Chapter Text
Martin was halfway into his flat when it happened.
It had been a long day at the Institute, but not a particularly notable one. He’d done some digging into the Lensik statement— housing and death records weren’t the most interesting things in the world, but in the context of a spooky haunted house they took on a captivating quality— listened to Tim and Sasha banter, and endured a total of three cold glares from Jon, which was fewer than he received usually. He’d accepted the victory, as small as it was, and it had made his day a little bit better. It had buoyed his spirits so much that he’d been confident enough to recommend Jon go home at the end of the day instead of staying at the Institute to record statements, which had garnered him his third and final cold glare.
Instead of going straight home, Martin had decided to stop by the supermarket to pick up a few things he was running low on— cereal, eggs, tea, canned peaches, nothing too out of the ordinary. He’d spent what was probably too much time deciding between different types of yogurt, but he wasn’t exactly in a rush. Between shopping, public transport, and staying at the institute a bit late to pester Jon, he got back to his flat at about eight in the evening. And as he was opening the door, Martin felt something lift .
It was an odd feeling, as if a weight he had never noticed had suddenly disappeared off his shoulders, or like someone had been watching him for eons and had finally decided to look away. He considered it as he took off his jacket, pondering what could have possibly caused the sensation to strike him at that moment, but there wasn’t anything that stuck out to him. His day had been remarkably ordinary. Jon’s obvious distaste for him had even been more subdued than usual! There was certainly nothing that warranted such a strange feeling of… relief. Nothing at all.
After mulling it over, Martin shrugged and launched into his evening routine. The strange feeling was forgotten as he put away his groceries, cooked dinner, and watched bad reality TV. If he felt a little freer to sing in the shower than usual, that was nobody’s business but his own.
The next morning, Martin woke up early to prepare for work. He took special care to savor his tea, enjoying his last few moments of solitude before he began a hectic day researching monsters and hunting down records. He left his flat at eight o’clock, so that he’d get to the Institute ten minutes early, before everyone else. The tube was uncomfortably crowded, as usual, forcing Martin to spend his commute sandwiched between two middle aged businessmen. Once he’d escaped onto the city streets and began to approach the Magnus Institute, the cold November air nipped at his skin, and he had to stuff his hands in his pockets to keep them warm. But as he turned the final corner of his commute, he was struck by the sight of half a dozen emergency vehicles parked around the Institute and cops buzzing around the entrance, all marked off by police tape.
The gears in Martin’s brain ground to a halt. That many police simply didn’t come to the Institute . Gertrude Robinson’s disappearance had only drawn in two or three officers, and that was the last time any law enforcement had visited the Institute as far as Martin was aware. For there to be this many police at the Institute, something bad must have happened. Something very bad. And Martin had no clue what that could possibly be.
After he’d spent a few moments staring at the scene before him, a dark pit of dread forming in his stomach, Martin gathered up the strength to confront it. He crossed the street and approached the first police officer he laid his eyes on, a serious-looking woman in a hijab. “Excuse me?” he said, pulling her attention away from a conversation with another officer. “Uh, I work here. Did something happen?”
The two officers looked at each other, before looking back at Martin. “You work at the Magnus Institute?” the one in the hijab asked, though it wasn’t phrased as a question. Martin nodded.
“So we’ve finally got a live one, huh?” said the second officer, a woman with red hair cut close to her head.
As Martin opened his mouth to ask what she was talking about, the hijabi officer cut in. “We’re going to need to ask you some questions, Mr…”
“Blackwood. Martin Blackwood.”
“Mr. Blackwood. If you would just come with me—”
“Tell me what’s going on here,” Martin said. “Please.”
The officers looked at each other again, and Martin could tell they disagreed about something. “I’ll tell Carver an employee showed up,” said the redhead, before walking off in the direction of a few other officers. The hijabi officer turned back to Martin with a sigh. There was something like pity in her face that made the pit of dread in his stomach grow deeper. “I’m sorry,” she said, and the tone of her voice told Martin that whatever she was about to say would shatter him.
The officer— Constable Hussain, she said her name was— tried to explain it to him gently, but there wasn’t anything gentle about what had happened. Yesterday evening, she said, the London Fire Brigade had been called to a fire in the Archives of the Magnus Institute. By the time they arrived on site, the fire had been put out by the Institute’s sprinkler system, and the building sustained minimal damage. But by the time the firefighters had found the fire's source, it was the least of their concerns. No— what concerned the firefighters was not any fire, but the bodies.
They had been found scattered throughout the Institute. At their desks, in the hallways, halfway through doors. They were completely pristine, with no signs of violence or struggle or even smoke inhalation. It was as if everyone in the building had dropped dead at once— and indeed, as far as the police could discern, they had.
The police hadn't been sure what to suspect, their theories ranging from carbon monoxide poisoning to mass suicide. Regardless, there hadn't been much for them to do other than tape off the crime scene and investigate it. And that had been that, until later that evening, when Sonja Harland was reported dead. She had died of sudden cardiac arrest while with her boyfriend. Martin could remember Sonja talking about him, the few times he’d visited Artefact Storage. And then Thomas Bishop had been reported dead, also of cardiac arrest, and Martin could still picture in his mind the garish green sweatshirt Tom had chosen to wear to work last Thursday.
“After that, we got our hands on a list of Institute employees, and a few officers started going down it, checking in on people. So far…” Constable Hussain trailed off, and the look of pity that had been painted on her face only intensified. Oh.
“They’re all dead.” Martin had said, voice dull with shock.
“I’m sorry.”
Martin didn't want to believe Constable Hussain. How could everyone just suddenly be gone? He’d last seen them mere hours ago, and everything had been fine. There had been nothing to make him suspect that the next morning they’d be dead. What could have changed in that short time? It seemed impossible. It should have been impossible. And yet—and yet— here he was, surrounded by police officers and crime scene tape, and a constable was gently explaining the situation to him in the same tone of voice you use to regretfully inform them their loved one has died. He could believe that Constable Hussain was lying or somehow wrong all he wanted, but that wouldn't change the fact that he knew, deep down, that she was telling the truth.
Martin was overcome with the urge to throw up. The pit of dread in his stomach had become a giant, gaping maw that seemed to have completely consumed him.
If everyone except him was dead, that meant Sasha— Tim— Jon —
Jon, who liked to stay at the Archives one, two, three hours after his assistants had departed for the day. Jon, who had stayed late at the Archives yesterday .
“Did— did you find Jon?” Martin asked quietly, trying not to let the fruitless, irrational hope that Jon had gone home and somehow lived show in his voice. From the look on Constable Hussain’s face, he had failed.
“Who?”
“Jonathan Sims. He’s the Head Archivist of the Institute. He uh, he’s short, and has dark graying hair, and brown skin, and glasses?”
Constable Hussain looked very sad when she said, softly, “Yes.”
After that, things became hazy. Constable Hussain guided him to sit on the steps in front of the Institute as he tried to keep his knees from giving out on him and process… everything. The cold marble bit into him, but he didn’t particularly notice, too lost in his own despair. Time passed in a blur; for all he knew he could have been sat there for seconds or years. At some point Constable Hussain left, and police officers and paramedics swirled around him like ocean currents around an island. Perhaps more than he ever had been, he was alone.
What was he supposed to do now? How did a person go on from this? In an instant, he’d lost a job he liked, financial security, all his friends . It was as if he’d been living a wonderful dream and had suddenly been pulled back into cold reality. What was he going to do without Sasha’s warm smiles, or Tim’s dumb jokes, or Jon , God, Jon, he’d never even gotten the man to like him, and now he was dead . All of them were. Of course they are , a part of him said. It was only right, only fair that everyone at the Magnus Institute was dead except for him. Why would Martin Blackwood get good things? It would have been kinder for him to be dead along with them—
“...Martin!”
A voice shouting his name cut through the fog of grief and loneliness that had settled around him. Martin looked up, and saw Sasha , weaving her way past the police and looking decidedly alive. Martin stood up and stared at her in disbelief, tears welling in his eyes.
“Sasha?”
Sasha rushed over to Martin, face twisted in unnerved concern. Martin took in all her features: the deep brown color of her eyes, the purple scrunchie she had used to tie back her dark curls, the light dusting of freckles across her nose. All the little details he had always taken for granted he now made special care to fix in his mind. This was Sasha, real and standing in front of him, and she was not dead. How was she not dead?
For that matter: how was Martin not dead?
“Martin! Are you alright? What is happening here? I tried to ask but nobody would tell—”
Martin crushed Sasha into a tight hug. All the grief he had been holding in crashed over him at once, and he began to sob into her shoulder, face pressed into the warm brown wool of her coat. Sasha only hesitated a moment before hugging him back. For what felt like a long time they were like that, Martin letting himself finally collapse into the embrace of someone he’d thought dead moments ago. Eventually, the tears thinned out to shaky gasps, and Martin let go of Sasha to face her.
“Jon’s dead,” he choked out. “Everyone’s dead.”
Sasha stared at him, uncomprehending. “What?”
Martin gripped her shoulders. “Everyone is dead.”
“You— I don’t—” Sasha searched his face. “What are you talking about?”
“Everyone who works for The Magnus Institute. Everyone except— except us.”
“But— that doesn’t make sense."
"The police— they said—"
Sasha stepped back from Martin, expression of skepticism rapidly turning to one of fear. "Are they sure?"
"Yes, they're sure, I—"
"When? How?”
“I don’t know,” Martin said, a sob in his throat. “It was sometime last evening— everyone just dropped dead and they don’t know why, or— or how—”
“What— last night?” Sasha's eyebrows furrowed. “But I was talking to Tim just this morning and— Tim .”
Sasha immediately dug into her coat pocket and withdrew her phone. She frantically tapped at the screen before putting it to her ear, and Martin could make out a dial tone on the other end. For a few moments, there was an awful anticipation between the two of them, both of them holding their breath. But after what felt like an eternity, the ringing stopped, and a tinny voice at the other end said “Hi Sasha, Yes I know I’m late, I’m getting coffee and you can tell Jon to shove it up his—”
“Tim!” Sasha said as she let out a teary laugh, relief written all across her face. Martin released his breath and brought his hand to his mouth as Sasha spoke. “Oh my god, Tim, you’re okay!”
“Uh, yeah, I’m okay.” Tim’s sardonic tone turned serious. “Did… what’s going on? Did something happen?”
“Yeah,” Sasha said. “Yeah, something happened.”
“How bad?”
“Bad.”
“I’ll be there as soon as possible, we can talk then—”
“Wait,” Sasha said, cutting him off and looking at Martin. “Can you… please don’t hang up.”
There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment, before Tim's voice said, “Uh, yeah, I can do that. I’m here. Do you want me to talk about something in particular?”
Sasha wiped at her eyes. “Anything.”
“Okay, well, I think I mentioned this to you already, but last weekend I went kayaking, and…”
Sasha sat down— well, it was more like her legs gave out from under her, but the effect was the same— and gestured for Martin to sit next to her. He did so gladly, and she put her phone on speaker before leaning against him. Together, they listened to Tim go on about his kayaking trip, tears rolling down their faces, the world falling apart around them.
—
The rest of the day was a whirlwind of crying and police questioning. Tim showed up after about ten minutes, and it didn’t take long to update him on the situation. The terrible, terrible situation. He settled into a state of numb disbelief rather quickly, and only made one awkward joke about not having to go to work anymore before Sasha’s hurt glare shut him up.
Eventually, Constable Hussain reappeared to have Martin answer some questions, and was surprised to be told that two of his coworkers had turned up alive and well. All three of them were shuffled into a police car and taken to the nearest station, where they each spent a few hours answering questions about their jobs, personal lives, their feelings about the Institute, opinions of their coworkers and bosses (and hadn’t that question been especially fun for Martin), even how their health had been recently. The person questioning Martin, a severe man named Constable Carver, had been polite, but not particularly sympathetic towards Martin’s plight. The two or three times Martin had broken down into tears, the Sergeant had silently watched until he composed himself.
By the time Martin was done being questioned, it was official: out of every single person officially employed at The Magnus Institute, him, Tim, and Sasha were the only ones who hadn’t dropped dead last evening. Martin was standing in a small lounge area that smelled like coffee and cigarettes, waiting for them to finish with Sasha and quietly talking to Tim when an officer— Detective Tonner, the redhead he’d seen speaking with Constable Hussain at the scene— gave him the news, and he had to sit down on the ratty couch in the room to compose himself. Tim sat next to him and put his arm around Martin's shoulders, although Martin could tell he was equally distressed.
“You’re sure?” Martin rasped, looking up at Detective Tonner.
“The officers we had check were about as thorough as you can get,” she replied, looking down on Martin impassively. “You archival assistants are pretty lucky.”
“Yeah,” Martin said, voice dull. “I guess we are.”
“So what happens next?” Tim asked.
“Well,” Detective Tonner said as she crossed her arms, “considering that this is a Section 31 case with no suspects or leads… not much.”
Martin and Tim stared at her for a moment. “What,” Tim said.
“What, exactly, are we supposed to investigate here? Eighty-five people go into cardiac arrest at once— what type of evidence does that leave behind? How the hell can we do anything about that, especially when it would just be me and Basira? No, hate to break it to you, but we’re pretty much done here once you lot leave.”
“Are you kidding me? You just count some bodies and go ‘wow, that sucks, lets just forget about that?’” Tim fixed Detective Tonner with a murderous glare. “All of my coworkers drop dead and you don’t care ?”
“Yep. sorry.” Detective Tonner did not look particularly sorry. She met Tim’s glare head on, returning her own icy gaze.
Tim stood up from the ratty couch, looking about ready to punch Detective Tonner in the face. “That’s funny, because I thought it was the police’s job to investigate—”
“Hey, Tim!” Martin said as he quickly stood up. “Why don’t we go get some fresh air! Outside. Not here.” He gave Detective Tonner an apologetic look. “Sorry about that.”
Tim looked between Martin and Detective Tonner, before he sighed and said “Fine. let’s do that.” He turned to Detective Tonner. “Once Sasha’s out of questioning, tell her we’re outside, Detective . ”
“Will do,” she said. “Have a nice day.”
The two of them made it out onto the street, and Tim immediately shouted, “You heard her back there, right?” The cold air did nothing to cool his temper.
“Yes, I did hear her,” Martin said.
“Nearly a hundred people die at once and they don’t even care. What the fuck? That lady didn’t even pretend to feel bad!”
“It is pretty messed up,” Martin admitted.
“I just want to punch her in her smug face. That stone cold—”
“Look, Tim, I get it,” Martin said. “I’m upset too. But… being angry about it won’t solve anything. It won’t make the police care, and it won’t bring anyone back.”
The fight melted out of Tim, and he slumped against the facade of the police station. “You’re right. It’s just— it sucks.”
“I know.”
Both of them stood there in silence for a moment, listening to the sounds of the city, before Sasha emerged from the police station.
“Wow,” she said, false cheer in her voice, “they really are thorough about their questions, huh?”
“They’re not thorough about anything else,” Tim replied.
Sasha sighed. “Constable Hussain told me about that on the way out. Because this is weird supernatural stuff, they don’t have the resources to follow up. She seemed apologetic, at least?”
“Yeah.” Tim was not enthused. None of them were; Martin felt like the day’s events had hollowed him out, scooping up any joy he’d once had and leaving behind only an empty sadness. None of them were quite sure what to say, so none of them said anything, and they all let the city move around them as they shivered against the cold.
After a few minutes, Tim stood up straight and said, “Let’s go to the pub. I don’t know about you two, but there’s nothing that sounds more appealing right now than drinking my sorrows away.”
“Tim, it’s like two thirty,” Sasha protested.
“Do you really care?”
“... No.”
Martin, who didn't drink much under normal circumstances, found himself agreeing with Tim’s assessment of the situation. “I’m in,” he said.
“See! Even Martin wants to get so drunk he doesn’t know who he is,” Tim said, a small smile making its way to his face for the first time all day. “Let’s get going.”
So that was how Martin found himself in a shitty pub with his only remaining (former?) coworkers at three in the afternoon. The place was a hole in the wall, and at that time of day it was all but dead. They found a booth in a dark corner, Sasha and Tim cramming in next to each other and Martin ordering the first round of drinks from the bored looking bartender.
At first they largely drank in silence, slumped over in their seats and wrung out by the day’s events. At some point, a basket of chips appeared on the table, but none of them touched it. Martin sank into the decaying leather seat of the booth and became one with his surroundings, absorbing into his skin the faint smell of spilled beers and the football game playing on a TV somewhere in the background.
Three drinks in, Tim broke the quiet by saying, “I wonder what Jon would have thought of all of this.”
Martin looked up from the table. He saw Sasha, who had been leaned forward over her drink, lazily turn her head to face Tim. “What?” Martin croaked.
“Oh come on. If he found a statement that said ‘everyone at my work simultaneously died for spooky reasons’ you know he would have dismissed it out of hand. He would have taken one look at it and gone ‘considering that the statement giver ends sentences in prepositions and once smoked weed, I sincerely doubt that this ever happened.’”
Sasha huffed in a facsimile of a laugh. “You’re not wrong. This would have broken his tiny skeptic mind. It’s too bad he… ”
The table lapsed into silence again.
“It’s weird,” Martin started, “Because he wasn’t really that nice to us. To any of us— especially me. But I feel like… I feel like we could have been good friends. I mean, for all his grouchiness, there was definitely something… something there, right?” Martin sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe,” Tim said. “He was always a prickly bastard, but he did put up with us whenever we invited him to, like, your birthday party for example. He certainly didn’t go to any birthday parties back in research.”
“I just— none of us ever really got to know him. We can only hope that maybe he harbored feelings other than resentment for us. I like to think he did, but I can’t really be sure, can I? We’ll never know, and I hate that, because I feel like there was real potential for something great there.”
Tim sighed. “Yeah.”
“Asshole or not, he was one of us,” Sasha said. “I think we were growing on him. And, to be honest, he was kind of growing on me. I was almost beginning to understand your crush on him, Martin.”
Martin felt his cheeks grow hot and looked at his drink again. “Was I really that obvious?”
“Yeah, a little,” Tim said. “You were very doting.”
“I dote on everyone.”
“But you doted on him the most.”
“Yeah, well, that was never going to go anywhere anyways. And it’s especially not going anywhere now that he’s… he’s dead. So. Yeah.”
There was an awkward silence, before Sasha said, “I’m sorry Martin, I shouldn’t have—”
“No, it’s okay.” Martin shakily exhaled. “It doesn’t matter now, I suppose.”
“No, I suppose not.” Sasha sipped her drink. “But I think you’re right that he didn’t hate us. It was almost endearing how hard he tried to play up that whole ‘grumpy old man’ persona of his. You know, I figured out his password and broke into his computer a few weeks ago— he was a decade younger than he said he was.”
Tim choked on his drink. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“You mean he was twenty-seven ? With that much grey hair?”
“Yup.”
Tim leaned back in his seat. “Wow, that’s— that’s really sad, actually,” he said, before his shoulders slumped. “He was only twenty-seven.”
The three of them sat there, processing that, as the sound of the football game floated over them. Martin didn't think he had any tears left in him after the day's events, but if he did, that revelation very well may have set him off. Fuck, Martin was twenty-seven, and he certainly didn't feel ready for death at his age. It wasn't fair. None of it was, obviously, but what had Jon done to earn death while Martin and Tim and Sasha escaped? For that matter, what had the entire Institute done to earn death that the three of them hadn't?
“Why us?” Martin asked.
“I— I don’t know.” Tim said. “Maybe the murder ghost just liked us.”
“But seriously, why us? Why were three archival assistants spared from… whatever killed everyone else?”
“I mean, if something decides I don’t have to drop dead on a random Tuesday night, I’ll take it.”
“It is strange though,” Sasha piped up. “All of this is. Obviously, whatever massacred the Magnus Institute was supernatural.” Martin and Tim nodded. That was something of a given. “But what would have done that? And why?”
“It could have been something from Artefact storage?" Martin suggested without much conviction. "The staff there poked something nasty too many times, and it decided to exact revenge on the Institute?”
“Maybe… but that still leaves your question: why us? If an Artefact wants to slaughter the Magnus Institute, why would it stop short of the Archives?”
“I’ll take that one step further,” Tim said. “If us three didn’t have to die, why did Jon?”
Martin and Sasha looked at him.
“Seriously. You said it yourself Sasha: ‘Asshole or not, he was one of us.’ We were all in the Archives, so if our spooky murderer decides it wants to kill everyone except the Archival staff, what makes him so special?”
“I mean, he was Head Archivist…” Martin said as he slumped into his seat. Tim was completely right, of course. Martin had thought the exact same thing; Tim had simply said it aloud. There wasn't anything that differentiated Jon from the three of them, except that he was one rung above them on the ladder. That may have mattered to their jobs, but it shouldn't have been enough to kill him.
“I guess he was too important to be left alive,” Tim said. “I guess we’re not important enough to die.”
“Guess so,” Sasha said. “But if we’re going based on importance, I feel like we’d be higher on the list than, say, Sebastian.”
“The janitor?” Martin asked as he did his best to become part of the shitty leather booth.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know,” Tim said. “His job was pretty important. Without him, I’m sure the Institute would have been consumed by some sort of garbage monster eons ago.”
“Point taken,” Sasha admitted, “But you see what the issue, right? The only thing that sets us apart from everyone else is the our job titles. There's nothing that makes us special except for the fact that we're 'archival assistants.' And I just have no idea what it could mean.”
"Maybe I'm right about the Murder Ghost liking us," Tim suggested, only half joking. "Maybe it's a fan of librarians, but only the subordinate ones."
"Tim! First of all, we're not calling it the Murder Ghost." Sasha seemed legitimately upset at the concept of calling whatever had killed all of their coworkers and upended their lives something as pathetic as the Murder Ghost, and Martin couldn't blame her. "Second of all— well, I suppose that's possible..."
"Or maybe we won it over with our winning personalities? Or it took pity on us—"
“You know,” Martin said as he suddenly sat up in his seat, a thought occurring to him, “Yesterday, as I was getting home, I… I felt something. It was like— like when there’s some sort of white noise in the background? And you don’t notice it’s there until it goes away. It felt freeing, I think. I wonder… I wonder if that was… when it happened.”
“Shit,” Tim said. “You too?”
“What?” Martin asked.
“I was eating an entire sleeve of Oreos last night, and when I got to the end of it something just— disappeared. I wasn’t sure what the deal was, just figured it was the last of my self control slipping away. I didn’t connect it to the Institute at the time, but if you felt it too…”
Tim and Martin looked at Sasha.
“I was reading a book,” she said. “It must have been eight, maybe?”
“That’s around when I got home last night,” Martin said.
“Shit,” Tim reiterated.
“Well, what the fuck!” Sasha exclaimed suddenly, slamming her drink on the table and causing it to slosh everywhere. Tim and Martin jumped at her sudden outburst. “Something terrible just happened to us and all our coworkers are dead, and for some reason we were all spared and we don’t know why!
“And we’ll never know,” said Tim, “because the cops don’t give a fuck.”
“No, they don’t.” Sasha fixed Tim and Martin with a glare that was deathly serious. “But why should that stop us? It is— or was, I suppose, given... everything— our literal job to investigate supernatural events. If the police won’t figure out what happened to the Institute, we’ll do it. Doesn’t everyone deserve that? Doesn’t Jon deserve that?”
“Sasha,” Martin said, “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but what’s the point? Whatever it is— it won . It did what it wanted to do, and we’re just what’s left over. The best we can do is move on, and try not to think about it too much, I guess.”
Tim shook his head. “I think Sasha has a point. I, for one, would love to fuck up some monsters on behalf of our dead coworkers.”
“Well— yeah, but…” Martin trailed off. They were both right. He knew they were right. And he wanted to do something about what had happened, same as them. But at the same time— they were all dead. Every single one of them. Sonja, Tom, Sebastian, Rosie, Elias, Jon— Jon — all of them were dead. And dead they would stay. And revenge wouldn’t change that. Anger wouldn’t change that.
More than anything, Martin just wanted to stop. He didn’t want to think about what had happened, didn’t want to talk about it, just wanted to try and move on with his life. Forget that the Magnus Institute had ever existed, that Jon had ever existed. But that wasn’t possible, was it? For all he just wanted to— to stop feeling terrible about it, he wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to move past this. No; unless he wanted to die, he would have to cope with the fact that his entire life had been ripped away from him in one fell swoop, leaving him to deal with the wreckage. Well, him, and Tim, and Sasha. And if he had to cope, he might as well cope productively. Revenge would probably be a better catharsis than death.
Martin sighed. “You’re right. Let’s avenge Jon.”