Broken Souls

Chapter 2 - Missing Files

It had been an interesting week thus far for Sans, filled with nightmares of emptiness and symbols that he couldn't make heads nor tails of. After getting bored of having little to no sleep and Papyrus insisting, Sans decided to get help. Naturally, he'd gone to the only person in the monster city who was smarter than him.

And to help aid his story, Sans had been careful when noting down what he'd seen in his dreams, making sure that each random symbol was recorded exactly how he had seen them. In doing so, Sans had noticed that the symbols repeated, forming some sort of language. When put all together, they looked like three words looped again and again. Sans only had to translate them and he would be one step closer to finding out what the recurring dream meant, or at least what was causing them.

Unfortunately, when Sans showed up at Alphys and Undyne's house, a sheet of paper in hand, Alphys only shrugged.

"I'm s-sorry Sans b-but I've n-no clue how t-to translate th-them. They d-do look k-kinda familiar" she said. Sans frowned, taking back his notes. He looked them over once more and sighed,

"it was worth a shot. thanks anyway alph." Sans turned to leave, heading back to the front door when Alphys suddenly perked up.

"Wait Sans! I know why they look familiar! Here, follow me!"

The skeleton grinned, following Alphys out of the door and into the street. Alphys took Sans to the new Lab, situated near the centre of the city. It was only half built because Asgore was reluctant to finish it without a proper Royal Scientist but it would still serve their purposes.

"so how are we getting in?" Sans asked, once the two had reached the locked front doors of the Lab. Alphys fished around in her pockets and pulled out a small plastic card.

"A-Asgore gave m-me access when I w-was working with t-the amalgamates." Alphys explained, opening the door with a swipe of her card. Sans shrugged and followed her into the Lab's elevator. He knew no one had worked in the Lab except Alphys after Toriel had assigned her to try and fix the amalgamates. It had been a failure, so Alphys had fully resigned as Royal Scientist. Sans didn't know Toriel had let her keep her access key card. Perhaps it was a good thing though, Sans decided. Otherwise he wouldn't be able to be in the lift, heading down towards what could be the answer to his nightmares.

The lift shuddered to halt on the second to last basement floor of the lab. Sans and Alphys stepped out into a large, rounded room, filled from floor to ceiling with filing cabinets.

"Th-these are the r-records of every s-single experiment or p-project the Lab has ever t-taken on, d-dating back to b-before the War." Alphys explained. Sans looked around with wide eye sockets, reading the names and dates on all the files. He saw how the handwriting on many changed through the ages, ranging from neat Roman Alphabet to messy scrawled symbols. He had a faint recollection of being somewhere like this before, with a different, much deeper voice explaining to him, but couldn't remember anything more than that.

"thassa lot." he said finally, shaking off the sensation of Deja vu. Alphys opened a cabinet drawer and pulled out an empty file,

"It's a-actually not... for s-some reason m-most of the files from the p-previous Royal Scientist are empty, t-their names are impossible to r-read and all the data is m-missing. I c-can't remember him at all and he left b-barely any notes or anything. The only t-things I've managed to find are in those c-cabinets over there." she said, waving dismissively at a very small section of the huge file room.

"strange. what were those files anyway?"

"That's t-the thing!" Alphys spluttered, "Th-the ones with c-clear enough writing are impossible t-to understand! It's written in another f-font completely. I've only m-managed to understand a f-few diagrams that show e-experiments to do with genetic m-modification, but Asgore made that i-illegal years before I came to the L-Lab."

Alphys continued to explain the ins and outs of some of the other experiments that she'd found diagrams of but Sans was only half listening. He stared down at his hands, deep in thought. He only looked up when Alphys dumped a stack of blueprints in front of him. He read over the top one with a detached interest when something suddenly clicked.

"you said they were written in a different font right?" Sans asked. When Alphys just shot him a confused glance, he explained in more detail, "most skeletons write in the fonts they're named after yeah? well whoever wrote these was a skeleton. i recognise the symbols, they're wingdings!"

Thanks to his sudden realisation, Sans and Alphys spent the next hour trying to find a translation sheet for Wingdings, but to no avail. Alphys logged on to one of the computers on the upper floors to find a translation whilst Sans poured through old typography books until he got distracted by the amount of puns that presented themselves.

After fifteen minutes of no work and telling puns, Sans got a call from his brother telling him to come home and Alphys was left alone.

===

The something was jerked into its strange half consciousness without warning. It looked around the in the darkness, feeling something that it hadn't felt for a long time. It felt more whole, more real. Like it could almost exist again.

Sans was remembering it...

Sans was remembering him...

===

Alphys cleared up the mess of papers Sans had left behind him. She didn't mind though, as it gave her a chance to look through the blueprints and typography papers properly, to try to gain some sense from all the weird symbols because despite what Sans said, there was no mention of any skeleton by the name Wingdings that survived the war. In fact, the last mention of the name was way before the War began, in the surviving records of the old monster villages. It mentioned the name once, briefly stating that a Wingdings Verdana had died, passing on his lineage to his daughter, Tahoma Gaster. But there was no further mention of any children, nor of what happened to her.

Of course, Alphys had heard the stories. That the skeletons had stayed with the wyverns during the war to be safe, until the humans attacked and wiped out both species. Then somehow, Sans and his brother got to Snowdin hundreds of years later. There was the small matter of who the former Royal Scientist was, but Alphys couldn't remember for the life of her. Surely there must have been some report if he died, being such an important figure after all. But there was nothing, just a few old blueprints, written in a font that was forgotten long before the monsters ever went Underground.

===

He felt a lot stronger now. As if the nothingness was releasing it's hold on him just a tiny bit. He knew that Sans would never be able to translate the notes he'd left behind without help. So he gathered all his energy, pulled the few remaining fragments of his Soul together, marvelling in the sudden re-appearance of his body. He somehow found paper and a pencil, summoning them from the nonexistence and very slowly began to write.

===

Alphys turned to leave, placing the blueprints back in their respective files. She headed back to the storage room to put the files in the cabinets, silently hoping that she'd never have to take them out again. As she slotted the files into their correct places, Alphys heard a noise. It was a strange sound, like a faint hiss or rattle but it was covered over with static. She looked around at the place where the sound had some from and froze.

A figure stood there, tall and shrouded in darkness. The light didn't seem to fall on it properly, making it seem like it wasn't really there. What Alphys assumed to be it's head was pale white, with two eyes and a gaping crevasse-like mouth. It's right eye was half closed, with a huge crack running up above it; it's left eye was open and had a smaller crack down to it's mouth. It's mouth opened and closed at a surprising pace, making a sharp chattering noise that sounded oddly familiar.

The figure loomed in the corner for a few moments, then suddenly lurched forward. Alphys leaped back with a shriek, shutting her eyes. When she opened them again the figure was gone. Left on the floor where it had stood was a slip of paper. And on the paper were the same symbols that Sans had shown her, but next to each one was the translation into the roman alphabet. Filled with a sudden courage, Alphys retrieved the files from where she'd stored them minutes before and began to translate what Sans had written.