Chapter Text
“Martin, you’re not… Er... You didn't die here, did you?” Jon asked, before he could help himself. It was a stupid question, and he knew it was a stupid question, but blame it on the stress from the worms’ attack or the pain pulsing from the bloody hole in his leg or the idiotic way that Martin decided to phrase his--
“What? No,” Martin replied, glancing away from the door window to shoot Jon a surprised look. Then he blinked and seemed to stare off into middle distance. “No, I died in my flat, actually.”
Jon’s train of thought came to a grinding halt. “...what?” he repeated. Then he rallied. “That isn’t funny, Martin.”
Martin let out a little huff of a breath, running a hand through his hair. “No, it really isn’t. It was… Well, I mean, I did think it was a bit funny, you know, how everyone accepted that Prentiss just… gave up? Like, like somehow I was so tedious that I just bored her into being left alone, and that was why she was done with me. ...that would have been nice.”
Jon’s mouth had gone dry; he felt the prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck, a sensation he’d come to associate with the Statements. Not the nonsense ramblings of superstitious idiots, but the… the 'real' ones, the ones that didn’t record to his laptop, the ones that made it feel like he was somehow being watched for the duration of the statement. He swallowed. “What do you mean, Martin?”
“Well, I lied, a bit, with my previous statement. Sorry. I didn’t manage to seal up my flat enough. I… Well, you know what happens, to the victims. It took me about twelve days to die, I think, which I suppose could have been worse, really. I mean, Timothy Hodge was like that for years. I’d like to say I can’t imagine what it would have been like. But I think… I think I have a pretty good idea.”
“But I’ve seen your skin,” Jon said, inanely, like that was the most pressing concern about this situation.
Martin actually blushed, dropping his gaze to the floor. “Ah, yeah. Sorry about that. But you only saw me without trousers, not without a shirt. And… what was in that text Prentiss sent? ‘Stomach problems’? That’s pretty accurate. It’s… Well, you can take a look if you want.” He wrapped his fingers around the hem of his shirt and hiked it up enough to expose his belly.
Martin’s skin was… gone. Not all of it, but it was peppered through with enough holes that Jon was sure that he could have seen through to the other side, if the holes weren’t filled. But they weren't filled with silvery, writhing worms. Instead, the gaps in the flesh were held together with something white and fibrous and wispy.
Jon felt his skin crawl. “What happened?” He asked, unable to stop himself.
Martin let the shirt fall back into place. “I don't really know. I mean, I felt myself die. I felt my heart stop, finally. And then I felt… I felt legs. Thousands of tiny legs, nothing at all like the fleshy squirming of the worms. And I felt something like a net… A web, really, catch me up and pull me back. I woke back up and I don’t know where all the spiders came from, but they made pretty short work of the worms. Or maybe it took me longer to come around than it felt. But after they finished, they spun new webs for me. Keeps me from sounding like a whistle when the wind blows, at least,” Martin said, mouth quirking in a little half smile. Then he blinked, and looked a bit puzzled. “I couldn’t tell you this before. I don’t know why I can now.”
Jon swallowed back a question about where the spiders went afterwards. He didn’t want to know if Martin was a hive for them now, too. Although he had a sinking suspicion he might find out soon. “Why… why are you here?”
Martin blinked. “I said that already, didn’t I? I can’t leave. Not, not even now. I don’t know why. Same reason why you’re still here, probably.”
“No, before. You said that Prentiss was out there, and I can't run, so… what, exactly? I'm... trapped in here with you, now. What are you going to do?”
“What? There isn't really anything to do, is there? I mean, I can't get us out, so- “ The penny finally seemed to drop, and Martin's eyes widened. “Oh! No, Jon, I wouldn't- I'm not- I'm not a monster. Or, or I don't think I am, at least. Maybe I am. ...Probably I am. I mean, people don't come back from the dead, right? But I'm not- I'm not dangerous. I wouldn't hurt you.”
Jon was silent for a moment. “Right,” he eventually said.
“I don't want you to be afraid of me,” Martin said, softly.
Jon didn't reply.
Martin swallowed, and looked back out the door. “Well, I suppose that we've got more pressing things to be concerned about, right now.”
“Yes, I suppose we do.”
"I thought that wall was meant to be solid!” Martin cried, as the smashing sound on the opposite side of the wall continued.
“So did I!” Jon exclaimed. “We don't have any sort of weapon, do we?”
“I mean, I suppose we could use the-”
“Don't say the corkscrew!”
“...okay.”
“Can you, I don't know, fire spiders at them?”
“What?! No! Out of where?!”
“I don't know. I was just asking. Damn. Well, Martin, I suppose this is- “
The wall finally gave way. “Hi, guys!”
“Tim?!”
“Have they found Martin yet?” Jon asked, trying to ignore the throbbing pain that was making itself ever more insistent as the painkillers slowly wore off.
“No, they haven't. I'll contact you and let you know if they do, but right now you've gotten the statements from everyone else and you need to rest,” Elias replied.
“But-”
“We don't know when-” The unspoken if burned in the air between them. “-Martin will turn up. You can question him when he does. Collapsing because you forced yourself to work past exhaustion isn't going to help anyone.”
“... fine.”
Jon slowly made his way home, pretending not to feel the stares of the fellow passengers on the train. He turned over the possibilities again and again in his mind.
He hadn’t told anyone about Martin. He didn’t have any proof, and the last thing he needed was to have to waste his time with a psych evaluation. Raving about how his assistant had been eaten by worms- no, not the worms that attacked them today, he’d been eaten months and months ago and, yes, he still came into work after that, but that’s only because he had been turned into some kind of shambling reanimated husk held together by spiderwebs...
Hell, Jon wasn’t even sure he believed that nonsense.
Assuming that Martin's… condition wasn't some kind of retroactive hallucination Jon had from being exposed to too much carbon dioxide, Martin would be an idiot to let the ECDC get a hold of him. So maybe he was lying low, until after they went away. That assumed, of course, that Martin was able to think that far ahead, but he'd surprised Jon before.
Or maybe Martin was just dead, for good this time, somewhere down in the tunnels.
Or maybe he was lurking down there, spinning a web of his own down where the cobwebs began. Maybe he would just stay down there, waiting for prey to stumble in.
… whatever it was, Jon had to know.