A soft sleepy mumble issues forth from the chair, and then cuts off abruptly as the person in it wakes up and instantly freezes. Dead still, not even breathing. It's several long seconds before she dares, as silently as possible, to inhale.

Daisy still hears it. Such are the benefits of having someone on your team with supernaturally good senses. "Over here," she says, and inclines her head before beginning to walk.

Everyone else--Jon, Basira, and Melanie--follow her cautiously.

The door swings open. The four of them look at April.

"She doesn't look like Annabelle Cane," Melanie says dubiously. Her knuckles are starting to turn white. "She looks as scared as we are."

"She still might be dangerous." Jon (a heavily scarred man who looks like he hasn't slept or eaten in a week) steps forward. 

Daisy's head snaps towards him. "Jon..."

"I hate to say it, but Jon's right." Basira sighs. "Just ask if she's going to hurt us."

"Are you going to hurt us." Something in Jon's voice tugs at April. It demands an answer.

Her face scrunches up in deeply suspicious bewilderment and she makes an unintelligible noise like she was trying to say several different words all at the same time, and then, on the second try, "—how the hell should I know—not on purpose, probably—what the fuck?!"

Jon looks back at the three girls. "Not on purpose, probably," he repeats, a bit sarcastically.

"Jon." Daisy shifts uncomfortably.

"What, so we go visit Hilltop Road, and just coincidentally, there's someone else there? I have to know why she's here."

Melanie speaks up: "I don't think anyone's claiming it's a coincidence, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea for you to--"

Jon interrupts her, voice rising. "--what other options do we have--" but Melanie interrupts him back with "--we could just leave--"

Basira cuts them both off. "No. No, if she's here, she was sent for us. I don't know what the Web's playing at but I don't like it."

"And Jon can't just know something?" Melanie says.

"I told you, I can't see anything here." Jon sighs, frustrated. "Unless I ask."

There's a long pause. Melanie sighs. "Fine."

Jon smiles a little. It's not a nice smile. His eyes are greedy, hungry. "Who are you?"

She bites her tongue and snarls under her breath and neither of those things prevents her from answering, "April Turnberry. —see the problem with asking somebody if they're going to hurt you and then forcing them to answer is that it's one of those things where the act of observation changes the thing being observed, it's all Heisenberg up in here—I don't have any idea who any of you are, just thought I'd point that out—"

She shifts slightly in the chair, and the grimy sheet that has already slid down to mostly reveal her face slides down farther to reveal a decidedly shirtless shoulder. She clutches at it to prevent it from falling any farther and glares at the group as though they personally are responsible for her state of undress.

"And if we didn't force you to answer you could just lie."

Melanie glares at him. "For Christ's sake, Jon, she doesn't have any clothes." She turns to April. "I'm, um, Melanie King. The ex-youtuber."

"Never heard of you," she says, but she relaxes slightly at this relatively non-hostile interaction.

Her free hand comes up to push a lock of damp tangled hair out of her face, and then she squints, makes an abortive gesture as though adjusting a nonexistent pair of glasses, ends up poking the side of her face just behind the corner of her eye instead, and looks disgruntled about it.

"Where am I? ...actually, what year is it?"

"Oxford. July 20, 2018." Basira's flare is still pointed at April; she doesn't lower it. 

"...fuck," she sighs, glancing uncomfortably away from them all. "Explains the accents, I guess." (Her own is somewhere in the generic North American space.) "Could be worse, at least you speak English."

She takes a deep breath as though steeling herself for an unpleasant task and then says, "Last look I got at a calendar was in May of two thousand and seven. And I'm pretty sure it hasn't been ten years since then. Pretty sure." Her wandering gaze returns to Jon, with another uncertain squint like she can't quite see well enough to be sure where he's standing. "Your turn. What the hell is up with the magic questions?"

Time for a bit of an awkward silence!

”...You do realize that I don’t actually have to answer that?”

Melanie glares at him and he sighs.

“I’m, um. The Archivist. It sort of comes with the position.”

“What he’s trying to say is that he’s a monster. Spooky, lots of eyes, wants to eat your fear.”

"Oh. Great." She makes a soft noise, a sharp exhalation that might be a distant cousin of a chuckle. "Yeah don't do that. Pretty sure anybody trying to eat this mess," she gestures vaguely at her head, "is gonna choke on it."

“Jon. Listen to me. You do know how this looks, right? You say the Web might be making you take statements, we go to Hilltop Road and there’s someone, clearly traumatized, a nice victim all wrapped up in a bow, and you’ve got the... bad-decision look in your eyes. I don’t like it.” 

“If the Web wants us to hear her statement— look, I don’t trust it either. But we need more information.”

“We’ve already stayed here too long. We can keep having this argument somewhere else. April, come with us, we can get you some clothes back in London.” She’s still pointing the flare at April; it’s not really a request. 

"...clothes are good. I like clothes."

She awkwardly wrangles the sheet into the world's worst toga, attempting with mixed success to minimize wardrobe malfunctions along the way. At the end of the process she's standing up and holding the sheet in place with both hands and not displaying any socially inappropriate anatomy.

"I will come with you for the promise of clothes." She tilts her head in a futile effort to shake her hair out of her face and winces. "And maybe a shower. Food would be nice too." She squints at Basira. "Oh, you're threatening me. Whatever. It's not like I have better options."

“Great,” Basira says, and they head out. Other than the flares, they’re holding some papers and a tape recorder. 

There’s an argument over who April should ride with. Jon’s car is summarily and unanimously vetoed by everyone except Jon. 

Melanie ends up taking her, mostly because she has a jacket in the back seat that’s about April’s size.

It’s a very quiet hour’s drive to London. They pull up to the Magnus Institute. 

“Most of us live here now,” Melanie says. “It’s... safer, a little, than our flats. Less comfortable, but you get used to it. You can borrow Daisy’s clothes for now, you look about her size. And we have a stockpile of food in the tunnels.”

She is quiet on the way. Very quiet; her default state seems to be 'not moving, breathing as silently as possible'.

"Thanks. ...dare I ask why it's safer to be living at your office and stockpiling food like an apocalypse cult?"

“Honestly, you’re not too far off with the apocalypse cult thing. Unfortunately all the other apocalypse cults want to kill us, so.” 

"Oh." She sighs. "Great."

And, after a moment's reflection, "Well, at least I get to wear clothes."

“Yup.”

As soon as April enters the Institute, she gets a sudden and intense feeling of being watched. 

"Haha wow fuck you too," she says. "—sorry, not you. The," she gestures awkwardly, reluctant to let go of her Garbage Toga but trying to indicate the environment at large with a sweep of her shoulder.

“Well, if you get something else figured out, you can leave. ...Probably. Basira might want Jon to ask you more questions first, make sure you’re not going to kill us or something. Trust me, I don’t like it either.”

The feeling intensifies as they head to the Archives. The other three are already there. There are some clothes laid out for April on a cot: a white blouse and a long skirt. 

"Is there somewhere for me to change or is this some straight-up fuckin' Panopticon shit?"

“Pretty much. We’re even built on top of it. Far as we can tell the Panopticon proper never got built, but the tunnels beneath the institute are the ruins of Millbank Prison, which was inspired by Bentham’s ideas. And they’re not exactly easy to navigate, so who knows, maybe it is down there somewhere.”

"...okay that's more literal than I expected. I would still kind of like to put clothes on without being stared at by anybody besides whatever's giving me the creepy feelings. ...would also kind of like to take a shower first, because I am disgusting, but I guess there's no reason you'd have a shower in your office except apparently the thing where your office is an ex-prison?"

"We have a shower down the hall." Basira and Daisy exchange a glance. "I'd rather you have at least one of us with you until we know why you were in the house on Hilltop Road. If you let Jon ask you some questions, unsupervised shower. Otherwise, you're stuck with me. I won't look."

"...I am so wildly unenthusiastic about more mind control questions. And I don't even know what the fuck was up with that house or how I got there so I bet you're going to find my answers really unsatisfying. Supervised shower it is."

"Great." Basira sounds almost as unenthusiastic as April about this, honestly.

The shower is down the hall as promised. It has really shitty water pressure, but anyone staying at the Magnus Institute generally has bigger problems than the water pressure. It has a curtain, theoretically, but it's transparent and too small, which is basically like not having a curtain. Basira stares at the ceiling and drums her fingers against her thigh.

She turns the water as hot as she can get it without literally scalding herself and gets the cobwebs out of her hair and the grime off her skin and stands there for another couple of seconds leaning heavily against the wall and then sinks down until she's huddled on the floor of the shower with her knees drawn up to her chest and both hands clamped over her mouth, shivering in total silence.

After a minute or so of that, she gets up and turns off the water and finds a towel and dries off and finally puts some damn clothes on.

The clothes are nice. The shirt is soft and the skirt swishes around her ankles when she walks. Basira, as promised, does not look until April is fully clothed.

"Better?"

"...yeah. Yeah that's better."

"Great." Back to the office, then. "I still don't love this. Jon, you know anything about her?"

"No. Nothing--useful. There was a statement, right before the circus--Anya Villette--someone woke up in Hilltop Road in 2009 after falling through a crack. Said that London looked different than the one she remembered, and that she was from the future. So maybe this is something similar. But it's--I don't like it either." He drags his hand down his face. He looks like he wants to say something else, but he doesn't.

"I fell through a fairy ring," she says. "End of my last year of high school. And then spent a while lost in some deeply fucked up caves about which the less said the better, and then woke up in that chair. I don't know if that helps. Probably it doesn't."

"It's... better than nothing." She could be lying. She's probably lying, given where they found her. "If there's any way you could prove that you're telling the truth, that would be... helpful. And if you have any--powers, abilities, that you might use--it might be a good idea to let us know before using them." He speaks haltingly, choosing his words carefully.

"I don't... really have a good way to prove that I'm telling the truth. I don't know that I have anything I'd call a power, either, but—" She nibbles worriedly at her lip. "—see, my concern here is that the more I tell you the more you're probably going to be really curious about what I'm not telling you and then out come the mind control questions—"

"Honestly I think it is pretty hard to make me more curious although I certainly can't speak for my coworkers. If you don't tell us anything I am inclined to bring out the mind control questions."  

"...okay so it's not really a power as such but—when I said I bet you'd choke on this mess—that's not just me being like 'I will be pissed off if you make me talk', that's, like, an actual thing. If I can't make myself shut up that's... bad. I don't... know how to explain it in a way that makes sense and doesn't make me sound like a fuckin cartoon character, like, what do I say, 'I might use the bad words', that sounds like a totally reasonable concern, right, no it doesn't. But the bad words are bad and you do not wanna hear 'em. Like I also separately don't wanna talk about it because it's awful but besides that there is the thing where if you make me talk about it an actual bad thing might happen."

"It does sound like a totally reasonable concern, actually.

Do you think--would it--" Jon cuts himself off with a frustrated sigh. "If it would be possible for you to give a statement or answer questions in a way that doesn't risk whatever you're worried about exposing us to, I would appreciate that."

"...I can think of some obvious things to avoid but maybe the thing I'd rather do here is get to vet all the questions you want to ask me before you ask them."

"The thing I want is to take your statement." Jon closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "I probably shouldn't be the one to draft a list of questions, I don't think I can compel you through writing but it seems like the sort of thing that I would start being able to do at the most inconvenient time for all of us."

"What is a 'statement' here and why do you look so fucked up about it...?"

"Your--story. About what happened to you. Written or spoken. I can--make you tell it."

He closes his eyes again. When he speaks, his voice is a little lower, more desperate: "I--I need it. I don't know what I am, what I'm--becoming. I don't know if it's an addiction or--or something else. We were at Hilltop Road today because we thought something might be--controlling me. Making me take them. I don't know. Maybe it is."

"And the nightmares." Basira sounds deeply unimpressed. 

(Jon winces. When it's obvious that he's not going to elaborate, Basira sighs and continues.)

"Every night, you relive it. With him watching. Unless you join the Institute. Don't join the Institute, you can't quit and the life expectancy's rubbish."

"...hahaha holy fuck no. I'm almost tempted to say yes just because I bet you'll regret it more than I will but no. Do the vetted questions thing, everyone will be happier."

"I'd take that bet."

"No you wouldn't."

"Fine, yes, I wouldn't. If the Web wants me to take her statement--

The rest of you work on questions for me to ask her, I'm going for a cigarette." 

He takes a stack of papers with him.

April watches him leave with a wary eye and then the rest of them can all have equal measures of her suspicious gaze.

Then after a bit she can be presented with a list of questions!

- What are the obvious things we should be avoiding asking you about?

- What do the words you are not telling us actually do?

- What would asking for your statement do?

- Are you currently working towards causing an apocalypse?

- Do you have any information about any apocalypse plans?

- Are you planning or expecting to hurt, traumatize, and/or kill many people in the near future if allowed to?

- Do you expect that many people may become hurt/traumatized/killed in the near future in a way you and/or the institute would be able to prevent with information?

- Do you know or suspect why you were sent here?

- Does you being here put any of us in immediate danger?

- Will being here cause anyone else to come, that you know of? If so, who are they and do you expect them to be a major threat?

- What are your abilities? What do you expect will happen if you try to use them? What do you expect will happen if you try to refrain from using them?

- What questions should we be asking you that we have not?

- Have you been fully honest with us when not compelled? 

- Is there any other information that you have that you expect we would benefit from knowing?

"...okay," she says, reluctantly, after reading through the list twice and taking a minute to think about it. "I'm... mostly sure none of these will lead to catastrophe. I can imagine maybe having to say a bad word to answer 'what are your abilities' but I think if I have like any control over my phrasing I should be able to dodge it. ...'if so, who are they' should maybe be reworded because one of the things you should avoid asking me for is the names of things. But I think that's it."

"You have control over your phrasing, it's--you're still yourself, answering. If you wanted to answer it in the first place you don't always even notice that he did anything. You can't lie to him, or leave things out. It's been....awkward." Melanie glances at the list. "Would 'if so, what is the information about them we would benefit from having' be fine?"

"Yeah I think so."

"...Do you want a moment before we call him in? You look like hell. I know we've been kind of rough with you, it's just... Well. Can't really take our chances. And sorry about Jon, he's just an asshole."

"...I would maybe like a minute and a drink of water, yeah. Honestly from what I'm hearing your suspicion levels seem pretty fair, and the time I was having before I met you was definitely a lot worse, but, well, that's not exactly a high bar."

"One water, coming up." Water!

By the end of the cup of water she is sitting a little straighter and looks less like she expects to be stabbed the second she lets her guard down.

"Okay."

Oh, good, she fits right in. 'Looking sort of like you expect to be stabbed the second you let your guard down, but not currently panicking': basically the unofficial uniform for the Archives. "Ready for us to call Jon in?"

Reluctant nod.

It takes a few minutes for Melanie to return, this time with Jon. Jon looks... somehow even unhappier, but a little less tired.

"You've got the questions ready?"

"Yes," Melanie says, and then glares at him; he winces back apologetically before clearing his throat and looking at the paper, partly to avoid eye contact with Melanie but mostly because he wants to know what questions they decided on.

"What are the obvious things we should be avoiding asking you about?"

"Anything where I might end up saying a word or a name I learned in the bad caves or repeating a noise I heard there. You shouldn't ask me who or what something is if the answer might be something from the bad caves, or ask me to describe anything that happened there if the complete answer to the question might have bad words or sounds in it. ...also you shouldn't ask me anything where I might end up using a bad word on impulse partway through because I decided I'd rather spend the next five minutes throwing up and wishing I were dead than keep talking."

"What do the words--or sounds, or whatever--that you are not telling us actually do?"

"Hearing the things from the bad caves speak or sing is like... I don't even know if I can describe it... like, 'spend the next five minutes throwing up and wishing I were dead' is sure part of it, but it's just... bad. It's pure concentrated badness. It's like Satan wrote a symphony titled Nails on a Chalkboard calculated to make the audience shit themselves and claw their faces off and then when the orchestra started playing it for the first time he lit the place on fire and summoned an earthquake to drag it all to hell and they're still playing the whole way down with the audience tumbling after them and everything hurts and everyone is screaming and the being on fire and falling into a pit of eternal torment is a relief compared to the music but they won't stop fucking playing. It's very much like that. And they taught me some of their language and you wouldn't think I could make those sounds with a human mouth but it turns out I can, which is about as much fun as you'd expect."

Nod. "So--best that we avoid it, but not--world-ending consequences. That's... good. Or, not good, but better than I was expecting, anyway.

What would asking for your statement do?"

"...well, I'd tell you the whole story, and the whole story involves some words and some names, which would suck as described, and there's a bunch of parts where I might in fact decide I'd rather use a really bad word than tell you about it, because I'm a little used to bad words by now and there's some stuff in there that I don't ever want to think about again. And then apparently I'd dream about it every night for the rest of my life, which would suck even more, and you'd be there watching me—I did catch that right, didn't I, you'd be there watching me?—which means you'd get to hear the bad words, every night for the rest of my life, although come to think of it that implies you could get out of it by murdering me so maybe I'd rather not make that bet after all. But even without that, I don't actually want to make the bet, it's just a vindictive impulse I'm having because of how much I fucking hate mind control."

"I wouldn't kill you. I don't know if that would work but I wouldn't do it.

I do realize you don't have any reason to trust me about that. If you can make me tell the truth I'd let you ask me."

There is a long pause while he stares at the paper before speaking again. 

"Are you currently working towards causing an apocalypse?"

"Fuck no!"

That gets him to relax a little! “Then it sounds like we’re at least mostly on the same side. Do you have any information about any apocalypse plans?“

"Well apparently there's half a fucking dozen apocalypse cults around here or something but all I've heard about them is one offhand comment from you," she waves vaguely at Melanie, "about how they keep trying to kill you."

“It’s... not ideal.

They did kill me, technically. My heart stopped, I mean.”

“‘S not a bloody competition,” Melanie mutters. 

“I didn’t mean it like that. And if it was, Tim and Sasha would win.” Jon’s tone is bitter, but he flinches a little at his own words as soon as they’re out of his mouth.

After a beat, Basira clears her throat. “You were asking April something?”

“Right! Right. Are you planning or expecting to hurt, traumatize, or kill people in the near future if we let you?”

"I mean, no, except for how I'm stranded in a foreign country in a foreign decade with no money and probably no legal identity and also apparently landed in the middle of some kind of secret war between apocalypse cults and all in all that sounds like a lot of opportunities to end up backed into a corner and doing something shitty for lack of better options and I have a few more shitty things up my sleeves than most people because I speak a language that's the verbal equivalent of a flashbang grenade."

"That's fine. The point is making sure you don't torture us to death.

Do you expect that many people are likely to get hurt in the near future in a way we would be able to prevent with information you have?"

"...probably not many and probably not soon and not really with information I have that's useful here but I sure do wish people knew not to touch that fucking fairy ring."

"If I see a fairy ring I'll make sure not to touch it. Do you know or suspect why you were sent here?"

"I have no idea why I'm here. I suspect the things in the bad caves had some kind of plan for me, because they kept trying to teach me things, but I'm pretty sure they weren't anywhere near done teaching me things yet so I don't think they sent me here on purpose, and I have no idea why they'd send me here specifically except, I guess, 'wow, that's a lot of apocalypse cults, what the fuck'."

"I can give you an overview of them later if you want. --Or someone else can, it might be a bad idea for me to be around you too much.

Does you being here put any of us in immediate danger? ...I would also appreciate being told about non-immediate danger, although it's admittedly less of a pressing priority."

"...the only way I can think of is if the things from the bad caves are still keeping an eye on me somehow but I don't actually have any reason to think they can do that except that it would suck if they could, and I have some reason to think they can't touch the world except through their fairy ring, except I'm confused about that because whatever was going on in that house sure did not look like a fairy ring to me."

"As far as we know it's not--associated with fairy rings. It does--mind control, not like I do but like--things just happening, your body moves without you making choices about it and it seems normal and fine and it doesn't even occur to you to question it--and manipulation, lying, that's why I'm asking all these questions, because if someone comes from that house it's more likely that they're lying or manipulating you--lack of choices, lack of control, getting you to do what it wants. And spiders." He does not ask about the things from the bad caves, because it's not on the list, and also because Melanie and Daisy have both tried to kill him before and even if they're doing better now it's probably for the best that he doesn't give anyone any more motive. "Will being here cause anyone else to come, that you know of? If so, what is the information about them we would benefit from having?"

"Like I said, I'm pretty sure the things from the bad caves can't come get me, but if they could I think they might and if they did I sure don't think they'd be nice to anybody while they were here. They're, uh. You know about the language already. They're also... they have some kind of control over how physics works around them, like, things going through each other instead of touching, and gravity twisting around so water flows in loops, shit like that. And I don't really know what they want but I can guess that it sucks. And they hate it when I make noises, especially voice noises, I almost wonder if my voice sounds as bad to them as theirs does to me. But, uh," she shivers, "them hating it does not really... stop them... from doing things. So if they show up on Earth I think anyone who gets in their way is pretty much fucked. But like I said, I don't know if they even can show up on Earth."

"They sound like the sort of thing that might exist somewhere, but I haven't heard of them before you, which is... something. Hopefully. Although we're unlucky enough that who knows. Daisy and I might stand a chance, if--" He sucks in a breath. "Okay. So, nothing coming after you, probably." Time to check the list-- "What are your abilities? What do you expect will happen if you try to use them? What do you expect will happen if you try to refrain from using them?"

"I speak their language, which I feel like is not exactly a power really but it does mean anytime I can use my voice I can use it to make sounds that basically incapacitate anyone who hears them, which is kind of not not a power. It sucks for me too but I think a lot less than it used to which means probably a lot less than it would for whoever else was listening. I think they were trying to teach me to do things besides that but they haven't gotten anywhere on that yet. I don't really expect anything in particular to happen if I try not to use the bad words, except that apparently if you felt like it you could make me do it anyway. Which would suck. For both of us and also anyone else in earshot."

"--Well. It's something to keep in mind if we ever need it, I suppose. 

What questions should we be asking you that we have not?"

"Man, I don't fucking know? ...you should maybe be asking me what the fairy ring looked like. It was a big circle in the ground that was weirdly flat like it got stamped that way by a giant stamp and it had long grass growing in it that made it look like it was mostly the same height as the ground around it when it was actually a couple feet deeper and all along the edge there was a bunch of kinds of mushrooms and flowers and that sort of shit all growing straight up from the rim."

“Makes sense. Have you been fully honest with us when not compelled?”

"Yes, unles leaving things out because I don't want to talk about them and don't actually think they're that relevant strikes you as dishonest, in which case fuck you. I think I've done a basically reasonable job of not misleading you about anything while also not getting any farther into the ugly details than I have to."

Nod. “That wasn’t what I was thinking of, no. Last question, is there any other information that you have that you expect we would benefit from knowing?”

"...I don't actually trust any of you and I'm not sure trusting people is a thing I do anymore if it ever was but if there really is an apocalypse on the line and you really are trying to make there not be one then I'm down to help with that, especially since I don't really have a better place to get, like, food and clothing and a place to sleep. On the other hand I'm not sure how useful I'd be so you might be better off kicking me out on the street to starve."

"There... probably isn't an apocalypse on the line at the moment. We stopped one last year, the attempts are generally spaced decades apart--the reason we're being attacked so much is that people are worried that we only stopped the last apocalypse because we're about to do our own attempt. Which--isn't actually impossible. Elias is in jail right now--he was our boss before--but we don't... entirely know his capabilities.

None of us are very useful at the moment. We're here because we can't quit and haven't died. If you have a language that can incapacitate people, that's at least as useful than I am. More, probably, you look like you could get in shape with a year of eating well and working yourself up to it.

I wonder if we could convince Martin to give you money while you stay here--if nothing else, he'd know how much we should be trying to hide you from Peter-- I'm sorry. If you want to leave, you can leave. It's probably safer."

"I don't think I believe in safety. 'Staying in the haunted-ass prison with the people who already basically know what my deal is and have been mostly decent to me so far' at least sounds more convenient than 'homeless in a foreign country with no sane explanation for why'."

Nod. "You can hire yourself if you want, Daisy did it, you'll get paid." Inhale. "And you won't get nightmares if you give a statement."

"You can't be serious! No, no, absolutely not--"

"If you want to ask Georgie if her couch is free for another supernatural runaway, be my guest. She was pretty clear that she wasn't interested in talking to me."

"Right, because you're an innocent victim here--what was wrong with your original plan, anyway, Martin can sneak her onto the payroll and it's not like any of us are paying rent."

Daisy's voice is quiet but sharp. "Stop it, both of you. April's had a long day. You can argue another time, right now you need to give her space."

"Sorry," Jon mutters, sounding not at all sorry. Melanie scuffs her foot against the floor and exhales slowly, still glaring at him.

"...how did making me tell you about the caves get back on the table? I mean, I guess the answer is 'you're jonesing for my trauma'. Anyway, if I ever decide to do that, which I sure hope I won't, it's definitely not gonna be now."

Jon is just going to SCOWL AT THE FLOOR. “I’m not going to take your statement unless you want to give me your statement.” He does not necessarily sound happy about this fact. “It seemed like... relevant information. For if you decide to work here. Which you don’t have to.”

"...honestly I'm not sure the nightmares are a bad thing, all things considered. Like, they're bad, but hey, extra reasons for you to regret doing that thing you keep saying you're not going to do in that tone of voice that sounds like you're only barely convincing yourself."

“That’s... that’s fair.” Sigh. He’s still staring at the floor but the scowl is gone. “I don’t— I’m sorry.”

"...yeah," she says, somewhere between acknowledging and sympathetic.

"Anyway. I would like... food and some assurance that I will sleep under a roof tonight and an explanation of the difference between 'hire yourself' and 'Martin (whoever that is) sneaks you onto the payroll' and whatever other options I have for hanging around."

(Basira heads off to get food.)

“Martin is—an assistant here. Like Melanie and Basira and Daisy. Since Elias was put in jail, Peter Lukas has been running the Institute. He serves the Lonely, which is approximately what it sounds like, and he’s taken a special interest in Martin, which is why you haven’t met Martin. He’d be—better at this, he was always the best of us at—comfort. 

He might be able to get you on the payroll as a secretary or just an unnamed expense or something, something that doesn’t tie you to the Archives, which means you can quit or leave any time. The downsides of this are that Elias or Peter Lukas might notice you, and also that Martin is... More distant. Than before.

If you hire yourself then all you have to do is go into an office and sign some paperwork and you’ll start getting paid. But you can’t quit and if you try to go on vacation for too long you’ll start getting sick, wasting away.

You can also just stay without making money. The downside of that is that money can be exchanged for goods and services. I’m perfectly happy to give you enough money for food—not like I’m using it—but the Archives has a high enough turnover rate that relying on the goodwill of its employees is... risky.”

Food! 

“You forgot to give her the assurance that she has a place to sleep tonight.”

“What? —Oh, right. We don’t have a spare bed yet but you can pile up my blankets, I haven’t been able to sleep with them since the coffin.”

"Since the... okay. Sure. It sounds like I don't want to go near any of your spooky bosses past or present, but being a miscellaneous expense doesn't sound so bad? I really am not gonna sign any paperwork that means I waste away if I stop working at the haunted prison, that sounds like a terrible idea. Especially since I've already been kidnapped by extradimensional monsters once in my life and I'd rather the second time not kill me. Or, I guess I shouldn't assume, do you guys already know whether you end up having problems if you like physically can't come into work? How long has your boss been in prison and is he wasting away in there?"

"I was kidnapped for a month and didn't do particularly poorly apart from the part where I was kidnapped. I also spent six months outside the Institute, but that was--special circumstances, I was in a coma and I don't even know that I can get sick for the same reasons. Martin was fine for a couple weeks of not coming into work without telling anyone--I was away from work for two and a half months when I was with Georgie, but I was still doing work for the Institute, and I'm pretty sure Elias filed paperwork allowing it--I don't actually know how long Tim managed to stay away before he started getting sick, it was while I was with Georgie and the tapes he recorded don't have dates on them--Elias is doing fine in prison but he's Elias, he's almost definitely watching us from in there. My guess is that you'll be fine as long as you're not trying to leave, but I don't technically know, maybe Tim did fine for a month before he started feeling ill."

Melanie winces a little. "I didn't pay attention, I just thought he was being an asshole, trying to dump all the work on me while I was still new here. I think he was gone for about a month total?" Then she glances at Jon. "You forgot to mention Elias's threat about Archives employees. He says that if he dies, we all die too. I don't believe him, but nobody except me is willing to risk it, hence the sending him to jail. But he's not young, I wouldn't want my lifespan tied to his even putting aside all the people who want to kill him. Word of advice, even if we can't find Martin, the pay's not worth being a prisoner here."

"Wow, yeah, good to know. Note to self: never ever work for the Archives."

"Yeah. Good plan. --D'you want to sleep in an office or in the tunnels?"

"...are the tunnels the ex-prison part of the building, because I can't say I'm thrilled about that, but on the other hand I think my actual answer might be 'whichever place feels less watched'."

"Yep, they're the ex-prison part. They are less watched, though. It's--better is maybe an overstatement, but." Shrug. "I don't like it up here."

"I don't like it up here either. I'll go for the tunnels."

The tunnels are beneath a trapdoor in the office! They are vaguely mazelike; there are several levels. Melanie and Basira have cots set up on the second; Daisy can't join them in the tunnels at all because her legs are still too weak for that to be safe, and Jon stays with her, but they get several armfuls of blanket to take with them for April. Nobody's sure how far the tunnels extend. Melanie's pretty sure they go past the boundaries of the Institute. Basira just says "Far." and leaves it at that. They're totally dark except for the light of the flashlights ("torches") that they've brought; the sleeping area has a few candles set up as well. They're definitely unsettling, although it might just be the fact that they're creepy underground tunnels, but the feeling of being watched is almost entirely absent.

April is happy to haul the lion's share of her blanket nest around; it seems only fair.

Once she has them piled up on the floor a little ways away from the cots, she turns to Melanie and says, "So what is watching us up there, anyway?"

"Elias, mostly. The--it's called the Eye? Some sort of--weird fear god--about knowing things you aren't supposed to. Elias and Jon both have powers from it. This whole place is--about it. Like a really fucked-up temple disguised as an office building."

"Well, now I'm extra glad I didn't mention up there that my first thought when I heard you all die if Elias dies was 'feed him to the Cave Things, I think they like keeping people alive'."

Dry snort. "I'm in favor."

"Probably a bad idea and also I don't know that we have any way to do it, but it would solve at least one problem, so..." Wry shrug.

"Anything that hurts him can't be that bad an idea."

"Whatever they were trying to make me into, it sounds like he'd be a nastier one."

Shudder. "Fair enough." Pause. "He doesn't just--watch. He can make you know things, make you experience them, make you live your worst moment over and over until you break."

"Sounds like fun," she says, in the tone of one who very much does not think it sounds like fun at all. "Dare I ask how we know that?"

Melanie raises her hand and waves it. "I tried to kill him. Twice. He let me go with--well. I suppose it qualified as a warning, for him."

"My instinctive response here is 'holy shit, are you okay' but I'm starting to get the impression that nobody around here is ever okay."

Dry laugh. "Pretty much. You'll fit right in."

Snort. "Not wrong."

"We can go shopping tomorrow, if you want. Get you a sleeping bag or a cot or something. And some more clothes so you don't have to keep borrowing Daisy's."

"That'd be nice. Thanks."

"'Course. Honestly, it's nice being around someone without so much of the--history." Vague gesture. 

"Heh. Glad I can help, I guess."

"Do you have any questions? I know this all must be, uh, a lot."

"It's a hell of a lot but 'what the fuck is even going on' seems, uh, kind of broad, as questions go."

"Yeah." Melanie sighs and leans back. "Bet Jon could get a useful answer with that. Um. The supernatural's real, it's based on fear and turns people into monsters like Jon or Daisy or Elias. Some people worship it and want to help it end the world. None of this is common but there are a lot of people in the world and you don't actually need very many of them for it to become a problem. So. There's other stuff too--ghosts, books, architecture--but we have even less of an idea about all that."

"That's, uh... unpromising. Man, I really wish I was more sure about whether the Cave Things want to end the world or not. Like, they suck! They suck so much! But depending what they want and how bad it is and what the fear monster things ending the world would look like, they might suck less, you know?"

"Yeah." Sigh. "I guess the world hasn't ended yet, at least."

"I mean, that's good, but if people keep trying... it kinda only takes one, you know?"

"Yeah. We just have to keep trying too, I guess."

She nods.

Time passes. Basira reads; Melanie watches youtube videos on her phone for a while before heading up to the offices to plug it in. Eventually it's time to sleep.

Basira wakes up three times in the night and does a full patrol of the Institute all three times. Melanie only wakes up once, but she wakes up screaming.

April sleeps like a log, with similar levels of noise and movement, right up until Melanie screams at which point she startles awake and immediately curls up in a fetal position with her hands over her mouth. It takes her a few seconds to recognize that the person screaming isn't her, at which point she drags a blanket over her head and burrows back into her nest, somewhat more tensely than before.

It's kind of hard to tell when it's morning, since the hallways are always pitch black.

Basira and Melanie will head up to the offices at some point, though.

If April keeps sleeping, Basira will come down to wake April up at noon or so.

If otherwise uninterrupted, she will totally sleep until noon.

Waking her up is pretty easy, though, all you have to do is make any kind of human voice noises or touch her.

Basira starts with a very quiet "Hey" from a safe distance, so that works fine. She isn't going to touch April unless she has to, she still has basic police training for dealing with extremely traumatized people.

The blanket nest rustles for a few seconds and then a bleary face pokes out. "G'morning. Is it morning?"

"It's noon. I can let you sleep longer if you want, but I thought I'd let you know. It's easy to lose track of time without any light to keep track."

"No, noon is good, noon seems like a decent time to wake up."

"Great, I'll plan on waking you up at noon then. Melanie had plans to take you shopping, right? There anything else you want to do?"

"Going shopping sounds like a good plan to start with. And, I dunno, if there's stuff I can do to help out around the place..." She trails off with a shrug, which incidentally helps excavate her from the nest. Up she gets.

"Not really." Does April like granola bars, here is a granola bar and a bottle of water. "Eat enough, drink enough, start working out. You can do research if you want, I guess, or if it looks like there might be anyone planning an apocalypse. Who knows, maybe I'll end up teaching you to shoot."

"Wow. Okay, sure." She can stuff a granola bar in her face before they head back up to the part of the building with light fixtures.

Light fixtures!

(Jon and Daisy look tired. It's almost as if nobody in this building got a good night of sleep or something.)

Shopping?

Shopping! In a normal-ass city on a normal-ass planet! Wow that's gonna be weird isn't it.

Yup. 

The good news is that they have a solid amount of money, since they no longer have to pay rent. The bad news is that April doesn't really... have... anything. She can buy a reasonable number of clothes and they can buy toothpaste and a toothbrush and shampoo and soap and food she likes and a hairbrush or comb and whatever she wants for a sleeping arrangement as long as she doesn't want a real bed.

The really unsettling thing about shopping, she discovers, is the background noise. All those people going around having voices, how dare they.

That said, she has clothes and toiletries and junk food and a hairbrush and her very own cot—and a pillow, she has to sit down for a minute when confronted with the fact that she gets to sleep with a pillow again—and, all in all, is a very happy April. "Never thought I'd be so glad to put on a bra."

“Ha. I can imagine. Want to head back or would you rather hang out at coffeeshops and avoid the Eye for a bit longer? Not much overlap between ‘quiet’ and ‘not incredibly creepy’ so I figured I’d ask which you’d rather.”

"Eh, gotta get used to it sometime. Let's sit in a coffeeshop and pretend we're normal people."

“Sounds good to me.”

The coffeeshop Melanie picks out is relatively quiet, which is to say that it still seems pretty loud to April.

“What’s your order? You can go find a spot to sit.”

"Man, I dunno." She squints hopelessly at the menu board. "I can't actually read that from here, what's a normal coffee order in 2018 for someone who's kind of a wuss about coffee?"

"--Oh, shit, d'you need glasses? You can get tea or you can get a coffee with a ridiculous amount of sugar and whipped cream and stuff, your choice."

"I'll go for a ridiculous coffee, why not. And yeah, sorry, I forgot to mention it but I'm nearsighted as hell, you've all been varyingly friendly blurs to me this whole time."

"Well fuck. Do you know your prescription at least or should we be trying to figure out if there are any eye doctors who'll take someone who doesn't legally exist?"

"Yeah, sadly no. Last time I went to the eye doctor I was like sixteen."

"Fuck. --We can see if Jon can Know it, it's the sort of thing he might be able to do. If you're, uh, willing."

"I mean, will there be any terrible side effects?"

"Not like the nightmares or anything? He might end up knowing other things about you, if he goes looking. Even if he wanted to control it he--can't, really. He's... working on not looking, but, well."

"All in all, probably worth it to get me glasses."

"Okay. Well, we'll try that then."

Melanie goes up and orders! She returns a couple minutes later with a bubble tea for herself and some sort of fancy coffee drink with whipped cream on top for April.

April approves of her fancy coffee drink.

Oh good! They can just stay here then until either April wants to leave or the coffeeshop closes.

She is content to spend a couple of hours in the coffeeshop, although her conversational skills are a little rusty and the first question she comes up with is "so which famous people died in the last ten years, anyway? Queen Elizabeth still around?"

“She is, yeah. The royals are like cockroaches or something. You’re from—2008? Uh, phones are way cooler now. MySpace died. Donald Trump is president of the US now. I’m definitely missing things, I didn’t expect to be meeting a time traveler. Though I guess we have no reason to expect our worlds are the same.”

"MySpace died? Wow. The times sure do change. And I guess I can tell Youtube got big from how you introduced yourself. I haven't run into anything yet that threw me for a loop except, like, all the apocalypse cult eldritch shit, which... I dunno, I guess it's weird for that to be the only thing that's different, but I guess I also don't know that my original world didn't have all the same crap..."

“Oh! Yeah, YouTube got really big. And Netflix is mostly online streaming instead of through the mail now. The apocalypse cults are, uh, a secret. I worked as a ghost hunter for years before finding anything real.”

"Yeah, so if my world did have it, I probably wouldn't have noticed."

“Yeah. —Seriously though, I’m not joking about the phones.” Melanie has an iPhone! It is basically a pocket-sized computer with a touchscreen and the ability to text and call people!

"Damn! That's so much cooler than I'd imagined phones getting!"

"They're really cool! We can probably get one for you if you want, I should check our budget but I think we're still doing fine within it. And smartphones are really useful."

"I think maybe I want glasses first and we can see how your budget feels about getting me a phone after that."

“Right, good plan.”

Nod nod.

Okay. They have had coffee. They have had something resembling a normal conversation. April is flinching much less frequently at ambient voice noises.

Time to go back to the spooky place?

Time to go back to the spooky place. 

Melanie goes into Jon’s office. “April needs glasses. Any chance the spooky knowledge powers include letting you know what her prescription is?”

“Wh—um, maybe? The Eye isn’t exactly Google.” Sigh. “...Negative three in her right eye, negative seven in her left eye, no astigmatism, and you can measure her pupillary distance your damn self.”

"Thanks. It's been awkward not really being able to see anybody's face since I got here."

“It’s not a problem. It’s nice to do something— useful.”

She smiles.

He smiles back, kind of. The muscles around his mouth definitely move, but the resulting expression is vaguely unnatural, like he's an alien who doesn't actually know how smiles are supposed to work.

Perhaps fortunately, she still can't quite see him clearly enough to get the full effect. And under the circumstances she's willing to give points for effort.

Later, Basira gathers everyone for a conversation.

"I want to set up some ground rules. I talked it over with Melanie and she agrees it's a good idea. Jon, no being alone with April unless it's an emergency and you really can't help it. And stop staring at her like she's a piece of meat."

"I'm not--"

"Yeah, you are. And if I find out about you taking her statement I'm putting a bullet through your head. Got it?"

Weary sigh. "Yes."

"Good."

(April reflects on how apparently there are some advantages to not having her glasses yet. On the other hand maybe she would actually rather know what it looks like when he stares at her, all things considered. So that later if she catches him doing it again she'll be appropriately concerned.)

"April, I know this is all still new to you, but if there's anything that would help... let me know? No promises, but we'll do our best."

"I'll... keep that in mind. Thanks."

"No problem."

"Anything else, or are we done here?"

"Have you talked to Martin yet?"

"...No."

"Well, that still needs to be done. And Melanie got groceries today. I think that's all the news I have."

Then they can disperse again!

Melanie does a few measurements of April's pupils and then places an order online for glasses. They set up April's cot. 

Nights are... about the same. Basira does patrols. Most nights Melanie wakes up screaming at least once. April gets woken up at noon. There's not much to do, particularly, though the changes the Internet has gone through in a decade will probably keep April occupied for a while.

A few days later, glasses arrive!

She does her best to be useful insofar as usefulness is possible; she's always on the lookout for floors in need of sweeping, lightbulbs in need of changing, plumbing in need of unclogging, that general sort of thing. She remembers Basira suggesting that she work out but she doesn't actually have much of an idea how to begin doing that and this seems like a stupid problem for her to have which makes it very tempting to ignore until prompted. She does keep herself appropriately fed and watered, though, and tries to at least spend a decent amount of time walking around even if she is only walking around in well-known locations due to the risk of spending all day squinting hopelessly at street signs if she strays too far from the Institute and gets lost.

And then glasses arrive and she puts them on her face and "holy fuck, I can see again. Did not know I missed it this much."

(Basira helps Daisy through PT exercises once a day, as well as doing her own workouts once a day on her own. Melanie has PT exercises as well. April has a standing invitation to join any of them, although Basira is much more in shape than she is while Melanie and Daisy are still working on 'walking', so getting something at the correct level might be a bit harder.)

"It's nice, right? Leaves on trees, all that."

(It's a rhetorical question; it doesn't do anything. Daisy and Melanie are both in the room as well. Melanie glares at Jon when he talks. They all have faces, which have been thus far represented with icons! Daisy's emaciated, and Jon and Melanie are both bordering on underweight. Jon has quite a lot of scars--he's covered in pockmarks that look like they probably came from puncture wounds, his right hand is covered in burns, he has a ring of scar tissue around one of his pinkies, and he's got a long scar on his throat, as though it was slit at some point. He's not, in fact, wearing glasses. He is looking at April like he wants to eat her. He has extremely dark bags under his eyes, like he hasn't slept in a very long time.)

She smiles. She doesn't take offense, although she does pause before responding, as though taking a moment to verify that she doesn't have to. Then again, maybe she's just absorbed in looking around at everything in the office.

"Yeah, I've never lost my glasses for this long before and wow, objects having details, definitely forgot how cool this was. You all have faces! With features on them! That's a weirdly large number of tape recorders! I can count the dead flies in the light fixture!" Her wandering gaze lands back on Jon and she remarks in the same tone of cheerful discovery, "You look like utter garbage! —sorry, that was tactless."

"It's fine. It's not a new observation."

"Oh good. I meant it in the sense where you look like you have been having a very bad time but that is not quite what came out of my mouth. Although while I'm making tactless observations, wow, they weren't kidding about the way you look at me."

Jon closes his eyes and digs his fingernails into his palm. (Of the non-burned hand.) "Yes, well. I'm not trying to, it's just--" Frustrated sigh. "I can go to a different room."

"Eh, I'm not that bothered. Whatever." She tucks the little cloth that came with the glasses into a pocket and turns to Melanie. "Okay, glasses have been achieved. I remember you saying something about a phone...?"

"Right! Yes. Phone. It'll be a couple hundred dollars but--almost definitely worth it, you can use it for anything. You'll also have to come shopping again, unless you want me picking one out for you."

"I will happily come shopping again."

Cool! Then they can go shopping again. April can get a smartphone. 

She asks for a lot of advice and pays a lot of attention to budget and eventually obtains a phone she is satisfied with, then spends the whole way home playing Candy Crush on it.

...Awwwwwwwww. Good for her. Melanie will not interrupt the Candy Crush playing except to give April the Institute’s wifi password once they get back. 

"The future is pretty cool," she announces. "Apocalypse cults notwithstanding."

“Kind of a major exception. But hey, at least we have Candy Crush.”

"Candy Crush is a good thing for the future to have."

“It is! —Oh, I forgot to mention—there isn’t great service in the tunnels, and there’s a lot of spooky bullshit, don’t go exploring down there on your own, even if you can see now. London’s mostly safe, though.”

"I will avoid exploring the spooky tunnels. I'm totally gonna wander around London though. Gotta go look at all those trees with leaves on 'em."

“Yeah! Your phone has a GPS on it so you can find your way around if you do get lost—” Melanie demonstrates. 

"Oh neat, and here I thought I'd have to just navigate by landmarks and memorize street names like we did in the benighted past."

Melanie laughs. “Well, you still will if your phone dies. But it’s more convenient than a paper map.”

"Sounds it!"

When April goes down into the tunnels that night, she will discover they are even spookier than previously assumed! Specifically, past a certain point, there are a kind of ridiculous amount of dead silvery-looking worms. They’re small and they’ve been cleared out of the way of the main path, but they’re obvious now that April has glasses. 

Yikes! How about she does not go near those at all!

That seems like a good plan! (There’s also quite a few cobwebs that have been similarly cleared, but this is probably more expected.)

Yeah, cobwebs are normal, piles of dead worms are Yikes.

She means to ask somebody about them, but ends up forgetting because it is so much easier to just Not Think About The Dead Worms.

Meanwhile:

"Jon. I told you not to come find me."

"I know you did, but it's--"

"Important, yeah. It's always important. Been taking any statements recently?"

Sigh. "No. And--thank you. You--" Deep breath. "You did the right thing."

"Yeah, well, somebody's got to. What do you want."

"There was--a girl, at Hilltop Road. Not Annabelle. She's from a different universe, like--like that one statement we got right before the Unknowing, Anya Villette, the one you found for me. Her name's April. She doesn't legally exist, she didn't even have any clothes, we've been giving her a place to stay but--"

"...But the Magnus Institute isn't exactly prime real estate. And what do you expect me to do about this?"

Sigh. "...Do you think you could figure out a way to get her some money without either trapping her here or bringing her to the attention of Peter Lukas. Write it off as an expense or something. ...Please."

"...I can do my best. I should... go now."

"Yeah. Yeah, okay."

And when Jon looks back, Martin is gone.

The next day: "Hey. April. Can you help me with something?"

"Sure, what's up?"

"Daisy passed out again yesterday. I don't think she's hurt, I caught her, but it'd make me feel better to have someone keeping an eye on her. Melanie's got a bad leg, Jon's as likely to pass out too as he is to help, and I can't be hovering around her all day, so. That leaves you. If she falls, catch her head, head injury is the most dangerous part of falling. --Might want to keep an eye on Jon too if he's around. Get me if she's acting weird or if anyone falls and you can't wake them up. Don't trust them if they say they feel fine, they're both liars about that."

"Got it. What, uh, is Daisy's problem, anyway, I get the sense it's not the same as Jon's...? Maybe none of my business, I guess. Except I don't know what kind of acting weird to look for."

"She's-- violent. Or she can be. Hasn't been, since the coffin, and that was two months ago. But that's not what I meant. Acting weird as in concussion symptoms. Memory problems, confusion, sensitivity to light, fatigue, nausea. That sort of thing. --Has anyone given you Smirke's list of fears?"

"Nnnno. No, they haven't."

"...Right. Of course they haven't.

There was this old British architect, 19th century, Robert Smirke, and he came up with a way to categorize the fear entities that affect our world. He came up with fourteen: the Eye, the Dark, the Stranger, the Spiral, the Lonely, the Slaughter, the Buried, the Vast, the Corruption, the Desolation, the Web, the End, the Hunt, and the Flesh.

Jon, Elias, the Institute--that's the Eye, the Beholding, the Ceaseless Watcher. It's the fear of being watched, being seen, being exposed. Flip side, it's the fear of learning things you shouldn't.

The Dark, pretty self-explanatory. Their cult is the People's Church of the Divine Host.

The Stranger is--you know the uncanny valley effect? Yeah, that's the Stranger. Mannequins, creepy dolls, that sort of thing. They tried to do an apocalypse ritual last year and we stopped them. Tim died, Jon and Daisy sort of died, I'm the only one that actually made it out.

The Spiral's the fear of going crazy, that either you're wrong about everything or everyone else is. Lies, fractals, mazes, hallucinations. An aspect of it lives in the tunnels, calls itself Helen. If you see a yellow door, don't go in it. Melanie likes it but I don't trust it.

The Lonely is, well, fear of being alone. That's Peter Lukas. He's grooming Martin, 's why you haven't seen either of them.

Melanie used to be Slaughter--that's violence, anger, warfare--after she got shot. We had to take the bullet out of her while she was asleep but the anesthetic wasn't enough, she woke up almost as soon as we got it out. She's fine now.

The Buried is claustrophobia and suffocation. Called the Buried because the central example's being buried alive. That's what happened to Daisy, she was in the coffin for--god. Eight months, before Jon went in and got her out.

The Vast is heights, depths, agoraphobia... opposite of the Buried, pretty much.

The Corruption is bugs, disease, parasitism... gross stuff, stuff that makes you feel like you need a shower.

The Desolation is uncaring destruction, caused by people or not. Fire, pain, that sort of deal. They've got a cult, too, the Lightless Flame.

I think we already mentioned the Web? Mind control, manipulation, for some reason also spiders. The house you came out of is a stronghold of the Web.

The End's pretty basic, fear of death.

The Hunt and the Flesh are weird 'cause they're formed from animal fears and not human fears--the Hunt is the fear of wild animals being hunted as prey, the Flesh is from animals being factory farmed. It's the newest fear. Daisy was part of the Hunt, back when we were police together. I'll write it all down for you later if you want."

"Are the piles of worm corpses in the tunnels related to... uh, the bug one I guess? Also... how... does somebody survive eight months in a coffin? Well, magic, presumably."

"Yeah, the worms attacked the Institute a few years back. It's why Jon's got those scars all over, Martin had to dig them out of him with a corkscrew. They're all dead now though, got it pretty thoroughly checked by exterminators with a super strict NDA, so." Shrug. "And, yeah, magic. But that's why she has trouble walking, she may not have needed food or water but her muscles still atrophied while she was in there. She's actually doing way better now, believe it or not. Well. In some ways, at least."

"Okay, noted. Wow, do you guys ever catch a break? I guess nobody's nearly died since I got here, which is cool."

“Not really. Give it a couple months, I’m sure you’ll get plenty of chances to experience mortal peril with the rest of us.”

"Oh, what fun," she says dryly.

Snort. "Yeah, something like that. So, you up for helping supervise to make sure nobody hits their head too hard?"

"Yeah, sure."

Daisy looks... bad. Not as scarred as Jon by any means, but the bags under her eyes are prominent and she's more emaciated than he is. (Jon is skinny, possibly worryingly so, but Daisy looks like you could count her bones.)

"So, Basira's getting you to help babysit me?"

"Apparently so."

"Well, I don't do much so it'll probably be fairly boring for you. 'Cept for when it's exciting for everyone, I suppose." She sighs and leans her head back against the wall before standing up. "You okay having me as your supervision around Jon or should we pick up Melanie too? Figure it'll be easier with all the fall risks in one room."

"I'm reasonably okay with just you and Jon given that Jon has like three different reasons not to try to eat me and one of them is death."

"Fair enough."

Jon's reading a statement; the tape recorders aren't on. When he finishes, he rests his head in his hands for a while.

"Not an important one? --The tape recorders aren't on."

"Yeah, something like that. What do you want."

"Basira's visiting Elias today so she put April on babysitting duty."

"And you figured that if she's already watching you she might as well watch me too?"

"Pretty much."

Jon's eyes dart to April, then away, then back to her, then back away. "Did Melanie say this was okay?"

"No. April did."

"...Right.

I talked to Martin last night."

"...And?"

To April, now: "He said-- he said he'd do his best. To get you money without Peter noticing."

April feels like she is missing an incredible amount of subtext and for lack of a better idea she is just going to ignore it all and deal with the straightforward parts of this interaction.

"That sounds promising. Thanks. And thanks to Martin too I guess but it sounds like I'm never gonna meet him, so."

Head in hands again. "You would have liked him, I think." Jon isn't quite crying but it's close.

Aww fuck, there's feelings. Some sympathetic impulse wants to offer him a hug but she feels like they are nowhere near that close and it would just be weird. On the other hand watching him cry would also be kind of weird. There may be no non-weird way out of this.

"...sorry."

Jon takes some deeeep breaths before sitting back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling.

"It's not your fault."

"Well, yeah. I guess what I mean by 'sorry' is 'your life seems to suck and I wish it didn't'."

"Ah. Well." Wow these ceiling tiles are so interesting.

Okay yeah that's awkward but at least she's not awkwardly watching the spooky semi-stranger cry about missing his friend. That's... good? She thinks? Probably? Nothing about her life has prepared her for this.

That's fair.

If April doesn't have anything she wants to do, Jon will quietly do research on his laptop while Daisy plays phone games. They can keep this up pretty indefinitely, although eventually it will probably occur to Daisy that April needs to eat lunch. (It will take an hour or so after when she normally eats lunch for Daisy to remember, unless April brings it up herself.)

April browses the internet on her phone, interspersed with a moderate amount of Candy Crush. She has found where people put their fanfiction in 2018 and the joy of this is only slightly marred by the fact that, understandably, most new fanfiction is about media that came out in the last decade. It's okay, the Harry Potter fandom is still kicking and that's the important thing.

She does in fact remember the existence of lunch at an appropriate hour. "So uh... I should eat food. Is there a way to make that happen that's compatible with my babysitting duties. Also... do either of you... eat food."

"Right. We--can. Basira thinks we should, says it's probably good for us. There's probably food around here somewhere?" 

"There is." Jon does an admirable job of standing up and makes it about two steps before his legs give out.

"Oh for—"

She dives to catch him. She is not very good at this and they sort of end up sprawled on the floor in a heap but, and this is important, nobody hits their head on anything, which in her opinion suffices to call it a win.

Yeah, that counts as a win.

.....bliiiiiiiiiiink. "...Sorry about that. You and Daisy can go get food, I'll just.... lie here, I guess. I'll be better later, probably." He mostly sounds like he's trying to convince himself.

"Lying here sounds like a good plan!" She disentangles herself and gets up. "We will go get food. And water. And you... will hopefully not stand up again while I'm not around to catch you. Cool? Cool."

"Right. Yes. Okay." Once it is clear that he is not being expected to stand up again, he goes limp on the floor. He also stops blinking, mostly because it's too much effort and so he doesn't really want to keep doing it, but from the outside it is definitely a disconcerting effect.

That is mildly odd but, you know what, if you've fallen on the floor and can't get up you are allowed to decide you're too tired to blink.

Food? Food.

Food! Daisy has to sit down once but, and this is important, she does not at any point collapse. They have quite a lot of groceries and snacks stockpiled.

April picks out things she wants to eat and asks Daisy which things Jon can be expected to not hate and makes sure that they are also bringing water because she definitely wants to be hydrated and under the circumstances would kind of like it if Jon and Daisy were too, and then they can go back and have lunch like the group of normal kind of objectively fucked-up people that they are.

Jon has a LOT of opinions about food and is ridiculously picky but Daisy has figured out some things that he will not hate. Water's good! Daisy doesn't have to stop and rest at all on the way back although she does feel a bit better when they're back and sitting down.

(Jon has not moved from his location on the floor; he shifts his head when they arrive and then stops moving again.)

April sits down next to him on the floor and offers him a Certified Acceptable Food Item.

He will SQUINT AT IT DUBIOUSLY and then attempt to lever himself up on his elbows. He gets almost halfway to sitting up before collapsing back with a sigh. "Sorry," he mutters. He does not sound particularly sorry. He is theoretically looking at the food but his eyes keep sliding over to focus on April's face instead. "I can sit up, just give me a minute."

She makes a sort of darkly amused 'tff' noise, puts his food down next to him, and gets up to sit in an actual chair and eat her own lunch.

He does, eventually, manage to lever himself up so he's half-slumped against the wall. He eats the first half or so of his lunch while staring unblinkingly at April, until Daisy nudges him, at which point he mutters another extremely half-hearted "sorry" and fixes his eyes firmly downwards. 

"Okay, now I'm morbidly curious, do you not need to blink?"

"Not since I woke up from the coma. It's just--habit. Usually."

"He needed glasses, too, before the coma. Guess creepy eye powers have their benefits."

"Yeah, I thought there might be something of that nature going on, what with the way you reacted when I got my glasses. —also, what coma,"

"When the Unknowing happened--the Stranger's apocalypse ritual--I... Died, kind of? I mean, my heart stopped. But I was still--alive, my brain was still alive, I was still... dreaming." Small shudder. "The hospital called it a coma, and I don't exactly have a better word for being unconscious for six months."

"...right. Okay. Have I mentioned recently that this place's whole deal is kinda fucked up."

"I'm aware."

"Sorry your life sucks," she adds, and then she goes back to eating lunch.

"Sorry he's being prickly. He's not used to people who aren't me being sympathetic to him."

"That's not true! There's--"

Daisy waits a second to see if he's going to complete the sentence. When he doesn't: "Yeah, thought so."

"God, that's depressing."

"See, now you're getting it!"

"...it's pretty depressing, yeah." Om nom.

The food's not bad! The ambient feeling of being watched is somewhat worse, but that's not the food's fault. 

The ambient feeling of being watched is an asshole and she refuses to pay it any more attention than she has to. (This strategy is working out perhaps less well than she might have hoped.)

Unfortunately this does not seem to discourage it, or at least it hasn't so far.

It's quiet for a bit after they finish their lunches.

Daisy's the first to say something. "Right, this silence is getting awkward, any objections to me turning the radio on?"

Jon actually smiles a little. It's tired, and he's still staring at the floor, but it's there. "None from me."

"Go for it."

Then they can listen to the radio in the background! It's currently talking about world news. Donald Trump says he is willing to meet the leaders of Iran. North Korea might have new missiles. IS is claiming a terrorist attack of foreign cyclists in Tajikistan.

(Daisy goes back to playing phone games. Jon slowly sinks back down to the floor.)

April, reminded that she vaguely recognized that name the first time it came up, googles Donald Trump.

"—he the fucking what?" she says, eloquently, a few sentences into his Wikipedia page. "How did this man get to be the president of the United States?? Were eldritch forces involved???"

"Ha. Not that I'm aware of, but who knows."

"Not unless you count the secretary to the state director in Ohio, who--" Jon cuts himself off. "I mean. No."

...she snorts, and then the snort slowly blossoms into a full-on chuckle.

Awkward half-smile. "The Eye is really not as helpful as it thinks it is sometimes."

"Seriously though, a reality TV host. I mean, I guess Arnold Schwarzenegger got to be Governor of California and the world didn't end, but still."

"Yet." Exhale. "Though it seems likely that politics will prove unrelated to the world ending or not, at least."

"...true."

"Better than the alternative. If this is what politics looks like without any apocalypse cults..."

"Yeah, here's hoping the apocalypse cults stay out of politics."

"Small blessings."

Nobody else passes out for the rest of the day, and eventually Jon is able to walk a couple steps without falling, which is sort of like a win.

Nothing much changes for the next couple of weeks. Basira starts occasionally putting April on babysitting duty instead of doing it herself. Melanie goes to therapy once a week; after a particularly intense session, she announces that she's decided to stop doing her job, now that Elias isn't here to make sure everyone's working. Jon and Daisy keep getting thinner and more tired despite keeping up with daily exercises (Daisy also consistently eats three meals a day, though Jon is worse about this). Daisy starts shaking all the time. Jon gets even more snappish than usual. Jon's restless; he paces and chain-smokes as much as he can before his legs give out, at which point he reads old statements aloud. Daisy rests more, curled up with her knees to her chest, eyes carefully tracking every motion in the room. He veers between staring at April and pointedly not looking her direction whenever they're in a room together.

Two weeks later, Jon passes out under April's watch for the second time.

She catches him, again, though this time it feels like she almost doesn't make it in time.

"Fuck's sake," she says under her breath. "Eat food, why don't you—"

He doesn't wake up right away this time.

"I don't know if that would help," Daisy says slowly. "You... might not want to be here, when he wakes up."

"—so on the one hand that makes sense and on the other hand it's—my watch—" She carefully lays Jon out on the floor and scoots away from him and looks between him and Daisy and bites her lip. "Fuck. You guys are—you're not doing okay. Like—you're—you're not okay."

Sigh. "Not really.

I can lay down if you want to leave. You caught him, you did your part of this job."

She gets to her feet, glancing between them again.

"...okay. I'm. Going for a walk. Please make sure both of you stay on the floor for the next, I dunno, half an hour. I'll..." (she sighs, and smiles wryly) "...indulge in some wishful thinking and bring you guys food when I get back."

"Thanks."

When April returns, Jon is awake.

She has successfully remembered which things he finds edible and retrieved some of them from stores, and the first thing she does when she gets back is set down a Certified Acceptable Food Item and a water bottle next to him on the floor. (With a side of mild Suspicious Glaring, because she remembers Daisy telling her not to be around when he woke up.)

Jon does not look particularly interested in the Certified Acceptable Food Item. He does sip from the water bottle. He is once again not blinking, although he stops staring at April and starts staring at the floor once she gives him a Suspicious Glare. "Thank you." He doesn't sound particularly thankful. He sounds like he's aiming for his usual vaguely acidic tone, but his voice shakes and it lands somewhere in 'exhausted' instead.

She paces back and forth a couple times and then says, not looking at either of them, "—dying. Is the word I was avoiding earlier."

"What--" Jon cuts himself off. "Was this. I mean. When were--" Sigh. "I don't remember this conversation, do I have a concussion or are you just assuming I'm all-knowing enough to be aware of all the conversations you happen to have."

"Sorry, no, I was talking to Daisy right after you passed out. I just—" She makes a frustrated noise. "Words, ugh."

Pace pace pace.

"—I'm going for another walk and for your information it's not because I'm scared of you." (This is true.) "I'll be back in... fifteen minutes. Don't get up, I'll be mad."

Halfway out the door, she pauses to add, "And thank you for not asking questions even though I was being cryptic and frustrating."

And she's out.

Jon is going to close his eyes and also make a frustrated noise. Frustrated noises are all the rage today, apparently.

"She wants to help, you know."

"Yes, well."

"I'm just saying." Daisy will put the radio on and remain on the floor. They can listen to a bad sitcom while they wait.

(Basira and Melanie are around if April wants to talk to them. Or she can take a walk on her own.)

Oh she is in no way going to try to make the word sounds come out of her face hole in this state. She stomps around the block for a little less than ten minutes first, until she can think in complete sentences again.

Then, with five minutes still to go before she promised she'd be back, she finds whichever of Basira or Melanie she can track down first and says abruptly, "So they're starving to death, huh."

"We don't know that."

"It seems pretty fucking likely to me at this point."

"It might be just--withdrawal. Getting worse before it gets better. We don't even know if they can die normally.

...I don't like seeing them like this either. But they both did a lot of damage. I let them do a lot of damage. If we could make sure they were pointed at the right people, maybe, but I don't want to just... set them loose again."

"Man, I have no idea who 'the right people' are to point them at, I just—"

She spends a moment struggling with words.

"—if they are starving to death, then—I can't singlehandedly save either of them, I'm pretty sure. I don't even know what Daisy eats. But... I don't think I like standing by and watching somebody waste away when I know I could feed them and while it would enormously suck it would not, in fact, kill me."

"Daisy would kill you.

You don't have to do anything, you know. Whatever happens to them, it's not on you."

"...so on the one hand, you're right, it's not. I don't have to. I could just stand back and see what happens and if what happens is death then oh well, sucks to be them. And if somebody was trying to make me do it, or make the case that it's my responsibility just because I'm here and I have a tasty treat attached, I would definitely tell that person to fuck off. But..." She shakes her head. "Man, I don't even like him that much, but he's a person and he's blatantly dying in front of me and it turns out I like that even less."

"It's your choice. If you want to give a statement, I'm not going to stop you. Hell, if someone came to give a statement, I don't even know if I'd warn them. 'S not like any of the rest of us were warned, and I don't-- I do still care about him? Just, what he was doing...

If he threatened you into this or, or anything, I'll--we'll figure something out. I promise. But if you do want this, that's not a decision I can make for you."

She laughs a little. "If he'd tried to threaten me into it we'd be having a very different conversation. But thanks."

Okay, back to the room she is nominally supervising right now. (For a moment she pictures getting them a fainting couch, and this is why she is giggling when she opens the door.)

Daisy turns the radio down. "Hey."

"Hey." She plonks herself into a chair. Something tells her Jon has not touched his Food Item but she glances over to check, just in case.

That sure is an untouched Food Item sitting next to him. "How was--I mean. I hope your walk was refreshing."

"I feel much more capable of using words to form sentences now!" she says cheerfully, but then her smile fades.

"So. You guys are probably starving to death but there's really no way to be sure until one of you keels over for good, is that about the size of it?"

"Pretty much."

She looks at Jon, and then that's too hard so she just sort of looks near Jon, and ends up staring at his Food Item. (All kinds of thematic implications there, which she notices and then decides she'd rather ignore.)

"...I couldn't actually make you not be dying, if you are. The best I can do is 'dying but slower'. Right? Like, there's no—telling the same story twice won't cut it?"

"...No. There isn't. The rest of them--Daisy, Basira, even Melanie--they've given statements before. If it were that easy..." Sigh. "I'm sorry. It would help for--a couple weeks, probably."

She drums her fingers on her knee.

"... I'll do it if you promise you'll eat real human food on a vaguely reasonable schedule from now on, because I cannot think of a stupider way for this to turn out than that I go to all that trouble and you end up succumbing to regular-ass starvation because you were too busy dying of eldritch trauma withdrawal to notice that your normal human bodily needs were also killing you."

That actually surprises a laugh out of him.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay. You'll do it?"