Chapter Text
The door stuck halfway on its hinges again. Tyler shoved his shoulder into it until the frame gave with a splintering groan.The sound echoed through the narrow hallway of their apartment before fading into the familiar quiet.
The air inside was thick with dust. A lamp flickered weakly on the counter, powered just enough that it hummed like a dying animal. The single window was cracked open to let in the polluted air, the city’s smog riding the breeze.
Home. Or the closest thing they had to it.
Tyler toed off his boots by the door, the soles worn and falling apart. He would have to get them replaced, but they couldn’t afford it. So it went on the long list of things that needed to be replaced.
Jim lifted his head from the corner where he lay curled on a pile of blankets, tail thumping once in recognition before settling again. The dog’s ribs showed more than Tyler liked to see, but there wasn’t much more he could do about it.
“Ty?” Jenna’s voice came from the next room - tired, wary. She stepped into the hallway, her hair pulled back. “You were out late,” She said, tone edged.
Tyler hesitated, shrugging out of his jacket. “Lost track of time,”
“Doing what?”
He turned to hang his jacket on the hook by the door, shoulders tense. “Looking.”
Jenna’s expression softened just slightly, but her eyes didn’t. “You went to look at him again?”
Tyler didn’t answer, but the silence said enough.
From the tiny back room, Debby’s voice drifted through the cracked door, roughened with exhaustion. “If you’re chasing that ghost again, at least tell us before you do something stupid this time.”
“I’m not chasing ghosts,” He said quietly, more to himself than to them. “He’s still in there. Or have you forgotten that?”
The words landed heavy between them. Jenna didn’t push. Debby didn’t reply from the other room, and Tyler took the silence as an opportunity to leave, making his way to the kitchen. But Jenna followed, because of course she did.
She leaned her shoulder against the wall, arms crossed tight over her chest. “Ty,” She called softly. “We’ve been over this. Every week you come back from out there with the same look in your eyes, the same… hope. But nothing changes. You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”
Her voice carried that familiar ache he’d come to expect from her - the kind that came from care and not judgement. The kind that was so very Jenna.
Appearing in the doorway behind her, Debby’s tone was far less patient. She set a screwdriver down on the table, hard enough to make it clatter. “No, Jen. He needs to hear it straight.” She pushed, pressing further into the room. “You think I don’t want him back too? I do. But Josh is gone. The Initiative made sure of that.”
Tyler’s jaw clenched, his hands balling to stop from shaking; a tactic he’d learnt was best when Debby came at him like this. “They had me too, once.”
Debby barked a dry laugh, bitter and sharp. “You think they haven’t improved it since we’ve been gone? Think they haven’t worked on their programming? Fill them up with that happy bullshit and parade them on screens like trophies.” She was rambling now, more muttering to herself than to Tyler, but that didn’t stop her. “And you think you’re going to waltz in there and pull him out? Alone?”
Jenna shot her a warning glance. “Debby-”
“No,” Debby cut in, shaking her head. “He needs to stop. If you want to get yourself killed chasing a memory, fine. But you’ll drag us down with you.”
Tyler finally turned to her, eyes flashing. “It’s not a memory. I saw him, Debby. Today. On the billboard to the east. He looked right into the camera and-” His voice faltered, breath caught on the memory. “He said…”
Jenna frowned, stepping forward. “Said what?”
There was a hesitation there. Tyler was hungry. He was tired. He was thinner and weaker than he had been in months. What if Josh hadn’t said anything weird? What if he was imagining it? They would think he was crazy, if he couldn’t prove it.
“He’s asking me to come find him.”
The room went still, and then Debby exhaled slowly, the anger draining from her face and leaving only worry. “Even if that’s true, even if he’s still in there somewhere - it’s bait. They’d use him to reel you back in, and you know it.”
Tyler didn’t have time to respond. Jenna stepped forward again, closing the distance between them, her voice careful and measured. “We just don’t want to lose you too.”
He wanted to scream, to break something, to claw at the walls until his fingers bled. Instead, he whispered. “You won’t.” Before stepping past them and down the hallway to his room.
He didn’t want to hear their replies. It’s not like the conversation would bring anything new. On the contrary, it was much like every conversation they had now. Always the same cycle, never ending.
Tyler clicked the door shut to his room, back pressing against the wood as he sighed.
It was barely larger than a storage closet - four walls of cracked plaster and peeling paint, the air heavy and damp. A single lamp sat on the nightstand, its light weak and yellowing, but enough to keep the space bright. Against one wall sat a narrow bed, sheets tangled and half-hanging on the floor. Across from it, a desk cluttered with scraps of paper, torn-out maps, and hand-scribbled notes. Circles, arrows, coordinates - every inch of the surface covered in his obsession.
Tyler sank down onto the edge of the bed, rubbing at his eyes with both hands. For a moment, all the noise in his head threatened to crack open - the argument, the memory of Josh’s face, that billboard glow that he burned into his retinas from hours of staring.
When he lowered his hands, his gaze caught on something glinting faintly beside the lamp; the bracelet.
It was a simple thing - thin black cord strung with a handful of uneven beads, the centre one shaped like a little green alien head. The paint had chipped over time, one eye nearly rubbed clean off. The same one Tyler had given Josh on his birthday all those months ago.
He slipped the bracelet around his wrist, fiddling with the knot. The fit was loose now; he’d lost weight. But it still felt right. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to sleep without it.
-o-o-
The days that followed blurred together - a restless grinding rhythm that Tyler fell into because he had to.
Mornings started before dawn, with the rattle of the apartment's old pipes and the low hum of the city’s underbelly stirring awake. The air outside was always thick - not with the sterile perfumed haze of the Initiative’s air filters - but with smoke and oil. He’d pull on his jacket, the one with the patchy lining, and make the walk toward the factory in the south quarter.
The work was brutal, but simple. Machines that never stopped. Conveyor belts slick with grease. No names, no paperwork - just the hiss of metal and the shuffle of bodies moving in rhythm. People here didn’t ask questions, and that suited him fine.
They called him Clancy.
The first time someone had said it, he almost didn’t answer. But then he realised that was the point - the fewer people who knew Tyler Joseph existed and lived here, the better. ‘Clancy’ was someone who didn’t flinch when the sirens wailed. Someone who didn’t have a past full of ghosts.
Cash came in folded bills at the end of each week, slipped from one scarred hand to another. It wasn’t much, but it kept them fed, kept the generator running, kept the shadows at bay just enough.
At night, he’d come back to the apartment - the one wedged between a half-collapsed noodle shop and a bar that never seemed to close. Jenna would usually be at the stove, cooking something cheap but warm. Debby would sit by the window, tinkering with whatever scavenged tech they could find.
Life in the slums was strange. It wasn’t lawless, not exactly - it was ignored. A forgotten vein of the city where people existed because no one wanted to deal with them. The ones who’d fallen through the cracks, or had torn themselves free from the system and didn’t want to go back.
Tyler had never known this world existed before. The Initiative made sure of that. They built walls high enough to keep the shine in and the truth out. He used to believe the city was all there was, and the Initiative, with its cozy towns - a perfect, organised circle of control, safety and light. But outside that ring, the air tasted different. Sharper, more real.
Sometimes, he caught himself watching the people in the market - the ones laughing, bartering, fighting, loving - all of them alive in a way the Initiative never allowed. And he’d wonder what would’ve happened if he and Josh had found this place together instead. If they could’ve been just people. Not escapees.
Every night, before he slept, he traced the alien bead at his wrist, feeling its smooth, worn face against his thumb. The paint had almost completely faded now, but the shape was still there.
So was the promise.
He hadn’t told the girls yet, but each day after work, he was getting closer - maps, intercepted radio chatter, glimpses of patrol routes that hinted at where the Initiative sent its “rehabilitated” subjects.
And if he was right… Josh was in one of those facilities. Alive. Controlled. Waiting.
He’d find him. He didn’t care if it meant walking straight back into the fire to do it.
But even so, the nights in the slums were never truly quiet.
There was always noise - distant shouts from the alleyway markets that ran too late, the whine of rusted train lines cutting through the city’s underground, the buzz of the neon lights that never quite stopped flickering. But tonight, even with all of that, Tyler sat in the dark of his room and felt the silence pressing in.
His desk was a mess again. Crumpled notes. Empty coffee cups. A torn map pinned to the wall with red thread looping between districts. In the middle of it all sat a dented transceiver he’d picked up off a vendor three weeks ago. It wasn’t much - just a cracked dial and a half-functioning antenna - but with the right tuning, it picked up things it wasn’t supposed to.
He adjusted the frequency slowly, his hand steady despite the tremor in his chest. Static filled the air first, like white noise in a hospital waiting room. Then voices, faint and garbled. He leaned in, ear inches from the speaker.
“...testing - sector twelve confirmed - transport delayed until clearance…”
He turned the dial another fraction.
“...new rehabilitation candidates transferred from east…”
The words made his heart jump. Rehabilitation. That was an Initiative term. Their polite word for what they did to people who didn’t comply. For what they’d done to Josh.
He turned the volume down, breath caught in his throat.
“...candidate 21-J - reassigned to facility compound four for promotional media rotation…”
That was it. The smallest clue, the kind only someone listening for it would even notice. But it was there - a designation, a location. Tyler’s pulse spiked. He grabbed his notebook and scribbled fast, the pen nearly tearing through the paper. Compound Four. Media rotation.
Candidate 21-J… Josh?
He leaned back, staring at the words. His fingers traced the alien bead at his wrist again - so worn now it was barely green.
And then - just for a second - the radio crackled again. A voice, soft and warped through the static, but familiar.
“...Ty?”
Tyler froze. The breath punched out of him. Static swallowed the sound before he could be sure, but it didn’t matter. He’d heard it. He knew that voice.
Josh?
Tyler turned the dial again, frantic, desperate to catch another word. But it was gone. He had a candidate, and a location, but not a time. However, if they were discussing it on the radio, it would be soon. And Tyler would be ready.
-o-o-
The siren sounded somewhere far off, muffled by the heavy fog that lay low over the district. Tyler shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets and joined the line of workers trudging toward the factory gates.
The guard at the entrance barely looked up as Tyler flashed his pass. He knew him by now - the quiet one who never spoke much, always showed up early, always left late. The kind of man who didn’t cause problems.
Inside, the factory was already alive. The conveyor belts hummed, arms of machinery clicked and jerked with tired precision, and steam hissed from pipes overhead. The lights flickered every few seconds, bathing the floor in flashes of cold white.
A foreman in a stained jacket waved him over. “You’re on assembly today, Clancy. Line three.”
Tyler nodded, even though he hated that line. Usually he worked maintenance - repairing belts, replacing filters, duties that kept him out of the crowd. But when they were short staffed, he was pulled in to help with production. It wasn’t optional.
Line three was worse than the others. It was where they built the delicate stuff - boards, wires, circuits - components he knew ended up in drones and surveillance gear. Every time he was assigned there, a knot would form in his stomach that would take days to leave.
He clocked in, pulled on his gloves, and stepped up to his station. The line was already moving, the person beside him feeding components down the belt with mechanical rhythm. Tyler caught the next part. Soldered it. Passed it along. Repeat. Don’t think.
The hours blurred together, the same movement over and over - heat, metal, the faint sting of solder smoke in his lungs. The rhythm of it all had a way of emptying him out. He liked that about maintenance work; the hush, the predictability. Here, surrounded by bodies and noise, it was harder for his mind to drift.
He focused on his hands - hold, fit, press, solder - the silver seams glowing briefly before cooling to dull gray. The belt carried each piece forward, another taking its place before he could even lift his head.
Then something caught his eye.
One of the casings, a curved strip of dark alloy, had a faint indentation near the edge - a symbol, half-sanded but still visible beneath the surface grime. A sun rising over a cartoon hill. It was subtle, almost erased, but he knew it. Everyone did.
The Initiative’s mark. The logo that read, ‘Mulberry Street’.
His hands froze in motion. For a heartbeat, he thought maybe he’d imagined it - maybe it was just a scratch, a trick of the light. But the next piece came down the belt, and the same mark was there too, faint, etched deep into the material before someone had tried to cover it up.
He felt a slow, cold weight drop into his stomach.
The components he’d been assembling weren’t just factory orders or off-market tech. They were Initiative made - or at least Initiative designed.
Tyler glanced around, careful not to draw attention. The others on the line didn’t seem to notice, or maybe they didn’t care. They worked with the same blank focus, faces lit by the stuttering white lights overhead. A woman beside him hummed tunelessly under her breath. Someone coughed. Steam hissed from a pipe.
He bent closer to the piece in his hand, pretending to inspect one of the joints. The logo was there again - almost invisible unless you were looking for it.
Why this factory?
He felt the urge to ask someone - to point it out, to see if anyone else saw what he did - but his voice caught in his throat. You didn’t ask questions here. You didn’t notice things. Not if you wanted to keep your job.
He slipped the component into the tray and forced himself to move on, though every motion now felt heavy, deliberate. Each new piece that passed down the line carried the same faint mark.
Then, a low mechanical groan rolled down the line, cutting through the constant hum. The belt shuddered, slowed, and finally stopped altogether. A chorus of sighs followed - frustration, resignation. Someone swore under their breath.
Tyler set his tools down and stepped back. The foreman was already shouting about jammed gears, but nobody moved to fix it. Nobody ever did. They just waited for someone else to handle it - someone who cared enough to keep things running.
He rubbed the back of his neck, glanced toward the far end of the floor. Steam drifted through the air in long, ghostly trails. The machinery ticked then cooled.
“Filter again,” He muttered, mostly to himself, seeing as everyone else had turned and begun their own quiet conversations.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he ducked under the arm of the assembly machine and pried open the access panel. The inside was slick with oil and heat. He reached past the belt, felt around until his fingers brushed a lump of jammed material - a snapped wire and a melted bit of casing. He tugged it free, the metal searing his glove.
The moment it came loose, the belt lurched forward again. The line jolted back to life, gears clanking in rough contrast to the silence that left them.
Someone behind him called out, “Hey, careful!” But Tyler was already stepping back, brushing his hands clean against his shirt.
Then he felt it - that prickling awareness of being watched.
He turned his head slight and saw Mute standing a few yards away, half-hidden by the mist of steam and light. He wasn’t tall, but he had a stillness that filled the space around him. The black beanie never came off; it was as much a part of him as the faint grease smudge that always lived on his jaw. His coat hung open, heavy with tools and wires that clinked softly when he moved.
Mute hardly spoke - people would rarely hear from him, at least not on the floor. They said the years of factory work and the lack of protective gear had probably taken his voice, but that was just a rumour. Others believed he’d traded his voice for secrecy, that he preferred to watch people instead of talk to them.
And now, he was watching Tyler.
Their eyes met through the haze, just for a second. Mute’s expression didn’t change, but it softened - not in gratitude, not exactly approval, but recognition. A nod, brief as a blink.
Then he turned away, already moving toward the foreman, the soft click of his boots lost in the hum of machines.
Tyler stood for a moment longer, feeling the faint tremor of the restarted belt under his feet. The approval - if that’s what it was - shouldn’t have mattered. But it did.
It had been a long time since anyone looked at him like he was useful.
He went back to his station, the motions automatic again, though now there was a flicker of restlessness in his chest - a mix of pride, unease, and the faintest thread of curiosity about the silent man who seemed to see everything.
-o-o-
By the time the final siren wailed, the floor was already emptying out. Workers peeled off their gloves, wiped their faces with the same oily rags they’d used all day, and drifted toward the locker room doors. The hum of the belts wound down until only the cooling metal filled the air - clicks, sighs, the mechanical equivalent of breathing after a long run.
Tyler stayed behind. He liked the hum after everyone left - it was the only time the place didn’t feel like it was pressing down on him. He stacked his tools, hung up his gloves, and signed his name on the clipboard nailed crooked on the wall. His body ached in that dull, familiar way - wrists, shoulders, the base of his spine - but it was the kind of pain he could live with.
He was halfway to the exit when he heard someone behind him.
“Clancy.”
Tyler looked up. Mute stood there, hands tucked into the pockets of his heavy coat, the black beanie pulled tight over his head.
“You fixed the line,” Mute said, his voice low, carrying just enough weight to make Tyler’s stomach tighten. “Usually it would have been down for hours. Nobody else would’ve touched it.”
“Just a filter,” Tyler replied, shrugging in an effort to look nonchalant. “It’s no big deal.”
Mute’s gaze lingered on him. There was no smile, no expression beyond that careful, measured watchfulness, but his shoulders rolled, a slight tilt of his head, and Tyler felt like the tiny approval he'd seen earlier wasn’t an accident.
The rare acknowledgement sat heavy between them - equal parts pride and unease. There was something about Mute that made him feel like every move he made was still under watch, every success cataloged.
“People don’t notice things like you do,” Mute began again after a moment. “Keep your head down, do your work - it counts for more than you think.”
Tyler hesitated, uncertain if this was a compliment or a warning. Still, it felt like the closest thing to gratitude he’d ever received from Mute.
“Thanks,” Tyler managed. More words had been on his mind all day, and now, with Mute standing there, he found himself blurting out before he could second-guess it. “Uh… those parts - the ones on the line - some of them… they had Initiative marks on them. What’s that about?”
Mute’s eyes narrowed slightly, fixing Tyler with a quiet intensity that made him take a half-step back. He didn’t answer immediately, letting the hum of the cooling machinery fill the space between them.
Finally, his voice came, low and deliberate: “You don’t ask about that again. Not here. Not to me. Not to anyone.”
Tyler blinked, caught between curiosity and caution. “I-”
“No,” Mute interrupted, the single word carrying more weight than a lecture ever could. “Focus on your work. The line, the parts, the tools - that’s what matters. Everything else is none of your concern.”
Tyler swallowed hard, the words settling like a weight in his chest. There was no anger in Mute’s tone, only the unmistakable finality of authority. Questions ended here.
Mute gave the faintest nod, the ghost of approval still lingering in his gaze from earlier, before he turned and melted into the dim corridors of the factory, leaving Tyler with the quiet hum of the belts and the heavy, pressing silence of unspoken rules.
Tyler lingered a moment, staring after him, the tension coiling in his chest. He wanted answers. But he also knew when to wait.
With a reluctant sigh, he slung his bag over his shoulder and stepped toward the exit, every step measured, aware now more than ever that he was being watched - and catalogued - with every move he made.
-o-o-
When Tyler got home, he dropped his bag by the bed and sat cross-legged, pulling the old radio toward him. Twisting the tuning knob, he felt the familiar resistance under his fingers. Static hissed and crackled. A faint, broken voice emerged somewhere in the noise, then vanished again. He tightened a screw here, twisted a dial there, coaxing clarity out of chaos like he always did.
The static deepened into a low hum, like breath caught between frequencies. Tyler adjusted the tuning knob a fraction of a turn.
“...copy - sector nine, confirm-”
The voice was faint, buried under layers of noise. He leaned closer, heart picking up. Most transmissions out here were garbled, untraceable. But there was something familiar in the cadence, the clipped tone beneath the distortion.
He held his breath and tuned a little further.
“-unit four - maintain protocol-”
Then a pause. The static thinned, and for a second, the voice came through clear.
“Stay calm, Tyler.”
The words froze him.
The sound was faint, warped by interference - but unmistakable. Josh’s voice.
He stared at the radio, the metal cool against his palms. The hum of the slums outside seemed to fall away. He turned the volume up, careful not to jolt the fragile signal.
“Josh?” His voice came out as a whisper. “Josh, say that again-”
Static flared, swallowing everything. Then, faintly-
“-Initiative… protocol sequence - maintain order-”
The tone was different now. Flat and controlled. This voice was clean, mechanical. Not Josh anymore.
Tyler gripped the radio tighter, pressing the side of his hand against the cracked casing. “Josh, it’s me,” He whispered. “It’s Tyler. Can you hear me?”
Nothing. Just the slow rise and fall of static, the whisper of signal loss.
He sat there for a long time, waiting for the voice to return, his pulse loud in his ears. But it didn’t.
Eventually, the frequency collapsed into pure noise again - an empty hiss that filled the room like fog.
Tyler leaned back, eyes burning, throat tight. He knew it could’ve been a glitch, a random transmission caught at the right moment. But deep down, he didn’t believe that.
He’d know Josh’s voice anywhere.