For several long moments—moments they probably, in the grand scheme of things, didn’t have—nobody moved. Martin felt as though he had fused both to the floor and to his family, numbed by shock and a renewal of the grief he’d buried at the age of nine and never, until this moment, realized he hadn’t dealt with. Melanie clung to his right side, Jon to his left; he felt the chill emanating from Gerry at his back mingling with Tim’s warmth. Even Daisy, tentatively, had found his hand and squeezed it in a silent sympathy that told him she’d never dealt with her own grandfather’s death either.
The words that broke the silence were not ones Martin would have expected to say, nor were they particularly important. “I still can’t remember what he looked like.”
“I bet there’s a picture in the employee records somewhere,” Sasha said. “Even if it is thirty years out of date. We’ll find one when…when we have time.”
Martin exhaled heavily. Right. There was a crisis going on. “Yeah. Speaking of…” He extracted himself, as gently as possible, from the cluster of a hug—which fell apart easily enough—and picked up the tape recorder. “Is there any chance you know where they are right now?”
The recorder rumbled for a moment, like it was fast-forwarding, then clicked softly. Peter Lukas’ voice came through the speaker. “Are you going to bring that with you?”
“Not unless you want a record for later.” Basira’s voice was, if anything, even less emotional than usual.
“You don’t want Daisy to hear it?”
“Should I?”
“My, you are good at this.” The proud, pleased note in Peter’s voice made Martin feel sick, and he noticed Daisy curl her hands into fists momentarily. “Anyone else would have wanted their partner to know what happened to them.”
“Don’t have a partner. Haven’t for a long time.” Martin could hear the shrug in Basira’s voice. “Anyway, there’s no point, is there? I’ll leave them the tape that tells them we’re going. They won’t try to interfere, and they’ll know I’m not coming back.”
“Perfect. Well, we’ll just put this away then.”
The recorder clicked off. Martin sighed. “I was afraid of that.”
Tim put his arm around Daisy’s shoulders and hugged her; for a wonder, she accepted it, and even hugged him back. To Martin, he asked, “Do we have a chance of finding her? Or getting ahead of her?”
Martin hesitated. “We…have a chance, because there’s always a chance. It’s just next to zero. The only reason Jon and I were able to map the upper levels of the tunnels as well as we did was because Leitner was bullying them into submission—under ordinary circumstances, they change on a whim, probably to keep people away from the Panopticon. Add that to the fact that we don’t know how much of a head start they’ve got—and my little, uh, field trip probably put us at a disadvantage there—and it’s just…it’ll take a miracle.”
Melanie put her hands on her hips. “Got one of those handy?”
Under other circumstances, Martin might have said something saccharine like I’ve got you, isn’t that enough? It didn’t feel like the right time, though. “Best I can give you is a last-minute million-to-one desperate chance.”
Melanie touched the lilac behind her ear briefly, but didn’t say anything. He knew what she was thinking without having to resort to the Eye. Daisy squared her shoulders. “It’ll have to do, right? We know they’re…probably going to that Panopticon thing, so all we have to do is find that.”
“Is that all,” Sasha scoffed.
“We still need a key. A map. Something.” Martin squeezed the recorder briefly. “Granddad, I don’t suppose Granny Robinson would have committed anything like that to tape, did she?”
Tim choked. “Granny Robinson?”
“Uh. That slipped out.” Martin could feel himself blushing.
“I think she’d appreciate that from you.” Gerry managed a small half-smile. “But I’m guessing either there’s not a tape out there or it’s not easy to get at.”
Martin sighed. “We’ll have to do this the hard way, then. If we’re doing it.”
“What do you mean, if?” Daisy scowled at him.
“You know Basira better than anyone,” Martin said, meeting Daisy’s eyes. “What she said about us not interfering. Was she just saying that to placate Peter Lukas, or as a warning to us?”
Daisy wavered briefly. She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled more deeply. “You going to force me to answer?”
“I could,” Martin said, as calmly as possible. “But I won’t.”
Daisy stared at him, then at the tape. Her shoulders slumped, and she sighed deeply, suddenly looking tired. “If it’s one of those, it’s to placate Peter Lukas, but I don’t know. She’s got…tells when she’s just telling a superior what she thinks they want to hear, but I don’t know if I’m not hearing them because she isn’t or because she’s got good at covering it up.” The Welsh in her voice was beginning to come out a bit, a sure sign she was under stress. “It could be she genuinely doesn’t think we’d bother.”
“Good enough for me,” Melanie said. “She’s not telling us not to go down there, so we need to find the Panopticon.”
Jon gazed out over the Archives again. “Where do we start?”
“1800s,” Tim said unhesitatingly. “We found that one letter from Smirke, remember? If we’re going to find anything else useful, it’ll be there. Damn, I wish there were actual blueprints of the place in those drawers.”
“The Panopticon wouldn’t be on it,” Martin said with a flash of insight he really would rather not have had, thanks all the same. “Smirke didn’t want it, said it was cruel and unusual—and it was—but more than that, Jonah Magnus altered the original plans. I—” He broke off and closed his eyes, rubbing his temples briefly to ward off the nascent migraine. “Fuck, I didn’t need that right now.”
“I don’t want to ask you to fall deeper into the Ceaseless Watcher—” Sasha began.
“Then don’t,” Jon said sharply.
Martin put a hand on Jon’s shoulder and tried to give him a comforting squeeze. “Don’t worry about it, Jon. Even if she asks, I can’t.”
“Damn right,” Melanie muttered.
“No, I mean literally, I can’t.” Martin glanced at the trapdoor. “You know how hard it is for me to See down there? The deeper I get, the worse it gets. I…maybe if we were actually down there, I could See part of the way they went, but not the whole path. And there’s…” He hesitated. “Maybe a seventy-two percent chance it’s been too long and the trail will have faded too much for even me. I’m not saying I won’t try. I’m just saying it won’t be easy.”
“Don’t know how much help I’ll be,” Daisy said. “Not without going too deep. But it’s Basira, so maybe I can—” She suddenly froze. Martin swore her ears pricked up.
He was about to ask what was wrong when he felt it—a stabbing pain where the sliver of metal from the accident with the seal in the Library was still embedded, nearly drowned out by a wave of awareness, alarm, and protectiveness that suddenly washed over him and nearly engulfed him. Intruders! Invaders! Encroachers! Something was breaching his—the Institute.
“Fuck,” he said tightly, fighting the urge to let the Ceaseless Watcher have some control and see if he could use it to fight this threat—whatever it was—off. “Peter’s gone. If he was the only thing stopping the Institute from—”
A sudden booming crack, muffled but distinct, echoed from somewhere above them, and Martin jerked his head upwards. The desire—the need—to Look was almost too strong to resist, but he didn’t need to, because he definitely recognized that sound.
Gunfire.
Someone was shooting in his Institute.
Gerry’s entire body went rigid as more shots rang out and faint screams began emanating down from above. Daisy cursed in Welsh. “Different guns. There’s more than one person up there.”
“We need to get out of here.” Tim reached for Gerry’s arm. “Come on—”
“We can’t just leave them!” Melanie cried, looking at the door that led to the main part of the Institute.
“Look,” Tim argued, “when there’s an active shooter situation, you either hide or you get out if you can. We’ve got a clear escape for now, and we can’t do anything about—”
“Go,” Martin, Daisy, and Gerry all said in the same breath.
Naturally, none of the others did. They all just looked confused and a little alarmed. Before Martin could put a bit of compulsion into his voice—he didn’t want to, but if it was the only way to get them all out safe he would force them to go—the door to the Archives burst open as someone rammed it with a shoulder. There was someone over their shoulder with a drawn gun, and the first person quickly straightened and raised a gun too.
Behind the guns were two of the last people Martin wanted to see right about then.
“Hello, lad.” Trevor Herbert’s smile was noticeably less friendly than the last time Martin had seen it, not that that was any surprise.
“You miss us?” Julia Montauk leered at him.
“Not remotely.” Martin kept his voice calm with an effort. “Wouldn’t have thought there was anything for you here.”
“Oh, didn’t you?” Trevor said coldly. “You’re here. Somehow.”
Julia sighted her gun. “Wonder if you’re still human enough to bleed?”
Before Martin could react—pushing Jon and Melanie away, shoving in front of his people, calling on the Ceaseless Watcher to defend them—Daisy stepped in front of him. “Get away from him.”
“Oho, what’s this?” Trevor bared his black and yellow teeth in a malevolent grin. “Got yourself a guard dog?”
“Woof,” Daisy snarled.
Jon took a quick breath, and Martin knew what he was going to do before he did it but wasn’t fast enough to stop him. “Drop the guns and get out.”
It almost worked…for about half a second. But Jon’s connection to the Web was nowhere near as strong as Trevor or Julia’s connection to the Hunt, and from the appraising looks they gave him after shaking off his attempt at compelling them, he had just made one of the biggest errors he’d made in…well, at least three days, if Martin was being honest.
“You really think it’ll be that easy?” Julia sneered.
“Fucking try me, bitch.” Melanie yanked free of Sasha’s hand. From the way her leg dragged as she lunged forward, Martin could tell her Slaughter Mark was hurting—his own twinged in sympathy—but it didn’t stop her.
Martin was going to need to, though. She and Jon were both preparing to fight Trevor and Julia—to protect him—and they would lose, they would die immediately, Martin would be forced to watch the two people he loved most in the world bleed out right in front of him and Know there was nothing he could do for either of them, and no matter if he lived until the world ended, he wouldn’t survive that. He couldn’t let Daisy fight them, either, she’d worked too hard to get away from the Hunt and if—
“Lucky Strikes?”
The words caught Martin off-guard, not because he’d forgotten Gerry was there, but because he was sure he would have either left or been incapacitated from not taking someone’s life. But he was still there, standing perfectly still, expression completely neutral. His eyes were fastened on Trevor’s front pocket.
“Well, well, look who’s here,” Trevor said with a curl of his lip. “I owe you something as well, you little bastard.”
Martin would swear for the remainder of his existence that he didn’t see Gerry move. One moment he was at the back of the group, looking over Tim’s shoulder, and the next he was stood in front of all of them, directly in front of Trevor and Julia, arms stretched out to either side like a stained glass window depicting the Ascension of Christ. From the way Trevor swore and raised his gun, Martin guessed they hadn’t seen him move either.
“You should have quit smoking years ago.” Gerry’s voice resonated with the same hollow echoing Martin had heard only a couple of times before—in the House of Wax and at his mother’s bedside. The air around him practically crystallized as the temperature dropped. His eyes turned pure white, as did his hair, which stood out in a halo around his head. He raised his arms slowly, long slender white fingers flexing, then reached towards Trevor and Julia and made a pulling motion.
Both their eyes widened. Julia made a gakking sound as something black and ichorous flowed from her throat; Trevor wheezed once as something similar was extracted from his lungs. Gerry held the long strings taut for a moment, then flicked his hands upwards. The black ichor dissipated. Trevor and Julia both seemed to fade slightly, like a photograph put under a grey filter, and then dropped to the floor with dull, wet thuds, guns clattering away.
Gerry’s hair settled against his shoulders. The white sucked out of about two thirds of it, replaced with a mottled orange and black like a monarch butterfly’s wing, and the hazel returned to his eyes as he lowered his hands.
“Those things will kill you,” he completed, staring down at the corpses at his feet.
There was a moment of utter silence, which was something of a relief. It was broken by Daisy pulling out the pack of Airwaves gum Basira had evidently left for her and silently passing Jon a piece. Jon took it even though Martin knew damn well he didn’t like blackcurrant.
Sasha took a deep breath, obviously preparing to say something. Before she could do more than open her mouth, however, there was a sudden explosion of wood that made Jon almost leap into Martin’s arms. Splinters rained around them, and Martin whirled around to see what fresh hell was raining down on them now.
His lungs flattened against the back of his rib cage. The thing that had erupted from the remains of the trapdoor to the tunnels bore, at the very least, a superficial resemblance to Rosie Zampano, or at least the Rosie Zampano that Martin remembered, but…taller, somehow. Thinner. Stretched out. With too many joints in its limbs.
And that smile…if you could call it a smile…
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Melanie burst out, her voice shrill. Martin could hear that she was at least as scared as she was angry. “Anything else?”
“Don’t even joke, Melanie.” Martin was already running scenarios in his head. None of them ended well, but there was one thing he knew—whether it was the Beholding giving him that knowledge or just training and an educated guess, he wasn’t sure, but he did know it—and that was that Peter Lukas had let it out. Jurgen Leitner had trapped the Not-Them in a wall to save Jon, using a copy of The Seven Lamps of Architecture to do so. Peter must have somehow obtained the book and used it to free it from its prison.
Which meant he was trying to keep them distracted. Which meant there was a good chance they could get there in time to stop him.
Daisy rolled her shoulders, took a deep breath, and turned to Gerry. There was something in her expression Martin couldn’t read, but at the same time, it felt oddly familiar. “Promise me something,” she said in a low voice. “When this is over, you need to find me. And kill me. Promise.”
Tim made a strangled noise of protest, but Gerry gave a single nod. Daisy whirled around and hunched her shoulders as the Not-Them charged towards her, and Martin opened his mouth to object, to step in, to take the battle on himself, something, it was too late for him but it didn’t have to be for her—
There was a sort of twisting of reality, something warping in front of them, and then a door—not a trapdoor but an actual wooden door—appeared on the floor directly in front of the Not-Them. It swung inward, and the Not-Them, unable to stop its headlong rush, screamed with fear and rage as it fell into the door, which slammed shut behind it and vanished.
Gerry and Tim both put a hand on Daisy’s shoulders, and she blinked, her breath ragged as she struggled to come back to herself. Before Martin had time to even think the words “what the fuck”, let alone say them, the door reappeared and the Distortion stepped out, smiling.
No. No, not the Distortion. Martin took in the pansy blue eyes, the tilt to the chin, the erect but relaxed posture, and said, “Michael.”
Michael’s smile widened—not the preternaturally outsized smile of the Distortion, but an almost roguish grin. “Sorry that took so long. I wasn’t sure I could do it if it wasn’t near a wall, but, well…”
“Where did it go?” That probably wasn’t the most important question right about now, but Martin didn’t think he could move on from this point without knowing the answer.
“I gave it a door out. It…might have been near the top of an oil derrick in the middle of the ocean.”
Daisy shook her head and croaked out, “Why?”
Michael’s expression grew serious. He stepped all the way through the door, but didn’t close it. “I heard the tape—the ritual. I think Alastair’s spell might have protected me, too.”
Melanie started and looked from Martin to Michael and back. “Fuck, does that mean you’re siblings?”
“No,” Martin said. Realization hit him all at once. “Granddad named her as Gertrude Robinson, the Archivist, and asked protection on her and her ‘line’. Because he invoked the Archivist name, it protects her line in that sense too. So anyone who ever worked under her—or under any subsequent Archivist—falls under its jurisdiction.”
Michael nodded. “Emma never liked the tape recorders and Sarah thought they were archaic, but Ms. Robinson used them, so I did as well. I had one with me when I went to Sannikov Land, so I could record my progress. It must have given me…something. Easier to fight when you’re around, but…I’m still here.”
“How can you be sure of that?” Daisy asked. She sounded like she was getting her bearings back.
“When the Throat of Delusion Incarnate asks you if you really believe something, or if you’re certain of it, it’s a safe bet that the answer is ‘yes.’ It’s just very good at making you forget that.” Michael looked over his shoulder at the door, then back at Martin. “I—I know where she is. Their path intersects with m—with the Twisting Deceit’s. I can get you…maybe not all the way, but close. I don’t know how long we’ll have before it comes back, so we’ll have to hurry.”
Martin should probably have hesitated. He didn’t. “Let’s go.”
“Can you take all of us?” Jon asked. He put a hand on Martin’s chest, obviously to forestall the protest he had to know was coming. “No more solo adventures, remember? Where you go, I go. That’s the deal.”
“That’s the deal,” Martin agreed. He raised an eyebrow at Michael. “Can you?”
“It might affect how far we can go, but yes, you’ll all be safe as long as you stay together.” Michael pulled the door open. “Come on, then, let’s hurry up.”
Daisy was first to move, Tim and Gerry less than half a step behind her. Martin started to follow, but Jon held him back. Martin turned to face him, prepared to remind Jon that they had to do this, when Jon took his face in his hands, pulled him down, and kissed him.
It was at least as intense as their first kiss, at least as desperate and messy, and if Jon wasn’t already crying he was barely holding back tears. Martin felt a lump rise in his throat as he realized that they had no idea what lay ahead of them, and this might actually be their last chance for this. He tried to give as good as he got.
It was another moment they probably didn’t have, but if there was any moment he was willing to sacrifice the world for, it was this one.
“I love you,” he murmured when they at last pulled away.
“I love you, too,” Jon said quietly. He pressed his forehead to Martin’s, then drew back reluctantly.
Evidently their kiss hadn’t lasted as long as they thought, because Melanie and Sasha were just passing through Michael’s door. Michael winked at them as Jon and Martin followed, then pulled the door shut behind them and got out in front. “Follow me. Stay close. We’ll get as far as we can before it comes back.”
Martin had had his eyes shut the last time he’d gone through these corridors; he’d heard Helen Richardson’s description of them, and Michael’s as well, but he wasn’t so foolish as to think they’d look the same. Which was good, because they didn’t. The walls, floors, and ceilings were all painted eye-bleeding stripes of black and white in random angles and thicknesses that made it difficult to judge distance or perception. Without Michael to guide them, they’d never get far. As they started off, he got as close to Michael as he could. For a while, they hurried in silence at somewhere between a fast walk and a run.
“I’ll do what I can to help get you free of it,” he said at last. Declaring that in the Distortion’s corridors was probably dangerous, but something told him this was the safest time to bring it up. “I don’t know what I can do, but there’s got to be a way. At least to have less time that you have to be the Distortion.”
Michael glanced at him briefly, eyes sparkling. “If anyone can figure it out, you can. The grandson of Alastair Koskiewicz and Gertrude Robinson? And, I’d suspect, the best damn Archivist the Magnus Institute has ever seen.”
“I’m not entirely sure that’s a compliment.” Martin caught Jon’s arm to keep him from tripping over his own feet. “Speaking of, I’m almost afraid to ask how badly the time’s being distorted here.”
“I’m…maintaining it. I think. The Twisting Deceit likes to make days seem like minutes, but I’ve sort of learned to work with it over the years. Normally I can fight it and make time pass normally, but I think that—” Michael pointed at the pocket where Martin had secreted the tape recorder and continued, “—gives me a little bit of an edge, and I found another path.”
“A shortcut?”
“Some shortcut,” Sasha gasped out from the tail end of the group. Melanie was dragging her along to help her keep up.
“Mm, how do I explain this?” Michael paused, then shifted direction. Martin bit back a grunt as his shoulder hit a wall that looked further away than it was. “The Spiral plays with everything. Distance, perception, time. They don’t behave the same way here. We’re not exactly following their path in terms of distance. It’s the space between one minute and another. Which is why it’s winding like this,” he added as he turned a corner that almost had them doubling back on themselves. “I had to direct us back to six hours ago when they came through the Archives, and then take you down the path between six hours ago and now.”
“Thanks,” Martin said. “That’s even more confusing.”
“Yeah, well, Eric always said I was rubbish at telling a story straight, so I can’t even blame the Spiral for that.”
They ran through a few more twists and turns. Martin hadn’t bothered trying to keep track of them. He knew that no matter what they looked like, or seemed to look like, they would never be the same twice. Gertrude Robinson’s map wouldn’t work a second time, nor would he want it to, and anyway, navigating through time wasn’t really something Martin wanted to make a habit of. It had too much potential for even worse misuse than the rest of the Fourteen’s powers, and the last thing he wanted to do was relive some of the years he’d had to go through. Or skip any of the years he had coming up. Tempting though it might have been to avoid the bad parts of his life, even the potential ones in the future, he would put up with them if it meant not missing the good ones that he had to have faith were yet to come.
He still had Jon with him, and Melanie, and Gerry, and all the others. There was no way the future could be anything but good.
Michael suddenly pulled up short, his face crunching in an expression Martin knew only too well—he was pretty sure his own face crumpled into that same shape when he was trying to fight the Ceaseless Watcher on occasion. “It’s coming back. You need to go. I don’t know how close you are, but—”
“We’ll find her,” Martin promised. “And I’ll—I meant it. I’ll do what I can to help.”
Michael straightened and looked up at Martin, and his smile was the one he remembered from the man who’d come to the library, warm and kind and full of humor. “You already have. If you three can fight back against what you’ve become, so can I.” His eyes flickered, and he jerked back, then pointed a finger that seemed to flash back and forth between a normal digit and a preternaturally elongated spike of bone. A door suddenly appeared in the wall. “Go. Quick.”
“Go, go, go!” Martin shepherded the others through the door, nodded his thanks once more to Michael, and leaped out of the Distortion’s corridors just before the laugh began.
They found themselves in a roughly hewn stone tunnel that felt at once familiar and strange to Martin. Something about it itched, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“I’ve never been here before,” he said quietly, “but I know this place.”
Melanie nodded absently. “Yeah, same. I don’t like it.”
Daisy went still for a moment, looking back and forth, then pointed. “This way. They’re close. I can sense them.”
“Go easy,” Tim cautioned. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like this.”
“I know my business, Stoker,” Daisy said, but she went carefully.
They hadn’t gone far when the tunnel curved and suddenly emerged into an open stone chamber, round and barren. Other tunnels were spaced evenly around the room, and at its center was a round stone tower with open windows on all sides—the Panopticon, high enough that they couldn’t see what was inside it. There was an opening just ahead of them, gaping wide to display a set of remarkably intact stone steps.
Gerry suddenly stiffened. “We need to hurry. Someone is about to—”
The loud report of a gun came from the tower above them, followed less than a second later by a second gunshot. Right on the heels of that came a scream—a loud, sharp cry of pain and fear.
“Basira!” Daisy charged up the stairs at a dead sprint. Gerry was only a half-step behind her. Martin cursed and waved to the others as they all took off running.
The steps spiraled upwards, following the circumference of the tower, and finally stopped at a rusted metal gate, which had been shoved aside, admitting them into a flat, empty space with walls around the edge that ended at waist height while somehow keeping anyone below from being able to see past them. The smell of gunpowder still hung in the air.
In the center of the room was an ornately carved chair, in which was seated an eyeless, practically mummified corpse in an expensive but faded Victorian suit. A few feet away from it, giving the impression they had been facing the tableau, two far more recent bodies were sprawled on the ground. The first, lying on his back with a bullet hole in his heart and an expression of surprise and anger on his face, was a man in an expensive but unremarkable blue suit; Martin had never seen his face before, but the family resemblance was unmistakable—he looked enough like Evan that this had to be Peter Lukas. The other, face down in a remarkably large puddle of blood, was wearing the grey trousers and jumper that were standard issue for a prisoner, but even without being able to see his face, he was recognizable as Elias Bouchard. Between them, directly at the feet of what could only be the original Jonah Magnus, on her hands and knees with her head hung down, was Basira…winded, beaten, obviously injured in some way, but still, thankfully, alive.
“Basira!” Daisy started towards her, expression tight with concern, but Gerry threw out an arm to stop her. She turned on him with a snarl, then checked at his expression.
The door in Martin’s mind, the one that he used to keep back the ocean of knowledge that could overwhelm and drown him in an instant if he let it, strained hard against his efforts to keep it closed, but a few drops squeezed past—a sense of dread, and an awareness of something wrong about this scenario. Not just that Elias/Jonah was here at all, but the two bodies, Basira’s scream, the fact that…
There had only been two gunshots.
Martin swallowed hard and had to try twice before he could say, “Basira?”
Basira began to laugh. He’d never heard her laugh before, she was always so serious, but this laugh didn’t sound like the kind she would make if she did laugh, and the way Daisy suddenly tensed and flinched back told him that it really wasn’t normal.
She raised her head and looked at him. It almost appeared she had a concussion; her left eye was so dilated her pupil almost swallowed the brown of her iris, whereas her right eye was completely, one hundred percent normal…except for the fact that it was a cold, eerily familiar grey.
“Hello, Martin,” she said, in a voice that was both hers and carrying an undertone of authority and malice he’d never heard there before. “Apologies for the deception.”