As Alphys continues to work, she feels a shiver down her spine.

“Weird…” and shakes it off.

The three of them—Alphys, Hiro and Undyne—continue to work tirelessly while the other Scientists and Nurses all work on their respective fields. Some scientists assist Alphys’ team, working in labs much larger than her office. With this being a major emergency, every bit of manpower is critical.

"What's up?" Undyne asks, lifting her head from where she’s sprawled on the sofa.

“Do you get that feeling that someone’s watching over you?” Alphys asks gazing around the corner of her office to detect a 4th presence but she fails to do so.

“Probably just a rat or something…” Hiro mutters, his face buried in the stack of papers.

“What did you say?” Alphys asks Hiro.

“Ugh… it’s nothing…” Hiro raises his head to say these words and flops his head back to the paper and groans as he does.

“Hiro, please. Not on those files, you’re going to have your saliva in them.” Alphys pinches her brow, disappointed by his growing lack of focus.

She looks at the clock and immediately notices that they don’t have much time. It has been 9 hours since the Failsafe was activated and none of them have either slept yet, took a break, or had a proper meal.

Undyne starts to worry sick about their health.

“Uhh… guys? Wouldn’t you guys mind at least taking a bath because it's… getting horrid in here.” Undyne sniffs signaling that they really do need to take it and eventually pinches her nose. It wasn’t that smelly yet, but the lingering scent of stale coffee in the air-conditioned room was getting stronger... and let's be honest, Hiro’s sweating is adding up to the smell.

“Not me… could be somebody.” Alphys looks at Hiro.

“Yep. Culprit confirmed.” Undyne joins Alphys in staring Hiro down.

Hiro didn’t notice at first—his head still resting on the pile of papers on the coffee table... as he sat down on the carpet floor. But he feels Undyne and Alphys looking at him, kinda like a sixth sense.

“Uh… guys? Why are you silent-” Hiro raises his head and eventually notices that both of them are looking at him. “M-me??!”

Hiro smells himself and right, he identified it himself too that he’s rather becoming stinky. His face flushed red and quickly stood up and ran outside the office.

“S-SORRY! I need a moment… I’ll be back, Dr. Alphys!” Hiro blurts, rushing out and pulling the door shut behind him... covering his underarms as they both look through the glass panels.

As the door clicked shut behind Hiro, silence fell again.

Alphys went back to continue working, while Undyne’s still laying down at the Sofa with a book on top of her head.

She smiles at the sight of her lover, but something in the corner caught her attention.

Still empty. Still ordinary.

But the shiver down her spine hadn’t left.

In that corner, lingers one of Gaster’s puppets, invisible, giving him vision.

While Alphys is busy, Undyne suddenly summons a spear and quickly attacks the puppet that’s been hiding behind her head at the corner. Of course this startled Alphys and quickly fixes her eyeglasses.

“I knew there was something there…” Undyne said, removing the book from her face and placing it on the table as she stood up to examine the corner.

“W-what was that? You could have broken my favorite vase!” Alphys shouts

“Shh… quiet for a sec, love.” Undyne slowly creeps towards the corner and immediately notices a little squeaking and the puppet—impaled through the core—twitches… then disintegrates into dust.

Undyne slowly withdraws the spear and takes a step back.

“We have to leave… now…” Undyne walks towards Alphys and holds her waist.

“W-what why?!” Alphys tries to remove her hands from her waist that keeps her from working.

“I can’t exactly tell… but I have a strong feeling that we’re being watched…” Undyne whispers it to Alphys’ ears. “And I feel like… they can hear us…”

Alphys’ eyes narrows and quickly snaps her head in place realizing that what she sensed earlier could be what Undyne stabbed at the corner.

“What did you see in that corner…?” Alphys asks, a bead of sweat rolls down her face and she wipes it while her hands start trembling.

“No time to talk about it. We must leave first…” Undyne continues to whisper. Undyne grabs her hands as Alphys closes her laptop in a hurry and brings it with her. They then left the room, locked the door, and left a small note on the door for Hiro.

The note says, ”We are currently in another room, we have guards by the door, and they’ll call on you to let you in. - Undyne”. 

“This will do, I’ll have some of my knights guard the door for us…” Undyne sighs.

“Can you tell me now?” Alphys' brows annoyedly looked at her, pouting while carrying the laptop in her hands.

“Let’s go.” Undyne completely ignores her and just grabs her hand as they walk the opposite way as where Hiro went.

She tightly grips on Alphys Hands, almost making her hands hurt a bit.

“U-undyne!!” Alphys grunts “that hurts! And careful please I’m holding my work laptop, every important document is stored here!”

Undyne didn’t budge but continued to walk at a hurried pace. Every Doctor, Scientists, and some patient in the hallway are all staring at them both as they proceed to walk. Some are whispering at each other, inaudible but Alphys thinks that they might be thinking it's an embarrassing situation getting pulled by the Royal Knight.

“Can’t you just… Tell me?” Alphys shouts, breaks free from Undyne’s grip and both of them stop. She quickly catches her breath and tries to calm herself to remove her flushed red cheeks.

She holds her wrists and looks at Undyne’s back. Undyne isn’t facing her at all.

“Face me and  tell me now.” Alphys insists, her voice becomes slightly mad. Undyne doesn’t usually keep anything from her, so this is new to her.

“Get in.” Undyne says, clenching her fists. Still not facing Alphys.

“I’ll get in, If you tell me what’s the matter! I-I can’t focus because this is making me anxious! What’s wrong? What was in that corner?!” Alphys walks in front of Undyne and looks up to her.

Undyne bites her lips and her fists clenched. She’s hiding something, what is it that she knows? Alphys continues to wonder as she blocks the way spreading her arms wide as she places her laptop down temporarily.

Undnye grabs Alphys and her laptop and barges inside the empty meeting room and places her on a chair as Undyne sits on the other. She locks the door behind them.

“I fear… that Gaster might be ahead of us.” Undyne says.

Alphys stunned, jaws wide open, eyes narrowing. She couldn’t believe what Undyne said. 

“Y-you must be joking… haha… right?” Alphys nervously laughs as the air in the room intensifies signaling what Undyne said is true. Undyne looks at her, eyes not flinching. Stares at her with a worried look in her eyes.

“I’m… not sure what I’ll focus on first… The citizens or you?”

“O-of course you have to save the Citizens! I can defend myself, I still have Mach with me.” Alphys said.

“He’s using puppets to monitor us, Alphys. His minions could be anywhere in the Underground. We might not even know if one of his puppets is surveying us in this room as well.” Undyne’s tone is getting louder, but she still remains with respect. Just a strong tone to pierce through Alphys.

“Then… this leaves us no choice…” Alphys quickly opens her laptop.

“We don’t have time to browse on the internet, Alphys… This is a serious matter.” Undyne rolls her eyes.

“I’m pulling up his files.”

“Who’s files?”

“Gaster’s files.” Alphys looked at Undyne, fixing her eyeglasses and her fingers smashing through the laptop’s keyboard.

“What will we get from his files? They’ve been tampered with earlier, right? They could still be tampered with at any time.” Undyne gently holds Alphys’ hands.

Alphys looks at her hands, and looks back again at Undyne. She places her other hand on top of Undyne’s hands.

“My love, Don’t worry. People may think I’m stupid, but I’m not. I’ve kept a separate untouched file of everything. Locked away from being tampered with the moment that I realized Gaster’s manipulating it earlier.”

“I don’t think you are stupid, my love. So what did you find?”

“If we’re going to have him, we’ll have to wake up some of our friends.” Alphys says, as she pushes Enter on her laptop’s keyboard and the file on the screen pops up.

The File shows Gaster’s. His age here is when he’s currently exiled. His reason for exilement is: Tampering with Monster Lives and experimenting on them resulting in many Lives death. His point being is researching the possible ways to resurrect the dead.

Alphys scrolled down, and her eyes lit up. Even though the file says that Gaster can’t be summoned anymore at will, he can still be visited at his dark prison, not to be confused with the void. And it’s a bit impossible to visit him as we will be needing the key—Aetherial Beacon. But Alphys remains concerned since he later found out that the Aetherial Beacon had been sent to someone in the underground.

“Wait… didn’t my tech receive that same wavelength as an Aetherial Beacon does?” Alphys scrambles through another file and quickly realizes that he knows who owns the Beacon right now—and that is Sans.

“So what?” Undyne remains confused “What’s that thingamajig supposed to do to help us?”

“Asgore uses it to control time itself. But he can’t manipulate it through because it consumes his life and it's not compatible. I have to visit Sans in the infirmary.” Alphys says.

“Wait… Asgore gave Sans a kind of Military Grade weapon to somebody as Lazy and Careless Skeleton, Sans?? Isn’t that like giving up our very own lives?” Undyne rolls her eyes.

“No… but it’s said that the Aetherial Beacon will continue to find its compatible owner. And it looks like Asgore finally has given up on it.” Alphys cleared out any window open at her laptop and pulled out the files of Sans and Papyrus. She scrolled through their files and found almost nothing… These files haven’t been updated for 20 years and Papyrus is still a trainee knight in his photo and Sans looks awful with a stain of ketchup in his left cheek.

“Yikes… Can’t believe that twerp dressed all classy now…” Undyne murmurs, crosses her arms and rests her back on the reclined chair as she blows wind to her bangs.

Alphys stares at her and sighs.

“Anyway, I’ll have to visit them at the Infirmary and confirm it with him.” Alphys closes her laptop and deeply sighs. She looks at her wristwatch and carefully observes how much time has passed already since the Failsafe was activated.

“Almost 10 Hours already…” She keeps sighing “I can’t believe that it’s gonna be half a day already since it was activated and  yet we aren’t near to our goal.”

She stood up and reached for the door when Undyne stopped her.

“Are you really leaving…?” She asked.

“I have to Undyne… My love… Our universe is at great risk, a Genocider is missing, The Multiverse is going to reset back to zero, Gaster is needed to continue the plan—but we don’t know if we can trust him or not—and the Aetherial Beacon which based on my tech Sans now holds?” Alphys gets a bit confused and a bit teary eye.

“I just ask why it has to be our universe… and not any universe out there at all… why us? Why now?” Alphys continues to keep asking herself in the process whether she believes this could work or not.

Undyne didn't say anything but grabbed her and gave her a comforting hug as Alphys continued to cry on her chest.

“Geez…you really are bad at keeping your emotions… There, just… take a few minutes to breathe before getting back to work. What’s the worst that could happen right?” Undyne pats her head and gives her even more comfort.

As two lovebirds are having their own time, a knock can be heard from behind the door.

“Uhh… Dr. Alphys? Are you there?” A familiar voice, its Hiro.

“Hiro?” Alphys asked, releasing from Undyne’s comfort, Undyne felt a bit disappointed because Alphys gets distracted with work easily and she couldn’t get any attention from her partner for just a bit. “Come on in, we’re inside here.”

The doorknob twists and the door opens as Hiro shows up freshly steamed and fresh from taking that good bath.

“I really should take good baths every now and then… mostly we will be working tirelessly for a whole week.” He smiles and waves “how’s it going between the two of you, and why did you guys move rooms?”

Hiro sits down on the opposite side of Undyne. Alphys sits back between the two of them at the end of the meeting table.

“Shall we go through our plan?” Alphys looks at Undyne

“Go on my love, I’ll be sitting here.” Undyne relaxes her arms behind her head and reclines her back on the chair.

“So here’s what happened… Gaster is already on the move. He visited us in my room earlier with one of his puppets. Undyne takes the credit for keeping me safe.” She pointed her thumbs at her and smiled.

“Continuing, We’ve found out in his files that we can visit him in his prison, but we will need one of Asgore’s keepsake items—Aetherial Beacon—to visit him. However, we’ve also deduced that Asgore might not have it.” Alphys continues to explain when Hiro suddenly gasps out loud.

“OH NO… What happened to it?!” Hiro said

“Uh… nothing… because as I was about to continue, Asgore gave it away to-” before Alphys could even finish again, Hiro gasps.

“WHAT…” Hiro’s jaw drops

“Can you let me finish…” Alphys facepalms

“Oh- sorry… uhh continue please. Hehe…” Hiro scratches the back of his head and awkwardly laughs.

“Okay so… He didn’t just give it to anybody, it was given to Sans. Sans recently had an encounter with the Anomaly and during their fight one of my Techs detected the same wavelength—Asgore’s Aetherial Beacon whenever he uses it—on that same location.” Alphys shows the data from her laptop to Hiro.

“Now… To visit Gaster in his Dark Prison hold, the Aetherial Beacon is the key to opening it. And we will need Sans to open it for us.” Alphys continues to explain. “And during that time, I’ll go there and get Gaster to our side… but I’m afraid it may take me some time since… he might be against us right now…”

“Why?” Hiro asks.

“Because here’s the thing… Undyne detected one of Gaster’s little puppets in my office. That’s the reason why we are now in this meeting room.” Alphys says. “And if… things go south and Gaster decides to turn his back on us… I’ll leave you in charge, Hiro. For now, I’ll have to visit the Skeleton Brothers.” Alphys stood up from her chair.

Undyne grabs her hands and looks at her with a worried look in her eyes.

“Alphys… Are you really sure about this…?” Undyne asks.

“Yes… I’m sure. My life is nothing compared to the thousands of lives we’ll save. Not just our universe but every universe in the entire Multiverse.” Alphys said not looking back at Undyne knowing she’ll get hurt if she ever sees Alphys’ face.