And If Thou Wilt, Forget

It had been a long, frustrating month. Actually a long and frustrating year. So when Tim got an email from Lou asking him to meet her for a late lunch to celebrate her birthday, he’d jumped at the offer, even if it meant he’d have to catch a cab or extend his lunch, since he hadn’t driven to work. He wouldn’t vent to her, wouldn’t ruin her day, but it would be nice to get to talk to someone who wasn’t involved in…all this. And maybe she’d know some places to find Gertrude.

He’d insisted on both Sasha and Martin going at their regular time, assured them he would talk to Jon, and used the span of time he had to himself to probe at a few threads he’d deliberately left hanging from statements he’d been assigned, secure in the knowledge that Jon wouldn’t call him on it…yet. He was just packing his laptop up to head out the door when he heard a thump, a clatter, and a rustle from the Archivist’s office.

And every sense he’d honed over the last two years fired off at once.

Tim was out of his seat and across the Archives floor before he had a chance to consciously think about it. Jon was standing over by the shelving unit he’d put up against one wall of the office, or what was left of it, anyway; it looked like it had collapsed, maybe because he’d put too much weight on it. There was dust all over that part of the office and a…tang in the air Tim couldn’t quite place but definitely didn’t like.

“You okay?” he asked Jon, who looked momentarily flustered.

“Ah…yeah,” Jon said, straightening his shoulders. “A…spider.”

Something prickled on the back of Tim’s neck. It could have been completely innocuous, but if the Web was involved…“Did you get it?”

“I…hope so.” Jon looked at his hands, as if searching for evidence. “I think so. Nasty, bulbous looking thing.”

A big, obvious-looking spider? If it hadn’t had a clear marking that told Jon it was toxic, it was certainly there just to draw attention, and that definitely meant the Web. Tim’s eyes roved over the shelving unit. “What did you do, try to tackle it?”

“No, just…” Jon waved at the shelves. “Cheap things, I guess. I was just trying to—”

Tim sucked in a sharp breath as his eyes locked onto what he hadn’t realized he’d been looking for. The shelving unit, as it had collapsed, had slammed into the wall. Not hard, probably, or at least it didn’t look like it should have been hard, but there was a distinct dent in the plaster. No…no, not a dent. A hole.

The tang in the air got a bit stronger, like a gust of wind had just come out of that hole, and he recognized it all at once: the sickly, musty odor he’d last noticed, last consciously noticed, in the corridor outside Martin’s flat. The smell of insects, and rot, and…filth.

Corruption.

Oh, shit.

“Jon,” he said sharply, cutting off whatever Jon had been trying to explain.

“What?” Jon looked at Tim, then followed his gaze. “Oh…uh…got dented when the shelf collapsed, I suppose.”

“That went clear through.” Fear was encroaching, threatening to choke him, but Tim had to stay calm, had to stay sensible. “Fuck, that’s supposed to be an exterior wall.”

“It—it should be.” Jon, in defiance of all logic and common sense but totally in line with his insatiable curiosity, bent over to examine the crack in the wall. “I think it’s just plasterboard.” He reached out, tentatively, and pushed at the largest portion; it crumbled away almost instantly.

“Jon, don’t, get away from there!” Tim shouted, lunging deeper into the room.

The musty, decaying smell got even stronger, and he heard the wet squelching sound of too many crawling, writhing things eagerly rushing towards them. Jon reeled back, throwing his arms up over his face. “Tim, run. Run…”

Too late. Way, way too late. The weakened wall ballooned briefly, then crumbled away at the bottom, and hundreds, thousands of the grey and white worms started erupting out of the wall. Jon yelled in dismay and backed off. Tim thought he was going to run—sensibly—but instead he lunged for the Archivist’s desk and began scrabbling with one hand across the surface, his eyes darting back and forth between the onslaught of filth and the desk.

“What are you doing?” Tim shouted at him.

“Almost—” Jon half-gasped, and Tim realized he was going for the tape recorder.

“Leave it, it’s not—” Tim half ran, half jumped over and reached for Jon’s arm.

Jon, not even looking in his direction, nearly folded himself lengthwise and managed to seize the recorder with a glad cry. “I got it!”

There was a sudden bang as the door to the office swung inwards and hit the wall, and Martin’s voice came from behind them. “Guys? Is everything—oh, Christ!”

“Shut up and get the extinguishers!” Jon yelled back.

“What?” Martin squeaked out.

“Fuck that,” Tim ground out. Jon’s eyes were still fixed in terror on the invasion, Martin was obviously too frightened to think clearly, and while it would obviously be best to extinguish these before they got any deeper into the Archives, his priority had to be getting Jon and Martin out of the line of fire. If these things got into them…no, it didn’t bear thinking about. He grabbed Jon’s arm and yanked him hard, then turned and dragged him towards the door, shouting at Martin, “Out, out, out! Grab the nearest CO2 and let’s go!”

“Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, yep.,” Martin babbled, backing out of the doorway, stumbling over his own feet, before turning and darting for the wall near the computer, where the little black-banded CO2 canister still hung. Tim knew, knew it had been serviced and replaced after he’d used it on the outlets behind Mister Megabytes and hoped and prayed nobody had used it since then.

In that, at least, his luck held; Martin grabbed it, aimed it at the threshold of the Archivist’s office, and let loose with the gas. Tim kept dragging Jon forward. “Come on! Don’t stop to fight them all! Document Storage, now!”

Jon was stumbling along at Tim’s side, running well enough on his own, and Tim, stupidly, released his arm, intending to drop back a little and go for one of the bigger extinguishers that had to be around somewhere nearby. Unfortunately, he did so at the exact moment as Jon looked back, presumably to check the pursuit of the worms. He slammed full speed into Sasha’s chair, which crashed to the ground with Jon on top of it. The recorder flew from his free hand and slid across the floor towards the shelves.

“Dammit!” Jon flailed, panicked as a drowning swimmer, and managed to free himself from the chair. Instead of continuing towards Document Storage, though, he started scuttling sideways to the worm army, obviously intent on the recorder.

“Jon! Santa cazzo Madre di Dio,” Tim swore. He put on a burst of speed, full Big Brother Mode activated, and caught Jon around the waist. Jon yelped, then screamed in the instant Tim hoisted him up over his shoulder.

“Jon, it’s okay, it’s just Tim!” Martin cried frantically.

“Martin! Get in the fucking storage room!” Tim bellowed, stomping a patch of worms with a disturbingly satisfying pop and vaulting over the chair. He was rewarded by the sight of Martin sprinting, almost as fast as he’d left his apartment, towards Document Storage.

His intention had been to toss Jon in, slam the door behind himself, and go back out to do battle with the things invading his Archives, dammit, Gertrude wasn’t here and she had left him in charge, Elias be damned, the Archives and those in it were his to protect, he’d already failed once, twice if you counted Breekon and Hope turning up to make their delivery, thrice if you counted Sasha getting lured out by the Twisting Deceit…all of that ran through his mind in the three bounds it took to get across the Archives to safety, but Jon’s hands were balled up in the back of his shirt and Martin was holding the door for him and he had to at least get in and get Jon down safely before he went back out there, and the second he was across the threshold Martin slammed the door and leaned against it, breathing heavily.

Jon was whimpering faintly as Tim slid him back over his shoulder to sit on the cot. Tim was about to reassure him that they were safe when his brain locked onto the pitch and timbre of Jon’s screams. Not fear. Pain. He instantly gave him a once-over and quickly found what he was looking for and afraid he’d find, in what little meat there was to his calf, just behind his left ankle. “Shit fuck damn! Martin, bottom left drawer, there’s a first-aid kit, I need it now!” He quickly patted himself down and—as he’d expected—came up with nothing but his key ring. He gritted his teeth. “This isn’t going to be fun, but it’s going to be the best I can do.”

“Wh-what are you—I, I didn’t get the recorder, I need to go grab the recorder,” Jon chanted, looking pale and dizzy. “I need to—”

“I’ve got one,” Martin said over his shoulder, rummaging through the drawer. He came up with the small metal kit triumphantly, then looked over at Jon and paled. “You’re bit!”

“I—nngh—“ Jon grimaced as he tried to move his leg.

Tim tried his hardest to keep his voice calm and level. “Jon, there’s a worm in there. I need to get it out. This is going to be messy, but—”

“Here. Use this.” Martin pressed something into Tim’s hand. “I’ll, I’ll get that recorder, okay?”

“I need you to hold him still,” Tim said, at the same time as Jon blurted out fervently, “Yes, please.”

Martin hurried over to his things, and Tim resigned himself to the fact that Martin was always going to do what Jon asked first. He looked at the object Martin had pressed into his hand and was surprised to discover it was a corkscrew—probably the one they’d used for Jon’s birthday wine last year. He eyeballed it, then the hole in Jon’s trouser leg…yeah, okay, that was probably about the right size.

“Okay,” he said, as calmly as he could. “This is still going to be messy, but probably not as bad. Sit still, okay? Can you do that for me?”

Despite the situation and the pain he had to be in, Jon still managed a pretty impressive glare, if not up to his usual standards. “I’m not a child, Tim.”

“You’re younger than my brother. You might as well be,” Tim shot back without thinking. “Sit still and try not to kick me in the face.”

He pushed the leg of Jon’s trousers up, exposing the bloody hole, and swiped at it with the first piece of gauze he found in the kit until it was clear enough for him to see. Gripping Jon’s ankle in a firm but not too tight hand, he lined the corkscrew up with the hole, gritted his teeth, and shoved it in.

Jon, unsurprisingly, screamed and—as Tim had more or less expected—jerked back, trying to pull himself free. Tim was stronger than he was, and he’d extracted enough splinters, thorns, and God knows what else from his daredevil baby brother, and he simply stiffened his arm to hold him steady and twisted the corkscrew in deeper. It squelched unpleasantly.

“And…there we go. Recording again,” Martin said. “Did you get it?”

Tim felt the tip of the corkscrew catch on something that he really hoped was the worm and not a muscle. Jon cried out in pain, and Tim’s heart, despite everything, clenched. He glanced up at Martin briefly. “Martin, I need you to sit behind him and hold him. Jon, Martin’s going to hold you, okay? This won’t take long, but it is going to hurt. I need you to be brave, okay?”

Evidently the pain was overriding Jon’s sense of indignation, because he nodded, then gave another soft cry of pain and closed his eyes. Martin, his whole face creased in anxiety, hastily sat on the cot next to him and wrapped his arms around Jon’s torso from behind, hesitantly at first, then more confidently and securely when Jon leaned back into him, almost involuntarily. Tim nodded, even though Jon couldn’t see him. “On three, all right? One…two…three.”

He pulled the corkscrew straight out. Jon cried out again and gripped Martin’s arm with almost clawlike fingers, but the corkscrew came free with a sucking pop and on the end was a feebly wriggling worm that, despite the bit of metal wrapped around its arse, seemed relatively intact. He pinched it off the end with the gauze, dropped it to the floor, and stomped on it as hard as possible. He wiped the blood off with a fresh piece of gauze, tapped a plaster in place, and—without really thinking about it—kissed the injured spot before rolling Jon’s trouser leg back down and patting it gently. “There. All done. Good job, Jon, you did good.”

Jon was breathing heavily, and his face was streaked with tears, but he sounded almost like his normal self as he opened his eyes. “Thank you, Tim.”

Tim glanced up at Martin, who—reluctantly, it seemed—let go of Jon. He didn’t go far, though. “Quick thinking with the corkscrew, Marto. Why do you have it, anyway?”

“For the worms.”

“What?” Jon looked up at Martin in confusion and some irritation, although noticeably less than usual.

“For pulling the worms out of people.” Martin gestured at the smear on the floor. “Like now.”

Jon followed Martin’s gesture, then cut his eyes away quickly; Tim swiped it up and lobbed it towards the rubbish bin in the corner. “How’d you think of that?”

Martin shrugged. “I used to carry around a knife, but I started thinking that, well, cutting laterally into someone wasn’t really the most efficient way to get them out, and besides which, they seem to be quite slow burrowing in a straight line, so, given their size, th-the corkscrew just seemed to be the better option.”

“Well, you’re right. Although I really hate that this is something you had to think about.” Tim found an alcohol wipe in the kit that probably wasn’t any good anymore, at least not for cleaning people, and began methodically wiping the blood off of the corkscrew.

“Thank you,” Jon said softly.

Tim glanced up at Martin. “You thought of this place without me shouting at you about it, right? That’s why the cot is in here?”

Martin’s cheeks turned pink. “Yeah. The room’s sealed. I checked it myself when I moved in.”

“Climate controlled, as well,” Jon put in. “Strong door. Soundproof.” He sighed. “These old documents are better protected than we ever were.”

“I did my best,” Tim muttered under his breath. He handed the corkscrew back to Martin and pushed to his feet. “Anyway, it’s a good place for you two to lie low.”

Jon looked up sharply at Tim. “What do you mean, you two? We’re trapped in here.”

“Look, someone’s got to stop those things,” Tim argued. “Gertrude Robinson trained me, so right now, I’m the best we’ve got. You two stay here and—”

“No,” Martin blurted out, his face drained of all color and his eyes huge with fear. “Don’t go. J-Jon’s right, it’s not safe, it—d-don’t go out there!”

They were well and truly scared…which was good, Tim supposed, it would keep them here and not getting themselves in trouble. On the other hand, their fear was going to draw the Corruption to them at some point or another, and even though the worms couldn’t easily access it, they’d get in eventually. He’d need to make sure they were either calm or protected before he could leave them.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

He glanced out the window of the door. No sign of Prentiss, not yet—that was good. And the worms seemed to be…backing off? Maybe he had a shot at this. He turned back to Jon and Martin. “Listen to me. Listen. It looks like we’ve got a clear path to the exit right now, but I know that’s bullshit. They’re waiting for something, and if we try to run for it they’ll be on us so fast, you have no idea. The Archives are in danger and so are we, and we’re not going to fix it by hiding in here. So unless you want to wait until someone comes to save us—”

“O-oh, God. Sasha!” Martin’s face, impossibly, got even paler. “I think she was out at lunch. She doesn’t know—we should, someone should call her, tell her not to come back inside.”

“There’s no signal in here,” Jon said, looking stricken as well. “We’ll just have to hope she heard the noise.”

Tim turned to look out the window again and cursed at the sight of the figure. “Too late! She’s just come in—fuck, she doesn’t see them.” He whirled back around and stabbed a finger at Jon and Martin. “Keep each other safe. Don’t open this door for anything unless I tell you it’s safe. The code word is ‘candlelight.’ If anything else tries to come through, you spray it to death and you run, and you get out of the Institute by any means necessary. Do you understand me?”

“Tim—” Jon protested, starting to try and get up, then collapsing to the ground with a cry. Martin rushed to his side. Tim used the momentary bit of chaos to open the door wide enough to admit himself and squeeze out, slamming the door behind himself.

His worst nightmare…well, close enough to it anyway…presented itself. Sasha had stooped to pick up the tape recorder and was looking at it carefully…but there was another figure behind her. This one wasn’t as tall as Sasha, with long, stringy dark hair and the tattered remnants of a red dress…and honeycombed all through it were holes, out of which poked more of the greyish-white worms.

“Sasha! Behind you!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

Sasha turned around and gave a ragged gasp, clutching the recorder to her chest like a talisman. The thing that had to be Jane Prentiss smiled at her with a mouth that was more worms than teeth.

“Do you hear their singing?” she asked. There was a swelling hum that was almost musical if you didn’t think too hard about it as hundreds of worms suddenly began squeezing up through the cracks between the floorboards around her.

“RUN!” Tim put everything he had into his bellow as he cleared the distance in two great strides and slammed into Sasha, tackling her out of the way as Prentiss and the worms sprang for them. She screamed and hit the floor, and honestly a whole lot of worms in the process, which made her scream louder. Tim quickly rolled to one side and onto his back, then sprang to his feet.

Prentiss was close. Too close. And they’d killed a bunch of worms when they landed, but there were still more, and more coming by the second. He leaned over, grabbed Sasha’s arm, and bodily hauled her upright.

“Go! Run!” he shouted, propelling her towards the door.

“Tim! Come on!” Sasha held onto his wrist and dragged him along behind her, still clutching the recorder with her free hand, worms popping and squishing under their feet.

Tim let her until they reached one of the shelves and he realized how full of worms it was. There were…way more than he’d expected, and yet somehow not as many as he would have expected if the Creeping Rot was seriously invading. He shook off the moment of analytical paralysis and let go of Sasha’s hand. “Run! Get help! I’ll hold them off!”

If she heard him, or responded, he didn’t notice; he only noticed that, thank God, she made it out the door of the Archives. Tim blew a raspberry at the shelf full of worms, then turned and bolted for the Archivist’s office. It was the logical choice—it was Ground Zero for the invasion, but also, it was Gertrude’s office. If there was anything in the Archives that could fight off an invasion, it was probably hidden in there somewhere.

Some of the worms leaped at him as he reached the door. He yelped, secure in the knowledge that there was no one to hear him, and dodged to the side to avoid them. Naturally, he overcompensated and tumbled headlong into a pile of boxes holding old case files. Or at least, they should have held old case files. From the solid nature of the things he hit, they didn’t—and from the faint clanking, they were probably fire extinguishers. God bless Martin and his paranoid hoarding.

Tim dove into one of the boxes and came up with an extinguisher. He twisted the pin and yanked it out, aimed the nozzle, and squeezed the trigger.

Just as Sasha had said in her statement, the worms died fairly quickly on contact with the extinguisher. He sprayed, and sprayed, and sprayed, until the extinguisher came up dry, then dropped it, grabbed a new one, and repeated the process. There were too damn many of the things, though, and he couldn’t get out of the office to get at them properly, so it was just…spray them until they stopped coming at him, specifically.

Had Elias actually had the new system installed? Tim vaguely remembered something about men coming to install, but had they…? Yes, yes they had, because the crew boss had gotten into a twenty-minute argument with Jon about it and then insisted on Elias signing about fifty different waivers saying they wouldn’t hold the company accountable if the Archives actually caught fire and the system didn’t do anything, and he recalled now the kid on the crew mentioning offhand that they’d assumed it was a computer archive rather than a paper one. And he’d managed to convince them not to install it in the Document Storage room, so if they managed to get it active, Jon and Martin would be safe.

Tim probably wouldn’t, but he’d suffocate if he had to.

He managed to clear enough space that he could slam the door shut. It wouldn’t help for long, though, since the hole in the wall was right there, but nothing seemed to be coming at him at the moment. He had five…maybe ten seconds’ breathing space. Well, breathing was optimistic. Still…he fished his phone out of his pocket and hit the preset number, then jammed his phone against his ear as he dug for more fire extinguishers. One ring, two, three…

“Delano.” Gerry sounded slightly distracted, like he’d been engrossed in his art, which he probably had been.

“Gerry, I love you,” Tim blurted out before Gerry could say anything else.

“What?” Now Gerry sounded startled, which was fair. Tim calling in the middle of the day was usually met with something joking, and since they rarely said that…

“I love you,” Tim repeated, the words tumbling over one another as he darted his eyes back and forth from the door to the ruins of the shelves. He could hear the squelching, squirming noise, and over it all, in his own head, he could hear the loud ticking of a clock slicing off seconds of his life. He didn’t have time for this, but he didn’t have time for anything else. “Whatever happens, I need you to know that.”

“Tim, what—?” Gerry’s voice sharpened with fear, but Tim had already seen the first worm poke its head out from under the door.

“Gotta go!” He hung up without further ado and kicked viciously at the worm attempting to squeeze through; he killed it, but he also put a noticeable dent in the bottom of the door. Oops.

It wasn’t safe in here. Sasha would get help, she’d—she was smart, she’d figure out a way to activate the fire alarm and get the fire suppressant system working in the Archives, even if there would probably need to be an actual fire to activate it, maybe one of the worms would bite through Mister Megabytes’ cord and short it out. Jon and Martin would be okay in their incredibly defensible position, hopefully, at least long enough for the system to activate; it wasn’t airtight, obviously, but they should be okay. Tim needed to go, though, and it looked like the only way out was to figure out where the worms had been. Probably just a narrow space between the walls, a secret passage that had been boarded up or a temporary wall put in to portion off the building when it was modernized or something. Either way…it wasn’t here.

The hole was bigger than it had been when he’d hauled Jon’s scrawny ass out of the office. Not a surprise, Jane Prentiss had to have got out somehow…God, she’d been in the damn walls. Tim moved a little closer and sucked in a sharp breath, ill advised as that was, when he realized it wasn’t just a gap in the wall. It was a proper tunnel.

Hadn’t Gertrude said the Institute was built more or less right over the remains of Millbank Prison? This could have been part of that original complex. Which meant these could go anywhere, extend for miles under the surface. They probably weren’t in great shape, except that if it was Millbank, it had been designed by Robert Smirke, who built to last. Either way, it also likely meant the space would be a bit more open, so he might be able to get away from the carbon dioxide. On the other hand, it was going to be dark, and he’d need both hands to work the fire extinguishers.

Actually, that was an easy fix. Tim whipped his belt off his waist, threaded it through the buckle, and tugged it around his head so it was almost but not quite snug. Then he activated the torch on his phone and tucked it on one side, then turned on the pocket torch on his keys and stuck that upright on the other before tightening the belt and securing the tang. Definitely not the most elegant thing he’d ever worn, but hardly the worst, and in the absence of a wreath to set candles in it would have to do. He grabbed a trio of extinguishers under one arm, crossed himself, and sent up a quick prayer to Saint Lucy, then plunged into the hole.

It was…dark, obviously, and the light of his improvised crown cast odd shadows on the sides of the tunnels, but it was cool and dry and oddly quiet. At first he thought there were no worms left down here, but then he saw some—moving faster, and much more quietly than they had in the Archives. Something up there, probably Gertrude’s wards, was slowing them down, but down here they were…stealthier. Quieter. A different kind of fear, maybe.

It didn’t matter. Tim unleashed the first of his canisters of carbon dioxide on the batch and watched them die, then ran over their corpses. He had to find…something. An exit. An answer. Fucking Gertrude.

She had to know about this, didn’t she? Was that why she’d put the shelves where she had? To know if something tried to break through that wall? Obviously there had to be other entrances, this couldn’t be completely sealed off…well, Jane Prentiss had got down here somehow, and even if the worms could squeeze through the floorboards, she couldn’t. She’d never mentioned it to Tim…or Gerry, probably…but that didn’t mean she didn’t know about it, only that she didn’t mean to tell them about it. Which meant that she was either not sure of how dangerous it was, or using it as a contingency plan for something. Either way, there was the possibility she was down here somewhere.

There was also the possibility that, if she was down here, she was lost. Hopefully she had enough food to last her a while, because this place was a fucking labyrinth. Tim wasn’t sure if he was more worried about meeting the Minotaur, the Goblin King, or the world’s biggest lab rat, but at least he didn’t sense the Spiral down here, so this was…probably real. Probably not changing. Probably. He didn’t really sense the Buried, either, so there had to be a way out.

He was…definitely a little dizzy. Okay, so maybe pumping six canisters of carbon dioxide into a room he was actively standing in wasn’t the smartest idea, but what was he supposed to do, let them get to him? Or worse, destroy the Archives?

He had to get back up there. Had to find another way up, had to find another way in. If he could get outside and loop in through the side door, maybe he could start a fire and—no! No, he couldn’t actually start a fire, Jon and Martin were trapped in there, even if the fire suppressant system put it out right away they might still get hurt.

Frith in a barn! What a business. The line popped into Tim’s head, and he took a deep breath to center himself. He was starting to think in circles. Right. Focus on getting out, then he could figure out how to save the others and stop Jane Prentiss.

The realization that, if this was the Creeping Rot’s attempt at a ritual, it was likely going to make Jon and Martin sacrifices for its ascension struck Tim at about the same moment as another small wave of worms appeared. He sprayed the fuck out of them with the first of the CO2 canisters and ran, ran like he could outrun his poor decisions, ran like he could outrun his past, ran like he could catch the future before it slipped out of his fingers. Ran like his life and the lives of everyone he cared about depended on him, because they did.

And, of course, he made a wrong turn and found a dead end. No…not a dead end. A room.

A room that was filled with worms. Tim quickly hopped backwards through the door—and then paused in the act of aiming the fire extinguisher. He turned his head slightly and cut his eyes to the side so he had a bit more light and could see better, because the vague impression he got looked…odd, and he needed to make sense of it. Without consciously being aware he was doing it, he crossed himself and recited the old familiar novena to Lucy of Sicily, Santa Lucia, bringer of light, patron saint of the blind and those who wanted clearer sight.

And his eyes opened, and he Saw.

The worms were knitting themselves together, weaving themselves into a solid mass. The structure rose into the air, creeping up the wall. Two structures, really—two columns, curving slightly in on themselves, not quite meeting but getting closer by the second. Silent but fast, the worms crawled up over their brethren and twined themselves into the ends, securing in loops and links and chains. It would take so little time for them to meet. At the rate they were going, Tim estimated another ten minutes, tops, before the two halves connected into an arch.

Into a doorway.

“Not on my turf, bitch,” Tim snarled. His voice echoed oddly in a way he wasn’t entirely sure had to do with the tunnels but couldn’t spare the brainpower to think about just then. He dropped the two spare canisters to the ground, raised the nozzle of the one he’d already started using, and squeezed the trigger hard.

The gas hissed as it dispensed into the room. The worms didn’t scream—of course they didn’t, that would be ridiculous, they didn’t have mouths—but he felt them screaming to the core of his being as the ones he touched with the carbon dioxide died. Not enough of them. Not nearly enough. He squeezed and sprayed until the fire extinguisher was empty, then dropped it to the ground, snatched up the next one, and sprayed it into the room as well. It was definitely getting harder to breathe by the time that one was spent, but Tim was absolutely not finished. Coughing violently, he scooped up the third one, backed out of the doorway, and sprayed it into the room, filling it like a hellish steam room.

Maybe Gertrude would have had a better solution, but hey, it was Tim’s first time disrupting a ritual. And he was improvising a bit.

He wasn’t stupid enough to think that was the end of it, though. He’d disrupted the portal, but Jane Prentiss was still out there and she was still going to try…even if she couldn’t bring the Corruption into the world fully now, she might still hurt his people if he didn’t find them and get them out. He hefted the canister to gauge if there was still anything in it. Felt like there was.

Right. Tim backed further down the corridor until he was far enough away from the tendrils of carbon dioxide that he could safely take a deep breath, then turned on his heel, squared his shoulders, and kept moving. Briefly, he touched the Saint Anthony’s medal beneath his shirt and murmured a quick plea for assistance—hey, Lucy had done him a solid back there, no reason to think the other saints wouldn’t get in on it—before focusing his attention on finding his way out of the tunnels, back to the Archives, and back to stopping Jane Prentiss.

Back to saving the others. Back to saving the world.

Gertrude had left him in charge. She had trusted him with her Archives in her absence. He had to keep proving himself worthy of that.