Last time:
The Doctor hides from Inky as the demon searches for someone. Afterward, he finds a murder plot against Inky and a Weeping Angel that's crying. The Angel presents him with a fragmented recording of Henry's and leads him down through the ink village, where the Doctor gets attacked by Sammy Lawrence, slips away, and falls through a hallway when the one board left of the floor snaps.
In the future, the Doctor and a Bendy Angel looks into a Weeping Angel loose on Slvson 8, and the Doctor warns Joey not to join him for the sake of the past.
Chapter 6
In Which the Doctor Says Three Things
He landed in something cold and wet. His mind flooded. He couldn't even hear himself think – not over the mental cacophony. He pressed his eyes shut in an effort to block it out.
He pushed himself to the surface.
A hard, cold hand grabbed him. He let it pull him onto the rocky floor.
Ink. Yuck! He was grateful it cushioned his fall, but still!
He rested an ink-covered hand against a damp, stony wall and opened his eyes. The Angel child was kneeling next to him, and above its head, he could see another of Henry's thoughts. This one was over a symbol drawn in ink of some square device with a handle: IT'S INSIDE THE VAULT.
The Doctor looked around the small room they were in. Nothing else but that ink pool, stone walls, and the doorway out. "Henry was here, but why would he hang around this place? He wouldn't. But he might find himself in here if he fell through that board like I just did. Or if he will… or if he would have… further into this time loop."
The Angel was peeking its head at him from the doorway. Through it was a waiting area in front of a gated-off area labeled Administration. A faded Bendy face beamed at him from over its top. No messages from anyone, no one else around except one of the cardboard Angels leaning between two sets of wooden benches, and another one around the next corner standing next to a Little Miracle Station.
His stone guide was pointing to a room labeled FILM VAULT. The Doctor went inside and passed exposed pipes, but there was a problem – the hallway between said room and said vault was chest-high in ink – he could see it through the door's glass window.
He backtracked through a different doorway into a small office. He took a look behind the desk and found an audio log sitting on the chair. One of Thomas Connor's.
Progress Report to Gent Home Office. Client: Joey Drew Studios.
Although we're making progress, the client's expectations keep changing. What started as a machine to simply mold life-sized figures, now seems to be teetering on the edge of magic more than engineering.
Although Mr. Drew remains convinced they are the same thing.
The process of running the cartoon film through the machine for the figures to imprint on is going well. We've had several near successes.
One weird note, the first figure ever created was a failed attempt in the likeness of the character named Bendy. Since that time, no other attempts of this particular figure have emerged. And the one that did.. I dunno, there's something just unworldly about him.
The Doctor kept staring as the cassette player clicked off. He exhaled. "Gotta keep moving."
He backtracked to the waiting room. Opposite him was a secretary's office with windows through which he could see a lever. In the corner outside the secretary's office was another one of those ink-crafting machines. Checking on the machine showed that it could make pipes like the ones he needed, but he didn't have any ink to feed it yet.
Pulling the lever in the office opened the administration gate. Since the Angel was just waiting for him now, he might as well go exploring.
It was a maze in there. He twisted and turned, poking his head into every office and closet he came across. He found a voice memo of Joey Drew trying to re-establish his role as a financially-successful leader, despite the studio's obvious failure. He found a room with nothing but a hiding station in it. He found a dry ink well in one room, with a recording from Wally Franks on a chair, which regaled anyone who listened with a story of Wally finding a chocolate cake.
One door he unlocked led to an empty hallway and a functional elevator shaft. Its controls had it going up as far as Level 9.
He shut the door and kept exploring. At the end of a hall, he found a table with a tape and a Little Miracle Station nearby. This was another of Joey Drew's tapes.
Listen, Tommy, I know you boys over at Gent are doing your best, but I'm paying for living attractions, not weird abominations! You know that grinning thing I saw wandering around your office, you'd better keep it locked up tight! I realize it was a first attempt but imagine if the press caught sight of it! Might scare off investors! And in response to your previous memo: if you claim your failures are because these things are soulless, then, damn it, we'll get them a soul! After all, I own thousands of 'em!
With a shudder, he kept exploring and finally found the thick ink he needed near the furthest office. Just whose office it was made him stop. A sign with a star declared it to be the office of Joey Drew, and its window was blocked by a thick curtain.
He opened the door. Inside was an office roomy for one person and the nicest he'd seen yet – lots of drawer space. On top was an audio log. Joey's of course.
I know how much this part means to you, Susie. Alice means a lot to me too. All of my characters do. In fact, I'll let you in on a little secret. I too really believe my characters are more than just drawings. They're alive. They're part of us. And I want people to know them as well as I do. I want people to be able to shake their hand, spend an afternoon with 'em. Love them. Susie, I'll be straight with you. I'm putting together a small project... a little ceremony. If it works, a lot of dreams will come true. And I want you to be a part of it. ...I want you to bring Alice to life once again. What do ya say?
The urge to punch Joey Drew returned. The Doctor busied his hands by searching the six desk drawers.
There, he found an ink bottle, a record, Joey's book, a Bendy plush, a wrench, and a gear. Useless.
He looked up, and just above the door was another of Henry's thoughts: WHO IS THE MAN BEHIND THE MONSTER?
The Doctor left the room and collected enough ink to make the pipes he needed to replace and got the ink drained. He traversed the hallway and stood before the vault. It was already open – door off its hinges. Nothing much inside in terms of company valuables – there was ink, a few boxes, and a message from Henry: THE DEMON HAS TAKEN IT.
The Angel was pointing toward a metal gate in the corner, but the Doctor stopped to look through the old weakened cardboard boxes anyway. There was a radio and several old Bendy episodes but neither the reel for "The End" nor any square thing with a handle.
He pulled out his screwdriver, aimed at the gate, and blinked. He followed the Angel through.
The Doctor blinks. Slowly.
Nothing. Empty cliff – except that device.
Something crunches.
He blinks again.
Nothing.
The local's hand shakes his shoulder. "Doctor-"
The Doctor's already spinning around. They both tumble to the white, moss-covered ground. An energy bolt nearly hits the Doctor's ear.
"MUTUAL ENEMY CONFIRMED. SOURCE OF WEEPING ANGEL INSANITY DISCOVERED. I HAVE FOUND THE DOCTOR! FIRST HIM, THEN YOU!"
The Doctor and the skinny blond Lz local press against a cliff wall. Twenty feet from them is a bronze, bump-colored personal war tank with an eyestalk.
"Another one!" the Doctor shouts. "How did you survive?"
"EXTERMINATE!" The Dalek blasts the cliff face, sending boulders hurtling toward both Time Lord and Lz.
The Gallifreyan's blood froze: an empty projector shone on a wall beside a cut-out. He picked up the projector and smashed it against the floor. The light died.
He looked at the cut-out. "I'd be careful if I were you. Those guys with the projectors as heads – they are not your friends, and they are definitely not your father's friends. See them, run. See the guy with one of your siblings' heads strapped around his face, run. See anyone for that matter, run."
Of course the cardboard Angel couldn't answer, so the Doctor continued following the stone one down the hall. In the next niche, there was the cardboard Angel again – unless it was another one. The Angel stood next to a desk covered in sketches. This looked like the concept art for the Bendy cartoon character. A particularly cute sketch – one with a shiny head and an open-mouthed smile had a rejection note, just NO posted to it. And according to Henry, HE WAS BORN HERE.
The Doctor and his guide continued through a hallway that had glass windows looking over into a parallel hallway, turned the corner, and saw a big inky message: DEATH →
They entered a large cavern and there was the ink machine! There, on the other side of an inky moat with a few crates floating in it. Makeshift lamp posts lit the place. Directly across the moat was a doorway, over which was a giant spigot dribbling ink. Large pipes attached to the spigot and the walls.
His eyes wandered to the Weeping Angel crossing the lake. Sure, it was harmless enough now, but if something happened to create the stories he remembered, what was the best way out? Back through the moat? Would he have to sneak through the giant pipes? He was sure he could fit if he had to – it was just a matter of the Angel not knowing where he went.
Speaking of, it was looking back at him.
"Hold on a bit, Gallifreyan senses and psychic, temporally-charged ink don't mix." Glancing around for signs of Inky, the Doctor backed up to the hallway. He got a door to take off its hinges and a plank to paddle with.
The door was a bit heavy, but the Doctor made it do. He paddled across the moat and followed his guide up the stairs, catching sight of a dead chest-creature lying on a rock.
They stepped quietly into the machine. At first, it was just a hallway covered in panels. Removing one revealed twentieth-century Earth wiring within. Just as it seemed to be from the audio tapes – alien technology manufactured on Earth.
The Doctor let the Angel lead on. There were niches – incubation pods. Several before he even got to the lever for the door, and more once he'd opened it. Some were in use, forming more of the yellow-eyed, tentacle-faced humanoids, one forming another of those cartoon wolves. Some were empty. He saw written on the back of one: I STILL REMEMBER MY NAME.
Ahead, there was a macabre throne – a horned, cushioned chair placed on top a pile of dead projectionists, large gears acting like steps up to its height. Projectors played a myriad of cartoons on screens surrounding the throne.
He bent down to investigate a broken cassette player near the throne – why did Inky have it here?
A soft scraping from another hallway caught his attention before he could finish looking into it though. He looked up, and there was his guide peeking at him. When he blinked, it was gone.
Squeak!
"Alright, I'm coming, but I find it hard to believe you found the recording all the way down here. Unless it dropped out of a pipe?"
The Angel gave no answer – at least not one that the Doctor could even recognize as one, so he kept following it through hallways of incubation chambers. They entered a room with four glass pillars and a giant grate on the floor.
The wall read WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?
He shivered. "Hate to think you've got anything to do with that message."
When he went to step forward, onto the grate, it was slid out from under him and he fell through instead. He landed on something soft – a cot? A cot with a pillow, a Bendy plush, and bedding that wasn't made at all. The wall beside it held a poster for "Bendy Walks the Plank." Scattered across the floor were toy planes and trains and picture books. "Hold on. This is a child's room. But where's the child?"
He blinked. When he opened his eyes, there were Bendy Angels crowded around the bed – both the statues and the cut-outs. "Not fair! I try to help you lot, and you ambush me! You're going to get everyone killed – yourselves included!"
His eyes watered. He couldn't hold them open much longer, and he knew the Angels were going to get him the moment he blinked. Despite this, even his quick Time Lord brain couldn't find a way out.
Too late. He blinked.
Only one Angel took advantage of it – a stone Angel with a screaming distorted face stuck halfway between their original Bendy appearance and their more conventional one. It had two horns and two pie-cut eyes, but it also had thick, curly hair down to its widow's peak and a bump of a nose. It wore a bow tie over its angelic robes, but its wings were still missing. It was reaching toward the Doctor with a gloved, five-fingered hand.
He jumped away and bumped into another Angel.
He looked over without thinking, and he was in time to see the stone Bendy he'd bumped into crumbling away, leaving a cut-out version in its place. The Doctor climbed off the foot of the bed and prodded the cut-out. It sipped at his time energy and tickled his consciousness, just like all the other Angels.
The Doctor turned around and found two stone Bendys restraining the half-transformed Bendy Angel. Its nose was gone now. He grinned. "You're not Bendy Angels turning into Weeping Angels – you're Weeping Angels turning into Bendys!" He gently rubbed the horn of the cut-out he'd been examining. "Into Bendy cut-outs by the looks of things. No – you're not Weeping Angels at all! You're parasites! Parasites that feed on the Weeping Angels."
He faked a smile for the Bendys' benefit. If they needed time energy to live, what did that say about their odds of all surviving after he broke the time loop? He was going to have to kill a bunch of little kids again in order to get everyone else out of this situation, wasn't he?
No, no, he'd find a way for them to survive. Even though there wasn't one. "It will be okay. Everything will be okay."
If only he could convince himself.
When next he blinked, there was a fully-infected Weeping Angel – a stone Bendy, that is – standing before him and offering him a broken reel.
He took it. "The End." He turned it over, in the back, there was a cracked-open secret compartment. He tore it open and his eyes widened. "This definitely isn't from Earth, nor is it from this time zone. Did Henry make it? Joey?"
In the Doctor's excitement, he failed to notice the thumping heartbeat approaching.
"This is from Slvson 8 in about three thousand years from now."
He didn't notice the inky veins running down the walls either.
"The Slvsonian's first time travel technology. Well, first legal time travel technology. The Lz built it. They'd meant it as a weapon against the Pnetiiy, but it's what finally brought peace between the two species. This is what's causing the time loop! Pretty good bait for Weeping Angels too."
A smooth hand grabbed his arm.
As he blinked, he got yanked into a stone embrace, and a second statue wrapped its arms around him and the first Angel. Two stone Bendys were clinging to him, looking up at something above the grate.
The Doctor directed his eyes upward too.
He glimpsed his guide standing beside Inky.
Inky was already changing into his larger form. His teeth glinted, even in the dim lights. He stuck his inky breath down, right in the Doctor's face, and roared. He pulled back and looked at his hand, which he flexed. He rubbed his fingertips past each other, resulting in the sharp swoosh of sharp blade against sharp blade.
The Doctor gulped.
Cut-outs started swarming between him and Inky, but Inky brushed them aside and aimed his sharp fingers at the Doctor's throat. "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Hold on! Three things!"
Inky pulled his hand back, tilted his head, and growled.
The Doctor had his attention, but he had to talk fast. "One. You're the one keeping the time loop going, aren't you? You just needed to draw the Weeping Angels here so you could use them to fertilize your eggs. You inherited memories from an Lz working at the studio, so you were able to replicate their technology."
Inky plucked the film reel from the Doctor's fingers, examined it and its contents, bared his teeth, and growled again.
"I didn't break it!"
The Ink Demon curled his hand around the reel. When he opened his hand, the reel was covered in thick black ink, but the reel and device were being put back together as the ink faded away. Setting the film reel aside, the Ink Demon locked his gaze on the Doctor. He mouthed something at him, but the Doctor wasn't familiar enough with his species to read his lips. The meaning became clear when one of the stone Bendys moved his hand and shielded the Doctor's throat.
His mouth went dry. Alright, onto point two quickly. "Two. You've noticed that your children are protecting me, haven't you? Don't you want to know why? It's because I've spoken to some of them, and I promised them I'd help. And I will! I know you've been hurt by the people here, but I will help you. You've just got to stop with the time loop – you're endangering everybody in this system."
Inky roared, shook his head, pounded his fists on either side of the grate, and stuck his face in the Doctor's to roar again.
The Doctor swallowed. "Or I could just take you far away to where you never have to see them again. I have a space ship. I can do that."
Inky swiped at his face and drew blood.
It stung. The Doctor winced.
Inky's growl rattled the grates overhead.
"Three," said the Doctor quickly. He licked his lips. "I've noticed a child's bed down here – just one. Your children don't need one until they hatch, do they? That means you've got a hatchling, and your hatchling's missing. What else could rile you up this badly? I've been a father before too. I-" He choked up. "I know what it's like to lose a child."
Inky went quiet, eyes – if he had any – on the Doctor. Good.
Next time:
Henry.
Disclaimer:
I do not own Doctor Who or Bendy and the Ink Machine.