[Blank]

"Error."

Gloved hands suddenly slammed onto the mattress in defence, as Allen woke up, his eyes full of alert.

Who was that?

"Error."

He leaned over toward the end of the bed, and was surprised to see the sleeping Rin snoring away. It occurred to him that Rin wouldn't spew out a peculiar phrase out of nowhere; the voice that was echoing sounded oddly robotic and inhuman.

He lingered a finger over his left eye, feeling no part of his flesh activating into a gearing monocle. Wondering what on earth was causing such a strange phenomenon, Allen scanned the room and to his relief, saw what he assumed was a video game console powered on.

He quietly dismounted from the bed, seeing the green light on the white console flashing rather sceptically at him. He pressed on a switch and the flickering emerald light slowly died into a rigid, bright red.

"That ought to do it," he said, rubbing his eyes and feeling the fatigue multiplying.

"Error."

"What in the—?!" Allen cried impatiently, hearing the voice again. Rin was thankfully snoozing away despite his loud outburst. The young Exorcist rose and felt the walls, feeling annoyed and slightly frightened at the same time. What is going on?

Rin's bedroom appeared perfectly ordinary to him, and the streets of Tokyo outside were empty, with no being in sight. He walked out of the room and stood in the hallways, basked in the darkness, seeing nothingness.

Pale grey eyes closed for a brief moment, absorbing his observation, his exhaustion ebbing away with each thought that crossed his mind.

"Error."

Now that he listened closer, he could sense that it was, in fact, a voice looming within his mind. A small frown stuck itself onto his lips, and it stayed there for quite some time, because he was confused.

Allen considered if he was half-asleep, which was a given since he hardly slept whenever he was in a huge predicament. On the other hand, he felt perfectly healthy, both in mind and body save for the lack of sleep.

"Error."

"Error?" he repeated out loud, and to his amazement, the machine-like voice rang once more.

"Timespan remaining is ninety-six hours. Reconnection failed due to incomplete equipment authentication. "

Rin rolled over his side, scratching his neck and murmuring in his sleep as the Exorcist stood rooted to the spot, frozen in terror, understanding nothing that was just eerily uttered. "W-what is going on…"

He thought hard, staring at the desk chair, his vision becoming blurry. He wasn't too good at dealing with ominous situations such as this; if only Lavi was with him! Allen groaned. Though he was not amused at the redhead's borderline jokes, at times like these, Lavi was perfect at balancing the dark atmosphere when needed.

Allen opened the window in attempt to freshen his mind with the cool air, but at once, he felt something rubbing into him, like an invisible creature. And it seemed to multiply, too, if he were to be honest, with the way he felt certain vibrations near his shoulders. He wasn't sure if he was too alert due to the inner voice that awoke him, or the fact that he was over-thinking things.

Deciding that he was simply tired and that all these odd things would disappear when he woke up, the white-haired male retreated to bed, falling fast asleep.

Unknown to him, the hands that were sleeping underneath the white gloves were slowly becoming transparent.

A curse rang around the corridor as there was the sound of a key hastily being inserted into a lock. Reever Wenhamm groaned, hearing the clanking and whirring inside the office. He turned the knob and entered to find Komui Lee, the European Head, wearing a protective mask and fiddling with strange gears and other mechanical parts of things he had no interest in knowing.

"Oh, Reever!" Komui was utmost pleased. "No sign of Allen?" he asked worriedly, sweat on his forehead. He sighed as the scientist shook his head, confirming his worst fears.

"Lavi and the others are still searching. They've even gone out of the radius, thinking he landed cities away," Reever added. "The Order seems to be cleared of the Akumas as well, though we couldn't figure out why."

"This is bad…" Komui took off the mask and threw on his framed spectacles. "Our last hope at this rate is to find the parts of the time machine."

"About that," Reever began, giving his Supervisor a concerned glance. "We haven't found any missing or damaged parts of the machine, either. It seems that there's nothing left."

Komui bit his finger, the grim news sinking in. The scientist had an urge to round on the man; after all, the whole incident occurred because of the ridiculous time machine, anyway. Yet when he saw Komui's crestfallen and deeply frustrated face, Reever couldn't blame him, as they were attacked by Akumas on top of that, and more than anything, it was important to find Allen right away.

"Chief, why did you build such a machine?" Reever couldn't hold back. "To have caused such destruction..."

"Reever, believe me when I say this, but Komutiny was incomplete at the time." Komui turned to him. "You see, I was just finishing up on microchips—Allen's, specifically, and I needed more data so I was scouting around."

Microchips? Reever widened his eyes. After spending years with the Supervisor, he was familiar with the man's method of experimentation, but this was something entirely new. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not that reckless to build a time machine without thinking of a plan to revert back to present time," said Komui, his voice strained. "How Komutiny works is that, it's embedded with thousand of microchips filled with data of everyone—finders, exorcists, you, me, and so forth," he went on. "However, I quickly found that the machine powers due to the effect of Innocence."

Reever felt a headache approaching. "What?" He knew Komui loved to toy around with Innocence, hoping to crack down the mysterious power's origins, but he wished the man would give it a rest.

"Innocence changed the time vortex. That sort of thing was dangerous, especially because I hypothesised that if someone used the machine, they would be completely wiped out, erased, blank. So I made sure that in order to retrieve someone back from time, microchips would be embedded in their Innocence during the process."

"You're saying that you added some sort of microchip surgical procedure in the machine?!"

"Well, yes…"

"And you thought it would work?!"

"Well, yes..."

Reever groaned. "Chief, what exactly are you trying to say?"

"I'm saying that my machine has a time limit."

As absurd as this all sounded, Reever couldn't help but feel intense relief hitting him like a brick. "So, Allen's safe! He's able to return back, right?!"

"Well…" A nervous glint flickered in the glasses.

"Chief…"

"It would… if only Komutiny wasn't incomplete."