Martin waits until everyone leaves the Archives that night. Then he waits a bit longer, just to be certain they’re gone. Then he wastes a little more time telling himself not to be stupid.
Then he sighs, pockets torch and corkscrew, and ventures into the Archives to find himself.
It’s surprisingly easy. His double, or alter ego, or future self, or…whatever the right term is for him, is waiting for him in one of the reading nooks, seated in a comfortable armchair, hands folded around a mug of tea. He turns his head as Martin approaches and smiles, a tired sort of smile. “Still here, then. How’d he take it?”
Martin eyes the other (it’s easier to think of him that way for now). He seems relaxed, mostly, but there’s a kind of tension to him, like he’s waiting for another shoe to drop. And his hands—Martin probably wouldn’t notice if his own hadn’t done the same earlier—are trembling, ever so faintly. He’s either tired or stressed or scared, or some combination of the three. Martin suddenly feels bad for adding to that, in whatever way he did.
“How’d he take it when you told him?” he parries, taking a cautious seat in the armchair across from the other. He notices another mug of tea sitting on the small table between them. “Is that for me?”
“Thought we could both use some. It’s that peppermint-chamomile blend nobody admits they drink, so it shouldn’t keep you up all night.”
Martin picks up the cup, feeling its warmth soak into his palms. Just the smell is calming, sort of. “You didn’t answer my first question.”
“He…smiled,” the other says slowly. “I was a bit worried about him, to be honest. Thought he’d gone off his rocker. But…well, he was a bit paranoid at the time. Things were—it was bad. Not as bad as it got later, but still…bad. He’d gotten convinced one of us might have been trying to kill him, or might have killed Gertrude Robinson—long story why he believed that, I really can’t tell you just yet—and then he found part of a letter I’d written to Mum in the document storage room, after I’d moved back out, talking about not wanting the others to find out the truth. Combined with the fact that he’d just finished reading a statement from Trevor Herbert—you know, the vampire hunter? Apparently he didn’t actually die after giving his first one—and he sort of overreacted. Then I told him the only thing I’d been lying about was my job history, and he could relax. Said he was honestly rather relieved.”
Martin nearly chokes on the sip of tea he’s just taken. Setting it down on the table, he takes a moment to clear his throat, then says in as neutral a voice as he can, “He said the same thing to me. At the end. He wasn’t…mad or anything. Just told me to ask for help if I need it. And then he had me spend the rest of the day on filing. Wants me to look for statements that…might help with the current situation?”
He’s not sure why that comes out as a question. The other gives a thoughtful hum. “There are a few out there. Jane Prentiss made a statement in…let me think, 2014? It’s been a while since I listened to it. And I honestly don’t know exactly where it is in here.”
“Yeah, things are pretty out of order. Jon can’t figure out why Gertrude just shoved things wherever.”
“Ah—that’s a—”
“Don’t tell me. It’s a long story,” Martin says, a bit sourly.
“I know, you’re getting tired of hearing that,” the other says, sounding apologetic. “It really is, though. And…this isn’t the best place or time to tell it.”
“Why not?” Martin knows he sounds like a petulant toddler, but he feels like he’s being treated like one. “What’s the big deal?”
“I’m—waiting for someone else. Once they get here, we’ll tell you—all of you—but really, this is…they explain it better than I do. And they know how to keep you all safe once you know it. I don’t. There’s only so much I can tell you without putting you at risk, and frankly putting our whole plan to save the world in jeopardy. And I’m sorry, I know how much you hate feeling like you’re being…brushed off or kept in the dark or whatever, but I’m not doing this for fun. For right now, just know that Gertrude had her reasons, and they were…I’m not going to say they were valid, because I’m not sure it would have made a difference if she had organized the Archives properly, but I’m not sure they didn’t at least slow things down a bit.” The other takes a deep breath. “We’ll tell you everything as soon as we can. Promise.”
“When is…this someone else supposed to get here?” Martin asks. The speech took a bit of the wind out of him, actually.
“Soon, I hope. We’re…relying on someone else for transportation, shall we say, and we were warned it would be unreliable. Problem is, I don’t know if we came through at the same time but in different places, or if we’ll come through in the same place but at different times.”
“And you don’t have a way of communicating with one another?”
The other hesitates again. “Not…really. They can find me, though. In theory, anyway. They always could before. And if they can’t, well, we both know the plan, and it involves the Archives, so they’ll be heading this way anyway. I just…don’t know for sure.”
Martin bites his lip. “Is it—look, what if you came through the same place at different times, but they got here first? Would they have…”
“They’d have found me by now. I’d bump into them trawling through the Archives after you’re supposed to be sleeping.” A familiar dimple winks in the other’s cheek as he smiles, if only for a second. “Trust me. I know it’s hard to believe, but they wouldn’t have just…left me. Wherever they are, if they’ve come through somewhere else, they’re looking for me.”
Martin tries not to be skeptical, but he can’t help but think that whoever this someone else is, they must be someone he hasn’t met yet. Even Tim or Sasha, if they came back in time with him to fix something, would immediately apply themselves to solving the problem rather than waste time worrying about where he might be. Unless something changes drastically between now and whenever his counterpart came back—you know, besides the end of the world—he very much doubts they ever would. He wants to ask when he meets this person, but decides against it. The fact that his counterpart has changed the timeline means that now he might not meet that person, and that’s a bit of a depressing thought. That saving the world might come at the cost of Martin being that important to someone.
It’s worth it, but it’s still a bit depressing.
“Would they have looked for you before?” The question slips out before he can stop it, and he wants to bite his tongue in half, then decides, to hell with it. He might as well press on. “Before the end of the world, I mean.”
“Not only would they,” the other says, quietly but with steel in his voice, “but they did. They found out I was heading into a dangerous situation and practically moved heaven and earth to find me and bring me back safely. Almost literally. So when I say I know they’re coming, I know. I’m more certain of that than I’ve ever been of anything else in my life.”
“And you’re not…worried about them?”
“Constantly. Just like I’m sure they worry about me. But I know they won’t give up on me, any more than I’ll ever give up on them. They’ll find me.”
“Why don’t you go find them?” Martin asks. If whatever plan they have involves them needing to be together…
The other shakes his head slowly. “If they’re going to come out at the same place but not the same time, I’ll just be wasting time I could be using to lay the groundwork here. And if they’re already on the way from wherever they ended up…what if we miss one another? I’m not adding to their worries more than I have to.”
Martin desperately wants to change the subject now. He can hear the strain in the other’s voice, but more than that, he hears the undercurrent of real, genuine love. He and…whoever else is coming back…have a deep bond, nigh-unshakable, and Martin wants that, longs for it. And it kills him knowing that he’s likely not going to get it. He’s sure he’ll never meet this person now.
“So,” he says finally. “Until they get here…what can you tell me?”
The other takes a slow, thoughtful sip of his tea. “I can tell you that you’re in danger.”
“But you said—”
“Oh, not from the worms. Not really. It’s the Archives. The Institute.”
The other pauses. For a long moment there’s no sound but the usual noises of an old building settling for the evening and the gentle susurration of the climate control system. Martin sips at the tea, feels the herbs curl gently into his stomach, and wonders how much anxiety is going to surge past the soothing mint and chamomile as soon as his older counterpart starts talking again. That the Institute is creepy isn’t really news to him, but dangerous?
“There are…forces in this world you know nothing about,” the other says at last. “Powerful beings. They thrive on fear. They are fear. And one of them was behind the founding of the Institute.”
“And it’ll—do what? Hurt me? Control me?”
“Not…really? Not on purpose, anyway. It’s fond of you.”
Martin supposes that makes sense. A being that thrives on fear? He must be a veritable feast. Especially right now. It’s probably fond of him the way a glutton might be fond of a smorgasbord, or at least a cheeseboard if anxiety doesn’t quite have the same level of sustenance as fear. For a wild moment, he considers asking, then decides in favor of listening silently to the other continue.
“But these beings have…I don’t even really know what to call them. Servants? Worshipers? Devotees? We used to call some of them avatars, but that’s not really accurate. There are people who come under their power, willingly or unwillingly, and some of them get powers from these things. They don’t lose their free will, for the most part. They still have a degree of autonomy under their powers, although they can be punished, sometimes pretty severely, for doing something too contrary to what their…entity wants, or needs. But…well. There’s at least one person under the—being that founded the Institute’s thrall that doesn’t care if you get hurt or not. Right now, anyway.”
“Right now,” Martin repeats. “And later?”
“Hopefully, you’ll never have to find out what he can do if he does want to hurt you.”
The pain in the other’s voice is palpable, and he looks…lost. Martin’s blood runs cold as he considers the possible interpretations of that. Logically, a fear being that wants to hurt you would make you more afraid, right? But possibly give you a valid reason for that fear, so that you’d be irrationally afraid of seemingly innocuous things later. Like in the Carlos Vittery statement, when he accidentally killed a spider and then fell into the egg sac and was swarmed by them and…
“Hang on,” Martin blurts. “Is there—does one of these fear beings have to do with spiders?”
“Ah—yes, actually. Not the one that runs the Institute, though.”
“Christ, is that why Jon’s so averse to spiders? He ran into that being once? Did it hurt him? Is it still after him?”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down.” The other holds out a hand, palm outward. “Short answers? Yes, yes, not exactly, and sort of. There’s a lot going on there. But that’s why I told you last night to keep an eye out for spiders. They invariably mean something is messing with him. Again.”
Martin exhales heavily. He likes spiders, always has, stemming back to his grandfather reading him Charlotte’s Web every afternoon for two weeks when he was in bed with the chicken pox. A lot of the things he loves—spiders, poetry, cherry preserves, Highland cattle—are things he discovered, or more accurately was given, at his grandfather’s knee. His mother’s father, with whom Martin had spent more time than either of his parents even before his father walked out on them, the man who taught Martin everything from his parents’ native Polish to knitting, who walked with a cane but never showed any difficulty keeping up with his only grandson. Who never told him not to be afraid, but always showed him how to fight back against his fears. His grandfather loved him—is probably the last person who really loved him, if Martin’s being honest—and he still misses him sorely. He’s never admitted to Jon that’s why he gets so defensive about spiders, but now he wonders what Jon would say if he did.
“Did you ever tell him?” he asks, then clarifies when the other gives him an odd look. “Why you like spiders so much. About Granddad and all.”
“A little. Not about the spiders, though. By the time we were close enough to talk about that sort of thing, I understood a little better why he didn’t like them and we avoided the subject if we could.”
Martin wants to ask how long that took, but decides against it. He doesn’t want to force things if it won’t happen that quickly for him, and he also doesn’t want to hold back from trying if he hears that it’s “supposed” to be a while. Let things happen at their own pace, he supposes. That’s all he really can do.
“Hypothetically speaking,” he says slowly, “and not to change the subject, but…how long do you have to stop the world from ending?”
The other puffs out his cheeks and exhales. “Couple years? But it’s…we’re trying to slow the prep work, so to speak. We’re hoping we can stop it altogether. Might only be able to delay the inevitable, but we have to try.”
“Even though you survived the world ending?”
“Especially because we survived the world ending.”
“Did we all survive it?” Martin asks. “Tim? Sasha? Jon?”
There’s a long silence before the other replies, “Everyone who was alive when the world ended continued to be alive after. It’s just that a lot of them wished they weren’t.”
Martin really, really wishes he didn’t ask. And even though he’s burning to know whether any of them regretted being alive past the end of the world, he decides to table that question…for now. The other looks like he’s in real pain, and Martin wouldn’t make that worse even if it wasn’t his own face he’s seeing that look on. Which is still really weird to contemplate.
“So what can I do?” he asks instead.
“I told you. Keep—”
“Keep Jon safe, I know. That’s—you should know you don’t have to actually tell me to do that, really. But I mean…other than that. What can I do to help you?”
The other pauses. He tilts his head slightly to one side, like he’s listening to something Martin can’t hear, or like he’s studying him, or maybe just like he’s thinking. Finally, he says, “Where are you hiding the fire extinguishers?”
“Everywhere I can.” Martin wonders that the other doesn’t know that, if he was, well, him.
“No, I know that. It’s just…I don’t have my bearings anymore. The Archives…I haven’t been down here in, well, a long time. I don’t remember where everything is off the top of my head. And trying to find things without—” The other stops. “I’m trying not to be seen by any of you, really. Obviously I’m failing, but I’m trying. It’s hard to move around without…making noise or drawing attention. Harder than it used to be, anyway.”
“Oh.” Martin should have guessed that. He thinks for a minute. “I’ll grab you a couple, if you want. Then you can put them somewhere you’ll remember. I’d give you this one, but…”
The other smiles. “Thank you. I do appreciate that. But if you’re asking what you can do to help with the plan…well, you really can help best by keeping Jon safe.”
“Are you going to ever tell me what the plan is?”
“Eventually. When it’s not just me. It’s—it’s going to take some work. Not as easy as we’d like it to be, and…well, there’s a bit of an additional difficulty now. I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to be ready, or able, to do what needs doing. But we were always planning to bring you all in.”
Martin is bursting with questions, but he tries to tamp it down and be patient. “In that case…want me to fill you in on what we’re working on? Will that help?”
The other’s smile is broad and wistful. “Absolutely. Let’s hear it.”