[Intro Theme]
ANNOUNCER
Rusty Quill Presents: The Magnus Protocol.
Episode Forty-Two – Hostile Workplace.
[Music]
[Click]
SAM
(shakily) Alice? Alice, are you alright?
[No response]
SAM
No, no, no! Alice, wake up! (voice cracking) Come on, stop messing around.
[Georgie enters, breathless.]
GEORGIE
Lost it. Damn, that thing moves quick!
How is she?
SAM
(panicked) I… I don’t know. She won’t wake up!
GEORGIE
Shit. How long’s she been out for?
SAM
I, uh… Twenty seconds, maybe? Thirty?
[Alice shifts slightly on the floor]
ALICE
(weakly) Wake me in an hour…
[Sam exhales in relief]
SAM
Christ, Alice. Don’t do that to me.
ALICE
(weakly) No promises.
GEORGIE
I’ll radio Melanie. She should be able to call in a medical team to – oh. Eurgh!
SAM
(alarmed) What?
GEORGIE
Your arm!
SAM
My ar– Jesus!
GEORGIE
Okay, when did it happen?
SAM
Uh – it must have been when it grabbed me…
ALICE
What’s going on?
SAM
Nothing. Nothing, I’m fine. I just need to… I’ll be back in a second.
[Georgie and Sam walk outside, shutting the door]
GEORGIE
Can you… See out of them?
SAM
(hushed, urgent) What? No! Oh, god, will I start to?
GEORGIE
I don’t know. I’ve seen a lot, but this is… new.
SAM
What do we do!?
GEORGIE
(exhales) We can’t just leave them in case it gets worse.
SAM
Worse!? How can it get worse?
GEORGIE
Let’s just say… we need to get rid of them.
SAM
But how do you get rid of extra eyeballs!?
GEORGIE
I mean… I assume, the normal way?
SAM
The normal way–? (realising; faintly) Oh, Christ!
ALICE
(calling from inside) Everything okay out there?
GEORGIE
(calling) All good! Alice, do you have a sewing kit?
ALICE
In the dresser. Top drawer.
GEORGIE
(cheerfully) Thanks!
SAM
(to Georgie) No.
GEORGIE
(dropping the cheer immediately) It’s just like lancing a boil.
SAM
(through gritted teeth) You don’t know that!
GEORGIE
You’d rather they stuck around?
[Sam sighs]
GEORGIE
Well then.
Give me a couple of minutes. Just – Keep an eye on Alice.
SAM
Oh, ha ha.
[Georgie exits. Sam returns to Alice.]
SAM
How we doing?
ALICE
Feels like I was drinking tequila all night, but yeah, I’m okay, I think.
SAM
…I thought I’d lost you.
ALICE
One-all, I guess.
SAM
I don’t follow.
ALICE
I already lost you, remember?
It was your turn.
SAM
Oh right. Yeah…
ALICE
It’s alright. I know you’re not my Sam, but you’re damn close.
(inhales) And now you’re leaving too.
SAM
Yeah.
Sorry.
ALICE
It’s okay.
…
Are you sure you can’t work things out with your Alice?
SAM
I dunno. Last time we talked…
ALICE
You should try doing an apocalypse together. Did wonders for us.
SAM
(laughs) Heh. I’ll give it some thought.
ALICE
Just… make sure you survive this time, yeah?
SAM
Alice…
[Footsteps as Georgie returns]
GEORGIE
Okay. Good news is I found a nice big needle. Great news is Melanie’s managed to call in a med-team and they’re on their way. Bad news is, they said we need to sort your arm ASAP.
ALICE
W-What’s wrong with Sam?
GEORGIE
Nothing serious, just some minor first aid. Right, Sam?
SAM
… (restrained) Er… yeah. (attempting at cheer, badly) Yeah! It’s nothing.
GEORGIE
So! I heated it over the stove and I even found some old rubbing alcohol kicking around with some clean rags, so, we should be good to go.
SAM
Is it going to hurt?
GEORGIE
Probably. Is that gonna be a problem?
SAM
(yes) No…
GEORGIE
Good. Bite down and close your eyes.
SAM
(muttering) …Easy for you to say…
[He bites down on a belt.]
ALICE
It’s alright, Sam. I’ve got you.
[Sam braces, then Georgie unceremoniously stabs down]
[Sam howls in agony through the belt]
GEORGIE
(matter of fact) Hold him.
ALICE
I’m… trying…
[Sam screams in pain and indignant rage throughout as Georgie keeps stabbing: it sounds like five in total]
ALICE
It’s okay –
[Sam sobs]
[Finally, Georgie finishes and steps back.]
GEORGIE
Right.
That should do it.
[Sam’s screaming begins to subside to whimpering]
GEORGIE
(to Alice) You can let him go now.
[Sam recoils and checks his arm]
GEORGIE
See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?
[Sam hyperventilates and sniffles a little]
GEORGIE
The medics can take a proper look at the station, but with any luck we’ve stopped them spreading at least.
SAM
(weakly, still breathing heavily) Oh. Good.
GEORGIE
How’re you doing? If you’re going to puke, try and keep your arm out the way.
SAM
(weakly) No, no, I’m – fine. I just… (swallows) just… need… to…
[He faints in Alice’s arms]
ALICE
Sam?
[A long silence]
GEORGIE
He’s out. He’ll be fine.
He’s had a big day.
[Click]
[Click]
[Sam’s breathing still sounds pained, but much better]
[Scratching noises, which stop when Melanie speaks:]
MELANIE
Scratching at the bandages won’t help. Trust me.
SAM
You have no idea how –
[Beat]
MELANIE
You maybe want to try that again?
SAM
Sorry. It just – it itches like crazy. Oh, god, what if they’re growing back?
MELANIE
Then I’ll take a pair.
Look, I wouldn’t worry, the doctor isn’t. This is nowhere near the weirdest thing we’ve seen from the zone. We had a rookie a couple of years back who got stuck in there for too long, and you wouldn’t believe where he started growing a new face.
[Sam laughs nervously, grimacing]
SAM
How’s Alice?
MELANIE
Sleeping, but they say she’ll recover quick if she doesn’t do anything stupid.
SAM
That’s good.
Where’s Georgie? I thought she’d want to be here.
MELANIE
Well, given what we’re dealing with, she thought it best to go and get – Ah, speak of the devil.
[The door opens; two pairs of footsteps approach]
GEORGIE
(to the other person) This is the one I was telling you about.
SAM
Miss Hussain?
BASIRA
(taken aback) Have we met?
SAM
Oh, uh – I suppose not.
Sorry. I’m Sam.
BASIRA
Georgie got me up to speed. So… you’ve met my double.
SAM
Yeah. You were a deputy head.
BASIRA
At a school?
SAM
Uh… yeah.
BASIRA
Huh.
…
Was it a good school?
SAM
I mean, it was pretty fancy –
GEORGIE
Sam, I brought Basira in to help because she, myself and Melanie are, a-as far as we know, the last people alive who dealt with our Archivist back in the day.
BASIRA
…So it is John then? Or his double, at least?
GEORGIE
We don’t know.
BASIRA
But you did see it?
GEORGIE
What I saw… it was so transformed, so inhuman…
If it was him… he’s completely gone now.
SAM
Okay, sorry, h-hold up. Can I get, like, an explanation of who this John guy is or something? As far as I know this is a monster that came over with me, from my world, and now you’re all acting like he’s an old friend.
MELANIE
Georgie, you care to do the honors?
GEORGIE
You tell it better.
MELANIE
Alright. So… A few years ago, before everything went to hell, we had a… colleague?
BASIRA
A friend.
MELANIE
Meh. A guy, called Jonathan Sims. He was the archivist for the Magnus Institute, and we all ended up working there at one point or another.
GEORGIE
Ahem.
MELANIE
Except Georgie!
So, anyway, he got wrapped up in bad supernatural stuff the same as we did, but he got it the worst. It turned him into kind of, um.
SAM
External?
MELANIE
What? No, no, shut up. He turned into something that sent the whole world to hell! Eventually, he managed to undo it, but it – (quieter) killed him. And… and someone else we cared about.
BASIRA
Well. They disappeared.
GEORGIE
At the exact same time that the building they were in completely exploded. Dead doesn’t feel like much of a stretch.
BASIRA
I mean, you say that, but –
GEORGIE
Let’s not do this again.
SAM
…So you think this archivist might be the same as your archivist?
GEORGIE
Maybe. The eye stuff… The monologues… It’s definitely similar.
BASIRA
Where did your archivist come from?
SAM
I mean, we don’t know exactly…
BASIRA
Best guess.
SAM
We have… had a Magnus Institute in my world, but it burnt down about twenty-five years ago?
BASIRA
(quiet) Lucky.
SAM
I guess. But me and Alice, my Alice, went poking around in the ruins and we think we might have accidentally… disturbed it.
MELANIE
Do you know how long it had been down there?
SAM
No. But it must have been trapped a long time. Since the place was destroyed at least. Maybe longer.
BASIRA
Hm. The timelines don’t work.
MELANIE
That’s assuming time is the same everywhere, which we already know isn’t the case.
BASIRA
True.
GEORGIE
The Institute, the one in your world. Did it still serve The Eye?
SAM
I don’t know what that means.
MELANIE
Did it do a lot of collecting stories, taking statements?
SAM
…No. No, I don’t think so. It was more into alchemy.
GEORGIE
Alchemy? What, like lead-into-gold?
SAM
More like lead-plus-fear-into-gold, but – yeah, sure.
BASIRA
…Interesting.
SAM
So then, what’s this eye you said your Institute was working on?
BASIRA
(exhaling) Oof, lots to unpack there…
MELANIE
Not it.
BASIRA
Fine. So, in our world, fear was like a supernatural force, okay? And it was chopped up into fourteen entities.
MELANIE
Fourteen and a half, really…
BASIRA
Whatever. The point is, each one was tied to a specific kind of fear. Like… the Corruption was all disease and filth and bugs, or the Spiral was kind of like madness and not trusting yourself. Or the Hunt, which…
[She stops.]
BASIRA
(more reserved) You get the idea.
SAM
And your Eye was one of these entities?
GEORGIE
The Eye was a power, yes. One obsessed with being watched.
MELANIE
But that’s not how it works where you come from, is it?
SAM
I don’t think so. My job is – was, categorizing these things for the government, and we had a whole index of way more specific listings.
BASIRA
Can you give me an example?
SAM
Uh, sure. So, like, when I was a kid I applied for the Magnus Institute’s gifted kids outreach program, and… well, long story short… I saw a man’s skeleton claw its way free of his body.
MELANIE
Sounds like Flesh to me.
BASIRA
Maybe Buried?
GEORGIE
So, what did your… index say about it?
SAM
Oh, uh – I think it was something like: Alchemy cross-referenced with human bones, or something.
MELANIE
Okay…
SAM
But that’s not the one I was thinking about. That was just the set-up.
GEORGIE
Go on.
SAM
So, going through that, left me with a real phobia. Of skeletons. Not surprising, really. I get why it was kind of funny. At least, why everyone always laughed when I told them, so after a while I just stopped telling them.
It makes sense. I mean, we see skeletons as kind of goofy, right? Dancing cartoon bones and cheesy Halloween decorations. If people have seen a real one, it was probably cleaned, polished and hung up in a museum somewhere. Not many people have seen them fresh and bloody, with fat and muscle still clinging to them.
As a kid, the phobia was really intense. I don’t know how many Halloween meltdowns my parents had to deal with over the years, but I never told them what happened at the Magnus Institute. I didn’t think they would believe me, and now I’m certain they wouldn’t.
Even now, I can see you smirking, and I do get it. But handing the other kids a cheat code for bullying you is a bad idea, so by the time I was in my mid-teens I’d learned to hide it, just calling myself a “bit of a scaredy-cat.” I still had to steel myself when October rolled around, but it generally didn’t affect my life as much as it had when I was younger.
Then I started training to be a lawyer. I went corporate, nothing sexy like a barrister. I’d never had a calling so I thought I might as well make good money while doing something that I at least found mildly interesting. Anyway, it takes years to qualify, even after finishing your degree and taking all the courses, so I took a job as a paralegal at Akman Blane. It wasn’t what I expected.
There were three others on my team. Natasha Merrell, Anastasia Russing and Anthony… Something, I forget his last name. As soon as I met them, I knew we weren’t going to get along. My parents were pretty well-off, all told, but these three were something else. Every one of them was there because of some family connection, and none of them had any doubt about where their career was going.
Natasha was occasionally kind to me, in a “charity case” kind of way, but as far as the other two were concerned, I might as well have been something they scraped off their shoe. And on top of all the rest of the pressure that comes with working as a paralegal, it didn’t take long for it to start to get to me. Six months in, and I was already getting hit with the holy trinity of insomnia, depression and burnout.
Then Halloween came around. One of them, I think it must have been Anthony, went around taping little cartoon skeletons to all the monitors. It wasn’t aimed at me, I hadn’t been stupid enough to tell any of them, but I, uh… reacted badly.
I don’t remember what happened exactly, but I knew it ended with me crying at my desk. Natasha asked me what was wrong and… I don’t know, maybe it was because she was occasionally nice to me, but I ended up telling her. She nodded, very sympathetic, and said she’d get Anthony to take the skeletons down. He did. And that was the last I heard of it.
Until about a month later, when Anastasia asked me to help her get a ream of paper down from the top shelf of the stationary cupboard. It wasn’t a suspicious thing to do. She couldn’t have been more than five-foot-two, and it wasn’t the first time she’d asked me to fetch something. So, it came as a complete surprise when the door slammed shut behind me.
The cupboard was shallow enough that it didn’t have a light, and as I was plunged into pitch darkness, I could hear three distinct voices giggling to themselves. It was only as I turned to open it that I saw what was waiting for me.
Pinned to the inside of the door was a glow-in-the-dark paper skeleton, you know the ones with those pale green bones that stand out in the gloom? I froze. Terrified. I wanted to scream, but I choked it down. I knew the reaction they wanted, and however close I might have been to a breakdown at that point I was damned if I was going to give them the satisfaction.
Then something changed.
I don’t know how to describe it, exactly. It was like the fear inside me, mixed with something, became something entirely new, not just inside me anymore.
I screamed when the skeleton began to peel itself off the door. Its two-dimensional grin opened wide as its legs flailed, stretched and spasmed, dancing like in those old cartoons. And it reached out its arms towards me.
It couldn’t have been more than ten seconds between my scream and when our boss, Jean Pearce, pulled the door open, but apparently my face was already covered in papercuts.
So, yeah, I don’t know how that fits into whatever system you use for these things…
MELANIE
It doesn’t.
[Beat]
BASIRA
Anyone else clock when it turned into a statement?
SAM
(surprised) What?
MELANIE
You think it’s nearby?
GEORGIE
I don’t think so. The squad has definitely been more… eloquent since it arrived, but it all seems to be just a general effect near the zone.
BASIRA
…So far.
GEORGIE
Hmmmm.
MELANIE
I’m guessing you didn’t stay in that job much longer?
SAM
I tried, but my nerves were shot. A week later David pulled me into his office for the “not everyone can handle the pressure” talk and I was “encouraged to move on,” right out the door.
GEORGIE
Anyway, the point is that regardless of whether this Archivist is John or not, it’s not working the same as it did before.
SAM
I don’t even know if it’s quite the same as it was in my universe either.
BASIRA
What do you mean?
SAM
Well, for one thing, the eyeballs are new. I’m wondering if this “Eye” thing you have has changed it.
BASIRA
Had. It’s gone now.
GEORGIE
Unless having another Archivist changes that.
[A long silence]
BASIRA
Well, shit.
GEORGIE
Yeah.
So given all that, if anyone wants out now is the time, because either way, this is going to get messy.
[Beat]
BASIRA
I’m still in.
SAM
And it’s not like I’ve got anywhere else to be.
[Another beat]
MELANIE
You know I can hear when you’re all staring at me, right? Obviously, I’m in. I’ll just leave the shooting to you guys.
GEORGIE
Well… okay, then.
SAM
So does that mean I’ll be getting a gun? Because I haven’t actually –
GEORGIE, MELANIE & BASIRA
No.
[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, Billie Hindle as Alice Dyer, Sasha Sienna as Georgie Barker, Lydia Nicholas as Melanie King.
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.