Forever Forever Forever Summer
Chapter 7: Everywhere From Nowhere
It can’t be.
“There's no way.” Isabella stood over Ferb’s shoulder, transfixed on the monitor alongside him. “Surely a clue this massive wouldn't be dropped onto our laps like this.”
Ferb stares into the screen displaying a page for a fantastical local weather altering machine, sold by an unknown company for an obscene price. It looked somewhat like a dandelion; a pillar with a ball covered in antennae on top. It was constructed with a familiar brand of whimsy; a childish wonder and the ability to see the world in a vibrant light that far too few people genuinely possessed.
“It's not stolen, it's not in the project book, so where...?” Isabella trails off, absently twirling a stray strand of hair around her finger.
Unannounced, a muffled voice starts enthusiastically shouting from downstairs, quickly becoming recognisable as Irving repeatedly yelling Ferb’s name. He thunders up the stairs and down the hall, sliding on the carpet and almost falling over when he arrives at the bedroom’s open door.
“FERB!” He hollers, clutching one of his many, many record books of Phineas and Ferb’s creations. Isabella looks over and winces, while Ferb remains glued to the screen. “...and Isabella also! I ran here as soon as I saw it!”
“You saw-?”
“Phineas’ engineering! I’d recognise it anywhere!” He begins frantically flipping through the pages of his book. “It's a little less refined than usual, which is weird, but it's his! And it's not something you’ve ever made before, which is weirder since he's legally dead and I’ve recorded everything you’ve ever made ever and-”
“Whoa, hey, Irving, don't forget to breathe!”
Irving continues on, but Ferb already has all the confirmation he needs. He had feared when he first saw the advertisement for this weather machine that he was getting too desperate for information and had started seeing Phineas in places he wasn't. His wall of theories looked enough like a conspiracy stringboard without actual baseless conspiracies on it.
Thankfully, if there was one other person he'd trust to recognise whether something was Phineas’, it was Irving. While he wasn't quite as stalker-ish as he was when they met he still kept an incredibly in depth and thoroughly analysed log of their creations, in some ways even more detailed than Ferb's own records. He’d probably spent more time looking at the brothers’ engineering than they had themselves. Most of their mutual friends would call it creepy or obsessive, but Ferb found it admirable, in a way, to be that dedicated to something.
So, with all his familiarity and knowledge, if Irving believed this was Phineas’ work then it damn near certainly was.
“-and the closest thing is the biosphere, but that was a container, if they're telling the truth about how it works it’s a completely different mechanism-” Unsurprisingly, Irving is still rattling on when Ferb tunes back in.
“Okay, okay!” Patience wearing thin, Isabella raises her voice just slightly above Irving’s. “Easy, Irving. We see it, we agree with you. At least, I do.” She turns back around. “Ferb...?”
Irving looks over too, eyes wide and aware, mouth hung slightly open, apparently forgetting to close it after being cut off mid-sentence. Next to Isabella, their expressions were as different as night and day.
Ferb looks back at the monitor and breathes.
“This is Phineas’.” He declares, invigorated by the new lead. “We’re going to dig into this company and figure out everything about them. Their employees, suppliers and their history.” To anyone else he looked as stoic as ever. On the inside he was seething. Rage was bubbling so close to the surface that it could burst. He inhaled deeply and mindfully, reminding himself that no level of anger was an overreaction to whatever they did to his brother, but he had to stay focused in order to do anything productive with that emotion.
“Right on it, sir!” Irving pulls out his tablet and instantly begins tapping away.
Ferb and Isabella meet eyes, nod sternly, then begin their own tasks. Ferb remains on the computer, opening tab upon tab to begin his research, while Isabella pulls out an orange walkie-talkie.
“Come in, girls. I’ve got a new task for us.”
~
Summoned by the scent of research being conducted, Baljeet arrived at the Flynn-Fletcher house to join the in-person hunt for information while the rest of the Fireside Girls conducted their own search effort in the lodge. The four of them, plus Perry, sat in parallel silence tailing this mysterious company. The name on the website was Wanted Creations, but all of them quickly learned it was only the outermost shell of a much larger, much darker whole.
Playing detective generally wasn't Ferb's style, Phineas was the talker and a better fit for a job like that. Silence can be just as persuasive, Ferb knew that very well, but you can only get information so specific without asking any direct questions. Luckily for him, all of that was completely irrelevant. Being a digital detective was far more his speed, like putting a jigsaw puzzle together without the image on the box. A challenge, sure, but a worthy one. Just the way he liked them.
“I believe I may have found the true owners of this company...” Baljeet announces without stopping his hands breezing across the keyboard.
“What’s the name?” Isabella asks, interest piqued. “The girls and I might’ve too.”
“Feign T. Enterprises. They own an array of shell companies, Wanted Creations is only one of many.”
Isabella glances back at the laptop she had run home to grab after instructing the troop. “We landed there too. There are a lot of tenuous links... these people really know how to hide their tracks. Are you certain this is the real deal?”
“No one who has ever claimed to be an employee at Wanted Creations is a real person and they all seem to have joined at the same time, about six months ago. The same goes for every layer of this mystery and every company I have been able to check, except for Feign T. Enterprises. If they are still all fake names it is very convincing, and it would be strange for only one layer to have so much more work put into it seeming legitimate.” For a moment, he stops typing, leaving the room silent without the rhythmic tatter tatter of the keys. “I suppose we cannot know for certain yet. But at the very least it is suspicious.”
Ferb, meanwhile, had silently dug his way through the trenches of the internet, through business reports, associations and just about anything with a scrap of relation to these companies, and arrived at the same location. Feign T. Enterprises... a painfully generic, boring business assisting customers with business things. It was inconspicuous. The perfect cover. Hidden in plain sight.
But... even if this was the company that knows what happened to Phineas or owned the one that did, what on earth were they meant to do about it? They couldn't just ask them, that was a stupid plan. They couldn't tell the police, they had no evidence to prove anything had actually happened, and with Phineas legally dead they probably wouldn't care anyway. They didn't even know where they were based, it might not even be anywhere near the Tri-State Area.
...Hm.
As the other three continue discussing, Ferb opens a new tab and delves back into the search. Somewhere in this mass there must be an address...
“Someone as brilliant as Phineas would never work with such a shady company anyway.” Irving scoffs, responding to something Ferb didn't hear.
“I think that makes it worse.” Isabella sighs. “I know we believe he's alive but the more we learn the more I don't like the alternative.” Her voice fades a little. Even with his focus elsewhere, Ferb recognises it as her drifting into longing daydreams.
“Yeah, but he’s got to be alive somewhere, even if he's being held hostage or something.” Irving idly taps the back of his tablet, avoiding Isabella's eyes.
“Hostage implies they're waiting for someone to try to collect him but they didn't send bribes or threats, they want us to think he's dead! We don't know what they're doing to him. And I'm terrified that-...” The mask cracks but doesn't break. Her posture softens. She stays strong. “If they did anything to hurt him, if they even thought about hurting him, I swear to god, I’ll-”
“Forgive me for interrupting, Isa, but let us not get too hasty.” Baljeet chimes in. “Phineas is brave and determined, you have told him so yourself, multiple times, in fact! Regardless of what has happened to him it will never break his spirit, he never gives up-”
“2404 Rockpart Street, Badgertown.”
All sounds stop and everyone turns to Ferb. The monitor showed an inconspicuous page for a slightly decrepit building, built like a brick pillar with uniform square windows. There was a sign above the front double doors that age had long since washed away.
“Sorry?” Isabella tilts her head, peering over at the screen.
“2404...” The rest of the breath exits his lungs wordless. A feeling that was occurring far too often these days seeps into his chest and his head floods with thoughts he can’t decipher.
The other figures in the room blend into the background noise. He stands, paces to the drafting table without looking down for a clear path, and tears a note away from the wall, revealing a small blue sticky note underneath. He delicately plucks it and turns it to face his friends.
On the note, in perfect unfamiliar cursive, was a message;
2404 Rockpart Street, 2nd Floor
Badgertown
Please save our boy
“2404 Rockpart... wait.” Isabella turns to the monitor, then to the note, then back again. “Do you think it's related to Feign T.?”
“No-” Damnit, damn his stupid brain, the words all jumble and tangle into a useless pile of sludge that only gets thicker the more he tries to straighten it out. His grip on the note tightens and it takes everything he has to not crumple it in frustration.
In a last ditch effort, he turns and points the note at Irving, who leans in and examines it carefully.
“Hey, that’s... that's not your handwriting. Or Phineas’, or any of ours... who wrote that?”
“You have all of our handwriting styles memorised...?” Baljeet asks, not expecting a helpful answer, then returns to tapping away at his keyboard. Irving shrugs nonchalantly.
Ferb knew who wrote it. He knew where this note left on his bed overnight came from. Who else would be confident enough to call him “our boy”? But he also knew, for reasons he couldn't know the full extent of, that it was best for both of them if he kept that secret to himself.
So shakes his head dismissively, pointing back at the note.
“This-” He strains, each word taking a mountain of effort. “-is where we go. Where he is.”
“What? How...” Isabella stammers, uncertain. “Are you sure?”
He nods. Bubbles of emotion boiled and muddled his head even further. A minute twitch in his expression tells Isabella what to do next.
“So...” Her face hardens, her brow furrowing in concentration. “To get everything straight before we jump to conclusions. This address, someone gave it to you as a tip?”
He nods.
“And you didn't want to act on nothing more than a sticky note, just in case it was a false lead.”
Right.
“So, after finding the same address from a completely unrelated source... business records of some kind, I assume? That confirmed the note was a legitimate lead.”
That's it.
“You trust the note, for whatever reason, and you trust your judgement.”
“Yes, I can back up Ferb connecting the address to Feign T. Enterprises. I have found it myself as well. It was not a small feat, they have several fake or shared decoy buildings.” Baljeet briefly interjects.
“...so that's where Phineas is.”
Bingo. Ferb triumphantly points at Isabella with his free hand, the briefest of tiniest smiles passing over his face, something he had been sorely lacking. Thank goodness for Isabella's endless skillset letting her share his thought process when he couldn't do it himself. God, he loved his friends.
As soon as Isabella is released from her focus, her expression sinks. “Phineas...”
Note still in hand, he steps back over to the computer, much more carefully this time, and continues digging through the building’s information.
“I will admit, I had believed the odds of finding Phineas, let alone learning what happened to him, were...” Baljeet pauses, choosing his next words very carefully. “...statistically extremely bad. But if he is in that building we may really get him home!”
Isabella breathes deeply, shifting back into being the fearless troop leader. “Even if he is, how on earth are we going to know for sure? We can't go storming in, they probably have tight security-”
“Man, their security is terr-i-ble!” Irving announces with a slightly alarming level of enthusiasm. “Like, their cameras are connected to their actual, public website. Rookie mistake. Their physical security, less so. There's guards. I think some of them have guns. I guess they put all their money into that instead!”
Isabella and Baljeet stare stunned at Irving. Ferb continues toiling away silently.
“Wait, seriously? You got in just like that? That's probably really illegal.”
“I’m sure they won't mind if I just borrow them for a bit.” Irving smirks coyly as he flicks between camera feeds. “I’m not breaking anything, they don't have to worry about a thing.”
“And why do you know how to hack into security cameras?”
“Oh, I've done this before. Not this exact system, obviously, but since their security is so bad it was really easy-”
“Actually, just focus on finding Phineas for now, okay? We can talk about this later...”
“Yes ma’am!” Irving throws a mock salute and Isabella rolls her eyes. They all return to their keyboards and screens, creating a song of taps and clatters.
Then, it went quiet. Only for a moment. An innocent second before it all collapsed. Ferb's stomach twisted and stung, instantaneously filling with dread of an unknown origin. It was simply the primordial impending sense that something is wrong.
He looks over at Irving. The reflection of his tablet in his glasses flicks gracefully through each camera feed.
A new image appears on his screen, almost entirely white. Irving’s expression twists, then drops. A brief squint does nothing but reaffirm the fear of what he sees. Casual smugness becomes nothing but horror. Mixed with the white light of the tablet, almost all colour is drained from his face.
“Ph... Phineas.” He quivers, mortified. “He’s...”
Time stands still.
Ferb's hands clench shut so tightly his nails dig into his palm.
Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, Irving turns the tablet to the others where it’s immediately crowded by three faces; one flat, one terrified, one furious.
Through camera grain and static, they all stared. On the other side of the lens, a bird's eye view of a pale tile room housed the undeniable shape of their friend and brother, sat unmoving on a lone chair, surrounded by strange machines, attached to the walls by a headset and countless blue wires.
Phineas.
~~~~~
Perry was so proud. He was overflowing, he wished he could safely show Ferb just how proud he was.
It was a gamble, most would call it reckless, to willingly jeopardise his cover for any reason. When something as small as an accidental lair entrance opening can relocate an agent if memory erasure wasn’t an option, it was a catastrophically dangerous risk to place a handwritten note on your host’s bed while they sleep.
Risk and reward had been a sizable piece of his training, this was nothing new to him. He had spent his life calculating risks on the fly and acting accordingly, sometimes while in life or death situations, and had never faltered. He was good at what he did and proud of that. Yet, this time, from the moment he wrote the note to the moment Ferb read it the next morning, he constantly found himself doubting his judgement. What if OWCA finds out? What if he gets taken away from his family when they need him most? What if they erase Ferb’s memories and hinder or completely ruin his search for Phineas? What if he was just plain wrong with the address? This wasn't his usual field and he was running on far from enough sleep. Then, the reward half of his training kicks in, and he remembers that if it all goes to plan, Phineas will be found, rescued and returned home. No risk could outweigh that.
He had his suspicions that Ferb knew his secret identity anyway, that boy loved solving a good puzzle. Thanks to a certain incident a few years ago he’d already seen the lair without getting his memory erased, and with everything in it either platypus sized or themed it wouldn't need to be a frighteningly smart boy like Ferb to figure out it might be related to the regularly disappearing pet platypus. That, plus an array of near misses, close calls and inexplicable shenanigans over the years? It was a blessing in disguise that the chatterbox of the brothers was generally oblivious to anything he wasn’t currently focused on because it would not be a secret he could keep without destroying himself with guilt.
Their friends, on the other hand... he was glad they didn’t pry when Ferb didn’t say where the note came from. Whether it was because they could tell Ferb was struggling, or because they simply had more urgent things to worry about, he wasn’t sure. All that mattered is that they didn’t know. While he didn’t not trust them, he also didn’t know them well enough to trust them with keeping a secret this important. To be fair, Stacy had done a commendable job in that regard, but he didn’t exactly let her know intentionally...
It was out of his paws now, anyway. All he could do was hope. Ferb had enough fury for the both of them.