No one will find me. [Martin Blackwood]

No one will find me.

There was something wrong happening in the Archives.

Martin Blackwood had known this feeling for a long time now; wrong things happened there every day for over two years. But today, something was terribly wrong.

The archival assistant didn't notice that anything was off, not at first. After all, Martin was used to being left to his own devices, ignored and invisible, alone.

He started the morning organising files, bound between shelves and tucked into corners of unmarked cases and messy statements. Martin could spend entire hours shuffling papers around a single cabinet without a single one of his co-workers asking after him, whether requiring his assistance or out of passing curiosity. 

Though it would drive any other person insane with boredom, Martin told himself that he didn't mind the repetitive, tedious work. Not that he enjoyed it— he simply didn't mind it. He was far past hoping for a work environment that would bring him any sense of fulfillment or purpose. There wasn't a place for him to thrive. Not anymore.

After a couple of hours in an unfeeling state, Martin felt a nervous itch at the back of his mind. It seemed different than the paranoia he was accustomed to. It felt colder, more cruel, more... personal, as if some gnawing, seeping insidious entity had hand-crafted this sunken despair that settled in his gut. He would have prated that his premonitions were false alarms if he still believed in a god that wasn't one akin to of the monsters his enemies worshipped.

Hoping to shake away his stupor, Martin left the back room of the Archives and popped his head into the main office.

"Would anyone like a cup of tea?" He asked his co-workers. "I was just about to brew a pot and wondered—"

Martin stopped talking. His co-workers weren't there. No one was there. With a shaky breath, he realized that it was the first time he had seen the Archives entirely empty of life before.

"Jon?" He called out with trepidation. He looked around, poking his head around every corner. "Melanie? Tim? Basira? Anyone there?"

Had he been alone all morning? Or had they all gone out without telling him? Or had something worse happened to them all in the hours he had mindlessly passed in his own company?

Fear crept towards the center of his being as a dreaded revelation came to him: he was alone. He had always been alone. And, perhaps, he was always meant to be here alone.

He was no longer in the Archives. It looked exactly like the Archives, the lonely space he now inhabited. But he was not at the same Archives he was when he arrived at the Magnus Institute that morning.

Martin Blackwood knew the real Archives were untouched by the force that had overtaken him and his surroundings. It couldn't possibly be the Archives. The Archivist was gone. He had been gone before, but not like this. 

Before, The Archivist's presence remained even when he was miles away. Jonathan Sims was always there, if only in Martin's thoughts. Now, Martin couldn't even recall his face. He tried desperately to remember Jon, but the more he grasped at the vague, fading, foreign memories, the more jumbled and disjointed they became.

He tried to think of Melanie, Tim, Basira. Nothing. Not even Elias, though his mind seemed more eager to block him out than the others. His thoughts could contain no one. Fleeting images and voices flickered in an instant, disappearing sooner than they appeared.

Martin's lip trembled. "I-Is anyone there? Hello?" He didn't even know who he was calling out to. Perhaps he had always worked there in the Archives alone. But he knew that he had to try and reach the people he dared to believe would answer, even if he had no assurance of their existence. "Please... Someone... Anyone..."

He feared what he would see when he uttered that final word: anyone. Being alone was better than being with certain "anyones". It should have been better. But Martin feared never seeing a single person again more than he feared encountering another monster. 

He remembered monsters existed. 

They must have done this to him. They took everything away. Or they took him away from everything. That is, if there ever was an everything. Martin couldn't be sure anymore. This may have been his reality all along, and the transient names that had passed his lips moment ago were imaginary, made-up people who had never set foot in the Archives. Why did he expect that anyone else would be there? He was in the Martin Archives. It was always just him. Martin Blackwood. All on his own.

He looked to Jon's desk. A tape recorder was running. Of course the goddamned thing was running. At least, he assumed that it was running, that it was real, and not some illusion giving him hope that even if he were to die alone in this place, someone would find the tape someday and listen to his final words. 

No one is going to find the tape recorder, Martin thought. 

No one is coming. No one will find it. No one will find me.