Sure enough, even everything in Potter's Splay was stuck in time, just like everywhere else in Willow Creek. Through the kid's bedroom window, Dan saw Dab sitting on his bed with a torch shining upwards onto his face. Evan was on the floor beside the bed, looking like he was listening, intently, in a mix of excitement and fear. Both children were frozen, eerily, in the dark, with only the light of the torch to illuminate the room.

There was something utterly sinister and bone-chilling about the whole thing, seeing every plant, person and thing dead still.

Both Phil and Dan peered though the windows to check on the Howlter parents (who were both fast asleep) but soon realised that they couldn't re-enter the house: the lock wouldn't move and neither would the door if they did manage to unlock it. This revelation wasn't game-changing, though, because they didn't even need to be in the house. All they needed was the satellite.

"How would we even know if anything was out-of-place?" Dan swallowed, running his fingers over the button panel on the side of the satellite pole, "We don't know how to work this thing."

"And even if we did, it's not like we'd be able to right anything or press any buttons," Phil admitted, "It's just as frozen as anything else…"

"What can we do?" Dan whined, desperately, his eyes pleading for any more suggestions from his friend. He could tell from Phil's eyes that he had thought of something but was refraining from telling Dan about it. Just like Dan could read the air, he could read eyes: telling everything from the slightest twitch or glimmer. He paused for a while and inspected every inch his friend's expression and body language, watching the tiny twitches and shuffles.

"You've thought of something," he said, flatly, "Haven't you? And you don't want to tell me what it is."

Phil's breath caught and he sighed, hanging his head and kicking his shoe on the decking. He was struggling for breath, Dan could tell. Their air was running out. He wandered round in a circle once, biting his lip, until Dan took him by the shoulder and dragged him into a hug.

"Why aren't you telling me?" He whispered into his shoulder.

"Because… I don't think it's a good option," Phil replied, reluctantly, knowing there was no way he could avoid explaining, "And it might erase this whole journey… but it's the only thing I can think of."

"What is it?" Dan asked, softly, moving a hand to rest on the back of his friend's neck, attempting to soothe him enough to get him to speak.

"I thought… I thought maybe we should go through the barrier," he said, eventually, "We could get back to the computer and restart the system. It would get the game out of the Crash, but… it would erase everything that we've done."

Dan was silent. He didn't want to believe it, but he knew that it was true – leaving the world and loading from their last save was the only way to save everyone, and their last save was right before they arrived here. June would be a massive waste of time and they would have lost everything.

"Why did it have to happen now..?" Dan murmured, "Right after we'd fixed almost everything… we've been through too much here to just lose it all now."

And he was right. June had been eventful. February could be erased with almost no problem. It would doubtless be relieving to get back to normal and for Dil to still not know they existed, but June was the time when they'd fixed the mistakes they'd made, and even probably gotten to know each-other even better. Erasing it would be traumatic, but…

"It's the only thing to do, isn't it?" Dan muttered, bluntly, and felt Phil nod into his shoulder. He breathed a sigh and slowly let go, "I guess we have to, then," he said.

"This wasn't how it was supposed to be," Phil whispered, folding his arms, "It was going so well. We were going to leave peacefully after we were content, and that was going to be very soon, too. And now we're going to have to do it all over again."

"Or, of course, we could leave it," Dan suggested, quietly, knowing that Phil would hate the very idea, "And not come back."

Phil frowned, angrily,

"You know I don't want to do that," he hissed, "I'm not letting these entire two weeks go lost for absolutely no benefit. We came here for a reason, with a job, and I intend to finish what we started, even if it means going it alone. If that's what you were thinking."

"No, no, of course not," Dan answered, shaking his head, "I'd definitely come with you if you decided to come back… and if that's what you really think is best… I suppose this is it."
Phil looked anywhere but Dan's face, staring at the grass, at the trees, at the clouds in the sky…

"Yeah," he nodded, "This is it."

"Should we go?"

"We should."

And they went. Wandering back to the forest and engaging in softly-spoken conversation to calm their beating hearts, but all in vain. They couldn't come up with any better idea, so they arrived at the barrier and stared up at its glassy surface with the same sense of awe they had the first time they saw it.

It never failed to fill them with a sense of trepidation and wonder every time. It was somehow still in-tact even after they broke through it back in February, perfect as everything else in this universe. Nothing about it made sense, but it didn't really need to; it was their gateway back to reality and the only tether they had to the real world, and now it was their only way to save this world.

Seeing as the rocks were practically glued to the ground, the only way to get through was to shatter it with body weight, so with a sickening dread and regret, Dan took as deep a breath as he could manage and took his friend by the hand to leap through it.

The glass shattered with an ear-splitting smash and what felt like a vacuum started to drag all the air toward it in whirlpool-like fashion. Through the shards flying out into it, Dan could see the all too familiar sight of binary code circling like a tornado.

They only hoped their idea would work and that they wouldn't kill themselves or anyone else in the process.