"...I'm not certain but... Elias was talking more like the Magnus Institute was benevolent than like it was evil? Like, he was apologizing and... more or less being honest... He's still a condescending ass but I think that might just be his personality."

“That’s good! I mean, it’s not good that he’s a condescending ass, but—if he’s just a kinda bad boss instead of an actively evil boss, that’s good news!”

"Also he kept saying things I knew and presenting them as if he were telling me things, which is annoying, but... he wasn't trying to manipulate me in any other ways, at least, as far as I could tell."

“Yeah, if the worst he is is annoying, that seems... good? Or at least... not bad?”

"It is nice that I yelled at him and he apologized. Gets you a lot of points in my book."

“I dunno, in my experience I get a lot more points for arguing with you than for apologizing. I think there might be diminishing returns on the whole apologies thing.” (He’s smiling.)

"You should apologize when I yell at you and I'm right, and not at other times. --Except I probably wouldn't yell at you very much because it's not fair because you wouldn't yell back."

“In that case I guess I’ll apologize when you are right at a normal volume.”

"But I... suspect Elias might not be evil? Or at least he's morally ambiguous? --Also he definitely observes everything that's going on in the Archive and probably everything that happens when we have that ominous feeling of being watched."

“Um! Wow, okay, I guess I don’t do anything private in there anyway—maybe it’s even a good thing, since the non-digitizables break security cameras?—but! Uh! That’s kind of creepy!”

"If we fucked in the supply closet he would deserve it."

Martin splutters for a moment before regaining composure! “He would.”

"But there's a problem if he's malevolent because, uh, we can't quit and we have a very limited ability to do things he can't see. I at least have experienced the Watchful Thing watching me outside of the Archives. So... there's another reason to guess that he might be benevolent. Because if he's malevolent we're fucked."

“Yeah. That’s... not great, but yeah.

I... think it mostly just watches me when I’m in the Archives? Maybe a few other times, but—not even close to as much.”

"Well, if you think Elias is evil, try to do useful things about it and not tell me anything."

“I guess I’ll do my best. Uh. If it comes up, anyway. Hopefully he’ll turn out to be good or at least not evil and then it’ll be fine.”

"I'm not sure the Watchful Thing will manage to get to 'good'. It's"-- he gestures vaguely-- "there are lots of ways an inhuman alien thing can be evil from our perspective, right. If it wants to kill people for any reason, for example, and there are a lot of reasons why something might want to kill people. But 'good' is a really narrow target. You have to not do anything we humans object to, and you have to do a bunch of stuff we actively find helpful, and I don't think you'd get it right unless you cared about the same things people do. And... it would be weird for any of the spirits to do that. --I guess Elias is a person though and he could be working with the Watchful Thing for his own purposes."

“Yeah, I meant Elias, I... wouldn’t have said ‘he’ about the Watchful Thing. And... we’d be able to tell if he were as far gone as Jane Prentiss, right? So I assume he’s more, more like you, where sure maybe it’s influencing him but he’s still... himself. But I could be wrong.”

"Oh, yeah, I think the person you'd have to worry about there is me. --Elias says the Watchful Thing rewards curiosity and doesn't want me to avoid things. And serving it gives me... some measure of protection. We've seen a similar thing in some of the statements, like Father Burroughs's, he was safe from the tree thing because he already belonged to the thing he'd tried to exorcise."

“That’s... good, I think? Let’s just go with good. Definitely better than if it mind controlled you to be more curious and then didn’t give you any protection.”

"So to some extent I think I'm going to be... safer... if I cooperate with the extremely powerful being controlling every aspect of my life. Trying not to be recklessly curious might actually be more dangerous? --For me, not for you."

“I guess that makes sense. Terrifying, but, makes sense.”

"Also Elias said to keep an eye out for someone called Salesa. Apparently he does antiques that are as... charming... as Leitner books."

Martin winces slightly, inhaling sympathetically. “Okay, that’s definitely good information to have, yeah. Okay. Keep an eye out for anybody named Salesa and don’t touch their antiques.”

Over the next few days, Lev keeps searching for statements that mention Jane Prentiss, and sends Tim off to track down Jane Prentiss's friends from before she was possessed. 

He photocopies the Hive statement and keeps the copy near his desk, and when he's dispirited about work, he rereads it. He looks at the text from Jane sometimes. He considers the fact that he could text her back, could interview her, could... talk to the one other person who understands how much the Hive is beautiful. But he promised he would explain himself to Martin before he did anything risky, and... this is not a decision he thinks will pass a cost-benefit analysis. 

It doesn't stop him from looking. 

When he talks to Martin, his infodumps are full of words like "eliminativist materialism" and "philosophical behaviorism," "the equivalence principle" and "non-Euclidean spacetime." He slows down; he's careful to try to make sure Martin understands what he's talking about, even in a simpler and less mathy way. He brings Martin Feynman's the Character of Physical Law and attempts to teach him what a proof is. 

At night Lev does things that are... if not foreplay at least adjacent. He kisses Martin's chest and neck and shoulders, touches his stomach and back and sides. He does not at all have the physical reaction one would generally expect from a man in this sort of situation.