Chapter Text
Things go to hell in a handbasket very rapidly, as per usual.
The 'rapid' part is very important. Gerry Keay likes to believe that, if they were to just slow down a little bit, maybe he could, y'know, prevent some damage. Get a head of it. He is something of a professional, after all -- but no. When things go south in his line of work they tend to do it swiftly and without any real warning.
Like now, for instance.
When Jon had called him in to deal with a persistent branch of The People's Church skulking about in rural Ireland, abducting people from communities for whatever freaky shit they got up to, it all sounded very simple. If you were prepared for it, The Dark wasn't hard to handle. Gerry had loaded up a trunk with some industrial floodlights, enough torches to light up a grade school theater production, and a sizable collection of long-lasting candles should the batteries and back-up batteries fail (which has happened before). Then he'd said his goodbyes to Tim and Sasha, let Marin pretend he'd forgotten something so he could run back and canoodle with Jon for a few minutes, and they'd headed on their way.
Even the drive had been excruciatingly boring. The entire Institute had come to the unanimous agreement several years back that, whenever possible, driving or taking trains was preferable to flying if only to avoid any intense and unanswerable questions from airport security about the materials they were traveling with and the potential for mysteriously lost baggage. The Vast wasn't the only entity out there capable of sabotaging more precarious travel plans, though it was usually the most lethal, and really, whenever possible, it just wasn't smart to let your equipment leave your sight.
Of course there were exceptions to this rule -- it wasn't always feasible, not everywhere was reachable by car, the list went on. But for low level stuff like this, driving had the highest cost-risk ratio, and -- well. Three cheers to him and Martin for drawing the short straw this time around, Gerry supposed.
Not that he had any problem with Martin. He was perfectly lovely. The two of them just tended to have very different approaches to things, was all, even down to the way they dressed. It made them a very odd couple on the road, a heavily pierced and tattooed goth riding shotgun with someone who could pass as a jumper-wearing assistant professor. Still, over the years Gerry had learned to appreciate how stealthily funny Martin really could be, under all the cozziness that made him easy to write off as the team mom or something. They got on great. It was just the job that sucked sometimes.
The first leg of the nearly 10-hour journey had been comfortably quiet -- Gerry preferred it to small talk, really, and liked to keep the radio on in lieu of conversation, but now in the back half with the sun well set and Martin at the wheel, it was time to chat, apparently. If only to keep the both of them awake and from dying in a horrific crash somewhere on the highway.
Martin was clearly running out of questions for Gerry to half-heartedly answer, so he finally picked up the slack and went for the personal topics. All it took was a casual "so, how are things between you and Jon going?" And Martin was bright pink and sputtering about how Gerry had gotten it wrong and they weren't like that, and it wasn't going to -- how could he have -- it was --
Gerry's laugh was enough to kickstart his second wind and keep him awake in the passenger seat for the rest of the ride, and enough to keep Martin ping-ponging wildly between fierce dienals of his crush and absolutely embarrassing gushing about how handsome Jon was that the risk of an accident was no longer a clear or present danger.
The peace and tranquility of checking into their tiny little inn and unloading all their gear for the trek up to the spooky corner of the woods The People's Church had apparently cordoned off lasted about fifteen minutes.
Unfortunately, neither Gerry nor Martin had really taken the time to consider that arriving here in the middle of nowhere around 3 in the morning, otherwise known as the dead of night, was maybe a colossal error in judgement on both of their parts for a job that required dealing with a cult that worships the unholy power of darkness.
Gerry barely had time to process what had happened when his door was kicked in and a bag was shoved over his head. In the same motion, his arms were wrenched behind his back and secured with what he can only assume was a zip tie.
The next few minutes were a bit of a blur.
The clutists had, unsurprisingly, begun immediately dragging him back out of the room literally kicking and screaming, which earned him a kick to the gut that winded him. It was impossible to tell exactly what was happening around him, but he could hear Martin having a similar struggle -- fuck, poor Martin. Gerry was mostly used to this sort of thing, really. Martin had become perhaps more accustomed to it than he would have liked, given the Institute's history, but that didn't mean he was really predisposed for it, or good at it. He shouldn't have come. Gerry should have seen the trap. He should have been ready for it. They shouldn't even be here. Fuck.
Fuck.
He tries to calm his breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Martin isn't screaming or anything, so that's a good sign. The Dark is a tricky bitch on the best of days, or nights as it were, but at least it wasn't The Desolation or something miserable like that. It could be worse. It could always be worse. He just needs to think.
Hands on his shoulders jostle him back, unbalancing him painfully onto his restrained wrists. They're loading him into -- a van, maybe? Something moving. Christ.
"Martin?" He doesn't bother trying to keep his voice down, even though it earns him another kick to the stomach.
Martin's hurried, hushed, "I'm here, I'm okay," is almost drowned out by the sound of his own subsequent wheeze. So at least there's that.
Whatever they've been loaded into is moving, bumbling along the backcountry roads into what Gerry feels safe guessing to be the forest. Knowing The People's Church, there was going to be some kind of lake, maybe, a clearing, something with a view of an astrological event of some kind. They weren't exactly the most creative lot, which also probably meant that Gerry and Martin were on the menu as sacrifices or some other nonsense. There'd probably be a lot of them. All their equipment was packed up, left back in their rooms. Gerry had a knife in his boot he could maybe get to if he was very lucky but they were otherwise unarmed.
Someone had a walkie talkie. It clicked on, choppy radio signal and a language Gerry didn't recognize off the top of his head -- Finnish maybe? Sweedish? Sounded like a confirmation of some sort.
The van -- or whatever it was -- rolled to a stop.
And that's when things went from bad to extremely fucking weird.
For a moment, all Gerry could hear was absolute silence. No animals, no wildlife sounds -- to the point that it actually made him doubt that they'd ended up in the woods at all. And then he heard moving. He hadn't had time to count how many people had actually come and taken them, but if he had to guess, there were at least 5. They were shifting around, mumbling to one another. It sounded confused.
A door opened -- but it didn't sound like a car door? Where was --
Another door open, the van this time, definitely.
There was a fantastic bout of commotion.
Someone screamed.
A bunch of people screamed.
Over the noise, Gerry tried to call for Martin again, tried to shift and shimmy in his restraints, even if he could just get the fucking bag off his head, if he could just --
Someone was laughing, but it didn't sound right. It sounded like --
Gerry said: "Oh, fuck me," just as the bag was torn off his head. It was dark, still, so his eyes needed no time to adjust to the looming, maniacal face hovering just in front of his own, smile too wide and too long for its face curling up at both ends, blood splattered and hypnotic and completely impossible.
Distantly, Gerry was aware that he was surrounded by carnage. The handful of cultist who had taken them had met up with maybe ten more, all of whom were laying in various states of dismemberment on the ground
"There you are," Michael grinned, giddy, peering down at Gerry with the air of a cat who had finally cornered a mouse it had been stalking for a great long while.
Gerry tried to inventory anything he could have done in recent memory to get on The Spiral's bad side, aside from just existing in general. The Spiral did tend to take some umbridge with things that existed. And speaking of --
As subtle as he could, given his current state of homebrew bondage, Gerry looked over his shoulder to see Martin, still very much bagged but alive, clearly, based on the way his chest was heaving.
Michael noticed.
He laughed, bright and loud in a way that made Gerry flinch, feeling every blood vessel in his head react to the sound.
"Oh, don't worry, I'm not here for him, I don't care about him. I'm here for you."
Gerry blinked.
Michael leaned in closer still, reaching one of his disgustingly misshapen hands out and weaving his fingers through the collar of Gerry's shirt. "Nothing to say for yourself?"
"I don't --" It was incredibly hard to think, much less speak at all when a creature who had knives for hands was practically holding you by the throat. Michael seemed very unimpressed by this and wrenched Gerry to his feet.
From the new perspective, the carnage of The People's Church sect was even more apparent. The air smelled rancid already, thick with the metallic tang of blood and mud.
"You are playing games you cannot possibly comprehend, Gerard Keay. Did you think you would finish the job your Archivist started?"
The Spiral often dealt in non-sequiturs, so Gerry couldn't rightly be surprised by this, but he still felt abundantly lost. "Jon?"
Michael's face contorted at this, grin instantly replaced by a horrifying, fractal snarl, "No! Gertrude Robin--" His face flickered, twisting in and out of Gerry's perception as he broke off into what Gerry could only assume was the extremely inhuman equivalent of a frustrated growl.
Gerry had never been an expert in The Spiral -- no one was, really -- but he didn't need to be to understand that something was very, very wrong here. Also, it was very, very likely he was going to die as a result. He tried to look over to where Martin had managed to right himself, back pressed against the inside of the van, sitting as still as possible but hopefully listening. At some point, thank god, Martin had managed to swoop his bound arms under himself to his front and pull the bag off his head. The two of them made eye contact. Martin mouthed what Gerry really hoped was 'keep him talking' but could have been 'what's he doing' or really anything -- lip reading had never been his strong suit, especially not in the dark in the middle of a life-or-death catastrophe.
"Gertrude is dead, Michae--" he got most of the name out, as calmly as he could, before Michael reacted again, practically howling, using his grip to throw Gerry to the ground. He landed in an ungraceful heap, ears ringing, equilibrium struggling to catch up.
"Shut up, shut up!" Michael roared, his voice sounding like three different frequencies and pitches all at once. He rounded on Gerry before he even had a chance to stand, "I don't know what you're doing to me! I'll kill you, I'll kil--" It sounded like he was choking. It sounded like he was in pain.
Gerry knew he had to take the chance. He twisted himself around, trying to get away, at least get him away from Martin. But unlike Martin, he hadn't had time to bring his zip-tied arms around to his front so getting any sort of balance was almost impossible. Thankfully, Michael seemed to be thoroughly distracted by...whatever this apparent meltdown was. He'd dug his hands into his own hair, which coiled around the knife-like edges of his fingers like vines. It looked like he was trying to literally tear himself apart.
Expecting the unexpected was part of the job, but even this felt dramatically out of his league. Running would be pointless, especially in the dark but he couldn't just stay here and let whatever this was take its course -- if he could just get Michael further away from Martin, that would at least be --
He scanned the clearing. There was only one source of light in addition to the van's taillights and the moon. A yellow door, attached to nothing, standing about 10 feet away from where Gerry stood now. It wasn't actually glowing, but its weird paint seemed to hold light anyway, like it was standing in a well-lit hallway and not the middle of a forest.
That's when Gerry had what may be the stupidest idea of his entire life.
In one clumsy motion, he pitched himself forward and ran toward the door, full tilt, just barely keeping himself from toppling over as Michael makes a sound somewhere between television static and wounded animal.
Michael moves without moving, but Gerry's entire body weight crashes into the door, shoulder first, before Michael could actually get a hand around his neck and somehow, against all logic or form of reason, Gerry hears the sound of wood splintering.
It shouldn't be happening. It's impossible -- like properly impossible, not just Spiral impossible. This door isn't even real, much less actually made of wood but --
The latch snaps under their combined force and the door swings inward, somehow, rather than outward and both of them pitch forward and fall.
There's a sound not unlike a lightbulb burning out.
In an instant, the door is gone and Martin Blackwood finds himself in the clearing very much alone.