Chapter Text
Jasper had just stepped out of the restroom when a sudden, terrified scream echoed down the hall. Arnold, who had been sitting quietly by himself, shot to his feet.
"August!?" Arnold gasped, his eyes wide. "What—what's wrong?!"
Jasper spun toward Arnold, then quickly looked back at the doorway, closing the bathroom door behind him. "What did I miss?!"
Before anyone could answer, August burst into the room. He scrambled through the shattered doorway, skidding wildly across the floor and nearly crashing into the plastic tables.
"Woah, woah, calm down, man!" Jasper gasped, lunging forward to catch August before he could fall. "What's going on?"
August was breathless, sweat rolling down his pale forehead. "S-Someone is coming!" he choked out, panic lacing his voice. "We have nowhere to hide!"
Jasper and Arnold's eyes widened in shared horror. "Coming?! From where!?"
"They're walking to the front door right now!" August pointed frantically back toward the hallway. "They were moving through the snow outside, they're—"
A sharp beep interrupted him, followed by a mechanical, automated voice echoing from a speaker tucked somewhere in the breakroom ceiling.
Door Opened.
The three boys froze instantly, snapping their mouths shut.
"W-What do we do?" August whispered, his face crinkling in sheer distress.
Heavy footsteps began echoing down the hall.
Door Closed.
The footsteps grew louder, closer, until a figure stepped into view just outside the broken doorway. The person stopped abruptly, looking up and down at the destroyed frame.
"Jesus Christ, what happened here?" The person pulled back the thick hood of their oversized winter coat, revealing a woman's tired face.
August let out a soft, shuddering gasp as the sheer terror bled out of him. It wasn't his father. It was Claire.
"Who came in here before me and made such a wreck of this place? Thought I was the only one here for now," she grumbled to herself. She hadn't noticed the three boys yet, turning to survey the damage as she backed into the breakroom. "They better not have been playing with those weapons in here again. Barclay explicitly said he wouldn't allow that." She spun around and stopped dead in her tracks, finally seeing the three boys staring right back at her.
Claire squinted, taken aback, before blinking in surprise. "Oh?" A profound look of relief washed over her features. "Did he actually listen to me?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned and left the room. The boys heard the harsh sound of a zipper, and a moment later, she returned, having shed her heavy, snow-covered coat.
"The doctor finally let you all out? Surprisingly, he actually listened to me this time. Strange, though," Claire said, placing her hands on her hips. "He told me he wasn't coming to this facility for another couple of months. I thought he would have at least contacted me if he changed his mind. Though, he is always unpredictable."
The three boys exchanged nervous glances. Doctor Barclay had been gone for a long time. August hadn't seen him in days, having spent practically all his time out of his own transfer chair to keep an eye on Oliver while he was still plugged into his own chair.
"Honestly, the least he could have done was bring you all some real food if he was coming up here," Claire sighed. "Don't tell me you boys have just been eating junk food since you woke up." She gestured lazily toward the vending machine. "Well, I suppose after sitting in those chairs for so long, it's probably not good to consume a heavy meal anyway." But as her eyes focused on the machine, she did a double-take. The glass was entirely shattered, sparkling across the floor in tiny, fractured pieces. "Good God, what happened there?" She blinked a few times, eyebrows raised. "Why is everything falling apart in this room?"
She walked slowly up to the ruined machine, staring at the wreckage. As she turned her head, her gaze finally landed fully on August. For a split second, she froze.
"August?" she breathed.
She blinked, standing up a little straighter. "August?" she repeated, her tone sharpening. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be at your dad's house?"
August stared at her. He slowly shook his head, unable to find his voice.
Claire opened her mouth to speak, but closed it, her brow furrowing.
August swallowed hard. "I... I was in Extraction Room 2."
Claire's expression instantly darkened into one of deep, furious upset. "That's why he told me not to go in there," she muttered bitterly. She looked back at the other boys. "But... he freed all of you now?"
"No, Claire," August admitted quietly. "I—I was the one who freed them. I figured out how to eject my avatar from the world I was sent to."
"So Doctor Barclay had nothing to do with this?"
"N-No," August stammered.
Claire let out a heavy sigh. "That prevaricator..." she hissed, gritting her teeth. "He can never be trusted. He never once tells me the straight truth." Her voice dropped into a hollow, defeated whisper. "What ever made me think I could change the man who took my life away from me..."
Jasper stepped forward, looking her dead in the eye. "You work for him, right? Why? It doesn't sound like you like him very much at all, so why are you still here?"
August opened his mouth to defend her, to point out that she probably couldn't just leave, but Claire beat him to it.
The older woman fixed a tired gaze on Jasper. "It's not that easy," she said grimly. "You've all seen what he can do. This lab, the experiments he pulls off... you don't think a man with that kind of power wouldn't hold a gun to the head of someone he ropes in? He has threatened me multiple times. Threatened my family. I had no choice but to do whatever he told me."
"You can't call the police?" Arnold asked softly.
Claire looked down at the smaller boy, her eyes softening as she sighed. "Sweetie, no. I cannot," she murmured. "With how remote this facility is, the police would never find it."
August tensed. "Claire? R-Remote? What do you mean by remote? How remote are we talking? Since when did my dad even own a building like this?" He already knew they weren't anywhere close to home—the blinding blizzard outside had made that obvious.
Claire met his gaze steadily. "This lab is built right in the middle of Greenland."
The boys' eyes went wide. It was deeply shocking, yet somehow, perfectly fitting.
"Well, that explains all the snow," Jasper muttered. "And it definitely explains why the police can't find us."
"It's not just the that," Claire continued, her tone darkening. "The transfer chairs and the avatars they generate... they're not just vessels for humans to pilot. They also act as black holes, establishing a two-way link between the avatar and the chair. They can suck things directly out of the worlds they go to."
August looked sharply at Jasper, a sudden, heavy realization washing over him. "Venti," he muttered under his breath. It hadn't been Venti's own godlike power that brought him here. The lifeless husk of Oliver's glitched avatar was the anchor that had dragged the bard into their world.
"Barclay discovered that effect and used the avatars to collect things. He has countless fictional weapons hoarded all over this facility," Claire's voice dropped to a cold, deadened pitch. "That man is a cold-blooded demon." She shook her head slowly. "He even has a weapon from one world that can kill a person and instantly dissolve their remains."
A chill ran down the boys' spines. They didn't need to hear anything else. Barclay could use a weapon like that on anyone who got too close or asked too many questions, erasing all evidence of the murder in seconds.
Claire looked utterly exhausted just talking about her boss. "Doctor Barclay is not a good person," she reiterated bitterly. "I have no idea why I keep trying to find the good in him." She rubbed a hand down her tired face. "And just so you know, I'm the only employee actually from this world. All the other workers he 'hired' are people ripped from other universes and brainwashed. I'm the only one from Earth. It's pathetic that I had to get roped into all of this."
Jasper blinked, stunned. "He actually did that?"
August folded his arms tightly across his chest, refusing to meet anyone's eyes.
Claire saw the pain written plainly across his expression. She knew exactly how he felt. "August, I am so sorry," she said softly. "Knowing that he's your father... and having to hear all of this..."
August took a long, shaky inhale, letting it out in a slow sigh. "I already had a hunch," he admitted. "I broke into Extraction Room 3 and found his physical files. The boxes were stacked up practically to the freaking ceiling."
Claire looked at him in genuine surprise. "I've never even been inside that room either. I only had clearance for this one. Extraction Rooms 2 and 3 were strictly off-limits to me. You're saying Room 3 is full of documents?"
"Yeah," August nodded. "An entire room full of them."
Suddenly, a strange, shimmering sound vibrated through the air nearby.
The three boys' expressions instantly warped back into sheer panic. In the stress of Claire's arrival, they had completely forgotten about Mark, who was currently out trying to track down Oliver and Venti. Claire, meanwhile, remained completely ignorant of this other massive problem they were dealing with.
A portal tore open in the middle of the room, and Mark stepped casually through it. "As I expected, I still can't find them anywhere," Mark announced, stepping fully onto the ground. His large, key-like weapon vanished from his grip in a flash of light, and he dusted off his clothes. "I think I'm going to have to try a totally different approach for this." He summoned the weapon right back into his hand, immediately looking annoyed with himself. "Why did I desummon this when I need it to close the portal?" he grumbled. He casually turned the Keyblade in a turning motion, and the portal snapped shut behind him.
In his free hand, Mark was holding a large cardboard box. "Figured you all needed some real food. Actual meals, not just sweets. So... to be completely honest, I have no idea what world I just went to, but I saw a food stand and grabbed this."
Mark set the tray of nutrient-rich, hot food down on the plastic table, a massive upgrade from the sugary cakes and cookies he had fetched from the Minecraft dimension earlier.
As Mark stood up from the table, he finally noticed the three boys staring at him with terrified, wide-eyed expressions. "Are you three alright? Remember, don't worry, food from fictional universes is completely edible in your world," he assured them, misreading their panic. "Or are you just uneasy that Oliver and Venti are still missing? Well, good news! I actually have a little way to—"
Mark abruptly stopped talking. August was aggressively nudging his head to the left.
Mark blinked, arching a curious eyebrow before slowly turning around. His eyes widened slightly at the sight of the woman. "Oh." He looked Claire up and down, then quickly turned back to the boys, utterly baffled. "Since when was there a fifth transfer chair?"
"S-She's not one of us," August blurted out. "That's Claire. She's my dad's assistant."
Claire looked completely bewildered, but she held her ground. "Who are you?" she demanded. "Are you from a fictional universe? You just walked out of a magical portal. Or are you... are you one of Barclay's brainwashed otherworldly workers?"
Mark took a wary step back, glancing at the boys. "An assistant? I don't think I'm comfortable telling you absolutely anything if you work for the maniac who started all of this."
August quickly stepped up, grabbing Mark's sleeve. "Mark, wait. I think it's okay," he insisted. "I always trusted Claire... and honestly, I really don't think she actually wants to be working for him."
Mark looked down at August. "I'm still not taking that risk. I refuse to," he whispered back fiercely. He turned his stern gaze back to Claire. "Whoever you are, please step out of this building, or go back wherever you came from in the first place."
Claire blinked. "B-But who are you? Are you—"
"Please step out," Mark repeated, his tone leaving no room for argument.
Claire swallowed hard and nodded. "Okay," she agreed, choosing not to fight it. Her expression was painted with deep worry as she slowly backed away.
Neither of them was truly in the wrong. Mark was rightfully cautious about trusting an employee of Barclay, and Claire—if she truly hated her boss as much as she claimed—was entirely justified in being terrified of a stranger who could casually summon magical portals.
As Claire backed out of the breakroom, Mark followed her closely, stopping at the shattered doorway to ensure she actually left. He watched her walk down the hall, grab her heavy coat, and pull it on. She punched a quick sequence of numbers into the keypad by the main exit.
Door Opened.
The heavy metal door swung outward, allowing a violent blast of freezing, snowy air to whip down the hallway before it slammed shut, cutting off the storm once again.
Door Closed.
August peered around the doorframe beside Mark, gripping the broken frame. He watched through the tiny reinforced window as Claire's dark silhouette slowly disappeared into the blinding white blizzard.
Mark glanced sideways at August. "It's a shame that door doesn't use a traditional lock," he noted dryly. "I could have just used my Keyblade to seal it."
August blinked. "So it is a Keyblade," he muttered. "Just like Oliver mentioned."
Mark didn't confirm or deny it. He simply turned around and strode back to the center of the breakroom. "Okay. Now that Claire is gone, I have actually found a much better way to track down Oliver and Venti."
"How?" Jasper asked, perking up.
"Meet me in Extraction Room 1."
~~~~~~~~~
"What exactly are you doing?" August asked.
They were all gathered inside Extraction Room 1. Mark had walked right up to a transfer chair. He didn't seem to care which one it was, but August had been incredibly wary of him touching Oliver's old rig, considering how dangerously glitchy it was. He couldn't use Arnold's old chair either, since it had been completely fried and blasted into the wall by Venti's explosive arrival. That left only Jasper's active chair.
"Y-You're not actually thinking about using the chair, right?" Jasper asked nervously.
"Please don't," August pleaded. "They're highly unpredictable, and we might not even have a way to pull you back out!"
"Don't worry," Mark said calmly. "I'm not connecting myself to the avatar. I'm just hoping these machines are a little more advanced than they seem." Mark ran his hands along the heavy metal casing at the back of the transfer chair. "Hmm... it should be right about here." He dropped down onto one knee, feeling blindly along the chassis.
"More than they seem?" Jasper echoed, confused.
Mark's fingers caught on a slight groove. "Got it. Yes, I feel an access panel." With a sharp tug, Mark ripped the metal plating clean off the machine and tossed it carelessly aside.
Reaching into his pocket, Mark pulled out a small, blocky electronic device. He pulled out a bundle of colored wires from it and began expertly splicing them directly into the exposed circuitry of the transfer chair.
"What is that thing?" Jasper asked.
August watched Mark's rapid handiwork closely. "Are you altering the avatar coding? I did something like that with Oliver's to free him. But... wait, if you're hacking it... That means you are you planning to go into the chair?"
"No," Mark repeated. "These transfer chairs are complex machines that project human consciousness into entirely different universes. There has to be something more to how they fundamentally function. They need an incredibly powerful energy core to maintain that connection."
August narrowed his eyes, a memory sparking in his mind. "Claire did say they acted like black holes, or something like that..."
Mark paused. He stopped splicing wires and looked up at August. "Huh." He turned his attention back to the exposed motherboard with a satisfied grin. "Well, that's all the confirmation I needed." Mark held up the small device.
The machine featured a glowing digital screen displaying a faint, empty grid.
"If these chairs truly house that magnitude of energy, I can use this remote to tap into it."
"What... is that thing, exactly?" August asked. The other two boys leaned in, trying to get a better look.
Mark adjusted the device in his palm, making sure the wires connecting it to the chair weren't tangled. "It's something I call a Dimensional Scanner," Mark explained. "I built it a few years ago, but I've had very little use for it. It only works if it's directly connected to a massive energy source that naturally acts as a gateway to another universe." Mark tapped rapidly on the screen. "You said Claire claimed these are black holes? She must have mistakenly said that. She probably meant they contain the equivalent energy of a localized black hole. They can't literally be black holes, otherwise this entire facility would have been gone."
Suddenly, thousands of tiny dots populated the digital grid, flooding the screen with light.
"There we go," Mark smiled. "I'm in... well, almost."
August blinked at the glowing screen, utterly confused by the messy data. "But... what about the portal?"
"What portal?" Mark asked, not looking up.
"The massive portal rim downstairs. Couldn't you have used that instead? Surely whatever this 'energy' is, that giant machine has it too, right?"
"You're not wrong," Mark said. "And I did consider it. But that portal rim holds exponentially more energy than these chairs. Probably more than all of them combined. The rim acts as a grand hub bridging countless worlds. Theoretically, it would require the raw power of ten, maybe fifteen black holes to be stable. Hooking this little scanner up to that much raw output would likely blow us all to kingdom come. But the energy in this chair?" He patted the metal chassis. "It would need to be condensed. It couldn't be the raw power like that. So, it's safe to use the device on it,"
August swallowed hard, the technical jargon making the terrifying reality of their situation settle heavily in his gut. Needing space, he quietly stood up and slipped out of the room.
Arnold, who had been peering over Mark's shoulder, immediately noticed August walking away. Arnold could tell from the look in August's eyes that the other boy was spiraling. Stepping away from the scanner, Arnold quietly followed him out into the hall. He found August standing just a few feet away from the doorway, slumped heavily against the metal wall with his arms wrapped tightly around his own chest.
"Hey," Arnold said softly. He let out a sigh. "I was going to ask if you're okay, but... none of us really are right now, are we?" He offered a small, empathetic smile.
August was silent for a long moment. "I still just cannot believe my dad built all of this," he muttered, his voice hollow. "I know I keep repeating myself, but... I knew he was a brilliant scientist. I knew about some of the tech he developed. But all this extra shit? Brainwashing people? Dissolving them?" He shook his head in disgust. "I guess the ignorance is on me. If the man can literally build a chair that projects human consciousness across the multiverse, no shit he's built other crazy, dangerous stuff."
Arnold reached out and placed a comforting hand on August's shoulder.
"I just..." August trailed off, looking down at the floor. "The thing that shocks me the most is that he's actually hurting people. You heard Claire. She's terrified to even quit her job."
"I know," Arnold agreed gently. "I'm handling this terribly, too, you know? I don't remember a single thing about this world. You and everyone else keeps insisting I was born here, but..." Arnold sighed, his shoulders slumping. "Every time I go to sleep in this facility, I convince myself it's just a nightmare. I think I'm going to wake up back home with my boyfriends by my side, returning to my normal life. But I always wake up stuck here."
"What do we even do when we finally leave this place?" August asked quietly. "I think we've had this conversation before, but what the hell are we supposed to do when this is all over?"
"I don't know..." Arnold muttered softly. "But... Mark is here to help us now. Besides, I think our only priority right now should be getting Oliver and Venti back."
August pushed himself off the wall, standing a little taller. He nodded. "Yeah. You're right."
Arnold beamed, offering a genuine smile.
"Thanks, Richard," August said gratefully. "For... checking up on me."
Arnold's smile turned warm. "Hey, you were there for me when I woke up in that chair for the very first time. I figured I should return the favor." He gave August's arm a friendly pat. "Let's go back inside. Let's see if Mark needs any help."
August nodded, feeling slightly grounded again, and followed Arnold back into the extraction room.
As soon as they crossed the threshold, Jasper waved them over. "Hey!" he called out. "Mark got into the thing... or, well, he did something. I really don't understand what I'm looking at, to be honest."
"He did?" August asked, hurrying back over to the chair.
"Yep," Mark confirmed, gesturing for them to gather around. "Come take a look at this, guys. I think I found something."
Once they huddled closely behind him, Mark pointed to the glowing screen of the scanner. The display now showed a vast blue map overlay. A massive circle dominated the center, but it was absolutely suffocated by millions of overlapping, chaotic dots. Every time Mark panned the screen, hundreds of thousands more dots rendered, flooding the grid into a solid block of light.
"Uhhh... it just looks exactly like it did before," August noted.
"Yes, but watch when I do this," Mark said. He twisted a small dial on the side of the scanner. Instantly, millions of dots vanished, leaving only a scattered handful on the grid.
"Oh!" August exclaimed, but then he narrowed his eyes. "Wait... that explained nothing,"
"These transfer chairs were originally bridged directly to the Genshin Impact universe," Mark explained. "So, I calibrated the scanner to isolate a specific character signature. Right now, it's pinging the location of every single version of Venti across all possible sub-dimensions of Genshin." Mark sighed, shaking his head. "But it's still way too broad. There are millions of instanced sub-dimensions. If there was just some way to know the specific sub-number of the Venti that Oliver is with, this would be a million times easier."
August blinked. He slowly looked up at the large diagnostic monitor mounted above the transfer chair. Thankfully, the screen had survived the earlier chaos and was still displaying data. He looked back down at Mark.
"Mark. The sub is 3921."
"3921?" Mark repeated, twisting around to look at August in surprise. "How do you know that?"
August simply pointed up at the monitor.
"Huh?" Mark turned back around, leaned back and followed his gaze to the ceiling. "Oh!" His face broke into a relieved grin. "Well, that's incredibly helpful. Good catch, thank you."
Mark quickly punched the numbers into the scanner's keypad. The chaotic map on the screen fizzled for a moment before snapping into sharp focus. All the stray dots vanished.
"There we go," Mark muttered. He dragged his finger across the digital map until he isolated a single, aggressively pulsating green dot. "Found him."
"Why is there only one dot? Isn't Oliver with him?" Arnold asked anxiously.
"The scanner is strictly calibrated to lock onto Venti's character. Oliver isn't a fictional entity, so he doesn't have a signature I can track," Mark explained. He squinted at the screen, a deep frown forming on his face. "Wait a minute..." Mark swiped through the data logs. "How many worlds have they..." His tone shifted into pure disbelief as he reviewed the localized tracking history.
"Five Nights at Freddy's? SOMA? Minecraft?" Mark read aloud, shaking his head in absolute bewilderment. "Just how many worlds have they been ripped through? Why the absolute hell is Nerraw dragging them across the entire multiverse?"
Mark pinched the screen, zooming in tightly on the pulsating green dot to see their current exact location. "Okay, right now they're in Sil—"
Suddenly, the screen glitched violently. A terrifying, dark face flashed across the display for a fraction of a second before the scanner completely shorted out, dying instantly in Mark's hands.
Mark and the boys gasped as they stared at the dead device.
"Oh, no," Mark breathed. He scrambled to his feet instantly. "I managed to pull the sub-code for the Minecraft dimension they were just in!" He turned on his heel, ready to bolt out of the room.
"Wait!" August yelled, grabbing Mark tightly by the arm. "Where are you going now?!"
"I can pick up their tracks if I at least go to the realm they were in last!" Mark explained frantically. "I couldn't get the sub-name for the world they just dropped into, but I got the Minecraft one. I need to get to that realm right now. It was... uh... Sub-24345! I'll be back in a little bit, hopefully with Oliver and Venti!"
Without wasting another second, Mark thrust his hand out, summoning his keyblade. Then, he swished it upward, and his portal tore open in the air. He threw himself into it, vanishing instantly and leaving the three boys completely alone in the silent room.
Jasper stood frozen, staring at the empty air where the portal had just closed. He blinked slowly and looked at the other two.
"...How did he remember such a huge number?"