Henry Stein x Reader {Completed}

Chapter 4: And So it Begins

Y/n's POV:

"I can do it... I'm almost there..." I thought to myself, limping to the music department to get to the infirmary. Boris tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a thumbs up to tell me that I was doing well. I smiled.

"Thanks, Boris. I appreciate it."

At first, Boris' inability to speak made it hard for me to understand him. But the longer we were together, the easier it got for me to understand him. If we managed to find paper and a writing utensil around, he would sometimes write to me what he was trying to say.

Though, sometimes I wished we understood morse code or sign language. That would make things easier.

But it was alright. I could still understand him pretty well.

After a little longer, we finally made it to the music department.

"Finally! We're here!" I sighed with relief. "Now just to get to that infirmary."

I forced myself to walk a little faster to get to the infirmary. Once I got there, I was faced with something extremely disappointing...

It was filled with ink.

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!" I groaned. I collapsed on a chair nearby and buried my face in my hands. "After an hour of walking around—a painful hour of limping around this stupid studio to get to this infirmary—only for it to be filled with ink! I hate it when stuff like this happens. I hate this ink," I complained.

Boris pointed towards the ink and gave me a thumbs up.

"What? I know. I agree; this is absolutely fantastic," I said sarcastically, confused as to what he was giving me a thumbs up. He rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"Fix," he mouthed. I raised an eyebrow.

"Fix?" I repeated. He nodded.

"How are you going to fix this?" He shrugged.

"Right. You'll figure something out," I realized. "I can wait here while you figured something out."

He gave me a smile then walked off. I sighed.

This might take longer than I thought.

Henry's POV:

THUD.

I groaned as I hit the ground on my arm, landing in ink. I instantly felt a throbbing pain in my arm. I sure hoped I didn't break it.

I could move it, though. So that was a good sign. But it still hurt like hell.

It probably left a gnarly bruise. But I couldn't tell for sure, considering it was completely covered in ink.

But as bad as it hurt, I knew I couldn't focus on the pain right now. I had to focus on getting out of here. There was nothing I could do anyway.

With my good arm, I pushed myself up. The ink nearly rose up to my knees. I knew that I had to drain it if I wanted to keep moving forward. Conveniently enough, right in front of me, I spotted a valve. It looked similar to the ones that I had used in the past to drain ink. Maybe that would do the trick.

Sure enough, after draining the ink with the valve, the ink on the floor gradually cleared up.

Looking over to my right, I then noticed another audio log. I went up to it and pressed the play button, only to hear the voice of the old repairman, Thomas Connor.

"It's dark and it's cold and it's stuck in behind every single wall now. In some places, I swear this ink is clear up to my knees! Whoever thought that these crummy pipes could hold up under this kind of strain either knows something about pressure I don't, or he's some kind of idiot."

Yeah, no kidding. I knew what that was like; I had just found out.

"But the real worse part about all this... are them noises the system makes. Like a dying dog on its last legs. Make no mistake, this place... this... machine... heck, this whole darn thing... it just isn't natural.

"You can bet, I won't be doing any more repair jobs for Mister Joey Drew."

I understood what he meant. Thomas seemed to be one to complain a lot, but you can't blame him; nobody liked that machine. And after having spent only an hour or so here, I could already understand why he hated it so much.

I walked off, continuing to wander around the lower part of the studio; hoping to find something that could help me out. For the most part, the only thing I saw was more ink. Lots of it. There were ink stains on the walls, more ink that flooded parts of the area, and some ink was even pouring down from the ceiling. The place was practically nothing but ink.

I did the same thing a few more times: drain the ink while trying to ignore the creepy sounds and sticky ink. Sooner than I expected, I came to the end of the area, and I had drained all the ink... or at least the ink that was flooding the area. I opened the only somewhat familiar door, I walked inside, and on the left wall, I saw another message written in ink just like the one I saw before. Except this one said THE CREATOR LIED TO US.

...Weird.

On a nearby table, though, I was fortunate enough to find an axe.

"This will definitely come in handy," I said to myself, picking up the axe.

I walked a little further, only to see more hallways. There was less ink, but something still felt off.

Once I came across another door, I chopped down the wood that covered it up and came into a very... unexpected room.

There were candles on the floor and chairs scattered across the room as well as two coffins leaned against the wall. I could barely comprehend what was going on though because I instantly started seeing... flashbacks... hallucinations... I wasn't quite sure what they were.

The ink machine... my old workplace... that demon from earlier... and an old familiar voice...

"Maybe someday you'll find your way back to me."

A/N: Sorry for the extra short chapter. I know that with my last story I did medium-length to long chapters, but for this one, I think I'm gonna go back and forth between short chapters, medium-length chapters, and long chapters.

I hope you enjoyed my iffy chapter; just give this two or three more chapters then it's gonna get good.