Chapter Text
“...I somehow managed to live through one horror movie. I have no intention of going looking for another.
Statement ends.”
Another spider statement. Lovely. Just what Jon needed right now, for childhood trauma to be drudged up and mixed with more recent trauma.
Was that what was waiting in the tunnels, what had killed Gertrude? The idea of spiders managing to fire a gun seemed absurd at a glance, but from what Jon knew, he wouldn’t put it past them.
Or... or given what this statement suggested, perhaps the spiders wouldn’t have to be the ones pulling the trigger. Perhaps they could just force someone else to do it, have their hands move of their own accord like Mr. Harlow described happening to himself...
Jon shuddered a little as he thought of it, took a breath as he prepared to make his typical post-statement remarks, and then stopped cold as he heard something behind him.
No, not something--someone. Someone trying to keep their breathing soft and shallow, perhaps hoping to avoid being heard, but no such luck.
Jon stood up from his seat and grabbed the nearest loose object on his desk as he turned around. If this was whoever had killed Gertrude, be it someone he worked with or the thing that lurked in the tunnels, come to kill another Archivist... well. He might go down, but he wasn’t going to make it easy for them.
Jon had been prepared to face any number of abnormal things when he turned around. He knew whatever was in the tunnels was almost certainly some flavor of supernatural, was very probably not even human, and the fact that his office door remained closed, that there was no evidence that somebody had simply sneaked up behind him while he was lost in a statement, supported that belief. Jon had seen beings consumed or created by supernatural powers before, knew they might well look unlike any sentient being most of the world even knew existed.
Jon still wasn’t prepared to come face to face with a being that looked startlingly like himself.
It wasn’t an exact replica of him, that much was clear at a glance. The hair was longer and more tinged with gray streaks than Jon’s own, the clothes were more ragged than anything Jon would ever wear outside of his own flat, and it had scars that Jon didn’t have, testaments to injuries Jon himself had never suffered. (The worm scars were there, though, and as Jon glanced between his hand and that of his doppelganger, he confirmed that the locations were identical.) But there was no denying the similarity between the two. It was, perhaps, like looking an identical twin in the eye--not quite right, not quite him, but close, eerily close.
Jon’s doppelganger wasn’t alone, either. Standing next to it was a being that resembled Martin, but again with a few details decidedly off--a thick white streak in his hair that Martin certainly didn’t have, clothes worn and dirty while Martin always wore something significantly more presentable to work. But if you weren’t paying attention, weren’t already on guard, the changes might be subtle enough that it could fool somebody into thinking it was Martin.
Behind them, a yellow door that made Jon’s heart sink at the sight of it closed and disappeared from sight.
If Michael was in on this... well, Jon didn’t know what that meant exactly, but it definitely wasn’t a good sign.
“Sorry, did we interrupt you? We didn’t mean to.” The voice sounded like Martin’s, sure enough, but the tone wasn’t quite as genuinely apologetic as Jon would have expected if it were really Martin speaking.
The thing that looked like Jon glanced over at the thing that looked like Martin before directing its gaze back at Jon himself. “Was that the statement about Annabelle Cane just now?”
It was disconcerting, hearing something that sounded very much like his own voice coming out of another’s mouth.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.” Jon tried to sound more confident than he felt, though he wasn’t sure whether he actually succeeded on that front.
He sneaked a glance at the tape recorder, which was still recording. Good. If this really was a murder attempt about to unfold, he’d very much appreciate having it recorded. If he died, he wanted the world to know how it happened.
“That’s back in, what, January 2017?” the not-Martin said, its eyes focused on the not-Jon.
“If this world even has the same timeline as ours did, yes.” the not-Jon replied.
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to try and sell this as some sort of- of time travel conspiracy, of all things.” Jon said. “I know better than that.”
Not-Jon and Not-Martin exchanged what looked to be a meaningful glance between them, though what exactly the meaning of it was was lost on Jon.
“Not time travel. Not exactly.” Not-Jon said. It even had Jon’s speech patterns down pat. Were they here to replace him--him and Martin? “Probably closer to dimensional travel, at a guess.”
Jon scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, even better.”
“D’you think Helen knew-” Not-Martin started, his speech cut off by a shake of the head from Not-Jon.
“I think this is uncharted territory for all of us.” Not-Jon shifted its gaze from Not-Martin to Jon before adding, with a wry smile, “Probably good you came prepared to write all this down.”
Jon followed his doppelganger’s gaze and saw that the object he’d grabbed in his haste to find something, anything, to use as an impromptu weapon had in fact been a pen, a cheap pen that was one of probably about a dozen identical ones Jon had around his office at any given moment. It still had its cap on, too. There were probably worse impromptu weapons than a flimsy plastic pen that wasn’t even uncapped, but Jon couldn’t think of many, and his face heated up as he dropped the pen, suddenly aware of how feeble his attempt at self-defense truly had been.
“Who’s Helen?” Jon asked. There were more pressing questions on his mind than that one, admittedly, but that one seemed like it might actually get an answer, which he rather doubted would happen if he asked the doppelgangers what they were or what exactly they planned on doing to him and Martin.
Not-Jon blinked rapidly and raised its eyebrows in a passable imitation of confusion. “Oh, you haven’t met her yet?”
Jon thought silently for a moment. The only Helen he’d met recently was Helen Richardson, but she couldn’t be responsible for this, whatever “this” even was. She was a victim, a statement giver consumed more permanently after her escape from the corridors, not an eldritch being herself. Though perhaps these doppelgangers had encountered her while traversing Michael’s corridors... was Michael going to come back for these two like it had for Helen, or was it in on whatever they were planning?
Rather than explain his thought process fully to these alien beings, Jon simply shook his head.
“That’s different, then. Met her before the Cane statement myself, I’m pretty sure.” Not-Jon said.
“Different world, different rules...” Not-Martin replied.
“Perhaps. It does feel different, but maybe that’s just because...” Not-Jon let its sentence trail off, punctuating it with a strange hand gesture that Jon couldn’t decipher the meaning of.
“Ah, yeah, right.”
“What are you here for? To kill me?”
Not-Martin paled at the question, but Not-Jon seemed to be stifling a laugh as it shook its head.
“I don’t think that would help, no, but if this really is early 2017-”
“It is.” Jon said. He still wasn’t keen on giving these intruders information, on helping them in any way, but confirming the date, at least, could be done a number of different ways without his assistance--hell, he was pretty sure it was visible on his computer screen right now, if you looked closely enough.
“Well then.” Not-Jon smiled, but it wasn’t a kind smile, exactly; Jon was reminded a bit of how smiles were abnormal in the animal kingdom, how for most animals baring your teeth like that was a show of aggression, an open threat. “I would very much like to speak to Sasha James, please.”
Jon nodded numbly, his whole body shaking as he went to the door and opened it up to the rest of the Archives, though he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was making a deal with the devil here, that if he wasn’t about to die then it was only because one of his assistants was about to take his place.