MAG 142: Scrutiny

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Statement of an unknown bystander regarding an encounter with The Archivist.

## Pre-Statement

An unidentified woman has come to the Institute to talk about a staff member who is harassing her. Martin Blackwood identifies himself as someone who can help and gets the appropriate form.

Upon hearing that the employee harassing her is male, Martin asks if the man looked like he "hadn't slept in about a week". She confirms and says that he has been following her. Martin asks her what happened, and she begins to share after being assured her she will be taken seriously.

## Statement

The unidentified woman is an engineer who works for Thames Water and primarily does repair work on underground pipes and sewers. About five years prior, she was working underground in Kentish Town when the tunnel collapsed and left her trapped in the rubble.

Injured, she lay there panicking and screaming for what felt like weeks until a hand gripped her ankle. Although the woman was relieved at first, the hand was strange and felt like old stone. She soon realised that it was trying to pull her further down into the rubble, and she began to thrash in spite of her injuries. She was approaching her limit when she was rescued a member of her work crew, Abby. The feeling of the hand disappeared when she was freed, but deep bruises were left on her ankle. According to reports, she had been trapped in the rubble for three hours.

The woman took about six months off to recover from her injuries, receive physical therapy, and talk with a therapist to better cope with her nightmares and claustrophobia. As the years passed, she had largely put the incident behind her until she met a strange man.

About two weeks before coming to The Magnus Institute, the woman was at a cafe and waiting for her date to arrive. She noticed a man who seemed exhausted, creepy, and staring intensely at her. He continued staring for a long time, and she was about to say something to him when her date arrived. After the date, the strange man approached her and told her he worked at the Magnus Institute and "wants her story".

The woman was alarmed, but sat down and began to tell him about the sewer collapse. She was physically unable to shout at the man, to run, or to stop talking about her experience, and calmly told him about the incident in full detail. As she did, she felt all the terror and misery of the collapse as if it were happening a second time. The man listened intently as she spoke and when her story was finished he gave her a strange look, as if he had just eaten a well-cooked meal. He thanked the woman and left.

Since then, she has been having dreams of the tunnel collapse and of the stone hand pulling her deeper into the rubble, all while the strange man watches her scream and thrash. She does not blame him for her dreams, but she feels like she sees him when she is awake as well. Her claustrophobia and panic attacks have reached new extremes after being well-managed for years, and she is unable be below ground in any capacity. While gripped by her panic, the woman distinctly sees the man out of the corner of her eye.

The woman has been suffering immensely since this meeting and has been unable to work. She wants someone to speak with the man and tell him that it is wrong for him to do this to people and that he needs to stop. She does not want to see him ever again.

## Post-Statement

As the woman nears the end of her statement, Martin offers her his sympathy and agrees that this should not have happened. However, she leaves as soon as she is finished and does not tell Martin her name.

Martin does not know what to do with this information. He is sure that John would not be acting of his own free will in taking these statements and supposes that his actions may be due to instinct or mind-control. Martin is reluctant to talk about this with John; he has gotten comfortable with the distance Peter Lukas has encouraged him to maintain with the other archival staff and finds avoidance easier than direct communication. Martin wonders if he should try to get this tape to John or if it would come across as an accusation.

Daisy knocks at the door, and Martin calls for her to come in. She wants to be with someone while Melanie is out and while John and Basira are in Ny-Ålesund. Martin is unbothered by his co-worker's absences, as they tend not to talk to him regardless. The two talk about the powers they respectively serve and of Elias being in prison. Martin antagonises Daisy by bringing up the partner she lost to The Buried and brings up the way she treated him during an interrogation. Daisy apologises and states that her actions while influenced by The Hunt are still her responsibility.

Martin changes the subject to ask after John and Basira, and is surprised to learn they have gone to Ny-Ålesund to stop The Dark's ritual. While he is frustrated to have come by this information through Daisy rather than Peter, he is most upset by John repeatedly involving himself in dangerous situations with seemingly little planning. Daisy is somewhat sympathetic to John's course of action and briefly explains that a common response to trauma is to take action as a way of asserting control, even when it would be best to wait. This, combined his survivor's guilt, makes him reckless and self-destructive.

Martin remains unimpressed with John's actions, as all of the archival staff have experienced a variety of traumas, but still thought that Basira would have more sense. Daisy says that when she worked with Basira, she would frequently forgo a plan in favour of taking chances and trusting she would figure out details as she went. Daisy says she wanted to go with them to offer protection and implies that she stayed behind due to her current condition. She points out that the recorder is still on and Martin turns it off.

## Continuity

* **Related Entity:** The Buried and The Eye
* This statement takes place the day after the previous statement, MAG 141, which is the first time John is shown actively feeding on the statements of casual bystanders. That MAG 142 references an event that took place several weeks ago indicates that John has been doing this longer than has been directly shown.
* Martin and Daisy's conversation in the post-statement references her partner's disappearance into the Buried, first detailed during her statement in MAG 61, and her interrogation of Martin and the other archival assistants in MAG 82.
* Daisy is still recovering from the muscle atrophy she developed during her time trapped in The Buried.

* John later identifies the woman as Jess Terrell when talking to Melanie, Basira, and Daisy in MAG 146.