MAG 118: The Masquerade

Original recordings of the Magnus Institute's visit to the House of Wax, Great Yarmouth, and an internal management dispute.
==Recording==
Martin is gleefully burning statements while pointedly talking to an empty room. After three statements, Elias shows up and orders him to stop. Martin taunts him through the locked door and Elias is forced to go look for the key. 
He returns shortly and confronts Martin about his newfound interest in arson. They argue and Elias realises that Martin is intentionally wasting his time. He resolves to deal with him in the same manner as Melanie and Martin steels himself as Elias prepares to deliver the perfect bit of emotionally devastating information.
He talks of Martin’s mother. How Martin spent years caring for her and yet she was the one that asked to be moved into a nursing home and now she refuses his visits. She simply hates him and Martin does not know why. Of course, it is not really his fault. He was only 8 or 9 years old when she became ill and his father left them. Martin does not even really remember what he looks like.
Martin’s composure begins to falter as Elias tells him, he need only look in a mirror to find out exactly what his father looked like. His mother never recovered from being abandoned and all these years she has been seeing the face of a man she hates as Martin cared for her. Elias forces the raw knowledge of how she feels into his mind and Martin is reduced to tears. Elias simply orders him not to burn any more statements as he leaves.
Martin barely manages to compose himself before Melanie shows up. She is distraught at the state Elias has left him in but she got what she needed from his office while Martin was distracting him. Melanie wants to take another stab at killing Elias but Martin convinces her to leave with him.
In the House of Wax, John, Daisy, Tim, and Basira have been planting explosives. Daisy is setting up the last of them when music starts playing from the main room. 
They realise that the wax figures around them are not made from wax but from meat and they risk a peek into the main room to see the Anglerfish and a choir of skinless people. John had assumed it simply ate its victims after skinning them but, clearly, you do not need skin to sing. 
Tim wants to try and save the people in the meat choir but John does not want to risk it. Daisy finishes setting the explosives while they argue and hands John the detonator. Before they can make their next move, Nikola Orsinov calls for the audience to take their places and announces that the show has begun. 
The Unknowing starts and the world goes wrong.
==Continuity==
*Related Entity: The Eye and The Stranger
*The statements burned by Martin on tape are:
** #0071304, Ivo Lensik (MAG 8: Burned Out)
** #0020406, Harold Silvana (MAG 35: Old Passages)
** #0140207, Dylan Anderson (MAG 103: Cruelty Free)
** #9830203, Benjamin Hatendi (MAG 86: Tucked In)
**He also threatens to burn statement #8163103, Albrecht von Closen (MAG 23: Schwartzwald), but Elias intervenes before he can follow through.
Category:The Magnus Archives Episodes