Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Per ora risu,” John chanted, reading from the Leitner he’d taken from the Hunt-bound savages during his trip overseas, “radicum fila invocavero. Hoc statu rerum, mutare melius!”

There was a blinding flash of light, bright enough to show out from underneath the door. At his insistence, his fellow warriors had left him to perform the ritual alone, but Georgie and Melanie were both waiting just outside. John always thought it was truly heartwarming when they managed to set aside their differences for the sake of their mutual love interest. No time to dwell on that now, though. The last thing John heard was Melanie calling his name, before the world twisted away from his vision and suddenly he was standing in the middle of an unfamiliar office. A strange Korean man started upright from where he’d been sitting at a desk opposite John. He looked shocked, opening his mouth in what sounded like the beginning of a question. John didn’t hear what it was.

His knees folded beneath him, and with that, he collapsed into a graceful swoon.

Jon had been in the middle of asking Tim to look into this “nee-allesunt” phrase Mark Bilham’s statement mentioned when he blinked, and found himself standing, alone, in a thoroughly unfamiliar room. He startled, gripping the tape recorder he’d been holding tightly. “What the – ”

A moment later, a woman with shockingly blue eyes and equally shocking hot pink hair burst in through the door. “Who’re you?” she demanded loudly. “Where’s John?”

“I – ” Jon gaped at her for a moment before drawing himself up. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t quite – ”

“Is it safe to come in?” another voice interrupted. A pale face framed with honey-blond hair peeked tentatively past the doorframe.

The pink-haired woman rolled her eyes and sighed loudly. “Yes, Georgie, it’s safe. You don’t have to be such a wuss all the time, you know.”

Jon choked.

“Georgie?” he squeaked. The two women ignored him.

“You know I just have to be more careful than other people, Melanie,” the blonde chided softly. “Not being able to feel fear means I don’t know how to protect myself without help.”

“Melanie,” apparently, rolled her eyes again. “Whatever. I’m just saying, unless John is hiding behind your skirt back there, you’d better get in here if you want to help me get some answers.”

Unless – what?

Jon had a very bad feeling about all this.

“What’s up?” A tall, muscular blond jogged up behind Georgie as she stepped carefully forward into the room. “I heard you calling for help. Did John’s ritual work? Who’s the chick?”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t count on that ritual, Tim,” Melanie said, peering fruitlessly into the corners of the room. “Unless there’s something I’m missing, I’d say we have a problem. Has anyone seen John?”

“I’m Jon,” Jon finally managed.

“Whoa!” Tim took a step back at the sound of his voice. “Dude looks like a lady!”

Melanie snickered.

Somewhere, Jon could swear he heard a crowd laughing.

“John?” Georgie moved towards him tentatively, palms out like she was trying to calm a wild animal. “Is… is that really you?”

“I really don’t think the ritual worked right,” Melanie muttered.

“I… don’t…” Jon was at a loss. “I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Okay,” Georgie soothed. “That’s fine. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I was… I was getting started on a new statement,” Jon offered. “I just finished reading Leanne Deniken’s, she had a weird encounter with a calliope? Sasha and I argued a bit about the pronunciation of ‘calliope’ and whether the historical roots ought to be prioritized over the ever-fluctuating and regionally specific customs of word usage, or – sorry, sorry,” he cut himself off when Melanie started tapping her foot. “Er. Anyway, I finished recording and went outside my office to ask Tim to start looking into Mark Bilham’s statement. And then, erm, I was here? Wherever here is? So I’d – I’d very much appreciate it if someone could please explain where the hell I am, and why.”

This Tim, the blond Tim, let out a low whistle. “You really went a while back, huh, boss?” He gave a forced grin that reminded Jon sharply of his Tim, even though they looked nothing alike. Jon was getting an awful sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Not to mention, uh,” Tim gestured with his hand, mouth twisting away from that Tim-like expression into a nasty sort of smirk. “You know.”

Jon looked down at himself, but there wasn’t anything unusual about his appearance – no cobwebs, or spider eyes, or weird grey limbs like Amy Patel had seen on the not-Graham. He looked back at Tim quizzically.

“Shorter,” Melanie clarified hurriedly. “You’re a lot… shorter, now.”

“And you had, like, a run-in with Ariana Grande’s tanning salon,” Tim added.

Jon glanced down at his hands again, which were the same colour as always. “I’m Pakistani,” he informed them coldly. “And I don’t see what that has to do with any of this.”

There was a beat of awkward silence.

“Yeah, okay, this definitely isn’t John,” Melanie decided.

“Well, that definitely isn’t Georgie, and that isn’t Tim, either,” Jon snapped, waving his arms wildly at the people in question. “And I have no idea who you’re even supposed to be. Unless – wait, you’re not… Martin?”

Melanie, who’d been looking downright murderous at his outburst, guffawed at the last bit. “Martin?” she demanded incredulously. “In what world would anyone get me confused with that fat idiot?”

“Don’t talk about him like that,” Jon bit out. He may not be an ideal employee, but there was no call to attack him for his size, of all things. Martin’s size was very good. That was, Jon hurriedly amended to himself, it was adequate. Fine, in a neutral sort of way. Jon had no particular feelings about Martin’s body or appearance. Anyway, Jon was beginning to think “idiot” was… perhaps a bit too harsh. Either way, Martin was trying his best, and really he’d been holding up incredibly well in the wake of the whole Prentiss incident.

Meanwhile, Georgie was repeating Melanie’s last few words thoughtfully. “‘In what world…’”

“You don’t think – ” Tim started.

“I think we’d better pay a visit to our local psychic.”

They all seemed to know what she meant by that. Jon decided that, in addition to being very confused and tentatively terrified, he was also thoroughly exasperated.

For lack of any other options, he followed them as they all strode out the door, clutching his tape recorder closer to his chest. They wove through a weirdly convoluted open-concept space, which had desks strewn haphazardly beneath gold-plated gargoyles and arched ceilings. He thought it might have been supposed to be an office. There weren’t any windows, which made it harder to tell.

Tim stopped in front of an oddly-placed bookshelf and pulled on one of the books, causing the whole thing to swing open. Jon gaped. The others seemed perfectly used to this, and trooped nonchalantly down the dark stairs that lay behind.

“What is this place?” Jon muttered.

Georgie glanced back at him. “These are the tunnels,” she explained kindly. Melanie gave her a look, and she blushed. “Well, if the last thing he remembers is from when Sasha was alive, he wouldn’t know about them!”

“Not our John,” Melanie reminded.

“When Sasha was alive?” Jon repeated. “What does that mean? What happened to Sasha?”

“Obviously, she died,” Tim growled, stopping suddenly to point a flashlight in Jon’s face. All the false cheer had abruptly fallen off his face, like a cheap mask snapping its tie. “Or did you want all the gory details? Is that what you want, ‘John’? Do you want me to describe how Elias sacrificed her on that pagan altar in Artefact Storage, tell you exactly how beautiful she looked when the evil copy of her stole my memories and tried to make me think I loved it? Do you want to know how it felt to slit her throat?”

Jon gaped.

Tim snorted and turned away. “That’s what I figured. Pervert.”

“Come on, let’s hurry up so we can get the real John back,” Melanie said, hurrying after Tim down the dark hallway. Georgie tossed Jon an apologetic look before following suit.

“What the fuck,” Jon said to the empty air.

He pasted on a scowl, quickening his step to keep up with his – companions? Kidnappers? – as they threatened to disappear around the next corner. He pushed down the feeling that in the span of ten minutes, he’d managed to get himself completely lost.

He’d find his way back. He would.

He had to.

John was completely lost, and trying valiantly not to show it. He’d come around to find himself seated in a cheap swivel chair pushed up against the wall, his arms tied to the back of it with someone’s cotton sweater. The Korean man he’d glimpsed earlier was leaning against a desk a few feet in front of him, brandishing a breadknife, of all things. Beside the man stood a woman with a large nose, thick glasses, and long cornrow braids, trying to cajole her companion into putting the breadknife away. Beside and a bit behind both of them stood –

“Martin?”

The arguing couple shut up, both looking at him with frighteningly intense expressions. John ignored them.

“Does that mean it worked? Did I pull you out of the Lonely?”

The woman looked at Martin, who shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

“Sure you do,” John pressed. “That frigid sea-witch, Petra Lukas, flung you into her icy prison when you refused her advances. We thought we’d finally found a way to bring you back. Set you free. You’re here now, so does that mean it worked? I’m assuming I didn’t accidentally send myself to the Lonely.” He chuckled nervously, flipping his hair out of his eyes. “Unless that’s exactly what happened. It’s not, is it?”

“Um.” Martin looked at the other two helplessly. “I don’t – I don’t think so?” His voice cracked in that adorable way he had. God, John had missed him. “I’m, uh. I’m pretty sure none of us are under the spell of a… sea witch. So.”

The Korean man shook his head sharply, bringing John’s attention back to him. He was wearing an eye-searingly tacky Hawaiian shirt, John noticed. “Stop trying to confuse us,” he said, pointing the breadknife at him. “Who are you, and what have you done with Jon?”

John blinked and tilted his head, smirking a little. “I, ah, I think you must be a bit confused.” He glanced at Martin, rolling his eyes, but Martin didn’t seem to get the joke. Well, no one would ever say Martin wasn’t dense. “You see, I’m John.”

The man snarled, raising his knife.

“Tim, no!” The large-nosed woman said sharply.

“Wait, Tim?” John stopped clenching his teeth in manly preparation for death, because now he was confused again.

“You’re not Jon,” the man hissed. “I’ll give you three seconds to rethink your answer, or I swear I’ll – ”

“Wait, wait, hold on,” John interrupted. “Let’s back up for a moment here, hm? You’re Tim?”

Tim nodded warily.

“And that’s Martin,” John checked. Tim nodded again, and Martin waved a bit, blushing a vivid pink as he did so and putting his hand down hastily.

“So… does that mean you’re…” John stared at the woman. “Melanie?”

“What? No,” the woman said. “I’m Sasha.”

“No, you’re not,” John shot back reflexively. “Sasha’s dead.” He knew his own luck, and now he was sure. There was no way any of this was real.

‘Sasha’ spluttered. “I – I’m very clearly not!” she exclaimed.

John tried to maintain some soulful eye contact with Tim, who was obviously going to be upset to hear about his girlfriend’s death, but Tim was just kind of glaring at him. His eyes flickered across John’s face like – oh. John very much hoped he wasn’t plotting the best use of his breadknife. Unorthodox tool for torture, perhaps, but real or not, he was sure it wouldn’t be pleasant.

“Last chance,” Tim said evenly. “Who are you, where are you from, how did you get here and what did you do to Jon?”

“Right.” John nodded placatingly, eyeing the knife. “Of course. I’m sure we can be gentlemen about this.” For some reason, Tim’s face went even more murderous at that, so John went on quickly. “Er! My name is John Simons, Last Archivist of the Magnus Institute, and I think I’m here by mistake.”

The psychic in the tunnels was Gertrude.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were dead,” Jon said for the third time.

For the third time, Gertrude patiently repeated, “Yes, I gathered that, but as you can see, I am indeed very much alive.”

“How?” Jon finally demanded.

“My lover, Jurgen, always protected me,” Gertrude began softly. “He was the only one who knew my secret, and I believed he would take it with him to his grave. Torture will do terrible things to a person, though. I can only assume Elias didn’t realize he was still alive when he tossed him down here, but my dear Jurgen was far stronger than that villain gave him credit for. When I came into work that fateful morning, I found a note scrawled in blood on my desk, reading only, ‘HE KNOWS.’ I knew who it was from, of course, and what the intent of the message was. I can pick up many readings through touch alone, and as I’m sure you can imagine, blood practically demands to be heard. I followed the faint psychic trail, which led me to discover the tunnels. There, at the foot of the stairs, lay my beloved Jurgen.” She paused, sniffing a bit. “Of course, I knew what I had to do. Elias has all Archivists cursed to be bound to him, heart, body and soul, but as a psychic, I knew how to get around even such powerful magic as his. I blinded myself with acid” – she gestured at her unscarred face and white, unseeing eyes – “nullifying the curse, and returned to the tunnels to bury my Jurgen and live out the rest of my days safe from the evil uses Elias would have had for my powers.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon interrupted. He knew this idea was probably mad, but so was a lot about his current situation. “That wouldn’t – you wouldn’t happen to be talking about Jurgen Leitner, would you?”

“Why, yes,” Gertrude said, a benign look of surprise on her face. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d know that name yet. He was very highly regarded in certain esoteric circles, of course, but if the last thing you recall is from Sasha’s time – ”

“Oh, oh, no, trust me,” Jon laughed harshly. “I am very familiar with the name Jurgen Leitner.”

“How intriguing,” Gertrude murmured. “Do you know, then, that it was a book from his library that brought you here?”

Jon put his head in his hands. “Of bloody course it was.”

“Our John must not have performed the ritual correctly,” Gertrude mused.

“On the contrary,” Jon said, voice muffled, “in my experience, this is exactly the sort of thing Leitners tend to do.” For all his efforts to ignore it, Jon was starting to feel like he didn’t have a choice but to acknowledge the creeping idea that had been nagging at him since Melanie said his name.

What if he was the Jon all these people knew, after all? What if his memories had just been dramatically altered by some horrid decision to read a Leitner, so that he would believe he was from another world? What if none of the people he knew and – and respected – what if they’d never existed at all?

“Oh, no, dear,” Gertrude chuckled. “You can put that thought right out of your mind. I can tell you right now, you are most definitely not the same person as the John we know and love.”

Jon jerked his head up. “Did you just – ”

Gertrude tapped her head. “Psychic, dear.”

“That’s not possible,” Jon said stubbornly.

Gertrude shrugged. “I do try to be respectful and not go digging, but you were thinking very loudly.”

“Okay, but how do we get our John back?” Melanie burst out.

“Hmm,” Gertrude said, tilting her head. “I believe we would need to begin by understanding where precisely he went.”

There was a moment of quiet, and then Tim nudged Jon’s shoulder roughly. “Well?”

“Oh,” Jon straightened. “You, ah, you want to know about where I’m from?”

“If you would be so kind,” Gertrude agreed.

“Right.” Jon cleared his throat. “Right, well, to start with, I’m from London, England. Er, the year is 2016, if that matters.”

“All the same so far,” Georgie chimed in. Tim shushed her, and she apologized.

“Okay,” Jon muttered. Same year. That was a good start, right? “Um, obviously, Sasha’s still alive where I’m from. I do know a Georgie, but she’s Filipino, and definitely not associated with the Magnus Institute.” He pulled up short. “This is the Magnus Institute, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Gertrude assured him. “John took my place as Head Archivist at the beginning of this year.”

“Right, that’s the same, then,” Jon breathed. “Er, there’s a Tim in, ah, in my world, too, but he’s shorter and thinner and Korean and, honestly, much more pleasant to be around than this Tim.”

“Hey!” Blond Tim protested. “What’s that for?”

Jon glared. “The first thing you ever said to me was a crude joke about my gender!”

“That was funny!”

Jon shook his head, suddenly feeling exhausted. “It really, really wasn’t.”

Gertrude tilted her blind eyes at his skirt and raised an eyebrow.

Jon wanted to go home.

Since that wasn’t exactly an option, he steeled himself and kept talking. It seemed as though, apart from the dramatically different appearances and personalities of its employees, most of the core facts about this world were the same as his. Jon’s counterpart worked as Head Archivist at the Magnus Institute, Elias was their employer – though, of course, Jon vaguely gathered that he was much more murderous than the Elias he knew – and Melanie had only recently been hired as Sasha’s replacement.

On that note, while many of Jon’s experiences seemed to be familiar to his listeners, the details of recent events were very different from the life Jon remembered living. For one thing, Sasha had been replaced. After being ritually sacrificed, if Tim was to be believed.

“And then Martin got held hostage by Jane Prentiss, as I’m sure you’ll recall – ”

“Wait, what? When was this?” Tim interrupted. Jon stared at him.

“I – I just said, it was only a few weeks ago? Did that not happen here?” Most of the differences Jon had made note of so far were things that had never happened to him, or that had been twisted into something he could barely recognize. This was the first time anyone outright denied his retelling of events. It was a point of diversion, and Jon wondered if that might be the key. Could this whole disaster have something to do with –

“Wait, I think I do remember that!” Georgie exclaimed, dashing his burgeoning theories. “Yeah, like, a month or so ago, that definitely happened. Jane Prentiss thought Martin was John because the worms ate her eyes, so she kept him trapped in his apartment for two weeks or something until she eventually realized it wasn’t the right guy.” Tim made a faint noise of recognition.

“And you all forgot about it?” Jon demanded, aghast.

Tim shrugged. “He seemed fine,” he explained. “And it’s not like she even meant to target him in the first place, so what does it matter?”

“…Whatever place this is,” Jon announced, “I just want to be sure it knows I hate it.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” Melanie muttered.

“Oh, trust me,” Jon seethed, “I am aware. On that note, I am suspending my summary until someone tells me where this accursed universe’s Martin is. I’m hoping that you didn’t just forget him somewhere upstairs.”

Everyone suddenly looked uncomfortable.

Jon couldn’t believe this. “Did you forget Martin somewhere upstairs?”

“No!” Tim and Georgie both exclaimed, with varying degrees of hostility. Melanie just made a face.

Jon narrowed his eyes at the lot of them.

“Where,” he asked, a dangerous undercurrent in his tone, “is your Martin?”

“John lost him in the Lonely,” Melanie blurted.

“What?”

“A Leitner?” Sasha was rubbing her temples. “Why on earth would you willingly open a Leitner? Let alone read out loud from it?”

John stared at her. “What do you mean, ‘why’?” He looked to the others in bemusement, but of course they didn’t back him up. “Books from Leitner’s library are powerful objects. Sure, they can be dangerous in the wrong hands, but – ”

“They’re literally just cursed books, mate,” Tim interrupted.

“Not necessarily,” John argued. “Mike Crew used the power of Ex Altiora to bind himself to the god Imdugud, giving him superhuman powers and the ability to vanquish the monster that pursued him.”

“Mike Crew…” Sasha wrinkled her brow. “I swear I’ve heard that name before.”

“Well, just trust me on this one, then,” John said, frustrated. “Leitner’s books aren’t all bad.”

“Okay, but you’re here, though, so I’m guessing it didn’t work out exactly as planned,” Martin pointed out. John glared at him.

Tim shook his head, making a “keep talking” motion with the knife.

“Right, so I travelled overseas to commune with a primitive tribe. I needed to access their great wisdom to help retrieve Martin and defeat Elias,” John went on.

“Okay, pause,” Sasha said, making a ‘T’ with her hands. “I have at least six questions right off the bat, five of which can be boiled down to ‘what the racism,’ but, uh. Can we circle back to defeating Elias?”

“Did someone say my name?”

Everyone startled as a head poked out from the stairwell. Elias, at least, John recognized, although his suit wasn’t as tight as usual, and there was something odd about his eyes. John thought it was because he wasn’t wearing any eyeliner.

“You,” John snarled.

“And who might you be?” Elias inquired.

“You can go ahead and call me your doom,” John said darkly. He flung himself forward, doubly glad now that he’d untied himself as soon as he woke up. Snatching Tim’s knife from his hand and ignoring the man’s shouts, he made to plunge the serrated blade straight into Elias’ heart.

He pulled up short, muscles twitching, as his vision suddenly cut out altogether.

“Hm,” Elias said coolly. “I don’t think so.”

And then suddenly John was twelve years old again, reliving the moment that never quite seemed to belong to him, watching helplessly as a circus clown laughed and swept his little brother away. Suddenly John was a child, practically a man but he hadn’t been, he should have been stronger but he hadn’t been, he hadn’t saved the only family he’d had left, and he couldn’t remember the words of his promise to never be weak again.

Then John was five, and he saw in crystalline detail every moment of the horror he’d only ever caught a glimpse of. John was five and instead of picking Danny up to run, he was trapped, frozen in front of that awful thing that called itself Mr. Spider. John watched for what felt like eons as his parents were slowly eaten alive.

John was five and seven and eight and nine and thirteen, hearing every foster parent he’d ever had telling him it hadn’t been real. It couldn’t have been real. Even though he’d seen it, even though he wasn’t a liar. He was five and a half years old and swearing never again to lie. John watched as it still didn’t work, as no one believed him anyway.

John was twenty-nine and Martin was tricking Petra Lukas into trusting him, pulling his shoulders back and stepping timidly forward and smiling. John was twenty-nine and realizing Martin was actually rather good-looking, and then promptly pretending he hadn’t had that thought. John watched himself distract himself from things he didn’t dare name, focusing instead on the agony of his bare arms being pulled back by the water that froze as it crept slowly over him, trapping him against the wall in that cavern of ice. John watched, helpless, helpless again, as Martin worked to save him.

John was twenty-nine and twenty-nine and twenty-nine and ignoring the odd feeling that sat in the pit of his stomach, because all the tea and the dinners and the life-saving heroics didn’t matter too much. Because Martin was a stupid lunk and his friend. Because all of that was just what friends do.

Until it wasn’t.

Until he was watching Martin fling himself in the way of a needle-sharp icicle spear, saving John’s life as John was swallowed by the door he’d summoned too soon. Until he heard Martin gasp out something John didn’t want to know.

Martin had loved him, even as John left him behind –

“Do try to keep yourself under control, this is embarrassing to watch,” Elias said.

John came back to himself with a wheeze. He was horrified to realize that hot, ugly tears were streaming down his face, and more horrified to find that he couldn’t stop them.

“My apologies for any undue distress I’ve caused, John,” Elias continued, “but I’m sure you understand it was strictly self-defense.”

He glanced at the others. “I would be quite irritated to find my Archivist permanently missing. Fortunately, I am moderately well-versed in this sort of paranormal encounter, and I believe I can take it from here. Thank you for your assistance, you three, but you can leave the situation with me now, and rest assured I’ll have our Jon back before the end of the week.”

“Sorry, what just happened?” Martin blurted shrilly.

“Exactly what I said, Martin,” Elias replied in a bland tone. “John attacked me, for no reason that I can discern, and I responded in self-defense with one of the many paranormal tricks I’ve managed to pick up over the years. I’m sorry if that’s difficult for you to understand.”

“Don’t – ” John panted, glaring up at him through puffy eyes. “Don’t you dare treat him like that.”

Elias smirked at him. John realized suddenly what was wrong with his eyes. It wasn’t the eyeliner. It was the colour – the piercing blue John was used to was now a vivid, virulent green. “He isn’t even your Martin.”

John shook his head, teeth bared. “Don’t.”

“Of course, John,” Elias said indulgently. “You’re the only one allowed to insult him, aren’t you? Come, let’s get you cleaned up and see if we can’t find a solution to this little conundrum.”

“Fuck you,” John spat, and pushed past him to fly up the stairs.

Far behind, he heard Elias curse, but there was no way the bastard would be able to catch up. He had never come close to matching John for physical fitness. John was out the front doors and on the streets of London before Elias’ shouts made it to the lobby.

His world or not, he vowed as he ran, one thing was sure. Elias Bouchard had to die.

John was going to kill him.

Jon, on the other hand, was still trying to wrap his mind around Martin’s current situation.

“So you’re telling me,” Jon said slowly, “that in this universe, there’s a pantheon of malevolent gods that are desperately trying to end the world?”

“More or less, yes.”

“And the Lonely is one of them.”

Gertrude sighed. “No, not precisely. Petra Lukas is a servant of one of them, with a rather distinct domain of her own, which we typically refer to as ‘the Lonely’ for convenience’s sake,” she explained, very patiently.

“Right, right. And that’s where Martin is.”

Tim groaned. “Martin, Martin, Martin,” he mimicked. “It’s like you’re not even trying to listen to the important bits. ‘The Lonely is one of the gods,’ John, really? Do you even remember any of the gods’ names? Do you even know how many there are?”

“I do!” Jon said defensively. “There are – there are seven of them! And, ah, their names are…” Jon trailed off, fiddling with his tape recorder to try and play back what Gertrude had said.

Melanie huffed loudly before rattling off a much more concise list than the explanation Gertrude had provided. Jon clicked the recorder on quickly to catch most of Melanie’s words. “Amashilama,” she droned, “ruler of death, decay, burial, and general gross stuff. Asag, violence and destruction. Isimud, deception, manipulation and duplicity. Beletseri, god of that which is inescapable, who watches everything and pursues everything and mocks you for trying to hide. Lamashtu, the dark, the black, the foreign and unknown, and the monsters that lurk in the night. And Imdugud, which is really just ‘big’ and ‘cold’ with a side of falling and solitary confinement.”

“Right,” Jon said, turning his tape recorder back off. “And… ‘Imdugud’ is the one that took Martin.”

“Pretty much,” Melanie said, sounding resigned.

“So how do we get him back? I mean – I’m assuming there was some sort of backup plan. Honestly, I hope it’s a good one, though I can’t imagine what could be bad enough that your better option was a Leitner – ”

“Can you quit clicking that?” Tim burst out. Jon startled. “You’re driving me mental.”

“Sorry,” Jon muttered, moving his finger off the ‘rewind’ button on his recorder. He hadn’t realized he’d been pressing it rapidly. On, off. On, off. Jon started jiggling his knee. “I just – I still can’t believe your Jon really thought the best course of action here was to read one of those books.”

“To be fair,” Georgie put in, “Leitner’s books are really the safest way of interacting with the gods of fear.”

Jon pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right. Of course they are.” He sighed very quietly, then cleared his throat. “Well, I mean, it’s certainly shocking that this foolproof scheme has so thoroughly backfired, but back to the point: do you have literally any other ideas on how to retrieve your friend?”

“Well, that’s kind of why we’re asking you all this stuff,” Georgie offered shyly.

“What?” Jon blinked at her, before he realized she thought he was asking about his counterpart. “Oh – I mean, yes, I do hope to get home as quickly as possible, but I am actually still talking about Martin.” Honestly, these people.

Melanie grimaced, sucking her teeth loudly as she looked between Georgie and Tim.

“Yeah,” Tim said, dragging the word out. “We’ll definitely get on that. But, I mean, Martin isn’t – well, you know. He’s not exactly the most fun to be around. Or useful in the fight against evil. Or, actually, useful, period. Don’t get me wrong, Martin’s great, but I think we’re gonna prioritize getting our John back before we waste more time going after Martin. Obviously, we’ll come back for him eventually, but now really isn’t the best time, right? Just, like, logistically speaking, it makes the most sense to deal with our problems one at a time.” Beside him, Georgie and Melanie were nodding. Gertrude seemed content to sit placidly in the background with a wise expression painted on her face.

Jon couldn’t believe this.

Did none of them care that their friend was being tortured by an evil apocalyptic god of emptiness?

“I don’t actually think I can express how absolutely appalling the lot of you are,” he fumed.

“Whatever.” Melanie rolled her eyes, pulling a compact out from somewhere and beginning to reapply her lipstick. “I just can’t get over the way this is all news to you. I mean, you know about Leitner’s library, so you’d think you’d at least have some idea of what’s going on, no matter how thick your skull is. Is there just not a girl gang of evil gods where you’re from?” Melanie raised an eyebrow at him. “Because I could get on board with that.”

“Of course my world doesn’t have any evil gods!” Jon snapped. An image of Prentiss’ worms nudged its way to the front of his mind and refused to leave him alone. Very reluctantly, he amended, “Well. Almost certainly not.”

“Almost certainly,” Tim echoed.

“Well, I mean, some of the statements are,” Jon flapped a hand, “a bit weird, I suppose, but nothing that can’t be explained with perfectly ordinary – ”

“Oh, no, those are definitely the gods at work,” Gertrude interrupted, a faraway look on her face. “Sorry about that spider, dear.”

Jon felt the blood rush to his face. “I don’t – I – what?”

“The sooner you accept it, the sooner we can work on finding a solution,” Gertrude went on implacably. “Your world is being menaced by seven gods who actively want to destroy it. We can help you stop that from happening, if you’d like.”

Jon opened and closed his mouth a few times.

“Also, you should know that Elias can only be killed by someone with a pure heart,” Gertrude added.

“I really, really hate this place,” whispered Jon.

John was belatedly trying to rethink whatever life choices had led him to this.

At the moment, he was hiding from Elias in Gertrude’s tunnels. They looked nothing like how he remembered them, and he’d had a hard time finding the outside entrance. It didn’t swing open when you pressed the right sequence of bricks the way he was used to. Eventually he’d noticed the false manhole, and pried it up without too much difficulty after that.

“What kind of secret entrance is this?” he’d muttered as he did so. “No sense of style. No intrigue, no pride of craftsmanship. I don’t care for this world at all. Shoddy work, that’s what it is.”

He was even less impressed with the rough tunnel that lay below. Were the walls here really just packed dirt? That was downright unsanitary.

At least he knew Elias’ evil powers wouldn’t be able to reach him here, though. John knew he had to be looking directly into your eyes in order to read your thoughts, but he hadn’t known about… whatever that was, back in the Archives. He didn’t want to find out what else the man could do.

As he wandered, he stepped on more than a few worms that reminded him uncomfortably of Prentiss. He’d forgotten to ask the others where they were at in terms of fighting the seven gods. Hopefully they’d at least have dealt with Amashilama by now, though, right?

John turned the corner and almost crashed into someone. “Whoa!” he exclaimed, doing a complicated swivel to avoid knocking some white-haired grandpa to the ground. The old man seemed just as startled as he was.

“Who are you?” they both demanded at once.

John sighed. “I’ve answered that question too many times already today, it’s someone else’s turn. You first.”

The old man tucked a thin book under his arm and pushed up his glasses. “I’m, ah.” He straightened. “I am Jurgen Leitner.”

“Oh, really?” John brightened. “That’s fantastic! I had no idea you were still alive in this universe. I’m John Simons, I’m not really meant to be here. I bet you can help, though!”

Jurgen looked wary. “Is that so?”

John nodded. “I came down here partly to get away from Elias, but mostly to meet up with Gertrude and see if she had any insights to share with me about this. God, she must be so much happier with you still around! Can you take me to her?”

Jurgen stared at him for a good ten seconds in silence.

John coughed.

“Gertrude is dead,” Jurgen said carefully.

“What? No,” John corrected, “she faked her death when Elias found out about her psychic abilities. Now she lives down here, in the tunnels. They dampen her powers enough that she can live a fairly normal life, despite how much stronger she became after taking out her eyes.”

“Wh – psychic abilities…?” Jurgen shook his head. “I’m afraid you’re either a liar, or you’ve come from a very different dimension indeed. Elias shot Gertrude three times through the heart before she had the chance to follow through with her plans. Her body’s still around here somewhere, I try not to look at it too often.”

John gaped. “Her… you mean you didn’t even bury her?” It tore at something in his chest, despite himself, to think of Gertrude – sweet, doddering, wise old Gertrude – shot to death and left to rot where she lay.

Jurgen looked surprised. “Why would I?”

“Because you loved her!” John shouted. At that, Jurgen actually laughed.

“Oh, dear me,” he wheezed eventually. “Oh, I needed that. Gertrude and I, in love. I honestly think she’d have outright killed me if she hadn’t found me so useful. Not that she’d have been wrong to, but I doubt she’d have cared either way. Love, goodness me. It was mutually advantageous to us to help keep each other alive, that’s all. I needed someplace to hide, and Gertrude needed my help to stop the Entities from ending the world.”

John couldn’t muster the words for how horrified he was. For a moment, he just looked at the hateful man before him.

Jurgen Leitner had a wispy white combover and three-day-old stubble on his chin. His shaking hands were covered in liver spots, and his eyes were wide and watery behind his glasses.

John found himself feeling less disgusted than he wanted to. The only emotion he could really muster was pity.

He spun on his heel and started marching away.

“Where are you going?” Jurgen called.

“I’m going to collect the archival staff so we can have a proper meeting,” John proclaimed. “Something is very wrong with this universe. I’ve been sent here for a reason, and I’m certainly not going to leave before I find it.”

John supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that the entrance into the Archives wasn’t the same as he remembered, but he couldn’t help feeling disappointed all over again to find that it was just a trapdoor. A trapdoor! Where was the enigma in that?

Still, he cracked it open just enough to peek into the office beyond. The door seemed to be tucked away in a corner of the Archives, but after a moment John saw Sasha walk past the narrow aisle that stretched along either side of John’s vantage point.

“Sasha!” he hissed.

The sound of her footsteps paused, then came back. Sasha’s face peeked cautiously around the corner.

“Wh – ” she started. John hushed her quickly.

“Get Martin and Tim and come quickly. We can talk in the tunnels if you can make it before Elias figures out what’s happening!”

Sasha stared at him for half a moment longer, then abruptly turned on her heel. A few seconds later, John could hear her calling, “Martin! Tim! Come here for a minute, I think I just found some kind of weird trapdoor in the floor of the shelving section!”

John was pleasantly surprised. This universe’s Sasha was a quick one. The ruse probably wouldn’t throw Elias off for long, but he had to admit, he didn’t think it would even have occurred to him to try pretending simply happening to notice the secret entrance. Very clever woman.

A few minutes later, all three assistants had dropped down to join him in the tunnels.

Tim pointed his phone’s torch uneasily down the branching corridors. “Has this place always been here?” he muttered. “Or is this just showing up because of whatever happened with Jon?”

Martin shrugged at him, and Sasha just shook her head, busy studying the way the walls of this section didn’t quite manage to touch the floor. John felt homesick all of a sudden. Gertrude always said these parts of her domain were the ones with the best airflow.

“Oh, no,” someone answered Tim, “the tunnels have been around for quite some time. Longer than the Institute, in fact.”

All four of them jumped, looking wildly to find the source of the voice. It was emanating from a pitch-black archway behind them, which had almost certainly not existed a moment ago. John frowned. He didn’t remember the tunnels doing that in his world.

Tim swerved around to point his torch directly into the tunnel, revealing Jurgen Leitner standing just beyond the threshold with a book in his hands. The old man squeaked very quietly, squinting in the light.

“Who the hell are you?” Tim demanded.

At the same time, John crowed, “Oh, so you did come after all!”

Sasha looked at John sharply. “You know this person?”

“Yes!” John grinned. “It’s Jurgen Leitner!”

Half an instant too late, he noticed Jurgen frantically motioning for him to keep quiet.

Sasha’s eyes bugged out. “Jurgen Leitner?” she gasped. “Stupid idiot mother – ”

“Oh, right,” John whispered. “I forgot he’s an arsehole in this universe.”

“ – fool, book collecting, dust-eating rat – ” Sasha was beginning to get a slightly manic gleam in her eye. John leaned over to Martin.

“Does she get like this often?”

Martin shrugged. “Not really.”

At the same time, Tim interjected, “Oh, yeah, all the time.”

Martin and John both looked at him. “Well, you know,” Tim amended. “Not that often, but when she starts going off on someone, it’s usually because they really deserve it. Anyway, it’s best to let her get it out of her system.”

John might have trusted this advice more if Tim hadn’t had a look on his face not entirely unlike Sasha’s. Then again, it wasn’t as though anyone was going to dare try interrupting Sasha before she was done.

“ – of the whore – ”

“Oh, that’s not actually one of the gods,” John corrected absentmindedly. Sasha cut herself off, and John had a moment of existential dread when he remembered what he’d just been thinking he shouldn’t do before she turned to him.

“Excuse me?” she said, voice terrifyingly even.

“Er,” John’s voice cracked. “I, ah, I thought you – thought I heard you mention the Whore? Which is commonly mistaken for being a god unto itself, but actually it falls under Lamashtu’s workings, so, ah. She – she’s the one who usually…” He trailed off.

“Hm.” Sasha looked back at Jurgen, who flinched. “We aren’t finished,” she told him, then turned back to John. “Is this, like, a popular religious belief where you come from, or…?”

“What?” John blinked at her. After a moment, he figured out what she was asking. “What?” he said again. Did they really – had no one told them –

John swivelled to glare at Jurgen, too. “Were you aware that no one told these people anything?” he demanded.

Jurgen made a noise in his throat, a bit like he was trying to speak but also trying to avoid ever breathing again.

“Unbelievable,” John growled. He turned back to the three assistants. “Right, right, right,” he mumbled, “okay, just – God, I hate giving people the talk.” He cleared his throat, feeling pained. “Er. To answer your question, no, the seven gods are not a religious belief where I come from,” he started. “They are very real.”

“Okay, but you know the two aren’t mutually exclusive, right?” Tim blurted. He looked a bit like he was reaching the end of his rope.

John squinted at him.

Tim squinted back, eyebrows tilting dangerously. “You do know that not everyone is a default atheist. Right? John?”

“Right, obviously,” John said. He didn’t quite get the point of this little diversion. Or, wait – “If you’re worrying that the existence of the seven gods contradicts the idea of one almighty creator, I can assure you the two are not at all mutually exclusive,” he offered quickly. “Actually, I personally think the existence of the seven explains quite well the need for a saviour – ”

“Oh, my God, that’s worse,” Tim muttered. “Can we go back to the default atheism? Is that an option?”

Sasha patted his shoulder sympathetically. “Tim, you’re not even religious.”

“I’m not not religious!” Tim argued. “And you’re literally Jewish! Jon’s Muslim!”

“Anyway,” Martin piped up hurriedly, “what, ah, what do these ‘seven gods’ have to do with us, John? Or, uh, the… Wh – that thing you said Sasha said? Is this something we should be, I don’t know, worried about? I mean, like, on a, a non-theological level?”

John sighed. “I’m afraid I have to say yes,” he said apologetically. “I wish I could tell you the gods are limited strictly to my universe, but given the prevalence of worms I’ve encountered just walking through the tunnels to get back here, I’d say the seven gods have more to do with this world than anyone would like.”

“Oh!” Martin said, voice pitching up and over Sasha and Tim’s similar dismay. “Oh, alright then! I, I actually hate literally everything that just came out of your mouth! Wow!”

“Believe me, Martin, so do I,” John told him gravely.

“Okay,” Sasha cut in. Her fingers were twitching at her side. Tim quietly reached into his pocket and handed her a tiny notebook and the nub of a pencil, which she immediately used to begin scribbling notes. “Okay, John, tell us more about these ‘seven gods.’”

John shot Jurgen a nasty look, but he just seemed vaguely intrigued, motioning for him to take the lead. Grudgingly, John obliged.

“In the beginning,” he started, ignoring Tim’s quiet groan, “the world was pure. Mankind lived in harmony with the cosmos, and there was no guilt, no suffering, no fear. Then came the Great Cataclysm. No one knows exactly how it came about, and so no one can say how it may be reversed, if such a thing is possible at all. All we know is that it caused the birth, or perhaps simply allowed the entry, of seven gods of chaos. Six are goddesses of demonic perversion: Amashilama, the Decayed Beauty; Asag, the Woman Scorned; Lamashtu, the Foreign Predator-Seductress; Isimud, the Scheming Deceiver; and Imdugud, the Bitter Crone.” John looked at Sasha questioningly when she made a choking sound.

“No, no, better let him finish now,” Tim murmured to her without turning his head. He had a bit of a glazed look in his eyes. John supposed he was enraptured by the story. His expression looked more like revulsion than genuine interest, but John wasn’t sure why he would be upset. John hadn’t even gotten to the apocalyptic part yet.

Sasha opened and closed her mouth, pressed her lips together, made a sound like a boiling teakettle, and resumed her note-taking. John shifted his inquiring look to Martin. Martin never had an answer for him in this kind of situation, but he was usually good for a commiserating shrug.

“It’s the misogyny,” this world’s Martin informed him in a disconcertingly cool tone.

“O-oh.” John pulled back. “O…kay?” He really didn’t know what to do with that. Was he supposed to apologize? What did Martin even mean, “misogyny”? How could him just explaining the gods be seen as misogynistic? It wasn’t his fault they were trying to end the world.

Jurgen interrupted his worrying. “Carry on, please, this is truly fascinating,” he requested, an odd glint in his eyes. John glowered at the others for a moment more before he obeyed.

“Right. So, the six goddesses, and then there’s one god: Beletseri, king of all that is forbidden to know, keeper and teller of secrets and seer of all we’d like to keep hidden. He tends to keep more to himself than the others, typically seen as less of a threat by gods and mortals alike. See, all seven gods are in eternal competition with each other, trying to end the world and establish their wicked domains. Human history is one long, secret story of the fight against these gods. Many have tried to appease them with evil sacrifices, or even given themselves up to one of the gods so that if that god should win the war, they might be spared, but I’m not content to maintain the status quo or take the doomed coward’s route of compromise.” John puffed out his chest. “I intend to find a way to destroy every one of these so-called gods, once and for all ensuring the eternal safety and happiness of mankind.”

“Wow,” Tim said, entirely inflectionless.

“How’s that been going so far?” Sasha inquired.

“…Well.” John shifted. “We’ve really only just gotten started, so… But we have managed to imprison one! Amashilama, currently walking the earth under the guise of Jane Prentiss. Or rather, previously walking the earth. We burned what was left of the host body and trapped the goddess in a coffin sealed up with runes.”

“Er. Okay,” Martin hedged. For some reason, he looked incredibly tired. “And when you say you sealed her up, you mean…?”

“Well, obviously it can’t be opened from the inside.” John rolled his eyes. “We also wrapped it in some pretty sturdy chains and scratched ‘do not open’ into the lid, just in case someone not in the know should ever happen across it.”

“Wait, that sounds like – ” Tim started.

“The Coffin,” Jurgen interrupted. His expression had turned suddenly dark when John mentioned it. “Yes, quite. John, I think I’ll take it from here, if you don’t mind.”

“About time,” John grumbled.

Jurgen proceeded to completely contradict everything John had just said.

“How can the ‘Stranger’ and the ‘Spiral’ be two completely separate gods?” John complained. “That doesn’t even make sense! They’re essentially the same thing – ”

Jurgen massaged his temples. “Entities, not gods,” he corrected for the umpteenth time. John still didn’t see the difference. “And no, they are not ‘the same thing,’ but you do have a point about overlaps. We’ll get to that in a moment.”

It took significantly longer than a moment, but eventually Jurgen did finish summarizing his bizarre categorization of fourteen unintelligible forces that were absolutely not gods, despite sounding exactly like gods to John, complete with diabolical rituals enacted in their worship. Once he was done describing them, though, Jurgen finally started saying something interesting.

“But ultimately, these divisions are the same as any human category,” Jurgen remarked. “Useful, oftentimes, and accurate as far as they go, but not ultimately real in themselves.”

Sasha’s brow was furrowed, and John was expecting her pencil to start smoking at any second, but the rest of them were lost. Jurgen looked at their blank faces and sighed. “Imagine it like this,” he started. “Compared to the Entities, we are all just… ants, working away in an anthill, going about our business and never considering the existence of monsters beyond our comprehension. Such monsters do exist, though, and one day, a huge fingernail appears, crushing hundreds of your fellows at once and collapsing the walls around you. You flee from this awful monster, but at the next exit is a great, staring eye blocking you from leaving and observing your every move. You look up in horror, only to witness an enormous shadow: a boot falling down to crush your whole world. Without any way of comprehending the one single creature that inflicted all of these different horrors upon you, how would you name what had killed your mother and sisters and friends? All these vastly different catastrophes are brought about by the same being, but it is too different from anything we have encountered for us to ascribe to it any meaningful word. So, instead, we divide it into the parts that we can recognize, and name and hate each of them individually. And yet, in the end, the parts still all belong to each other whether we comprehend it or not, and it is only one creature that works carelessly to demolish all that we have ever known and loved.”

“Wow,” John said finally, since everyone else seemed too distressed to speak. “That’s dark.”

“Yes, I suppose it is a bit,” Jurgen replied dryly. “…Only about one-fourteenth of the time, though.”

Martin snorted, despite himself. “Sorry,” he said hastily when everyone looked at him. “Just. I thought it was a bit funny, at least.”

“Martin, if we survive to the end of the week I am going to show you what a sense of humour looks like or die trying,” Tim told him, clapping him on the back. Martin rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling a bit.

“Right,” Sasha said, finally looking up from her notebook. “So how do we beat them?”

Jurgen made a face. “I’m afraid the best we can do is damage control,” he said apologetically. “Shortly before her death, Gertrude realized that none of their rituals will ever succeed on their own, so you won’t need to make the kinds of sacrifices she made in stopping them. Unfortunately, that does not mean there aren’t those who will continue to actively serve them, wreaking destruction in the name of their own power.”

“Like Elias,” John put in. Jurgen nodded at him. “Which is why we have to kill him.”

“What?” Martin squeaked.

“I’m afraid it isn’t as simple as that,” Jurgen said at the same time. He turned to the others. “Have you realized yet that you cannot quit?”

Sasha’s eyes widened, and Martin made an ‘oh’ of understanding.

“Excuse me?” Tim demanded. John was glad he wasn’t the only one feeling confused.

Jurgen rubbed the spine of his book nervously. “I’m afraid so. When you take a job in the Archives, you become tied to them, and through them to the Eye. Elias is the lynchpin of that bond, and if you were to kill him before severing it – it would be a bit like tearing a tea bag while it’s steeping. Instead of a gradual diffusion of the tea’s essential flavour until the water has been uniformly transformed, the whole mixture is immediately overwhelmed and destroyed beyond repair.”

“Okay,” Sasha said slowly. “So Elias is an old teabag, and we can tear him in half, but only once we’ve gotten ourselves safely away from the tea leaves, i.e., the Eye?”

“Correct,” Jurgen nodded.

“But we can’t quit,” Martin pointed out.

“Well, strictly speaking, that isn’t quite true,” Jurgen corrected. He was blinking nervously again. “You can sever your connection to the Eye. You just need to, erm. Sever your connection to… your eyes.”

There was a moment of absolute silence.

“This is a load of garbage,” John declared at last. He scowled at Jurgen. The old man obviously couldn’t be trusted for anything. “Yes, the Archivist is bound to Elias, heart, body, mind and soul, but that doesn’t keep him or her from quitting.” Tim made another growling noise, but Sasha hushed him. “It just means that Elias has the power to control the Archivist’s mind from time to time. And even that isn’t absolute, I’ve resisted it perfectly well before. No, the only problem is that Elias is basically immortal, and can only be killed by a blade in the hand of one who is pure of heart.”

“I genuinely can’t tell if I desperately want to live where he’s from, or if I’d rather die than step foot there,” Tim told Sasha, who nodded feelingly.

“Fortunately,” John added with relish, “Gertrude – who, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned, is alive and psychic in my world, and much nicer than this embarrassment of a man,” he gestured at Jurgen, “Gertrude has assured me that I am pure of heart, so I can take care of this for you. I’ll just kill your Elias before he does anything awful and then be on my way home.”

“Once again, I have a problem with at least seven of the things you just said,” Sasha sighed.

“I’ll tell you this, though, I’d kill to have your confidence,” Tim told him.

John preened.

Jon was just about ready to scream.

“For the last time,” he gritted, “you are not using my blood in your blasted ritual.”

“Nobody said you had to agree,” Tim told him darkly.

“Tim,” Georgie reprimanded. Then, “Give him some time to get used to the idea.”

Jon threw up his hands. “I’m not going to change my mind! I don’t know why you even think another idiotic, clichéd magic trick is any more likely to work than the last one.”

“I mean, the last one definitely did something,” Melanie pointed out. She was perched on a rock shelf that stood just beside the thin, colourful blanket atop which Gertrude sat. “Maybe not what we expected, but we probably should have asked Gertrude before trying that spell in the first place. Anyway, look. Sure, it’s a big ask, but the alternative is being stuck here with us. And there’s only a 92% chance you’ll die during the sacrifice! We’ve played worse odds before, right?” She looked at the others, who nodded supportively. “Risks are a part of living! Don’t you want to go home?”

“You – I don’t – do you even hear yourself – ” Jon couldn’t believe these people. “No, that’s it,” he decided. He turned sharply on his heel and walked out of Gertrude’s alcove.

“Where are you going?” Georgie called after him.

“Away from here!” Jon sniped back, and stomped away up the tunnel he was pretty sure they’d taken to get here.

He made it out without issue, which he wanted to think was the result of a number of lucky guesses, but he felt a sneaking suspicion that Gertrude had had something to do with it.

Whatever. He was away from the lot of them, it didn’t matter how. Perhaps now he could get some actual research done.

He made for the library. The Institute layout was entirely different from what he was used to, but it was at least well-signed, so he found it without too much trouble.

Using the library was another matter altogether.

Like the “office” downstairs, it was an open-concept room, with shelves that lined the walls from floor to ceiling. It had a golden chandelier in the middle of the ceiling, and a balcony halfway up the wall that gave easy access to still more bookshelves. A gilded spiral staircase curved down in one quadrant of the room, and beside it stood an empty desk, presumably where a member of the library staff would sit during working hours. Jon had yet to see a window, but he assumed based on the unlit hallways and empty rooms he’d seen on his way here that it was after closing time.

In short, the library was beautiful. Jon might even call it idyllic. It was also utterly impractical. None of the shelves or the books had labels, and they didn’t seem to be organized according to any system Jon recognized. It was an absolutely atrocious use of floor space, and half of the books weren’t accessible at all unless one climbed right up on the shelves.

Admittedly, that was partly a problem because Jon himself was not the tallest person in the world, but his point stood.

Still, it wasn’t as though Jon had many options, so he drew himself up and began prowling through the stacks.

Partway through his search he found a small reading desk tucked away in a corner of the balcony, so he dumped his collected books there and returned once he was satisfied he’d gathered everything he could find. All told, Jon had twenty or so tomes on quantum theory, multidimensional interactions, doppelgängers, and, reluctantly, magic spells. Improbable as it was, his companions seemed convinced that magic was both the cause and the solution for their current situation, so Jon supposed he ought to at least know what they were talking about. One didn’t have to believe in something to learn about it, after all.

He paged through book after book, vaguely conscious of the fact that it must be getting quite late, but preoccupied with the growing desperation to find something, anything, that might help him understand what had happened. Nothing. Book after book told him nothing that could possibly help, or even relate at all to whatever force brought him here. Wherever ‘here’ was. There didn’t seem to be any previous instances of this kind of crossover, not even in folklore. Jon put his head down on the desk, growling in frustration.

“None of this makes any sense,” he muttered.

As he spoke, a faint creaking sound echoed behind him. It sounded like a door opening, if a door were made of static, or of wood that hated you.

Jon sat up sharply and twisted in his chair. Behind him, stepping out of an unassuming yellow door that hadn’t existed a moment before – surely it hadn’t? surely Jon would have noticed – there was a person.

At least, Jon thought it was a person.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

They laughed. “Oh, Archivist,” they chuckled, voice warped and twisting. “No matter the universe, you’re always the same, aren’t you?”

As they spoke, their face changed. Originally it had been pale, with wide blue eyes and incomprehensibly long, curling blond hair. Now it had a longer nose and a whiter smile, brown hair blown out and streaked with artificial gold highlights. Jon didn’t notice it changing until it had happened, and then he couldn’t quite remember if the face had ever changed at all.

“How – ” Jon tried to concentrate. “Do you know me?”

“Mm…” The person – the creature – the being looked at him consideringly. “That depends on what you mean by ‘know.’”

Jon was getting a headache. “You called me ‘Archivist.’ Why?”

“That is your name.”

Jon scowled. “No, that’s a title. My name is Jon.”

“Quite right,” the being agreed. “Or is it John?”

“No, it’s definitely Jon.”

“Is there a difference, Archivist?” The creature laughed again, and the room seemed to change shape, growing larger and smaller in turns. Jon gritted his teeth and held tight to the back of his chair.

“What’s your name?” he demanded, raising his voice to be heard over the rising static.

“What a fascinating question,” they mused. They were blond and long and blue-eyed and strikingly, horribly young. “Here they call me Michael,” they offered, laughing again, and their laugh changed. Their eyes were bright and their nose was long and hooked, and their hair and skin and teeth were all carefully tended to be as young and pretty and professional as possible. “I have other names, but I don’t think I should tell them to you yet,” they added.

“Alright, well.” Jon was feeling very off-balance now, on quite a literal level, as the floor seemed to be moving smoothly away from him underneath his chair. “What are your pronouns, then?”

Again with that awful laugh, which seemed to make everything that much less real each time it rang out through the room. Was it still a room? “Oh, you truly do not belong here, Archivist,” Michael said, but they smiled at him with that too-white, crooked-toothed grin. “Here they call me ‘it,’ which is as true and untrue as any name can be. I am he and she and ze and fae and vey and they and we, Archivist, all and none and each in turn. Any name will do.”

“Well, that was very poetic,” Jon muttered. “Can you make the room quiet down a bit, please?”

Michael grinned at him again, extending a hand that seemed far too long. “Certainly. Just come right this way, and it’ll all settle back to normal,” she coaxed. Jon took zir hand absently and let zir lead him through the yellow door.

On the desk, the tape recorder whirred away, forgotten.

It did not, in fact, all settle back to normal once Jon had crossed the threshold out of reality. Jon did realize exactly how stupid the move he’d just made was, but unfortunately not until after the door swung shut behind them and promptly ceased to exist.

“This is decidedly worse,” Jon announced, snatching his hand back from Michael with a scowl.

“The library is back to normal,” Michael assured him. “And really, this is normal, too. For my hallways. I haven’t lied to you, Archivist.”

“Mm.” Jon eyed ver irritably.

Michael sighed. “This is for your own good, really,” fae said. “You would have opened a very cursed book if I hadn’t interrupted, you know. I doubt you’d have lived to see morning.”

“…Oh.” That did sound plausible, and he supposed he should have been more careful around books with titles like “Blood Magick And Its Conʃequenʃes,” but he wasn’t sure Michael was any better. “Why did you stop it?”

“Because I want to be friends,” Michael said brightly.

Jon raised his eyebrows. “Are you going to let me go, then?”

Michael looked at his skirt. “Not dressed like that, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, not you too,” Jon snapped. He was aware that losing one’s temper was bad praxis when it came to irrational and possibly-interdimensional beings, but he was just about at the end of his patience. As a last-minute concession to his mortality, he tipped his head upwards, addressing his fury to a semiexistent ceiling rather than Michael themself. “Is anyone in this universe familiar with the concept of basic diversity? Because I am getting very tired of being everyone’s punchline!”

Michael laughed, which was much worse when it happened in her corridors. “Oh, I assure you, I am very well-acquainted with the concept,” he chuckled. “Indeed, you might say I am the embodiment of a cautionary tale.” Xe spread hir arms, and they stretched to the ends of the endless hall. Jon suddenly realized they’d been walking this whole time, and it had been long enough that his feet were starting to blister.

“I am the throat of delusion incarnate,” Michael sang, and dropped their hands to their side. “And in this world, that means I can remain, even as I am. I am a monster, Archivist, and so I may exist. For the time being, at least, I live, and feed on the fear and revulsion they feel at the sight of me.” She tucked her brown hair behind her ear, and for a moment faer face shattered into a wail of grief.

Michael smiled again, pale face genial and composed. He was wearing a skirt like Jon’s. Had ze always been dressed that way?

“I am already their enemy, so I do not yet need to be killed,” Michael concluded. “You, on the other hand, are not a monster, Archivist. Not yet. And so, for as long as you walk among them as yourself, your every step will work to be your last. The cursed book that would have read you was neither a trap nor an accident. In this world, Jonathan Sims, you will find no safe haven. Here, your very humanity is a threat to those that call themselves human, and not they but the world itself conspires to render us monstrous or dead.” Vaer face was suddenly frighteningly intense. “Do you understand?”

Jon really wasn’t sure if he did.

“Are you trying to tell me,” he started slowly, bracing himself for that horrible laugh, “that the alternate universe I was kidnapped into is… what, inherently transphobic?”

Michael’s face lit up. “Precisely,” fae said.

Of course it was. Jon buried his face in his hands. “That figures.”

“You can be bait or you can be buried,” Michael hummed to zirself, “the apples don’t fall from the tree, after all. Fruit is plucked. Fruit goes in the fridge. All the little branches are bundled into fuel for the flame.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying,” Jon told them.

Michael just chuckled, and Jon checked his ears to see if they were bleeding. When he looked up again, he was alone, and there was a door in front of him.

Jon was more than a bit trepidatious about what might lie on the other side, but he reached for the handle anyway. He froze in place, arm outstretched, when he caught sight of his sleeve. Jon’s clothes had been completely replaced, his favourite lacy green top now a red flannel button-up, and his ankle-length skirt a pair of dirty blue jeans. He reached up to check his hair, and found it neatly tucked away under what was apparently a worn-out baseball cap. Even his shoes had been changed into a pair of workboots.

Jon hated this world so much.

“Give me back my clothes,” he demanded. There was no response. “I’m not leaving until you give them back,” he added mutinously.

“You won’t last more than a day out there, looking like you did,” Michael said. She was standing just behind him, something unreadable on vaer face.

“I don’t care,” Jon said stubbornly.

“Are you really willing to risk the price they will try to make you pay?” Michael pressed.

Jon pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is it really any different from the price I’ve risked paying every time I leave my house back home? I’m sure they’ll kill me eventually,” he added, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll let them do it without a fight.”

For the first time, Michael’s smile seemed almost genuine, crooked and small and perfect-toothed. “I knew I liked you, Archivist.” Without looking, Jon knew his outfit was his own again. “Let me know if you ever need a door.”

Jon nodded and turned the handle, stepping back out into the library, which stood just the same as he’d left it. The door swung shut behind him.

Jon really needed a nap.

Instead, Jon started looking into the goddess Imdugud.

If the fabric of this reality was really as hostile as Michael had implied – and, at this point, Jon was halfway to believing it even without the assurance of a walking allegory for bad pangender representation – then he doubted he would find any way home that didn’t entail near-certain death.

Worryingly, Jon was much more accepting of that than he felt he should have been. If there was something in his own Magnus Institute that left him wanting to look over his shoulder and keep up his guard, he was starting to realize there was something in the air of this one that made him feel… resigned. Like his own fate was no worse and no less inevitable than the setting of the sun.

Jon hated it, but he was too tired to try making himself feel something he didn’t. So be it, then.

If he couldn’t fight against his own fate, he could at the very least fight against Martin’s.

“Why is it,” he muttered, pulling down from the shelf another book illustrated with tiny, stylized shipwrecks, “that whenever something goes wrong, it always seems to happen to him? A completely different universe, and he’s still the one getting kidnapped by, by evil gods, apparently. Absolutely ridiculous.”

It wasn’t like Martin even did anything to deserve it. He wasn’t like Jon, always chasing the thread of his own curiosity. He wasn’t even… he wasn’t even unkind, just the opposite really, and if there was any justice in any universe then surely that kindness ought to protect him, if it did anything. Instead he seemed to attract trouble, to the point where Jon spent whole days worrying about him when he could have been doing much more productive things with his time.

And really, Jon wouldn’t have been wasting time on the matter at all – it wasn’t even his Martin – except that no one else seemed remotely inclined to care. Jon didn’t know anything about his counterpart, and if this world’s platoon of buffoons even managed to succeed in somehow bringing him back, it was perfectly possible that he wouldn’t bother to try and save Martin again, either. If he was anything like everyone else here, it seemed distressingly likely that they would all just… forget.

If Martin was to be saved, Jon had a nasty feeling that he would have to be the one to do it.

Jon dropped the load of books back at his overflowing desk, absent-mindedly shoved the tape recorder back in his pocket, and (with significantly more care than before Michael had warned him off cursed books) he once again began to read.

After a few hours, he had a tentatively reliable solution. It was, predictably, absurd. Jon hoped that meant it would work.

He had found a conveniently-placed stretch of blank wall on the lower floor of the library, and was now finishing up finger-painting the runes depicted in “Imdugud’s Many Realms, vol. XIV: The World of Fog and Loneliness.” Jon was fairly certain that was the correct realm, given the inscription scrawled in ancient, spidery handwriting that warned it had been “lately claimed by that most wicked family, which names itself, Lukas.”

He was feeling a bit lightheaded by the time he was done. Apparently every single rune needed to be painted in the spellcaster’s blood. The runes had to be at least as tall as an average doorway, which meant Jon was sacrificing a great deal of plasma for this. Really, Jon didn’t understand the preoccupation everyone in this universe seemed to have with blood spells. It just seemed like a good way to spread disease, and if he remembered correctly, he thought that would be a bit in the vein of the ever-so-evil Amashilama.

Well, Jon didn’t make the rules here.

As he finished the last few lines, Melanie came bursting through the library door. “There you are,” she exclaimed, and shouted over her shoulder, “Guys, I found him!” Turning back to Jon, she demanded, “Where have you been? Were you holed away in here the whole time?”

Jon shrugged absently. “More or less, yes.” He glanced back at her, realizing he should probably have written a note or something so they all knew where he’d gone. Oh, well, Melanie was here now, so he could just tell her. No harm done. “I’m off to retrieve your Martin. Don’t mess with the portal, please. It should stay open for an hour. If I’m not back by then, assume I’m also trapped in the Lonely and respond accordingly.” Jon really wasn’t sure if that would translate to ‘come get us both,’ but he was hoping as much. He imagined it would probably be difficult to retrieve their Jon from an alternate dimension without some kind of touchpoint. Right?

Well, too late to worry about it now. As Melanie’s eyes widened, Jon followed the final instructions in the spellbook, slamming his bloody hand directly in the middle of the design. With a blast of icy air and a light the colour of the moon through a thick ocean fog, Jon fell forward through the wall and entered Imdugud’s Lonely.

He supposed, as visions of hell went, it wasn’t too awful, really. No cacophony of screams or splatters of blood. The low moans, just a touch too human for him to be sure they were the wind, were certainly unsettling, but on the other hand, the fog was thick enough that he couldn’t be absolutely certain the writhing shadows that flickered in and out of view weren’t just oddly shaped trees. Very oddly shaped, very mobile trees, flailing about like that despite the oppressive stillness of the air. Jon reminded himself that it could very well have been windy wherever he wasn’t.

Well, he had an hour, so he supposed he’d best get moving. Jon reached into his skirt pocket and pulled out the enchanted map he’d found stuck in the back of the rune book. Clearing his throat, he followed the instructions written on the back to enunciate: “‘Show me that unwitting worshipper I seek,’ er, Martin Blackwood, ‘that in the name of Imdugud I may bring him greater woe.’” Jon wasn’t entirely sure what would happen when he didn’t follow through on the promise of “greater woe,” but he was hoping to get them both to safety before he was noticed, anyway.

A tiny icon labelled “Martin K. Blackwood” appeared on the piece of parchment, along with some squiggles in the corners that looked vaguely like clouds. When Jon took a step forward, the whole map shifted to put Martin’s location further to the left, and at the same time a tiny curlicued arrow shimmered into being, pointing directly forward relative to Jon. Jon assumed that meant he was going the wrong way, and since he didn’t want to spend an hour walking perpendicular to Martin, he adjusted his course until the arrow was pointing roughly towards Martin’s name.

Based on the gradually increasing sense of urgency that accompanied Jon’s persistent awareness of the portal’s location, it took a good forty minutes or so to reach this world’s Martin. Jon hoped he’d be able to bring the portal to them the way the instructional book had implied, because otherwise he was beginning to get worried about making it back.

Finally, the arrow on Jon’s map overlaid Martin’s icon exactly, and he stopped to look around.

As far as he could tell, there was no Martin here, either. In fact, everything looked exactly the same as it had where he’d started out.

Jon growled in frustration. “Martin?” he called. “Martin, can you hear me?” He glared down at the map. “Martin!”

“He won’t answer.” A soft voice came from behind him, and Jon whirled around to see what looked like a young woman, with long, straight black hair, piercing blue eyes and impossibly pale white skin.

“Who are you?” Jon demanded.

Somehow, the teeth in that smile looked sharp. “I am Petra Lukas, daughter and inheritor of the Lukas family line.” She looked him up and down, and Jon felt the already-freezing temperature drop. “And you are?”

“I am the Archivist,” Jon said impulsively. The title seemed to have meant something to Michael. He could only hope it would help him here.

Petra Lukas laughed, a pretty, tinkling thing, like icicles breaking. “Are you, now?” She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “What happened to the other one?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Jon bristled. “I’m here instead.”

“So you are.” Petra sighed. Slowly and deliberately, she took a step closer with a twist of her hips. “My, my, you’ve come where you’re not wanted, haven’t you, little one?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be leaving again just as soon as I have Martin,” Jon snapped back.

“And what, exactly” – Petra stepped forward again – “makes you think he’ll want to go with you?”

Jon blinked at her, then looked around. “I assume you mean besides the obvious.”

She smirked again. “Oh, Archivist, I wouldn’t be so sure.”

Jon only had ten or so minutes left before the portal closed. Irritably, he retorted, “Regardless, I would prefer to hear his preferences on the matter directly from Martin himself. If you don’t mind?”

She studied him for a moment. “You genuinely care about him, don’t you?” she mused. “Odd. I’d have thought I would’ve at least heard of you, if you were part of that little gang of renegades long enough to replace their Archivist. Very well, though, I’ll let you see him.” Petra grinned. “Or at least, whatever’s left.”

Jon’s heart dropped at that, but he didn’t have long to think about it. Petra stepped smoothly to the side, and behind her the fog cleared just enough for Jon to make out a shape. Tall, bulky, pale and curly-haired, a human figure knelt, back bent and hands pressed against the ground.

“Martin,” Jon breathed. He ran forward. “Martin, come on, we’re getting out of – ”

He stopped, because he’d been prepared for a different Martin, but he hadn’t been ready for this.

Martin had slowly raised his head at the sound of his name. He looked exactly the same as the Martin Jon knew, except that his face was lax, empty of the constant nervous smile and careful kindness that Martin always worked so hard to keep up. Worse, though, far worse, were his eyes.

They were gone.

Or perhaps they were still there, somewhere underneath, but Jon couldn’t see them if they were. All he could see were the twin blank sheets of ice that filled and spilled over from Martin’s sockets.

“What did you do to him?” Jon demanded, falling to the ground beside Martin and grabbing his shoulder. No sooner had he touched it than Jon hissed and pulled back his hand. Martin’s arm was cold, closer to the temperature of bare iron in the dead of winter than any human flesh.

It didn’t matter. Jon braced himself and reached out again. This time, he hung on.

“Martin?” he repeated. “Martin, can you hear me?”

Achingly, glacially slowly, Martin turned his head towards Jon’s voice, but said nothing. Jon looked back at Petra Lukas, fury boiling in his veins. “What,” he asked again, lowly, “did you do?”

“Oh, I barely did anything,” Petra said carelessly, examining her manicured nails. “Actually, I was aiming for your predecessor. This one just got in the way of my shattering blade. Really, what you’re seeing in our dearest Martin is merely the natural consequence of loving something that can never love you back.”

“Right.” Jon didn’t have time for this. He hoisted Martin’s arm around his shoulder and started to stand up.

“I’m sorry, did I not make myself clear?” Petra still spoke in the same careless tone, but there was something more dangerous in it now. “Martin isn’t leaving. Neither are you, for that matter.”

Jon gritted his teeth and stood, grunting as Martin’s full weight leaned against his left side. Good lord, the man was nearly twice his size. And so damn cold. Jon hissed again as the tape recorder tucked in his left pocket dug into his leg, the metal of its casing rapidly becoming too cold to bear with only a thin layer of fabric between it and his skin. He dug into his pocket awkwardly until he managed to pull it out and transfer it to his right hand.

“Really, Archivist, why don’t you – ” Petra was saying, before she cut herself off with a gasp. Jon looked up sharply to see what could possibly have scared her, but her eyes were fixed firmly on the still-running tape recorder Jon now held in his hand.

“What – ” Jon started. Petra made a sharp motion with one arm.

“Don’t, Archivist,” she ordered, voice pitched up an octave. “Don’t even think about asking your questions here.” She shook her head minutely, still staring at the recorder. “I thought those had all been destroyed,” she whispered, apparently to herself. “Elias promised me he had destroyed them.”

“O…kay,” Jon said slowly. “Well, I won’t ask any questions if you just let us leave.”

“Yes, fine. Get out.” Petra made a shooing motion. “Now!”

Jon decided not to doubt his luck just then, and focused on bringing the portal over. It wasn’t hard to fix his mind on it, given how loud the link was becoming as the one-hour mark drew near. “Let the door that stands open draw near,” he recited hurriedly.

For half a moment, nothing happened. Jon was about to panic when a golden fissure broke through the fog beside them.

“Oh, good,” he huffed. “Ms. Lukas, meeting you was, uh… I very much hope never to see you again.”

“Likewise, I’m sure,” Petra said dryly, still with a hint of anxiety in her tone. With that, Jon hefted Martin’s unresponsive body and stumbled, breathing heavily, back through the entrance.

An instant later, the fissure’s light flickered out. The door closed behind them.

“Okay, so based on what you’ve told us, it sounds like it at least couldn’t hurt for you to explain some of the things you’ve mentioned happening in your timeline,” Sasha said finally.

“I would really rather just kill Elias for you. It would solve a lot of different issues at once,” John offered once again.

“Not happening,” Sasha repeated. “Let’s start with how I died.”

“Oh!” John straightened from where he’d been leaning against the tunnel wall. “Did I not explain that? Sorry!” He cleared his throat. “Right, so essentially, Elias sacrificed you on an altar to Isimud kept in Artefact Storage, allowing him to replace you with a changeling.”

“We don’t have any altars in Artefact Storage, though,” Sasha interjected.

“Based on everything this guy’s told us so far, I would just steer clear of anything that looks vaguely like a table,” Tim mused. “Maybe furniture in general. Candlesticks. Actually, Sasha, how about you don’t go into Artefact Storage ever again, just in case?”

Sasha nodded, making another note, and John went on. “None of us… er, none of us actually remember what you looked like. All we know is what the changeling made us think you were. Tim took it especially hard, obviously. Actually, we almost managed to kill Isimud a little while ago, except Tim lost his head out of grief and attacked too soon. He was also the one who wound up having to slit the copy’s throat, which I’m sure didn’t help matters.”

The tunnels echoed with the sound of distant water dripping.

“Okay!” Martin squeaked, clapping his hands together. “Let’s all just, er, avoid Artefact Storage, then? That way we can make sure none of that happens here, yeah?”

“Unless it already has,” John pointed out.

Tim and Sasha both froze.

“Excuse me, what?” Martin spluttered.

“I mean, it’s not like any of you would know,” John reminded them.

“I think I’d have noticed if I were secretly a changeling!” Sasha exclaimed. “I mean – I would have, right?”

“There’s an easy enough way to tell,” Jurgen offered. He looked pathetically happy be sharing something positive for a change. “The NotThem cannot alter certain types of recording – mostly polaroids these days, and, as it happens, tape recorders. If you have any of those, we can use them to compare your current voice and appearance to what it used to be. I really wouldn’t worry about it too much, though,” he added. “Generally anyone close to the NotThem will have a creeping feeling of wrongness, even if they can’t put their finger on its cause – otherwise, how would it feed? – and between you three being acolytes of the Eye and my own experiences in such matters, I very much doubt there could be a NotThem among us without us having noticed.”

Sasha still looked uneasy. “Still. I want to make sure. Tim, remember when you came to fetch that tape recorder back when we were still trying to figure out a system that would take the… you know, the ‘spooky’ statements? You turned it on while we were talking to make sure it worked, right?” Tim nodded, so she went on, “Do you remember where you put the tape before you gave it to Jon?”

“Uh…” Tim squinted. “I think I just tossed it into a drawer in my desk.”

“Great, let’s go get it,” Sasha said briskly.

“But Elias – ” John started.

Sasha whirled. “It won’t! take! long!” she ground out through a brilliantly tight smile.

“Sasha, I really think you’d know, at least, if you weren’t – ” Martin started tentatively.

“Great! I’m glad we’re in agreement,” she said loudly. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll come, too.” Tim hurried to follow as she stalked back towards the trapdoor.

Martin glanced between John and Jurgen. “Wait for me!” he called quickly, and dashed after them.

John looked at the old man and shrugged. Together, they shuffled over to wait for the others beside the trapdoor.

A good ten minutes passed in silence.

Finally, John stood up. “Something’s gone wrong,” he announced.

Jurgen glanced at him. “Oh, probably,” he agreed, and went back to the battered-but-apparently-ordinary copy of Agatha Christie’s “The Clocks,” which he’d pulled out of his pocket as soon as the trapdoor closed behind Martin.

John glared. “Don’t you care that something terrible might be happening to those civilians as we speak?”

Jurgen snapped his book shut with a sigh. “Either Elias will kill them, or they’ll come back eventually,” he stated. “There’s nothing I can do about it either way, so what use is there in my caring?”

“You could go after them,” John growled. “Try to help, for once in your miserable life.”

“Yes, that does seem like an excellent way to get myself killed,” Jurgen said mildly. “You can go, if you like, but I’ll be staying right here. A miserable life is better than none.”

John narrowly restrained himself from doing something rash. Instead, he turned on his heel to march up the rough stairs to the door. He took half a heartbeat to prepare himself before he flung the door open and hurtled into the Archives, settling into a fighting stance before looking to see where everyone was.

He was, of course, still in the back of a narrow aisle, which meant he really couldn’t see anything at all.

He felt a bit stupid, now.

No matter; John hurried to the end of the shelving unit, peeking carefully around the corner before making his way into the main section of the Archives.

Sasha had a tape recorder in her hand, which John assumed meant they’d found the tape, and Tim wasn’t attacking her so he assumed it was good news. That, however, was not his primary focus just at the moment.

Michael was in the Archives.

“…because really, at its heart,” it was saying, “this universe is predicated on the notion that all creatures are but fodder for the gods of infinite suffering to feast on in ways we cannot hope to comprehend.”

Tim had his fists clenched, but Sasha’s pencil was still poised over her notebook, and all three of them were just… standing there, watching Michael speak.

John was horrified. They’d certainly been quick enough to attack him, so surely they weren’t completely unaware of the danger intruders could pose. Did Michael have them in some kind of trance?

John would have to be careful about this.

He crept closer, ducking from shelving unit to shelving unit as he approached to avoid being spotted by the awful distortion of a person.

“And yet,” Michael continued to muse, “would you believe that this world, for all its cruelty, is still so much more wholesome than the one your Archivist is in now?”

“So what’s that supposed to mean, though?” Martin demanded, voice pitched up.

“Don’t listen to it, Martin,” John commanded. He stepped forward, revealing himself and making eye contact with the thing that flickered in and out of really having eyes. “It Lies. Michael is merely another servant of Isimud.”

Tim shifted to position himself a bit more between Sasha and Michael. Sasha noticed, and sighed. “Spiral, Stranger and Web are all completely different in our world, we just went over this, Tim,” she reminded, nudging him back to where he’d been standing. “Though I am interested to hear that you recognize…him? from your world, John.”

“It,” John corrected with a sneer. “This thing is most definitely not a person.”

“Mm,” Michael tilted its head, and tilted, and tilted, until the room was upside-down. “You’re right about that, in this universe, at least. But not for the reasons you think.” It smiled, and John quickly looked away.

“John, glad to see you’ve decided to – ” Elias’ voice sounded from the stairwell. The man froze in his tracks when he caught sight of Michael. “ – rejoin us,” he finished after a moment. He almost managed to maintain the same smug tone as before. He was too late to hide the alarm that flickered in his eyes, though.

Michael had seen it, too. “Why, Elias,” Michael purred. “Did I take you by surprise? Surely you must have seen me, down here in your very own Archives. Unless – but surely not. Could the Spiral really be so much more powerful than the Eye? Just how strong are you these days, Elias…?”

“What delicious nonsense,” Elias replied archly. “Now, this is all rather besides the point – ”

“Right, the point, which is where the hell is Jon?” Martin interrupted. He was looking quite pale, John noticed, and his eyes kept darting towards Michael’s door.

Michael got a bit of a faraway look. “At what is more or less the moment, your Archivist is preparing to drain his body of blood in a rather misguided ritual effort to reverse this… hm, shall we say ‘impromptu archival exchange program’?”

“How heroically self-sacrificing,” John approved.

At the same time, Sasha exclaimed, “What? Why?”

“Wh – if you know he’s doing it, hurry up and stop him!” Tim shouted.

Martin said nothing, but his face dropped into something bland and certain. Unceremoniously, he broke from his position lingering at the back of the group and raced for Michael’s door.

Michael just chuckled, stopping him with a twitch of one extraordinarily long finger. “I wouldn’t do that, little Assistant.”

“Well, you do it, then!” Martin challenged. His eyes were dangerously bright, and two spots of high colour had suddenly bloomed on his cheeks.

“Mm, no, I don’t think so. Not I.” Michael’s gaze shifted to John. “An Archetype might do. Then again, the Watcher is certainly full of lies. Aren’t you, Elias? I should think you would make a positively delectable meal.”

Elias’ eyes narrowed. “Are you quite sure you want to play this game?” he asked quietly.

Michael wiggled a hand from side to side, making John’s vision blur for a moment. “Perhaps I am. I’m beginning to think we’re more evenly matched than you’d like anyone to know.” John felt Michael’s laugh in the back of his teeth. “One failed ritual to another, I might enjoy a game or two.”

Elias’ face was as implacable as ever, but John could see beads of sweat gathering on the back of his neck. His eyes were fixed firmly on Michael and the door behind the monster, and John thought he’d likely never get a better opportunity than this. Slowly, he reached out to grab a pair of scissors from the nearest desk – the curse only specified that it had to be a blade that killed him, it never said what kind, right? – and inched towards Elias until he judged that he was close enough.

John lunged.

Elias turned, eyes widening, and for the first time, his mask slipped enough to reveal genuine fear on his face.

Michael laughed.

John had overestimated the force he needed to take Elias down, and the momentum of his tackle sent both of them stumbling quite a few steps back before hitting the ground. John sat up immediately, raising his scissors, but Elias was gone.

From very far away and perhaps underwater, John heard something that sounded like fear, if fear had had a voice. With a sense of dawning dread, moving so much more slowly than he meant to, John looked over his shoulder. The last thing he saw was Martin shouting a warning, much too late.

The yellow door closed, with John inside.

Jon ran out of things to say, and finally hit “stop.”

He let himself take a moment to breathe, gripping the tape recorder in both hands. He knew there was no point in keeping it, and had recorded over all the previous dialogue he’d had on there, including Louise Deniken’s statement. He only had the one cassette in this world, after all, and this world’s Martin deserved to have someone treat him with a modicum of decency. Jon typically would not pick himself to be that person, but… well, this world had been making Jon rethink quite a few of his own assumptions. The thought of Martin, any Martin, sitting so cold and so empty while everyone else laughed and called him a useless idiot –

– Jon had spent the past few weeks working so hard not to think about it, and now he couldn’t stop.

If Prentiss had gotten in, how long would it have taken them to notice that Martin was dead? If she hadn’t decided to just… just up and leave, for no reason any of them could guess, how long would it have taken Martin to starve to death?

Would anyone have come for him at all?

Jon was Martin’s superior, he was the one receiving every damn text from Prentiss, it would have been his fault if Martin had… It would have been his fault, and the whole time, he would have been thinking Martin was just some lazy idiot skiving off work.

Jon was realizing quite a number of things, lately. All of them rather useless, given that he’d just about come to terms with the certainty that he wouldn’t be making it home, but then, how often had epiphanies been useful?

Jon wished… well, he wished he’d taken the chance to thank Martin for his tea.

Too late now, but that didn’t stop him from wishing.

Still. He supposed he might as well do something productive with all this maudlin sentiment, and was currently doing his best to ensure that this world’s Martin had, at the very least, a chance of being saved. Jon really didn’t know if it was possible, but he didn’t mention that in the tape. Best not to give the people in this universe an excuse to put in less than the bare minimum of effort on Martin’s behalf.

Jon was aware that it was morally questionable of him to present his puerile hopes as a sure and irrefutable solution to Martin’s condition, but at this point, he was past caring. He was minutes away from being turned into a blood sacrifice for these people’s idiocy. He wasn’t letting them subject their own Martin to a similar fate if he could help it.

“Right,” Jon breathed, ejecting the tape and tucking it into Martin’s shirt pocket. “At this point, I’m very doubtful that you can hear me, but… well, all of us have beaten worse odds before, haven’t we? So. Just in case you’ve been processing any of this. I do want you to know that I hope things work out,” he told Martin awkwardly. “If you’re anything like the Martin I know, you deserve… God, you deserve so much better than we’ve been giving you. I hope your Jon isn’t too dense to see it. If he’s anything like me, I’m afraid I can make no promises there, but as I suppose my Martin would point out, what’s the harm in hoping?”

Jon patted his icy shoulder one last time. “I am deeply terrible at this. May you never remember this exchange, for your own sake and mine. Uh. Take care, I suppose.”

No point in putting it off any longer.

Jon stepped out of the little office the others had decided to put Martin in, which Jon had been using to record his final statement since it was the only place that offered a modicum of privacy – apparently opening a portal in the middle of the library had made the others leery of his ability to stay put without an armed guard, so this was the best compromise he was going to get before they stole all his blood like some kind of highly incompetent vampiric cult.

Jon wondered if he was being punished for some terrible crime he’d committed in an alternate life. He found it difficult to imagine what would merit a reckoning of this magnitude, though, short of ending the world or something equally ridiculous.

Besides, based on the kind of person this world’s Jon seemed to be, he really didn’t think it was fair to punish him for the actions of some other Jon. Jon was pretty sure he wasn’t even the same gender as his counterpart here.

It would be nice if there were a court of appeals for the laws of karma.

“Alright,” he told Melanie, who pulled her pair of brand-name headphones down to hear him. “I’m ready whenever the rest of you are.”

“’Kay,” she said gravely. Without another word, she led the way back into Gertrude’s tunnels.

“You remember what I said about this, right?” Jon hefted the tape recorder in his hand. “It’s extremely – ”

“Extremely important, potentially supernatural, key to your escape, I know, you’ve said,” Melanie finished, rolling her eyes. “I promise, we won’t forget and we appreciate the super-special relic you’re giving us. Thank you, John.”

“Right,” Jon said uneasily. They passed the rest of the walk in silence.

Gertrude’s little alcove had been utterly transformed in the course of the past hour. When Melanie said her friends were “preparing the spell,” she hadn’t been exaggerating. Jon wasn’t completely sure this was the same space as the room he’d met the wizened psychic in – it had the same dimensions, and he thought they’d taken the same route to get there, but now instead of a gently witchy space filled with scarves and incense, it looked like a lapsed Catholic’s lurid impression of some Satanic rite.

“For the record,” Jon announced when he’d come to terms with the stupidity of his captors, “I maintain that this is a bad idea and altogether unlikely to work the way you intend it to.”

“It’s very brave of you to help us anyway,” Gertrude told him softly.

“I really don’t think I have a choice,” Jon muttered.

“I know it seems hopeless,” Georgie reassured, stepping closer to look earnestly into his eyes, “but even a slim chance is better than none, right?”

“That’s really not what I…” Jon sighed. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Melanie nudged him forward, to where Tim was holding a very unpleasant-looking knife over some kind of altar that definitely hadn’t been there an hour ago.

Despite knowing it was pointless, Jon still found himself pushing back against her until she muttered a bitten-off curse and kicked out the back of his knees. Stumbling forward, he landed at an awkward angle more or less on top of the altar, rolling over and back to his feet again immediately with a strangled cry.

This was stupid, Jon knew, even as he ducked Tim’s grasping arm and moved to keep the altar between them. Jon had asked to get it over with barely ten seconds ago. It was pointless to fight three armed godhunters and a psychic, and there was nowhere for him to run to even if he did somehow manage to get away now. And yet – it was just –

In the split second Jon’s back had been pressed to that table, he’d felt more afraid than he’d ever been in his life. It was worse than the eyes in the Archives, worse even than the creeping, helpless dread of Mr. Spider.

Jon was about to die, and all he could do was watch it happen.

Well. Jon pressed his back against the wall, baring his teeth at the ring of killers that looked at him with varying expressions of pity and irritation. If he couldn’t stop it – was there anything he could do to stop it? No, he knew, in a staccato rhythm which he wasn’t sure belonged to him but which nevertheless beat in time with his pounding heart: nothing, nothing, nothing – well, then he supposed he might as well make sure his death meant something.

“You’ll remember,” he blurted. “My – it’s my dying wish, alright? That must mean something to you people. You’ll remember to take care of your Martin.”

Tim, huge and blond and nothing like Tim at all, sighed heavily. “For the love of – yes, okay? We’ll take care of Martin.”

“Promise,” Georgie added, and she, at least, seemed sincere. Jon didn’t know how long he trusted her sincerity to last, but it was something. He supposed that had to be enough.

“Alright,” Jon whispered. It would have to be enough, one way or another. On shaking legs, as everything in him screamed silently against it, he took a single step towards the altar.

From behind him, there sang out a long, echoing creak.

“Oh, Archivist,” Michael said, laughing quietly in a voice that was so very loud, “I thought I told you to let me know next time you needed a door.”

The feeling of seven fingers on a single hand closed around Jon’s shoulder, and before the wild hope could fully hit him, he was falling backwards into a world of twisting halls.

The last thing Jon saw was the shock and fury mingling on Tim’s face, and then the yellow door swung shut, vanishing like it had never been there at all.

John had no idea how long he’d been stumbling aimlessly down that awful hallway. It seemed to go on forever, although every time he looked back, the bare wall that had once been a door stood the same few metres away, barely far enough behind for him not to bump his heels against it every time he took a step. He didn’t try to run, of course. He knew well enough that the wall would keep pace with him if he did; what he didn’t know was whether it would slow down again once he stopped.

John wondered what would happen if he stopped walking. Just – sat down, for a little while. Would the wall stop behind him, or would it keep moving forward? Would it push John along with it, or would it suck him into the nonexistent gap where the baseboard met the floor, steamrolling him out until he was flat and broken? Or would it simply pass through John, the unforgiving plaster as much an illusion as the door had been?

John told himself that sitting would feel too much like giving up, anyway.

He didn’t know how long he went on like that. It could have been hours, or days, or centuries. Maybe it was all of the above, or none. Maybe it was both. It didn’t matter, in the end. What mattered was that John had been trapped there. What mattered was that now – now there was a door.

John practically threw himself forward when he noticed it. He flung it open before he could think to wonder what lay on the other side, and rushed through without bothering to look.

“John!” someone shouted, and a dizzying array of lights and shapes and movement assaulted his senses. Faintly, John heard a creaking sort of laughter that seemed to come from everywhere. At last, his mind gave up trying to make sense of things, and everything abruptly went dark.

The first thing John registered when he woke was the gold-plated gargoyles staring down at him from the ceiling.

With a gasp, he scrambled upright and looked around. There was Tim’s desk, and Georgie’s, and –

“John, you’re awake!” Melanie shouted. “Guys, get over here!”

John was home.

The next few minutes were a jumble of hugs and kisses and gruff “welcome back”s, which ended a bit abruptly when Georgie and Melanie accidentally wound up kissing each other. Something about the way they looked at each other afterward stuck in John’s mind, though, in a way that reminded him oddly of the other Martin’s face when he talked about his missing version of John. John shook himself, laughing with the others at the absurd little mix-up, and made himself focus on more important things, like how long he’d been gone and what had happened in his absence.

Apparently, the other world’s John had indeed been transported here by the failed attempt to save Martin, but Michael had snatched him away just before they could finish working a spell they’d hoped would undo the effects of the curse John had accidentally cast.

“It’s been two weeks to the day,” Georgie said when he asked. She rubbed her arms, looking distressed. “We didn’t know if we’d ever see you again.”

“I’m sorry,” John said helplessly.

Melanie punched him lightly. “Not your fault.”

The other major thing, which John really felt they should have led with, was that Martin was back. Apparently, John’s replacement had been tiny and peevish and weird, but he’d also managed in one night what John hadn’t been able to do in a month and a half.

John tried not to feel irritated by that. Martin was back. Nothing else mattered.

“Where is he?” John demanded. “Is he alright?”

His assistants looked at each other, shifting uncomfortably and saying nothing. John’s stomach dropped.

“You – you should probably see it for yourself,” Tim muttered at last.

John was going to kill Petra Lukas.

John was – he was –

“Dammit, Martin,” he whispered, hands pressed against the desk in his office as he tried not to break down in tears. The only sign that the other man was alive at all was the way his head had tilted at the sound of John slamming the door to shut the others outside.

Martin wasn’t breathing. It had been two weeks, and he hadn’t shown any signs of dehydration or hunger. He did have a pulse, but it was so faint and fluttering John could barely feel it at all. His skin was so, so cold.

His eyes –

“She was aiming for me,” John said. He meant for it to come out accusingly, but he just sounded wretched. “You always have to be so – so stupid, and self-sacrificing, why can’t you get it through your head that I – ” he broke off, shaking his head. “God, Martin…”

With a sudden desperation, John gripped his shoulders. “Wake up,” he commanded. “You – you’ve been sulking for long enough, come on now. Martin, this is quite unlike you. I – who’ll make everyone tea if you don’t wake? I won’t stand for it. Wake up.” Martin didn’t move, not even to acknowledge the sound of John’s voice. “Please,” he added. In a whisper he hated the sound of, he begged. “Please, Martin. Wake up.”

Nothing.

John slumped, letting his hands slide down those broad, far-too-cold shoulders. As he did so, his fingers brushed against something hard and rectangular tucked in Martin’s shirt pocket. “What…?”

John pulled it out to find that Martin had apparently been holding on to a cassette tape, of all things. He wondered if that was why there was a tape recorder on his office desk, neatly squared with the far corner and placed atop the pile of high-priority statements. He supposed there was only one way to find out.

John pushed the cassette into the recorder, and pressed “play.”

“Hello, er… me, I suppose,” the voice on the tape began. It was low and solemn, with an almost comically posh accent. It sounded nothing like John. “If you’re hearing this, I suppose it means that something must have worked, after all, so… that’s good. I have to believe that’s good.

“Tim – my Tim, that is – would doubtless scold me for starting this way, and my own Martin would get that disapproving look that means my tea is going to be lukewarm for the rest of the week, but I don’t care. It’s not like I’ll ever see them again, thanks to you, so I honestly think it’s fair for me to say that I don’t like you. From what I can gather, you seem like an arrogant, self-absorbed prick, and I can’t say I’m sorry not to have met you. Oh, yes, I know, ‘arrogant and self-absorbed’ are epithets that have been used to describe me plenty of times, but that doesn’t mean they’re qualities I admire, and it seems in that respect I stand out among your… compatriots. For all I can tell, they seem to think you’re some kind of chosen hero who can do no wrong, and the fact that I’m almost certainly dead by the time you listen to this – if you ever listen to this – would, in my view, rather disprove that theory, given that it was your idiotic mistake that brought me here in the first place. Not that my death seems to strike anyone as being of any real import. Michael says it’s because this universe is innately transphobic, so, er, good luck with that, I suppose. Although if you’re anything like everyone else I’ve met here – except Michael, and I’m still not entirely certain they would call themself a person – I doubt you have a particularly nuanced understanding of the value in diversity, so. You’ll probably also be fine with my fate.

“Well, regardless, I’m not recording this solely to insult the queerphobic alternate version of me, and I’m running out of time to get to the point. I’ll be putting this tape in Martin’s front pocket, so you should be well aware of what condition he’s been left in. When I retrieved him from the Lonely, Petra Lukas told me a few things about what happened the last time you were both there, and while I’m not sure exactly what the situation was, it sounded like Martin found himself, or put himself, in the path of a blow that wasn’t directed at him. According to her, his condition is ‘the natural consequence of loving something that cannot ever love you back.’ Taken together, these facts lead me to conclude that Martin’s affliction can be reversed. All you have to do is find out what Martin loves, and find a way to make it love Martin back. Frankly, I’m not sure what that would be, especially since I’ve never actually spoken to this world’s Martin, but I’m sure you can figure it out.”

The voice on the tape dropped to something even lower than before, and significantly more ominous. “You will figure it out, and you will return Martin to his former health, because if not, I swear on all seven of your horrible gods that I will come back to make you wish that you’d suffered Martin’s fate.

“Don’t disappoint me.” The speaker paused. “Oh, right, and in case Melanie forgets – this tape recorder was instrumental in allowing Martin and I to leave the Lonely. Petra seemed inexplicably terrified of it, saying something about how she ‘thought Elias had destroyed them all.’ I hope leaving it behind will prove to be useful in your ongoing battle against these unpleasant creatures. Ah, speaking of whom: not every creature is an ‘it,’ Jon. Ask about pronouns when you aren’t sure. You are living in a terrible universe, but even so, surely you can do better than that.

“End recording.” The tape clicked off, and John stared into space.

His mind was whirling as he tried to parse the fact that his alternate self hated him, and was apparently trans, and had left a note on a tape recorder, and found out what could scare a Lukas, and told him how to get Martin back, and really, that last part was the only important bit, wasn’t it?

What did Martin love?

For half a second, John considered pretending he didn’t know the answer.

John would rather have gotten crushed by the wall in that damn hallway than lie to himself about this again.

He couldn’t bear it. Not now. Not anymore.

“I really loved you, you know?” Martin had whispered, smiling weakly at John in the instant after the icicle pierced his chest and before John was ripped away through that bloody door. John had been too stunned in the moment to reply.

He’d thought it was too late. Even while he was reading that tome from Leitner’s library, he hadn’t honestly thought Martin would still be alive in the Lonely. He didn’t know what he’d even been trying to do, really. He just hadn’t wanted to believe what he’d known, deep down, had happened to the stupid, bumbling, brave, kind man who had loved him.

He’d always been so good.

John hadn’t thought it was possible for Martin to love him back.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, still clutching the recorder like a lifeline. He couldn’t bear to look at Martin. He couldn’t bear to look away.

John couldn’t bear this.

“I’m so sorry, Martin,” he repeated. His voice broke. “I didn’t want – I never would have wanted – goddammit, Martin, what’s the point of saving the world if you’re not in it?”

Now John forced himself to look in Martin’s eyes – to look where Martin’s eyes should be, at least, and not let his gaze flicker around the man’s shoulders. He’d meant to do it as a gesture of respect, of bravery, of hope. He’d meant to look into Martin’s eyes and watch the ice melt away as he said the words, but as he stared into those frozen, endless depths, he knew it was useless. His otherworldly counterpart had lied on that tape, and it was noble of him, really, to try and save Martin, but John knew the truth. It was written in those blank, frozen sockets. Martin couldn’t be saved.

John shut his eyes, and let the hot tears drip down his face. He leaned forward until his forehead pressed against Martin’s, and let the frigid skin of the man who’d died for him freeze his tears as they fell.

“Me, too,” he murmured, pretending to himself that it meant anything now. “That’s all it would have taken, for you to know… God, Martin. Come back. Please come back. I love you, too.”

John cried until his face was red and Martin’s was drenched with his tears. He sobbed, messy and childish and loud, because he didn’t care who heard him anymore, the world could damn itself while he sat in his office curled in Martin’s frozen lap. John didn’t care. The world had already ended, and he was kissing its ruined, stony cheek.

John’s world had ended.

And then the world blinked.

“Where are we?” Martin asked, blinking again. He lifted a hand absently to support John’s awkward sprawl across his seated form. “Did I miss something?”

There was nothing John could possibly say to that.

Instead, he laughed, high and wild and disbelieving, and twined his hand gently through Martin’s hair until Martin gave up on understanding, and finally leaned forward and kissed him.

“He said what?” Tim demanded again, and Jon couldn’t help laughing at the look on his face. “Okay, scale of one to ten, how likely do you think Michael is to listen if I ask to pop by that universe just for, like, a second. You know, just long enough to beat alternate-me’s face in. It’s for a good cause.”

“Funnily enough, I think the fact that it’s a ‘good cause’ is more likely to dissuade Michael from helping,” Jon pointed out.

“Damn, you’re right,” Tim huffed.

“I just can’t get over the fact that you had one night to get out of a blood pact, and you spent it figuring out a way to rescue Martin,” Sasha interjected. Jon looked at her suspiciously, and she batted her eyelashes.

Jon scowled harder at her. “Well, it’s not like I had too many options,” he argued. “Michael was right when ze pointed out I was just going to get myself killed faster if I broke too many rules. Besides, there was… I don’t know, there was something about being there that made me… not care? No, that’s not it, I just – I couldn’t actually imagine successfully finding a way out, so after what Michael said, I didn’t really bother to try. I thought I might as well make myself useful, that’s all, because obviously Martin didn’t deserve to get left behind like that. I mean, I still don’t really know anything about him, but there’s no version of Martin that deserved that. To get left behind. Someone should have noticed, someone should have – ” he cut himself off with a cough. “Anyway. It all worked out in the end.”

“Sure it did,” Tim agreed, something gentler in his stance. Sasha was looking a bit embarrassed, and Martin – Martin was so red Jon was a bit worried for his health. Surely that much blood rushing to the head at once couldn’t be good for him.

“Tea?” Jon offered desperately. Martin liked tea. Probably it was good for his blood pressure, or something.

“What?”

“I, erm.” Jon thought he should probably backtrack, but he wasn’t sure how. “I was wondering if you wanted tea. I could make some. If you want. Or, or if anyone else does.”

Martin’s face did a series of incomprehensible jumps before he settled on amused surprise. “Do you know how, um, how any of us like our tea?”

“Do you even know how to make tea?” Tim put in. Unlike Martin, the pure glee on his face was brazenly easy to read.

“Yes!” Jon bridled. “I – obviously, I know how to make tea. You just boil water and pour it into cups, and then put in teabags and sugar and so on. I’m not an idiot!”

There was a moment of silence.

“Why don’t I make us all some tea,” Martin suggested.

Jon scowled.

He supposed Martin had a point about knowing how everyone took their tea, though.

Besides. He had missed Martin’s tea.

When Martin made his way back and passed Jon a steaming mug of creamy, unsweetened earl grey, Jon remembered the wishes he’d made.

“Thank you, Martin,” he blurted, a beat too late to sound natural. Martin stopped and turned to him inquiringly. “I, um. In the other world, I was thinking before the whole, er, blood sacrifice thing, wishing – it doesn’t matter, I just. Wanted to say thank you. For the tea. I like the way you make it.”

Jon shut himself up by taking a long sip of the aforementioned tea.

He’d been wrong earlier. He was an idiot. Jon was starting to wish Michael hadn’t intervened after all. A blood sacrifice might have been less painful than this conversation.

“Oh,” Martin said softly. “Well. Er, you’re welcome.”

Jon nodded firmly. “Good. Right. Well, we’d best get to work before Elias comes to check on our progress. What did you tell him about my absence?”

There was another, longer moment of silence.

“Er,” Sasha began. “About that…”

In a world about three degrees less real than it ought to be, a door opened.

“What the – ” Melanie started, rising from her seat in the library. “John? Tim, Georgie, everyone! Come quick!”

The door creaked shut and vanished after depositing its offering, which groaned when Melanie nudged it with her foot.

“What is it?” Georgie asked breathlessly, stumbling into the room and nearly tripping over her own feet, except that Melanie caught her. “Thanks, love,” she muttered, pecking Melanie absently on the cheek.

“I think it’s Elias,” Melanie said dubiously.

“His suit’s awfully loose, isn’t it?” Georgie frowned.

“What’s happened?” John skidded to a halt in the doorway, followed closely by Martin and Tim. “Wh – is that…?”

The greyish lump on the floor raised its head, revealing a pair of piercing blue eyes. “You,” Elias snarled, and made a pathetic effort to lunge at John. Melanie put paid to that by driving her knee into his stomach, and he fell back to the floor with a thump.

“Not our Elias,” Martin observed. “Look at him, he has wrinkles by his mouth.”

“The other Elias’ eyes were green, though,” John argued, without taking his own eyes off the man.

“What do – What do you mean by that?” Elias demanded.

John felt a faint tugging to respond, the same feeling he always got when the Watcher tried to control him, but it was weak and rather directionless, like Elias didn’t know how to use the power properly. He shrugged it off easily.

“Did your eyes used to be green?” Martin inquired.

“Used to be – of course they’re – where am I?” Elias spluttered. The command didn’t have any more weight than the previous one, so John continued to ignore him.

“It is the same Elias, if you’re curious,” the Spiral said, poking her head out of the wall. “I’ve had my fun, and really, the other Archives could probably use a break.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tim demanded. He still didn’t really get along with the Spiral, although John had managed to strike up something like camaraderie with faer after what little he’d gleaned from the tape his replacement had left behind. Apparently, ze hated being called Michael. John was still trying to keep track of all the pronouns vey had listed, after they finished laughing at him for asking what a pronoun was.

“If this is their Elias,” John said now, furrowing his brow, “why do his eyes look like our version?”

The Spiral hummed. “Let’s just say I’ve kept him long enough that his personal rules of being have become a bit… malleable.”

“Wait,” Melanie interrupted. “Does that mean the curse applies to him?”

The Spiral tapped his nose. “Indeed it does,” xe giggled.

“Awesome,” Melanie breathed. “John, I think I have a switchblade in my boot – ”

“Hang on, if this isn’t our Elias, should we even be killing him?” Martin piped in, wringing his hands. “I mean – I mean, are we sure he’s even evil?”

“Quite sure,” John growled.

Martin eeped a soft “okay,” and John paused halfway through flicking out the blade Melanie handed to him.

“Sorry,” he muttered, making Martin do a bit of a double take. It had been over a week, but even after all this time, he seemed surprised whenever John was remotely considerate of his feelings. It made something in John’s chest ache. “He’s, erm, he’s definitely not good. I personally know that, and I also know some of the things he’s done to the people in his own world, so I promise we’re doing both worlds a favour by killing him. Is that… are you okay with this?”

“Yeah,” Martin answered, still looking at John with that odd expression. “Yeah, John. I trust you.”

“Okay.” John smiled at him, and then turned to his task. Elias had struggled to a sitting position, and was sneering at him defiantly.

“You’ll never – ” the Watcher began, and never finished.

John painted the walls with a crimson splatter, and in a world three degrees more real than his, a curse was lifted.

Nine days after Jon returned to a world that was only incidentally trying to kill him, Tim slammed his resignation letter successfully down on his desk. They both blinked at it for a moment.

“I quit,” Tim said breathlessly.

Jon was the first to break eye contact, stumbling up to push past Tim out of his office. He faced the rows of rickety shelves, piled high with looseleaf paper. Sasha and Martin looked up at him as he walked in.

“Let’s burn down the Archives,” Jon suggested, rummaging in his pockets for the lighter he hadn’t carried since he quit smoking years ago.

That was alright. Martin pulled a box of matches from the top drawer of his desk, and grinned.

Jon thought, when he saw that smile, that he might be falling just a little bit in love.

He found he didn’t mind.