When he opened his eyes, Benny was surprised. He hadn't expected the cops' mindspace to be so… peaceful. He and Unikitty were standing next to Good Cop under a large oak tree, its lower branches worn smooth from years of children clambering over them. Words had been clumsily scratched into the bark just above the thick roots of the tree – "Liam was here," and below it, much messier, "Mal was here." Benny squatted to put his blue-gloved hand to the lettering, then looked out across the flowering meadow. There was a little white cottage in the distance, and Benny could make out a red door and a white picket fence.
He'd seen this place before. Bad Cop had shown him pictures of it. This was home.
"This isn't so bad," Benny said, straightening up.
"Benny," Unikitty said behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder. There was something off about their tone. Benny turned to look.
"Holy shit," he breathed.
There was a towering black monolith of a wall, the sky red and surly above it. At first glance, it seemed impenetrable, but then Benny saw cracks slowly forming at the base, jagged and glowing orange. What looked like lava was seeping out through the gaps.
"I don't think I like this metaphor," Benny said.
Good Cop was staring wide-eyed at it. "It wasn't like this earlier. I couldn't find any weaknesses."
Benny looked over at Good Cop, and his stomach bottomed out. "Good Cop," he said carefully. "Why don't you just sit down for a minute?"
Good Cop gave him a perplexed look, then blinked and put a hand to the left side of his face. His fingers came away covered in the same substance leaking from the wall. The scars on his face were beginning to glow orange, like the cracks. He looked down at himself. The lava was starting to soak through his shirt. Inhaling sharply, he stumbled back, tripping over a root and falling hard. He curled up on his side, hugging himself and gasping as the viscous fluid gradually pooled under him.
Benny looked at the wall, then at Good Cop, and then back at the wall, and he knew what he had to do. "Unikitty, you stay here and keep an eye on Good Cop," he ordered, and clenched his jaw. "I'm going in."
"Wait!" Unikitty shouted, but Benny was already sprinting down the slope of the hill.
Benny tore across the field, his breathing harsh in his ears, and he skidded to a stop at the foot of the wall, just short of a puddle of the lava. He could feel the heat coming off it. Planting his feet firmly on the ground, he bent his knees, took a deep breath, and shoved away from the ground, rising through the air like a rocket ship. He sped up the side of the wall and came to a stop when he cleared the barbed wire, hanging in the air, and he took in the scene before him.
"Oh," he said. "No."
There was a thick layer of foul smoke below him, backlit by a sullen reddish-orange glow. Yellow light occasionally flickered in the smoke like lightning, accompanied by cracks of thunder. If Benny imagined hell as looking like anything, it would be this.
Benny felt his earlier resolve waver. The tricky thing about mindspaces was that you couldn't just wander in and out of them like rooms. You were entering the most private of places a person had, and you didn't get in for free. Collateral had to be given, and this meant that you were just as vulnerable as the person whose mindspace it was.
If something went wrong, it could leave scars on Benny's psyche as well.
This was why he hated mindspaces.
But he had to do this. Bad Cop was in there somewhere, hurting and alone.
He steeled himself and dropped like a stone. The smoke puffed outwards in his wake, and it smelled acrid even through the filters of his helmet.
Benny landed in a crouch, hitting the ground so hard it left a small crater in the dried and brittle ground. A bit of a dramatic entrance, especially considering no one was watching, but it made him feel tougher.
"Bad Cop!" Benny shouted, cupping his hands around the part of the helmet that his mouth was behind. "Hey, Bad!"
There was no response.
Benny drifted onwards, hovering about a foot off the ground. Grungy fog coiled around the skeletons of burnt-out plants. Out of the corner of his eye, Benny saw a massive dark shape, and he turned to look. It was the same tree he'd appeared under on the other side of the wall, but it was blackened and leafless, its bare branches scratching at the sky like claws. Benny floated up to it and inspected it. There weren't any names carved into the wood at the base, and the bark was sharp and rough. He stepped back and looked around, shading his eyes and squinting into the distance.
He thought maybe he could see a house through the haze, and he headed towards it. Once he got closer, it became apparent that this was the same cottage as the one on the other side of the wall, but like the tree, it had become twisted. There was no white paint, and the wooden planks were rotting. Shingles were missing from the roof, and the picket fence was like jagged teeth. The gate was hanging off one hinge, and Benny gingerly pushed it aside and slipped through. The paint on the door might have once been red, but it was peeling away. Hesitantly, Benny gripped the rusting doorknob and pushed. The door swung inward with a long, horror-movie creak, and Benny gulped. It was pitch-black inside and smelled stale, musty, with an unpleasant metallic tang mixed in.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped inside.
Immediately, the floor fell out from under him, and he was falling. He landed hard on a cold tile floor.
"I can't do it!" he heard. "They're innocent!"
Groaning, he pushed himself upright and looked. He was in Lord Business' office, in the middle of the relic collection. Lord Business was towering in his villain suit over a familiar figure, sneering. There was a house. The house. And the cops' parents were standing in front of it.
"Just as I thought!" Business said. "Your Good Cop side is making you soft, Bad Cop!"
Benny couldn't stand by and watch as Business sent his robots to grab Bad Cop. The spaceman raced forward, punching down the first robot he reached, kicking the next, leaping over the third, and tackling Bad Cop to the ground.
The scene froze, flickering slightly like a paused VHS tape.
"B," Benny said, putting one hand on top of Bad Cop's helmet.
"Ben?" Bad Cop gasped, scrambling back. "What- what are you doing here?"
"Getting you out, duh," Benny replied, gesturing at the space around them.
Bad Cop shook his head frantically. "No. No, I can't. I can't let Good remember. It'll ruin him."
Benny got up and hauled Bad Cop to his feet by the front of his shirt. "It's already ruining him!" he shouted. "The wall is breaking, and you're not there to talk him through this! He needs you, B!" When Bad Cop didn't respond, Benny gave him a shake and yelled, "Mal! Liam needs you!"
Bad Cop went white as a sheet at the name. "How did you…"
"I'm in your mindspace!" Benny screamed. He didn't like being here. This was a place of fear, and he could feel his own personal terrors stealing up on him. If they stayed much longer, they could get mixed up. "We need to go, Bad!"
Bad Cop sagged, resting his forehead on Benny's shoulder. "I need to protect him," he whispered.
"Well, you gotta find a different way, man," Benny said, his heart beginning to slam a panicked staccato against his ribs. "'Coz this one isn't working out so great." There were black cracks forming at the walls and creeping inward across the floor, and Benny knew those were his cracks. They had to get out of here before the cracks reached them, but he couldn't force Bad Cop out of his own mindspace.
"Come on, dude," Benny said, gripping Bad Cop's shoulders. "Any time, now."
The cracks were speeding up, the fissures widening, headed straight for the pair. Benny could see the black void beyond them, and it suddenly became very hard to breathe. "Let's go, B," he croaked. "Let's go."
Bad Cop straightened up, gritted his teeth. "Okay," he said. Then he saw the cracks, and his jaw dropped.
It was a split-second of hesitation they couldn't afford to lose. The ground crumbled away under them, and they were falling, falling-
Bad Cop awoke with a start, staring up into Unikitty's worried face. "The heck?" he said. What were they doing here?
Unikitty's face went slack, their eyes widening in shock. "Um," they said.
Bad Cop pushed himself to his feet and looked around, a little unsteady. Why did he feel so… small?
Then his eyes landed on the figure huddled shivering on the couch. Heart in his throat, he looked down at himself.
He was wearing spaceship pajamas.
"Oh, fuck," he said.