The hospital room suddenly fell silent.

The erratic beeping fell into a long empty tone, crashing the last remaining hope that Tristan had left.

"No Ryou! NO!" he shouted, shaking the now lifeless boy. His chest still rose and fell with steady mechanized breaths, but everything on the monitors were falling flat. "No! You can't do this to us!"

"Oh, Khons… Oh Ra… Oh Osiris…" Isis muttered the name of every deity she could think of.

The door slammed open, and a team of doctors rushed in, pushing Isis and Tristan out of the way.

"I'm sorry, but you'll have to leave."

Tristan heard the words being spoken, but he didn't know where they came from or who said them.

"No! I won't leave him!"

"I'm sorry, you have to leave." Another doctor shouted. Tristan tried to keep his eyes on Ryou, but medical personnel had already surrounded him.

"Get a defibrillator in here right now!" another screamed over the added commotion. "Move! Move! We're wasting valuable seconds!"

Before he knew what was going on, Tristan found himself outside of Ryou's room, staring at a closed door, and listening to the muffled sounds of arguing doctors. He couldn't make out much of what they said, although the phrase, 'We're losing him' stuck uncomfortably in his mind.

Isis placed a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, but it couldn't do much, especially when Tea and Joey walked into the hallway again.

They took one look at Tristan and Isis, and nearly lost all sense of composure.

"What's happening? Why are you out here?" Tea gasped. Her knees rattled as she thought of at least a million things that could have gone wrong inside the room.

"What's wrong!" Joey shouted, dashing up to Tristan, as though clenching on to him would stop this inane nightmare. He looked up, only to see tears sliding down his friend's cheek. They splashed messily onto his jacket, sliding towards the floor.

"Is he…"

"The doctors pushed us out…" he tried to speak, but a lump rose in his throat. "His… his heart stopped."

Tea froze, tears swelling behind her closed eyelids.

"No!" Joey shouted, pushing Tristan into the wall. "Don't say that! Don't lie to me!"

Isis tried to pull Joey off his friend, but to no avail.

"Don't lie to me! Ryou's fine! You're… You're just pullin' my leg! I don't believe you!" he screamed, slamming Tristan's back into the wall again. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

Tristan couldn't bear to look his friend in the eyes.

"I'm not… he… his heart stopped." He managed to finally answer, before Joey let him go. The punk dropped down to the floor, sobbing with his head buried deep in his hands.

"But what about Yugi… and… and…" Tea attempted to ask.

"They are still inside him." Isis answered.

"But…"

"I don't know what has happened to them." She sighed. "I can only hope that they are all right. That the gods are protecting them."

But the trembling in her voice made it clear. There was a possibility that Ryou was already dead. And that inside of him, their three friends had met the same fate. It was a thought that no one wanted to consider.

"No… This can't be happening…" Joey sobbed. His screams echoed all of their feelings. "This can't be happening!"

They huddled together outside of the room, and not able to do anything else for the time being, waited.

…

"Oh shit…" Yami Bakura froze, feeling the long empty pauses where heartbeats belong. The unpumped blood cooled around his feet. He didn't know what to do next.

The mass collection of spores didn't seem to know what to do either, as they too were frozen in place.

"He's… dead…" Yami Yugi gasped, his voice quivering.

Malik bent down, and felt the soft cardiac tissue beneath his feet. It was warm to the touch, overworked and exhausted.

"It can't be…" he stuttered, as he looked back up.

For once, Seto Kaiba failed to muster a sarcastic comeback. He was too overcome with shock.

Yami Bakura looked down at his own hands. He wasn't sure why he was still here. Was it because of the god's powers infusing him? If Ryou were dead, he would have likely been sucked back into the ring by now, trapped until the next destined host should arrive.

"Did we just… fail?" Malik asked. He sheathed his sword at his waist, and looked around.

If they did, were they doomed to remain inside Ryou's body? Or were they instead doomed to return to their lives, with the knowledge of their failure trapped permanently in their minds. Malik wondered, for a moment, which would actually be worse.

The silence around him was deafening.

Each second felt like an eternity.

"…I… I…" Yami Yugi finally attempted to speak.

But he was cut off by a powerful wave of electricity, shooting into the ground below him.