(Audrey's point of view)
After upgrading her GENT pipe, Audrey went into the next room. It had several machines on the walls, like many of the rooms in the workshop, but unlike the other rooms, it had a large screen angled above the door, close to a couple of small televisions.
Suddenly, the screen lit up, and Audrey saw a...person? On the screens?
She hesitated to call them that, because it looked nothing like a person she'd seen before, even by the standards of which she'd become acquainted with upon entering the studio.
The screen was blurry, so she could hardly make them out, but they looked like they had the body of an ink monster, but had golden sludge on their arms and chest, cords wrapped around their arms, and their face completely obscured by golden light.
Suddenly, the strange person(?) spoke up.
"Anomaly...detected." Their voice sounded mechanical, and haggard, like they had to force every word out.
"New subject...designation required. What are you? What..is your purpose?" The strange person asked.
"My name is Audrey! I'm not here to cause you trouble. Look, I just want to go home." Audrey attempted to answer their question and reason with them. Maybe they could help her get out of this hell.
"Please, can you help me?" She asked.
"Feisty, erratic, dangerous. We've not seen one like this before." The person described her...like that?
She supposed could be called dangerous, judging by the weapon in her hand, but she wasn't feisty or erratic. She explained calmly that she didn't want trouble and that she just wanted help! How is that erratic?!
"I-I'm sure we can reach an agreement! Let's just talk." She tried to keep calm and reason with the stranger
"Who are you?" She asked
"We are...the Keepers. Order...control...eternal. We serve...the many...by serving the one. The Machine must endure." The Keeper(s?) explained.
So this was a Keeper, the creatures Joey claimed were the worse of the worse. Or the Keepers? Was it multiple people on the screens? Or was it just one Keeper, but operating within one massive hive mind?
Nevermind, pondering the nature of the Keepers could wait for later, more important things were going on.
"Where did you come from? Who made you?" Audrey asked to get more answers.
"Wilson." The Keeper(s?) answered
'Someone from outside is messing with things in here', Joey had told her. Though there were plenty of things to suggest it was Wilson, this was the icing on the cake.
"Can you take me to him? He wanted me to find him." Audrey asked.
While she was...angry at him, to say the least, she also wanted answers, and she supposed Wilson was her best change, considering her other option was the word of Joey, and that was not a word she particularly trusted.
"Dangerous. Much too dangerous. This subject is without limits." The Keeper(s?) mumbled.
How was asking a couple of questions making her dangerous?!
"Please take me to see him!" She begged.
"This subject has been deemed hazardous. Toxic fumes should be activated..." The Keeper(s) muttered.
Wait, did they say toxic fumes?!
"No no no! Toxic fumes should NOT be activated! I don't have to see Wilson! I'll leave! I'll never come back!" Audrey desperately said to get them not to kill her.
Granted, she knew she could come back, but dying was not very pleasant, and dying from toxic fumes was NOT something she wanted to experience.
"But...orders from...the master...say to contain a subject...that matches this one...entirely..." The Keeper(s?) said, not really addressing Audrey.
"Pardon?" She asked.
"Subject must be...contained...until further orders..." The Keeper(s?) announced.
Then a beep went off, a door opened, and three more creatures entered the room.
They wore helmets over their heads that were similar to diver helmets. They each had three long arms and clawed fingers with wires wrapped around them. Their right arms in particular had an extra forearm which seemed to be stitched on. They wore suits which seemed to resemble lab coats but were black instead of white and had glowing outlines. They have four tentacles in place of legs.
It was then and there that she realized that the creatures in front of her resemble the Keeper(s?) on the screens to a T, so she supposed they were Keepers as well.
However, she couldn't dwell on this for long, because they tried to grab her.
She swung at them with her pipe, but it had next to no effect. Then she tried to teleport away from them, but the ability wouldn't work for her!
Then she recalled what had happened when she first arrived in the Workshop. How the Ink Demon was about to charge at her, but then the two electric poles in the room activated and the Demon shrunk into, well, little Bendy.
Choosing not to unpack that at the current moment, because Now Was Not The Time, she instead focused on her state at the time. She had felt a seizing pain in her head, and a golden aura at the edge of her vision.
A golden aura that she saw at another time, when Porter had given her his teleporting ability. And when she had gotten the ability to banish ink monsters.
...Oh. oh no.
Those electric poles that had transformed the Ink Demon, it might have also completely canceled out her powers.
Well, this is quite a dilemma.
'Ok Audrey, sure they outnumber you and you can't teleport or banish them, but it could be worse!, she thought to herself', you still have your weapon, and you've faced bigger numbers.
Then two of the Keepers grabbed her arms from behind and the third stole her pipe.
Ok everything has gone to shit, time to start kicking, she thought to herself, before kicking at the Keeper in front of her.
"Subject is...resisting containment. Subject must...be damaged." The Keeper(s?) remarked.
Audrey wondered what the Keeper(s?) meant, though though she would quickly get an answer
When they broke both her legs.
The last thing she thought to herself was "I should have never tried to get that damn cup of coffee."
And then she started screaming, because holy hell that hurts.
She must not have broken a bone before, or maybe she had, her past was rather hard for her to recall now that she realized it.
The Keeper wasn't gentle in the slightest, it was meant solely to keep her from fighting back. And she hated to admit it, but it worked.
It had grabbed the leg roughly, held the knee cap with its other hand, twisted her leg into a contorted position, and then repeated the action with the other leg.
She could feel the shattered bone, the shards in her leg. It felt like she was being stabbed in both of her legs, trying to carve directly into the bone. Oh wait, the bone WAS carved.
Once the screaming had died down into pained whimpering, the Keepers dragged her for a long while until they arrived in an area with 4 glass cages.
They threw her into an empty one and locked her in, leaving her crying and whimpering on the floor.
"Ah geez, that's pretty bad."
She heard the voice coming from behind her.
She turned her head to see it came from someone who was in the cell across from her.
He looked to be an aged man, wearing a jacket with the sleeves rolled up, with ink-stained jeans and black shoes. Aside from the humongous bags under his eyes, there wasn't much that was remarkable about him. He looked like anyone she would pass by in a crowd.
Wait...
"Oh my god, a regular person!" She practically yelled.
Granted, in terms of encountering normal people, there was Joey and Wilson, but one was a ghost she wasn't entirely sure she trusted, and the other put her in this place and his private police broke her legs and through her in jail!
The man sucked air in through his teeth and said "Not quite."
He then stared at the injury. "Hmm, it's gonna be hard for you to move like that. I'm gonna have to bring you food for a while."
"Who are you? What is this place?" She asked.
"Well, to answer the first question, my name is Henry, the guy next to you playing the ukulele is Sammy-"
"It is a banjo, and if you call it anything otherwise, I'll use it to bash your head in." The man who was called Sammy threatened.
"Uh huh sure, you have fun with that." Henry responded, undeterred by the threat of brain damage by banjo.
"And you might not have noticed him earlier, but there's Norman here too. He's a projector head. Say hi Norman."
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
Audrey heard what sounded like a guttural scream from a soul of the damned and instinctively tried to prepare for a fight.
"What the hell was that?!" She yelled.
"That's Norman."
"Why did he scream like that?!"
"The working theory is that it's the only sound he can make since he doesn't have a body so, no vocal cords."
"Oh. Well, why doesn't he have a body?" She asked.
"Because that blasphemer cut his head off and brought it here!" Sammy yelled indignantly.
"He means Wilson, by the way." Henry explained.
"Oh my god...that's barbaric!" Audrey stated.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
"You'll get your revenge one day Norman." Henry assured him.
Audrey already had feelings of resentment towards Wilson for dragging her into this inky hellscape, having everyone in the studio hunt her down, and having his enforcers break both her legs and throw in what she assumed was Ink Jail, but cutting off a man's head like that, that's a new level of cruelty.
"And to answer your second question, well. When the Keepers think you're a threat to their plans, they lock you away. Forever."
Forever? Audrey couldn't be locked in this cage forever, she had a life to get back to! Also, she was sure that Henry, Sammy, and Norman had lives as well.
How could Wilson just lock them away like this?
"Why would you be a threat to them?" She asked
"We are what the supreme blasphemer calls 'Cyclebreakers'. The Cyclemaster was locked away for his forbidden knowledge, the lesser blasphemer for his eternal rage, and I was imprisoned for simply preaching the truth they refuse to accept!" Sammy responded this time.
"What's the truth?" I asked.
"Don't get him started." Henry groaned.
"The glorious truth of our lord and savior the Ink Demon! He still lives, I know he does! He simply bides his time to destroy the supreme blasphemer, reclaim his throne, and accept the worthy into his final loving embrace! And I will be leading them! For I am his prophet, his vessel to carry out his divine will!" Sammy ranted on.
'Well, he's not wrong about the Ink Demon being alive, but I don't think the Ink Demon's your 'savior', Audrey thought to herself.
Or maybe he was. Audrey didn't think she could say she truly knew him. He had hunted her in the studio, but he also had traveled with her shortly in the city. He had plenty of chance to kill her then, so why didn't he-
Her thoughts would be cut short by Norman screaming.
"Silence, lesser blasphemer!"
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"
"YOU WERE SLAIN SOLELY FOR YOUR TREASON AGAINST MY LORD!"
"Yeah, you might wanna just ignore them." Henry's casualness about it made Audrey assume this was something that occured quite often.
"So I can see why Sammy would be here," Audrey said, remembering the ink person crucified next to the words 'Demon Follower' and concluding that aligning with the Ink Demon was not a popular thing.
"But I still don't quite get why you and Norman are here." Audrey finished.
"Well, Norman's here because he's integral to the Cycle and he refused to align with anyone. He definitely won't follow the Ink Demon, but he also won't obey Wilson. To the Keepers, neutral isn't an option." Henry explained.
"As for me, well...I'm the catalyst for everything the Keepers are trying to prevent."
"The Cycle, it tells a story, a story with events that occur because I influence it, even with the smallest things, like walking in a room. And once upon a time, I knew how to start the cycle over. And when that happens, everything begins again. Completely new."
"Obviously, Wilson and the Keepers don't want that to happen."
"How did you do it?" She asked. If she reset the cycle, maybe that was the key to escape and helping her friends and the ink denizens trapped in the studio.
"Reset the Cycle? It turns out the Ink Demon himself is the key. This world is his, but even he must obey its rules. For now at least."
"If you can get him to look at something very specific, it will reset everything."
"What is it?" She asked.
"It's just a reel of film, labelled with the words 'The End'. I can see it in my mind, every day." Henry told her, even showing her a sketch of it in a notebook he was drawing in.
"They keep in upstairs in the Pit."
"I'll see if I can break out and steal it. Maybe, if I reset the cycle, we can make things better for everyone here." Audrey told him.
"And what about you? How'd you end up in here?" Henry asked
"...I just wanted a cup of coffee, now I just want some answers and to go home." Audrey told him
"So did I." Henry said, not meeting her eyes when he said it.
Audrey wondered just how long he had been imprisoned in here. How long they all were.
Well, that wouldn't matter.
"Henry, I'm gonna find a way for all of us to break out of here. I promise."
Henry gave her a sad, tired smile and said "Good luck with that."
"And Audrey?"
"Hmm?"
"You might wanna cover your ears. Their argument's getting intense." He said, pointing in the direction of Sammy and Norman.
"OH YES, GO AHEAD AND STRANGLE ME! OH WAIT, YOU CAN'T! YOU DON'T HAVE HANDS!"
Audrey took his advice and covered her ears, and started plotting an escape.