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“In here! In here, come on!”
Martin barrels around corner so fast that he nearly loses his footing, looking frantically back over his shoulder.
Sasha is just a few steps behind him, and a few steps behind her is Jon, clutching the damn tape recorder. And few steps behind Jon, the floor is carpeted by silvery worms, surging forward at speeds that definitely shouldn’t be physically possible. Sasha clambers through the doorway, nearly tripping in her haste just like Martin had. She braces her hands on her knees as she tries to catch her breath, but keeps her eyes focused on Jon and the rapidly approaching army of works.
Martin is holding the door handle in a white-knuckled grip, ready to swing it shut as soon as Jon makes it over the threshold.
“Come on, come on, come on,” he mutters to himself feverishly.
Just a few steps from the doorway, Jon slips. His knees hit the ground hard and the tape recorder he’d been holding skids across the floor. Jon’s eyes widen and he curses, diving for the recorder. Martin watches the scene in frozen horror.
“Leave it!” Sasha shouts from over Martin’s shoulder. “It’s not worth it Jon, just get in here!”
Jon seems to elect to ignore this advice. He struggles quickly to his feet and makes a grab for the tape recorder as it skitters across the linoleum. His fingers don’t quite close around it.
The worms, Martin can’t help but notice, have gotten significantly closer to Jon, and by extension closer to the door of document storage.
”Come on, Jon, you can’t be serious! Get in here!” Sasha shouts.
Martin is a few seconds away from rushing over and hauling Jon bodily over the threshold when Jon appears to make up his mind that the tape recorder is a lost cause.
“In, come on! Come on, you’ve got to—,” Martin makes a grab for Jon’s arm as soon as he’s within reaching distance. Jon practically falls through the doorway and into document storage at the same time that several worms break from the pack and leap at him.
Martin squeaks in panic and wrenches the door shut, clicking the lock into place with perhaps more force than is strictly necessary. He’s sure he hears the sound of the worms’ fleshy little bodies smacking into the door as he does so. He shivers.
Abruptly, there is absolute silence inside the document storage room, broken only by three sets of labored breathing.
Martin leans heavily against the door. Sasha stands a few feet away, gripping the edge of one of the shelves for support. Jon is still sitting on the floor where he’d fallen. For a moment they all just stare at each other wide-eyed.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Martin catches sight of a glint of wriggling silver on carpet near Jon.
“Worm!” He gasps, and springs into action. Jon scrambles back, and Martin wastes no time in bringing his foot down hard on the disgusting creature and crushing it into a grayish pulp.
“Oh god, could there be any more?” Sasha asks sharply, eyes darting around.
For a few seconds they all go quiet again as they scan the room for any hint of the creatures. Jon braces a hand against one of the metal filing cabinets and pushes himself up off the floor and away from any possible hidden worms. Martin picks up a few of the file boxes from the floor and checks under them just to be sure that no worms have hidden away there. Sasha inspects the area around the bottom of the door.
“I don’t see any,” Martin says at last, voice trembling a little. “I think it was just the one.”
“Right,” Sasha says weakly. She closes her eyes and exhales. “Good. That’s good.”
“We should also make sure there aren’t any on us,” Jon cuts in. “On our clothing, or, ah— or otherwise.”
“Oh, right!” agrees Martin. He’s not sure why that hadn’t occurred to him immediately. “Right. We definitely should do that.”
None of them waste any time in checking themselves over for unwelcome parasitic passengers. Martin’s just finished checking his ankles, which seem like one of the most at-risk areas for worm bites, when he hears Sasha suck in a breath.
“What is it?” he asks urgently, crossing the distance between them in seconds. “You found one?”
Sasha is crouched on the ground and has rolled up both of her trouser legs, apparently having had the same idea as Martin. In the dim light of document storage, it takes Martin a few long seconds to notice the three small, wriggling objects embedded in the flesh of her ankle.
“Oh god,” Martin says, feeling a little lightheaded all of a sudden.
Jon has made his way over to Sasha’s other side, his expression going grim as he takes in the sight.
“We’ve got to get them out,” he says, voice hard. “Now, before they— ,” he hesitates. “Just— it has to be done now.”
“Yeah, okay,” Sasha agrees shakily. Her face has gone visibly pale in the dim light of the room. “Just, um— how? They’re… they’re pretty deep in there.” She makes a sound that could be a weak laugh if it didn’t sound so choked.
Jon’s eyes flick around the room, looking for anything that could potentially be used to cut the worms out. Martin’s brain suddenly snaps back into gear.
“Oh!” Martin exclaims, shoving a hand into his pocket and pulling out the corkscrew. “I have this! For— for emergencies. Worm emergencies.”
Jon and Sasha stare at him for a moment before Jon snatches the corkscrew from Martin’s outstretched hand with a look of determination.
He turns back to Sasha. “Alright. This will probably be easier if you sit down and straighten out your leg.”
“Right,” says Sasha. She seems to shake herself out of her dazed, panicky state and back into some semblance of awareness, sliding down into a sitting position with her leg stretched out in front of her. “Yes. I’m ready, just— just get them out, please.”
Jon nods tightly, the corkscrew clenched in his hand. “This is probably going to be… unpleasant, Sasha. I’ll be as quick as possible.”
Sasha just nods in response, seeming to brace herself, tilting her head back so she’s looking at the dim fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling.
Martin watches as Jon takes a deep breath, steadies Sasha’s leg with one hand, and plunges the corkscrew into one of the bloody punctures in her flesh with the other. Sasha makes a choked- off noise of pain as he extracts it, a fleshy silver worm embedded on the end of the metal spiral.
“That’s the first one done,” he tells her, scraping the worm off of the corkscrew and unceremoniously crushing it under his shoe. “Just two more to go.”
His voice holds a soft note of reassurance that Martin has never heard from him before. It’s jarring, almost, but not in a bad way.
Sasha nods again, eyes squeezed shut. “Do it.”
The corkscrew plunges in again, and then again, and the last two worms are extracted with significantly less difficulty than Martin was anticipating. He mentally pats himself on the back for having planned ahead with the corkscrew. Turns out he does occasionally have good ideas after all.
“That’s it,” Jon says, squashing the last of the worms. “Done.”
Sasha’s leg is bleeding sluggishly from the three small wounds and her breathing is a little bit labored, but she sounds immensely relieved when she speaks. “Thanks,” she sighs, and then shivers. “Ugh. That was disgusting. I don’t know how I didn’t notice them wriggling around in there right away— and then once I did realize, God, the feeling of it…”
She shakes her head, expression haunted. “Neither of you found any on yourselves, right?”
Martin does a quick re-check of himself. “No worms,” he breathes, at the exact same time that Jon mumbles “Er…”
Martin and Sasha’s eyes both snap to him.
“I, ah— I may also have also been bitten a few times,” Jon admits carefully. He pulls up right trouser leg and Martin can’t hold back his horrified gasp.
There’s at least seven bloody perforations in the skin of Jon’s lower leg wrapping from calf to shin. Some of them still have a wiggling silver tail visible inside them. Most of them do not.
“Fuck,” remarks Martin eloquently.
“Goddamnit, Jon,” Sasha exclaims. “We should’ve done yours first! What the hell?”
“Mine were going to take longer,” Jon says pragmatically, avoiding her gaze. “Makes sense to do them last.”
“Except for the fact that we can’t even see most of the worms at this point because they’ve got so deep in!” Sasha cries, her voice a mix of panic and frustration.
Jon cringes. “It’s not as if they could’ve gone that far in there,” he mutters halfheartedly. “Should be much the same process as removing yours.”
“Fine. We don’t have time to argue about this. Give it here.” Sasha gestures for the corkscrew. Jon wipes it on his trousers and hands it over.
Martin worries his lip anxiously, feeling useless but unsure how to assist. “Is there anything I can, er, do to help?” he asks, and immediately feels stupid for having done so when Jon shoots him an unreadable look.
“You’re on worm squashing duty,” Sasha declares, settling herself down beside Jon. Martin nods quickly. Sasha lines up the corkscrew with one of the bloody punctures. “Okay, Jon. Ready?”
“Yes, just— Christ, I wish I’d been able to grab the damn tape recorder. There needs to be some sort of record of this, in case—,” Jon cuts himself off, but Martin hears the unspoken conclusion. ”In case we don’t make it out of here.” Jon casts his eyes around the room as if there might magically be a spare tape recorder hidden somewhere among the boxes of documents. Except— oh, oh. There sort of is, actually.
“Um,” Martin pipes up. “I actually may have another tape recorder in here? Over with my stuff. I can go check if you like?”
Jon looks at him with brows furrowed in an odd mix of consternation and relief. “Yes. Please do, Martin.”
“Oh, sure, okay,” Martin agrees, quickly crossing the room to dig through the box of belongings he’s been keeping stashed under the fold-out cot. He finds the tape recorder with relative ease and wastes no time in heading back over to Jon and Sasha with it. He only hopes the tape in it now is blank. He’s fairly sure he’d taken out the one with his poetry on it and put in a fresh one the other day.
Well. There’s not much he can do about that now either way.
”Do you— do you want me to start recording now?” he asks Jon. At Jon’s nod of assent, Martin slides the tape deck closed and clicks the record button.
Nothing happens.
Martin tries again. Then he tries again one more time, but there’s only so many ways one can attempt to start a tape recorder, and Martin’s pretty sure he’s just exhausted all of them.
“Er…” Martin hesitates. “I think it might be broken,” he admits.
Jon flashes him an irritated look and curses under his breath. “That’s— not ideal,” he says after a moment, the tense line of his shoulders clearly illustrating his displeasure.
“I can keep trying to get it to work, though!” Martin assures him. Obviously this is important to Jon, and Martin doesn’t exactly have anything better to right now. He reopens the tape deck and begins inspecting the tape, glad at least to have something to keep his hands busy.
“Thank you, Martin,” Jon says, barely audible. And then, louder, “Alright, Sasha. Ready.”
Sasha doesn’t waste any time in setting herself to the task at hand. The first two worms come out easily enough, having been shallow enough yet as to have been still visible in the wounds. Martin dutifully squashes them as Sasha shakes them off of the corkscrew.
“Okay, that’s two out,” Sasha huffs. “Um,” she says, sounding apologetic, “these ones are probably going to be a bit worse.”
Jon waves a hand. “It’s fine,” he says brusquely. Despite the dismissiveness of his tone Martin can see his whole body go tense as Sasha lines up the corkscrew again.
This time, as soon as Sasha plunges the corkscrew in it becomes clear that the process of extraction isn’t going to go as smoothly as it had the previous two times.
“I can’t feel it in there,” Sasha says, glancing up, an edge of fear to her voice.
“It’s probably just— deeper,” Jon says, wincing. “You’ll have to, ah, use a bit more force.”
Sasha exhales harshly, then takes a steadying breath in. Martin chews on his lip, the tape recorder forgotten in his hand. It’s not as if they have the option of leaving the worms in there. They’ve all seen the results of that, and the possibility of it happening to any one of them is almost too horrific to contemplate. Sasha must come to the same conclusion, because she raises the corkscrew and, despite her obvious trepidation, jabs it in deeper this time— and twists.
Jon makes a noise halfway between a whimper and a yelp and flinches violently. Sasha removes the corkscrew, and to Martin’s immense relief there is a silver squiggle speared on the end of it. He’s never been happier to get to stomp on a worm before.
“Martin,” Sasha orders. “Come here and hold his leg still.” Martin obliges, kneeling next to Jon and gently bracing his hand around his ankle, tape recorder forgotten on the floor beside him. Martin can’t help but be struck how small Jon is. He’s practically able to wrap his whole hand around Jon’s ankle, for Christ’s sake. Something about that floods Martin with an absurd feeling of protectiveness.
He’s jerked out of his musings by Jon’s cry of pain as Sasha stabs the corkscrew in again. She has to twist it a few times this go around to find the worm, and by the time she draws it out again Jon is panting, hands clenched so hard against his slacks that his knuckles have gone yellow. In the low light, Martin can see the pinpricks of sweat breaking across his forehead, and his heart lurches in pained sympathy.
Sasha looks pained as well, her face set and her mouth a tight line of determination. “I’m going to do the next one now, okay?” she warns. She doesn’t wait for an answer before she’s digging the corkscrew in again.
This one is trickier than the others had been. Martin can feel himself starting to panic as Sasha digs around with the corkscrew and continues to fail to find the worm. Jon is trembling in Martin’s grasp now, his dark skin gone ashen.
“I— I’m having trouble finding it,” Sasha admits, looking strained. “I’m just— I’m going to try this again.”
Jon nods without looking at her, his eyes squeezed shut against what Martin assumes must be intense discomfort. Sasha withdraws the corkscrew and goes in again, twisting deeper this time, lip caught between her teeth in concentration.
Jon flinches under Martin’s hand and utters an impressive string of curse words, which quickly devolve into a pained whimper as Sasha works. “Almost got it,” Sasha murmurs. Martin tries his best to hold Jon’s leg still against the shakes now wracking the smaller man’s body. He wants so badly to be able to comfort him, to lessen the pain, but he knows there’s nothing he can do to make this particular situation any less excruciating.
Sasha twists the corkscrew at an angle, quick and forceful, and Martin watches the remainder of the blood drain from Jon’s face. A bead of sweat slides down his cheek. With a final twist of the corkscrew, Sasha draws out the wriggling parasite, triumphant. Martin squashes it with particular force. Jon, eyes still squeezed shut, curls forward a little and makes a sound like he’s going to be sick.
Martin finds himself glancing around the room for the rubbish bin he knows is stashed somewhere nearby, and debates getting up to grab it just in case. But Jon is breathing evenly if shallowly now, so Martin stays put.
When turns his gaze back to Jon, the other man’s eyes are open, a little hazy and unfocused from the pain. “Hey,” Martin says before he can stop himself. “Do you need anything? Is there anything I can—,”
“The tape,” Jon reminds him, voice thready. He exhales shakily, steadying himself. “Need to keep a record.”
“Oh, right,” Martin agrees, grabbing the recorder off of the floor where he’d abandoned it and fiddling with the buttons. He wishes he’d remembered this tape recorder when they’d been running from Prentiss. If he had, maybe Jon could’ve avoided several worm bites.
He shakes his head against the rush of guilt. There’s nothing he can do about that now. All he can do is try and get this tape recorder to work.
“Two more, okay Jon?” Sasha states, voice tight but calm and corkscrew already poised. “Just these last two and then it’s sorted.”
Jon nods and squeezes his eyes shut again, bracing himself. Sasha brings down the corkscrew. Jon lets out an agonized groan which morphs into a scream as Sasha rotates the corkscrew. Martin can feel the awful intensity of his trembling as he keeps his hand braced against Jon’s ankle.
While Jon catches his breath, Martin swallows hard and busies himself with the tape recorder. He’ll admit he doesn’t fully understand why the recorder is such a priority for Jon, but if it’ll help alleviate any of the immense stress of the situation for him, he’s happy to try and get it to work, at least to the best of his abilities.
As it turns out, there’s not much trying or ability required. Despite its earlier reluctance, the thing whirs to life as soon as Martin closes the tape deck and presses the button down. Huh.