Sasha was not an older sister. Or a younger sister. At least, not as far as she knew. She had in fact grown up as yet another unwanted child lost in the foster care system, shunted from home to home without time to put down roots or even really form proper friendships, which meant that by the time she’d got to uni and a more settled life she’d lost the knack. She cared about Tim and Jon and Martin, of course she did, but up until a couple of days ago, she would have laughed at the very idea that she cared about any of them more than she cared about herself.
So she hadn’t been prepared for the surge of emotions she felt every time Martin opened his mouth. What she’d thought would be a simple, academic, satisfy-my-curiosity-and-get-some-goddamned-answers conversation had rapidly turned into a series of revelations that smacked her upside the head and left her breathless and nauseous.
She’d told Jon when she made her statement that she didn’t consider Martin to have the best self-preservation instincts in the world. Obviously she’d been wrong. He’d been embroiled in this…bullshit…since he was a small child, going on twenty years now, and he’d survived. Not only survived but thrived, and he’d apparently been quietly protecting all of them this entire time. But he shouldn’t have had to, and she was taken aback by the intensity of that conviction.
Maybe it was just that she’d only really had Tim as an example of a protective instinct, or thought she had. Now, though, she could see that it came in all sorts of styles. Tim’s protectiveness was a warm blanket and a hug, but Martin’s was a quietly-built fortress wall you never thought about being there or even really noticed until someone knocked one of the stones out on top of you, and Melanie’s was a barricade of cannons and barbed wire and flame. Sasha wasn’t entirely sure what hers was like, mostly because she hadn’t realized she had it before today, but she suspected it was somewhat akin to the way Gerry—Gerard—she wasn’t sure where she fell on the spectrum of being allowed to call him Gerry—was protective of Melanie and Martin.
Whatever it was, the look on Jon’s face when Gerard made his announcement brought it out full force.
“Elaborate,” she said, a bit more sharply than she meant to, because Jon looked absolutely terrified and she didn’t know if it was at the idea of the rituals themselves or the idea of an Avatar being a key component. “What rituals? What do they do?”
“It’s…different for each one. Probably. Look, it’s not like there’s a manual for this or anything.” Gerard sighed heavily. “Gertrude was trying to stop them. She’d dedicated most of her career as Archivist to it, or so she told me once. She could’ve been lying, I dunno. But we were…the one we were specifically trying to stop was the Unknowing.”
“Which sounds like a Stranger ritual,” Tim said slowly. Gerard nodded. “Did you manage it?”
“Dunno. Hadn’t by the time I died. I kind of assume she did, or we wouldn’t be here talking, but…well, I dunno,” Gerard repeated. “Maybe it’s not ready yet. Takes centuries to build up the power, and if it fails, it’s back to square one. Could be the Stranger is still building up.”
Sasha picked up her notebook and flipped back to her list, tallying up quickly. “I think you’re right. Look, out of all the statements we’ve done, the real ones I mean—well, take away Father Burroughs’ statement and the one where you found the book at the nexus of all the fears, and the two we’ve had the most about have been the Stranger and the Flesh, tied with five each. And the anatomy class one was a live statement—that can’t be a coincidence, right? You said they were trying to learn to—to imitate humanity better. Is that part of this…Unknowing thing?”
Gerard sighed. “Maybe the build-up to it. I-I mean, if they’re recruiting people, luring them in, they want to be as…convincing as possible. Could also just be they were tormenting the professor. The actual Unknowing, though, doesn’t really matter how human they look, I reckon.”
Melanie squinted up at Martin’s face, her nose scrunched in worry, then turned to Gerard. “Okay, cards on the table. What is the Unknowing? Specifically.”
“I don’t have a play-by-play, if that’s what you’re asking. Not even sure Gertrude did. I just know the basics.” Gerard took a deep breath. “It’s a dance of some kind. Not—like a ballet, I guess, you know? And it centers around, well, the Dancer. Which, I think, is something mechanical, something made. Like a robot or a doll, maybe. Gertrude said something about a ‘mechanical Turk’ once, but—”
A chill ran up Sasha’s spine as she remembered one of the conversations she’d once had with Gertrude. “That was destroyed.”
All the heads in the room turned to look at her in varying degrees of shock and concern, except for Martin’s, which was perfectly blank and honestly scared her more than the others. It was Jon who spoke. “Sasha, you’ve heard of this?”
“Did a paper on it back in university. Wolfgang von Kempelen’s Mechanical Turk was—well, it was widely believed to have been a hoax, and I guess in the early days it was. It was supposed to be a chess-playing automaton that beat some of the best minds in Europe in its day, but years later it came out that there was a space under the table and a person hidden under it who actually controlled the Turk and played the game. Still a marvel of engineering, but not self-powered.” Sasha hesitated. “Supposedly it got sold to another man after Kempelen’s death and kept touring until 1854 when it was destroyed by fire, but I think that was a replica of the original. Gertrude let me read something once that she said she thought I’d find interesting—a journal entry from the first man who’d played the Turk, detailing an…incident in 1787. I didn’t believe it at the time, figured it was just the usual…sorry, Jon, but the usual spooky bullshit we have to sift through. After all, I had the papers to prove the Mechanical Turk was still touring for another sixty years, why would I believe some crackpot who saw it come to life only to get blown away by blind soldiers with a cannon?”
Gerard nodded slowly. “That explains a lot. Gertrude thought the only way to stop it, to really stop it, would be once it was underway. Anything you do to it ahead of time can be fixed, but if you disrupt it at the high point of the whole thing it should put it out of commission for centuries.”
“When was the last time the Eye tried a ritual?” Martin’s voice was extremely quiet, but in a way that sent another chill down Sasha’s spine.
Gerard swallowed hard. He looked like he was about to be sick, but he met Martin’s eyes without flinching. “Dunno. But Gertrude reckoned it was coming up.” He held out a hand to Melanie. “I swear I didn’t know last time I was home. I’d have told you then and there if I had. She’d told me about the Unknowing but not the Watcher’s Crown, not until we were in America, and I didn’t want to bring it up on a call or in a letter.”
“That should have come up last night, don’t you think?” Melanie sounded both angry and scared. “Like as soon as you had the opportunity? Don’t you think that’s something we needed to know? Jesus fuck, is that why you didn’t get in touch with us like you promised?”
“I—yes.” Gerard’s shoulders slumped, and he broke eye contact and looked away, picking at a frayed spot on his jeans. “I’m not going to pretend it isn’t. I—I got scared. She didn’t tell me much about it, just kind of mentioned it offhand and said she’d already made plans to avoid having to play a part in it, but…you know, I didn’t know if she’d—I didn’t know what she’d do if—I didn’t want her to meet you. Not until I told you.”
“Told us what?” Melanie demanded. “Because you didn’t. Is it somehow less dangerous now that she’s dead?”
“Yes,” Sasha said, understanding sinking into her heart and dropping it into the pit of her stomach with the weight of certainty. She looked up at Gerard, who had turned to her in obvious surprise. “I’m right, aren’t I? You weren’t worried about her trying to recruit them or whatever. It was that she would have recognized Martin as someone who’d been touched enough by the Eye to maybe be viable to a ritual, and she’d have killed him.”
Tim’s head shot up; Jon sucked in a sharp breath and turned ashen. Gerard nodded slowly. “That was my worry. She was…look, there were rumors, all right? Not by name, but there were a lot of whispers about the Archivist. I just thought it was part of the job description until I met her, but no, she was just a stone-cold bitch. Not the sort to hesitate when it came to…using people, or sacrificing them. And okay, maybe there was a bit of worry that she’d do to you two what she did to me—just use you up and discard you the second you weren’t of use anymore—but the bigger fear was that she’d just kill you, straight out.”
Sasha didn’t speak whatever language Melanie used for the next five minutes, but it definitely sounded profane. So did Tim, although she was at least able to identify that as Italian. Jon looked incredibly shaken. “Would—good Lord, do you think she really would have done that?”
Martin shook his head, not in negation, Sasha thought, just some sort of indefinable emotion. He was surprisingly calm when he spoke. “Like Gerry said, there were rumors—we all heard them. Honestly, it’s probably a big part of the reason Jane Prentiss was so interested in attacking the Archives—that she believed, or maybe even the Corruption itself believed, that that was part of the Archivist’s job description. You don’t hear too much about people being too tightly tied up in the Ceaseless Watcher who don’t find their way to the Institute, one way or another, so maybe it didn’t ever occur to me that she might kill me if we ever met, but if she thought there was a risk of it, she might’ve. Or at least she might’ve tried.”
That surprised Sasha, enough that she blurted out, “You don’t think she’d have managed it?”
Martin actually cracked a smile at that. He tilted his head in Melanie’s direction. “She’d have had to be very fast.”
“Damn right,” Melanie snarled. Martin freed an arm from the blanket still wrapped around him and hugged her; she resisted for a minute, then sighed and slumped against him.
Tim studied Martin. “You don’t seem particularly worried about the possibility.”
“Of her trying to kill me?”
“Of being used in a ritual.”
“Oh. I’m not.” Martin shrugged when all of them stared at him in surprise. “I’ve got five different Marks—well, six now. No matter how strong my connection is to the Eye, it’s not enough to wipe the others out, so I don’t reckon I’d be all that useful in a ritual to bring a single fear into this universe. I-I mean, it’s like, like forging a sword or something. If your ore has impurities and other…bits mixed in with it, your steel is going to turn out crummy and fall apart the first time you swing it, no matter how well you crafted it. Even assuming there is someone out there trying to put together a ritual—and I’ve got a pretty good idea who it might be if there is—they’re not going to use someone like me as the linchpin, the whole thing would just fall apart.”
There was a brief silence as all of them contemplated that. Sasha picked at the argument from all sides, but she couldn’t see a flaw in it. “So you’re saying the more Marks we all collect, the safer we are. From being used in a ritual, at least.”
Martin nodded. “I’m definitely not saying ‘let’s go out and stir up hornets’ nests to accumulate as many Marks as we can,’ because there’s always a chance something will kill us eventually, but in this case, what doesn’t kill us might actually make us stronger.”
Gerard took a breath. “I—I never thought of it before, but you’re right.”
“Does that mean you can’t be used in a Terminus ritual?” Sasha asked him. “Because you have—had—other Marks? Or does he?” she added, glancing at Martin.
“He does,” Martin confirmed. “The Eye and the Buried. They’re harder to see than the End’s Mark, but they’re still there.”
“Also,” Gerard said, “I don’t think there is a ritual for the End. After all, Death is inevitable—why would he need to hasten that? He’s probably the most patient of the Fourteen.”
“Still.” Martin took a deep breath. “I can’t say I’m unhappy it wouldn’t work with you if there was one.”
Melanie rested her chin on Martin’s chest and looked up at him. “You realize that means I’m going to ask you again to tell me what I got Marked by, if I got Marked, at Cambridge Military Hospital. I’m assuming I’ve got the Buried too, but…”
“Actually,” Tim said quietly, “I’d like to know, too. As far as I know, I’ve just been Marked by the Eye because I work for the Institute. Not that I think I’m all that important, but just in case, I’d like to have some idea, you know?”
Sasha felt something twist in her stomach. “Me, too. I mean, does meeting Michael technically count as a Mark or not?”
“I—I don’t know.” Martin hesitated, then sighed. “Okay. Okay.”
He leaned forward and set his cup on the table, then stood, the throw slipping off his shoulders as he stretched and straightened. He nodded at the sofa. “Anyone who wants to know, sit over there. I’ll sit on the chair right there and I’ll only look there, so if anyone doesn’t want to me to See, I won’t.”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Tim frowned as he stood and moved towards the sofa.
“I told you last night. It’s not just a matter of ‘oh, I got a bit spooked by a shadow in the window,’ it’s something that hit you hard. And I’m not going to lie to you—if I don’t already know how you got whatever Mark you might have, I’m going to be curious. I won’t ask you about it today—I won’t do that to you, to any of you—but, well, at its core, the Eye is all about knowledge, about exposing secrets.” Martin grimaced. “And you heard what I did earlier. I didn’t even know I could do that. There’s every chance that this…thing…will get bad enough, sooner or later, that it won’t be enough for me to See, I’ll have to Know. The last thing I want is to force something out of you because I know you have it.”
Jon slid over on the couch closer to Melanie, looking up at Martin seriously. “I’d rather you ask me than pounce some random person on the street.”
“Yeah, same.” Tim settled next to him and glanced at Sasha.
She didn’t need any further prompting. It was the work of no more than a second to step around the coffee table and join the others. Gerard stayed in the armchair.
Martin sat down across from them. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and let it out in a slow, even breath. As he did so, he slid his glasses off his face and lowered his hands, his shoulders relaxing and his body seeming to sink slightly.
His eyes opened.
Static filled the room, the same static Sasha had noticed when Martin spoke about Michael and when he’d Looked at Gerard, and for the first time she realized it was the same static she’d heard on the tape when he took off his glasses to Look at Jane Prentiss. It started off soft at first, then built gradually until it drowned out the sound of her own breathing. Behind Martin, the candle she presumed to be warding against the Beholder glowed brighter, not a sudden flare but a steadily building glow. Martin’s eyes had gone eerily blank and still, as though they’d been replaced with pictures or glass models, and yet she could feel his regard passing from one to the other. Prickles danced across her skin in odd patterns—spiraling around her arms, sparking against her shoulder, tickling her throat—quickly passing from disconcerting to unpleasant to painful. She clenched her hands tightly and determined to bear up.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she watched the others. Tim was pressing a hand to his chest, grimacing; Melanie sat ramrod straight, arms folded tightly across her chest and a scowl deepening on her face; Jon’s hands bunched up his borrowed trousers as he kept his eyes fixed on Martin, his expression one between worry and anguish. She could tell he was clenching his teeth and trembling slightly.
The static grew louder and louder, the sensations more and more unbearable. Sasha wanted to ask what was taking so long, to demand Martin tell them what he Saw, but her jaw seemed fused shut. He still sat with that same blank expression, perfectly still and seemingly immobile, and yet the scrutiny got more and more intense. At last, after what seemed simultaneously like mere seconds and an eternity, Jon made a small noise of pain and flinched, his eyes squinching shut.
Instantly, the static stopped. Sasha’s skin settled back to its normal state, still tingling slightly but more in a remembered sensation than active discomfort, and she rubbed her arms without conscious thought to make it stop. Martin gave a great, shuddering gasp, his whole body going rigid for a moment before he doubled over slightly, squeezing his eyes shut tightly and burying his face in his hands, heedless of his glasses still in his left one. He was breathing heavily as if he’d been running.
“Martin! O-oh, God.” Jon was up in an instant, Melanie a half second behind him, and starting towards Martin, but Gerard got to his feet and threw out an arm to stop them.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Martin panted, his voice choked with tears. “I-I didn’t—I’m sorry. I c-couldn’t stop, I couldn’t—”
“It’s o—it’s not your fault,” Sasha said. It wasn’t okay, not by a long chalk, but Martin hadn’t done it on purpose.
Martin fumbled and managed to shove his glasses back onto his face, then straightened up, looking miserable. The bandages on his face were discolored with bright red, and at first Sasha thought he’d reopened the wounds beneath them, but then she realized the fresh stains were on the wrong side and way too thin to be from a wormhole.
“Are you—were you crying blood?” she asked, getting to her feet as well.
“Okay, no more of that,” Tim said firmly, getting up and stepping over the coffee table like it wasn’t even there. Jon and Melanie ducked under Gerard’s arm, and Sasha rushed around the other end of the coffee table to drop to her knees and join the others in hugging Martin tightly. “That’s—that was way too much for you. You’re hurt, you don’t need to do that again.”
“Yeah,” Martin mumbled from somewhere in the center of the pile of humanity that was his friends. “I’m—I’m sorry. I should have known something like that would happen.”
“How?” Sasha demanded. “Has that ever happened before?”
“N-no, but—”
“But nothing,” Jon said firmly. “We never should have made you look at all of us at once, Martin. Tim’s right, that was far too much.” He hesitated, then swiped at one of the trickles of blood on Martin’s skin. “Are you better now?”
“A bit,” Martin said, not entirely convincingly. Sasha took the hint and eased back a little. “Christ, that—yeah, I’ve never had it that bad before.”
Tim sat on the coffee table, his hands still hovering around Martin’s knees. “Did you at least get the answers you wanted? You know, so we don’t have to do that again?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I did.” Martin took a deep, steadying breath and straightened. Melanie rocked back to kneel at his feet, resting her folded arms on his leg; Jon simply stood next to the armchair, hovering anxiously. Gerard, whom Sasha just realized hadn’t been part of the hug, came a little closer. “Okay. So, um, all of you have the Eye on you, obviously. That’s, that was a given. Tim, you’ve got the—you’ve got one Mark beyond that. Jon, Sash, you’ve, um, you’ve each got two more—n-not the same ones. You’ve actually got four, Neens.”
Melanie swore again. “The Eye, the Buried…the Stranger, I guess?” Martin nodded. “What’s the other one? This is me asking and wanting them to know. It relates to a statement, after all.”
Martin swallowed. “The Slaughter.”
“Fuck,” Melanie said softly.
Sasha hesitated. She didn’t want to hurt Martin—or Tim or Jon, for that matter—any more than they already had been, but it occurred to her that if she asked, if she made it her choice, it might be better for Martin than if he knew he risked exposing them.
“What about me?” she asked. “What were my other two?”
“The Spiral and the Web,” Martin answered. “Bit of a surprise there. I’d have thought the Corruption, but I guess meeting Timothy Hodges wasn’t enough to Mark you. They’re both faint—fainter than the Eye, anyway—but they’re definitely there.”
“And mine?” Tim asked softly. Sasha looked at him. Something in his eyes told her he already knew, or at least that he’d guessed.
“The Stranger.” The pain in Martin’s eyes was palpable, and he pressed his lips together tightly; Sasha guessed there was something he was trying his hardest not to say.
Thankfully, Jon seemed to figure that out, too. He touched Martin’s shoulder gently. “You said I had three as well. I know one is the Eye and the other is the Corruption…obviously. What’s the third?”
“The Web, and it’s almost as strong a Mark on you as the Eye is.” Martin looked up at Jon, guilt all over his face. “I—I kind of knew that already. I—when you asked me to look into Carlos Vittery, I—you just, you looked scared and I just—I didn’t, I know I shouldn’t have, but—”
“It’s all right.” Jon swallowed hard, although he looked stricken. “I-I probably would have done something stupid like go to investigate it myself if you hadn’t, so it’s for the best, really.”
“I think this is all enough for one day,” Gerard said firmly. “You both need rest before you get into this any further.”
Sasha nodded, pushing herself properly to her feet. “We can talk about it tomorrow. Or in a couple of days.”
“Or when we’re back to work,” Jon said. “It’s—it’s going to be a few days, but—”
“It’s going to be more than that,” Tim said sternly. “You two aren’t in any shape to be back at the Institute just yet. I’m sure you’ll need to see a doctor and get a note before you can go back, and honestly, there’s going to be a lot of healing you both need to do first. But I agree with Jon. We can—this isn’t time-sensitive, right? We can wait to talk about it until then.”
Martin took another deep breath and closed his eyes, then nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay.”
Sasha looked at Jon. He nodded, too, but she could see the look on his face and inwardly resigned herself. They were definitely going to have a fight on their hands.