Remind Me of Your Name?
4/5
Bone_Axe
Summary: Here we are at the end of it all. It was never meant to be like this, it was never meant to go this far. But how am I supposed to live in this world if you aren't in it? Who am I in this world if you aren’t seeing me? All I need you to do is come back to me, stay with me. Why can’t you do this for me? Don’t you see we both suffer without one another?
Chapter 4: We are together once again
Notes:
Soooo, haha, long time no see, everyone? First, thank everyone who has commented and stuck with me throughout this story. It’s the first time I have written such a long fic with multiple chapters! As you can see from the chapter’s word count, haha, there is a reason it took me so long to finish this lol. Knowing it was the last chapter, I really wanted to put all my effort into it! I did feel rather guilty for taking so long, and I saw all your encouraging comments! No worries, I will be replying to all of you now! I was thinking about splitting it into two parts, but then I thought… wait, no??? I personally really hate when things get split up! So enough of my yapping, and please enjoy~ OH! also I never really made a playlist for the other chapters but I made one for this so if you would like to know what I was listening to as I wrote this please feel free to listen to these as you read! Remind me of your name, chapter 4 playlist PS! Please read the endnotes!!! There are a few things I want to go over at the end!
(Click here for the endnotes! more notes.)
If it's easier for you to read on AO3, here is the link!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
The low, persistent hum of the cooling fans was the first thing to reach the surface of Vox’s consciousness. It was a dull, thrumming sound, synchronized with the heavy, rhythmic thud of a pulse that felt too loud for his own head. For a long moment, there was nothing but the gray, staticky haze of a rebooting system, lines of data scrolling behind his eyes too fast to read, error messages pinging and being suppressed by a firewall he didn't remember setting.
Then, the world bled back in.
It wasn't the bright, neon-soaked world he was used to. It was dim, the air thick and strangely warm, smelling of expensive cologne. Vox blinked, his screen flickering with a jagged horizontal line before his stabilizers finally kicked in. He thought he would be met with seeing his ceiling, but it was Valentino.
The moth was hovering so close that Vox could see the microscopic cracks in the pink tint of his glasses.
I should get him a new pair… Vox thought.
Val’s two red eyes were wide, and his expression was... soft. Uncharacteristically soft. That kind of look was reserved for a very small number of people. Vox is one of them.
"He’s awake," Val breathed, his voice emitting a rough rasp. "Vel, he’s finally coming around."
Why did they sound so panicked? Did…did something happen? I was just…what was it doing again?
Before Vox could get lost in his thoughts, a second face crowded into his field of vision: Velvette. She wasn't looking at her phone. She was looking at him, her usual sharp, confident smirk replaced by a look of concern.
"Vox?" she prompted, her voice unusually quiet. "Look at me. Take it slow, okay?"
Vox tried to sit up, but his limbs felt like lead. The weighted silk blanket pinned him down, and the movement sent a spike of static through his head. "I... I’m in the penthouse," Vox croaked, his voice synthesized and cracking. He squinted, the blue light of his eyes pulsing weakly. "Why are you both... why are you looking at me like I’m about to explode?"
"Your fever just spiked, is all. You know how all your fancy computers love to blare out for the attention you need, Voxy," Valentino said quickly. He reached out to smooth the silk over Vox’s chest, his touch lingering almost desperately, as if he could physically hold the lie in place.
"You were calling out for me, Voxy. When Vel and I came over, you were... overheating. That’s all it was." Valentino’s voice pitched into a soothing purr, though his eyes remained sharp, searching Vox’s screen for any sign of a flickering memory.
Vox frowned, a glitchy ripple distorting the corners of his mouth. He searched his memory banks, reaching for the most recent logs. There was a gap, a cold, yawning void of white noise where the last couple of hours should have been. "I... I don't remember any of that. I was just..." He trailed off, the memory of whatever—or whoever—had been in his room slipping through his fingers like sand. He looked up at Valentino, his screen flickering with a faint, uncertain pulse. "The overlord meeting! I missed a meeting. Was I... was I supposed to be somewhere?"
"Val already went and handled it," Velvette cut him off, her voice softer than usual as her hand snapped out to catch his arm. "Everything is fine, V. Seriously."
She leaned in closer, her brow furrowed with a rare, genuine concern that she tried to mask with a flicker of her usual sass. "You’re staying right here until your internal temp is stable. Doctor’s orders. Or, well, my orders, which are better."
Vox gave a weak, glitchy chuckle, trying his hardest to brush off these strange vibes he was getting from the two of them. They weren’t hiding something from him, right?
At first, he appreciated the attention. It was nice having Val bring him high-end coolant and Velvette actually sitting at the foot of his bed to gossip about the latest Sinner scandals. But as he started to feel more like himself, the walls felt a lot smaller.
He’d be sitting in his home office, checking the nightly ratings, and the door would hiss open. It was always one of them.
"Voxy, how is my cariño doing?" Val would chirp, leaning against the doorframe and staying for twenty minutes for no reason at all.
Or Velvette would "accidentally" leave her tablet in his room, so that she had an excuse to come back in five minutes.
And then there was Ethan.
The first time Vox tried to make a solo break for the studio, he nearly walked right into Ethan’s chest. The assistant was stationed just inches from the bedroom door, hands clasped at the small of his back, and shoulders squared. It was standard protocol for a personal assistant to be reachable, but it felt as if Ethan was taking it a step too far.
"Ethan?" Vox asked, tilting his head. "What are you doing? Don't you have a shoot you have to be at?"
"Change of plans, boss," Ethan said with a shrug, falling into step exactly two paces behind Vox. "I’m on personal security for a bit. Mr. Valentino orders."
Vox stopped walking, his screen flickering with a small amount of static. "Personal security? In my own tower? Ethan, I am the security. I have eyes in every corner of this building."
"Just a precaution, sir. Until you're at a hundred percent," Ethan replied smoothly, his eyes scanning the hallway with a level of intensity that made Vox’s fans spin with unease.
It continued like that. Everywhere he went, Ethan was there. If he went to the kitchen for a drink, Ethan was by the fridge. If he went to the bathroom, Ethan waited right by the door. And every time he looked up, he’d catch Val or Velvette watching him from across a room with a look that he couldn't quite describe. It was the look of someone guarding a treasure they were terrified would be stolen.
"Is there something you guys aren't telling me?" Vox asked one evening, catching Velvette staring at him as he read a report. "I'm fine. Why are you all acting like I’m made of glass?"
Velvette reached out and fiddled with the cuff of his sleeve, smoothing the fabric over his wrist with a repetitive, nervous motion she couldn't quite hide. "We just like having you around, Vox. Can't a girl look after her favorite business partner without a deposition?"
Vox looked at her, then over her shoulder at Ethan standing by the window, and then at Valentino, who was watching them both from the hallway. He felt fine. He felt great, actually.
So why did it feel like something was lurking around him that everyone could see, but him?
The frustration was beginning to manifest as a physical rot in the air around the radio station. Alastor stood in the quiet of his own space, the silence feeling uncharacteristically heavy. He could hardly conceive that Vox had sunk to such a pitiful, pedestrian depth.
To excise a memory... to perform a self-inflicted lobotomy to escape the weight of him, of what they had, the years they had known each other. It was more than a retreat; it was an admission of total defeat.
When? The question ticked in his mind like a broken clock. How many months had he been playing a game with a partner who didn't even know the rules anymore? Every barbed comment, every calculated appearance, every grin meant to provoke had it all been falling on a hollowed-out mind? The thought sent a chill through his veins. All those encounters hadn't been a farce or a clever performance by the Media Demon. Vox hadn't been pretending to forget. He was... gone.
"No…no…no…so then the Vox that stood before him, the one who lay in that bed surrounded by those pathetic "companions."
He was a fake, a charlatan,
an imposter
But… that means Vox had to be in there somewhere, then, right? No matter how much you try to erase something, isn’t history meant to repeat itself again and again and again? This is them we are talking about, they can’t just….end like this, right?
Within the months following the near blow-up of heaven and the pentagram, along with Alastor, breaking his chains, he had become more powerful than he had been in decades. Breaking his deal with Rosie had unchained something ancient and jagged within his soul, his name could finally now again invoke fear into all of hell, everyone would remember who he was, well… almost everyone, yet the one he wanted to remember the most was..
Since his last visit with the other two Vees, Alastor was being successfully blocked by a moth, a brat, and a glorified bodyguard.
"Insolent... predictable... tiresome children," Alastor hissed, his voice layered in simmering anger. He lunged toward the shadows of his office, attempting to melt into the darkness to emerge in Vox’s private quarters, but he was violently spat back out into the center of his own room. He stumbled, his heels clicking sharply as he caught himself. The Vees had done more than change the door codes; they had layered the tower in a localized, high-frequency "white noise" field that acted like a physical barrier to his shadow-travel. It didn't hurt him in the slightest, but it made his arrival noisy, messy, and most frustratingly obvious.
They were treating Vox like a delicate porcelain doll, and it was driving Alastor into a manic frenzy.
He didn’t want to see Vox at this point; it would be pointless to talk to a shell of the former overlord. No, what he wanted was to reclaim the space that was once his to occupy within that man’s mind for half a century. Every day that passed with Vox in that “blank slate” state brought on a new wave of emotions that Alastor wished to avoid. It was an ego-bruising reality he couldn't stomach.
He grabbed a nearby radio, his claws sinking into the plastic casing until it cracked. "You think a silly little barrier can keep me out?" he laughed, the sound sharp and echoing, devoid of its usual rhythmic charm. Alastor was losing his composure. He knew that. The way that he was acting, if he could see himself, was irrational, but it always seemed to be that way when he thought about Vox. Practically anything to do with Vox these days made him act out.
Normally, Alastor was a master of the long game, a strategist who enjoyed the hunt. But the image of Vox looking at him with those vacant, hollow eyes, seeing nothing but a stranger, had triggered a desperate need to be known. He didn't have a plan. He was too manic to form one. He just knew that the V Tower was a fortress, and he was finding a way to reach Vox no matter the cost.
"If I cannot slip through the cracks," Alastor whispered, his eyes glowing like radio dials in the dark, "then I shall have to make the cracks myself. Let’s see how long your 'perfect little world' lasts when the frequency starts to bleed."
Alastor let out a sound that wasn't a laugh or a word, but a screeching burst of static. His shadow, normally a silent partner in his theatrics, ballooned upward, its antlers scraping the ceiling until the plaster rained down like ash.
"How dare they!" he howled, his voice distorted into a chorus of a thousand dying signals. "How dare they tuck him away like a broken toy!"
Alastor’s latest attempt to gain entry within the tower had failed…again.
With a violent flick of his wrist, a thick, oily black tentacle erupted from the Alastor’s latest attempt to gain entry to the floorboards, lashing out with the speed of a whip. It slammed into a heavy oak bookshelf, sending volumes of ancient, leather-bound music scores flying across the room like panicked birds. Another limb, slick and pulsing with malice, hooked into the handle of a mahogany dresser and ripped the drawers clean from their tracks, spilling silks and silver onto the floor.
He didn't care for the mess. There was no one here to witness his lapse in composure, no hotel guests to unsettle, no "friends" to appease with a hollow pleasantry. In this sanctuary of his own making, far from the prying eyes, the shadows were free to be as crude and cruel as their master. He was beyond their reach now, and certainly beyond their understanding.
The inner contents were sprawled across the floor—silver cufflinks, old yellowed photographs, and hand-stitched waistcoats—scattered amid the broken glass and splintered wood.
He was pacing, his steps heavy and uneven, his claws digging into his palms until his own blood—dark and smelling of old iron and rot—began to drip onto the rug. Every time he tried to focus, to weave a path back into the Tower, the high-frequency barrier snapped against his senses like a live wire. His power recoiled, the feedback sending him stumbling back into the center of the room.
In the silence that followed, the image of Vox’s blank, flickering screen flashed in his mind. It wasn't the hatred Alastor was used to; it was the indifference. The nothingness. It was a dial tuned to dead air, and it was a sound Alastor couldn't survive.
He seized a delicate side table and hurled it through the window. The glass shattered outward in a glittering spray, but even the sulfurous night air of Hell couldn't dampen the feverish heat radiating off him. He was a stuttering reel of red and black, a manic whirlwind deconstructing his own sanctuary because he couldn't reach the one person who mattered.
He turned toward his desk, his breathing heavy and thick with the rattle of a dying signal. He swept his arm across the surface. Inkwells shattered, hemorrhaging a deep, permanent black across the floor; pens snapped with the brittle crack of bone; and his meticulously kept ledgers were shredded by the jagged, passing shadows of his own frantic power.
He stood in the center of the wreckage, his chest heaving, his grin stretched so wide it looked like it was going to tear his face in two. His eyes were no longer dials; they were glowing red pits of pure, primal hatred.
"You think you’ve saved him?" Alastor whispered, the silence of the room now more terrifying than the noise. He looked at his trembling, clawed hands. He was thinking only of the flickering blue light of a screen and how much he wanted to smash it to see the moment recognition finally, painfully bled back into Vox's eyes.
As the thought took hold, the whirlwind of his fury finally began to settle. The violent static died down to a low, ominous hum, leaving the room a graveyard of splintered maroon wood and shredded paper. Alastor remained in the center of the ruin, his chest heaving, his shadow still twitching against the walls like a dying flame.
Among the wreckage of his life, the artifacts he’d collected over a century of terror, something caught the dim light. It didn't belong. It was a small, sleek object, made of modern plastic and cheap metal, shaped like a stylized, cartoonish shark—a USB drive.
It was a garish, neon-bright thing that screamed of the very world Alastor despised. It was a piece of him.
Alastor’s shadow, usually a mocking reflection of his own ego, peeled itself away from the floor. It didn't mimic his rage this time. Instead, it slithered toward the small device, its elongated fingers hovering over the shark-themed casing with a strange, hesitant curiosity. It knew. Even if Alastor, in his manic state, was too busy relishing his own fury to notice, the shadow remembered where that thing had come from.
It was a relic of a rivalry that had once been more than just hatred. It was a piece of tech Vox had probably left behind years ago, tucked away in a drawer he hadn't opened in decades. Alastor’s shadow didn’t move with its usual predatory grace. As Alastor’s hand descended, his long, clawed fingers reaching for the small shark, the shadow acted on an instinct that seemed entirely separate from its master’s manic ego.
A jagged, ink-black hand shot across the floor, snatching the USB drive a fraction of a second before Alastor’s fingers could close around it. Alastor froze. His arm remained outstretched, suspended in the air over the empty floorboards. Slowly, his neck snapped to the side with a series of sickening, wet cracks, his glowing eyes fixing on his own silhouette.
"Give it to me," Alastor commanded, his voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly smooth register. The radio static in the room surged, the walls beginning to bleed a dark, shadowy ichor.
The shadow didn't move. It stood huddled in the corner of the wall, its long, spindly fingers curled tightly around the little shark-shaped drive. It didn't mimic Alastor’s grin; for the first time, the shadow’s mouth was a thin, jagged line of worry. It knew exactly what Alastor was planning. It knew that Alastor didn't just want to wake Vox up; he wanted to shatter him. He wanted to use that drive to force fifty years of rivalry, hatred, and obsession back into a mind that had found a fragile, hollow peace. It would be like pouring molten lead into a glass jar.
"You've grown quite bold, haven't you?" Alastor hissed, his shadow-antlers growing, casting a massive, suffocating darkness over the room. "Do you think I don't see what you're doing? You’re trying to protect him."
The shadow shrank back, pressing itself into the wall’s crease, clutching the USB to its chest. It was a bizarre sight, the manifestation of a demon's cruelty showing a mercy the demon himself was currently incapable of feeling. The shadow remembered the way Vox used to look at them before the "deletion." It remembered the sparks and the life. It knew that if Alastor did this now, in this state of unhinged mania, there wouldn't be a Vox left to play with.
"He is MINE to break!" Alastor roared, the sound echoing like a bomb going off in a small tunnel. He lunged toward the wall, his claws raking through the shadows as he tried to tear the object from his own reflection physically. The shadow darted away, sliding across the ceiling and down the opposite wall, keeping the little shark just out of reach. It was a frantic, silent game of cat and mouse played between a man and his own shadow.
"You forget yourself!" Alastor howled, his image flickering like a damaged film reel. "That drive belongs to the world we built! If he wants to forget, I will make the remembering so loud his screen will CRACK!"
The shadow slipped under a pile of discarded coats, burying the USB drive deep within the fabric, trying to hide it from the very eyes that shared its vision. It was a desperate, losing battle. Alastor was the master here, but for a few precious seconds, the shadow was the only thing standing between Vox and a total, agonizing system failure.
"You are me," Alastor whispered, and the sheer force of the words caused the shadows in the room to ripple like disturbed water. "Every ounce of your defiance is just a reflection of my own will. You cannot hide a secret from the mind that birthed it." The shadow froze against the far wall, its form trembling. It clutched the small, shark-themed USB drive to its chest as if it were a heart, its jagged mouth twisted in a silent plea. But Alastor closed his hand into a fist, and the shadow began to scream a soundless, vibrating agony that shook the floorboards.
Slowly, agonizingly, the shadow was forced to peel its fingers back. It fought, its ink-black limbs straining against the invisible tether of Alastor’s command, but it was like a puppet trying to cut its own strings. With one final, violent jerk, the shadow’s hand flew open, and the little plastic shark tumbled through the air.
The smell of burnt mahogany was momentarily replaced by a sweet, salty, almost ocean-like scent.“Keep it, Alastor,” a voice had rasped as if it were coming from an old television set. “If my screen ever goes dark... if I ever stop being me... you’re the only one I trust to bring me back.”
The memory snapped away just as soon as it appeared. Alastor caught the drive between two clawed fingers, his shadow's frantic claws finally stilling beneath his boots.
"There," he cooed, his voice returning to a smooth, velvety purr that was far more frightening than the screaming. "That wasn't so hard, was it? You’ve always been a bit too sentimental for your own good."
He held the drive up to the dim light, his thumb tracing the cheap plastic fins. To anyone else, it was a simple piece of forgotten technology, but to Alastor, it was a key to the man he needed, the one who challenged him, the one who actually mattered. He was elated, but as his manic laughter died down into a low, buzzing hum, the reality of the situation set in. The Vees had turned the tower into a tomb. He could feel the high-frequency barrier humming even from here, a wall of white noise that would tear his shadows apart. He was a monster newly unchained, yet the digital equivalent of a locked door was thwarting him.
He couldn't get close enough to plug the drive in.
"Patience, Alastor," he murmured, his neck cracking as he tilted his head at a sharp angle. "If you cannot walk through the front door, you simply find someone who is already inside."
His mind drifted to the roster of souls trapped within that glittering prison. His gaze sharpened, the radio dials in his eyes spinning with predatory glee. Of course. The perfect, pathetic, glittering little Trojan Horse.
Angel Dust.
Honestly, Alastor had never thought much of the sinner, even during his time at the hotel. If he were forced to choose an emotion, he might claim a semblance of pity, the sort one felt for a wounded animal that lacked the sense to crawl out of the rain. He had found Charlie’s efforts to "rehabilitate" the creature quite valiant; therefore, it was truly unfortunate when the boy's spying was revealed, and all that progress, if there had been any at all, was traded for a seat back in the very pit that had fostered his worst habits.
The one thing Alastor might admit, strictly to himself, was the kinship of their shared hatred for Valentino.
The spider was currently filming at the Tower, tucked away in one of Valentino’s high-security studios. He was already past the checkpoints. He was already behind the firewalls. More importantly, he was someone the Vees, especially that lecherous moth, would never suspect of carrying a lethal dose of reality. Angel was already such a broken, hollowed-out soul that they would never imagine him becoming the catalyst for their end.
Alastor let out a soft, melodic chuckle that made the shards of broken glass on the floor vibrate in sympathy. It was a horrible idea. It was a violation of every boundary he had established at the hotel, a move that would undoubtedly traumatize the boy and draw the white-hot ire of Charlie Morningstar.
But Alastor no longer cared about the hotel. His time there was a closed chapter, and the people within it were merely discarded characters. He didn't care about the spider's safety; he only cared about the result. Whoever was in the way and whoever had to be used mattered very little to him now.
He squeezed the USB drive until his knuckles turned white. Behind him, his shadow rose, but it did not mimic his twisted, manic grin. Instead, it slumped before his feet, radiating a profound sense of sorrow for what was to come, not just for its master, but for the soul it had once considered a friend.
"Oh, Angel," Alastor whispered. "Since they’ve insisted on dragging you back to that stage... the least we can do is ensure it’s the last performance any of them ever see."
The studio lights were blinding, a hot, artificial white that made the sweat itch under Angel’s layers of makeup. Around him, the crew scurried like insects, adjusting cables and checking monitors. Valentino was perched in his director’s chair just off-camera, the smoke from his cigar trailing in the air like a red, toxic fog.
"Positions, baby!" Valentino barked, his voice amplified through the studio's massive surround-sound speakers. "And give me emotion this time, or we are staying here all night."
Angel took his place on the velvet sofa, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He waited for the familiar beep of the digital timer, trying his best to focus on the rhythm of the upbeat, synth-heavy track as it started playing through the studio monitors.
Instead, he heard a horrible static feedback loop.
It was a low, wet hiss, the sound of a needle dragging across a jagged groove. Was the earpiece he had defective? Why was no one stopping the scene, or at the very least saying anything? The studio stayed silent to everyone else, but in Angel's ears, it was anything but.
"Camera one, rolling!" the floor manager shouted.
Angel opened his mouth to notify one of the sound crew, but his jaw locked—a wave of static, cold and sharp as needles, washed over his skin.
“Smile, Angel,” a voice purred not from the speakers, but from somewhere deep inside his own skull. “You’re on camera, after all. It would be a shame to let all that makeup go to waste.”
Angel’s eyes widened, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks as he stared directly into the camera lens. He could see his own reflection in the glass, but for a split second, his shadow on the wall behind him didn't move when he did. It stayed still, its eyes glowing a radio-dial red.
“Don't look so terrified, darling,” Alastor’s voice vibrated through his teeth. “I’m simply here to offer you a new script. One with a much more... explosive ending.”
"Cut! Cut!" Valentino’s voice was a whip-crack through the studio. "Angel, baby, you’re giving me nothing! You look like you’re watching your own funeral. Take ten! Get your head on straight before I decide to straighten it for you!" The heavy studio lights dimmed, leaving the set in a hazy, purple twilight. Angel didn't wait for an assistant. He stood up, his movements stiff, and practically ran toward his dressing room. The earpiece was still in, still humming with that low, rhythmic static that felt like a migraine taking root in his brain.
The moment the dressing room door slammed shut, Angel ripped the small device out of his ear and threw it against the vanity. It hit the mirror with a dull thud, the static from the tiny speaker still audible in the quiet room. Angel stared at the plastic device, his chest heaving, his four hands trembling as the top set hovered near his face and the lower set hugged his middle.What. The. Fuck?!
That was Alastor. That was definitely that creepy, old-timey prick’s voice vibrating through the studio's frequency. But how? The Tower was supposed to be a fortress. Angel had overheard Val brag for weeks about a new security system that was supposed to keep the Radio Demon’s "filthy analog signal" out of their digital paradise.
A cold shiver raced down Angel's spine, quickly followed by a hot flare of pure irritation. He didn't have the time for this. Not today. Not while Val was already breathing down his neck and his skin felt like it was crawling off his bones. What the hell did he want? Why was he reaching out now, in the middle of this neon-lit nightmare?”
The static from the small piece of technology near the vanity didn't stop when it hit the mirror; it grew into a low, rhythmic thumping, like a heartbeat made of white noise.
"Tsk, tsk. Running away again? It seems to be a recurring theme for you lately. You ran from the Hotel, you ran from your 'friends'... and yet, here you are, still taking orders from a man who treats you like a discarded prop." The voice dropped an octave, becoming syrupy and dangerous. "I expected more from a resident of my former establishment. Or perhaps... I expected too much from a lost cause."
"Oh, fuck you, Alastor!" Angel spat, his voice cracking with a mixture of rage and exhaustion. He spun around to the empty room, his eyes darting into the purple-hued shadows, knowing the demon was listening through the very air. "I'm a lost cause?" Angel spat, kicking a stray costume trunk. “Shut the fuck up, I left for the sake of everyone!” The movement sent a jolt of memory through him, the image of the executive hallway from weeks prior.
He’d been lingering near the master suite, script in hand, when Valentino had come bursting through the velvety purple doors, nearly taking Angel out in his haste. Val looked like he was vibrating out of his skin, his wings flared and frantic. Angel had frozen just a couple of steps from Vox’s room, pressing himself against the cold wall. Satan only knew why he didn't just bolt for his own quarters right then. Maybe it was a survival instinct, or a dark, twisted sense of satisfaction. Something was intoxicating about seeing a monster like Valentino with such raw, unmasked distress on his face.
But the distress wasn't just coming from Val. The air in the hallway was vibrating, the very wallpaper peeling back as a three-way war of words tore through the door.
"He didn't choose you, Valentino!” Wait… was that Alastor? The voice had shrieked, followed by the violent spray of glass shattering inside the room.
“I don't give a damn about your ego, Alastor!” Velvette’s voice had sliced through, sharp and terrified.
Then, a burst of heavy, distorted radio static—the kind that made your teeth ache- erupted from the hallway speakers. “HE DID SOMETHING TO HIMSELF!” “I’m going to tear your tongue out for this! Get the fuck out of here!” Val had roared back.
That was the last of it. Angel hadn't waited to hear more; he had fled the moment a looming shadow began to seep like spilled ink from beneath Vox’s bedroom door. That was weeks ago, it was a rare glimpse into the hidden inner world, a moment of desperation from the top Overlords of the city.
Snapping back to the present, Angel’s four hands balled into trembling fists. "I heard you, Al," Angel hissed at the empty air. "I heard you screaming weeks ago. Is that why you're bothering me? Because he won’t look at you anymore? Because Vox finally figured out how to move on from you?"
The air got eerily quiet and cold until Alastor's voice came through again.
"I didn't come here to be psychoanalyzed by a man who doesn't even own his own soul. Doesn’t it make you livid, Angel?" Alastor whispered, his voice dropping into that dark, projecting tone.
Tell me, Angel…does it.
"To see them like this? They get their happy ending. Why does Vox get to forget everything and move on so simply? Why does he get to pretend I—that we—don't matter?"
The words "we" and "I" hung in the air, thick and unnatural. Angel felt the hair on his arms stand up. He felt the weight of it the way Alastor’s voice had hitched, just for a millisecond, on that last sentence.
He's not talking to me, Angel realized, a cold spike of clarity hitting him. He’s talking to himself.
Angel shifted his weight, his four hands clenching at his sides. The fear was being crowded out by a strange, sharp pity that tasted like iron. Alastor wasn't here as the once fearsome radio demon; he was here as a ghost who had been evicted, trying to find a door that wasn't locked.
"You're talking about mattering?" Angel asked, his voice low and mocking. He didn't turn around, staring instead at the shattered mirror where Alastor’s distorted reflection, if he were here, would have hovered behind his own. "Since when do you care if a 'flat-faced-wannabe' thinks you matter? You’re the big bad Radio Demon. You don't need 'em."
Angel took a breath, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"But you’re not here to 'save' me from a script, Al. You’re here because he really did it. He hit 'delete.' And it’s eating' you alive that he’s finding' peace in a world where you don't even exist."
Again, Angel met with another round of silence until Alastor started again.
"Let’s talk about your loyalty. You loathe them, yet you slave for them. You fear them, yet you let Vox treat your mind like a playground. Have you forgotten the hypnosis? The way he slipped into your head like a parasite and turned your eyes into his own personal cameras? He didn't just watch you, Angel. He owned your thoughts. He made you a spy against the only people who ever gave a damn about you."
"And Valentino. Your 'papi.'" Alastor spat the word like it was a mouthful of rot. "He loves that hollow blue box more than he loves the air he breathes. Vox is his pride. His joy. He is the anchor that keeps Valentino stable enough not to torture you constantly. Imagine the exquisite agony of watching that anchor shatter.
It felt as if Alastor was actually there. His voice felt as if it was brushing right next to Angel’s ears.
"You can break him, Angel. You can take the one thing Valentino loves, the thing Vox worked decades to build, and you can turn it into a screaming heap of corrupted data. You can watch them both burn from the inside out. Don't you want to see the look in Val’s eyes when his precious king finally snaps? Don't you want to be the one who pulled the trigger?"
Angel stood frozen, his four hands clenched into tight, shaking fists. His mind was a battlefield of images: Valentino’s smoke, the cold buzz of Vox’s hypnosis, and the way he’d been forced to betray Husk.
He’s using me, Angel thought, his heart hammering like a trapped bird. He’s just another monster wanting to play with a different set of toys. But then he pictured Vox, the arrogant, electric prick who thought he was untouchable. He pictured Valentino, who spent every night obsessing over Vox’s health while Angel worked until he bled. If Vox broke, the empire would crumble. The leash might finally snap.
“It’s not just for Alastor,” Angel lied to himself. The thought provided a desperate, oily comfort. “It’s for me. It’s for Husk.”
"I hate you," Angel whispered, his voice trembling as he finally caved in. "I hope you both burn in a ditch when this is over. I hope you end up somewhere so deep and dark that even your voice can't find a way out."
"Oh, I'm sure we shall," Alastor’s voice purred. “Now, let me explain how this will go.”
Alastor tilted his head and allowed his radio-static to hum with sudden, sharp clarity as he began to lay out the specifics of the plan. He knew that he could not afford for this to go wrong because this might be the last chance he had to get this close to Vox again, and that was a haunting thought he tried desperately not to dwell upon.
"The plan is simple, Angel," Alastor muttered while his voice emitted from the damaged, sparking earpiece with a casual air that completely belied the malice behind his words. "Valentino is a creature of pure ego and obsession, so you must create an opening for yourself to not only distract him, but also to lure Vox down into the studio. I am sure you are already aware of how they are treating Vox like a glass doll lately by restricting his every movement and keeping him hidden away."
Angel actually did not know any of this, and the information was entirely new to him, though it explained the strange shifts he had witnessed on set. He had noticed that there were moments where Val, who normally stayed behind during set breaks to check in on him in his own suffocating way, would instead leave as soon as the scene was finished. Val would vanish while muttering something under his breath about Vox and his stability. Still, Angel had been too buried in his own misery to realize the empire was actually fracturing.
Alastor was not physically present in the room with Angel, yet he still managed to emit a rage-fueled lecture that seemed to vibrate through the very floorboards. “You will mess up your lines repeatedly, looking at the wrong camera, hitting the wrong marks, and ruining the lighting for every shot. You are going to wear him down until his temper is fraying and his mind is a mess of pink smoke and frustration, making him stay on that set until he is too exhausted to think of anything but the mounting budget you are blowing.”
"And then what happens? Is Val just going to sit there and watch me fail? He will kill me before the first hour of production is even over."
"Oh, he will be far too busy to kill you," Alastor chuckled with a sound that resembled a skipping record. "Once he is sufficiently worn down, you will accidentally tamper with the equipment by causing a small, irritating glitch in the mainframe that requires the CEO’s personal touch to resolve. Valentino will be reluctant to call him, of course, but he is desperate for his production to finish, and he will eventually convince himself it is safe. After all, he will be standing right there next to him, and he will wonder what could happen with the great Valentino standing guard."
Alastor’s grin pulled back to reveal rows of needle-thin teeth that glinted in the dim light of his tower. "That is your window of opportunity. When Vox is distracted by leaning over the hardware to fix the mess you have made, that is exactly when you must strike. You will plug this little shark in and let the data flow because one quick click is all it takes for the house of cards to collapse."
'"Wait, wait, WAIT, Al," Angel interrupted, his voice hushed but frantic as he paced the small confines of the dressing room. "How am I even supposed to get this little USB you keep talking about? It’s not like I can walk out of here and meet you for coffee. You yourself said you no longer have access to the building, so you clearly aren't just going to hand it to me. What is the plan for that?"
Alastor’s laughter crackled through the earpiece, "My dear Angel, I do not need to step back into that vile tower. I have something far more reliable. I have the predictable nature of a man who believes he owns the world. Valentino loves to showcase his prizes, doesn’t he? He delights in the attention you receive because it validates his own 'impeccable' taste in talent."
"My fan mail," Angel whispered, the realization filling him with a cold, sinking feeling in his gut.
"Precisely," Alastor purred, his voice dropping into a tone of dark satisfaction. "Every day, a mountain of adoration is delivered to your doorstep, and every day, Valentino allows it to pass because he views those tributes as his own personal trophies. He is far too busy counting his profits to worry about the contents of a fan's affection."
The delivery arrived the following morning during the frantic chaos of the first wardrobe change, tucked inside an oversized, flamboyant box wrapped in shimmering pink foil that looked no different from the dozens of other tributes sent by obsessed fans. One of the studio interns had tossed it onto Angel’s vanity with a distracted comment about it being just another admirer, and at the time, Angel had been too busy fighting into a restrictive corset to give the package a second thought.
It wasn't until he was finally alone during a brief lighting reset that he tore the paper away, expecting to find the usual assortment of expensive chocolates or scented letters. Instead, he found a vintage, velvet-lined jewelry case. Inside, nestled against the dark fabric, sat the shark-themed USB drive, its neon-blue finish looking jarringly modern against the antique elegance of the box.
There was no card and no signature, there was no need for such formalities Angel already knew who sent this; he had been apprehensive when Alastor would send it as Angel picked up the device, it was slightly stuck to a small handwritten note that was tucked into the lid of the box, the letters were crude and erratic, as if the pen had been gripped with a trembling, violent force that threatened to tear through the paper itself. The ink appeared dark and thick, like dried blood, and the words seemed to vibrate under the harsh vanity lights with a frantic, pulsing energy that made Angel’s eyes ache.
A lead role requires the proper props, Angel. The note read, “ Do ensure you hit your marks when the curtain rises, for I should hate for such a masterful performance to go to waste.
Angel felt a cold shiver race down his spine. This was it; he was really going through with this. He tucked the drive deep into his chest fluff, the cold metal a constant, biting reminder of the deal he had made.
Angel looked toward Valentino, who was currently barking orders at a cowering cameraman with a frantic intensity that seemed to vibrate through the entire studio floor. As he watched the Overlord’s wings snap with agitation, Angel found himself struggling to maintain his composure while a dozen different, lethal scenarios began to race through his mind. He wondered what would happen if Valentino didn't believe his act, or worse, what the moth would do if he discovered the device hidden in his fluff before the trap could even be set. He questioned how Alastor could be so certain that Valentino would personally summon Vox to the studio rather than just calling for that sycophantic Eel who followed the Media Demon everywhere.
For a heartbeat, the weight of the USB drive felt less like a weapon and more like a death warrant, making his stomach churn with a sudden, nauseating wave of doubt. He thought about the potential fallout and whether he was truly ready to witness the total collapse of the empire that, for better or worse, provided the only life he knew.
However, the moment he glanced at the red-tinted lenses of Valentino's glasses, the flicker of hesitation was snuffed out. How could he forget the pain they both put him through, the invasive, buzzing hum of Vox’s hypnosis, a sound that had once violated the sanctity of his own thoughts and turned his very eyes into cameras for the Vees' entertainment.
“I am going to break them,” Angel told himself, feeling a dark and cold spark of satisfaction flicker in his chest. “I am going to shatter the very thing Valentino loves most in this world, just like he and Vox spent years breaking every piece of sanity and dignity I ever had.”
"Alright, everyone! We are taking it from the top!" Valentino roared while his four arms gestured wildly at the crew to reset the heavy equipment. He turned his red-tinted gaze toward the stage, his voice dropping into a warning growl as he added, "And Angel? Do not fuck it up this time, or I will make sure you regret ever waking up this morning."
Angel took his place on the velvet-draped set and allowed a lopsided, perfectly artificial smile to be plastered across his face for the cameras. "Sure thing, Papi," he chirped, his voice dripping with a thick layer of sarcasm that Valentino was far too exhausted and distracted actually to catch.
The next two hours were a grueling exercise in psychological endurance as Angel systematically dismantled the production, and he could feel Valentino’s self-control snapping with every ruined take and wasted minute of film. He missed his marks by several feet, causing the expensive focus-pullers to blur the shots into a useless mess of distorted colors, and he intentionally stuttered through the most expensive sequences until the film stock was practically wasted. Valentino was now vibrating with a frantic, manic energy that suggested he was at his absolute limit, pacing the edge of the stage. At the same time, his wings beat a steady, irritating rhythm against his back, and the pink smoke pouring from his mouth began to cloud the entire studio floor in a thick, cloying haze.
"Again!" Valentino shrieked, his voice cracking under the weight of his mounting desperation and fury. "We are doing it again from the top! Angel, you will get this right, or I will set this entire stage on fire with you tied to the center of it, and we will let our viewers find a new kink from your charred body!"
Angel wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and moved back to his starting position with his heart hammering in his throat, but as he passed the main power hub for the digital rendering rack, he let one of his lower hands slip out of view. He used one of his small, sharp nails to slice through the fiber-optic casing with precision, ensuring the damage appeared to be a freak internal surge rather than a clean cut. The reaction was instantaneous: every monitor in the studio flickered with a violent burst of static before turning a deep, sickly shade of crimson, and a high-pitched, mechanical whine erupted from the mainframe, making the crew cover their ears in pain.
"What is that? What did you do!" Valentino screamed as he lunged toward the technical booth, his four hands slamming against the console in a useless, frantic attempt to stop the deafening noise.
"The system is crashing, Mr. Valentino!" the head technician yelled back, his voice pitching into a high-register panic as he watched the data streams dissolve into incomprehensible gibberish. "The encryption is folding in on itself, and I cannot bypass the lock! It is a core-level hardware glitch; the rendering rack is hard-wired into the tower’s central core system. If this isn’t fixed immediately, we risk losing all the footage from today’s shooting!!
Valentino froze, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps as he looked from the flickering red screens to the gold-plated elevator that led directly up to the penthouse. He knew exactly who could fix this with a single thought, yet it pained him greatly, who else but
Vox.
Vox knew the in’s and out of the tower, hell he was the tower practically, any glitch or spark out of place Vox would be able to fix in second this however seemed like it required him to make a physically appearance, However, the fear of exposing Vox’s current, fragile condition to the crew was clearly warring with his manic obsession for the film and the millions of dollars currently evaporating in the heat of the server rack.
"Call him," Valentino hissed, the command seemingly causing him physical pain as his secondary set of arms gripped the edge of the console until the plastic began to crack. "Call Vox down here right now. Tell him the tower's primary buffer is desyncing and I need him for five minutes. Just five minutes to stabilize the goddamn rack before it burns the whole studio to the ground!"
The technician didn't wait for a second order, frantically punching the emergency line to the penthouse while Valentino turned his back to the crew, his wings flared wide in a desperate, defensive posture. Across the stage, Angel stood in the shadows of the bed-set, his hand surreptitiously moving toward his chest of fluff where the cold weight of the USB waited.
The elevator doors slid open, venting a pressurized hiss of frigid air that collided with the studio’s sweltering heat. Vox stepped out into the chaos, his stride missing its usual high-voltage snap. The neon glow of his screen cycled at a low, struggling frequency, and his suit hung slightly loose on a frame that looked like it had lost the physical mass to fill the expensive fabric.
Valentino intercepted him before he could reach the center of the room. He moved in a few long, predatory strides, his four arms expanding like a massive, moth-winged barrier to shield Vox from the prying eyes of the crew.
"Eyes on your stations, now!" Valentino’s voice roared, a low, vibrating threat that sent the imps scrambling back to their monitors. He stepped into Vox’s personal space, his secondary hands twitching with the urge to steady him. "Where is that eel? Where’s Ethan? Why the hell is he not with you?!"
Vox’s display lagged for a painful microsecond, flickering through a frame of static before his mismatched, concentric eyes finally focused on Valentino. He looked profoundly tired, his expression a mask of exhausted irritation. "I sent him to handle the archives in Sector 4," Vox rasped, his voice carrying an electronic burr that made the audio tech's monitors spike into the red. "I’m fine, Val. I don't need a babysitter, and I certainly don't need you hovering over me like I’m some child. I built this tower; I can handle simple hardware without an escort."
"You’re supposed to be recovering, Vox,” Valentino whispered, keeping his back to the room to hide the genuine, frantic lines of his face. You look like you're about to short-circuit in front of the entire floor."”"
"I said I'm fine! Besides, you are the one who called me down here in the first place!”Vox snapped, the sudden spike in his volume causing his display to fracture into a mosaic of buffering symbols for a moment. He shoved past Valentino and turned his attention toward the head technician, who looked terrified that he would be the next person scolded or worse under the Overlord's gaze. "You. Move. Tell me exactly what the issue is and fast. I do not have all day to waste on a simple server error.”
As the technician stammered out what they had already tried, Vox forced himself toward the smoking server rack. Valentino followed him like a dark, protective shadow, his hand hovering inches from Vox’s waist, ready to catch him the second the bravado failed. From his position on the bed-set, Angel watched them with a sharp, calculating gaze.
Vox was hunched over the server rack as the main head technician, from a distance, pointed to various spots where he had checked here and there. Vox’s back was turned, his fingers deep in the wiring; it was a tangled mess, trying to find the source of the issue. If you didn’t look too deeply at him, you would have thought he looked like perfection, always the image that Vox prided itself on, but looking deeper, you could see that the man looked exhausted, his screen, usually a vivid ocean blue, was much dimmer, and the occasional flicker would appear.
This was the moment Angel had waited for.
The studio air screamed with the mechanical whine of the overtaxed server rack, creating a wall of noise that masked the subtle rustle of Angel’s movement. Valentino remained positioned as a human shield, his focus entirely on Vox’s face, watching for the next flicker of static or subtle stumble made by Vox. He was so preoccupied with guarding the secret of Vox’s exhaustion that he never looked over at what Angel was doing.
Angel leaned into the "stressed-out star" persona he’d been building all morning, letting out a sharp gasp as if the heat and flickering lights had started to beat down upon him. He surged from his hiding spot behind the lighting crane, his movements frantic and uncoordinated.
"God, the noise, the heat—" Angel cut himself off with a choked, breathless sound, pressing his hands to his head. He scrambled forward, his movements jerky and blinded, as if he were trying to escape the sound and didn't see Vox standing right in his path.
Angel staggered over to the two men, counting his steps to ensure that his boots would catch on the thick cables snaking across the floor. To anyone watching, it looked like a genuine accident. He went flying forward, a tangle of long, white limbs. Valentino, startled by the sudden outburst and the spider-demon, instinctively flinched back just enough to avoid a direct collision.
That was the opening.
Angel slammed into Vox’s back with enough force to pin the Overlord against the server rack. The impact was jarring, the metallic tang of Vox’s suit pressing into Angel’s chest. In that half-second of tangled limbs, while Valentino was still recovering his footing and Vox was reeling from the physical shock, Angel’s hand darted to the base of Vox's neck.
Click.
The drive slid in perfectly, the cold metal teeth biting deep into the port. For a second, there was a moment of silence. Angel was half-scared that Alastor had sent him a dud, but then Vox’s entire frame locked into a stiff position. The hum of his fans rose to a frantic shriek as his system detected an intrusion. Blue electricity danced around his neck, sparks of light crawling across his screen and down his arms. The air in the studio turned sharp and metallic, the smell of scorched ozone thick enough to taste. The pain emanating from Vox forced him to grip the server rack so hard that the metal casing began to groan under the pressure.
"ARGH! FUCK!" Vox screamed, his screen flashing a blinding, ultraviolet white; the light blinding, it burned the afterimage of his fractured silhouette into the back of Angel’s eyelids. The force of the electrical discharge sent a shockwave through the air, throwing Angel backward into the dark.
"Vox!" Valentino roared, lunging forward, his wings unfurling in a frantic, red-velvet blur.
Angel, sprawled on the floor, saw the drive pulsing a rhythmic, neon-blue against the dark fabric of Vox's suit. Valentino was going to see it the second he reached for him. Panicked, Angel scrambled up and lunged back in, making it look like he was trying to "steady" the man he just nearly crushed.
"Oh shit—Vox! I’m sorry, I didn't—!" Angel yelled, his voice cracking with a mix of real and fake terror. He grabbed the drive, his fingers burning as he felt the raw data humming through the plastic. He yanked it back with a desperate, frantic pull.
Snap.
The drive broke. The plastic tail came away in Angel's hand, leaving the metal teeth of the USB jammed deep in the port, fused into the hardware by the electrical arc.
"Get away from him!" Valentino snarled, his voice laced with an edge of fury. He shoved Angel so hard the spider tumbled backward over a prop couch, hitting the floor with a heavy thud that knocked the wind out of him.
Valentino scrambled toward Vox, gathering the shivering, sparking Overlord into his primary set of arms. "Voxy? Talk to me, baby! What happened?!"
Vox’s screen was a dizzying mess of horizontal lines, flickering between his modern display and a grainy, silver-screen grey. Blue sparks danced across his shoulders, popping with the smell of scorched metal and fabric, and his breath came in short, ragged bursts of static. Valentino should let go of Vox, as his hands and arms were getting small burns from each new spark that arose from Vox, but how could he when he was in this state?
"Vox? Who’s that…I’m Vinc— no…no I’m not him anymore, Val? It's... “ It’s loud, Val," Vox whispered, his voice pitching up into a distorted, static voice before dropping back to his usual tone. “It’s…something is wrong Val…I’m not…”
Vox was not able to continue with whatever his poor, confused mind was trying to piece together. Valentino had had enough; his face contorted with a mixture of terror and possessive rage. He looked at the chaos of the set, the blown-out lights, and the sparking server rack. "That's it! We’re done! Everyone out! The shoot is over!"
He stood up, effortlessly lifting Vox’s lanky frame into his arms as if he were made of nothing. Vox leaned his head against Val’s shoulder, his screen dimming to a faint, rhythmic pulse, his fingers twitching against Val’s chest, trying to grasp onto anything he could, mainly reaching for Val’s fluff.
Before Valentino turned toward the elevators, he stopped. He looked down at Angel, who was still sprawled behind the couch, clutching his singed palm to his chest. Valentino’s two eyes narrowed, pink smoke swirling around him as if trying to create a small protective bubble around him and Vox.
"You," Val hissed, his voice dropping to a terrifying, quiet simmer. "You, why the fuck did you even come near him for what the hell were you trying to do? All you had to do was sit still, you pathetic whore look pretty. Val wanted to say so much more, but the twitching emanating from Vox snapped him back to what was more important. He tightened his grip on Vox. "I'll deal with you later, Angel. Don't you dare leave this building."
As the elevator doors hissed shut behind the Vees, the studio fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. Angel sat on the floor, his heart racing. He reached into his fluff and felt the broken plastic tail of the shark. It was cold now, but he could still feel the phantom vibration of the data that had surged through it.
He had done it. He had planted the "virus." But as he looked at the sparking mess Vox had become, a cold pit formed in his stomach.
"I hope you know what you're doing', Al whispered to the empty, darkened studio. " 'Cause if you don't... we're both dead."
In the shadows behind the prop couch, a small, old-fashioned radio dial on the floor flickered to life, glowing a faint, sinister red. A low, rhythmic tapping began the sound of a cane hitting a floorboard, timed perfectly with the static heartbeat coming from the penthouse above.
The elevator doors hissed shut, sealing them in a cramped, vibrating silence. The aggression Val had directed at Angel vanished, replaced by a frantic, high-strung desperation. He pulled Vox closer, tucking the Overlord’s heavy head against the crook of his neck, ignoring the blue sparks that bit into his own skin.
"How could I be so stupid!" Val hissed, though this time the venom was directed at himself. "Letting him come down here! And for what? To fix some stupid server?"
His mind spiraled through a thousand regrets, each one sharper than the last. His primary arms wrapped securely around Vox, holding him close. Meanwhile, his second set of arms worked with frantic, blurred speed, dialing Velvette over and over, his fingers nearly cracking the screen.
"Pick up, pick up, pick up..." he muttered, his breath coming in short, ragged hitches.
When the call finally connected to her voicemail for the third time, he gave up on the voice call and began firing off texts with a trembling, violent rhythm.
Val: SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH VOX. I ’M TAKING HIM TO HIS ROOM. Val: I DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED, VEL. PLEASE MEET ME UP THERE
He shoved the phone back into his pocket, his secondary hand returning to Vox, "Just breathe, Voxy. Well, breathe... keep your fans spinning, okay?" Val’s hand moved to Vox’s chest, feeling the erratic, mechanical thrumming beneath his skin. "Vel is coming. We’re gonna fix this. Please stay here with me.
Vox’s hand suddenly twitched, his fingers digging into Valentino’s bicep with bruising force. A single line of text flickered onto his screen, vibrating in a neon-blue font that didn't belong to his OS:
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED: UPLINK ACTIVE
"Voxy?" Val whispered, his heart sinking. "What’s that? What is that on your screen?"
In the quiet shadows of the radio tower, the air usually hummed with the controlled static of Alastor’s own making. But suddenly, the frequency shifted. A sharp, rhythmic pulse, neon-bright and artificial, tore through the veil of his shadows.
Alastor’s eyes widened, the dials in his pupils spinning erratically. He felt it instantly: the connection. It was an electronic tether snapping into place, vibrating with the frantic energy of Angel’s heartbeat and the cold, metallic resonance of the Overlord on the other end.
Finally. Finally. Angel had actually managed to do this simple task; the connection had been established.
At least, that is what Alastor thought.
His mind flickered back, briefly. Many, many years ago, Vox had gone into excruciating detail about exactly what that USB was supposed to do, explaining its architecture with a feverish, tech-obsessed glint in his eyes. But Alastor had remembered none of it. To him, the digital babble was nothing more than a fly buzzing in his ear; it was not as if Alastor was ever going actually to use it at any point. He had assumed it was a door he could open and close at will.
He was wrong.
Alastor felt his physical form begin to fray at the edges, his shadow stretching thin as if being sucked into a vacuum. The floor beneath him dissolved into a vast, digital void of glowing white lines. He was being dragged across the airwaves, forced through the very medium he usually controlled. The sensation was repulsive, a cold, sterile descent into the guts of a machine he was being pulled into Vox, his essence being funneled toward that singular, sparking service port.
The blinding, ultraviolet white of a flickering screen was replacing the darkness of his own realm.
It was quite disorienting for Alastor; he stumbled quite a bit. It was a combination of how he himself would use his shadow to teleport. He found himself standing in a place that defied the laws of Hell. The digital void didn't stay a void for long. The system began to accommodate itself to Alastor’s presence in the environment, stitching itself together, pulling from the deepest, most stable parts of Vox’s subconscious. It was a defensive reflex, a subconscious attempt to pacify a threat with the only "data" that had never been marked as hostile.
Alastor found himself standing on a street corner that looked hauntingly familiar. It was Pentagram City, or at least a high-definition simulation of it, but it was eerily devoid of the usual screaming masses. There was no smell of ozone or rotting meat here, even the sky was the color of a deep red, starless sky.
As he walked, his cane clicking rhythmically against the simulated pavement, he realized this wasn't just a reconstruction. It was a gallery. Every storefront, every billboard, was a window into a past he had spent decades pretending to forget.
He passed a replica of an old tailor shop. As he looked into the display glass, the reflection didn’t show the street behind him. Instead, the glass rippled like water, revealing a memory in vibrant, saturated color:
The 1950s. A much younger Vox, still with that old CRT head, his eyes bright and devoid of the frantic static of his modern self, was leaning over a drafting table. Alastor stood beside him, a hand resting familiarly on the man’s shoulder as they pored over a blueprint for the first city-wide radio tower. They were genuinely laughing, a shared triumph for two men who looked like they could conquer anything and anyone.
Alastor’s steps slowed, his own reflection flickering with a spiked, blue distortion. He pulled his gaze away, his heart performing a strange, mechanical hitch, only to find the next window of a dimly lit cafe displaying another fragment:
The 1970s. The color was grainier now, more psychedelic and raw, reflecting the era's frantic energy. Vox was wearing a double-breasted suit that would have been hideous if it weren't so expensive, his newly-formed screen-face flickering with a soft, neon pink. He was holding out a small, velvet-lined box. Inside sat a sleek, hand-carved shark USB drive, its casing made of polished obsidian that caught the dim disco lights of the lounge. It was a prototype, a piece of technology far ahead of its time, designed specifically for their shared network. Vox looked nervous, his internal fans whirring at a high-pitched frequency that translated to unfiltered anxiety. Alastor was examining the gift, his long fingers tracing the dorsal fin with a genuine, rare curiosity. For a brief, flickering second, his usual predatory mask softened, replaced by a look of actual... affection.
Each window he passed was a fresh wound. It was during the times they had been "on good terms" when the rivalry hadn't yet soured into hatred. The glass reflected not only the images of what once was; it radiated the feeling of those moments, the warmth, the mutual respect, the shared secrets that had been buried under seventy years of spite.
“Stop this," Alastor breathed, the static in his voice dropping into a low, dangerous hum even as he continued his path of destruction. "Is this what you have been doing? Living in the past? Reliving these horrid memories... watching the lives of two men who are long dead? It’s pathetic, Vox. To curate a museum of these disgusting feelings and call it a sanctuary!
Every time he broke a window, the street around him lost more detail. The cobblestones turned into flat, gray blocks. The sky flickered from a dark reddish hue to a blinding, bright white. He was breathing heavily now. "You think you can hide behind these memories?" Alastor hissed, his grin pulling back so far it looked painful. "You think showing me this will make me go away?
The red-and-black static of Alastor’s aura surged as he reached the final block. His antlers were jagged, crown-like, and his eyes were blown wide with a manic, flickering hunger for destruction. He raised his cane high, ready to bring it down with enough force to shatter the last of these digital delusions.
But as he swung, his arm froze mid-air.
Through the glass of this specific storefront, he didn't see another memory of their past. He saw a figure waving at him.
Alastor blinked, the radio dials in his pupils spinning to focus. Waving? This wasn't the frozen, looping behavior of a background program. The figure moved with a fluid, hauntingly human grace.
Alastor’s gaze snapped upward, searching for the name of the store. His breath hitched a sharp, distorted sound that cut through the digital hum. This wasn't a memory of a contract signing or a shared drink. This was a reconstruction of the Blue Note Lounge.
The bar from that night. The night that ruined everything.
"Vox?" Alastor’s voice was barely a whisper, the static stripped away to reveal a rare, raw vulnerability.
Inside the glass, the figure leaned against a mahogany bar that looked as solid as if it were made of real wood. One moment, the Overlord’s screen was there, cracked and dim; the next, it was Vincent, his boxy CRT screen lit by the amber glow of a whiskey he wasn't actually drinking. He looked at Alastor not with the hatred of the last seventy years, but with a tired, knowing sort of sorrow.
He waved a slow, hesitant gesture of recognition, his fingers flicking forward as if calling him over. The door to the bar creaked open on its own, inviting Alastor into the one memory he had tried the hardest to bury.
Alastor stood on the threshold. The static around his antlers crackled with frantic energy. This place, everything, was just the same, the smell of it all. Vox was able to remember such details perfectly, even after so long. The smoky atmosphere, the smell of it all, how Vox had been able to remember such details perfectly, shrouded the bar, the amber light pooling on the floor like spilled honey.
"Vincent, is that you?" Alastor’s voice was a thin, distorted rasp.
Inside, the figure at the bar didn't move. Vincent, or this version of him, watched Alastor with those tired, watery blue eyes. He looked so small sitting within the bar.
Alastor took a tentative step inside. The moment his heel touched the floorboards, the street behind him vanished. A sudden, heavy darkness swallowed the clinical white sky and the shattered windows of the other memories.
The door slammed shut behind him.
The sound was final, a heavy thud that vibrated through Alastor’s very core. He spun around, his hand clawing at the wood, but there was no handle on the inside. There was no way out of the bar’s windows, which showed only a swirling, electric-blue abyss where the street had been.
"A trap," Alastor hissed, his grin returning as a defensive mask. "A pathetic, digital cage! You think you can keep me here? In this... this rehearsal of a tragedy?"
"It’s only a trap if you still want to leave, Alastor," Vox’s voice drifted from the barstool where, seventy years ago, the first real crack had formed between them. Alastor turned, his shadow looming large and monstrous against the bar’s mirrored back-wall. But as he looked at Vox, his shadow began to shrink, losing its sharp, terrifying edges.
Alastor turned, his shadow looming large and monstrous against the bar’s mirrored back-wall. But as his gaze fell upon the booth in the far corner, his shadow began to shrink, losing its sharp, terrifying edges.
Vox was sitting there; his form began to flicker violently. One second, it was the tall, lean Vincent in a wool sweater, his face lined with fatigue; the next, it was the Present Day Vox, his screen cracked and leaking a dull, grey light. He looked utterly exhausted. He wasn’t wearing the sharp, glowing suit of a CEO; his tie was loosened, his collar undone, and his screen was dimmer, darker, just like when he tried to…He looked like a man who had finally stopped running and was waiting for the end.
“Take a seat, Al, we have a lot to discuss.” Vox pulled up the seat next to him, gesturing for Alastor to take a seat. Alastor continued to stare, his silhouette casting long and jagged against the flickering neon of the simulated bar. The static that usually buzzed around him as a swarm of angry hornets had settled into a low, mournful hum. He looked at the chair Vox had pulled out. It felt like he was on autopilot; the heels of his boots clicked against the wooden floorboards, a sound that felt too heavy for a place that was supposed to be a simulation.
"A seat," Alastor repeated, his voice stripped of its usual upbeat, transatlantic lilt. He placed his cane across his lap, his gloved fingers tracing the grain of the wood. "How very... hospitable of you, Vox. Though I must say, the decor is a bit more 'morbid nostalgia' than I expected from a man who prides himself on being the future."
Alastor expected the usual raptor with Vox, yet it never came. Vox didn’t snap back. He didn't even look offended. He just leaned his screen forward, laying it upon the bar top, his eyes staring forward at the multiple rows of bottles that lined the bar top.
"Heh," Vox rasped, his voice a low, dry frequency. "And you said I was the one who was obsessive?"He gestured vaguely toward the middle of the bartop, where the light blue shark USB lay, which was the very thing Alastor had used to tear his way in here.
“I can’t believe you even hung on to the little shark I gave you all those years ago, never took you to be the sentimental one," Vox murmured, a ghost of a smirk pulling at the corner of his screen. "Never expected you to go this far, honestly. I thought you’d have tossed it the night we parted ways…He turned his head to look at Alastor, his face a beautiful mess of cracked glass and deep lines around his eyes.
"So, let's discuss it. Why did you come all the way here, Alastor?
Alastor’s hand hovered over the little blue shark, his claws trembling just enough to catch the light. The questions he had been choking on finally forced their way through, but they came out fractured, stripped of their usual theatrical charm.
Alastor’s mind raced with questions as he sat next to Vox. How long had he been here? Did I really push you to go this far? Were you really going to vanish if I hadn't barged in? The thoughts were like thorns, drawing blood from his pride.
"Before we discuss anything," Alastor rasped, his eyes fixed on the small shark rather than the man, "I want to know if you are... the real Vox? My Vox? Are you truly in there? Or am I talking to another programmed puppet?"
He finally looked up, his crimson pupils narrowed into sharp pinpricks. "Because the thing in the tower... it has your face. It has your voice. But it looks at me and sees a blank screen. It doesn't remember me."
Vox let out a long, shuddering breath that glitched into a high-pitched hum. He leaned forward, his form flickering once again to his old CRT head, Vincent becoming so clear it was painful to look at.
"I'm here, Al," Vox whispered, his voice steady for the first time. "Every miserable, obsessed, broken bit of me is right here in this chair.”
The true Vox had been here the whole time, watching the world through his own eyes like a prisoner behind a one-way mirror. Alastor felt two conflicting emotions swirling within him. He felt a sense of relief wash over him; his shoulders, which were hiked up, slowly lowered themselves. Yet the next emotion to follow was a deep, sharp sorrow. If this was indeed his Vox, why did it still feel like he was talking to some version of him that felt hollowed out?
“So you have just been here, doing what exactly? Reliving the glory days?" Alastor’s voice spiked into a harsh, jagged frequency, his shadow lunging across the floor to loom over Vox’s chair. "How pathetic! You buried yourself so deep within your own self, and for what, Vox? So that you could see me chase you in here? You wish to humiliate me further than you already have these past months?"
Vox just swirled the amber liquid in his glass, watching the way the digital ice cubes refused to melt.“Well... technically, that wasn’t me who was doing all that, Al," Vox said with a hollow, glitching chuckle. "Also, hey, I don’t think Outer Me is doing too badly for himself, honestly. He’s efficient. He’s stable. He doesn't freak out every time you are nearby. Isn’t this a win-win for you and me?”
"A win-win?" Alastor repeated, “Is that what you think this is? Stop it!" Alastor roared, the radio dials in his eyes spinning into frantic, crimson blurs. "Stop with these whims and jokes! You know exactly what I mean! You’ve turned yourself into a ghost before you’re even dead!"
Alastor paced the length of the small enclosed space of the bar, his movements frantic and jumpy as if he was trying to stop the progress of something that was already set into motion a long time ago.
"This is a tantrum!” Alastor hissed, his voice dropping into a desperate, pleading hum. "A grand, theatrical tantrum! You’ll wake up, you have to wake up—you aren’t allowed to end it all! I will not allow it! You think you’re being clever, don't you? Tucking yourself away in this... this shrine to a decade that doesn't exist anymore!"
Alastor leaned down, his face inches from Vox’s screen, his grin a jagged, trembling line of pure fury. "You’re a coward, Vox! You’re hiding in the empty void because you can’t handle the mere presence of me, so you went ahead and lobotomized your own self! Answer me! Fight me! Scream at me! Do something other than sit there!"
When Vox remained silent, Alastor slammed his hand onto the table, his claws gouging deep into the mahogany wood. "Why?" his voice spiked into a harsh frequency that shook the glasses on the bar. "Why in God’s name did you decide to do all of this? Who truly benefits?! You’ve turned your empire into a hollow shell and yourself into a ghost! It looks like you’ve surrendered the board!"
Vox’s screen flickered a strobe-light effect of white static violently before he finally snapped.
"I did!" Vox roared, springing to his feet so fast his chair toppled over. "I benefit, you arrogant prick!"
He towered over Alastor, "It was good for me! And it was good for the Vees! Do you have any idea what it’s like to wake up every morning, and you are the first thought that floats into my mind? To have this obsessive need to check every camera and monitor to see where you will pop up, Vox grabbed the edge of the table, his knuckles white. "The Vees needed a leader who actually put them first. By deleting 'us,' I gave them a Vox that is actually functional!
With a flick of his wrist, a live feed manifested in the air between them. It showed the Vees' private quarters. Valentino was pacing with genuine concern; Velvette was gently wiping a smudge off the face of the "Blank Vox,” the one with the soft, blue default screen, her expression softer than Alastor had ever seen it.
"Look at them, Alastor. Look at her. She’s not walking on eggshells anymore. She doesn’t have to worry about me throwing a tantrum because a radio signal spiked in Cannibal Town. And Val... he’s finally able to have someone who can show him love." Vox let out a choked, glitching sob. "Why should I go back and ruin that? Why should I drag that miserable, obsessed 'Overlord' back into their lives so that I can continue this pathetic war with you?"
He grabbed Alastor’s arm, his grip surprisingly strong. "I was so tired, Alastor. I was poisoning everything I touched, and I almost killed the two people who actually give a shit about me. Though there is one thing you were right about, Alastor, heh. What was it you said? That I was 'broken from the start'?"
The words hung in the air, heavier than the void. Alastor’s shadow shivered. He remembered saying it as a cruel, dismissive remark meant to inflict the maximum amount of pain on someone whose heart was so fragile.
"Well... look at me now," Vox whispered, his voice dropping into a hollow, mechanical drone. "You were right. You are always right. I was broken. I am broken. I spent all this time desperately trying to have you see me, and for what there is no use when all the cracks lead back to you. They’re happy, Alastor! For the first time in an eternity, the air in that tower isn't thick with my bitterness!"
Alastor’s hands, usually so steady, began to tremble violently. “You would truly rather erase your soul, erase us to give them a peaceful lie?" "Was this not a form of suicide?" he hissed, his voice cracking with a rare, unscripted fear. "Digital suicide?”
"IT'S NOT A LIE IF THEY'RE HAPPY!" Vox screamed, the feedback from his voice shattering the remaining glasses on the bar.
The silence that followed Vox’s scream was deafening. The live feed of the Tower flickered in the air, a cruel window into a world that had already moved on from the man Alastor was currently clutching.
"You're not going back, are you?"
Alastor’s voice was stripped of its theatrical vibrato, sounding thin and reedy. The dials in his eyes were still, the red light fading into a dull, panicked rose. He looked at the "Blank Vox" on the screen, then back to the flickering Vincent in front of him.
"You... you fool," Alastor hissed, his shadows curling protectively around his legs. "You can’t do this! "You think you’re permitted to walk away simply?
He began to pace, back and forth, his mind was racing, grasping for any string he could pull to snap Vox out of this trance. Alastor stopped, pointing a clawed finger at the live feed of the Tower.
"The moment I leave this digital prison, I will walk straight into your pathetic tower. I will tell your 'family' I will tell Valentino and Velvette that the creature wearing your face is a hollowed-out lie! I will tear down the illusion of their 'happy leader' until they realize they are mourning a corpse while a fake runs the company!"
He leaned closer to Vox, his grin returning, but it was broken and desperate. "They won't love the 'New You' once they know he’s a imposter! They’ll hate him for not being you. Is that what you want? "They won't even be able to grieve you, you fool! How can they cry for a dead man when a puppet is still wearing his skin? They’ll learn to loathe the sight of your face because it isn't you anymore!"
Vox didn’t even bother to glance at Alastor; he just watched the ice in his glass melt. "They already know I'm not 'me,' Al. They don't care. They're just happy the screaming stopped."
The threat fell flat, leaving Alastor standing in a silence so thick he felt he might drown in it." He scrambled for the one thing he had spent decades refusing to give.
"A partnership," Alastor whispered. The word felt like glass in his throat. "A true partnership, Vox. Like you wanted... as you asked for all those years ago, I will give you the one thing I denied you. We can run this city together. Just don't go where I can't follow."
He looked at Vox with wide, searching eyes, his entire existence hanging on the hope that his pride was a high enough price to pay. He saw Vox’s translucent hand twitch, but the other man still didn't look up. The offer Alastor thought was his greatest prize was met with indifference that quickly made the small hope within him fade.
Alastor felt the walls of the lounge closing in, the ozone smell of the void growing stronger. He was running out of things to give. Finally, he stopped. He reached towards Vox, his hand trembling.
"You’ve always wanted to know, haven't you? How a mere mortal arrived in Hell with the power to topple Overlords on his first night?" Alastor’s grin was gone, replaced by a hollow, bitter twist of his lips. "You called me 'inspiring.' You thought I was some pure, ancient force."
He let out a dry, rattling laugh. "I sold it, Vincent. My soul. I bartered it away while I was still drawing breath in New Orleans to ensure I’d never be small again. All those years I called you pathetic for relying on 'technology' and 'audiences' for power... I was just as much a parasite as anyone else.
He leaned in, his eyes wide and pleading, offering the confession like a peace treaty. "We’re the same, Vox. Do you see? You don't have to be 'less' than me. We’re both just puppets on different strings. Stay... and we can be broken together."
Vox finally looked up. His screen was a mess of cracks, but his eyes were clearer and sharper than Alastor had seen them in years. He looked at the man who’d spent seven decades calling him a "weakling" for needing the others to be strong.
"So that’s the secret," Vox whispered. A dry, glitching chuckle escaped him. "All that talk about 'old-fashioned grit,' Al? All those lectures on integrity?"
Vox leaned back, the steady, flickering blue light of his screen washing over Alastor’s trembling frame.
"All this time," Vox murmured, his voice layering into a soft, distorted harmony. "You were just one big hypocrite, Al. I almost find it funny now how much I actually admired you. All that talk about standards and being 'above it all,' and you were lying to my face the whole time." Vox let out a short, hollow laugh.
"But hey, we’re in Hell, right? You do what you have to do to get ahead. It’s not like I was any better with how I treated my own family—Val, Velvette... ha, even you."
He tilted his screen, watching the way Alastor’s eyes darted, looking for any jagged edge to pull him back.
"The only difference is, I’m finally ready to let go, but you? You’re still standing there, clutching at my sleeve because you're terrified of being the only one left in the room. You don't want 'me' back, Alastor. You don't want to be alone with yourself.
The silence that followed was a dead frequency, more agonizing than any scream.
"I’m so tired, Alastor," Vox spoke. His voice was a thin, flickering rasp—a heartbreaking dissonance of the man and the machine. "After everything... after seventy years of clawing at each other’s throats... I’m just done."
Vox stepped back farther, his form trailing static like smoke as he moved away from the mahogany bar. Behind him, the lounge was failing; the floorboards were turning into a gray, featureless void where bright white light sprouted through the cracks. He paused at the edge of the glow, his digital eyes softening into something almost human as he looked back one last time.
"Aren’t you tired also, Alastor? Can't we finally put this little dance to bed? I’m staying here," Vox whispered, his voice becoming a dull, rhythmic hum. He turned away, his silhouette beginning to blur into the white noise of the core. "Please... just leave."
Leave? Vox wanted him to leave? After seventy years of haunting one another, after all those nights defined by the distant, buzzing hum of Vox’s frequency, he thought he could... dismiss him?
Alastor’s shadow erupted. It was a convulsing mass of ink-black limbs that tore through the lounge’s floorboards, shredding the glowing circuitry beneath.
He lunged.
His clawed hand gripped his fingers tightly, hooking deep into Vox’s collar with a desperate feeling that if he let go, he would lose him forever. Yet he was met with a horrible burning sensation as if he had plunged his hand into a furnace made of needles, every nerve ending in his arm screaming as if Alastor’s very touch to Vox was a serrated blade dragging across an open nerve. He didn't let go. He only gripped the fabric tighter, his teeth bared in a grin that grew more stretched and painful as the moments passed. He planted his hooves and pulled, but the figure was weightless. Alastor’s snarl deepened; he realized he couldn't physically drag him because Vox was unwilling to exist. The memories that gave his soul weight were locked away, buried behind a firewall Alastor couldn't breach.
If he couldn't pull the memories out of Vox, he would force his own in.
He plunged his other hand directly into Vox’s chest.
The scream that tore from Vox was the sound of a thousand speakers blowing out at once. As Alastor’s claws sank past the flickering fabric of the vest and into the center of the "Vincent" persona, the reality of the bar finally shattered. Mahogany turned to jagged glass; whiskey bottles exploded into clouds of binary. Under the sheer, agonizing pressure of Alastor’s hand shoving into his chest, Vox’s knees gave out.
They went down together.
"You are not staying here!" Alastor roared, his voice layering into a demonic, multi-tonal chord. He closed his eyes, searching for the specific, shared resonance they had once held open for one another lifetimes ago.
But it had been too long.
The frequency was buried under decades of unresolved feelings of spite, sorrow, and the longing for something lost to time. Alastor, however, did find it yet; it wasn’t a clean synchronization; it was a fractured mess, a horrible, high-pitched whine started, followed by sharp spikes in feedback, looping on constant. Pushing past it all, he smashed his own memories directly into Vox’s body.
Images of them together flashed through the void like lightning, standing shoulder-to-shoulder as they tore through rival Overlords, having each other's backs when the streets of Hell ran red. He forced in the memories of those late-night chats that would bleed into the early morning, the rare, quiet moments where Vox would lean in, eyes bright with excitement, explaining another one of his grand, world-changing plans to a captive Alastor.
He didn't stop at the good moments. He shoved the future in, too, the weight of their own spectacular failures, the jagged vitriol of their fights, and the way they had spent decades trying to unmake one another. Every shared breath and every traded blow flickered in and out of existence like a dying bulb, a chaotic strobe light of seventy years of obsession.
"Stop!" Vox shrieked, his voice echoing from every corner of the collapsing room, sounding like a speaker tearing itself to pieces. "You’re... you’re splintering my mind! You’re breaking me!”
Alastor didn't stop. He couldn't. He was beyond reason, driven by a manic terror that if he let go now, there would be nothing left to hold. He broadcast his own heart, trying to force the drifting soul to take the shape of the man he used to be. Vox’s eyes began to leak a thick, black, viscous sludge that bubbled from his tear ducts as his system tried to purge the "foreign" soul Alastor was shoving inside him. His screen began to splinter, revealing the white-hot light of an overloaded processor beneath the skin. The scream coming from Vox’s throat was the sound of a soul being shredded.
Alastor looked at his hands, which were now stained with that same black liquid leaking from Vox’s face. It felt so… cold. He realized, with a sickening jolt, that he had reached the second hurdle. Vox hadn't just forgotten; he had built a psychological firewall designed to self-destruct if anyone tried to force him to remember. By trying to "save" the man he knew, Alastor was effectively deleting what was left of his sanity.
"No... no, no, no, no," Alastor whispered, the word repeating like a skipping record. His voice was a desperate, thin whine. "No, this isn't what I want. Vox, look at me. Look at me!"
He reached out with his other hand to cup the side of the flickering, half-digital face. His fingers trembled, the claws scraping against the cold, metal casing.
"I just... I want you to come back," he stammered, his eyes wide and frantic, the red dials spinning out of control. "Just come back. We... we could start over, right? I mean, this isn't the first spat we’ve gotten into. This is just... It’s just another argument, Vox! It’s not the end! It can't be!"A sob, sharp with static, tore through Alastor’s throat.
"You can't do this. Please," Alastor choked out, his manic grin finally, truly breaking the corners of his mouth, drooping into a line of pure, raw agony. "I can't do this. I can't go back there alone. I can't be the only one who remembers! If you stay here... if you die in here... then I’m the only one left.
The Radio Demon, the most feared entity in the Pentagram, was weeping.
He buried his face in the flickering fabric of Vox’s vest, his shoulders shaking."Isn't this what you always wanted, Vox?" Alastor pleaded into the cloth, his voice cracking into a high, pathetic frequency. "I'm finally saying it! I'm saying the words! I need you!
The "Real" Vox—the version caught between Vincent. He watched Alastor’s breakdown with a quiet, hollowed-out expression. There was no triumph in his eyes, only a deep, echoing pity.
"You're the only one, Al," Vox whispered, his voice steady while Alastor’s was a wreck. "You're the only one who still thinks there’s a 'me' worth saving. But look at this place. Look at what you’re holding."
Vox gestured to the void around them, which was now gray and silent, the neon lights fading into the dark. The inner world of Vox’s mind began to fracture, the white noise rising like a tide. Vox looked up at the Radio Demon, the man who had been his shadow, his rival, and his obsession for a lifetime, now reduced to a trembling wreck. At one point in his life, Vox would have been ecstatic. He would have been overjoyed at the fact that he was finally able to reduce Alastor to such a state; he would have broadcast this moment to every screen in Hell, savoring the sound of that static-laced sobbing as the ultimate trophy.
Yet now, it all felt meaningless.
"I can't go back, Al..." Vox whispered, his image flickering so violently that for a moment, he was nothing but a silhouette of fuzzy static. "And I won't. No matter how much you beg. The Tower, the Vees...
"Please," Alastor rasped, his voice a jagged, broken frequency. "Please, Vox..."
Vox reached up, his fingers lifting Alastor’s chin. The Radio Demon’s eyes were wide, the dials shattered, leaking the dark ink of his essence. The sight of Alastor, the most arrogant creature in Hell, utterly destroyed by the prospect of a world without him, did something to Vox’s chest.
"How about this then, Al?" Vox’s voice suddenly smoothed out, losing its digital edge. It was the voice of a once-hopeful overlord—the voice of the man who once pressed a shark-shaped drive into a friend's palm.
"How about we make a deal?"
Alastor froze. The word deal hummed through the void, a frequency more powerful than any glitch.
"A... deal?" Alastor breathed, his lungs hitching.
Alastor froze. He could feel the heat of Vox’s hand, even as the rest of the world turned to ice.
"The outer world is going to forget you. The version of me that wakes up in that bed... he won't know your name. He won't know our history. To him, you’ll be another face on a screen," Vox murmured, his eyes glowing. "But I can keep you here within my inner heart where no one, not Val, not Velvette, not even the 'New Vox' can ever touch you."
Alastor’s breath hitched. "What are you saying?"
"Give me your soul, Alastor," Vox whispered, his voice a seductive, digital caress that seemed to vibrate from the very air around them. “I’ll house you in the center of my core. Forever. Even when I don't remember who you are... my heart will still belong to you. We’ll be intertwined, our souls always within each other.
Alastor looked at the vanishing man. He looked at the looming deletion, the gray void swallowing the last of the bar.
His mind shrieked in protest. For a century, he had guarded his soul with a ferocity that made him the most feared entity in the Pentagram. To hand it over now, after just getting it back, would be simply foolish, if not downright idiotic. Yet he realized with a sickening, frantic clarity, he would be sent back to a place where no one truly saw him. It was something he could not take again; all those months alone were nothing but pain.
"Deal," Alastor choked out. The word brought out a sob of relief.
He lunged forward, his hand snapping into Vox's flickering palm.
As their hands met, the "handshake" didn't emit a normal spark; soul deals normally did, but instead, it created a vacuum. A terrifying, silent pressure erupted from the point of contact of their hands. Alastor felt his entire being his shadows, his radio-static, being pulled forward, while simultaneously, a surge of cold, neon-blue energy poured from Vox into his own chest.
They were threading their essences through one another, tearing away halves of themselves to make room for the other. Alastor felt his soul being compressed and funneled into the glowing blue core of Vox’s chest, while Vox’s digital consciousness anchored itself into the deep, red shadows of Alastor's heart.
The Radio Demon didn't scream as he was pulled into the dark; he only tightened his grip on Vox's hand, his eyes finally closing as he let himself be swallowed.
In the center of the collapsing void, there was a final, blinding flash, a violent collision of blood-red and neon-blue. Then, the lounge vanished. The static died. There was only the quiet, rhythmic hum of two broken things becoming one.
















