Red was used to chains. He was used to the feeling of a collar, of his wrists being tied. From his universe, this was nothing new. Nor was the sight of blood on the floor, hidden away by the rug in their room. He wasn't dumb, he knew to check for anything the moment he woke up.

By far, he hated Blue the most when he first woke up. The guy just didn't get a grip on what was going on, did he? Not at first. He was always claiming people could be good, that they should give this Papyrus a second chance.

That's the problem. They gave him a second chance. Yet Papyrus kept them locked up, despite their begging.

Really, Red wasn't helping much. All of his life, he was trained to obey Papyrus, protect and serve Boss at all costs. That was what he was taught.

And that was why he couldn't do it. Years of training taught him never to go against Papyrus, but no one ever anticipated there being more than one.

That was why is was so stupidly easy to kidnap Red. The creepy Papyrus didn't look like his own, and he didn't have to. The moment Red saw him, his training kicked in. Confusion had settled in, and his soul was in a turmoil of pain and confusion. That wasn't his Papyrus, but he was still Papyrus!

Red hated himself for that. For letting this fake walk up, for panicking. But he couldn't help it! He was trained to obey for years, he suddenly couldn't go against it.

Sobbing was how he often found himself. Funny, living in the kill or be killed world didn't make him as tough as he would have thought. Sure, he was tough physically, the scars showed it. Red could handle pain, he could handle being chained to the wall, he could handle having that dumb new collar around his neck. Hell, he could even handle the awful food.

What Red couldn't deal with was Papyrus himself. The way he would scoop Red up into a hug like he actually cared, and maybe he did. But he cared too much. The guy was demented, a freak. So obsessed with them to the point where he believed they loved him back. He would just sit there and talk to them for hours, Red hated it.

Red just couldn't fight back, not when he looked so much like his brother. And the dumb copy knew it! He knew Red was in a constant state of mental pain, constantly wanting to fight back, but finding his arms shaking. So Papyrus would hug him, pet his skull and hum out tunes, while Red would simply just shake.

Blue was the one who talked most to this new Papyrus. He tried to reason, which obviously didn't work. Papyrus was too far gone, stuck in his own land. Convinced they all loved him back, when they clearly didn't.

Sans was the only one really clear in the head. Red was too emotionally damaged to try and fight back, he was practically just a dumb pet. Not Sans. He knew to stay away from this Papyrus, and he constantly was trying to fight back. Shoving him away, trying to unchain himself. Sans was the one who pointed out the bear traps.

And of course, Sans was the one who noticed the thud when the others didn't.

~~~~~~

Gwen had been starting to suspect Red wasn't the killer. Despite his L.O.V.E, Papyrus' reading had said he would never anticipate his killer to be the one with the knife. To be the murderer.

Blue and Sans made sense. Neither of them were exactly violent. Blue seemed too nice, and Sans was injured. Both were prime suspects. Red was violent and loud mouthed, with more L.O.V.E than serial killers. It would be expected of him to try and fight back, Papyrus likely would have suspected him first for attacking him, not the other two.

Yet this simply pointed out new information Gwen never had considered. What living in that type of world would have done to Red. He was raised differently than her, they all were. She had to adjust accordingly.

Red wouldn't have been expected to kill Papyrus, either. He was too broken from where he came from, he was practically fragile. The victim would have never seen it coming from someone emotionally broken. However, he seemed to have returned his mojo back, which meant something happened. Like him finally snapping and killing Papyrus, despite his training.

Which meant he was back as a prime suspect, and she had made no progress. Great.

Frankly, any of the suspects could be the murderer. Gwen had absolutely no idea which one of them had killed him, her gut wasn't helping with it either. She didn't have enough of the story yet.

Gwne suddenly snapped her eyes back to Red's face, ignoring the chill from the cold room.

"The thud?" She asked.

Red averted his eyelights, voice dying down.

"Well, uh... yer ain't gonna like this..." Red muttered.

"What did you mean, by the thud?" Gwen clicked her pen.

Red shifted in his seat, avoiding eye contact with her until the very end. Only when he did finally look at her did he confess.

"It was how he got the machine, how he traveled to our universes," Red explained, "He... he had a hostage."

"A hostage?"

"It doesn't matter anymore," Red said, leaning against the table. "It seriously doesn't. She ain't alive anymore, she died before we even moved to the new universe, so it doesn't matter."

"If it doesn't matter," Gwen shuffled aside some papers, "Then you should have no problem telling me about her."

There was a moment of hesitation on Red's part, and Gwen hoped he wouldn't remain silent. She needed to understand how they arrived here so she could figure out who killed him. Red has been pretty shut in about all of this, and she needed his testimony as well.

"There was this girl, Alphys," Red said, looking annoyed with himself for talking to her. "She was a scientist. Real brilliant, ya know, good with technology and souls and crap like that. The Alphys girl was from his universe, so she knew about him. Apparently he had been killing far before we even got there, so she knew not to do anything for him. And Paps knew that too, f*cking creepy a*s was good with playing people like a fiddle. So he kidnapped her girlfriend and used her for blackmail. Her name was Undyne, she was the hostage."

~~~~~~

"I heard something!"

It was one of the few times of the day Papyrus really left them alone. Red had been left alone to his thoughts when Sans had pointed it out.

The trapped skeletons all then heard it again, each scrambling to press their skulls against the floor. Faint, but there. They could hear a muffled Papyrus yelling, then another thud, but they sounded so small they were easily ignorable.

It wasn't just different versions of Sans that Papyrus had kidnapped. Someone else was there!

That meant they weren't alone. They had help out there.

They just had to find it.