(this chapter is probably gonna be worse than the other ones. i have covid, i'm busy and i don't have any motivation :') my writing isn't the best rn)

Test Tube exhaled, looking at the mess she had to clean up.

A few cups of coffee and six more hours later, the recovery machine was fixed and the fluids were gone.

She stared at the marvellous machine in front of her. Her brain was so used to the buzzing of drills and humming of the machine at work that the silence felt so uncomfortably loud without it. She resorted to tapping her fingers on the table to make up for the lack of sound. After a while of resting (what felt like a while, anyway), Test Tube rose and returned to one of the caskets: the one tied together with a yellow, now bloodstained ribbon. She carefully opened it and looked at what was a mix of Lightbulb and OJ.

Lightbulb...

She shed a tear, remembering her bright, optimistic friend.

She closed the box and walked away, not daring to take a look at her other friends' remains, fearing that she'd burst into sobs and waste away in her lab for the next few days.

Test Tube exhaled. She knew what she had to do, but she didn't know if she was prepared to do it a second time.

She grabbed a notebook and a pen and went off to find her next target.

Inside the hotel, the tension had settled a bit. Objects occasionally remembered the kidnapper on the loose and grew anxious, but for the most part, they had gone back to how life was before. Paper had taken OJ's role of owning the hotel, along with a few other objects that knew he'd be crushed under the responsibilities.

"OMG, Salty Salt, I can't believe she did that!" Pepper exclaimed from the couch, presumably in the middle of one of her gossiping sessions with Salt. Her friend giggled back to her in response before continuing her story.

Test Tube stopped, listening in on their conversation.

"So I'm sitting there, sunbathing by the pool, and all of a sudden he comes back, and he looks angry." She erupted into giggles again, unable to contain herself. "And then he spots her in the crowd! So he starts yelling a bunch and-" She stopped to snicker a bit more, "-he pushes her into the water!"

The two erupted into giggles, barely being able to breathe. Test Tube glanced back over to them before continuing her work.

She began to write down a list of everyone at the hotel, who their closest friends were and what materials they were made out of. She underlined a few obvious names, such as Paper since he was a similar object to Fan.

It pained her, thinking about her deceased friends. Thinking about how quickly she'd lost them, and what she'd have to do to get them back.

If only Mephone hadn't left.

She watched as Suitcase and Balloon left the cafeteria. Only once they gave her an odd look did Test Tube realize that she had started crying. She slammed her notebook shut and wiped her tears. Test Tube exhaled, trying to keep track of her notes inside her mind instead. Out of pure boredom, she looked over to the two friends sitting on the couch.

Their conversation took on a darker tone as Salt spotted the missing posters on the wall.

"Hey... Pepper?"

"Yeah?"

Salt looked away and wrapped her hands around her elbows. "Do you... think we're next?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you think... the kidnapper is gonna get to us?" Pepper's eyes widened, a flash of concern passing in her gaze. She embraced her friend. "Of course not! If we just stick together, the kidnapper won't be able to get us, like, isolated and kidnap us!"

"Yeah..." Salt chuckled slightly, both at Pepper's eagerness and to fill the silence. She looked over to the missing poster again, her expression filling with sorrow as tears threatened to leak out of her eyes. Pepper gave her friend an empathetic look and took her hand, attempting to comfort her "BCFF".

"I promise... no matter what happens, we'll be fine, okay? They're gonna catch that kidnapper, I just know it", Pepper murmured to her friend as she started to shed tears.

With a tired expression, Test Tube opened her notebook and circled Pepper's name with a red pen.

Test Tube trudged through the night, the guilt of her next crime already weighing down on her.

Through the entrance, up the stairs as to not make much noise, and finally at her desired location, it felt like she was carrying the weight of the entire hotel on her back.

How would she even do it? How would she lure Pepper out of her room?

She and her best friend were roommates, and Test Tube hadn't even thought about how she'd kidnap Pepper without waking Salt. On top of that, Test Tube remembered hearing that one of them was an extremely light sleeper. If Salt was the light sleeper, her entire plan would be ruined, and she'd have to kidnap both of them, maybe even whatever witness overheard what she did through the thin walls.

And when she thought it couldn't get any worse, she remembered that Salt and Pepper almost always had their doors locked.

She sighed, walking up to their room.

Her heart pounding in her chest, Test Tube wiggled the doorknob and ever so gently pulled the door towards her.

Silently, in the back of her head, a voice screamed as loud as it could, hoping, begging that it would be locked to give Test Tube another reason to not do what she was about to do.

But the door quietly creaked open, illuminating the room with both moonlight and weak orange beams from the hallway.

Weak murmurs in response to dreams occasionally broke the deafening silence. Test Tube watched Salt like a bird of prey, observing the way the reflected light danced across her rising and sinking glass. For a moment, she got lost in the beautiful sight, before remembering why she was there in the first place.

The glass object didn't seem to be waking up. Good.

Test Tube shifted her gaze to Pepper's side of the room, which was just slightly messier than Salt's. Posters hung on the wall, ripped around the edges and accompanied by massive collections of photos, containing the two smiling besties and a few other objects Test Tube didn't quite recognize. However, by Salt, there were only two decorations: a beautiful, framed depiction of a vase full of flowers, and an old but equally beautiful portrait of Salt, again with more objects Test Tube hadn't seen before.

She needed to stop wasting time and just get it over with already.

With a nervous sigh and trembling hands, she slowly approached her next victim.

"Pepper?" she murmured, careful not to wake Salt.

Almost immediately, Pepper flinched and rolled over, meeting Test Tube's gaze with tired, confused eyes. So she's the light sleeper.

"Mhm..." Pepper mumbled, rubbing her eyes and clutching her head. "What is it? I'm trying to, like, sleep..."

Test Tube hadn't planned this far.

"I-It's Salt." She panicked, hoping that the room was dim enough for Pepper to not notice her sleeping friend in the background. "She's... she's hurt. OJ's taking care of her. You need to come, quick!"

Pepper shot out of her bed, her confused expression turning to a teary, worried one. She ran towards the door, her footsteps sending vibrations through the building, presumably waking a few people.

Crap.

Test Tube tried to quiet Pepper down, immediately coming up with an excuse. "The entire building's in lockdown because the kidnapper is around! You have to be quiet!"

It was hard to quiet the now sobbing Pepper down, but she managed to slow her down a bit. The two hurried down the stairs to the first floor, Test Tube eventually guiding her out of the hotel.

"Where is she?!" Pepper panted, looking around the surrounding area in an adrenaline-filled daze. Test Tube's stomach churned thinking about what she was about to do. The least she could do was offer Pepper some closure if she somehow died while being transported to the lab.

"She's fine, Pepper."

Test Tube grabbed Pepper's arms, bashing the back of her head into the nearby dumpster and watching in a guilt-filled shock as the life disappeared from her eyes.

Until she heard a horrified scream from the entrance to Hotel OJ.

"PEPPER?!"

[word count: 1384]