Gravitational Phantoms: After the Storm

Chapter Six: The Cipher File

*Rises from the smoke like a demon covered in glitter* I LIVE! And with a new chapter too! I'm so sorry for my abandonment of Wattpad. I got caught up in my FF. net account.

Panic attacks are hard to write, seriously.

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Danny was wandering aimlessly around the house. He was mostly just looking for something to do-while the cold didn't really bother him that much (it actually gave him an invigorated feeling), it was boring being snowed in.

Yes, snowed in. Some god or deity had decided that Oregon should be blessed with some rare snow. And now it was literally everywhere, and incredibly deep too.

The Halfa didn't expect to end up in front of the vending machine.

Eh. Maybe there was something down there that he could mess around with without destroying the universe.

Probably not, through.

He tapped in the code and watched the door slide open. Danny walked down the stairs that led to the elevator-and stopped. The ghost boy had never been to the second level before. He hadn't even noticed it before.

Danny tapped the button and let himself get taken down to the middle floor. It was less dusty than he had expected it to be, like Ford had just been there. Even though he spent more time on the bottom level, but even then it was still always grimy.

There was a large mirror with a sheet covering it lay against the wall, and a red gun type thing with what looked like a lightbulb on the end was half-hidden by a book. 

At the end of the room was a series of screens, all labeled "Project Mentem" or something like that. Danny couldn't really tell. 

Behind it, the walls were covered in large white pieces of cloth. Weird.

Danny tentatively lifted up the edge of the sheet that covered the mirror, and stared back at his reflection.

Or was it?

The movements and angles didn't seem quite right, like someone had taken a picture and then enlarged it to his size. His reflection's eyes had a peculiar gleam to them, and Danny quickly threw the cloth back over it.

The Halfa would rather not think about it too hard.

He backed away from the mirror and turned. Danny's eye landed on a half-open drawer, and he reached inside.

Danny picked up a manila folder, one emblazoned in red across the front in words that read "Cipher File."

The teenager flinched back, almost dropping the notes. But he kept his grip on them. He... he wanted to read it. 

Danny flicked open the cover and turned the pages that lay inside, looking at crude prehistoric drawings of a triangular creature with one eye and a snappy fashion sense.

He stared in fascination at one particular drawing.

On one side was a skull, labeled "Our World." In the middle was the outline of a screaming person and Bill's smaller form, called "the Mindscape." Danny shuddered. At the end of the page was a large image of the dream demon that read "the Nightmare Realm."

So... that had been what Bill meant when he said that he was going to fuse the two dimensions. Would all of the other creatures that inhabited the demon's home world cross over too? And were they just as sick and twisted as Bill was-had been?

("Come out, come out, where ever you are!")

Danny shivered, his muscles involuntarily convulsing. The paper creased beneath his steadily tightening grip, and he could feel his eyes glowing radioactive green. He squeezed them shut and dropped the page to the floor.

He suddenly found it impossible to breathe, and his body was suddenly trapped and immobile beneath the former Shack. Danny backed up, gasping for breath.

And ran right into the back of one of the sheets that covered the wall behind the screens.

With a swirl of papers, they all fell and revealed what was behind them.

("One down, three to go.")

Danny's legs gave out beneath him, and he lay on the floor. He was curled up into a tiny ball, chest heaving. 

(Can't can't can't do anything no please don't hurt them please please please.)

Someone set their hands gently on his shoulders and upper back, and the ghost boy automatically flinched away.

"It's alright, Danny. Just breathe. It's okay, you're okay. Bi-he is gone. Just breathe. In and out, in and out. There you go."

(No no no I can't move please help he's coming freak freak no good monster you don't deserve to live.)

They were talking to him, and Danny struggled to follow their instructions. 

"Breathe. Just breathe. It'll be alright. Nothing can get to you, you're safe here. Just breath."

(I can't.)

"It's okay. You'll be okay. Just keep going. You can do it."

Slowly, the air returned to Danny's lungs. He blinked up at the person above him, connecting their identity through bits and pieces.

Glasses. Gloves. Trench coat. Red sweater thing. The hands on his shoulders.

Ford.

Danny jerked back. The Halfa pointed to the pictures of Bill Cipher that lined the wall, unable to actually look at them. 

"W-why?" He whispered.

Ford sat down across from him. 

"It's not what you think," he said quietly.

Danny let out a small hysterical giggle as neon green bled into his bright blue irises. "Than what is it? You just happen to have a shrine to one of your enemies in your house and forgot?"

"No." Ford shook his head and took a deep breath. "I... I thought he was my friend, once. I trusted him."

He spat out the word trust like it was tainted. Maybe it was.

"He could... move in and out of my mind as he pleased. I didn't even notice what he had done to me until after I was betrayed. Planted ideas there, sadistic impulses that were hard to ignore at first. He's the one who designed the portal in the first place. I thought it was to create knowledge." Ford spoke bitterly. "I was a fool."

The man studied his six-fingered hands. "The things he made me do..." He shuddered."I thought that it was for the purpose of science, knowledge, progress. Not because of someone thought that hurting people and melding together two things that should never mix would be funny."

Danny bit his lip. The ghost boy understood that, what it felt like to have someone root through your thoughts and control you. Freakshow, Bill, his parents, the agents.

But... not like that. Not for his life's work, not for his sanity. At least, he didn't think so.

"It wasn't," Ford whispered, running a hand through his hair. "It wasn't funny."