It… would, actually. He’d have to be careful, choosing what to send. And it turns out he had his phone the whole time in his hand (did he?), right there in his palm, (did he?), and so he texts.

There. That ought to do it. Keep Tim safe.

The rest of this doesn’t matter so much. All those standards and schedules and victories and losses… all that control doesn’t feel the same at all anymore. All his self-control... [static] is no longer sure what they all meant or why he was doing it in the first place.

Something with his parents… the fire… 

Fire! How unpleasant… and we can see where its grip caught and then lost you, sliding away and leaving scars but no mark. That is because you were already claimed, Danny.

Claimed?

I've known you for such a long, long time.

But... no, but there was a reason... a reason not knowing what was happening, not knowing the facts, not being informed and capable, meant terror.

Doubt is not so terrible, Danny! If you let it take you, the fear will ride your veins and fill your heart until it is all you can breathe, and you will be so very happy. Well. Terrified, but you'll love it, in the end.

[static] is terrified right now. He isn't even sure why. All the reasons are just... stupid now. Children's games.

I like games. What was your reason? Let us laugh together at the "certainty" of knowledge! (twisting burrowing terrible laugh that hurts like the worst headache he's ever had after crying too much and coughing smoke and yet it feels...)

He knows the answer, but it doesn’t seem important. He’d designed his whole life around that reason, before. He can’t work out why.

(that laugh that laugh it hurts but in such a satisfying way—) You have time to figure it out.

Do I?

There is no answer, and the limbo of that non-response gulps him, drops him spinning down the void-throat like a single, unmattering crumb.

What a way with words! No wonder the Watcher wanted you so… Alas for It. 

Who? 

He glances at his phone as if it could tell him.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

Wait. Is that what he’d meant to text?

Mihi fīdere nequeō…

What had he sent?

It means ‘I cannot trust myself.’

Oh.

Does it, though?

(cackling crackling chaos and sunlight, bright and terrible as a polished blade)

He hadn’t meant to send weird Latin. (Or had he?) It would not keep Tim away. It would bring him, because Tim was more faithful than anyone [static] had ever known.

Really? Then we don’t want him here.

…we don’t?

Are you sure you do?

I… wait…

Yeeeees?

(And comes a moment of clarity)

I don’t want him here. Whatever is happening isn’t real.

What is real?

I don’t know, and I never did, but he doesn’t belong here.

That was such a lovely answer that I feel the need to reward it. You will not be here when he comes.

But… no, that’s not what I meant...

Do you want him to join you with me?

Oh. With—

Oh. The laugh. The feeling. The… dubiousness of all of this. The strangeness of realizing everything he knows is a lie, a deception, a trick. None of it is trustworthy. He... How could he ever answer that?

I want my brother, but I don’t want him… in this. 

An excellent reply. Well, if you really want, I can leave him be.

That was almost right, but 

(Images of the old lady, of the army of dead things parading as humans, pretending life because they had none of their own)

Please…

What are you asking for, little twist?

I can’t be sure. Just… not this. This terror. This falling. This… blissful deterioration. Please. Not for him.

Ooh… oooooh. I like that! Are you Watcher-types always so eloquent? If so, I might do this again.

Do… what?

Poach!

…poach?

Do you trade your brother for yourself?

Oh.

Of course. It’s the one certain thing in a world without them. Of course I do.

Of course you would. Well, let’s see what we can do.

Tim who never blamed him, never said “if only you’d been better,” never said it was his fault at all.

Except it was

He knew

He hadn’t been prepared, ready enough, strong enough—

Weren't you, though?

I… 

I’m not sure… of anything… anymore

Does that frighten you?

Yes.

Perfect.

#

Tim isn’t sure why the worst moment of his life is coming to mind just now, but boy howdy, it sure is. Maybe it has something to do with traveling through a place devastated by fire.

He was ten when it happened. Old enough to remember the sharp, burning, smoke, an acridity he could taste, screams that will never leave him, the shock of seeing burned flesh like overdone steak (he hadn’t realized people were made of meat, not then, not that early, not yet). He’d heard his parents screaming. He’d stood on the lawn and listened to screaming, stood there and cried, because there was nothing he could do.

Danny had gotten him out; possible because they shared a bedroom, and Danny helped him through the window. Their dog, Brody, survived because he was in the room, and Danny shoved him through that window, too.

But the fire was in the hall.

The fire was all through the house.

There was no way to reach anyone else.

In Tim’s memory, that single night lasted weeks. Weeks of sirens and yelling, weeks of smoke and loss. Weeks of standing in front of a burning house (a betrayal, a thing that should not be), crying. Useless. Danny had saved him. Tim had needed to be saved.

It broke something in there, Tim thinks. Some part of him that ever thought he could be more than just… Tim.

Tim, who is funny. (He remembers making his parents laugh.)

Tim, who is kind. (He remembers Danny praising him for being such a good helper.)

Tim, who is just Tim, and not the one who got the family out. He helped his brother, is what he did. He’s good at that.

He couldn’t get his family out.

“Right, time to abandon that little thought spiral,” he murmurs to himself and exits the train.

It’s a cute town. Clearly one of those places the UK is known for, full of history and interesting architecture and somewhat softened colonialist horror. A beautiful, storied place, and in spite of the fire, some parts are even still ancient. Conwy is apparently near the first golf game on Welsh soil, rife with history and parks and all manner of things to do.

Tim has one thing to do: find Danny. He has no idea where to start. This may, he admits as he stands outside the station, have needed a pinch more research before plunging in. 

He checks again. He’s been checking relentlessly, refusing to accept that Danny’s phone is no longer any use. It has to work. The location services have to turn back on. Because if they don’t—

There’s a text.

Don’t

That's absolutely awful, a terrible thing to see in the wake of certainty of trouble, but more importantly, the location services send one single ping.

Tim gasps. He knows where Danny is.

He runs.

#

“No, I’m sorry, Mister Stoker. No one of that description has been here,” says the weird old lady behind the circular, who is possibly the creepiest old lady he’s ever known. Her name tag says Emma. “Could I interest you in directions to the local constabulary?”

That’s partly what unnerves him, he tells himself. She doesn’t speak… quite right. It all makes sense, is all correct, but something is off. “That’s a terrific idea, spot-on,” Tim says, leaning into charm, leaning into her, arms folded on the counter as he tries to persuade her into helpfulness. “The problem is, I’ll just end up back here because this is where his location says he is as of fourteen minutes ago, and I think it’d be a lot less pleasant to come back with the law, don’t you?”

“You’re free to watch and wait, of course,” says Emma, her rhythm strange, turning watch-and-wait into a single three-syllable sound, like she somehow meant the opposite.

“Thanks!” He gives her his absolute best smile, and wanders off to search the stacks, hiding his shudders.

The location of Danny’s phone should be… right here. Here. Where there’s nothing, against the wall, under the lighted EXIT.

Opening that, a sign informs him, will cause an alarm to go off. He debates dragging Ms. Emma over here to tell him if there’s a basement Danny could be in (though how would he have gotten a signal out?), or maybe an upper floor Danny could be in (though the building seems to be single-story), when someone clears their throat. Tim turns.

A man stands there, taller than Tim, with blond curls cascading past his shoulders and a bright smile. “Are you Tim?” he says, like there's reason to doubt it.

Tim stares. Opens his mouth. Freezes.

Behind the man is Emma. She’s standing between two shelves, shadowed, her eyes veiled in convenient gloom, and she’s standing wrong.Something about the angle. Something about the way her arms are. Something about the stillness of her, unlifelike and awkward.

Tim’s heart rate picks up.

The blond man is waiting. “I have something for you. Something, I think, which you would like very much.”

Tim can’t take his eyes from Emma. “Yeah? And what’s that?”

The man leans in, capturing Tim’s gaze, and winks. “A friend.”

When he says it, he means something else, and Tim suddenly doubts he heard it right. This whole town is insane, and if Danny weren’t somewhere here and clearly in trouble, Tim would be gone, fast enough to leave a cartoon-smoke-silhouette of himself. “I need my brother, actually. Did you overhear me talking to the lady? How did you even know my name?”

“Oh, don’t mind them,” says this guy.

And Tim shivers, and his breath has sped, because there is a they, and right now, they’re all here. 

In the stacks. 

Standing in unlit patches, impossibly shaded spaces between shelves and in walkways.

Staring at him from the dark with eyes that do not gleam, but are dead, flat, lifeless.

Tim is hyperventilating.

“Easy, there,” says tall, blond, and spooky.

None of them are moving, breathing, blinking. No one is doing the micro-adjustments humans do when they stand, pumping blood and shifting balance. They aren’t real, Tim thinks, but they are, and suddenly he thinks they took my brother.

Did they? Did they do that?

If they did, he’s going to kill them.

If they did, he’s going to melt every last plastic fool.

If they did—

“Oh, dear. You need a friend very badly,” intrudes the blond guy, chipper and present and headache-strange. “I did promise, though I never said anything about poaching anyone else, but I suppose you should at least have this.” And he holds out Danny’s phone.

Tim grabs it, stares at it, looks up at this man filled with an sudden and illogical urge to kill him. “Where did you get this?”

“Another friend! One I quite like,” says the man and smiles. Then he points at the EXIT. “If you leave now, you’ll survive. He wants you to survive, you know. I’m not normally inclined to give favors, but he’s so very charming, don’t you think?”

It’s true, Tim knows it’s true, everything this freako is saying is true, and it makes no sense, and right now it feels like fucking manikins are going to attack them, and if Danny’s phone is here… “Where is he?”

“Oh, you know—bouncing here and there and everywhere.”

“What?” says Tim.

“High adventure that's beyond compare!” The man does a gig with no music, upsetting, somehow giving the impression that there is music after all and Tim's ears are lying to him.

“What?” cries Tim, who feels like a thousand voices are shouting, who feels like screams are raising him from the floor, who feels like he’s gone mad and is about to set something on fire.

“They are the Stoker Bears!” the man declares in a voice that is neither human nor mechanical, neither singing perfection nor grinding, cracking steel. “They are the Stoker Bears!” And then he disappears, because of course he does, and all the manikin fuckers in this place take a step toward Tim at once.

One step, but they’re so much closer than they were, nearly in reach, far closer than one step should have come.

Tim doesn’t let them get closer than that. He turns and bangs through the EXIT door, setting off the alarm. And he hates himself for running instead of fighting, for running instead of ripping them and beating them and bashing them to bits, for running instead of setting it all ablaze, but he still does as fast as he possibly can, because all of this is wrong.

And Danny is definitely in trouble.Terror and rage surge in equal measure, infuriation like fuel, and Tim wouldn’t be surprised if he looked back and saw he’d left a trail of black and smoking footprints.

Suddenly, it’s all done.

He’s standing in the middle of the fucking street, damp clothes sticking to him like he’d hung out in a sauna, and it’s a lovely, chilly day, and people are giving him politely concerned glances, and everything is normal and nothing weird even happened.

But did it?

It wasn’t real.

Was it real?

Tim looks down. He has Danny’s phone. There’s no question it’s his. Maybe this is proof of life, a sign that things will all work out, but the only thing Tim can think right now is he has the phone but not the one who owned it, and since the phone is here, he can’t follow another location ping. 

For one moment, he almost cries.

Did that happen, in the library? Monsters? Crazy men? Did it? The fact that Tim has to wonder that makes him so fucking angry. The helpless kind of angry, like when his parents... No, stop. Stop. Take a breath. He doesn’t like how violent this made him feel. (He loves how violent it made him feel.)

Tim finally trots out of the road and presses against the cool brick rising from the sidewalk, covering his face and trying not to start screaming.

#

He’s not even sure how he found his way to a hotel. Tim has no memory of checking in. Renting it. Pulling out his credit card. Anything. He’s just there, on the bed, staring at the poster on the wall.

It’s a pretty little room in a pretty big manor, a local affair converted to individual rentals some time ago. The poster advertises the “local legend” of ghosts protecting this property from the fire that took down so much else. 

Tim rubs his forehead. Does he have a fever? His skin is still tacky, sweat gluing cloth and dust and who knows what else to him. (Who knows what else? Madness spores, obviously, because he also smells weirdly like mildewed plastic left out in the sun.) Tim groans his way out of bed and peels off his clothes, refuses to take stock of anything else, and staggers to the bathroom.

The water is lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, and that feels strangely fitting. He leans against the cold tile, discovers a shaving mirror suction-cupped to the wall, sees a man he barely recognizes. He looks wrecked; dark circles under his eyes, badly pale, kind of rough like he’s been living outdoors. He looks older than he is. He looks haggard.

“Danny’s got it worse. Probably gone bald,” he tells himself, trying to joke, refusing to take what he sees to heart, refusing to accept that he might already have neared the end of his rope in whatever this is, because it’s too soon, it’s far too soon. Danny hasn’t even been gone twenty-four hours. It’s too soon. 

This shower has just sent in into spirals. Time to stop. A towel around his waist, he marches back into the room and stares at the phones on the nightstand. 

Fact: Danny is missing. Straight up fucking missing.

Fact: Yes, that’s Danny’s phone, including the nick in the corner from when they went can-can dancing and accidentally kicked it across the stage.

Fact: Whatever happened in the library cannot be real. Therefore, Tim has lost his fucking mind. Except… he doesn’t believe he did. He sits on the bed. 

Fact: He knows he’s sane. In that library, he saw… something happen. Something strange. And there is a fully logical explanation as to why he can’t understand what he saw. He just has to find it. So: Step one: Police. Explain that Danny is missing. Show the strange texts. Tell them some weirdo had his phone. No need to bring up hallucinations at this point.

Step two: Doctor. Because there are hallucinations, so obviously, he’s been exposed to some crazy chemical, and hopefully no permanent damage. 

Step three: Let Jon and Martin know where he is. The last thing anyone needs is the two of them running up here, too, maybe being exposed to things in the middle of their own crisis.

He types.

Hey, guys. I’m in Wales right now looking for Danny. He’s missing. You have my location, and you can find me if you need. I don’t know what happened, but he’s gone, and I have his phone. I’ll update you as soon as I know more. Be safe. I think we may have all been exposed to some chemical or something.

Good enough. He sends it. Then movement catches his eye, and he spins.

Not movement; glitching. Danny’s phone is doing something. Tim picks it up and unlocks it.

The screen flickers. Frowning, he opens various apps and finds they all expand with full screen of static. Also, they’re not quite right, none of them; Danny still uses his AOL email, but this phone only has Yahoo Mail. Danny’s lifetime membership (thanks to modeling work) was to the gym X-BOD, but the app on this phone was for AllHoursFitness. It was all just slightly wrong.

Nauseous, Tim checks email and calendar and note apps, but finds no indication of an illicit rendezvous or anything else. There are no threats from anyone; it all seems normal. There’s just no reason for this to be happening.

Who would hurt Danny?

Only a monster would.

Tim is so tired. He pulls on his clothes, wincing at the nastiness of them, then grabs his room key and heads out the door.

#

Six hours later, he’s back. 

The police took all his information, grilled him more seriously than he’d expected, and then had him wait around while they went to the library. And Tim ignores the strange movements officers make in his peripheral view, or the hollow-plastic sounds of their shoes on scuffed tile. Tim is very good, and waits through the hallucinations, and refuses to run.

Of course, the police find nothing amiss.

“You’re not even going to look further?” says Tim.

“It’s an open case,” says the officer whose mouth movements do not match her words.

Tim wants to hurt her. Not to attack her, not to win, but cause harm, to find the gasoline and baptize this world in the name of Danny and Timmy and The Holy Roast, and burn and burn and burn until screams steam up like dancing, and then burn and burn and burn some more.

That isn’t normal. None of this is normal. So instead of doing any of those things, Tim nods like a good worker ant, thanks them for their help, and walks out the door.

For some reason, choosing to walk out without burning anything (he's never burned anything in his life what the fuck is going on) absolutely drained him. He’s too tired to play detective right now. Too tired to be a good patient, either, and mentally moves see doctor to tomorrow. Somehow, he stumbles back to the hotel, awareness skipping steps as if he’s short-range teleporting instead of walking. Somehow, he arrives in his room, and peels off his damp clothes, and makes it to the bed.

Flu. Or whatever it is. Sucks. He'll see someone tomorrow. Just needs a nap now. Maybe it's all a fever-dream. Maybe this isn't even happening. Maybe Tim's in a hospital bed nowhere wildly ideating, and Danny is fine, and at his side urging him to get through it and stop being a baby and please be okay.