Martin very much does, though he's clearly ashamed of it. He starts getting a bit skittish around Lev at night.

(He also gets a knife and signs up for classes.)

They don't find any more statements of Jane Prentiss. They keep looking. Her friends confirm that she was starting to get really weird, obsessed with bugs and just "having a really negative energy, you know?" before they stopped being friends with her. Her work confirms that she was fired after having a public breakdown over them dealing with an ant infestation. The paramedics report reports that when they and the police responded to reports of screaming at Jane Prentiss’s flat on Prospero Road, they found her in a loft space, passed out, with her forearm buried up to the elbow in “pulped organic matter”. The landlord, Arthur Nolan, cannot be talked to, as later that same night, a fire destroyed the flat and killed him. The fire service report he had fallen asleep with a lit cigarette, due to the fact that he was found sitting in the remains of an armchair with no sign he had made any attempt to escape. Jane Prentiss was taken to the hospital, showing signs of her parasitic infestation; six hospital staff attempted to treat her when many of the worms were violently expelled from her body. All six of them died, and she walked calmly out of the hospital; a seventh hospital employee died as a result of falling down the stairs running fro her. The Institute was consulted at the time but was quickly dropped in favor of what appears to be a sloppy cover-up story.

They keep not finding any more statements that mention Jane Prentiss.

Sasha knocks on the door to his office. "Lev?"

"Yes?"

"Lev, um, you're going to want to hear this. --I guess I have a statement now, like Tim did, if you want it? Sorry, just had a bit of a rough night. Couldn't really sleep well. --Nothing as bad as Tim's, it just, shook me is all." It's true; she looks exhausted.

"Go type it up on the typewriter," he says, concerned that any expression of sympathy will make her attempt to give him a live statement.

Statement of Sasha James, March 31, 2016.

I’ll start with the first thing I noticed. I live up near Finsbury Park, and my building is old. Victorian, I think, and though it’s been repaired and maintained quite well, it’s got all sorts of strange little quirks. One of these is the windows. The actual windows in the flats are fine, but the stairwells have slightly warped glass, where the windows have those little bubbles. Looking down on the street below can be a bit strange, as the glass bends the light and distorts whatever’s below it. I never really paid much attention to it until a few days ago, but it’s not a new thing.

It was the day before yesterday when I first saw it. When I’m heading down the stairs in the morning, I sometime like to spend a few seconds looking out of the window at the people on the street below. I’ll move my head so that I see them through the warped glass, and they’ll distort like a fun-house mirror. It’s a bit daft, but I have a pretty dreary commute down to Victoria, so I take my fun where I can get it. Well, on that morning I paused before the window, and noticed one of the warped figures below was… off, slightly. It looked too tall, the limbs and body were very thin and almost wavy, like they didn’t have any structure or bones in them. I couldn’t make out a face, but it was the hands that were the most bizarre. They seemed to be stretched and inflated by the distorted light, until they were almost the size of the rest of the torso. The fingers were long and stiff, and seemed to end in sharp points. It stood completely motionless, and I could feel it staring at me.

Moving my head to the side, I saw that the actual person I had been looking at was a large man with long, blond hair. He was neither stood still nor facing me, instead moving around the display of the flower shop opposite my building. Nothing about the guy seemed especially out of place, but I made a mental note to keep a lookout for him. I checked again through the bubble of bended glass and again I saw that tall figure with its limp arms and huge hands.

I’m not exactly the bravest person in the world. I generally avoid horror and I tend to stay off roller coasters in the rare situation I have a chance to ride them. So I was as surprised as anyone that this undeniably sinister figure wasn’t causing me more distress. I mean, I was a bit nervous, sure. I’ve never had any direct experience with the supernatural before outside the Institute and the more I looked and checked and double-checked, the more sure I was that supernatural was exactly what it was. To be honest, I was surprised how quickly I accepted that. I’ve always considered myself a bit of a skeptic, and until recently I’d have said working at the Institute only made me more so.

Anyway, I watched it for about ten minutes, until the blond man bought a small bunch of lilies and walked away. Once he was gone, the distorted figure with the long hands disappeared as well. I headed down into the street and over to the flower shop. The woman working there gave me a bit of a confused look when I asked if there had just been a tall, blond man in her shop. She said yes there had, and no, she hadn’t noticed anything strange, and was I looking to buy some flowers. I was quite confused myself, and on a bit of an edge when I left. I was already late for work, though, so I decided to ignore it and just keep an eye out.

Sure enough, it wasn’t too long before I saw him again. There’s a small café I generally pop into when I head to work in the morning. I love the Institute’s building, of course, it’s beautiful, but from a money point of view, I really wish it wasn’t in Chelsea. Everything around here is so expensive. I generally walk down from Victoria Station. It’s a long walk, but quite pretty, and it gives me a chance to pick up a coffee on the way. As I said, I was running late that morning, so I was a bit conflicted about whether to get one, but as I looked in the window I saw a familiar figure at one of the corner tables. Again, the blond guy wasn’t looking in my direction, nor did he seem to give any indication that he was aware of my existence. He was there, though, and I was on the verge of walking in and confronting him when I noticed the time and decided getting to work was more important. Besides, what’s that old saying? “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action”. I decided that if he turned up a third time, then I would ask him… something. I don’t really know what I was planning to ask him. “Are you secretly a monster?” probably would have been a great opener.

It was a quiet day in the Archives. I mean, it usually is, you don't usually come out much. I got on with my work, did some filing, kept looking through statements to see if any mentioned Jane Prentiss. 

Nothing else had happened until I left work. It must have been about half past six, so the sun was just about starting to go down, and I headed back up towards Victoria. The first thing I noticed out of the ordinary was that the café was still open. Normally they shut up about six o’clock, but the lights were on and the door was open. I couldn’t see anyone behind the counter, though, and there was only one customer. He sat there in the exact same position he’d been that morning, drinking what could easily have been the exact same coffee.

I looked around to see if there was anyone else who could confirm what I was seeing. The street was empty, but as I looked, a car drove past. In the curving glass of its tinted windows, I saw him there, the weird distorted body, rail thin and limp, the hands huge and sharp. And then the car passed on and I turned back to see a normal-looking man. But now, for the first time, he was looking at me. He gestured to the chair across from him, clearly inviting me inside. I don’t know why I wasn’t more scared going in there, but I wasn’t. My curiosity apparently conquered my nervousness.

He didn’t speak when I sat down, and I saw his coffee cup was empty. Whatever was inside had dried up hours ago. He seemed to be waiting for me to ask him a question. So I asked him what he was. He laughed at this, the first sound I’d heard him make, and it sounded… unnatural. Like he was laughing very quietly, but someone had turned up the volume up so I could hear it. He said it didn’t matter what he was, that he couldn’t describe it even if he wanted to. What was the phrase he used… “How would a melody describe itself when asked?”

This put my back up a bit to be honest, and I told him if he was going to talk in cheap riddles I was just going to leave. He actually apologized, told me I could call him Michael. I didn’t want to call him Michael; it didn’t seem to fit somehow, and the way he said it made me think that it definitely was not his name. Still, it wasn’t like I had any other name for him it.

It sat there, clearly waiting for me to ask another question, so I did. I asked it what it wanted, and was told that it wanted to help.

I asked if it want to stop Jane Prentiss. It laughed that weird laugh again and told me that I had no idea what was really going on. It didn’t sound like it had any intention of telling me, though, it just seemed like it was amused by my attempts to understand. Then it said it didn’t care if I or my companions lived or died, but that “the flesh-hive was always rash”. It said it wanted to be friends. When it said this it put its hand in mine, and it may have looked like a human hand, but it was heavy. It felt like a wet leather bag full of heavy stones. Sharp stones.

I pulled my hand away quickly and got up to leave. By this point I was just about sick of this weird thing that looked like a person but was not a person and talked in riddles. It made no move to stop me as I headed towards the door. As I was about to exit, though, it called after me, and said if I was interested in saving your life it would be waiting at Hanwell Cemetery. It said your name specifically, and Martin's, and Tim's.

Statement ends.

"Thank you," he says when he gets the statement. "I'm sorry that happened to you, that sounds awful."

"Mostly I just, I wish I could quit, you know? I've been wanting to since Tim was trapped in his flat. Since before then, really. I don't think this is a safe job, and I don't want to be in it. But here I am."

"It's really not. --I could try firing you and see if that takes?"

"That'd be nice. If you can fire me, anyway."

He says "I'm firing you, get out of here."

No, he doesn't.

"Yeah, doesn't work. Was worth a try, anyway. --You can take the day off if you want to. I mean you could do that anyway, since I can't fire you, but I would approve of it."

"I'm going to Hanwell Cemetary. You can come with me or not, mark it as a day off or not, I don't care, I want to find out what it has to say."

"I'll... think about it."

"Take your time. Any thoughts on 'Michael'? There aren't exactly any leads to follow up on except the ones it gave us."

"I don't know," he says, "it's hard to come to any conclusions when he's being so vague."

(The blonde man was probably chosen by another spirit, one that's opposed to the Hive. The spirit doesn't sound like any of the ones he knows. "Wants to be friends" sounds similar to Prentiss's statement; it probably wants to choose Sasha. Sasha belongs to the Watchful Thing but not as strongly as Lev does; the blonde man probably expects to be able to take her. It might be trying to make a deal with Sasha where their lives are preserved in exchange for her service. There is something to be said for letting Sasha go so he can find out what Michael wants to say, or at least what Michael wants to tell him; he's not sure if going himself would have any advantage over it.)

"I don't want to wait longer than this evening, I don't know how long it'll wait at the graveyard for us. I'll be taking the day off, I guess. Probably just going to take a nap, I wasn't lying when I said I didn't sleep last night. Call me when you make a decision?"

...okay ethical people would at least try to talk Sasha out of it.

"You realize that in non-digitizable statements fucking around with supernatural beings has, I don't know, a fifty percent chance of resulting in your horrible gruesome death?"

"I worked in Artefact Storage, remember? Trust me, I know. I wouldn't be telling you my plans at all except that you can't actually stop me, your only leverage is my job and I wasn't exactly crying at the idea of being fired. But it knew your name, too, so I figured you deserved to know. Show my statement to Martin and Tim if I disappear or die, will you? But if it actually is benevolent, if it actually does have something that can save our lives... I'm willing to take that chance."

He considers this and chooses his words carefully.

"I think the Institute may be better at keeping us safe from Jane Prentiss than you would imagine."

"Right, well. I don't exactly get the impression this place cares much about staff well-being, and I've worked here significantly longer than you have. So, unless you have something better than that?"

See, he doesn't want Michael to know he knows about the Watchful Thing, and attempting to talk Sasha out of it further would probably reveal information he doesn't want to reveal, so he can stop now. Ethics.

"Well, good luck."

“Thanks. Hopefully I won’t need it.”

He goes to Martin's office.

"...Sasha's planning on committing suicide."