Chapter Text
―!
The world rushed up to meet him, the nothing becoming something again. The nowhere becoming here.
Sensation returned to his body all at once―unfortunately. He was soaked, his head was killing him, the whole of his skin felt like pins and needles, a dull roar of static. Awareness trickled in after…he was…he had…Celia had…
Oh, God. Oh, fuck.
He needed to get up now , he needed to fall back through the literal crack in the world , and he needed to quit his job.
And yet―he remained still on the ground, listening to…traffic? Was he outside?
Straining his ears, he picked out another sound intertwined with the others. The faint whirring of a tape recorder. Multiple, actually.
Another stab of panic hit him, the Archivist had fallen through too, hadn’t it? Where had it gone? Was it still with him? He hoped not, having it in his brain was bad enough the first time; he really didn’t need to go through it again face down in grass and insides spinning from actual goddamn interdimensional travel.
It didn’t seem like it was still nearby, when it was close Sam heard popping noises like a bad radio signal and tasted metal in the back of his throat. Neither seemed to be happening. Only the soft whirr of the tape recorders.
That was something, right? He wasn’t in immediate danger of the memory eating monster. He could deal with the rest of it later, after he figured out where the hell he was. Cosmically.
With some effort, he managed to crack his eyes open to see that he was in fact in some sort of park. Or, no, maybe not a park. An alleyway overgrown with grass and stinking of piss.
He wasn’t sure if he was still in Oxford but it still looked like England enough. So that was a…plus?
One of the tape recorders stared back at him, rumbling away; the fall had carved a big gash into its casing, revealing an inside much too red and wet to be a simple tape recorder interior. It said something that it barely managed to surprise Sam in the moment, given the state of everything else.
The Archivist was gone. It was just him in the grass in this new, familiar world.
This is where Celia is from.
The thought comes unbidden and it makes something curdle in his stomach. Not the time. He needed to get somewhere not in a piss-stained alleyway, a breakdown could happen later.
Muscles straining and his migraine begging to be acknowledged, he pushed himself in a sitting position mindful not to crush any of the other recorders circling him. There didn’t seem to be anyone around even with the distant din of cars on the road, what time was it? It had been late―or, er, early―when he’d fallen through that strange gateway but the sun appeared to be lower in the sky than it should be, casting his surroundings in a dull orange.
He fumbled for his phone that, surprisingly enough, was still in his back pocket. Not that it did any good, the screen was still stuck at 6:05am with all of Alice’s missed calls and text glaring at him.
Christ, Alice.
Not the time.
“He…” he coughed, his throat feeling strange and crackly, “help…” he wasn’t being nearly loud enough, nobody would hear him at this rate, “somebody―oh?”
A rustling at the edge of the alleyway caught his attention.
Two big shining eyes stared at him from the tall grass.
“Hello?” Sam tried, “Uh…h-hello?”
The eyes leapt forward―a cat. A rather big one at that, lumbering over to Sam with an indignant meow with each step, as if admonishing Sam for being in the alley in the first place.
Okay, not a person or anything that could help him but still, Sam could really use a big dumb cat right now.
He held his hand out but the cat seemed much more interested in the tape recorders, butting their head against one and purring.
“That’s not a very safe toy, kitty.” Sam reached to pull the recorder away before the cat reached the wound on the side of it which seemed to alert the cat to his existence. They plodded over, still purring while they sniffed his hand extensively. “Must be a lot of weird smells, huh…” the cat continued sniffing, Sam noticed a collar underneath all their fur, its name tag jingling with the movement. “Are you lost? What’s your…” he dug the name tag out with his other hand. It looked old, tarnished in some parts but the text was still legible enough.
IF FOUND,
PLEASE CALL
GEORGIE BARKER
0151 708 8004
“Oh, you are lost.” he frowned, “God, I hope my phone still works.”
He turned the name tag over, a name embossed into the metal, “The Admiral?” the cat mrred, “Is that you?”
And as if on cue, a voice came from beyond the alleyway, “...miral! Admiral!” the sound of crunching grass grew louder, “Where are you, you sneaky git.”
The Admiral lifted his head at the voice, tail sticking straight up. Must be the owner of the phone number on the back, Georgie.
“H-Hey!” Sam called as loud as he could, “Over here!”
The steps stopped, then redoubled their effort, bringing the face of a woman to pop out from the mouth of the alley. Her shoulders visibly relaxed at the sight of the Admiral, still purring and soaking in all the pets from Sam.
“I think this is your cat?”
“Oh, you big ham―yes!” she sighed in exasperation, advancing toward the both of them “That’s my cat! Sorry, I don’t know how he got out, he’s a little escape artist I swear. Thank you so much for―” she stopped abruptly, probably clueing in on the strangeness of the scene before her. Sam drenched on a cloudless day in a dark alley surrounded by tape recorders, it’s a wonder she got closer at all.
“U-Uh, yeah, hi, so, um, this will sound absolutely insane but…” she didn’t seem to be listening, her gaze locked on the still whirring recorders. Sam continued nonetheless, “W-Where are we?”
“London.” Georgie said plainly, not even looking at him.
“London!” Sam exclaimed, well that took care of one problem, “That’s…that’s good.”
“Hm.” finally her eyes snapped up to meet him, dark and accusing, “Are these yours?”
“The recorders…? No, no, they’re not―” wait. “have you, have you seen anything weird around here? Any one weird?”
Her eyes darkened further, “Weird how?”
“Like…not…human?”
Her shoulders tensed again, the Admiral was indifferent, ignoring both of them in favor of chasing a bug through the grass. He saw a muscle in her jaw twinge, “Who are you.”
Not a question, a demand.
“Sam?” he gestured helplessly, “Samama. Khalid.”
“What are you doing with tape recorders, Sam?”
“It’s a…long story?” her expression told him that wasn’t enough, “Okay, okay. This is going to sound crazy but I think I’m in the wrong universe.”
Georgie nodded simply, “And?”
“And?” he repeated, dumbfounded, “That’s it? No follow up questions?”
“Not the craziest thing I’ve heard.” she glanced back at the tape recorders, “Or seen.”
Sam just stopped himself from immediately diving into that verbal rabbit hole. He had enough mysteries on his plate already.
Then: “Was it Hilltop Road?”
He felt all of the air leave him in shock, “H-Hilltop Center.” he corrected, “It used to be a shopping center or something, maybe it still is. The place was weird .” Now that he was talking all of the panic he’d felt in that place and in that basement was welling up again, making the words spill out, “I was so stupid, I-I knew something was wrong but Celia kept―she kept reassuring me it was fine but then we were in the basement and she, she was going to push me in. Send me here so she could stay, she’d planned it. And, I-I―She didn’t even need to push me, that goddamn Archivist― ”
Georgie took a sharp breath, covering her mouth with a hand that trembled slightly.
Sam leaned forward, “You know it.”
“Yes, I…” she exhaled slowly, dropping her hand to her side in a loose fist, “I know. And the tape recorders?”
“They belong to it? Or they answer to it at least.”
She sighed again, “Yeah. That sounds…that sounds right.” a strange emotion crossed her face like a great shadow, “Did he hurt you?”
“It was following us. It attacked me then it followed us to Oxford then it tried to get Celia and I…I tackled it. We both fell through.”
Georgie looked around, “You both fell through?”
“It’s gone. I don’t know where it is.”
Yet another sigh, though this one dipped more into a rough grief than pure exasperation. Sam fought the instinct to apologize.
After a moment of silence, Georgie bent down to pick up her cat, cradling him to her chest, “Do you have anywhere to stay, Sam?”
Does he? He didn’t know anything about this world or how it worked in comparison to home. Hell, would his money even work here? His Oyster card? Did anyone he knows even exist here? Did he?
“Guessing that’s a no.” she swallowed, pulling her jacket closer to her, “Come on. You can stay with me.”
“I-I couldn’t, I―”
“If I’m being totally honest, Sam. I’m asking more for me than for you. If even half of what you just said is true, I want you where I can see you.” she said, tiredness evident in her voice, “And leave the tape recorders.”
With her arm slung around his back, it took them fifteen minutes to reach her flat, Georgie leading them and Sam ordered to hold the Admiral and focus on nothing else than staying upright.
“Make sure you hold on tight to him.” Georgie had said, “He’s slippery. He’s had a taste of blood and he’s been a mess ever since.”
Whatever that meant.
Honestly, Sam was too distracted with looking around at this wrong and weird London to worry about an impromptu lesson on holding a cat.
It was as though someone had taken the city and moved it two inches to the left while he’d slept. Everything looked familiar but not― a shop where he didn’t remember one ever being, a street where he’d sworn a park should be. One big gaslight. It definitely wasn’t helping his head.
All this to say, he was relieved once they reached Georgie’s door.
She unlocked it and ushered him in in one motion, pointing to a comfortable looking sofa in the corner of her comfortable looking living room. Sam could hear another woman’s voice from somewhere else in the flat.
“You can sit there while I grab my girlfriend.” she unwound the scarf from her neck, “And be quiet, she’s recording.”
The Admiral jumped out of his arms once he crossed the threshold, trodding off with Georgie and leaving Sam hover awkwardly. Following her instruction, he sat on the plush sofa, avoiding the abundance of decorative pillows on top of it.
Though ‘an abundance of decor’ could really describe the entire flat. Every surface Sam could see had some sort of trinket or photo decorating it, from a wall of concert ticket stubs to an army of little ghost figurines; the quietest part of the place was the windowsill to the side of him, entirely bare except three photos.
The largest and most recent looking was of Georgie and a woman holding a white cane hugging in front of a waterfall, the aforementioned girlfriend probably―smiling wolfishly at him with a firm hand on Georgie’s waist. At either side of it were two other pictures. To the left, one of a much younger Georgie snarling at the camera with a man sneering at her side, both of them wore enough eyeliner to put Camden Market out of business. Georgie didn’t seem to be in the other picture―a polaroid held by a small wire frame―but, oddly enough, the man from the left one was, though much older judging from how much he was graying. He was smiling at the camera, pressed closely to a man who was in neither of the other photos but seemed to be holding the camera for this one. The whole picture was blurry but the smiles on both men were evident, the photo catching the moment.
He put the picture down once he heard a door open from the hallway Georgie had disappeared down. There was a brief murmur of conversation then they were coming back, Georgie first then her girlfriend, shorter and sharper and looking at Sam like he was a dead bird the Admiral had dragged in.
“Explain.” she said, voice knife-sharp yet restrained.
“Explain―what?”
“You, the tape recorders, the Archivist. Explain all of it. Now.”
“Hon…” Georgie touched her shoulder.
“We need to know if it’s really him.”
Sam furrowed his brow, “Really who?”
The two women were silent, Georgie’s girlfriend sat heavily in the chair across the couch with Georgie herself leaning against the chairback. They seemed to be having a conversation purely through silences, one Sam couldn’t hope to follow.
Finally, Georgie spoke aloud, “Sam, this is my girlfriend, Melanie.” she touched the woman’s shoulder again, lingering this time, “We both have…history with the Archivist. An Archivist. And what you’ve told me so far―it sounds a lot like him.”
“Oh…”
“Start from the beginning. Please.”
Sam swallowed, how do you tell somebody you set a monster loose? He took a deep breath. Start where you always start. “Have either of you ever heard of the Magnus Institute?”
Both women’s faces fell. A barking laugh ripping from Melanie’s mouth, “Of course! Of course, it’s always the fucking Magnus Institute.”
“Y-You know it?”
“I worked there.”
“You―” she worked there . She was there, she must know what they did there, she must know why they wanted him but didn’t choose him, all the dark corners. Sam found himself digging his nails into the meat of his arm, why now? Why after all that searching, why now does he run into answers now when the Magnus Institute should be the least of his worries. It wouldn’t leave him alone, not until he figured it out. And here it was, the answer… but― “no, no, you couldn’t have.”
Melanie slumped in her chair, “I wish I hadn’t too but I did work there. Until our messy divorce.” she tapped her temple, Sam felt as though there was a joke he was missing.
He shook his head, “No, the Institute hasn’t…it burned down in ‘99, how could you have worked there?”
“Burned down?!” both women chorused in near harmony.
“Alternate dimension…” Georgie whispered to herself as a much more joyous yelp of laughter came from Melanie, “If only!”
Sam shifted in his seat, “...Did it not burn down here?”
“No.” Melanie’s laughter quieted, “It’s still around.”
“It’s― what ?”
Georgie interjected, “Can we go back to J―” she stopped herself, “to the Archivist. Please. Was…was he in the Institute?”
“Under it, actually.” he said, “I…Something weird happened there and I figured that, I don’t know, maybe there’d still be something there after all these years. So I went with my friend Alice to Manchester and―”
“Wait,” Melanie held up a hand, “Manchester? The Institute is here, in London.”
“Here?” Sam echoed. The Magnus Institute, still standing and close .
“It has to be an alternate Institute, right?” Georgie brushed back a lock of Melanie’s hair.
Melanie scoffed, “An alternate Institute with an Archivist in its basement. Only so many things that can mean.”
“Maybe.” she looked back at him, “Sam?”
He straightened back up, “Right. So, me and Alice were in the basement, the―”
“The Archives.”
“The Archives, yeah, and I found, I found a key. I thought it was to something important and I…I guess it was. There was this office we got into and the floor almost collapsed under us and I dropped the key.” he grimaced, “The Archivist found it.”
“And since?” Georgie asked, voice soft.
“It’s hurt a lot of people.” Sam answered, guilt stinging the back of his throat, “And it’s all my fault.”
“You said he attacked you.”
“No, that was an accident, I think.”
Melanie scoffed, “Did he tell you that?”
“It just felt like it, in my head. It was looking for something in me and I started talking a-about the Institute and what happened to me.” he shuddered at the memory. How had that only been a few hours ago? “I don’t think it meant to do it, it didn’t kill me like the others.”
Georgie’s face fell further, “He’s killed somebody?”
“A-A few.” Sam felt the need to soften the truth for Georgie, as though he were delivering bad news about a close family member, “We got them in our caseloads sometimes.”
“Jesus.” Melanie whispered as Georgie fished her phone from her pocket, swiping on it a few times before turning the screen to Sam.
“Here.” on the screen was the man from the photos again, the one with the graying hair. He seemed to be sitting on the very sofa Sam himself was on now, looking up at the camera with a begrudging half smile. His right hand was bandaged and his glasses were pushed high into his hair, “Does he look like this?”
“Ah―no?” Sam gently pushed the screen away, “I’m not sure, it’s hard to see what it looks like with all the eyes, I don’t think it looks like anything at all. The hair is similar, maybe? It’s tall, though. Taller than me.”
Melanie leaned back into her girlfriend, “Doesn’t sound like him, love.”
Georgie held the phone close, staring at the picture herself now, “It doesn’t.” she said, stowing the phone away.
A minute passed in silence.
He toyed with the still damp cuff of his shirt, “So…what now?”
“Now,” Georgie stood, patting down her locs, “I get you a blanket and Melanie and I go have a long, long conversation.” the Admiral padded back into the room, content to be immediately scooped into Georgie’s arms, “You’re welcome to anything in the fridge, bathroom’s back there, the couch pulls out into a bed, remote’s on the ottoman.” she paused, then: “Clothes, too. I should have a few shirts and pajama bottoms that’d fit you.”
Awkwardness reared its head again in him, “You don’t―”
Melanie cut him off, “There’s no stopping her, trust me.” she stood as well, “Plus, she’s right. You sound wiped, Sam. I think answers can wait until you’ve slept some of the interdimensional travel off, yeah?”
Can they?
“Yeah.” he said instead. The sun had completely set outside, emphasizing the warmth of the light coming from the many lamps and suddenly making him very aware of how tired he is. Everything had happened so quickly, he hadn’t had time to think beyond what the hell and what the fuck.
Georgie set the Admiral back down, “I’ll leave him here with you. Sleep well, Sam, we’ll get you back home.”
The two left without much more said, wishing him a good night and walking back to where he assumed their bedroom was. Only a second passed between the door shutting and the sound of terse voices filtering through the walls.
Sam needed to get out of these clothes.
The bathroom was similarly decorated as everything else the two shared, a series of pictures of the couple taken in various photo booths watching as Sam dried his hair and face from another universe’s rain.
There were clothes waiting for him on the sofa-turned-bed once he returned, a half faded band tee and fleece tracksuit pants along with a bottle of ibuprofen. At least there was one spot of luck he seemed to be having, Georgie and Melanie seemed to take every insane thing he said in stride as though he were simply describing the weather. If he’d landed near anyone else he’d probably be in a padded cell by now.
He slipped the clothes on, downed two of the ibuprofen, crawled into the springy bed and…
God. What was he going to do?
What would his parents think? He’d never told them about the OIAR or any of the strangeness surrounding it, they still thought he worked at the firm. What would they think when they went searching for him there just to learn he was fired a year ago for having a breakdown on the job? It would kill them.
The Admiral hopped onto the bed after him, situating himself in the hollow between Sam’s legs.
And Alice? Did she even know what'd happened to him? Would she ever? It’s not like Celia had proven herself to be particularly open or truthful.
A wound in the world, she’d called it. And Sam was on the other side of it, along with the Archivist, wherever it had gone. He’d need to ask Georgie and Melanie about it in the morning, they seemed much more familiar with the Archivist than he was. Maybe they’d know how to get it to leave them all alone.
Outside the windows and the warmth, it was raining again.