Chapter 20:

Despite their worries, there was no immediate danger in the room the elevator had brought them to. They walked down the stairs and found a tape recorder on the shelf. Henry picked it up and pressed play.

"These blasted elevators…" came the gravelly voice of Thomas Connor. "Sometimes they open… sometimes they don't… sometimes they come… sometimes they keep on going to hell and back. I keep telling these people, if Mister Joey Drew keeps cutting corners like this, someone's sure to end up falling to their death. And it sure ain't gonna be me. I'm taking the stairs."

"If the elevator was so bad then, I wonder how bad it is now," Nino thought out loud. None of the others replied, unwilling to think about just how much danger they had been by taking the elevator. Moving on, the group crossed a bridge to a large metal door under a "She's quite a gal" sign. As soon as they had gathered around, the doors began to slowly open with a creak. Boris ended up running ahead as soon as he could fit through, surprising the others. Plagg at the same time dove into Adrian's shirt to hide though Adrian was the only one that noticed.

"Boris! Wait!" Henry shouted, taking off after the cartoon wolf. The others began following behind a moment later. They came around the corner only to stop at the horrific sight before them. Right in front of them was a Boris, strapped to a table with its chest ripped open. The Boris they knew was standing in front of it, staring at the dead Boris with an unreadable expression. The sight was only worse when they realized the room was filled with the corpses of dead toons.

When the group had encountered the first dead Boris back up on the main floor, they hadn't been sure what to make of it. Sure it was a gruesome sight, but for the most part, they didn't accept it as real. And of course, everything else that happened since then had kind of drove it out of their minds. But now with everything they'd seen and what was displayed right before them, the truth finally hit them. Each and everybody on display had once been a living toon, only to have been killed in such a torturous fashion. All of them paled as they came to this realization and Nino ended up vomiting over the side of the railing.

"I want you kids to head back to the elevator," Henry said as he continued staring around the room, his voice shaking slightly from repressed grief and anger. "Take Boris with you and wait for me there. I don't want you to have to see anything else that might be here. I should be back soon."

For once, Alya didn't feel like arguing. Instead, she just grabbed Boris' arm and gently guided him and Nino out of the room. Adrian and Ladybug didn't budge from their spot next to Henry though.

"You don't have you face this alone," Ladybug declared, tearing her eyes away from the sight in front of her. "We're here to help."

"We're with you Uncle Henry," Adrian added, standing firmly next to him. "Besides, we're superheroes. We can handle anything. Even things like this."

"I don't suppose I can talk you into staying with the others," Henry said ruefully, knowing the two were shaking their heads even before he looked at them. "Alright then, let's get this over with."

The three walked past the Boris corpse and onto a thin walkway over a lake of ink.

"Look around," Alice through the speakers as they carefully made their way across. "It took so many of them to make me so beautiful. Anything less than perfect was left behind. I had to do it. She made me."

Henry's grip tightened on the pipe in anger. How could she talk so casually about murdering? Henry took a deep breath and did his best to shake those thoughts from his head. There was nothing he could do for them now and getting angry wouldn't help. He had to stay calm and focused so he could get the kids out of this nightmare.

Ladybug and Adrian were also affected by the way Alice spoke, but they were more horrified then angry. Despite some close calls, no one had ever been seriously hurt during their battles with the akumas. And most akumas never set out to seriously hurt anybody. But to be against creatures that had no problem tearing watch other apart, it shook them more than like to admit.

The three of them came to one corner of the room with a tape recorder on the desk. Moving almost automatically, Henry picked it up and pressed play.

"Who would have thought? Me having lunch with Joey Drew!" came Susie Campbell's voice. Apparently, times are tougher than I thought. For a moment there, I thought I'd be stuck with the check. But I gotta say, he wasn't at all what I expected. Quite the charmer. He even called me Alice. I liked it."

Henry numbly put the recorder back on the desk. Now that he heard her voice again, he couldn't help but compare how similar Alice's voice sometimes sounded to it. He wanted to just think it was a coincidence since she had been Alice's voice actor after all. But a part of him knew that it wasn't a coincidence. That Susie was likely another victim of Joey's madness, another ink monster out to get them. Ladybug and Adrian had similar thoughts to Henry, but, while they thought it was tragic, were more worried about Henry. He knew these people once after all and it must be horrible to be constantly reminded of what happened to them.

"Let's keep going," Henry said, focusing back on the task on hand. He couldn't dwell on what he couldn't change and it wouldn't help to grieve anymore right now, not when they were surrounded by so much danger. "Let's see what "Alice" has to say?"

Ladybug and Adrain nodded in agreement and followed along after Henry, hoping desperately that they could somehow make this right. They were superheroes, they've saved people and fixed bad situations before. There had to be something they could do. There had to be…