1 hour later

Rob, his sons, and Rowan were waiting in the break room, except Rob was the only one being patient. Rowan’s leg was shaking, Matthew was running around the room at super unnatural speeds, and Elijah was keeping his arms crossed so he could lay his head down in them.

The door to the break room opened, and Steve walked inside, walked to a chair next to Rowan, and plopped down with an exhausted sigh.

“Y-You okay, S-Steve?”

Steve leaned forward, massaging his nose, before saying “I’m all that’s left of the Berkan family… huh?”

Rob nodded.

Elijah perked his head up, and asked “Wait, what about me and Matthew?”

“You’re Freemans. Not Berkans.”

…

“Hey, how about a joke to cheer everybody up?” Matthew said ecstatically.

When Rowan and I both looked at Matthew, not sure what to think, we both screamed when a soaringly painful headache took up the entirety of our brains.

Rob stood up fast, and ran over to help me, but before he had even gone around the first corner of the long table… I blacked out, and woke up in the familiar black void with white blobs that together imitated the night sky.

I looked around in every direction, until I laid my eyes on Knightmare, who was standing tall in front of a collection of frameless monitors that formed the letter F. The left, most top monitor showed a blond-haired 13-year-old woman, blood splattering across her face as a pair of kids her age watched in horror.

The next monitor to the right of that one was… me, dropped to my knees, tears streaming down my cheeks in some sort of lab with the only shown power in the room being shown through the light on a computer.

The one below the woman’s showed two faceless beings, one pink and one maroon, with the pink one pinning the other one down with a knife prepared to plunge into the maroon being’s chest. Then I recognized both the beings had flower birthmarks… and the being being pinned down had the same birthmark as Rob.

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The monitor below that one showed what looked to be adult Matthew… but I couldn’t make out anything else. It almost looked like the stuff that surrounded him was a bunch of different kinds of backgrounds pushed awkwardly into one background.

To the right of the Matthew monitor was Rob, holding a battered, bloody, and unrecognizable woman, as his children looked on in horror. Matthew and Rob’s monitors combined were shorter in length than the combined length of my monitor and the woman’s.

Finally, there was a sixth frameless monitor, at the very bottom… showing just Rowan, but me as well… and we were fighting. Fighting as we plummeted through the air.

“Ahh… the art of fear. Isn’t it beautiful? Knowing that at any moment, just having a single thought can completely destroy your ability to succeed.”

“Let me guess. You led Rob here,” I said, stepping closer.

“I’m not in control of everything that happens between you all. Sure, I ordered someone to kill Elizabeth… but there wasn’t a guaranteed chance he’d go to you.”

“Bullshit,” I cussed, stomping towards him. Once I was close to him, I stopped, took a moment to think, and stepped a little further, letting me look straight up at Knightmare.

“You wanted us closer together. You wanted to use us against each other…”

I stopped talking when I spotted Rowan, holding his legs in a fetal position and cradling himself, far away into the void.

I took a step forward, getting ready to run to him, but some invisible wall blocked my path. I pressed my hand against the wall, closed my eyes, and tilted my head down.

“What did you do to him?”

“Simple,” Knightmare replied, “I showed him what happens when you betray your family.”

“You bastard!” I yelled, turning around, only to see Knightmare was gone.

Suddenly, Knightmare, in a disembodied, echoed voice, asked “So… what happened, just before you both joined me?”

“I… there was a voice. It sounded exactly like me… and it was being yelled at. At least… that’s how it felt… were you trying to mess with my head?!”

“Hah! I can barely bring you here. It’s basically impossible for me to alter your brain waves.”

I took a moment to think of a response, and when I opened my mouth… Knightmare spoke again.

“Before you came hear… what happened inside your head?”

My resolved posture faltered for a moment, as I wondered why he jumped to that so suddenly.

“There were… voices, arguing. They sounded familiar, yet… foreign. Just before I could place who, or what they were… I came here.”

“Hmm… interesting. That’s… not what I expected.”

Before I could open my mouth to respond… I woke up.

“Steve! What happened?! Are you alright?!” Rob yelled.

“Where’s Rowan?!”

I spun my head, only to spot Rowan, standing on the other side of the room, alone.

“He’s alright. But what about you? What happened?”

I took a moment to gather myself, my mind barely processing I was back in the break room.

“We’re going after Robert. We know where he is… are you with us?” I asked randomly.

Rob stared at me, for about a minute, before looking at his children.

“Do you have anyone you trust, who can look over them?”

I immediately thought of Issac and Dylan.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll come.”

Lore, Lore, and more Lore.