They didn’t have any real way of knowing exactly what time everything was going to kick off in Great Yarmouth. Tim knew it was a three-hour trip up there, and he guessed it would take them a while to find a clear shot into the building, let alone plant all the charges, but he had no idea just how long that would be. And it wasn’t like they could ask Elias to tell them, not and have this work.
The problem, Tim thought as he tried to concentrate on what he was doing, was that the more interested in what was going on up there he was, the harder they would have to work to distract him. Distracting him from ogling Martin and the others while they tried to stop the Unknowing would be a nice bonus, sure, especially if they wanted to keep him from calling Martin and demanding to know why he hadn’t said Gerry was alive (or, alternatively, why the goth trespasser who’d apparently damaged his eye beyond repair was tagging along), but it actually wasn’t their primary goal here.
He began revising his plans a little. Hopefully nobody would mind too much.
The project he and Sasha had started, partly to give themselves something to do and partly to give themselves a starting point for their plan, was a complete overhaul of the stacks, grabbing every single statement and sorting them out before putting them back on the shelves. It would hopefully make things a little easier on them in the long run, but as was typical with most projects of that nature, it was temporarily creating even more chaos. It was leading to fraying tempers and short attitudes.
“Don’t do that,” Sasha snapped as he dropped a lopsided box with a dull thunk onto the stack of papers in front of her. “I just got those sorted!”
“Well, now you can sort these,” Tim shot back.
“Why don’t you try sorting for a change?”
“I thought I was the pack mule.”
“You’re certainly as stubborn as one. Look, can we at least get what we already have out here organized before we start adding more to it?”
“And what good is that going to do if we’re just going to keep adding to it?”
“It will mean I don’t have to dig through sixteen tons of papers to find the one I’m looking for, Timothy!”
“Why are you organizing the things on the bottom?”
“You are impossible!” Sasha shouted. She ran her hands through her hair and fumed for a second, then turned on her heel. “Fuck it. I’m going to lunch. Destroy things all you want, and I’ll clean up after you when I get back. Like I always do.”
“You wouldn’t have to clean up after me if you just accepted I had a different filing system!” Tim yelled at her retreating back. She responded by slamming the door to the Archives hard enough that the framed picture on Tim’s desk wobbled and fell over.
Tim stared at it, letting his anger build and rise. Their fighting had been for show—well, mostly, the waiting was probably getting to both of them—but the fact that she’d stormed off meant she was expecting him to start acting out, that she’d decided now was the best time to launch their plan. Probably it was. Manal took a thirty-minute lunch at more or less the same time afternoon, and if they didn’t want her to get caught in the inevitable crossfire…
With a wordless shout of frustration, Tim shoved the box he’d just dropped on the table onto its side, spilling its contents and the stack underneath of it to the floor. He sent a quick mental apology to Sasha, just in case she was actually upset about that, and stormed into Jon’s—no, the Archivist’s office. It wasn’t Jon’s anymore. It was Martin’s now, and Tim let that anger fuel him. Anger at the way they’d been treated, the way they’d been manipulated, the rotten hand fate and luck and Elias Bouchard had dealt them.
It ended now.
The plan, such as it was, was for Tim to lock himself in the office with a few juicy statements and a lighter. That would hopefully prove a big enough distraction for Sasha to enact her phase of the plan. Tim, however, no longer thought it would, so rather than lock himself in, he reached behind the filing cabinet, swatted away a spider, and grabbed what he needed, then stormed back into the Archives and marched directly into the climate-controlled Document Storage room, then slammed the door behind him.
That he took care to lock.
For just a second, he hesitated. Was this really the best option? He wouldn’t have time to…curate, to make sure he was only burning statements they’d already recorded. What if there was something important in here that he destroyed before Martin could read it?
Then he shook his head. Fuck that. If it was that important, Gertrude would have a backup copy somewhere, and Martin would be able to find it…somewhere. And if she didn’t, well, they’d muddle through. They always did.
A faint click caught his attention, and Tim turned and glared at the tape recorder sitting innocuously on top of the filing cabinet where they kept the recordings, which had apparently switched itself on. “Oh, are you listening?” he said, a bit sarcastically. “Fine. Whatever. Listen away. I don’t know what this is going to do…but I know damn well that it’s going to hurt.”
With another roar of anger, he swung the axe over his shoulder and slammed it into the nearest shelf.
They were wood in here, not metal, and it splintered in a very satisfying manner. Papers fluttered around him in a miniature snowstorm patterned with words and the Institute’s logo. Tim freed the axe from the wood, drew back, and attacked again. This time the shelf cracked in half and dumped everything that didn’t fall to the floor onto the shelf below it. Tim reared back and aimed higher.
He hadn’t chopped firewood in a while, not since before Danny died, but he figured nobody was going to be judging his form. Again and again he attacked the shelves, sending statements and evidence—what little of that there was—to the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shape at the window—Elias, pounding at the glass and mouthing words that probably contained Tim’s name and a command to open the door.
The door was soundproof. Tim pretended he didn’t see him and kept going, screaming partly with rage and partly with exhilaration, and the shadow disappeared.
“I am going to chop these statements into kindling!” he roared, turning the axe on the pile of papers. It wasn’t as good as, say, scissors, but the noise was incredibly thrilling.
There was a loud clunk and a faint creak, and Elias’s voice, cold and foreboding, came from behind him. “Tim. What are you doing?”
Tim looked over his shoulder as he lifted the axe from the pile of papers and hefted it over his shoulder. “What does it look like I’m doing?” he snarked.
“It looks like you are making a very foolish mistake.”
For a fleeting second, Tim considered turning and burying the axe in Elias’s skull, but something about the expression in his piercing grey eye told him he was daring him to do it, and that therefore doing so would be an incredibly foolish mistake. Instead, he swung it overhand, letting his hands slide together for extra leverage, and slammed it into the stack so hard that it got stuck in the floor. “Am I?”
“Yes. You are.” Elias folded his arms over his chest and scowled. “I suppose you think this is accomplishing something.”
The axe’s head was really stuck. Tim tried not to look like he was struggling to free it. “Maybe I’m just trying to hurt you. Is it working?”
“Not as much as you are hurting yourself.”
“I’m in plenty good shape.” The axe came free with a ripping, tearing sound. Tim lifted it to his shoulder with one hand and fished in his pocket with the other, then pulled out the lighter Jon had given him—the golden one with the spiderweb on it. He flicked it for emphasis. “Just building myself a good bonfire. Something to keep the ol’ bones warm.”
“I suggest you put both of those implements down and walk out of here. Now.” Elias had the same tone as Tim’s father when he’d really screwed up.
Since the last time he’d heard it had been when Danny died, it only served to piss him off further. “Or what?”
Elias nodded sharply at the tape recorder. “You may want to turn that off.”
Tim hesitated, for just a second. Curiosity overtook him, and he leaned over and switched the recorder off with the hand holding the lighter.
Click. It turned itself on again with an unusually loud and aggressive sound.
Tim tried not to look like this was bothering him and only smirked at Elias. “Sorry. It looks like it’s going to record whether we want it to or not.”
Elias was barely controlling himself, Tim thought, but he said only, “Fine.”
“So, what now, boss?” Tim folded his arms over his chest, somehow managing not to cut his own nose off in the process. “Is this the part where you fire me with extreme prejudice?”
“I would never do that, Tim.” For once, Elias didn’t sound patronizing when he said it—he sounded downright cruel. “Martin will need you, after all. Believe me, it will be much more effective to simply leave you where you are until he uses you up and discards you. Every Archivist in the Institute’s recorded history has done so with their assistants, and I assure you, he is no different.”
“Bullshit,” Tim growled.
Elias raised an eyebrow. “Believe what you like. I suppose you think your relationship will save you, do you?”
Tim froze. “My what?”
“It’s almost amusing, the way you all thought you were fooling me.” Elias stepped closer to Tim, nudging paper fragments aside with a tap of his overly expensive dress shoes. “Did you truly think I couldn’t see that you were interacting with Gerard Keay? I may not be able to see through your little wards, but there are plenty of times you chose not to set them. The shop is fair game. I know you’ve been spending time with him.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “I suppose you think he actually cares for you, do you?”
“No, I think he thinks I’ve got a nice ass,” Tim shot back, trying to cover his shock. “And that he’s got a nice dick. I suppose you’ve seen what he can do with it, then?”
He did get the satisfaction of seeing Elias slightly off-balance, and a bit uncomfortable, but he recovered quickly. “I should have done more with that. Shown you what he really thinks of you. But, alas, there’s no time, so I’ll have to go with what I already have prepared.”
Tim snorted. “I don’t know what you possibly think you can hit me with, but sure, let’s go for it.”
Elias’s one good eye bored into Tim. “Your brother.”
“What about him?” Tim let the anger out to cover the sudden surge of fear. “Going to fucking tell me that he never forgave me for hiding under his bed when we were kids?”
“Oh, no, Tim. No, what I have in mind is much, much worse.” Elias moved closer. Tim took a step back and found himself against the filing cabinet. “You think you know what happened to him?”
“Yes, I do. I was there,” Tim bit out. “You knew that when you hired me. It’s why you hired me. And I’m sure you’ve heard my statement somewhere.”
“I have heard what you saw, yes,” Elias agreed. “But you don’t understand what you saw.”
“What do you mean, I don’t understand?” Tim demanded. “I saw what I thought was my brother. I saw that it wasn’t, just his skin. I saw that it was whatever is going on with that fucking dance, whatever the others are having to deal with, and that Danny was gone. What else is there to understand?”
Elias drew himself up and stared hard at Tim. “Did you truly believe your brother was dead?”
Tim’s breath caught in his throat as static began building around them. His vision went blurry, then grey, then seemed to be…
…dark but not dark, cold but not cold, silent but not silent. There is a thing on the stage that isn’t him, and there’s a thing behind the stage that is him, but the thing on the stage looks like him and the thing that is him looks like something else, he doesn’t know, only knows that the Dancer is pleased with him and he does not want her to be, and she has placed him here, where he can see the stage and see what little there is to be seen in the audience, and he doesn’t know why, until suddenly he does.
He hears the voice calling to him, knows who it is, and he doesn’t want to see this, he doesn’t, but he can’t open his mouth, he can’t scream. Can’t tell the man who’s risking everything, things he doesn’t even know he’s risking, to come here, to save him, to leave, that it’s too late, that he’s as good as dead. That he never wants to see him again, because it means he’s alive and living.
He can only watch in mute terror and helplessness as the spotlight switches on, illuminating the corner, and he can’t even move his eyes, they just remain fixed on the spot above the stage, the upper level of the seats, the man, the face frozen in horror, and he can hear the scrape, scrape, scrape of a figure dragging itself across the stage, slowly, ever so slowly, towards the thing on the stage that’s put on his skin like a costume. Like a mask. He hears the voice ask its question, the same question it asked him, and he tries again to scream but his lips are literally sealed, and he has only time to see one last look of horror on the one living face in the audience before the clown tugs on his hand and his skin, he, pulls off the thing beneath him and flutters to one side.
Waiting in the wings, in the shadows hidden behind the curtains, he sees the shock and horror and morbid fascination and the tears streaking all unknowing down his beloved big brother’s face as the thing on the stage now laid bare to the elements dances, and then all goes mercifully black…
…time, distance, darkness, so much darkness, dust and dirt and debris, the drip, drip, drip of melted wax and the clink, clink, clink of metal on metal and the tap, tap, tap of plastic on wood, has it been days, months, years…
…there is a new figure brought into the workshop, and he does not want to see this part, but the cheerful voice he hates so much speaks to the struggling figure and promises him they won’t be killing him yet. It’s the yet that catches his attention, because she’s never said yet to the others, and he watches, not that he has any real choice in the matter, because the helpers have shuffled the cast, it’s easier to think of them as the cast, around so that he’s in the front with a clear line of sight to the worktable instead of being in the back with nothing to see but the backs of the heads in front of him, he doesn’t know why. But he watches and he sees the figure, the man, still defiant and trying to struggle as they hold him in ungentle hands and strap him to the table and begin to work the lotions into his skin, he’s not strong enough to fight them but he’s trying, but he sees in his eyes the tiny, tiny bit of fear. He wishes he could reach out and tear the bindings away from the table, give the man a chance to escape, but he cannot, he can only watch through eyes that burn because they can no longer cry above lips that can no longer part to scream.
They finish their work and they take the man away, and then the helpers come back and shuffle the cast again, and this time he is in another room, another crowd, and these waxworks are lifeless and unskilled, these are not for the Dance, he thinks he is the only living soul in the room, if a soul he has, until he hears a muffled grunt and his eyes adjust, and there is the figure from the other room. Still unclothed, still bound and gagged, but now sitting in a chair with the hated Dancer facing him, and she pats his cheek and assures him he won’t be alone, and then she leaves and he knows the figure thinks her statement a cruel joke. Or perhaps he doesn’t, perhaps he guesses, because his eyes, the only part of him that can move freely, scan the room anxiously, but he doesn’t seem to be able to make out anything clearly and that is when he notices the glasses, lying on a small table nearby, and he knows the man cannot see well enough to know he is there, or to recognize him if he can.
He cannot cry. He cannot scream. He cannot even reassure the man that he is not alone, that there is someone there with him. He can only stand still, day after day after interminable day, watching as they try to feed him and then give up and jab the needle into his arm, as they take him away to prepare him and bring him back, as the Dancer returns to taunt and touch and tease, as the man’s struggles grow less and less and his muffled cries of pain grow more and more frequent, as fear begins to take the place of defiance, as hope slowly fades…
…and the world crashed back in all at once.
Tim’s knees buckled, and he caught himself against the file cabinet to keep from collapsing in front of Elias. His face was sticky and his throat raw, and he felt more helpless and devastated since had since that night in the Covent Garden Theatre. That couldn’t be what happened, it couldn’t…
“You’re lying,” he choked out, somehow.
Elias raised an eyebrow. He actually looked almost…impressed. His voice, however, was just as cold and even as before. “I assure you that I am not, Tim. And unless you want me to watch the Unknowing through your brother’s eyes, and impart to you exactly what that feels like—” He straightened and fixed him with the full force of his disapproval. “Don’t destroy any more statements.”
He turned on his heel and strode out, leaving Tim in the wake of his devastation.
Alone, Tim finally gave in to gravity and pain and sank to his knees. The axe fell from his hand, and he braced himself against the floor, sobbing. Hot tears dripped and splattered on the remains of statements, making the ink bleed through.
Danny…was alive.
Alive and trapped in a waxwork shell. Alive and kept that way, tortured and raw and in pain, for four. Fucking. Years. Alive and forced to watch others go through the same process he’d gone through…and, God, Martin. He’d been forced to watch them torture Martin, which in turn now meant Tim had a picture of what Martin had suffered during those painfully long weeks that even Jon and Gerry didn’t have, and knowing that Danny was still there…
Unless you want me to watch the Unknowing through your brother’s eyes…oh, God, of course. Danny hadn’t been taken just to torture Tim. The Stranger didn’t do foresight, it hadn’t been interested in Tim because he might someday go to work for the Institute. It hadn’t been about him at all. Danny had walked into something he shouldn’t have and as punishment, or payment, had been recruited to the Unknowing. Dancer or Chorus, who was to say, but they’d planned to use both bits and the part that was Danny was still there, still going to be forced to see the world unmade, and God only knew what would happen to him.
Sudden panic struck Tim in the chest, and a heartbroken cry escaped his lips as he curled further in on himself. Danny was alive. That meant he was going to be in the middle of the Unknowing when the others blew it up, which meant…which meant he was going to be blown up, too.
Tim wasn’t stupid. He knew there wasn’t enough left of Danny to save. Even if he was able to rescue the waxwork he was imprisoned in, he couldn’t force him to stay alive like that, he wouldn’t ever have a normal life. Death was the kindest thing for him, and from the experience Elias had put him through, he knew Danny was in pain all the time; the explosion probably wouldn’t hurt him more than just existing did.
But Tim was still Danny’s big brother, and the protective urge that had driven him for thirty fucking years screamed that he should have gone, that he was letting his brother down.
Sancta Maria, Mater Crucifixi…the words rose unbidden in Tim’s mind. He clenched his hands, crumpling papers beneath them, and prayed harder than he had in years, begging the Virgin Mary to intercede with God and get a message to Gerry in a hurry. Gerry had promised he wouldn’t let anyone suffer unnecessarily, and now Tim prayed that somehow, somehow, Gerry would be able to find which waxwork had Danny in it and set him free. That he would be able to save Tim’s brother when he couldn’t.
“Tim? Tim!” Sasha was suddenly in front of him, her hands framing his face as she scanned him anxiously. “Oh, God are you—what happened? Did he hurt you? Did you hurt yourself?”
She swiped his cheek with her thumb. It was the same gesture Martin did for Melanie on the rare occasions she cried, the same gesture Tim had always done for Danny after nightmares or skinned knees, and he jerked his head back on instinct. It was still too raw.
“I’m…” He didn’t say he was fine or okay. He wasn’t. He probably never would be again. “He—Danny…”
“Danny? What—oh. Oh, Tim, no, don’t tell me he did what he did to Martin with—oh, no.” Sasha stared at him in horror for a moment. Tears started to fill her eyes, but she blinked them back, and the flame of anger began to smolder in them. “He needs to die. Forget everything else. He deserves—”
“No.” Tim wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and got to his feet. His own anger burned white hot and incandescent, temporarily at least eclipsing his grief. “Death is too good for him. I want him to suffer. Did you get everything?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Sasha swallowed hard and got to her feet. Her eyes still danced with anger, but there was worry in them, too, as she studied him. “Come on. He’s probably gone back to watch the Unknowing. Let’s go hand this over.”
It didn’t seem like Sasha heard the click as the recorder turned off, but Tim did. He wanted to smash it, to snatch up Jon’s axe and hack it to pieces for daring to record…that. Reason took hold, though, and he swallowed his anger at it. After all, it would only record what had been there to hear, and while his throat felt like he’d been screaming or sobbing or both, he didn’t think the details would be on the recording. And…he had to admit, it was at least a little bit of a comfort to know he hadn’t been alone. He did, however, sweep it up and put it in his pocket. It wouldn’t do to leave it where Elias could come back for it after they’d left and destroy it or hide it somewhere. Even if he wasn’t going to be a problem that much longer.
For now, Tim turned his back on the axe, the lighter, the remains of the statements, and the Archives itself, and followed his best friend out into the sunlight. He paused long enough to send up another prayer for the safety of the group up at the House of Wax, now that he knew more about what they were facing, then turned and ran for the Tube stop, the police station, and their liberation.