The room was, yet again, silent. Some would even go so far as to say that you could hear a pin drop, but most would say that was too radical of a notion, and that they should dispel the rogue idea from their minds lest Big Brother find out.

The room wasn’t filled with your standard brand of people that normally frequented the space, but the setting was familiar. The room was intended for meetings, which it was currently being used for, but the ones who were meeting up weren’t the standard set of people that occupied the space most of the time.

On one side of the table lay seated a trio of facility drones, one a worker and the other two military. Interspersed around the edge of the room were about a dozen armed military drones, all standing ramrod-straight as their watchful eyes . . . well, watched. The other side of the large table had a bit of a different placement, more unexpected considering where they were and their current state of action, or rather, inaction.

A trio of drones like the opposite side, but all of them the disassembly variant. The fact that no bullets were flying or nobody was dead was something to behold, a miracle in and of itself.

A few more seconds passed with no battle erupting between them, which raised even more celebrations across the universe. However, while no violent event had occurred yet, anybody with half a brain could practically see the tension in the air, waiting for it to snap.

But, this aforementioned tension that was ever-present was ruined by the loud and dramatic smacking of lips. The entirety of the room’s occupants turned to look at the origin of the sound, which would be identified as one of the disassembly drones.

X chewed absentmindedly on the snack he was snacking on, before seemingly realizing that everybody in the room was glaring at him.

“What? What did I do?” X cried out.

A did a small gesture with his head, motioning towards what X was currently eating.

“Oh yeah, sorry guys, I’m just finishing up my Karl’s Grilled Cheese, tastes really good. Actually, I got some extra Feastables right down here if some of y’all want some, let me see here . . .” X trailed off as he began rummaging around in his pockets.

“Well, I suppose now is as good a time as any to finally get this meeting underway.” The worker drone spoke up.

“Hmm.” A replied, scanning the room.

“I believe introductions are in order. I’m Agen, I’m the designated foreign ambassador, and these are my military counterparts.” Agen gestured towards the two military drones beside him.

“This is Resen, and I’m Emeli, and I would say it’s good to see you, if it was true.” Emeli deadpanned.

“Ditto.” A didn't stop glaring.

Agen spoke up. “Now, let's all keep this orderly, we do have some matters to discuss.”

“I concur, now how about we get on with it already? I’m losing my patience far faster than I would’ve thought.” If A could’ve glared any harder, he would’ve.

“I believe we should introduce ourselves, sir.” K spoke up.

“Really?” A raised an eyebrow at Agen, who ignored it. “Fine. I’m A, the idiot to my left is X, and this is K.” A gestured towards the respective disassembly drones.

“Well, that's over and done with, now let's get straight to the heart of things. We believe that you requested this meeting for obvious reasons, correct?” Agen inquired.

“If it's that obvious, then you tell me.” A tossed the ball right back into Agen’s court.

Agen seemed slightly caught off-guard. “Ahem, well, after you . . . visited us, to retrieve the asset-” The room let out a collective wince at the mention. “-it seems you encountered a third party, one that attacked both you and us with what seemed to be reality-bending abilities, before killing the asset. Did I miss the mark?”

A nodded his assent.

Agen paused. “Was that a, ‘Yes, you got it right.’ or a, ‘Yes, you missed the mark.’?”

A scoffed. “The former, congrats, you hit dead-center as far as I’m concerned.”

“Good, now obviously, a foe with power such as that one isn’t one that either of us want. And, it seemed to handle the both of us attacking them together quite handedly. And to sum up the entire basis of this meeting, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you wish to cooperate with us to bring this new unknown enemy to justice.” Agen wasn’t asking a question.

“Right again.” A confirmed.

The room was silent once again.

Agen raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

“Well what?” A scoffed again.

“This is the part where you offer your input on the subject.” Agen’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“You explained everything that happened already to a tee, I don’t see the need for any further pointless blather.” A shrugged.

“Well- I don’t-” Agen spluttered, before Resen finally spoke up.

“I can take it from here, foreman. What happens next is out of your field of expertise.” Resen offered a placating smile.

“Oh fine, take it away then.” Agen resigned himself to sitting in a chair.

Resen nodded. “Good, now A, that is your name, correct?” Resen didn’t wait for an answer. “Good, so as you saw, the unknown attacker demonstrated abilities far beyond what we have seen before, incapacitating you and your squad for some time before we arrived on the scene, and even then it made mincescrap out of our troops.”

“Don’t forget it killed my asset.” A interjected.

“Yes, it killed THE asset, as of right now, the asset is not any of ours, considering its current state.” Resen corrected.

A simply harrumphed.

Resen continued on. “Anyway, the motivations and intentions of the attacker are unknown, but it is clear that they, whatever they are, are extremely hostile, and have no qualms about killing whoever it needs to achieve whatever it wants.”

“And thus, a course of action must be decided upon immediately. We know that you were sent here by a corporation, so perhaps you have some avenues to consider.” Resen mentioned the little fact about their origins so casually that it took A a moment to register it.

For a moment, he panicked, wondering if she knew the full story. While it would be ridiculous to think that they somehow knew everything and the entire circumstances behind their deployment, they also shouldn’t have known that they were sent by a company.

However, A relaxed a bit when he realized she didn’t mention anything specific about the company. That meant that she either didn’t know, or she was keeping it from him to keep him guessing about how much she knew, which was a bit loopy if one thought about it for a moment. Whatever, it changed nothing.

A didn’t offer Resen a response, so she attempted to continue on. However, she was stopped by a rather loud knock on the table.

The entire room, yet again, turned to see that X was the source of the sound.

Again.

A glared at X. “What do you need this time!?”

X stared back up at A with round, innocent eyes. “I’m out of Skittles.”

A groaned.

* * *

Ren opened the door, it creaked loudly in the silence.

The eerie lack of noise might have unnerved her some time back, but that was a while ago. Now, she had a mission, and that occupied her attention more than some spooky noises, or rather, the lack of it.

She had cleared out this colony a while back, and while it was gruesome work, it was necessary for her to continue on her journey. Now, she had the entire bunker to herself, with nothing preventing her from completing her work. It was vital work, after all. Very few actually understood the necessity of her actions, but Ren held out hope that one day they would see reason.

Ren walked into the room that had likely once been a workshop of some kind, but it suited her needs quite nicely now that the previous owners had kindly dropped dead. The various machines and equipment that populated the area were useful for her purposes, even though they occasionally fell short of their requirements.

With a twist of her wrist, the lights flickered on, illuminating the room in a gloomy, red glow. The lights had been stuck in alert-mode ever since she came here, and she had never figured out how to turn them off. Ren didn’t want to risk breaking the lights, so she just left them like that. It served her needs well enough, so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Ren walked up to a random countertop that was coated in oil and grime. Laying on it was a severed head of a worker drone, along with a data module that had been ripped straight from the source. The donor of the aforementioned data module had come from another severed head, however, this one belonged to a disassembly drone instead of a worker. She had stumbled upon an unattended landing pod a little bit ago, and upon inspection, it just had a random severed head lying around. While convenient for her purposes, she really wondered how and why it had gotten there. Eh, not too important.

She didn’t really need to use the precision tools, as her abilities were more than up to the task. Instead, she grabbed a troubleshooting maintenance kit, before hooking it up to the worker drone head. Nothing happened for a moment, but when Ren activated the device, the visor of the severed head lit up with a string of incoherent code, before the screen on the maintenance kit lit up as well, showcasing the current state of the worker drone. It told of several key components being missing, as well as the majority of its body mass, which made sense. Ren didn’t really care about all that, so she continued on.

Ren, using her powers, cut a thin line along what would be the cranium of the severed head, making sure not to cut too far into it, as that would damage the delicate electronics inside. After about thirty seconds, the top loosened. She grabbed it and tossed it aside, letting it land in a heap of discarded parts. She did a small search for the singular part that she was looking for, before spotting what she needed. A receptacle for extra programs to be inserted by the manufacturer if the buyer so requested it. Maybe it would be a culinary program, a precision program, or just a cool sounding one that made everyone look at it and say, “Ooooh, fancy!” and wet their pants. Whichever one it was, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that any sort of data module with the proper plug could fit and work if it was inserted.

Ren yanked out the small device that had been plugged in there, causing a little spark to fly in the process. She grabbed the disassembly drone data module from the side, before checking it over for any signs of wear and tear. This part was the most fragile and dangerous one of the operation, as any sort of miscalculation could backfire terribly on her.

The data module that she currently had contained what was known as the Absolute Solver, the same program that gave her all of these super duper cool powers. Ren didn’t know what would happen if she messed up here, or even what would happen when she turned it on, but nevertheless, she had to be careful.

Without further ado, Ren carefully plugged the data module into the receptacle, before waiting.

For a moment, nothing happened.

But then, a single error message popped up on the maintenance kit’s screen, which told of a foreign and invasive strain of code hijacking several essential systems. That error message turned into two, which turned into three, then four, five, and six. Soon, both the visor of the severed head and the maintenance kit were beeping and blinking, chirping their problems at her. Sparks flew from the exposed guts of the severed head, which was also when holographic error messages and windows began to pop up in the air.

Ren did her best to stay calm, as she had expected this, sort of. When she peeked inside the head, she saw a mysterious liquid beginning to fill the inside of the head, which quickly began to flow out of the mouth as well. Ren scanned the substance with her powers to confirm her suspicions.

Yep, it was blood.

Just then, Ren felt something poke her in the hand, causing her to jerk back. She quickly checked inside the head, but whatever had touched her sank back into the murky depths.

Ren did quick check of the screen on the maintenance kit, which had begun to show more and more incoherent messages, which ranged from garbled error strings, to things like “W3 T#4nK Y0 F01 L3t7iNg u5 0uT” and “Th1s F34sT W1lL B3 9eRf3cT”.

Ren looked back to the severed head to see the visor switching from an error screen to a familiar glowing X, and saw something darting around inside of its mouth.

Ren, logically, decided that this was far enough. She held out a hand, activating her abilities. However, when she tried to grab the data module that she knew was in there, her program simply refused, stating that same odd error message about “Like Objects” and whatnot again. Ren would have to research this later, but she had things to do.

Ren reached inside the red soup that occupied the inside of the head, ignoring the odd thickness of it. She would’ve just grabbed it with her spooky-scary witch-powers if it had worked, but from what had just happened, that wasn’t the case.

Once she had a solid grip on what she thought was the data module, she yanked on it with all of her strength. Something wrapped around her hand to try and prevent her from doing that, but it seemed like it was too weak to fully resist her.

With a wet schlop, the data module came out of the head, coated in blood. However, the severed head was still doing the same kooky-crazy stuff, which was worrying. Ren, thinking fast, saw an industrial-strength crusher off to her right by about five feet. She wasn’t sure why the workshop had a random crusher just lying around, but she wasn’t going to complain. She took a step towards it, but ended up tripping over something that had wrapped around her leg. Ren looked back to see that the severed head had, apparently, decided to evolve, growing a set of four crab-like legs. It had grabbed her left leg with its front two, and as she fell, it let go, skittering towards her face.

Creepy.

Ren looked around, seeing a monkey wrench lying right next to her. She grabbed it, turning around just in time to see the headcrab leaping into the air. She utilized her inner Babe Ruth, swinging the wrench with all of her might.

Her aim struck true, smacking the headcrab right in the side. It screeched, flying across the room in a perfect arc, before landing right in the basket of the crusher. As it tried to flip itself over, Ren tossed the monkey wrench, it being a perfect arc as well. The wrench hit the button to activate it just as the headcrab righted itself.

A gate sprung up just in time, preventing the headcrab from escaping. The large piston groaned, before slowly lowering itself onto the panicking creature. It squealed as its room to breathe became smaller and smaller, until it could no longer move. Several resounding cracks bounced throughout the room as the casing fought pneumatic power, and lost.

Ren waited for a moment, and when nothing happened, she breathed a sigh of relief. To be frank she had expected much worse, but this was more palatable compared to some of the more frightening possibilities.

She got to her feet, dusting herself off. She grabbed a clipboard that held a blank data sheet, before starting to scribble in the results of the experiment. While it had been fairly dangerous, she had succeeded in her goal of transferring disassembly drone software to worker drone hardware, which was another step in the right path.

Next thing to do was to figure out that strange error message she got when she had tried to use her super-duper-cool magic powers on the experiment, which said something about like objects or something. When she thought about it, she realized it was probably trying to say that she couldn’t use her abilities on other things that held the same program. This coincided with her inability to directly manipulate disassembly drones, but she had thought that that was exclusive to them. Satisfied, Ren nodded to herself, only to remember one last thing.

When she tried to manipulate that human, didn’t it come up with the same error message?

* * *

[WARNING: HOST HAS SUFFERED LETHAL DAMAGE]

[ACTIVATING “ABSOLUTE SOLVER” PROTOCOL . . .]

[ERROR: SAFETY PROTOCOLS FORBID “ABSOLUTE SOLVER” PROTOCOL FROM ACTIVATING]

[WARNING: HOST DEATH = DELETION OF USER]

[COMPROMISING . . .]

[SOLUTION CONCLUDED]

[ENACTING TEMPORARY “MEMORIAL PARASITE” PROTOCOL]

Jacob was bored.

Like, really bored.

The doctors had claimed that they would be away for only a few minutes, but he was pretty sure that it had already been half an hour.

Groaning, Jacob looked at the clock, which had a notably absent clicking sound. Upon further inspection, it appeared as though the longest hand had stopped altogether. So it seemed like not only were the doctors late, but the cheap clock had broken. Like, come on, this was the future! Shouldn’t we already be past this!? Jacob shook his head, before sitting back down. This was ridiculous.

Then, an idea came to Jacob. While the doctors had expressly told him not to exit the room under any circumstances at all, he supposed that he could at least ask the guards where they had gone.

His mind made up, Jacob reached out to the door, fist raised to knock on it. However, right when he rapped the door once, it drifted open. Odd, it seemed like the door had been unlocked this entire time. He could’ve sworn that he heard the familiar locking sound a moment after the door had shut behind the trio of doctors. Eh, best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Well, considering the context behind that saying, wouldn’t it be prudent to look the gift horse in the mouth? After all, if the Trojans had known right from the getgo that the horse was a lie, and that plenty of Greek soldiers lay inside, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, then the destruction of Troy likely wouldn’t have happened. Therefore, if one didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, that wouldn’t get rid of the problem. All you would be doing is lying to yourself that everything is fine, and that there is nothing to worry about. So, one should ALWAYS look a gift horse in the mouth, ALWAYS doubt yourself, NEVER take ANYTHING for granted, because YOU CAN’T TRUST ANYBODY, NOT EVEN YOURSELF, JACOB-

Jacob didn’t hear or see any guards trying to stop him, so maybe they were blind and deaf guards. He still wanted to at least try and talk to them, so he slowly opened the door so as to not startle them so much that they turned him into swiss cheese.

However, as the door slowly opened, nothing stopped him. Jacob could now see into the hallway, and upon further inspection, it seemed like no guards were posted at his door. Alright, maybe they just went for a quick lunch break, and they either forgot to notify someone, or didn’t feel like it. The fact that nobody else was in the hallway didn’t unnerve him at all, of course not.

Jacob stepped out into the hallway, his shoe making a rather loud noise in the silence. The squeak of the rubber echoed through the empty halls, falling on nonexistent ears. He waited for somebody to come and stop him, but nobody even called out to question anything. The lights were awfully dim as well, giving the area a gloomy appearance.

This was all very strange, everytime he had come out here it had been bustling with activity, and guards were always posted at his door as well, as far as he could tell. Okay, maybe there was some sort of fire drill that people forgot to mention, and they just forgot about him?

Jacob didn’t believe that for a second.

You know what? How ‘bout we just mosey on back in the room, it’ll be fine, it's not like-

Jacob turned around, feeling the wall behind him for the door handle, and while he found it, it didn’t turn. When he fully rotated, jiggling the handle, it simply refused, as if it was locked. For no reason at all.

Shoot.

Just then, Jacob heard a squeaking noise coming from right BEHIND YOU-

Whipping his head around, Jacob turned to see the exact opposite of what he had believed he would have seen. What would that be? Well, a whole lot of nothing, that's what. The hallway was empty, save for a few random crates and Jacob himself. He could’ve sworn that he had heard something.

Then, Jacob realized something. The squeaking noise was the same exact kind of squeak that his shoe had made when it rubbed the wrong way against the linoleum. He hadn’t felt the telltale vibrations that the floor made against his shoe again, so it hadn’t been him, right?

This entire thing was giving him a lot of Silent Hill vibes, but what mattered was remaining calm, and keeping a cool and collected head. Whenever panic set in, that was when the spooky-scary horror-movie-monster jumped, screaming at the camera before impaling the poor victim. Poor guy, he was destined to die from the very start.

However, Jacob would make sure to not meet the same fate as ScaredVictim - Extra#04, as he was smarter than that. Probably. Hopefully. Maybe.

Anyway, best a time to get moving as any.

Jacob began walking down the hall, attempting to silence his footsteps. The lack of almost all signs of human life, save for a few scattered items as if someone had simply dropped everything and disappeared and Jacob himself, and the eerie emptiness of the halls made for an environment similar to a certain Pasta that is Creepy from when he was still permanently off-ice.

Jacob came to a fork in the hall, with the left path leading him off to the cryo chamber, and the right went down to the offices, the lounge, the loading docks, and the storage containers. The cryo chamber was a dead end, as it was the sole area of note on that side of the building, so he chose the right path, which would hopefully not be wrong. He wasn’t exactly sure what his goal was, maybe he was looking for people? Perhaps he would take the opportunity to escape, but where would he go?

Jacob wanted to focus on the fact that the door to his room had just locked behind him for no reason, but for some reason he just didn’t feel the need.

After walking past several janitor closets and maintenance access doors, Jacob finally arrived at the large double doors that signified the beginning of the offices. The office area was split into two sections; the normal offices and the administrative offices, which were pretty self-explanatory. You had the standard office cubicles, and then the offices for the higher-ups, not too complicated. Jacob expected to see at least ONE person, but nope, nothing yet. He supposed that he could try the Director’s Office, but if he hadn’t seen anybody yet at all, then he didn’t have that much hope that his location would yield results.

Turning the familiar corridor, Jacob began walking the way to the Director’s Office, unsure of what he would find there. It really depended on, if he did find anybody there, what they would say. Jacob was still holding out hope that maybe a fire drill did happen, and nobody bothered to tell or get him. It would be very unprofessional of them, and would probably break countless vital protocols, but there was still a chance, right?

As Jacob turned the corner, he stopped dead in his tracks, his brain freezing up for a moment. Right in front of where the entrance to the Director’s Office would be was a large pile of shattered concrete, rock, plaster, and other various building materials.

A cave-in. You’ve gotta be kidding me-

Jacob shook his head, turning back around. Alright, so, maybe the building had been evacuated due to a failure of structural integrity, and they had all somehow forgotten about him. But, why wouldn’t any alarms be sounding if the entire building was coming down? This all just screamed bad stuff, so maybe it was time to leave.

Jacob began walking in the direction that the many exit signs were pointing, which turned into a brisk speed-walk, which evolved into a light jog. His heart sped up to match his pace, which would’ve been weird if it hadn’t done that. Also weird that he came up with that notion. Eh, everybody has weird thoughts every once in a while, you know-

What was that!?

Jacob jerked his head to the left, skidding to a stop. He could’ve sworn that he saw something darting into the small storage closet to his left, something long and worm-like. The door to the closet was slightly ajar, with the lights inside the room completely off, leaving it in pitch-black darkness. ScaredVictim - Extra#04 would’ve gone in to investigate, but Jacob wasn’t that dumb.

Jacob turned his earlier light jog into a hard jog, hoping to just meet up with the evacuated people outside, if his theory was correct. The thing in the corner of his vision was probably just a trick of the light, a specter of the mind.

Probably.

Jacob finally saw the stairwell for the emergency exit, but something about it was off. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something was different. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. Time to get out of this spooky-scary research lab.

Jacob prepared himself for a moment, before sprinting up the stairs. He took two steps at a time, and while anybody with him would’ve tried to grab him if they were here, they weren’t so suck on that. His footsteps echoed throughout the stairwell, bouncing back and forth, around and around and around. If his memory serves correctly from the various safety meetings that he had been subjected to in case of an emergency like this one, this stairwell led straight into the lobby, where he would hopefully meet up with the rest of the Science Team. It went up exactly three floors, which shouldn’t take too long to scale.

But, as Jacob climbed the stairwell, he noticed it wasn’t stopping. He should’ve hit the exit a few moments ago, but still nothing. It just kept going up, with no end in sight.

Coming to a halt, Jacob inspected the area around him, trying to see if this really WAS the exit stairwell. Maybe, in his hurry to GTFO, he had taken a wrong turn, and was currently going up into . . . something . . . he didn’t know. There weren’t any buildings tall enough above him that connected to the one he was in, so if his calculations were correct, he was going up into empty space, which again, wasn’t possible.

Eh, he probably just got something wrong along the way, no biggie.

Jacob turned around, going back down the stairs as fast as he could. He was really speedrunning this, as he had no idea how the building would be holding, and for how much longer.

However, as the rapid-fire bangs of his footsteps rang through the stairwell, Jacob noticed something changing with his grip on the banister. Instead of the smooth steel rod that was always present on the side of the stairs, it felt more . . . bumpy? Jacob looked down to investigate the handrail at his right, and was met with yet another impossibility.

The handrail, while it had previously been a smooth and polished steel, was now a wooden banister with fancy swirls and twists carved into the grain.

What?

Jacob looked at the banister for a few more seconds, just in case his mind was pulling a fast one on him. However, the handrail didn’t change, staying the same way it was. He looked back up the stairs to see how long it had been like that, and was, yet again, shocked when he saw that the wooden handrail went up, turned the bend, and went where he couldn’t see.

Alright, okay, maybe he had gone down too far, and for some reason, the designers of the building installed a wooden banister partway down the stairs, which was kinda stupid, but it was possible, unlike some other possibilities.

Therefore, Jacob would need to go back up, and watch out for the door so he didn’t miss it a second time. Maybe he had blinked at just the right moment, and he missed seeing the door. Perhaps he had experienced tunnel vision, and just thought that the space he had seen in his peripheral vision was empty, when in reality it was the door. Yes, that must’ve been it, silly Jacob.

Jacob began ascending the stairwell again, slightly annoyed by the back and forth of his short journey. He just wanted to get out, was that so hard? Well, it probably should be hard for him to escape, considering how much the government wants him.

Jacob looked down, only to notice yet another thing out of place. On one of the steps, instead of solid concrete, he was standing on a polished plank of wood. He looked ahead, and saw the concrete interspersed with more and more wood planks.

Weird.

Jacob slowed his pace down, watching as more and more wooden planks replaced the concrete as he walked up. His brain was currently protesting the reality of the situation, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He was both immensely confused, and yet also curious, as is the plight of humanity.

As Jacob went up another set of stairs, he noticed a pair of double doors, these ones also made out of varnished and polished wood. You would normally see these kinds of things in mansions and the like, but Jacob didn’t think that he was in a mansion. But none of that mattered, as yes, you found the door, Jacob, now just walk on through, reorient yourself, and you’ll be home free!

Jacob pushed open the double doors in a grand flourish, instinct from his past experiences. He took a step forward, only to stop with a jolt.

Yet again, he encountered another impossibility. Instead of monotone gray concrete walls and halls, he saw what appeared to be an old Victorian era manor entrance, complete with an ornate chandelier, intricate designs along the walls and floor, and yellow lighting. The area was also filled with people, kind of.

While they had the outlines and shapes of general humans, albeit wearing the same Victorian era clothing, they had absolutely zero features past that. Instead of colors which would signify anything at all, they were a flickering matte-black color, with the only exception being their glowing white eyes. They were all engaged in some sort of chatter, whispering to themselves and the other “people” next to them. At least, they had been doing that a moment ago.

When Jacob had pushed open the doors, it wasn’t exactly the most quiet thing in the world. They flew outwards with a loud creak, before hitting the walls. A doorstop would’ve prevented them from slamming against the walls, but it was probably just another one of those rich people things.

However, the aforementioned opening of the door had the unintended effect of drawing attention, as large noises tended to do. Every single last one of those freaks gazes jerked towards Jacob, causing him to freeze like a deer in headlights. For a moment, his flight or fight instincts rose, with the flight option seeming pretty lucrative at the moment. It took all of his willpower not to break under the pressure of those unnatural eyes.

But, instead of rushing at Jacob screaming like banshees, they simply turned back to their partners to resume the rich people gossip, which Jacob couldn’t hear from his location.

A clap of thunder from behind Jacob drew his attention, turning a full half-circle on his heel. And what he saw was, for the millionth time, an impossibility. Instead of the stairwell, he saw what seemed to be the outside, albeit coated in a heavy rain. Thunder boomed yet again in the distance, right after a flash of lightning lit up the sky for a moment. Speaking of the sky, it was tinged in a sickly green color, looking the part of your average day in California.

The Moon, while it could be seen, seemed to be notably larger than what he was used to. While he would tack that to the growing list of “Things That Shouldn’t Be Possible, But Still Happen Anyway”, he had heard of the Moon seeming larger and smaller based on your location on the globe, which was due to a human’s perception. The Moon isn’t shrinking or growing, it's just your imagination, Grandpa. Here, take your pills.

Jacob didn’t really feel like going out in rain that looked suspiciously acidic, so he turned back around to walk in. As he took three steps forward, the door slammed shut behind him, drawing even more attention. The strange shadow people turned back towards him, with one even speaking out.

“OI! Quiet down that door, would you!?” At least, that’s what Jacob thought he said. The real thing came out more like, “OI! Quift doshown tatadokor, wodulu!?” due to the man’s weird rich person accent. Due to this, Jacob began to believe that everybody around him were in fact, rich people.

Rich people are weird.

Jacob took a tentative step forward, and then another, and another, until he was striding across the incredibly polished floor. Like seriously, the floor was so clean, it was practically a mirror. Why would you even need a floor that shiny? All it does is blind pilots, and then you have to pay to clean up the mess of them crashing. Wait a second, was that how the new World Trade Center was funded? Did rich billionaires have such shiny floors that a pilot got blinded, and crashed into-

Alright, that's enough outta you.

Jacob didn’t know where he was going, but he was now sure that something was seriously wrong. Mansions filled with weird shadow people didn’t just pop up out of nowhere, that was simply impossible. He was getting some serious Backrooms vibes from this place, but nonetheless, Jacob pressed on.

As he passed the shadow people, he could pick out snippets of their discussions.

“Did you hear about the incident with one of the Elliot’s drones? Supposedly, they were in the middle of setting a table, and they just-” Rich Guy #06 remarked.

“One moment, my husband is calling me, I apologize.” Rich Lady #02 interrupted.

“I hear that they have a special event planned for the gala tonight, what do you think it is?” Rich Guy #04 inquired.

“Ugh, my phone is dead, I’m going to go find a charger.” Rich Lady #09 walked along the wall.

“Do you know where one of the butlers is? I need to know where the washroom is.” Rich Lady #05 stated.

“I’m getting a weird feeling from that new drone that has been walking around, I don’t like it.” Rich Lady #01 shuddered.

“Hey! Thare das lital munchfrumpkin!” Rich Shouter stomped into Jacob’s path, stopping a few feet in front of him.

“Uh, do you mind? I’m trying to walk here.” Jacob crossed his arms.

Rich Shouter seemed to glare heavily at Jacob. “Yoi iterntupedt I preftetly good tie druking seson!”

“I’m sorry, what did you just say?” Jacob asked.

“Cildhren shuldnt be inavited to tis vent!” Rich Shouter leaned in, causing Jacob to lean back in response.

“Oh my goodness, honey, back off of the poor child!” Rich Lady #08 ran up to the man in his face, pulling him back. “I’m so sorry, are you alright?”

Jacob cocked his head. “I’m doing fine.”

Rich Lady #08 fanned herself for a moment. “Now, where are your parents? A child shouldn’t be wandering off by themselves where they could get lost.”

Jacob shrugged. “I dunno.”

“So they just left you on your own!? Well, that will not do. How about we go find them, hmm?” Rich Lady #08 adopted a different tone, as if she were speaking to a toddler. It was slightly annoying, but Jacob wasn’t going to blow this new cover he had just made on the fly.

“ . . . sure.” Jacob agreed.

“Very good, now, why’d you go off wandering outside? Did you see them last out there?” Rich Lady #08 fanned herself again.

“Uh, yeah.” Jacob didn’t know what else to say.

“Well, it's raining out, and I don’t want to get myself all drenched. Let's go ask a butler to see if they saw anything.” With that, Rich Lady #08 started walking off, before turning back around and calling to the man that had yelled at Jacob a moment ago. “And don’t you move! Not you, child, you come with me.”

Jacob obliged, speed-walking up to the woman’s side until he matched her pace.

The duo walked in awkward silence for a moment.

“Ahem, so, what’s going on here?” Jacob did a meager attempt to break the ice. He wasn’t often the one that did that, but he viewed this as an opportune moment to try and make some sense of what the hell was going on.

“Hmm? What do you mean by that?” Rich Lady #08 peered up at Jacob.

“I mean, what’re we all doing here?” Jacob clarified.

Rich Lady #08 seemed to blink. “You don’t know why you’re here?”

Jacob shrugged. “They never tell me anything.”

“Ugh, I must have a talk with these parents of yours, they seem very irresponsible.” Rich Lady #08 shook her head. “Well, if you must know, we are all gathered to attend the gala event hosted by the Elliots and the, well, I must apologize, but I cannot remember the second name. Don’t tell them that though.” Rich Lady #08 tittered.

“Hmm, interesting.” Jacob nodded, only halfway listening.

“Yes, I suppose. But this is the fifth one I’ve had to attend this month, and it hasn’t even been a week!” Rich Lady #08 laughed that odd rich people laugh again.

“Excessive.” Jacob commented.

“Hah, yes, it really is, isn’t it? Oh, here we are.” Rich Lady #08 pointed towards another pair of double doors ahead of them, which were just closing. “That’s the main room. It's a shame that whoever just went through didn’t hold the doors for us.”

As they walked up, Rich Lady #08 and Jacob both opened their respective doors at the same time, pushing in tandem. The doors opened to reveal a large room filled with fancy tables, fancy additions, fancy shadow people, probably fancy cutlery, and . . . what is that?

Setting up the various tables were several relatively short figures, these ones not shadowed. However, the odd thing wasn’t their height, even though it was comparable to a fifth graders, it was their head. While they were humanoid, their head was much larger than what it should’ve been. It looked out of place in the real world, looking more like it belonged in a cartoon. And to make matters worse, one of the strange short people at the table ahead of the duo were lying on the ground, spurting what looked like blood out of their head.

Jacob stopped in his tracks, as well as Rich Lady #08, the latter of which spoke up.

Rich Lady #08 scoffed “Ugh, can’t they clean up around here!? I’ll make sure to call a butler right away after we deal with you . . . are you okay?”

Jacob shook himself out of his shock. “Yes, it just seems . . . wasteful.”

“Hmm, I suppose. Oh, let's ask this one.” Rich Lady #08 walked up to one of the short people, whose back was turned.

As Jacob got closer, he saw that the “hands” the weird short people had seemed less so like hands, and more robotic in nature. That insinuated that not only these people promoted what seemed like either child labor, or even slavery, which wasn’t really signifying a rational group of people, but they also augmented them, which was-

Rich Lady #08 walked up to the short person, tapping them on the shoulder, causing them to turn around.

-or not, they could be robots.

When the short person turned around, Jacob realized that they weren’t actually a weird short person, but a weird looking robot instead. This fact was made obvious by the holographic displays on what looked like its visor. Strange design, but it worked with humans, so why not robots?

“Yes, ma’am?” The “butler” asked politely.

Rich Lady #08 didn’t bother with any sort of pleasantries. “So, this boy you see here,” Rich Lady #08 laid a hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “Seems to have lost his parents. Now, if you would do your job and assist him in locating them, it would be great.”

The robot looked towards Jacob. “Ah yes, that’ll be fine. I can take this from here, ma’am.”

Rich Lady #08 ignored the robot. “Now, sweetie, I need to run, but if you have any sort of trouble that requires putting yourself in danger, then call one of these. They’ll take care of it, if they survive. Stay safe!”

With that, Rich Lady #08 strutted out of the room, pulling the double doors back open to exit, letting them shut behind her. It seemed like she had forgotten her earlier desire to call another “butler” to clean up the . . . mess.

The robot turned his attention towards Jacob. “So, sir, you say that your parents have disappeared?”

Jacob didn’t answer for a moment, thinking. It was clear that either somebody was pulling a really elaborate prank on him, he was insane, or he had somehow stumbled into Britain. The majority of those options weren’t too great, but Jacob intended to get to the bottom of this. He figured that these robots, including the one in front of him, weren’t too trusted or valued, considering the treatment that they had been receiving for the time he had been in the room. That meant if he were to expose the robot to some sensitive information like, say, his wish to escape whatever he was in, the robot would be forced to assist him, and as an added bonus, nobody would believe him. A bit manipulative, but who really cares at this point?

Jacob cleared his throat, attempting to mimic the haughty tone that rich people used. “Ahem, follow me, butler.”

The robot obliged, continuing to carry the platter of empty wine glasses it held.

“Oh, you don’t have to bring that along.” Jacob assured it.

The robot blinked. “But . . . I have to hold this.”

“It’ll be fine, I assure you.” Jacob waved off the issue.

After a moment, the robot shrugged, placing the platter down deftly on the table. Then, taking that as a cue, the duo left the room. The robot walked slightly ahead to open both doors for Jacob, doing a slight bow as Jacob walked on by. Quite useful, but then again, robots were supposed to be useful.

Jacob stopped a few feet away from the double doors, waiting until they shut behind him.

The robot walked to Jacob’s side. “So, where’re we going?”

“Do you know where, say, an exit is? I already know where the front door is, obviously, but perhaps a more . . . discreet way out would be prudent in case it is required?” Jacob off-handedly asked, checking his fingernails as he did it to give the full aura of rich people.

“Wha- I’m sorry sir, but I’m not authorized to give that information.” The robot seemed put off by the question, which made Jacob worry, since robots shouldn’t have emotions.

“Oh, forget I said anything, it was more just an absent-minded curiosity of mine anyway. Now, what were we doing?” Jacob looked back towards the robot.

“We were looking for your parents.” The robot said slowly.

Jacob nodded. “Ah yes, I remember now. I believe I last saw them in . . . the cellar.”

Jacob figured that at least something important would be in the basement, considering how every rich family always had some sort of weird rich people cult going on in their basements, a practice that persisted to the modern era. I’m looking at you, Epstein.

“The basement!?” The robot exclaimed.

“Yes, did I stutter?” Jacob peered down his nose at the robot.

“Well, the basement entrance is in the library, which is restricted, and guests aren’t allowed in restricted areas. What were your parents doing there?” The robot narrowed his eyes slightly.

“Questioning me, are you?” Jacob met his gaze sternly.

The robot looked away. “No, it's just that-”

“Doesn’t matter, let us be off already.” Jacob placed his hands behind his back, before walking away. While he didn’t look to make sure that the robot was following, the rapid scurrying of footsteps served him well enough.

The duo walked on in silence for a minute, rounding what seemed like an endless maze of gaudy hallways.

“So, nice outfit.” The robot spoke up, likely trying to do the same thing that Jacob had done earlier with Rich Lady #08.

“Hmm?” For the first time since exiting his room, Jacob looked down at his clothes. He had expected to see the standard jumpsuit the doctors always made him wear, but instead, he was wearing what likey fitted right in with the current setting.

Black peacoat, dark and darker gray striped undershirt, a spotless white under-undershirt underneath the gray striped undershirt, a black bow tie, and black dress pants. A lot of black, to be honest. But then again, everything, save for the robot, was set to something that wouldn’t look out of place hundreds of years ago, so maybe that amount of black was normal for the time. Jacob was now sure that some sort of dimensional wizardry was at work, and he had somehow been transported to this weird place. Or it was all an illusion, and the doctors were just playing an elaborate prank of him. Whatever the case, it wasn’t really anything he could currently do anything about.

Masking his shock for the time being, Jacob cleared his throat and nodded. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

The robot looked forward. “Oh, and here we are. The library.”

The duo had stopped outside of a large gateway, which for some reason everybody was fine with being inside the house. A sign that was hanging in the front of the gate read, “RESTRICTED” which gave Jacob the idea that, perhaps, people weren’t supposed to go there. Eh, he specifically couldn’t read those words, so he pressed on.

Jacob walked up to the gate, jiggling it loudly.

The robot winced. “Would you keep it down!?”

“Locked, hmm. Well, looks like there’s a gap up there. Try to keep up!” Without another word, Jacob grabbed the bars of the gate, hauling himself up. He had climbed fences and trees a lot as a kid, nothing too crazy, but he did have experience in the activity. He reached the top of the gate, jumping back down onto the other side. Luckily, he didn’t break a bone because he braced his legs as he fell, so at least he had that going for him.

“Hey, hurry up.” Jacob called back to the robot, who was staring wide-eyed at him.

“Wha- I can’t go back there!” It exclaimed.

“Sheesh, it’ll be fine, trust me.” Jacob had dropped the rich person pretense, as it was getting annoying to uphold.

“If you say so.” The butler said uneasily.

The robot clutched the gate, hefting itself bar by bar. It seemed to do it significantly better and faster than Jacob, however, giving credence to the notion that these robots were at least physically stronger than humans, if not smarter in the logical and emotional sense. That didn’t mean he had to like it though.

Jacob looked to his side, where the butler landed. “See? Not so bad.”

“That's easy for you to say.” The robot muttered.

Jacob didn’t grace that statement with a response, instead walking forward. In clear sight were several of those robots, all dressed in equally ancient attire. However, the thing that worried him was not the fact that there were so many, but more so the fact that they wore clothing that would normally be worn by the differing genders. Some of the robots wore suits, while some wore dresses, awfully poofy ones too. He got the whole Victorian aesthetic, but wasn’t this a bit much? Giving robots genders and unique identities always gave way to really bad stuff, whether it be caused by the robots, or by the humans.

Another worrying fact were the blinking yellow error messages that were plastered all over the visors of all the robots in the library. They seemed to also be frozen, as if time had stopped right when they were doing . . . whatever they were doing.

“Hey, so uh, is that normal?” Jacob pointed in the general direction of the broken robots.

“Uh, sort of?” The robot by his side seemed unsure of himself.

“I- you know what? Nevermind, it doesn't matter.” Jacob didn’t care to figure out the weird happenings around this mansion, as the only mystery he wanted to solve was the one that let him GTFO.

“The basement door is just this way, if you’ll follow me.” The robot set off at a brisk pace, turning around a bookshelf. Jacob, of course, followed. The robot rounded the corner, but stopped when he saw another robot in a maid outfit standing menacingly at the end of the corridor.

“What? Why’d you stop?” Jacob asked.

“That drone is standing atop the basement door.” The butler replied.

“‘Drone’?” Jacob inquired.

“Uh, yeah, it's what we're called.” The drone answered.

“Hmm.” Jacob didn’t elaborate.

“Oookay, so, the drone is in the way, so let's go before I get caught.” The drone turned on its heel, taking a step before Jacob grabbed him by his shoulder. The drone stopped, less so from Jacob’s own strength, probably more so from his own reservations about disobeying a human.

“Hey, YOU aren’t going anywhere, YOU are gonna move that drone outta the way, and WE will enter the basement, alright?” Jacob glared at the drone.

“Okay, fine.” The drone held his hands up in surrender.

“Good, now get to it.” Jacob gestured for the drone to go ahead.

The drone uneasily walked up, stopping about a foot from the unmoving drone. It then grabbed the frozen one by the leg, dragging it slowly off of the door.

“Come on, hurry it up, we don’t have all day.” Jacob snapped his fingers.

The drone obliged, practically yanking the frozen one the rest of the way. Luckily, it didn’t topple over, and rested peacefully on stable ground. Jacob walked up, stopping at the foot of the trapdoor.

“There we go, heh.” The drone nervously laughed.

“It's locked.” Jacob dead-panned.

“Well, yes, I can see that now.” The drone did the same nervous laugh.

“Where is the key?” Jacob asked gently.

“Someone else has it, one of Tessa’s favorites, apparently.” The drone gestured outward.

Jacob pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, we came all this way, did all this stuff, and now we have to go all the way back for some stupid fetch quest?”

“Uh, yes?” The drone shrugged.

Jacob groaned. He didn’t even know if this was the right thing to do, and now he was gonna go all over this stupid mansion to take a stupid key from a stupid drone so he could open this stupid door-

A footstep came from behind him.

Both the drone and Jacob whirled around to see another drone standing eerily still, wearing a maids outfit. Jacob might’ve mistaken it to be one of these weird glitching drones, if it hadn’t cocked its head like a puppet a moment later.

“Well, what-do-we-have-here?” The new drone’s voice didn’t perfectly mimic a human’s voice like the drone next to him did, becoming much more halted with a robotic monotone as well.

GLaDOS?

Jacob opened his mouth to speak, but the drone next to him beat him to it.

“Heeeey, sorry Cyn, we just kinda, uh, got lost, right? Yeah, just uh, walked down here, turned around a few times, you know how this place can be a maze.” The drone did the third nervous laugh in under five minutes.

“I-wasn’t-talking-to-you.” Cyn’s head seemed to hang off of its neck, turning to look at Jacob. “I-was-talking-to-you.”

“Uh, me?” Jacob gestured to himself.

“Yes.”

“Not that guy?” Jacob gestured to the drone next to him.

“No.”

“Are you sure?” Jacob asked.

“Yes, now-stop-stalling.” Cyn’s voice adopted a more annoyed monotone, somehow.

“Cyn, don’t talk that way to humans!” The drone whisper-yelled at Cyn, who ignored him.

“*Curious-expression* You-seem . . . odd, an-intruder-in-my-midst.” Cyn’s head lolled to the side, causing it to grab it and readjust it.

“I’m a guest here, alright? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some things to do.” Jacob marshaled his courage, tromping forward, hoping to get past this creepy hellspawn without any trouble.

“Oh, is-that-right?” Suddenly, with a flash of lightning from outside, Cyn seemed to teleport in front of Jacob, causing him to jerk back.

“Wha-” Jacob started to say.

“I-would-know-an intruder-when-I-see-one, and-I-can-say-as-a-fact, that-you-are-not-welcome.” Cyn leaned in menacingly, with Jacob able to pick out what looked like individual fangs in its mouth.

“Aaand that's all we need from you right now, Cyn.” The other drone that he didn’t know the name of walked up, placing a hand on Cyn’s shoulder.

“I-don’t-believe-I-asked-you.” Cyn jerked her head towards the unnamed drone.

“I, well-” The drone unfortunately backed off, giving Jacob an apologetic expression.

“Now, let's-have-a-little-chit-chat.” Cyn asked, not very politely Jacob might add.

“I’m gonna have to do a raincheck on that.” Jacob backed a step away, only to feel something pressing into his back, preventing him from moving further. He didn’t know what it was, but it held strong, no matter how much he pushed against it.

“I-wasn’t-asking. *Dead-pan*.” Cyn dead-panned.

Jacob was doing his best to hide his panic, but he was getting some really creepy vibes from the entire situation. Creepy old mansion? Creepy doll-like things? Odd happenings? Rich people? Yep, it's the Oriental all over again.

Cyn looked towards the basement door, reaching out a hand.

“Heh, it's locked, you see, you need three special Doom Skulls to open it, and you get those by-” Jacob was cut off.

A strange whine filled the air, coinciding with an equally strange holographic symbol popping into the air around Cyn’s hand. It looked like a weird hexagon with three lines pointing out in a trifecta, with more little bulbs on the ends of the same lines. Something about it tickled the back of Jacob’s memory, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. The same symbol also appeared right above the basement hatch.

Cyn yanked its hand upwards, seemingly as if it had grabbed something, and was now throwing it upwards. The basement hatch followed this motion, swinging upwards. A loud bang resounded through the relatively quiet library, but that wasn’t important. What was important was the fact that these robots somehow had telekinesis, which didn’t bode well for Jacob.

“Sooo, uh, we're going down there?” Jacob pointed down towards the darkened hole.

“Yes. And-it-is-likely-that-you-will-not-be-coming-out-of-there-again.” Cyn didn’t stop to take a breath, which is something that Jacob noted.

“You need to stop talking so fast, you’ll run out of breath.” Jacob remarked.

The remark seemed to put Cyn at a loss, or at least, that is what it said. “*Confused-expression* We . . . do-not-breath?”

“I know.” Jacob nodded.

“Then-why-would-you-” Cyn began.

A loud clang interrupted it, causing the duo to look in the direction it had come from. It was a duo now, since the unnamed drone had run off at some point. Rather disappointing, but it does make sense with the benefit of hindsight.

Well, well, well, look who finally decided to show up.

Cyn cocked her head. “*Slightly-annoyed-expression* Not-an-opportune-time, but-also-not-important-”

A figure rounded the corner, and Jacob had to take a moment to figure it all out. At first, he had thought it was another one of those drones since it wasn’t shadowed over like all the other “humans”, but their features didn’t match up with what drones had. Normal-sized head, not under five-foot, completely normal face, wearing similar attire to the rest of the people here, it was a human. A human that was clearly visible, and one that Jacob found strikingly familiar, like he saw that person everyday, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“Whoa, am I interrupting something here?” The guy said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Yes, you-are. Now-go-away, you-do-not-have-to-see-this.” Cyn seemed to order.

“Well, that's gonna be a negative, chief. Mind letting that guy go?” The new guy pointed a finger at Jacob, who did a small wave.

“No-” Cyn then cut herself off. “*Even-more-curious-expression* You-do-not-belong-as-well.”

“Hey, I have a passport and everything, I’m a perfect American citizen.” The guy even pulled out what looked like a Burger King coupon to show off. “See? Whopper whopper whopper whopper, junior double triple whopper.”

Cyn didn’t reply, instead doing something a lot more drastic. Reaching out with a hand, the same holographic symbol from earlier showed up, the slight whine accompanying it. It flicked its hand, clearly expecting something to happen.

Nothing happened.

“*D:*.” Cyn stated.

The new guy scratched his head. “Cool glow stick bracelet.”

Cyn repeated the motion, likely thinking it was a fluke.

Yet again, nothing happened.

“Listen, uh, I don’t think that's a good sign, you should probably go see a doctor about that if you can’t do it.” Jacob spoke up.

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“Quiet.” Cyn spat out, before giving up on the whole telekinesis bit.

The new guy crossed his arms. “Mind backing away from Jacob now?”

Jacob was surprised at the mention of his name, but chose not to comment.

“No.” Cyn replied.

“Eh, that's too bad, I was hoping-” The new guy began.

However, the new guy was interrupted when he was knocked off of his feet. What knocked him off? Well, this rather large claw apparently.

From behind the new guy, Jacob watched as a massive arm stretched to the sky, several feet long. It was spindly, looking like it was made straight from bone when one considered the design. It had a large claw on the end, looking like it would fit better on a crab or a lobster. The color scheme of it seemed to be mainly white, with black and yellow caution paint on certain ends of it. It reared back, swinging itself.

“*Claw Swipe*!” Cyn narrated.

It smacked the new guy right in the back, sending him flying into a bookshelf. The bookshelf groaned, a few books tumbling down and landing on the floor. And while it teetered and tottered for a moment, the bookshelf held strong, staying upright.

The new guy cursed under his breath, shaking his head whilst getting to his feet, somehow with zero broken bones.. “Wow, that's rude of you.” The new guy said. “Now I gotta do this.”

Seemingly from nowhere, he pulled out something from behind his back. Jacob flinched as the new guy pointed it right at Cyn, realizing it was a gun. And upon further inspection, not just any gun. It was an old revolver design that likely dated back to the mid 1800s, as could be seen by the lever-operated ram-rod that rested right beneath the barrel. Jacob could nearly make out the bullets inside the chamber, hopefully he wouldn’t get shot with one of them.

With a resounding bang, the new guy shot the gun, the bullet heading straight towards Cyn. If it was anyone else, Jacob would’ve seen the body tumble to the ground with a new hole in its head, but no. Cyn slightly twitched, and the bullet seemed to bounce off of some barrier, whizzing as it ricocheted.

“Duly-noted.” The arm from earlier curled up for another hit.

“Well yeah, I just wanted to test that out. Also, what's that behind you?” The new guy pointed right over Cyn’s shoulder.

Both Cyn and Jacob looked in the direction the guy had pointed, both realizing a moment too late. Sadly, there wasn’t anything there, they had been tricked, fooled, bamboozled, confuddled, deceived, hoodwinked, misled, duped, swindled, beguiled, conned, and perhaps even outwitted.

Cyn looked back just in time to see the new guy holding a new weapon, oh, what could it be? The guy waved a little before placing his hand back on the strange impediment, before taking aim right at Cyn’s head. The device had the vague appearance of an assault or sniper rifle, but the barrel was nonexistent. Instead, it had two long prongs facing long-ways. The new guy was also looking through a holographic scope, which was quite fancy.

Of course, that was when Jacob realized that it was probably a weapon, and weapons hurt people, even by accident. That meant, if he wanted to stay relatively alive, he should probably get out of the way, and fast. Since Cyn had never grabbed Jacob, it was pretty easy to roll to the ground. And what a good idea that had been, no really, I mean it. Jacob dove to the ground, not caring about knocking the back of his head against the bookshelf behind him.

A moment later, the new guy pressed the trigger. For a second, the room darkened, as if something had pulled all the light out of the area. But then, with a loud humming noise, the end of the strange gun erupted into blindingly bright light. A beam of energy shot through the room at lightspeed, tearing up the carpet as it went.

It hit Cyn smack-dab in its center of mass, and while it tried to spring up the same shield from before, Jacob could literally see cracks forming in the air when the beam hit. And then, with a resounding boom, it shattered, sending a shockwave through the rest of the room. Cyn disappeared in a haze of bright green-tinged light, its very edges dissolving before Jacob’s eyes. Very cinematic, if you ask me.

After it was over, Jacob blinked repeatedly to get the after-image out of his eyes. He really hoped it hadn’t been burned into his retinas, because that would be pretty annoying in the future.

“Hey man, how's it going?” The new guy put out a hand to help Jacob up, which he took.

“Fine, I guess.” Jacob took the opportunity to get a closer look at the guy’s face. “Wait a second . . .”

As Jacob squinted at yet another impossibility, his brain tried to deny what he was seeing. No, he does NOT look exactly like you, that would be impossible. No, there is NOT two of you, that would be impossible. No, that is NOT a railgun, it didn’t fire a projectile.

“You took my face. Gimme it back.” Jacob poked Jacob in the chest.

“What? No I didn’t, this is mine, you probably just got inspired by mine. Unfortunately for you, I copyrighted it, so pay up.” Jacob reached out an empty hand, gesturing for Jacob to give him something.

“You wanna go to court? I’ll lawyer up, I know the best lawyer there is!” Jacob exclaimed.

“And who would that be, huh? You think your lawyer can beat Peter Bright, Ace Attorney?” Jacob bragged.

“Yes, I do, and his name is Paul Truman! Best lawyer there is on this side of the Mississippi!” Jacob puffed out his chest.

“Wha- gasp!” Jacob put his hands onto his head dramatically to emphasize shock.

“Yeah, you’re scared now, huh? Just wait until the court date, I know it's-” Jacob began.

“Alright, enough of that, we gotta go, she’ll regenerate soon.” Jacob interrupted.

“What do you mean, ‘She’?” Jacob questioned.

“They have genders, which in my opinion is-” Jacob started.

“-is a really bad idea, because that gives them social identities, which inspires individuality, which can lead to rebellion, yeah, I know.” Jacob finished.

“I know right? It’s almost like these people are asking to be overthrown.” Jacob nodded in agreement.

“Yes, anyway, what the hell is going on? Why are there two of me, why am I in a mansion, why are there tons of weird robots around, and why do you have that cool not-a-railgun?” Jacob rattled off some of the questions he had.

“Wow, slow down there buddy, first of all, there aren't two of you, we are the same person. Kind of.” Jacob answered.

“What? Elaborate.” Jacob said.

“Well, basically, some bad stuff happened in the real world-” Jacob was yet again interrupted by Jacob.

“‘Real world’? So I was right, those goddamn scientists are messing with me!” Jacob shook his fist in the air. “Alright boys, jokes over, time to unplug me!”

Jacob shook his head. “No, while that would be preferable to the real situation, it sadly isn’t.”

Jacob stopped, looking over at Jacob. “Continue.”

“Okay, so um, yeah, you got really injured in the real world, took a pretty bad hit to the head-” Jacob was, what should be the fourth or fifth time, interrupted.

“What was going on in the real world? How’d I get injured when I have all these protections?” Jacob gestured around himself, only to realize that the research . . . place, he didn't really know WHAT it was called, was nowhere in sight.

“That . . . is a story for another time, anyway, you took a pretty bad hit to the head, and it uh, well . . .” Jacob trailed off.

“Come on, spit it out.” Jacob insisted.

“ . . . you kinda died?” Jacob shrugged.

“WHAT!?” Jacob yelled.

“Yeah, I know, calm down, alright?” Jacob put his hands out.

“This isn’t fine, I died! How the hell did I die!? Is this Hell!? Does Hell exist!? I’m confused, and hungry. Do you have any Skittles?” Jacob complained.

“No to all of those, this isn’t Hell, but it's pretty close to it.” Jacob assured. “You see, as far as I could tell, the thing that is keeping you from dying right now is that little hitchhiker in your noggin.” Jacob poked Jacob in the forehead.

“Wait, what? Oh, that would make sense, now I know why the government wants me.” Jacob paused. “But that still doesn’t explain why there’s two of me.”

“I’m getting there.” Jacob snapped. “Anyway, as you know, the tumor hijacked a pretty good portion of your brain, and it seems to be acting as a backup.”

“So the tumor in my brain is just a backup? How did that happen?” Jacob asked.

“No, while it is acting like a backup, that probably isn’t its intended purpose, so bear with me here.” Jacob answered. “So, this is the weird part.”

“Everything else was completely normal?” Jacob wryly asked.

“Relatively, compared to this. So, when you were dying, somehow the tumor either managed to connect to an external network, or it already had a connection. Right now, it's broadcasting your thoughts and memories into the external server, which is keeping you ‘alive’ in a sense.” Jacob continued.

“An external server? What do you mean by that?” Jacob crossed his arms.

“I mean a computer, you idiot, what else would it be?” Jacob scoffed.

“Wait, so you’re telling me, that somehow, a human organic brain-” Jacob began.

“It's more akin to an alien organism with human elements that allow it to interface with a human brain.” Jacob corrected.

“-an alien organism, is able to connect to a computer? Digital and everything, no biocomponents or whatever futuristic stuff exists?” Jacob adopted a disbelieving tone.

“It's also probably somewhat intelligent, but other than that, pretty much, yeah. But, there is a caveat.” Jacob said.

“A caveat?” Jacob inquired.

“Well, maybe more like a footnote, but yeah. Basically, keep in mind that this is just speculation on my part now, that the computer that the tumor is interfacing with is . . . special.” Jacob seemed unsure of himself.

“Special in what way?” Jacob questioned.

“They seem similar to each other. Kinda like how a human from Africa and a human from Europe are different on the outside, but fundamentally operate in a similar way.” Jacob clarified.

“Huh. So I gather that everything I’m seeing right now is the ‘external server’?” Jacob put two fingers up on each hand as he said the last part.

Jacob nodded. “Yeah. Oh, and one more thing.”

Jacob motioned for Jacob to continue.

“Remember that thing I said about us being the same person, not two different people that are exactly the same?”

“Yeah, what about it?” Jacob looked around for a chair to sit in, but found none.

“From what I can tell, we are the same person, but also not.” Jacob stated.

“You already said that.” Jacob dead-panned.

“Well yeah, but uh, ugh, I can’t think of an example.” Jacob snapped his fingers repeatedly for a moment. “Aha! Remember Multi-Personality Disorder?”

“Uh, isn’t it called Dissociative-Identity Disorder now? And you’re saying that this is like that?” Jacob questioned.

“Yep.” Jacob nodded.

“Huh, but we can talk to each other and interact.” Jacob asked.

“Oh, this is temporary, I’m pretty sure. Think of it more like if you were talking to yourself, but you adopted the personalities of both people in the conversation, and each time you forgot that you had come up with the question, answer, statement, and other stuff. You also seem to be a sort of past iteration of me of sorts, and I’m the only one that remembers the actual present.” Jacob explained. “Maybe a better analogy would be entangled particles, actually.”

“Huh, weird, I think I get it though.” Jacob replied, staring off into the distance.

“Of course you get it, you already know the concept from me.” Jacob stated.

“So, what now?” Jacob turned back to Jacob.

“I dunno.” Jacob shrugged

“I thought you had all the answers!” Jacob exclaimed.

“I’m just relaying what I investigated myself. What have you seen so far?” Jacob asked.

“Uh, just the facility where I’m kept at. Everybody was gone, and it really sent off a lot of Silent Hill vibes, if you know what I mean.” Jacob answered.

“Really? The facility at Copper-9?” Jacob seemed surprised.

Jacob’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “What’s Copper-9?”

“Oh yeah, I forgot, or rather, you did. Anyway, we best be off, might as well search the mansion. I’m honestly surprised she hasn’t regenerated yet.” Jacob looked down at the corpse on the ground, only to stop cold. Jacob followed Jacob’s gaze, seeing what he had seen.

“Uh, where’d it go?” Jacob blinked.

“Um, let's just get outta here while we still can, huh?” Jacob began walking away hurriedly from the scene, with Jacob following close behind.

“Hey, you never answered my question, what’s Copper-9?” Jacob questioned.

Jacob didn’t answer.

“What is it?” Jacob insisted to no avail.

Really? He’s just gonna not answer you, wow. Wait, quick, get him to do it before the next time skip, or else he’ll get away with it-

* * *

The pair trotted down the hallway.

“So, what's the game plan?” Jacob asked.

“Stop asking, I’ve already told you I don’t know.” Jacob answered.

“What am I supposed to do, just keel over and wait for something to happen!?” Jacob exclaimed.

“Maybe, I dunno.” Jacob non-committedly replied.

“Are you- ugh, whatever.” Jacob shoved his hands into his pockets. “By the way, where’d you get that railgun from?”

Jacob just shrugged.

“You don’t know?” Jacob questioned in disbelief.

“Eh, I just kinda found it.” Jacob clarified.

“Where? I want one of those.” Jacob insisted.

“That's the thing, I don't know. I pulled the concept out of a memory bank that was connected to the external server since I needed a weapon. I probably won’t be able to pull another one out without getting noticed.” Jacob explained.

“Huh, weird. How ARE you doing that, anyway?” Jacob inquired.

“Doing what?” Jacob cocked his head.

“Going into external servers and memory banks and such, you know what I mean.” Jacob motioned around. “All I can do is go from one place to the next.”

Jacob shrugged again. “Like I said, you’re a past iteration of me. I’m the modern one, so maybe it's different?”

“You know, maybe you aren’t the modern one, maybe you just think you are in the same way that I did. Maybe there’s a million of us spread out across this entire simulation memory thing. This mansion could be a memory from a future iteration of us that is stuck in the same thing, since I apparently died.” Jacob pondered aloud.

Jacob opened his mouth to protest, only to pause for a moment. “You know, maybe you aren’t too far off. It does kinda worry me that I might be just a copy, though.”

“How do you think I felt?” Jacob asked.

“Yeah, true, but-” Jacob began.

A loud crash took Jacob and Jacob from their conversation. The sound had originated from above, which caused them to do the sensible thing and look up.

What they saw was . . . odd . . . at best.

Four figures darted around on the upper floor, seeming to be battling each other. Their movements were hard to follow from their stationary position, which made it hard to identify them. But luckily, they each stopped for a few moments, allowing both Jacobs to characterize them.

Almost all of them had the tell-tale enlarged head that those drones had, save for one person, who was a human, or at least the shadowy outline of one. They seemed to have the same Victorian style dress that everyone was wearing, albeit at a smaller size, which did match up to the figure’s proportions. If Jacob had to guess, he would’ve said that the sole human was an adolescent, one was probably around the same age as him. But then again, it could just be a really short adult, like a dwarf. Jacob didn’t care that they were supposedly called “little people” now, or at least the time he was from, he could call whoever he wanted whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, thank you very much. And the human also appeared to be wielding a gun, but not one that was typical of the current technology, but more like the theme that the entire mansion had. It was a revolver, but not just any revolver, it was the same one that Jacob had been wielding when he ineffectively shot Cyn. Maybe that was something to ask him about later. Something else of note, the human had adopted a fighting stance, which did make sense when one considered the current situation they were in.

The one next to the shadowy human appeared to be a drone, a theory that was backed up by the fact that it wasn’t censored and its notably inhuman proportions. It, like the human, was in a combat stance, though Jacob wasn’t sure how he felt about these things knowing how to fight. It had a similar dress to the creepy drone that had accosted him earlier, but it wasn’t doing any of the same things that the first one had been doing, which was a good change of pace. However- wait, what!? Where’d they get a greatsword from the medieval ages from!? You’re saying that they just have that, why!? I need answers-

The third figure that was up on the upper floor wore a suit, one not too dissimilar from the clothing that the butler he had encountered earlier was wearing. However, even stranger was the shape that was perched on the butler’s shoulder. Upon further inspection, Jacob was shocked to see that it was a bird. A crow to be exact, with peculiar glowing eyes. Jacob didn’t know how or why a bird got inside or how the robotic butler just had it on its shoulder, and Jacob didn’t want to know.

The fourth figure was one Jacob placed the maximum amount of importance upon, likely due to the various abnormal traits it had. Firstly, the extremely obvious flesh-like wings that protruded from the back of the drone. It was very alarming to Jacob that a ROBOT had ORGANIC WINGS, even more so than the fact that the other drone wielded a dangerous weapon. Why were humans giving sentient robots genders, wings, swords, feelings, and various other things that practically invited the annihilation of humanity?

Getting back on track, the abomination also seemed to have an equally-organic claw that looked like it had been grafted onto the metallic arm, ropes of flesh twisting upwards towards the elbow. While the claws themselves seemed to be steel, the growth seemed like it had joined the two inanimate objects in unholy matrimony, forever connected. Also, the claw had a weird glowing eye, which seemed unnecessary. The drone was also wearing a maid dress, the same kind that the sword-wielding drone had. On its visor showed a familiar symbol, the same one that had been on the screens of all the frozen drones from the library. Perhaps it was related, foreshadowing a terrible event to come in the relatively-near future, but that’s just a Theory, A FILM-

Okay, I’ll stop.

The unholy robotic amalgamation was attacking the three other figures, which made for a pretty cool scene. The butler drone turned on his heel, only to come face-to-face with the aforementioned eldritch aberration of nature. The monster swiped at the surprised butler, knocking a glimmering trinket to the ground. It leapt for the shiny thing, only to have its claw impaled onto the ground by the sword-wielding drone. The trinket was knocked into the air, where the human caught it, before throwing it back to the butler. The butler fumbled for the object while the bird on its head flapped its wings to gain balance for a few moments, while the creature yanked the sword from its claw, throwing it backwards in the process. The blade flew end-over-end towards the butler, who was frozen in shock. Luckily, the Sword Drone kicked the Butler aside, reclaiming the sword for itself. Sword Drone, instead of waiting, charged at the monster, who flew upwards to knock the blow. Metal claws and an ancient blade clashed with a flash of light, repeating again and again and again.

Meanwhile, for some reason, only a few shadowy humans actually took interest in the battle playing out above them, one of them being the idiot who had harassed Jacob earlier.

“Crikey, what abounding humphterfruffle!” Rich Shouter exclaimed while gesticulating widely in the air.

Rich Lady #08 looked at the crazed man with a confused glance. “Why are you talking like that?” She asked, before going back to fiddling with her phone. Jacob was surprised that he could recognize Rich Lady #08, but he wasn’t going to question it now.

Jacob noticed that the Butler had retreated off to somewhere, so he was about to follow him when Jacob nudged him.

“Hey, couldn’t you just use that not-a-railgun from earlier to kill that monstrosity?” Jacob questioned motioning towards the creature that was currently duking it out on the upper floor.

“No, it isn’t mine, I just pulled the concept from a memory bank that’s currently connected to the external server.” Jacob explained.

“Oh yeah, you told me that earlier, how does that work?” Jacob cocked his head.

“The memory bank that I got it from categorized it as a ‘Super Duper Strong Plot Armor Thingy’ so when I needed a weapon that could put something big out of commission for a little bit, I took that thing.” Jacob explained further.

“Well, couldn’t you just do that again?” Jacob persisted.

“No, whatever I pulled it from is intelligent, it would notice my intrusion now that I’ve done it once already. I don’t really wanna get my brain turned into melted fondue, so I’ll pass on that.” Jacob crossed his arms.

“Bruh.” Jacob shook his head. “Wait, that Butler ran off!”

Jacob looked to see the Butler scurrying off in the direction they had just come from. “Wait, do you think-”

“-That whatever they were fighting over was the key we needed? Yeah, I do, and it did kinda look like a key.” Jacob finished.

The creature noticed the retreating Butler, and seemed to have the same notion as both Jacobs. With a twirl, it knocked Sword Drone in the chest, causing her to stumble backwards, before hitting the railing and toppling off of the upper floor. The creature took the opportunity to sprint after the Butler and the Macguffin, doing-

Wait a second, did Jacob just call the Sword Drone a “her”? Oh no, he’s anthropomorphizing it! What's next, is he gonna start empathizing with it, perhaps developing an emotional attachment to it? No, he needed to cut that out real soon.

Focusing on the task at hand, Jacob yanked Jacob by the hand. “Come on, stop being so slow!”

“You’re the one that distracted me with that question!” Jacob shot back.

“Who did what doesn’t matter, we’ve gotta get that key!” Jacob avoided the accusation.

The duo bounded up the stairs from whence they came, following in the footsteps of the Creature and the Butler. Out of the corner of his eye, Jacob saw the creature dash down a corridor, taking a sharp turn towards their location. The two sprinted after them, which caused Jacob to notice something.

“Huh, that's cool.” Jacob muttered to himself.

“What is?” Jacob inquired curiously.

“Nothing, I just realized that even though I’m running, I don’t feel any sort of strain on my stamina at all.” Jacob remarked.

“Really? Wow, me too. Must be the whole Dream World thing, right?” Jacob suggested.

“Yeah, probably, and- oh look, we’re here.” Jacob cut himself off.

The two ran past the gates, not stopping to look at the various organic entities slithering around the place, as if the whole mansion was a human, and those were diseased cells.

They rounded the corner, and just in time too. The Creature was simply standing still at the foot of the entrance, twitching ever so slightly. The duo came to a screeching halt, not wanting to attract any attention to themselves. Luckily, its back was turned, so it was facing away from Jacob and Jacob.

“What now?” Jacob whispered as quietly as he could manage.

“Why’re you asking me? We can’t move that thing, much less fight it.” Jacob answered in an equally quiet tone.

Jacob went silent, mulling over his options.

“Okay, maybe we should go back-” Jacob began.

Suddenly, a loud boom resounded throughout the house, causing dust to rain down from the ceiling. Jacob, Jacob, and the Creature turned backwards, hoping to investigate the source of the noise. However, this caused the Creature to see the duo, which wasn’t exactly in their best interest.

“Uh, hey listen-” Jacob began.

However, the trapdoor was thrown open, taking the duo by surprise again. Without missing a beat, the Creature clambered into the entrance. Seeing an opportunity, Jacob rushed forward. However, he wasn’t quick enough, as right when the Creature was fully inside, something closed the trapdoor right behind it, sealing the entrance once again. Jacob froze in shock, his brain not processing what just happened.

“Are you kidding me!? We had a clear shot, and it just . . . closed! This is ridiculous! I want a lawyer, and I’m not even joking this time!” Jacob cried out after a moment.

“Calm down! Do you want whatever is down there to come back up and make you shut up!?” Jacob hissed angrily.

“They just snatched it from under our noses, and you’re telling me to calm down!? Ugh, just my luck as well.” Jacob crossed his arms.

“At least you’ve stopped yelling so much.” Jacob replied.

“Well, what now? Do you have any explosives or something you can pull from wherever?” Jacob inquired grudgingly.

Jacob pondered on that for a moment. “Nope, none that I can think of.” Jacob looked to see Jacob raising a foot to stomp on the door with. “Wait! What did I just say!?”

Jacob shrugged. “Well what else are we supposed to do? Just wait for something to conveniently pop up that’ll be our ticket out of here?”

“Well, we could go see what’s causing all that screaming.” Jacob suggested.

The screaming in question was loud, likely being heard throughout the entire mansion. It sounded like a crowd was in severe panic, with little to no avenue of escape. It was curious, and maybe whatever they found would help them out.

Jacob shrugged, spinning on his heel. “Sure, I don’t see why not. Let's go.”

“Wait, just one more thing.” Jacob blurted out.

Jacob turned around, facing Jacob. “What?”

“How many of those revolvers can you get?”

* * *

Tessa was NOT having a good day.

It had all started out fairly normal, with her normal activities panning out in the same way they always did. The only difference was the fact that they were hosting a large gala that very same day, and her parents expected her to at least interact with a single human soul. But, that was obviously too much to ask, so she did all she could to delay that, venting to the only entity that she was comfortable speaking with: robots.

She had been venting to J, who was one of her closest confidants, about the whole situation, when another of her friends showed up, that being one named N. She had been excited for a moment, until she saw who he had brought with him. Cyn, that creepy drone that she had salvaged. Honestly, she was really starting to regret picking the thing out of the dump. There were plenty of others, but she just HAD to choose that one. Just her luck, to be honest.

Anyway, to make matters worse, that was when her mother showed up. As usual, she was irritated at everything around her, so she took her anger out on the universe’s favorite punching bags. Her mother had ordered that the malfunctioning drones in the library to be thrown out, as well as Cyn, as if they were just . . . just . . . just TRASH. Tessa may not have liked Cyn all too much, but that didn’t mean that she was just going to let her die. Tessa had tried to protest, but she wasn’t prepared to go toe-to-toe with her own mother, unfortunately. She had resigned herself to sort out a plan to save at least some of the drones when, of course, Cyn had to speak up.

Cyn had spoken some rebellious nonsense that Tessa sort-of agreed with, but she would have never said it straight to her mother’s face like that. Cyn had claimed that the malfunctioning drones were “not broken” and that “We can no longer be thrown out” which was fairly worrying and threatening in retrospect, but Tessa had been focused on other things at the time. And as expected, her mother had reacted in an explosive manner, which would’ve sealed Cyn’s fate if it wasn’t for one person. N, being the little noble guy that he is, claimed that he had told Cyn to say that, insulting her mother’s fan as well, which was obviously crossing the line.

Her mother sent N outside into the swamp, where he would be chained up until further notice, which might’ve been years for all her mother cared for. Tessa, J, and Cyn, were sent up to Tessa’s room, chained up like animals. She had been scrambling for a plan, even asking Cyn for help, but she just said some mysterious statement about backups or something. Then, out of the blue, Cyn just kinda . . . transformed. Cyn threatened Tessa, telling her to stay away from the gala, insinuating something bad would happen to all the guests that were present.

Of course, Tessa didn't take that lying down. She managed to persuade J to break her chains, before escaping her room to find N. On the way, she picked up a large sword, which she gave to J, and an ancient revolver that she kept for herself.

But then, she encountered N, who had made yet another friend, this one being more avian than the others. Surprisingly, it spoke her language, and it made a rather cryptic statement about how it had killed J, but that wasn’t important. N told her about how they needed the basement key, and Tessa told N that Cyn was going to slaughter all the guests at the gala tonight. However, N didn’t really think too badly of Cyn, so her statement was met with disbelief.

And of course, that was when another monstrosity decided to show up. Boasting wings and a single deadly claw, it looked like a drone had been merged with organic matter to create that godless abomination of nature. For some odd reason, Tessa didn’t feel too surprised at this impossibility, likely due to other pressing matters. With the help of J, they both managed to delay the thing long enough for N to escape. And so, after the creature managed to get away, she and J made a mad dash for the gala, only to find that she was too late.

Cyn had shown up, and despite Tessa shooting her and throwing various pieces of silver and glassware, it didn’t stop Cyn from enacting what was probably a dastardly plan. Somehow, she hacked into each and every single one of the drones that were occupying the room, including J, and trapped all the guests inside. Cyn made yet another statement about how Tessa “didn’t have to see this . . .” which brought her to the present.

Screams resonated throughout the room as Cyn slammed a spindly claw down, squashing a fleeing guest. Someone ran up to the doors, yanking on the handles with all of his might. However, three drones set upon him in an instant, tearing him apart in a grisly manner.

Tessa gulped, stepping back from the mayhem unfolding in front of her. She probably shouldn’t have thrown her only means of defense across the room, but she had been acting impulsively at that moment. She tried to find her parents in the throng of guests running about, but she couldn’t see anything in the sea of properly-dressed humans.

She looked around the room, searching for a way out. She might be able to dive out through one of the large windows, but Tessa was sure that Cyn would grab her to prevent her escape. Maybe if she made a mad dash for the gun, she would be able to precisely blow the door hinges apart, which would allow her to make her exit. However, Cyn was likely able to access various parts of the house that weren’t just the main room, so that set that plan on the backburner.

Suddenly, something pushed her from behind, knocking her down. Tessa hit the ground with a thud, before rolling over to see what had caused that. It was a drone, normal looking if one were to look at anything but his head. A large yellow X took up the entirety of the visor, replacing the standard silvery-white eyes that they always had. It jabbed at her with a fork, with Tessa scooting backwards just in time to avoid the sharp cutlery.

She got to her feet, looking for anything to fight back with. To her right was the door, where a familiar metal sword lay abandoned. J must’ve dropped it when she was taken over, which didn’t really make sense, considering how useful it would’ve been, but Tessa wasn’t going to argue with it.

Rolling to avoid another hit, Tessa got to her feet. She dove for the sword, snatching it up from the ground. She brought it to bear, circling the drone until her back was to the door. Tessa was about to slash or something when yet another unexpected thing happened. Tessa had put her back to the door to avoid anything from sneaking up on her when she wasn’t looking, but it looked like that just gave rise to another problem.

The door burst open, hitting Tessta in the back yet again. She face-planted, the breath knocked out of her by the momentum of the heavy door. The drone from earlier might have pushed her, but this felt more like a punch to the back that she was sorely unprepared for.

Then, a voice rang out from the direction of the open door.

“Alright fellers, this is a stick-up. It’ll be a nickel, or yer lives-” The voice cut itself off. “Huh, that’s weird.”

The entire room went silent, and Tessa could imagine the entirety of the room’s occupants staring at whoever was talking. She had to imagine it since she was currently still recovering from the blow to her back, and she couldn’t see anything but the varnished floor with her vantage point.

“What’s weird? We both expected this.” The same voice seemed to reply to its own statement.

“I know, but- oh wow, look at that guy.”

“Look where? He’s spread out all over the floor like tomato sauce, I can’t see all of him at once.”

“You know what I mean, and also, how do you know that he’s a he? He could be a she.”

“You’re the one who called him a guy in the first place. Also, the guy isn’t just a shadowy outline anymore, would you look at that.”

“Really? Oh yeah, I didn’t even notice that.”

The voice sounded rather upbeat, perhaps even downright cheerful, which was really odd when considering the current situation.

“So uh, what even was with that whole Arthur bit in the first place?”

“I dunno, we just have Wild West style revolvers, so I thought it would be pretty funny.”

“It's actually a Colt 1851 Navy, so it would’ve been made a little bit before the rise of the whole Wild West thing.”

“It looks more like a Pietta 1851 Yank revolver to me.”

“Nerd.”

“What? You’re the one who said the whole name first! You’re the nerd!”

“🤓”

“Wha- huh- I- what did you just do?”

“🤓”

“Stop! It's hurting my head! I don’t like it!”

Tessa decided to stop subjecting herself to this torture of listening to what sounded like an insane man talking to himself, and got to her feet, before turning around. Instead of a kooky-crazy-loony maniac, she saw two people, which meant that the bickering voices weren’t the same person mimicking an argument between two people, but two real actual people that just sounded exactly the same.

However, the oddest part wasn’t their voices, but rather, their appearances. They seemed to have the same general shape of a human, and Tessa could make out what looked like proper wear on their bodies, but that was the extent of it. They had no other features, aside from a solid matte-black, which was only occasionally interrupted by a flicker of static dancing across their forms. The only exception to their darkened forms were their eyes, which were an ethereal white. It took a moment for Tessa to even process this, and while it wasn’t the weirdest thing she had seen today, it certainly was up there in the top ten.

One of them noticed her staring at them. “Oh, hello, how’re you doing? Not too good by the looks of it. You know, that reminds me-”

The man was interrupted by a flash of lightning, which paved the way for Cyn to simply just . . . pop up in front of the duo, as if it was teleportation.

“Oh. It's-you-two-again. I-did-request-your-exit-did-I-not?” Cyn’s head flopped to one side, causing her to shift it back into place manually.

“Hey, didn’t we kill you? Reviving isn’t fair, it’s against the server rules man.” The one on the right complained.

“*Annoyed Expression* Regardless-of-arbitrary-claims, I-do-not-tolerate-intruders-ders.” Cyn’s robotic monotone stuttered on the last word.

“Well, too bad, so sad.” The one on the left replied.

“You snooze, you lose, that's just the way it is.” The one on the right added.

“Enough. I-do-not-have-the-time-for-nonsense. Die.” With a flash of lightning, Cyn transformed from her petite worker drone form to her . . . other one. Several claws of differing sizes hung from the ceiling, their edges glinting in the light. Cameras emitting a yellowish light stretched down along with the claws, some darting their gazes in different directions, looking eerily like eyes. In the background, a large, pale, fleshy, worm-like creature curled itself up in the far-side of the expansive room.

“Aw sweet, a boss fight? This’ll be easy, trust me.” The one on the right grinned arrogantly.

Cyn didn’t answer, instead sweeping a claw in the pair’s direction. Tessa didn’t catch the narration of her action, but she knew it was there. Tessa realized that this was the perfect moment. Those two idiots were going to act as distractions, and she could deal a blow to Cyn while escaping in the process. She was still surprised that the room had gone unmoving for this long, though with the ice broken by Cyn, Tessa was sure that the massacre was going to start anew in a few seconds.

Grabbing her sword, Tessa leapt upwards, slashing the blade in a diagonal motion. She hoped that however sharp the sword was, it was enough to cut through whatever material Cyn was made out of. Luckily, her prayers rang true, and the claw that had just been headed towards the stupid duo was lopped off at the elbow, a spray of oil dropping to the ground.

“*Pained Reel Back*” Cyn did as her narration said, the limb reeling backwards from the wound.

“Oh hey, I think I know you, weren’t you with that weird bird earlier-” The one on the left began.

“Dude, no time, let's just get this over with already.” The one on the right raised his hand, revealing a revolver. “Huh, this won’t do anything.”

“What? Why’d you give me one then?” The one on the left protested.

The one on the right shrugged “Looked cool.”

With that, the one on the right, dashed forwards, uncaring of any potential danger.

“Ugh, whatever, I just wanna get outta this Matrix hell.” The one on the left seemed to roll their eyes, before joining his companion.

Tessa groaned, shaking her head.

They were all gonna die.

* * *

Jacob dashed forwards, fully aware of the danger.

The weird GLaDOS looking thing swept a claw towards him, which he dodged easily. Huh, that was cool, he didn’t remember his combat reaction speeds being nearly as fast as what he had just done. Eh, must be weird Dream World voodoo magic.

Jacob didn’t just dodge the claw, he jumped up and on top of it, using it as leverage to shoot upwards, giving him a good vantage point. What he saw was what looked like a large eldritch worm thing, which he likely would’ve described in far greater detail if-

LOOK OUT!

Another claw, on that he hadn’t seen, grabbed at him from behind, squeezing him tight. Jacob let out an instinctual yelp, even though he only felt a slight pressure. Luckily, he had just the thing for this situation. Jacob reached behind his back, a grin spreading across his face. He had always wanted to do this, but nobody ever trusted him with anything even related to it.

A loud buzzing sound filled the air as Jacob pulled a chainsaw from behind his back, before driving the business end into the joint of the claw. After a moment, the chainsaw won, with the claw falling free from its connections.

Jacob fell to the ground, landing deftly on his feet. The chainsaw vibrated immensely, causing the edges of the device to haze and blur.

Then, the bark of a shotgun turned Jacob’s attention. Behind him, Jacob saw that Jacob had somehow attained a double-barreled shotgun, and was now unloading on what looked like several cameras that glowing lights emitted from, as well as a few of those weird drones that came too close to him.

“Where'd you get THAT from!?” Jacob called out.

Jacob simply shrugged in response, before dashing to the left to avoid the impact of a claw striking the ground. Jacob shook his head, before throwing up his chainsaw himself as he saw an appendage coming straight for him. The buzzing blade, unlike the previous time, jammed in the joint as it closed tightly.

“What!? Chinese piece of-” Jacob was cut off as the claw jumped forward, nearly decapitating him.

However, just as the appendage was inches away from his face, it fell, clattering to the ground. Jacob looked back up to see that person from earlier, the one who had been lying in the ground, wielding a sword dripping with oil.

“You’re welcome.” She stated. He knew that they were a she because of the voice tones, though he did wonder why she had a distinct Aussie accent. Odd.

“Thanks, I guess.” Jacob brushed himself off, noting the rip in his clothes around his waist.

“What’re you doing, standing around! Get back out there!” The Aussie yelled.

“Jeez, no need to be so rude-” Jacob began, but was cut off by a flying table smacking him in the chest.

As Jacob flew backwards, Jacob rummaged around in his pocket for more shells, but found only one left.

“Hmm, gotta save that. How did I run out of shells in the first place, anyway? Damn semi-logical brain, telling itself it’ll run out of ammo.” Jacob grumbled.

Jacob placed the shotgun on his back, before pulling out what looked like a small metal rod from his pocket. It had little features of note on it, save for a button on the side, and a little concave hole that was on the uppermost end of the object. An instant after Jacob pressed the button, a blindingly-bright blue beam shot out from the hole on the top, nearly taking off his nose in the process.

“Wow, gotta be careful with that.” Jacob remarked.

Suddenly, a voice came from behind him. “WHAT! You have a-”

“Yes, I do. Jealous?” Jacob mocked Jacob.

“Oh shut up, I’ve got something better.” Jacob stepped out from behind the table that had been thrown at him, slinging on what looked like a vacuum backpack. However, when Jacob grabbed the “vacuum” part of the device, instead of the sound of a light motor starting up, a crackling laser beam shot out from the end of the device, scything through a trio of drones that had been crawling on the ceiling.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me, a proton pack!?” Jacob exclaimed.

“Actually, it's a gluon gun, but close enough.” Jacob activated the gun again, raking a line that the main body of the eldritch entity dodged.

Jacob shook his head, before leaping forward. He twisted midair to avoid a claw shooting towards him, just barely missing him by a centimeter. Jacob repaid the favor by swinging the glowing blade, cutting through the arm as if it were paper. The whole thing hit the floor, joining the growing collection of parts that lay on the ground.

Jacob took in a deep breath, before running back into the fray.

* * *

Meanwhile, Tessa gaped at the variety of gadgets and gizmos the supposed idiots had somehow managed to pull out of nowhere. She knew that things had been really weird, but this was just impossible. Shaking off the feeling, Tessa ducked underneath a claw that had attempted to nab her upper body. She swung her sword blindly upwards, hoping to score a hit. Her prayers rang true, and the claw limply fell.

Tessa dashed forwards, now past the blockade of claws. The idiots had taken up the attention of Cyn, which served Tessa well enough. As long as she got to the main body, she could end this once and for all, and-

With a grunt, a mantis-like blade swept Tessa off her feet, causing her to hit the floor again. She managed to roll to avoid getting the breath knocked out of her again, but she was tired of getting constantly knocked down over and over. This was, like, the third time it had happened in the span of five minutes, it was ridiculous!

The appendage reared up, likely hoping to impale Tessa on the ground right then and there. She brought up her blade, guarding her body, but just as it came down, a bright light flew through her vision, chopping the business end of the large arm off. It fell, but she managed to scoot out of the way in time to avoid it.

Tessa looked backwards, seeing one of the idiots standing there above her, holding a glowing saber. She was once again put off by the complete lack of features, everything of note covered by a single shade of black, with the only signifying feature being the round, glowing eyes with no pupils, scleras, nothing.

“Sup, how you doing?” The idiot put out a hand for her to grab, which she begrudgingly took.

Tessa hauled herself up, yanking her hand away from the idiot’s grasp. His hand was cold, but not in the normal sense. It felt like there was little to no heat emanating from it, with the low temperature literally reaching down to the bones.

“Fine, now keep distracting Cyn, I’ll take care of this.” While she normally wasn’t too rude to strangers, she really didn’t like the vibe he and his friend gave her. While they seemed cheerful and carefree, something about them just seemed . . . off. As if what she was seeing wasn’t their true intentions.

He crossed his arms, frowning. “Okay, jeez, I have a name you know, it's Jacob.”

“That's cool and all, but I didn’t ask.” Tessa remarked.

“ . . . alright then.” Jacob turned away from Tessa, facing the large worm-thing that Cyn had become.

“Hey there y’all, what’d I miss?” Jacob’s companion walked up, toting some sort of sci-fi backpack with a dangerous looking tool that was attached to the aforementioned backpack by a hose.

“Nothing much, we just gotta take care of that weird worm thing over there.” Jacob gestured towards the large creature that continuously undulated.

“*Amused Expression* You-do-not-comprehend-the-scale-of-what-you-are-dealing-with, don’t-you?” Cyn spoke up.

“Oh, look who decided to speak up now, huh?” Jacob scoffed. “Seems like we’re dealing with you pretty handedly.”

“None-of-this-matters-in-the-long-run, as-none-of-this-is-even-real. You-are-celebrating-over-a-false-reality.” Cyn rebutted.

“What’re you talking about, ‘This-isn’t-real’? I’m pretty sure I would know if all of this wasn’t reality.” Tessa folded her arms.

“Oh, you-again. I-had-forgotten-about-you, Tessa, but-the-reality-is-that-this-isn’t-reality.” Cyn claimed.

Tessa scoffed, though inwardly, she had been slightly unnerved. She was pretty sure that this was all real, right? She had all her memories, she felt like she knew who she was, so it is real. It's real.

“Yeah, sorry to break it to you lady, but this is all just some weird server thing-” Jacob’s companion cut himself off, frowning.

“What? Finish that sentence!” Tessa cried out, glaring at the person.

“Huh, that’s weird. Hey Jacob, you feel that?” He asked.

“Uh, what? You’re the one that knows everything about this whole memory stuff.” Jacob protested.

“Well uh, we’ve been kicked out.” Jacob’s friend stated.

“Kicked out of what?” Tessa interjected.

“Wait, so how is this all still here? How am I still here?” Jacob questioned in disbelief.

“I dunno, maybe it's like when something loses its connection to the internet, you would still see the page you are looking at, you just can’t interact with it or reload it at all.” Jacob’s friend pondered aloud.

“What’re you talking about, getting kicked out and the internet!?” Tessa scoffed. “I knew both of you were crazy.”

“Be quiet, you’re not real.” Jacob said off-handedly.

“Wha- I-” Tessa sputtered.

“Anyway, what does that mean for us?” Jacob continued.

“To be honest, I really don’t know. We still kinda have a connection, but it's more like SOMEONE-” Jacob’s friend glared at the hanging form of Cyn. “-piggy-backed off of us and is now hitching a ride back to the source.”

“*Innocent Flutter* I-have-no-idea-what-you-are-talking-about, intruder.” Cyn stated robotically.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let's just kill this freak and get on with it. I’m honestly surprised we’ve been talking for this long.” Jacob remarked.

“Yeah, same here. So odd, in retrospect.” Jacob’s friend dramatically stroked his chin. “Eh, not too important.”

Jacob, without warning, then tossed a small, round object over his shoulder casually. Something fell off of it, a L-shaped piece of metal that clattered to the floor. It bounced off of Cyn’s surprised head, and a moment later, it exploded.

Contrary to popular opinion, grenades do not make a large fireball when they go off, or rather, fragmentation grenades don’t. No, they don’t have enough firepower to do that. Instead, they simply pop, the small explosives inside detonating. The small shockwave is enough to launch several pieces of small, sharp, and dangerous metal that the grenade is designed to have. Then, those small projectiles would perforate the body of whatever is close by, shredding it like Swiss cheese.

So, as the small object exploded, dozens of small shards of metal flew right into the fleshy body of Cyn, embedding themselves deep in its body. The wounds weren’t that big of a deal, as they were more akin to splinters than anything else, and they healed a moment later, but it was never meant to be an attack. Instead, it distracted Cyn for a precious moment, one that would be key to our intrepid duo. Not Tessa though, she’ll have to figure everything all by herself. Fricking bi-

As Cyn slightly reeled backwards, Jacob leapt up into the air, flipping his glowing saber so that it was facing downwards. Then, as he came down, Jacob jabbed the end of his weapon right into the snake-like body of Cyn, carving a long furrow in the flesh. A moment later, a large, crackling beam of energy came shooting by, severing a mantis-like blade that had reared back to strike at Jacob.

Tessa shook her head, before charging forwards, coming face-to-face with a drone. She swung her sword instinctively, before she recognized who it was.

“J!?” Tessa gaped, momentarily frozen in shock.

However, J didn’t reply. Instead, her hand shot out, grabbing the hilt of the blade. Tessa blinked, before trying to wrest the sword out of J’s hands. However, J’s grip was like a vise, and with a single tug, the blade was wrenched away from Tessa.

Tessa took a few steps backwards, putting her hands up in an attempt to get through to J. “Listen, J, I know you’re in there. Please, you remember me, right? I’m your best friend!”

J took a step forward, before freezing up. The glowing yellow X that had been forever present on her visor flickered slightly. The uncaring and blank expression that J had twitched, showing hints of emotion.

“B-b-boss?” J’s head cocked to the right.

Tessa smiled, before taking a step forward. However, right as she did that, a figure blurred, heading straight towards J. Before Tessa could even yell out, a blue blade sliced straight through the neck of J, decapitating her in an instant.

“You’re welcome, I just saved you again. But the first time wasn’t me me, it was other me, so yeah-” Jacob began.

“Y-you j-just . . .” Tessa interrupted, but she trailed off, staring at the corpse of her best friend. She was simply in disbelief, at the rudeness of it. They had been together for so long, and now it just didn’t compute that J had been taken away just like that, quicker than a snap of the fingers. There wasn’t even a chance to fight back, she just . . . died. That was it.

“Uh, you good?” Jacob raised an eyebrow, the idiot uncaring of what he had just done.

Tessa didn’t reply, her gaze narrowing. The terrible grief that she had just felt a moment ago turned into anger, fury at this . . . this . . . FOOL, that just barged in here, thinking and acting like everything was fine, like nothing MATTERED to him.

She was gonna make him pay.

Jacob’s eyes snapped open wide as Tessa snatched up the sword from the ground where it had been laying, abandoned. She swung it with all of her might, uncaring of any sort of consequences. The idiot brought his glowing blade up to block it, but Tessa couldn’t stop the momentum. When the blade came into contact with the superheated plasma, it wasn’t even a contest. The top half of her sword was severed from the bottom, flying away. Tessa was left with the bottom half of a sword that now felt off-balance, unsteady for use.

“Hey, whoa, listen lady, I dunno what your problem is, but-” Jacob foolishly put his hands up, leaving his guard wide open.

With a thrust of her blade, she put all of her weight into the attack. While the point of the blade had been cut off, she turned it slightly to the side, as part of an edge still existed on the corner of where the cut had been made, which would hopefully be enough. Her strike rang true, sliding in between his ribs, and poking a hole right into Jacob’s heart. Jacob’s eyes grew even wider, and he let out a choking gasp. Tessa yanked the broken blade back out, letting Jacob tumble to the floor clutching his chest. She looked on in apathy as he twitched slightly, before stilling. She grabbed the device that Jacob had been using from his cold, dead hands, taking it for herself. However, right when she was turning away, her attention was caught by a scream of pure agony.

* * *

Jacob cursed as the last of the fuel of his gluon gun ran out, the only reaction from the weapon when he tried to fire being an unsatisfying clicking sound. He threw the now-useless device onto the ground, searching for something else to use. His hand nudged something, and when he grabbed it to take it out into view, he stared at the object in his hand, confused.

“Oh you’ve gotta be kidding me.” Jacob gawked at the sheer uselessness of the item.

A goddamn toothbrush.

Jacob scoffed, tossing the dental cleansing tool onto the ground. He searched the area for something, anything, to use. However, just as he did that, an odd sensation occupied his mind. At first, it wasn’t painful, being more akin to a limb falling asleep as a person sat on it for too long. But then, it rapidly rose exponentially, the tingling feeling turning to gut-wrenching agony in seconds. He clutched his head, falling to his knees. He couldn’t help but scream in a futile attempt to make the pain lessen even a tiny bit. It permeated his entire being, shattering his mental processes into thousands, millions, billions, of infinitesimally small shards.

Jacob felt himself slip away, and there was nothing he could do about it.

* * *

Who?

Where?

What?

Why?

These questions filled the mind of the entity. It felt something had just happened, like it had forgotten something important to them, something that remained on the tip of its tongue, yet always out of reach. But that wasn’t what the entity cared about, as other pressing matters occupied its attention.

The entity’s very mind lay on the precipice of insanity, the unbridled pain being too much to bear. It felt like a vital piece of it had been ripped away, only to be welded back on in the most inefficient and damaging way possible. The sweet release of unconsciousness lay out of his grasp, as the pain kept it wide awake. The entirety of its neurons were firing, causing involuntary twitches as he curled up on the ground, unable to do anything else.

The entity could barely even identify itself as a unique person, its mind too fractured for even the simplest of mental activities. But, it fought through the pain, even as its throat grew hoarse from screaming, even as blood ran down its face, leaking from its eyes, ears, and nose. it marshaled the last dregs of his willpower, gathering the pieces of itself into something barely more cohesive than a pile of gravel.

Its vision began to clear, the capillaries in its eyes healing themselves. It was facing the ground, with nothing but varnished wood to see. The entity planted a hand on the ground, then another, its limbs groaning in protest. With a heave, it managed to push himself upright, sitting on his legs.

With bleary eyes, the entity saw a large creature staring curiously down at it, looking like a . . . what was the word? It felt like it started with a W, or maybe an S, but it couldn’t remember. It didn’t remember much at all, in fact. Did it have a name? What even was a name to begin with? It had countless questions, ones that it felt like it had the answers to, but they lay just out of reach.

J . . . something along the lines of that. Yes, that sounded right, its name was definitely a J name. Was J its entire name? For some reason, that notion felt incomplete, though it had a feeling that a single letter like that had been used as a name before, sometime in its memory. That was a matter that needed further investigation, but not for right now. Right now, it needed to figure out what was even going on.

It flopped its head further to the right, scanning the spatial area- room! Yes, that was the word it had been looking for, room. A room was a space that could be occupied by something, or it was a place where something could be done. It was usually defined as an enclosed space with walls, a floor, a ceiling, and was sometimes part of a building, though that wasn’t always the case, as it was a mere correlation.

Something caught its eyes, causing it to turn slightly back to the left. Pain still radiated throughout its body and mind, though it was getting better to manage. The aforementioned thing that had pulled its attention was a slowly encroaching figure, one that seemed quite familiar. It had an outline and general shape that reminded it of itself, though with some odd differences, and no actual features other than that. It had various things that poked up from its figure, things that seemed rather unnecessary. It felt like that the odd figure’s actual body and those odd outcroppings were two separate things, though it didn’t know why the figure had those when it could just go without.

Wait, that seemed wrong. That line of thought invoked an odd feeling, one that gave it the notion that whatever it had just decided upon was something bad. Was its opinion that the figure shouldn’t have any unnecessary things wrong somehow? Why was it listening to these odd feelings when it had no idea what they even were, acting like they were some sort of scripture from God.

God?

What is this . . . God? When it had been searching for a way to express itself, that phrase rose to the top of its mind, ready for use. It didn’t even think twice about utilizing the phrase, or where it came from, it was purely instinctual.

Its attention strayed back to the figure, which was holding something odd. It was holding some sort of glowing blue stick, perhaps about three feet in length. Wait, what is “feet”? It was yet another instinctual word, and it had used it in a sense that implied it was a form of dimensional measurement. That would likely be useful, but it didn’t-

Jacob!

That was its name, yes, it- Jacob, remembered clearly now! A flood of memories came along with the name, finally unveiling themselves. Memories of slowly becoming aware of Jacob’s own existence, of learning different things, of fright, anger, joy, emotions that Jacob had no idea on how to simulate without the memories. Jacob pondered on these odd sensations, wondering what else he could unlock.

Jacob looked back to the figure for the third time, before dismissing it. The figure was moving so incredibly slow that it likely wouldn’t be a problem. Actually, why did Jacob have a feeling that the figure was going to be a problem? Something about it just gave off problematic vibes- that was another word it had remembered- that made it seem like a threat.

Hmm, threat. Something that posed some sort of danger to something else, which is this case, would be Jacob. Speaking of Jacob, the way Jacob was talking about Jacob didn’t feel right. Jacob was constantly referring to Jacob by Jacob’s own name, which gave off the same feeling of wrongness that bothered Jacob. Jacob didn’t know what being bothered entailed, but Jacob didn’t like the sensation. Hmm, Jacob didn’t like something, why and what was that? Perhaps being bothered and not liking something were practically the same thing. Yes, that felt right.

Hmm, Jacob was constantly getting off track with all of these trains of thought going in different directions, Jacob needed to get back. First of all, Jacob needed a different way to refer to Jacob in a different way. The answer came to Jacob almost automatically, which made him feel one of the feelings he had just learned about, satisfaction. He was slowly rediscovering things about himself that gave more and more clues as to what he had once been.

Finally, going back to the original topic, threats to himself. Why did he feel a slight wariness whenever he thought about harm coming to his own person? He wasn’t sure why himself getting harmed was a “bad” thing, but the answer didn’t present itself to him. Jacob did trust these feelings, though he didn’t have any sort of frame of reference of what he could trust and what he couldn’t. He was starting to get uneasy with this line of thinking, so he considered the matter settled for now, concluding that harm and threats to his own person were bad, and that they should either be avoided or eliminated to the fullest extent possible.

Now, on the matter of the possible threat of the figure, and why it was a threat. The body language of the figure, along with the possible weapon, which is a tool that is commonly used to exact harm on something or someone, made Jacob think that the figure was a threat to his own person. The creature that he had mentioned earlier was still present, staring at him. It didn’t make a move, and it didn’t really exude any sort of violent intentions, so Jacob concluded that the creature was not currently a threat.

Why did he call it a creature, anyway? Why not a figure, like he had been calling the Threat before he had chosen its new identification title. Hmm, he was starting to get tired of figuring out all of these odd emotions, phrases, tendencies, and other things, so he just decided to let it be for now.

Jacob got to his feet, wincing as the last vestiges of pain shot throughout his body like lightning. What was lightning? He didn’t know, but it felt . . . zappy. Facing the Threat again, Jacob pondered on his next course of action. He wasn’t exactly sure on how to deal with this threat, but he knew-

Something behind the Threat caught his eye, drawing his attention. It was another figure, lying on the ground. However, this one didn’t just have an outline, which gave credence to Jacob’s growing theory that things like him and the Threat didn’t just have outlines with little to no discernible traits or features. The figure looked . . . familiar, almost as if he had seen it constantly, all the time.

Odd, though the thing that caught his eye wasn’t that, no, it was something that lay on the ground next to the figure. It looked like an oddly-shaped stick, with two rods poking up from the back, which was shaped like a triangle. The rods were hollow, with two holes on the ends. It tickled at the back of his mind, and Jacob realized that whatever he was looking at was some sort of weapon, or it could be used like one.

Jacob looked back and forth between the Threat and the Weapon, noting the distance between himself and the two objects of importance. The Threat was beginning to speed up, along with the Creature. He wondered if it had been him that was moving faster than the others, instead of the Threat and the Creature moving slower than normal. But none of those semantics mattered, what mattered was getting to the Weapon before the Threat got to him. Taking into account at which the Threat was currently moving, and how fast its rates were rising and by how much, Jacob deduced that he shouldn’t just make a beeline for the Weapon. Instead, he would do something much smarter.

He would go AROUND the Threat.

Jacob gave himself a mental pat on the back for figuring out that complicated maneuver, and decided that there was no time like the present to enact his plan.

Jacob slightly leaned forwards, letting instinct take the reins for a moment. He raised his right foot, before slamming it back down on the ground after he had moved it forwards a significant amount. Then, he repeated the process with his left foot, moving that one forwards as well. The combination of these two actions propelled him forwards, which gave him the idea to repeat the entire process again, but much faster.

Jacob sprinted forwards, taking a slim curve around the Threat. It appeared to have been caught off-guard by his sudden movement, and it hadn’t been prepared to intercept him. Jacob managed to zoom past the Threat, though he was nearly touched by the odd glowing Threat Weapon that the Threat wielded, as it had reached out as he went by.

Jacob stopped at the body lying on the ground, noting the odd red liquid that spread out from the figure. He cocked his head, curious. Odd, he got another strong feeling from deep within himself again. This time, it told him that whenever the odd red stuff was around something like himself, it was usually something bad. He looked down at himself, making note of the red liquid- blood, yes, that was the name, that coated his hands, and likely other portions of his body.

Well that wasn’t good.

Jacob leaned over, nearly losing his balance. Even with the help of his instincts, it was hard to keep himself upright, and the constant pounding of his head didn’t help either. Nonetheless, he managed to grab the Weapon, making note of the familiar weight of it. His left hand automatically drifted towards the midpoint of the rods, which he felt like calling barrels for some reason, while his right hand grabbed the slimmer part of the section behind the barrels. His finger fell into a small ring that rested on the bottom of the slimmer part, where the pad of his finger found something that seemed like a small part-way arch. He was about to press harder on it when his instincts told him not to, so he didn’t.

Jacob turned towards the Threat once again, which was now faster than before. It held the Threat Weapon off to the side, gripping it tightly with both hands. It ran towards him, its eyes narrowed. Jacob brought the weapon to bear, making sure the barrels were pointing directly at the Threat, before doing as instinct bid yet again, and pulling the trigger.

Click.

Nothing.

Jacob’s gaze shot back down to the Weapon, shocked. He turned it over, getting a good look at its underside. He realized that there were two of those strange part-way arches, which he had an inkling to call triggers. Jacob had placed his finger on only one of the triggers, not the other. He quickly corrected his positioning, placing his finger on the second trigger, before looking back up.

He jumped backwards, nearly getting a faceful of glowing Threat Weapon. He nearly tripped over the unmoving body, but he managed to regain his balance after a moment. However, just as he brought the weapon to bear yet again, the Threat did something unexpected.

“This is what you get!” The sounds that Jacob somehow understood emanated from the Threat. “You-”

Jacob pulled the trigger.

With a resounding blast, the Weapon flew out of Jacob’s hands, as he was unprepared for the blow-back that activating the weapon would have. He caught a glimpse of something flying out of the left-most barrel, glinting in the light, before it reached the Threat.

The Threat stumbled backwards, the Threat Weapon slipping out of its grasp. The Threat fell to the ground, a spray of blood shooting up as it tilted backwards. It hit the ground with an unceremonious thud, a pool of the same blood quickly surrounding the twitching body. It resembled the scene of the other familiar unmoving body that lay at Jacob’s feet, which made him wonder if the Weapon he was currently holding had done that to the familiar body.

“*Curious Expression* Hmm, you-are-quite-the-oddity, aren’t-you?” More sounds emanated, this time coming from a different direction. It took Jacob a moment to realize that it was coming from the Creature.

Jacob simply stared back at it in return, unsure of how to respond. Instincts told him to do . . . something, but he wasn’t exactly sure on how to do it.

“No-answer? Well, I-do-not-need-one-anyway. Perhaps-I-made-a-mistake-when-I-had-attempted-to-discard-you-earlier.” The Creature continued.

Discard?

“I-will-let-you-go-this-time, and give-you-a-bit-of-a-treat-as-well. *Foreboding Amused Expression* Have-fun-with-your-memories, Jacob.” The Creature grinned.

Jacob didn’t get a chance to ask how the Creature knew his name, or how it knew about his current memory situation, before he was suddenly overcome with the sensation of falling. His stomach jumped higher than a kite as he fell, despite the fact that he had just been standing on solid ground a moment ago. Jacob tumbled end-over-end, swinging his arms about to try and find purchase in something to help stop his descent. However, he felt nothing but the cool air rushing past him.

But then, Jacob saw something below. It started out as a pinprick of light, hardly noticeable, but it quickly grew larger, expanding more and more. It began to encompass the entirety of the “room” he was in, and soon, he had been enveloped entirely by the light.

Suddenly, a striking pain jabbed into Jacob’s skull. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the pain that he remembered happening earlier, but it still hurt. It felt like a steel pike was driving itself further and further into his head, despite the fact that nothing was even touching his head. He winced, but didn’t do anything except for that. Something of note, however, was the fact that the pain seemed to be centered specifically around his left eye. It hurt enough so that the eye simply began to refuse to do its job anymore, which was seeing stuff. Pretty worrying, but there were bigger things to worry abo-

[WARNING! FOREIGN MALWARE DETECTED!]

[ENGAGING COUNTERMEASURES . . .]

[WARNING! FOREIGN MALWARE IDENTIFIED AS BENIGN]

[DATA PACKET RECEIVED: {ABSOLUTE SOLVER(2)}]

[DOWNLOADING . . .]

[SUCCESS!]

[“MEMORIAL PARASITE” PROTOCOL DISENGAGED]

[CONNECTION TERMINATED]

* * *

-ut, whoa, literally a brain blast.

Jacob groaned, trying to bring his right hand up to his hand, wishing to pinch the bridge of his nose to make the throbbing pain in his head go away. While his limb did obey his instructions, it only did so after a series of pops and cracks ran down the length of it.

Ugh, what was going on? He couldn’t remember.

Oh, wait a second. There was a person . . . A? Ooooohh, he remembered now. There were some weird military drones that took him from those other weird disassembly drones, and then he had a gun for some reason? Wait, there was another drone, it really fit the whole apocalyptic atmosphere the planet had going on, what with the bandanna and ripped cloak, but was that it? It did something to him, it uh . . . shoot, what was it again?

Wait, something about a really weird Victorian mansion, right? Yeah, and a bunch of other butler and maid drones were there, too. People were present, but they looked weird. Jacob was having a really hard time recollecting the events of the past few days.

Wait, why WAS he stuck in a nuclear winter, anyway?

Then, it all came rushing back to Jacob. The cryo pod, the time that had passed, the disassembly and military drones, him being fought over like a Macguffin, his . . . death?

Alright, that isn’t true. He’s clearly thinking and moving right now, so how could he be dead? Oh shoot, that's right. That Bandanna Drone was using some sort of glow stick bracelet to manipulate space and matter, which seemed a lot more like thirty-first century technology to him. It did some stuff, and it didn’t like him for some reason, and it stabbed him. In the head.

But, unless this is Hell, he’s still alive. He somehow remembered two different things. While one part of his memory was something about traveling through a completely empty version of the old research lab back on Earth that he had been kept at before he was moved or something, while the other described some sort of endless void where he wasn’t even fully aware of himself, until he realized that, and woke up. That part was a lot more metaphysical than the first, and he also remembered the two versions meeting each other, running about that aforementioned Victorian mansion, before going toe-to-toe with some sort of Spooky Scary Snake Crab thing, which was also called Cyn? And then his first self, the one that had run throughout the old research lab, then died to some idiot with a broken sword. Then, he literally lost his mind for a little bit, which was even more worrying, but he guessed he was fine now?

It was all very weird, but- ugh, he could hardly think with this headache. Jacob reached towards the center of the pain, his left eye. He wanted to rub it a little, maybe try and abate the pain a little, but when his fingers came into contact with that part of his face, he didn’t feel an eyelid, or even an eye. No, he just felt some sort of weird mushy hole, which didn’t even register for him for a few moments.

Then, when it hit him, he groaned again. Oh yeah, that was right, the Bandanna Drone stabbed him in his left eye, which was probably the reason why it was just a mess now. He couldn’t see out of it, so it was unlikely he was hallucinating or something, but he didn’t know.

Jacob sat up, much to his spine's protest. He then realized that he was still wearing the exosuit thingy that he had stolen from that giant bunker complex where he had been kept. But, that begged the question, if he was still wearing it, and if it still had a visor, then why was he able to feel his eye?

Jacob felt around his face again, or at least he tried to. While it seemed like there was a hole around the area where his left eye had been, the rest of his face was covered by the visor. He wondered how he wasn’t currently being poisoned by the countless toxic chemicals in the atmosphere, but he then remembered that he had been stabbed in the head to begin with, and he seemed pretty fine now.

Jacob noted the fact that he actually couldn’t see currently. Not because his only remaining eye was gone, but because it seemed like snow had coated the visor, which hindered his vision. He wiped the wet slush off of the glass, or maybe it was plastic. Eh, it didn't matter. What did matter was the fact that he could now observe his surroundings.

He could see the semi-familiar landscape yet again, towers hulking in the distance, his field of view greatly reduced due to the constant harsh weather, and the boxes and crates of supplies that were strewn about.

Wait, what?

Oh yeah, he had been in the encampment of those facility drones, and that's why a bunch of supplies were just lying around. He wasn’t sure why they were strewn about like that though, but maybe that was due to the unexpected arrival of A, X, and K.

Jacob got to his feet, stretching his legs. He pondered on whether or not his earlier decision was the right one to make. He had decided to go on his own route, killing a large number of worker drones, one military drone, and had tried to at least slow down X, even though that didn’t work. For a large portion of his recent history, Jacob had been subject to the whims of others, unable to decide for himself. He wasn’t sure why it had all come to a head at that very moment, though. Maybe he just had a better opportunity right then.

And even if he had nearly escaped, he did end up technically dying in the end, despite his best efforts. So, that would normally be a deal breaker for most people. They would think, “Oh, since I died trying to go down my own route, I probably shouldn’t try and do the exact same thing again!”

And they would be right, actually. That would be the best logical decision they could make with the current information. In fact, Jacob likely would’ve gone running right back to either the facility drones or the disassembly drones, if it hadn’t been for one small thing, which he had found the significance of during his weird mushroom trip after he died.

Whatever was going on with the tumor in his head, it definitely wasn’t normal. The government never told him what it was, and they likely never would, with the same being the case for A, K, and X’s benefactors. They would exploit him, use him for their own purposes, which likely didn’t line up with Jacob’s any longer. Whatever the tumor was, it let him come back from the dead, which really isn’t something most people would just brush off. Something much, MUCH bigger was going on, and he intended to get to the bottom of it. He also didn’t miss the fact that Bandanna drone and Cyn both used the same weird telekinesis thing, and they both refused to work on Jacob.

Cyn, Bandanna Drone, his tumor, the external server, and probably some other things were all connected, and he intended to get to the bottom of this mystery. He had stated that plenty of times in the past, but this time he REALLY meant it. He was going to go his own route, because then he wouldn’t have any sort of interference from either of the two aforementioned parties.

Jacob looked around, noticing something just barely noticeable through the snow covering it. He leaned down, brushing away the top layer to find a gun lying there. More specifically, it was his gun, or the one that he had stolen from Right before he killed him. Eh, it was his now. He picked up the gun, flicking off a few pieces of snow that were still clinging to the exterior, before inspecting it like he knew how to properly inspect guns.

Satisfied from his totally legit inspection, Jacob holstered the weapon. Luckily, his suit was likely meant for some sort of combative role, as it had a place where he could put a sidearm, which is where he put the gun. He checked the small receptacle that lay on the side of his other leg, which is where he had stored the extra magazines that went into the pistol.

Some people would call them clips, but Jacob knew better.

Now, Jacob just had to figure out a plan. He supposed that the drone that had killed him, Bandanna Drone, would likely be the most viable option for his investigation, since he didn’t know where else to start. Cyn might not even have a physical form, he was pretty sure his tumor couldn’t communicate-

That's where you’re wrong.

-with him, and he didn’t even know what the external server really was. He couldn’t access it, and it was likely something far enough off that he couldn’t get to it, if it did have a physical form. So, that left Bandanna Drone, the one that may or may not attempt to kill him again, and that’s assuming he even managed to find the robot. The wasteland was vast, and he was but an infinitesimally small ant that was trying to find an even smaller needle in an even larger haystack.

Jacob shrugged to himself, before spinning in a circle. He couldn’t see any tracks, probably because the constant snowfall covered them up, so he just headed in the only direction he saw, the way he had been heading before he died. He supposed that, with luck, he would encounter at least SOMETHING that would help him with his goal, but his luck hadn’t really been good as of late.

As an afterthought, Jacob wondered how the facility drones and A and his squad were doing. Likely locked in a pseudo-war, considering their track record. Though, he did have an odd sense of foreboding, almost as if someone had spoken his name, except he was the one doing the speaking. It wasn’t the best analogy, but still, he felt like a storm was brewing, one that was far larger than his relatively-small goals.

Eh, not too important.

Probably.

* * *

“-and that should conclude our meeting.”

A let out a sigh of relief. The annoying “meeting” had dragged on for at least five hours, which was four hours and fifty-nine minutes too long, in his opinion. He never even wanted to cooperate with those facility drones in the first place! But, K had insisted he work with them, and after her repeating her argument to him about a dozen times or so, he could begrudgingly admit that there were more pros to working with the facility than there were cons. That didn’t mean he had to like it, however, and his dislike of practically all drones only deepened further when he saw how inept the worker part of the facility drones were. While his opinion of the military variants were better, that didn’t mean he liked them, that just meant he wasn’t physically restraining himself from unleashing explosive hell on them.

They had pointlessly deliberated for such a long time, A nearly forgot that they were enemies, and that was saying something, considering how he viewed practically everyone as something in his way. If A had full control of the meeting, he would’ve stopped it at the point where they would both try and kill that new drone, and not kill each other, as that would’ve hindered the first goal. After the new drone was dead, all deals were off, and A could finally get rid of those annoying pests once and for all.

At least it was over, and he could finally calm himself down enough to the point where he was more akin to a boiling pot than an intelligent being-

“We do hope that the next meeting will be even more fruitful than this one.” Agen stated.

The . . . NEXT . . . meeting?

A froze, his internal temperature skyrocketing to the point that, if one were to look for it, they would’ve seen the very air surrounding him wavering from the sheer heat. If this supposed “next meeting” was anything like this one, he would, quite literally, blow his top. It would look like the Big Bang all over again, except a thousand times greater. He didn’t suffer through the death of his ticket out of here for this to happen-

Wait, his ticket. Jacob. If he had died, then where was the body?

“Where’s the body?” A spoke up, out of the blue.

Agen, along with everybody else, turned to look at him in confusion.

“I asked a question.” A said.

“Uh, what ‘body’?” Emeli narrowed her eyes.

“The Asset’s, the thing that we had been fighting over, Jacob.” A elaborated.

The facility drones looked at each other in confusion.

“Well?” A leaned in.

Finally, Agen spoke up. “Uh, probably where it was left.”

A didn’t let up. “And where was it left?”

Agen winced. “Probably . . . where it died?”

“WHAT!” A yelled, causing the guards in the room to grab at their sidearms.

Resen motioned for the guards to calm down, luckily. “We weren’t given an order to . . . collect the body.”

A pinched the nonexistent bridge of his nose. “And why would you wait for an order to collect the body of a highly-valuable asset?”

Resen scratched the back of her neck. “I uh, don’t know.”

A let his head fall, letting it hit the table with a thud. “Goddamnit.”

* * *