers in his conscious mind at all, but it’s something unexpected in this eternal predictability, so he immediately focuses his mental energy on figuring out what about Peter’s words feels unusual. 

Then it hits. Jon is in Peter’s domain. He’s lost and alone, he can’t seem to find Martin, and his fear of being stuck here forever and never seeing either Martin or his avatar friends again is no doubt providing Peter with a very tasty meal.

So why does Peter want him to leave?

“What’s wrong, Lukas?” he goads. “Afraid of talking face-to-face?”

“Of course,” Peter says with a harsh laugh. “Or haven’t you been paying attention?”

Fortunately, Jon has been paying attention, so he feels it when something in the trail he’s following shifts.

“MARTIN!”

“It’s odd, really,” Peter’s voice interjects, interrupting Jon’s strained listening for a reply. “You each think you’re so focused on the other, but how much do you really know each other? How long has it been since you had a conversation one of you wasn’t desperately trying to escape? How long has it been since you talked at all? And how much have you both changed since then?” He laughs. “What would he think of you now?”

It doesn’t matter, Jon reminds himself as a pang of grief threatens to stop him in his tracks. Martin deserves a life, whether he wants Jon to be a part of it or not.

“What are you seeking?” Peter asks. “The image you’ve each created of the other? The memories of people you’ll never be again? The people you think you love don’t exist. Not really. And that’s a very lonely place to be.”

Jon ignores him. “MARTIN!”

“He doesn’t... want... to see you,” Peter singsongs.

“Then let me hear that from him.” The trail is getting stronger now, he’s sure of it. He still can’t see Martin, but he’s close by.

“Just go,” Peter says.

“Make me.”

It’s petty defiance as much as anything that drives the words out, but the silence that follows them sparks a realization that blossoms bright and alive in Jon’s core.

“Unless you can’t,” he says, his patron’s approval and his own delight at having solved the puzzle melding into an inseparable tangle of warmth.

Slowly, the fog around him is beginning to melt away.

“I didn’t realize at first,” Jon says. “Dark, Spiral, Stranger, those I knew, but you?” He laughs, short and sharp. “Lonely is just as vulnerable to Beholding as any of them. You can’t be alone if someone’s watching, can you? Knowing and being Known are inherently intimate experiences. That’s part of what makes them so terrifying.” He grins. “Do you know what I could do to you, Peter? Would you like me to tell you?”

Silence.

“When I take a statement from someone,” Jon spits, “they relive the entire thing. But this time I am right there with them.”

Jon pauses for a moment to let that sink in before going on. “I could make you give me your entire life, Peter. I could ruin every moment of solitude you’ve ever experienced. Every time you thought about your past from then on, every time you remembered an experience of your patron, I’d be there. Every night, you’d dream about whatever you’d told me, and I’d be there, too. Just watching. And when you woke up, you’d feel the Eye on you from the moment you woke up to the moment you fell back into the dreams.” The grin on his face could probably rival Helen’s right now. “You’d never be alone again.”

Jon’s threat struck a nerve, he can feel it. Peter is genuinely afraid of him, and it feels wonderful .

He’s about to promise all that and worse if Peter doesn’t let him see Martin when a familiar silhouette emerges from the swirling fog.

“Martin!” Jon shouts, running over to him.

“Jon?” Martin calls back as Jon gets closer.

Jon’s heart sinks.

Martin’s voice sounds distant and echoey, much like Peter’s did. Despite the clearing fog, and even with Jon’s abilities, his outline is fuzzy, hard to distinguish. He looks more like a mirage than a person.

Despite the quiet Knowledge telling him that yes, this is Martin, it’s hard to believe there’s really anyone there at all.

Jon forces himself to ignore the feeling of talking to empty air and focus on bringing Martin home.

“I’m here,” he says. “I came for you.”

“Why?” Martin asks.

He doesn’t seem upset by the idea, or relieved, or any other emotion Jon can identify. Just confused.

Jon blinks hard. He’s not sure it’s even possible to cry here—an expression of genuine emotion that might lead to catharsis of any kind feels antithetical to the nature of this place—but he can feel the tears trapped behind his eyes, wanting to fall. “I thought you might be lost.”

“Are you real?” Martin asks.

Jon feels a flicker of hope flare to life along with the pain. “Yes!” he replies. “Yes, I—I’m real, I am. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“No,” Martin replies, and the nascent hope dies as quickly as it arose. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Why?” Jon asks before he can stop himself.

“This is where I should be,” Martin says, expression flat and distant. “It feels right.”

Abruptly, Jon Knows that Martin isn’t past the point of no return. He could still turn from the Lonely and remain human, if he fought for it.

He also Knows that Martin is very, very close to that point. Balancing on the edge of the avatar event horizon.

One way or another, the next few minutes will decide.

“Nothing hurts here,” Martin is saying. “It’s just quiet. Even the fear is gentle here.” He laughs, a hollow sound completely devoid of either humor or bitterness. “I really loved you, you know?”

Jon is still recovering from the gut-punch of grief those words send sinking through his stomach when Martin’s already foggy outline blurs out of existence.

“MARTIN!” he shouts, not really expecting an answer.

Perhaps unfortunately, he gets one anyway.

“I tried to tell you,” Peter says offhandedly. “He’s gone. He made his choice. And it wasn’t you.”

He made his choice.

For a moment, Jon wonders if he even has a right to interfere.

As horrible as it sounds from the outside, Jon knows enough by now about how the Fears and their avatars operate to know that every nightmare is someone’s home. If the Lonely’s chosen Martin, if he’s come this far more or less willingly, if he likes the way it feels—

Jane Prentiss came to the Institute at her own tipping point. The Corruption was calling to her, and she was drawn to it the way everyone is to a Power they’re suited for once it sets its sights on them, but she didn’t want it. However sweetly it sang, she knew the cost would be too high, and she was right—but still unable to resist. She came to the Institute asking for help on the last day of her human life, and she didn’t get it. Years later, consumed by the love of her patron yet still alone, bitter and hurting and unable to adapt, she came back for revenge on the place and the Power that had been her last, fruitless hope.

Even if the Lonely wants Martin, even if Martin thinks he wants the Lonely right now because he’s been desperate and grieving and vulnerable for so long and it’s worked its way into his head, Jon knows both Martin and loneliness well enough to know that the truest and best things Martin is have nothing at all to do with fog and isolation and keeping a distance.

If they leave the domain of the Lonely and it still has a hold on Martin, that’s fine. Martin can settle in, and learn how to feed, and choose how much contact he wants to have with other people, including Jon. It’ll hurt, if Martin doesn’t want anything further to do with him, but Jon’s been prepared for the possibility this whole time.

But Jon will not leave Martin in this place where nothing ever happens and nothing ever hurts and nothing is ever beautiful without so much as the possibility of even wanting to leave.

He needs to talk to him, to at least try to loosen the Lonely’s hold enough for Martin to return to the world outside. Uninterrupted, without Peter’s interference.

Peter won’t let Martin go willingly, and this is his domain. There’s no chance Jon will be able to get through to Martin while Peter is directly molding his emotions, or leave with Martin while Peter is controlling the very space around them.

It’s simple.

Jon needs to get to Martin. Peter is in his way. Therefore Peter needs to be gone. Therefore Jon needs to get rid of him.

(Staring into a darkness so complete it would surely unmake everything he had ever been atom by atom, slowly exposing that pure nonbeing and ignorance to the burning light and understanding his patron wielded through him, forcing himself to See the unseeable until he had instead unmade it—)

(Michael’s statement, the giving that destroyed the giver by the simple incompatibility of Michael’s very being and the state of being known—)

(The still-healing wounds on his neck where Helen’s fingers dug in to stop him speaking, Helen warning him that only one of them would survive if he tried to rip a secret out of her, Harriet explaining how easily he could kill Helen with a mere question—)

(The Lonely is vulnerable to the Eye, just like the Dark and the Spiral.)

Perhaps the fierce, almost joyful determination that fills Jon’s chest when he realizes he’s going to kill Peter should disturb him. But the truth is, it feels right.

It’s about time, really, for Jon to kill. And it’s long past time for this bastard to die.

Jon stares into the fog with all the power he can muster, but he’s aware that this is Peter’s territory. The Lonely is at its strongest here, and the Eye is weak, too weak to pierce the swirling gray haze as deeply as it would need to in order to—

(“Think of me as a bear trap. Not a sword.”)

He can’t find Peter with brute-force tactics. But maybe, if he plays this just right, he can get Peter to come to him.

It’ll have to be real. Jon might be able to lure Peter in with the promise of prey, but only if he truly feels as frightened and vulnerable and alone as he needs Peter to think he is. Delightful as it was to threaten him earlier, his confidence then means he’s working at a disadvantage now.

Jon’s never before had occasion to deliberately take advantage of the intense immersion in his victim’s emotions that comes along with taking a statement, but between that and his method acting training from uni, he should be able to make this work.

(“I am lucky, Jonah, but only insofar as that I never married. Never fathered children. Never let anyone get closer than my brother. The pangs of loneliness I feel are no more acute than my general longing for the company of my fellow man. I have no-one whose absence truly pains me. And yet here, in this empty world, I cannot but spend these nights, these dreadful, silent nights, huddled and frozen in some terrible fear I find myself unable to name. I almost think I hear the mocking joy of my friends, but there is nobody here, and never shall be again.”)

“He did it for me, though,” Jon chokes out, letting the genuine guilt he feels strangle his voice. “I’m the reason he—” He breaks off with a deliberate, shuddering breath. “I did this to him as much as you.”

(“I suddenly felt very cold as I stood there in the road. Rain beating down, tears flowing freely, and utterly alone. I kept walking, desperately hoping to see headlights in the distance, but there was nothing but darkness and the steady pounding of the rain on miles of empty countryside in every direction.”)

“Yes, I suppose you did,” Peter muses. “You left, didn’t you?”

(“They’re all like that now—you’re all like that, I suppose. I have no reason to believe anyone will read this who would be any different, no reason to believe you’ll be able to read this, that you won’t simply stare blankly at this page before... performing your response, your artificial opinion. There is every chance that I am the only one left. And the whole world has fallen to a soulless horde, devoid of life and feeling.”)

“Yes,” Jon agrees in a harsh whisper.

(“They avoided each other just as much as they did me. Meals were always quiet, no matter how many people were eating, and there was no friendly game of cards or chat in living quarters. There was no real conversation in any language. It was like they were doing everything in their power not to think about each other. It took me less than a day of ignored hellos and grunted answers before I fell into line, becoming just as quiet as my crewmates.”)

“He had nothing else left,” Peter says casually. “Nothing but his self-imposed mission of protecting you. And you abandoned him in the end, didn’t you? Just like everyone else did. Just like everyone abandoned you.”

Jon squashes the immediate protest rising in his mind and focuses on the parts of it that feel true. “I did,” he mutters. “Daisy, too.”

(“I tried to talk to them or to shout, to scream at them, but there was no reaction. I tried to push, to punch or kick them, but they were pressed in too tight, and I couldn’t do anything except get buffeted this way and that by them. This crowd of people, they weren’t people. It was just a crowd. A crowd without any people in it, and I was still completely alone.”)

“We all abandon each other in the end, don’t we?” Peter is saying, still in that infuriatingly light tone. “You got away from the Institute, for now. But you can’t seriously think whatever you found is going to last.”

(“All the world’s a stage, and it was empty, my only company the mocking grotesques of pantomimed humanity. The mewling infant, the schoolboy, the lover, the soldier, the judge, each eliciting such a roar of nothing from them it took my breath away.”)

Jon hangs his head, casts his eyes down. Defeated.

(“I was going to die. I knew that now, just as she had, just as anyone else who came here had. How many corpses lay waiting behind the placid facade of this endless false suburbia?”)

“I did warn you,” Peter says. “I did want you to leave, but... perhaps it would be better if you stayed a while. No one can let you down if you never get your hopes up in the first place, can they?”

Jon can feel him coming closer. He forces himself to keep his eyes and his expectations low, not to let a premature sense of triumph ruin the whole thing.

(“I can still remember it vividly, as I entered that code over and over in an attempt to get that locked door to open. Each time I painstakingly entered it with as much precision as I still had within me, and each time the password field read out what I had apparently typed in: no one is coming. And the door remained closed.”)

Peter is closing in.

Jon’s eyes snap up.

The trap snaps shut.

Jon grins, finally allowing the pure delight of channeling his Power to run through him, feeding into itself. “Got you, Peter.”

Peter frantically pulls away from the Gaze that pins him in place, tries to fade out of sight, but it’s no use.

“I wouldn’t try to leave if I were you,” Jon gloats. “I can see you now. I can find you wherever you go.”

“Fine!” Peter blusters, still trying to salvage the situation. Still not understanding that it’s over, that he’s beaten and there’s nothing he can do about it. “It was just a thought. So leave.”

Jon shakes his head and laughs, allowing the sweet crackle of compulsion to rise through his throat. “Tell me your story, Peter Lukas.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Peter grits out.

He’s fighting hard—harder than anyone ever has in Jon’s experience. Even Jonah didn’t push back this hard, and (fortunately for both of them) Helen found another way to stop him before that kind of literal power struggle became necessary.

Jon has no intention of giving up. “Tell me.”

“No!”

“Tell me everything.”

Peter groans in what Jon Knows is agony, resisting with all his strength the pull of the Eye’s power that would tear the story out of him, rob him forever of every memory of solitude he has. Jon doesn’t know if Peter would survive that experience, but he certainly won’t survive resisting much longer. Already the words are choking him as they build behind tightly clenched teeth. The pressure of refusing to let them out is beginning to burst blood vessels, sending a ribbon of crimson, almost comically vivid against the monotonous gray of everything else Jon can see, flowing from Peter’s nose and over his thin, pale lips.

Jon feels the exact moment Peter’s resolve gives out, and it is delicious.

“Fine!” Peter spits, smearing blood on his teeth. “Fine. Where do you want to begin?”

Jon knows by now that he doesn’t need to answer, so he doesn’t try. Peter begins at the beginning, just like the Eye and Jon (insofar as they’re even distinguishable in moments like this) want him to.

Jon soaks up the story, taking in every detail with even more focus than usual. Making sure Peter can feel his presence in every corner of his memories, that he has nowhere left to hide.

He’s so immersed that, when the topic shifts, he almost doesn’t realize the importance.

“I suppose that’s why I was so keen when Elias contacted me,” Peter is saying. “We’d kept in touch, of course—my family helped fund the Institute, and he’d always been good about tipping me off to potential victims. Going through something horrific can leave you feeling very isolated indeed, especially if you know no one else will believe you—and, of course, he knew I find it hard to resist a wager. If I could convince one of his staff to willingly pledge themselves to the Lonely, it was all mine. He even let me pick the victim. He was so sure the price of the Institute, the Panopticon and a willing vessel to use it would be just too much for me to resist. And… he was right. Just didn’t go quite as I’d hoped.” He scoffs lightly. “You know, this is one of the first bets I ever made with him I’ve actually lost. But I guess that’s how hustlers work, isn’t it? They lose and lose until you’re willing to put it all on the line, and then... the trap shuts.”

“What about his side of the wager?” Jon asks, ignoring the moment of gleeful pride that fills him at the reminder of how effective the scheme he borrowed from Helen was. “What did he get if you lost?”

Peter shrugs. “He’d’ve gotten you.”

Jon’s good mood sinks into the ground faster than Karolina can manage. “What—what do you mean? How could you have... given me to him?”

“No,” Peter snarls. “No more questions. I’m done.”

“Tell me.” Jon forgot the compulsion in his earlier moment of sheer bafflement, but now it’s back, with as much power behind it as Jon can muster.

“I’m not saying another word,” Peter grits out, slow and agonized, pausing for breath after nearly every word.

“Tell me, or I will rip it out of you.”

“No.”

Peter’s body and mind are on the brink of tearing apart under the strain. The pain must be unbearable by now. Peter can feel himself dying, and the Eye has given him an intuitive awareness that all he would have to do to make it stop is open his mouth and let the words escape.

Still, that ornery bastard won’t do it.

Jon wants the information he asked for, of course. Wants to know exactly what Jonah had planned for him, how Peter factored in, whether Jonah’s plan—whatever it was—might still be a danger.

More and more, though, he also wants to see if Peter can fight the compulsion to the last. Whether it’s even possible, and what, exactly, will happen if he manages it.

“Answer. My question.”

“No!” Somehow, Peter is still able to form words other than the ones the Eye, through Jon, is doing its best to drag out of him. “Leave... me… ALONE!”

“TELL ME!”

Everything Jon has, everything he feels—burning curiosity and sick dread of what Jonah might have intended for him, rage and helplessness from every time he’s been treated like the rope in a game of tug-of-war between players with purposes he doesn’t understand in some eldritch competition with stakes hasn’t been told, grief for Martin’s current state and determination to bring him home, fear that he’s already too late and fury that Peter brought Martin to this point in the first place—he throws into that final shout, fuel for the Power that pours through him and into the battle of wills taking place within the shaking frame of the man in front of him.

Jon Knows what’s about to happen an instant before the horrible, wet sound of Peter being torn apart from the inside out reaches his ears.

He manages to slam his eyes shut just before the warm, wet spray of gore hits his face.

After a bit of trying out various odd angles between his face and his arm, Jon finds a patch of shirtsleeve he’s fairly confident is clean and wipes his face until he’s comfortable opening his eyes without too much concern about how much Lukas might get in them.

When he does, he almost laughs.

Fortunately, Peter was standing far enough away when he exploded that Jon was spared the worst of the mess. His shirt is probably unsalvageable, and the blood remaining on his face is going to be a textural nightmare when it dries, but nothing too bad. Most of the detritus ended up splattered over the foggy, nowhere beach-concept.

The gray sand that’s just visible through the gray fog that hangs over the gray water and melds seamlessly into the gray sky is now stained a bright, vibrant red. All that time serving the Lonely the best he could, and Peter’s last influence on his domain was messing up that faultless monochrome, literally exploding into color.

The metallic tang piercing the dull, nondescript scent of the fog smells, right now, like hope.

Which brings Jon’s attention firmly back to the reason he’s here.

“Martin,” he calls, straining his physical and metaphysical vision to See through the fog. “He’s gone, Martin, he—he’s gone.”

“His only wish was to die alone,” Martin murmurs at roughly the same time as Jon catches sight of his faded outline.

“Tough,” Jon snaps, forcefully pushing down the rest of the vindictive satisfaction he feels. His focus needs to be entirely on Martin. “Now, listen to me, Martin. Listen—”

“Hello, Jon,” Martin says, with a distant echo in his voice and a glazed look in his eyes.

“Listen,” Jon frantically repeats, doing his best to ignore the whisper in the back of his mind that this isn’t really Martin, just a badly programmed copy. Martin is in there; Jon just has to reach him. “I know you think you want to be here, I know you think it’s safer, and—well, maybe it is.” He swallows hard and looks directly into Martin’s vacant eyes. “I know it hurts, out there. I know—I know feeling things hurts, I know caring hurts, and I know it might seem easier not to, but—but Martin, it’s worth it, I promise it can be worth it.”

“I’m sorry,” Martin says in that awful, dead voice.

A numb, aching grief is settling into Jon’s chest, the certainty that he’s too late, that Martin is unreachable. Maybe, if he was still human, Jon would be able to break through the shell of crystallized indifference trapping Martin within and keeping Jon out. But Martin is still mostly human and probably still more or less thinks like one, and Jon doesn’t think or feel the way humans do. Not anymore.

He doesn’t remember enough about how humans love to be a proper anchor. In all honesty, he probably never knew.

Jon looks down and away.

The fog is beginning to close in again when his eyes catch on the vibrant red splatter on his shirt.

Dammit, he and Martin love each other enough that they’ve each now killed a much older and more powerful avatar to protect and avenge the other—first kills both, as far as Jon’s aware. Human or not, that has to count for something.

The Lonely doesn’t get to keep Martin. Not him. Not today.

If avatar love is what Jon has, if the only ways he knows to express it are what he’s picked up from his friends, it’ll have to be enough. And if Martin doesn’t understand what it means, Jon will just have to show him.

Slowly, giving Martin plenty of time to see the movement and anticipate the contact, Jon places his hands on Martin’s upper arms. The places where his hands rest feel somehow insubstantial, as though he should pass right through. As though the body he’s touching is solid only by the merest technicality.

Jon squeezes tighter, recalling the warmth and pressure and certainty of Karolina’s hands after she stepped back from that first hug, hoping Martin can feel the same certainty from him now.

In his mind, as he once again looks directly into Martin’s dull, unfocused eyes, Jon reaches for his patron.

Let me have this, he silently pleads. When I get back, I’ll give you whatever you want, whoever you want, just please help me bring him home.

He pleads, he prays, and then he Knows.

(The sticky-hot sensation of blood on his skin, the bright crimson of the stains on the sand, the fierce joy he felt while putting them there. The rage he felt and still feels towards Peter, the grief of thinking Martin was lost forever, and the fear that he still might be. The wish for Martin to think well of him. The worry that Martin won’t, now that he’s the same as the monsters they used to study. The relief and catharsis of Jonah’s death, the pride and victory and admiration of watching Martin kill Jonah, the warmth and awed gratitude of realizing that Martin killed for him. The determination not to let Martin fade out of the world unnoticed. Not after everything. Not with so much left unsaid.)

Jon brings up everything he feels about Martin right now and lets himself drown in it.

Once the tidal wave is so strong he can’t possibly contain it, Jon stares directly into Martin’s eyes and lets it crash through the barrier between them.

“Martin,” Jon says aloud as he does. “Martin, look at me. Look at me and tell me what you see.” Compulsion crackles through the words, unfettered and confident.

Martin gasps and jolts back like he’s been punched in the stomach, but Jon’s hands on his arms hold him steady.

The moment the light comes back into Martin’s eyes as they regain focus and fix on Jon is one of the greatest of Jon’s life.

“I see…” Martin shudders and breaks off with a breathless laugh, hazy outline filling in as his arms once again grow tangible in Jon’s grip. “I see you. Jon.” He laughs again. “I see you.”

“Martin,” Jon breathes, overwhelmed with relief and joy.

Understandably, Martin seems quite overwhelmed, too, and Jon is neither concerned nor surprised when the wild laughter flows seamlessly into sobs.

“I—I was on my own,” Martin chokes out through the tears, face crumpled. “I was all on my own…”

Jon slides his hands down Martin’s arms, taking both of his hands in his own. “Not anymore.” With another tight squeeze, he lets go of Martin’s left hand with his right, keeping his own left hand firmly held in and holding Martin’s. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

Martin, who is still crying but appears to have mostly regained command of his facial muscles, looks confused. “How?”

Jon hasn’t tried to feel the connection to his anchors yet, but when he reaches out, it’s with absolute confidence that they will be there.

As he strains his senses to reach beyond the fog, he catches a snippet of melody.

Someone’s singing.

It takes a moment of intense concentration to catch the tune and words, but as soon as he does, Jon grins.

(“—can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken, your best friend always sticking up for you—”)

Through the cold, dull scents of fog and blood, the familiar smells of ozone and freshly turned earth and ocean water and the herbal tea blend that lives in Jon’s cabinet are drifting in from the same direction as the singing.

(“—even when I know you’re wrong, can you imagine no first dance, freeze-dried romance, five-hour phone conversation—”)

The entirety of the space around them is somehow tilting, sloping downwards as gravity itself pulls Jon towards home.

(“—the best soy latte that you ever had, and me?”)

“Don’t worry,” Jon says, gently tugging on Martin’s hand to lead him in the direction of that wonderful pull. “I know the way.”

Someone is laughing.

On some hard surface or other, someone is tapping the Fibonacci sequence.

Martin is squeezing Jon’s hand so tightly it hurts. Jon’s squeezing back almost as tightly.

(“—but tell me, did the wind sweep you off your feet?”)

There’s never so much as a breeze in this place of still dead air. The wind is here all the same, pushing the fog back and the hair out of Jon’s eyes.

The light up ahead is resolving into a gap in the fog, through which Jon’s pretty sure he can see his desk and the people seated on and around it. 

(“—did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights all faded, and that heaven is overrated?”)

Martin makes a small sound. Jon hums in what he hopes is a reassuring manner, keeping his gaze laser-focused on that light up ahead.

(“—and did you miss me while you were looking for yourself?”)

Martin gasps as the way back to the world gets closer.

Jon doesn’t look back, doesn’t let his sudden fear of something going wrong at the last minute make him do anything but calmly approach the gateway, Martin’s hand still gripped firmly in his, and step through.

The first thing Jon heard as he stood in the bright, warm light and clear air of his office, clinging to Martin’s hand and blinking at the dramatic change in atmosphere, was a chorus of cheers and shouts of his name.

Slowly, the blur of sound and light resolved itself into something he could interpret.

At the time he’d arrived and gotten his first post-Lonely glimpse of the real world, Jon’s usual seat at his desk had been occupied by Helen, spinning back and forth. Oliver had been seated in the statement giver’s chair, rotated to face the center of the room, and Harriet had been perched sideways on the desk itself. Karolina had been on the floor with her back to the wall, one leg drawn up with the knee bent and foot flat on the floor and the other stretched out in front of her. Mike had been sitting atop the bookshelf, scuffs on the wood showing where he’d been swinging his feet.

By the time Jon had processed the scene in front of him, it had been completely reshaped by everyone present jumping up or down, as applicable, and running over to gleefully mob him.

Karolina was the only one to hug him outright—probably because he was still somewhat covered in gore—but everyone else was still crowding in close, laughing and cheering and putting a hand on him wherever they could reach.

Well, almost everyone. Helen was hanging back, but the expression on her face made it very clear that, whatever her reasons for staying out of the fray, they had nothing to do with lack of enthusiasm.

Jon smirked at her— told you I could do it— and her smile got wider as she dipped her head in acknowledgement.

The pressure of Martin squeezing his hand brought Jon down from the joy and relief of belonging with a sharp reminder that, in this room at least, Martin didn’t. The easy camaraderie Jon was so grateful for had to be horribly isolating for someone who wasn’t part of it.

Jon couldn’t do anything about Martin’s humanity making him the odd one out, but he could at least lessen the sting of being a total stranger.

“Everyone, this is Martin,” Jon said as the joyful clump of friends around him began to disperse, gesturing with the hand that wasn’t still held in Martin’s grip. “Martin... these are my friends. Mike, Harriet, Karolina, Oliver, and, ah... I think you’ve met Helen.”

Helen’s grin sharpened as she held up a hand and rippled the fingers in what Jon was fairly certain was intended to be a deeply unsettling parody of a wave hello.

Jon shot her a mildly annoyed look, which she ignored.

Harriet, meanwhile, had stepped forward and was extending her left hand toward Martin, offering a handshake that wouldn’t require him to relinquish his grip on Jon. “Harriet Fairchild,” she said cheerfully. “It’s lovely to meet you, Martin. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Martin, whose dubious expression as he stared at Harriet’s outstretched hand had not been improved by hearing her last name, looked up as she finished her sentence. “You have?”

Harriet smiled and nodded as she lowered her hand. “Jon thinks very highly of you.”

Martin didn’t reply in words, but he smiled.

As always, Harriet was doing an excellent job of emanating disarming friendliness, but Jon thought there was something odd about the way she was looking at Martin. She could have been staring at the premature streaks of gray in his hair, but—

(Robert Kelly’s hair had been curly and red, much like Martin’s. At the time of his death, it had even been cut similarly.)

(Harriet and Robert were close friends for four years before she killed him.)

Jon shook his head slightly and resolved not to worry about that right now. Just because his patron didn’t outright lie didn’t mean it could be relied upon to give him the whole story, and it had a vested interest in encouraging him to be a paranoid bastard. He could ask Harriet for her side of the story later. For now, he would simply trust that whatever had happened with Robert Kelly was substantially more complicated than the Eye was making it sound.

“Who’s all over your shirt?” Mike interjected in ASL, immediately followed by the echo of Harriet interpreting.

Jon grinned. “Peter Lukas.”

Harriet gasped and grinned back at him in gleeful astonishment. “Get outta town.”

“Was that your first kill?” Oliver asked with a warm, encouraging smile.

Jon had thought so, but started to wonder as he properly considered Oliver’s question. “Depends on what counts as killing.”

Harriet turned to Oliver. “We were talking about this a while back, weren’t we? What did we decide?”

“I think we decided that for someone to count as your kill—first or otherwise—you have to have fairly directly and more or less deliberately brought about the permanent cessation of that person’s existence.” Oliver shrugged and turned back to Jon. “The vague wording is intentional. When the Powers are involved, what counts as ‘direct’ or ‘deliberate’ can get very complicated very quickly. So, ultimately, it’s a case-by-case thing.”

Jon sighed. “If someone was... ah, sort of a... sending, trapped in a Leitner after they’d already died, and I burned their page at their request, which as far as I know caused them to permanently stop existing... does that count?”

Oliver raised an eyebrow. “I’d like to hear the details of that sometime, but without any further information, I would say not.”

Karolina smiled. “Agreed, but it is very you that your first sort-of-kill—and your first actual kill, come to think of it—were both for primarily altruistic reasons.”

Oliver smiled at her. “Well, we can’t all go murder our shitty ex-boss basically as soon as we’ve come to terms with what’s going on.”

Karolina smiled proudly. “I suppose not. Although—” She looked back and forth from Jon to Martin. “Am I correct that you two both made your first kills today, and you killed each other’s shitty ex-bosses?”

Jon looked at Martin, who looked back at him with the beginnings of a faint smile and nodded.

Jon smiled back, then turned to answer Karolina. “I think so, yeah.”

Karolina’s smile softened. “That is incredibly adorable.”

“I just can’t believe you finally make your first kill and it’s Peter Fucking Lukas,” Harriet said with a head shake and an incredulous laugh. “You’re like one of those kids who won’t say a word until they can speak in full sentences.”

“I was one of those, too,” Jon muttered.

Harriet nodded. “Sounds about right.”

“I was seventeen for my first kill,” Mike interjected.

As soon as she’d finished interpreting, Harriet rolled her eyes and scoffed. “You were eighteen.”

“I started killing him before midnight. I was seventeen.”

“You don’t start killing someone, they die when they die,” Harriet protested.

“Suppose on Monday you hit someone in the head, and they’re bleeding in their brain, and they die on Wednesday,” Mike said. “Did you kill them on Wednesday? No, you didn’t do anything on Wednesday.”

“You didn’t kill them on Monday either, if they didn’t die on Monday,” Harriet shot back, then looked at Jon. “He just wants to have been seventeen because he thinks it’s more impressive if he made his first kill before he was a legal adult.”

“That is false. Also, fuck you.” The sign Mike used to convey that last bit would have been perfectly recognizable to everyone present with or without Harriet’s interpretation.

Harriet laughed, and Oliver and Karolina joined in.

Jon was chuckling a bit as well until he registered how tightly Martin was squeezing his hand.

At this point, Jon felt incredibly comfortable and safe with his friends. So comfortable and safe, in fact, that he’d completely forgotten what this had to be like for Martin.

Right now, Martin was the sole porpoise trapped in a room with a pod of orcas, and the current topic of conversation was making that fact utterly impossible to ignore.

Jon looked around, addressing the whole group. He was fairly certain everyone would know this without being told, but it might reassure Martin to hear him say it, and besides, it couldn’t hurt to make sure. “Just to get this out of the way: this one”—he gestured to Martin—“is with me, and under my protection. I have absolutely no desire to harm any of you, but if anyone makes it necessary to defend him—including with violence, if need be—I will. So I would very much prefer it if no one made that necessary. Is that clear?”

Given what Jon had learned so far of avatar social standards, the total lack of any visible offense taken by any of his friends probably shouldn’t have surprised him. If it hadn’t been for the way Martin’s presence had forcefully reminded Jon of how recently he’d found all this almost as strange and frightening as Martin did now (although perhaps for slightly different reasons), it most likely wouldn’t have.

Harriet pointed at Martin. “Friend. Not food. Got it.”

Oliver rolled his eyes, then reached over and swatted Harriet’s arm.

Harriet grinned back at him with an edge to her smile that reminded Jon of a shark.

“Perfectly clear,” Karolina chimed in, looking only the slightest bit disappointed about it.

Jon took a deep breath and looked over at Martin. He seemed to be holding up fairly well, but given that he’d apparently just successfully pulled a long con on Peter Lukas and, to a lesser but still deeply impressive extent, Jonah Magnus, Jon wasn’t overly inclined to trust appearances when it came to Martin’s wellbeing.

Even if he was doing all right for the moment, that could very easily change, and the past—

“What time is it?” Jon asked.

“It’s three twenty-two in the afternoon,” Harriet replied with a glance at her watch. “Still Tuesday, if you weren’t sure.”

“Well, in that case, I’ve been awake and very busy for approximately thirty-six hours at this point—”

“You have not been busy that entire time,” Helen interrupted.

Jon looked at Helen in surprise on hearing her speak, which she hadn’t done since he’d gotten back, quickly followed by annoyance—of course that was what she’d finally break her silence to say. “Still, I think it would probably be a good idea for me and Martin to go home and rest sooner rather than later, and since taking public transportation in our current state”—he gestured at his bloodstained shirt—“seems decidedly unwise, I’d appreciate it if someone could give us a lift.” He shot Karolina a sharp look. “Not you.”

Karolina dipped her head in acknowledgment. “Wasn’t going to offer.”

Jon looked at Martin. “Tell me if I’m wrong, but I’m thinking Vast travel is going to be our best bet.” His first instinct was to ask Helen, but given both Martin’s traumatic past experience with the Distortion and Helen’s periodic difficulty with the concept of boundaries, that seemed like a bad idea. “How do you feel about falling?”

Martin opened his mouth as if to reply, but that was as far as he got before freezing up, making small, cut-off sounds and frustrated facial expressions.

After a long moment, he seemed to give up and just shrugged.

“Is it better than Helen’s corridors?” Jon asked.

Martin nodded.

“Cool,” said Harriet. “I’m happy to take you both home, if you’d like.”

“That would be lovely,” said Jon.

“Would you like to put your shirt in your trophy drawer first?”

It took him a moment to realize that Harriet was talking about the Desk Drawer of Vanquished Enemies, but once he did, a warm glow of pride settled into his chest. “Yes,” he said. “I would. But the whole shirt seems bulky. Maybe I could cut a swatch, or something?”

“Here,” said Harriet, unzipping her hip pack and retrieving a Swiss Army knife. “Use this.” She opened the scissors attachment, then handed the knife to Jon, handle first.

After carefully letting go of Martin’s hand, Jon looked down at his shirt, located a patch of particularly heavy staining, cut out a small, square swatch of fabric, and undid the buttons to free the newly separated section of shirt from the garment as a whole.

He closed Harriet’s knife and handed it back to her, then opened his trophy drawer.

As he looked inside, he gasped in delighted surprise.

The familiar items—the jar of Jane’s ashes, the chip of plastic from Nikola’s forehead, and Jon’s extracted rib that he’d decided could represent Jared Hopworth—were all still in their places. Beside them, though, were three new items.

(The black leather glove stained with gunpowder once belonged to Manuela Dominguez, who took it off and dropped it in the corridors of the Distortion on the day Jon destroyed her life’s work.)

(The lock of curly blond hair bound with a black thread was from Michael. Technically, it was from what was left of Michael Shelley, as Michael’s hair no longer existed, but Helen had decided it was close enough.)

(The dust-covered knife was the one Martin had used to kill Jonah. Karolina had gone deep into the wreckage to find it for Jon, anticipating that he’d want to have it.)

Jon swallowed the lump in his throat and looked back and forth from Helen to Karolina, doing his best to convey the extent of his gratitude via facial expression, before gently and ceremoniously laying the bloody square of fabric in the drawer with the rest, then slowly sliding it closed. “Thank you. Both of you.” He looked around. “All of you.”

“You’re welcome,” Karolina replied as Helen smiled, Oliver nodded, and Mike gave him a thumbs-up.

“You two ready to go?” Harriet asked.

Jon looked at Martin. “Ready?”

Martin looked back at Jon for a moment and took his hand again, then looked at Harriet and nodded. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

Chapter Text

Upon dropping out of an endless rush of air and dizzying freefall and into his living room, Jon had approximately half a second to mentally note that he was getting better at staying on his feet following Vast travel before Martin’s hand in his pulled him over and he landed on the floor—or, more accurately, Martin landed on the floor and Jon landed on Martin, who reacted with a soft 'oof' as the air was driven out of his lungs.

Harriet, who had apparently had the good sense to let go of both of their hands as soon as they returned to the world, looked down at them with an expression halfway between amused and mildly concerned. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Jon replied, getting up as quickly as possible and reaching down to offer Martin a hand. “Martin? Are you all right?”

Martin didn’t answer, and it took Jon a moment to realize that he couldn’t. He was still trying to remember how to breathe normally enough to talk.

“Wow,” Martin whispered when he finally managed to speak. “Wow. Okay. That was... a lot.”

Harriet visibly and forcibly restrained herself from making what almost certainly would have been some atrocious pun or other pointing out that the Vast being ‘a lot’ was sort of the point. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Martin said, a bit more steadily, as he accepted Jon’s help to get to his feet. “I, ah... I’m fine. I’m...” He laughed, a soft, tentative, unsteady sound. “I think I’m pretty good, actually. I—I felt that.”

Jon could hear what lay behind those few words just fine. Spending months alone and grieving, then getting pulled in by a Power that thrived on dissociation and depression, Martin more than likely hadn’t felt much of anything in a while, at least until Jon had taken a psychic wrecking ball to the emotional walls around him. Under those circumstances, it made perfect sense that falling through the domain of the Power of being completely overwhelmed by something infinitely grander than yourself, of awe and vertigo and acceleration that leaves you breathless, might actually feel pretty good. At the very least, it was something to feel that was too bright and intense to be dulled.

Harriet was smiling. “I should certainly hope so.” She turned to Jon, then apparently thought better of it and turned so she was addressing them both. “You two take care of each other. I’m gonna go see when Lynette’s available—” She specifically addressed Martin. “Lynette Fairchild is an expert on avatar medicine. Given what Jon’s told me, I think it’s a good idea to have her give you a check-up to see if the Lonely still has a hold on you, what your options are if it does, and whether the separation process went okay if it doesn’t. She’s off duty until sunset tonight, except for life-threatening emergencies, but I’m sure she’d be happy to come over after that, or tomorrow if tonight doesn’t work for whatever reason. Does that sound okay?”

After a long moment, Martin nodded. “Yeah.”

“Cool.” She turned to Jon. “I’ll tell you when I know when Lynette can come over. Do you have any human food?”

Jon winced. “Just stuff for tea.”

Harriet nodded. “Probably best if you hold off on eating until Lynette clears it,” she said to Martin, “but once she does I can go shopping for you if you want, so you two can stay here and just focus on resting and recovering.” She looked at Martin. "I'm guessing you don't have anything but what was on you?"

Martin shrugged. "I mean, I didn't have much else, anyway. Hadn't left the Institute in ages."

"Was all your stuff there, too?" asked Harriet.

Martin winced. "Unfortunately."

Harriet nodded. "I’ll be back with clothes for you in about twenty minutes," she said. "Just basic stuff for now, but Jon and I can take you shopping for whatever else you need tomorrow, if you like."

"Thank you," Martin said. "That would be lovely."

"Cool," Harriet said with a wide smile. "See you soon!"

She promptly fell out of sight, leaving Jon and Martin standing in the living room, staring at each other in wonder and uncertainty.

“Hi,” Jon finally said.

Martin giggled, halfway between relieved and nervous. “Hi.”

“Um—” Jon gestured at his torso. “I don’t know about you, but I need to take a shower and change out of these clothes before I do anything else.”

“Yeah,” Martin said in that same giddy tone. “That’s, uh—that’s a good idea.”

(Martin didn’t want Jon to take a shower. He was afraid this would all disappear and turn out to have been a dream the moment he was left alone.)

Jon mentally kicked himself for not having thought of that sooner. Martin’s fear made perfect sense—Jon didn’t especially want to be alone right now, either, and he’d only been in the Lonely for just under a day. Martin might not have been fully in the domain of the Lonely for much longer than that, but he’d been heavily exposed to it for months and on the cusp of being fully claimed by it when that had happened. Given all that... of course the idea of being alone for even a few minutes was distressing.

Jon took a deep breath. He had an idea for what to do about that, but he really hoped it would both go over well and not be misinterpreted. “If you wanted—only if you’re comfortable with it, but... if you wanted to be in the bathroom while I’m in the shower, so we can keep talking, and just... turn your back, or something... that would be fine with me.”

Martin briefly looked surprised—almost amazed—but it quickly faded into concern. “I mean... that sounds really nice, actually, but... are you sure? You don’t have to—”

“I’m not sure I want to be in a room full of steam by myself right now, either,” Jon admitted in a rush.

Martin nodded. “Fair enough.” He frowned. “Um... I should probably take one, too, I haven’t done that in... way too long."

Jon looked back up at Martin. “I should probably go first, seeing as I’m the one covered in blood—”

Upon seeing his expression, Jon abruptly remembered that Martin might not consider that as normal and reasonable a thing to say offhand as his avatar friends would.

Nonetheless, he went on. “So I was thinking maybe I can get some clean clothes—sleep clothes, probably, I’m exhausted and I’m sure you are too—take a shower, brush my teeth, get dressed, and by the time I’m done with that it probably won’t be long until your clothes get here and you can take your shower, and I’ll stay in the room, if you’d like. Does that all sound okay?”

Martin nodded.

“All right,” Jon said. “I can show you my room while I’m getting my clothes, if you like.” He gestured towards his bedroom. “It’s just over there. The bathroom is just that way”—he pointed—“and that’s the kitchen.” He indicated over the back of the couch.

Martin smiled tightly, chewing on his lip. “You, ah… you don’t use that very much, huh.”

Jon winced, distressingly familiar shame sinking through his gut.

“Sorry,” Martin immediately blurted out, probably in response to Jon’s facial expression. “I shouldn’t have—that was rude. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

Jon swallowed hard. “It’s all right. We’re going to have to talk about it sooner or later.” He took a deep breath. “Can we have this conversation while I’m getting clean clothes?”

“Of course.” Martin began to walk towards Jon’s bedroom door, hanging back to let Jon open it.

“I don’t expect you to just believe me right off,” Jon said as he made his way over to his dresser, thinking it might be best if he didn’t try to look Martin in the eye right now. “But for what it’s worth, I promise I will never feed on you, and no one else will, either, if I have anything to—”

“Jon, I am so sorry.”

At Martin’s interjection, Jon stopped in his tracks with his pajama drawer half open and turned to look at him on instinct. “What for?”

Martin looked down, as if unsure how to phrase whatever it was he wanted to say.

Jon quietly resumed picking out clothes, allowing Martin whatever time he needed to get the words in order without the pressure of Jon inadvertently staring into his soul.

“It wasn’t a metaphor, was it?” Martin finally got out. “The whole… feeding thing.”

Jon started to freeze up, but forced himself to keep moving. “No,” he quietly confirmed as he closed his pajama drawer and started searching for a suitably comfortable pair of socks.

“So, basically, that whole time between when you woke up and, and when you left… you were starving.”

Jon flinched. “I mean... not all the time. As you’re aware.” He retrieved a pair of the soft, fuzzy socks he’d bought on that shopping trip with Harriet and Karolina, the one they’d taken him on just before he formally accepted his new position. “But... more or less, yes.”

“Jon.” Martin’s voice was tight, as if he were on the verge of crying. “If I’d known how the others were gonna treat you when they found out, I swear to God I never would’ve left them that tape. I would’ve taken a fucking hammer to it.”

Jon tried, with minimal success, to distract himself from the weight in his chest by digging through his underwear drawer. “You were doing the best you could.”

“So were you.”

“I think we all were.” Jon sighed, then turned away from his dresser with a complete set of clean clothes in hand. “I’m ready to start the shower process, if you are.”

“Uh, yeah.” Martin looked a bit flustered, and appeared on closer inspection to be blushing. Even if the blush reflected embarrassment, it was nice to see some color back on his face after the near-monochrome translucence of the Lonely. “Sure thing.”

...

Jon took several slow, subtle deep breaths as he followed Martin into the bathroom and closed the door behind them.

This was fine. It was just the two of them, they were rational adults, and there was no need to make any sort of fuss about a perfectly normal concession to their incredibly abnormal circumstances. In this context, nudity would only be weird if someone made it weird, and Jon certainly wasn’t going to make it weird.

Even if the thought of being so vulnerable in front of Martin—of Martin being so vulnerable in front of him—was making his stomach do the sort of flips he usually associated with Vast travel.

After a brief and mildly awkward negotiation to switch places, Martin ended up standing with his face toward the closed bathroom door, leaving Jon next to the shower.

Jon turned on the water and adjusted the temperature—hotter than he usually would have preferred in such mild weather, but he still felt the lingering chill of the Lonely—then quickly disrobed and stepped in.

“All right,” he said once he’d drawn the shower curtain closed. “I’m in. Still here.”

“I’m here, too,” Martin called back, then giggled faintly. “I’m here,” he repeated, in a way that suggested he might have been talking to himself more than Jon.

“Yep,” Jon replied anyway. “You’re here, and I’m very glad about that.”

Occupied as he was in washing the blood off his face, Jon almost didn’t hear Martin’s quiet reply a few moments later.

“Thank you,” he said, a bit tentatively. “For coming to get me. You didn’t—” He exhaled heavily. “I know you didn’t have to.”

Jon took a moment to rinse the area around his mouth clear of pink-tinged, soapy lather before answering the unasked question behind Martin’s words. “You’re right. I didn’t have to,” he said, reaching for the shampoo bottle. “I wanted to.”

For the amount of time it took Jon to squeeze a dollop of shampoo into his hand, replace the bottle on the shelf, and work the shampoo through his hair (wincing as his fingers encountered a few stray fragments of bone and other, squishier things), Martin said nothing.

Jon was rinsing his hair and trying to think of a suitable way to break the silence when Martin finally spoke.

“So, uh… what’ve you been up to?” he asked, clearly trying for casual and not quite getting there. “Besides… avatar stuff, or whatever.” He coughed. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Jon thought for a moment about how to explain the past month in a way that would make sense to someone unaccustomed to avatar social norms. “It was Helen’s idea, to begin with. She’d tried to convince me before, to… accept what I am now, to embrace it, even.” He sighed, running his hands through his newly washed hair one more time to make absolutely certain there were no stray bits of Lonely avatar left in it. “She’d tried to fight it for a while herself, just like I did. But once a Power fully takes hold of you, there’s no going back, and she’d had time while I was in my coma to come to terms with that. She was just trying to save me the time and trouble of reaching that conclusion myself.” He dispensed a blob of conditioner into his hand with probably more force than was necessary. “Long story short, it didn’t work.” He scoffed. “Theoretically I can speak or understand any language, but apparently Spiral isn’t on the list. So she recruited some help.”

“The people who were in your office just now?” Martin asked.

Jon paused in the middle of distributing the conditioner to tug at his hair, letting the pressure and slight pain overwrite his building anxiety. “Yes.”

“I figured Karolina had something to do with it,” Martin said. “When you disappeared. There was dirt all over your office, and I’d listened to the tape with her statement. You mentioned at the end that she’d left your office all dusty. I—” He broke off, voice cracking a bit. “I actually—before you sent that email, I was afraid she might’ve killed you.”

Jon swallowed hard. It was a reasonable hypothesis, honestly, given the information Martin had available. If he’d been someone else, someone Karolina hadn’t seen so much of herself in, it might even have been correct.

“Quite the opposite,” Jon finally said, instead of telling Martin about herbal tea or blanket forts or exploding rock candy or a half-spilled glass of water or an uncomfortable plastic chair in Beijing or hugs just this side of too tight or any of the other simple, straightforward, sometimes surreptitious forms of kindness Karolina had extended to him. “She saved my life. They all did.”

“Were you...” Martin’s voice was quiet, tentative. “Would you have died? If you’d stayed?”

“Daisy’s dead,” Jon replied flatly.

“Oh.” Martin sounded taken aback. (Of course he hadn’t known, how could he possibly have—) “In the collapse?”

“She stayed in the Archives on purpose,” Jon said. “She knew the building was going down, and she was...” He swallowed. “She stayed down there hoping it would kill her.” It was the truth, if not quite all of it.

“I’m sorry.” Martin sounded genuinely shaken.

Of course. Martin had made the building collapse in the first place. People had died. He might not have processed that yet, but at some point, he’d need to. Maybe Lynette could help, or at least point him in the direction of someone who could.

That didn’t mean Jon was going to let this particular bit of guilt stand, misplaced as it was. “It was what she wanted,” he said. “There was nothing else left for her. Not much left of her, either, by then.”

“Jon—”

“I wasn’t like that,” Jon forced out, refusing to give himself the option of losing his nerve. “I wasn’t at that point because I hadn’t been starving myself nearly as long, or as completely.” He huffed out a sharp breath and kept going. “Honestly, I was hardly starving myself at all. At that point, if I’d thought I could’ve taken a proper statement without getting killed for it, I’m quite certain I would’ve. If it would’ve made it stop, I... I would’ve done almost anything.”

Martin didn't reply.

With remarkably unfortunate timing, Jon’s attempts to get his torso suitably washed led to his hand running over his lowest ribs—or, rather, where they should have been.

Jon shuddered, suddenly wishing he wasn’t trying to have this conversation while in the shower.

“Did the Lonely ever want you to feed it?” It was probably a bit ethically as well as practically dubious to deal with his discomfort at getting a taste of his own medicine by flipping the tables onto someone he’d just retrieved from what amounted to literal hell, but he was careful to keep the compulsion down, and, really, Jon couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Fortunately, Martin either didn’t notice the maneuver or didn’t care. “Not that I know of,” he said. “Although it’s possible I was just feeding it enough with myself to keep it from being an issue. Or, um...”

(The Lonely had, indeed, wanted Martin to feed it. He’d mostly been surviving on his own auto-cannibalized misery, but he’d also occasionally fed on Jon. Which he hadn’t been aware of at the time, or at all, until the possibility had occurred to him just now.)

The uncomfortable silence dragged on as Jon did his best to finish getting himself clean before the even-more-uncomfortable conversation inevitably had to resume.

He’d managed that and was in the process of rinsing off when he heard a faint, horrified cry from outside the curtain.

(Martin hadn’t realized that needing to feed the Lonely was part of the reason he put the tape of Jess Tyrell’s complaint on Basira’s desk, but now that he’d thought of it he was quite certain—correctly—that it was at least a contributing factor.)

“Martin?” Jon called, as gently as he could while still being reasonably assured that Martin would hear him over the sound of the water.

“Yeah?” Martin called back. If Jon hadn’t been listening for it, he probably wouldn’t have heard the thickness of suppressed tears behind his voice.

“Ah...” Jon coughed, swallowed hard, and forced the words out in a rush. “The Eye told me what you were thinking about just now.”

Martin audibly breathed in and out. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“No, it’s—I’m sorry, I—I should’ve known.”

Jon bit back bitter laughter. “From my experience, it... might not have made much difference if you had.”

The answering silence made Jon’s stomach sink.

“Actually, that, ah... that’s... that actually helps, somewhat,” Jon said, hoping to soften the previous sentiment—it might have been true, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to hear. “If you were feeding the Lonely. I’m... I’m actually... sort of glad to hear it.” He winced and quickly clarified. “Not—not that you were hungry. Avatar-hungry, I mean. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I’m just...” He took a deep, slow breath and tilted his head back into the water, rinsing the conditioner out of his hair as well as he could without getting too much water in his ears. “They were going to find out eventually. One way or another. Secrets like that, they... they have a way of coming out, especially when you work in a temple dedicated to the Power of exactly that. They would’ve found out, even if you hadn’t left that tape. And... if I had to go through that...” He exhaled shakily. “At least it happened in a way that helped you.”

Martin was silent.

Jon continued rinsing the conditioner out of his hair.

“There’s something else you ought to know,” Jon finally said. “I don’t know exactly what it involved or how I factored in, but Jonah had an Eye ritual prepared, and he was going to use me in some way to make it work.”

Martin huffed out a surprised breath. “Jonah was going to end the world?”

“The evidence says so.”

“And… he wanted you to help?”

Jon sighed. “I doubt he would have left me with the option to refuse.”

Martin’s voice made it clear he was speaking through clenched teeth. “I’m glad I killed the bastard.”

“Believe me, so am I.”

“Yeah, I would imagine.” Martin laughed slightly, in a vaguely nervous way. “It’s got to be hard, this avatar stuff, isn’t it?”

Jon echoed Martin’s laugh, though a bit more bitterly. “Which part?”

“The part where you’re bound to the whims of an eldritch terror being from another dimension.” Martin scoffed. “And the part where someone else with the same patron who’s stronger or… or crueler than you are can more or less puppet you if they want.”

“Yeah.” Jon turned off the water. “It’s awful. And I genuinely cannot imagine anything worse than someone using that to make me end the world.” He took a shuddering breath, squeezing his hair more tightly than was probably needed to get the water out of it. “If that was Jonah’s plan, he wouldn’t have stopped until he’d succeeded or I was dead.” Another shaky breath. “Martin, you may have actually saved the world by killing him.” He smiled, even though Martin couldn’t see it. “And you almost definitely saved me.”

Martin scoffed.

"I'm serious."

After a solid ten seconds of silence, Martin finally found some words. “I mean... you definitely saved me.”

“Just returning the favor.” Jon shivered—the chill from water evaporating off his skin was starting to get annoying. “Would you turn around, if you aren’t already? I’m going to get out of the shower now.”

“Sure thing,” said Martin, over some scuffling noises. “Coast is clear.”

Jon stepped out of the shower, grabbed his towel, and quickly dried off, then put on the clothes he’d picked out. “Ready. Want to go wait for Harriet to get here with your clothes?”

“I hope that's soon,” Martin muttered. “I feel like I could sleep for a week.”

“Same here,” Jon said. The shower had granted him a bit of alertness, but the constant stress of the past day and a half was catching up with him hard, and he knew what energy he had would fade quickly.

As it happened, Harriet hadn’t arrived with their clothes, so Jon and Martin sat down on the sofa to wait for her. Jon, perhaps inevitably, soon found himself leaning against Martin’s shoulder. He didn’t remember having done that, but it could have happened accidentally, he supposed, if he’d been drifting off.

“Sorry,” he muttered, carefully sitting up, only to realize by the sudden absence of the weight and pressure of Martin’s arm that it had been wrapped around him.

“Sorry,” Martin echoed, wincing. “You were just… there, and you looked really comfortable, and—”

Hoping it wasn’t a terrible decision, Jon slowly and deliberately lay back down against Martin’s side, grabbed Martin’s arm and returned it to its previous position around his person, and snuggled in as close to Martin as he could possibly get.

Martin’s arm around him tightened in a half-hug, and he tilted his head to rest it on Jon’s, even though it had to be putting his neck at a somewhat awkward angle.

“Stars, that's adorable,” declared Harriet’s voice from the gust of wind sweeping through the living room.

“Hey, Harriet,” Jon said as he sat up, properly this time. “Thanks for the help.”

“You’re welcome,” Harriet chirped, setting a large plastic bag down on the floor by the sofa and untying the handles. “Martin, I didn’t know what sorts of clothes you generally prefer, but I did my best." She retrieved a pair of jeans, a plastic three-pack of white t-shirts, similar packs of socks and underpants, a light green button-up, and pajama trousers made of some light, soft material in a similar shade. "I also got you a toothbrush," she said as she retrieved said toothbrush from the bag. "Lynette's gonna be here around nine o' clock tonight. I'll come along and talk to Jon about a few things while she's checking you out, if that's okay?" She was looking at Martin, clearly addressing him specifically.

Martin nodded. "Sounds good."

"Awesome," said Harriet. She turned to Jon. "I'll see you then."

With that, she was gone.

Martin grabbed a pair of underwear, a pair of socks, a t-shirt, and the pajama trousers and headed into the bathroom.

Jon followed, then sat down on the floor with his back to the cabinet and closed his eyes.

Immediately, the exhaustion he'd been holding back hit him like a tsunami.

"You can figure out the shower?" he mumbled. "Should be pretty straightforward."

"Yeah, I got it," Martin said a moment before the water came on.

Jon tried to stay awake. For a few minutes, he even managed it, pinching the outside of his thigh hard enough to hurt and forcing out verbal acknowledgments of words he could barely hear, let alone understand. Before long, though, it became apparent that, now that he was sitting down, continuing to fight the fatigue was a losing battle.

Martin would wake him up when he got out of the shower, wouldn't he? Maybe it would be all right. Just for a few minutes...

...

Jon snapped awake to a bathroom full of steam and the sudden awareness that something was very wrong.

The shower was still running, but Jon couldn't hear any movement.

"Martin?" he called.

No answer.

Despite the humid warmth of the bathroom, Jon's blood ran cold.

(Martin was still in the shower, awake and alive but thoroughly dissociated. He'd sunk into this state after repeatedly calling out to Jon and not getting an answer made him worry that he was back in the Lonely, or that he'd never left at all.)

"MARTIN!" Jon shouted, feeling sick.

When he was met with only more awful silence, Jon took a deep breath, removed his nightshirt, grabbed the damp towel he'd used to dry off, and stood. "Martin, I'm coming in, if that's all right."

When he didn't hear an objection, Jon pulled back the curtain and stepped into the shower.

Immediately, he hissed in pain. The water was hot, hotter than could possibly have been comfortable even in cold weather, let alone on a relatively warm day like today. Jon adjusted the temperature until it was still hot but no longer painful, then let himself properly look at Martin.

Martin was standing unnervingly still, skin an angry deep pink where the water touched it, staring straight ahead with a blank expression.

Jon took a deep breath. "It's okay, Martin. This is real. You're here, with me, in my apartment in San Francisco."

Martin's eyes settled on Jon, trying to focus.

"May I?" Jon asked, holding out the towel.

Martin gave a faint, jerky nod.

Jon wrapped the towel around Martin's waist and tucked the end in to secure it. Then, slowly, watching closely for any sign of a "no"—verbal or not, intentional or otherwise—he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Martin, pulling him close.

"It's okay," he repeated. "I'm here. I'm right here. You're not alone."

He was tempted to use his powers, to make Martin understand that this was real in a bone-deep way that left no room for doubt. It would fix the current problem, Jon knew. However, he also knew that using his powers to influence Martin without his consent would create a host of new problems, so he resisted the impulse and simply continued to hold Martin close, murmuring reassurances.

After a long minute, Martin's arms came up to return the embrace.

"Sorry," Martin whispered.

Jon shook his head. "You don't have to be sorry. I'm sorry I fell asleep."

"It's okay," Martin said. "You were exhausted."

"Still am," Jon muttered. "And I'm sure you are, too."

Martin sighed. "Yeah."

With the immediate crisis over, Jon suddenly became very aware of his bare chest pressed against Martin's.

As quickly as possible without drawing attention to the situation, Jon stepped back. "Did you get cleaned up before..." He trailed off.

"Yeah," Martin said again. "Sorry about the water, I just... I can't get warm." There was a quiet despair in his voice.

Jon nodded. "Well, let's get out of the shower and dressed, and then we can go cuddle under the covers and see if we can fix that." He reached for the water and turned it off. "And sleep."

"Good idea," Martin replied with a yawn.

As Martin stepped out of the shower and began to dry off with the clean towel, the pink on his skin still clearly indicating where the hot water had been hitting him, Jon smiled.

"Statement of Jonathan Sims," he intoned in what he knew Martin thought of as his Statement Reading Voice, "regarding the plot to replace his—"

Abruptly, Jon realized that he had absolutely no idea how to finish that sentence.

He hated to backtrack and spoil the effect, but in this case, it was probably the least uncomfortable option. "Regarding the plot to replace Martin with a cooked lobster."

Martin's eyes went wide, mouth opening slightly in astonishment.

Then, a small but definite smile crept over his face.

Jon decided to take that as a win.

...

Jon stood at the foot of his bed next to the man he'd been pining after from afar for months and who might or might not still feel the same way about him, struck by the sudden and powerful awareness that declaring an intention to get into bed with and cuddle Martin and actually doing that were two very different things.

Before he could think about it any more, Jon went around to the side of the bed he usually slept on, pulled back the covers, and climbed in.

A moment later, Martin got in on the other side.

Jon took a deep breath and silently asked the universe to let him borrow some of Karolina's unflappability.

"Still cold?" he whispered.

"Yeah," Martin whispered back.

Jon gathered his courage, then scooted forward until his body was pressed against Martin's and threw an arm over him.

Martin made a sound that might be best described as a squeak.

Jon smiled, probably halfway to a smirk. "Better?"

In lieu of words, Martin wrapped one of his own arms around Jon and pulled him in with decisive enthusiasm.

Jon hummed.

"I wear socks on my feet," Martin declared, apropos of nothing.

Jon blamed sleep deprivation for the loud, jarring laugh that burst out of him at that. "I'm sorry, what?"

"What?" asked Martin, sounding legitimately baffled. "What did I just say?"

Jon blinked. "Do you not remember?"

Martin frowned, then sighed and let his eyes slide closed. "No."

"Well, what did you mean to say?"

"I meant to say, I wear socks to bed so my feet don't get cold," Martin said in a slow, measured tone. "Is that not what I said?"

Jon smiled. "You said 'I wear socks on my feet.'"

Martin snorted. "In my defense, I think being this close to you is actively frying my brain."

"Well, sleep deprivation is frying mine," Jon said. "Good night, Martin."

"Goodnight, Jon," Martin replied, voice already starting to slur. "You'll... you'll still be here when I wake up?"

Jon's chest ached at the vulnerability in Martin's sleep-soaked voice. "Yes," he said. "I'll be right here."

Jon couldn't hold back the darkness blurring his vision any longer, but, judging from Martin's slow, even breathing, he didn't need to.

...

Much too soon, Jon was dragged back to consciousness by the sound of knocking.

In the time it took for his brain to come back online, he gradually became aware of several things.

First, the knocking was coming from the direction of the wall by the head of the bed, not the bedroom door. Second (only an extra step because of Jon's half-asleep state), that meant it was Helen knocking.

Third, Martin was lying very still beside Jon, eyes squeezed shut, breathing shallow and fast, every muscle in his body tense.

It wasn't until he was fully awake that Jon put the pieces together.

"Martin, it's okay, it's just Helen," he said, then called "just a minute!" in the direction of the knocking.

"Take your time," Helen replied, already distorted voice muffled by the wall between the part of her that was speaking and the listeners.

With a convulsive, whole-body shudder, Martin opened his eyes. "Just Helen?" he whispered, distressed disbelief apparent in his tone even when he was talking so quietly as to be scarcely audible.

"She won't hurt you if you're with me," Jon said in what he hoped was a convincing manner (despite not being entirely convinced himself), then sat up and turned back toward the approximate direction Helen's voice had been coming from. He noticed as he did so that it was dark outside his window, even though the room was still brightly lit—he and Martin must have fallen asleep with the light on. "Helen, what is it?"

The new door in the wall swung open, hinge on the side farther from the bed, and Helen poked her head and upper body out, grinning at Martin and wiggling her fingers in a gesture Jon was fairly certain was intended to have a deeply unsettling effect while maintaining enough plausible deniability to pass for a greeting.

"Hello, Martin," she purred. "Lovely to see you again."

Martin, at this point in the process of scrambling up to a seated position, looked at Jon frantically. "Why is she in here?"

"Why don't you ask me yourself?" Helen interjected.

Martin turned just long enough to glare a few daggers at her, then turned back to Jon. He seemed about to say something else when he suddenly went still.

Jon's heart sank.

Martin's eyes were fixed on his neck, where the cuts left by Helen's hand were still healing and, no doubt, still visible.

Martin swallowed hard, then turned back to Helen with, somehow, even more loathing in his face and voice. "Fine. Why are you here?"

Helen frowned, then looked directly past Martin at Jon. "Can you make him behave?"

Martin sputtered, turning back to Jon as well. "Can you make her leave?"

Jon took a deep, slow breath and resisted the urge to lie back down and pull the covers over his head. Much as he wanted to just remove himself from the situation, he wasn't at all sure that Helen and Martin wouldn't immediately start genuinely trying to kill each other if he did.

Finally, after a long moment of breathing and struggling to think of something to say while staring into the middle distance and avoiding looking directly at either of them, Jon spoke.

"Whether I could or not," he said in a painstakingly slow, measured voice, "I'm not going to make either of you do anything." Breathe. In, out. "I'm also not doing this right now." In, out. "Helen, is there something specific you came here to say?"

"Lynette and Harriet will be here soon," she said, irritated but resigned. Sadly, Jon knew that tone of hers well from all the time he'd spent provoking it. "I thought you might both want to be awake when they get here."

Jon nodded. "Thank you. I'll come talk to you later, all right?"

To her credit, Helen took the hint.

Once her door had disappeared behind her, Jon turned to Martin. "Sorry about that. I know she can be a lot—"

Martin scoffed and seemed about to say something, but to Jon's relief was interrupted by Harriet calling through the (preexisting) door. "It's the medic! May we come in?"

Jon once again looked at Martin, who nodded.

"You may!" he called back.

The door swung open, and Lynette walked in as Harriet hovered in the doorway.

Jon and Martin both got out of bed as she came over. Lynette extended her hand, and this time Martin actually shook it.

"Lynette Fairchild," she said. "Are you Martin?"

"Yeah." Martin eyed Lynette's backpack. "You're the avatar medic?"

"That's me." She took the backpack off and set it on the bed. "You can look through it, if that would make you more comfortable. Shouldn't be anything too alarming in there."

Martin hesitated a moment, then unzipped the pack and began looking through the plastic-bagged medical supplies contained therein.

"Harriet filled me in a bit on what you've been through," Lynette said, "but I'd like to hear it in your words, and I'll need to ask quite a few follow-up questions, some of which might get pretty personal. I generally make it a policy to conduct that sort of questioning one-on-one, for privacy and to make sure my patients feel they can speak freely. Is it all right if I send Jon away for now so I can talk with you more privately?"

Martin grimaced, but nodded. "All right." He looked up at Jon. "See you soon."

"See you soon," Jon repeated, then headed out the door of the bedroom, closing it behind him before following Harriet out into the rest of the apartment.

When they arrived in the kitchen, Jon leaned against the counter before Harriet shook her head, slid down the front of the refrigerator until she was sitting on the floor with her back to it, and patted the space next to her in a clear invitation.

Jon sighed, but followed suit, wincing as his bad knee informed him in no uncertain terms that it did not appreciate the maneuver he'd just put it through. "Why are we sitting on the floor when there's a perfectly good couch in the other room?" he grumbled as he slowly stretched out his legs.

"We can go into the living room if you want." Harriet shrugged. "Just something Helen told me." She looked Jon directly in the eye, covering the resulting slight wince with a smirk so effectively that, without his Power letting him directly sense her discomfort, Jon would never have noticed. "Hungry?"

At that, it was Jon's turn to wince. "I just fed on Friday," he said. "Lynette. And I got a statement from Peter Lukas, before—" He broke off with a huff. "There's no way I should be hungry already."

Harriet smiled sympathetically. "I'm taking that as a yes?"

"I don't—"

"Stop me if I get something wrong," said Harriet. "On Friday, you got in a fight with the actual fucking Distortion, in which you were physically injured—I'm not blaming her, or you, I'm just saying what happened," Harriet clarified in response to Jon's attempted protest. "Lynette fed you to help you start healing, but the fact that a Spiral being directly inflicted the injuries meant your Power couldn't just heal them for you, so your body is having to heal itself, which it isn't used to doing anymore. On Saturday, you did a lot of heavy emotional processing and then, if I understood Helen correctly, spent a substantial amount of time in a Spiral domain—"

"Helen told you about that?" Jon wasn't sure how he felt about that possibility. On one hand, it was good for Helen to have friends other than him who she could talk to if she wanted, but on the other... that felt sort of private.

"She didn't tell me anything specific," Harriet reassured him. "I don't know any details and I don't need to, but I'm assuming that whatever the two of you got up to involved you spending a while in the corridors. That right?"

"Yes," Jon replied, electing not to think too hard about what assumptions she might be making. As Harriet had said, he details were between him and Helen, and Jon didn't really care how Harriet decided to fill them in.

"So, lovely as I'm sure that was, it was still probably a pretty significant power drain. Monday morning you got devastating news, and then the asshole boss who literally got you killed and tried to use you as a weapon against the entire world showed up at the new job you took partly to escape his influence, in your territory where you thought you were relatively safe, and tried to use your shared Power to force you to go back. If I know you, you fought back with everything you had and then some. After that, you spent a lot more time in Helen's domain, experienced the utter destruction of your home Archive, and dealt with a lot more heavy emotional shit, including the death of a friend which you both had directly beamed into your head by your Power, and had to actually bring about in order to honor her wishes. Have I gotten it right so far?"

"Yes," Jon sighed, well aware of what she was doing but too exhausted to interrupt—which, he had to admit, probably proved her point just a bit.

"Cool. After that, you walked into the hostile domain of another Power directly opposed to yours, where I imagine you had to use your Power to navigate even with your access to it mostly cut off. I know you took a statement from Peter Lukas, but you also killed him with your brain, which I'm sure took a huge amount of power, and then found your way out, with a human, no less—"

"I also used the Eye to get through to Martin," Jon muttered. Harriet's litany of his recent power expenditures might as well be complete, at this point. "And I told it I'd feed it when I got back if it would help me."

"There you go," said Harriet, gesturing in agreement. "And since then, I'm guessing you've been putting a lot of effort into not using your Power, at least not accidentally. You're injured, sleep-deprived, and physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, and you've had to ask more of your connection to the Eye in the past few days than most people do in a year. And now you're flat-out refusing to give it anything, when you promised you would." She gave Jon a pointed look. "Now do you understand why you're hungry?"

Jon sighed, but didn't answer Harriet's question directly. He didn't need to. They both knew she was right.

"I talked to Lynette before we got here," Harriet said. "She's gonna keep Martin distracted for half an hour or so. I know you don't want to leave him—trust me, I get it—but you need to take care of yourself, too. So we're gonna sit here, and I'm gonna give you a statement, and then you can go curl up with Martin and get some proper sleep without having to torture yourself by constantly fighting not to feed on him. How's that sound?"

In lieu of a verbal reply, Jon took a deep breath and finally let himself acknowledge and surrender to the hunger gnawing at him.

"Harriet," he said, power ringing through his voice, "Tell me about Robert Kelly."

Almost immediately, Harriet began speaking, words settling into the smooth cadence of a statement.

"The invention of stunt-based charity fundraising is one of the greatest things that ever happened to servants of the Infinite," she began. "I know, that probably sounds bad, but you have to understand. One of the trickiest things about trying to feed my patron is that people who are particularly afraid of heights or deep water or outer space or the concept of infinity or what-have-you tend to just avoid situations that expose them to their fears in any significant way. Sure, there's mandatory work trips, and tall office buildings, but more often than not people who are scared of heights just… don’t go up high. You can live your whole life never seeing the ocean if you're not born near a coast and don't want to go, and don’t get me started on outer space—planetariums only help so much when entrance is strictly voluntary." She scoffed. "Of course, the sky is always there, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t even really notice it in their day-to-day lives. Awful shame, if you ask me. "

She shook her head sadly, and Jon smiled at her.

"But at those ridiculous charity events, it's different," Harriet said. "Every now and then a proper phobic will deliberately face their fear for the sake of some noble cause, but the real payoff is the spectators. Supporting the cause, supporting a friend, improvised exposure therapy, morbid curiosity... it doesn’t really matter. The point is, almost any charity stunt related to my patron—which is a lot of them—will have someone in the audience whose fear is so strong it’s easy to pick up on, even when it's only secondhand. And once you find that person, if you keep tabs on them, sooner or later something will come up to make them face their fear. It was at that sort of event that I met Robert Kelly." Harriet grimaced. "Well, first I met his mother."

She paused, bound to the timing of the narrative dragging her along, and Jon leaned in towards her, waiting intently for her next words.

"It was nineteen ninety-seven," she said. "The first Saturday in October—October fourth, I think it was. I'd gotten word from a friend that some uni student was doing a skydive to raise money for the British Heart Foundation, promising to jump out of a plane for the first time if he got enough donors. Well, he did, and I showed up day of to check out him and the crowd, see if I could find any potential victims. It didn't take long to zero in on a middle-aged woman with curly red hair as the likeliest candidate."

Jon nodded, an image of Moira Kelly appearing unbidden in his mind. She was a bit taller than he'd imagined her, when he'd read her statement, back before the Eye would have shown him exactly what she looked like.

"I went up to her and started chatting, asked what had brought her here, and she told me that her name was Moira Kelly and she was here to support her son. Which made perfect sense—she wasn't unusually acrophobic, pretty typical level, I'd say, but most people find the idea of jumping out of a plane at least unnerving, and of course it's scarier to watch when it's your own family. She'd certainly do in a pinch, but it'd be easy enough to find someone better. At that point I was pretty sure this particular event had been a total bust, but I decided to stay until Robert landed. Would've felt a bit like leaving church halfway through if I hadn't. And as soon as he touched down, I was very glad I had.” Harriet’s smile was dreamy, almost reverent. “The look on his face was just… pure joy. Whatever he’d seen up there, he was in love.”

"I could see it in his eyes, even before he’d removed his parachute, that he was in love." For a moment, the distant voice of Moira Kelly overlapped Harriet's as they said more or less the exact same thing.

“I decided right then that I had to talk to him,” Harriet went on. “If that was really his first jump, he'd done remarkably well. He stuck the landing like a pro, for one thing, but more importantly, he didn’t seem to be distressed in any way. He was a bit afraid, sure, in that way that’s just excitement with a slightly different emphasis, but it wasn’t bothering him at all. I thought maybe he was one of us who’d somehow stayed off the Fairchild radar, but even if he wasn’t, I was thinking… maybe I could fix that.” Harriet winced, a bit of her current emotion breaking through the tightly structured journey on which the statement was taking her. “I hung back while Robert talked to his friends and his mother. By the time he was alone and headed to the train station, I had the outline of a plan all worked out and ready to go.”

The statement paused, allowing Harriet a moment to catch her breath before zooming out a bit to provide some necessary context. Distantly, to the extent he was able to separate himself from the statement at all, Jon noticed that he didn't think the Eye was specifically telling him what Harriet was about to say—he'd just listened to enough Eye-facilitated statements by now to be instinctively familiar with the format, right down to the timing and rhythm of a speaker's sounds and silences.

"Have you ever noticed that the Powers whose servants organize themselves into formal social structures tend to be the most innately isolating?" Harriet asked. "My people, the ones who belong to the Fear of overwhelming scale and scope and power and of our own insignificance before it"—her eyes glittered—"have the Fairchild family. The agents of destruction and loss have the Cult of the Lightless Flame, I think you called it. Those who worship darkness and ignorance and all things hidden have the People's Church of the Divine Host. The people whose patron is literally called the Stranger have the Circus of the Other. Hell, even the Fear of being alone raises up most of its children within the Lukas line." She scoffed.

Jon made a wry face and nodded agreement.

Harriet, caught in the flow of the statement, quickly moved on. "Nobody knows for sure why that is, of course, but my theory is that it has to do with the fact that human beings—and human-adjacent formerly-human beings—are inherently social creatures. We need connection as much as we need food, and if the nature of the Power that meets most of our basic needs means it can't meet that one, we'll look for it from each other. That fact—that avatar social structures exist to provide what our patrons won't give us—means that the Fairchilds in particular have gotten really, really good at being each other's safety net. We all have each other's backs, all the time, no matter what. It helped that this was the nineties, of course—he couldn't just get on his smartphone and Google the name I gave him—but even so, when I caught Robert at the train station, the reason I felt completely confident making up a skydiving company and offering to pay for his training if he'd agree to sign on with us after he graduated was my absolute certainty that my family would back the play and give me whatever help I needed to pull it off." She snorted. "They definitely grumbled about it, but, ultimately, I was right."

As Harriet prepared to launch into the next section of her statement, the flow of words paused long enough for Jon to realize that perhaps he should have insisted they move to the couch. Sitting on the tiled kitchen floor for this long was starting to be a literal and significant pain in the backside. Still... it wasn't as bad as he would have expected, given how long they'd been sitting here and his utter lack of natural padding.

(In the less than a month that had elapsed since he'd left the Magnus Institute and started feeding on a regular basis, Jon had put on nearly a stone of weight. Harriet had noticed, and wanted to congratulate him on it, but had thus far refrained from doing so because she knew it might be a touchy subject for any of a number of reasons.)

It was probably a good thing that Harriet's statement resumed before Jon had any more time to contemplate that information.

"For the next few months," she said, "Robert was in training. Mostly, what that meant was that I convinced a few Fairchilds to volunteer so our fake company could have some employees, spray-painted a plausible logo on the side of David's plane and a random white van, and took Robert on a company-sponsored jump every month or so, teaching him different things he'd need to learn to be a skydiving instructor. My 'company' sent him a formal offer letter pretty much as soon as he graduated, and just like that, Robert Kelly was an employee of Open Skydiving, Ltd."

Well, that certainly explained a lot. Where Robert had been getting the money, for one thing.

“I’d like to say I was only acting on a sense of religious duty,” Harriet said. “At first, I think it was even true. But I probably lost the right to make that claim the first time we made out in the company van after a jump.” She sighed. "People talk about there being different kinds of love—philia, storge, agape, eros, those. I think they're supposed to feel different? I've never really understood that—it all feels the same to me, and I don't get at all what it has to do with sex. I mean, there's a level of trust I need to have with someone to be comfortable enough to have a good time, but of course we trusted each other, we routinely jumped out of an airplane together. We were never partners in anything but the business sense—I was more comfortable keeping things loose and undefined, and I think he was too. So I wasn't too worried when we started having sex." She winced. "I didn't realize until much too late that the real danger was becoming his friend."

Through the combination of statement-haze and sympathy, Jon took a break from wondering what happened next to wonder if Harriet had heard of aromanticism.

Either way, she quickly resumed speaking. "The way I loved him had nothing to do with the sex. It had everything to do with the way he smiled when we were playing cards cross-legged on a motel bed and he told me to go fish, or blushed bright red if I said something mildly suggestive in public but knew every single drugs-and-sex-soaked lyric to Semi-Charmed Life and belted them out when it was just us in the van and it came on the radio, or the kindness in his voice when I'd tried to eat human food and thrown up again and he told me his cousin was in recovery for an eating disorder and that if I ever wanted to talk about anything he was there and would be glad to listen, or the way he wouldn't take any other holidays off except Christmas but always made sure to go home for Mother's Day, or how giddy he always got right after a jump…” She shook her head, blinking hard.

The images and the emotion that went with them melted into Jon's mind like dark chocolate, rich with the bittersweetness of ruined hope.

“We settled into a rhythm pretty quickly,” Harriet said. “Robert and I spent most of our work time together, but a few of our other ‘coworkers’—Juan, David, Matt, and Anja, mostly—took turns traveling and working with him while I was doing other family-related things. They all liked him, and they didn’t even complain that much about having to run a skydiving business without launching any of the clients into the Endless, but it was pretty clear they were only doing it as a favor to me.” Harriet shook her head. “You may have noticed by now that most Fear-people"—she gestured back and forth between herself and Jon—"don't really have a concept of moderation. If we did, we wouldn't have been chosen by a Power that requires its followers to give it everything they have and do and are. In my case, that means I can easily commit to a project so hard that I forget to wonder whether it's a good idea or not.” She winced.

Jon winced too, in a visceral sort of commiseration he probably would’ve felt even without the enforced empathy of a statement. What Harriet was describing was certainly a familiar problem.

“Honestly, probably the only thing that saved me from getting completely consumed by the effort to bring in Robert was getting sent to invite Mike to become a Fairchild," Harriet said with a faint smile. "I knew he would be a tough nut to crack, and I was right. But I got through to him in the end, and helping Mike integrate into our family kept me connected enough to them and distant enough from my efforts with Robert that it didn't destroy me when they failed." She cringed. "And it might well have. I'd gotten far too invested, more than I’d ever planned to be. I wanted him to be part of my family, and I wanted him to know how wonderful it could be to be more than a visitor to the beautiful expanse of blue that had become his workplace but still wasn’t his home, and I wanted him to know who I really was, and I wanted to meet the person he would be once our Power had claimed him."

Harriet's words were saturated with love—for her patron, for Robert, for Mike, for her entire family, for the never-realized idea of Robert's avatar self—in a painful, beautiful mess, love that was still going strong mingling with love that had long since gone sour.

“Still, as time went on, it became easier and easier to enjoy what we had in the present enough to push that to the back of my mind. I don't know how long it would have gone on if Simon hadn't finally put his foot down.” She sighed. “But, of course, he did. In early May of two thousand two, four and a half years after I'd first met Robert, Simon told me that if Robert wasn't ready by now he never would be, and it was time to hand the matter over to our Power to be settled once and for all. He was right, of course, so I agreed. I told myself I was more excited than nervous, and that whatever apprehension I was feeling was perfectly normal. That it didn't mean anything. I think even then I knew better, but..." She tipped her head, a wry expression on her face. "You know what they say about hindsight."

Jon nodded, mirroring Harriet's expression. Despite the statement carrying him along nearly as much as Harriet, he knew where this was going, and his sympathy for Harriet was as real as his hunger to hear the rest from her perspective.

"We planned Robert's test for the first of June, which was a Saturday that year," Harriet said. “Simon and I would go tandem, him in the role of a widower jumping for the first time as a charity fundraiser in memory of his late wife, and me in my capacity as an instructor. I’d get as many Fairchilds as I could to play supporters, which turned out to be quite a lot—everybody knew about Robert, at this point, and lots of the others were excited to see how it turned out and to welcome him if it went well. I think most of them thought I was missing a few marbles"—she made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob—"but they wanted to support me and my ridiculous project anyway, and besides, my people are disinclined on principle to call anything impossible. Especially if it hasn't been tried yet." She smiled a bit. "I'm sure you of all people can understand that. Anyway. The plan was that I’d ask Robert to come along for support, so we'd be with him on the way up, but he’d be jumping alone. I wanted to introduce Simon as my grandfather, but he said it was better if Robert didn’t realize anything was unusual until he was already out there, and if he knew Simon was part of my family he'd definitely know something unusual was going on."

Harriet screwed up her face against the tears that were still trying to fall, despite the Eye-enforced steadiness of her voice.

"Robert had been asking for years when I was going to let him meet my family," she said. "Of course, he'd already met some of them, but he didn't know that—all he knew was that I had a big family, they were really important to me, and I talked about them a lot, but he'd never been introduced to any of them. He never got pushy or seemed impatient about it, but he definitely knew I was hiding something." She took a deep breath. "The last time he asked me, we were at the film festival in Cannes, France. One of the movies premiering that year was one that some of my family had been working on for years and were really proud of—not Fairchilds, in this case, but other servants of the Vast. I'd been called on to echo a few times during development"—('to echo' was Vast avatar slang for what some might call 'letting someone bounce things off you' or, in other circles, 'being a rubber duck,' the Eye chimed in)—"so I'd scored an invite, and I took Robert along. The movie was great—it was an animated children's movie about horses, which Robert said wouldn't usually have been his thing, but even he thought the visuals were gorgeous and the soundtrack was amazing. I told him I'd pass on the compliments, and he asked me, in that playful way he always did, when I'd let him talk to my family himself. Usually I would have deflected. But that day, a week before we were planning to put him through his trial and find out whether he would be joining us, I took his hands and looked in his eyes, and I told him, 'soon.'"

(One of Robert's many idle theories about Harriet and her elusive family had been that they were ghosts, and when Harriet had told him in that oddly serious way that he'd meet them soon, he'd experienced a moment of deep, cold fear. He'd told himself he was being ridiculous, that there was no way Harriet and her family were actually long dead and preparing to drag him into eternity with them. That was absurd, he'd told himself, unaware that, give or take a few details, it was entirely true. Even after his first proper encounter with the eternity in question had left him violently traumatized and sent him fleeing home, he hadn't told his mother any of his suspicions about Harriet or her family, even if he hadn't been sure exactly which of them he was trying to protect.)

(Harriet had noticed Robert's momentary distress at being told he would soon meet her family, but had chalked it up to normal nerves about meeting the family of his sort-of-girlfriend, especially after so long. She'd been too busy thinking about her own present feelings and Robert's potential future to pay it much mind, and by the time of Robert's last jump she'd entirely forgotten.)

Jon mentally told the Eye to shut up.

Instead, it made Harriet resume her statement. Oh, well. Good enough.

"The early afternoon of June first was gorgeous," she said, tone almost reverent despite the tears in her eyes. "Deep blue sky, the kind that's lighter near the horizon and fades into something so saturated it's almost dark higher up, without a single cloud in sight. It felt at the time like a good omen, like the sky itself was blessing our endeavor. The ride up to ten thousand feet was—" She laughed. "It was wonderful. Simon and Robert seemed to be getting along wonderfully, and the three of us were joking around, and no one seemed nervous or out of place. I mean, I sure felt nervous, but I think at the time I was only thinking of it as excitement."

Jon leaned towards Harriet, partially to redistribute his weight (his legs were going numb), but mostly out of curiosity to hear exactly how Harriet's plan had gone so dramatically awry.

"Finally, it was time for the jump," Harriet said. "Simon and I had gotten strapped into our parachute—we didn't need it, of course, but Robert didn't know that—and Robert had gotten into his, and we'd double-checked each other's harnesses, like we always did. Simon and I had talked about it that morning—we'd go into our domain first, and Simon would mark Robert for our patron so that when he jumped he'd be taken in as well. We'd agreed to leave him there for half an hour, an hour at most. Just enough to give him a taste. He'd loved the limited freefall he'd already experienced so much, I thought there was no way his reaction would be anything but delight and a craving for more." She sighed. "Even at the time, I wished I could be with him, but I knew it wouldn't have been right. Being chosen by a Power... it's such a personal thing, not something anyone else can or should get in the middle of. I mean, Simon brings in new people sometimes, but even then, whether or not it takes is always between the person and the Infinite."

(Simon had brought in Harriet—not only to the Fairchild family, but to avatarhood as well. She and her twin brother Curtis had built a version of one of Leonardo da Vinci's flying machines, which had been working fine until Simon had sabotaged it. The resulting crash into the ocean had killed them both, and the Vast had only chosen to revive Harriet. Simon had fished a distraught Harriet out of the water, comforted her, and told her he'd be back for her when she was ready. To this day, Harriet had no idea that Simon had killed both her and the most important person in her life up to then.)

Jon wanted to slam on the brakes at that series of revelations, at least mentally, but the statement pulled him back in regardless.

"But anyway," Harriet was saying. "I heard Simon put the mark on Robert, and we jumped into the embrace of our Power, and I forgot all about my worries. After a lovely while of just existing in that bright forever, we landed near the target site among the rest of our family and settled in to wait."

Harriet's face had gone dreamy while discussing the Vast. Now, it crumpled.

"I couldn't feel Robert while Simon had him in our patron's domain," she went on, voice rougher than it had been. "I wasn't the one feeding on him, and, at the risk of stating the incredibly obvious, Infinity is really big." She giggled a bit, wild and achingly sad. "But as soon as Simon brought him back to this plane of reality, I knew. He was terrified, and not in a good way. He felt..." She swallowed hard. "He felt broken." The tears that had been gathering in her eyes finally began to drop from her lashes and fall down her face. "Everyone else could tell, too, of course. Some of them tried to console me, but I clearly wasn't having it, and soon they all left so I could deal with the aftermath of my failed project however I saw fit." She sighed. "When Robert hit the ground, I went over to help him get his harness off, but he flinched away when I tried to touch him. I backed off, of course, and tried to figure out exactly how bad it was—I mean, of course it was bad, I could feel that it was bad, I just..." She took a shaky breath. "I couldn't accept that it hadn't worked. I'd spent years of my life on my effort to bring him into my family, and I wasn't prepared to let him go. So when he told me, right then and there, that he was quitting, effective immediately..."

She broke off, flinching, but the sort of flinch that Jon recognized as punctuation rather than merely one of Harriet's natural reactions breaking through the statement's hold. It was a genuine reaction, of course—the Eye wouldn't let her lie, not even with her body language—but in this case, it was as much a part of the statement as her words.

"I've never been prone to dwelling on mistakes," Harriet went on, confirming Jon's instinct about the purpose of the flinch. "I can count on one hand the number of decisions I've made that I'm still genuinely ashamed of. But that's only true because everything I did in the first week of June of two thousand and two is connected enough that I think it all sort of counts as one decision."

(Harriet thought the worst thing she had ever done was agreeing to her brother's crazy plan to build a working flying machine and launch it off a cliff with both of them in it. She'd been wracking her brain for decades, wondering where the calculations that they'd checked and double-checked so carefully had gone wrong. Since joining the Fairchild family, Harriet had learned more about Simon's patterns, but she still hadn't put it together, partially because she couldn't even bring herself to consider it. Her entire life was wrapped up in what Simon had built, and, while she could easily forgive him for having temporarily killed her, having permanently killed her brother would be unforgivable. She and the rest of her family couldn't afford the consequences of a real and permanent break between her and Simon, so she just didn't think about anything that might cause one. An entirely subconscious decision, but a decision all the same.)

As the Eye backed off enough to let Jon listen to Harriet again, he realized that she was now on a similar topic. "I want it noted for the record that I did not physically hit Simon when he casually told me in response to a decidedly non-casual inquiry that he'd left Robert up there for what was probably a few days of subjective time," she said. "I yelled at him enough, but I didn’t hit him, though I’ll admit it was a near thing. But what I did instead was maybe worse."

Harriet really, really did not want to tell Jon whatever she was about to tell him, and she knew as well as Jon did that she was going to tell him anyway. She was afraid of the memory, and afraid of Jon's judgment, and afraid of confronting her own guilt.

Jon had just enough presence of mind left outside of the statement to at least try not to let himself visibly react to how wonderful it felt.

“I followed Robert back to his mother’s house,” Harriet said dully. “I’d never been there before, but he wasn’t difficult to track. I didn’t let him know I was there. I’d like to say I don’t know what I was thinking, and I suppose to some extent it’s true—it’s all a bit of a blur at this point—but the truth is, I know perfectly well that the problem was that I wasn’t thinking at all. I was hurt, and grieving, and angry—angry with Simon for changing the plan without telling me, and with my Power for rejecting Robert, and with Robert for not being what I’d thought he was, and with myself for wasting so much time on someone who’d turned out to be unworthy—“ She broke off. “The hope I’d held onto for years was slipping through my fingers, and I was stupid enough to try to hold on. I wasn’t following him for any particular purpose—at least, not consciously. I just wasn’t ready to let him go.” She took a deep, shuddering breath as the tears fell faster. “The day after he got home, he and his mother were taking a walk in the park. They’d brought a picnic lunch and everything, and… he looked happy. Just like he had all those times before, when I’d thought he was one of my kind in the making. When that smile was for me, and when I thought it was for the Power that would one day be ours." She winced. “I was following them, trying to stay far enough out of this plane of existence to be invisible, but I must’ve misjudged, or… maybe Robert just had a sense about me by then. As I was following him and his mother up a hill, he looked over his shoulder, and... he saw me. I know he saw me, and I know he recognized me, because the look on his face…” She shuddered. “I can’t think of anyone else who would’ve scared him that badly.”

Harriet tried to turn her head away, but the power holding her captive within her own story wouldn’t let her.

“I‘d like to think I somehow managed to convince myself that something about exactly how Simon tried to introduce Robert to our patron was the problem,” Harriet said through a voice heavy with tears. “That maybe if I tried again I could get it right. But right then, seeing that look on his face at just the sight of me… it’s just as likely that I was angry and wanted to punish him for what I saw as his failure. And when he shoved his mother onto the ground, out of my line of sight, and started to run…” She swallowed hard. “You know how they say that if you see a predator in the wild, you’re not supposed to run, because that’ll just make them want to chase you?”

Jon managed a small nod as Harriet erupted into more of that helpless, grief-soaked laughter.

“The first time I met Robert,” Harriet said in a small voice, “I thought maybe my patron had led me to him for a reason. That the sky he seemed to love so much wanted him for itself, and it was using me to get to him.” She smiled bitterly. “Turns out I was right about that. I was just wrong about in what capacity.” She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. Can we go sit on the couch now?”

Mixed up as he was between the warm haze of feeding and the secondhand pain he'd absorbed, Jon didn't quite trust his voice yet. Instead, by way of reply, he hopped up off the kitchen floor (it was so easy, now) and reached down to help Harriet up.

Harriet stared at Jon's outstretched hand, making no move to take it.

Jon made a go-on gesture with his extended arm, raising his eyebrows in an expression he hoped conveyed don’t be ridiculous.

Slowly, tentatively, Harriet took Jon’s hand and allowed him to help her to her feet.

"Go sit on the couch," Jon said gently. "I'll make some tea. I'll be there in a minute."

Jon filled the kettle as Harriet went into the living room, then set it to boil and retrieved Karolina’s calming blend from the cabinet, along with the honey, Harriet’s mug, and the mug he’d been given by Helen.

(Harriet liked her herbal tea in particular very, very sweet. While she’d always had a sweet tooth, that particular habit was one she’d picked up from Mike, who during his life as a human had routinely gone days without any more substantial nourishment than copious amounts of honey in his peppermint tea.)

(Harriet hadn't told Mike about her human brother. She definitely hadn't told him that one of the things that had initially drawn her to him was the fact that he reminded her of Curtis, who had also been autistic and semiverbal. Mike knew about Curtis anyway—he'd known since 2001, when he'd decided to test the Fairchild resource network by tracking down Harriet's human life. He'd briefly worried that Harriet only cared about him because he reminded her of someone she'd lost, but had quickly decided she'd earned at least the benefit of the doubt, and she'd since proven several times over that she cared for and valued Mike for himself. It had never occured to him to tell her what he knew.)

Dammit. Jon was going to have to talk to Harriet (and possibly Mike) about that at some point. But right now, more painful memories were the last thing she needed. He could worry about the potential implications of what he'd learned later. For now, he'd focus on the Harriet who was currently crying on his sofa. The one he could help.

Once both mugs of tea were steeped and (in Harriet’s case, over-) sweetened, Jon carried them out into the living room and sat down next to Harriet on the couch, setting their respective mugs on coasters in front of them with a gentle sideways shoulder nudge to reassure Harriet that he wasn’t upset with her.

Harriet, meanwhile, was quietly sobbing with her handkerchief over her face, from the look of it trying and utterly failing to stop.

"Sorry," she choked out. "This is stupid, I know, I haven't—haven't cried about this in—" Another sob cut her off, face twisting up before she once again hid it behind the soggy square of cloth in her hands.

"You don't need to apologize for crying," Jon said.

"I know," Harriet grumbled. "I just—"

Whatever absurd protest Harriet had been about to voice, Jon didn't let her get that far. "If the Fairchilds were having some sort of major crisis, and you'd used up all your energy on dealing with it, and I offered to let you feed on me so you wouldn't have to leave someone who needed you, and I was crying, and I tried to apologize to you about it, what would you tell me?"

Harriet laughed, sharply and explosively, in a manner indicative of a sob repurposed halfway through. "I'd tell you to stop being ridiculous."

"Harriet?"

"Yes?"

"Stop being ridiculous."

Harriet's laugh this time was significantly more real. "I'll try."

"Good." Jon smiled at her, then picked up his mug and took a sip of tea.

Harriet wiped her face one more time, blew her nose, and set her handkerchief on her lap, then followed suit with her own mug, grimacing as her tea was contaminated by a bit of snot she'd failed to completely remove from her upper lip.

Jon looked at her, this dangerous, terrifying predator with blood on her hands and a smile full of teeth, this playful, caring friend who routinely risked her life reaching out to new avatars she didn't even know, this loyal and devoted acolyte of eternity and family member to her fellows, this manipulative schemer who'd betrayed and killed someone who had loved and trusted her, this grieving woman sitting on a sofa she'd bought for a friend and helped move into his new apartment after she called in multiple favors to help him escape a horrible situation while he’d still been a complete stranger to her, just because she'd wanted to help. The kindest and the cruelest of the little group who'd assembled to help Jon escape, holding a star-filled sky in her hands and a snot-soaked handkerchief in her lap, waiting with red, puffy eyes and a mug of hot tea that was nearly a quarter honey to find out if Jon would think less of her now that he knew the details of what she believed wasn't even the worst thing she'd ever done.

Jon saw Harriet—the good, the bad, and the ugly; as she was and as she had been; the faults she was ashamed of, those she couldn't grasp, and those she couldn't face; her greatest triumphs and most brutal failures—and he loved her, fully and unshakably.

Erica (Erica's predecessor, technically) had been right. At this exact moment, Knowing so deeply was an honor and a privilege, one Jon was sincerely grateful for. One that led to love as inexorably and forcefully as a rainstorm in a desert led to a flash flood.

Jon elected not to try to explain all that to Harriet.

“May I hug you?" he asked instead.

Harriet nodded, turning to Jon and opening her arms.

Jon’s feelings around his patron and being an avatar in general were still complicated at best, and the story he’d just heard from Harriet certainly hadn’t improved matters in that regard. The Beholding wasn’t a deity, and Jon still had no intention of treating it like one, even if he’d accepted that bargaining with and occasionally praying to it (for lack of a better term) were part of his life now.

But this moment, hugging Harriet fiercely with her arms tight around him and her head on his shoulder, feeling the sobs shake through her body and her tears dampen his shoulder, and knowing that the way he loved her now and the way he could and would love others were truer and deeper than human love could ever be…

Whatever the word meant, there was no doubt in Jon’s mind that this was holy.

...

A few minutes later, Harriet's phone chimed.

"Lynette says we can come back in if we're ready," she said upon checking it. "Are we?"

Jon nodded and stood, taking one last sip of his tea and bringing the half-empty mugs into the kitchen.

As he and Harriet walked back into the bedroom, Jon saw Martin and Lynette sitting side by side on the edge of the bed, Lynette's backpack open on the bed beside her and her stethoscope around her neck.

Martin smiled weakly and gave Jon a thumbs-up. "Passed my checkup."

"For the moment," Lynette told him. "You may be out of immediate danger, but you'll always be particularly vulnerable to the Lonely, both as a potential servant and as a potential victim. So take care to stay as connected to other people as possible." She turned back to Jon and Harriet, addressing Harriet first. "I was telling Martin that he should be good to eat human food, but it may be a while before he has much of an appetite, so it's probably best to start with snack-y sorts of foods that aren't too overwhelming in flavor or difficult to digest. Biscuits, toast, brothy soups, that sort of thing."

"I said I'd make a list in the morning," Martin remarked sleepily.

"Cool," said Harriet. "Want me to come back then?"

"That would be lovely," Jon replied when Martin didn't answer. "I'll text you when we're ready."

"All right. Seeya." Harriet waved at Martin, put a hand on Jon's shoulder for a moment in an encouraging sort of way, and promptly disappeared from view.

"I've already gone over most of my advice with Martin," Lynette said to Jon. "I've written it down"—she gestured to a piece of folded paper on the nightstand—"and he can fill you in once you've both gotten some proper sleep. Also, Jon, I suggest you plug in your phone."

Jon winced and checked the pocket of the trousers he'd been wearing in the Lonely. Sure enough, his phone was in there, disturbingly cold and extremely dead. He plugged it into the wall charger, then turned back to Martin and Lynette.

"Right now, my prescription for the two of you is to get into bed and stay there in close proximity for at least ten hours," Lynette declared. "I'll be back tomorrow to check in. You both good from here?"

Jon looked at Martin, who nodded.

Jon nodded as well.

"Cool," said Lynette. "See you then." With that, she too was gone.

Jon didn't stop to think about it, just turned off the light and crawled back into bed as Martin did the same.

"Lynette's alright," Martin said, sounding a bit pleasantly surprised through the haze of sleep. "Don't know many doctors who'd prescribe cuddling."

Jon smiled. "That is definitely not the strangest prescription I've heard from her."

"Oh?" Martin's raised eyebrows were audible. "What is?"

Jon thought for a moment. "Possibly fishnets?"

Martin coughed. "Like... for fishing, or..."

"No, the tights."

"Do I want to know?"

"Probably not."

Following Lynette's prescription, Martin snuggled in closer to Jon and pulled him in closer still against his chest. "Night, Jon."

"Goodnight, Martin."

...

Medic's recommendation of ten hours aside, between the amount of time Jon had slept that afternoon and how early he'd gone to bed, it was perhaps unsurprising that he found himself decidedly awake at six twenty-three the next morning.

At some point during the night, Jon must have rolled over, because Martin was spooning him, one arm thrown over Jon to hold him close against his body like some sort of particularly bony teddy bear.

It was surprisingly comfortable, really. Perhaps not entirely in the physical sense—awkward limbs were still a thing, although Martin was delightfully soft and cuddly, not to mention pleasantly warm now that he'd shaken off most of the Lonely chill—but it felt right. Like sharing a blanket fort with Karolina, but somehow even better. Like this room and this bed and this apartment that had already been such a wonderful safe harbor had finally decided to become home.

Jon blinked back stinging grief at the thought. However wonderful this was, however much he wished Martin could be part of home for him, this proximity couldn't last.

It wasn't fair. Jon didn't want Martin to leave, and Martin might feel hurt by the suggestion that he should—in his current state, barely free from the Lonely's grasp, being told he couldn't stay by someone he loved would certainly be painful and might even be dangerous, especially since his social support system aside from Jon was basically nonexistent at this point. Jon hated the necessity of cutting short this closeness that had barely begun, hated the inevitability of Martin feeling rejected.

But if there was one thing more dangerous for Martin than having to leave Jon right now, it was remaining close to him.

Harriet's statement had made that excruciatingly clear. Yes, Jon loved Martin, but Harriet had loved Robert, and in the end it hadn't mattered. She hadn't meant to hurt him, not really, and she certainly hadn't meant to kill him until those last few minutes, but her patron had run her around for years and then briefly gotten the better of her, and that was all it took. Sixteen years later, she was still wishing she could take it back, but what she'd done in those few minutes of Vast-induced rage could never be undone. Robert was gone, taken early from a life that might have been long and full if only he hadn't met Harriet.

It wasn’t fair.

Jon felt tears beginning to slide down his face, over the bridge of his nose and the cheek pressed into the pillow, lightly dampening the pillowcase.

He himself wasn't any different. He'd experienced his patron hijacking his emotions and sabotaging his relationships in ways that had once or twice been nearly as bad as Harriet's, and would have been just as bad or worse if the loved one in the room with him hadn't been another avatar.

Helen could match Jon Power for Power. Their patrons were directly opposed, which gave them the ability to seriously harm each other with their abilities, but also the ability to effectively counter the other's potentially harmful actions.

Jon could hurt Helen in a way few others could, but she could at least defend herself. If the Eye decided it wanted Jon to hurt Martin...

Martin had been able to kill Jonah because Jonah had underestimated him and thus not bothered to learn the extent of his capabilities. Jon wouldn't make that mistake.

"Jon?" Martin's quiet voice jarred Jon out of his thoughts. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Jon managed after a moment of mentally getting his voice under control. "I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

"You're not fine," Martin said. "You were crying."

Jon sighed. "You worry about you right now. We'll talk about this in the morning."

"It is morning."

Jon groaned. "You know what I mean."

"Jon," Martin said firmly. "I have been worrying about me for months and it has been driving me out of my mind. Please let me worry about someone else for a while."

Jon sighed, smiling faintly through the tears. "Fair enough."

"Tell you what," said Martin. "I'll make tea, we'll go sit on the sofa, and we can talk about whatever's going on, and... whatever else we need to talk about."

Jon bit his lip and nodded. "All right."

...

Ten minutes later, Jon was sitting on the sofa with a mug of hot tea in front of him and Martin beside him, wondering how to say what he needed to say.

Perhaps fortunately, he didn't get the chance to try before Martin beat him to it.

"Those cuts on your neck," Martin said cautiously. "Did Helen do that?"

Dammit. Jon had been afraid Martin had put that together. "Technically, yes, but it's not what you think."

Martin made a dubious sound. "If she hurt you—"

"It was self-defense," Jon blurted out before he could lose his nerve.

Martin frowned. "What do you mean?"

There it was. The opening he needed to explain the problem. He just had to be brave enough to take it.

"She didn't want to hurt me," Jon said slowly. "If she had, she could've easily taken my head off. But she didn't even cause any real damage. The only reason she did this was that I might have killed her if she hadn't."

"What?" Martin sounded utterly baffled.