KC jutted out his chin, alarm bells ringing in his brain. “Yeah, I don’t think so, kid, get lost.” Part of him wanted to throw open the door and let him in, let him help, so thankful to have someone in his corner, but the logical part of him didn’t think that’s what this was. “I don’t have time to deal with a stalking teenage fanboy.”

“Hey, dude, I’m eighteen, chill.” Bri scowled. “And I’m not here to be a stalker, I’m here to help you. Nobody else is taking this seriously.”

KC gritted his teeth. With his brain foggy from exhaustion and his muscles taut from panic and fear, he didn’t know what to think, here. He wanted so badly for someone else to believe Rose, for someone to be all in on helping get her out of there, but...

“Why come here?” he asked. “Why not just help from your place?”

“You don’t have enough screens,” Bri replied. “You’re doing too much shit at once, and can’t talk to multiple chats and shit, it’s just easier.”

“And it has absolutely nothing to do with you wanting to see inside RosieRainbow’s home?” KC crossed his arms, straightening his shoulders. He had never been the type of person to try to intimidate someone else, especially not someone a decade younger than him, but he didn’t have time to mess around here. If Bri was serious about teaming up in this way, then KC had to assert himself to try to maintain some semblance of control.

“Look, she’s been doxxed a hundred times, I could have broken into her place long before this and I never have, I’m not some depraved stalker,” the kid insisted. “Legit hate the fact that I’m at the door to her house uninvited and with her not inside. Not gonna lie and say I’ve never thought about what it would be like to meet her but this is not how I’d fuckin’ want it to happen.”

KC stared hard. It made sense. And he didn’t have time to argue, really. He’d just have to keep a close eye on the kid.

“Okay, get inside,” he said, backing down the hallway. “Stay out of frame though, I don’t want local viewers to see you and get any bright ideas.”

“Yeah no probs, man,” Bri said. “I’m Dave, by the way.”

The push for familiarity didn’t feel right, and KC shook his head. “I’m still KC.” Rose was the only person in his life that knew his first name, and she didn’t even use it because they were so used to being on camera together that it was easier to just call him by the screen name.

The kid looked a little disappointed, but shook it off quickly. “Yeah, yeah, figured.”

KC led him back to the office, motioning to the dead zone to the left of Rose’s desk where the camera couldn’t see. “The mic’s muted,” he said. “What have you got?” He winced as he stepped in one of the sopping parts of the carpet where he’d spilled the cold brew, the icy liquid quickly leaching into his sock.

If Bri noticed, he didn’t let on, simply dropping his bags next to the wide pot of a fluffy green tree in the corner. He started pulling out cords and laptops until there were five stacked on top of each other.

“Got a table or something?” he asked as he tossed an extension cord and power bar on top of the spaghetti pile.

“Yeah, let’s grab the coffee table.” KC reached down and stripped off his wet sock before heading out towards the living room. He made a quick detour to the linen closet in the hallway, tossing the sock into Rose’s laundry basket and grabbing two fluffy bamboo towels to soak up the mess he’d made. “I’m gonna end up your laundry slave if you get out of this,” he muttered to himself as he flung the towels over his shoulders.

Bri knelt on the other side of the long coffee table and picked it up. “This thing is huge,” he grunted as he lifted the oak and glass table.

“Yeah, it’s worth more than a month’s rent,” KC grunted as he lifted his end and began to shuffle backwards down the hallway. “First frivolous purchase after her channel got monetized.” He clamped his mouth shut, a little pang slicing his heart as he remembered that day, how he’d cursed her for spending so much money on a coffee table and not shelling out the extra hundred bucks to have it delivered. It had taken them so long to haul it up the stairs because it wouldn’t fit in the elevator. The memory of her grinning and slicking her sweat-damp hair from her forehead when they’d finally got it inside flashed through his mind’s eye, so vivid it hurt.

They managed to fit the beastly table on an angle next to the desk, the fluffy plant towering behind it, and Bri sat cross-legged on the carpet as he got to work setting up all of his machines.

KC put the towels down on the wet spot on the floor, pressing down to soak it up. The game screen was still black, and he hoped that meant that Rose was getting some rest. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and set it on the desk, bumping the audio a bit louder so that if anything happened, Bri could hear from the floor.

“I wonder if, when I can get out of here, we can figure out a safe way to play the game this way,” Rose said, startling KC. “Like, if we figure out how to get people out, how many of you would want to pop this thing into your computer and see if you could survive? King of Demons could be the next viral Let’s Play that everyone wants to do.” Rose chuckled under her breath, but it wasn’t her usual excited belly laugh, it was something dark, hoarse.

“I don’t know if I’d wanna go in there,” Bri admitted, and then raised a palm. “Do you have an extra ethernet hookup over there so I can hard wire to the modem?”

KC moved around to the other side of the desk where Rose had her own bin of spaghetti cords, fishing out a long ethernet cable and sliding it into one of the extra ports with a snick. He ran it around the back of the monitors and tossed it to the coffee table, so that the camera couldn’t see him wiring something up.

“Could do nominations, like pass it on once you get out. Who do you think I should nominate?” Rose continued.

“Oh, this should be good,” KC muttered, and flopped into his chair, throwing on the headphones and making sure they were on the group chat with Pogo, Dragon, and Daisy, though he left himself muted. He scanned the chat as he adjusted the headset to leave one of his ears free. His name popped up a bunch to be nominated, with others thirsting after Rose, one person demanding she fuck and marry them.

“I’d fuck and marry all of you if it meant getting out of here,” Rose joked, and KC rolled his eyes as the chat went insane.

Well that sure motivated them, I can’t believe we didn’t think of that before, he sent from his phone in a donation message, and Bri snorted from the floor as his last machine booted up and he focused on the stream chat.

As Daisy and Pogo got progressively dirtier, Rose laughed again, this time sounding a bit more like herself. KC allowed himself a little breath of relief, just a little. At least the chat was keeping her company, lifting her spirits some. Hopefully they could do even more.

When Pogo made a comment about wanting to go first to avoid sloppy seconds, KC smirked into the camera and leaned forward, hamming it up as he typed a donation message, How about whoever gets her out of there first gets to go first? It would send the shippers into a frenzy, but if it got even one person to work harder at this, then it was worth it.

BriGuyMonster: What if it’s a tie?

KC swivelled his chair and levelled a glare at the kid on the floor, making it look like he was scowling at his phone. “Don’t make me regret letting you in here,” he muttered.

“Sorry, I couldn’t help myself,” Bri said, lowering his head a bit like a dog who knew he was in trouble.

Rose responded positively, at least, with her usual charm. Navigating fans for so long gave such skills as making them not feel bad about themselves when you shut down their toeing-the-line advances. KC hoped he hadn’t inadvertently fucked up and let Bri too far over the line by letting him inside, making him too comfortable.

“Back on track,” Rose said, and then she opened her eyes, because the screen showed the cage interior again. “I heard something.”

KC ducked his head to say, “Turning on my mic,” noting Bri’s understanding before flicking the mute button. “Still recording, Pogo?”

“I’m always fucking recording,” came the reply. “Dragon’s combing through the black footage while she was sleeping to see if we could hear anything.”

KC nodded. “Good idea. If we can hear through her ears, then we should be able to hear what’s around her even when she’s not awake.”

“You should be talking to the stream right now, babe!” Daisy squealed. “It’s pure fire in chat right now!”

“You go ahead and have fun with that,” KC snapped, and then turned down the headphone volume so he could hear Rose’s conversation with her apparent rescuer. He muted his mic again, realizing that he could easily pretend he was talking to a different chat while actually talking to Bri. “Bri, did you catch what that demon said?”

“Dave,” he said.

“I’m not calling you Dave,” KC shot back. “She said Guul, didn’t she?”

“Sounded like Rold Guul?” he replied, pulling one of three sets of headphones from around his neck and listening to one side. From what KC could see of the screen, he was rolling back footage. “Roll Guul?”

“Is that the world they’re in?” KC asked, and typed the same into the group chat as he spoke. “The world they’re in is Rol’Guul, and on the game case it’s the Guul Corporation?”

PreciousPogo: what came first, the corp or the game world, they all about them easter eggs

“Pogo thinks it’s just an Easter egg,” KC said.

“He would,” Bri growled, surprising KC with the venom in his tone. “Maybe if your buddies gave more of a shit we’d have a better idea of how to get her back through the portal.”

KC blinked, glancing at the stream camera that he knew was up on one of the kid’s screens. “You really believe this.” It wasn’t a question—he wasn’t sure how to actually ask anyone the real question, but at the same time, he had a desperate need for it to be answered.

“Why would I have come here if I didn’t, dude?” Bri replied. “Also did you notice I wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t here with you. You seen the fanart of her blowing you under the desk while you laugh at her viewers? That’s probably who everyone thinks you’re talking to right now.”

KC sighed. “Pass on that,” he muttered. “So you think for sure it’s a portal?”

“It’s gotta be,” the kid said. “Something opened when she booted up the game, and now you can’t close the game window, so something is still linked there, still open. If she got through and we can still see, then we’ve got to be able to get her back through. I’m thinkin’ that there has to be something on that side that works like this side, something she has to ‘boot up’, you know? Then that’ll pop her back here.”

KC sighed again, a wave of exhaustion nearly toppling him. “That’s a lot of ifs.”

“Ifs are all we’ve got, man,” Bri replied, shaking his head. “For now.”