Consciousness returned to Sans with a gentle but insistent tug on his soul, and the intrusive feeling of fingers on his ribs. His eyes snapped open and locked onto the culprit. Well, they tried to. An unclear figure hovered above him, its entire form glitching out of focus like static. It didn't seem fully formed, and he couldn't make out any details, other than the free-floating black fingers that were curled around his rib with one "hand", and prodding at his soul with the other. Red lines of code danced aimlessly around the figure, and a sort of pitch-shifted humming was coming low and piercing from what appeared to be its head.

Everything happened in a split second, between Sans spotting the figure and it noticing his attention. As soon as it did, the glitches around it spasmed violently and furious lines of the coding wrapped around its form. The thing seemed to rise off him and wail a bit before disappearing altogether.

All at once able to move again, Sans jolted up and pressed his hand to his sternum, eye sockets wide. He found Frisk only a couple of feet away, only just starting to sit up and staring at him with an equally shaken expression. Relief swept through him like a tidal wave and he grabbed Frisk's wrist, dragging them into a bone-crushing hug. He heard them choke on a little sob, muffled in the folds of his hoodie, as they returned the embrace, clutching desperately at his back. He couldn't tell which one of them was shaking.

"Sans," they whimpered, "Sans, are you alright? What was that thing? What happened?"

Still holding onto Frisk, he took a moment to look around properly. They were back at the door that should lead back up to the Surface. But it was different. The door stood slightly ajar, its massive edges unstable and glitching sporadically, and through the opening all Sans could see was blackness. Not the normal darkness of shadow that usually obstructed the arched door, but...true, deep blackness that seemed to be sucking in the light around them. He even thought he heard a steady stream of white noise coming from the darkness, humming high at the fringes of his senses. The rest of the dark hallway seemed the same as usual, though. Still, he could feel in his bones that something had shifted. Whatever it was that had felt "off" when they'd first got back Underground had been pulled to the forefront, vivid and screaming at his senses as if it'd been held back by something before that had suddenly disappeared.

As for the...thing, that had been grabbing at him a moment ago. Well, to be honest, Sans had no guesses as to who or even what that had been. It didn't look like any monster he'd ever met. Not that he'd gotten a good look at it, of course. But not just any monster could prod at another monster's soul like that. It was certainly a cause for concern.

"I'm fine kid, I'm fine. And I don't know. Did it touch you? Are you ok?"

"No, I'm alright."

Pulling themselves up and dusting off, Frisk wiped the tears from their cheeks on the back of their sleeve. They cast a wary glance at the door to the Surface and took a few determined steps towards it, before thinking better of it and backing off.

"Sans, what do we do now? There has to be something we can do to get back to the Surface. Mom's going to be so worried..."

Sans flinched at the mention of Toriel. The kid was right. Having Frisk stuck down here with no way of knowing they were okay is the last thing she needed on top of the lingering trauma of the children she'd lost before. Knowing that Papyrus would be predictably very loudly hysterical wouldn't help either. . Scratching at the back of his skull, he waved towards the other end of the hallway.

"Only thing I can think of to do for now is go back the way we came. Maybe something's changed. Least we can do is get back to the Lab and see if we can get any readings on what these anomalies are."

Casting a last hesitant glance at the glitched out door that should have brought them home, Frisk nodded and started to head back down the hallway, chin stubbornly held up and shoulders back. Determined. Sans tried to hang onto a bit of their will, pushing forward.

Asgore's garden had been wilted the first time they'd passed through, but neither of them were prepared for what was left of it now. Dried and brittle stems littered the ground, not a single petal in sight. Dust blanketed the ground like fine snow, laying completely undisturbed by the anomalies that had almost completely consumed the throne in the center of the room. The throne seemed pixilated, the boxes of its mass shifting out of place, most of it having become crudely monochromatic while the rest was a sporadic mix of too-vibrant shades of yellow, red, and green. Entire sections seemed to be missing from the throne, too, with tiny sections of what almost looked like red coding hanging suspended where they should be.

Sans' eyes narrowed at the glitches, the lights that served as pupils growing dim, as he made a frustrated 'tsk'ing sound behind his teeth. He lead them both around the flowers, keeping them as far away from the walls as he could too (He could swear he saw them twitching a bit). He kept a protective hand around Frisk's wrist, nerves coiled tight in his bones.

They found the rest of New Home very much the same as the throne room. The long hallway where Frisk had found Sans waiting to judge them during their first journey had turned completely black and white, the light that cut between the glitching pillars sterile and harsh like florescents. In the house, there were massive chunks of space just.. missing, replaced by twitches of code and what looked like boxes of white pixels.

The first other person they met back along the way was a short, monochromatic little serpentine girl that reminded Frisk of Monster Kid. She was sitting at the bottom of the elevator from New Home, leading into the Core. Well, sitting wasn't quite the right word. They were slumped forward, looking lifeless, with wide, empty eyes. If not for the semi-regular rise and fall of their breathing, Frisk would have thought they were dead. Crouching down in front of the armless little monster, Frisk stooped at an awkward angle to look at their face.

"Hello? Are you alright?" Frisk raised a careful hand to their shoulder, giving the monster girl a little shake. She didn't react at all. She didn't even blink.

An uncomfortable feeling of haunting familiarity tugged at Sans's soul and he gently pried Frisk away from the motionless monster. Something scratched at the back of his mind, like the memory of a dream you can't quite remember. The feeling was too close to the confusion the Resets had caused at the beginning for his comfort, and he couldn't bring himself to look at the still figure any more.

"She's alive kiddo. Let her be. We've gotta keep moving."

They stood, still looking down with concern on the monster girl. "But Sans, we have to help her. We can't just leave her here like this." They tried to sound determined, but Sans could hear the agonized resignation in their voice. Frisk was a smart kid.

He shook his head, glancing at the motionless figure and back at Frisk. "Best we can do for her right now is figure out what's causing all of this. She'll be ok." He tried to believe his own words. Truth was, he had to find a way to get the kid and him back to the Surface, as far away from here as possible. They needed to get back to Papyrus and Toriel. To their family. He couldn't be stuck down here again. He wouldn't. Not like this.

Pulling Frisk along down the corridor, through the Core, neither they nor Sans saw the monster girl's head tilt towards them and watch them go before a mass of code and glitches coalesced on her and she was gone.

It would have been impossible to traverse the Core if it weren't for Sans's ability to teleport, with how much of the architecture had been erased by the anomalies, leaving gaping holes that fell into pits of lava. The elevators were out of commission, forcing them to traverse the complicated rooms of the whole Core. After the ninth jump, Frisk had to lean most of their weight on Sans to walk, their vision swimming and their soul quivering in their chest.

Sorry kid," Sans said, holding their elbow to steady them. They gave him a weak smile and pressed a hand to their sternum, trying to steady their breathing. They'd made it out of the Core, MTT resort within sight. From the outside, the Core looked even worse than it had inside. It was like the whole structure had rusted black and red and was twitching and melting into the lava beneath it. The structure seemed to be emitting a low groaning noise that echoed off the high roof of the Underground. They both shivered at the sound.

MTT resort had morphed, appropriately, in the most dramatic way imaginable. The whole thing had become blocky and monochrome, with a single wide line of the interior glitching into vivid neon colors that hurt to look at for too long. The Metaton-shaped fountain was still going, but it was spewing a thick black liquid that smelled of ozone instead of water. The door to the elevator had glitched out of existence, leaving only a patch of white pixels and long, thin lines of red coding behind. Frisk pulled away from him to peek into the Glamburger stand, which was part of the too-saturated strip of the resort, and leaned back out after a moment with a small frown.

After almost a year of monsters being on the Surface, they hadn't really expected there to be any food left around. Monster food didn't rot and expire like human food did, but it had mostly been hoarded and carried to the Surface once the Barrier had broken. As excited as everyone had been, they'd also been aware of how uncertain things would be above. Who knew where they'd get food from next?

Sans had never wanted anyone he cared about to face that uncertainty again. He could tell just by looking what was bothering Frisk. He tried not to worry. He knew where they could get food, if the anomalies hadn't messed with it, but at this point they were both traveling precarious territory and that stubborn, pessimistic voice in Sans's head was back in force. It didn't help that the queer, twisting feeling in his bones from before had just kept getting worse, joined now by the acute feeling of being watched. If the freak he'd woken up to crouched on top of him was any indication, then they were absolutely being watched. Still, some despondent part of him couldn't shake the idea that it was Flowey watching them from the shadows, planning some new scheme that would wind up snatching away everything he loved again. And this time, there wouldn't be any SAVE files to Load back to.

A bit of the floor started glitching too close to Sans's foot for comfort, and he scooted away from it with a frown. "Kid, I know that the jumps are rough on ya, but are you sure you we shouldn't just take a shortcut to the Lab? These anomalies are starting to freak me out."

Frisk shook their head. "We have to see if anyone else is here. Besides, with how messed up everything is, it isn't safe for you to keep teleporting. You can't take a shortcut if you don't know if your destination has been swallowed up by glitches, right?" They turned back from where they'd been looking into the old restaurant and stood at his side, glancing up for just a moment with a look of concern. "Not to mention the fact that you're exhausting yourself. I noticed. We can walk."

Sans grinned sheepishly at them. Damn, but the kid was way too sharp for their age. Weren't teenagers supposed to notice nothing but themselves? He guessed that a couple hundred resets and a few thousand times dying did something to you. God knows they'd taken their toll on him.

They didn't see anyone else on their way to the Lab, but it became evident that the further into the Underground they went, the worse the anomalies were. The unnerving wailing that the glitches emitted filled the air in a low drone that followed them everywhere. The scent of burt metal and ozone, and something over-sweet that was too much like dead flowers, hung about them, too. The anxious feeling inside Sans had become almost a physical ache, groaning coarsely in his soul. He could feel sweat beading on his skull, and the lights in his eyes were dim, darting around them restlessly. It was like danger had become a palpable thing, hanging like thick, choking fog in the air around them, setting their teeth on edge. Frisk was pretty obviously faring just a poorly as he was. They kept a hand clutched tightly to his sleeve as they walked, and Sans could feel that hand shaking ever so slightly. The kid had gone pale, and he even heard them muttering "determination" to themselves a couple of times. Their other hand was clasping the heart-shaped locket at their collar in a vice grip, turning their knuckles white as the bone beneath their skin.

On their first walk through, with the research team, Sans had noticed a few stay objects with double shadows. Now, it was like some objects had become shadows themselves, their vague shapes turned wavering black masses. This anomaly was relatively small, compared to the twitching, blocks of missing pixels, and lines of barely-there red code (which would get hazier the closer Sans tried to look at it). It only appeared here and there, swallowing up small objects that would hardly be noticeable, blending into the stark black and white that seemed to have spread through the Underground like an infection, if it weren't so damn bizarre. For a few minutes, though, it seemed like that particular glitch had thinned out completely. Until they reached the Lab, that is.

The entire Lab was a featureless mass of blackness and spasms of red code, sucking in the flat light around it and swaying more than twitching. Sans wondered if it was what a black hole might look like, if you could look into one. There was nothing to the Lab, now.

Except for the door, standing still and untouched by the anomalies, right where it should be.

And hell, if that didn't freak Sans out more than all the rest of it. This was so obviously a trap that he almost laughed, except that he knew they had to walk right into it anyways.

"Well, alright then," he sighed in resignation, taking the hand Frisk had tangled in his sleeve firmly in his own. Didn't matter one way or the other what ended up happening to them, he wasn't going to leave the kid on their own in this place.

Frisk chewed their lip for a minute, just staring at what had become of the Lab, before pulling him forward and pressing the release button on the door. It slid open slowly, creaking as if long since rusted. The whole building(?) gave a long, sharp keen as the door opened, revealing a dark, dusty room. But a room, nonetheless.

Frisk groped at the walls for some sort of light switch, but there was nothing. Sans looked around. The light mechanism should be on the far wall, if nothing had changed, but he couldn't see through the darkness to it. It was like the darkness was swirling through the air, a thick, soupy substance rather than the mere absence of light. He narrowed his eyes, blue light flickering to life in his left socket and bathing the room in a dim glow.

"I didn't realize you came with a built in flashlight, " Frisk teased, a weak smile on their lips.

Sans grinned, winking his glowing eye and plunging the room back into darkness for half a second. "Yeah, well, I'm a pretty bright guy after all. Consider yourself enlightened."

Frisk tried and failed to cover their giggles with a groan. Sans considered it a minor victory.

The Lab looked, to their surprise, widely undamaged. What hadn't been brought to the Surface sat untouched, covered in a fine layer of dust. The escalators had both stopped running shortly after Alphys had moved away, and the massive screen that had tracked Frisk's adventure a year ago was black.

Sans crossed the room and flipped on the light mechanism. Only about half of the lights came on, dim and flickering, but it was more than his eye had provided. He let the blue light fade and blinked a few times, taking a better look around. To his relief, the elevator down to the True Lab seemed in working order. Even if it wasn't powered, he could use his gravity magic to lower it down.

First, though, he pulled Frisk back over to the bare desk in the center of the room,pulling open drawers and rummaging through the things- mostly trash, really- that had been left behind. True to character, he found just what he was looking for. He pulled a chocolate bar from the back of the bottom drawer, his grin widening as he handed it to Frisk.

"Here ya go, buddy. That's a start. We can get some chisps down below, too."

"What about you?"

Sans shrugged. "I don't need it like you do. I'll get some chisps, too, and be fine."

Frisk pocketed the candy bar and smiled up at him, filled with determination.

The elevator door slid open for them without a qualm, and Sans figured he wouldn't have to use his magic after all. Still keeping a protective hand around Frisk's, he pressed the button for the bottom floor of the True Lab. The elevator hummed with electricity, jolting a bit before slowly descending.

Then there was a loud, sharp snap, and they were falling.