Archive of Our Own ^beta

The video showed up on Youtube in the middle of the night. It had started as just another niche video that only the ARG enthusiasts had watched, only garnering a few thousand views in the days after its publishing, but then a well-known youtuber covered it, and that's when the true crime community found it, and then everything just happened from there. 

The opening of the video was shaky handheld footage of two kids looking over the viewer, smiling at whoever was holding the camera. The girl grabbed the hand of the cameraman, dragging him forward.

"Danny! Come on, we're almost there!" 

As the other teen laughed at the girl, their friend, now known as Danny, responded.

"Come on, Sam, you don't need to drag me like this!"

--

The ARG enthusiasts who originally found the video wouldn't have thought anything of these names, however once the true crime community had gotten ahold of the video, connections to a case that was well known over ten years prior were brought up, involving the disappearance of three high schoolers, all friends. 

--

Sam, the girl in the video, had then looked at the camera, smiling. "So! for our audience, Danny is going to show us something awesome in his parent's basement!!! They're crazy mad scientists, so they have the coolest stuff!"

The other boy in the video, who would later be identified as Tucker Foley, had lightly punched Sam, identified as Samantha Manson, in the arm. 

"They're not crazy, just insane!" The two of them laughed at the joke, with Danny, Daniel Fenton, sighing in the background. 

"Look, they aren't crazy, or insane, they just only do pseudoscience. It isn't that weird I swear!!" The camera flipped around to show Danny, him smirking at the camera. "They're 'Paranormal Science' enthusiasts. I swear they really are nice if you get to know them!"

The camera was then pointed back towards Sam and Tucker, the two of them opening a door to a basement, quickly descending the stairs. 

Danny's voice could be heard as the camera followed the two down the stairs. "I'm really not supposed to bring anyone down here, my parents are suuper strict with us keeping their work a secret. I wasn't even allowed to be down here until my tenth birthday, and even then the first time I was allowed without supervision was last week, after my fourteenth birthday, when they decided I could help them with cleaning up the Lab as a chore."

Tucker and Sam had stopped at the bottom of the stairs, a doorway stood, locked in front of them. There was some sort of scanner in the front, unlike any that would be available at the time of the video's creation, but from the point of view of over ten years later, seemed like some sort of fingerprint scanner. Danny laid his right hand on the scanner, with the door audibly unlocking and opening in front of the group of teenagers. 

As the trio entered the lab, the audience could see a large variety of unknown technology, seemingly futuristic in nature. In the center of the lab was a hole approximately seven feet tall and seven feet wide, large and intimidating, with a step up into it. There was a control panel in front of it. 

"Woah." The voice of Tucker could be heard in the background as the camera panned around the lab. "Is that the portal your parents have been working on? You said it didn't work, right? Just want to be safe, haha."

Sam walked forward towards the massive hole in the wall, making sure to keep her hands behind her back. "You should walk in."

Danny audibly gasped, "No way! My parents would kill me!!"

"They'll never know! It's not like we are ever going to tell them! And even if we someday share the video, it's not like they will ever see it! You'd be too old for them to punish at that point anyway!" Sam looked back at Danny, eyes pleading, shining with excitement. 

Tucker nodded, "Come on! I'll hold the camera, it would be so cool to have a video of you in it!"

Danny sighed, then gave the camera to Tucker. 

Tucker turned the camera towards Danny, the boy smiling and nervously scratching the back of his neck. "Fine, but I am so telling my parents that you pushed me towards this, and are a bad influence, if they ever find out."

Sam squealed and Tucker could be heard laughing. 

A few minutes later, and Danny was wearing a protective suit, walking into the odd hole in the wall. 

The camera followed him, but stayed just outside of the metal thing. 

All of a sudden, Danny seemed to trip over a wire, his hand flying out to stop his fall, landing on the side of the wall, with an audible click. 

"What was tha-" The video cut out as tucker questioned the noise, everything lighting up green. 

-- 

At the end of the first video on the channel, if one were to look at the comments, the oldest ones were talking about how cool and real all the technology appeared, and how interesting the setup was. 

All of the newer comments, however, were questioning the identity of the publisher of the video, asking about their relationship to the three missing children, and asking where the footage was found, if the person may have been one of the children in the video themself, all three being fourteen at time of disappearance, and supposedly in their twenties if still alive. 

The publisher of the video, a channel called 'HalfwayThere', hadn't responded to any comments, only liking some of the older ones that complimented the technology and the end of the video. 

If one were to look at the channel, they'd see that there were two more videos after the first, titled 'The Beginning', and the other two titled 'Week One' and 'Week Two', both videos much longer than the first. 

--

The second video on the channel opened up with someone holding the camera, running through a forest that seemed odd, the greens too green, and all the wood looking slightly purple. The cameraman couldn't be identified in the video, as all that could be heard was panting and leaves getting crunched under foot. Eventually, after a minute of straight running, the camera footage blurry as if whoever was holding the camera didn't mean to be taking any video, there was a slight pause as the cameraman took a few seconds to catch their breath, now being identifiable as Danny, as he realized the video was on. 

"Shit! The camera-" The footage was cut off. 

After a couple seconds of darkness, the footage picked back up at a different time, this time all three teens crowded around the camera, which seemed to be perched upon a rock. All three seemed to be worse for wear, each of them covered in dirt, a few scrapes and bruises, with Danny looking the worst, his hair ruffled, spotted with white hair, his cheek scraped very badly, and his arm in a temporary cast of sticks and vines. The blood that flowed from his wounds looked green for some reason, but that could be chalked up to the fact that they were surrounded by glowing green plants. 

Danny, who had his eyes closed, suddenly looked up at the camera. 

--

People who were seeing this video with no context would think nothing of this moment, but anyone who was even slightly interested in the previous video, or the true crime case, would know that something was very off. 

His eyes were green, not the blue people were accustomed to. 

--

Danny, staring at the camera, started to speak. 

"We have been stuck here for over twenty-four hours. We don't know exactly how long it has been. Time is... weird. Our watches all show that it's been a day, but for some reason there is no day or night here. Just the dark. We are making this as a log to show our states right now. If anything happens to me, my sister gets anything I own-"

Danny was cut off by Tucker sobbing into Sam's shoulder. "I just want to go home. I'm so tired. I miss you, mom." Tucker continued to cry. 

Sam, who had silent tears rolling down her cheeks, pat Tucker on the head. "I want my parents to know that I love them, no matter what I say. We might not agree, but I still love you guys." Her face scrunched up, holding back a sob. 

Danny, looking too tired to even cry, just put his head in his hands. "I want one of us to make it out. One of us is going to share this video, I swear it upon my grave that is the portal. One of us is going to make it out."

The video cut off after a moment of silence between the three teenagers.

The black then cut to the three friends slowly walking together in the odd forest, Tucker looking exhausted in comparison to the other two. 

"It has been six days since we were first stranded wherever here is. Tucker was scratched by one of the weird plants, and we're worried." Danny looked at the camera. 

"I'm... Going to be fine..." Tucker slowly pushed the words out, taking much more effort than he would like to admit. His hand was on Danny's shoulder. 

"We have to keep moving, there's something behind us that gets louder every time we stop, so we need to keep going." Sam told the camera, explaining why they weren't letting their friend rest. She steeled herself and looked forward again. "We have to keep going."

The trio continued walking for the next few minutes, occasionally saying something to each other or the camera, making observations every few minutes about the odd surroundings. 

The forest around them seemed to get darker as the minutes dragged on, with the glowing plants looking brighter and brighter, but the teenagers in the video looked oblivious to the effects, not noticing the atmosphere change. 

The teenagers stopped again, settling down for a quick rest, and the camera cut off. 

The video ended. 

--

The comments on this video were at first just worried about the characters, but once it was confirmed to be real, everyone began to theorize, looking at the different plants, looking at Tucker's symptoms, theorizing where they could be and what Tucker was sick with, if he was going to be okay. 

None of the comments were answered. 

--

The last video uploaded on the channel started once more with running in the mysterious woods. The pace was slower than the previous video, taking into account that Danny was somehow running with Tucker on his back. 

"The thing that - huff - was chasing us is - huff - faster than before." Sam struggled to speak as their pace continued the same for the next minute. 

"Why are you still talking to the camera? We all know none of us are going to make it!" Danny shouted at her, his voice not interrupted by his running pace. He seemed more on the verge of tears than he did actually mad at the girl. 

"BECAUSE I WANT TO HOPE!" Sam shouted at her friend. A groan could be heard as Tucker shivered against Danny, looking feverish and in pain. 

"SHIT! We need to take a break, I need to look at his wounds!" Danny slowed to a stop, Sam next to him, as he swiftly pulled Tucker off of his back, unwrapping a wound on his leg. The camera showed the wound for a split second, but anyone could see the black veins and the disgusting, pus-filled wound on the boy's calf. 

Sam quickly pulled the camera away as the viewer could hear her throw up at the sight of the horrid injury. Danny sobbed as he supposedly rewrapped the wound. 

"Come on. Please, just stay with us, please. I can't lose you," Danny could be heard muttering under his breath at the wounded and sick boy. 

The broken arm Danny sported in the previous video could be seen to be healed as Danny pulled Tucker back onto his back. 

"Come on, Sam. We can keep going. We need to keep going."