Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He keeps dreaming about plastic.

He imagines, if he's doing this whole thing right, he should be dreaming of loneliness. Solitude. Dwelling on who and what he lost and never had to begin with: an arm pulling away from his touch, a gaze that almost held tenderness, a sleeping form that would not wake for him. Christ knows Martin spends enough time dwelling on all that during the waking hours when Peter sends him meaningless tasks that do not occupy his mind. And sometimes, he does dream of loneliness. Sometimes he wakes up and the sea-salt fog still hangs in his bedroom.

And he still dreams of the worms. Thanks, Jon.

But lately it's been plastic. A plastic duck washed up on the beach, its colors fading through endless tides, misshapen but recognizable as the ocean swells with dead fish and the sand grows littered with bones. Plastic islands floating on plastic seas beneath a hazy, blood-red sky. An entire city crumbling, its stone and concrete crumbling away to reveal skeletal sticks of plastic like children's construction toys.

Oh, and there are corpses. Birds, turtles, deer, a drowned cat perfectly preserved in slick, clean blocks of plastic.

It's to be expected, Martin supposes, when he's spent so much time working through Peter's notes on The Extinction. He needs to know how bad this newborn Dread Power could be, what the world could look like were it truly to bloom. Everything has to be worth it.

Life without Jon has to be worth a life for Jon. Because life without Jon was always going to be the only option, but now? Now it's for a cause, right?

Still, nightmares about solitude would be easier to handle. Martin doesn't fear dying alone because there's no point in fearing what was always going to happen. These visions of Extinction, the ones that linger past awakening, they're new and strange. And it wasn't as if he had the best sleep schedule to begin with.

He's pretty sure it's starting to affect his health, not that he'd ever been in peak shape or anything. He's been losing weight, which a doctor might consider a good thing out of context seeing as their answers to anything from allergies to earaches always seems to be 'you should lose weight.' But it doesn't feel right, and he sure can't call himself healthier with the way his coat has started to hang over him.

He isn't eating enough. It's not from lack of opportunity. Martin, who has skipped meals to save money before, has a very reasonable paycheck under his new position. He could afford to dine out nearly every day if he wants.

But the smell of food, most food, makes him nauseous. And it all tastes wrong. It's all too intense, too fresh and vivid. Something as simple as an apple overwhelms his mouth until he has to force himself to finish. It takes him so long to get through a meal he's started just packing energy bars and meal replacement shakes; at least those are supposed to taste vile. And it isn't as if he's not hungry. He is, often, sometimes to the point of pressure headaches and stomach pains. Just not for anything he can name.

Is he becoming like Jon, longing for statements? Except the statements don't quell the hunger. They're just as exhausting and draining as ever.

He's getting dressed in the morning, smart suit, well-combed hair, fucking cuff links, when he notices he's having trouble buttoning up his pants and tying his belt. His clothes are a little loose on him except around his midsection. And while it's not the first time Martin's had to suck in his stomach, it sure doesn't match up with sudden weight loss.

Maybe it's stomach cancer. That would be a bitter irony. Martin's prepared to go along with Lukas's plan, sacrifice himself for the world and for Jon, and bam! Six months to live anyway. It'd be a punchline.

He should, really, talk to a doctor. Get an ultrasound. Take a sick day; being home from the Institute for one day won't feel too awful.

He goes to work.

The meeting starts as it usually does. Peter is late. Peter messages Martin to let him know he'll be late. There's lukewarm tea, and for some reason the very smell of it is making Martin's stomach turn.

Peter's meetings start late and end early. It makes sense, as Martin can't stand him and it's probably causing some kind of bad reaction for two touched by The Lonely to hang out for long. Maybe that's what all this is. Martin is allergic to Peter Lukas.

As usual, Peter needs help bringing up a file in MS Office, so despite the growing discomfort in his stomach Martin has to move over there and walk him through the magic of ZIP files. Again.

And that's when he smells something enticing for the first time in weeks. Because Peter left the cap off of his Sharpie marker.

It's clean, chemical and unnatural. Kids at school used to claim you could get a high off permanent markers. But Martin doesn't want to sniff it, as wonderful as the smell is. He wants to eat it. All he can think about is how much of a beautiful waste it is, how much energy and manpower went into the construction of a marker, all the land taken up by the factory, the chemical fumes, the way the dried up piece of plastic will never be of use to anyone again but will last and last and he cannot imagine anything more delicious.

And that is an insane reaction to have, so he takes deep breaths, finishes helping Peter with his stupid file, and sits back in his chair.

Something inside doesn't like that. Something has just been spurned and is very, very angry, and Martin can feel his insides pulling around inside of him, and everything feels hot and feverish and he's kneeling on the floor, crouching over the wastebasket as he starts heaving.

What comes out smells of petrol. It's jet black, the texture and color of crude oil, right down to the rainbow shimmer. And floating in it is the skeleton of a fish and a tiny, corroded plastic duck.

"...Hmm," Peter Lukas says a bit too calmly as he examines the crude oil on his boot and pant leg, all while Martin convulses and shivers, still on all fours. "Well, that might complicate things, Martin."

They're mopping up the mess and not saying a thing, though Peter is humming what sounds like a stupid sea shanty and Martin really wishes he would shut up. Peter keeps cleaning supplies in the office closet because he 'doesn't want janitorial staff messing about.' He can do this old lighthouse keeper shtick all he wants, but that is the most rich-person sentiment Martin has ever heard.

There's also a bucket on loan from Artifact Storage. The...waste goes in there.

Cleaning on his hands and knees is a simple, repetitive motion that keeps Martin's mind off his still-churning stomach in clash with spikes of vicious hunger. When he picks up the tiny plastic duck with a sponge, it dissolves into translucent goo. He wants to throw up again at seeing that, but seems like the tank is mercifully dry.

"So, Martin." Peter tosses away his used plastic gloves and Martin really doesn't like how appetizing they look. "Any clue what that's about?"

"No." Martin's throat stings and his mouth tastes like gasoline.

"Come on now. These things don't come out of nowhere." Peter Lukas sits casually at his desk, sounding so irritatingly paternal about it. "If you're experiencing an Extinction manifestation personally, it's not just going to pass like a 24 hour bug. At least, probably not. It's all new territory."

God, he's such a prick but he's so good at sounding reasonable. "Plastic. I keep having dreams about...well, I-I just assumed it was from reading too many statements and incident reports. I have bad dreams about statements all the time."

His boss just nods. "And?" No judgment, just curiosity, like he's examining a weird bug.

And Martin's got no reason not to tell him everything else so far, he supposes, so he does. He talks about the weight loss and aversion to food, all the while eyeing that marker and trying not to think too hard about it. He still wants the marker.

"Sometimes, for certain kinds of Avatars, regular food stops working all that well."

"...What?! I'm not an Avatar of the Extinction! That's-that'd be ridiculous! I'm working against it! And trying very, very hard to stay lonely," Martin assures Peter, because Peter loves to lecture Martin every time he risks straying from 'the path' and Martin is not in the fucking mood.

"You're right! I don't think you are an Avatar of the Extinction. Like I said, I think we're seeing a manifestation. An intrusion, if you will. Which does mean it's moving faster than we expected," Peter says with a little sigh that blows his mustache hairs aloft. "But in a way, that does track. The Extinction's tied to fears about collapse and environmental decay, a race humanity feels they're losing. Silent Spring comes out, the world learns that we've been poisoning our wildlife with pesticides. Suddenly there's a hole in the ozone layer from something as innocuous-seeming as central air conditioning and hairsprays. The Pacific Garbage Patch keeps growing."

That was in one of his dreams, wasn't it? A big, ugly, grotesque blotch on the sea, nothing but detritus, accumulating at impossible speeds in his eyes until it swallowed the ocean whole. Plastic and sea nets and bleached bones.

"But why's it...why's it hitting me? Is it just because I'm trying to research it? Is someone who serves it targeting me?" Martin shifts in his seat, because his insides aren't behaving themselves again. "How would they even know who I am?"

"They probably don't, but the emergent Fear might. Not in a self-aware way, but when you look at the Powers, they sometimes look back. I thought there was a chance this would happen, but I'd hoped you'd be fully within the Lonely's grasp, or at least too tied up with the Eye for anything else to get its fingers in. But perhaps it was inevitable, now that I think about it. You're still longing, aren't you?"

God, this again. "So what?! I'm staying away from him."

"Which is good! But you long. And sometimes, longing draws...attention. Or, it's just possible it's going after you because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most often, incidents just happen."

Then Peter Lukas stops, and examines Martin more carefully, putting his reading glasses on his gray, deceptively kindly-looking eyes. Martin pulls his jacket closer around himself, glancing away.

"Hmm. Suspect I know what's going on now. Think I've got just the thing." Peter whistles as he unlocks his desk, pulling something out from the drawer.

The blade stops a finger's length from Martin's stomach. Martin's hands are clamped over it so tightly he can feel the vibrations from Peter's arm muscles.

Martin's a big guy. He can lift boxes of paperwork without too much effort. But he's never exactly been athletic or in the best of shape, and he certainly doesn't have any kind of martial arts training that would give him the strength to hold back Peter Lukas, one of the few people ever to make Martin feel small by comparison. And he sure as fuck doesn't have those kinds of reflexes.

There's a standstill. Peter won't budge and Martin realizes he cannot let go.

"...That you doing this, Martin?"

"Do you think I'm doing this?!" And he's not. Something is, and that something will not release its iron grip on Martin's arms. It hurts, it hurts to squeeze that hard but it isn't difficult to hold Peter back. The old man may as well be made of paper.

This is the first time he can admit to himself that there is something inside of him. It wants to eat markers, it's making him vomit chemical waste, and it has much stronger feelings about being stabbed than Martin does at the moment.

"I think..." Martin grimaces. "I think you've got to be the one to pull back."

"Hmm. Right." Peter withdraws the knife, and only then does Martin regain the use of his hands as they fall to his side, tingling as the blood rushes back to them. Peter holds the knife up to the light, showcasing a curved blade with a handle carved to depict an empty sailing ship. "Old favorite of mine, this one. Commissioned it myself. Designed to be so sharp it cuts out its target before you know what you're missing." He glances back at Martin as he sheathes the blade and puts it away. "I wouldn't have killed you, you know. That would ruin everything."

"Just wanted to carve it out. Right." Martin stares down at his midsection, because he suspects he's coming to the same conclusion Peter is. Whatever has made its way inside Martin, it's in there.

Cravings. Nausea. The way his stomach has started to swell ever-so-slightly as the rest of him dwindles.

"...Why the fuck am I pregnant with it."

"I wasn't going to put it that way," says Peter, who sounds awfully casual about something so bonkers. "Parasitic infection. Though really, I always thought them one and the same. A thing that's fully dependent on you, feeding off of you, and you can't get rid of it without hours of agony." He shudders.

"Peter, I do not care what you think about pregnancy as a concept, I want to know why I, a man who does not have the-the organs , am pregnant with this !"

Peter shrugs. "I know as much as you do! Maybe, with the Extinction being such a human-oriented Fear, it's sending something into the world in a way that plays into itself. It is the fear of what comes after us. What we bring into the world. So to speak."

"Great. Lovely." Martin buries his face in his hands, trembling.

"Could be worse. Sometimes things enter the world through human bodies in much more violent and dramatic ways. Think Athena from Zeus's head, except...messier."

"Can we...can we. You know. Get rid of it?" Martin's latent Catholic guilt flares up like a bonfire the moment he even brings up the idea, which then clashes against his political beliefs because of course everyone should have the right to choose, except if HE does it that makes HIM bad, and then he remembers he's talking about a literal abomination that will probably kill him when it emerges and the whole debate isn't really worth having at a certain point.

"If it won't let me cut it out, we certainly can't get rid of it easily ." Peter taps his fingers against the desk. "I'll call up one of the physicians that serves the Lukas family. They can give us a better look at what we're dealing with. They're very good with privacy, I assure you."

Given what he knows about the Lukases, Martin can believe that. He slowly raises his head again, feeling lightheaded and trying hard not to stare at his stomach like something is going to claw itself out. It's too small yet. He knows that by instinct.

"In the meantime," Peter goes on, "we do need you alive. And you're clearly not getting the nutrition you need. You mentioned cravings, right?"

Martin doesn't answer at first.

"Martin. Forget all the pregnancy terminology. Parasitic infection. You're hungry, aren't you?"

He's starving. He's famished. He wants to eat, needs to eat, but the very idea of food makes him feel even more ill.

"If I starve it," Martin mumbles, "then maybe..."

"You'll die first, and for all we know it'll just make its way to another host. You dying is just going to give the Extinction more strength, and then where will we be?"

Hard to argue with that. It would be such a painful death, and so meaningless. And he can only think of his mother wasting away, turning from food she could no longer handle, and wondering if it was because Martin was the one serving it.

His eyes fall on that marker. Maybe it just wants the scent. Maybe that'll be enough. What the hell else could he even do with it?

He reaches out, slowly at first, before his hand clasps the Sharpie and grabs it like it'll squirm away. A whiff of the ink, and all thoughts of 'just a sniff' fly out the window. He shoves it in his mouth, dulled point first, and takes a bite.

His teeth should not be able to tear through hard plastic like it's an apple. He shouldn't be able to chew it up and soften it until he can swallow it. It shouldn't go down so smoothly or taste so fucking good.

It's all gone in seconds. He even licks stray ink off his fingers. The gnawing, clawing hunger isn't fully sated, but god if he doesn't feel better already, like a glass of ice water on a hot day.

Peter is watching him with keen curiosity and no apparent judgement, which only makes it worse.

"Better?"

Martin, feeling like a child in front of the school nurse, nods. "Calmed it down a little."

"See? Just got to listen to your body. We'll make sure you live through this long enough to play your part, and pry the Extinction off of you with a few lifestyle changes as needed. No one," he adds cheerfully, "needs to find out about all this, yes?"

"Believe me," Martin says with a glower, "I won't tell a soul." Because there is only one person he could imagine trusting with this nightmare scenario, and frankly he's been through enough. Martin can bear it alone.

"And," Peter adds, "you tell me anything new you discover about your condition. Eat well, you're eating for...that, now."

His eyes next fall on the spot where the wastebasket was. Before Martin had to go and contaminate it, there was an empty styrofoam takeaway container. All he can think is, what a waste.

That night he gets home, fixes himself tea and pours it out when the herbal, natural scent proves too noxious. He tries to make himself open the fridge. Instead he finds himself on the floor, digging through a tipped over kitchen trash bin and digging out anything he wants to eat. He finds a broken plastic fork, an empty ramen noodle packet, an old Starbucks cup and an embarrassing number of takeaway containers. He washes them out to get rid of any biological remnants and eats them all, finally feeling sated for the first time in weeks.

Then he mops up the kitchen and sobs quietly.

Chapter Text

Over the next few weeks, Martin gets a better idea of what he can and cannot eat. Peter Lukas is fascinated with him, infuriatingly, and seems to have a knack for acquiring junk for Martin to try.

It's not all plastic. Nothing about Martin's computer entices him, not even its plastic casing. And it's not all garbage, thankfully. Rotten food remains are just as repulsive as fresh. There's something about a substance that will return to the land from which it came, something that can decay naturally and feed the soil, that unsettles him. No, not him, he has to remind himself. It's the thing inside him. Martin really wants to be able to eat a fucking hamburger and chips again instead of the chip container.

Rubber is alright if it's melted and warped. A truly broken and scratched circuit board goes down smoothly. A drink cup tastes 'wrong' when he realizes it's made with whatever plant-based, biodegradable material coffee shops can make clear cups out of now to brag about their environmental awareness. A remote with corroded batteries lodged in tastes divine, like the sort of posh, luxurious cake they sold for 20 quid a slice somewhere in downtown.

He makes the connection when, of all times, he's brushing his teeth and realizes his plastic toothbrush has worn down, as they are wont to do, and he'll have to replace it. Without even thinking about it much, he bites the bristly head right off.

It's not just plastic. It's not just waste. It's something that was made, made to last forever, and will never be of use again but will last forever. The remote that will languish in a landfill as its corroded batteries leak poison, the broken circuit board made of rare earth materials, a stupid little disposable toothbrush that lasts three months? What they all have in common is that they will persist.

Martin's Extinction-corrupted body is constructing a being made out of that which will persist long after anyone who constructed or used it has perished, to no end at all.

And it's feeding him, too. It's nourishing him. Now that he has ready access to 'food' again, Martin's started filling back out, his clothes no longer going loose on him. Which means that his body isn't just using all this literal rubbish to feed the-the whatever , it's converting it into calories and nutrients and storing excess as body fat. Is it just working this way for now, while he's pregnant? Will he go back to normal after the Whatever is gone? Or will he end up like those poor souls in statements who make it out alive, but permanently, deeply inhuman in ways they cannot show the world? You live, but this is you now. Have fun.

How self-pitying that feels, when he has a sense of how far Jon is from his own humanity now. Martin's not the first, nor the last to go through this sort of thing. And really, people have babies all the time. That permanently changes the body, doesn't it?

But still, it frightens him. Martin's relationship with his body has never exactly been a loving one, but he's never been afraid of it.

He catches himself looking at his midsection, examining it from the side in a mirror, trying to see how fast it's growing. Are the two moles on either side of his bellybutton further apart now? Does the skin feel tighter? There is something inside of him, in an organ he does not possess, and he has no idea how long it will be in there or how big it will get. Will it tear through him, like that thing in Alien? It doesn't hurt, now that he's feeding it. It doesn't even feel like much of a pressure yet. It's just there, and it swells little by little as he quietly swaps out his belt for stretchier pants.

No one seems to notice yet, anyway. It's not very noticeable, especially now that Martin's regained the weight and all. Oh, a fat guy has a rounded stomach? Alert the press. He doesn't know what he'll do when it's more apparent. Probably just work even harder to avoid everyone.

You know, business as usual.

Martin has no idea if the Lukases own the clinic, or just frequent it. But it sure matches their whole approach to life.

The waiting room is sparse, with beige walls, gray carpeting and a TV showing bright, happy people who are much healthier and happier than you ever will be. The receptionist acts as if Martin is taking up his time, which he probably is. The nurse calls his name once and never uses it again. Martin is weighed, no comment, pulse and blood pressure taken, no comment, and temperature, no comment. Then he's left alone for far longer than it takes to change into an ugly hospital gown, in an examination room where a clock ticks too loudly and there are no windows. 

It's still far from the worst experience Martin has had with medical professionals, even narrowing it down to when he's the patient and not his mother. Hell, he almost kind of prefers this approach. It's hands-off and impersonal. No one is pretending to be pleased with him for what, showing up to an appointment? Which is probably further proof that he's a good fit for The Lonely, isn't it? 

When it's time for the ultrasound, Peter Lukas is there in the room with the doctor and assistant. Of course he is.

"Don't be nervous, Martin," Peter says with an irritating, lazy grin. "They're very professional here. Professional and distant. They only ask necessary questions, and they are very keen on medical privacy. Isn't that right?"

The doctor answers Peter with a grunt, looking at her clipboard. She hasn't made eye contact with Martin or Peter once. Did Peter use the term 'pregnancy' when he booked the appointment for a cisgender man? Abdominal growth? Infection? Presumably she knows what to look for, Martin tells himself, and he doesn't bring it up.

The gel is cold and slimy. The doctor's hands push just a little too hard on Martin's midsection, feeling around the still-subtle curve of his stomach. Though it is much more obvious to him now that he's almost completely naked, laying down on a chilly metal slab. He's not really the thing of interest here, is he? It's what's inside him there, and the rest of him just has to put up with it for the moment.

Is this how it felt for his mother? Is that when the seeds of her resentment were planted? He was part of her body betraying her the first time.

The sensor passes over him, over the part of him he refuses to think of as a 'womb,' and a picture starts to show up on the monitor. Only then does the doctor show any signs of expression, eyes widening just slightly and lips pursing as she clearly tries to figure out what she's looking at.

But Martin knows. He knows immediately, in his bones. In his gut .

"Those little blinking lights. Three of them there. They're..." They're dots that appear and disappear in a regular, even pattern. One, two, three. One, two, three. "Hearts."

"Hearts?" Peter whistles. "You're not carrying triplets in there, are you?"

"No. Just one. Three hearts. It can have as many hearts as it wants or needs." Martin lets the words come to him. He will think about their implications later, because he can't right now.

"And these?" The doctor addresses Martin for the first time directly, and asks her first question in front of him. She's pointing at wriggling lines leading from the exterior of the not-womb (for it is not a womb) to the hearts.

"Tubes. Plastic. Not for feeding. Going to be part of its body." This time he doesn't wait for a response. All of it flows out like an oil spill. "It constructs itself. It builds itself of what was unwanted and unneeded but created from what was once beautiful. The organ it grows within is made of plastic bags that would have choked turtles. It swims not in amniotic fluid, but petrol and wiper cleaner. It is of my flesh and my flesh will be of its flesh, which is-which is the opposite of flesh, and..."

The spill was drying up, leaving Martin to actually hear what he'd said in that strange trance. He sat up so quickly the doctor jerked back and dropped the sensor.

"Get it out of me. Cut it out. It can't-it's going to consume me, and then it's going to live in the world and I don't know what it's going to do. You have to get it out of me. Please!" Tears sting his eyes and run down his cheeks. They smell like cleaner fluid.

"Hey! Hey, hey, calm down." Peter clears his throat, standing over Martin. Looming, really, in that obnoxious way of a man who knows he looms and doesn't do it on purpose but doesn't really care either. "You know I don't want this thing walking around spreading its poison and fear anymore than you do. But being afraid of it is only going to make it stronger, and further bind you to The Extinction."

Martin glares through blurred vision and wipes his eyes on his wrist. "Of course I'm scared of it. It's inside me. I'm its..." Not father. Not mother. "Host. I guess."

"I don't blame you! Very natural reaction. But you can't just think about yourself here, can you? Got to think of the future that thing represents, and what future you want to bring about." For him , for the world, remains unspoken but heard. "And you can't play your part if you die needlessly. Unfortunately, what I was hoping was the case doesn't seem to be so. It's not a tumorous growth that could be cut out even if it didn't try to kill us for it. The Dread Powers aren't always something you can respond to with conventional science or medicine."

Martin notices he speaks of the Dread Powers in front of a doctor who flinches slightly, but does not seem surprised. In fact, she hasn't run from the room screaming. That tears it for him. The Lukases own this hospital, in funding if not in name, and they've treated-or failed to treat-some very unsettling cases.

And Peter Lukas isn't lying, because Martin instinctively understands something again. Perhaps some Knowing is leaking into him. He prefers to think that's the case rather than to imagine that the anti-flesh inside him is telling him about itself.

"It won't die because it is inevitable. Its nature is of the-the Bad Future, I guess? The Looming Disaster." He looks down at his stomach again, and for the first time since he's figured out whats' going on in there he places his hands on it. 

"It won't let me die before it is born. After that..." He barks out a sharp, sad laugh. "No damn clue."

"Then The Lonely is our salvation. Cultivate it further. Let it into your heart. Weaken it while it's still in the womb. Let it be a monster less feared, and a child unloved. You know," Peter adds, "like most children."

A child unloved. Martin really wishes Peter hadn't put it like that.

A child unloved is not a child unfed. It makes demands Martin cannot ignore. 

One night, before leaving work, Martin quietly sneaks into the janitor's closet and comes away with a bottle of mop fluid with just a few centimeters left. They have a habit of accumulating as it's just easier to open a new bottle rather than try to get the last bits out, and it's all too common to forget the old bottle is there until someone bothers to clean the supply closet. Jon liked to make sure that got done from time to time, back in the day. Nowadays, he's busy.

So is Martin.

Nobody questions why he's got the old bottle on the train back home because Martin's very good at looking too boring to bother questioning. When he's home, he tilts back the bottle until the contents trickle down his throat, sweet and refreshing, then devours the bottle itself, bite by bite. It is rapturously good. He eats it so fast he gives himself hiccups, because every time he stops to linger on what he's actually consuming just sends him into a spiral. He should be strong enough to overpower this disgusting urge. He should be able to steal his body back. 

At least Jon never has to see him like this.

As he sits back in his chair, recovering his breath and wiping his mouth with a towel, he feels something inside his stomach. It's a soft, low vibration, not strong enough to be seen but clearly there. It rings through his bones, and brings with it a strange sense of relief and comfort. Endorphins, he guesses, but what kind of movement is that?

It's the soft buzzing of a machine. The thing inside of him is thriving. It's pleased. Because it has eaten well? Because it has new material to grow? Because Martin has no choice but to listen to it?

He sits in the chair, staring down at himself, thinking of the deeply inhuman, un-flesh Thing from the ultrasound. Instinctively he knows now: it has found new material for its blood. It is growing. It is going to grow faster now, and there will be more demands, more hungers.

Martin does not know it until he looks in the bathroom mirror that night, but his eyes have gone from soft hazel to bright, chemical blue.

Chapter Text

In the dream, he's wandering on an empty, abandoned highway. It's covered in graffiti, with a great crack running down the middle. Steam and smoke rise from tiny rifts in the ground. He feels like he should be able to see further. He's seen this place in photographs before, hasn't he? It's an abandoned town in the eastern United States. But the smoke has formed thick walls around him, the sky bleeding red.

"It's Centralia, Pennsylvania," the unborn Thing says. "Or might be, someday. Maybe the coal fires will burn forever. Maybe they'll collapse the town. I added the smog because I like it."

It is holding Martin's hand, a smaller shape right now, spindly and hard to focus on. Every time he looks over at it, it has taken on a different silhouette. Sometimes it's humanoid, though without the proportions of a child. Sometimes it's quadrupedal, with a long trunk made of wires and plastic straw antlers. Sometimes it's just a purple-black blob, with different colors of oils and chemicals bubbling up inside. Even when it doesn't have hands, Martin can feel it holding his hand. Its grip is like steel.

"So, what," he asks the thing, "you don't know what you look like yet? Is that why you keep changing?"

"I haven't decided. It's so much fun, constructing yourself. I feel sorry for you. Not only have you forgotten what it's like to be created, you're made of cells and DNA. You had to follow the instruction manual."

Its voice is Martin's, but wrong. It warbles. Sometimes it sounds far too young, higher-pitched. Then, in the same breath, it will speak like Martin in casual conversation. And sometimes it booms, deep and distorted. How much of him is inside this abomination inside him?

"Do you like Centralia? I want to go there someday." It is long and birdlike right now, a parody of a crane, with human arms clasped behind its back.

"I'm not traveling to the bloody States for you. Bad enough what you make me eat. Besides, isn't it dangerous traveling when you're pregnant?"

The thing laughs. It is a laugh in Martin's voice in a tone he would never use. "I mean after I'm born! I have to dream of after, because that's what I am."

"Dream of after?"

"I'm what comes after. I haven't figured out what that means yet." The monster kicks a rock with a hoof. "But I will."

"I'm not helping you."

"I know. You plan to kill me after I'm born. You want to kill me now, but you can't." Another weird giggle. "Do you hate me?"

He wants to answer 'yes,' but he keeps thinking about Peter Lukas speaking positively of an 'unloved child.' "I don't think how I feel about you should matter, seeing as you've hijacked my body and you're probably planning to kill me after."

"I might. I don't know yet." There's no malice in that voice, no weight to it. It doesn't say anything else, and neither does Martin, as he waits for the dream to end. It turns out to be a long one.

When he does awaken, it's not in a cold sweat or with chills from a nightmare or anything like that, even though he knows he was just conversing with a monster growing literally under his skin. He can remember it all perfectly clear, too, which isn't always the case. Presumably the thing wants him to remember.

Shit. It would be a lot easier if the monster inside him was just a silent, encroaching doom. But it's never like that, is it? The Lonely is silent in its cold, oppressive nature, a turning-away. The Extinction looks back at the humanity that, ugh, births it. It's poetic, isn't it? The universe is so fucking poetic sometimes.

As the weeks go by, he finds himself cleaning and sterilizing his home. It starts with mopping the floor of his kitchen, and then swabbing down his bathroom with some kind of noxious cleaner that's no doubt terrible for the water system and his own skin. He rents a foaming carpet cleaner. His windows are spotless. It wipes him out, to spend so much non-work time swabbing and spraying, and the fact that his stomach has started getting in the way doesn't really help, but he feels as if he'll go mad if he lets up. His house is the absolute cleanest it's ever looked, and constantly smells of chemicals.

It's as if he is trying to literally scrub his home free of all signs of life except himself.

He drinks up the leftover chemicals, too. The first time he finds himself eyeing a half-full bottle of bleach, he really does try to stop and hold back. That's bleach. It should, will, make him horribly sick if it doesn't kill him. How does he know the monster hasn't just decided to get rid of him early? Maybe it doesn't need to grow all the way to infant-hood. Maybe it can just eat his corpse.

But something borne of The Extinction would want to see humanity live at least long enough to watch its own end.

In the end, down goes the bleach. It tastes light and fizzy, soothing the hunger that gnaws at him the more his condition progresses. The wave of contentment and relief that washes over him quite literally from within is overwhelming, quite literally intoxicating. He lays back on a newly-cleaned and immaculate couch, light-headed and incongruously giggly as he stares up at his belly. It's gotten bigger rather quickly, going from 'fat guy has a pot belly' to unmistakably pregnant.

"So," he says, voice slurring slightly. "First rubbish, now poisonous chemicals. What's next, pesticide?"

Immediately he finds himself curious to know what weed killer tastes like. Stop giving it ideas , Martin.

At least nobody else knows. His home is empty, bereft now even of the little spiders he used to let live in the corners. If there were mice, they're probably dead from all the noxious cleaning. And in a way, that's embracing The Lonely too, right? It can still have him. It's just clearly not going to have him 100 percent to itself, because Martin simply doesn't have the willpower to resist what has taken him over.

Sometimes it's part of some mastermind's plan that one ends up pledged to the Dread Powers. Sometimes it's a cult, or a family that may as well be a cult. And sometimes, Martin reminds himself, it just happens. Sometimes you just learn the wrong things. And then you can't stop learning, and then you can't stop at all.

Not for the first time, he wishes he could talk to Jon about it. At least find someone who has been there, someone who understands. But he can't, and besides, if Jon knew he'd freak out and fall apart. Jon almost died, and every time Martin does see him he looks like he's withered further. Jon does not need this burden. It's Martin's to carry.

Alone.

The buzz is already starting to fade, and with it comes the burning urge to eat the bottle. Of course it wants him to eat the bottle. It's growing so fast, and it's so greedy.

"Pretty sure they don't make maternity clothes in my size." Which means he's going to have to find other ways to hide it.

It isn't as if Martin doesn't have an excuse for wearing a long, draping coat in the Institute. It's chilly in the building, kept cool for the sake of document preservation. It also makes him look a lot more like Peter Lukas's stupid little mini-me, which is humiliating but not as much as it would be for anyone to discover Martin is pregnant with a monster.

He still has to lug around boxes of paperwork for Lukas, which is getting more and more difficult and tiring as he grows heavier. It's not impossible, as Martin has the advantage of height and longer arms, but he feels clumsy about it. He remembers feeling clumsy about his work under Jon too, especially early on, but the difference is that Martin really wanted to impress Jon and he really wants Peter Lukas to just drop dead or something.

"The oil spill statement should be in here," he says flatly as he drops the box on the desk. Peter's in office a little more often than usual, mostly to observe Martin, his new favorite curiosity. It isn't really interfering with Martin's cultivation of The Lonely because, he suspects, Peter's company is worse than none at all. But at least he brings snacks.

Like Christmas lights, enough of them permanently blown out or broken that they're just a useless pile of wires and colorful bulbs. Martin munches on them like licorice ropes as he works. "Where do you even get these?" he asks in-between bites.

"There's ways to find objects that are forgotten, just literally collecting dust. You'll learn them someday. I do clean off the dust for you."

"Thanks?"

"Got to say, I'm glad you've managed to stay productive during all this. It's a good sign. You're able to distance yourself from your own problems while being aware of them. Eventually you won't even think of them as 'yours,' but that takes time." Peter is writing something with a pen he keeps clicking incessantly. "But..."

Compliments from Peter Lukas always come with a 'but.' Martin just looks up, waiting.

"But," Peter goes on, "it's getting a bit harder to keep eyes off of you. So to speak. The Institute is big on The Eye, as I'm sure you've picked up, and The Eye loves uncovering secrets."

"...What are you getting at? You're running The Institute. Can't you control what gets, uh, Seen?"

"Well, not necessarily. I can control what The Institute does and make sure it's doing its job. What I can't control is what secrets The Eye whispers to its Avatars. You know, like a certain Archivist."

Martin freezes, hand grasping the wire so hard a bulb almost breaks before he catches himself. "Would it just...I-I told him not to Know me."

"And it's very sweet of you to trust him on that front. But do you think he'll be able to resist? If there's something tugging at him? I've known a few Archivists in my time, you know. They're terribly nosy."

Jon would hold to his word, right? Sure, he can be foolish and reckless, but he's trustworthy. Martin has trusted him ever since he sheltered Martin from Jane Prentiss's worms. Maybe not his instincts, but-but his loyalty. His kindness. "He won't look," Martin insists, staring very intently at his computer monitor.

"I'm sure he won't," says Peter, insincerity clear. "Just think of it as another reason to affirm your commitment. Stay away from him. From all of them."

"Yes. I know." There's no emotion in Martin's voice.

"Which reminds me. I'm working on a little arrangement, for when that-" He gestures to Martin's midsection, "progresses too far. Think of it as, hmm. Paternity leave?"

At this, Martin finally does look up from his work. "Sorry?"

"For your health and safety! And your further development. I'll update you when I know the details, but rest assured, you'll get the care you need."

Well, either that means some kind of work-from-home situation, which would surprise Martin given how they all apparently need the Institute to live, or what, a hospital run by those creeps in the clinic? "It-it seems a little early to..."

He trails off when he realizes he's eaten the entire bundle of broken string lights.

Then he goes back to work in silence, and mercifully Peter leaves before Martin even knows he's gone.

Chapter Text

One morning, Martin steps out of his house and realizes the outside sounds all wrong.

He can hear the traffic just fine, car radios blaring. There's a distant siren. The gravel still crunches under his feet. His footsteps, they're all normal. The noises are all normal, just off, like a song missing a note.

He glances down at the grass, noticing how vividly green it's grown. It's even and flat despite how often Martin has trouble bothering to mow, and so stiff, like the plastic grass in stadiums. There's a silk flower sprouting from the lone weed, and beneath it a tiny, pointed shape. A dead songbird, legs folded up beneath it. 

There's no birdsong. There are no birds. Oh, he sees them again in other trees in front of other lawns, but their song dies down around him and they fly off in flocks, as if innately aware there is something to him that's hostile to life. Did he poison that little songbird just by his toxic presence? Did the not-child do that?

After that, he refrains from petting the local neighborhood cat, just in case. It doesn't come near him anyway. 

He thankfully has no such effect on people as far as he can tell, though he avoids them anyway just by default. Martin can tell he's still got a good amount of the Lonely within him, because he's even better at being unnoticed than he used to be. He has to be, because everyone on the train ignores him as usual, despite the fact that he is very obviously pregnant at this point. Or has some kind of other medical issue. 

He's been buying clothes a few sizes up, and it kind of helps. At least they make him look bigger overall instead of just in the middle. And true, he can use his briefcase to kind of hide his belly when he sits. But when he inevitably stands to give an elderly man or (somewhat ironically) a pregnant woman his seat, everything just visibly juts forward. And no one gives him a second glance. He is overlooked just as he's always been.

He wishes he could ignore his own body just as easily. Instead, he's had to pay more attention to it than he has in years.

The thing that is not a child moves now. At least, he thinks that's what's happening. It doesn't always move around the same way. Sometimes he feels something scaled or ribbed sliding under his skin, complete with a clack-clack noise only he hears. Other times, it is swimming in a circle inside him, around and around, sloshing and swishing like one of those long-finned fish in bowls too small for them. 

And it grows a little more every day now. Just a tiny bit, but Martin notices. It's heavier now. Standing on his feet is tiring, his ankles swelling and his back sore. Bending down is a hassle, getting back up a chore. Finding a comfortable sleeping position feels impossible at times, and even when he can, he keeps dreaming of sludge and plastic and smog. It hasn't spoken to him again, but he knows it will. The only time his body feels good is when he's obeying one of his monstrous, disgusting cravings for plastic or chemical waste. Then it practically sings to him, enveloping him in warmth and comfort he can never otherwise feel. And those cravings are coming more frequently, because his not-child is growing and growing.

He's exhausted when he gets to work that day, sore and heavy and just tired of dealing with this whole thing. It should still scare him, but it's been months now and the fear of what is within him is drowning in sheer fatigue. Perhaps that will save him, he thinks bitterly as he tries to catch his breath in the doorway before anyone spots him. Fear feeds the monster. Annoyance doesn't do a thing. And can you really be scared of something so familiar to you that you carry it within you?

"...Martin."

Shit.

Martin wants to look away from Jon, but he can't. He never can for long. And Jon looks so much more haunting now, post-coma, so much stranger, his eyes so vividly green and his unkempt hair falling to his shoulders. He's beautiful. He's always been beautiful, but now there's something uncanny about it. He always looks like he desperately needs something he isn't getting, something out of reach. Maybe in another world, in another life...

No, not even then. In another life, Jon shouldn't have to suffer through all of that at all, and Martin would matter even less.

Martin meets Jon's gaze, and he doesn't have to fake how tired he is when he rubs at his glasses. If Jon Asks, and Martin isn't entirely sure he won't, Martin will have to answer. "Jon. Sorry, I have to-"

"Your eyes , Martin."

His eyes? Not the weight gain, not the fatigue, but Martin's eyes. Jon even notices those? Enough to see a change in them? 

"They're fine. I'm fine." One of these is a lie. "Got a meeting." Martin pulls away from Jon almost forcefully. When Jon reaches behind him, Martin feels Jon's hand reach right through him. He is still Lonely, even with this condition. 

He's still desperately lonely, he affirms to himself as he slams the door of his office and slumps at his desk, covering his face. He doesn't want to cry. The tears always smell like bleach or Windex now. Jon has seen something uncanny in Martin now. He knows something is up, and soon he will Know. Will he really be able to resist information that juicy? And then The Extinction will draw him in, and all Martin has done to keep Jon safe from one last enemy will fail. 

Right. Work from home, is it? 

With shaking hands, he starts drafting an e-mail to Peter 'For Fuck's Sake Please Check Your Work Email More Than Once A Week' Lukas about setting up arrangements for medical leave, whatever form that takes in the Institute, when he gets a message from Basira that Jon's going inside the goddamn coffin to get Daisy out of The Buried. And he thinks one of his own ribs will lead him back. Oh, Jon, thinking he's got enough attachment to living that a bone relic would be enough.

When no one is around, Martin scatters some of those tape recorders around the coffin. They still manifest around him. He idly wonders what one would taste like, but it triggers no hunger pangs. Whatever's inside of him is a picky eater. Probably for the best, anyway. 

It's only after he learns Jon has emerged, alongside a haggard, disheveled Daisy, that he sends off the e-mail. And because it's Tuesday, the day Peter actually remembers to check his mail sometimes, he gets a response right away. Peter's made plans.

It's a slick, blue and black minivan that pulls up to Martin's driveway at an early hour, when the sky is still dark gray. Fog isn't really common this time of year, but it rolls in anyway, obscuring the world beyond the car that will take Martin to what Peter called a 'safe place.'

'We don't know how much longer you've got before that problem of yours reaches full term,' he'd said in the e-mail. 'Wouldn't want it to hatch or whatnot while you're alone at home, would we? You need medical supervision. And rest. And I know people who can help you with your particular ailment without asking too many questions.' 

Peter Lukas sounded rather insistent that Martin take him up on the kind offer. And as many alarm bells as it set off, what else is he going to do? He's in a medically dangerous situation. And at least this way, when the thing comes out-however it will happen-it will presumably be around people who can deal with it.

And Peter does want Martin alive. 

Martin moves sluggishly, really feeling the weight of his pregnancy as he drags a rolling suitcase to the van. His ankles are screaming at him to Stop Walking Already, Please. A young man steps out from the back in a smart gray hotel uniform, taking Martin's belongings without saying a word or making eye contact. The driver is similarly taciturn and distant. 

And because Martin would have found taciturn, distant silence kind of comforting for this situation, of course Peter Fucking Lukas is in the van too, watching Martin hobble into one of the car seats, struggle to get the safety belt over his expansive middle and then just mutter a curse and give up.

"Don't worry about it, lad." Peter waves him off. "Marcus here takes the backroads to avoid traffic. And even if there was an accident, that thing doesn't want to let you die so easily."

"No," Martin sighs, "it doesn't. So, where are we going? Some kind of hospital? That clinic from earlier?"

"No, no. Nothing so miserably crowded as a hospital! It's one of the properties we hold under the family name. Private, but not so far away that you'll have to deal with any of Elias's little quirks." Peter huffs, looking out a window that shows only fog, streetlights, and the shadows of trees. "Always found that kind of unnecessary. Someone wants to quit, let 'em. Less to worry about. If you really think they're gonna squeal to the wrong people, just kill 'em. Properly, mind you, none of that sloppy business he's so prone to do."

"I'll bear that in mind if it ever comes up." Martin has to make himself pay attention to what Peter rambles about seeing as his life is now in his supervisor's hands, but it isn't easy, not the least because Martin dreamed of oil spills the night before and is absolutely starving.

There's nothing in the van that registers as food, though. No discarded water bottles, no styrofoam cups, not even a single plastic bag. Peter has to have done that on purpose. Remind Martin how much harder it is to take care of himself and the not-child.

"Don't look so sullen, Martin. It's a nice place. Comfortable. Fully staffed, too. You won't have to lift a finger if you don't want to. You'll get the bed rest you need, and all your needs accounted for." 

"So plenty of rubbish to eat, then."

"You'd be surprised what kind of objects people lose or leave behind when they're lost or left behind. Some quite interesting. Most?" Peter shrugs. "Rubbish. Really, it'll be good for you! We'll want you at full strength when the time comes."

"When it 'hatches?'" Martin tries not to gag as he echoes Peter's wording.

"After that. Remember." Peter taps the side of his head with a wrinkled sausage of a finger. "You've still got a lot of work to do."

After that, Peter falls mercifully silent, and Martin leans against the window, resting his hands on the curve of his stomach and looking out at nothing. He feels the creature stirring again. This time, it's wriggling like a dying bird trapped in an oil slick.

Chapter Text

It's a penthouse on the upper floors of the swankier part of downtown London. Martin is less surprised that a wealthy family like the Lukases own such a place and more that it's still in Archives range. Maybe Elias is granting some kind of favor, or has decided it's all the same so long as Martin is working and terrified. 

The doorman says nothing to Martin as he's escorted in. The elevator has a white marble floor and all white walls, no mirrors in sight. The bellhop barely acknowledges his existence. 

And then Peter leads him out through a hallway into double doors with heavy, ponderous handles. He turns on the lights as Martin looks upon his new quarters.

It's not what he pictured based on penthouses from the movies. It's a very sensible affair, really, all soft beige carpeting and white walls. Curtains hide the floor-to-ceiling windows. When Martin nudges one aside, he only sees streetlights engulfed in fog. 

There's a kitchenette with a table that looks a little too big to have so few chairs, though he's not sure he'd fit comfortably in one anyway. The sofa is large and soft, facing a bare wall with no tv. The bathroom has the only mirror in the place. 

And the bedroom, large and spacious as it is, doesn't even have any windows. Oh, it has a bed, a great soft fancy one that could probably fit three Martins, with extra pillows for support. There are also hand rails by the bed and in the restroom, and intercoms in each room.

"Some of us," Peter says, spooking Martin as he interrupts the silence of the suite, "find hospital treatments a bit too...personal. Intimate. Everyone checking in on you, looking at you, sending you flowers and all that rot? Not for us. So we've traditionally found places to retreat and tend to ourselves, with as much medical care as necessary."

"What," Martin says as he eyes the hand rails, "when you're sick?"

"Sick, injured, giving birth, dying, all things best done in as solitary a state as possible."

So that's it. This is a posh hidey-hole where Lukases are born to indifferent parents and die without being mourned. Martin really is part of the 'family' now. Gross. 

"So what, those attendants just..."

"Do what they're asked to do, bring what they're asked to bring, clean up without questions. Oh, you'll have access to medical help too of course, when you need it. We hired the staff here because they're thorough, private, and miserable. You'll be well-insulated by the ways of The Lonely here. Should help keep that thing in check." Peter moves to pat Martin's stomach. When Martin swats at his hand, Peter just pulls it back with a casual shrug. "Just saying. Not much Extinction to this place, is there?"

Not much, but it's there. The low hum of the electricity, the slow wear and tear on the wires and plugs, all of it consumes the world, little by little. Of course Peter can't see it. 

"Well, lad, you've got your laptop, and the login info, and your breakfast should be arriving in a few. So I'll leave you to it, yeah? Do keep me updated." And then Peter is gone. He doesn't walk out, he just isn't there anymore. Martin is pretty sure he likes to do that to show off by now. The Lonely frightens Martin; Peter Lukas just infuriates him.

Martin sits on the bed, staring at a suitcase he knows he should get to unpacking already, trying not to think about how bland and silent this place is, when a chime rings at the door. He groans as he stands back up, hobbles over and finds a wheeled cart with empty plastic water bottles, a broken cell phone, and a keyboard with keys melted into it. Breakfast. He's torn through the first water bottle before it even registers that the attendant who brought the cart is nowhere to be seen.

His eyes travel back to the foggy morning light peeking behind the drawn curtains. It looks unwelcome. He knows that once the fog clears, he'll just look down on a busy, indifferent city, out of his reach. 

Then he pulls the cart into the bedroom, as if hiding from something that cannot even find him, and unpacks the laptop.

In the bedroom with no windows, it's hard to tell when day bleeds over into night, save for the clock on his laptop. He works, and he eats, and he eats, and he works, and he sleeps. At the end of the first day, he shuts the laptop and forces himself to stand, walking in circles all around his empty suite. There's a fridge and a stove he has no need for. There are the chairs, mocking him as if he'd ever have anyone over to eat with. (And what would he serve? A six-pack ring and an empty soda bottle? Maybe some bleach to wash things down?) His own home has felt lonely before, but at least it is his. This is designed to never feel like home. It's brilliant, in an awful way. The Lukases have had generations to hone their craft in service to their Fear.

Even that little panicked loop leaves Martin out of breath. He's grown so heavy now. He sits on the bed, awaiting the dinner cart and staring down at a stomach that nearly obscures his knees. 

All around him, the electricity hums, quietly seeping away the future. Inside him, a monster grows, devouring his future. 

The dinner cart brings, among other things, a heap of extension cord with the rubber insulation peeling away and the prongs of the plug twisted. Perhaps, he thinks as he eats through it, this is trash gathered from the other residents of this building, cleaned up for his sake and then offered up to him, like tributes to some disgusting god they will never meet. Well, no, not to him. To that. To The Looming Disaster, a greedy god growing in the body of a man too weak to starve it. 

It's a larger, heavier meal than usual, and by the time he finishes it off he has to lay back on the bed as the hazy delirium of the monster's joy washes over his body. It's not just the comfort of a full stomach, and he knows that now. It's a reward. He hates how pleasant it feels, how natural and safe. It is as if he is wrapped in a warm, thick blanket, held in the arms of something unimaginable. 

Love. It feels the way being loved ought to feel, the way it must have felt when he was much younger, before his father left and his mother turned away.

But it's just chemical responses, he tells himself as he slips into sleep earlier than expected, his hands resting on his belly as the creature clicks and whirrs.

This time, in the dream, it's a lot bigger. Bigger than Martin, large enough to encircle him like a boa constrictor and loom over and around him. It's still a shifting blur, but more concrete now, translucent and jelly-like with mechanical bits floating and clicking into place. 

They're in the center of a cracked, parched desert, watching a mushroom cloud rise in the distance and obscure the stars. It balloons and blossoms so slowly. It's kind of beautiful.

"I'm not taking you anywhere you can see that," Martin insists as the creature slithers around him. Despite the jelly-like surface, it's warm to the touch and smooth like a plastic tube. 

"I know. I might live to see it myself. I'm hopeful. But that's not what I'm here for, I think." Its voice is still Martin's, warped and warbling with an electrical hum beneath it. 

"Well...good? I'd rather you didn't cause nuclear war if I can have any input?" Martin finds himself petting its surface and stops, pulling his hand away. "Look, what are you here for?"

"To exist. To be. Like all the other nightmares in the world."

"And more specifically...?"

"I think I need to grow a little more before I know that." The not-child slithers off of Martin and collects itself in loops like a giant electrical wire. More of its mechanical innards float about, piece connecting to piece. It is building itself even in his dreams.

Martin wraps his arms around his stomach, which here is the size it ought to be, at least. "Haven't you grown enough already? How big are you going to get?"

"As big as I need to be to survive. Just like any newborn."

"Right, I-I get that...but you're going to kill your father if this keeps up."

"My father?" The creature's lightbulb eyes flicker and flash, and it laughs with a mockery Martin could never imagine in his own voice. "You are not my father."

"Look, just because I'm the one pregnant with you-"

"I have many, many fathers and many, many mothers." It starts to slither around Martin in a slow, slow circle. "All of us do. All of us will."

"All-all of you? There's more...?"

"I am not sure," the creature finally states, before pressing its great, shapeless blob of a head against Martin's chest. 

It's an unmistakable expression of affection.

"I don't want to kill you." It is not the first time the thing has said it, though Martin is never sure he believes it. "I love you, you know. You are the first thing I have ever loved."

Martin's hands hover above the thing. He can't embrace it and he can't push it away. "I-I don't..."

Mercifully, the dream ends.

Chapter Text

Work is slow and tedious. Maybe it's intentionally so. The Lonely is all about longing, isn't it? Then again, maybe Peter is lightening up Martin's workload due to his 'sensitive condition.' Both are kind of insulting, frankly. Martin wouldn't be going along with this if he weren't serious about it. He wouldn't have gotten that haircut to look more professional, he wouldn't have started shaving more regularly, and he definitely wouldn't have...

Would he? Would he have kept waiting by Jon's side, knowing it couldn't possibly end the way he wished it would? Would he really have that kind of strength of will? 

Well, it doesn't matter now. Shaving has kind of gone out the window, at least. The not-child isn't just getting bigger, it's heavy, sometimes almost solid inside him, and that means walking is getting more painful. He can get to and from the bathroom just fine, but standing for any longer than he needs to is hell on his legs and back. So, in addition to being pregnant, he's growing his beard in again. So there's that. His hair is getting a little shaggy too, but that's just going to have to wait for now.

The bathroom has a mercifully large bath, a round jacuzzi-type of the sort he would actually expect to find in a posh penthouse suite. He never does figure out how to get the water jets going at a rate he doesn't find weird and distracting, but the bath helps. It takes the pressure off his legs, letting him soak away his aches and pains. The downside is that it forces him to spend even more time looking at himself and focusing on what's happening to his body. 

His belly is growing, obviously. Sometimes it's hot to the touch, something inside so warm he needs to take off his shirt to cool off. Is it the heat of machinery? When he hears a sloshing, is that a bubbling mixture of oil and chemicals? The Lukases provided him with a set of clothes made for a much larger man, with a shirt that can drape over him and, if not hide the pregnancy, at least make it a little less obvious. But when he's nude in the bath like this, it's impossible not to stare at and think about, rubbing his hands over it to try to sense any of its strange movements. It doesn't feel like a ticking time bomb. It doesn't feel like the anti-life he knows it is. But it sure as hell doesn't feel like a human is growing in there.

His midsection might be swelling, but his breasts aren't. He's got the fat deposits there and all, but aren't breasts supposed to grow during pregnancy? Not that he's complaining. He absolutely doesn't want to deal with suddenly growing a pair of perky tits alongside everything else. But the implication is that he won't be breast-feeding this thing, meaning it won't need him alive afterwards. 

The rest, well. His ankles are swollen, no surprise there. He's been putting on weight again, which at least means he's eating enough ruptured batteries and bleach bottles to sustain the both of them. Will he be able to go back to regular, real food if he survives this, or is this just how he works now?

Martin's never been a huge fan of looking at his own body at the best of times. It's never been a friend to him. Puberty felt like it was mocking him intentionally, making a shy boy grow head and shoulders above his peers without letting him shed any of his baby fat in the process. He feels like he ought to apologize for being so visibly big, like he's taking it away from someone who would wear it better and with more pride. Attempts at weight loss never lasted long. Now he just feels like an incubator for a monster, with legs to get it around, hands to hold food and a mouth to feed it. The part of him that has a mind might as well be auxiliary at this point. 

Except no, the Fears wouldn't allow him mindlessness. He needs to be aware of what's happening, so he can fear it and make it stronger. That's the other way Martin is feeding the monster.

He realizes after a few days-days? A week? A few weeks?

He realizes after some time that he's basically marking time by meals. He wakes up, eats whatever's been brought to him for breakfast, logs in to work, washes up when he thinks to do so, eats what must be a midday meal, works until he's tired or run out of statements to research for the night, eats what's brought to him for dinner and then stares up at the ceiling until he falls asleep. Like an animal on a farm. 

God, when did he get so gluttonous and food-obsessed anyway? It's the highlight of his day because it's when the monster is happiest, when it radiates its love through his body, easing his pain and assuaging his anxieties. It's like a drug, really. The anxieties still exist, the problems are all there, but he finds it so hard to worry about them or even think clearly in the aftermath of one of his non-recyclable, non-biodegradable suppers.

Broken-down electronics are rich and filling, sending a tingly feeling through him. Bleach and glass cleaner sometimes get him out-and-out drunk. Pregnant people aren't supposed to drink, but he's not exactly concerned for the health of this thing, which sends him into a pleasant state of intoxicated oblivion as a reward for swilling down environmental hazards. Naturally he has to take a break before he can work again. Sometimes the 'break' is longer than expected, and he wakes up realizing it must be far past closing time at the Institute. God, if he slacked off like that at any other job, he'd be fired in a heartbeat. What would Jon think, to see Martin succumbing to his appetites like this? On the job?

Peter won't fire him over it. Peter doesn't even comment on it most of the time. That makes it worse, somehow. Martin has worked so hard to live up to his stupid Lonely Avatar standards and now that he's just passively being lonely and miserable, kept like a pet and living like a slob, it must not matter anymore. The Lonely will have its Martin, one way or another, won't it? 

Are you sure about that?

Martin is sure he heard that. He looks around in confusion, and then out of instinct, down at the dome of his stomach. Did it talk to him just now, while he's awake? 

It doesn't say anything else. Maybe that was his imagination acting up. He is bleach-drunk, after all. Or is that bleach? No, he realizes as he squints at the label, it's-Christ, formaldehyde? How'd they even get hold of that? 

Maybe that's why the meals are such a highlight. It's nice to pretend he gets to have something special, even if it's not really for him.

He's up early one morning. The bed is big enough and all, but getting comfortable takes a lot of work and shuffling around. And when the thing is awake, so is Martin.

He wonders if seeing the sunrise will do his mood some good. Except, of course, the windows are facing in the wrong direction, and they're still cloaked in the ever-present fog that just seems to linger around the penthouse. There is nothing to see, or so he thinks, until he looks a bit harder.

Somewhere, beneath the fog, there's something else. Something he can see and know intimately, something that calls to him...

And the doorbell rings. It breaks Martin out of his little trance and reminds him he's hungry, or *it's* hungry, which means the same. When he opens the door, expecting the usual anonymous, disinterested bellhop, instead Peter Lukas is waiting there with the tray of non-biodegradable breakfast. 

"Thought I'd check in," he says in his annoyingly casual way. Something about his tone makes Martin wonder if he's intentionally mocking everyone who speaks to him or if he's just casually like that, the faux-joviality and easygoing nature of an old man who has cultivated cruel isolation and inflicted it on others without a second thought. And it's spoiled Martin's appetite. Well, no, no it hasn't, he just doesn't want to eat in front of Peter.

So he steps aside and lets Peter in, because what else is he going to do?

"You're looking healthy, at least. Got a bit of a glow to you. Color in your cheeks. And..." Peter peers down at Martin and squints, frowning slightly. "A plastic sheen to your hair. That's concerning."

Self-consciously, Martin runs a hand through his hair. Does it feel 'plastic?' "Might just be the lighting. Which is hideous, by the way."

"I think of it as 'inflicting mild unease.' Mild, mind you. If it's too much, you'd just want to leave, and feeling trapped is not exactly our jurisdiction, yeah?" Peter digs his hands into his expansive pockets, looking back out at the fog. 

God, why's he even here? Why won't he leave? If he wants Martin to be lonely, why poke his nose back in? Martin's starving, and standing like this for any period of time is painful. And Martin's just all too aware of how big he's getting, the way his stomach juts out in front of him and obscures his view of his feet. Not that he should care how he looks around Peter Lukas, a man who literally walks around the office dressed like a bloody sea captain and sometimes smells like salt water. But he doesn't want to be seen by anyone. Wasn't that the point?

"You resent being sent here." It's a statement from Peter, not a question.

"Am I supposed to be happy about-about any of this? I miss my house! And the office! And-and..."

"You're allowed to miss him. You just can't see him." 

Turning red at how obvious and easy he is to read, Martin glares at a corner away from Peter. "I know, I know. This is keeping me alive. I'm useful to you, so you can't just figure out a way to kill me before this thing is born. Bury me in cement or something."

This earns a laugh from his new boss. "You've got a morbid sense of humor. Always did like that. And at least you understand this isn't out of any personal attachment. That's important in our work." The smile fades, as Peter looks back out at the fog. "But you're not looking at the big picture, here. Now, it's not your fault, but the fact is The Extinction has a stronger hook in you than either of us could have predicted. This isolation, it's meant to cleanse you, purify you. Like retreating to a temple to meditate. Not to single you out here, but we're trying to slow the advancement of a new Dread Power. The Extinction gaining an Avatar would do quite the opposite."

Wait. Feeling the color drain from him, Martin snaps over at Peter. "Ava-I'm not an Avatar!"

"Didn't say you were."

"They're-I haven't done anything to anyone! I don't fling people into the sky or burn them with my hands. I didn't join some-some Extinction cult. All I did was research it!" For some reason, his voice is cracking. 

"And Jane Prentiss just became a walking worm hive. Oliver Banks just felt the touch of death until it became part of his entire being. Many of us do choose the way," Peter goes on, not acknowledging the panic he's induced in Martin, "but sometimes the Powers just find a little crack and move in. Like a volcanic hot spot."

Martin feels dizzy and hot, like an overheating, outdated computer. "And sometimes they just do shit to people and then the people walk away or die! I'm just experiencing a-a thing that happens in those Statements! I'm not-"

As if finally noticing how Martin's starting to break down, Peter holds his hands up. "You're not," he agrees. "Not yet, anyway. For some of us, there comes a point where we choose to accept what we're becoming, or reject it. But to reject it takes a lot. That's why you have to reflect on your solitude. Take strength in it. The Lonely is a gentle Fear. Cloak yourself in it. Like the fog."

"Like the fog..." So, The Extinction is getting in him through a 'crack.' Some fracture in him, something that's giving it a hold. But what? It can't just be learning about it. 

"Tell you what. I'm going to lighten your work load. For your health, of course." 

Shit. Is he less valuable to Peter like this? Is Peter going to turn his attention back to Martin's other colleagues? That would defeat the entire purpose of Martin's resolve to bring it all on him! "I'm not sure I need that. I-I know I've been slacking, but I can-"

"Now, now, this isn't about your performance. I'm hardly a stickler for deadlines and urgency like your previous superior." It's impossible to tell if Peter means Jon or Elias. "But you're in convalescence, for mental and physical reasons. Work is distracting you. And you are correct that I do need you alive, alive and Lonely. I'll just move you onto secretarial work for now."

Secretarial work? "So, no more potential Extinction statements?"

"I can handle those. There aren't many, you know, and plenty of false leads. It's getting in your head, Martin, and we don't want it there."

"...No. I suppose we don't." It makes sense, so why does Martin feel such a sense of dread when Peter speaks of lightening his workload? He's still part of the plan, clearly. The deal is still on.

"Well! I'll let you get to your brekkie. Personally more of a sausage and beans type myself, but I'm not eating for two. I'll be back to check in on you from time to time."

Ugh. Great. "Seems counterintuitive to the whole 'isolation' thing," Martin mumbles, too cross to regret saying that aloud.

"A little, but trust me, you'll be plenty isolated. Besides, you're genuinely fascinating! Can't blame a man for his curiosity, can you?"

And then Peter is gone. He doesn't leave through the door, he's just gone. Martin takes the time to sit down in the ugly soft chair and tear into his breakfast of broken speaker pieces and floppy discs advertising long-defunct internet clients. 

And he closes the drapes again.

Chapter Text

On most days now, Martin finishes his work early. Today, he finishes it before lunch. 

It's a favor to him. Or to the Institute, considering he's probably been doing some slipshod work with his mental state. It is before lunch, right? There's only been one delivery, so it must be. The number on his laptop clock reads...11:30. Good God, what's he going to do for the rest of the day?

What did any of the residents do in their downtime? There's no TV and no bookshelves. Martin should have thought to bring some books from home. He was too distracted at the time, packing only necessities like clothes and toiletries. He wonders if he could make a call down to the front desk to request-request what, a library card? Who asks the concierge for books? 

He does have internet. He could watch something or read something or-or something. And he's got a phone. It's not his favorite way to spend time. Social media just makes him anxious. But maybe he can just pull up some clips from old television shows. Something soothing and stupid. 

When the lunch delivery arrives an hour later, Martin realizes he's just watched nothing but news clips and reports about anthropocentric climate change. Fuck. It's like the algorithm itself wants him to grow more, for lack of a better word, polluted.

Why The Extinction? Why him? Martin is left pondering it as his unnaturally bright and strong teeth tear through a broken old smartphone. Phones are a pretty common snack now. He knows they can be refurbished, so these must be beyond fixing, or no one cared to try.

Maybe that's it. The Extinction is-it's about caring, isn't it? Or not caring. Or the dangers of not caring. And Martin, no matter how hard he has tried, is incapable of not caring. And there's a sense of guilt to it, right? Guilt and panic. We have gone too far, we have engineered our own doom, we are killing something beautiful. Martin's an expert at guilt. He was raised Catholic. He could have gotten a doctorate in guilt.

Still, that all feels arbitrary. Lots of people are anxious and prone to self-recrimination. Can't be enough to draw The Extinction's attention. Maybe those early statements he was reading just got to him too hard. Those dreams of mass death and destruction are genuinely frightening. 

The thing about trying very hard not to think about a Fear is that it's like saying 'don't picture an elephant.' It's self-fulfilling. So, he decides to just stay off the internet for a while. Too much of a temptation to doom scroll, and he gets enough visions of doom as it is.

He eats until he's cleared off the trolley. It's a little more than he has appetite for, but the Thing seems content with excess. Then he tries to take a nap, hoping the post-meal euphoria will give him good dreams for once, but sleep won't come. He hasn't done enough to tire himself out.

So he sits in bed for a while, waiting for something to happen. 

"You know what it reminds me of, in here?"
Martin is very aware that he's talking aloud to himself, yes. He needs noise. It's so obscenely quiet in the penthouse. He's tried streaming some dumb music on his phone, but isn't helping.

"An egg. Like the inside of an egg. Not that-not that I've ever seen that. Obviously. And it's not just the color, the awful off-white beige. It's like I know there's a world out there, there are things happening, but none of them have to do with me. They just happen around me, now. I get nutrients from somewhere. It's all secure and snug and awful." He looks down at himself. "Suppose that's kind of fitting, isn't it? I feel rather like an egg myself, lately-ugh...!"

Scrambling for the bucket by the bed, he pulls it up to his face and just manages to avoid vomiting all over his clothes and his bed. It's blue this time. Windex-blue. Even smells like it. He heaves, gasps for air, downs some water and then crushes the hard plastic cup in one hand before devouring it. 

"Fine," he wheezes. "There. Better? Something upsetting about being compared to an egg? Too-too natural for you?" He glowers down at his own stomach. "You know, I'm allowed my own thoughts. You have to allow me those."

Brushing away stray tiny bits of plastic, he finds himself staring at the inside of his eggshell-room again. 

"Well, it's got doors. I guess I could just...leave. I don't know what happens then, though. And I mean, where do I go? Don't know exactly where I am. What, am I going to call a taxi or something? Waddling around like this?" He folds his hands over the curve of his belly.

There's another moment of nothing.

"I know you talked earlier. Yes, I was bleach-drunk, which is a thing I can be now, but I heard you. Felt you. Something! You said something."

No answer. No cravings, no vomiting, certainly no words spoken from within him.

"Fine. Works for me. The Lonelier I am, the better, right?"

'No.'

Okay. That he felt clearly, words resonating from within and spoken right into his thoughts. He even senses a slight vibration in his belly. 

"So." He swallows, eyes wide. "So you really can talk now, huh."

'Yes. To you. Not as freely as in dreams. But some.'

It is probably wisest not to talk to the parasite inside of him, but it's also wisest not to end up in this situation in the first place. And Martin, at the moment, isn't sure he cares. If fucking Peter Lukas can keep showing up uninvited to sate his curiosity regarding Martin, can't Martin wonder about himself?

"Can you answer questions?"

'Sometimes. If I know them.'

"Okay. When the Hell are you-you know-aren't you full term yet?!"

Another soft vibration. 'Not yet. I need more.'

"More? More what? I feed you everything I can get my hands on. For Christ's sake, I just broke a reusable cup with my bare hands so it would qualify as 'food' for you!" He flexes his fingers, looking at them. "You've made me awfully strong, haven't you?"

'When you need to protect me, you're strong. When you need to feed me, you'll find food. It's because I love you.'

Nothing mocking in the tone. It's innocent, and dare Martin say, childlike. Which makes it worse, because if it is sincere, if this thing really does respond to his care with attention and love...

Now the vibration is accompanied by a clicking and a slithering inside of him. 

'You feed me, so I make you feel good. You feel helpless, so I give you strength. You fear deprivation, so I share my bounty with you.'

"Share your bounty?" Something clicks, and Martin sighs, grabbing at the folds on his side. "Is that why I'm getting so goddamned fat?" Aside from the fact that all he does now is sit in bed and eat. 

'You ensure I don't starve, so you won't starve either.' 

He groans. It makes sense in a sort of animal-logic way. "Thanks. I guess." It's altering his body without his consent in so many ways, and it sees itself as doing Martin a favor. And in a way, he gets it. Martin's always so frightened of those with power over him, those with power over anyone, really. The Thing was assuring him that he was bigger and stronger. Sort of, anyway.

'It is because I love you.'

Again. "Look-look, I don't think-I don't...if you expect love in return-it's just that you've taken over my life, and you'll grow to hurt innocent people just like all those other abominations do, and-and I'm trying to hate you..."

'Why would I need love?' And then a laugh, a wet, sticky laugh, and a slither, and silence. 

Martin has started getting very well acquainted with the bathroom, with its plain, bland, beige walls and tiles. Like anyone in what he hopes are the later stages of a pregnancy, his bladder is under a lot of pressure. In a fit of boredom, he digs in the cabinets and finds remnants of past occupants. Empty pill bottles, which make for a quick snack. A skin lotion, the cheap kind that's all chemical, which he slathers on his belly to deal with some of the dry, patchy skin and then sips on like yogurt. He's getting hungrier, and the food supplies are staying the same.

The Thing knows it, too. 'We cannot go hungry. We will die. I will consume you, and it will sicken me, and we will both die.'

And Martin thinks that if he were strong enough, if he were brave enough, maybe he could just do that. Let himself starve, get rid of the thing in the process before it can hurt others. But he's known hunger before, known it in panicked bursts of missed meals and binge eating. He's too familiar with insecurity for the idea to be anything but terrifying and repulsive. 

Besides, the thing can speak to him now. He couldn't ignore its pleas. He hasn't the strength. 

Work is already done for the day. Martin thinks so, anyway. It's all getting so hazy, everything blending together. He gets e-mails, he answers them, he does some clerical work, he collects a paycheck. Sometimes he fiddles around with the accounts he's using to embezzle from the Lukas family. Not that he has any idea what he'd do with any of that money. This penthouse has kind of ruined him on the idea of typical wealth and luxury. It's all so fake and lifeless, so...plastic.

The window calls to him again. There's something there.

Still idly snacking on the lotion bottle, he ties a robe around himself so he doesn't accidentally expose anything to anyone in the building across the street and waddles to the living room. It's daytime, apparently, based on how the light is peeking through the curtains. Not that it matters much to him, as his sleep cycle has been hijacked entirely by strange dreams and a creature that sometimes decides it wants to wriggle or ooze at 3 in the morning. 

Something there...

He pulls open the drapes, and as expected, there's the fog. But it doesn't seem so dense this time. Is it the time of day? Could it be that it's just a bit too warm for even the Lonely to overpower the weather? 

No, no. It's there, but it looks so weak now. Like a little blanket over something else, something that is permeating it from within and floating up from beneath. Yes, there it is. The exhaust of so many cars, all of them caught in traffic, burning away gasoline and pumping carbon monoxide into the air. Smog. Not the potent, toxic soup Martin read about in history books, the Great Smog of London, which has naturally bubbled up in his dreams, but it's there. It's stronger than usual today, thanks to air currents. 

It's all starting to swirl around the penthouse, gathering to him. It's trying to reach him through the fog. 

And Martin realizes he's lonely, but not as lonely as perhaps he should be. Of course he still misses everyone in the Archives. Of course he still wants to see Jon so badly it makes him ill, all the more because he knows it can never be. Especially not now, when he's like this. 

But he isn't alone. He has the smog, and the plastic trash tossed into the drains. He has the overflowing trash cans. He has all the little things London is killing itself with, bit by indifferent bit. What miserable companions, he thinks as he bursts into laughter that lasts so long it hurts. 

And how could he be alone, when there's something inside of him? 

He wipes away tears of rubbing alcohol and looks down at his belly. "Were you the one that wanted me to go here? To see this?"

'No.' 

"So, that was...well, either that was me, or something else. Bad news either way." Martin laughs again, and then sighs, sitting heavily in the chair. And staring over the curve of his stomach. "You're getting massive, by the way. If you're going to burst out, can you do it already before I just pop anyway? This is getting old."

'Not ready. Need to eat more. More.'

It's not wrong. He does need more. He's finished off the lotion bottle, and somehow it only causes his appetite to flare up. It'll be hours before the next junk delivery, and the meals aren't big enough anymore. Martin's very, very pregnant, and this thing needs a lot of materials to build itself. 

He hefts himself up to the kitchen and looks at the old, but clearly expensive-looking coffee maker on the counter. Then he lifts it effortlessly and smashes it on the ground, shattering the glass. A few more stomps and slams and it's nothing but a machine, broken beyond repair. 

It tastes pretty good. And the thing inside him rewards the effort of him taking something functional and turning it into useless junk with a euphoric buzz that helps him sleep off the large meal right in that almost-comfortable chair, where he dreams of a London of old consumed in smog and soot. 

Chapter Text

There are many dreams, but one more long, vivid one.

The creature is massive now, a great humanoid in shadow. It strides through an abandoned, flooded city with broken skyscrapers and the rotten remains of plants clinging to walls. Martin sits in its cupped hands. He can see down into the street below through the creature's transparent fingers, filtered through a brownish haze and dark, oozing liquid running through its body.

"Please tell me you're not going to get this big." 

"No. This just means I'm close to being big enough to survive. I wanted to be large enough to hold you and protect you. That's what you do with me." There's honest tenderness in its voice, this thing that has taken him over from within and has no sense of any wrongdoing. Why would it? It just is. Will be.

"Kind of touching? I guess?" Usually Martin's not fond of heights, but he somehow knows this thing will not drop him. It considers him precious. It loves him.

"I know what I am now. What we are."

"We?"

"Me, and all who will be born from me. Let me show you." 

The hands lower Martin onto a ledge, where he sees a sickly songbird with patchy feathers hop away from a tiny nest made of sticks and wires. Three eggs rest within. Two are malformed, the shells so thin the developing chicks can be seen from the outside, destined to die if they even manage to hatch. 

The third is steely black, shining in the red-tinted sunlight. It cracks open, and a little bit of brown oil oozes out before a creature emerges that is shaped like a chick, but a mockery of it. It is made of wires and bits of plastic, its skeletal wings formed of tiny umbrella prongs. Instead of blind eyes, it has two bulging plastic beads in its head, one still showing bits of metallic paint on its surface. It opens its mouth and lets out an electronic buzzing sound as the bird returns. 

"We are what is born instead of birds."

Before Martin has a chance to react, the hands lower him down, down into a muddy pool in the middle of the flooded street. There are frog eggs, some dull and gray, but the rest tinted a strange amber-yellow. Within them wriggle bright blue tadpoles, the color of window cleaning fluid. The 'natural' eggs are lifeless. Only the chemical tadpoles will hatch.

"We are what comes instead of frogs."

A creature stalks by the pool, hopping from outcropping to outcropping to stay dry. It's shaped like a cat, but its body is a dripping blue gel surrounding a skeleton of trash. 

"We are what comes after cats, and rabbits, and trees. I think...I think I am the What Comes After."

The What Comes After. Martin can't look away from the mockeries of life inhabiting this broken city. He has no right to, given what role he's played in it.

"And you," he asks the What Comes After, "you're what comes after humans, then?"

"Maybe!" There's an awful giggle in the warped-Martin voice. "We can't bring about The Extinction ourselves, you know. That's the place of humanity. We're just symptoms."

Martin is unsure if he even counts as 'humanity' anymore or not. "So you go around and you give people the idea of an anti-life. A mockery borne out of the wreckage or something like that. They encounter you, or your, uh, siblings? Offspring? Whatever, and they're afraid."

"Yes! And I grow stronger. And so will you." One of the hands lifts to brush Martin on the head. It feels and smells like old rubber. 

"I love you. I will pass on my strength to you. I will help you live on and on, so that one day we can live in this world together. I will love what you love, and never harm it."

"But I love the world!" Martin protests. "And you're going to hurt it! You're going to help kill it!"

The creature makes a confused humming noise. 

"But you don't love the world. I've seen your heart. I know what you love and what you hate. You don't hate the world, but you don't love it."

Is this creature trying to manipulate him? Could it even do that? It doesn't seem capable of lying. Everything it says, it does so with conviction and a strange sort of purity. And maybe it is right. Loving the world, the world that's cold and cruel, sounds exhausting, and Martin is just so tired now.

"You said you'd never harm what I love," Martin whispers. "Do you mean it? You'll never hurt Jon, even if he tries to kill you."

"I don't want to die. But I promise." The hands clasp around him, obscuring the view of the ruins. "And I will help you kill what you hate."

"Wait. Wait, what do you mean by-"

Then the dream ends.

Martin wakes up feeling strange and agitated, more energized than he has in months. His throat itches. Something in his stomach stirs.

It's going to be today. It'll be born today, and he'll survive or he won't. For all the What Comes After insists it will not intentionally hurt or kill Martin, it doesn't seem to know what its birth will involve. And while it loves Martin, who does not love it back, The Extinction does not love at all.

There's an odd liberation in knowing he may be doomed. What has he to lose? 

But Jon. Jon, Basira, Daisy, Melanie, they have to be okay. They have to be safe from Peter Lukas, or everything Martin has done is for naught. If he dies, will Peter try using someone else? Sure, Martin's already acclimated to the Lonely, or was anyway, but the Fears are patient and Peter has plenty of time.

Speaking of Peter.

Martin checks his e-mails, resting the laptop on top of his belly. He's been doing his job, what little there is of it, and in the meantime he's also been messaging Peter asking about any return to work plan. As he might have expected, Peter's awfully elusive on that topic. Martin keeps bringing up that after all this he would like to go back to his own fucking house and his miserable workplace, not exactly in those words, and somehow Peter just keeps forgetting to answer. 

"You know," he tells the thing he now knows is listening, "I don't think he's planning on letting us go. Why would he? Maybe he thinks he can get The Lonely's claws back into me with a little bit of postpartum depression isolation. Maybe he's got another place in mind. You know, once my medical needs are a lot less 'high maintenance.'"

His eyes drift to the wheeled tray carrying breakfast. There's some melted Tupperware, a few busted phones, and even a few burnt out light bulbs in a heap. It wouldn't be enough on a normal day, but this morning none of it appeals to him. Not that he isn't hungry. He, or rather they, are both starving. But he isn't craving. There's a difference.

How long has it been? Months? Has it been months? It must have been, at this point. Has Jon managed to get out of the Institute? No, Jon wouldn't get out on his own. He's too far in there. All Martin can do is try to protect him from a distance. 

"Except, except..." Martin rubs at his stomach, setting the laptop aside. "Except The Lonely lost me. The Extinction has me now. And once Peter finds out I'm not the Lonely-bait I was, he'll have no use for me. He'll target someone else. He'll-he could go after...any of them. None of them deserve that. They don't deserve to live like this. And-and I won't be able to keep his attention from them. Unless..."

Unless. Unless.

There's an odd twinge. The thing is rearranging itself inside of him, repositioning himself. Again, there's a scratchy feeling in his throat and a burning in his chest. 

Martin shoots off an e-mail marked urgent, letting Peter know that It's Coming Out Today, one way or another. Then he slams the laptop shut and stares at it.

It's stupid, isn't it? Martin's 'employment' at the Institute right now basically amounts to pity work and ownership under one of two Avatars. Either he's Peter's or he's Elias's. None of the work he does matters. They were trying to stop The Extinction and in doing so gave it an Avatar. Seems pretty counterproductive. Which matches. Nothing good ever comes of Martin meddling. He's supposed to disappear into the background, and now he's too monstrous and dangerous to do even that.

But god, it's so stupid. This little work laptop. If there's a good chance Martin dies tonight, he doesn't really need it. And even if he does survive and Peter keeps him locked up, he still won't need it much. There's no way Peter will let him have even that much contact with the outside world. There's just no power in it anymore, not here, not in this place. 

It's junk.

Martin picks up the laptop and breaks it in half as easily as if it were a chocolate bar. Hell, it even has a satisfying kind of snap. The edges spark and hiss, giving off an appetizing scent of burning electronics. There. That's what he wants. That's what they want to eat.

It goes down smoothly, tasting rich and filling. Something that was made to be useless from the start has its own appeal and power, but there's a specific flavor to an object that once held importance and has quite suddenly been rendered landfill-bait. 

He eats the whole thing, sighs, and then feels a sharp pain in his stomach, like something is squeezing the lining from within. With claws.

When Peter Lukas arrives, fog and all, Martin has just finished vomiting into the kitchen sink. It's a swirling rainbow of chemicals and bits of plastic bag, flecked with blood and tissue. 

"Was going to ask how you're feeling," Peter says in his infuriatingly casual way, "but I can assume it's proving a difficult birth."

Martin heaves and catches his breath as he turns around, hand on his chest. He's experiencing the worst heartburn of his life, alongside a really itchy, awful feeling above his stomach. Everything in his abdomen burns. "Could be better," he says, his voice hoarse as he glowers at his boss. 

Peter didn't bring any physicians. Of course he didn't. What would they do? Anti-nature is going to take its course one way or another. It's just Peter, which suits Martin just fine. "Well, if it was going to rip itself out, you'd probably be feeling that by now. If I had to make a scientific guess, I'd say it'll come up through the throat."

"Well, I think the equivalent of my water breaking just went out that way." Martin leans on the counter for support, a hand on his heavy stomach. His legs feel weak, his arms numb and his head woozy. It has been a very miserable hour or so. 

He's trying hard not to think about how childbirth labor can take hours and hours. 

He also knows he looks a pathetic wretch. Which would bother him, ordinarily. 

"There now, it's almost over, see? A terrible ordeal, but we'll get you back in order yet. If you survive the birth. If you don't, there's really nothing any of us can do about it, right? It's out of our hands." He glances around, wrinkling his nose. "Did they just clean the carpet here? I told them to stop using the cheap stuff." 

Martin isn't really in a place to answer. He slinks down onto the floor, sitting up because he knows lying down will be worse. He can feel claws and teeth inside of him, pressing against his skin from within. Birth is proving desperate and painful for both of them.

"In this together," he whispers, "aren't we?"

"Hmm? I guess." Peter shrugs, unaffected by watching Martin writhe in pain. "Not really a thing we say around here. But I do have a plan for the creature. Once it's out we'll send it off to the Lonely, or let it stew in The Distortion if that proves difficult. There are places and ways to seal a horror."

A jolt, a sharp pain and an internal scream. The What Comes After does not want to be trapped the moment it's born. What being would? But to let it run loose would be to condemn innocent people to its torments. It would feed, and it would feed Martin, and could he really live like that?

His thoughts are interrupted by a heavy cough from Peter. "Ugh. Pardon me. Must be the pipe smoke." He starts coughing again, wet and full of phlegm. "Don't ever take up smoking."

That's right. It's sifting in, slowly. Martin knew he could call his friends in, the smog, the haze, the carbon monoxide. But they might work too slowly. An old Avatar like Peter might be able to shrug that off. Sure, Peter's starting to wipe at his eyes, but it does little to just irritate the man.

What he really deserves is...

God, Martin's heart isn't beating at the right rate. It's skipping here and there. He can't die and let Peter move on to anyone else in the Institute! He can't! 

Peter's just content to watch. Martin's being observed like a particularly interesting zoological specimen, which he supposes he is. Nothing like The Lonely to insulate one from the suffering of others, eh. Him and his stupid coat and his stupid pipe and his stupid...neck. His neck is exposed. 

Martin whispers a soft, "help me."

And then the creature seems to calm, and Martin feels something small and sharp climb up his throat, further and further, and hook itself into his mind. Like a plug in a socket.

Oh. Oh, is it really that easy? 

"...Hmm. Odd." Peter starts scratching at his neck, where a reddened horizontal stripe is starting to form at the middle. "What-what is..." 

Martin concentrates, and the plastic six-pack ring around Peter's throat starts to tighten further. 

"You know," Martin says, still hoarse, still pained, "we've got to hand it to you. You made a fine little box of isolation here. And then you put us in it. And the thing about us is that we contaminate things, Peter."

Peter says nothing, gagging and pulling at the six-pack ring. It slices into his fingers as his face reddens. All the while, Martin can feel the smog leaking in further, the carbon monoxide filling the room. It doesn't hurt Martin. If anything, the poisoned air gives him a second wind.

"You were never going to let us out. We're not stupid, you know. Pathetic, sure. We-I-know I'm very suited to be a pawn. But you really had no idea what to do when things went south, did you? You were just winging it. Probably should have buried me in cement after all."

Peter hisses out something, his eyes bulging. He's wheezing and gasping for air. Something is starting to protrude out of his mouth. His eyes water, his face turning from red to a bluish-white. 

Martin grits his teeth. This feels like a necessary stage of the labor, spitting his words out and all. "I don't mind being used. Who cares about me? But I don't-we don't want our suffering to be pointless. Besides, this is your fault."

Peter spits out a blood-soaked plastic duck. He glares up at Martin as oil and blue chemicals ooze from his lips.

“You-you fool. You weren’t supposed to let it in. You never let it in…”

“Well,” Martin answers, watching, forcing himself to watch, “I was lonely.”

“And lonely you’ll be. You’re the first, now. The first…” 

Peter shudders, writhes, falls limp, and his breathing slows to nothing. It’s almost anticlimactic, watching a demigod of solitude die.

That-that was death. That was murder. Martin just murdered someone, and he'd died in fear of The Extinction. Martin knows it because there's a burst of strength, a slight lessening of the pain. 

Well, if he wasn't an Avatar before, he is now. It was Peter himself who'd said Avatars have to choose eventually, right? But Peter can't hurt Jon now, can't hurt any of them. 

It's worth it. It has to be worth it. It has to be-!

And then there's a rush of claws and a clacking noise from within, and Martin feels something push up, up from his abdomen, through his throat, which feels as if it will tear apart at any moment. He cannot breathe. He does not breathe. His vision goes black as something viscous leaks from his eyes and his nose. He heaves, and heaves again, something cutting into the sides of his mouth and shoving it open unnaturally wide. He wonders if it will split him entirely.

It crawls out. 

All of it, in a horrible wave that lasts only seconds but feels eternal. It oozes out of his mouth and his eyes and his nose and his ears. He can feel his own body deflate, emptied of air, his heart stilled. 

And then it beats again, and his lungs fill with air, and he tastes blood and gasoline, and when he wipes at his eyes he can see again.

It is a great slimy form, plastic claws and labyrinthe skeleton suspended like aspic in bubbling, shifting chemicals of every unnaturally bright color. Its organs are visible, three hearts connected by wires to melted, warped circuit boards and chunks of cell phone. It has two great eyes at the front of its slug body, both the same vivid blue as Martin's own. It is big enough to reach Martin's hip when he stands. Which he does, because he feels he must.

A slug, though one with a winding snake of a skeleton inside of it. Or, no, not a slug. It's a blob. A protozoan. An amoeba. The first evolutionary stage of The What Comes After. This is the horror Martin brought into the world, and it will bring other horrors in its wake, slowly but surely. It will claim victims, just like The Distortion and The Not-Them, and will feel nothing but delight. And those horrors will feed Martin.

It stares up at Martin, adoringly. And he knows, he knows immediately it does, truly, love him. 

He cannot love it. And he cannot hate it. He knows what it will do, but as it has done nothing but live, he can't bring himself to punish this creature. 

How wretched for the both of them.

Now that the pain has passed, now that Martin feels drained and exhausted and deeply hollow, he collapses before his offspring and finds his tear ducts are too dry for him to weep. So he sobs, harsh and dry, and the creature just watches, as if first comprehending sadness.

"God. I-I killed Peter and I can't kill you. I can't go back like this. I'll hurt them." And go back where? To the Institute, where he broke Elias's control and killed his own boss? To his home, empty of birds and insects? "What do I do now. Where do I go..."

The What Comes After bubbles. "Don't cry," it says in a voice like a dying computer. "You know where we can go." 

And then he does. Martin knows, and he knows exactly how to send himself there.