Chapter 8

Undyne blinked at Sans, trying to figure out how a skeleton could possibly be rotund. She resisted the urge to poke him and find out if there was a pillow stuffed under his white shirt. He laid on the green couch, boney arms behind his head, attempting to appear laid back in his blue hoodie, and only managed to come off as listless. He looked like he'd gone a hundred steps beyond worn out and didn't feel the need to hide it very well.

Undyne frowned. This was a monster who'd long ago thrown in the towel. So why hadn't he fallen down?

Papyrus groaned. "GET UP, YOU LAZY BONES!"

"*nah. i'm good right here, bro."

"YOU WON'T EVEN GET UP TO SAY HELLO?"

Undyne waved it off. "If he's not interested in getting up, that's fine. I just need information."

Papyrus frowned, clearly upset. "THE ISSUE IS NOT THE INFORMATION. IT'S THE WAY IN. THE LAB IS SEALED. IF YOU WANT TO ENTER, SANS MUST TELEPORT YOU INSIDE."

"*the lab's a terrible place. you don't want to go there."

Undyne frowned. "Is Dr. Gaster alive?"

Sans' pinprick eyes slid across his eyes sockets to look at her without turning his head. "*why's it matter?"

"Because the Barrier won't open if he's alive."

The smile on Sans' skull disappeared into a hard, thin line. "*you've got a lot more than him to take care of if you want the barrier open."

Undyne shrugged. "One step at a time."

Sans closed his eye sockets. "*and what's got your panties in a bunch that you want the barrier to open? or do you just want to see sunlight bad enough to murder your way to it? do you think the king up on the surface is interested in having a murderous monster running loose?"

"My orders are to open the Barrier. So you can say my boss has my panties in a bunch." She stopped. "Actually, don't say that. He'll think it's funny, but his wife will beat me to a pulp."

"*orders?" Sans sat up, eyes on Papyrus. "*yo, papyrus. who is this chick?"

Papyrus ignored the question. "I WANT YOU TO TELEPORT HER INTO THE LAB."

"*not happening." Sans eyed Papyrus. "*what's gotten into you, papyrus? you don't just bring some unknown monster around and say you want to get her in the lab. why don't you just take her?"

Papyrus huffed, annoyance rising. "YOU KNOW I CANNOT TELEPORT MORE THAN MYSELF."

Undyne looked to Papyrus and smiled a little.

Papyrus sighed, skull dropping. "NO. MY BROTHER DOES NOT KNOW."

"*what don't i know?"

Undyne nodded and sat down on the floor next to the couch, which put her on eye level with Sans. "I am Undyne Cichlid, Captain of King Asriel Dreemurr's Royal Guard. I was originally sent into the Ebott Prison to retrieve a human who had been kidnapped and smuggled inside via a previously unknown entrance. But the truth of the matter is that it's been three hundred years. The only reason the prison hasn't opened is the boss monsters. They are long lived and Asgore's refusal to give up on his ambitions keeps you all trapped here."

"*but if someone has smuggled one human into the prison, that means there are other humans..." He looked up at Papyrus. "*you've been hiding humans in the prison."

Papyrus nodded.

"*under the nose of 'toriel the reaper' and lord chara, the human hater?"

"LORD CHARA IS THE ONE WHO COMMISSIONED ME FOR THE TASK, UNDER THE NOSE OF THE QUEEN." Papyrus put both hands on Sans' shoulders. "PLEASE TAKE HER INTO THE LAB."

"*that still leaves asgore and toriel."

Undyne counted off on her fingers. "And the royal guard. As I said before, one step at a time. This is the step with the most unknowns, so I'm taking it first."

Sans looked up at Papyrus. "*you sure about this?"

Papyrus sighed deeply. "It's been over a century, Sans. If we can't end it, let someone who can."

Sans stood up. "*you ready for this? need anything to prepare?"

"What am I up against?"

Sans shook his skull. "*i don't know." He stuck his hands in his pockets and shuffled his feet. "I don't know if there's anyone still alive in there. when asgore sealed it up, he sealed it with magic. with all the staff who were there still inside. most would be dust by now, but you can't be too sure when someone's desperate."

"I'm ready."

Sans shrugged. "*follow me."

Undyne looked to Papyrus, and received a nod. When Sans turned, she stepped after him and was suddenly standing in an elevator lobby for a very old elevator.

"That was quick."

Sans jerked an elbow toward the elevator, refusing to take his hands out of his pocket. "*take the elevator down. it goes into the lab. if you find any keys, grab 'em. you'll need 'em."

Undyne sighed. "So when are you going to say it?"

"*say what?"

"That you don't want me to kill your father."

"*dr. gaster isn't-"

"I know what a skeleton monster looks like, Sans. And Wing Dings Gaster is a figure of history."

"*then you know his wife died before the war started." Sans sighed. "*we're clones. some of the staff saw us as an experiment. others saw us as children he couldn't otherwise have. but the closest of his followers knew what we were: an apology."

He disappeared and Undyne entered the elevator, sending it down.

The elevator creaked to a stop, the cage gate rattling. Pulling the gate back, Undyne pushed the outer elevator open into darkness. Clicking on the flashlight revealed a stairwell in concrete. Something shuffled in the darkness below and she paused, taking a moment to flick the safety off on her gun. Stairs led into an open storage room, construction materials littering the floor so that she had to carefully step over bags of concrete mix, rolls of wire, and wooden beams.

Light streamed through an open doorway across the room and Undyne made her way to it, pushing open a door made of metal bars with a grating sound. The shuffling noise ceased as she came into a fully lit room with more construction materials; beams, ladders, wheelbarrows, and large metal barrels. On the other side was another cage elevator.

The elevator only went down, opening on what appeared to be a contractor's onsite office. A large table took up the middle of the room. Workmans' lockers lined the left and forward facing walls. On the right was a map. Undyne paused for a few minutes, taking out her notebook and jotting down the map. Once she was reasonably sure she had enough detail, she took the door next to the map out of the room.

A roar echoed in her ears and Undyne only had a moment to duck the mass of flesh that swung at her. Rolling away, she came up in a crouch and her jaw dropped. A creature that looked like four humans shoved into one mound of burnished yellow flesh swung at her with one of several bone thin arms. She rolled to the side, coming up spear ready and not knowing where to hit it. Grimacing, she switched tactics, summoning several spears up through the floor to impale the creature at several points. It's cries stopped, the body collapsing on itself in a pile.

"What the hell?!" She stared down at the thing, gasping to catch her breath. It made a weird sound like the meat inside was being squished by its own weight. No cold overtook her and she found her breath. "No rise in LOVE. Why not? Where you not really alive to begin with?"

Undyne pulled out a knife and cut the mass of flesh open only to rear back, coughing as she choked on the putrid smell. Inside, she could make out the bones and entrails of humans.

Tearing her eyes away from the fleshy mass, she found that she was on a railed walkway over a large pit area. The pit was filled with debris and your everyday trash. Taking the walkway to the other side of the room led to another stairwell down past the pit. Undyne pulled out her flashlight as she got to the bottom, finding a waterway filled with murky water. She frowned and let herself down, feeling for the bottom with her feet and finding that the water only just touched her thighs.

She hurried through the water looking for the split in the tunnel she'd seen on the map and taking the turn to the right. Something slithered past her legs in the water. Not wanting to take the chance that whatever was in the water would dunk her, she booked it for the platform at the end of the waterway. The water sloshed loudly behind her, as something reared up out of it. Refusing to look back, she leaped for the platform, catching it with her hands and heaved herself up.

A slick, brown tentacle wrapped around one of her ankles and she crashed to the platform. Grabbing her knife she slashed at the tentacle and it let go of her, letting her scramble away from the edge. She looked back, and wasn't sure what she saw swimming away in the darkness. Only that it was big and covered in bloody pustules. She turned away only to hear a roar behind her as the thing rushed up against the platform, slamming into the supports. The metal creaked with the impact, the concrete cracking under her. Falling to her hands and knees as the platform swayed, Undyne crawled for the stairs leading away, jumping for them like a frog as she got close and the platform collapsed underneath her. Running head long up the stairs, she only slowed down when she was sure she was far enough away that a tentacle couldn't grab her.

"What the hell is going on down here?!" she gasped, bent over at the waist, hands on her knees as she caught her breath. She looked back the way she'd come. "I don't think that thing was alive either. So what makes them walk around?"

She went up the stairs, entering quiet hallway. The emergency lighting was on, though one light flickered on and off continuously. Two doors lined the hall on the right. Taking a moment to listen at each one, she tried the knobs. The first was locked. The third opened on a neat and very tidy office with a single desk and a bunch of filing cabinets. The walls were bare of decoration and there wasn't anything personal on the desk. Undyne tried the drawers on the desk first and found a key marked with an enamel blue star. Turning to the cabinets, Undyne went through them. All drawers were cleaned out except one, which had a single file folder. Inside was a series of lab reports written in a spidery hand.

Undyne read through them:

Entry Number One:

The Doctor got his hands on a human soul! I don't know how. I don't think anyone knows. It didn't come from King Asgore. The Doctor won't talk about it. He's hiding a way out of this hell hole. I know he is!

Entry Number Two:

The Barrier is locked until all the monsters who have harvested human souls have died. Which means we're never seeing sunlight again. Asgore is young for a boss monster. He'll see a thousand and I'll be a pile of dust. The only way out is to harness the power of the soul. The Doctor thinks he can harness it.

Entry Number Three:
The Doctor is working on several projects all at once, so it's hard to know what his progress on any one of them might be. He's most interested in the clones he made of himself: two more skeleton monsters. Neither of them seem like the Doctor at all. They're both smart though, even if they don't act like it.

Entry Number Four:
The Doctor built this huge machine for extracting the power from the human soul. It's this monstrosity of cables, wires, and metal. Looks like a big animal skull.

Entry Number Five:

The machine works! The Doctor called the extracted material 'Determination.' The soul has lost its color. Instead of the bright red it was before, it now looks dark. It doesn't move on it's own anymore. The Doctor put it in the Lab's generator and now it powers the Lab.

Entry Number Six:
The Doctor used the extracted Determination on a coworker that had fallen down while working in the Lab. After a few days, it woke up and started walking around, talking to everyone as if nothing had happened. The Doctor used the same procedure on several other monsters.

Entry Number Seven:
Shit! Those things! They're melting!

Entry Number Eight:

Several of the staff have been fused together with the melting monsters. I don't think monster bodies are meant to handle the power of a human soul. It took several of us in Hazmat suits to push all the amalgam monsters into the lower level of the Lab. The Doctor's clones are hiding, sneaking around the Doctor. We've all been doing the same. He's been looking at everyone strangely. Like we're potential subjects for the next experiment.

Entry Number Eight:

Something happened between the Doctor and Asgore. Now we're all locked in here. We can't find the clones. Maybe they got away?

Entry Number Nine:

I haven't seen the Doctor in a while. I've also been hiding. We're running low on food.

Entry Number Ten:
What day is it? What year? I don't remember. Can't remember the last time I ate.

Entry Number Eleven:

Somebody is dumping human bodies into the Lab via a chute none of us knew was there. I think I'm small enough to climb up it.

Entry Number Twelve:
I can't get out.

The entries ended there. Undyne took a moment to compile the information.

"Human bodies? So this is where the humans who died were being dumped. If the things I ran into are any indication, the Doctor, or someone still dedicated to the work, might still be down here." She hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe they're being injected with 'Determination' and that's what's making them get back up."

Undyne closed the filing cabinet and went back to the door. Listening carefully for a moment to be sure it was clear, she went back into the hall and tried the key on the other doors. It didn't work. Snorting, she stuffed the key in a pocket and kicked the door in. The wood splintered and opened on an office in shambles. Photos on the wall were smashed, the cabinets on the floor dented so as to be completely ruined, and a fine gray dust coated the paper strewn desk and floors.

She grimaced. "Looks like a couple monsters snuffed it in here."

Careful to gather the dust on the desk and gently pile in together, she looked over the papers. They were all covered in strange symbols that reminded her of hand gestures, though she couldn't place why. Sighing, she headed out the door and down the hall to the door at the end. It creaked as it swung open into a room filled with long dead computer banks and a pair of thick metal doors that lifted via a power coupling. She pulled the lever and the door didn't budge.

"Hmmm…" She reached down and attempted to lift the door. It refused to budge. "Guess I need to get the power back on."

Using the flashlight, Undyne followed the line of wires from the lever to the ceiling and over to a box on the wall. After fiddling with the switches inside a bit, the power to the door kicked back on with a loud beep. She pulled the lever again and the door slowly rose.

A massive, red hand, shiny and slick, fingers ending in six inch long claws reached under the door and slammed it open. A creature with half a discernible human face, the other half a mess of what might have been a horse monster's head, swiped at her with the clawed hand. She ducked the swing, and the creature spun around, unable to control the momentum. It's body was severely over encumbered on the right side, the clawed hand needing a huge arm, but the left side was underdeveloped and the left arm flopped uselessly.

Undyne ran past the thing for the door, heading into an area filled with columns that didn't reach the ceiling and scaffolding from some previous construction project. A railed mezzanine jutted out from the far wall. Climbing the nearest scaffolding, she ran across a narrow wooden plank for a column. The creature turned and ran full force into the column, shifting it.

Undyne jumped to the next column, giving the room a look. "So these things aren't exactly stable."

She jumped to a column that was nearest to a wall. Sliding down between the wall and the column, she whistled loudly. The creature swung around several times before spotting her and charged. Putting her feet on the column and bracing her back against the wall, she pushed with everything she had. The column rocked away from her, overbalanced and toppled on the creature, smashing it against the floor. Undyne dropped to the floor, dusting off her hands with a smirk.

The creature shrieked and heaved the column off of itself. It had a curved indent in its chest from the column and that didn't appear to be hampering it in the least.

"Well, fuck." Undyne took off for the scaffolding while the creature climbed to its feet. It dashed after her as she climbed the scaffolding, slamming into the metal bars, bending them and causing the scaffolding to come toppling down. Undyne kept climbing, reaching the top of the falling scaffolding and using it to jump on top of a column. The column swayed beneath her and she jumped to the top of a second as the first one fell over.

Looking around, she spotted a mezzanine and made for it, leaping from the column as the creature slammed into it. Jumping from column to column, Undyne realized that the creature hadn't smashed into the last two. Looking down, she saw it going for the last column next to the mezzanine, cutting off her escape.

Summoning a glowing spear, she paused and threw it with everything she had, embedding it in the mezzanine. Making one last jump, she avoided the last column, landing on the spear and using it to springboard herself onto the mezzanine. She gave herself too much lift and ducked to roll across the mezzanine rather than smack her head and shoulders on the hard concrete. She lay there for a moment, catching her breath.

And then the mezzanine shook. Inclining her neck slightly, she saw the creature's huge hand come up, grabbing the edge of the mezzanine.

Undyne scrambled to her feet and ran for the door at the end of the walkway. She quickly turned the knob, only to have it refuse to budge. Grunting, she slammed her shoulder against the door, once, twice, three times as the mezzanine rattled under her feet. The door jamb splintered on the fourth slam and she sailed through the open door as the mezzanine came down. The creature howled in furry, jumping for a door it couldn't reach, it's claws scraping the wall.

Undyne's legs went out from under her and she sat down, shaking as she tried to get her breathing back under control. Once she was calm, she noticed that she was in a very clean and orderly observation room, the electricity working perfectly. Several chairs lined a window that looked into the room she'd just escaped. A coffee and tea service cart rested near one wall, but the pots were empty and the mugs dusty.

She pulled out her notebook and checked the map she'd drawn. Finding the room she was in, she made a note about the mezzanine's destruction and marked where the creatures she'd found were. Looking out the window, she watched the creature stamp around the room, it seemed to have forgotten her. Turning away, she tried the door out of the room and found it unlocked.

It led into a brightly lit and clean hallway painted white with a single green stripe running along either wall. At one end of the hallway was what appeared to be an elevator. At the other end was a reception desk and a set of glass doors into a gleaming hallway filled with open doorways into large spaces. Heading quietly for the desk, Undyne looked it over, checking the drawers and finding a set of janitorial keys. She attached the keys to her belt.

The glass doors opened smoothly and closed quietly behind her. They didn't look as if they had a locking mechanism on them at all. Looking around, she didn't see any slits for a gate to slide down or across the area and block it off either. Stepping carefully to muffle her footsteps, she stopped and looked in each room as she passed: conference rooms, a lounge, a cafeteria, large office spaces. Everything was empty and spotless, as if it had all just been cleaned.

At the end of the hall was a heavy door with a blue diamond in the middle, 'Laboratory' painted in crisp letters over it. Undyne fished out the key with the blue diamond on it and unlocked it. The door gave a hiss and multiple locks hidden within the door came undone at once. Instead of opening inward, the door slid away, revealing a room designed like a large shaft around a glass elevator. Walkways from each side of the room connected to the elevator which went up two floors with the same walkway layout. Each walkway led to a laboratory on each level.

Undyne pulled out her notebook, checking her notes. "The map said that Dr. Gaster's personal lab was on the third level…" She frowned at the elevator and stepped inside, not seeing any other means to ascend. Each level required a key to activate the button for that level. Pulling out the janitorial keys, she flipped through them to a set of three elevator keys. The first one she tried lit the button for level three and the glass door closed, the elevator taking her up.

On the third level, Undyne looked around and noted that the four walkways led to an office, an apartment, a laboratory, and back into the building proper. She checked the office first. It was huge, open, and white. There was a single desk and an outdated computer that had long died. A long row of filing cabinets took up the majority of the room while shelves of books lined the walls.

Checking the apartment next, she found a space that had once been lived in, but was now dusty from disuse. The apartment had three bedrooms and it was obvious that two of them had been designed for small children who'd aged in their time there. Toys meant for toddlers were lovingly placed next to textbooks. Family photos hung on the walls depicting two, young skeleton monsters engaged in this or that activity. A few of them depicted other monster children as well, several of them making silly faces for the camera.

Undyne smiled, lifting one of the photos. "Papyrus and Sans made for some cute kids. Looks like they had a pretty normal childhood, all things considered. No wonder Sans didn't want me to come down here." She took a few minutes to take some of the photos out of the frames and slip them in her notebook, paperclipping them in tightly.

She sighed as she put her notebook away and turned to the final laboratory. "Well, Doctor. If you're here, you're in there."

The door into the lab was locked, but a key on the janitorial ring had it open quickly enough. The door opened on a reception desk with a sign in sheet. The last date on the sheet was one hundred and twenty years ago.

"Even after you were locked in, you tried to keep up normal for a while, huh?"

Undyne walked past the desk to the single door into the lab beyond. She opened the door, stepping through, and immediately stepped backwards out of it. Looking away from the inside, she leaned against the wall sucking in huge breaths of air so as not to vomit.

"That… that's something I'm gonna have nightmares about." She took one more deep breath and let it out slowly before shaking herself out.

Ready for it this time, she went into a room covered in rotted human body parts, the putrid smell thick and heavy in the air. A grisly mass of flesh, blood soaked deep into the tiled floor underneath it, moved rhythmically, like it was breathing. Bones protuded from it at various places and it appeared to have been melded into the wall.

Undyne approached it slowly. "What is this thing?"

"*don't get too close. it will suck you in and spit you back out a monstrosity somewhere else in the lab."

Undyne turned. Sans stood behind her, hands in his hoodie pockets, staring at the ground.

"*i uh… don't tell papyrus this, but i… i come back to check on him from time to time."

"So Dr. Gaster is alive."

Sans motioned to the back of the room. "*there's a hidden room behind the cabinets in the back. he's in there."

Undyne nodded and turned to the cabinets.

"*you took the photos from the apartment."

Undyne paused and looked back at him. "I thought you and Papyrus might want them. Have you been following me the entire time I've been down here?"

He shook his skull. "*no. just guessed on when you'd get here."

Undyne sighed. "So you dropped me as far from my goal as you could in the hopes that I'd turn back?"

Sans shuffled one foot, staring at the floor. "*i don't know."

Undyne smiled softly and put a hand on the skeleton's shoulder. "It's okay. I get it. You have a lot of memories. A lot of happy memories and they don't erase the sad. That's all right. That's actually wonderful. For a monster in a bad way, good memories can see them through." She patted his shoulder. "You don't have to be here for this."

"*actually, i do."

A glowing white bone struck the back of Undyne's head and she hit the floor, unconscious.

Sans sighed, his left eye alternating between a blue and yellow glow. Summoning several bones, he sent them into the monstrosity melded into the wall. The mass of flesh and bone deflated as it blackened. The cry of every creature roaming the lab filled the air with a cacophony of agony before settling into nothing, each one dying. Sans turned to the cabinets.

"SANS?"

"*you know? i was so lost, just waiting to die, that i didn't even notice that my little bro was running around, making the world a better place. it doesn't matter to you that all those humans meant we could finally see the sun. you just keep doing the right thing, even when it's the hardest thing."

"REMEMBER WHAT DAD SAID? YOU CAN'T BUILD ON A GOOD IDEA WITH EVIL ACTIONS. IT'S LIKE WATERING A PLANT WITH POISON."

Sans nodded and walked over to the cabinets, pushing them aside to reveal a hidden door. "*you uh… you get her back to the house. the key ring she's got will let you take the elevator up to new home. i'll finish this."

"SHE IS FINE FOR THE TIME BEING." Papyrus' hand landed on Sans shoulder. "WE'LL DO THIS TOGETHER."