The walls surrounding Steamboat Studios were pristine white quartz, nearly fifty feet tall, with wide ramparts running along the top.

  Beyond those walls, the city sprawled like a nightmare version of a theme park promo reel. At its center rose a massive castle, the kind you’d expect to see in a fairy tale—if that fairy tale had been rewritten by someone with a head injury and a deep grudge against childhood wonder. The spires leaned at odd angles, shingles hung loose like jagged teeth, and the once-proud banners dangled in rotting tatters.

  Every available inch of vertical space had been eaten alive by billboards and screaming neon signs—Dollar Holler, Pizza Slut, Walt’s-Mart, Cash4Kidneys, The Burger Baron, Starbies—plus a dozen more, all just as mind-numbingly dumb. Ads flickered and buzzed like life-support machines feeding off the city’s last dying breaths. The damn things were everywhere, plastered over buildings and even across the castle itself. A living testament to brand awareness and convenient product placement.

  I pulled out Nikoli’s bronze monocle—the one that made me feel like a Victorian-era pervert every time I used it—and trained it on the walls.

  Shapes moved and shuffled along the ramparts. Squat, blocky silhouettes pacing with mechanical precision. Dwarves, though not the singing, diamond-mining variety. These ones wore slabs of armor so thick it looked like they’d been welded into it. Some carried oversized crossbows while others leaned on halberds that gleamed with streaks of dried crimson. Their beards were the color of old rust stains, and their faces had the hollowed-out look of something that used to be alive but had been sucked dry like a Capri-Sun decades ago.

  A creeping dread settled over me. Getting past the dwarves was going to be tricky.

  I briefly considered trying to just fly over the walls, but quickly decided against that option. I’d learned my lesson after tangling with the Polaris Vora, and the air above Steamboat Studios wasn’t exactly welcoming.

  Or unoccupied.

  Vast pirate ships drifted in lazy patrol patterns, each one held aloft by bloated zephyr-style blimps. The blimps weren’t made from canvas, though. Instead, their bulbous hides were a mottled patchwork of pale, waxy flesh, stretched taut and stitched with thick rope. Even from this distance, the seams gleamed wet in the artificial light. Tiny human figures zipped between ships, darting like insects beneath the arching dome.

  Pooh followed my gaze. “Pan and the Lost Boys,” he said, his voice carrying a grim weight that didn’t fit his fluffy frame. “They took the ships after finally killing Hook. This was about thirty years ago, I suppose.”

  “What did they do with the crew?” Harper asked, studying the floating ships through squinted eyes.

  “What do you think the blimps are made out of?” Pooh replied without elaborating any further. He didn’t need to. “Best not to go that way, I should think.”

  Well, that was grim. And surprisingly on brand.

  I mulled over our options for a long moment.

  If we couldn’t climb the walls or fly past them, how the hell were we supposed to get inside? Sure, we could probably blast a hole through the perimeter, but if we did that, we might as well set off some fireworks to let the Franchisor know we were coming. I wanted to avoid that for as long as possible. The element of surprise was the only thing we really had going for us.

  “So what?” I asked, lowering the viewing glass. “Should we just walk through the front gates and ask politely?”

  “Oh, heavens, no.” Pooh shook his head slowly, his voice as soft as honey. He gestured toward the ramparts, where another dwarf stepped into view, cranking the winch on a ballista-sized crossbow. “I should think that is not a very good idea at all. The Dwarves will cut us down long before we ever reach the gates. They’re not very nice at all.”

  “Check,” I said. “So that’s a firm no on the stroll-and-knock plan.”

  “Once we get inside, there should be considerably less resistance,” Pooh continued, “but getting in is the tricky part.” The bear paused and tilted his head to one side. “Oh drat, let me think for a moment,” he said, more for himself than for us. After a second his eyes widened. “I suppose there is another way. Did you know there are underground passages that run beneath the city? The staff use them to move unseen, out of sight of the park’s visitors. Most are patrolled by the Gloombeards…”

  Pooh’s voice trailed off, a crease tugging at his stitched brow. Then his eyes brightened, like a lantern sputtering to life.

  “But there’s an old access tunnel that isn’t used anymore and shouldn’t be patrolled,” he said. “I… I remember it, though it’s all fuzzy. Like a dream I can’t quite seem to recall.” He tilted his head, eyes staring somewhere far beyond us. “Christopher Robin was there once. At least, I think he was. Maybe…” His voice dropped. “Maybe he’s still there? I don’t suppose it would hurt to take a peek?”

  I didn’t love the idea of trudging around in some dank access tunnel, but with no better option I didn’t see any other way. I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Alright,” I finally said. “We go beneath. Which way to this tunnel?”

  The bear flapped an arm. “We’ll find the entrance that way. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  It took us two hours to navigate our way around the outer edge of the walls, clinging to the tree line and out of sight of the Dwarves patrolling the ramparts.

  The entrance to the underground was a squat, ugly bunker crouched fifty or sixty feet from the base of the wall like a rotten tooth. It vaguely reminded me of the old missile storage bunkers out on the Naval Weapons Depot—the stretch of road that ran between Fallbrook and Camp Pendleton. Dirt and ivy clawed their way across its rounded shell, smothering the once-white concrete in green foliage and patches of brown mud.

  A rusted sign hung above the door, its cheery lettering barely legible beneath grime and moss.

  STEAMBOAT STUDIOS UNDERGROUND, BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE BURGER BARON – “WHERE HUNGER KNEELS.”

  “Subtle,” Harper muttered. “Nothing says ‘abandoned death hole’ like corporate sponsorships.”

  The blast door looked like it belonged on a Cold War fallout shelter—a solid slab of riveted steel streaked with rust. It groaned in protest as Croc’s tentacles hauled it open, the sound shrieking across the trees like a dinner bell. For a moment I expected the Dwarves to come charging out.

  I sighed in relief when nothing immediately terrible happened.

  The air that spilled out was the stink of a forgotten graveyard—damp, moldy, and sharp with a copper tang. Moss carpeted the steps descending into the dark, slick with phosphorescent growth.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I said with a scowl. “This places reeks like a septic tank buried beneath a slaughterhouse.”

  A quizzical look flashed across Pooh’s face. “I don’t know… I think it smells a bit like home,” he said, before shrugging. “Down we go.”

  We descended, boots scuffing on damp stone, the stairs spiraling into a narrow concrete passage. Pipes lined the ceiling above, dripping in arrhythmic beats. Some had split wide, leaking something that definitely wasn’t water—it was too dark, too thick, and it stank of old shit.

  The tunnel at the bottom stretched forward, narrow and slick with moisture. The walls sweated, paint bubbling and peeling. Strange symbols had been scrawled across them, the letters smeared as though written by unsteady hands.

  We followed the tunnel for what felt like forever, creeping forward inch by inch, my nerves stretched tighter than a guitar string. And for good reason. The place was loaded to the gills with improvised, homemade traps.

  Pressure plates hidden under crumbling tiles, their runes faint but still deadly. Thin tripwires strung knee-high across the hall, rigged to only God-knew-what. Swinging pendulum blades tucked into recesses overhead. Even a few decoys—false traps designed to funnel us into the real ones.

  Every fifty feet there was something new waiting to chew us into hamburger.

  But there were no Dwellers. No ambushes. No movement in the corners of my vision. That was more than a little unexpected. A place like this should be crawling with horrors, but it was utterly empty. Not even bugs or rodents skittered around in the darkness. The only sound was the constant drip-drip-drip of sludgy liquid falling from rusted pipes.

  Croc filled the silence with nervous chatter, talking to Pooh about everything from Princess Ponypuff and the Howler kids who like to play with him, to his favorite Froyo flavors and the greatness of the Twilight series. The bear seemed genuinely enthralled, especially at the mention of the Howler children.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “I’d quite like to meet them someday,” the bear said dreamily. “I miss having friends. I’ve been alone for so long now, without Christopher Robin. Not even Piglet comes over for tea these days. It would be nice to have some company.”

  Finally, the tunnel ended at another blast door. This one stood half open, the gap just wide enough to slip through. Jakob shoved it the rest of the way with a groan of protesting metal.

  The chamber beyond hit me with a sense of wrongness.

  I would’ve been more comfortable if there was some cosmic, slathering horror with a hundred tentacles and a thousand eyes waiting for us. At least that would’ve made sense. Instead, the room looked like it had once belonged to a Delver.

  It wasn’t a monster’s lair. It was… lived in. Or had been, a long time ago.

  A thin layer of dust coated everything, but the layout was unmistakable. Two cots lined one wall, green wool blankets still tucked in place with military precision. A tiny camp stove sat cold, a half dozen empty fuel bottles scattered around it. Against the far wall, a footlocker sagged under the weight of age. A desk slumped nearby, its surface cluttered with a long-dead propane lamp and a stack of journals, their spines curled from moisture.

  Paintings hung along the concrete walls, yellowed with age but still unmistakable. The brushstrokes were identical to the ones back at Pooh’s house—whimsical but faintly off-kilter, as though they’d been made by a particularly talentless child. There was love in those paintings though; it practically bled through.

  In one, Pooh stood beside a man in a faded military uniform—not modern fatigues, but the older kind. Something out of Korea or maybe even World War Two. In another, they both stared at something off-canvas, their expressions oddly solemn, though there was a bright rainbow behind them and a smiling sun in the corner of the canvas.

  “What in the hell is this place?” I muttered.

  Pooh waddled slowly to one of the cots and eased himself down. His gaze roved over the paintings, his stitched brow furrowing in confusion. He lifted one paw as if reaching toward the canvas, then let it fall.

  “That must be him,” Pooh whispered. “Christopher Robin.” His face scrunched up, the words like glass in his throat. “I remember being here. With him… but it’s all foggy. I can’t seem to recall when I was here or why.”

  Although I wanted to keep moving, curiosity tugged at the edges of my mind, and I knew I couldn’t just walk away. Not without knowing what we’d just uncovered.

  I headed over to the desk and carefully lowered myself onto an ancient wooden chair, before picking up one of the journals. It was heavily creased and badly water damaged, but one of the pages had been bookmarked with an old, faded Polaroid. Like the pictures hung with care on the walls, it depicted a man of middle years wearing the same fatigues. He was sitting on the cot, one arm wrapped around Pooh’s slumped shoulders.

  His face was worn and gaunt beneath the olive-green helmet perched on his head. A patchy beard clung to his jaw, ragged and unkempt, and his tired smile revealed several dark gaps where teeth should’ve been, but weren’t. He looked like a POW, still trapped in a prison camp.

  The journal entry was dated June 28th, 1956.

  This is it. Today I’m going to finish things, one way or the other. Two years of planning, prepping, all for this. Pooh and I have finally found a way into the Franchisor’s inner layer. There’s a Loot Arcade near Tomorrow’s End with a service door that connects directly to Castle Everafter. Chances are, this will be the end for me, but better a quick death than slowly rotting away down here in the tunnels. And who knows? If I survive, I might even be able to fix things. Always remember, I’m doing this for you, Pooh bear.

  It was signed CPT James Graham, 15th Infantry Regiment.

  On the opposite side of the page was a rough, hand-drawn map showing different areas of Steamboat Studios, each neatly labeled in cursive. Dreamer’s Harbor, Tomorrow’s End, Animation Alley, The Gluttonarium, Storybook Catacombs, The Grand Parade District.

  Another map, directly beneath the first, depicted the location of the Loot Arcade. This tunnel seemed to let out into the Gluttonarium, but from there it was just a short jaunt over to Tomorrow’s Edge. The pages beyond were completely blank—this had been James Graham’s final entry.

  Jakob rummaged around in the footlocker, pulling out a set of drab cammies, faded, bloody, and riddled with holes and tears that had been mended a dozen times over.

  “Looks like whoever lived here was some sort of solider,” he said. “American, I think, though these are old.”

  “Does the journal say anything?” Harper asked, stealing a sidelong look at me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “The guy’s name was James Graham, some sort of Army officer.”

  Pooh stirred faintly at the name, as though it resonated in some way. But then he shook his head and frowned. “No, that can’t be right,” the bear said. “This is Christopher Robin. I’m sure of it.”

  I didn’t correct the bear, though I knew what the journal said.

  “There’s more here,” I continued. “Just give me a sec.”

  I carefully ripped out the map, stuffing it into my pocket, before flipping back to early entries.

  Most of them were painfully mundane, the kind of stuff you’d expect from a man slowly losing his mind, alone and in the dark. Complaints about hunger. Notes about how many cans of fuel he had left. One passage where he described chewing on boot leather because he couldn’t stomach another mouthful of honey.

  In another entry, his handwriting wavered, jagged where the pen had clearly slipped.

  Caught by the Emberveins today. Didn’t know there was another Dwarven clan, though I should’ve suspected. They were all fire. All fury. One of them got me. Leg’s bad. Can’t move like I used to, not even after drinking a healing tonic. Every step feels like walking on hot coals. Some sort of lingering Affliction. Hopefully, I’ll feel better tomorrow, though I doubt it. This place isn’t merciful enough for that…

  I skimmed further.

  Mixed in with the desperation were strange little pockets of sweetness. Notes about reading stories with Pooh by lanternlight. About painting together, though he joked that Pooh’s brushstrokes looked like someone dunked a mop in a paint can. Still, the words carried something rare down here. Gentleness.

  Love, even.

  I flipped to the very beginning.

  The first entries confirmed what I’d already guessed based on the pictures and the uniform Jakob had unearthed. James Graham was a veteran. Korean War. He’d been separated from his platoon after a KPA ambush, then… slipped through a space between worlds. From what I could gather, he’d Noclipped directly into the 10,000 Acre Woods.

  That in itself was an oddity.

  Most Delvers ended up in the Lobby, although I’d heard more than a few stories that led me to believe it was possible to arrive on other floors. Like a Delver Croc had told me about named Mikal, who’d Noclipped directly to the 6th Floor after some sort of experiment went wrong with the Large Hadron Collider.

  The handwriting started crisp and clean, but over time it sagged and bled at the edges, like the place itself was eroding him.

  I flipped ahead until another entry caught my eye. It was longer than most, and his script was steadier.

  Pooh has been my only real companion in this place. My only friend. I wouldn’t have lasted a week if not for him. At first, he wouldn’t stop searching for his boy, Christopher Robin. He’d call for him in the dark, wander the tunnels with that soft voice of his, hopeful every time a shadow moved.

  I suspect that there is no Christopher Robin. That he never existed at all, except inside the dusty pages of a children’s book. Although the same could be said for Pooh, I suppose. But even if the boy is real, I’d be willing to gamble that he’s a Progenerated Dweller like the rest of the god-awful things that haunt this place. Probably twisted beyond all recognition, assuming he’s even alive at all.

  I worked up the courage to tell Pooh as much, but it didn’t stick. He got sad for a few days, but then he simply forgot. Started asking if I knew Christopher Robin.

  But then one night, he looked at me with those strange little eyes of his and called me Christopher. I should’ve corrected him. Should’ve told him the truth. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. The bear’s whole face lit up when he thought that he’d finally found his boy, even if he was “all grown up.” I’ve never seen him so happy. And God help me, I couldn’t take that away from him. If he wants me to be Christopher Robin, then that’s who I’ll be. For him. For both of us.

  My throat tightened, and I glanced over at Pooh, sitting on the cot, stuffed legs kicking back and forth as he stared at the paintings as though trying desperately to unlock some hidden meaning. He looked small. Even smaller than usual. Like a forgotten toy left too long in the attic.

  For a moment, I wondered if he was remembering the same things James had written about—or if his memories had already blurred so badly that he couldn’t tell the difference between fiction and reality.

  Croc lumbered forward, his bulk casting long shadows across the dust-choked chamber. He plopped onto the floor beside the cot and rested one blue rubber paw on Pooh’s shoulder.

  “You okay?” the mimic asked, voice gentle and filled with understanding.

  “No,” Pooh said, shaking his head forlornly. “No, I don’t think I am. I… I don’t remember any of it,” he said softly, “but I know I should. This must’ve been my home once, but it’s all gone now.”

  I pulled the Polaroid out and handed it to the bear. He clutched it gently in one paw and stroked the surface of the photo with the other.

  “Why, that’s me,” Pooh said with surprise. “And that must mean this is Christopher Robin. But none of it is up here.” He tapped one temple with his stuffed paw. “I feel empty. Like when I’ve eaten too much honey, but my tummy is still hungry. And I’m cross with myself for forgetting. This was his place. Our place. And now it’s gone, all gone.”

  Croc let out a long, rattling breath. The mimic glanced at the paintings, then back at the bear, and the hard lines of its muzzle softened.

  “I’m so sorry, Pooh. Before Dan, I had a friend named Gertrude. Gertrude Evans from Madison, Wisconsin. She was the first friend I ever had, and she took care of me when no one else would. She was kind and sweet and generous. She was my whole world.”

  Croc’s body sagged under the weight of the memory.

  “One of the Aspirants of the Skinless Court killed her down on the twelfth floor. It broke me… in here.” The mimic tapped its chest. “My memories of her are the only thing I have left, and I can’t imagine how much it would hurt to know there was a Gertrude-sized hole in my heart, always there but just out of reach. I can’t make things any better for you, but I want you to know how sorry I am.”

  “Does losing your person ever get easier?” Pooh asked, glancing at Croc.

  The dog considered the question, before sighing and shaking its head.

  “No, not really,” the mimic admitted. “But also, yes. In a way. The pain never really goes away, but it softens around the edges with time. And it gets better if you fill up that emptiness with other people who care about you. After Gertrude was gone, I thought I’d never be happy again. But then I found Dan”—googly eyes swiveled toward me—“my best friend in the whole world. He even gave me this, which says so.”

  Croc gestured at the collar.

  “We aren’t ever going to be a replacement for what you lost,” Croc said softly, “but maybe you can make some new memories. Good ones. I want you to know that you’ll always have a place with us and the darkness is a little less dark when you have other people to walk it with you. And who knows? Maybe your boy is still out there.”

  Pooh clutched the Polaroid tighter, marble eyes glimmering in the lamplight.

  “Do you really think so?” Pooh asked.

  “Sure I do,” Croc replied. “Could be he’s out there somewhere, wandering around, looking for you, just the same as you’re looking for him. People get lost down here all the time, don’t they? Maybe he’s one of them. And if anyone knows what happened to him—well, I’d bet my tail it’s the Franchisor.”

  For a long moment, the chamber was silent, save for the slow drip of water from some rusted pipe above. Pooh stared at the photo, paws trembling faintly, then gave the smallest nod. A stitch of resolve pulled tight across his face, fragile but there.

  “Alright,” he whispered. “Let’s go ask him.”