Chapter Text
Something is watching him.
In the Archive, Martin knows, something is always watching him. Something ancient, wicked, unyielding. There’s the constant undercurrent of being…not spied on, exactly, but seen. Observed. Witnessed. The feeling is there, always there, at its worst when he’s recording statements in Jon’s stead, but there even when he’s reaching out to witnesses or combing through police records; anyway, he’s not recording now, and the sensation’s not the same, quite.
Martin glances over his shoulder, but there’s only Tim (slouched halfway down his chair, a book in his hands and his eyes shut), Melanie (glowering at her computer screen), Basira (considerably more intent on her book than Tim is on his), and Jon’s office door, shut tight. Jon’s there now, back in the Institute for the moment. Martin expects him to chase after some new lead any day, to disappear and leave Martin wringing his hands, worrying until he returns, and then worrying a bit more.
The point is, nobody’s looking at Martin.
As though Jon’s heard him thinking, the door swings open to reveal the Archivist, his face drawn and tense. Martin practically jumps out of his chair, already saying, “D’you need anything? I can get tea, or…” He trails off at the minute shake of Jon’s head.
“No, thank you, Martin,” Jon says, and then, “I’m going to lie down.”
Martin tries not to feel useless, and fails, and watches Jon maneuver around the desks and messily abandoned case files, into the document storage room. He’s not well. There’s more color in his face recently, and Martin dreads to think why that might be, but he’s just as often exhausted. Martin says, “Right, just let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, all right?” and Jon flicks his hand to acknowledge he’s heard.
Nobody else has moved during this exchange, beyond Melanie and Basira having looked up from their distractions. There’s pity on both of their faces. Martin pretends not to notice, dropping back into his chair and snatching up the police statement he was reading.
The sensation of being watched by something more is gone, leaving him with only the ordinary unsettling eyes of the Archive.
Martin is down the soup aisle the next time he notices—thinks he notices, feels it like a chill—somebody watching him. Eyes in his back. It’s different from the pinning, suffocating presence in the Archive. It’s probably his imagination, truth be told. It’s run rampant, more rampant than usual, since—
Well, everything. Prentiss. Gertrude. The monster in the tunnels. The monsters in the tunnels. The one stretched out and crooning, growling for Jon, the one that killed Sasha; the one with the wrong, sharp hands and the painful laugh, the one that tucked him and Tim away in nonsense, impossible corridors until it was ready to let them out. (He doesn’t delude himself, doesn’t think for a second that they escaped through luck or ingenuity. It let them go. Maybe it was bored. He prefers not to speculate.)
There are monsters at home in the Institute, too. Whatever’s watching them and stopping them quitting. Elias. Jon? No, not Jon. He can’t stand to think that way.
As it turns out, his imagination is a bit weak in comparison to his reality.
He sets the can of creamy chicken noodle he’s been mulling over back on the shelf, and chances a look about the aisle. Empty, aside from himself and a little old lady who’s squinting down at a box of chicken broth and probably harmless. But there’s still that feeling.
Martin hurries out of the store.
It doesn’t stop, after that.
Eleven days pass by, and it doesn’t matter where he is: Martin senses something spying on him. On the train. Navigating through crowded streets. Fussing over Jon, who seems to have a new wound every time he comes in, and tolerates Martin’s constant attention. Balancing a full tray on the way from the Institute’s kitchenette to the Archive. Standing beneath the pounding heat of his shower; he doesn’t look, then, for whatever is watching.
He considers, and just as quickly discards the idea of telling Jon. It’s not that he thinks Jon wouldn’t believe him. They’ve all seen too much for him to fear that. But Jon has larger concerns, has to be focused on stopping the Unknowing. (And maybe Elias, after that.) This, just a feeling, isn’t worth bothering him over.
And then, more than a feeling, it becomes a presence.
Martin is alone in the Archive, Tim having gone home early with a headache, Basira upstairs scouring the library for whichever bit of esoteric catches her fancy, Melanie out on an extended lunch break, and Jon…Martin doesn’t know where Jon is, gone two days this time, maybe with Daisy. He’s working his way through a pile of soon-to-be-Discredited statements. It’s a waste of time, he knows it is, but he needs the useless, mindless distraction of it. He’s almost able to ignore the whisper-soft impression that he’s a great source of entertainment for something.
That is, until he hears rustling, like paper, like wind. The hair on the back of his neck stands up. It’s probably a draft, he tells himself, refusing to let his eyes slip from the statement of Lewis Earles, even when there’s the addition of footsteps, something falling off a desk and being replaced.
“Martin Blackwood,” someone says, slow and fascinated and amused. He knows the voice, but wishes he didn’t. Maybe, he thinks, just a hint desperately, maybe it’s a hallucination. The end result of his nerves building up. It sounded just the same the first time, in the tunnels. “Do you like it down here in the dark?”
The steps come to a stop in front of his desk. His hands flex on the sheaf of paper he holds, and his eyes lift up, and up, and up, and if he hadn’t known it from the voice, he would recognize it on sight. It’s visited his nightmares often enough, strolling leisurely toward him without a worry. (What would it ever have to worry about, with hands fit to slice anybody to ribbons?) It looks like an ordinary man, its hair all loose, golden waves, its face impassive and soft-cheeked; but the hands are still sharp and the smile uncanny. Martin opens his mouth, but all the words he might say stick hard in his throat.
It knows his name.
It’s still watching him, too, looking prepared to wait, perfectly patient, however long it might take for Martin’s mouth to remember the proper way to form words. His throat has gone dry. He forces a swallow and gropes for his glass of water. It feels like a silly thing to do, but it’s all he can manage. Its eyes follow the line of his throat as he gulps down half the glass. He doesn’t feel any better, but he says, “What do you want?” and his voice betrays him by quavering.
He doubts he could hide his fear from this thing, either way.
“To say hello,” it says.
Martin doesn’t know quite what to say to this. “Hello?”
“Hello,” it repeats. “You’re like Michael.” Its head cocks at a curious angle. It reminds him, quite inexplicably, of a crow, or of a cadaver.
“Michael,” Martin says cautiously. “That’s…that’s you, isn’t it?” He is nothing like this thing. He’s human, for starters. His eyes flick occasionally toward its hands, hung down by its sides.
“Yes.” It makes a thoughtful sound. “No. Michael was like you. Small. Powerless. Scared.” It pauses. “Inconsequential.” Its mouth twitches. “I’m much more than that.”
Martin might be insulted, if it were coming from anyone, anything else. None of it is wrong, anyway. He feels at his smallest in front of it, fully powerless and scared; inconsequential, that one he’s felt for seemingly ages, in the face of the Unknowing and what might follow, whether or not Jon is successful. “You said I’m like Michael.”
“Yes,” it says again. “He worked in this dreadful place of dust and bones too. The Eye’s little temple is terribly uninspired.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Martin is surprised by how much he’s holding himself together. He’d like to run, sprint from his desk and the Archive and the Institute, but his legs are shaking harder than his voice. “How am I like Michael?”
“You work with the Archivist,” it says, its eyes leaving him for just a moment, catching on the door to an empty office. It laughs. The sound sets his nerves on edge. Last time he heard that… “Always worrying over the Archivist. You shouldn’t, you know, he won’t do the same for you.”
Martin doesn’t say he knows that. “I don’t—I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“No?” Another laugh, and a shake of its head. “No, it isn’t. I have no reason at all to pay you any mind, Archival Assistant.”
“The Archivist isn’t in,” Martin says. “So why are you here?”
The monster at his desk looks almost surprised. Almost. The expression’s not quite right, like it hasn’t properly tried on ‘surprise’ before. “A servant of the Eye with a faulty memory? How unfortunate.” It leans forward, those hands settling flat on his desk. “I told you. I came to say hello.”
Martin takes a breath. “To me?”
Its nod would be encouraging, if its hands weren’t too close for comfort. If it weren’t the thing it is. (Martin doesn’t know what it is, only that it’s fully capable of killing him, if it likes.) It looks as though it has more to say, but stops, appears to have caught a scent or a sound, a beast on the hunt. It steps back from his desk. There’s a door behind it, a yellow door tucked between bookcases, where there’s not room for it; the sight fills Martin with a bone-deep terror, drains the blood from his face.
“Until next time, Martin Blackwood,” the monster called Michael says, and slinks through its door. “Try not to be too much like Michael.”
Its door has just shut when the door to the Archive swings open. Basira steps in, carrying a precariously arranged stack of books. She looks at Martin, and the space around him, and frowns. “Were you talking to somebody? I thought I heard voices.”
“No.” Martin shakes his head. The yellow door is gone again, leaving a single bare inch of wall. The door can’t have been there, but it was. “It’s just me.”
“Hm.” She looks unconvinced, but there’s nobody here, no cause for her to argue with him. She sets her books on her newly adopted desk and settles in.
For the first time in ages, Martin feels no more watched than usual.