Lincoln's eyes fluttered open. He stood in his room, where he noticed two bags laid out on his bed, one stuffed with clothes and the other various things in it from money to his favorite and prized comics. What stuck out most to him in the second bag was an odd, orange colored decade-old book.

"Lincoln Loud's family album…" Lincoln recognized the front of it with ease. On the bookshelf in the living room was a rainbow assortment of books of various colors, each one belonging to a separate family member, their parents having separate ones as well as one together.

"I can't believe I ruined my own life… for everyone," Lincoln said, looking over the tons of happy memories captured within each Polaroid. He smiled, seeing one photo depicting him around Lily's age with an older cellphone model in his mouth while being in a younger Lori's arms. It was supposed to be a small cute photo that got unintentionally sabotaged like most of the family pictures.

Each page Lincoln flipped sent him down another few years of memories. The singing and guitar practice with Luna, the sports games and physical exhaustion with Lynn, the attempts to educate Leni which rarely went well, the first time he even had the hard work he put in to help Lucy complete dark rituals, as long as he didn't actively get involved with it, the dress up and makeup wearing with Lola, the rough play with Lana, helping test Lisa's experiments, all the pranks he helped setup, create and fell into from Luan, and all the pictures of the family pets. It all concluded with welcoming Lily into the world and doing his best to help raise her with the rest of his family to make sure she turned out alright to the best of their ability.

"Why did I have to ruin it all?" Lincoln heard his thoughts echo around the room. He had not even opened his mouth. He rested the photo album on his bed by the duffel bags, rubbing his eyes since they felt somewhat dry.

"What the…?!" Lincoln gasped. The photo album had vanished. The very photos he had reminisced over were now scattered all over his bed and walls, and as he then noticed, he was no longer in any of those photos. His entire being was shadowed out like someone had spent careful time and work to trace him out perfectly with a dark marker.

"W…wha…?" Lincoln fell onto the floor. His eyes tried to keep adjusted to his surroundings, when he noticed this nearby television, and the words on the flickering static of his screen.

"Nothing will change once you're dead."

It kept repeating over and over in various text fonts, changing colors and sizes, trying to induce a seizure for the terrified thirteen year old. Lincoln had to grip his ears, hearing loud voices piercing his eardrums and attempting to embed into his brain.

"What happened to Lincoln?"

"Where'd our little bro go?"

"Do you think he ran away?"

"What if he got kidnapped?!"

"Imagine what those horrible people could do to him!"

"I believe that the note left on his bed was a suicide note…"

"No! Stop it!" Lincoln's eyes squeezed shut tight. When every one of his siblings' voices stopped torturing his mind, the young boy opened his eyes again. His room was now empty. Nothing was there, not even the tiny window that he once had. Suddenly, something kicked open his door, breaking it off the hinges and sending it to the floor. Lincoln stood up, preparing for the worst, but saw nothing but darkness. Not even the sun could pierce this void. The young boy was too afraid to leave the confines of his own room.

"Your life ended days ago," Lincoln heard, turning around. Standing there before him was a girl with long white hair and an orange long shirt and blue pants. This person, except the opposite gender, looked just like him.

"Who are you?"

"I think the question is what I am. Even so, I don't know. What do you think I am? Do you think I'm your consciousness? A manifestation of your guilt? Your feminine side? Whatever the choice, I am you. I'm just here to tell you that you died days ago," his female counterpart replied. Lincoln had no idea what to respond with by now. He had started to lose his mind again. Whatever she was, he could take some comfort in imagining she was only in his mind.

"I don't know about you, me, but the dead don't usually wander around," Lincoln retorted, but assumed it was more a referral to the mafia ordeal like a metaphor for sealing his fate since that was the most recent of his own life changing events.

"Well… I'm just here to remind you what is going to happen inevitably. Look down," his female clone said. Lincoln did just that, only to see water underneath him. His room had vanished and he was now in the ocean where no one else was around. Now even his clone vanished. Lincoln fell into the water, feeling something pulling him down.

Lincoln had no clue what to do anymore. He closed his eyes, willing to just accept whatever he wound up falling to in the bottom of the ocean. During this descent to darkness, Lincoln suddenly felt hands on his back, stopping him from falling further.

"Lincoln? Lincoln!" He heard voices calling out for him. He held his hand out to the top of the water, several other arms reached out grabbing his wrist he felt himself quickly returning to the surface.

"Gah!" Lincoln gasped, suddenly jerking awake, panting. He looked around, his body beginning to calm down. His eye turned to the nearby alarm clock on the nightstand that read 1:30am.

"Huh… it was just a nightmare…" Lincoln coughed. He was still in Lynn and Lucy's room, where he was allowed to sleep in their bed until he was fully functional again. He then noticed Lynn and Lucy lying on both sides in their pajamas. He was glad to know they cared a lot about him so much, that they decided to both sleep with their brother to comfort him tonight, and get hopefully some stress off him and themselves.

"Heh… I'm glad you're all going to help me…" Lincoln thought in his head, not wanting to wake them up over a nightmare. The young boy's injuries were healing up nicely, and he felt decently rested, but he wasn't going to disturb his precious sisters in the middle of the night while they slept. He smiled as he lay down on the pillows the three shared, wrapping his arms around Lucy and Lynn, feeling them both snuggling into him, despite their slumberous states.

"Thanks for saving me from drowning…" Lincoln whispered while closing his eyes ready to go back to dreamland to get more rest, he had to make up for having been awake for two days straight after all. The night felt peaceful, crickets were chirping outside under the twinkling stars as the air blew through the trees, knocking off the occasional leaf. The young boy fell asleep fast in the comfort of his siblings Lynn and Lucy had both decided to sleep with him that night, to try and comfort him better since he had taken the sports loving girls bed anyway they continued their slumber for the night, after all tomorrow was the first of a many rough days.

Lincoln sat in the back by the window of the family van, dubbed Vanzilla. Lucy was beside him on the best spot in the van while Lynn was in the passenger seat up front with Lori who was in the driver's seat. It was early in the morning, and Lincoln felt a lot better now that he had an actual good long rest.

"Thanks again for doing this, Lori," Mrs Loud spoke, holding Lily in her arms. Their baby sister was in her chinchilla costume again with her bright smile, giggling and cooing while playing with her costumes tail.

"I don't mind. It would be pretty boring if it was just me and Bobby at the campsite," Lori insisted it was nothing, having made up a lie that she was taking the three siblings camping with her boyfriend. Their parents were happy with this, but refused to let everyone go together. The last time the family tried to have a personal camping trip, it was a disaster.

"If anything happens, just call us. And Lincoln, be good and listen to Lori, okay?" Mr Loud ordered, their parents still not over the traumatic shock of their son almost being arrested for fighting random people.

"Don't worry dad, I will," Lincoln nodded, reassuring he wouldn't give Lori and Bobby any trouble.

"Bye, mom and dad. We love you," Lori told their parents goodbye before beginning to back out of the driveway, the parents watching the car drive off down the road and out of sight.

"Well that was easy," Lucy stated. Lying to their family wasn't as hard as most of them thought. Only Lisa really had the skill of being able to pay attention to detail enough to find discrepancies in lies. It was either that or their parents were just wanting to make sure everyone was happy and alright and to try and keep their only son out of trouble, which they entrusted the three sisters with that task.

"Yeah… So where are we going?" Lynn requested. Lincoln had only told them they were going to pay a visit to his boss before he went to work at his next job assignment.

"The deeper part of Royal Woods, it's kind of to the east," Lincoln explained as he went into more detail about exactly where to head to. Lori was not too cheery to hear where this place was, having not heard the best of things from this part of town, but she nodded.

"I'm so excited, and nervous!" Lynn said. Lucy was feeling the same usual unchanged deadpan face. Lincoln tried to relax for the ride while their older sister drove, but he doubted things would be easy, especially negotiating with Nora. He had long since informed them who his boss was, and his sisters were upset with hearing that her job as CPS worker was a lie.

"Let's just hope Nora lets you three join."