ANNOUNCER
This episode is dedicated to Gray Anderson.
[Intro Theme]
ANNOUNCER
Rusty Quill Presents: The Magnus Protocol.
Episode Thirty-Four – Eliminations.
[Music]
[Tape recorder clicks on]
GEORGIE
I wouldn’t touch it. The nurse said it was hard enough finding a vein for it in the first place.
SAM
(weakly) What?
GEORGIE
I think it’s just saline, some electrolytes… probably some vitamins, if they’ve got them. They didn’t give me the full run down.
SAM
Why?
GEORGIE
To keep you alive? You were in a bad way when we picked you up, “Sam.” Malnutrition, dehydration, the works.
SAM
Oh. Um… Thanks?
GEORGIE
Don’t mention it. Now it’s your job to convince me that we were right to use those resources.
SAM
(a bit stronger) How long was I asleep?
GEORGIE
You’ve been in and out for a couple of days.
[Pause.]
[Sam adjusts himself and settles into a more upright position.]
GEORGIE
Comfy?
SAM
Yeah, although actually if you’ve got another pillow –
GEORGIE
What are you?
[Beat.]
SAM
Excuse me?
GEORGIE
What are you?
SAM
I don’t understand the question.
GEORGIE
Are you human?
SAM
What else would I be?
[Georgie does not answer.]
SAM
Y-yes. Yes, I’m human.
GEORGIE
And that’s a problem. Because the only humans allowed in the London Exclusion Zone are me and my team. And you’re not one of my team, “Sam.”
SAM
…Where am I?
GEORGIE
We’ve checked pretty much the whole border at this point and can’t find any breach, any tracks, no evidence at all of how you got yourself inside.
SAM
Please, I just need someone to explain what’s happening –
GEORGIE
So as far as we can tell, you came from the Square Mile. And humans don’t come from the Square Mile.
SAM
What? Look, I don’t even know how I got there, okay? I don’t even know where there is. Last thing I remember… I was in the basement and there was, uh…
GEORGIE
So what’s the deal, “Sam”? By the look of you, I’m guessing some kind of hunger thing, right? You look into my eyes, make me realise the hunger in my soul and turn the whole building into cannibals?
SAM
No, there were people. I saw people… In a dream… I didn’t know them, but… Celia was there.
And I think… you were there.
GEORGIE
Okay, so some kind of dream-eating creature then? Help me out here, “Sam.” What’s your thing? What’s your schtick? What’s your messed up little horror power?
SAM
Wait, are you talking about–?
GEORGIE
All the monsters have one.
[Beat.]
[Sam is fully awake and making connections.]
SAM
We call them Externals.
GEORGIE
Who’s “we”?
SAM
I work for the Office of Incident Assessment and Response. We’re a branch of the UK Civil Service. Or were, maybe… You said that was London you found me in?
GEORGIE
Technically. The zone’s too dangerous to break down for scrap. And I hate to break it to you, but there hasn’t been a proper Civil Service for a while. Government’s just one big “Incident Response” for a few years now, so either you’re lying or…
SAM
Wait! What year is it!?
GEORGIE
(dubious) 2024.
SAM
(relieved and surprised) Oh.
(realizing) Ooooh, okay, yeah. In that case then, I think I might be from another dimension.
GEORGIE
…
What.
SAM
(a bit defensive) Oh, what, hunger monsters from post-apocalyptic London are just another day at the office to you, but other dimensions is just too farfetched?
GEORGIE
I mean, it wasn’t exactly on my bingo card. (sighing) Okay, let’s just skip the whole “why should I believe you” stuff for now and get straight to the big stuff. Why you? Why now? Why hasn’t this happened before?
SAM
I don’t know. Maybe they have? I mean, there was this tear in – in the world, my world, but it was hidden. Maybe no one else found it.
GEORGIE
Where was it?
SAM
Basement of an old retail unit in the Hilltop Shopping Centre, if you can believe it.
GEORGIE
(suddenly serious) Hill Top? In Oxford?
SAM
(surprised) Yeah. You know it?
[Georgie exhales and puts her notepad down]
[She extends a hand to shake]
GEORGIE
Georgie.
SAM
(shaking her hand tentatively) Uh… hi, Georgie.
So… does this mean you believe me?
GEORGIE
(rubbing her eyes) You know, Sam, it would have been a lot less complicated if you’d just been a monster.
SAM
Sorry, I guess? So, like, can you tell me where I am now? What happened to London? Who are you people? This world is a lot different to mine.
GEORGIE
I suspect it was probably pretty similar until about five years ago, then all hell broke loose.
SAM
What sort of hell?
GEORGIE
The kind where your world is transformed into a psychoformed fear-farm for otherwordly entities outside of human understanding.
SAM
Oh. Okay then.
GEORGIE
It didn’t last long, objectively speaking at least. But time wasn’t exactly working right. Anyway, we eventually managed to… get rid of them, and we’ve spent the years since trying to rebuild and get back to something approaching normal.
SAM
Where I landed didn’t look normal.
GEORGIE
No. A few places around the world never fully changed back. I think of it as a sort of lingering fear radiation, and London was at the heart of what happened.
SAM
And you look after them?
GEORGIE
We try to contain them. Officially we’re part of the wider civil defense militia, but most people just call us “Wardens.” I suppose it fits. We try to keep the horrors in and the people out.
SAM
Why would anyone want to get in somewhere like that?
GEORGIE
You’d be surprised –
[Door opens]
DAVE
Captain, you’re needed.
GEORGIE
(immediate) Talk to me.
DAVE
It’s Heidi. They found her.
[Click]
[Click]
DAVE
– we found it near the body.
GEORGIE
How near? Right next to her?
DAVE
Her hand was touching it.
GEORGIE
…Was it recording when you found it?
[Dave considers, clearly unsure]
DAVE
I’m not sure. I don’t think so.
GEORGIE
Okay.
How was she killed?
DAVE
Doc’s not sure yet, but it definitely wasn’t natural.
GEORGIE
Dave. Details, come on.
DAVE
(tight) Sorry, I know, I just –
GEORGIE
Feel later, work now. What happened to Heidi? What state was her body in?
DAVE
…
(managing to hold himself together) It was pale. Shriveled. Like she’d been sucked dry. And she had – There was glass all over her body, embedded into the skin, but nothing in the surrounding area.
GEORGIE
Describe the glass?
DAVE
I dunno. Clear? Uh, slightly curved. I think it was, like, camera lenses maybe. A few of them were still whole enough you could make out the shape.
GEORGIE
…
Did Heidi ever tell you about her domain?
DAVE
No. We didn’t know each other that well. Why, did she tell you?
GEORGIE
It’s part of the standard psych eval for the newer recruits.
DAVE
And it involved cameras?
[GEORGIE affirms.]
DAVE
…What are we dealing with here, Cap?
GEORGIE
I don’t know. I have a suspicion. A suspicion that I really, really hope is wrong. But I can’t say for sure. Not yet.
DAVE
So what’s the plan?
GEORGIE
I go have another talk with our guest. You put everyone on alert. Double up the rounds, at least one auto per pair, and notify the other branches.
DAVE
Got it.
GEORGIE
Steer clear of any tape recorders and if you hear anyone starting to get all poetic and tell a really personal, really traumatic story for no obvious reason, you grab them and you run. Understood?
DAVE
Understood.
GEORGIE
Right, you get going and I’ll –
[Dave notices the tape player is on]
DAVE
Captain!
GEORGIE
What?
DAVE
What do we do if it starts to record?
[GEORGIE considers the tape player, then sighs, bone-weary]
GEORGIE
Pass me that claw hammer.
[The hammer is passed]
Then all you do is –
[She jams the claw into the tape player and wrenches, once, twice, three times]
[The tape player squeals as if in pain]
[Click]
[Click]
[Something thuds onto a table]
GEORGIE
(angry) What is this?
SAM
What? I don’t know, broken junk? Is this another test? (quieter) God, someone really did a number on this thing…
GEORGIE
Fine. Do you know what it was?
SAM
Plastic… Some metal… Magnetic tape – Oh.
GEORGIE
One of my team is already dead and if this means what I think it means, they’re not going to be the last. So no more games. You are going to tell me what you know, right now.
SAM
The tape players, we think they’re something to do with the… thing that’s been chasing us. It found me near the… the hole – portal, whatever it is. I’m still fuzzy on some stuff, but it must have come through with me.
GEORGIE
Who’s “we”?
SAM
Oh, uh… me, Alice, Gwen, my colleagues at the OIAR. My friends. Alice called it an “Archivist.”
[Georgie audibly flinches.]
SAM
Is that… wrong?
GEORGIE
Tell me everything.
SAM
Right, okay… Uhh… So, I was looking into this old organization called the Magnus Institute –
GEORGIE
(quiet) Oh shit.
SAM
You know it? Do you have one in here?
GEORGIE
Used to.
SAM
Yeah, well, ours burned down in the late 90s.
GEORGIE
(muttered) Lucky you.
SAM
(noticing but pressing on) Anyway, Alice and I were poking around and… Our best theory is we accidentally let it loose somehow. Unlocked something or disturbed something or opened something… Or just woke it up, I guess. Since then it’s been sort of stalking us and… feeding on people nearby.
GEORGIE
But he hasn’t killed you. Why?
SAM
I don’t know. It even dragged a story out of me at one point but it didn’t finish me off.
I wonder if it wanted us to find this place so it could follow us here…
GEORGIE
(intense) What does he look like? What’s his voice like? Think, Sam, this is important.
SAM
I – I don’t even know if it is a “he.” It’s… hard to look at. It dresses in rags, or a cloak, or something that hides most of its shape. But its face…
It’s all eyes.
[Beat.]
Look, it was an accident. I didn’t mean to bring it here –
GEORGIE
I don’t give a crap what you meant to do. If this is who I think it is…
SAM
What?
GEORGIE
There won’t be anything left to rebuild.
[Click]
[Click]
GARDENER
There we go. Had a good drink in the rain, didn’t you, but it’s all cleared up now. Just as well, you need a little sunshine, get those berries nice and ripe.
[Static begins to fade in]
GARDENER
People always say strawberries are easy to grow, but I’ve never really been able to get a handle on them. Nor any other plant, to be honest. I guess I’ve got what you might call a brown thumb. But it doesn’t matter, I’ll stay out in my garden as long as it takes. As long as I’m here, in the fresh air and the sun, trying to give things life, it doesn’t matter if I succeed or not.
[She pauses, realising she’s monologuing]
GARDENER
(straining with effort to stop) It’s not the sun, though, not really, nor the sky nor open air… Even at the end of it all it was never the cave that scared me, but I need to see the world moving, to watch the light grow and dim, the sun to march on its path, the clouds blow through the sky. It reminds me the world is moving, that I’m not stuck in that long empty moment.
When I was young I read about a man who went into a cave for two months. He was some sort of scientist and wanted to see what would happen to him if he just didn’t come out. So down he stayed, no watches, no clocks, no night and day, for what he thought was two months. It was four. His whole sense of time had become unstuck. That stayed with me. That scared me. To be trapped in a moment, to have no sense of motion… And the longest moment I was ever trapped in was when I killed a man.
I never even knew his name. Not before and not after I fled. It was nothing, just an argument in a pub. I didn’t even think when I pushed him. But when he went down as his head sailed towards the wood of the broken barstool… I don’t know how to measure the time that took. Two seconds? Two hours? Two forevers. And even when it had happened and I was running from the pooling blood and the accusing eyes, the moment didn’t end. Every time I closed my eyes I saw it, my life trapped in the amber of those seconds when I realized with crystal clarity the violence of which I was capable.
When the world died screaming and I was taken to that cave, I didn’t understand why. It was dark, but I wasn’t afraid of the dark. It was cramped, but I wasn’t afraid of tight spaces. I thought I was going to die, but I wasn’t afraid of death. Not my death, at least.
There were others there, shapes and silhouettes in the gloom. Enough detail to realize how many people were down there with me. And in the middle, sat between us all, the only thing we could see clearly in that place: the rusty knife.
There was only one, and we all immediately knew what that meant.
Nobody said a word. In the deep, in the dark, I have no idea how long we were there before it all ended, but in all that time not a one of us spoke. What would we have to say? Each and every one of us knew we were a killer, and what could a killer say that would ever be trusted in a place like that. And so the moment stretched on, dragging the pain of our potential cruelty across our souls with a point sharper than any blade.
I would imagine picking up the knife, its cold heft, the reassuring weight of it. My mind swarmed with images of rusty points buried in flesh, of how my muscles would feel as they forced it through skin and into muscle. Would it hit one of their ribs? Or a clean cut right to the heart? Or perhaps messier, slashing open their stomach, filling the cave with the stench of blood, acid and death.
I didn’t want to. The idea repulsed me, left me lying there shaking and pressed up against the wall. But it didn’t matter what I wanted. All that mattered was what I knew that I could do it.
I longed for one of the others to pick it up and raise it in anger. If only one of them would lunge at me. Slice my stomach open, spill my entrails across the stony floor. Then I would be free. Maybe not free of that place but at least free of that lingering, growing, pulsating temptation.
In the end I was the first to break. I was the first to take the knife that lay in the middle of the cave, but not the last.
ARCHIVIST
(hungry) PICK IT UP.
[The Gardener reaches down and finds a rusty knife in her grip]
GARDENER
It felt in my hand exactly as I thought it would. The weight, the balance, the coarse wood grain of the handle. My stomach curdled at the feeling, at the butcher’s extension of my body and will.
The others didn’t flee or cower or try to defend themselves. Instead, they crept forward in pathetic supplication, silently begging to be released from what they might do in turn.
But my motives were entirely selfish. I grasped the blade and angled its wicked, rusted point. Then I closed my eyes, though that was pointless in the dark…
ARCHIVIST
YES.
[The Gardener stabs herself in the gut, gasping]
GARDENER
(pained) It… did not cut cleanly. It tore… and caught… on every scrap of my flesh… but it did not help. So I pulled it out… and tried again.
ARCHIVIST
YES.
[Another stab]
GARDENER
(Wheezing) The heart… was difficult. It was an excavation of rib… and lung… and so much blood… But it did not help… So… I pulled it out and tried again.
ARCHIVIST
YES!
[The Gardener slits her own throat.]
GARDENER
(gurgling) I slit… my throat… but there was no escape… from that eternal… second… of violence…. It did… not… help…
[The Gardener finally dies]
[The ARCHIVIST is sated. For now.]
[Click.]
[Music]
ANNOUNCER
The Magnus Protocol is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 International License. The series is created by Jonathan Sims and Alexander J Newall, and directed by Alexander J Newall.
This episode was written by Jonathan Sims and edited with additional materials by Alexander J Newall, with vocal edits by Lowri Ann Davies, soundscaping by Tessa Vroom, and mastering by Catherine Rinella with music by Sam Jones.
It featured Shahan Hamza as Samama Khalid, Sasha Sienna as Georgie Barker, with additional voices from Beth Eyre.
The Magnus Protocol is produced by April Sumner, with executive producers Alexander J Newall, Dani McDonough, Linn Ci, and Samantha F.G. Hamilton, and Associate Producers Jordan L. Hawk, Taylor Michaels, Nicole Perlman, Cetius d’Raven, and Megan Nice.
To subscribe, view associated materials, or join our Patreon, visit rustyquill.com. Rate and review us online, tweet us @therustyquill, visit us on facebook or email us at mail@rustyquill.com.
Thanks for listening.