And If Thou Wilt, Forget

“She wanted to be cremated,” Tim growled. He slapped the sheaf of papers covered in red wax seals against the edge of Elias’s desk for emphasis. “And that isn’t even something she added in this latest version. It’s been in there for ages. So you want to tell me why that didn’t happen?”

“Tim, you’re getting upset,” Elias said calmly.

“Getting? Oh, we’re well past that point.”

“A dignified burial for one of the longest serving members of the Institute—”

“Which you didn’t mention to her last surviving assistant—”

“You were still out on medical leave at the time. I felt it best to allow you the time to rest.” Elias raised an eyebrow. “And you never inquired about the disposition of her remains when you did return.”

Tim took a deep, steadying breath. Elias may not have had a point, but he thought he had a point, and pushing him would do no good. “Fine. Whatever. Still asking why you didn’t have her cremated like she wanted. I’d imagine after a year and a half underground, she’d go up like a candle.”

Elias pursed his lips. “In point of fact, she was remarkably well preserved and still…relatively uncorrupted. I daresay if she were Catholic she’d be considered a saint.”

“Incorruptability alone isn’t considered miracle enough for sainthood. Quit avoiding my questions, damn you.”

Elias leaned forward. “Quite frankly, Tim, I suspected that subjecting Gertrude Robinson’s corpse to fire would draw the attention of the Desolation. They hated her more than almost any other of the Fears, and I worried that if they knew she was to be cremated, they would take a…more extreme approach to it. More to the point, I worried for Jon’s safety—or yours, for that matter.”

He was lying. Tim didn’t need any kind of supernatural abilities to know that. Whatever his reasons for leaving Gertrude’s body intact were, it had nothing to do with the Desolation. He considered leaving it alone, then decided, actually, no, he wasn’t going to do that. “Do you actually expect me to believe that?”

“No,” Elias acknowledged with a slight tilt of his head. “But I do expect you to accept it.”

Tim pressed his lips together tightly. Several accusations and speculations regarding the species, degree of relation, and validity of marriage status of Elias’s parents clawed their way up his throat, but he swallowed them down. There was nothing to be gained from it except making him feel momentary relief, and even that wouldn’t last more than a fleeting second.

“Was there anything else?” Elias prompted. “I am quite busy today. As, I’m sure, are you. The Unknowing is coming up soon, is it not?”

“Why do you think I’m up here yelling at you?” Tim snapped. “They took her skin, Elias. Because you thought it would be safer than what she wanted. If they start this off before we have time to stop them, on your head be the consequences.”

“I’m sure you’re well up to stopping them.” Elias raised both eyebrows this time and said pointedly, “Don’t let me detain you.”

It was as clear a dismissal as could be, and there was no way Tim could get away with pretending he hadn’t picked up on it. He aimed a low kick at the shelving unit and growled, “Whatever. I’m going to get some fucking coffee.”

He yanked the door open, stormed through, and slammed it as hard as he could. As he’d hoped, there was a series of creaks and thumps followed by Elias, uncharacteristically, swearing.

Satisfied, he headed down the steps towards the front door and slammed that one, too.

How long had it been? Fifteen…twenty minutes maybe? Hopefully enough time to test his theory.

He stormed down the block, then jogged to one side and slipped in through one of the other entrances. Gerry was already on the other side of it, smirking, with two trays of coffees. Tim took one. “Thanks. At least he can’t say I was lying to him if we all come out with these.”

“I’m sure he’ll find a way. Are the others down here?”

Tim closed his eyes for half a second. It was always harder to sense anything in the tunnels, but…ah. “Yep. Come on.”

He led the way to the room he and Gerry had set up to work out their plans and, sure enough, found the others. Basira was leaning against the wall with her arms folded, looking unimpressed; Tonner stood next to her with an almost identical expression, although Tim noticed she had pointedly placed herself so that she was on the far side of Basira from the others. Melanie, Jon, and Martin were all clustered around the cork board strung with red thread between index cards, murmuring to one another as they looked at the notes.

“Hey,” Tim called, loud enough to get their attention. “I’ve got coffee.”

Melanie turned around and checked briefly at the sight of Gerry, then took the cup Tim handed her. “I take it you’re Gerry Delano?”

“That’s me. Dad was one of Gertrude Robinson’s assistants when she first took the job at the Institute. Mum was a psychopath rare book dealer. Like Jurgen Leitner but without the moral compass.” Gerry lifted one of the coffees out of his tray and studied it. “Black, dark roast, half the number of scoops you’d normally put in a coffee pot and left on the warmer until it developed a crust on the bottom of the pot?”

“That’s a lot of verbiage for a coffee shop order,” Tim said as he handed Martin his cup.

“It doesn’t say all that, it just says ‘cop style’. I’m extrapolating.” Gerry handed it to Basira, who narrowed her eyes at him as she took it. “Whose is the hazelnut mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles?”

Tim pointed at Tonner. She gave him a glare that would blister paint, but she had also already been reaching for the coffee before he did so and took it without further comment. Jon took his own off of Tim’s tray without needing to ask. “We were just…admiring your conspiracy board.”

“How long did it take you to find all of this?” Martin asked.

“Three years, give or take. At least for our part. A lot of it was building on what Gertrude had already done.” Tim took a sip of his own coffee. “She’d been working on it for years. Not just the Unknowing, but all of it. Ever since she figured out the Scorched Earth wasn’t an isolated incident.”

Jon exhaled. “At least I’m not the only Archivist who believed it was a one time thing at first.”

Tim shrugged. “Frankly, I’m not even sure if any previous Archivist was even aware the rituals were a thing. The last attempt at the Unknowing was disrupted by the Slaughter.”

“Wait, how do you know that?”

“There’s a statement about it. It was the first serious bit of research I did for Gertrude, before she’d even told me what was up—what made her start trusting me properly. I found the statement poking around and started looking into it out of curiosity, then couldn’t let it go. Anyway, Gertrude never told me how she figured out about the rituals to begin with, let alone the Desolation’s.”

Jon’s eyes locked on the papers Tim had set on the box. “What is this?” he asked, reaching for them.

Tim picked them up before he could. “Gertrude’s will.”

“I—I never thought to check if it had been admitted to Probate. Or even if she had one,” Jon admitted. “Any surprises?”

“Plenty,” Tim answered. “The biggest being that I never got a copy of it before, but according to her solicitor, he was out of the country when her body was found and his junior clerks weren’t aware she was his client. When he got back and found out she was for sure dead, he assumed the estate had already been probated and didn’t inquire further. He was very apologetic about it.”

Martin rubbed at his forehead. “Okay, but why should you have got a copy?”

“Oh. I’m her sole beneficiary.” Tim shrugged when everyone except Gerry stared at him. “She didn’t really have anyone else. The Institute requires you to have a will on file as a condition of employment, which is not in your standard job contract for those of you who’ve never worked a traditional job elsewhere, and apparently her solicitor had been hounding her to update hers since her previous beneficiary died in 2010.” He’d taken the opportunity to update his own will while he was there, not that he told the others that. Gerry knew, obviously, since he’d updated his own as well, but the rest of them didn’t need to know that for sure. Didn’t need to know he was thinking about what if already.

“And she picked you.” Basira’s voice was deeply skeptical.

“Most of what she owned is stuff that would come in handy for exactly what we’re doing now,” Tim pointed out. “And none of it was worth much, so yeah, it was either me or Gerry and she didn’t want Elias knowing about him if she could help it.”

Jon pinched the bridge of his nose briefly. “Right, I—I think that’s something we can discuss later. “We do have more pressing things to discuss. Are you sure Elias isn’t listening?”

“Positive. It’s harder for him to see us down here. The Eye isn’t…exactly cut off, maybe, not completely—fear exists everywhere—but the Institute is its pedestal, and as anyone who’s ever tried to avoid a security camera or read Lord of the Rings can tell you, there’s usually a big old blind spot directly underneath it.” Tim shook off a momentary pang of loss at the memory of the lighthearted exchange he and Gertrude had had the day he came back from the Night Market. “And for that same reason, we’re on a little bit of a time crunch here, so let’s do what we need to do and get out of here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Melanie demanded.

“It means Jon as the Archivist is connected to the Ceaseless Watcher enough that being cut off from it is going to have an adverse effect on his health,” Tim said. “You know how I said that if you try to leave the Institute, you’ll find yourself getting sicker and weaker? Jon gets that tenfold. It’s probably not to the point that you’ll end up dead with exhaustion if you’re down here for more than fifteen minutes, but I wouldn’t try for more than a couple of hours, which you maybe already started to notice when you were doing all your explorations before you finally met Leitner and just put down to a combination of paranoia and still building up your stamina after Jane Prentiss tried to turn you into Emmentaler—don’t look at me like that, I’m not doing that on purpose,” he added in response to the looks he was getting from Jon, Martin, and Gerry—all vastly different looks, but one reply sufficed for all. “I keep telling you it’s my job to protect you, so when you do really stupid shit that puts your life in jeopardy, I generally know about it.”

“I suppose that’s fair enough,” Jon muttered.

Martin’s expression suggested that it wasn’t, actually, and that he wanted to have a few choice words with whoever had made that arrangement, but he visibly swallowed whatever it was he’d been planning to say. “That’s what happened to you, right? When you f—when you went off to, what was it, Malaysia?”

“What?” Jon looked up, startled. “When did you do that?”

“Right after Melanie joined the Archives.” Martin raised an eyebrow at Tim.

Tim glanced at Gerry, then turned back to the others. “Okay, full confession: I lied. About Malaysia, anyway, and about getting sick. Well, I flew to Malaysia, and then I jogged back over to Çukurova to meet Gerry and we kept going from there. And I didn’t get sick because I was on Institute business. Kind of. Unofficially. It was to help with the Unknowing, anyway. And since I was doing the research, it meant I wasn’t…I hadn’t abandoned the Ceaseless Watcher, so I was mostly okay.”

“Gertrude used to have to get statements while she was traveling,” Gerry put in helpfully. “Mostly she would compel them out of people she met that she thought might have something useful to her, people she thought might’ve encountered the Stranger, but sometimes she’d bring a few written ones with her and go in the other room to sort of read them out, give herself a bit of a lift. You brought her one when you came to Chicago, didn’t you, Tim?”

“Yeah. Flesh, not Stranger, although it was a bit of a tossup for a while, but I reckoned it being an American statement would help with the energy level at any rate, and she said it did.” Tim pursed his lips. “She kept getting disappointed, too. Most of the people she thought had Stranger statements actually had something else.”

“Flesh and Corruption, mostly. Weirdly. You’d think the Spiral would be more likely to be confused for the Stranger, but…” Gerry trailed off. “That’s not really important. Point is that Tim was fine, because he wasn’t trying to escape, he was finishing up the trail we’d been following before Gertrude called us home.”

That fast, Jon’s interest sharpened and focused in on Tim. “Where did it lead? What did you find?”

“Siberia. North end of Lake Baikal. And we found Gregor Orsinov, or at least his grave. Or memorial or whatever.” Tim glanced at the red string board they’d put up. “It mentioned he was a father, which is how we reckoned the Dancer was probably his…creation.”

“She called him her father the first time she spoke to me,” Jon said. “‘My father named me Nikola, and then I killed him, so I rather thought I deserved his last name, too.’”

“That wasn’t when she kidnapped you, was it?” Tim asked quietly. “You’d met her before.”

Jon bit his lip. “Yes. She, ah, she got into Georgie’s flat somehow. It’s how I knew she was looking for the gorilla skin, before she decided an Archivist’s skin would be better.”

Martin hesitantly reached out to touch Jon’s shoulder; Jon arched into him like a cat, but didn’t step close enough for a hug even though he clearly wanted one. Tim suppressed a smile, despite the situation. “Unfortunately, she’s got one, plus Leitner’s. I can’t imagine either of them are in particularly great shape. You know, Leitner’s is probably a real mess, and Gertrude’s…well, human skin usually dries out pretty quickly after death. It’s why people are such poor candidates for taxidermy. It’s doable, there have been a couple famous examples, but it’s not easy. I’m pretty sure the Stranger has their methods, though.”

Basira folded her arms over her chest, somehow taking a sip of her coffee in the process. “What makes you so sure of that?”

“We met one.” Surprisingly, that response came from Tonner, not from Jon or Tim. “That Sarah Baldwin person. She was stuffed full of sawdust and had glass eyes or something like that. Right? Smelled like real skin.” She narrowed her eyes, and her nostrils flared briefly, like she was trying to draw a half remembered scent back into them. “And cloves. And shitty perfume. And…crayons?”

Tim exhaled. “Wax. Of course. They must have used it to waterproof the inside of the skin.”

“So they just—what, skin people and stuff them?” Martin demanded.

“Not necessarily. They’ve got…I’m, I’m actually not sure what kind of forms they’re using, really,” Tim said slowly. “Sarah Baldwin, and probably Daniel Rawlings, were—are—cloth and sawdust, but they might be experimenting with other forms, with what might be best. Plastic mannequins. Wire forms. Resin molds. We heard stories on our travels about things that stole skins, or filled them with insects—although that might have been more the Corruption than the Stranger—or just hollowed them out and made them empty vessels for evil.”

“Wire or plastic is my bet,” Gerry offered. “They’ve got to be flexible enough to dance but stiff enough to stand, right?”

Tim nodded. “But they’re going to be…off, whatever they are. Too tall, too short, too wide. The skin won’t quite fit. Maybe it’ll be stretched, maybe it’ll be…folded on itself.”

“Why wouldn’t they alter it to fit?” Basira asked. “Make it less obvious they’re not…right.”

“Well, that’s why. They want that uncanny valley effect, that sense that it could be but isn’t quite. Just enough to be unfamiliar. It’s called the Stranger for a reason.” Tim shrugged. “And what’s scarier, someone you definitely don’t recognize or someone who almost looks like someone you know but that you know isn’t?”

“Or someone you definitely don’t recognize that everyone insists you should,” Melanie muttered.

“I mean, all the Fears get a special little pleasure out of that sensation you get knowing that no one will ever believe you. Gertrude didn’t exactly go out of her way to reassure people that their experiences were true, and…I hate to tell you this, Jon, but your skeptic act at the beginning probably did more harm than good,” Tim said as gently as he could. Jon flinched anyway. “I’m not saying I’m any better. Even when Dr. Elliott came in, I pretty much just told him we’d investigate but wouldn’t find much—he probably assumed I was placating him—and I had no time for that idiot who kept trying to blather on about government conspiracies before I made him get his head out of his arse.”

Martin stifled a laugh. “Was that, er, the one that came down looking all shifty the week Jon was…um, out?”

“That’s the one. Pretty sure he had his beanie lined with tinfoil. Lead would have done him better. And by the way, that was a Dark statement, so not even worth the energy, which is why I was so cranky after.” Tim took a swig of his coffee. “And let’s be realistic, guys, all of this is nice information to have but not why we’re down here, and we are on a deadline.”

“Right, yeah, okay.” Melanie sighed. “So what’s the plan?”

Jon pursed his lips and studied the board. “Do we have an idea how long it takes to, ah…prepare a skin for something like this?”

“Three days, give or take,” Tim said. “At least for large mammals. Could be longer depending on the process, but on average, it’s about three days to prepare the skin and then another to fit it to the form. Of course the Dancer can probably just slip it on like a dress.”

Jon visibly shuddered at that, and Martin put a protective arm around him, his face going pale. “So…what, it’s tomorrow? You said she got the skins on Friday…”

“She got Gertrude’s on Friday. She got Leitner’s around Wednesday,” Gerry corrected him. “But if Gertrude’s is the most important…”

Tim pursed his lips. “Three days to prepare the skin, minimum, that would put it as being finished some time today. Give it another day for her to decide if it’s going to work or not, then a day to get everything set up…I’d say Wednesday. Not sure what time.”

“That doesn’t give us a lot of time to prepare,” Jon murmured.

“What preparing do we need to do?” Melanie asked. “We’ve got…eighty pounds of plastic explosives. We’ve got the location. What more do we need?”

“Someone who can set the charges?”

“I can,” Tonner said shortly.

Jon hesitated. “Then…do we all need to go?”

“No,” Tim said, firmly. “Too much risk of us being spotted if we all go. Some of us should stay back.”

Martin straightened to his full height, and his gaze bored into Tim’s. “Who did you have in mind?”

Tim didn’t hesitate. “Melanie. And me.”

Jon blinked. “Wait, what?”

Tim glanced at Gerry, then back at the others. “Remember I said I might know a way to deal with our Elias problem?”

“Yes?” all of the others said in unison, with varying degrees of anticipation and eagerness.

“Well, I’ve got a plan. It hinges a bit on two things. First of all, Elias needs to at least want to be paying attention to the Unknowing, so it has to happen at about the same time. And second, Elias needs to think he’s sussed out our plan and stopped it while we actually fill out what we need.” It actually hinged on a third thing, which was nobody pressing him too hard about the details, but Tim didn’t mention that for obvious reasons. Instead, he turned to Melanie. “How do you feel about a little light arson?”