Shock was all they could feel.
Wilbur too has been reported missing, like the previous cases, he also disappeared without a trace besides his also burned computer.
His roommate, David, claimed he heard a thud from his room, coming in to see a chair knocked on the floor with no sign of the 6'5 male in the room. He called out for his friend for a full hour, checking his windows which were tightly latched close, cleaned out his wardrobe but there was no tall man inside. The space under his bed was empty. David even inspected the entire area of their flat, but when he saw no sign of the tall lad leaving, he decided to report it to the authorities.
All that could connect them three were the twitch stream they were watching before, channels who disappeared out of thin air with their untraceable IP addresses.
A day after the new missing case, the authorities have notified the group online about the other cases they thought was painfully similar but came from different parts of the country and one from abroad. The last task on their devices were a twitch stream that dissipated with no crumbs left. Some victims were normal people and others had familiar names because they were well known to the Minecraft community.
Mumbo Jumbo, Grian, Iskall85...
Dream let out a huff as he scrolled down the chat he and a member of Hermitcraft, Impulse, had. He reached out to some of them after finding out their similar situation to gain more information about the last time they heard from their fellow hermits, but it didn't help at all cause the missing people were also doing normal, mundane things.
Like their own loss, the other group's cases were also being investigated secretly, not wanting to cause panic in their respective community.
At this point, everyone in the Dream SMP discord was certain that the twitch channel is indeed the problem. The problem is, with thousands of creators streaming a day, it will be difficult for them to find the particular Livestream. After Phil shared the last conversation Wilbur had with him, each one of them is adamant on finding the channel to save their friends, some spending an entire day typing in random words and number combinations, hoping to see the channel pop out.
Their communities are getting suspicious now, since some of them got hold of one of Tommy and Tubbo's schoolmates to ask about the test which the student denied, saying that they already finished their tests before they excused themselves from streaming and posting regularly.
Dream and Phil talked to the students about deleting the statement before they got the authorities involved, it was them who made the excuse after all. Tubbo's friend was kind enough to follow but the other person didn't, so the Inspector had to be the one who confronts them.
It made everyone wary and suspicious when the tweets were deleted as well as their accounts. Who wouldn't be? Their content creator peaced out then days later, was revealed to be lying now those evidences suddenly disappeared from the internet.
But it seems the hacker's target now was him.
He stared at the blank white thumbnail on his suggested under the channel name 'Utopia4231'
No viewers? He thought to himself as his mouse cursor hovers on the thumbnail. But he managed to stop himself from opening it and decided to call for the other person living with him.
If he's gonna watch a suspicious stream, might as well have someone to be a personal witness.
"Sapnap!"
After a solid three seconds of silence, his door opened as the man peeked his head inside with an unreadable expression.
"Yeah?"
"I-I found the channel" Dream wasn't even finished talking when Sapnap stepped in and pushed his friend's chair to the side to look at the screen.
"I think.." Dream adds.
His friend almost clicked on the channel but Dream slapped his hands away ignoring his friend's hiss of pain, managing to stop him before he did. Before Sapnap could speak, Dream had voiced his plan.
"Let's join a VC and tell everyone."
And that's what he did not paying any mind to his friend's nod, he opened another tab and typed in Discord. After the website has loaded, he rushed to type in the Dream SMP chat.
"JOIN VC 1 WE FOUND IT"
Joining the said voice chat channel, they waited for at least one person to get in with them. It took quite a long while before George entered the channel.
"What do you guys see?" He immediately asked as soon as he joined.
"Wait, what are you using right now?"
"My computer, I stopped streaming after seeing your message" There were shuffles heard from the other line, Dream assumed the male was searching for his phone on his desk.
"Then start recording, the police might need this"
"Oh right-wait why me?"
"Because the investigation is mostly in the UK and that our phones will probably get destroyed" Sapnap answers as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.
They waited for a moment before George hummed an affirmation, signalling that he was recording the conversation.
"Alright, the channel name is 'Utopia4231'. The thumbnail is a blank white picture." Dream starts as he scrolls down the channel when George proposed an idea.
"Wait! Share your screen"
"GEORGE!" Sapnap exclaimed, obviously impatient as he sat beside Dream. He found an extra chair from a far corner of the room and pulled it in front of the monitor.
"We need a lot of evidence!" The British male argued back as Dream clicked on the stream after doing what George told him to.
As the live loads, all they could see was a black screen with an ender pearl placed in the middle of it. They noticed it distort for a moment before it returned to its original picture.
After spending a half a minute watching the stream, they figured out that it was looping a GIF of the ender pearl glitching and not.
"Are you sure it's the stream?" George asked, sceptical as he waited with his friends.
"Yeah... Are you sure we're not being trolled?" Sapnap joins, turning to his friend.
"I think this is it. The channel has nothing but this live" Dream answered as he impatiently tapped on his table. He looked around his room finding something to fixate on when they heard a knock on the other side of the call.
"Wait, my delivery is here"
"Wait, stay, who knows what will happen..." Sapnap said jokingly.
"Sapnap I'm hungry. Surely nothing wrong would happen without me"
The two said nothing as the other left to fetch his food. Sapnap let out a loud irritated groan as he slumped back into his chair, his patience running thin.
"I think it's the wrong one, it's taking them so long"
Dream sighed, letting his head fall to his chest. Maybe he had the wrong channel after all. His friend reached for the mouse to close the tab when they heard radio static from the stream, making him reach for the other male's hand to stop him from doing any actions.
"Did you hear that?"
In London, George thanked the delivery man with a thin smile. Immediately closing his door and ran to his room with the plastic bag in hand, not wanting to miss anything that might've happened during his absence.
"I'm back! Turns out the delivery man was an old classmate and the chatty type," He complains as he closed the door to his bedroom before jogging to his chair, putting his headphones on, waiting for their responses while he set his food on the table.
"Guys? It's not funny! Talk to me!"
After taking a bite from his sandwich, he looked up. What he noticed first was that Dream isn't sharing his screen anymore and that their discord pictures were a glitched version of their original profile pictures.
"Dream? Sapnap?"
Then Fundy and Ranboo joined the voice chat, bombing him with countless questions after seeing the chat. Their voices got lost in the background while George closed the recording application, panic rising in him.
"What happened?" Fundy asks.
"Why is their profile picture like that?" Ranboo points out.
"Wait, I'm rewinding the recording." The British male excuses, muting the two others as he tabs out to the background, chewing his lower lip as he searches for the folder his screen recordings are automatically saved.
But when George opened his files to search for it and attempted to open it, his computer made a sound as a pop up came up to say it was-
"Oh no"
"What?"
"It's corrupted!" George continued to click on the file, only for the same pop-up to reappear.
"WHAT?!" Fundy exclaimed.
"Did you find out anything about it at least?" Ranboo asked, but you can tell that he too is nervous with the tone of his voice.
"He said the channel was called 'Utopia4231', it has a black thumbnail and only plays a GIF with an ender pearl in the middle that sometimes glitch." A ding notified them of another person joining the vc, after a glance on the tab he found out that it was Phil.
"I just found out Techno has gone missing as well." He said as soon as he entered, surprising everyone in the voice call.
"WHAT?!"
"So what did I miss?" the older male asked.
"Dream and Sapnap are gone as well" George answers, still attempting to open the corrupted video recording.
·"When?!"
"Just five minutes before, I was on a call with them."
"What do we do now?" Fundy asks. As silence loomed into the conversation before Phil let out a sigh before he spoke:
"Report it, then we'll plan something tomorrow."