Chapter Text
Phil, Techno, and Wilbur spent the next few days in vigilance. The former two kept their eyes and ears pricked for the latest news. The latter had his own trained on them, his face flickering between dread and relief ever so often.
Meanwhile, Minx busied herself with deciphering what Eret's random statements meant. The boys could not help but be dragged along by her enthusiasm since she swore to help them out on behalf of Niki. They huddled inside her room in the west wing, watching Minx jot down all the ideas they brainstormed. Tubbo, in particular, enjoyed coming up with the wildest assumptions on what little they got.
Somewhere between zombie armies and aliens ("Barking."), Tommy decided to take a break and go outside. All this talk of Dream was making him sick, and he sorely needed fresh air.
Also, the sweet scent from Minx's covers made him feel funny.
Huffing after a huge gulp, he turned his eyes to Techno standing under the shade of the east wing. The man had his arms folded, eyes sweeping the world outside the love hotel with eagle-eyed keenness. Tommy followed his line of sight and felt his spirits dampen.
The Veil still straddled the whole market square and the Prime Path, glinting like a massive, necrotic sore. Despite being inert, a mere projection of cursed energy, it taunted them with their smallness before it, almost as if it bore the threat of one day swallowing them whole.
He shivered at the memory of those weeks in Fort Worth and looked away.
Then, his eyes fell on Wilbur. He had just come out of the bathroom on the other side, walking to his room with heavy shoulders. Their gazes met for a moment. And then, the man's face flushed as he hastened to the door and slammed it shut.
Tommy tilted his head.
Another wrongun, right here.
The blush caught him off guard. He snorted at it, though the corners of his mouth twitched upward. Heat prickled on his nape, and he swiped a hand there in sudden disgust.
Then, he saw Techno straighten, pick up a couple of pebbles, and flick them against the walkway with such precision that it clanged like a warning bell.
Phil strode out of the kitchen and went swiftly down the stairs to join him, his face stern. But as Tommy heard a van slow to a halt just at the front of the yard, his expression melted into a smile.
A woman stepped out, tresses of shimmering brown hair tumbling over a crisply pressed white suit. She took off the sunglasses on her face, looked around, and heaved a sigh.
"Looks just like I remembered it."
Phil laughed. "Welcome back, Chief."
Tommy ogled the newcomer as they set up a couple of tables and chairs next to the van. The gears in his head churned, a part of him recognizing the puzzled face while the rest denied it. The blurring crept at the edge of his vision again, so he turned his attention to the thick folders before him.
That was until Puffy ("Curious name.") spoke up. "Figured you'd know my face," she said to Tommy.
"You've met him?" Phil asked.
"Not really," she answered with a mild smile. "But you look like the kid who tailed Dream weeks ago. I was wondering where you went after that."
Everyone (save Jeb, who stood all aloof in a corner) looked at Tommy in wonder. The boy squirmed in his seat, the pain and fog echoing tauntingly in the back of his head.
Puffy's expression shifted to one of worry. "Oh, he didn't tell you about that?"
"Not much, no," Tubbo answered for him, his eyes looking down at his twiddling thumbs on his lap. "We don't really press him on it. It looks like it hurts him to try and remember."
At that, Puffy's face darkened. "He's not the only one."
She picked up one of the folders and slid her finger through the flap. But before turning it open, she looked at a young, gangly, and unusually stiff auxiliary hovering a few feet behind her. "Sykkuno," she muttered in an authoritative tone. With a nod, he went to the driver's seat and took out a small diorama of a bucking horse.
He placed it on the van's hood and tapped it twice, saying, "Live and working, Chief." Puffy nodded at him. He then retook his place behind her, trying to resume his stiff posture, only to buckle under a strange look Jeb was shooting him. He had heard stories about the Schlatt heir, each as colorful as the last. At the moment, he looked like he was sizing Sykkuno up, his eyes squinting in scorn at his puny frame.
The auxiliary cleared his throat and sidled to Puffy's left.
While she flipped through papers chock-full of text and diagrams, she told Phil, "We're not taking any chances. Even with Jordan spilling everything and backing me up on my lack of involvement, we couldn't convince Sam. He's Interim Head, you know?"
Tommy watched Minx lean over to Wilbur, whispering animatedly. He only made out a few words, particularly, "That mean turd from our Public Relations class, right?"
Phil grimaced. "I take it he's loving it?"
Puffy shook her head as she settled on a page littered with long black dashes. "It's more like remedial work for the part he ended up playing in this fiasco. Take a look."
Phil leaned forward as she slid the folder toward him, Techno and Wilbur doing the same. Tubbo's interest was piqued, and he briefly considered shuffling to that side of the table. But he plopped back to his seat when he noticed the deflated look on Tommy's face.
Phil's forehead creased. He was looking at a log of major medical incidents at the Institute HQ. Through the crossed-out words, he read that many personnel, including Samuel Nook, fell ill on the 15th of May. They all experienced headaches, severe confusion, nausea, and an inability to recall certain events without all the other symptoms flaring up.
He remembered the look in Tommy's eyes when he attacked him in Dallas. To his silent horror, he matched it with the expression Anthony wore during his attempt to break out Ranboo.
He looked further down. With a grim sort of acceptance, he found the agent's name in the list of patients.
"What caused this?" he whispered.
Puffy dipped her head. "Do you know any agent who has the power to affect minds?"
"I don't think there was any the last time I was there," Phil replied.
"And you'd be right," Puffy affirmed while opening another folder. "Except there's one that comes close."
Tommy caught the words on the front before it flipped over.
Survey of Identified Cursed Techniques from the Enrolling Students of Upper Manburg Technical High School
Batch 2013-2014
Puffy sifted through the pages until she found the one she needed and slid it to Phil. She tapped at a corner of the paper and said, "Hannah's department had a hard time figuring out the cause. But she did conclude that it could only be the work of a cursed technique once the last of the patients came in. Then, later that night, Dream entered the HQ, carrying a person to the ward who was long gone by the time they laid him on a bed."
The surprise visit. Tommy. The eyes. The mark. They all crashed into Phil's brain as his gaze fell on the person Puffy was pointing at.
His face grayed. "Halo could never."
"We'd like to think so, too," Puffy noted with sadness. "But the signs point to him. Empathetic Entanglement was what the board called his technique. A Class A ability that had little to no practical use. All it does is create an ethereal connection between the user and their target, allowing them to read their emotions and inspire feelings of kinship. They considered putting him on the admin track, but he refused. He worked hard and loaned a cursed object that let him channel a thrall spirit just so he could join Dream in the front lines."
She sighed. "Someone as meek as him. You can imagine what he faced to get to where he was. That may be all the push he needed to modify his own technique. But it makes sense once you know what he and his friends were up to before all of this happened."
Puffy took the previous folder and turned to another set of pages. This time, it consisted of documents ranging from report logs to notices from government agencies.
Wilbur squinted at one of them. "Is this a CIA hit list?" he asked bemusedly.
"Phil's there if you're wondering," Puffy pointed out. That made Wilbur purse his lips.
"That's arranged according to perceived threat level," she added, "though that's from November 2016. The next ones come from the succeeding months and years."
On this list, the names Clay Dream, Darryl Halo, and George Knapps sat on Orange. "A bunch of personnel-in-training, little more than teenagers, up this high?" Puffy said with a dark smirk. "That followed a botched scouting mission involving the rogue agent Yvonne Ng."
Phil flipped to the next page, where the three climbed to Red. Karl Jacobs and Nicholas Galliard joined them, all five following after a man named Maximillian Damocles, who stood at the very top, and Joel Schlatt.
"I suspected as much," Phil mused aloud. The former was the previous Head of the Institute. Meanwhile, Wilbur fixated on the latter name.
"Joel Schlatt," he read aloud in a mocking lilt. "Your old man, yeah?"
Jeb spat on the ground in answer.
Phil flipped to the next page and exhaled sharply. "Charlie..."
Puffy closed her eyes. "I'm afraid so. I still don't know why. Maybe they suspected him for trying to link with the Schlatts. I know he got close with Jeb's circle back then. Whatever he did, it got him dealt with."
At that, Jeb shrugged. "Just thought he was funny. Didn't make much of him, though."
Phil continued skimming through the pages, noting bitterly how the names of Dream and his friends remained stuck to their spots while the other faces changed.
And then, he came upon on the list for November 2017. The five dipped back to Orange as a single person stood in Red.
Wilbur and Techno's faces hardened. Phil took a shaky breath. "This is..."
Puffy nodded sternly. "That day in California."
Tommy watched in pity as the man's chest rose and fell heavily. Techno placed a gentle hand on his shoulder while Wilbur sank back into his seat, eager to see no more.
His jaw tightening, Phil moved past an entire chunk of pages and landed on the entry for October 2018. Dream jumped back to his spot in Red. However, only Halo followed him, making up the sole people considered high-level threats by the CIA.
"The Shibuya Incident," he whispered.
"I guess they finally found a good excuse to cut down half of their main targets," Puffy said.
Phil looked back at what Dream said, his torturous pondering over why his friends died a preventable death. With that echoing in his head, he flipped the folder closed.
"How were you able to put this stuff together, Puffy?" he asked wearily.
"We've got Eret to thank," she replied, relief breaking on her face after the long and dreary recounting. "He threw all of us for a loop. But, for better or for worse, it worked. Matthew and Nivison told me the wildest thing about how he did it."
Phil chuckled, his expression warming again. "Got that from Aphmau, no doubt."
"Well, he broke the cursed object array Sam put in place while he was under Halo's influence. That opened up a lot of servers, as well as tons of space," she added in an amused aside. "We took it as a safety measure for all the pestering our backers got fond of doing recently. But it turned out he was also using it to hide vital information."
She turned to Sykkuno and tipped her head toward the backseat of the van. Without a word, the auxiliary retrieved a much thinner folder, holding properly ten pages at most, and passed it into her hands.
"I thought you might find this useful," she whispered, her voice hushing. As she tipped it gently toward Phil, Tommy noticed that it had the word Classified stamped in huge, red letters across the front.
It reached Phil's side of the table. He, Wilbur, and Techno stared at it in muted trepidation. Gingerly, Phil took a peek at the first page and immediately closed it.
Techno stood abruptly. He put on the usual stoic look Tommy was familiar with, though it twitched ever so slightly. "I'll fix you guys some orange juice," he grumbled quietly before turning to the stairs. Wilbur followed, mumbling something about snacks.
Phil remained in his seat, screwing his eyes shut. He brushed a tear aside, then looked at Puffy with a pained smile.
"I owe you so much for this," he said. Puffy merely nodded.
"That's enough looking back," she said, addressing all who remained by the table. "It's what's ahead we gotta worry about now."
That proved daunting. Many of them were still chewing on the look-back when Wilbur and Techno returned with snacks in tow.
While Puffy said her thanks, Minx raised a hand. "So, quick question: does this have anything to do with the Veils? You guys should've done something after, like, a couple of months, no?"
Puffy made a strange face, sucking in her cheeks. Phil leaned toward her, his brows knitting together.
"Puffy..."
"Dream does," she answered stiffly. "For both questions actually."
They sat in stunned silence. Minx cupped her chin with her hand, looking dazed with disbelief. Jeb, on the other hand, perked up in attention, his eyes glowering as his jaw hardened.
"How?" Phil cried.
The chief heaved a sigh before explaining. "I'm just as stumped as you are. It was an alarming find. I don't have it because Sam's still tearing his hair over it. But we found a map showing the population densities of different towns and cities in the state. There were circles with the exact locations and circumferences over where the Veils currently are."
While everyone shared looks of shock and confusion, Tommy sank deeper into his seat. The fog took over his sight at last, and he did his best not to make a sound at the pain it made in his head. His mind's eye stumbled about in a world of static, images of a map laid out on a stuffed table inside a dimly lit truck flashing constantly at it. He heard Dream's voice and saw his green, green eyes, and he bit down a whimper.
"Not only that," Puffy went on. "We found another one showing the entire country with markings that matched the ones found on the map Minx swiped. They marked ground zero for each of the impacts of the Skyfall."
Tubbo gasped quietly. Then, Phil said, "You can't be saying he's got a part in that, too."
"We ruled that out, actually," Puffy replied. "He was at HQ when it happened. We thought he was using it to make comparisons, like a template almost. For what? We've got no clue. Some of the staff are saying—"
Tommy could no longer follow her words. His body was wracked with chills as a cold sweat broke all over him. The fog was taking a solid shape within his body, making his head sway.
He watched Tubbo look at him in concern and open his mouth to speak. But he could not hear his words, only Dream's grating in his ears.
"Would be a waste to get rid of it so soon..."
"It's like how some people try to reverse engineer tumors. This here's an opportunity to tap into the endless potential of curses!"
"You're not seeing the big picture here..."
"...This thing is a massive fish tank!"
"Just a bunch of small fry."
Tommy leaped to his feet, jostling the table. "Fish tanks!" he screamed. They all stared at him like he had gone mad. But to him, a pressure valve had just been loosened, and he had to spill everything steaming from his mouth or risk popping his brain.
With one hand on his head and the other stiff to his side, he went on, "I remember. It isn't clear, and it hurts, but I remember. He told me he wasn't really interested in getting rid of the Veils. Said it's like something to study, something that would allow him to tap into the infinite potential of curses, or some mad shit like that. And then... and then..."
The world sputtered in and out of Tommy's vision. He strained against the sharp shifts of his weight to no avail. As he slumped next to Tubbo, he dug deep into himself and pushed out the last of his strength.
"He showed me something. It was red and gem-like, and he... he shoved it into my mouth. It made me... feel..."
"Breathe, Tommy! Breathe!" Tubbo urged. Before Tommy's eyes closed, he saw Phil, Big Man Phil, turn to Puffy with a sudden look of recognition.
"It's true. Somehow, Dream has the Egg. He showed it to me."
"W-Wha—"
"He had Halo's mark on his own hand, too. Still don't get how, but—"
"Tommy!"
Tommy woke up to the rustle of a bedsheet and the hum of a ceiling fan. He tried jerking up as quickly as he could, only to feel like his brain crashed into his skull like jelly. With a hiss, he settled for a slow, humiliating rise.
To his pleasant surprise, he found himself in his roo—
"You're awake!"
He jumped in fright and immediately doubled over as his temples throbbed. Tubbo handed him a glass of water, looking apologetic as Tommy peppered the air with swears.
"You should use your centering thing more," the boy said.
Tommy paused after taking as many gulps of water as he could. When was the last time he did his centering ritual? He found it worrying that he could not remember.
"Uh, yeah, that," he said lamely. "So, did you carry me here?"
Tubbo pursed his lips while tapping his fingers together. "Wilbur did, actually."
Tommy thought he was hearing things. "What?"
His friend shrugged. "I know. By the way, you didn't miss out on a lot. After you passed out, they had this hurried conversation about this Egg thing. It all went over my head, but I got that Phil was definitely going to help them do something about it. Oh! And all those cards Minx snuck out of the swamp mansion? They handed them over. The guys did something crazy with them first, though. Techno had Wilbur channel his technique into one of them, and then the whole box exploded! Miss Puffy looked very intrigued, and Minx seemed very pleased at getting credit again."
Tommy's face soured. "That sounded like a lot," he muttered ruefully, to which Tubbo could only scratch his head.
Then, his shoulders drooped, a somber expression written all over his face. Tommy felt his stomach dip. "What's wrong?" he asked.
Tubbo took one look out of the door and shook his head, wringing his hands tightly. "So, about the Veils? Miss Puffy said in light of everything they learned, they were going to put a quick stop to them. A few days from now, they'll do one last check on each of them to make sure no one's stuck there. After that..."
He pursed his lips and concluded, "They'll blow everything up."
The last few words echoed in Tommy's ears. "Oh."